And um while they all have value, I think maybe we save the most impactful for last. So, on a personal note, I have to tell you that the two people coming up before you today, uh, Tim Cannon and Thea Hansen have been, um, I think instrumental in the growth and development of all of us. And so, they're leadership coaches, and I think that they know that their role is really primarily focused on campuses, but what we all learn from them on a regular basis just can't be uh, overstated. And so, we're grateful for them. um humble, dependable, just very impactful leaders. So, they're here to present tonight on their work with leadership coaching uh specific to campuses and what has transpired over the last few years under their leadership. So, we'll turn it over. Thank you to you. Um good evening, President Thompson, uh Dr.
So um I always like to ground our conversation in what my objectives are, but I want to make sure they're aligned to your objectives. Um, three objectives for tonight's conversation. First, you all will leave tonight saying, I have a good understanding of what strategic plan implementation means and what is this process like? How do these pieces work together and what's my role as a board member in supporting that work? Um, second, you all as board members will have a chance to review some draft measurable goals and be able to provide feedback. what sits well with you, what doesn't sit well with you, and tell us where we need to to move so that you feel comfortable moving forward with these goals. Um, and then finally, you will understand what was prioritized so far and what why did we prioritize some strategies and where are we moving forward from here?
So the ability to like blow up uh the the t the text, the font that was in there. Um and so there were other accessibility features that were available. Whatever is on a student's IEP, they will receive that on this. No different than what they would do for the AR assessment or a classroom common assessment. But again, that's us as the individual educators that ensure that those things are in place. I'm going to reiterate exactly what he said, which is why I really like the video. This does not replace the teacher, right? This does not replace the teacher. The teacher is the one that then takes the information that's provided. Similar to a doctor will take the results and has to analyze it and has to delve deeper into that and has to look, okay, does this student have an IEP? Is a student an English language learner?
But the purchase in excess of $25,000, that's already something we have to do. That's not even a board policy. That's law. If if I'm correct, maybe that's not your question. That's anybody who knows question. Yeah. It and that's addressed actually on the first page. There are um the let's see one two three four the fifth paragraph down. It talks about um greater than $25,000 from some purchases and then supplies down underneath number one. supplies, materials, or work involving expenditure in excess of 35,000 must comply with state bidding law um unless otherwise specified. So those limitations uh were previously approved by the board. Um I I think just like the other policy, there's just some concerns about the restrictiveness that um may happen with some of the added language. I don't know, Mr. Shepard, if you want to talk more about that. Yeah. So the the concern that I have looking at it from the technology perspective the first paragraph that's highlighted in in green I understand the intent of this and if you think back to you know when computers people were building computers in their garage right the parts were interchangeable and and you could go and get um any particular type there was competition right in today's technology field there's a lot of stuff that relies on certain um certain hardware certain types of programming ing that is very specific to a certain company uh or or product.
Okay, there we go. Mindy Hartman, yes. Darling, yes. Stacy Salt, yes. Julie Jetty, yes. Jason Janzit, yes. Katherine Potter, yes. Thank you. Open session ends at 7:06 p.m. Have a good evening, everyone.
and everything that we heard from our administrators. Again, it's working as a team to make sure that we're preparing students academically and in the technical skills for the economy of the future. And so that's really what we're here to talk about today. It's that um we're starting an initiative that's a clean energy um career technical education program. And we have a big vision for it. Um, it's to make GLTS the number one public technical high school in Massachusetts in preparing our students and our area residents for clean energy technical careers. And then a goal that's a little bit smaller um is to make sure that our students and our adult learners are aware of clean energy careers. They master the concepts and the technologies in the their CTE area and that they prepare to um pursue clean energy employment. after graduation. And um go on to the next slide there.
And she's not here. Maybe she's watching. and she sometimes watches. But our teacher of the year, Mercedes King, is um just also an amazing individual that I have really enjoyed getting to know over the years. Um similar to the story that Casey shared with us, she had left us um at one time to go work in another school district and then um I think I was one of the first people to find out she was coming back and was like over the moon that she came back to us. She's been with us a number of years and I was at an event um the one of the top people at um Teach for America is um leaving Teach for America to become one of the top people over at the Desert Botanical Garden. Steve Ericson who's been a great partner and to embarrass him was also a student of Dr.
McChord, greatest superintendent that I've ever worked for, and I've had six of them. See, um that $20 is coming your way. I thought it was 40. All right. Um, governing board members, cabinet members, we're really glad to be here tonight to share with you things that we do as in uh leadership coaches for our school district. I'm Tia Hansen. I work with the elementary schools. And I'm Tim Cannon. I work with the secondary schools. And uh you have our slide deck, but we'll go over a few things with you and then at the end if you have any other questions, we'd be happy to answer them. But um so our focus well I started in this position four years ago and Tim started it was he was he was the the original leadership coach 5 years ago and our our focus and our goal is to work with our new and also with our veteran um administrators to develop and continue developing their knowledge, their skills, their expertise.
We good with this so far? All right, great. Um so overviewing strategic plan implementation. So you probably saw this in January. Um and actually your strategic plan reflects this um framework really really well. This is our framework for strategic planning. Um it starts with a mission and a vision. That's the long-term aspirations for a school district. And then there's a theory of action which I know you spent a lot of time in January talking about what is a theory of action. It's the fundamental belief around what do we believe is going to lead to change and lead to us being successful in what we're promising to our community. Um, and then a short list of priorities. And I love that you have three priorities. That is a great short list. It's saying we're not doing everything. We're doing a focused set of things that we believe are most important and salient to our students and our community.
Does a student have dyslexia? Right? Like this is one data point with so many others that we have to take in consideration. Students are by far more than just one data point. I have a question about the discontinued um applications. Is the data from that going to be extracted or accessible because isn't STAR um showing benchmarks from previous years? Yeah. So we just recently adopted uh this past year, right? Uh branching minds. All that data is already populated and generated in branching minds. It is our data platform. So all the data that we are currently have up until this point with STAR is already in there and will continue to remain in there. And so then as I Ready populates, they'll have that for longevity purposes to compare to. But again, it's apples and oranges. They're not the same type of assessment. Okay. At all.
Uh and when you when you go out to bid for those types of products, you're you're only going to get one bid because there's generally only one contractor or one one bidder that works within that particular uh field and serves as a vendor for say Apple. Uh so everything is so specialized in the technology field that um I I worry yeah we could go through the bid process which is a very timeintensive process. uh but it would yield the the same result. We'd still be working with the same vendor who is the same authorized uh user of that particular product because in this day and age everything is so specialized. I just I reviewed my notes also what I think when we discussed this in the committee if you look at the paragraph on the front page 460 that begins with notwithstanding. So it says notwithstanding the above, the superintendent shall not commit to any single non-customary purchase or expenditure excluding personnel of greater than 25,000 without prior board approval.
And so the thing about it is is that um you know we we don't do this just out of the blue. It's because um there's all kinds of guiding documents and programs in our state that are helping us see that there is um at least in our state um a clean energy economy of the future and we don't want to leave our students out. So for example, there is a Massachusetts 2050 decarbonization roadmap and in that road roadmap put out by the state um they are setting things in place to um reduce emissions as low as possible by 2050 and then those that they can't um remove um they have different ways to absorb emissions and they're looking at um a couple different sectors to do that. the building sector, transportation, non-energy emissions, and also carbon sequestration and all of those areas of moving forward to lower emissions.
Laurens. Dr. Lauren was his theater teacher years ago and the connections just never end. Um, but in talking with him and Tony Best from Teach for America, I learned um how impressed they are with Kraton as a district because they feel like we do one of the best jobs of working with the teachers that they provide to us. And I learned that Mercedes was actually a core member teacher many years ago. And so, um, it's just very interesting all the interconnections. Um, but one of the things I was sharing with him is that one of the other amazing things about Mercedes is she works very hard with our students to help them make good choices about high school in preparation for thinking ahead to college. And I know there are a number of teachers who do that in our district. Um, she was one of the first ones that I saw do it with just amazing gusto and um, just so greatly appreciate about that about her.
But we do it in conjunction which has been very nice. We do it in conjunction with all of our other departments. We really collaborate well together. We talk about things that are happening. We learn as well so that we can help our leaders learn more which um flows or trickles down into what instruction is happening. And and then the focus as you see here, our why is all about student, teacher, and school success. And we really enjoy what we're doing. Although um as leadership coaches, you would think maybe it's working more with just our new administrators, we really do get the opportunity to work with all of them and um and help them with all of the things that are on their plates on a daily basis. Right. All right. Some of the things that we do um are to support the the school and the administrators.
Um and then you have the bottom part which has this green box around it which really is the crux of implementation. So you have priorities but how do you measure success in a way that we call it like a smart goal specific measurable aggressive yet achievable relevant and time bound. How do you have a smart goal tied to each of those priorities? And then you can drive your initiatives which are like the things you're focused on and your action steps. what's actually happening in the classroom. So, an example of a really strong initiative that I've been hearing a lot about is this ELA review, curricular review that's happening in Bavia um that Drew mentioned earlier tonight that there's been a review of ELA curricula materials. That's an initiative and the action steps are reviewing what's currently happening and thinking about creating those, you know, salts teams that are reviewing the actual work and creating new materials.
But yeah, we will have that information. to piggy to piggy back off of that question. Um, I guess it's we're we've implemented a lot of new initiatives in the district and we've we've been using star data and collecting star data I think since prior to uh even me being on the board. So, we have a lot of that and we've been comparing the cohorts and we've been watching them um and watching the students especially after COVID and coming back from that. Will we be able to compare to keep watching those cohorts grow um with the star move and then moving to the I Ready? Yeah, that's a good and then how do we know if we move to the I Ready? This is this is like my I have these questions, but then my main concern is is that we've got um we've implemented all of these new things, the frameworks and um professional development and the curriculums and the and if we switch the way that we are tracking um progress and students and seeing how they grow, how do we know if what we're implementing is making a difference if we're just starting out with a brand new set of information and data.
So I believe we felt that it that was all-encompassing of those areas listed such as um the consulting contracts um and other large purchases above 25,000. So it wasn't necessarily that we just felt that it was already covered also within the policy itself. So, I agree with Miss Hartman and the vendor contract conflict of interest. I think that's some that's language worth adding. Um, I'm having a hard time with the with the first three paragraphs. I think of the work that the district is doing with Ali Hearn and I believe that's an open-ended contract. Correct. Is that it's uh I guess it's open-ended. We are charged and have agreed ahead of time to the specific dates and how much each of those dates will cost. Right. And but that would be something under this would that would most likely have to come to the board first before we do we would approve the work with Aliharn potentially if we had multiple Ali Hearn dates in a single month.
They're technical careers. There's a lot of technical work in those. And um also, I think everybody's familiar with the incentives that we have in our state. First, of course, the mass save program um that's really driving a lot of employment um in energy efficiency and in heat pumps. And then you might not know that um just being rolled out right now there's a program called Renew right here in Lawrence Andover in North Andover. This is a program that's funded with um money from the fine on Columbia Gas after the gas explosions. And this is funding to for families with 120% of um median income and lower to receive solar panels, heat pumps, um what we call barrier removal, and um energy efficiency measures like insulation for free. So there's millions of dollars for that right now in our area. So again, it's looking at how we can connect um our students and the employment opportunities that are happening right now and over the next years.
So, um, we are very fortunate to have a lot of amazing teachers in Kraton and, um, I just want to take, as we're coming to a close for the year, this moment to once again say thank you. Um, they work so hard. They're so amazing. And um I know being a teacher is like a roller coaster because it can be exhausting and it can be exciting and it can be terrifying at times, but when you get off at the end, um like like Miss Aris was saying, you kind of need to sleep for a weekend. Um at least that's how I feel when I get off a roller coaster. So um so thank you so much for hanging in there with us this year and all you all the amazing things you do for our students in this district. um it it really does make a difference and um and you really are valued and appreciated.
Sometimes it's about um their vision and what they have, especially if they're a new principal. what's your vision for what you think you want your school to be and how are you going to develop that and and create that academic success for your students. Um we talk about school climate and the culture that's happening um within school districts across the nation and and within their own schools as well. We really Tim and I have focused a lot on the the next bullet which is about using data and using it effectively and and that's been a big change over over time since I've been here in the district for nine years and then using that data to make decisions and and and to understand what the data is and what it's representing. And then we also personally build and help our leaders build um their practices knowing about standards um taking professional growth applying it looking for what's happening with it and then noticing what are some challenges what could be some possible solutions getting them to think about those things as well.