e e e good evening everybody's so far in the back there's chairs they smell that's okay the parents can come forward and use the chairs we're not worried about smelling either so it's all right there we go yourself we turn our mic down a little bit we're a little hot um so calling the school committee meeting from um May 23rd 2024 to order uh and I'll do a quick walk through the agenda agenda and then we'll jump in so uh we'll start with public comment if anybody here wants to speak to anything not on the agenda that's what public comment is for uh and if you do then you'll say your name and your comment you have about two minutes to give that comment give or take um we'll then move on to our focus on excellence and we have some recognitions tonight our valedictorian and salutatorian are here or a couple of them I think there's more than just the two that are here but um here tonight so um we're great F that they're here and we're going to celebrate them in the accomplishment um we then have uh the David W Libby scholarship which I was fortunate enough to give out last night at the senior Awards but we have to officially approve that tonight um checks and balances I suppose so that will be happening tonight we'll then move to our consent agenda um and then our reports and we'll have the reports from the administration and the school committee at which point we moved to the point where many of you are here for and that is the facility naming request on behalf of Charlie Hardy um so we'll hear from you all uh or some of you um for about 10 minutes about why you think we should name something after Charlie and seeing a lot of the Facebook posts over the last couple days I have a pretty good feeling not to mention reading all all the stuff from you all as well so we'll we'll be happy to hear from that uh when we get there I'll walk through a little bit of the process as well so you know what what the next steps are um after that we'll move to our end of year teaching and learning curriculum update and Dr Hardy will walk us through a lot of formative and and very important stuff uh we'll then move to our midcycle formative review process for Dr milesy and including Benchmark updates for uh strategic objectives two and three and then our midcycle formative review evidence presentation uh as well that he will presenting uh and then we will adjourn so it doesn't sound like a lot but it is a lot when you go through it all so with that said okay so before we do anything else is anybody here for public comment for anything not on the agenda all right seeing none we will move on Dr mileski will you start with the senior recognitions Perfect all right can we call up two uh seniors right here Hannah Wiggins and Caroline gagos do you mind just come on on up uh we're really excited tonight to be able to recognize uh Hannah and Caroline you can grab a seat up here for their tremendous uh academic accomplishments uh throughout their time in R rmhs and really Beyond so as you know they will be our uh one of our valorian we have two and our salutatorian coming up I just like to congratulate them obviously as a community we feel that becoming the valorian salutatorian represents uh incredible dedication to their studies over the years an incredible work ethic and also a a a high bar that you set for yourself in terms of just what you uh of your studies so I think you've uh a tremendous accomplishment and we're excited to hear what you have to say next Friday night in graduation and just wanted to make sure that the community here and every those watching at home got the chance to to see you to hear from you and to congratulate you on what is a tremendous academic accomplishment so I don't know if you both can just introduce yourselves for those who may not know you if you can just share anything that you want it can be just a thank you or anything about your RPS journey and then also just maybe what's next for you after uh after this year actually in a couple of weeks um hi I'm Hannah um I've uh throughout like my four years here I've been um a part of like the band program and I've done a lot with the marching band and the Jazz Band which has been a great part of my time here um outside of academics um and next year I'm planning on going to UMass Amhurst to um major in physics so I'm excited for that and just want to say thank you for um everything my family my teachers and um everyone here has done for me so I'm Caroline and I just want to say thank you to my family and my teachers that have been really supportive during my time at reading um next year I'll be going to see you Boulder studying engineering go Buffs go Buffs yeah knew you going say that I didn't know that I'm excited now uh outside of academics I play field hockey in the fall and I run track in the winter and spring I'm in some other clubs Ski Club so we'll be doing that next year um so that's been really great to help balance academics too awesome I just a couple thoughts here on that too I a couple things I really appreciate both about both of them uh first is you hear that they're involved in a lot more than just academics these are two students who have been role models in a lot of other activities in our community and hold themselves to a high bar in the classroom and outside the classroom two if you talk to any of their teachers you'll see that they're leaders in the classroom they are someone who are constantly doing the right thing and being a role model for their peers and three in a community a graduating class of close to 300 students to be number one and two and the dedication that that takes day in and day out is incredibly impressive so we look forward to following your your successes and and what's to come and congratulations there anything else from the committee I will just Echo the congratulations but also forewarn you that we have a a tradition here that we take pictures with people who come for the tradition of exellence so we'll be taking pictures down in front and if anybody else in the committee wants to say anything I just like to give him a round of [Applause] applause Boulder made my dadur [Music] oh did that's all right I don't know what page they got too and since we have so many students in the room I know that it may not be everyone's goal to be the valorian salutatorian but I hope that everyone who's a part of our community constantly holds themselves to a high bar in the classroom and I know that our coaches back there I see no also push you on that too so I uh just want to give always that push that academic Excellence along with all the Excellence that we see outside for our student athletes on the field and the courts as well okay great so let's move on to the next portion of the focus on excellence and that's the David W David B Libby scholarship Dr Miles you want to start us great so we were uh very fortunate a couple of years ago to receive a generous donation from the David Libby family of $1.2 million to be able to provide uh scholarships to graduating seniors who meet the qualifications students did have to apply for the uh for the scholarship we're thrilled this year to award and thank you Tom last night for doing so uh 22 scholarships at 4,000 each uh totaling $888,000 for students uh in our community um the award so usually the scholarship money is given out that night on the floor we the school committee is is responsible for uh taking a vote to approve and give uh the town to expend the funds to provide the students if assuming there is approval tonight the checks are waiting our guidance team will go pick them up tomorrow at 800 a.m. and then make sure they get in the hands of the 22 students who are recognized last night uh and a a piece of the award requires students to uh to demonstrate excellence and we just appreciate all the students who were recognized have been leaders in our community overcome adversity and been models in our community so I'm excited and thankful for the David Libby family for their generous donation that I think our students will put to good use in their future studies great um so do we have a motion motion approve the David B Libby scholarship distribution distribution seconded by Chuck any further discussion okay all in favor and opposed and it passes 5 to zero great thank you Dr mileski great okay so let's move on then um we're going to move on to our consent agenda so uh Aon a motion for that too please motion to approve the consent agenda second seconded by Shan any discussion or points on the consent agenda can I make please y you'll see the two outside the minutes two other items on the consent Agenda One is the acceptance of the uh FY 24 high quality instructional materials purchase uh Grant award and then two the uh metco REI implementation Grant I just wanted to flag for the community that first uh Grant was a similar one that we received for the elementary schools a couple of years ago that helped support the purchase of new highquality curriculum materials I know we talked at length that historically our community had been or District had been in the hundreds in Elementary uh growth for students St last year uh the first year of implementation we were fourth in the state in elementary literacy growth and we think the curriculum materials were a huge part of that uh so we just like to say we're really excited about this grant which will go to the middle school tonight you'll hear Dr Hardy speak a little bit about what's happening at the middle school we think that this grant will go a long way for us in being able to ensure that there's high quality curriculum materials across all of our grades particularly at the uh the Middle School level and then the the metco REI implementation Grant this is a one-time Grant provided by Meco uh the goal of this grant which is A50 $1,000 Grant is for us to work directly with some of our fifth sixth and seventh grade students to provide them with Summer tutoring targeted at sort of their needs standards they need a little additional support to ensure that they are on track to be able to uh um move into an advanced cour work either 78 math or e8th grade algebra or kind of when they get to high school on a more advanced track so we feel that Grant will be put to good use and ensure that we have uh more of our Boston resident students in our advanced math courses at the high school level any any further discussion or questions okay we have the motion already all in favor all oppos and the consent agenda passes 5 to zero okay so moving down the agenda then we will move to reports um we don't have a student because three of them are flying the coupe already um let's and let's move on to Dr Hardy good evening everyone um tonight for my report I just wanted to share that earlier this week we had a really nice celebration with our first year staff and their mentors um we had an opportunity to bring everyone together to reflect on what it's like to be a first year educator here in writing public schools and also to recognize the work of our mentors the role of a mentor to a new staff member coming in is essential to their success whether that staff member is in their first year of teaching or even coming to us with many years of experience just acclimating to a new District it's very important we are so appreciative to the work of our mentors we have outstanding teachers who have stepped into that leadership role tonight or in our packet our presentation you'll see that we've actually listed the names of all of our mentors um because we want to acknowledge their work just so you know we had this year we had 55 new staff members in year one that required mentoring uh we also continue to Mentor teachers in years two and three and this year we had um 22 staff members in year two that continued to benefit from mentoring so it was a very successful year and we are so appreciative to our teachers who stepped into the mentoring role great thank you Dr mileski anything else from you yeah I'd like to give a quick congratulations kilum principal uh Mrs Lindsay Fulton who just had her first baby so she's home on maternity leave I'd also to give a thank you to the entire kilum Community who have stepped up in her absence to kind of pick up some of the leadership void a particular thank you to assistant principal Talia howlet if you know anything about Kellum too maybe have some Kellum alums that building's filled with just leadership throughout from you know teachers office staff everything so uh congratulations to Lindsay and thank you to the kilum staff and I'd be remiss if I see the boys lacrosse team here uh just like to congratulate you thus far on another successful season so far uh first I I I catch up mostly I hear we see Brendan around but also seeing I saw Doug yesterday who gave me a recap Mr Gibbs on the season uh talked first about the the character of this team and the quality of young men that you all are talked about academically how well so many of you have been doing in the classroom and of course gave me high hopes for what the postseason has ah has ahead has in store we know that you have quite a uh season to live up to from last season but just want to share my enthusiasm for how well you've all done the season and there's a lot of eyes on you this season to uh put your best foot forward and make a Deep Run in the tournament so as I see you all good luck and we look forward to following your successes over the next couple of weeks go get them get another State title back to back okay so moving through the a reports Chuck uh so the uh the recreation committee met uh Tuesday night uh the chair was very mindful of a of a basketball game so we had a packed agenda but we got through it I won't go through the agenda but one thing I did want to say was we did uh vote to to recommend to the select board that the the trail in between Birch Meadow be named in the memory of Jamie M and I don't know if anybody I think you all knew Jamie he was just a uh really thoughtful uh intelligent uh hardworking uh town meeting member and and Community member who I think two years ago uh suddenly passed away so just a well-deserved uh recognition of Jamie thank you Carla thank you Tom um so Dr milesy and I um and Tom um attended metco advocacy day which was actually only two hours but um at Melrose High School and our delegation was there and we outlined and spoke about um the letter that the school committee wrote um advocating for increase or the deficit of funding that that we have to pay for that um budget um in terms of kilum I'm going to take this Shameless plug to tell people that we we are in the msba process to build a new kilum school we have a wonderful website um kilum school.com we will be coming to the voters um next spring to ask for um it will there will be a vote to support uh or not support building a new kilum school we are really fortunate to be selected to be in this process where we will receive um tens of millions of dollars from the state to build the school if the vote does not pass we will have to figure out how to do something and build that school um on our own dollar so I encourage you if you don't know about the process and you don't know the need for the process please check out our website we are constantly doing community meetings we have two more this summer um we we had a bunch of milestones in this past few days on Monday we submitted we had a huge submitt to the msba uh preliminary design um process submitt to the msba Tuesday night our designer did a um presentation to the select board and the financial Forum if people want to hear about all of the events um between a potential Senior Center a potential new kilum school and um CPA and a bunch of other things there is going to be a financial Forum on next Tuesday the 28th at 7:00 you're going to hear a little bit about each of those projects and those initiatives so as taxpayers you should be aware of of like what's coming down the pipe um that will require votes so thank you okay Sean no report Aaron no report and Carla to sto stole my finance committee report so I was going to steal it first if she didn't so that's what I get for being last in line um all right all right so I guess we'll move on to the uh not quite the main event but the main event for many of you so um we'll move on to the facility naming request um for on behalf of Charlie Hardy and Kevin I believe you're here there you are okay um so Kevin will lead that from your perspective I think and you have a few other people speaking you have up to 10 minutes to make the uh petition um and after you're done with that I'll explain kind of the next steps uh of the process overall so why don't you come over here to the microphone there um and if anybody's joining you in speaking they can come up as well thank you thank [Applause] you the mics have to be together bring the mics together because one of them is for the zoom and one of them is for the room [Music] okay okay my name is Dennis deetto so I'll go first um I want wanted to just say good evening superintendent michuki uh members of the school committee and those here in attendance and any of those folks that might be watching at home uh I wanted to thank you for providing me with an opportunity to speak on behalf of Charlie Hardy and more specifically the petition to name ready Memorial High School Turf to Charlie Hardy field um again my name is Dennis De benedetto I've been a resident of reading for 26 years I've known Charlie for 24 of those years uh I was was also the first Youth Boys director of the newly formed ring lacrosse program uh I along with my wife cornie uh raised three children that all graduated from ring Memorial High School um when searching for a place to raise our family we chose reading because of all the positive attributes the community had to offer uh we looked along a lot around the middle sux area and and reading seemed to be the best fit and trying to compare apples to apples reading head at that TI still does the the best schools uh in the area so that's why we ended up here um all three of my children played lacrosse I have two sons Kevin and Patrick who both played for Charlie and a daughter Kate who played on the girls team and uh keeping it All in the hardi Family my daughter first played for Charlie's niece Maggie Mahar who was a standout at Syracuse and finally for Charlie's daughter Michaela lacrosse stand out at UNH all three of my children played at the Collegiate level and I believe this is a testimony to the positive experiences and the coaching they had beginning with their participation in the youth lacrosse program and ending with they playing for the ready Memorial High School lacrosse teams uh this brings me to my next topic Community what does it stand for what makes a community successful or strong it's as simple as the people within it working together for the common good of all its members Charlie Hardy represents a unique individual in the community of reading in the fall of 2000 he had a vision to bring the game of Lacrosse to the Youth of reading with some gentle encouragement from a fellow UMass alumnist Dave lman a small ad was placed in a local newspaper in that ad Charlie asked anyone interested in supporting this effort to a meeting at his home it is safe to say that enough people were excited to be part of something new to offer to the Youth of reading summon attendance had no idea what the game and failed make no mistake it required many hands to make the establishment of the reading youth lacrosse program a reality none of this could have been accomplished without Charlie's leadership and contagious enthusiasm I feel immense pride in having been a contributing member of this small group of dedicated parents led by Charlie Hardy and bringing quite a successful acros program to reading people also should know that for 10 years Charlie would go to Parker to ensure that the field field are ready to be played on at that time it was a grass field and I can tell you from firsthand experience uh it was a lot of work to make grass fields playable at that time when the weather was unpredictable on a Sunday so he was a strong advocate for Parker to be converted ultimately to a Turf surface which it is today and the girls currently enjoy playing there the program held its inaugural clinic and registration event in February of 2001 at the Hawks Fieldhouse we had anticipated approxim 50 attendees what we had and much to our Delight were 168 participants thanks to Pat IA for remembering that number the overwhelming majority who had never picked up a lacr and really had no idea what the game was it was just another something else to do in reading and uh it was great out front was Charlie explaining the game in working skill sessions it was clearly obvious that this was his this that he was most definitely in his element of no is that uh past athletic director Phil vicaro stopped by and based upon what he observed it was reported by a few volunteer staff that he chuckled and said and I paraphrase it looks like there are going to be a few more games to attend I guess I was right I guess he was right Charlie's record of success on the field over his 22-year tenure is well documented in the petition that you folks have in your possession what he has done for the Youth of reading and the community at large cannot be overstated for any everyone knows that Charlie it was always about what was best for the athlete the school and the community they represent naming of turf 2 to Charlie Hardy field would be a well-deserved honor his contributions are in power with Walter he Hawk's Fieldhouse William Eno Performing Arts Center Pete moscarello baseball field John hollingworth football field and H coft track in closing any community would be fortunate to have Charlie Hardy in their citizenry thank you for your consideration thank you good evening superintendent members of the school committee my name is Kevin malvey um I want to thank you for the opportunity to come and talk about the petition to rename Turf 2 after Charlie hardi uh my wife by and I have been living and writing for over 24 years we have raised four Sons here in town uh they were all involved in Youth Sports and high school sports two of which had the Good Fortune to play lacrosse for Charlie um our kids got exposed to Lacrosse early on from the deetto kids in Just laxing it which is a program for youth that Chie and his daughter Michaela had created uh they would go to that every summer and then when they aged out they would actually uh work it with Charlie and Michaela and others um my wife specifically remembers her feelings on Charlie right for the first time she met him his enthusiasm and positivity were infectious to everybody around him uh young or old didn't matter Charlie would get everybody involved and interested in Lacrosse at that camp it became became evident that Chie taught a number of very valuable lessons camarad respect dedication all of which were Staples of ch's kids coming through the program and also once they graduated ch's obviously created a very top-notch program here in reading for the last 22 years but he's also created a very close-knit lacrosse family this was never more evident than last night when following the last B boys lacrosse game against conquer Kile nearly 200 folks showed up for the game most of which were there to see Charlie no offense to the kids um but former coaches colleagues Alum and I family and friends came out followed by a quick reception down to Cafe capri last night um I would be remissed if I didn't say in your packet is a a spreadsheet with over 500 supporters of this the numbers have now grown to over 600 and I think the longer this process goes on those numbers are going to grow as well um Charlie's impact goes beyond the borders of reading um Tom delandro who is conquer car's version of Charlie Hardy attended and spoke last night after the game he had a number of wonderful things to say about Charlie but the thing that struck out to me more than anything was that when conid was getting ready to play reading uh his kids had to give their aame prepare with their aame because they knew they were going to get an aame from reading and the quote is that the reading kids know how to play the game of Lacross correctly one of my sons plays college across at St anthom's College the St A's coach is Fond to say that he likes the reading kids because they know how to play uh they they know how to play the game of Lacrosse correctly right now there are six reading Rockets on the St a lacrosse team clearly a testament to the kids yes but also something for Charlie to take home and know that he's the one that created and Foster the program and the culture that that is important to reading uh the reading boys team and reading let's face it reading in general has been lucky to have Charlie for 22 years I think renaming Turf 2 to Charlie howy field is the most appropriate way for us to thank him for his service so those are my comments I'd be happy to answer any questions you have but thank you for your time great thank you very much um so just a a note on process uh it was in the packet so people probably already know this as well but the committee will not deliberate this discussion tonight um any Committee Member can ask a clarifying question of of you two or anybody else in the room who wants to answer um but otherwise we won't discuss it necessarily um next week next meeting two weeks from tonight we will have a discussion about forming an advisory committee and you most of you probably already know we also have a request on the table for Phil vicaro and and gymnasium in the Fieldhouse so my proposal for the committee at that point in time will be that we have one advisory committee that addresses both naming needs um simply because there's only so many Volunteers in town and only so many meetings we can all attend um so efficiency wise I think it would make sense to address both of them at the same time what that then means is that we would form that advisory committee assuming the committee agrees to it um and votes in favor of it and we would form it by putting one of us on that committee most likely as the chair to be elected by the rest of the committee uh a select board member a historical society member and a a business member the principal of this high school would be an advisory member of that committee as well and a student here at the high school so looking around the room if any of you are wanting to participate in this that's your chance to actually be on the committee that's going to vote and recommend something along this line I've been considering whether to expand the committee a little bit because of the fact that it's doing two so I'll I'll consider that over the next couple days as well as we come up to next week or two weeks from now to make that happen um that committee then will meet at least three times over the next couple months first their formation Committee just to see who's going to do what role and how they're going to structure themselves second would be a public uh forum and they have to by rule have to publish that out multiple time multiple weeks in advance so people know to come that's the second chance you as a advocacy group come to present your case and there's no time limit at that point in time unless the chair of that committee sets a time limit but there's no 10-minute rule at that point so everybody in their mother who wants to speak about Charlie can speak at that case uh and the third one would be their their recommendation meeting where they take all the feedback they've received probably in both cases and come back and they propose a recommendation that they then vote to bring back to the school committee as a whole once they bring that back to the school committee as a whole the school committee can then further discuss it and make a decision to accept the recommendation or decline the recommendation um so process-wise that's generally how it will play out um given that there we're now in June I'd expect that that's probably a September October time frame in terms of when the process will conclude give or take um but that's the general gist of it um so committee any questions on the recommendation or the nomination anybody wants to ask no um just I guess one more point of note is that the criteria that has to be used is according to our policy is based upon um it's outlined in the policy and it's essentially that you know Superior levels of performance in strengthening and supporting the public schools effective citizenship community service excellent character and general reputation and high standards of Ethics um those that's part of the criteria so as you think about your personal advocacy on behalf of that think about those criteria either submitting a letter which is another way you can handle it and that can come to the whole whole committee as a case or you know and you think about presenting at that public forum mentioned before okay any questions from you all okay any questions out there is that policy anywhere look up is absolutely it's it's policy FF it's on the school committee's website if you type in Reading MA school committee policies it's the first link and then inside there you can look at the the F the the the F grouping of policies it's also in the packet for tonight's meeting so if you look at the packet for tonight's meeting it's near the back of the packet okay all right thank you very much thank you thanks Kevin I'm going to suggest uh you all are welcome to stay but usually people don't I'm going to take a three minute recess to allow you guys to to clear if you want to do so are you going to pull up our slides or e e e 7:32 back to order and we'll move through the rest of the agenda and um I believe Dr Hardy we hand over the mic to you awesome thank you well we are uh enthusiastic to present this presentation to you this evening I'm going to give you just a bit of an overview of how we're going to proceed hopefully you've had a chance to review the slide um presentation that's that's in the packet and hopefully folks that home have an opportunity to read through there's a lot of information in there um and we really wanted to have that out there we're very proud of the work that's been accomplished this year um in learning and teaching for the writing public schools and we wanted to document as much as possible but also want to keep our presentation tonight to a reasonable time frame uh so we're just going to provide sort of some highlights and then look forward to answering any questions that you might have and any specific areas you want to delve into um we are happy to do that I want to acknowledge two members of my team that are with me this evening to help me I have uh Maran Lynn who's our K to8 stem coordinator and Aon burchel who is our K to a Humanities coordinator so we will do this together as we do most everything and I also want to acknowledge two members of our team that are not here this evening who really are instrumental in the work that happens um McKenzie Bido who is our administrative assistant and Liam Lalo who is our data specialist additionally if you look through the presentation you will see that there um are many teams of teachers and leaders that are mentioned and we've tried to where possible list the names of the folks that are part of those teams again the work that we're presenting tonight we help to organize and run but is really played out um in our schools by um this network of of amazing leaders and teacher leaders and our staff uh we don't do any of this alone and so we wanted to make sure that those folks were acknowledged in our presentation because they are integral to this work our presentation tonight is organized into two buckets and both of these come from strategic objective number two which relates to coherent instructional systems um this is one way that we leverage um improvements in in student academic growth we believe that the two areas that um our two buckets tonight are are ways that um we we can move work work forward and ensure that continuous learning is happening in our district so you will hear us talk a little bit about categories that fall under adoption of highquality materials and evidence-based instructional practices we believe that improvements in those areas will lead to improvements in outcomes for our students paired with that you will hear us talk a bit about implementation of highquality professional learning for staff as a learning organization learning for the adults is just as important as learning for the students and that learning is what propels a lot of the initiatives that we are have underway so we are going to um highlight just a few things from each section to give you a snapshot of some of the big initiatives um even the things presented in this presentation don't cover everything that's underway um please feel free also to stop us at any point if you want us to clarify at that point but then at the end we'll be happy to go back and answer any of your questions so all right right so I'm going to hand things off with the clickers with the clicker down moves it ahead down moves it ahead great everybody good to see you um so I'm going to talk a little bit um it's not moving there we go um about elementary literacy um and give you a little bit more information I know you've heard a lot from me this year about elementary literacy in terms of our core but also in terms of the early literacy screener um a big accomplishment this year was that we implemented a new Core Curriculum in literacy in grades K through five um it was year two for 3 to 5 year one for k to2 um it's a really big accomplishment because it's reading and writing in all of the elementary schools all of the grades um nothing is perfect we're still monitoring going through um but there's a lot to be proud of um in year two here um also want to highlight the early literacy screening um that was a major shift this year um we now have a consistent assessment k to3 um a consistent data source that houses the data historically a consistent Communication System across all five schools um and also really consistent intervention procedures for tier 2 across all five schools um I am going to shout out the elementary literacy Specialists Alison Matthews Stacy Foresman Aaron Gibson Jan rain and Colleen D Roos they have been building this boat as they've been rowing it um as the new as the new Universal screening guidelines came out um they've responded they've adjusted we have things that we're going to change for next year um and just tweak a little bit but they've been essential in this work essential um in terms of implementation um we have lots of ways that we are monitoring um I'm going to I'm not going to talk through all of this um but I'm just going to highlight a few different things things um so we have a bunch of data sources because data plays a really Central role in our monitoring of the implementation of a new program um there's data on the following slides but just to highlight the following so we are really encouraged by eara data so far knowing that this is year two and that impacts the data and the reliability and all of that um the learning curve of the teachers with the framework itself the core framework itself and also data collection and the assessment itself um but the cohort data for current fourth and fifth graders is also really encouraging so the slides show data from last year and this year but also cohort data in grades four and five that would be important to look at um we don't just look at one data source when we're monitoring curriculum either that's why the Dibbles not only is it really important to have as an early literacy screener it's also really important to have to tr start to triangulate some of the data um with our like core programs in tier one um and that data is really promising I'll tell you the end of year data is not complete yet we're still literacy Specialists are still in the middle of completing it um we mostly started with third grade then went to second then first grade then kindergarten last um because their Benchmark their windows were a little bit different this year than K than one two and three um so that's still coming in but that's really it's really promising at this point um and Dr Hardy and I actually today just wrapped up what we called our curriculum chats um we actually met with all third fourth and fifth grade teacher teams at each school um and had a series of question about art cor after two years of implementation to get some real feedback from teachers we're also sending out a survey K to five an anonymous survey um to get some data from them um it's revealing a lot of great instruction happening um we're hearing a lot about student engagement um but we're it's also revealing some areas for PD and places to layer in different supports that have been really crucial at this point moving forward um I'm sure I will be back to talk about our um and also the early literacy screener but just those are sort of the highlights um and things to sort of look through as you go do you mind um before we hand off to Mary do you mind clicking just down to the ear data I just want to make one point for the committee I'm going the wrong way that's so we we decided to include some really like higher level overview data in here sort of as an example um to let you know the types of data sources were considering um but I did just want to clarify that when our team is reviewing data when we're sitting with our building leaders you know when we're looking at it internally um we're looking at the data in much more detail than this um we're looking at it by student Group by grade level by school um breaking it out by different standards and indicators um but the purpose of this is just to allow you to see in general the types of Assessments we're using and to let you know that um assessment and monitoring um is really important to the work that we're doing we didn't want our presentation to not um have that in there because it wouldn't really be a representation of how we work okay yes thank you um hi everyone I am going to step into our next realm which is just talking about the curriculum reviews that we have going on as well as our implementation team so this year we have five different curriculum reviews happening in the district and we have an implementation team for Arc and an implementation team for illustrative math and so um as we've mentioned at pre at a previous meeting back in November our curriculum reviews are much better than C or much different than and better than curriculum reviews used to be in that they're very comprehensive processes and so it's no longer especially at the middle and high school level looking for a new textbook or a new instructional material but really includes a really strong focus on providing professional development for teachers and also looking at pedagogy and instructional practices and more recently just looking at change possible changes in assessments and how we can really um truly assess our students in what they're learning in the classroom and so um on this Point down that way point oh yeah okay so as you can see for our curriculum reviews there's four stages to the process and so they're long processes as well often times spanning two years and so that initial stage is really doing a learn and prepare and then the second is investigating different high quality instructional materials and piloting them and um selecting the new curricula that we would like and then there's the launch and then as I mentioned then we also really want to focus on implementing and monitoring and again like at the middle and high school level that's something that it that didn't always happen in the past like you gave teachers a new curriculum you gave them initial PD and then that was it so I'm really excited to see this change to really looking at how it is going to impact our students so as I mentioned the process is underway for middle school for five different departments so we have Middle School literacy we have secondary science which is both middle and high school we have World Language social emotional learning and multilingual Learners and they're all at different spots in this curriculum review process and it's really a fluid process um with the teams as they're learning and preparing really navigating and determining the route based on data reviews of our data in Reading looking at current research in the fields and learning along the way and so each curriculum review might evolve very differently from one another and so the slides give some examples too that we that I won't go into but that um really look at some of the just give you examples of some of the data that the teams are considering as we go through these processes and so for example we have I ready math in the slideshow and we have I ready reading and as I said that would give us some data in order to gain an understanding of where we are in writing right now and it also will help us to form a baseline to see if changes that we do Implement will actually lead to Greater success for all of our students and it also includes an overview of the work that was accomplished by each of the Committees this year um as I mentioned each process is unique depending on the curriculum review that's going on and I'll just so I'll just speak briefly to two of the Committees and how they are very different in what they're doing so for example World Language just as new set of curriculum Frameworks just came out for World Language and so the focus of that curriculum review do is really working to align the current curriculum with the new standards and I can tell you that is a major process having gone through it in 2016 and forward in science and so secondary science has already done the work of aligning our curriculum with the curriculum standards in Massachusetts and what has happened now right that was back in 2016 our subscriptions are expiring for the different curricula that we use and so we're really looking to see if the curricula that we are using meets the needs of students and also uses research-based best practices and figuring out if we need to adopt a different curriculum and so I mentioned in most cases it's a lengthy process um many of these curriculum reviews will extend into 24 25 and um for examp example just with the science curriculum review I can speak to that one specifically since it's one of the or it's the curriculum review that I'm facilitating we started in the fall in our learn and prepare phase by doing a book study of a book called ambitious Science teaching that really looks at the pedagogical shifts in Science Education and we talked about it and thought about ways that we might just slowly start to incorporate some of these new strategies into our classroom um and then we also did a lot of work just to identify our vision as a group and as Aon and Sarah have both said these committees have been doing a lot of work meeting regularly throughout the year and it's really the teachers who are doing the work and the thinking Behind These processes so we the team established a vision we set pro priorities parameters around what it would look like and this in the spring we've been looking at different hqm and we'll end the year with a professional development session right after school gets out that will be run by the Wade Institute that will actually help teachers to start to work some of these new shifts into units that they are currently using so I'm really excited about that and then also Ela is actually at the point of piloting this spring so a shout out to all of the Middle School teachers who are piloting a program this spring and I will turn things over to Sarah okay so the final two areas and under the adoption of high quality materials and evidence-based instructional practices are is work that's going on um at the high school and also um Middle School we've been looking at ways to ensure that the courses that we're offering our students are engaging and are setting them up for Success um regardless of what career they might um choose to pursue and wanting to give more options at the high school for our students especially who are interested in um trying out some um internships and um just going to click ahead here and a series of courses that would connect around a particular career pathway so we're really proud of the work um principal Kenan has been instrumental in moving us ahead at the high school in particular with the Innovation career Pathways uh but also with the internships that our seniors accomplished we are really excited um to La have launched this year our first Innovation career Pathways at the high school and next year we'll be adding two additional Pathways so we are um making really great progress in that we um Next Year look forward to in to having um many more students enrolled and we also think that um the addition of these clean energy and Healthcare and social assistance Pathways will give options for kids who perhaps didn't see um the engineering or the computer science as a field that they might want to head into it just gives our students more options to try things out in high school and makes them better prepared when they're making those decisions about what they want to study in college gives them that background knowledge that's another thing that the um internships do in senior year as well allowing students to either get a glimpse into a certain career what does this really look like like when I work in a place um and or just to understand what it's like to um go to work 40 hours a week so we're really proud of that program was exciting to put in a few photos of our students um and our secondary math Pathways is another example of ways we're trying to ensure that our courses support all of our students throughout their experience and reading to meet their college and career goals we know that math courses are particularly important when students are looking at their um future careers or the courses that they're going to pursue in college and we've presented regularly to this committee this year we have a followup um presentation in June where we'll be able to give you some more information but this is something that we have spent a good amount of time on this year um because we feel it's so important to ensuring that um the student students in Reading um receive the best education they have math is extremely important and that is some of the data in there too that we've been looking at is for you for your perusal so that was quick but we will shift ears and um switch over to some of the initiatives that have been underway to support the professional learning of Staff back to to Maran thank you and so we're going to start this section in talking about professional learning by just talking about our job embedded coaching that's happening at across the district and so we have Alana excuse me Alyssa and Alana I'm combining their names Alyssa Nelson and Lana Montero are our math coaches and um Renee Laro is our special ed literacy coach Jackie py our inclusion specialist and Karen Hall our MLL director who has been involved in coaching this year as well and so we're really excited about this focus on job embedded coaching in Reading because it really gives us much greater bandwidth to be able to differentiate professional learning and support that's really focused on the teachers work in the classroom and Prov provides teachers with opportun opportunities to really select growth areas where they're interested in improving their practice and exploring new strategies that are most meaningful to them and so teachers are playing an active role in the learning process and this might look really different for new teachers versus def um veteran teachers for example new teachers might be requesting for coaches to come in and model lessons for them to see how how to run the lessons whereas veteran teachers might be requesting to be observed to see how they're doing in their practice and to get some good feedback related to that the presentation does include some slides excuse me a graph that just shows the different types the lots of different types of support that the math coaches are providing 4K through eight teachers we also included some anecdotal evidence um and it's just feedback that teachers have been giving and it's been overwhelmingly possible excuse me I can't talk tonight overwhelmingly positive um and we are in the process right now of gathering more detailed feedback through um a survey to the staff and so I'm going to share just a few highlights from the math coaches since they are the two coaches that I work with most directly um but there's lots of great work happening um and Powerful work happening with Karen and Renee and Jackie as well and so hopefully you'll have an opportunity to hear about that at some point too so the math coaches have been instrumental in so many areas this year that it's really hard to capture everything that they've been doing so I'm just going to give you a couple of examples of what they do and so one is that one-on-one coaching that I referenced um and they spent a lot of time supporting our 15 new Elementary PR or excuse me elementary teachers in their work again by modeling lessons and really actually progressed from modeling to in the spring going in and observing and then debriefing lessons with the teachers they also worked to coordinate peer observations so that new teachers could go in and observe veteran teachers at the same grade level in order to learn from some of our amazing Educators that have been implementing Ark and had been implementing IM and so they also were really instrumental in running a lot of the professional development that we offered to teachers this year and so I'll just quickly run through they ran our they helped us Erin and I to run our six Elementary workshops on Fridays they helped to run the two in service days they co- facilitated four of the middle school choice PD sessions throughout the year and they also co- facilitated the IM implementation team meetings as well as request from administrators to run staff meetings at individual schools and they also um sat in on Data meetings at the request of some of our elementary principles and Middle School principles in order to help teachers to analyze the data that they were looking at and to look at how they could include and incorporate interventions for students that needed that and so we've also been focusing on how our coaches can get professional development as part of this work as well since they are our instructional leaders in the district and so some of the ways that that's been happening is that Aon and I have been co- facilitating monthly um professional learning communities with this group of six people or five people and they also are the math coaches are part of the desie math leadership Network and so four times during the year they go just to learn about new initiatives and PD opportunities for teachers and changes that might be happening to assessments and related to that we're really excited to be attending the inclusive leaders Academy next year that next week that's being held in Beverly and one of the organizers is Karen jaski who is a res reading reading resident so we're excited about that I'll just share on that last one too and that that's an opportunity for our coaches to get a couple of days together to like calibrate on what good and inclusive practice looks like we think there's some things good work happening on that but I think with some good facilitation and some support to have them calibrate on practice will be really beneficial um I'm going to talk a little bit about content specific professional development that we've been working on this year um so reading partnered with the hill for literacy and offered two courses to our teachers this year so we offered a k to2 science of reading course um and also an adolescent literacy course for Middle School folks um both Ela and content teachers all members of the Middle School literacy leadership team the curriculum review team actually took the Adolescent literacy course um these were really important because they help us build a common understanding and a really consistent Foundation um for sort of the why around the changes that we've made in curriculum and that we made in in terms of instructional practices are happening um and those have been those have been pretty great um also gets really into the like research base of like why the why we're changing practices too um other contents specific professional development we've had um you all know I've talked about the ark um leadership series and building based coaching that we've had um that's been instrumental really in learning sort of the different pieces of art core um and the different parts of like the different components of the program and the framework um we're even thinking next year about how to use this in similar ways in different ways um in all of the data that we're Gathering through the curriculum chats through the surveys that we're sending out through feedback Loops that we've had with implementation teams this year are really going to help push that work forward next year in ways that are really beneficial to our teachers and then obviously to our kids um middle school and high school um department meetings um they continue to work on curriculum and content related projects um with building leaders and department heads um we're working to develop more next year of thinking like what's going to work best next year based on like where we are in terms of curriculum where folks are in terms of content um and then there was even some um par professional specific um professional development well there we go um I know Sarah's going to talk about the choice PD a little bit but I wanted to call out the professional development for par professionals that was that was really really well received um and targeted really specifically to their roles which is really really important um when it comes to professional learning hand that back to Sarah and the final area we wanted to highlight for you was something that um was was new this year was the opportunity for our Middle School and High School staff to have a choice in some of the PD they participated in it looked a little bit different between the two levels and I won't get into the details um but what I want to note is this was in response to feedback we got from staff that indicated that they didn't um they enjoy meeting with their departments but they also wanted the the opportunity to learn with colleagues from other departments and it was also uh they felt that it would benefit them if they had a little more choice in what they were studying all of the topics that happened through our choice professional development were related to improving pedagogy and they might have just looked a little bit different one of the other features of all of these Choice workshops is that they gave staff the opportunity to learn about a specific strategy practice it try it out and then come back and have an opportunity to debrief and sh share with each other how it went we thought that that was really important that staff took away things that were practical we're trying them out and then we're learning from each other as far as what worked and what didn't work um so overall we're really pleased with this I know the high school is already looking at how they're going to extend and develop this next year we are working with our Middle School principles um and sort of taking in all the feedback we got from middle school teachers to decide what the next step will be there but we were really happy and feel like this was a success in our first year of trying it up we have some feedback in here for you when you have a chance to read too um I think it does it captures a lot of what teachers told us there are always um some staff too that um you know would prefer time with their department or um would like some different choices and it's been really great to get that feedback from staff too it's really helpful for us to make sure that all teacher voices are represented so um so that was an overview not as quick as we had hoped but um as quick as we could go we would love to answer any questions you have or delve deeper into any particular areas okay a lot of material covered in 30 minutes as fast as you can possibly speak so um looking at the committee any questions comments Sean your hands up yeah not really a question um maybe just more of a comment I suppose uh so you know all of the implementation teams and curriculum review teams you know I just was reflecting on how many names appeared in this presentation so you've got a healthy percentage of the RTA represented here so recognizing I just want to recognize and call out there's a ton of work happening in this space we we understand it's super important and we're you know I'm personally very appreciative that you know that uh um you know everyone is is uh engaged in this work and and to you all for leading it I think we're seeing some really promising results in the ear data which you know highlights sort of the importance of this kind of work um and and uh uh so I just really wanted to call that out and acknowledge it and and thank you all for leading it so thank you and Sean I'll say that these meetings also happen after school and so people are giving up time to come and be a part of these committees anybody else can I just ask a couple of quick questions thank you I I think that um you know from non-educators who are part of this whole group for me um the data piece of it has always been huge right and but the professional development and and the you know everybody getting it the coach is getting professional development and that time where they can collaborate with you know with each other in different ways in different groups it it's just it's huge right it's you know I think about it too when you're going into veteran teachers you know are I I I like that the coaches aren't um their the coaches aren't evaluating them in terms of job performance so maybe there there's more like learning happening but um you know I just you know it it's an opportunity and I I think it's awesome but just a couple of questions um on the earth the early literacy screeners and I think I just might be a little confused um switch screening tool to Dibbles is that from the our core no okay separate okay separate yep um we we use the Diles eth assessment we the data platform is called mclass and it's provided by a company called um so we previously had used a different assessment in kindergarten than one through three um so we shifted to this so we could be K to three um and could it could house historical data so we'd see kids year over year too okay perfect thank you I I looked at that a little differently so I'm glad to hear that um and then um for Maran the the um in just in terms of the schedule shift in science from um you know from the AP science classes and all that was part of the professional development or time for these teachers to collaborate on how to how to change things from losing you know those longer blocks and things like that that's a great question so that has not been specific to the or that has not been part of the work of the curriculum review but I know that Ray Albright is using some of the profession learning time at the high school to help teachers to accommodate to that shift be more consistent great thank you sure thank you very much both of you all three of you sorry go ahead um so thank you so much this is a ton of information and I hope people will read through the full presentation because it's very impressive um so thank you um so some of my questions I I don't know if they have concrete answers but I'm going to Muse on them anyway so for example curriculum review you're looking at both Middle School literacy and World languages is it at all a possibility of of starting World language in sixth grade is is that anywhere in any of these conversations since you're simultaneously looking at middle school schedules and both those curriculums I'm curious that certainly has been something the World Language department has talked about progression course is um where it would start I think um we have many world language teachers that would love um sixth grade so there are some things we're looking at um and hoping maybe to have some things to Pilot um te but nothing there's more there there's there's more there you tell Poker Face I think we've been working with the the par uh both both schools around uh my cap work and trying to bring some of like The Innovation Pathways work down to the middle school I can share some of the work that I was at a Parker staff meeting the other day where part of that would mean that if there're to shift to offer more electives in eth grade that align to a lot of the course work happening here around engineering computer science that would free up some of the world language teachers who are currently teaching elective um to be able to teach an exploratory in sixth grade so that's I think something that's being discussed pretty seriously at Parker right now now where I think sar's being cautious was you know we can't guarantee that we're ready to launch that although I would say more likely than not also what does that mean for coolage I don't know if we're able to launch at the same time because their my cap Works a little bit a different place but I think that will probably push the schools to kind of get it down to sixth grade because I'm guessing it would be successful when it moves down but I I would be surprised if it's not a pilot next year at Parker sixth grade World Language exploratory okay that would be yeah um so you spoke a lot about the math coaches obviously new position this year sounds like they've been hugely beneficial um I'm glad you're seeking feedback from the staff too because I I'd be curious um I'm just wondering obviously it's it's there's a budget impact to adding those positions I'm wondering if you can articulate any sort of budget savings by how much um job embedded PD they're able to assist with and I don't know if that's something you can put a number on but I guess I'm thinking of it more in terms of like if we ever were to try to add um literacy coaches so one thing that I was thinking of and I think just missed in my notes there was you know their focus is really on strengthening tier one within our classrooms right and so with that goal of having more students at you know achieving at tier one and not needing interventions like that would be a cost savings right for sure and then I think also in support like providing that support to new teachers we all know the detriment of turnover with teachers and so if teachers are feeling supported and feeling confident in the work that they're doing then I would think that they are more likely to stay in the classroom and so I think that would be a cost savings to the District that as you say Aaron I don't know that we can quantify it but I would say you know some of the outside providers that we've worked with in the past around map um you know the the prices are you know maybe two 2500 $3,000 a day to bring in PD so um you know not having to bring those outside folks in or not bring them in as frequently is also a savings we can point to okay I'm really glad you're that too and I was just quickly looking back at my inbox I remember when we were pitching this we had looked at a lot of the research around the coaching model and like return on investment I haven't looked at it again in a while so I'd want to brush up on that but I think that's a good push for us to start to think about what's the impact uh so thank you for raising that it makes me want to go back to what the research is saying about that now that we've had it in our district for a year great can I ask one more sure um so we are finishing out year two of artcore and 3 through five um and I know there's still a cohort that is not meeting grade level reading per per your data in here but I'm curious um and maybe there's something to come back to in the fall but in terms of who's needing like serious reading intervention in sixth grade if we're seeing a decrease from a few years ago um so I guess it'll be something to look at or I don't know if students have already been referred or that's already in the works but I'm going to make a big note to look at that fall when our literacy specialists at that Middle School are starting their work to sort of see how numbers compare yeah I I feel like it's another Benchmark to be monitoring thanks no problem it's going to be interesting data set because the group we're talking about now is the co group group that's in fifth grade going to sixth grade is the co group right so it'll be interesting to see how that how that applies versus historical Trend data and if we've been able to close the gap because it's the same or better than what it was that would be a really interesting story um so anyway um I had a lot of questions on Ela but I'm going to save that for June so just be ready um but one of them just to prepare yourself is I'd love to see more Trends in subgroups of the data so as you come in June I'd love to understand more of that the summary data at the subgroup level um to see if we can use that as sort of a predictor for what we should expect when we see the mcast data um I'll also I mean everybody's thanks I would Echo um I I totally Sean's point it looks like the entire RTA is in some way shape or form involves pretty much I mean it's it's it's quite an extensive list um but one that strikes me interesting and one I think is I'd love to see us figure out if we can address based on what I understand and I may not have the the right complete understanding here but we only have our three MLS teachers in the ml group as far as I can tell right um and one of the things I understand from the research is we do much better with MLL students when it's fully integrated into the regular curriculum and so how do we work our way um to cross proliferating that group a little bit more and or making sure that whatever evaluations they're doing is more aligned with the rest of the evaluations that are happening yes there are some MLS things we're going to have to purchase just to help close gaps but we really should be looking at our Core Curriculum about how they're supporting those students as opposed to how I'm pulling these students out of the class the same way we look at it from a special education perspective the same thing should be happening as we look at some of this like what is the pullout support for this or what is the you know augmentative support for an MLL student we all know they come from various different language backgrounds so it's not like it's a very clear-cut answer um but I'd love to see that population get a little bit more integrated from a staffing perspective if at all possible but that said people have to sign up for it so I can't actually this is a really timely question I met um with the ml teachers and Karen um on Monday and we talked a lot about our core um and our MLL students in in different ways we can start incorporating or continue to incorporate the new curriculum into into their sort of learning and their pull out learning so we talked a lot about the Thematic units and how building vocabulary with with kids using pictures using vocab words all of it um would be really helpful so and we talk through a whole bunch of different other like ideas and things so it's going to be a continued conversation for sure but it actually started like on Monday which was a question obviously it's different for a kid coming in at K1 or two that in kid versus a kid who just comes in in the high school which we've had right show up kids at the high school and all of a sudden it's like you know we have to do here but so just I want to think about that and I think the other observation I have is a little bit more disconcerting um you know reading the graphs and charts for the teacher Choice um data the high school ones are singing pretty high praise the Middle School ones have some disconnect I think um I'd love to understand if we can figure out why what was it in those particular cases now it's not huge numbers right it's not huge numbers but it is interesting in in the disparity there um where some people felt like it had like no help whatsoever to them right we didn't see that in the high school level at all was the strongly disagree is a is a bit higher number in the Middle School than it is in the in the high school so if there's anything there that you can pull out of your kind of open sessions that can help inform next year I think it would be good to good to understand that yeah I do think just to to speak a little bit to what we've talked about the high school format um is a yearlong track that staff are in it's based on a professional text and so there really is a different format in flow what we piloted this year with the Middle School were shorter um like two session workshops and so there's just a different feel to it I think when you're in the workshop for two early release days the other shift for Middle School too that I think we want to really examine next year when we're making a decision about that time it's the first time that the middle schools were not just meeting with their departments um so previously I know like when I arrived in reading that middle that early release day the Middle School departments had almost full autonomy for what happened during that time um the principles would help to kind of go in and see what is the math middle school department working on what is the ELA Department working on but there wasn't necessarily um alignment in the curriculum tasks that were happening or the the workaround content and so we've to try to find the best way to make sure that time is really useful and the initiatives we think are needed to bring you know forward the improvements are working on while also making sure that Staff feel good about them too because it is their professional development time and um so we we're really trying to leverage that partnership to find the best use of time um some of the feedback we've received from staff pushes us a little more in the direction of some specific content PD for next year um but again um you know we really do believe like our work is a work in progress and that's why we um at so many turns are asking staff for their feedback because you know it's iterative we try something and just as you said we we question okay if there are some staff who really felt this wasn't good professional learning for them why was that what what could we do different next time yeah and I guess I'll just finish with my observation and you know the the heavy heavy heavy focus on job embedded PD I want to applaud heavily um one of the feedback items I've heard for years is that they they're you know they're taking out of the classroom instead of you know embedded in in the classroom from a training perspective um but also that was that was from parents who were frustrated that teachers were absent from class but the opposite was from teachers themselves saying they needed more job embedded classroom training where they're actually doing it side by side with a with a coach or somebody else so I'm I'm so ecstatic to see that see the two needs kind of align and and work to help improve practice so thank you for the continued work there and the coaches as well for their continued work I'm sure you'll continue to hear from us about Job embedded coaching that we'd love to have okay any further last questions no Tom can I say thank that I just want to uh first thank all the teachers who who've been involved in all this different work around curriculum you know shifts you know uh data analysis uh just we have some of the absolute best teachers I think you named it are like leaders are also RTA leaders are also the ones leading this instructional work and I think that that sets the tone for our district so just like to emphasize the work this is really happening by our teachers who are doing an amazing job um I'd also like to give a shout out to the the committee too I think I think you should see two things that you've pushed for that you should see reflected kind of here one I think we feel fortunate that we work for and with a committee that pushes like focus on instruction I think you look at our back at our agendas we talk a lot more about instruction and teaching and learning than most committees do and I know that's a lot you know interest for this committee so I appreciate that push and that continued push for us on teaching and learning and I think that reflects here on what's important in our district and two just you're continued also folks in the budget like the getting some of these positions around you know for job embedded PD even our data analyst other positions have been really critical to I think move some good work forward in teaching and learning so I just also want to thank you all too for again your F your investment yes on the on the budget side but also too just your continued push around what matters most and that's teaching and learning and then I should be remissed to not thank this team I mean you can tell this team's doing amazing work day in and day out uh and that shows here so thank you thank you and thank Youk thank you so um we'll move on to our next agenda item uh and I realized I have a typo in there so I'll correct it as I speak um the formative review you all remember that um last August we agreed to a 2-year cycle for Dr mileski so the formative review is kicking off now and we will publish the results uh during our last meeting of this school year which is June 20th of 2024 um tonight we'll hear it says one and three I thought it was one and three and the packet says two and three so two yeah two and three that was by fault I I I told you wrong at first you misguided me that's my fault I misguided you yes so we'll hear we'll hear on two and three tonight we'll hear on 1 and 4 at our next meeting and that's the correction it says May 31st that the Public Presentation for 1 and 4 will be on June 6th but we as a committee will will have that material by the end of next week so we can use it for anything we need to write so U we'll have the Public Presentation on on two and three tonight uh Dr milesy will also give his evidence individually for his goals tonight as well uh and then by next Friday we'll have the 1 and four information in our emails so we can use it to write um publicly that'll be presented at our next meeting on June 6th we also have the math Pathways Public Presentation on June 6 and Sarah referred to that already and it's not you know 2 20,24 it's 2024 so you don't have that long [Laughter] prepare um and then we'll have my request of the committee is that you have your individual drafts to Dr mileski um by June 9th which gives you uh that week of June 10th through 13th to review that with him make any updates if you need to and have the final review final version of your stuff to Dr mileski myself and Olivia by June 14th and then that weekend I can consolidate it and have it ready for the public packet on June 18th for distribution and final vote on the 20th okay any feedback questions or concerns besides my multitude of typos NOP okay so that said um Dr milesy I'll turn it over to you and I'm sure you have a great assistant to help you work it through too um so here we go here we go I think on order were we talking about the Benchmark updates first Benchmark plan too okay so if you can just Tom if you don't mind going to page uh let's start at 78 of the packet that's okay of course I don't see the page number thing everyone home's not getting too dizzy watching that this one right keep going a little further yeah a little further there we go that's per okay perfect so uh I'm just going to spend three or four minutes orienting you on what's in the packet and then I'm just going to open it up to conversation questions and feedback so uh as you'll see this this is the first page of uh kind of our update on our district strategic plan a couple of things that I want to make note for you first you'll see in the left column is the activities these are the things that we set out to do and get done this year next year and one more year then tying that the best we could to short and long-term outcomes that we expected either after this year or the next two or three years that was what's in the district strategic plan which is linked above this third column to the right is what's new which is the 2023 2024 end of school year update which should provide the committee of sort of a progress update of where we are now just to orient yourself two you'll see that there as you go through this there are some goals that we feel confident we have already met and we've listed those many that we feel like we have made progress to and we try to give a little bit of an update three many that we have not met for a variety of reasons whether that's either the activities we're using or not working two maybe we feel like it's just we are uh don't have the data yet maybe it's a goal that's out for 25 26 um or maybe we just realize at this point this is not really a focus for us and we've kind of shifted gear so you'll kind of see that as we go through three as you go through this present uh through this this document you'll see that many of them say in that far right column linked here as a presentation too we didn't feel like for example tonight in pillar two a lot of what's in the Strategic plan is what you heard tonight so we didn't think it made sense just to copy and paste it out of the presentation and throw it in here the the only time that we will like like explicitly mention something there that's not a presentation is if it's a specific data point that we have called a quantitative data point that we have committed to so you'll see here we have put tangible numbers around the amount of kids we want in Innovation Pathways the percentage of students that we want you know based on demographic groups and Innovation Pathways in an upcoming pillar you'll see a specific number around attendance rates you know when we get mcast a you'll see specific targets around mcast we'll link we'll put that data specifically in there otherwise in a lot of these we have just linked to the presentation to avoid just being redundant with you the last comment I want to make before we just open up too is that tonight we put an information around pillars uh two and three even when we've done that there's some overlap like for example within pillar two there's a there's one of our two initiative 21 is around the program reviews that aligns to what's going to be presented on June 6 so even though tonight we've given information for two and three there's still some things that are coming in upcoming presentation on June 6th we've also learned a lot as a team as as we've gone through strategic plan like making our plan there's things that we've realized we were way too specific here we were not specific enough here we were not measurable enough here kind of as our first go around as a team making this so over the summer our leadership team is going to revise the uh strategic plan present a revised version back to the committee either sometime this later the summer or early fall um because we think there's sort of a lot of lessons learned so I'll pause there and just open it up to anyone in the committee if there's anything within two or three that either you have feedback on what we've given or if you have questions on just sort of our progress Sean do we have any hypothesis about the gender breakdown for career Pathways yes um particularly some of the ones that we've launched already we feel are also reflect what we see in sort of the industry as well so for example in computer science we see a major discrepancy Carla you not have this conversation about your daughter right a major discrepancy on gender breakdown in computer science um maybe not as as and also and maybe not as Stark on the other two Pathways but given that that's been our most popular pathway that is really skewed the data there has been an intentional effort uh at both middle schools to try to recruit more females into some of the computer science and get interest at some of the Middle School level because we think that's been a feeder to us interestingly enough Parker says the one the students who they feel most excited about coming in the computer science pathway was a female student who had no interest in doing anything computer science the school kind of pushed her to say you should try you know in this elective you got to dive in you got to give it a shot and now she loves it and she thinks she wants to follow computer science pathway so I I guess I sure I think these Trends are going to mirror what we're seeing out in the industry unless we do something different to build interest at a younger level and I don't know we've necessarily done that well yet outside of just pockets of encouraging kids I also am interested next year with Healthcare and social assistance I think the data in the sector looks kind of flip-flopped and I'm interested on what that looks like so at this point we're just mirroring industry data okay to to that point it would be great to break it down by program going forward right so we don't just show and even we have two or three programs now so I would love to see this these numbers broken down by those two or three programs great yeah I'll just observe I mean overall we're significantly over subscribed versus our goal in terms of the number of students participating career pathway so it's not that there aren't many female students participating um so I'm not too troubled by it in the grand scheme of things but uh that that makes sense about the particular nature of the programs and there's things we can do right like that we can if we if we if we just accept that we're just going to you know that that's the norm in a society or sort of the you know then we're just going to have the like we can build programming and supports and opportunities at younger levels to get students interest I even think about like Lego League like coming back next year how are we recruiting for LEGO League how are we opening pushing female students into those programs I think there needs to be an intentional effort on our part to change this data should look into so for Girl Scouts we used to look in we used to I used to take the girls to MIT for their um their women in engineering and they sit there and they you know they're standing in front of you telling you how they love to Shoe Shop but then they're growing cartilage in in a lab for for knes you know and it's just it was fabulous to see that and to just go to MIT and just be in those presentations and I bet you could get them to come and do like workshops or something great idea yeah they're great some of those shoes can be tough on your knees so that's a natural that's a natural going resolve the problems do I want to know how you know that's a good push thank you um I was I was looking at AR when you said that cuz I was I was waiting for you to say something about um Robotics and uh LEGO League LEGO League yeah we've missed a whole Generation by dropping LEGO League yeah yeah back the kids came the kids are here this as of this week the kids are here next year yeah and it's interesting because we do I mean we do you know we have the focus on coding in the library you know you know at the elementary level particularly the young the earlier Elementary grades but and there's this just this big gap you know where where unless the student sort of has a specific interest or a personal interest um there's not quite as much of a constant drip of of uh that content I love the idea of bringing it more down to the middle school because I think you know I I think there are kids looking at High School classes who are like what is engineering you know like would I select that or even like computers like the computer science is vast right I mean it's like it is not just one thing um but for some kids they might be like eh computer you know so I just think like if we can expose them a little earlier so that when they're making those choices they're a little bit more informed yeah there's a lot in here it's a lot in here yeah any other feedback on this portion of the meeting for committee members a lot of reading yeah a lot of reading I think the one thing I think is is there's some of it in Sarah in your presentation but we don't have a lot of data in here yet yeah right so as we have more to support some of that I think this will be even better but it's early right this is a three-year plan so that's one of the key things as well is it's a three-year plan some of the data we have is very encouraging especially when we start looking at some of the the Gap closing in the ELA space with the early data um but we have to we're not closing the Gap in terms of specific subgroups accessing certain things as of yet right so it's the early it's the early measurement point but we have a lot a lot of ways to go I'll say go ahead you first um we feel that too and I know um over the few last few years a a focus has been for us to put in place the assessments and the measures so that we can measure they weren't really there for us other than mcast and so it is a process of implementing an assessment having time to calibrate make sure staff are trained and that's why you saw in my presentation this year which you didn't see previously that we're starting to interject that data so that you can see it but it has been a process and we're not quite there yet there's still more spots like the high school for example we look at very different measures more around enrollment and participation but um we continue to say what is the data that's really going to help us see the success or to see the holes in initiatives um it is of course important to understand the teacher experience and you know the student experience um but we want to be able to pair that with things that are more quantitative to understand how it's impacting outcomes some of the things don't we there's not a you know a Clear Connection we can't always say um we make this small change and we have a quantitative difference but overall if we know the data we can rely on to say in general are our students improving and we can see over time that that really does reflect what's happening for our students we will be able to provide you with more data um but it's it's really work that you know is still pretty new was there a purposeful reason why you highlighted this sentence no no no freely accidental uh we internally we had highlighted certain things we were working through and that one just forgot to get the the Highlight off the Highlight off okay unless you want to make a connection for us or a flag no was asking if there a reason that I didn't see what happened at the leadership yeah we saw the we saw the sips come out of it right so and the professional learning plans for each school and I think the other challenge Tom to talk about like in in you'll see here interim assessment data on and used here and I think part of you and I have talked about this too is the tension between like being transparent with how our students are doing and how we're progressing to take stock of where we are make adjustments and how much of that sh What level what level of like specificity should that be forward facing like we have teachers who are just starting to wrap their arms around I ready if that data becomes more specific you know down to specific cohorts or maybe classes or schools does that change then how teachers are seeing that teachers are seeing this now as a way to assess how their students are doing and then be able to make change at the classroom level student level you know grade level if it becomes something different which we've seen in some districts where it just becomes it becomes more of a a show and than it is you know to be used for a you know continuous Improvement so we just have to as we share data and continue to share more and become more comfortable as a community sharing more specificity we have to realize too that we have to be sensitive to we don't want it to be used to become you know the unintended impact of presenting the data at that level no there's a there's a happy balance there is correct and I don't think we pushed far enough yet in terms of what we can preside but right and that's where I where I was asking about the subgroup stuff right if there's a way to find the right it's just like MC does if it's 10 or more you know you can anonymize it enough that we can we can share it then great if the population's too small and it would be too obvious then we don't want to see it right I think the first thing that talking about the the goals for me I think this is always just really interesting me to think about is that a lot of the success like when these things are successful here they're attributed to to my goal even though they reflect the work of so many other people here which just feels odd I just want to name that up front let me give you the math Pathways goal for example the math Pathways goal that which I feel we have we have hit and I think with the goal was probably too short in terms of like you'll see when we prevent data we have some data to show what's actually shifted now and who's taking like you know who who now has access to getting on the other track which I don't think the goal actually called for that but if you think about who contributed to that goal that was years of parent advocacy and staff advocacy for a change that was school committee putting urgency and a press behind that pretty quickly into my tenure and Sarah's tenure that was leaders Ship by Sarah by Maryanne by other teachers by parents around that committee to start to get some change and it was execution by our principles by our Math teachers like who are the ones living it out I just want to make sure I emphasize as we go through these that credit and recognition is more of a reflection on the district like collectively moving this work forward because there's it just seems shortsighted to say Tom you get credit for the math Pathways getting to a place that we're all really excited about and I know you know that but I just wanted to make sure that that's a little bit of the framing on the the process um if you go through these quickly I just want to name a couple of the goals who then this slide's fine too the first one I am I want to emphasize the community I am excited and I think it's great that a superintendent is held accountable on student outcomes I don't think that happens far enough so I'm excited that these are tied a lot of these to data that we um we will collect on mcast for the data I'll provide with you on Friday I will share some of the interm assessment data we don't know exactly how that will correlate but I am most excited about uh hopefully hitting 80% of the targets that we've outlined but I I just want to say I think this is the right goal for us to have because this is where you know I should be held accountable seeing outcomes uh this week you can expect me just to upload some of the interim assessment data also some of the other data around AP dual enrollment uh and also uh what some of our pathway enrollment looks like for next year too shifting to goal to two uh secondary math Pathways again I think this goal was too like short I I at first I thought it was too ambitious I thought it was like to think we were going to get this off the ground and running but now to think we designed and publish yeah that's great but we're actually now seeing kids you know nine kids at the high school who are now going to be taking are on a different track because of a summer course which is great we now have a handful of kids at the middle school who are now going to be trying 78 math because of additional conversations between parents and leaders there's additional work happening in the summer from our math coaches around helping to get kids ready to be able to make a shift from one Pathway to the other so I just I think I wish this goal had said design and publish and see initial evidence of like getting students on a track so hopefully when I provide you the evidence I'm showing you not of just implementation but also of impact of getting kids on a new track goal three um this is I think the biggest challenge for us right I think this was a a lofty goal and it still is a challenging goal one I I think I and we are still trying to wrap our our heads around and like so many way we have some like things that are encouraging within this goal like if you go to the next slide like pieces of this that I think that we're starting to do well like particularly number two a ton of credit to Sarah and Jen who I think have helped really change our district leadership team meetings to focusing on data and everything is are grounded and looking at a set of data and then using that to to to make adjustments or practice but the idea of like developing a central location we have some of that in some places and if you go even a step further to keep going Tom to step seven developing beginning a process developing a system to capture research and promising practices we see this maybe in some pockets of things that we think are working but to do that at scale across so many different content areas is is is challenging so I just want to name to the committee that this is the one that you'll probably see me and us like struggling the most to demonstrate what we're doing and to probably hit that the level that we want to and is critically important for us as we continue to improve um four principles I think I've talked at length over the last couple of years I will just add that we need to continue to invest in our principles and just one note of encouragement we are really encouraged by the impact that we feel our APS are starting to have yes I see some of that probably in some of the academic data but also when you talk to principles dayto day how that School communities and the buying that they've gotten from staff has been really important so I just want to thank the committee for that involvement but I think investment but I think that this continues to be a priority and I and I'll show the data again that of a lot of the work that we've done this year last but not least this goal is going to be done this year I graduated the other day from Miss yes I did yeah I did it so uh so so now you're that was a stretch goal I was a stretch goal so now yeah I it's going into four years I am probably above the median tenure at this point so but no that's uh so I'll provide data that I completed the program so all right so I think Tom outlined the process here but I will make sure to have uh all of the data that is um that you need by by Friday I would also since this looks a little bit different because it's the formative I know that you don't have to rate on particular indicators encourage you as much as you'd like to not only focus on the goals but also things within the district uh strategic plan as well any questions anybody thoughts so your the expectation is paragraphs on each of the goals and then if you have just overall yeah fine yeah think about the formative we did last year or the year before that basically right I'm not going to give you like four pages double spaced or anything else like that just do it as you see count yeah no word count no limitation good if you want to write a book I might just take subsets of that book okay um I'll just say this I think um you are I'm trying to figure out the right words for this um the way you introduced this overall Tom in terms of the role that you have versus and how everybody does the work that you get the credit for um you set the tone so don't undercut that right uh don't undercut your own impact and influence on everybody's willingness to do the work because of the leadership that you provide so just you know yes you will be the one who gets this review and you'll be giving reviews to your staff and all that kind of fun stuff um but some of these things weren't even under discussion before weren't even possible for consideration before so yes they do a lot of the work and they're awesome at it yeah but uh the the the foundation of that is the leadership that you show on a day-by-day basis and the ability that you do you have to rise bring them up and help them come and meet the expectation and then rise above the expectation so don't don't undercut your own impact in all this as well it's a team [Music] right okay all right anybody else have any thoughts no any have any motions anybody wants to see a basketball game have a motion yes motion to go watch the Celtics second I'll make it formal motion to adjourn think Roberts rules has Celtics there no Celtics all in favor all opposed we're jured at e