if you could log out of the board box but just hit exit session on the bottom that would help a lot so good you still there Laura I think he just left I thought she said yeah
so you can look at how many enrolled freshman year and then where they'll be assuming they stay with us which they tend to do uh what those numbers will be how many actually stay for all uh so there's there's like six years six years ago up to six years okay so it's great it's nine through twelve and then for two to three years depending on their age age 22 is what they can stay with us until what was your question so I was just I mean I know some some students choose not to go through the entire program before their I don't have that exact number but honestly the number is really low they they all usually go to transition so we're looking at how many students we have right now in the when do they start transition planning as part of the IEP well I mean it starts it actually starts in eighth grade usually for most students it's like 14 and a half of age um so transition to ninth grade through then all the way through t99 so part of the individual is the education plan is transition planning Scott that starts at age 14 and a half at that point you're starting to build a plan for post High School graduation planning that transition between high school and life yeah so that window right there is our t99 program so at age 14 they're already building in expectations of what's going to happen at t99 post-graduation so it's it's somewhat easy for now that's you know Revisited every three years in whatever your totality but every year we touch base on that so um you know it's pretty easy to project out if we've been has there been a trend in terms of uptick of of of people moving into District that need the services you know I mean my my theory on this is District 99 and down herself years ago used to be the hub for all the DuPage County for uh special ed programming in like the multi-needs area I didn't know that yeah and so I I think I mean I get calls all the time being like yeah we we're moving into the area where our child's going to be in fifth grade or third grade we want to get to Downer south or downers North for for the programming um so I think we've just we're just kind of a hub for for it and we Pro you know we provide great support the board is always supported absolutely programming it is it's huge but I mean it's great Services that's the right thing to do and then right right and we always look at those numbers and bringing back students from outplacements and yeah you know it does ebb and flow like next year I know is the outplacement's going to be larger but you know it just is what it is it's you know yeah the service that we do so next year's board might might be looking at some additional yeah we'll probably yeah there's some more requests okay yeah okay any other questions thanks Scott all right um the next item I'm gonna have uh Jeff and Scott share a little bit about last Friday's uh Institute day that was while everybody engaged in news today across the district however we ran kind of our own conference for our support staff members uh on Friday uh Jeff and Scott put a lot of work into this with other administrators across the district and I'll let them share a little bit of what went into it thank you Hank and uh as uh he mentioned this was a you know kind of a great opportunity so you know how did we get here um last few years since I've been the District Scott and I have worked with kind of co-chaired a support staff professional learning committee and uh I know it's Maria Giorgio is here she's the current SSA president and is always a willing participant it helps us lead that committee as well so I would consider a co-chair as well um and so it's really a very nice collaborative group um as I said we have Scott and I are on there Ken Nomar also make appearance on the committee to help us out as well and there's a sort of a stable if you will or a bunch of support staff who come in a few of them come in pretty regularly some make it every once in a while but Maria is great about making sure that we have SSA Representatives so that when we are having these discussions about everything that it's a you know it's a collaborative meeting and we're discussing and hearing ideas from the people who were looking to uh impact um you know some of the things we've done we've did a fairly big survey a little over a year ago uh checking on the interests and needs of the support staff and we try to tailor that sort of line with District initiatives so we're kind of steering them say here's the things the district's working on what are some needs and goals you have that sort of fit into that very nicely so that we can kind of make sure our meeting needs of our staff while also meeting needs of the district next one yep please um so just real quick just to give you a peek at this uh this is I know it's hard to read but this is just the schedule that we put together um for everyone we started today at about seventh in the morning we were truncated a little bit we were supposed to go till three but you'll if you could see that you'll see it it says 1 30 that was with the impending weather so we were you know safety precaution there um but we were able to still have our full morning plans which we uh had three different keynote speakers that we brought in uh for our support staff focusing on a few different topics that are of importance to the district um they had there we also had some kind of little breakfast they had a chance to network meet folks from across the district that they normally wouldn't interact with there was also lunch provided again with that same purpose of giving a chance to have those professional conversations about what they just experienced with their normal colleagues as well as the folks that they see don't see on a regular basis I should say and we had some afternoon sessions again tailored toward some of the feedback that we had from staff that these are things that they would like to know more about so a little more in our keynote speakers this really in a lot of ways was kind of I guess a highlight for us we wanted to really present this day as Hank said you know um all of our teachers were doing various things on this instance today and they get to always participate in really nice professional professional development with high quality things going on so we said to ourselves well we really want to take this opportunity you know a calendar presented this opportunity on the third here where we had this time we could create a day for our support staff and give them a really top-notch professional professional development day so we brought in you know well-known uh well well recognized speakers in each of their areas Mr J Shannon who actually has done some work with our Deans in the district already on restorative practices so he shared some of that information with the support staff Dr Don Parker who specializes in equity training I'm a former CPS administrator I'm sorry yeah he was uh also and also CPS I believe so he's got some good experiences he was able to share a lot of practice on how to engage and interact with students and with equity in mind and then Dr Allison Jackson who spoke on trauma-informed practices which of course is ever important now as we still you know dealing with a lot of things coming out of the pandemic and people's emotional and mental States and and how can we best support our students and ourselves with regard to that so three really great presentations uh that were in the morning so we had every the group was divided up into three groups and they rotate through all three of these presentations throughout their morning and so next few slides are just some pictures so here's uh Jay's presentation um he was really excited about the keftorm space specifically because he wanted to have very interactive things going on so you see him there interacting with staff and the right on the left he's got the circle of chairs or he's bringing staff down to kind of model and simulate something having conversations with students and staff around restorative practices uh Dr Don Parker was in the studio theater and uh he you know while these two couple pictures didn't capture that but he did a lot of things where there's a lot turn talk with the with each with their partners and things and going through um you know what were things that you can encounter with students he touched a little bit I thought was really powerful on the percentages of students who are dealing with situations that are difficult for them and you know how the Outreach and make sure we're teaching or treating them equitably uh builds relationships and helps make students be more successful so that was good and then Dr Allison Jackson again lots of really great feedback on her presentation staff really learned a lot and there's some really great discussions where staff were even then kind of you know examining what had gone on in their lives over the past couple years and reflecting on that so we heard some really good feedback and conversation about her presentation as well so three really awesome top-notch speakers we got in for our support staff that morning give them again a really sound professional experience and so here's just some other just some photographs of the day our support staff uh I'm gonna take the opportunity here just kind of talk about I know Scott and I've talked about some of the feedback we've just gotten informally at this point lots of uh positive responses people were excited about the day felt like they learned a lot that there was a lot of value in it so that was great to hear um so yeah so the afternoon sessions uh we had a few different things going on so there was stopped the bleed which was related to First Aid that was a continuation for a lot of our paraprofessionals from some professional training that had happened early in the year where they had some things that just couldn't all be done in one day um we had summer ad assistants uh had interest any Finance which was one of the platforms we use so dree was gracious enough to facilitate a session on that for us East school again another platform we use frequently here in the district a lot of our admin assistants use that and Colleen Daley Jim struck and Vicki miles stepped in uh stepped up I should say and in to uh for that training for our staff in those sessions so I got a chance to walk around and see that going on and they were fairly small groups so it was nice to see it be pretty interactive actually talked with Colleen a little bit today and she was really excited about some of the things she was able to do and what we were talking about what are some things maybe going forward to to reinforce what was done or give people more opportunities to connect with questions and things they want to learn about for those folks or some folks or maybe those two weren't really germane to what they do so we also offered some self-guided Google Suite training which is pretty comprehensive anything anything you want to know about Google you can click on it it kind of walks you through a practice module so you can get more familiar with that that's one of those things that always comes back to us it's like we want to learn more how to do this with Google how to do that with Google and since it's the basis for so much of what we do it makes sense that we try to help them out with that our security team engaged in some emergency response training with their group and our Tech Team also did some in-house training around various Tech issues regarding technology in the afternoon as well so as I said a little truncated so not everybody got to do everything that we had planned but everyone was busy and got something worthwhile out of that afternoon so in terms of what's next we're about to send out feedback survey about these sessions we also a couple questions about some of the things that happened early in the year a couple times that we did some PD for them just trying to get a overall temperature for how they thought things went and what they want to see happen in the future and any other feedback they have so as we're looking to the Future how can we uh you know further enhance what's going on in terms of the learning for our support staff again the focus is trying to continue this momentum and hopefully continue providing them with high quality professional development at every opportunity that we have I think one of the things that kind of come came from our committee discussions um I think Maria and Scott use that a lot of times support staff you know they feel like they are you know kind of second tier sometimes the teachers and what's provided for them and we really want to make sure that our support staff feels like that they are you know unequal footing that we appreciate them and we have a vested interest in their development in making them uh the best they can be because not only does that benefit them but obviously a lot of them especially the parapros are the people who have most direct contact their students sometimes we want to make sure that they are as equipped well equipped as possible to do the work they need to do and also you know this is a great option we see is you know providing that high quality professional development in a day like today kind of showcase that and leverage that as a retention tool for the staff we currently have and also as a recruiting tool as we still do have openings in our support staff ranks that we're trying to fill is trying to create an environment that is attractive so people say hey here's what my here's what my district does District 99 you got you should come check us out I know your District doesn't do anything like that um and so we kind of want to do it because we I just spent the problem this last week at like five different job fairs for certified staff and the things that people come up and they already know about our district and how excited they are about things they've heard that we're doing centered around our certified staff and what happened what you can do for teachers um you know Robin I've talked about so we're going to try and generate that same kind of buzz and excitement for support staff to help us again retain and then Recruit new people to fill all those positions so um yeah that was a little encapsulation of the day overall I think very successful so we're all pretty happy this is great about what percentage of support staff came was it 100 yeah it was a paid day we just about everybody who did yeah we had a good number I mean we did have some I mean you know like any type of thing when there's a Friday or whatever you know there were some people who calls like we had very good attendance yeah great yeah couple of Staff helping out snowball as well but overall you know it was like a normal work day yeah I love the idea of you know using this as a as a tool for retention and recruiting I mean yeah you're always what what the best way to to attract you know great people is to take care of the great people we have and other people will recognize that well done great yeah the only thing I'll I'll add to this is uh in recent past Institute days used to be just teachers and then we started inviting support staff particularly our 36 weekers that their their work calendar is usually they come to work when students are in session but our August Institute days we started inviting them to the Institute days so they could hear the same messages on some of those Institute days um and then when we had late start Mondays before our hybrid block we were inviting them to learn with the teachers on some of those late start Mondays uh and then this is the first year where they were there for uh our August into two days they were there in January for our Institute days with our teachers so we we reached a point where we're like okay now all adults are learning together at the same time uh and then Jeff and Scott said what if we took it one step further what if we created an Institute date just for them so they didn't feel like yeah this is a day that they're tagged on that's really for the teachers it's a day specifically for them so the two of them worked their tails off and got a bunch of feedback and and put this together and um High reviews so high that Julie saw the agendas and Julie said can I go and learn with everybody so Julie participated in the sessions also great thank you so much conference yeah thanks thank all your folks for coming of your professional development I mean that would be a real a real point for me in finding a job in a school I have to say yeah because I used to always kind of complain about the quality of the professional development when I was working because I always felt it was geared more to the teachers and not to particular area that I served you know yeah that's why they planned this day I really like to be powerful and then they can tell their friends right like yeah yeah some work in District 99 yes yeah great so that's really good thank you thank you thank you thank you all and thank you folks for coming no visitors we'll move on to uh closed session uh we need a motion to go into closed session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational educational setting or specific volunteers of the district or legal council for the district including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational educational setting or a volunteer of the district or against legal counsel for the District of determined Civility and Collective negotiating matters between the district and its employees as or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees and litigation when an action against acting on or behalf of the district has been filed in this pending before court or administrative tribunal or when the district finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting and I shall therefore say so moved second Mike Michael moves I think sure I'll beat you okay that's fine I don't care thank you as long as we might go report aye Fuller aye Denny hagstrom aye Terry pavasich aye Joanna Vazquez Drexler aye Christian Espinoza aye and Nancy cupka hi we'll be going into closed section session we will only be um adjourning then when we return to open session no reaction tape actually action's taken later tonight thank you so much quick break and then we'll come back together wonderful
hard to believe it's been 15 years that we've been in that building now so time seems to be flying obviously we have two gyms that are outstanding for our athletic programs in our uh our PE programs state of our gray box if you've never been to our building to see our gray box I'm not sure there's another Middle School anywhere who has a theater like that it is a tremendous place for not only for our theater group but for our teams to meet and have Team meetings for us to meet with our students and for presenters to come in so it's a it's a great place for that we have obviously have a large Commons area with lots of glass and natural light which was the design of the building which makes it really enjoyable for our students and staff to work there probably the thing I enjoy the most about the building is one of the pieces that they took some of the old pieces from the Central Middle School or the old Columbus High School and Incorporated it into the new architecture so we have the light post out front that are from that older building we also have the hope of our country to our children and Central School are all incorporated into the design so it's really nice to see that historical stuff still be a part of our school if you're not aware obviously we have about 845 students that we service we have about 100 staff when you add in custodians and cafeteria and classified staff that serve those we do teaming at the middle school level and we have seven different teams we do have two Pathways that we kind of talk about a lot it's our high ability or Team adventure and that is for students who are working on above grade level curriculum and so you've probably seen them here a few times they do a tremendous job with academic contests Mindy Summers it does a great job with that as a lot of her team and they do a lot of competitions also in um writing stories for newspapers and for articles and magazines so they do a great job there and in our project-based learning is the CSA and again that's been 15 years and they do a lot for our community over the last two years our CSA 8th graders have put on a carnival for a cause and have raised over three thousand dollars each year for the United Way so they are very invested in the community and we do a lot of things along that way so kind of so to get to the wall we were going to talk about tonight is uh we do the uh staff engagement survey every year we do it twice a year we do it in the fall and in the spring and when we did that we came across some areas that we needed to work on and that was kind of one area that was like meaning and role Clarity and utilization so we got to our staff we started talking to them about what does that mean what does that mean to you what what where are we where are we coming up short here and the one thing that kept coming up was purpose it's like what is our purpose and it's not that my staff doesn't know their purpose but over the last few years things have changed a lot in schools it's not just about teaching your content area it's about working with kids on their social and emotional and their families and and all the behaviors and different things like that so the job has really gotten spread out so it was about refocusing about okay what is our purpose we know what we our content but we got so many other things so we started talking about that and we started talking about how do we align that with the CSC Mission about developing expert Learners partnering with our community investing in people so we kind of looked at that along with our Central expectations for PBIS which is Central Chargers will be academically personally and socially responsible so our students know that tremendously well so what we did as a as a staff is we got together and started talking with our cic teams and really try to figure out how this all fit together to kind of help guide us with our future work and what we really realized was that when we talk about kids being academically responsible every day we're really wanting them to be expert Learners and so we really started blending in what those qualities are of an expert learner and really it's it's about teaching those kids how to use their mind well you know how do we help them use their mind well so that kind of is the academic responsibility piece so we talked about being personally responsible and we really started trying to find language that we could use consistent ability that aligned with the bcsd mission it was about investing in themselves that everything that they do in our building is about investing in themselves the work that they turn in the behaviors that they improve on those things are all investments in them and so it really tried to help them change their framework and their mindset about okay this is something I'm doing for myself and then we talk about being social responsible and invested in their Community what can they do to make their community and their community may be their four friends that they hang out with at lunch it may be their team it may be a classroom and so and it may be the bigger community at large so we really used that developmental asset or the engagement survey to help guide that and then this kind of helped guide some of the work that we've done over the last couple of months so again this is what we've been doing for the last few months but I'm going to highlight that in like two minutes for you so what we started with was we started with our staff so we went to one of our staff meetings and and we we talked about this idea of what is our purpose what are we what are we trying to do as a staff what are we trying to do as Educators and helping our students and and we gave our staff members these different puzzle pieces so you guys can see those and and we broke into groups and we and we dissected and kind of dove into what does it mean to develop expert Learners what does it mean to partner with our community what does it mean to invest in people when we started with our staff and identifying what those things look like and we had such Rich conversations with our staff and and saw so much passion of just getting excited again and seeing this is what we're doing here this is why we're here working with our kids and then we were able to carry that into the students so we kind of kept with this puzzle piece theme as we're kind of putting all these pieces together so to support students and to invest in our community so then we went to our students and at Central we have a class period called caps time it's a 15-minute class period that we have every single day where our students are with a team teacher and every day has a different Focus we use that to show our student ran TV show on Mondays we use that for academic responsibility and checking our grades and and the work that we need to do there we have tough conversations in the classrooms and we use that caps time and so we built that around caps time of bringing these different ideas and about each week focused on a different topic and we spent a lot of time doing Reflections we did a lot of time having the students really think for themselves what does it mean to be an expert learner and for our students who are 7th and 8th graders we ask the question what does it look like to be a successful high school student and those students had those questions they used you know this figure to start writing out all the different characteristics they used one with somebody walking with a backpack to really start answering and having discussions within their classes and within their teachers what does that mean to be a successful high school student so then what do they need to start doing now as a seventh and eighth grader and then we built that throughout each week so we spent time talking about investing in yourself hearing from teachers and getting that input we spent time talking about what does it mean to invest in your community and you know we're a central school downtown what does it mean to really go out and impact others and so we just really use that caps time to focus on that and you could see some of the different work we did so that's you know five qualities of a successful high school student a lot of time reflecting on you know what does it mean to achieve your dreams and reach for those and just a lot of times just really letting students kind of voice their own thoughts and share those things out but then we knew that we needed to walk the walk as a school and we needed to model this for our students so we were trying to find ways to incorporate these different ideas of developing expert Learners of investing in yourself investing in the community as a building and so we started doing some different things so on February 2nd we had our first ever CMS parent night where we invited parents of our current students to come in and we offered support we provided Pizza we raffled a 55-inch TV we had San Souci donated shoes where we were able to provide shoes for parents we had grandparents asking if they could take pairs of shoes as well and we were able to support that but then we also had a number of different topics that parents and Guardians could go explore that so we had a presentation on 21st century Scholars we had a presentation on the dangers of teen vaping from crh we had a presentation about different parent Communications and parent square and it's learning and how we incorporate those things and we had about 70 families show up to our first one but the other big thing we did was on February 8th we had a thing what we call passion day and that was kind of the culmination of all these different ideas and so I just want to show a quick video of what that passion day looked like my students got to explore different things that they were passionate about and our teachers got to share out what they were passionate about as well thank you [Applause] [Music] hi my name is Mrs seastrom and I teach Health at Central Middle School recently Central Middle School teachers were asked to come up with a project that they were passionate about I wanted to make Valentine's Day cards for residents of our local nursing homes I thought maybe our residents here and our local nursing homes didn't have people to come and visit them and would appreciate a kind gesture from our students at school I was really excited with a group of students that I had and they made great Valentine's Day cards they were very thoughtful they were very colorful I think our fashion day was a great success this year [Music] I'm Harsha then for passion day I did the Arts and Crafts activity with Mr singer it was really fun because I got to learn how to make new origami objects [Music] thank you I'm Diana and for passion day I did relaxation and pet art therapy and what I really enjoyed about it was like working with the dogs and stuff [Music] foreign so our next steps is obviously the passion day we did a survey afterwards it was a huge success uh teachers and students really wanted to do it more the nice thing about it is our teachers they had kids from all across this building so they were teachers who had maybe 18 kids that they'd never had in their class before so when you're developing that relationship across the building that was a huge piece of that and those kids still go talk to them about that passion day like catching up with them like we had one with crochet so those kids go in and talk to that person about what they're making next so it was a huge piece for us so we're planning on doing that each quarter we're gonna do one more this year after I learn testing and then we're going to do one each quarter the parent night we're going to do one at the beginning of the year to help our parents understand canvas that new tool that we're going to be using PowerSchool and helping them determine you know look at grades and really try to do some things like that to help our parents at the beginning of the year and then we'll do another one probably second semester kind of like what we did this so again our caps time will continue to work on that expert learner invest in yourself investing community so thank you so much any questions questions um I have a couple on caps first of all since it's all caps I'm assuming it stands for something yes uh if you take the first word central or the central Chargers and then academic personally and socially responsible so it kind of helps our kids remember those things yeah um and the samples we saw and the lessons you talked about are they like for one week is is it school-wide or grade level wide so this was school-wide because it's something that we have not done so we basically we spent three weeks on Expert learner okay that was right when we came back from Christmas break and really wanted to get into that deep and so then we spent another week on investing in themselves investing views so it was really a little over a month at the end we did a dream big week and that was the week in which we did the passion day and they did their big dreams so we kind of ended with that piece and now we've kind of been doing other mini lessons for different things since then but I guess my question is so that it sounds like the teachers are given the material and the ideas yes they're not creating them on their own correct yeah we wanted to make it a school-wide and everybody was hearing the same message and covering the same thing so yeah so yeah awesome yeah I want to give a shout out to the parent night idea the the first time I heard about this the the closest thing I could come to in my head was the open house that happens before a student enters the school but this is so much more than that and it's really uh aimed at it sounds to me like aimed at creating a community the parents the students and the folks at the school I really appreciate it commend it and hope you keep it up and grow it thank you thank you yeah it was you know we spent so many years that they couldn't come in the building and I was like all right you're allowed to come back in now let's get this started and giving away a 55-inch color TV we'll get them in the door giving away food we'll get them in the door so what was the video that we saw made by the student group that does the weekly videos no that was actually Mr manual he's my video guy yes I first of all I appreciate the um the variety in the in the examples you gave it went all the way from factory work to hairdresser to spinal surgeon in terms of the dream so just YouTuber two there was a YouTuber a YouTube yeah I forgot that yeah stand in line my son's on that path too Pat passion day a little bit so how many different passions were represented and then did the students get to pick which one they participated in yeah so we asked our staff we kind of did it that way we asked our staff some things that they were passionate about that they would like to share and we ended up having right around 40 different staff members running passion rooms and then it kind of just took off from there some brought in board games the owner of that came over and did a game with our kids a new game with them which they absolutely loved we had the wildlife Utopia out at Hope came in and brought in wild animals so we it was a learning experience because we let them pick their top four but they had never really seen them so they didn't know necessarily what each one was so we've learned the lesson is now we're going to do a slideshow and tell them what each thing really is and so that way they have a better better understanding of what they're choosing and they got one of their top four picks was there anything surprising in what was chosen or was maybe most popular yeah crocheting I was like I said okay what's your second option because I'm not really sure and she had an entire classroom oh entire classroom of kids learning some were doing their own thing and some were just learning so that was a pretty interesting one yeah we kind of learned is that we had a person who Friends the TV show Friends and she did like Cafe perk and all this stuff the kids that showed up thought they were just gonna get to hang out with their friends so she had trivia she had trivia and all this stuff and they had no idea what the show was so lesson learned about the doing the slideshow so they know what they're getting into but if she they made it work and again they all had a really really positive experience I hope there's no coffee involved that would have no very good thank you any other questions I don't excuse me excuse me I don't have a question but I will say several of the students came over to the library and was talking about it so yeah it's still been a conversation piece and they were asking when are we going to do it again and they've we asked them for their ideas this time so that like they like Pokemon and different things like that so now we're going to try to get teachers to do some of the ones that they prefer and and try to blend those in with what we're already doing so so we're excited to try to do that again here's your puzzles oh hey and next on the agenda we have elementary math curriculum adoption welcome as they're getting ready to go just a reminder to our school board we have this presentation tonight as kind of a first reading similar to how we might do policies there's a lot of information to try to gather here and you might have several questions Etc but we will not ask for formal approval until the next meeting April 3rd if you're ready to do that so just a presentation and information sharing this evening good evening distinguished board members Dr Roberts Dr Blake Mr Phillips other important participants thank you for the opportunity to stand before you this evening we're glad to be here I am Gail course I've been with BC SC almost 35 years and with Decatur County Schools prior to that so I've been a participant in a lot of math adoptions and I might just share the last math adoption that happened we were in a meeting in this very room with Mr Dale mcnallyn as the facilitator and I ask a particular question about the longevity of a math adoption decision and he answered in in his expert way and then added and Gail you know the next time there's an adoption neither of us will be here and yet Mr now and here we both are in different roles uh but still striving to do what's best for kids so thank you again for allowing us to be here I'd like to introduce to you my partner in this process another long time bcsc teacher Amy Ellsbury I'm Amy Ellsbury I have been in bcsc for about 32 years the last 29 I've been at Rock Creek and so I've taught many different grade levels I've taught fifth grade for the last 10 years so we're here tonight to talk about our hopes for the next elementary math program so first of all just a reminder the bcsc the vision is that bcsc is the choice to learn work and play and our mission is that we develop expert Learners by partnering with our community to invest in people so our goal is to present the bcsc elementary math adoption committee's recommendation for great minds em squared as the next adopted math curriculum beginning with the 2023-2024 school year and so I want to talk a little bit about how this process started back in the spring before the last school year was over Gail approached me about co-chairing this with her and so the first thing we did was to develop a leadership team so we started researching um to have a team reaching out to people it's the leadership team consists of various levels of classroom Educators we have parent Representatives we have special education ESL education technology administrator so we thought we had a very well-rounded team and then we reached out after that point to an additional review team who would actually review the materials so these are various classroom teachers that go from kindergarten through sixth grade as well as veteran teachers like myself all the way down to first and second year teachers we wanted a wide variety of input there individually people have volunteered as much as 26 hours collectively for the whole group about 428 hours have been volunteered toward this process oh if we have any members here from our committee tonight which I think we just have Mr backmire yeah if you will both stand please and be recognized as helping us out with this we appreciate you all right so here's our compelling challenge which research-based math curriculum will provide a conceptual foundation with instructional practices that promote student learning within the udl framework and so um to expand on that a little bit we want to adopt a math curriculum that will fit in with our udl framework and will provide the instructional framework for students to develop the conceptual Foundation we want to use materials and instructional practices that are going to help develop though not just the how of math education but the why an example would be in my classroom anytime we're working on on math we always end with what's our compelling question does my answer make sense we can compute you know we we know how to follow an algorithm but can you choose the correct one can you justify your answer so we want a program that's going to help develop that this is our timeline Cross of the process you can see that we started last year we last school year we had a math team together that pretty much was volunteer that we worked with the number sense we were developing in fact I was here a year ago at this March meeting with Mrs uh Detmer talking about math talks which is something that we've implemented at Rock Creek to try to help develop numbers since in our students the Summer Conference we brought in a speaker the keynote speaker was a person who is promoting that through their work and then we developed our teams you can see that we brought in we've had book discussions we brought our top three publisher representatives in our review team spent time here going through the materials they filled out rubrics and then the leadership team compiled those and collaborated to come up with our recommendation and then our goal would be in the spring of this year to start the rollout so that teachers are having not just you know the summer to get prepared but they'll know what curriculum we've adopted and they can start making those plans so you can see from that timeline that we did have opportunity for that leadership and that review team to come together thinking through the udl framework and having some opportunity for PD themselves so a few of the topics that we worked on were the eight principles of teaching mathematics by the National Council of teachers of mathematics meeting the conceptual needs of all Learners so back to that conceptual piece that Amy was speaking to building mathematical Community three aspects of rigor and math discourse which is that students talking about the mathematics so some important pieces there that we spent some time on we also then worked through those udl principles and formed a rubric around those principles that would be used in that review of the resources so every member used the rubric for each publisher and here you can see the results with the criteria on the left and the responses with blue being the highest rating yellow middle and red the lowest ranking on those criteria points so I'll give you just a second take a look at that scores just for a quick a question as we look at that remind us how many about how many people would have scored that to then tabulate was it on that it was about 40 people total that won't slide at about 40.
this is Elsie or after come in and you can see maybe up to two groups working on different projects it's literally the highlight of the week I think for the students and the teachers yeah all right that's great thank you thank you thank you thank you foreign okay thank you Mr noon so um at the last school committee meeting uh we had some discussion around the 18 to 22 transition program when we were talking about the budget we have Mrs Townsend Mrs jodwin Mr Shea Mr bro Miss Coke or Pierpont here who've prepared a a thorough presentation for you and you'll have an opportunity to ask questions and find out more about the program that we proposed thank you so much I'd like to thank the members of the school committee for having us here tonight um I wanted to share a little bit using the slideshow and before I do that introduce my esteemed colleagues who have really been the most amazing group of people to work through this process because it is a very detailed process that we've worked um you know collaboratively over the past couple of years so this is Coker Pierpont Mr Shea Mr bro miss jodwin here with me um so I'd like to share with you a little bit of the history and kind of where we are and where we've been and then I'm going to have my colleagues answer any of your questions so just to begin a little bit about why now um as you know you know we we always when we're creating new programs or thinking about new programs you always have to ask you know your why um so the reason you know why now and what has really brought us to bringing it through the budget proposal this school year students really drive the transition planning process we feel very strongly that students of all ages but especially in transition age should have a voice and a say in their services as it relates to special education and our students have independently expressed a desire to stay closer to our school community and in-district transition program would allow students to receive the quality education for all in the least restrictive environment that Fosters both Community Connections in and around Dartmouth the location that we're looking at within the Dartmouth High School that's being designated for this program has ample space to provide both independence from the students who are enrolled in DHS as 9th through 12th graders and also opportunities to connect with familiar staff members as an example through related service providers who would be familiar faces students will have a stronger connection to dartmouth's extracurricular programs Special Olympics being just one example which could Foster a deeper connection to extracurricular programs after students turn 22 after they've aged out of special education so there are many programs many components to a robust transition program this is you know pretty full but certainly not exhaustive list a good transition program should have functional academics as part of the day pre-vocational and Vocational skills and opportunities to Foster those opportunities to Foster independent life skills career exploration supported employment experiences as well as Community connections and volunteer opportunities so each one of the the Stars on this slide are topics which are very large broad topics which have been discussed at length over the past few years as we've developed the program that made it forward to the budget this school year so this is our linkage to our 2022-23 district priorities as you know we have three priorities district-wide fostering a sense of belonging providing appropriate instruction and monitoring understanding so under the first bullet we have that students would have a opportunity to build upon the sense of belonging which is really strong in the grades 9-12 program Mrs Coco Pierpont does a wonderful job building that sense of belonging through the school community and this program would allow them to use what they had in terms of that sense of belonging and expand upon it with a new space with a new teacher so still addressing some new faces but also building upon what they already have providing appropriate instruction is going to be focused on both the academic piece which is academic functional reading and functional math lessons as well as direct instruction in those life skills in the pre-vocational skills so um getting ready you know all aspects uh from you know waking up in the morning and going through the day whether it be opportunities for meal planning meal preparation um you know getting ready we really very much want a space that includes almost you know mock rooms you know throughout to practice you know any sort of skills that might happen in a kitchen or a bedroom or a living room and there's different life skills with all of those activities and we've thought through that and you know we have a plan for that finally to monitor understanding the transition planning form is our key tool once students turn 14 they're required to have a transition planning form which is developed as a guide to kind of Monitor and at the end of each IEP cycle we take a look at their transition planning form and based on what they have gathered and what they've gained and they make a new transition planning form and that's how we kind of monitor progress as well as the IEP document itself feedback okay it's okay all right um so this is my nuts and bolts Slide the wh questions if you will um so who will the program serve it would serve students who are ages 18 to 22 who received a certificate of attendance upon the completion of their 12th grade year what will the program do it's going to be a transition program that aligns with our mission and focuses on all of those subtopics of functional academics pre-vocational independent life skills Etc where will the program be housed it will be housed at Dartmouth High School in the a planning Suite as well as various Community sites because some aspects of the program do require students to be out in the community and doing practicing skills there the who of the staff would be a certified special education teacher preferably with a transition specialist endorsement and two teacher assistants I have two separate planning slides one is to separate out prior to September of this year and one that more thoroughly talks about what we've done since September so going right back to November of 2020 that's when building base staff began looking at other indistrict programs looking at some ideas and whether or not there might be a need here in Dartmouth on a district level we held conversations from June of 2021 through August of 2021 in addition to holding preliminary meetings beginning in October 2021 through March of 2022.
yes thank you quick on this too are the so the one that's all blue is the one being proposed but the other two where where is our current system ranked is it on the right actually the current we use GO Math which is an hmh published but this one they looked at was really a new program from that same publisher okay thank you and then you can see the bottom uh criteria there the projected pricing of materials which leads us into the next piece where we introduced the spend Bridge representative Charles Wright to the Publishers and he then did the negotiating representing us so the timeline with spin Bridge there worked closely with him throughout that and then received those final quotes and their hairs where you see as Landing with that work with that great mind Eureka math squared right there in the middle Eureka math squared helps students establish a foundational understanding of mathematics the why rather than only relying on the procedural skills the how to better prepare them for College and Career teachers will see students strengthening reasoning and critical thinking skills that students can apply to solve real world problems and that can be applied to many real world situations I think in the fast-paced society that we live in and students are Technologies at their fingertips but we need to help them dig deeper into the why this is the correct answer why I choose this procedure this program has the has three parts that we're going to talk about the great minds digital platform and that's a great resource for teachers it has lesson facilitation along with the teaching manual which is very detailed um let's see the structure of urethra Mass squared follows the model of fluency launch learn and land using the Learned book and so the math talks that I spoke about a minute ago that's the fluency piece that's built into every lesson where now I'm supplementing that and then there's a launch to get the students excited about the lesson that's about 15 minutes between the two of those things and then you move into the actual lesson that they use the learn book with and then the land at the end that is an exit ticket or some type of formative type of assessment that you can use to just kind of gauge how the students are understanding the skill and then there's also the apply book which could be used as homework and that's just the additional practice and the great thing about the apply book as well it has parent notes and so there's a lot of resources in there for a parent who is supporting the child at home with the things that they need so you can see on this slide some data the the top table is from the Indiana graduates prepared to succeed site the GPS the new data site and you can see for the last two years on iLearn here all in all in district grades um three through eight we're at 40.4 percent Proficiency in math so in the last two years not much change you can see but even more decrease in proficiency than from 2019 the bottom table is from our nwea which the students complete three times a year and the the numbers there are quite similar to what we see on the iLearn so in Winter we're seeing still in the different grade levels these percents of students below Proficiency in the math with these and showing proficiency so very similar to our 40.4 percent so we do see a vital need for a focus on math instruction do you have a question yeah I do have a question and I was looking at on here trying to unpack it but I'm seeing all the arrows green does that mean it's trending better or it's it's a yes and it's also I want to point out we are still above the state Trend there but 40.4 is not okay in my book I would just add to that so yes it is yeah the GPS is a new system so for anyone uh wanting to maybe check that out the Department of Education would release the graduates prepare to succeed and there's still a lot of iterations being done and trying to understand what so that that green arrow wouldn't mean an increase but have from a perspective standpoint what does that really mean so um yeah each of those have gone up but still opportunities exist so they're working on actually changing that there's there's conversations that Doe to to change that Arrow piece to reflect something a little bit differently and then kind of a rookie question what's winter is that we take it second nine weeks uh yes December it was right before uh winter break um and the fall is taken the window is from August to early September and then we'll do again in Spring okay some research around this program Ed reports is a a site that does research on on curriculums and so they are showing that em squared I call it em squared Eureka math squared meets expectations in in those categories curate is another such site and then uh Indiana learning textbook review which was done many districts adopted last year it was the actual year for math adoption we have in the past delayed along the way so we with some other districts around the state are looking this year so this was the rating from the Indiana learning textbook review for Eureka math squared so to go to to that a few places in Indiana that are currently using Eureka math squared and then a couple that are in a pilot this year we did speak with teachers and curriculum directors from Washington Township and Wayne Township so got some interesting feedback there and how they were very very pleased with the increase in student math discourse that was something they could see right away so some high points there yeah real real quick oh since you've got that slide up I had some questions here if you don't mind me oh absolutely now it's fine um one of the concerns I had with this was bcsc according to Niche which is a good website to try and look and compare different School corporations in iche bcsc's number 42 in the state with uh 49 math proficiency when I looked at these schools Goshen Burma Northern Wells Green Castle Marion all of them were worse in the state so Goshen was 97 Bremen 112 Northern Wells 116 Green Castle 124 and Marion 139 and they all had um except for one worse math proficiency and they're using this system what I would ask for when you guys come back with the final proposal could you maybe possibly look at some of the schools the school corporations that are better than us so I just picked up a few here just looking through Tippecanoe is number 31.
we took our group on the road and visited in District transition programs on in April of 2022 and that was also when we began how we were going to logistically work this into the budget in in a way that made sense since September of 2022 we have held monthly meetings at Dartmouth High School I won't read them to you but these are all the dates of our previous meeting starting in September we have completed the following bullets to date the name of the program so I Should Have Spent A Little More Time On My First slide which is titling the program so we are calling the program Atlas which stands for advancing towards life after school and while you know we love the name and we've fallen for the name it did take some time to develop that and find the perfect acronym so um so we're really pleased to to bring that forward um finalizing the space and how that space might be utilized was happened during those meetings we have developed a pro is still being fine-tuned but we've almost finished the job posting for the special ed teacher to be hired for this position we've looked at Transportation options for how to get community outings scheduled we've talked uh preliminarily about construction projects or any facilities projects that may be needed but we're actually going to be looping in Maintenance and Facilities in Mr Kylie in future meetings as well and we've looked at opportunities to either use donations or grants for Furnishing the space I know that I have volunteered my dining room set to to go to the dining room space so there's there's one one down but our next meeting is tomorrow so this is very timely we are meeting again in our monthly schedule tomorrow morning we meet in the a planning Suite in the space that will be or we hope will be the atlas program so that we can kind of really absorb as we're talking and meeting um just visualizing it's a little easier when we meet in the space a little bit about our goals for the future and this is you know by the end of year one we expect staff in the program to be very well versed in the individual needs of the first cohort of Atlas and they're going to make adjustments based on how that first year went for each student by the end of year one we would want those compute community-based experiences to have a card at least once a week in the first year through either District provided Transportation or demand response Transportation or both um we think that in some ways both would actually be a more robust way to give students opportunities for transportation and at the end of year one uh reviewing program needs and making changes by the end of the year too we would hope that students would continue to receive receive that individualized instruction and have an opportunity for up to three days a week of community experiences through volunteering project-based learning or supported employment and as always as is the end of every year review those program needs and make changes if necessary by the end of year three we hope that a really strong trajectory has been built that develops a profile of an atlas Student who is 18 to 19 versus a profile of an atlas Student who is 20 and 20 or through 22 with the hope that the students who are ages 22 to 22 have increased supported employment as they're getting closer to that age out as well as by the end of year three discussions about the viability at that point and just investigating tuitioning in students from neighboring districts um and then as always reviewing all program needs and making changes if necessary and that's at the end of every year so before I turn it over to my esteemed colleagues for the questions I I want to preface the question the question answer section and I'm going to step away and not come back there they will be taking over at this point um by prefacing to say that every question that you have that at least to my knowledge you've already had or have had either discussed you know whether we've you know chatted um you know through individual questions you've asked or through public meeting questions are questions that I myself had as a director I just want to be very transparent I had the questions and I can tell you um that it is the folks behind me who are going to be answering it for you who were the ones who answered it for me so I just you know you're in very good hands um any questions that you have regarding the program I'll just ask as each question is asking and one of them will step up and and answer those for you thank you again for your time we appreciate it well [Laughter] um thank you um first off I want to say something really important is that you do have exemplary staff here we're very lucky I've reached out well I think I reached out through somebody else Mr Capello to I'm not going to cry but share my appreciation for being bearing a witness to um you know the reality that the students that you serve are often um their needs are complex yet I don't want to give away it I would I was able to Bear witness to a situation that could have gone a certain way and I saw my son in your care you know it wasn't my son but I just I was putting myself in the shoes of that individual and the way in which you all sprung into action offering the respect and dignity um to this student was top-notch and uh and I reached out at that time to share that my appreciation for that Mr bro I think I've known you for many years when you were in college and on Saturday mornings very early yeah if I may say Bridge what a state university has an incredible child cpdc program a child physical development program that my son had been part of up until the pandemic um it's for students to receive some really great that's where he that's where my son learned how to dribble a basketball and a little bit ride a bike with he still needs help but um so Mr bro was dedicated uh just for way long before you know employment here okay so and then I do want to say that Ashley I hear from parents all the time and um you know when you're an excellent teacher and the students and the families trust you um you know with you know sometimes students can't even tell you when their nose is itchy and parents are protective and it's really hard to trust um and I know that parents trust you so I just want to preface that thank you for saying all that I've been there I have many many wonderful staff who I never wanted to leave and are still part of our life so um but with that comes I my my reasoning you know for questioning is just um you know my inbox the next day was like what but I probably was the least the person that you would least think to ask questions and it wasn't because I didn't think that that you guys are awesome and I that there is a need I was worried with the budget and I was thinking oh my gosh I don't want to start something I've seen as I said last meeting not go well and um I wouldn't want that for Dartmouth not because of intending it to not go well um and so I just had a couple uh points so I do have a question and I have a couple more things to say but has there been any discussion about partnering with like UMass Dartmouth for some space um you can just even do a yes or no or or would it would there be a potential of some sort of part I'm just thinking like Massachusetts is the first in the nation to pass the law to entitle students with intellectual disabilities you know to college right um in leveraging that in some way not necessarily UMass but BCC or another University and and we we've talked about that you know not obviously not in year one um but you know Bridgewater has a wonderful program the ice program BCC has the Macy program which is you know another program that's very similar um and you know we want students to have those opportunities to be able to explore colleges and in a college environment and um you know those Partnerships are definitely a piece of all of this this program isn't something that can just be done here you know in some ways it's so much more of a community program than um in a community-based program in terms of really leveraging some of the Partnerships with Community businesses Community volunteer centers um as well as the higher ed as well and so with that so that was my other worry was just oh gosh how can one teacher and one ta how can they build these Partnerships I mean is that is it going to be slow going has there been some work like I I can't imagine that that's an easy task but an important one and obviously one that you have in your trajectory so yeah and we're lucky that we we already have like a lot of um sort of relationships with businesses whether it's been through Special Olympics or a Unified sports programs we we have a lot of connections out in the community already and so that's sort of what our main focus is is keeping our students in our community um you know when they've gone to outplacements they're not really in Dartmouth anymore and they've built such a sense of community here in Dartmouth that we want to continue that we want them to have paid employment within our own Community um that's sort of like the goal yeah and when we look at it from Special Olympics right I mean the both of us are involved with Mr Capello you know obviously and um we just look at the the large scope and sequence and when Mr Capello first started here back in the early 90s he has that group of students that's still every spring come back to unified practices and then they are here for the school day games and they travel with us to Boston and you know my aunt's one of them she just turned 50.
50 percent math proficiency New Albany and Floyd 29 50 percent Mass proficiency both of those are over 10 000 students so that's probably a comparable School Corporation Batesville uh Batesville is number 22 at 57 percent Math Center Grove 14 66 percent math Monroe County 12 is ranked 12 in the state as overall Corporation they are 10 000 students and 57 percent math and West Lafayette school corporations rank the number one Public School Corporation in the state there are 72 percent math you would please could you um when you have the next kind of final proposal could you maybe look at those School corporations and and kind of compare and see what systems they use um to me I'm looking at the cost the cost is it's a lot of money to an average person but when we consider the life of this is seven years right and so when we're looking at seven year decision six year actually I believe it would be a six year so it's a it's a six-year decision which will impact a lot of kids right absolutely and um we're at 49 math proficiency so maybe Target over the next six years how can we move that to 55 to 60 percent and so that my biggest concern with this as I saw it was our Benchmark was was not as good as us and so I want to see what we could do to get even better than us so I I appreciate that and appreciate your work in finding those numbers one thing I might mention is that this these people have only adopted this last year so they are just using it this year so we might not see any results yet another thing that we ran into many districts are K-5 and then a six eight and when you start to look for math materials there are some highly rated that are K5 only so then we have to start to think what what is that for our sixth grade students in our elementary schools does that mean two total different adoptions but then it might be different than the seven eight so that that raised a a challenge for us in finding those so I would be interested to look into those those districts and see how many of them also are K-5 or six eight or are we looking at case six so you know are we really looking at Apples to Apples or not but thank you for that 100 percent agree um we we get this information on Wednesday Thursday and oh we have to understand absolutely so sometimes it's hard for us to do all the research to be that you guys have done over many months so so I appreciate what you guys have done I'm hopeful that you guys can take a look at that with us and help make sure just double double triple check that this is going to be the best solution for our kids moving forward absolutely thank you yeah I think this is what you're saying but I think I we need to save and stronger they adopted last year this is the first year they're using them and they haven't taken a state test yet so there would not be data to support that yet so you're going by anecdotal data of their reaction to the program yes it might I don't know but it might be interesting to see if any of them use the nwea and have that data for this year because we can't wait until the state test well they they could possibly too Dale I don't know if it would be possible if you went you don't have to go back a couple of slides but where you showed the difference between fall and winter for this year if at all possible one of those schools could help share some of that just to build some confidence right that this is helping them because that's the other thing too I guess we don't maybe an asterisk at the bottom that said been using this one year no scores of it right that would help too with just understanding is this moving the Right Way Marion County Marion schools at 27 percent math proficiency this is really helpful for them they should be able to show at least that internal to the year Improvement and we can check on that many schools do use nwea I I don't know which ones but we can sure check on that you mentioned and am I bringing this up from a strategic lens of six-year planning Cycles here and I'm assuming there's a parallel six seven eighth grade curriculum as well how what percentage has bundled their package into K5 and are we in a better position long term I understood I guess if you make this decision right you're gonna have another decision and probably I'm assuming it's some offset of three or so years and like it feels like we may be just making the decision out of a situation that we've grouped ourselves K to six but if most of the Publishers are moving K to five are we I you mentioned this I don't know what percentage it was yeah and I'm not sure I'm understanding your questions so just let me respond uh sometimes there are programs that only provide materials for grades K through five so they they would adopt but they still adopt on a six-year cycle um we would be adopting k-68 I mean seven and eight are adopting as well as well as the high school so I'm not sure I don't understand your offset of adoption there you mentioned that you know there's a there's a lot of Publishers out there and a lot of them offer really just k25 yes and the other ones are they group their next curriculum six through eight what I'm wondering is if is that a majority of the Publishers I wouldn't say a majority but I would say we were hearing great things about a one particular program that we might have really been interested to look at and it was a K5 only so that was kind of restrictive that that kind of restricted us um we we have in the past at one point in vcsc the sixth grade did adopt differently than K-5 and and that didn't prove to be greatly successful was that part of the discussion for the committee about how to do sixth grade and they decided early on to do okay six great questions great discussion I appreciate it so upon any recommendation being approved we would move forward we have an April 6th PD day coming up that might offer an opportunity just for some general overview um possible Summer Conference breakout session we are looking at what we like to call them power-ups when we get grade level teachers together and we might be able to go into the buildings and offer some opportunity for actual PD there is PD involved as well with from the publishers um professional days in the future great opportunities for that grade level drop-in sessions so after school perhaps third grades meeting at Richards this this month and fourth grades meeting at Parkside this month just for some collaboration and PD around that there is um a systematic intentional plan to develop an implementation and support plan so what does that mean within the building is there a go-to person is there what exactly does that mean so that's part of our plan as well so with all these things being said we are excited to recommend this as the adoption great minds em squared Eureka math squared hoping that this can be adopted and begin the 2023-24 school year other questions of course I might ask if if there's an interest to look at the materials between now and April the 3rd when this is going to come back and we we did even think about providing some samples but um it's a it's a lot there's a teacher book there are student books there so yes we do have samples if you are interested simply letting me know and I can make those available to you you can just email me gilp course G bcsc I was I was going to ask a similar question but for the cliff notes version so so there's yes we do have a publisher packet that might be the cliff no version again to just compare and contrast between what you have today and what people can expect to see in the future right so I I had a quick question it was a nice summary of how the the different solutions were ranked but did you see any significant difference in the different stakeholder groups and how they ranked it like did teachers see it differently than parents for example or or was everybody pretty aligned on the same solution rubric I would say on the days that we had people in reviewing it comments I could hear but not actually addressing what you're saying I might have heard a first or second or kindergarten or first grade teacher so excited about the apply book because it would be easy for parents to use so the teacher actually remarking from the perspective of parent and results of the rubric I I don't really think it's still it's stuck out okay thank you anything else so as a retired teacher there are a lot of things I miss about teaching but textbook adoption is not one of them oh because I know how much work goes into that and I appreciate how much work you've done and how thorough it is and I also commend you for including first and second year teachers because um it's a great way to get them involved early on and they do have a different perspective and many people would have overlooked them because they don't have the experience so I think that's great my question is so my Mantra is the research about cognitive demand during a lesson so to rephrase it in not non-math lingo we always ask who's doing the math is it kids doing the math or is it kids watching teachers do the math so can you talk about this program from that perspective a little bit in fact just the anecdotal remarks from Washington Township that was one of the people that we talked to there was a curriculum director and she specifically mentioned that the math has moved from the teacher's hands to the mat to the students hands so I think that addresses what you were speaking of and I you had me on the Y a sinner did you have a question yes thanks so at the very beginning of the process I realized that we narrowed it down to three vendors with names that sound kind of like craft beers to me and what I'm wondering is I'm used to names like Pearson and McGraw-Hill and Harcourt brace somebody else um were they in at the beginning or do they not offer these things anymore okay so it's really their products and they've just rebranded a lot of what you see is that people are merging and buying each other out so hmh is Houghton Mifflin Harcourt so there's a emerging um Pearson is now mostly by another name it's called Savas or Savas um when the when the whole process started how many different sets of curriculum were you looking for and at what point did you narrow it down to these three so we started I don't know there were probably 12 Jeff you had 12 2015 Genie I and we were looking mostly at that point online uh at the resources that way because it was not manageable to have that many we also looked a lot at um I was looking for this we also looked a lot at the um again the research the reports what we were what we were hearing so that leadership team then narrowed it down again that was when that discussion about K5 or k6 happened and so that um eliminated a couple and so that leadership team is the team then that narrowed it down to these three and then do we need to worry did your team worry about meeting State Standards oh absolutely and and that was part of the rubric uh the last thing um the apply book the parent materials it sounded like that was a physical book yes and I know that the times are changing but that seemed to me to be a really good idea to have a physical book that could go back and forth the parents and the students could work on together so I really like that idea I will 100 Echo that it's really hard to I had to double check but you have my daughter at Richard's so I that's why I texted earlier but I have struggled a little bit I'm an engineer so math is not the hardest thing it can be difficult um but for me it was relatively easy I was trying to teach my daughter some of the stuff that they're doing in high school and and it was it didn't it didn't look familiar to me the way I was taught right so in trying to help her I struggled immensely because I didn't have a book and I think that's that for me that's one of the struggles I've had with trying to help out so I appreciate asking for a book that that to me I think can help parents it can help the students because they can carry that resource with them everywhere at some point we have to get our kids heads out of these things and back into books and understanding how to how to take that knowledge and and absorb it yeah sure so you mentioned 20 plus Azure Publishers and this core team narrowed it down to three with K5 being won a limit could you just tell us like what's your top two criterias were that remove the majority of them just so we could understand things like Community State Standards math discourse so they can hear you oh well yeah we had a list of things that that were essential that had to be there we want to make sure the math this course was built in we wanted to make sure that the Hands-On was built and we wanted to make sure that obviously that met State Standards um learners right at that one slide that you had that had the different oh back the other way somebody am I sorry the one before that there you go where we were talking about the conceptual needs of Learners those types of things aspects of rigor we had different things like that but we were looking for and then we were able to eliminate programs that way can I add just a little historical perspective you said schools don't all adopt math the same year um and that's that's the way that happened was I think it was two adoptions ago in the middle of adoption the state changed Mass standards and so we as a system decided to wait until they got the new standards before we adopted some schools went ahead and adopted yeah thanks man thank you hey thank you very much um next on the agenda we have board commendations Mr now do you want to start no you're okay um yes I have accommodations to Beth flamian at Central Middle School and Brad Branham from Northside Middle School for their students performance at the math counts District competition on February 18th The District covers from Seymour in Jackson County up through Center Grove in Johnson County and both Central and North Side had students advance to the final round for the top eight students Brian y from Central finished 8th Northside won first place as a team and first place individual was Northside student and I apologize up front Arjun vajap Zula he went first place individual and it was on the first place team also on the first place team from North Side were Viva govindarajan Andrew Huang and Wendy Zhang seven students Advanced to the state including the first place team from Northside along with sanvi predip and Randy Zhang from Northside so of the seven students going to the state six of them are from Northside awesome thank you Logan yeah this past month Jason and I visited Taylorsville Elementary School which holds a special place as my elementary school as well and while we were there um Miss Gantt showed us the food pantry that they have inside that elementary school now which happens to be my old first grade classroom and uh it was I just want to give commendations to the teachers Carrie Tyree and Brenda Frady that partnered with local organizations to secure this in-school food pantry that's now serving hundreds of children and their families each day for those that aren't aware Taylorsville to the north of the county has a population that's approximately 70 to 80 percent free in reduced lunch and this pantry is ensuring that these children are not only being fed but their families are being fed too as this food is going home on a regular basis thank you the first one I have here for Mrs summers at Central out of over a thousand letters submitted this year the Indiana center for the book competition about well about literature competition five Central Middle Schools students receive special recognition a little bit about C4 it seems like there's nearly cost at least something great coming out as 4 program but recently put together a successful career week with a lot of community involvement 26 companies involved just under 100 different individuals from the community taking place or taking part hosting workshops leading a variety of talks on different topics so on Etc so good job to C4 there accommodations to those that put together the highlight video for the elementary basketball league Super Saturday and commendations particularly for making it at s-o-u-p-e-r Super first time collaboration between ebl and love chapel and they acquired 323 pounds of canned goods for love chapel and then in combination with that commendations particularly to the 33 student athletes from the 11 elementary schools boys and girls basketball representative and cheerleading were selected from each Elementary School for above and beyond that was not they were students were nominated by their coaches and teachers based on character and grade so excellent job to those 33 kids and um let's see and lastly um I wanted to mention a couple of teachers that were recently awarded Lily teacher creativity grants these were created many years ago for Teacher renewal kind of a refreshing time and hopefully gather some ideas that they can bring back to kids but Columbus East library media specialist Emily Cordova heard the title of her Grant is my own infinite adventure and she plans to experience self-renewal while camping exploring and journaling through throughout the Alaskan Wilderness and then also Smith principal Casey volts the triangle of Life embracing life habits in Thailand Malaysia and Sri Lanka and she plans to explore and draw inspiration from the cultures and wellness throughout those those three countries and that's it thank you um mine will be brief I really enjoyed the Wizards game on Sunday so for bcsf and for all of the teachers that participated that was a lot of fun I've been to a lot of sports things with my family and that was a family favorite so really really well done I'd like to send out commendations to the parents teachers adult volunteers that are part of the Columbus robotics program tomorrow night at six at the Reeves building they're going to unveil their robots for this year and that'll be a fun event but keeping a program like that going takes a lot of hard work and I really appreciate what the adults are doing in particular to help make sure that our students have the opportunity for that kind of an experience so so I apologize in advance for trying to be Mr Grimes tonight but I tested the thing I'm trying to propose for future commendations where I sent a request out to two different principles and assistant principles this last time asking for accommodations from their school for student Athletics academics and staff and so I only had one response but that one response was a full page so I'll try not to read it all um but uh I got this from Clifty Creek so Mr Parsons has already left unfortunately so he didn't get to enjoy um hearing what he wrote so um at the elementary basketball league above and beyond Wards Clifty Creek had three winners so Carla Hernandez for chair jakayla Smith for girls basketball and Tristan gramer for boys basketball Sophia Lawrence a fourth grader this is not um both her and Lily are not necessarily School athletics but this will translate long term into potentially high school at some point they both work with Columbus power elite Sophia on her Junior Team the charm currently holds a number five spot nationally out of 200 teams in that division her many team dream has consistently held the number one spot in the national rankings out of 220 teams teams so that's a big deal Sophia is invited to go to All-Star worlds competition in Orlando Florida So that obviously is not a school thing but we'll potentially translate when she gets into High School Lily broadviewer also participates with Victory gymnastics and is a place the first all-around in second grade at the five different gymnastics meets the last one for student Athletics is Caleb Parsons Caleb Parsons is the first fourth grader in Clifty Creek history to start every basketball game and led the team in scoring from an academic's perspective according to Indiana GPS Clifty Creek is trending upwards with the Green Arrow and every single iLearn growth and iLearn proficiency category so just a note about Mr Parsons and the staff and all the teachers the families there and the students that does speak very highly of Clifty Creek uh the fifth grade teachers I I think this is Teachers uh Dunvale Pearson tatlock looped the fourth grade students from last year to fifth grade this year and results have been outstanding according to nwea only 5 of the fifth grade students fall in the low achievement low growth category I don't have where that hopefully moved up from last year and we've got a smaller group there and the last thing for staff Kayla liffer the music teacher has done a lot with the students from taking them to music concerts to staying after school for the Clifty rocks rock band club to an upcoming second annual Battle of the Bands concert for Clifty Creek School building Susan Pena is the first grade Legato teacher she's in her fifth year she's doing a great job she came here from the Dominican Republic and is outstandard outstanding teacher in every respect she was the first hire for Legato it has been a great blessing to the school students and to Mr Parsons as well Melissa strevel for kindergarten attended a 40-hour course on her own accord to grow our abilities to implement new techniques into our classroom and Raven Chandler for third grade has a unique ability to take the class with a wide range of learning abilities and integrate each student into the class at an exceptional level so those are all the accommodations from Clifty Creek the last thing I have is again Logan and I traveled this last month went to Taylorsville and to Northside we met with Mr Burton and Mrs and miss notestine the principal and assistant principal we got to spend a lot of time walking through the building I've only been in north side one time so it was nice to go back and to see it from a different perspective it was also kind of interesting Logan's father had some design input on that building too previously is well as Taylorsville too so um there's about 875 students and teams of about 150 they all are engaged with the resource officer which is to me a pretty awesome thing we want we want students to not be afraid of police we want them to understand that they are a good resource and that they're safe people to talk to we were able to witness choir practice and we got a nice nice listen there to some good music which for me was much better than being at work listening to machines run Mr loxton is working to improve the computer lab they've done a lot of things there to make things more Hands-On previously they had a lot of modules that were spread out through the room but they've Consolidated those to different workstations so that you can do everything in one place he said that in his experience this year it's made them a lot more efficient and effective uh we went through the family and consumer science area they were making California sushi rolls we did not partake but it looked like there was probably about 20 to 25 kids in there having a lot of fun they look like they were enjoying their time and they've done some other things too with the courtyard that they have where they have many planter boxes out in the sun teaching them a little bit about how to grow plants and then go from garden to plate with that family and consumer science so I wanted to just make sure I know that's very long-winded there's a lot of stuff there to take in but a lot of good stuff happening at boat Clifty Creek in north side mmm Mr Ryan do anything tonight I have to uh you know this Mr standard reference and Robotics my grandson was in when he was uh it's great and now we will talk about him now that's it okay thank you okay next we have a school board member report so we do have a list up here however I think Dr Robertson might have missed one sure yeah so we just put together a list of meetings that we knew had happened since the last meeting and there might be other things that we've missed so we can maybe follow this to begin with and then add any on there to perfect for Mr standard you want to start sure thanks uh district districting and Facilities it just rolls right off the tongue isn't it February meeting covered four major topics we talked about Parkside we talked about high school baseball and softball Diamond work talked about Renovations at Schmidt and then we talked about a really interesting project that Mrs Keel from the Columbus Educators Association is helping us work on at Parkside you may remember we're doing uh significant Renovations we got updates on that project they're working on so I don't know exactly how they do all this but they're working on PODS of eight classrooms at a time and then when they get eight new classrooms ready they relocate people into those rooms and they begin work on the ones that they've just emptied so by the time the Project's completed I think they said there will be more than 30 classroom moves that will have occurred and then this summer when the building's empty things will really get underway also asphalt and concrete work this is in in between 15 and 20 million dollars total project to Parkside and I believe there are five different funding sources for that one the the baseball and softball projects are ongoing we got good updates on those projects and Schmidt there's just to the work that's going to be going on there General renovation in the classrooms in the building but then also specific renovation in terms of the HVAC at that building work is progressing and then um we were reminded as a committee that the last time bcsc built a an elementary school building was in the 1980s so we had to slide up with the new Central Middle School that came online in 2007 which is now how many years ago is that 16 16 years ago and again the last time there was a new Elementary School it was a different century um so one of the things that Mrs Keel is helping us with is going on listening tours at the elementary schools and um as we're able to share ideas based on what's Happening best practices all across the United States but then also specifically what's happening with the design at Parkside and the way that teachers and staff in the building had the ability to provide input into the renovations we're trying to collect and gather as much information and input and ideas as we can in advance of additional Elementary School renovation projects um not not on there but I did want to also give and this might be a good time for it a quick update on the subcommittee work the public engagement subcommittee met in February on a Monday night we had a good I think hour and a half two hours together probably about two dozen people in the room all together topics touched on ranged just across the board there were some traffic concerns about picks up pickups and drop-offs conversation healthy conversation about what would it be like to have cameras in the classrooms that people could access on the internet um there was a fair amount of frustration expressed to the school board which I think we've all got a sense of we've all felt about the inability of the public to meaningfully engage with school board members we haven't quite gotten to the next steps which I think will be um redesign going forward to help us achieve some of those goals the next subcommittee meeting is set for Monday March 27th School Board I'm sorry after after a strategic planning but also after spring break thank you after spring break and then I'll touch on the second bullet on the list there the business advisory committee there were two main topics one was an effort to um engage students more in civics and how the government works and how citizens participate in the work of government this in particular is designed to fit well with our new sixth grade State Standards on Civics and government it's designed for students between 5th and 9th grades and it may look like a summer camp that's been piloted in some other parts of the country again all focused on helping students learn more about our government the United States and about Civic engagement second half of the meeting was an introduction for everyone on the committee to Ms Angie Kirkham who's the new Multicultural coordinator for bscsc we got a chance to catch up on the work that she's doing and kind of like Mrs Keel Ms Kirkham is actively engaged in listening to students listening to parents and before she begins a lot of new work initiatives she wanted to purposefully take time to listen to the constituents in the corporation so that was the business advisory committee you Mr Stenner so I attended the diversity leadership council meeting at Mr Edwards leads there is just a lot going on so they asked me to give my thoughts at the end of the meeting and I said I need to listen at least one more meeting before I feel like I can comment because there was so so much activity a really broad group of people coming together all very eager to help and support but definitely a lot a lot going on there they also talked about that Civic engagement Workshop opportunity for students and I was super excited about that so the concept is you bring kids together you help them understand like what's important to them what in the community is important to them and then they work with the kids to try to help them figure out like how do I engage how do I actually make an appreciable difference in whatever that cause is so so it's not just them learning about a topic but but working to make our communities better which is a great skill obviously for our kids to learn so that was pretty exciting um so that's it for me Mr Grimes from the school Foundation yesterday lunatic Space Jam Skywalker and the other members of the Harlem Wizards put on a very entertaining show the executive director Nicole Cunningham of the school Foundation estimated the crowd at about 2 000 people so very good turnout a little over twenty four thousand dollars was made for the school foundation in ticket sales souvenir sales and sponsorships and this might have better fit in commendations but I would like to make quick mention of the combined choir of all the elementary schools that that sang the national anthem prior to the game was excellent and they didn't rehearse together until till the morning of and then the next event for the school Foundation is a 5K at Southside Elementary School uh the good better best Saturday April 29th at 8 30.
so that group of people at that age is is present unfortunately in the last 10 to 15 years we've lost a really big group of those kids and you know we're certainly doing our efforts outside of this program and its creation but to get an 18 to 22 program here but then to get a 22 plus program for Special Olympics because we want that to continue so in you know collaboration I know Beth mentioned it on a slide that's just one of the many facets that we're looking at for Community Partnerships to like Ashley said really make this something that's long lasting can I just I'm sorry to occupy a little bit um what I what I was happy to see like your goals of increasing the community you know and we know any day Anything Can Happen my own son loves to go out in the community he's actually 19 and he's in transition transition program and he he washes windows at an auto mechanic store um and he loves it and he throws tires around but sometimes it's difficult for him to leave his school because he has some preferred staff and that sort of thing so there goes my other being such a great teacher and having people not want to leave you I like that you're in your your plan to increase and sort of separate a little and not that you're going to be the teacher but maybe you are I don't know but you might apply but I like where I am thanks but um yes yeah but um because the reality is you know I as a parent you know I I know a little bit more because I work in the field but there's that Federal entitlement that end date of the day you're 22 you no longer are in that school building and so unless they perhaps they could gain employment here and still stay here as an employed person but increasing those outside opportunities to kind of soften the blow that's something that we've decided because that age of 22 is a hard stop and that can be really difficult for families we want to set the families and our students up for the most success possible when they reach that age of 22.
um and I'll move a transition into my role as the legislative liaison on Tuesday February 21st I was able to attend Indiana School Board Association State House day as a good opportunity to network with a lot of other board members across the state we heard from caucus leaders education committee members from the Senate and the house and I would like to say special thanks to representative Lauer who took the time to have lunch with me and engage in good conversation and then Senator Walker who came out of the floor of the Senate to to talk for a few minutes with me as well recently attended the virtual third house session again with representative Lauer and Senator Walker it was just this past Saturday on March 4th hosted by CIA with c c Haya oh my gosh that was it uh Freudian slip perhaps cea I'm sorry oh my goodness oh boy and so some things learned from that and and this the this legislative session is now halfway through so bills have either either made their way to the other chamber or they have died or rolled into the budget at this point and the isba tracking list is now down to 68 bills which means approximately 70 percent of the bills that were tracked from the beginning dealing with K-12 education are now dead uh some of the bills that got most of the attention um in the third house session on on Saturday uh Senate Bill 12 about material that's harmful to minors uh Senate Bill 486 that covers a variety of topics with arguably the biggest topic being what the discussions might look like between school employers and certificated employees moving forward House Bill 1177 about providing handgun training for teachers and then lastly arguably the biggie House Bill 1001 regarding regarding the budget and so it's it's so full of stuff I won't even um get started with that but it has moved on to the Senate where I'm sure it will receive some amendments and I believe that concludes mine hey next homeless Mr major yeah so I actually had two this time um Health Trust only meets quarterly so that one's probably a little easier to forget but it did meet um so I'll talk about it first we met on the 15th uh it's a it's a very interesting committee most of us don't understand Finance or Insurance very well so I am going to be challenged to learn a lot in between meetings it was interesting to look at the 2022 year in review there was a lot of information that was shared from sciho from Dr Klein and from ja benefits there's a lot of discussion for the future about how we can work and try and cut costs improve access and ensure customer satisfaction lots of surveys going on lots of material there to understand things a little bit better and one I think one of the biggest examples of improvements is community health is added to the network and so that's going to help give a lot more opportunity to people to see some doctors that they might not have been able to see in the past from a city Redevelopment perspective we met on the 27th uh this this I'm not a voting member in that so it's more observational and just kind of understand a little bit about what their dreams are for Columbus it so one thing that they have coming up on April 6th is the grand opening of the 1821 Trail they talked a lot about the downtown grocer and apartments they talked about the planning for the downtown Conference Center Riverfront project is still very early and then there's also some early planning for Second Street so there's a lot of good things there that I think when you look at will be helpful to make Columbus more attractive to people to want to move here and if we can couple what the City offers with what we offer is going to be hard to beat so that's all I have thank you thank you Mr Schultz so welcome Dr Roberts to this update as well because this was given to me about one week before they met and I had a conflict but I do have the notes so and I did review the results but the cic did meet on February 8th reviewed the resilience through strength survey which was approximately 5 800 students and opportunities to connect better with those students were provided to the review overall there's a review of the structure of the or the council in general which we'll be discussed in the next meeting and then we talked they talked a lot about the professional development days setting the agenda for the one that was on February 20th and discussing the plans ahead of the one coming up on April 6th and then there is also a discussion around models uh to improve our high schools and which there was an opportunity to go uh Benchmark as High School in our area just to understand that model and how it could be applicable to bcsc and the next meeting is not scheduled till May 10th okay Mr and Ellen I think we missed maybe one of yours The iupuc Advisory Board met on February 8th and just three highlights from that meeting that I want to share their inquiries and applications are up for this time of year over the last several years so they hope that will result in higher enrollments for next fall and many many of those are are our students going on from bcsc they are continuing to expand Athletics really for two reasons it it increases campus identity and it also the students who go there a chance to participate in athletics at iup you see which they also said is sometime in the near future we'll be changing to Indiana University Columbus instead of IUPAC along with the change at IUPUI and the final thing is it was they have a very lengthy strategic plan which they have put together in the last six months but out of all that the one thing I will pull out is they have several several initiatives to increase their output of Educators and that's certainly important to us okay good thank you very much okay next on the agenda I believe we have cabinet report Mr Edwards thanks I'm going to spend just a few minutes talking about what I've got written down here on this paper um I'm pretty confident that I know exactly what it says but as soon as I try to do it without looking at the paper I'll leave out something huge and meaningful so I'm gonna work from paper if everybody's okay with that um back in January Mike Reed principle of CSA came in here and he made a presentation to the school board about best practices occurring at his school and in that presentation he made a statement that our students benefit from small schools the CSA graduation rate has consistently been over 90 percent for at least the last five years um I said a couple things there that I want to go back and point out our students benefit from small schools and CSA averages over 90 percent consistently that's outpacing the state um in in their graduation rate is is um is pretty solid so I'd like to add a third thing there it's because of the size of the school that CSA is able to place an emphasis on building relationships and getting to know their students well so in terms of graduation rates Norse graduation rate hit a high water mark of 91.1 percent in 2014 and East hit a high water mark of 90.6 in 2018.
so that's why we want to make sure that they have that paid employment out in the community and they're out in the community as much as possible so that it's not a huge you know shock to them when that 22 years comes and then last real phase phase out right yeah there are two transitions here they're the ones where they're going from Ashley's program into what could be this program and that's the other thing you know we've talked a lot in the last few meetings is this was coming to budget proposal and being you know pushed out here that this when you think of the IEP process that eye is individualized and we understand that not every student is going to fit into this program you know and that's it's we're not closing doors here we're not we're hopefully opening more doors by having this as an option for students as they approach 18 but that first transition is 18 and they're going to come into this program and yes it is going to be building based for the most part and we're starting to establish those connections and make sure that everyone is comfortable getting out into the community or can access the community and then from really 1920 and into that 21st year you're hopefully transitioning them more and more so that this is a fulfilled um you know IEP transition plan and and services collectively are all met when that 22 day comes they're ready for you know that real world and so with saying that you know I know we have the annual resource Fair where the all the money that comes on we typically Deb the treasurer Deb August has we funded some bowling clubs and some other unified programming perhaps I could talk to the CPAC and we could help fund some of the needs for um yeah that would be amazing fantastic but from the May event and you also have my wheels turning with my you know Vision planning and my colleagues in the field and and offering and collaborating and partnering and perhaps like having like MRC the next gen program like the staff and I'll come in and talk and for a CPAC meeting maybe I can have a panel come in and some of my folks for from DDs or you know so I'm thinking of of what I can do in that in that realm to bring people in to um because you don't know what you don't know and there are so many little nuanced pockets of supports and programming that um it's all in my head so I'm happy to partner in it opportunity I know you know obviously the past session was there were some reservations and questions and they were rightful right we totally understand that and like Beth said it's all the questions that she's already asked yeah yeah I think um to give you all a little bit more scope I mean this was presented to Ashley by a family so this is family driven needs driven uh does it have the opportunity to be a great monetary aspect you know and cost neutral of course but this is family driven and it was back in 2020 so I mean there have been years and a lot of site visits and a lot of effort in planning and data collection that have gone into it because we hope that you know through this it's collaborative and that you can give us ideas we can give you ideas and then at the end of the day we're working together to make this a really good program for our community not only for now but for years to come right I'll pass it over to somebody else now sorry thank you so I thank you I think this presentation was great you know I think as part of our role here we need to do our due diligence to make sure that it's not that we doubt you but that's what we're here at this table for and I don't really have a question but I just want to make a comment you know we hear a lot of conversation in our community about do we support equality or equity in our schools and this is what Equity looks like not every 18 to 22 year old needs to have a fully supported educational environment but Equity requires that some of our students do and that we do right by that and so I just want to be clear about this this is what an equitable education looks like and so I'm happy to see you doing this and moving toward that and I thank you for all the work that you put into this okay no no problem not not trying to rush no I'm good Mr Oliver thank you Mr chair thank you everyone for your presentation this evening I certainly appreciate it um having been on this smack Board of the chair of the spec Board of Directors for well over 10 years now I'm very familiar with the 18 to 22 transitional programming and I do have some questions some some concerns some questions and I have no doubt that this group of talented individuals will be able to answer them for me uh so it's great to see that it was it's homegrown that it was a family that came came up came to this group to have this discussion um I'm all about keeping students here in Dartmouth if we can right that makes the most sense it's the least restrictive environment it's in a it's in a place that they know so a couple of questions that I have is first of all who there's obviously there there are some changes happening right now with our special education director who's going to be overseeing this program moving forward because they'll obviously they'll be a special education teacher there'll be Powers but who will ultimately be overseeing the logistics we'll be overseeing the logistics of the program yeah so um I'll speak as the building principal but um as someone that's been I joined in late I'm not gonna lie I can't I started last year they had already spent a year having these conversations and I joined in obviously it's housed at the high school um it will be a partnership between the um as the facilities of us we're going to be responsible for it as the program basis of it it will be a central under central office supervision on that side of it so we'll we will it'll be a shared role when we've talked about this is that it'll be in my building it'll be will be responsible for all the facilities the support of it as in the supervision of it it does fall more in that that central office New director um between Lori and the new director okay so stay right there right I'm not going anywhere so you might be able to answer my next question so obviously one of the key pieces of any 18 to 22 program is the important importance of getting getting students out or these yeah these young adults out into the community right for job experiences for any number of things so what is the plan for a One Transportation into who's going to be it's not just Transportation there's the logistics around the transportation as this program goes so do we do we have a vehicle secured yet because my here's my concern right yep if we're going to be opening the goal is to open this program next school year is it's in the FY 24 budget right so the goal is to open this program next school year so in my eyes I want to make sure that any students because I assume the intention is going to be to bring some students from back into this program or is it just for new students so it's just going to be our newly graduated students that's going to grow the program so one of the advantages of starting next year is it's a small cohort yep where potentially now again John said it the eye is the individualized right so there's potential for students that is potential when we give all options if if our option is chosen or not but that's what we're looking at and one of the reasons why we want to start with this year coming in is because we know we have a cohort of of small group students that allows the teacher a year to really build those Community connections as we spend there as we spend that time one of the things that we talked about is there's a year one two phase for the students in there and then there's the two that the 20 to 21 22 week student right so those first two years are really working on and we I'll get to transportation in a second everyone probably coming back to it is working towards those building those building out like how to fill out a resume how to get yourself employed the other side of the communications is working with the outside Services whether it's Ada services or whatever in our proposed budget there is a proposed budget for a vehicle in that that still keeps us at net zero right now in in what we're spending and what we would spend on four students versus not so that is part of the the job qualifications and I'm trying not to stop you but you said four students was what we're looking at potentially potentially and again everything's individualized right so like I can't guarantee a number on that side of that so I want to be very careful with that but there's potentially four students that could be there and that's where we kind of get to that and that zero is in but in our budget there is a plan for a for a vehicle for whoever will be the teacher to do and that'll be part of the job description as well the driving around in in with the Tas as well great thank you thank you for that question and we do want our students also so yes we do want the vehicle side of it but we also really want them to be able to contact those services that can transport them as well too we want them to have those life skills so after they leave us when they're 23 there is no vehicle right so we want them to be able to get on the phone set up for a doctor's appointment a haircut any of those supports that is out there certainly agree yes of course certainly I agree and I think that's something to work towards for sure but I have no doubt that you'll need some kind of transportation for these absolutely um and uh last but not least we talked about a dining room set being uh maybe don't maybe donating uh however is the intent obvious the intent is to start this program next school year uh maybe this is a question from Mr Kylie um I have no doubt I have the utmost respect and um confidence in our maintenance department but obviously these students need life skills right so will we have an area ready to go by next school year yeah we're actually meeting about it tomorrow we've looked at the space preliminarily it's a great space it has a lot of positive points for a program like this okay it has office space already built in it has several large areas one large open space it has a conference room that's sort of like a natural classroom type space already in it it has a kitchen so it's a great space for it um I think that you know we're going to talk about specifics I I think it's doable absolutely um I'd like to note that the vehicle you already approved a request for a vehicle in the capital Improvement plan so that's up at Town Hall we've not met on that yet my understanding is that they're talking about by the end of March having the initial meetings on Capital Improvement plan requests okay so that you know certainly your support on this program will help determine uh you know our push towards towards hoping to you know secure that vehicle the funding for that vehicle and the capital Improvement plan process but um we also have monies built in to the operating budget to support this program and to get it up and running as part of this proposal so I I think we can do it yeah no I'm I'm happy to hear that in from my point of view you certainly have my support um yeah it's just obviously a lot of questions when I on when I was when we were at the budget subcommittee meeting when we first heard this I really had no idea that these meetings had been taken place we were never I don't believe we were ever briefed on any any of the surroundings around the 18 to 22 program so it's certainly this presentation in my eyes was certainly very helpful so I have no other questions thank you thank you thank you what's that Chris Barry Oh no I just wanted to say again like first of all an excellent presentation I think it's you know again I'll just second with my colleagues I think it's such an important program if we're able to offer and it sounds I mean the amount of work that you've already put in and just you know for seeing all the the potential challenges and the thoughtful um you know survey of the area that you're going to have and everything else and the life skills I think you know again like it's it's certainly much needed I am a full believer in trying to keep our students here and again like just you know having those Community just everything we talk about is being like inclusive and bringing our members of our school community and making them feel truly a part of Dartmouth and again we don't want to lose that you know and so you know I'm you know thank you so much for like you know articulating this program and all the work you've put in and you know I think it's an exciting opportunity for our families and you know again I always defer to miss Amaral and these you know questions and I appreciate all my colleagues questions but um you know again like I'm I'm very pleased to see you know that we'll be able to do this for you know these students so that's great thank you definitely no I just I would I can't tomorrow I have to leave really early for the state house a big important event um legislative advocacy day um I would love to join a meeting like I'm not even like school committee we don't design programs we do not design curriculum that is not our purview uh we'll just say but um just worker in the Human Service field yeah for sure I would love to join at some point just to even yeah and and to jump tips and you know people to contact whatever whatever and absolutely to jump on Mr Oliver's comment too like um it is scary because it's a great responsibility right like and we understand that great responsibility we are taking our students that we have said you are now a graduate of Dartmouth High School no matter what that term means your graduate Dartmouth High School and we're preparing you for the future so we understand the weight of the great responsibility and that's conversations that we've had throughout this whole process is that if we're going to take this on we're going to do it right and we're going to do it the best for our students and there's not a better to campaign for students than you're going to talk about right here so I think with that Focus that we had from the start is that this is for our students no other reason that we understand that it is scary and it's a great responsibility and we understand that we're taking that seriously all set Mary Kathleen okay good a couple of quick questions I have and as like Chris I'm the treasurer for smack and I've been there 18 years now as as the treasurer so kind of familiar with that transition program and such so you know know a little bit about that but my thought go I go back to you talked about your uh visits to other buildings in transition and that type of deal what was good you know did they tell you what was good what was bad what's the pitfalls that type of deal yeah so um back in 2021 we had had preliminary conversations as a group already and a lot of the questions that you've asked were ones that we answered and I Echo what Ryan said because we understand the importance of this and we want to do it right so a lot of those questions were addressed first and then it was okay why don't we try to go see a couple of these programs and what they look like and it was a fantastic experience when we were able to glean the good and the great and realize that there were some things that they might have done in their process of getting started that we don't want to come in you know near and hopefully not have to go through some of the hurdles that they did but um old Rochester's was the space the space was the takeaway from them because they have a setup sort of similar to this a planning area and as Mr Kiley alluded to a little bit the areas it's not like we're doing construction or anything it's pretty much set up it's more cleaning up the space and making it suitable we've started I've started the process of looking at donations whether it's through donor's choose which Mr perotti is excellent with or if we're you know simply looking at Grants which we've had in the past with Community success in getting Furniture brought in I know Ms Townsend is a great donor already we have to thank her but yeah the space at Old Rochester was great and we thought that there was a lot of potential here in house for the space that we have decided on um and then Seekonk their space was brand new but a lot of what they're doing with the setup of it whether it's curriculum they have a therapeutic room which was unbelievable there are just so many things that we were able to take away and say okay this is what we want to sort of come back to the table debrief on and now craft how we can make this something that will become Atlas um you know a year and a half later that's now where we're at and um a lot of the things that we saw were like hurdles that we sort of tackled head on was the transportation that you had brought up Mr Oliver um you know or has a difficult time with the transportation and we realize that that sort of limits the amount of time they spend out in the community we see because so many of my students have gone on to smec we see the importance of creating a community-based program so we knew that transportation is going to be a huge thing that we need to make sure that we secure so that our students can be going out into the community to really get those life skills old Rochester has connections with BCC and although transportation is a difficulty they still make it happen they've been really fortunate and you know Dr Jenkins you know this college level classes right now there's a lot of variety whether it's in person online and orrs use that to their advantage with BCC where their students are auditing classes in an online manner again we've tackled the transportation piece head on so hopefully we're not closing doors whether it's Partnerships with UMass Dartmouth or BCC or Bridgewater so those are opportunities for our kids in the future one last question that I have when they go out to work are they working like a regular school day I eat you know eight to two or you know nine to three that that type of deal yeah so we talked about sort of the hours of the program that right now it's best to keep them the regular High School hours so start at 7 30 in the morning so maybe they can start out with some academics in the morning and then they go out for a few hours into the community whether they're doing job shadowing or volunteering or they actually get paid employment um and then as their years progress in the program their time spent out in the community increases throughout the day so ideally we've said and this is sort of like a view of Mr Shea's too is that your typical senior year in high school like he wants kids to be out in the community as much as possible whether it's working or whether it's doing dual enrollment it's the same thing for the atlas program we want our students to be out in the community sort of showing off the skills that they've been able to learn while they've been with us here very good thank you anybody with anything else thank you thank you posting yeah oh yeah the last thing to add to about this kind of idea of Community Based right is we also want to Foster what's already been established here so we've met with the Union just to try to talk through again some of the hurdles in Seekonk we're Union based and they had a really tough time getting this approved union-wise and one of those sticking points were the hours Mr noon so they went with a totally different setup there I think they're nine to three or nine to four which was really tough to get approved by their Union so we realized all right maybe that's a hurdle that we don't want to explore we'll go 7 30 to you know 2 15.
since then the graduation rates that both schools have declined and what we know is that demographically CSA is a magnet so that means it's north students and it's e-students and the reason that's I point that out is because if we can achieve a 90 graduation rate with north and east students at CSA that means there's a path for us to do the same thing at North High School and at East High School on February 28th I had the opportunity to visit Brownsburg High School along with nine other Educators from bcsc we went to ask questions and we wanted to hear directly from people working in the schools about their teaming model the reason we chose Brownsburg is because when we began benchmarking our performance against other school districts in the state with High graduation rates Brownsburg stood out and the reason they stood out is because they have one of the highest graduation rates in the state and they face some of the same educational headwinds that we do in terms of the socioeconomics they don't have single digit free and reduced percentage-wise it's somewhere in the 30s for us at the corporation level we're pushing about 45 percent but we have some of the same hurdles the other thing that we liked about Brownsburg is that they've been doing this for 12 or 13 years so they have implemented it for a while now so there's a lot of data there for us to be able to to kind of learn from and they do it well so during our visit we heard from assistant principals we heard from the building principal counselors academic coaches assistant superintendent the superintendent and we heard from kids everyone we spoke to spoke of the power of teaming and the team structure but the students spoke the loudest they had very powerful stories and selfishly I want those stories for our students one of the questions we asked Brownsburg was why why did you go to a teaming structure and the answer was twofold they wanted to make growing they wanted to make their growing High School Community feel small again and they thought they could do a better job of getting kids to graduate those were their goals 10 years ago looking back they did it they effectively hit two birds with one stone they made their three thousand plus student High School feels smaller and they increased their graduation rates they're consistently above 90 and they're competitive with some of the best in the state now when people hear teaming in in the educational field they think of academic teaming they think of placing teachers on teams but that's not what we're talking about since we've been studying Brownsburg I'll describe their structure it consists of an assistant principle a guidance counselor an academic coach and an administrative assistant that is the structure of their Student Success teams and we are extremely interested in the concept but we also know that whatever the reconfiguration it will have to work for us here in bcsc what we want to do is put into place a team of people responsible for the success of our students and we want to arrange that by cohort which means we want a team of people in place for the freshmen a team in place for the sophomores the Juniors and the seniors so if I'm on a team if I'm working on a team when my freshman becomes sophomores I move up with them when the sophomores become Juniors I move up with them when they become seniors I move up with them and it is my job to get them across the stage of note the cohorts are always arranged by graduation class so this cohort would be team 2023 and the reason they do that is because it increases the focus that we have on this particular set of students we know that we got to move them through in four years we know that 2023 is the deadline and it keeps it in front of everybody and it keeps everybody focused so if I'm part of the team I really only have three goals or three aspects of my job I need to get to know my students well I need to get to know their parents well and I need to get them across the stage so implementing a team structure helps with all three of these things by increasing the accountability it reduces the ratio of students to adults within the team structure and it increases the ownership of the team which increases the likelihood of success I spoke to a former Brownsburg assistant principal who has been in a different role for the past four or five years but he could still tell me the size of his last cohort how many kids graduated and what that graduation rate was this is four or five years on to me that was powerful there are weekly team meetings to discuss students absences tardies discipline grades Etc then the team can make a plan to figure out who is going to be responsible for addressing or following up on each of the things that they talk about in those meetings and these conversations are about students they're not about numbers they're not about percentages they're about students so having seen the power of teaming on our visit to Brownsburg bcsc's goal would be to give all students the experience of a small school and to increase our graduation rates thank you questions any questions from the team yeah as I've been thinking about this I wonder about and I'm sure you've thought about the ability to to marry this with maybe some existing programs that are already out in the community do you have a vision for how this might work with a program like igrad absolutely yeah so we are studying what that might look like but one possible thing is that igrad could provide a layer of support that's what they do now they provide a layer of support so um that's what we would look to do with igrad use the folks that we're bringing in in the academic sense to marry with that program but there are also other things that we're thinking about doing with igrad so for me to say that we have complete plans on how that's exactly going to work we're not there yet but that's just one possibility foreign [Music] this is a good example of benchmarking so this is the based on this the number four school corporation in the state with a 76 percent rating and 77 percent math proficiency level so being that they've been doing this for a while that seems like a like it's probably working pretty well in their favor this says average SAT scores just under 1200.
um but you know we've talked a lot about the space and the copy machines are down there there are bathrooms down there so you know making sure that it's accessible for the faculty that need to access it but also then creating opportunities uh Ash and I were learning Partners back in the day when that classroom did uh it's not Meals on Wheels meals to go meals to go and it was district-wide so bringing something like that back because again you're teaching them the life skills of cooking and communication and how to get an order and it's what they've already learned through Cafe Tuesday but now we're just kind of changing the format of it we've talked about opening a copy center where teachers can you know back in the day when we were students you were a departmental assistant it was the best class there can't say it was very rigorous but again bringing back that aspect of community these students already know these teachers and the staff members and the students here so why not Foster that by having a copy center available so I just think you know we're also brainstorming a lot of these things through and that's the best part about being able to hopefully collaborate is we can continue to kind of set up what we truly think will be most successful I do miss the meals to go Mr bro one of the other things though is that we don't want to make this seem like it's a one size fits all that you know this program you know if they're doing cooking that everyone has to participate in that every child you know every student is different um and so you know we want to be able to provide opportunities that speak to the interests and the um the strengths of the students so I just wanted to make that point yeah just one last time I just like I do with that sense of belonging I just so appreciate it because I do have a a student who is out of District right now and probably wouldn't be a camera well who knows but um uh and and he just has such Pride for this town and I mean I there is not a time that we do not drive by Quinn Elementary Demello where he says basketball he he shoots you know his sister played degal there after and went there to school but he just thinks she played basketball there um you know he wears his class he's a senior and he wears his class of 23 shirt and with such Pride um go by the middle school the high school here we joke do you want to go to school like he it's such a sense of belonging even for a student that is not in District right now um and that's because of of the incredible folks that he's had support him and you know I've spoken of my son who he does not have words but he does say cup hello I think we all learned to say that quickly in this District he does say that so so at any rate I just appreciate that about Dartmouth Public Schools perfect thank you thank you very much good luck thank you everyone thank you laughs standing on our heads how to flip it there we go there you go good thank you Mr Shea all right uh old business superintendent search update Mr Oliver sure I will take it Mr hardy here also he is here Mr hardy is here uh thank you Mr chair thank you uh Mr Kylie um we met we had quite a week last week it was a marathon week uh we met many nights um Katie you can come on up too um I apologize that's all right she was sitting on Kitty as you know Katie and I were co-chairs of the committee and I would like to start off with taking the opportunity to thank all the members of the search committee it was it was a great group uh we certainly had some a little some debate some healthy debate back and forth but we are all very respectful um and you know at the end of the day uh we came together and um we made some decisions so I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank uh Eric Bosworth uh Sandra chica Kate genther uh Kyle Grandfield Dr Shannon Jenkins Mary Lynch uh Katie paveo Kyle Ross uh Peter Rossi Trudy Santos Ryan Shea and Renee Vieira am I missing anyone I think that is just myself that's all right good job so um I'm gonna pass this down before we get started uh just one page okay this is uh the memo uh do you want to say I will be happy to read this um if oh it's up to you I'll be happy to read this book sure very good evening everyone uh this is from to the Dartmouth school committee from the Dartmouth superintendent search screening committee 13 candidates submitted packages for the position of superintendent of schools in Dartmouth Diamond search Community reviewed all the applications and after a series of preliminary interviews and much discussion voted to submit the following candidates to the school committee for consideration as the next superintendent of schools the candidates which are listed in alphabetical order are Dr Jason DeFalco current superintendent of schools at the Blackstone Millville Regional School District in Blackstone Massachusetts Dr DeFalco has has held his current position since 2018.
so that to me is probably pretty excellent so I think the big thing for me is is understanding again how we can use this here what's the cost difference between where we're at today and where we need to get to do we need additional teachers administrators how will this look from a uh I guess Staffing perspective to be able to attract the right people to be those coaches so to speak to work those kids through the system that's uh that's a big question um and so I'll address pieces of it and if I leave anything out please come back and and uh get that for me so when we think about what it looks like here um we're thinking about implementing the same team structure uh so what we see working for Brownsburg is um something that's tried and true they started and then they've made adjustments over the period of many years and so again when you're studying somebody that's been doing it for 12 or 13 years there's a lot to learn for us it would just be we need to figure out what we need to to get started and so that would be those teams at both of our high schools Columbus East and Columbus North we know that there's a size difference between Columbus North and Columbus East and so we're looking at how would we implement the team structure there are the number of teams at Columbus Northrop in Columbus East what would that look like so really we know what the structure would look like what we're trying to decide is what does it look like from a numbers perspective so how many teams are going to be at each place with respect to cost I'm going to have to phone a friend um and I kind of toss it to Chad Phillips because I know that we've looked at some models but again uh the dollars and cents part is that's not my strength yeah and we're not it's not like we're voting on this tonight exactly exactly something to just think about for the future to just help us understand you know if you told us it was going to cost 30 million dollars to do this we would think about it if you tell us it's going to cost you know five to ten more teachers in each school that's obviously we can start to do some math you can see clearly there you know putting trust in Niche right there's a huge difference in their performance versus here they're 25 to 30 percent better with their reading and math proficiency levels so that translates at some point um you know so the the one thing that I I kind of glossed over in my um report here is that our our demographics aren't exactly the same um demographically they're um well they're different than us and so we didn't find a district that mirrors our demographics exactly that was doing something that we wanted to study this this came close enough and again based on performance it was well what are they doing that we could learn from but they are a different District thank you let me just add real quick to Jason's questions there it may help without getting into dollar amounts at least next steps Jason so on Wednesday of this week hoping that Dr Parsons would be approved we set up a meeting to to bring Dr Parsons into that conversation as well as the the other principles in the corporation High School principles and the corporation and then our Teachers Association president um and Chad and Gina uh to to review all of those questions that you're talking about make sure we understand where we are what the what is that that model look like what's the ratio of adults to kids in in that cohort to try to provide that support and then you have a strategic planning session on Friday on May March 24th and so we would like to get some more specifics in front of you at that that meeting so sure no I think you answered my question it's just in terms of timing and and the goal I think is that we would try something for next school year is that right to just to make sure we're all progressing towards that nurse sure is yes yes I think the only the only feedback in 100 loved the idea and love the benchmarking here is not necessarily focusing on working through the system but kind of referencing what Mr Payton and Mr Manuel presented is that purpose so as a recent I mean relatively recent it's been a while now on the BCS graduate side I can still remember going through North side and knowing my team name and that was my sense of belonging to seventh grade voyagers and eighth grade North Stars and knowing I belong to those teams and so I would challenge this team as they work through look at that branding because then that can create that sense of belonging and also almost inter-team competition situations which I think was if I recall the CSA fadre's best practice some time ago so yep any other questions sure so I was actually teaching at Central when they Transit when we transitioned from department-based system to team-based system and it was the best thing that happened to Middle Schools ever and I've often thought about how does that look in a high school because high schools are more complicated I mean I I never had a class that had students of all one grade level but the two things I see here that they're bringing over are that it's a team of adults focusing on a group of kids together and and it helps with relationships and those are two things that come from the teams in middle school so so I I applaud your efforts my only question is so we're looking at implementation this fall is that a 9 through 12 implementation or are we considering a rolling implementation or do we know yet my answer would be it's a we're jumping in like it's everybody it's full go so not not rolling it's 9 12.
this previous positions include Deputy superintendent chief chief academic officer in New Bedford and the building principal in Southbridge Somerville in Worcester he earned a master's degree from Worcester State college and a doctorate in P PK 12 school leadership from Johnson Wales University in Rhode Island Dr Robert Girardi Jr superintendent of schools the new Shoreham School District Block Island Rhode Island Dr Girardi has held his current position since 2021. he was previously the finance director at Minuteman vocational school and superintendent of schools in Maynard you're in the master's degree from Providence College and a doctorate in educational Administration from Boston College Dr June Saba McGuire assistant superintendent Brockton Public Schools Brockton Mass Dr saber Maguire has held her current position since 2022. previously previously serving as Chief academic officer executive director of Elementary education and principal as well as teacher all in Brockton she earned a master's degree from Cambridge College a certificate of advanced graduate study which is referred to as a cags degree from Bridgewater State College and a doctorate in educational leadership from Boston College fourth and certainly not last Andrea B Schwab Dr Andrea B Schwab assistant superintendent in the Wareham Public Schools Dr Schwab has held our current position since 2014.
okay please so Brownsburg being a bigger School are there cohorts approximately 750 yes okay yeah and then 700 plus and do they break down the teams any more than that or are they simply teams of so they're simply teams of 750 um they're uh what they found was when they grew Beyond five 600 it was hard for the counselor to do his or her job within the team so what they have done is they've added counselors rolling so when you graduate a class and you come back and pick up your next one they have started adding an extra class or I'm sorry counselor in her team and So within the team the counselors will break up by alphabet um but that's really it in terms of breaking down the team thank you thank you Mr Edwards okay um next we will move on to public comments I believe we have one person who has signed up Mr Eric Rowe speak on curriculum I think we have three minutes and I don't know how to work this weekend the evening board and admin are we on my name is Eric grow and I come to you as always as a Civic minded citizen of our community and a father of three you know I just saw a a new curriculum on the agenda tonight with no information alongside it and granted the presentation and your questions were very insightful I just want to take the opportunity to to ask you the board and administration to provide the information regarding that curriculum publicly so that any and every member of our community would be afforded the opportunity to know if they might have questions or input for their board members I think even with the presentation in our community wouldn't even know what it is that they don't know that has the potential to raise a question or input and I know this one's you know it's math and math is math and then you know there's different ways to do that same math but you know the point being I think it would be pretty straightforward for our community but you know this is still a very important decision and I'm thinking more along the lines of you know best practices for future curriculum adoptions you know from the perspective of transparency and Community involvement um you know providing as much information as possible as early as we can so you guys can kit input from your constituents but yeah I just wanted to bring that up and I thank you guys for your time and consideration thanks okay I guess it's me yeah all right so I will I have just a few items comparatively to what I've had in the past for your approval this evening I'll start with the minutes of the regular school board meeting from our last one which was a month ago February the 6th and then we did have an executive session that evening too we have supplemental contracts in your packet as well as field trips and professional leaves and then a list of school fundraisers uh we have claims in payroll with the claims dated today about 1.1 million dollars in a pre-run for February 1st through February 28th that was about 4.4 million dollars uh we had payroll for February 10th to February 24th a total about 6.9 million dollars and that did Cover the checks of February 10th and February 24th that cover the work periods from January 16th through February 12th so a couple of pays in there and then we've already done letter F so we can leave that off in the recommendation and the last one is approval the adoption of Edmonton as the vendor for CVP specifically for grades 6 through 12 which we're considering secondary with the way at our Columbus virtual pathway is we had Edge annuity and you had information in your packet about Edmonton for that so I am asking for approval for letters a through e and G given that we've already taken care of f good okay do I have a motion to approve items a through e and item G I move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented by Dr Roberts a through e and G thank you Mr Grimes do I have a second second thank you Mr major all those in favor say aye question um what what I would ask seems like a pretty simple thing um field trips would it be possible to get the cost of the field trips right now it's just this field trip may be paid for by students or clubs or maybe paid by the corporation most of these that I saw are not very expensive it's just one of those things where when I I when I say yes to something I'd like to have just at least a little bit of understanding what that is thank you okay all those in favor say aye aye aye oh there's a post motion approved Dr Blake I request to Prevail the HR recommendations as presented this evening do I have a motion to approve the HR recommendations as presented I move that we approve the HR recommendations as presented by Dr pleek thank you Mr Grimes to have a second thank you all those in favor say aye I want to catch you a lot I'm going to catch you a lot we had talked in the past about maybe sharing you know a little bit about what some of these things are just so the public is aware is that something that we could do in the future I think that's part of our committee subcommittee focused on agenda so I think that's enough I have to wait till then to do that I think we're working towards grouping a lot of improvements together so we can look at that separately in that committee meeting and and we could approve separately one of the key things with Ellen Jason is trying to figure out legally how to to couch that in a way that doesn't compromise it and we've been working we've had some questions for Mr McIver to figure that out so once we can get that figured out we can give the the proper information that does go beyond because I know what you're saying here is how do we go beyond what is up there and still um be appropriate from a Personnel standpoint so okay I'm good now okay thank you all those in favor of approving HR recommendations say aye all right oh there's a post they are approved after please okay word input does anybody have anything they'd like to add tonight very quickly I'd appreciate Mr Edwards presentation and I am really looking forward to seeing this move forward two areas of questions um one just given the public comment is there Clarity is there any process already defined within our policies to share curriculum ahead of a vote by the sport with the public nothing in policy none again not that that's right or wrong but nothing in policy that indicates that yeah and I think the other the other feedback was is the original agenda for tonight's meeting did include the second reading of the proposed policies however that has since been moved and after learning about my role in this board that's one of the most important functions is that we set policy and I want to again reinstate restate that I wanted the public to be able to see these before we have a second reading vote and from my recollection I think first reading was January 23rd yes and I believe this will probably come up in the next regularly scheduled meeting we had our like Mr Center said we had our subcommittee hearing on the 20th of February I was talked to by at least a dozen folks after that meeting asking about these policies wanting to understand these policies and as they're elected official it's very frustrating not to be able to share what we're talking about and so I guess and I had asked about them being posted two weeks ahead of this meeting clearly had the topic has been removed from the agenda I do want to motion this board to post these by March 17th to give us two weeks to the public ahead of the next regularly scheduled meeting for the public to properly read digest and ask questions in the public comment opportunity well I could comment on that before going any further so uh in regards to um those policies I have Rewritten uh all 20 um into a format that I've shared more publicly than had been in the past more easily digested to to be clear as to what previous policy was and what the exact changes being proposed are so each have been Rewritten final reviews are being done and then Sherry Mrs Crispin will take those 20 documents put them into a single one and make sure that that PDF is is made available so it should be out I would hope by the end of this week this is Chris been given what we reviewed today so then the next time we review those would those then be considered a first reading since they are new it that they aren't new in terms of revisions they are new in terms of I'm okay either way Jason but the changes aren't there are no new changes from what you saw before but it may be easier for you to digest the changes than before so I I'm good either way with how we choose to handle that I'm not in a rush to make sure that those get get through we want to make sure they are as transparent as possible so however the board choose to choose to do that but they will be on the agenda the next time again April the 3rd anything else Mr Schultz okay Mr Grimes uh congratulations again to Dr Parsons for uh being named the new principal at a East for next school year thanks to the many presenters here this evening uh Mr Grow for sharing his thoughts and a special thanks and congratulations to the two students here this evening uh Utica her very thorough presentation of solar energy and a real example of the power that senior projects and the impact that they can have and then also Tommy Morrell's recognition for his accomplishments um and wrestling but it's also even greater to hear what a great human being he is and that's that's what it's all about thank you nothing but it's a great agenda tonight there are lots of uplifting news so thank you to the administrative team for putting see how full one can be when we have just one meeting in a month right that is true before we move on if I could just add something that I don't think we brought up tonight and as a a kid going up around here playing a lot of basketball it was nice to see Columbus North cutting down their own Nets on uh on Saturday night so congratulations to Paul Ferguson and the Columbus stomach bulldogs for a sectional Championship yeah yeah they're kind of nice to be able to recognize and honor Mr Barker for his contributions at Rock Creek right at Rock Creek and then also a shout out to the family of Dr Parsons of whom found something orange to wear tonight and did notice a lot of orange at the very beginning of the meeting this time I think Amazon can deliver pretty fast so real quick speaking of Dr Parsons Dr Parsons Dr plake and I share a mutual friend and in the process as we were leading up to this and Dr Parsons was recommended I reached out to this individual just to get some feedback on the person's character and what kind of person he is this friend of mine led a leadership event last fall with a bunch of students probably about five to ten students and what was really telling to me about Mr Parsons character and what kind of sold me on him after a long conversation of course was when those kids those students were asked who they could identify was a leader they mentioned him and so that told me a lot about how the students felt about him and about what kind of person he could be and we need good leaders in front of these students so that they can have somebody to look up to so thank you Dr Parsons I think tonight is over all right make sure we uh let's see I'm going backwards sorry about that so we'll miss that extra slide there we go okay just make sure that we mention these strategic planning session March 24th in this building probably in this room I'm assuming at nine o'clock and then the next board meeting is on April 3rd oh the 27th should we quit the 24th meeting will be in the boardroom which is upstairs okay Tara's room here for April 3rd and then subcommittees are up here March 27th I'll be the same rooms that they were in before perfect perfect okay
previously serving as principal and assistant principal in Falmouth as well as an assistant principal ship in Duxbury she earned a master's degree from Salem State University and a doctorate in educational leadership from Northeastern University all four of these candidates have been contacted a very eager to continue in the process I'd like to start off by thanking you for your time Mr hardy certainly uh it was great to have you there and walk us through the process as always the cookies are good the cookies were good thanks to Katie absolutely um I guess uh I'll just start off and Katie please chime in or Jim um you know we had a some very good candidates come come in for interviews um and it's all about as Mr hardy said to us it's all about fit the right fit for the district and we felt at the end of the day that we we believe that we should send four names forward to the full school committee giving everyone the opportunity these four candidates for a second interview and um to take place take part in the the site visits these are well qualified candidates all with your unique personalities and I look forward to uh to meeting them all again and taking this to the next uh to the next level well Katie would you like to add anything no um well yes so I would like to Echo your thanks to the members of the committee because it certainly was quite a time commitment and really everyone was just so prepared and really committed to the work and I really appreciate that I think you know we were very clear that our our charge was to take a look at the candidates and bring forth names that we felt we would like for you to dig deeper right so it's a your job now is to do with a deep dive we had a cursory glance and great first interviews and these are folks that we would like for the committee to get to know on a deeper level so I again just want to say thank you to all of you for your faith in us and thank the committee for their really good work on this agreed and Mr hardy could you go over next steps with us oh sure so yeah of course I told the search committee this that night but again I want to publicly thank them for their efforts we calculated somewhere between 35 and 40 hours commitment into this between the preliminary meeting where we did all the training reviewing the time spent reviewing the 13 application packets the time spent preparing for the interviews the time spent in the interviews and the time spent after the interview is deliberating it was it was a lot of work done in a very short period of time with most cases after everyone worked a full day so they did a great job and every candidate they interviewed or every candidate they talked to walked away with a positive impression of the Dartmouth Public Schools they thought the committee was engaging they were listening they were active participants in the interviews and every candidate felt good walking out the door and that's a very positive plus on behalf of the district so you can thank them for representing you in a Stella fashion the next step in the process would be scheduling site visits for the candidates to come to Dartmouth if the committee was going to go on site visits to the districts of the finalists and then when would the final interview interviews be gonna have I need a kind of sense from you when you want to do that who would be willing to go on-site visits uh what days in the coming weeks would be absolutely terrible to bring a candidate into this District because of things going on like I don't want to bring a candidate to a district on a professional half day things like that so I think person first and foremost thank you everyone much much appreciated uh I think the first thing we have to to figure out is uh when we can do the next round when we can you know have the candidates in-house because I'd like to bring usually correct me if I'm wrong Jim is you bring the candidates in-house uh for a tour bringing that and then uh have like the final interviews that night that's typical you know so they only have to come in once they're on they only have to come once and and that type of deal uh my thought was that at this point just because of the way circumstances have worked out that we have the candidates in uh for our next meeting which is we're going to move something we've got to do some changes move I can't bring I bring the candidates in for a site visit and the final interviews on Monday March 20th okay now that would then move our next school committee meeting to March 27th because we've got to have the budget hearing Mr chairman yeah bring all four candidates into the district the same day trying to get there at this point right so either either like the you know for discussion purposes or go you know get two in on the 20th and two in on the 21st Shannon so I'm just going to fall on my sword and apologize to everyone I know we had looked at the week previous I have been called into a work trip that I that I cannot get away from so I will apologize if this throws off everyone so it does you know what it moves it back a week I understand I just wanna I just want to make it clear that everyone's comments that the committee was really great um there was actually a lot of laughter in the room which having served in search committees is not usual and so I think there was there was good relationships and everyone came and got and they really did I think show Dartmouth off um everything that's great about this community so it was it was a really good committee to work on and thank you to Chris and Katie for for co-chairing the committee and and making sure everything ran smoothly so the 20th and the 21st works for me I will make that work oh wait a minute the 21st is 21st is candidates 21st as candidates so can we are school committee yeah so the school committee candidates can we go Monday and Wednesday sure although I will note I won't put this on Kathleen looking back at our our materials I remember I had to miss my very first candidates night because we scheduled we had scheduled uh the interviews for that evening and I was like look right if I'm not at the interviews like what am I here for I'm not going to put that on you I'm happy to do Wednesday but it's definitely precedent there so we're looking at the 20th and the 22nd 20th and 22nd we'll hold them in the auditorium do we want to do it here do we want to do it in a smaller venue we're going to do it in the High School auditorium does that work it's in the evening it's in the evening it's available I already stepped that far ahead all right yeah they're on it Mr Nunes thank you okay uh Mr news without me 6 30 at the same time or what kind of do uh you want to do how typically an hour say having done varying times last week um I you might want to move that up a little bit yeah well if you do two interviews each night yeah if you could do six you'd be a lot better off okay yeah because you're looking at probably six to seven fifteen seven two seven about seven fifteen then do 7 30.
so do you have a break in between yeah plus a buffer time yeah just in case a question sure so you're going to ask the same questions to all four candidates that was gonna die well for um for the semi-finals interviews we they the candidate the the screening committee all asked the same questions of every candidate right I understand where you're going though but they typically suggest well I think you could do them all on the same day well here's my here's my thought is and I'm going to have a discussion with Mr peratti on this if he wants to tape it by all means but it doesn't go out live and it doesn't go out that was going to be my suggestion Mr Nunes is that the the Monday interviews would be broadcast Wednesday uh while the Wednesday interviews are going on well no they'll be broadcast on Thursday but Shannon I'll just off on an alternative um I've done this in searches that I have run at UMass Dartmouth that we give the candidates the questions in advance um it allows the candidates to prepare and you know I had people on my search committee like we can't do that everything's going to be canned but what instead we found is that some candidates gave us really thoughtful answers and if we're asking for examples of where you built curriculum do I want to know someone can think in 10 seconds is that a qualification on a job or is the qualification that this person could prepare and we hear their best answer and their best responses so the other option is to Simply give the candidates the questions in advance I'll just put that out there I'm an advocate for that I think it we see the best of candidates when we do it that way I don't have a I don't have a problem the night of the interviews having the questions on the table for the candidate now I know what you're saying I know what you're saying and I'm telling you what I'm saying okay I understand what you're saying now it's my turn I'm saying they have they have the questions there and they're able you know as they're being read they're able to follow along yeah that's what we did we gave the questions to them as they showed up yeah that way they can you know you know if they get not they get hung up but you know they can go back and just kind of glance at it type of deal so because the other go ahead what else so the other thing we have to think two things we have to think about so what have we decided on that it's not clear to me on that what's that have we decided to give them the questions in advance or put and and just let the interviews be streamed or we decided to just put them on the table I think we have two Alternatives there and we haven't discussed one we're not going to stream the interviews I don't want the interview streamed I I no no offense Mr news but I think that's a decision that the committee makes okay I don't want the interview streamed because I don't want if we don't give them the candidates the questions but I also don't want the candidates watching and being able to sit here and say oh yeah that's a good idea I didn't think of that or Boy did he fall FL he or she fall flat on their face that you know the boy did way off I don't know I I just would prefer to have everybody cold out of the bikes Chris we have a consultant in the room I'd like to hear his opinion um I see both sides of this I do believe that having the interviews broadcast particularly since they're not all done in the same day may give an unfair advantage to somebody interviewing later in the process simply from and it may happen anyway simply if there's a print media person in the room who writes up a summary in the in the local newspaper so it may be unavoidable um I mean there's only really one way of guaranteeing that is do them all in one day but that's now you really kind of talk about a Saturday in order to be able to pull that off um uh as far as you know there's no right way or wrong way as far as conducting the interview generally speaking to help avert the problem with preconceived questions or being able to see the other questions my recommendation is always you have at least one question you're going to ask everybody else everybody that's your Baseline question then you tailor the rest of the questions based on the candidate you're going to get their application package you're going to see their background you're going to see where they've worked their job experiences and then you tailor two questions to that candidate so even if the candid even if the next candidate hears the interview the questions you're going to ask the second candidate might be different than the first candidate they might be similar but they might be different but you have that one question you've asked everybody that's your Baseline that's your point of comparison between the four um there's there's a lot of uh positives to Dr jenkins's method I've seen it work I've seen it work greatly I've seen it where you couldn't have told the difference whether they got them ahead of time or whether they got them surprisingly right in front of them because people still stumbled out of the box and you know a smooth interviewer isn't it isn't going to affect them at all if someone is good at con or good at participating in interviews whether they you give them to them ahead of time or you give them to them that night it's you're going to get the same thing um what it does help is the people who don't interview well but have a lot of knowledge and you kind of get to get a sense of really what their thought process is because they've had time to think about it so there's pros and cons to both neither one is wrong neither one is right it's really a matter of preference for the community I do like if I still have the floor yeah I do like the fact of having each candidate have each person asks once the same question to everyone and Taylor the rest I do like that um it's fine I have a copy of the questions the screening committee asked so all four of these candidates did well on these questions well they wouldn't have been brought forward to you so it'll kind of give you a baseline of knowledge going forward if they bomb these then they wouldn't they wouldn't their names wouldn't be in front of you though some did better on some questions than others but that's you know that's the nature of the Beast I don't have a preference yeah Mary I guess I just have a procedural question you know and again I you know regularly was not the last meeting that you know we had but um when it comes to you know let's say like because I I actually would defer and lean towards Shannon's idea at least with one question I think because I would like to see like what their thought process is and have that preparation but secondly you know if we were what is the process of like creating questions among ourselves do we meet an executive session ahead of you or like how does that I guess that that's one of the things that I'm curious about because when you mentioned having you know perhaps two questions that are unique to each candidate like when will we devise those like you know again we do that as a group or just individually and so that's what I'm trying to understand yeah does let me run into it is doing it as a group you have to post it well that's what I would assume so that's why um so what what we did with the search committee uh process was that people submitted their questions to me I compiled them into this document which I'll pass around because thank you um giving Katie a graceful way to yeah go sit down again um the um they submitted their questions to me I compiled them into a document like this okay okay well actually it was this document and then when people had duplicates I contacted them I contacted them directly say hey look we have three questions about this okay right do you want to go with your alternate question or somebody could somebody sent me a really great question or two really great questions I'd really like the second one answered do you mind asking that one I think I did that with Dr Jenkins um so uh and then that way you're not discussing together so it's not a meeting we don't meet the definition of meeting with the open meeting law because I'm not a public official okay that's what I was observing and then the other part is so ideally with the site would you want this I mean by dealing from procedure would we want to have the site visits I'm assuming before we're meeting and doing those final interviews so sometime in the next two weeks it would be whoever is going on the site visits should ideally yeah I was going to talk about your visits in a minute okay all right all right so I'll defer that thank you until we get through this part of it okay um so I'm assuming Mr Nunes that you that people will if there are two side visits in a day we're going to start them in different locations and kind of reverse the schedule well didn't you know hadn't gotten that far to be honest with you okay that's the Hardy only because of the I didn't know how you know that if we want to have three or four type of deals so might you know if it was three I was thinking you know one you know for discussion Monday Tuesday Wednesday you're you know that that type the you know three days that way type of deal uh you know with with four of them and one of them having to go to Block Island type of deal you know that's you know taking a ferry and catching you know what time is the ferry college that that would be that one that's probably just the one and done and again I have never been to Block Island and I don't know what the ferry schedule the other the other option is um do it over the fall you know resume or zooms um we can set up a series of zooms during the day and you can log in from wherever you are and yeah I can meet with people face to face there the uh do we have to do that with all the candidates if we do Zoom or can we do just the difficult to reach ones we have a very fixation at UMass Dartmouth who's treating everyone absolutely the same so that's why I'm asking that that's okay in my opinion the only one that is difficult is uh Block Island no distance I did speak to Dr gerardi about that he he actually mentioned the because it's winter so the ferry schedules sometimes it's you know but he he's the one that mentioned impossible you know either phone interviews or Zoom interviews okay um so it's it's something he was open to and realizing that the circumstances but I also realized that you know he he's only been in Block Island for a year um you may want to talk to some people from a previous District as well so yeah but we could set that up so Chris she ran up a good point Jim that he's he was only on Block Island for a year and is it worth just doing these all in Zoom so we have an opportunity because I have participated in these before on zoom in which you you speak to the colleagues that may not be in their current district is that something that you've seen done yeah I'm also probably because in the past couple of years with covet and that type of deal I did a lot of search on Zoom start to finish I wouldn't be surprised you know the hang on Shannon for one second okay because going back to Mary's Mary's question what I had thought about and hoping that everyone would agree outside is included but was you know post a meeting for a workshop on Bush Street to talk about questions and that type of deal but if you know that's what you want to do you can do I know I and that was that was my thought I hadn't thought of you know that type of deal so I don't know if you want or if you want to with you know if you want to you know ship them to Jim get the resumes and ship them the gym I'm good with that too I parked I personally I'm in favor I like the way that worked I'm in favor of just like creating them this way it saves us the having to meet and post another meeting um I'm hoping that somebody doesn't you know I know I got you yeah I got you yep absolutely I'm good my other question to you Mr chair is what are your thoughts on reversing or maybe we're already thinking about this having having us go to their site or via Zoom next week Shannon well I want to ask because I think I maybe saw a shaking of a head in the audience about the question of Zoom site visits and I think I remember discussion in the committee that people were Keen to go to the sites and I'm seeing some nodding of heads over there um and so I would I know I'm putting this out on people to do that but I think there was somewhat they really wanted to get there's a feeling that you get when you're in a building and you're walking around and you get a sense of community and culture when you're in a place that you don't get on Zoom um so I I don't I'm not recommending we do fairies and whatever we do so I'm for Block Island but if we can for the other ones I would I would I think we would like to have people go into the building the other thing that I will add is that we had a request that we add a teacher to our site visit that they asked if we would bring that to the committee for consideration we haven't had a teacher in the last round go with the um the group to the sites but that was a request from some of the committee members one of the things that I will say is when we went to Dr Gifford's site visit there was no real visit we were set up in the conference room at central office in Falmouth and we didn't leave that conference room we didn't get a chance to walk around I don't know how prevalent that is in the schools but we didn't get a chance because let's face it we're going into their territory oh there's there if this if this person isn't a superintendent their superintendent a lot of their staff is certainly they frown upon Outsiders coming in to see them right and I think it's a good I think in some ways it's a good practice but it also um it's it's a hindrance to some extent and this is a perfect example was for Dr Gifford in which and Jim was there we sat in the conference room and she and people came to us um to be interviewed you that's that's how it's usually the ones I've been on in in my tenure it would basically you know in in a conference room and you go from there they bring lunch in and right you get a chance you know and you're you're absolutely right you know I mean we're going there because we want one of their one of their employees one of their you know we hope is one of their best employees to come work for us as you know a superintendent type of type of deal and you know they're going to kiddingly you know hopefully they'll get sit there and they'll kid you and they'll say okay so what can I tell you that won't so you won't take him or her type of deal you know that type of deal but you're absolutely right I think we need to go out and we need to get uh you know get a get a lay of the land type of deal when we go into this these communities type of deal Jim I even Block Island I mean the ferry schedule really isn't bad you're eating is stuck in Block Island no it really isn't that I mean obviously if it looked like really bad weather you wouldn't go it's in a March March Yeah well yeah you pick your days but if um our current interim superintendent but there are there's pretty I'm looking at it too pretty frequent on the high-speed Ferry out of Point Judith it's really not that bad yeah so schedule wise so it could be done we'll see what week are we looking at just to confirm [Music] well if you wanted them done before your interviews you're talking about next week right yeah that's what I'm thinking you're talking about you're talking about next week or uh do you have a problem with that nope I mean you're not here Shannon anyways I don't I have okay so I probably wouldn't say visits yeah and I think we do two just two school committee members anyways right so someone else wants to go in my place I've already had a chance to interview the Committees I'm fine with deferring to one of my colleagues to attend the site visits okay okay yeah so yeah I mean we've got uh you know well we don't we're not going aside from Block Island we're not going it's not that bad because I've got commitments Thursday and Friday night next week but we'll be back in plenty of time for that so I'm good these will typically end right about the time the school day ends so 2 30 3 o'clock yeah that's when they normally we get there at you know you know eight nine up eight nine o'clock yeah yeah it's like a deal so all right so I just want to confirm so it's a full day for each site visit by and large like yeah you know and we'll we will do uh we do two two member two school committee members at each site visit yes if two committee members are able to go right no more than I guess no no no no no no no yeah okay no Who's got what so who's a I mean I'm out all next week yeah I know you're wrong I can make myself available one maybe two of the day is tops I can make you're probably looking at I got three Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday we could if it if different people go I mean if there's only two School communities total but if if there were like four of you available on a given day we could do two visits that day split it up yeah yeah I'll have to see if I can get coverage because I'm teaching too so it might be problematic for me but well how about if how about if we do this how about if we plan for a Monday Tuesday and Wednesday and then for discussion purposes we do uh Dr gerardi's by zoom on Thursday does that work I'm most available Monday and Tuesday most available Monday and Tuesday um yeah so um and anyway so there'd be determination of who else do you want to bring with you right um well I would and again I'm going to put my experience hat on here I'd like to have if Mr kiving wants to go and I'd like to have you know the high school principal just and again this is just me the high school principal and the middle school principal okay I'm a teacher and you want to be in a building right you don't want to be at central office we want to be in a building yeah please okay we want to be able to you know get up what's up or both yes we can spend time or a boat no no not a boat not a ferry boat or in both you know visit the central office I would I do agree with Dr Jenkins that I I would like to see a teacher as part of it as well the perspective can we flip back to them coming here yep um so if two are coming on Monday and two are coming on Wednesday do we want to schedule the site visits so that they're kind of doing this one starts like at the high school one stops at an elementary school and you kind of work their way well behind the grades yeah one of the that's one of the things that Mr Kylie sent out was the uh scheduled the last time and that's exactly what they did ships in the night as they say yeah okay and just so the committee knows and I'm sure Mr Kylie is aware but this is paveo offered to do whatever is needed to win the candidates for those site visits here um to to help them out so thank you Katie good thank you okay okay so I'll convey convey to the candidates the two interview nights and the two side visits tonight see which ones work into their schedules accordingly and let them know about the site visits for next week yep yep hang on to the high school are we going to do a student panel as well yeah when they come here and do we want the same student panel or if possible if possible okay so I'll do the same I'll do basically two half day field trips yeah because that way when you get feedback from the students they they have that same okay yeah yeah good question Mary um so just like anticipating on Thursday so if you have a zoom in the past are there's also full day like how do you like again I'm just trying to think again in terms of like when I can you know offer assistance that might be the time like typically how long is that I mean it seems to be sitting usually the zoom session the zoom ones are signif significantly shorter because there's no travel time between right particularly if you're going from one place to another so there's there's no real travel time involved okay um it's the same groups of people but they're typically shorter periods of time all right so let's do let's do this and I would suggest that if if any school Community member wanted to go on a visit but couldn't stay the whole day but you could do a half a day of it try to do it okay Okay so I'm available I'll make myself I can make myself available all four of them so that's that type of deal so it's like but who go ahead I was just going to say so for for Mr Hardy's purposes yes I'm just trying to get we're just scheduling them Monday through Thurs what are we doing how many days Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday is the zoom quite honestly if more than two want to go you can get around that by simply posting it that you're you're going on a site visit Quorum of the school committee is attending a site visit you just can't deliberate while you're there yeah as long as it's posted that it's a site visit you're good to go okay yeah good okay we would Kate would need to know soon yep because if it's Monday unless we posted by Thursday yep so who is it go ahead I could do Tuesday you can do Tuesday okay I could do and you can do Tuesday okay and John I'll just check back with you yeah check back with me all right I'll take with admin all right so it's just Wednesday we're looking out well I'll do I'll do what I'll do Monday and Wednesday so we've got two okay very good I'll definitely aim to be there for the Thursday the zoom I'll figure that out somehow so I think I'll be able to do that we'll do that from work well that's what I'm thinking that's exactly what I think and Thursday is my like easier yeah so if I miss it you know if you can just send me a list when it's finalized if who's attending what days so that I can give it to the will do yeah candidates and as soon as they get confirmation of the dates and a schedule together for you I will send that back through you to the members of the committee thank you I'll also send you oh actually Kate could probably give you the four application packets yeah can we get can we get those when how quick back do you want the questions I mean I know we need them for the 20th well um yeah I would say probably Wednesday next week okay and I would ask you that would be the 15th yeah pair one that you're going to ask for every candidate and identify that question and then the two more with a third may be possible in case we get duplication but if there's any duplication or if there's too much of one category I'll call you back and I'll send you an email back saying hey you know I'm getting five questions on Budget Finance and nothing on leadership style what do you decided did we need to decide whether or not we're going to send any of those questions ahead of time or is that something we have to decide now yeah that we've got to the site now so we know do we want to send the standard questions to everyone and then leave the other questions in reserve that would be like you're saying that we should ask the same questions of everyone we can give them those questions and then all those other questions that we might ask that we're going to vary we could hold back which would be five questions yes for everyone that's the same which will give you some level of preparation on the other question that's a hybrid yeah there you go yeah I like that I'm fine with that okay okay I will acquiesce okay I'm not but that's fine so we'll send them we'll send them the uh the main question instead of the one standard one and we'll go from there okay okay all right cool beans so the only other thing we have to decide depending on winning no stream ing no here's the whole thing that's fine no I'm gonna if that is I'm gonna have that discussion with uh Mr Karate after the meeting is not going to be you know he wants to tape it that's fine but if it's not going out it's not going to get hacked I'm going to make uh a plea to anybody to please do not post anything on social media things of that nature I will also again reiterate as I have done numerous times but you know now that we have the finalists you know number one there will be no public comment that night number two to my colleagues just remember now that these names are out the phone calls and things of that nature will start thank you very much and this decision is eyes and eyes alone remember the committee has any questions for me about any of the candidates please don't hesitate to give me a call directly I'll be more than happy to share any insights we may have um you the search committee members are free to discuss their personal thoughts with you excuse me but um they're Bound by confidentiality they cannot share what other people thought they could only share what they thought very good anything else from Mr thank you no we're good yeah thank you so much all right thank you thank you very much Jim thank you appreciate all the work [Applause] okay uh all right so we've got two school committee members uh Mr Kiley Mr Shea Mr Rossi I'd like to go you know do we want a teacher and who do we want or how to how how do we go about that I mean I'm I for one and with all due respect I'm not gonna sit here and say I'd like you know Miss Jones or Mr Smith or that that's I would I have I would leave it to the choice to maybe Mr Kylie or Mr Kylie Mr Shea yeah or Mrs uh Mr Rossi you know I I think it may be worthwhile I don't know if she's available but Mrs paveo to attend if she's available okay she may not know that we're should we seek seek volunteers who are interested in participating in that process sure that's fine okay to my attention would it be the same person for all of them yeah because you're getting it you're gonna you're getting it you're gonna help for everybody involved that's a lot of good commitment so one from each building I'm just thinking I'm just thinking about the kids yeah right yeah for four days yeah yeah exactly especially you know especially next week you know yeah I gotcha one from each grade span like the high school someone in the high school someone from the Middle School yeah from elementary yeah that would be that would work okay you know send them in and let Mr Kylie Mr shade Mr Rossi go about that's fine I'm good with that all right nice job everybody seriously good job okay all right so since we're talking about searches oh yeah button and again these interviews will be in the middle of the uh the High School auditorium you know nobody's crowded there's one all right uh old business people like still uh pupil support service at search update I guess that's me um and please Mr Nunes fill in any gaps I I really I think the the biggest update is that our committee met and uh we I feel that it was a lively and engaging group and um where um Mr Martin LED myself I co-led uh oh wait oh um you know the the the the day and it the evening and it went well I think people contributed their um thoughtfully and that sort of thing I felt it was a it was a good meeting um and we are spending it was just posted today that we're spending Saturday I heard that all day all day Saturday uh interviewing and um I believe the goal is am I getting ahead of myself nope you're fine okay is that uh at least we'll deliberate post interviews um with a break for some lunch and uh we will deliberate and our uh intention at least as of the time we met was to bring forth three uh candidates um at our next meeting am I missing anything no no you're right on you're right on right on right on target was I mean we had undoubtedly like the the superintendent search good Lively uh discussions talking about how many questions we were going to have and it it just it was like one you know this and then it led to another to another to another you know so we got we got where we wanted to be okay type of deal so it uh it was and again it was well-rounded uh collaborative effort yeah collaborative effort I mean pros and cons type of deal so it'll be exciting great thank you yeah thank you when we get back we will hopefully have and seriously we have what six good uh six good viable candidates yes awesome which is like because all you can ask for okay anything else on that with anybody thank you okay thank you no problem the rest of the community here we go all right FY 24 budget okay so um the major development since the last time we talked about the budget was the the governor's proposal on state aid which I had sent to you all and was underwhelming at best it was a one percent increase to Chapter 70 funding uh actually a little less than just under one percent increase so we get about 10 million dollars in Chapter 70 funding from the state you know less than 20 percent of our of our budget and the increase was 99 000 so that was the lowest we could have possibly gotten the lowest of any District in the state um you know when you look at it per pupil so it's not a good situation and uh they followed that up with the town's um state aid being equally dismal so um very little increase coming to the town side so you know when that happens obviously like a one percent increase is basically a step backwards so let's face it with with inflation and the way everything's working it's it's a loss so that's not great um I'll be meeting with Mr McInnis on Thursday afternoon to talk a little bit more about where the town is and their side of the budget I I think that they are hoping to have um have us in for some discussion with the finance committee towards the end of the month a little later than maybe we usually go but um but I think hopefully by the end of the month we'll have that discussion we have depending on I guess the 27th will be our budget hearing and another opportunity for you to for you to have more discussion on the budget at that point so we will have had a couple of opportunities before we before we go um before the finance committee but hopefully I have some more information this week from the town as to where they are in this process that's an important piece of this questions comments before Rice that huh it's disappointing expected yeah it's surprising expected but disappointing but thank you yeah what is to me very disappointing and disheartening and again I realize it's the governor's budget but it hasn't been changed so it hasn't gone through you know the house of the Senate the Committees in that type of deal when you take a look and you look at you know never mind I can't do the cities because there are a whole different uh Dynamics and that type of deal but when you look at the town of fave and you know that picks up six hundred thousand dollars more in chapter 70.
type of deal and then you look at you know the town of Acushnet and they pick up no disrespect Mr Oliver I know you work there not anymore not anymore and they pick up 600 000 you know and they have fewer schools and less students in a smaller budget than we have it is very very disheartening so I will say this I will probably wait to see what comes out from Ways and Means and uh at that point if there's no change I'm going to ask that we bring our state reps in we bring Mr Marky and and have a discussion with him as to what in God's name is going on because you know it's not uh not helping at all in my opinion so Dr Jenkins you know I don't disagree with you that is disappointing but from a state calculation right compared to other towns we make less effort in our taxes we have a lower tax rate we can afford to do more in their eyes right now they've never tried to bring an override to this community so right but that's the calculation and that's what we're being told by the state right if you're not going to support your schools your public services why should citizens in other communities do it right and that's the message we're getting and until people in this community receive that message things aren't going to change right we have to make more effort it's got to come from us so okay all right anything else on a state budget no okay very good all right new business superintendents update you should say introsive windows only enter them we'll give you the superintendo oh that's fine one of these other fine folks is going to take that role in a short short amount of time so yeah um a few things so um I know Mr Nunes has some stuff to share with you so I'll try and not steal his Thunder the Dartmouth tree committee reached out to us regarding the trees in front of uh in front of the middle school on Slocum Road which are horrific like the ones that are standing on outside or on the other side no on our side so the ones that are along the middle school parking lot on Slocum Road yeah yeah okay so they're pretty bad and um we've taken a number of them down through the years and they're interested in uh assisting us with uh planning for adding some new trees there so we were happy to we actually John Bernat um our facilities manager actually met with them today with uh with boy Knowles the arborist uh and um they had they have I guess lots of plans for trees from what I understand obviously including at the Mellow school which was one I I didn't know about um so we're working with them we're also working with uh New Bedford VOC um they are interested in a project at our Middle School on the um the let's see that would be the East fence line regarding lighting uh that light that light the fields you've shut them off a few times when they've been left on so they're interested in participating with uh with their electrical group and have kids work on it so um John Bernat also at a licensed electrician that's what he's you know prior to being our facilities manager that's what he did for a career so he's going to work with them and uh so it seems like a great project uh we have the Dartmouth High School AP art show starting on the 10th at the Dartmouth Cultural Center 404 Elm Street so on the 10th they have their opening reception from five to seven they have other hours following that um it's actually there for from the 10th through the 25th um so there's quite a bit of opportunity for the community to go out and see see some incredible art Dartmouth High School also has tedx happening uh Friday March 10th during the school day so that's going to be live streamed on DHS TV media if anybody wants to tune in and see some TED Talks um we have MCAS coming up at the end of the month so we're busy with that dartmouth's finest is on the 17th St Patrick's Day Dartmouth dartmouth's finest tickets are going on sale next week and I just wanted to mention because Mr priority perrotti has worked so hard and we mentioned uh his his donors choose efforts get get highlighted earlier so I'll just mention that he's involved with a grant that was received along with temple Mitchell from the Middle School a mass Q Grant to outfit a TV studio at the middle school so um they've received the grant they're using some hand-me-down equipment from here that they've been able to replace that Mr perrotti's been able to replace so it's another exciting project for us yeah that's that's about it all right very good any questions for Mr Kylie oh great thank you okay thank you for all your work yeah I think yeah I think all right a couple of things that I've got uh boys basketball is in a round of 16 tomorrow night they're up in Charlestown they're playing the number five seed uh at 6 30 so we wish them well I mean all our sports teams this did absolutely excellent uh I saw the other day a gentleman that runs a thousand meters beat the school record yeah type of deal so you know congratulations to him uh the music department is having its annual Pops concert uh this Thursday night at seven o'clock uh doors open at 6 30.
they're also having their annual uh winter indoor show uh on the 18th that Saturday starting at two o'clock we've got some 35 or 40 groups going uh uh we've got our JV color guide is performing uh then on the percussion side and wins a wins group and then percussion and the two sets of awards and such so I will be schlepping out invitations and requests for people to help hand out two sets of awards I'll get you the times type of deal if if you're able to able to do that uh there was a big article in the New Bedford standard times about our art students that got those silver key Awards or whatever you know congratulations to them thank you very jealous when I see what these students can do with that I can't draw a straight line with a straight edge so I wish that uh I'm going to put this out to my committee uh the high school TV I think we also have met Ryan orruta he wants to do an interview with the school committee candidates you know one at a time type of deal but the same set of questions I don't know Muslim and Sam are all how you feel about that okay that's fine I mean I'll let him let him reach up I'll let him reach out to the candidates and set up a time just we'll just need to let um front desk the security yeah you know that it's of course coming in a type of deal so schedule get us get us scheduled with them I'm just thinking of that okay uh all right that's all I've got anybody Dr Jenkins um so I have been tasked with asking the school the school committee if we would be willing to once again sponsor a team for the def spelling bee this year as long as I don't have to spell out that is my policy as well Mr hands um I assume everyone's okay and I'll follow up I just always want to make sure I do these things in open meeting great I will let them know and I will when is that and I don't I don't remember I'm not on the I'm not I'm not on anymore so um it's coming up in April I will have the date for you at the next meeting April 12.
okay yeah I was about to look it up April 12th thank you I most likely will be on it awesome oh hey great okay thank you somewhere okay uh yeah same as last year's I think so I will follow up with you all um just I just again I'd like to do these things in open meetings so no no no no thank you no problem okay Kathleen yeah uh so I with my school with my special ed uh parent advisory Council hat on uh typically the month of February we do our survey which then we present is presented to the school department uh but because of the Department of Elementary and secondary education doing all of their tiered focused monitoring um and surveying our parents as well we shifted and moved that and so parents received a text and there is notification in the weekly backpack a flyer with the link for parents to um and Guardians to complete the survey uh and that will be open until the end of the month at which point then we'll we'll schedule um it's my counterpart Deb or someone to come in and or myself to to share the results of that it's a great opportunity for families to uh just provide input as to their their satisfaction and in terms of the services and supports that their students their children receive and then on March 14th so it'll be a very long day for me at Potter School we have the special at parent advisory Council from six o'clock to 7 30.