##VIDEO ID:5reCv8GbPvE## e e e e e e e okay good evening um going to call the school committee meeting from November 7th to order um we have the four of us today no nobody else from a school committee perspective is on Zoom so we can just do normal related processes um so we are hereby in order um walking through the agenda real quick um we do have members of the public here so if anybody wants to do public comment we'll start with that shortly we'll then have a focus on Excellence which I believe is going to be our rise preschool Alana um to talk a little bit about that uh we have our consent agenda which includes multiple donations and multiple field trips as well as minutes and then we'll move to reports um our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning assist superintendent of student services our superintendent and liaison and we're graced with our new student representative Alex Vincent so we're glad to have Alex with us um we'll then move forward to our new business which we'll start with a masbo presentation um which is an award being given and as a result of that award a donation that we will vote hopefully to accept um and then we'll move on to Old business which includes the uh affectionately named annac committee recommendation for a few Fields uh well the gymnasium and um Turf 2 um which Mr Robinson will walk us through uh we'll then from there move to the school Improvement plan presentations and we have all of our pres our principles here to talk through those we're excited to hear that and we have a lead program review Dr stce will be talking us through that and we have some people that will be joining the zoom a little bit later as well to talk through that and we'll end with our October enrollment so one of our more packed agendas but many of these things weren't ready last time so we had a cancel a meeting last time so here we are all right with that said let's start with anybody in the room want to make public comment about anything that is not on the agenda and nobody's on Zoom so seeing none we will move on focus on Excellence Dr Miles you want to start DR sty is actually introduce start okay okay so we are really excited to have our rise preschool director um Alana Shon come and talk about some of the um Innovative and interesting workshops that they are hosting um for not only for our rise families but for the families that are in the greater reading Community because they all come to kindergarten and well most of them come to reading kind arten we want them to and we want to make sure everybody has the most that they possibly can when they step into R in public school so we're really thrilled to have Alana here Alana join us over at the table over here and yeah take Carla thank you you have to speak into both all right hello everyone and thank you Jen um Alana Shon I am the uh rise director and um I very excited to present the preschool Partners training program and it's a series of virtual and in-person presentations that focus on targeted skills um and the the overall purposes we were finding um several concerns in different areas throughout just the the rise preschool as well as throughout the community from parents and from other preschools and so we wanted to send invit ations out to um all of our reading preschools the Burbank YMCA Christian Cooperative Cobblestone five senses to name a few and um the the rise teachers and all parents um in reading and we've also presented to the CPAC so the trainings um we're starting with four Focus areas so the first one is a fine motor presentation which builds Builds on all of those pre-academic skills um the pre-writing skills that students need the pincer grasp and um and then we have a second SE uh presentation on sensory integration uh which promotes strategies for sensory seeking students or under reactive behaviors um we have a phonological awareness presentation which focuses on early literacy skills and an environmental one which supports regulation safety turn taking and so um after each of the presentations there will be lending bags and the lending bags um will go out to some of the community preschools or if a parent wants to use it they may use it as well and they're filled with um all kinds of goodies that apply to each of the different um focus areas so our fine motor bag for instance and I left some up here so that you can peruse at your pleasure um but the fine motor has tweezer sorting games or Spike the Hedgehog game um crayon eggs um little golf pencils so that students with fine motor difficulties can hold the pencils a little bit smaller the sensory bag has uh a wobble cushion fidget sets um noise cancelling headphones uh some of the books that we have um there we tried to focus on neurodiverse authors um but one of the examples that I really liked was an example of um a preschooler going to the beach and the preschooler had was all excited about going to the beach and then when got when um he got to the beach he had some sensory difficulties the sand bothered him the noises from the beach bothered him and it was a really nice um it's a really nice story about how he can handle it and strategies that he can use so it was a a combination of those different things and then there are a slew of games um all focusing on partnership group plans um turn taking activities and so I left all of those up there for you so the present the presentation dates have not yet been set um we're working on finalizing all of those dates throughout the year um and once we do we're going to share it with all of the community and um we'll also be um hosting um some consultation hours so that if after a presentation somebody needs a little bit more input or they used the bag and then it didn't work really well they can come back and ask us about it so it's a it's a really wonderful program I wish I could take full ownership on that that was uh uh Jen's fabulous idea but I'm really excited about it because it's so important to collaborate with the community and help with um all of the the families in reading so thank you great thank you thank you any questions everybody do you have a question I have a comment that's okay either way com I just like while Alana's up here I just want to publicly thank Alana as you know she stepped in the interim role to start the year and has been amazing addition to the rise community and I think everyone's quickly uh seen the strength of her leadership and has already had a really powerful impact on the rise Community I'd also like just to say to as a parent of two prek kids now this is amazing and I think the way that this truly builds a partnership with the families and the way the parents at home can then support their child's learning I just think is is uh really exciting so I appreciate your vision for this and making it happen thank you thank you you thank [Music] you to make sure that's on a school member okay we're good CH us now we'll get one okay didn't have to mute him they left um all right so moving on in the agenda uh we will um move to our consent agenda so I move that we accept the consent agenda second seconded by Mr Robinson or AKA Chuck any discussion no all in favor all opposed and it passes four to zero uh so we'll now move to reports and we'll start with um Dr Hardy okay hi everyone um just one item tonight uh for my report I want to just let you know that we had a very successful inservice day uh this past Tuesday November 5th and um we were really excited about the work that was accomplished that day as we do after all of our professional development we ask staff to provide us with feedback um so that we can learn about what worked for them and make changes for any other upcoming professional development opportunities um this year we we used a new tool that we recently um have access to it's called thought exchange and it's a um an application that allows us to put together much more polished surveys um and it also has on the back end some really great AI enhanced abilities to help us um comb through and especially when we survey the whole staff and get you know 300 responses um believe it or not we do actually sit and read every response from all of our staff members but the AI component helps us to consolidate and pull out the highlights so I'm just going to share with you um a quick little blurb that I was able to in about 30 seconds pull out of um thought exchange this is based on um the responses from our staff the feedback on November 5th in service day highlights a highly productive and well-received schedule many appreciated the collaborative work time with colleagues which allowed for significant progress on tasks and planning the morning session included whole staff meetings and Department specific activities which were particularly valued for their relevance and engagement the afternoon's UNS the afternoon's unscheduled time was praised for enabling teachers to complete essential tasks such as grading IEP writing and Conference preparation so a little summary of what our staff reported after our inservice day thank you thank you any questions okay Dr St hi everyone um I just wanted to highlight an upcoming event on Friday November 15th reading public schools and the reading Coalition are co-sponsoring a provids breakfast so we are doing Outreach to all of our local um Community Health Care Providers and um mental health clinicians and having them actually come here so that we can work so our social workers nurses members of the Coalition our counselors and our um school counselors from the high school will all be present to really meet with everyone to do some networking and to really begin to understand all the different processes and supports that are available in the school and in the town for our students and families so we're really excited to host that event here on November 15th at 8:30 great thank you any questions okay dreski great just one introduction I'd like to introd introduce our new interim Director of Finance and operations Mr Phil little haale who's joining us uh Phil as we talked about during the hiring process comes to us with pretty extensive background on the finance side uh close to 15 years as a CFO in uh Massachusetts and several districts most recently the newbur port public schools and and before that a pretty extensive background in the private financial sector uh we're thrilled to add a leader of his experience caliber to our team and you'll be seeing a lot more of Phil the next month or two as we Dive Right into budget season welcome aboard uh and we told teased Phil tonight that he tonight is unnamed but if he makes it through the night tonight on skad he will earn his stripes and have his own name plaque for next meeting too but all jokes aside he's been a wonderful addition to our team and really excited to have him and see his impact this year great thank you welcome again Phil thank you okay so we'll move on to Liaison reports and we'll start with Alex all all right hi everyone my name is Alex vinsent I'm a sophomore here at rmhs um I have a few updates and upcoming events to share uh starting off um first and foremost this weekend is the next fall musical We Will Rock You performance dates for the evening shows are November 8th 9th 15th and 16th and then for the matina performances we have the 10th and the 17th so spread out over two weeks um other big news our fall athletic seasons are wrapping up so boys soccer which I'm proud to be a part of uh football field hockey swim and cross country are all competing in the Massachusetts tournament this year um as well as that the marching band and the color guard both won second and earned a gold medal um in their state finals uh for some upcoming events uh report cards are being published tomorrow afternoon um to Plus Portals and another big news it is Spirit Week Halloween sorry not Halloween homecoming Spirit Week the 22nd through the 27th so that's going to be a lot of fun at the high school and last but not least we have the Thanksgiving football game at Fenway Park 7:30 p.m. on the 26th of November and I think tickets are available online already for purchase great thanks Alex welcome aboard thank you any questions for Alex anybody welcome thank you so just so the rest of the committee knows we already told Alex he can stay or he can go we love him to stay but we understand if he has to go be here right um so it's uh Carla great thank you um there was a um meeting from the permanent building committee on Monday where there was um they brought the new um owners project manager on for the senior center so there was discussion about their process um of picking a site and um and moving forward with that update on kilum um we got some exciting news on October 30th the msba board meeting happened where they um pushed us into the next phase of the project so we are now in the schematic design phase of the project and we're really excited about that even though we had already started schematic design we needed to wait for the formal um meeting we've had um in the past three weeks we've had um on community meetings on octob October 23rd November 4th we have another community meeting on December 9th it's um on sustainability at our um building committee meeting on November 20th we're going to be talking about we're going to be selecting a HVAC system so that's one of our biggest decisions to date and it will all come together because it always does um we did a presentation at the financial Forum on October 30th and um today I attended um the Veterans Day celebration at the high school um Bill I'm going to do a big shout out to Bill Brown who is a beloved member of our community on his 94th birthday today he did a speech at um for the Veterans Day celebration all the students did an unbelievable job the staff did an unbelievable job so thank you to service for our principal our assistant principal and um various teachers and staff in our district as well great thank you Carla thank you any questions for Carla okay Sean no report sure so the uh Charter review committee met on October 23rd and uh we were reviewing uh feedback from legal counsel on I won't go into it's not really School related but it's mostly rmld stuff and some of the uh some of the uh removing committee members stuff so that keeps going on so okay keep on keep on okay um on my side the October 15th right to read film viewing um I think went really well um I want to thank the staff that was able to join us as well as part of that conversation we had people from multiple Towns come we had one person come up from Wilmington asking how do I get my kids in your schools um so type conversation uh which was interesting as well um the feedback from the panelists was really good and Millie walking out was like you have an ally now we need to do this work so that was that was great to see as well um so that went well um we have we've had one policy subcommittee meeting since uh since we last met um where we reviewed some of the the a policies that are pretty meaty in um adjustment need to get some more legal feedback on those and incorporate that feedback appropriately and we have a lot more work to do there um and she already talked about financial Forum so I think that's it it okay oh no it's not children's cabinet we had the first children's cabinet meeting last night as well uh which uh was we brought in some new members to that um from the town uh that were able to get involved I was excited to see Jenna and Liv from the town join us uh we had three more new students join us as well so we have a little bit of a greater student voice included into that process too and we you know brought every up to speed and then broke into our groups to start working on you know next actions so there was a group working through the relational aggression next actions and a group working through the resources next action and the resources next action in particular is going to be focusing on bringing together kind of a children's closet of sorts um to help students in our district that have um clothing shortage related issues um so a lot of the you know hierarchy needs related stuff is is part of this process so you know how do we make sure that they are stud students have what they need so that when they get to school they can actually focus on learning um so there's there's that um it was great to have all the communication and and team members that were there so okay Andel will be speaking next week on Thursday um around relational aggression so um anybody is welcome to join us on Zoom there's a lot of Flyers out um we'd love to have people come she's been here before and was very very well received we also have copies of her books in all of our schools if people are interested um I'm sure we can loan some out as well thank you for that addition okay all right so moving on um we'll move on to the masbo presentation donation um and I believe we have some members here to present for us yeah Sam so for those who don't know Sam rippen uh past president of masbo and also the current business manager in the pbd public schools so Sam's here tonight to present the award thank you okay thank you very much uh for having me here again my name is Sam rien I'm the immediate past president of the Massachusetts Association for school business officials of uh known as mabo uh as part of that uh role last year was my president's year 2023 2024 and as part of being president at the end of the year uh I get the pleasure of awarding what's uh entitled the masbo president's award uh there there was a letter that was uh given uh to the superintendent from Margaret Raymond Driscoll who is at the Joint conference at Mas masc could not attend uh tonight um but I wanted to read that letter ever so briefly then give a couple of words about uh why I I selected Rob and then uh uh want to turn it over to Rob to give some words about why reading uh so the letter uh States this it is great pleasure to share this that this year's presence award one of the most prestigious Awards presented by the Massachusetts Association of school business officials masbo has been conferred on Robert F odonnell director of school Finance at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and secondary education as the reading public school have had great personal impact on Rob's life he has selected your District as it as this year's recipient of the $1500 contribution by the award sponsor Boston business technology uh we are grateful for your you being reading uh and the superintendent your dedication to the students of reading and look forward to the continued joy and success that students experience in your school family uh again uh what I looked towards when uh conferring the award I and and Rob was an unusual candidate in that normally these Awards go to school business officials in a school district uh Rob isn't okay uh that being said uh what really struck me uh was two things one I felt that uh Rob has tremendous humility and he would be the last person as he was uh to think that he would be getting this award when I announced it at a masso B monthly meeting uh the other is um people who should get this award uh I believe are ones who make a direct impact to the profession in in a positive way and I have always found Rob and I'm not alone uh as extraordinarily responsive knowledgeable helpful uh for us all to do our jobs uh in the best way possible to support students in the best way possible um I look to the reaction to see uh how well my uh who I picked was received and people stood up and cheered and so it would appear I made a I made a good decision that being said I want to turn it over to Rob thanks is this one live both both live all right thank you uh thank you Sam so probably wondering why I'm here so I'm a I'm a 1990 graduate of Ring of reading Memorial High School um I spent all 12 years of my public school education in Reading um as we drove in here my brother joined me as well as my my twin brother tonight um as we were driving in here we went by Birch Meadow where we both both went uh coolage where we both went and of course uh ring High School which is you know very different now than it was then um so uh when I received the award and uh got this opportunity to select a district uh to receive the money um I I didn't spend too much time thinking about it because you know I I quickly thought back to my own School experience and how much time I spent here and how much uh in particular um attending school here at ring High School meant to me in particular participating on the track team uh for four years uh while I was here and how much that experience meant to me um in my own formation as as a young person and as an adult um and so it was an easy decision for me to make that you know it'd be great to give this money uh back to ring uh specifically uh to use uh in support of of the track program and and all the students that participate uh in that program um you know said my speak for myself I I think my brother would agree uh we just had a lot of positive experiences we were on uh teams with Hal Croft when he was coach uh of of the program back then from 1986 to to 1990 and um we had a lot of success but we also learned a lot as as uh not only as athletes but as as people and and grew as people uh in that experience and and that is really uh been part of my own uh life in in so many ways and and my own professional work as well so um happy to give this money to you and and uh you know do with it what you will um I'm sure you have plenty of things you can do with it so umk thanks Sam for this opportunity and and and for masbo and U you know look forward the many years ahead you know continuing to work in this in this role which is given given a lot to me um and uh I'm glad to know that uh you know my work has been appreciated so much by people on the field so thank you thank [Music] you all right gentlemen thank you very much um before you leave I'm going to move to accept the donation from Robert F odonnell in the amount of $1,500 as the result of his receipt of the of mabo's President award sponsored by Boston Business Technologies second seconded by Carla any discussion seeing none all in favor all opposed it passes four to zero thank you so much thank you congratulations congratulations thank okay so moving on to and it's appropriate that he mentioned Hal crof because the last time we did a facilities naming conversation it was for hoft track outside right um so thank you for that and that you know direct Association to the next member the next portion of our agenda and Chuck I'm going to turn it over to you to discuss the nominations the recommendation and the process for fnck so uh everybody has the I put a memo in the packet uh that just outlined the process we went through I'd first like to thank the committee uh Christine uh Keller who was representing the historical commission uh Jess Kalan our high School principal uh Julie Centrella who's a business owner and Nick face business owner Community member and our two students uh Alex Van Horn and uh Daniel pastori that it was they very good good committee and uh we we met over the course of three meetings and it was very clear uh from the participation from the community uh that you know these were very wor worthy and deserving recommendations so at our last meeting on uh I guess it was the 16th uh we we as a committee voted unanimously to recommend to this committee that uh we name uh Turf 2 uh for Charlie Hardy and the gimnasium in the Fieldhouse for uh Phil viaro uh i' ALS also like to thank the the main proponents of each uh for the viaro recommendation uh Mr moscarello and and uh uh Joe finigan uh presented on that on that behalf and then for the Hardy Uh Kevin mvy and and all the the people thoughtful and respectful people that came with them for for the uh presentations so I I guess I'd answer or any questions that anybody has uh let's do this one by one just so we have a chance if anybody wants to ask questions or say anything so I'm going to put the motion on the table one by one um and then we'll we'll go from there so the first motion is going to be move to accept the nomination of the Athletics facility naming advisory committee to name the Fieldhouse gymnasium after Philip aaro second seconded by Sean now any discussion or any points of anything anyone wants to raise anybody want to say anything out there okay all in favor all opposed and passes four to zero so before we I'm going to give Applause here in a second but I want to move to the next one too so move to accept the nomination of the Athletics facility naming advisory committee to name turf 2 after Charlie Hardy second second by Carla any discussion on that okay any any discussion out in the audience okay all in favor and that passes 4 to zero before we before we Applause we do need to Applause I just want to thank Chuck and the committee for their time and effort in doing this I want to thank the sponsors as well for bringing it forward and you know I can't even count how many emails and petitions and whatnot we received as a result as well probably well over 150 oh oh yeah I think in in total amongst the two of them so um you all did a great job in advocating you all did a great job of presenting the gentlemen that they were and and why they are deserving of this award and I just want to thank you for that as well and Jeff thanks for sheering the process thank you with that said um congratulations and we now hand it over to the administration to take care of the next steps get get the signs up get everything ready we're on it get the naming ceremonies ready we're on it we're on it all right okay thank you so much app you okay so um moving forward now let's move on to our school Improvement plan presentations um and Dr mileski you want to start and then we'll have the principles us doesn't Joe finigan miss giving a sip presentation you want to bring you out of the bullpen come on [Laughter] Joe I appreciate all of our school leaders being here tonight uh a couple of things i' while we pull up the presentation a couple of things i' just like to mention uh around the Sip tonight first uh I'd like to thank all the respect school councils as you know these the process of putting together a sip involves many folks behind the scenes uh both parents uh and and staff members of each school so appreciate all the work of our school councils and know that the presentations tonight reflect all those collaborative efforts two we've asked tonight the uh presentation to be brief so each and they know the the line we've been saying two minutes you know around per slide per uh and they're already negotiating for more but two minutes per slide just to move for because the intent tonight is to give a high level overview of some of the key headlines of both similarities in the sips and also in respective School communities if you want to learn more you'll see in the packet there's information about when each principal will be presenting their sips to their school communities uh so you can either you know visit in person or jump on Zoom to see that and learn more too and in that meeting they will also be looking back at some of their sip goals from 23 and 24 and talking about some of the progress that they made and some of the you know some of the targets they hit and you know the ones they maybe did not hit as well as they would have hoped and things that they're doing this year an adjustment too so appreciate all the collaborative work on this and with that said uh the flow for tonight we're going to have first our uh Elementary principles come up to speak about just some of the commonalities of things that are you know consistent across all the schools we're then going to invite each principal to speak briefly about some of the highlights from their sip we'll follow the same process at the middle school level and then obviously high school with one school will look a little bit different where Jess will just come up to speak about just some of the highlights from her Sip and then we'll close with a couple of words on what's ahead with the sips so with that said let's invite up our elementary team come on over here over here here all right technically it can't see you either way so you guys can use both if you want to we'll hear they'll hear you either way they can't see you either way so hear I stand up I can close enough whatever works for you please um okay as you uh begin to look through our uh Elementary School Improvement plans you'll see that there are some common threads um one of those is focus on attendance and abs and chronic absenteeism and last year the district and all the elementary schools Middle School and High School spent a good amount of time looking at attendance looking at ways that we can continue to improve student attendance and we made some really good improvements and gains in our overall attendance rates um this year we're looking at refining and examining some smaller groups or um subgroups that may um need to continue to em continue to build their um attendance and then um refining our practice for monitoring our attendance and then putting in interventions to support students who may not be uh who may be chronically absent and or may not be um coming to school as regularly as possible so continue to do some of that good work this thank you um so another area that we are going to be working on this year that is really being built off of what we've been doing is to make sure that we have data informed practices using our um all of our different forms of um data analysis with students different kinds of um our Ola tool that comes from our which is more formative that we're doing regularly and then more of our um scheduled assessments that we do our Dibbles which is what our literacy specials do that help direct our tier 2 instruction um I ready AMC those are our math assessments and we're using that data to meet with our teams regularly to drive our instruction to say what are we doing well what do we need to do better and then also drilling down really on specific students as well so this regular um opportunities to meet with our staff is really going to move us forward um and we're also trying to build more protocols and being really systematic with how we're doing that so the teachers all have a voice and helping our students move along so building off of what Alyssa just said we're looking at really enhancing our tier 2 practices so we feel like our core instruction for tier one is solid how can we push for small group interventions how can we make sure we're providing teachers with professional development and the uh materials and skills that they need to provide differentiated instruction both in the classroom but also supporting our tutors and support staff um in other ways this this year as well um and stemming off of that as Lindsay and Alysa shared um being in uh years three four of our curriculum implementation with um Arc and I am um we're in a good place to really go deeper in our our tier one instructional practices um so a lot of our work this year is really thinking about how we can best leverage our coaches um from The Arc as well as our own internal um illustrative math and what we can do as principles to to support our our teams and deepening our instruction oh I'm back up oh it's you I was thinking Steve was talking I didn't pay attention to when he was speaking just myself um so I thought I was going so um what we're going to do now is share a little bit of our highlights from each of our schools even though there's a lot of commonalities there's just a few areas that we drill down because of our specific data and needs so at barrows one area that we identified was um chronic absenteeism but mostly in our um High needs profile of students and so we're meeting regularly with our staff we're kind of building off of what Josh weaton did because they had some great gains last year and they were really intentional in that so we've been working together outside of our school as well um to see what specifically each student and family needs to help um increase that that was one area where we saw in our accountability ratings where we dropped even though we went up uh despite that actually so that was really exciting but we still want to do better there um and then the other area is that we're also finding through um surveys with our families that students are not reading as much at home and that's having a direct impact on what they're able to do and their stamina during the school day so we're trying to have a really good partnership with our families to see what can we do to help um take down those barriers and and encourage students to feel really excited about reading at home um and so we're working together with our leadership team and our families I me as you can see in the slide different areas of opportunities right now we actually have a mystery reading challenge that's going kids are encouraged within 3 weeks to read 3155 minutes and then we'll celebrate them at the assemblies and sheets already coming in for kids that are reading double time and things like that and parents have said that really seems to um encourage the students to read at home and then that kind of um is hopefully going to build their love of learning to read and build a vocabulary and comprehension and all those things that we're trying to do here so it's a fun one so sorry there you go Steve sorry oh this time it really is me sorry okay so at Birch meow we had a lot of success meeting some of our targets last year on our school Improvement plan and one of the things that we found that we really leveraged to do that was our student leaders now you met some of them last year if you remember when the composting ambassadors came so and we're looking to really build on our student leadership program at Birch Meadow this year we're starting this year in our school Improvement land plan focusing on our fifth graders and there's a couple of reasons why we're focusing on that group first of all if if you think about our fifth graders they're the group that probably were most impacted by the pandemic that certainly is a challenge for them but it gives them unique perspectives and a unique voice and they have some real things to offer because of that experience as leaders and what they went through and how they see school and how they see Community the other thing is it's our last chance with them as fifth graders in our school so we know if we can give them some positive moments of leadership in fifth grade they're going to move on to Middle School as leaders and then the high school as leaders and really really build some momentum there so we're excited about that a few of the ways that we're going to do this with our fifth grade in particular is through peer mentoring so our fifth graders are going to Mentor students sometimes at recess sometimes at lunch they might be reading buddies they might be teamed with students that are showing some poor attendance and that mentorship we think is going to pay some real dividends we also have of course our composting ambassadors still going and they're learning how to how to lead through Community Action right and making Community connections and that's amazing we have our faculty meeting Representatives they're helping us build our multi-tiered system of supports in the building and we have principal circles as a few of you have attended with me and in that role they get to have a voice directly with building leadership I don't have up there listed um our student council of course and we've expanded our student council to include even more students this year to have some formal leadership roles in the building so we're really excited about our student leadership program we think that's going to weave through our whole our whole school Improvement plan and show some real benefits this year thank you all right so for uh J last year we focused a lot on our family communication around our academics so letting our families know um you know suit are on about their students um performance and things of that nature this year we want really wanted to to go deeper into the sense of belonging aspect with our families and connect them um within our school walls so we've had uh families volunteer to bring in um artifacts from their culture and um put it on bulletin boards that become um sort of a a teaching tool for our teachers to use U it's been really exciting to see at our back to school night we had families sign up all the way through June there's not a spot left so there was some excitement there around um just bringing culture into our school uh we're also looking to really educate our community around neurod diversities uh so our building leadership team and our school council have talk through different ways um within our assemblies um that we can really talk through um helping our students learn about how they learn best um and then lastly an area that we're expanding on um which we started last year with our 3 to five is our school store um so our student council members lead our school store every morning um and we've opened it up now from students in K through five so we're going quickly through our spot cards the kids are very excited to buy a bunch of different fidgets and J swag and things of that nature um and then thinking about going deeper in our instructional systems um we've hosted peer observations every year for the past three years uh and this year thinking that we're uh within our reading um you know our teachers really have their feet with with our new reading curriculum um to engage our ilt and um sort of planning out a really great process for peer observations with our within our reading um so last year our teachers um really looked at sense of belonging within the classroom and instructional practices and this year we're looking forward to bringing it into the the reading component um at the leadership of the ilt so for Kum we're very excited that we have United the whole building for one consistent social emotional block on Friday mornings it is a time where every adult in the building is in a classroom or working with students on our Castle competencies so we're really trying to promote students to be more self-aware build relationships with each other um do some more peer conflict there's a whole element of speaking and listening standards that are involved in this so our most recent professional development on Tuesday we talked a lot about how it's the same students sometimes who might be speaking how do we really engage and have Equitable participation how do we teach kids to um have the language to solve conflicts and this block when you walk around the building right now you can already see like a palpable shift in um instruction and culture and I think it's really going to help all of our students access the curriculum in a new way and then at the end of the month we have a assembly where we're synthesizing what did you learn over the entire month and we're having student voices present that out um and going back to the text that we're using so we have core Tex throughout the whole building so it's been kind of a nice consistency and I'm excited to see where that brings us for the end of the year and then for coherent instructional systems really looking for grades four and five to have an SGP for mcast of above 50 this year we did not have the growth that I would like to see last year so I think that we have some systems in place to really focus on our subgroups and going back to that tier 2 instruction who needs what and how are we making sure that that is is happening um in the classroom and out and part of that is really being intentional about the data team meetings so on Friday is when we meet with each grade level team what data are we analyzing what do uh staff members need to bring what do they need moving forward so that they can best plan and meet the needs of all of our students to make that happen great so can do we mind holding question more sorry Nicole I'm sorry don't worry one more um so like you've heard some of my colleagues share a sense of belonging something that all of the schools are kind of working towards and what end is not unique in that endeavor but what we are unique in is that this year we are housing this seam collaborative DEA and heart of hearing program and while we worked really hard to create an inclusive environment for our students and our families and our staff this just gives us another opportunity to do that and um there are two classrooms currently in our building there's an upper elementary school classroom and a lower elementary school classroom uh the goal of the program is essentially to get students back into their home schools so this is sort of a a segue to get there um we currently have a sign language interpreter at all of our school um schoolwide events which has just been sort of eye opening I think for a lot of our students um and and I think a lot of our adult staff members as well too um not only how quickly she can sign but how amazing it is that the kids can kind of follow along um eventually we're going to start offering some sign language courses to to um to the community so that should be coming in the coming in the upcoming months um and what we're really working for in terms of inclusive um environment is having those students who are enrolled in the program really be included into our school so we started at the beginning of October having um the Upper Elementary School students joining all of our um or as many as possible um Specialists where Acoustics and things like that are um where they're able to access um our lower elementary school students are also now starting to um be included in that way as well um and then the seam staff are starting to come to some of our building based professional development opportunities where their schedule aligns because they do have a bit of a different schedule and their early release days are on Wednesdays um and ours are on Fridays and you know just trying to incorporate them into all of our um into all of our events and they joined our staff picture today which felt really exciting to have them you know join join into our community that way um in terms of instructional systems last year we piloted um a math Intervention Program that was run by our assistant principal being our smaller school we were able to kind of utilize ize her skills that way um this year we're kind of building upon that in terms of um really collaborating with the math coaches on how to um build out our tier one differentiated instruction um really looking at building um monitoring tools to uh to monitor student math progress and then to re-evaluate our intervention model um and then looking at peer observations around um math practices so a lot of good work Happ I would done yeah we hold questions than do you want to go questions want to go next level does anybody want to have that I have one probably hopefully quick one um so Nicole You' talked generally about um attendance and then Alyssa you talked about it specifically in the barels context Nicole when I heard you talk about it it was like multiple groups of students that were concerned about from attendance perspective and then Alyssa you HED in on a high needs group are we seeing the same sort of trend across the five schools is it primarily the high needs group that we're concerned about are there other groups that are also a focus for us like what what are you all seeing I I can speak for wooden and I can speak specifically about certain groups like we're definitely looking at our Boston resident definitely looking at our Boston resident students making sure that you know they're attending as regularly as all of our other students um one of the things that we're also looking at at wood end is you know sort of minimizing um unnecessary absences or sort of the um the absences that are sort of not sick related those kinds of things that can kind of tally up because we know every single day that a student is absent um is you know time loss on learning so I think for us in terms of subgroups it's looking at our Boston resident students it is looking at our high needs population as well um but it's also looking at you know making sure that families are sort of on board on um you know minimizing the number of absences that students have um for things that are you know extracurricular sure I can add to a little bit of it I think that for baros we were able to based on the Desi data see that that's the population but the pra IES that we're going to put in place when we're really looking specifically at some of our student families and the supports they need hopefully we'll hit everyone that's that but I think it goes to you know vacations and things like that where what people are prioritizing when children come to school if they're sick we know they need to stay home um but so it's having those conversations and building awareness for the whole school Community but then really drilling down to specific families we're seeing it barrows it's it's falling in that that profile that makes sense yeah thank you thank great all right well there may be questions at the end so you're not we see so but uh at this point weite up our Middle School principles too to be able to share a little bit about starting with commonalities good evening Joel story principal at Parker Sarah marshan princi principal at coolage um so our sips um at at the core of of the Middle School sips is this idea that um really sense of belonging is fundamental to everything else that's happening um as far as our first strategic objective support of Equitable and safe learning environments um we're focused on having student- centered learning um so we have offerings that are based on um students interests in middle school they're starting to explore career um options and so we want to make sure our curriculum is also going to provide students with that opportunity to be able to explore potential careers um we also want them to be engaged in things that are exciting to them and so we're we're really um piloting some uh project-based learning experiences for uh for kids um we're also looking at uh making sure that our courses are aligning with our MHS uh in the Innovation path Pathways um we want to make sure that we're Levering ing our existing student support systems um so that they're aligned to provide academic social emotional and behavioral support for students um and we want to make sure that our practices are um culturally responsive and that we're including all of our students um from all backgrounds so that we're making sure that the the experience for them is relevant um we're doing this through different things like our enrichments um challenge day starting events after school activities our advisory curriculum that we have at both schools um we're also collaborating collaborating with our Meco directors our MLL Liaisons um and this year something new we're piloting our conferences at the middle school to hopefully um increase the relationships between school and home and for our second strategic objective we are providing coherent high quality learning experiences for all students and doing so in a collaborative Way by providing first high quality resources and have appreciated the district's support with increasing those over the years and this year we are in our first year of the amplify roll out for our ELA teachers so that's been really exciting um we're providing targeted professional learning that helps teachers with their instructional practices that kind of align with these high quality resources so that students are having engaging classroom experiences and some of the things we're um connected on on the in that is Universal Design for Learning culturally responsive practices as Joel mentioned restorative practices and then there's departmental specific PD also going throughout the year as different departments need different things at this time we're utilizing data to help inform our decision-making attendance data I ready data um mcast data and student survey data to help inform kind of what needs our attention and um areas to also celebrate along the way and we're doing that through various team systems our administrative teams um with our coaches with our ilts um with our teach and with our teachers um and we're similar to what the elementary teachers were talking about really looking to maximize differentiated learning opportunities for students no matter what their neuro profile is so um really and that ties in with the professional development we're we're utilizing as well um so when we start looking at what these things might look like at the individual schools um Jill mentioned the integration of Interest based learning for students and at coolage um and one thing that is so so important about that is that it aligns with the high school it gets kids thinking about what they what they like in in life and what they might want to do it also gets them excited about coming to school because they're doing things that they feel connected to um and that ideally is something that helps with attendance so we're hoping that by increasing these opportunities we're increasing kids wanting being excited about coming to school so for coolage the specifics we look we have two new enrichments this year we have math in the real world like looking at things like clothing design and cooking and things like that um financial literacy is a second one we have two new electives for eighth graders Lego robots which combines engineering and coding as well as digital music composition and we have a team time block where we have seventh and eighth graders working on what we call a passion project so they get to develop um something that's in their area of interest and create something um based on that not just a research project but actually creating something and we also have in that time frame a community service where we're our students are going down to Birch Meadow and working with students at Birch Meadow so that's been really special um also related to sense of belonging I just want to give a shout out I mean I'm I love our advisory program I think that's critical and we're building team leaders for our eighth graders in that Pro program and I just want to mention unified botch Middle School level was the first Middle School team we have had here in reading for a unified sport so and they just wrapped up their first season with the jamere on the 31st um quickly getting into a couple other things we are scaffolding more supports for students to Target some of our areas of need as identified in our data and at coolage that's in our team time where we have math intervention and we're also utilizing our on team teachers to do more of a literacy intervention block as well as a intervention for students who are struggling with absenteeism we have an additional e8th grade math enrichment now that we didn't have before we had it in the other levels we have a before school mentoring program with high schoolers who are coming down and mentoring some of our kids and an after school tutoring program um for our Boston resident students our sixth graders just to help them get used to middle school and related to professional development at coolage we are doing a lot the same at Parker um but there are some things that we're continuing that are specific to coolage such as our second year of the roll out of executive functioning practices last year was a lot of professional development for the teachers and now we're doing this really a purpose full student side roll out for that amplify is obviously huge um and so amplify is an example of what dep Department specific focus and other departments have things like science working on the new science mcast and we're also working on a little bit dabbling in AI as a tool for educators and trying to build capacity um on that so that's just something I'm excited about to learn about myself and I need to mention I'm really excited to be working with Jill on all of these things and she's been a wonderful collaborator and Sarah has been an awesome Mentor so thank you um for Parker um so in terms of some of the reasons the rationale behind the changes um something when I started last year that was a concern of um teachers was that um there were been some behavior issues with students um you know there I think coming out of covid um kids were like learning how to behave in school but also there was just in an ability for for some students to really persevere through class and have the stamina to actually be in class and and have their interest maintained and so we're looking at a couple different things how to um engage students in their learning but also how to support staff with tools to manage classroom behaviors but also create consistency um with schoolwide behaviors so that is framing sort of a lot of our our curriculum and our PD work um so as I already mentioned we have our Pathways exploratory offerings that we um have an eighth grade all grades have this project block class which is was referred to as team time before um at Parker we're now calling it project block because it lends itself to be so many different things but that's where we are offering these um Pathways exploratory courses in 8th grade um so students rotate through a different one each quarter potentially um Civic action Clean Energy Engineering and public health um that block actually also gives us an opportunity for students to work with their um math and ELA teachers in a small group environment and or um have tier 2 intervention support with our uh math and Ela uh intervention and so we're we're reviewing data um consistently I ready data and mcast data is framing sort of the initial groupings and then we'll continue to review that data as we go through the year as well as classroom assessments and things like that and so we're able to provide ongoing support for students who need that support and then they can move kind of in and out of some of that tier 2 intervention group into the the regular small group or the exploratory classes um we're offering electives as well to all students so we just changed the way that our electives worked such that more students would be able to take some of these classes um previously there were choices that students had to make if they were in band or course or in some of these electives and so we eliminated that by making sure that they weren't going to be competing in the schedule are able to offer all students an opportunity to take computer science to digital ethics and digital leadership financial literacy and information literacy we also are able to build Upon A lot of the skills that students need to be developing in some of those classes as well math and reading um in particular in sixth grade we are also offering World Language exploratory courses so students are able to take those they do a Spanish exploratory and a French exploratory one quarter each um to give them some exposure to those classes so that they know when they're making that choice for seventh grade they have at least a little bit understanding of sort of the history and the culture of um of those languages we're also trying to just provide more more scaffolds and support for students I already mentioned the enrichment and interventions that are happening during that project block time a key feature that allowed this to happen is our schedule changes um so we also have longer instructional time that we're offering for for all of the classes so we condensed The Home Room time a little bit we're offering an advisory block for a longer period of time once a week but we're able to add four minutes to each class every single day um and I think that's made a difference um as well in terms of what teachers are able to do especially when it comes to that activator do now and then the exit ticket at the end of class um and then our professional development is also very much aligned with coolage in terms of our department PD um but as far as some of our building based PD um Parker is in year 2 of working with des's uh SCB Academy which is social emotional behavioral Academy and so it's the cohort where you're in is sense of belonging but because of this um real desire to do PBIS positive behavior intervention supports work in terms of managing student behaviors they are adjusting it to actually accommodate us so we're doing kind of both um so we just begun that work but some of that PD will include um a Behavior's communication and an actual pvis of training for staff great thank you thank you thank you any questions for now anybody we hold them yeah we we can hold them for our last RS good evening everyone I'm sorry I have to be last I'll try to be funny and brief okay um so there there's a lot on what you say don't be funny uh there is enormous amount of information on this slide but a few things that I would like to highlight is that we are continuing on our work with uh to improve our daily attendance rate by focusing on our students that are chronically absent uh we did make progress last year trying to get to 95% daily attendance or 97% I'm sorry daily attendance rate and we improved um significantly from uh the previous year to last year and we're going to continue with that work sorry um we also are going to measure student uh one way to measure student uh or sense of belonging is how many activities or Athletics students participate in our freshmen are new to the school this year and so our goal is that at least 75% of our freshmen are participating are trying a new club sport or activity throughout this course of the school year that's something that will be measured on a survey that we're doing in the middle of the year and then again at the end of the year as well as um working with the children's cabinet to run some Affinity groups for different students um within the school which I'm really excited about and I've been working with Barbara best um to make that happen and there's other people I should name but I don't want to mess up their names so I don't have them in front of me but they're also working with Barbara um in addition We are continuing on our work to add and be continue to be innov ative with the courses that we offer at the high school so Innovation career Pathways um we did partner with the middle schools and trying to make sure we're aligning some of our electives to give students an introduction before they're choosing their Pathways uh some schools in other parts of the state have the advantage of having eighth graders in the high school and they can do the exploratory that way we don't um Oxbridge is one of those examples and so partnering with the middle schools and within their capacity of offering some of those um different electives that align with our Pathways um hopefully will inform student choices before they come to the high school that being said we are up to five pathways um I'm very excited to say that with our first year we had 73 students now we're at 176 so we do have numeric goals but we're blowing them out of the water and I hope to continue to do so uh teachers are really owning the courses that we're offering and we're very excited about the new um dual enrollment classes that part of the pathways and outside of the pathways uh one example is our audio production class which was recently highlighted by our the Secretary of Ed's visit and the lieutenant governor uh the kids were so excited and our our ums Little Professor that was in there uh with them and they were just you know making all sorts of noises and recording them and um digitizing everything and it was it was a cool experience um Dr milescu is also in there with us um and I think there's been obviously very recent CH changes in the mcast status for high schools and so we're still learning what that means specifically for high schools but what I will say is that I can already see that we're going to be able to take uh the work that we were doing for students that didn't initially meet expectations on mcast and which was in my opinion always reactive and turned that to look to be more proactive so looking at more student data coming out of 8th grade so that we can build in supports for students as nth graders and 10th graders rather than applying those supports for after students aren't successful um on assessments and that is something that I'm excited about it was already part of my plan for this year uh but I think with um the new vote that passed uh as of this week uh that that makes it all that much more possible for us to make that shift um and so again we're still awaiting some guidance from Dy but um once we have that we'll move forward um efficiently to make sure we can accomplish that this year chair um that's it unless anybody has any questions any questions now cross the board or yeah that you'll see that just to kind of close out before we go to questions too is just the to flag for the community again if you're interested in hearing more you got a little bit of a teaser of some things for each school or level uh feel free to join you know each School Community either on Zoom or in person to hear about their sips in more detail too uh and again just thank all the school councils Who Behind the Scenes played uh in instrument were instrumental in helping to get us to this point too so turn over to questions go ahead question have you gotten any um guidance on what's going to happen to the cople um Abigail Adams award no none we received one update yesterday from desie about we're currently offering we're giving the retake of mcast this week and next week for English and math for transfer students for students that didn't initially pass um and the guidance was basically have those students take the do do the retake we'll give you more information by December 5th um when the law is uh taking effect um and then you know to be continued uh we do have the list of Abigail Adams Scholars for this school year uh the assessments will still happen so I think that that's still something that could continue um but we don't have Clarity on it yet from the state thank you y okay any other questions no Sean go ahead um I think this was for Mrs Maran you were talking about um like experimenting with AI in you know instruction I don't know exactly where you're experimenting with it but um my question is are you engaging students in that cuz I I F so quick very quick anecdote I was uh on a FaceTime with my brother the other day and I was complaining about something I needed to do for work like after I got off the call with him and one of my least favorite things I have to do for work and his my niece my 12-year-old niece like overheard us saying it and goes why you just use chat GP G GPT for that and it was incredibly obvious once she said it it was perfect and it probably is going to save me 5 hours of misery every month for for the rest of my life which is fantastic but um I just like kids are so far in many cases so far ahead of us on this like I think you could probably Point them at a problem or a challenge and set them loose on you know what do you what do you guys think like how would you you know use AI to solve this well I think ultimately it will change the way teachers teach you know and but I think what I was sensing over the last year is there's so much anxiety about the tool on the student side and having access to it and Che cheting with it that I didn't think we were there like I thought kind of almost like a backwards design in order to get to the place where we're ready to help students use the tool in a way that's productive and integrated with the learning I felt like the teachers needed to feel the power of the tool for their own work so we're really starting phase one introduce it with the teachers let them actually get excited about it realize how it can help their work in their classrooms you know doing the things that maybe they don't like and then now how do we translate that to the student facing side so we're really kind of on the phase one of ultimately getting to the students so not yet but I'm excited about it yeah thanks I'll just add to that Sean I think um unfortunately you weren't able to make the the Summer Conference that we had on the offsite and a lot of focus on AI was there and in fact there's probably some takeaways there that I haven't actioned yet right Jen's like yeah Tom here you go um one of the questions in that topic was whether or not we should start looking at some sort of AI policy related stuff across the district right and whether there's a a need to do um kind of a a collaborative Committee of sorts between teachers Administration parents the committee themselves and say what what should this look like there are other districts that are looking at this more punitively I think we we came out of that as it's more of an opportunity than a problem and how do we frame the opportunity the right way um was kind of one of the big takeaways from the the summer the August meetings um so it sounds like there's some movement happening there about how to make make the opportunity uh a reality as well so okay um kayln um I'd love to hear more I know you might talk about it at your own uh um sip presentation for your for school but is there a preview you can give to us in terms of successes or lack of success of the ability grouping that you all you did last year and one of the others I forget was it Alissa Alissa yeah I mean if you both of you I'd love to hear from both of you about the how that worked last year and if you if there's anything that others are taking from what you guys did last year in that space sure yes so last year I think what Tom's speaking of is our uh first grade looked at all of the data for reading across the gray level and then shared groups during our intervention block to be able to sort of maximize the Staffing that we had and give a smaller group instruction um what's exciting about that is now this year we're expanding to other grade levels teachers are seeing kind of the power of that and wanting to kind of um rethink how they're doing their uh their intervention block um we did see um some growth within our first grade um uh ear data which is exciting it's something that we're tracking um frequently um but it's a practice that teachers have really gotten excited about um and our reading specialist is really spearheading that work um with all of our teachers as we look at what their current ear levels are what reading tutors we have during that time and then really working to expand our grouping so um I I believe we're in we went from uh just first grade last year to now we have three other grade levels that are are looking into that practice so it's exciting because it also shows um it's one way to show like that collaboration of team and that trust that teachers have of each other um to support students great if you'll share um so we are doing something similar with our tier 2 as well which actually we're doing more this year than we did last year but last year we took our ear data starting at third grade and we were looking kind of for outliers so that teachers could bring their groups together students across classrooms in order to um be able to meet with our groups more often because we have certain goals that you know our students that aren't meeting are meeting three times a week with the teachers and if they're on two times and if they're above it's about once a week um and so this was making it really challenging for some of the teachers if they had multiple groups and we were able toing them together but what we're finding this year because we look at this data every single month with our teachers is that as we are going through with Arc the students are kind of more leveling up together um and so we're having less of a spread so we're not necessarily needing to do it as much um and as we get them kind of together and move them up higher um we have fewer groups already which is really exciting as we get more comfortable with teaching Arc too but every every month we look at that and say do we do we need to restructure how we're working with our students across classrooms which which is great okay great any other questions no okay thank you so um thank you all for the presentations um I'll make a very quick motion and then we'll move forward um I move that the school committee accept the school Improvement plans for all eight schools of Reading Public Schools second seconded by Chuck any further discussion okay all in favor all opposed and it passes for to zero thank you so much you everybody we appreciate it um and now we move to the lead report um and I believe we have three members of the team online are we doing with another computer which I can pull up the report and look along is it okay I'm like oh no um so uh Dr stce do you want to do the introduction sure I'm happy to um we are very excited to have Dr Tiffany Hogan and her team from U Mass General Hospital um here they are part of the sale program which for them means speech and language literacy lab they are leaders in the field and um they provided A needs assessment for our lead program which is our language-based program um and we are really happy to have their um invaluable insights and we're really grateful for their expertise and what you're going to hear tonight is is really three kind of buckets they're going to explain the difference what is A needs assessment and that's different than a program review which we have done um historically they're going to talk about some of the things that are really working in our program and some of the buckets that are going to point us in the right direction to bring us forward in what we're doing um we definitely are looking forward to having opportunities to meet and discuss all of these findings with our families the CPAC um and the school communities which we have done and we are just super grateful Renee Laro is here our special education literacy coach who without her we wouldn't have been able to have all of the observations and records of review that were conducted as part of this needs assessment and also Alison R our director of special education who couldn't be here tonight but she helped pull everything together as well so we are really excited um to have the team here to talk about this and really want to work transparently and together to continue to bring our program forward so thank you all and welcome to Tiffany and her team thank you so much for having us I think Tim's going to be sharing his screen to share the slides yes is it okay By Request sharing sharing granted perfect thanks I want to start by thaning uh uh Tom and Jennifer and Renee and all of the team that welcomed us to do this needs assessment of the lead program I am Tiffany Hogan I'm a professor um in the department of communications and Sciences and disorders and a research associate at Harvard Medical School and we completed this needs assessment as a team with Norma Hancock who is a post-doctoral research fellow and Trish Kelly nazaro who's uh the assistant professor in Department of communication disorders and Tim DeLuca who is now at the University of Massachusetts Amherst hi I'm Trish Kelly Naro um as Tiffany said I'm an assistant professor in the communication sciences and disorders program at the MGH um ihp it's been a pleasure collaborating with Renee and the team in Reading uh to support student programming in the district of reading to begin I just briefly um will describe what A needs assessment is and then I'll turn it over to my colleagues who will share some commendations and recommendations resulting from the assessment in defining A needs assessment it's important to say what it is not so A needs assessment is not a program review a program review is a more comprehensive process designed to evaluate a program's Effectiveness progress and overall status it involves an in-depth analysis of student outcomes to assess how well a program is is needed goals and on the other hand A needs assessment is a it's a systematic process and it's aimed at identifying needs and addressing key gaps so specifically it examines the differences between current practices and an ideal standard and in this case the ideal um standard for Effective reading and writing instruction to support students with language and learning disabilities such as dyslexia so when conducting A needs assessment the focus really is on identifying areas of weakness that could be strengthened to enhance programming and ultimately improve student outcomes and in doing the assessment we found strengths along with key areas to prioritize for further development and to share those I'll turn it back over to Dr [Music] Hogan thank you I first want to uh commend uh your district for seeking this high level expertise and this level of scrutiny is quite rare in districts you should be commended for investing in your Staffing and your instruction for seeking specialized training empowering student neurodiversity or the focus on individual differences in ch children and their strengths and weaknesses or areas of opportunity for improvement and your focus on including family and Community engagement really to get to the level of detail that we had to get that we got to in this needs assessment it speaks to how advanced the program is at Reading Public Schools many districts when we do these needs assessments they're at a very Global level of big areas of needs but for this needs assessment we were able to really dig into fine grain differences that are improve areas of improvement and that really is the highest level of commendation that I can give your school district for seeking this evaluation and for us to be able to get to that level of detail so as stated part of our goal was really to find areas of need and and find gaps so that the district can address them um the primary findings we had felt across three buckets and again we're really reflective of how many things are already in place in this very strong robust program reading offers so our first finding was related to program alignment thinking about how uniform practices can exist across classrooms in the lead program as well as throughout general education classrooms where students from the program may be going for different instruction we also thought a little bit more around about how uh how grade levels can align their practices more evenly and reflect those practices in educational documents so that students are consistently getting the services they need across school years the second bucket we thought a little bit about is program staff and the training reading has invested a tremendous amount of money and time and effort in providing strong evidence-based training to a number of Staff members something that is a universal challenge across all School settings whether it be public or private is finding the time to make sure all these types of trainings can occur in a timely fashion so that the people in the classroom are directly able to address the needs of students and writing is continuously thinking through how they can best put all the pieces together in that puzzle and make sure all staff are trained to best address the needs of students in this program the final idea was related to program qualification and instruction so being even more explicit around the qualification of how students might enter or exit this program what explicit instruction looks like not only within small classrooms that has this program but also in those general education classrooms for students from the program may be getting instruction the district is were doing a wonderful job in thinking not only how they're supporting Britain language but also how they are supporting foreign language and executive function as well as empowering students with neur adversity there are different practices occurring across different grade levels and schools and so one of the findings was making sure that is carried out in many different settings that students are continuously supported in those ways we just want to reiterate what a wonderful job reing is doing in so many ways and give a huge thank you for as was stated she provided a great amount of information for this and facilitated a lot of opportunities for us to engage with different members of the Rene community so a huge thank you to Renee great are you open to questions and is that the end of the presentation yeah okay anybody on the committee want to make a comment or question or anybody in the administration want to make a comment or question why you looking me like that car you might as well just go Tom all right um first I guess I'll start with um a little thank you to the administration for doing this right and I obviously with our support for doing it right um one of the things that I heard privately I'm going to make it public and Tiffany and team correct me if I need to needed to be corrected but I heard that we were in the 95th percentile from a program like this that you guys see in other districts and around the area is that accurate definitely so I just want everybody to hear that loud and clear right people this is we're I we're not there yet because you're almost never there but you're almost always learning always training that Tiffany and team you continue to do research and publish it out as fast as you possibly can can right um but the fact that we are considered that High um and that well is is a huge feather in the cap that you know Jen you're you and your team Renee you and your team Caitlyn you and the team there at Josh weaton and I know Jill's on the phone right now the team at Parker Renee you're doing work here at the high school as well um we definitely still have work to do to from that vertical alignment perspective um and continuing to build out the program and particular at the high school um but the fact that we're listed at that level of degree already is I think it's amazing um you know I I think I also heard and I'm going to say this as well um that you guys actually warned us about publishing this document um because of the fact that it could be looked at negatively but it's it's important that the context of How It's come about is aware for everybody and the focus on continuous Improvement is is aware for everybody um and the fact that we are in in good really good standing as it stands already is aware for everybody but that goes back to a lot of the stuff that we started right three or four years ago when we started with the CPAC and the uh reading and reading and all that kind of fun stuff which you referred to in the terms of the training materials on the website those were all based on the CPAC reading and writing related work that we did um also just say this Tiffany some of your stuff is stuff I read when I started running for school committee 5 years ago um so a little bit of a you know statement of that um this team this team here from a school committee perspective has made great strides as well in our willingness and understanding of of what's happened here and what we need to do here um but the fact that your materials are saying how well we're doing is is appreciated um Tim can you put the slides back up again a little bit I just want to just double check through double click through some of those um the recommendations and note some some parallels right um two program reviews if you would go to that like the second to that slide yeah um so entry and exit criteria is a common theme right you knew I was going to hit on that didn't you Dr right it's a common theme it's it is something we absolutely have to get better at um I'll go back to the Walker report in 2015 it said it then um we've made progress but we're not there yet again it's a continuation Continuum um but that is also a common theme of the rest of the program reviews that we had right um staff instruction is a common theme right so while this isn't officially a program review it's saying other things that we already knew and well also but also um what I heard is that what we've done from a training perspective is already top-notch we still have where a place to go and where's you know places to meet um I really like the explicit instruction across content areas as a call out right it's one thing to say okay you're in a program and you're going to do some reading on the side but reading is in math reading is in social studies reading is in science and how do we support in classroom those students and those teachers to make sure the instruction is explicit for the students in the lead program um I appreciate that and I I you know thank you to the team for calling that as well um I can't I was looking to see because Sarah promised me she'd sent me a bunch of questions um she had unfortunately is traveling I'm sure the questions are caught in Flight as she's um out there but I think when she watches back um and she sees what's happening here and has a chance to really go through it she would be really um happy with what what this is coming out with as well um you know there's there's always areas for improvement always right we continually talk about that as a team what's the next thing how are we going to get better how are we going to get better um and this is just helping us move in that direction Rene now you probably don't get enough as well thanks for the work that you do I hear I hear from teams I hear from parents I hear from others how you just help crystallize and bring Clarity to some of the the needs um and your ability to engage that the team meetings and others has been very much appreciated so I just want to call that out publicly as well so thank you um anybody have anything else or any other Sean yeah I was just going to add you know I was I was really quite encouraged reading this I think um you know this program is one that has generated a lot of noise over the years um to say it charitably um and um two things I think I agree with Tom your your observations that the uh some of the observations and recommendations here are broadly consistent with what we saw another program review so um one that says to me that we sort of know what some of these challenges are and and you know as you alluded to we've made progress against many of them I think the other thing is that when I look at the things that are called out you know in sort of the more detailed report here they're eminently fixable they're eminently addressable right so there there's nothing here that it's like you know what would you even do to address that right you know so we we we know what we need to work on we know how how to continue making progress um this is really encouraging to to see this um you know this level of expertise arriving at this level of recommendation for it us I think it puts us in a really good spot agree agree any other feedback questions Renee do you want to say anything if you do please yeah please please do one over next to Carl she do love someone jumps at the chance to come up love it further forward further forward you have to get on camera as well so thank you so much everyone thank you for having me thank you Tiffany t Trish thank Norma I'm excited to see her speak tomorrow at the conference um it has been um a labor of love um this process um it was a privilege and honor to walk around with him and hear him talk about observing it's very emotional for me observing near perfect lessons that is a testament to our teachers to the school committee to our entire district and Community the um being able to put the time the funding and the effort into that and really seeing the successes of our teachers and our students um as a whole it's been really amazing um I'd like to thank Sarah and um Erin burill as well for their collaboration without us working together these things would never occur so um I'd like to thank our teachers um our administrators in our buildings our related service providers and power professionals their dedication their passion to our students their success um is just astounding um some of what we already know about our program is working um I can talk some um generalities in terms of successes we're seeing um we had students just move on from 8th grade to the high school they were in the elementary and middle school programs they went to the school they did no they no longer needed structured reading services like those successes in closing those gaps and developing those skills has been amazing some of our students who took mcast for the first time in the spring passed Ela mcast our students who continued to take it second third times we were saw astounding student growth percentile so that was um really great to see we've already started some of the work that's been outlined in the reports um one of those had addressed workload for teachers we know we're asking a lot of our lead staff in terms of you know a lot of the things that Trisha um Tim and Tiffany spoke about data collection progress monitoring making sure that we're carrying over and generalizing those specific and explicit instructional practices from those small group classes into the general education classes to make sure that content and that text is accessible to the students and that they're able to demonstrate at their knowledge so as part of that work we hired a third full-time special education teacher at Joshua Eden for the lead program um another piece um that we also have begun addressing prior to this as well um was on one of the slides that Tim spoke about was really expanding that um empowerment of neurodiversity and we've expanded our lead advisory from the Middle School level into the elementary school level it's been super successful again I get teary when I talk about this we've had students um they are so cute um every time I see them do we have advisory I wish that we had this class every day I love talking about this I love meeting about it we had a family recount um over the summer that their child was at a family Barbecue talking to his cousins about that he has dyslexia it's nothing to be ashamed of this is what that means it just warms your heart so um that has been a true success and we'll continue to grow those practices as well and we're hoping to bring that to the high school um but make sure that it's not impacting um their Core Curriculum we recognize we have some needs we're super grateful to have this feedback um lead as a program as you had mentioned has really grown Leaps and Bounds um over the years um with the work that's um been continuing and we'll continue to make sure that our work focuses on students Student Success and response to the current research as that continues to be rolling out in the upcoming weeks we'll be meeting with staff and families and the seed pack with the results of the report as we've done with the other program reviews and our goal is to continue to work together and be transparent as possible to support our students staff and families thank you Renee thank you thank you um just want to build on that I mean I was just thinking back a little bit you know to Sean's point this this end to your point right there were time there were dark times in this program back in 2015 2014 um and it's turned around to be a shining star right um and the investment of the overall team from the be you know to from the beginning to the end has been um admirable I mean I even we should even call out the parents that were going through that dark time that still many of them kept their kids here and we work through some of those challenges time over time over time and and now you know there's there's been some of this positive stuff so um it's still going on we still going we have to continue to improve we have to keep going forward with all the stuff uh that we have going on with early identification and and you know that's I think one of the things we're going to talk about sometime in the next couple months is the translation of early identification to you know whether there's testing needed and and all that kind of fun stuff to get them earlier so we can remediate earlier um and maybe we can even start talking about them graduating out of fifth grade and not needing at sixth grade anymore y um which has happened and can happen in some cases not in all cases but in some cases y um so you know I'm excited about this and I'm you know again I want to thank the the the team for the work they did and the and the continued focus of improvement so thank you thank you very much thank you thanks just to close what's ahead so we'll be releasing sort of the uh the the full report to the community over the next couple of days also with the video that gives a little bit of context on what's A needs assessment that the team broke down and then sometime over the next couple of months we would like to come back as a team to to outline here's all the recommendations here are some of the things that we're putting in place here's some of the plans ahead so the community knows how we're responding but we thought tonight it was important for the communities to be able to hear the findings and focus on that and then we'll focus on sort of what we're doing about an upcoming meeting as well it's two months before budget season so it's one of the points that feeds into the budget season but um it's been it's been great so all right anything else Tiffany Tim Trish anything else you want to add thank you for joining thank you so much for joining us and explaining it and uh giving us the update we appreciate it thank you so much thank you thank you thank you okay so uh moving on to the last item in our agenda um the enrollment update uh Dr milesy do you want to start or yeah this should be pretty brief in terms of my words on this too so you should find your the enrollment uh update which was submitted back on October 1st to desie um with uh in your packet so feel free to pull that up and I don't think there's anything that really jumps out off the page that I'd like to bring up right away so do the thing I'd just like to open up to questions there you go joh um I know so the the kindergarten enrollment has been low since or has been lower than we expected from the beginning and we were working you know I know the team was working really hard to run down every student and find out where they're going and what they're doing and why they haven't enrolled and that sort of thing um so you know we landed not as far off office maybe we look like we were going to be 6 months ago but um still quite a bit low what do we find in those conversations with families is there any Trends or themes there we should be concerned about um one I'll speak to which I don't know and I know Sarah if you feel free if anything from families uh I don't think we found anything I think it would just feel like there was kids that we somehow was off from the Census that we feel like was sort of the the biggest piece for us um but something else that we have noticed is that there are families who have mentioned the you know the tuition fee as well so we don't know why we've been able to drop the fee now in you know the 1K range still wondering if there's kids that are sort of waiting or families that are waiting until next year when we go full to we don't have any data but that has been brought up in conversations but other than that for us it seems like you know families who were on our list have either moved out of the district and no no longer there uh sort so it just students who hadn't kind of materialized in the way that we thought we would okay when can when you say waiting you mean keeping him back a back a year and I will actually brings up another theme a lot of families that we've heard from or I've talked to that have said that you have held their own kids back because they think they're not ready and I think I've heard that more than I had even last year I feel like I heard that more than I would have 3 four five six years ago and I don't know if that's a result of baby so that's dramatically different than cost yes for sure for sure Carla go ahead what what is the um the trend looking like of of kids not going to high school but going to private school I know it's you know down what 22 kids a year year but um do you know what that Trend kind of has how is it trending that number great great question because I know when I had started it was around it was between 12 to 15% attrition and I don't have the number for this year I apologize I should I can get that yeah we should have that as part of standard update right that's the the year-over-year what were they at e8th grade what are they in nth grade yep the attrition um you know it's interesting to me that overall net net were only 10 students off the overall enrollment projection you have a couple of years that are significantly short and that's the ninth grade class and the kindergarten class we're 10 high overall it's not even that's what I mean yeah we're 10 high yeah so we catch up with everything else go ahead CH just that's a question just to that point uh if we start calling that out in in the in our in our presentation can we are we allowed to maybe I don't know what else to call like an exit interview from why ask the family why because I'd like to know they're doing it why they're doing it it's a great it's a great we actually just started this was about 3 weeks ago uh where now we gave a survey to every one who has left in the last year asking if they'd be comfortable sharing sort of you know why they left and some more insights on their decision you know any need feedback for us to grow uh and we're starting to look at that and it's uh I think it's particularly important I I'm wondering about that nth to you know 8th to nth grade year too is what's what's happening there is there something programmatically we need to be shifting to you know keep some of those kids in District so we'll see but I think the trends be someone's going to Philips and over we can't but we can't necessarily offer all the things you get from that well my answer is going to be why I think it's all here yeah I think better Athletics I think better Arts programs I think so but yes but I I hear you no I agree there's different yes I agree there's a different alumni I agree that's okay I'm just teasing you but I mean I think there's two general areas where we see adjustments right it's the fifth grade to sixth grade area uh and it's the eighth grade to nth grade area um and again we need to see it from prior year versus that and Sean is quickly scrolling back to last year's looking at last year's numbers to compare them but um you know I think that's generally what we what we use I would say historically we lose about 10 to 15 from 5ifth to 6th grade and we lose about 25 to 30 from 8th to nth grade that's our general Trend over time um and so it' be interesting to see how that how that has been playing out especially now that we have Innovation Pathways at the high school and that our middle schools are on the up and up as well so well it be to watch that Trend over time we'll get that data and Sean just a flag as you look at the data too we also have had changes our Meco enrollment Chang in school choice enrollment so it's not easy it's not as easy as saying sort of how it's going to take a little more of analysis to figure out who's left and things like that versus it's not a clean cut if you get what I'm saying yeah yeah big picture though the eighth grade enrollment this time last year was 299 so it's it's in range for the attrition year-over year 22 Yeah so the so the projected was the okay so that's yeah there there's puts and takes during the year right we have students that left students that came in during the year we have you know changes in Meco and school choice so y um but you know directionally it's not y out of whack with from attrition perspective right we're flat year-over-year from a Boston resident enrollment at 100 um we are up in multilinguals by 14 students wasn't our Meco 104 last year it's say 100 but I thought it 104 too I thought it was higher maybe it might have been 104 by the end of the year it was the official the official October right this is October to October so we might still get other students through the year right it's possible correct so um but as it stands right now it's 100 to 100 from October to October special education is up 10 um that's interesting and school choice is up 25 that's nice mhm okay thank you for the feedback though on getting maybe some more detailed analysis the next meeting of just the attrition rates in those years too over time I think really interesting num have always hovered somewhere around 20 I think it's probably going to be more unique reasons than some reason because they weren't getting something it used to be that they weren't going to be able to get something here I don't know that that's the argument anymore right yeah okay okay anything else from anybody else I'll entertain a final motion motion to adjourn second seconded by Carla all in favor all oppos hereby adjourned e e