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[Music] seniors and guests please remain standing for the presentation of colors by apollo high school's naval junior reserve officer training unit under the direction of lieutenant commander william mccammon and master chief windell menega [Applause] [Music] [Applause] whose brush stripes and bright stars [Music] rockets [Music] was [Music] for the land and the hope of god [Music] [Applause] ready please be seated good evening parents friends faculty and graduates welcome to the commencement ceremony for the graduating class of before i begin i would like to say thank you thank you teachers and staff for supporting and guiding us these past four years thank you parents and family members for enduring us our whole lives and a special thank you to my mom and dad for supporting me along the way and i won't say much more because i know my mom's already crying something i remember from this year was when my econ teacher mr lopez said that he woke up the day of his graduation and wish we could go back to the first day of freshman year and he said we would all feel the same way i didn't believe him because if you know mr lopez it's hard to believe anything he ever says but he was right about something it has been a long 13 years and we may not have had the easiest high school experience but i'm glad to say that our freshman and high school our freshman and senior year were an amazing time spent on campus rather than behind a computer screen even though being able to sit in bed while learning wasn't all that bad all of the things that we have been through up to this point make us who we are and the best part is we're not done yet we'll continue to experience things and make memories every day that mold us into who we truly are and who we are meant to become so as you go forward in life whether you're heading to a trade school a university the military or simply wherever the wind will take you remember to do so with an open mind and a full heart be ready for what the world throws at you and keep going because contrary to what the world keeps trying to tell you you don't need to have all of the answers right now claim your life and live it the way you want to live it but just remember never let failure get to your heart and never let success get to your head you're all capable of taking on any obstacle that may lie in your life in any country in the world at any time of the year you have all faced a challenging high school experience that has never happened before and you overcame it and made it worthwhile something that i would like to call unparalleled we were thrown into this thunderstorm of uncertainty at such a young age but we fought their own ways we could have never imagined we are the generations who make a difference because of the experiences and memories we are made up of so i hope you all cherish the small aspects of your past and what is to come i wish you luck in this next chapter of your lives congratulations thank you all and go rams i would like to introduce the washington high school choir under the direction of mr dabusk for one last time [Music] all right with the horses [Music] all that i see you know [Music] well life is [Music] is [Music] i'll fly away from [Music] oh [Music] our jews last [Music] the forever come together and that's where we'll go [Music] oh [Music] my way [Music] [Applause] hey rams good evening graduating class of 2022.
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[Music] so [Music] thank you good evening i'd like to call the may 23rd meeting of the diamond school committee to order you please stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i would ask if you have any cell phones beepers pages electronic devices if you would either shut them off or put them on silent and vibrate please also like to let you know that this meeting is being taken by dartmouth youtube television dhst media and it is available for rebroadcasts on dc tv channel nines on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 p.m friday at 6 saturday at 8 and sunday at 2 p.m it's also broadcast on channel 18 on monday and saturday at 12 noon and thursday at 3 p.m and there's usually some other times that they also put it in there we appreciate all the tv time that they give us uh roll call please miss gantham john nunes yeah mary wait here kathleen amaral here shannon jenkins chris oliver here thank you uh dr jenkins is a little under the weather tonight we hope she's feeling better so doing that okay first order of business uh recognition mr tebow the principal of dartmouth high school has a couple of uh presentations that he's going to talk about thank you mr nunes each year dartmouth high school is tasked with selecting two students to receive the superintendent's excellence award in order to make this difficult decision we ask for input from the two student support teams who nominate students for consideration based on academic excellence as well as contributions in leadership made to dartmouth high school the first recipient of this year's superintendent's excellence award is a young man who is well known throughout the dartmouth high school community as a polite respectful quiet young man who leads by the power of his example joshua moniz is an exceptional student leader and has been for four years at dartmouth high school joshua has excelled in many of the most rigorous courses offered at dartmouth high school including such courses as ap english language and composition ap calculus bc project lead the way slash ap computer science a and ap physics and that's just his senior costly joshua has also successfully completed ap united states history and a dual enrollment pre-calculus with trigonometry course at a local college while josh's academic excellence is undeniable it is as i alluded to his leadership in service to the dartmouth high school community that is truly commendable joshua has served on the student council for four years and is currently the president of the student council additionally joshua has served as a student representative to the school committee a member of the school council a member of key club he's a student representative to the southeast regional student advisory council and is a member of the southeast regional student advisory council's diversity and inclusion subcommittee josh also serves as associate editor to our school's award-winning student newspaper the spectrum wager hush finds the time i'm not sure but he's also a student musician and a student athlete as well josh is a member of the unified track team one of our student volunteers for the special olympics day games which we just posted again on friday he also serves as a percussion section leader in dartmouth high school's national championship marching band and is a member of the stage and concert band as well for all of the reasons i've listed josh was also selected earlier this year as the francis w galishawa scholarship recipient and josh will definitely be missed by the dartmouth high school community but we wish him well as he continues his education in the fall at stonehill college where he plans to major in computer engineering so while joshua is exceptional so too is our second recipient which is mr evan garcia evan is both an outstanding student academically as well as a quiet and effective student leader who similar to to josh leads by the power of his example evan has taken and successfully completed many of the most rigorous courses offered at dartmouth high school including ap statistics ap environmental science ap human geography ap psychology and again those four ap courses are what he's taking currently this year alone in his senior year he's also successfully completed ap world history ap united states government and politics ap english literature with ap research ap united states history and ap english language with ap seminar as a result of evan's academic commitment and drive evan has been named an ap scholar with distinction and is eligible to receive the ap capstone diploma in keeping with a similar theme evan's academic achievement is certainly noteworthy but the leadership and service contributions that evan makes and ha and have made has made over the past four years are truly what distinguishes him from his peers and makes him deserving of this recognition evan has been a four-year member of our unified athletics program a member and current president of our best buddies chapter which just hosted for the first time a friendship ball a few fridays ago in addition evan is a member of the student council and has served has served i believe two different times as the student rep to the school committee evan is also a student athlete and at dartmouth high school he's been a member of the indoor winter track team each of his four years here at dartmouth high school and most recently this past winter season served as captain of our indoor track team in the fall evan will be majoring in political science at the college of the holy cross i believe i can speak for all members of the dartmouth high school community when i share that the void created by these two exceptional young people in their graduation we will miss them for sure and we're confident that other leaders will step up but they deserve all the recognition they receive and dartmouth high school is certainly indebted to them so i'd like to congratulate both evan and josh and we look forward to presenting them the award at the scholarship and awards evening on june 1st [Applause] thank you mr tebow well deserved for those two young men any comments from my colleagues chris sure i'll just say uh congratulations to them both two outstanding individuals uh we got to know i've gotten to know them both um so no best of luck in their college endeavors yeah as my colleague just stated i mean i'm not surprised they're two incredible young men uh who i've been fortunate to interact with you know in my work here and my service here uh so i'm not surprised and i wish them all all very you know the best in their future um i look forward to hearing what's to come and i'll just um just uh you know pay back on what my colleagues said i mean i've had a lot of fun just like watching them you know grow through like their middle school years into their high school years and you know i can you know speak to their leadership i know just uh besides just sitting in this room you know i've watched them out with my like own younger sons and so as well as my daughter's a senior and it's you know they are just really truly nice kids and those are the kinds of kids that i'm just really proud and humbled to be you know seeing on their way and graduating from dartmouth high school i think we have a lot to be proud of and you know certainly they're a product of a really strong and heartfelt community that supported them so um i i think that we're really lucky they're both staying in massachusetts for a whole lake crossing it's total so um you know they're gonna rock this world so we're really lucky i have no doubt about it both both fine young gentlemen and you know i agree with what mr tebow said and you know where do they find time to do to to do everything you type of deal with you know the class the the class load that they're taking and such so my heartfelt congratulations to both of them i wish them nothing but the best as uh graduation comes up in the next couple of weeks and they move on you know kind of as i always say you know come back and see us and make us all proud okay next right it's great nighttime this is what this is when somebody says why do i sit here and this is things like this that really make it special uh our next uh recognition is our special education parent advisory council and i looking for miss townsend and ms august good evening everyone the dartmouth special education advisory council known as the cpac is a parent organization that focuses on bringing support and information to parents and families of students with disabilities while many of their speakers and topics focus on supporting students with disabilities dartmouth cpac meetings have and always will be open to the public and all families parents of students with and without disabilities have provided positive feedback after attending one of the cpac meetings this year in addition to the annual basic rights workshop the cpac sponsored sessions focused on anxiety in children and adolescents secret lives of teens and tweens and healing post pandemic i would like to take a moment to sincerely thank kathleen amaral and deb august for their roles as cpac executive board members they've done a tremendous job bringing in relevant high quality presentations to all parents and families and especially this year focusing the presentations on the mental health needs of students and families i will be turning the microphone over to mrs amaral and mrs august who will share the names of students and staff that were individually recognized in our own annual cpac survey sent out to parents but before i do so i would like to formally recognize all of the special education staff in dartmouth for their dedication and commitment to our students and families to all of the general educators special educators related service providers and teacher assistants who support students with disabilities i sincerely thank you for the incredible work that you do this year and every year and now i would like to turn the microphone over to mrs amaral and mrs august for their recognition thank you get nervous standing on this side over here i used to do it often as you guys remember before sitting on that side but um it's different on that side it is different i just got a little whoo my knees got a little wiggly uh so yeah we um deb and i have been at this for many a lot of years and uh the best 11 years oh my gosh it's about 11 years it's been a long time but it's like it's like it was yesterday and we love this part so every year the department of elementary and secondary education or at least every three years when they do a tiered monitoring process they ask us if we've engaged and they asked our how our relationship with the district has been and they sort of require us to kind of get a pulse on what parents their experience is and so each year we survey parents and guardians around you know their previous year's experience and we share that information with the school committee oftentimes you know there are themes that arise and deb will present those findings later on in this meeting but what we also do because we recognize you know the the the pretty uh intense and uh uh coordination and effort it takes to support you know our students my son your son and our community we like to add in some recognition to the survey so we don't want it to be all this is what you're doing wrong we don't want it to be you know we certainly don't edit any of the comments you've got them all unedited but we like to recognize both staff as well as students i think you just peeked at this paper in the district yearly okay good uh and so i'm gonna first start off by naming the staff who are nominated from each level and i ask if it's okay chair and if we if when you hear your name i know every not everyone was able to make it if you come on over to the middle here so that at the end we can get a photograph of everyone if it's okay with you so i'm going to start off with the high school and so just to backtrack again because i'm nervous is that we ask parents and guardians to nominate a staff person who has gone above and beyond to make their student feel supported and safe and valued and has given you know the commentary has ranged from just extra support checking in you know to make sure that the child in checking in at home and being you know having great communication those sorts of things and similarly with the peers we ask for those students you know a student who has uh also gone above and beyond to make your student feel welcome and included and you know just uh just the kindness and the leadership shown so it takes a lot to be nominated and not everyone you know we have fourteen percent participation in this survey but everyone answers the question that they want to nominate someone and many of the folks that were nominated were nominated multiple times so when you talk about themes that kind of bubble up but then of course there are other folks that aren't nominated that does not mean that they are less deserving because we have a great community here so without further ado i'm going to start with a little surprise and get it out of the way because my dear friend and colleague deb august was nominated not by me but deb has done a lot of those of you who know we did sign this one no you didn't that's okay so deb was nominated those of you who know deb know the work that she does um uh for all students so i'm gonna backtrack a couple years and when my daughter didn't even have her in class and needed some extra help in math deb welcomed her into her class before after school i don't think emma took you up on that often but the door is always open and in terms of our students with disabilities deb has coordinated bowling clubs and filtered that in from the high school to the middle school and has volunteered her time with the best buddies and is just just an incredible person i'm not going to cry so i just want to hand this to you first you don't have to go stand here because i need your help and i just want to say that um this mostly goes for the kids not me it's all about the kids and it's not about me yeah absolutely yeah yeah they make it amazing yes it's talking about them so i'm gonna name you're very welcome well deserved so i'm gonna name folks and and i know some people aren't here but i do want to name them so from the high school we have brian crowley was awarded for having made an impression on students and melissa fitzgerald has also been nominated and awarded for also being super helpful and um you know to her students so please take your award and go towards the middle oh stay right there stay right there don't listen to me listen to the man the boys okay and so we have deb brian and melissa from dartmouth high school thank you and if you just stay there and now i'm going to move to the middle school and again these are staff who have gone above and beyond for their students so much so that parents and guardians have filled out this and added some incredible commentary around what these uh this these staff do for for the students um elizabeth dufault please come on up um i'm going to keep it in the family now i'm going to call mr bill garcia up here for the incredible work you do uh francis gothier anthony martin susan pelick and kim rio please come on up for the incredible work that you do so stay there please he's not yeah he was unable um and so now we're gonna move to quinn and sorry don't worry wait till i'm in here wait till we swap i'm not that coordinated it'll be done uh our first nomination uh from quinn elementary is lisa aruda mary thank you mary bolton is not able to join us today but she was awarded el canessa was awarded i don't believe al was able um ashley couture pozzo was awarded excellent caitlin defaria was also awarded and again the commentary that has come in for all of these teachers really ranged from patience and guidance and support and just all good stuff rebecca kelly was awarded from quinn desiree meta was awarded melissa sullivan is awarded lindsey vavitas was awarded and mrs fiera laura vieira hey this is the best now we're going to squish together more as we add mellow staff i believe everyone's here from demillo but andrea migno was awarded from de mello melissa nunes was also awarded mrs olean jasmine oleen right there and danielle santos so that's demelo now we're really going to have to squish together as we get to potter although a few folks were unable to make it we do have more that's great you gotta stop me in such a great district stop being such great so teresa baird from potter i don't believe she was available which is understandable paul schwinnard is nominated and awarded darren floren carrie gregoire caitlyn callback melissa lawrence the nurse is in the house [Applause] last minute unable to make it i believe yes uh lori murphy jenna reese and tricia weaver and i did that out of order because also rick porter was also nominated for this award he's here and i am so glad that you didn't say oh no this is for all the because this is for you and i'll share i'll share with each of you what what folks said about you so that's potter for real and we're going to move to cushman margaret collins was awarded christine fastori was awarded i think lisa perry was also awarded make a great team uh and julia emilia julie there you are there you are was also awarded from cushman and so thank you all [Applause] thank you all very good much so i'm gonna turn it over to you all right miss this is august okay did i lose my listing no you had it organized all right so we're going to start with recognizing some students we're going to start with the high school and we've got evan garcia [Applause] and jacob kearney [Applause] from dartmouth middle school we have uh olivia arrougeo [Applause] from potter school we have julian amaral [Applause] lucas aguiar [Applause] congratulations now from uh quinn elementary school you have jeffrey sylvia [Applause] we also have landon velozo [Applause] we also have eva seemos [Applause] elsie smart [Applause] uh jayla conward johnson and tegan carter [Applause] from demelo elementary school they have keegan lopes [Applause] liliana paveo [Applause] avery imbo [Applause] reese rem x and eli friedman nice and from cushman we have sadie thomas [Applause] thank you congratulations everyone thank you [Applause] thank you very much no problem thank you thank you [Applause] now that that part is done uh we always love to have an audience but we also understand students have homework so we'll hang tight for a minute if you guys want everybody needs to leave we're good with that [Music] we'll talk thank you mr galashaw awesome later they're great okay at this point in time in the agenda we have uh set aside 10 minutes for public comment as to anything that is on the agenda tonight so if anybody is there and has any questions or concerns about the agenda items you may step up to the microphone don't all rush at once okay that takes care of that next on our agenda is our wonderful junior student representative uh naina thank you mr nunes hi everyone to start off advanced placement testing has now concluded dartmouth high school students completed ap exams in nearly 20 different courses we would like to thank all of our teachers as well as our ap coordinator mrs chavier for helping prepare for success on the ap exams throughout the year our grade 10 students completed the mathematics mcas last week our students demonstrated their commitment and perseverance in our 10th and our 10th graders have now all completed their testing requirements our grade 9 students are busy preparing for their biology mcas exam which will be administered on june 6th and june 7th on thursday may 19th the newest members of the national honor society were inducted into the dhs chapter of nhs we would like to thank mrs enixon mrs fiera and the nhs officers for their leadership and hard work in putting together the ceremony on friday dartmouth hosted the special olympics day games with nearly 100 dartmouth high school students volunteering to make this powerful day of inclusivity possible we would like to especially highlight the efforts of mr bro mr capello mrs coker pierpoint and all of the support staff that make the special olympics possible additionally it would not be possible without the support from our community partners like like the dartmouth police and the massachusetts state police finally we want to wish our seniors well as their last day of classes is this friday end of year events are set to kick off next week and each one of you will be greatly missed thank you thank you thank you any questions comments no thank you very much thank you very much it's amazing it's the last day for seniors already oh my god another year i won't cry this is so quick here you go thank you thank you all right keep them right here okay all right back to continuing on with the the good stuff that we have tonight i'd like to call up dr justine dale principal of the andrew b cushman school and their spotlight on cushman students oh and sorry lightning i apologize i didn't see them miss o'neill well thank you everybody for the opportunity being here tonight so we have myself and our literacy coach lori o'neil and we have a number of slides we're going to fly through them there were some videos that were embedded that i don't think are working because of some technology glitches but we'll do our best to get through it okay so i thought it was important that i share a little bit about how special ed students come into the cushman school as three-year-olds so we work closely with the early intervention partners and we get a notification saying oh these students will be turning three and next thing you know we get a referral and that means that i will be attending a transition planning conference with those partners and i'll have an opportunity to meet the family and meet the child and then after that meeting i will put together an evaluation of the various assessments that need to be done for that child we'll have those assessments completed the child's brought to school now they're only at that point maybe you know two years nine months old and then once the assessments are completed we'll have another eligibility meeting to determine whether or not they would qualify for special education slot so i want that cycle just to be known as that's how our special education preschool slots are filled at cushman so we have the integrated preschool and in the integrated preschool we have eight peer students and seven students with special needs up to 15 in the classroom and the peer students come through us through the lottery process that was held in march and this year we had 110 applications for 49 peer slots so we have a lengthy wait list at this point and we have spring screening that will be taking place actually it's taking place starting tomorrow and we will screen all the preschoolers not only the ones who who were able to get into the program but those on the waiting list and any other child in the community that is approaching three years old or three years old and that also we will do screening that will tell us if that child needs further evaluations in any of our areas otp speech and language at cushman school we are so lucky to have the related service providers at the building so together we work together in supporting our students in all of these areas and when i came to dartmouth i was so excited to see that we actually had our support people in-house and what a what a opportunity that is to have them right there with us they're in-house we're able to utilize the resources of the building and also do some cross content areas here is a friend who's playing in the ball pit in our motor room with one of our speech and language tas and it's just so much fun to see how much this room is used you'll see it in some other pictures here's another picture in our motor room with some of our friends using a swing and any child can go into the motor room doesn't have to be a special needs child it can be any child it just needs to have some energy output when it's especially when it's winter outside here's another uh picture of a support person in our speech and language department integrating literacy into the services that she's providing and to kindergarten now at cushman we have four kindergarten classrooms and two tas and this year we had two co-taught classrooms and in those co-taught classrooms of course we have students with ieps and in kindergarten they have art music pe library along with technology and that brings me to why i have this wonderful lady here our students are supported through our literacy coach and she is going to speak to you about the reading and writing and phonics that takes place in kindergarten so we teach reading writing and phonics instruction in we deliver in a workshop model sorry so here are some just some snapshots of the kids working both with the teacher individually and uh the far one on the right is the mini lesson so there are three parts to a um workshop model and it's really an instructional practice it's just the way we deliver the instruction and it helps students um we will deliver a mini lesson at first and the teacher really models a skill or a strategy then there's independent practice where students get to practice that skill individually or in a small group and this is really where the teacher moves around the classroom offering conferences and targeted feedback and finally we have the share where the students come back together and as a whole group for reflection or debrief so this is just i don't think that we can see the book but she's in a reading workshop and really the goal of a reader's workshop is to teach students strategies um for reading and comprehension the um the model the workshop model really allows teachers to differentiate and meet the needs of all their students so students are not reading the same book they're not working on the same level but um they're just they're receiving feedback and just moving up the ladder as they go so it really helps to foster a love of reading and gives students a chance to practice their reading strategies this was a little clip i don't i guess it's not going to work right so he was just reading and you can really hear the humming of the classroom in back of him it's not quiet he's reading as though he's alone and you can hear the teacher you can hear the other kids reading their book and he happens to be working individually there are small groups going on there are partners going on this guy was reading a piece reading a piece of his writing so in for writer's workshop students work on informational pieces narratives and arguments he was writing an argument about not running in the hallway working really hard to reread his writing and he was very successful he could read everything he had put down so he the students really have come a long way from the beginning of the year to this this point of the year um we have them write authentic pieces for real audiences and um and and they really they really believe that they're changing the world with these these arguments and finally in um in phonics workshop oh this was a clip yeah that's too bad it was good um the teacher is so the unit that they're they're working on right now um in phonics is really that you can use phonics in of course your reading and writing and that's that's of course why we we study phonics but she was trying to get them to to add like um the unit is asking students to add things like uh magical magical words um and so the really they they're just they're they're not real words they would just they had to come up with a word in order to um create a magic spell i think it was and then the students were working really hard to um to write those words and these two little friends were going to turn the cafeteria into a chocolate factory and they were writing their magical words and it's too bad you can't hear the video but it was so sweet and they were saying the magical word and the other friend was that a t or was that a p sound they were like correcting each other it was so sweet so then i wanted to i was going to go over the bridges because i know you've been hearing a lot about the implementation and it's been happening at cushman as well and preschool and in kindergarten and teachers have really embraced it and doing a great job but i wanted to share some unique things about cushman school here is an outdoor community meeting we have three expectations take care of yourself take care of others and take care of our school very simple and we use that language and the children understand that and we are feinstein school and i'm so excited to say again this year we have the kindness tree and students are really understanding now what it means to be kind to be kind at home at school and in their community they write kind deeds they bring it to school they or draw a picture of what they've done their name goes up on a heart or a leaf and goes on to the tree we take pictures we celebrate it and um i just i just adore this here is an example of the feinstein junior scholar keepsake journal that we pass out at the beginning of the year each student gets a journal and on the cover of your journal you have your golden ticket which is a cherished thing that you want to hang on to every tuesday um the golden tickets are selected by the feinstein foundation and they are advertised on the news and and facebook page and this year we had claire worley receive a golden ticket which means that she receives 500 for a non-profit agency of her choosing she chose buttonwood zoo and with that she was able to get a close encounter with a red panda and the school wins five thousand dollars and i um with the school together we did a a big drive for gifts to give and i was able to take some kindergartners there with their parents on a little tour to see the foundation if you haven't seen it it's it's worth going to look at it is amazing and these children were able to leave with a stuffy of their choosing and a book of their choosing also through the feinstein foundation we uh receive free shows and things like that and this is the birwana iguana show that we had and um the children were entertained with a variety of reptiles and we had big boa constrictors and it was amazing and the kids loved it one of the things we do at cushman is that we really we want to go beyond awareness of different disabilities to acceptance and this little girl's shirt says it all we were celebrating diversity and um looking at autism and accepting autism and also the little girl on the right you know she has a sibling that has down syndrome and she had a beautiful handmade family shirt that we just were celebrating and we do that in a variety of ways one of the things we did we had a spirit week and on the spirit week one every day was a different day and this day was comfy clothes day because we wanted to have a sensory friendly friday where we would teach the children about children having sensory sensitivities and we all were able to wear comfy clothes we had the classroom lights shut down and just use the natural light and we also wore sunglasses if we wanted to wear sunglasses just to kind of calm our bodies and here's another day this was celebrating neurodiversity and the beauty in the diverse spectrum of the human mind we were all wearing rainbow and tie-dye clothes finally our newest edition of cushman we're going to end with that is our new little playground some of the feinstein monies have gone towards this playground and um you'll see the picture there all the students were watching it be installed they just naturally set themselves up like that and i said oh my gosh what a great picture and then obviously the next site is uh enjoying it on the first day so we are building our playground slowly at cushman school last year we had our fence our field fenced in this year we got the structure and now i'm looking to get a big sand house sandbox with shade for next year and here we are this is our um what would you call this our logo and this is put together by hannah roberto our art teacher and this year we were able to get this on sweatshirts and have spirit where cushman so thank you any questions thank you thank you ma'am great thank you any questions no it's it's it's great and i will say it's so great to see a playscape there like finally for these because i know they always are looking over the fence but i mean just everything you do it's just like you know speaks so much about like warmth and kindness and it's just uh i mean my my son went through there and i can just you know it just emanates from that that building from the people that you have working there so it is a great team so we're really i'm really grateful thank you thank you this is amarillo yeah no thank you for sharing um and appreciate you kind of talking about that timeline because it is it is you know cumbersome and it's a process in terms of students filling peer slots versus students needing or being found eligible for special education i'm wondering i think i asked this last time too it are the early intervention sort of referrals coming in on a manual you don't have much to base it on pre-covet but is it has it been uh smooth or are they coming in um as expected or are there i'm just worried about you know the state of the last two years and students you know with even eohs sort of like changing around keeping kids on eligibility for ei versus transitioning you know during the pandemic is that kind of coming into a routine that seems it is it's really falling into place now we did have an influx there for a little bit because they were children that weren't just turning three they were already older and it was a little breakdown right there so um beginning next year we probably have about half of our spot spots filled already so um depending on what the pace well it's a ruling enrollment so it's a hard one to to pinpoint as to how many you're going to come in very good um and yeah just a plug for like the cpac it's always a resource for young parents who either want to learn more get support through about special education with the parent advisory council or step into a leadership spot on the c-pac and sort of take the reigns i think that's when they got us right um but yeah and so i'll probably connect after maybe we could even do something where we kind of have a night to talk with young families about what the cpac is and how we can help support and alleviate some of the questions they have for you in terms of just you know the role that we feel in that way so okay thank you chris mr oliver thank you mr zamora thank you for your presentation it's great to see the students enjoying themselves all the special events that takes place there it's also nice to see some some type of novelty back in there back in their lives and back in the education environment i guess my question is i actually have a couple of questions one so when you when you talk about the referral process well the referral process early intervention and all this this is also um the one includes the one classroom over at potter as well or is that like separate i'm just curious is it just do we consider it all one big preschool program in dartmouth or yeah it is um and the potter uh program generally fills up first so we we go from there and fill up our slots but yes it's one of so it's seven preschool classrooms as a district program okay great and my second question is how are you finding because i know obviously with the budget we're responsible for the budget um in every year we hear about you know needs that arise i'm across the district and we keep hearing about um related services how are you finding um are the students coming in more needy uh because of the pandemic and because of covet and i you know i believe in universal but i would love to see universal pre-k um i think it's a you know there's a lot to be said about that and i think that a lot of the research speaks for itself um but i'm just curious as to are we seeing um the needs increase yeah um yeah i i have a spreadsheet that um just kind of shows everybody who's come in and where we've tested and what the diagnosis were or what not if they qualified or not and um beth townsend and i have had numerous conversations with regards to why we see so many children with autism coming through if the doctors have been maybe you know over diagnosing it because these children have not had the opportunity to socialize they've been at home and they are you know stilted because of that so i don't know but i will tell you that the kids that are coming in are are way more needy than what um than what i saw last year and what i've seen in my my career the need for speech and language overall is the number one hands-down area that really needs to be a priority for addressing the needs of these little three-year-olds okay thank you very much great presentation thank you good questions thank you [Applause] okay this is august your turn you get to talk about this cpac survey results you're useful that's right thank you all right so um this is based on the survey that was uh sent out to the community i think we had about 83 uh people respond i'm just going to start with a little background for the cpac and then i'm just going to report out the data that came through right so special education parent advisory council so we abbreviate that as the cpac okay this is our dartmouth one every problem every public school district in massachusetts is required to establish a cpac massachusetts state law assigns both an advisory and a participatory function to cpacs membership is offered to all parents of children with disabilities and other interested parties so this is kind of a little plug to you know to get more members and to get more people letting them know that we are here to help all right um we are a parent-run group our mission is to help inform parents of special needs kids we try to help educate parents on their rights and inform them of the many resources available we sponsor many workshops workshops events throughout the school year the most significant is our annual resource fair we are thrilled to bring it back this huge event it is scheduled for september 25th mark your calendars this resource fair helps us raise money which we donate to support a variety of school sponsored events sports activities we also sponsor professional speakers to lead workshops for our parents and community examples of such events that we support um is the unified bowling club um the dartmouth best buddies chapter um and we also just recently had a webinar on depression post-pandemic so that's been a couple of things that we've put our money towards all right so starting on some of the results of our survey so services children received again we had 83 responses and and that's pretty much throughout the whole thing will be the 83 responses so uh two children for ei services which about 2.4 percent of our survey iep services are 67 children out of the 83 responses 80.7 504 plan accommodations 13 children 15.7 percent and iep or a 504 that's in process we have five children in that area at six percent so children's uh placements uh early intervention would be the the blue i don't really have a number there so uh pre-calc either pre-calc oh i was just doing the br the math is in the brain that's right so pre-k either cushman or potter it looks like 9.6 percent pre-k private school um we've got the like a light orange in there i don't see it so pre-k out of district would be the green 18.1 percent i think my colors are a little bit off on this i think the quinn is the 18.1 percent demelo's 13.3 percent that was grades uh k-5 parter school grade k-5 is 14.5 percent i would say the pre-k either cushman or potter was the 8.4 purple is a is less than the one-third i'm assuming like the colors aren't really matching all right that's a breakdown there all right details about children's placement we have uh 12 responses smec the tlp that's the transitional living regular education placement related pull out speech therapy at potter these are just comments as to a children's placement greater new bedford vocational technical high school pre-k at cushman the pals program smack in rochester iep for speech services uh grade four i don't know what the asterisk meant that's how they put it cushman kindergarten suffers anxiety and has adhd receives help with reading so those were just a couple 12 responses that we had a special ed eligibility and referral process was smooth and efficient they were asked to please rate and at the bottom i did put how the rating went if it was closer to one if they disagreed and closer to six if they were in agreement so two were in disagreement 2.4 percent four um we had a 4.8 so then we had six responses at 7.2 percent 11 13.3 percent were starting to be more agreeable 25.3 percent and then 39 to 47 evaluation reports were explained clearly and were easy to er to understand again closer to the disagreement we have two response responses two point four percent a little bit more towards the agreeable two at two point four percent right right in the middle uh three at three point six percent four a rating of four is seven eight point four percent rating of five twenty people responded at twenty four point one percent and in total agreement forty nine fifty nine percent the components of the iap 504 were explained in detail we didn't have anybody in disagreement a rating of two five people six percent rating of three two people two point four percent rating of four getting kind of closer to the agreement eight nine point six percent rating of five twenty one people twenty five point three percent and then a rating of 6 47 56.6 if you guys want me to slow down i will we're good all right parents concerns were addressed during your child's team meeting so we have uh two people with a rating of one two point four percent uh one person with a rating of two one point two percent uh rating of three was five six percent rating of four six percent sorry six people 7.2 percent rating of 5 18 which was about 21.7 percent and then um in total agreement 51 people 61.4 percent and parent concerns prior to and after a meeting are addre addressed in a timely fashion we have four in the uh disagreement with a rating of one one person at a rating of two 1.2 percent a rating of three five people six percent uh rating of four ten people twelve percent rating of five getting closer to agreement sixteen nineteen point three percent and then a rating of six 47 people 56.6 and then uh covert compensatory services were considered so we have 33.7 percent were saying yes 22.9 uh had a rating of no and then not applicable 43.4 percent okay and if kovid compensatory that's a hard word services were needed were service services provided and or a plan put in place that is being followed 83 responses again not applicable 62.7 percent yes this happened 19.3 percent and no 18.1 percent so almost like split on the yes and no there and we're getting close to here to the end do you believe your child's placement and service delivery is appropriate so we had three people each with a rating of one two and three then we had thirteen people with a rating of four fifteen point seven percent this again goes with the disagreement to agreement and then 18 with a rating of five 21.7 percent and 43 people with a rating of six 51.8 percent and does your child experience bullying as a result of their disability 74.7 percent said no 9.6 percent is not applicable and 15.7 was a yes if you answered yes to the previous question has the bullying been discussed with school addressed and remedied 79.5 percent was not applicable 10.8 percent was a no and six percent was a yes and strengths i am happy with the services dedicated and educated staff staff has good communication they genuinely love my son was this part of it i would i mean i'm gonna hold off on that yeah yeah that's in the other part not that we don't want to hear the strengths but right i think that was part of that [Laughter] and i'm like it appeared all right any any questions questions mr oliver sure i'll start first of all i want to thank both of you for your great presentation that you did earlier to recognize our staff and students thank you and i i've had the i haven't been recently obviously because of covet but years ago i had the opportunity to go to some of the cpac meetings and um i think that's where i actually got to know mrs amroll and i thank you as well and um i just can't say enough about the cpac and the dartmouth cpac and how it's run in the time and the effort that i know all this takes and the dedication um so for for that i thank you both yeah um for your for your dedication to this because it it means a lot and obviously um you know you're always looking you're trying to recruit people to to take over i i see where this is going um so um i'm hoping that you know more people will more parents will step up and you know help out with that you know i think this phil's definitely fills a need in any district to hear even though it's a very small percentage to hear parents voices um and diamonds no different and i appreciate all the data that you shared with us um i think it's very helpful um you know and um yeah it certainly lets us know where we stand as a district and we're with with this so um i thank you both exactly thank you thank you no i just thank deb she she does she does look great she does a great job and we um all those like you know well but we we go on the road with this show we're a lot of fun um but i won't mention any names right now just but we we also so cpac is open to parents and other interested parties so um not only do we have uh parents from other districts pre-covered more so but even during our virtual events attending our meetings um like we see like miss townsend says from we have liaisons from schools and we have one in particular who is out caring for you know her beautiful uh daughter um who they're right in the mud with us and helping us coordinate events and organize um you know things uh they keep me in line because i can be a little bit of a chatterbox and all over the place and we each have our skill set but um you know there are a lot there are other folks that that are in the mix with us including staff and you hold that dual role so it's really valuable that's i don't have anything else to say okay yes well i'll say like speaking of dual roles again thank you and both of you you know again i have to echo what my colleague had said is you know excellent presentation you know it's always really informative um you know it looks like just from like statistically you know again i know it's a relatively small sample but it seems that for the most part we're doing pretty well and that people certainly seem to be feeling like that they're being advocated for and their students for the most part are receiving the services that they want they felt like again there are exceptions of course but it sounds like i know i went through the 504 process like recently you know it it feels like you know those just you know looking at the evidence most people feel that they're being they're understanding the process and that that itself is really important because it speaks to accessibility and language um so i feel really good seeing that i mean anytime we see bullying connected to you know disabilities it's always you know whatever that percentage is like one is too many so that's always a concern i did take note that in that case we have you know parents it looked like they hadn't followed up you know again i'm just trying to like you know parcel through so um you know but but that aside you know certainly and just the testimony of everybody we saw come to you know be you know this morning or that smart excuse you know in the presentation that people feel so supported by their staff i mean the numbers of people that we had you know it says especially you know looking back over the last two years we know that you know these children in particular have had an you know very hard time you know with kovids so the fact that they're feeling supported and connected to staff and to the point that parents are writing that is is really a testimony to um what's happening in our schools so um thank you very much i mean one of my questions i did have that was how many people do you tend to have attending your meetings and have you found a change you find more parents now that you're when you've worked on a virtual platform i must imagine that depending on what you're offering there's a shift but you have a lot of people regularly attending like how does that i think it fluctuates i think before covid um it would fluctuate i'd say sometimes it'd be 10 sometimes it'd be 20.
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mr hayden mr cyrillo miss marmal here mr rossi miss fitzgerald mr lamontagne yeah present okay can i have a motion for uh minutes of mage 10 discussion changes all those in favor anyone opposed jerry would you be kind enough to give us a cash balance report please leo may i have just a few minutes oh i'm set up and then uh sorry come back back no no my apologies no no problem uh you'll notice uh there was a handout given for the consolidated cash reconciliation report uh revolving fund report in the budget report communications i see no donations articles there was a mtel communication and literacy test preparation workshop medical assistant health fair and a plant sale is there any public participation this evening none think so well i mean you can slow down if you want okay we have no student report this evening correct it's in the packet but we don't have no we don't have a the student i don't think she's going to be here this evening because we have we have uh school council right yeah yeah so becoming late right right but i don't believe maureen will be here no i think susan was going to give her oh sue is going to give her yeah susan's going to do this oh okay so susan will do it okay all right when she comes in okay all right uh graphics program do we have an update on that john uh oh okay yeah just to wrap it up for closing graphics is uh some data if you look at the i gave you a document says labor market trends in graphic design in massachusetts it shows that the job market was shrinking to the point where it's at about one percent over the next 10 years and very few jobs openings year after year so that was the number one reason why we closed graphics and then the second reason we closed graphics uh the other major reason we closed graphics was the we found that there was each year less and less interest in the program basically we believe because of the job market and was also getting difficult to find instructors in that career area for teaching and and then that the other thing that shows a a lack of job opportunities trends was over the last four years that graphic was uh that we had graphics that the numbers for co-op continue to uh be very small so in 2019 we only place six kids all year uh 2020 one student all year we could only find one job for graphic students in 2021 there was two jobs and this year we've had two or two two co-op jobs for uh seniors i believe they were the same jobs as the when they were juniors they continued into their senior year so that just shows that the job market has shrunk and having difficulty placing students so that was a rationale let's go through the rationales questions for the superintendent there are um some uh links on the bottom of the one of the pages if you want to do more you want to you can uh go to those websites websites and get more information as well that supports the rationale for closing graphics frank uh john can you email me uh a copy i can email that to everyone so they'll have the link i'll have susan send that out tomorrow thank you oh i can send it out then i'll send it out mr lilly i just want to confirm that we did find a position for the graphics teacher who was here the graphics teacher that was here is uh has applied for the opening we have in uh uh business to business tech and um so i we haven't we haven't gotten to recommend this principle i don't believe has gotten a recommendation on that position yet but she the graphics instructor has experience in certain aspects of the frameworks and business tech so she qualified so she would be a a possible candidate to teach that program if in fact they feel like that she's the best candidate so she was interviewed i think she's already been interviewed was the graphics teacher that's teaching this year she was interviewed in business tech correct have anyone made a recommendation to you yet sue on that yeah not yet okay so we're still waiting on that anything further thank you anything further yes sir vivian when uh a certain program there's some sort of decline um in regards to students enrolling is there a correlation as to how the school promotes the program itself during open houses or any other um any other methods as well i'm not sure what methods you guys use when you promote certain shops yep so most of our marketing for the programs is done through uh the work we do with admission so when we go out to all the schools we go over every program we have marketing i mean graphics was one of those programs so we don't treat any one program more or less uh than another in terms of opportunities or growth or any of that we don't give a lot of detailed information about that in exploratory the students get to explore every program and learn about the opportunities in that particular program open house all the programs promote do displays presentations within their shops and everyone is given the same opportunities we don't if we do any uh anything for the website if you go on the website graphics would have been in the website so we don't [Music] try to hurt a program and her this opportunity for bringing students into their program [Music] one against another based on what we think might be the best shop for kids to go into we treat them all the same regardless of whether it's medical assistant or whether it's graphics or any other program in terms of our marketing and our support of uh any particular program anything further jerry are you all set now maybe we're going to go uh we're going to go back to the cash balance report did the stefano oh i'm sorry branson frank sorry um leo before that can you introduce our new business um frank sure sorry i don't have the hairline want to introduce her but not that i don't want to it just said last name and the title because i just completely blended down the title john let me introduce our business manager sorry the problem yeah so we should have had melissa right on the first thing but uh i want to welcome melissa martel our new business our uh director of uh finance with us tonight uh today's our second day on the job yesterday was her first day and uh we have a deep knee deep into plenty of financial problems initially well not really just uh plenty of uh plenty of learning and things that she needs to to learn um there's a lot to learn a lot of things to remember so we we're happy to have her finally we uh we were marking off the calendar for the last three months waiting for her to come so we're thrilled to have you and i think everybody remembers uh melissa as you guys elected her yeah thrilled to have you welcome okay uh jerry thank you leo um cash balance report as of may 17 2022 count balance on may 3rd 2022 was 2162 196.41 we had deposits from may 4th to may 17th of 1881 848 spot 92 less payroll on may 12 of 9 51 281 26 and warrant number 21 on may 10th of 337 spot 37 leaves us with the book balance on may 17 2022 of 2755 763 70 with a corresponding bank balance on the same day of 2833 829 spot 47.
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are we live what's going on here we're working on it yeah okay got it jeff's our test tech specialist tonight gotcha i wasn't sure so my uh my my daughter is out she has covid actually that's good for me to mention it to to you because i was at the meeting on thursday night she got tested on friday morning i tested two i was negative um my son is negative too good you were sitting at the end oh here we go we're having a little trouble it's not on youtube throwing up the scene that i see in front of me even though we did this earlier everything the same and it's it's throwing something different all right but it is we are being recorded right now and i can i'll post it immediately after the meeting okay have you gotten any emails from anybody about it no yeah so okay so we're not live kind of a rough day so uh sorry we'll just add this to the pile and make the best of it i apologize for the issues but if you wanna i'll if we if you just wait three seconds after i'm done speaking here adam you can say okay ready and you can ask me to count the take the roll i'll take the we'll just start the meeting from there and i'll edit all of this original part out all this person oh right tim's talking about all that great okay oh yeah sorry about that yeah that's all right you ready all right so i'm good with this i don't know if you i don't know if any wait hold on okay good evening everyone this uh board of education policy meeting is being called to order at 6 35 and it is my watch keeps going off i think it's may 23rd right does that sound right to everyone okay great um dr solon would you call the roll please okay mr grippo here miss rosenberg here mr white here mr grippo you have a quorum great um uh well you know what there's a flag in the background there dr sol and we'll just use that for the pledge that way you don't have to do anything fancy that works for me good okay works for me all right [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] if i do say so myself we may be getting the the hang of the virtual pledge that sounded actually in sync today so um so uh dr sullin you said that there might be some adjustments to the agenda this evening um i guess right well i guess first let's go to is was there any public comment there was none okay very good yeah the um two items that i would recommend that we postpone to the next meeting would be number policy number three five four three and three four five zero school activity fund in monies in school buildings both of those items will be covered by a report by mr maciana and a representative from clifton larsen associates who's our the accounting firm who recently finalized or has recently conducted an audit of the student activity accounts in the school system there are recommendations um you know that that have been drafted and those include updating those two policies from 1996.
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and meeting is being live streamed taped got it okay and uh terry you have uh let's see myself john yourself uh michelle luisa and kate are on board all right mr spang i will turn the meeting over to you sir please enlighten us um if i would like to wait uh for the superintendent but maybe in the meantime i could give an audit update just take a few minutes while we hey fair enough okay uh so uh last time we met i promised to get back to you with the results from our meeting with the auditors if you remember we had a very large uh document that we weren't sure how to proceed with we met with them uh there in a zoom meeting their preference was uh to take the data even in small tranches and so the next day we uh created um created that information in smaller parts ran it up through our advisor and loaded it into their portal for them to work with we did that for both the general fund the grants and in the meantime they withdrew their request if you remember they were looking for some sampling of paychecks they told us they didn't need to do that anymore they had tested that another way so the the 21 items we think are finished and then on may 18th they sent a list of six more new things that they wanted us to do so very routine matter of fact things i'm glad to share them with you later but on the 23rd i guess that was yesterday we completed all of those uh again ran them up through our advisor and they were dragged into the auditor's portal so right now we don't have anything we think we should be working on uh but we're not ready to be convinced there might not be something else so that's uh that's where things stand today all right but john at this point all data requested has been submitted yes and it's in their portal for them to look at correct thank you sir yep i i also sent a copy of the the last six things uh and our answers over to the city finance director david saint-hilaire just so he knew too that we think we've uh finished the list so far so that's that's the audit report okay do we have any questions for john members of the committee question for john okay hey teresa is this common uh for auditors to keep asking for more and more information um not really i you know they've changed field auditors um the person we had in the fall the one who actually came here um that's when all this would have been asked but they they've done a i'll call it a reset and um they're you know they use a checklist and they say did you get this did you xerox that and the new auditor is going through that to make sure everything's complete so normally we'd get these kind of questions but they'd be in september say october so you will expect this again in september then for this following year yes okay thank you okay we can't ask for more than that sir thank you for your diligence they say that everything it asks for has been submitted and we'll just wait till for the next move yep okay that eddie do i seen it yeah okay so what we thought we might do al to start it off is there are two um things we'd like to display on the screen i i'd like to see if i could just kind of set everyone on the same page before we talk in a little more specific so if it's sorry to you i'm going to ask eddie to display a page from the mayor's budget book this year um i don't know the page number but this um so this is what um you see it and i don't know if you can make that any bigger but you know as you recall the mayor's uh recommended budget goes to the ad hoc committee and then on what they do what they need to do and then uh their budget goes to the city council so you can see uh right here in the two most uh right-handed columns uh you see proposed by department there was our 152.4 million uh requests that's the one we adopted and then um right next to that you see the 141 million uh proposed by the mayor so i just thought it was good to to show that so you can see where the number is coming from the ad hoc committee um as they did a year ago voted to move the mayor's recommendation along to the full city council and uh in turn uh the city council um agreed to uh abide by the commit the recommendations of its committee and that's what was voted for uh earlier uh this month so that that's where it comes from um but um and so you can see the difference as i i mentioned in my memo it's uh 11.4 million dollars and uh what i'd like to say first is that um what kind of makes it what what exacerbates it for us is that the there were three there are three coronavirus relief grants the first one you'll all recall we called the cares act these days some people call it sr1 but it was over 2 million dollars and it's it's not being reauthorized uh and that grant initially was really to help us uh reopen schools uh safely uh with some of the un anticipated expenses from social distancing and uh you know uh plexiglas and cleaning and uh some of the staff though too that was needed just to to bring kids back but that that grant ends um next month so and i wonder if you just could put the other document up and i i wanted i thought it was important um just to bring this one back that uh those of you been on if you want to i think you went up to hyad but uh just show the title if you could ferment that's um what you had in front of you a year ago you can see june 8th of uh 2021 and um it was pretty good it was a good piece of work and what it did was it showed the grants and they were expiring and if you scroll up a little more you might recognize this chart here but it showed if you go down the column on the left side uh you can see there was the the city amount the what uh car reserves uh and then the grants coming in as well as the alliance and it added them all up and what the chart uh attempted to do and i think it did a good job of it although our situation has changed it said um you know without a significant increase from the city when these grants start to expire there's going to be a big uh deficit you see it um they called it a accumulated variance which really is the difference between what we would spend with the grants and what the city uh would give us and what we needed so you could see that the um the story was out there and we took we talked about it a lot a year ago that um we needed to do um we needed to get ready and i i from my my view what's happened is um when these discussions were going on not just here but everywhere i think most people thought uh last may or june that the pandemic was was ending uh that we would be going back to face to face we wouldn't have uh it lingering the way it has and um well we all know uh what's happened uh then but um and if you just scroll down a little more you can see that i go down to the next page what what happened when we voted uh that's the good page when we voted um a year ago uh what what this chart showed in and some of you remember it uh we tried to identify um what kinds of expenses would come out of what grants and you could see you you'll remember it um there were certain things that clearly um were easy to connect with one of the uh pandemic grants like our our move to um brookfield and st joe's to keep the kindergarten kids socially distanced that's in one of the columns as you go down uh but what we also did was um and i think it's at the very bottom um you know we needed a good we needed six percent uh we needed a six percent increase uh to keep things going and at the very end we just said well let's carry forward into the uh grants into sr3 uh the rest of the money to bring us up to uh the six percent and um that that's what was uh approved so what um i'd like to talk about today is uh a couple things one is that um you know not as the pandemic uh continued beyond what we thought that meant some on some expenses we didn't think we'd have last june a couple examples it became very difficult when school opened to get not only to fill our regular positions just many people left didn't want to come back um it was hard you you've you've heard all of this but it became very difficult uh to get substitute teachers so we had to uh we went with a service uh kelly services to help with that we also had to add um didn't have to we decided to provide more building subs those are sub teachers that come to the school every day not sure what they're going to be teaching but we know we'll need them so we we added some of those that we didn't have before and at the high school where we all know our enrollment has just been going up um we with classes we couldn't fill we either got teachers who had open periods to teach those we called those overloads if they had normally six periods to teach they'd teach a seventh or um we did what's called period coverage if a teacher just had a open period and we had a person out just for that day we'd have them cover it but all in all um it was a lot more expensive than we thought back in june uh just to keep our schools open so i i wanted to make that point because that meant uh we had to dip into the sr3 grant where there was money for these purposes but back in june uh we didn't think we'd be using it for that so um thanks eddie if you guys um or you folks want to look um at the memo i prepared if you you have that handy one of the things that um and others will speak better on this and i but um what we found is that the uh for almost all of our students pre-k through uh by being home for such a long time uh a third of the school year in 1920 being uh remote for the beginning of uh that the learning laws that everyone talks about has occurred and we're we're addressing um we think it's it's deep and it's going to take longer to uh bring everyone back to where they should have been we we think that's so important that we don't want to what we want to do is continue the programs and services we're offering and then i would say change our our three-year pro grant drawdown that you just saw into a two-year uh drawdown uh that we had and that's that's really the message that's in my memorandum uh i put a chart uh in there that it compares uh the figures you just saw i call that the june 9th uh plan and it shows it over three years uh compared to what uh we might do uh next which is a a two-year uh drawdown and and what that allows us to do is uh distribute uh the city council cut if those are the words and still rely on the coronavirus relief funds to address the learning loss and and some of the other things that are going on now um they're also uh it wouldn't be completely uh looking to our grants for another source of finance there's some things we think we can do that would not impact teaching and learning for example normally we have a number of people who retire or resign and when we replace them on the teachers salary scale of course we don't bring people in on the top step we'll bring them in at a lower step sometimes you just call that salary savings or the term breakage is out there but it happens every year we already have a number of people who've indicated they're going to leave or retire and we've been able to calculate what we think we'll save if we bring them at a typical replacement schedule and that figure is um it's close to a million dollars it's um we think we'll get 940 000 uh about uh just from replacing the typical number of staff that we replace every year and and after looking at who we uh we know will be leaving we also have a much better idea of our kindergarten enrollments you know registration's been underway and uh we know where those kids live and [Music] and we believe that we can reduce um some of not a total of nine elementary school sections not just kindergarten but other sections as well and save uh 550 000 not having those and staying within our class site guidelines so those two things uh having fewer sections and stand within the guidelines and also having the salary savings uh there's a million and a half dollars that we would suggest we use towards um distributing the reduction and then there's some other things we've talked about um it should be no surprise um this is a this is a difficult number and we're still looking at different ways it would have the least amount of um uh impact uh and it's it's it's really not easy to do so it's taking a little longer uh to do that um and then the other thing i i uh two things i'd mention one is uh we believe that if you remember when we put some new positions in the budget i think there were 31 not mistaken but six of those were specifically identified for the high school largely to meet the graduation requirement the change is there but also because of the increasing enrollment we'd like to leave those in the budget as proposed and then finally i've written to the city finance director and asked him for ways that we can have reserves released there are 2.8 million dollars in what they're calling reserves they the city would like us to use those only in the event of an emergency uh something we haven't expected uh i'm asking if we can relax those requirements and apply that money now if if the answer is favorable uh we have a smaller number to deal with um so those are the um those are the key points uh kevin i don't know if you'd like to uh add in a little bit there or maybe where we are that kind of thing so john thank you for opening up and providing an overview for everyone good afternoon everyone and thanks for joining um us noon time for a committee meeting um terry someway somehow mr russo got out of the seven o'clock meeting today and i guess given his role on the committee we were able to do noon so i i appreciate it um so i i just want to share quickly and just kind of paraphrase everything that i heard john just say um one one i think i i heard context on our three-year budget and given three year budget last year and beginning to share the term um that i think we all became very familiar with and that's this idea of a cliff um and so the cliff meaning the federal relief monies that was coming into the district helped us to address the enrollment growth um over these last couple of years um what what perhaps has not been clear but we want to clarify is that we are using at this point um extra monies for either critical support services which is what the essa funds were allowed allowed for and then using now all of our alliance monies which technically was also provided for critical support services we have maximized alliance um all of our grants and i don't think the board is as aware um as perhaps as they have been this year but we can clarify if we need to um we have exhausted every grant available to the district uh we have staff um exhaust in every salaries and benefits line possible in a district this is the work that i've gone through with the people on this screen that you see and we feel confident not only have we maximized every budget line and salaries and wages uh we've also realized um potential savings for the board as well and maximize those as well so john spoke to the fact that we added positions for social distancing during the pandemic those are the teachers at the elementary school also at the high school level on the teachers that were hired at the high school level um unfortunately we were not able to release because we continue to get more students at the school and without additional revenue to cover those costs on those positions remain being funded by the additional monies from so ii and so3 in the elementary school we hired 10 or 11 visit we were budgeted for 14.
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[Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] no no no [Music] high school district board oh i should probably wait for you're good all right anaheim union high school district voter trustee special meeting of may 24 2022 is called to order at 4 15 p.m the following members are present anna al piercy ann marie randall trejo katherine at schmidt brian o'neill and al jabbar do i have a motion to adopt the agenda i have a motion in a second all in favor aye any opposed motion passes unanimously public comments closed session items is there anyone that wishes to speak address the board of trustees regarding closed session items only at this time seeing none board of trustees will now hold a closed session to discuss items 4.1 through 4.3 on the agenda and now it is 4 16 pm and we will move to closed session thank you [Music] yes june 9th june 9th 9th isn't it capitan no no june 9th and june 16th we still have to do our
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] oh okay [Music] you may be seated good afternoon parents family members staff students and dignified guests welcome to the 2022 gilbert high school and auhsd independent studies commencement ceremony my name is maria nelias mesa and i will be your master of ceremonies today is a special day and when we are excited to celebrate together today's ceremony is being live streaming will remain on the district's youtube channel to view at your convenience it is so great that we can all be here together to celebrate the class of 2022 and without further ado let us begin at this time i would like to introduce juan agras and andera raso who will lead us in the pledge of allegiance after the pledge of allegiance please remain standing for our national anthem will the audience please rise for the pledge of allegiance and please remain standing while we play our national anthem place your right hand over your heart ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all please remain standing while we play our national anthem [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] thank you please be seated i would like to begin the ceremony by introducing george benitez as he will read the decorum statement [Music] [Applause] good afternoon families this ceremony is both a joyous and solemn occasion please let us remember to be courteous to those around us we need to be respectful to our seniors during the ceremony so no air horns or noise makers please remain seated while filming or taking photos and remember to keep the recording device at chest level to not impede the vision of others seated around you please keep the aisle or walkway open throughout the ceremony thank you thank you george and i would like to introduce our distinguished guest i would like to introduce and welcome mr al jabar president of the board of trustees [Applause] mr brian o'neill clerk of the board of trustees miss anne-marie randall trejo member of board of trustees dr jaron fried assistant superintendent educational services [Applause] dr nancy nien assistant superintendent business mr jose lara coordinator principal of alternative education and our amazing graduation student speakers we would also like to welcome and thank you dr egan's director subpoena student support services ms amy maya coordinator special youth services mr joe saldana program administrator attendance and safety scott rundle mbct coordinator 21st century career readiness sarah anderson title ix coordinator are teachers administrators counselors and all the other wonderful school staff who have supported the graduating class of now please welcome our first senior class speaker matthew lingle [Applause] good afternoon friends family and most importantly the class of 2022.
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um that's likes shares um and comments um this is a great sign it really speaks to the ultimate goal of social media engagement interactivity it's a great sign that people are absorbing that new brand you can also see that reach is up significantly from last year we have several posts already in these last few months alone that have reached a thousand people or more when you look at twitter twitter groups things a little differently they don't look at average posts but they accumulate uh interaction and engagement so you can see 1400 likes comments and retweets across posts as of late and this is actually a number we had to keep updating as we were putting together this presentation because um it continues to rise um the piece we're really proud of here is the total impression so we're just shy of 20 000 people that are seeing content on twitter and almost 80 of those people are actually seeing it um you know in the last five months or so so we're really seeing a lot of growth on twitter which is fantastic instagram here again this is the new platform and we want to preface these numbers here just by saying that uh we're looking at 90 days versus several months that's just how the platform looks at analytics so these numbers are a little skewed here we're going to continue to see growth as we leverage audiences on the other two platforms um and we have really no reason to believe that um anything other than uh rises will continue as we've seen so far and again when a new social media account starts for a district we've seen that it can take up to a year um even a little more of vigilant posting to really get to that full potential so we expect that in the coming months it'll get more on track with the other two platforms so there's a question because um all of the posts that we're putting on there uh have the ability to make comments on like watching them yeah we thought that was really important just for that sense of community and engagement i want to hear feedback from everyone and um yeah i think so then i'm going to ask the other half is if there's all of these comments is there someone that reads these comments or like they like yeah we're monitoring all that we monitor your your inbox um as well as comments and overwhelmingly i i don't think i've seen any negative as as you're saying that i'm trying to think back and um everything is overwhelmingly positive at this point and it's not to say in the future that there might be issues that arise and we could look at this at that point but once you're done here then that would have to be someone hopefully we're gonna you're gonna have a long-term arrangement with that right okay [Laughter] 1400 likes or comments i mean if you have a thousand comments that's a lot of that's a lot of reading it is but i think lisa makes a good point one of the things we spoke about before we even began to work in earnest was the idea we could use these platforms to actually engage the public so the idea that we could actually get community members who are positive and have the opportunity to help control some of these conversations also results right yes so we have done this um like social media ambassadors maybe is kind of where you're going like kind of creating something where we have others who we know in the district are already using social media whether it's teachers or students or that and kind of working with them on them making sure that you know they're it's reciprocal right yeah right your head's absolutely in the right place you don't want to let um you know let positive feedback go unacknowledged right exactly exactly and we'll show you next if you want to go it would be great even to align this to like alumni sorry like left the district to even have you know um what do i want to say um not ambassadors but it like influencers right like if we collect ourselves like district influencers that have gone to school here that loved it here that have nothing but really great things like signing those people out and finding those people and getting them to be ambassadors um i think it would be really awesome too whether they went to school here i mean i know that we have a we have a boundary page for alumni that people went to school here in like the 20s and 30s right like there's a huge history in bamboo so if we can even get some of those people need them understand what their experiences were and bad work i think all of that is amazing material to use on social media and that has been if you want to go into we just wanted to show you a couple of uh examples of things that have succeeded so that middle post here is actually what you're referring to um yeah bound for college here so um we can start in the middle there now that we're talking about it but um points of pride is a um it's a huge thing worth sharing on social media just like we would share on the website or pitch to the media there's no reason that we can't repurpose that for social media people really engage highly with that and again just like you said here we've done a couple posts featuring graduates that have been accepted to colleges which is a huge deal and it's certainly worth sharing and people have really responded well to that if you look at the left two here we've also done more campaign approaches so this was earlier in the year we featured and welcomed new staff members to the district um this was really a templated approach where we reached out to those new staff members for some basic information um including a picture of themselves and that was really the most engaging component of this people really like to see the faces of the people interacting with their children every day we know that parents really engaged highly with this with this series there were a lot of shares and you can see across all three of these posts here right we're really working in the brand again we have that hashtag bound to astound um building that brand recognition on here as well and of course the third column here um no worthy news in the district in this case welcoming dr friedman to the to the district certainly worth sharing um and again this is something that we need to remember that social media while it is an engaging tool we can also use it as an interactive and an informative tool and so people who maybe don't look to the website as frequently but are scrolling through social media then can have you know get their news that way because i know sure so if there was anything negative that we you know thought like this is something we would we would immediately you know let dan know um if there was anything that was concerning um i think we have received questions if like through the inbox right on facebook um about massive policies and things like that and we've always just gone to dan it's not just um but like i said we haven't seen any negative comments um at this point and if we did um sometimes the approach is to ignore it if you have to if it's not something you can respond to other times you do have to respond um and if things were to ever really get out of control we might consider shutting down comments or that but i just never experienced that on these platforms um so we could i think yeah um and we should mention we use a service um that so every day we're receiving in our inbox um any news out there about the boundary school district with keywords um as well as we're getting like a report about your social media accounts every day so yeah one key component of that is there is a sentiment feature um in those reports that we're receiving so it's kind of like a way of double checking just to see um if the platform itself misses something you know the monitoring services is there to help as well that's right are we are we set up with our own social pages to push out for advertising like are we open to instagram advertising or is that something that our account doesn't really cover it's it's something we haven't explored um but we certainly could yeah the capability is there if we decided to to go that route yeah the video when we launched that yeah i'm just wondering if we wanted to you know invest a little bit extra into that post and push it out you may get a really good return on it yeah yeah it is a capability we can do with how it's currently set up um as well we have worked on kind of proactive media pitching here so really taking what are those unique programs and unique stories in the district um and sharing them with the news media and so as you can see here um two of the bigger stories that we've been able to place for you one was in new jersey school boards association school leader magazine and that was about the case for in-school mental health services and it's a really nice story about the district's mental health services and how that's kind of a model for other school districts i think it really positioned the district well um in that space and then julia buccini who you saw on our video she's a social worker in the district uh she we worked with her on writing and placing a piece in social work today uh magazine um and then there's also ongoing press releases that were um always distributing to more of your local media like my central jersey patch uh rls media um and those might be fundraisers going on at the school or um i think some of the others like uh teachers and teachers of the year and things like that that we just want to get out into the media so that's been really successful as well and then another key communication tool that we've been working with the district on is the newsletter so when we came on we know there was a newsletter a printed newsletter that was sent to uh aldors and we've since worked on a new newsletter titled updates abound which kind of again plays off of that brand and we really aim to include the most engaging content possible so that so far has been a superintendent's message um budgeting information um and of course those same success stories that we see pitching to the media on the website again repurposing that just to tie the brand in and make it really cohesive so this is just again a great way to engage the community it is bilingual it's released in english and spanish so it's really important as a communication tool to reach as wide of an audience as you can we know you have a significant spanish-speaking population and so we want to make sure that that population is able to engage and interact with you we've done two issues so far starting first in january i believe and [Music] we worked on just kind of communicating in a clear way through various things so um you know clear and transparent communications will sometimes help with writing maybe a letter to the school community or um just you know reading over any communications that are going out so we've helped in other ways with the communications so we look forward to continuing to work together in the future we hope that that is um possible we will you know first step right is launching the website and getting that completed but then we would love to continue working on all these things that we've developed we feel like we've set a really good foundation here with this brand and we just want to keep going with it so we hope that will be the case okay and so i noticed um if you have any other questions i'm happy to keep them yeah yeah thank you so much yesterday [Music] thank you we are now up to committee reports uh i believe we postponed both education and governance for this round um i expecting that we'll be able to reschedule those uh between now and the next meeting but i do know that we have updates on both human resources and operations roger's not here tonight so i'll give the operations one uh michelle do you want to talk a little bit about hr no we haven't met as a committee uh our committee has been focused on negotiations and that's nothing that's moving forward and there's really nothing we can discuss yeah i i the only thing that i would say is maybe since the last time we all met as a group maybe for the best of the other board members we've met with the association twice we've been twice totally now right and we had additional meetings earlier this evening yes i i yes i met with some of the administrators to get some to clarify some information that we discussed at our meeting okay and then the next scheduled meeting with the association is first week in june right so hopefully before the next quarter meeting we'll have another set of updates to present but you know i think in general the sessions have been going really well so far you know everybody's highly engaged the team that's at the table really is passionate about what they're trying to accomplish on both sides so all positives uh there operations we had another meeting earlier this evening with uh our friends from the borough council uh we talked about a variety of different things uh primarily focused on shared services and how we could potentially partner to better effect across both entities but we also got into discussions about our student population as well not only how many students we have in district but how consistent and steady those populations are throughout the tenure uh that they're with us at the school so again i think we're continuing to refine everybody's understanding of the challenges that we face as a district as a community uh how those uh intersect with people of the district in the borough and ultimately i think you know we walked away this time with some tangible action items uh including hopefully the opportunity to plan for um some improvements at the billion or baseball field and to get that restored to a place where we can all be proud of it as a community so generally again i think a very positive discussion any other questions or comments about committees or committee meetings i think we're up to item number four open to the public for agenda items dr gallagher do we have any questions online we do not okay anybody from the room okay on to 5.1 which is approval of than these minutes resolve that the boundary board of education approves the minutes for the following meeting uh regular and executive uh may 9th 2022.
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i'm your senior class president andres hernandez laguna i would never believe myself if i were to tell freshman me that i would be in the position i am standing in today the choices one makes in their life can be astronomical to how our lives will be played out today that choice is simple stepping onto the stage and receiving a well-deserved token for an opportunity to have our dreams become a reality but let's not rush i want to invite you to remember this moment i want you to pause breathe and remember what today looks like what it feels like remember the smiling faces next to you the cute boy on stage your families everything embrace it now i would love to thank everyone who has stood by his sides during these past few difficult years whether that be our family friends pets and especially our staff i would personally love to thank my sisters for helping me when i just didn't know my next step and for my parents i appreciate them even more without further ado the gift our class has left behind is a large beautiful mural it's a mural that anyone can walk past and see just what washington is about all the sports languages and clubs smash into a giant beautiful piece of art with that being said make sure to enjoy the night go out to eat with your families friends go celebrate but guys thank you all for being a part of my life i love you all so so much and it saddens me that once we leave as graduates today there's a big amount of faces that i won't see again but just know i will never forget our memories together here at washington high school okay i've stretched this speech long enough as i want to stand here as long as possible and have my moment but it has been an absolute honor to be your senior class president this year now for the last time from me to you have a lovely ramtastic day washington [Applause] i am now honored to introduce two important guests we are fortunate to be supported by a caring district administration and governing board tonight we have with us executive director mrs kim mosquito and our governing board clerk susan mayland [Applause] clerk maylin has lived in the glendale union high school district for more than 30 years she and her husband are parents of two sunny slope high school graduates and as a former sunny slope high school teacher a district coordinator and a principal at apollo high school susan is a strong advocate for public schools she is retired and wants to remain active in an outstanding district by serving on the governing board her term began in 2015.
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when we had the zoom meeting that i'm one of the first ones it was in october or something we had like 30 something there right so and then on this last one i think we had 20 something okay i'm trying to yeah i think would you agree yeah those were the numbers yeah i don't have the numbers but i mean yeah yeah i think we got actually got more post cover than pre right and again like everything you've done around anxiety and depression like i just have to think you know thank you that's such a you know there's such a need you know there across like you said not just for students who you know maybe like qualify as a student who um has a disability but you know across the district we just see that you know over and over again so you know certainly appreciative and i would imagine for um child care which is something we all struggle with having the zoom platform it's you know as an option we always offered yeah so it's great to bring in the gym and get some energy out yeah no it's great so thank you thank you for everything thank you and i just want to say with everything you guys are saying communication is is the key between you know all the parties that are involved in the team definitely so thank you thank you thank you thank you i'm good i'm good no i'm fine i'm good she was like i'm done i put you up there not missed the news i spoke for john that's good that's fine i'm good all right uh next on our agenda is the approval of the regular and joint session minutes of uh our meeting on may 9th so moved by mr oliver second by ms waite on the motion and discussion opposed motion carries unanimously and uh entertainment uh the executive session minutes of uh may 9th also oh i need that language so moved with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were purposed uh yeah that's what i was going to pretend second there you go that is always the problem when i consider that's what i was struggling with okay don't worry about it we'll get it through it all right so we have a motion and a second motion by mr oliver second by miss wait no miss amara thank you miss amaral i'm sorry on the motion any discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you all right okay uh next real easy a couple of consent items okay we have a request from the dartmouth high school marching band and color guide to operate the food concession at the dartmouth living memorial stadium for the 2022 football season so can i make a motion yeah okay so i make a motion to approve that request yep all right motion by ms wait second by ms hammerl on the motion any discussion chair hearing on all in favor aye aye opposed and the chair will abstain since i'm a member of the association i am too but well no but my wife's the treasurer okay all right i'll route that way okay that's good i think that's bad you're fine okay uh all right next something we always look forward to finally again we can have is a request by the dartmouth high school unified arts department to hold their 2022 summer arts camp yes and we received a fantastic uh breakdown from uh mrs cronin with uh what's going on and you know the post things that they look for and what the courses are and registration and everything else any questions on that that's great okay no i actually i would just like to see um how enrollment is um just want to see if we got our kids our students back so yeah after after the registration deadline closes yeah and that's fine so i have a motion to approve motion notion by mr oliver second second second by ms white on a motion any discussion chair hearing on all in favor aye aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously all right um new business smack quarterly report i think we're gonna hold that yeah i asked um miss gentler if we could just uh hold it to the next meeting just because we have ours we have our smec meeting coming up on the 31st i believe and uh there's a number of things that we may be discussing including the first read of the budget um so yeah looking forward to sharing some hopefully some exciting news if we can um close on a real estate deal yeah that would be tough but it would be nice all right dr gifford superintendents okay i have a number of things that the schools have been up to so i'll just read through a few of them the middle school has been working a lot with great eight grade eight civics projects and some of the examples are homeless kits that they've put together for personal hygiene items and socks and and they would donate it to a homeless shelter and as well as food pantry donations another group is working with the pal students and uh to beautify the grounds they're working on the cleaning up the courtyard so it's a nice way for them to participate as well as some vocational skills that they're working on the national junior honor society always has their clean up the beach day and um fourth over four thousand dollars has been donated to the uh red cross and this was after lessons from the social studies classes and that which were aligned uh to the current standards sixth grade did a lesson on refugees seventh grade literacy and human rights and historically in countries around the world in eighth grade focused on humanitarianism and what it means to be a good citizen and they've done some book clubs in being introduced in the sixth and seventh grade after um they saw how successful it was in the eighth grade and uh working on more literature and of course a seventh grade trip to patriot's place and the eighth grade has the end of year field trip coming up and of course um the uh i was going to say graduate promotion uh coming up soon as we all know for grade eight quinn and all of the other elementary schools have been participating in art shows as we know some did them at their own school and some participated with the district one quinn also had a block party community event on saturday and they had all kinds of things happening bouncy houses and vendors and face painting so it was a nice a nice event once again to start to get the community involved um with the events that are happening at our schools potter obviously as well they've had their pre-k through five art show which was in may may 12th and um it's again it's one of the first time since 2020 that we've been able to have folks in the schools and really participate so we were real happy about that especially the grade one students which families never really were in there at all and um the potter staff about 90 percent participated in that and they also had well over 100 participants in a bingo game bingo night that they had i also want to mention that the mental health series with the cook center as kicks off with our first session if you will on june 7th the brochu poster has been put out it's about social media protecting our children by staying aware and involved so that's on june 7th and people should see that poster on our facebook page as well as send home in the backpacks and register for that uh virtual event also over at demelo they had their boost-a-thon fun run and and they as well as other schools have been doing the junior achievement day in their schools and something special over at demelo the dhs robotics team was working with the grade five on an engineering project so that was kind of cool and they've also been participating in people getting their field trips kind of done if you will lloyd center the ymca in the whaling museum and last but not least i did let you know that we did uh we are promoting um miss liz carrere i always say career but i think she really wants it correa how does she pronounce it katie yeah and i've always known that name is correa so anyway she will be taking over for katie paveo at the mellow school as principal so we'd all like to welcome uh welcome her into that position and and wish her the best and she's very excited you know she started dartmouth left and came back so it's been a full circle full circle for her and she said you know demelo's her home and she's really excited so we'll be posting for the assistant principal position this week and finally uh mr mr kylie would like to provide some updates as well thank you dr gifford i i was pleased to see that the finance committee um supported both the the budget and um the capital improvement plan for the town i think the the it was unanimous the vote on the capital improvement plan was a split vote on the budget overall from a town perspective but you know they did vote to support that so that's a good sign hopefully for june 7th i did just want to update you on the dartmouth memorial stadium renovation project so we had a very disappointing bid opening um on the 12th we had three bidders uh for the remainder of that project the low bid came in at six million three hundred and ninety thousand dollars uh we were i was optimistically hoping somewhere in between three and four million so um but being realistic given the uh economic climate that we're in and the inflationary environment it's that's i think that's what this reflects so at this point in time we're going to put it on hold we don't have the money anyway and you know reevaluate and see if there are other options besides the obvious option which is wait till things sort of normalize a little bit in terms of supply and demand and inflation and economics um it appears that you know people don't exactly need to be low bidders on a job like this they may already have a lot of work i know that it's very hard for um people to find good employees all around and everywhere in the in the economy right now so i'm sure it is in construction as well so i think that um you know at this point we need to we need to regroup a little and and uh take a look at it see if it's worthwhile trying to split it up i don't really think it is um i i think it's best to take a pause on it but that's that's where we are with mr kylie yes mr oliver thank you for that um i want to say dismal update but a frustrating update as the you know the project continues to move at a snail's pace because of covet obviously not through anyone's fault but just to confirm we did um award the bid for the storage facility we did we did do that that actually seems like i think the timing of that was such that i think the economy didn't quite understand where it was going to be now and i know that the contractor regrets regrets bidding on that project the way they you know sure because of the cost um i mean he's come out and said this is horrible for me but but they're honoring it and they're yeah that's good that's what i was going to ask they're honoring it so and what's the time frame on that uh we actually set up a fence today going to be breaking some ground tomorrow so and just to confirm because it's been years now since we originally uh started with this project just to confirm i can just for everyone watching at home and for the committee where's the where's this building going so the storage building is is going to the uh let's see to the northeast of the um of the stadium area to the northeast of the visitors stands so um so if you're looking at the stadium from slocum road the back left corner yes correct correct and um so that'll be going there that was necessary so that we could then reinvent the existing stands to provide concessions and bathrooms and things that really are in dire need of right you know so so we'll have that we'll begin positive i guess what i'm saying is that a positive it is progress it is not what we were looking for but it is some progress so um yeah i'm confident that that will be completed certainly that is also taking longer than we expected uh but it's it's a step in the right direction and and again hopefully better days are ahead at some point we can revisit i guess at this point i would like to ask if we could reconvene the the turf field committee um and i know that hasn't been um appointed we haven't been uh reappointed um all the uh members of that including for i'm not sure if you i know you were on i'm not sure if mary was on um with it's made up of the select board members um uh sean uh mcginnis um i don't know who's our director of development now do we have a director of development that would be cody yeah cody haddad um it's made up of a number of individuals so i think based on the results that you received from from your bids that i think at this point i think it's it's worthwhile to reconvene so we can have some more formal discussions as to what because obviously we need we definitely need the support of the town um on this project one way or the other i think it's safe to say that the money that we have allocated that tau meeting has allocated um one way or the other whether we wait a year or two years we're going to need more money is is the rea is the reality that's correct yes this is white yeah so just just one thing that seems to be like i know having been there you know for multiple band competitions and of course everything else and i know that now that we're having to delay this we do have the issue and i know it's going to come up when we are talking about our you know the dei community about accessibility so we have a lot of um people are coming in elders in wheelchairs and things like that and i know i just struggled just even as a parent saying like where do you go because we you know we're doing our we're selling our like raffle items or something so just if i think if we can kind of come up with or someone can strategize just a clear place that i just don't know where those places are as a parent to direct and i don't know if other people feel like that where i can direct people with wheelchairs to say like because it's it becomes a little bit of a challenge so you know in this conversation if that's because i know that was part of the thought around like this um you know construction piece is that we're gonna make it more accessible but even just to try to like say you know look with you know middle school graduates or whatnot like this is this is a plan and this is a space that we can you know set aside like you know free of encumbrances that would be helpful i think for us so just a thought we do have that fire aluminum bleachers that are handicap accessible with a wheelchair ramp and everything else that are there i mean right no disrespect if 500 people show up in wheelchairs we have a problem but there is that handicap area set aside it's i think it's like a deal that they put up a number of years ago yeah right i remember that yeah well it's kathleen to to your point john um yeah it is far and it's behind the it's behind the speaker but it is something but um to your to your point john i don't know if there's an answer to this but that was partially funded at the time i was a member of the disability commission in town which you know i stepped away from because it really was when mr mcginnis came in they sort of reformulated how they were but they recently have um appointed somebody to chair that again and i know historically that they're i know this is small money but uh there's some part of the ticketing you know parking in a handicap without a placard or that sort of thing there you know that fee if they collect that was supposed to be sort of earmarked for the disability commission and i i don't know if it's something that we could you know previously we've partially funded that that piece we've also done things for voting with visual vision i don't know if there's money in in that capacity to sort of help with with with uh with the overall project yeah i mean we could use every dollar we could i don't know where it stands now it's been a few years since that's a good point right it was yeah back 10 plus years i guess at least 10 years ago i would say when we put in those stands um and that is that's at they're actually the stands that are closest to the main entrance so yes it's it's on the southwest corner there of the stadium um accessibility is it it's one of the primary reasons we were trying to do this project um so hopefully yeah we can address that on a longer term basis someday soon no agreed so i just asked the committee for the committee support to if we could just reach out back out to that tower to everyone and see if we can reconvene back on back on board i can reach out to mr mcinnis and we can try and coordinate that sure that'd be great thank you thank you thank you for your stay i'm i'm i know i think you have some more i cut you off i'm sorry mr kylie no no no that that's that that's okay that's uh i think that's enough um but yeah we're uh so we're we're hopeful for town meeting at least you're not so hopeful for the this project but yeah get one one thing at a time get through town meeting and we'll be good there all right anything else no doctors gifford mr kyle are you all set i am okay uh anybody have anything before you know mr oliver thank you mr nunes uh just really quickly i don't think i had the opportunity i don't know if it was um if i brought it up i don't i don't believe i brought up the last meeting i had the opportunity to attend a a field trip with mr peratti and his students to university of rhode island and he extended the invitation to mrs waite and myself a couple months ago when we were checking out the new new studio back there and i got to say what a great group of students he has we were well represented um and just to see the some of their faces light up when we walked through the campus and look looked at the communications building so once again every time i come here i'm amazed at little additions that are added to to our meetings uh the little live tv we have there now so um no just uh props uh just a big shout out to mr peratti and um his students you know when they redid that a couple of months ago it was nice when we got the tour before the meeting and that and you know it's kind of sometimes you know when you watch a sporting event and they'll show you the the the uh the trailer that has all that you know and yeah all the guys you know they've got you know 50 people in there with all the different doing things and you know one person in check and see what these students have got it's it's it's unbelievable what they're going through just what they're learning just to put it into perspective um the the television studio at uri they actually broadcast for espn plus i believe a lot of their games i mean it's they they hire students to do that and they actually have very some of the same equipment that we have here um so and they were talking about what a very high caliber program that we offer here so i think it's worth i think it's worth mentioning that they you know they were very the some of the professors there the department heads were very impressed one of our students that graduated from here last year was in the program and such i think is it emerson this year but he was on a saturday afternoon uh lacrosse you know on the field with the camera type of deal okay and they had pictures you know his mother was saying you know they had pictures of them you know taking you know film on the field and everything else so that's great it's where it's it's unbelievable even for that but they have even for that extension i know that that same student still talks to mrs peratti and says we have this here like you need to get this like back you know so it's neat to see that he's established like such a warm relationship with kids that it's you know it certainly doesn't end you know yeah i'm just going to add let the the dsma is having its uh arts and music well it's a craft fair and music festival coming up on june 11th so they're planning that just uh you know they're trying to they're bringing in some vendors i know they're organizing musicians hopefully trying to get in some students not just from dartmouth but also possibly some groups from other schools as well so i'm kind of excited to see that it'll be around the stadium so it's in the it's in the process still of being planned but i think it's going to be a really really fun you know great great day and you know snuck in between you know different you know graduation and other events so excellent yeah that's it uh playing anything you all set no okay i mean the only thing i have an ulcer and and i know our student rep was kind enough to talk about it you know our seniors are leaving this week and you know it's graduation time not only for our students but all the students in in the area and you know prom nights and after proms and things of that nature and you know please be safe you know use with all due respect use some common sense you know and you know we want to see you back you know number one we want to see you at graduation and number two we want to see you back here next year and the year after letting us know how you're making out and how you're doing so uh you know please be safe and and be thoughtful and just i know it's getting to the end of the sports season and our teams are you know winding into the tournament so just wish them good luck type of deal and with that our next meeting is june 6th and uh after that our next meeting is june 27th and just kind of keep in mind uh you know usually in the summertime we start at 4 30 5 o'clock so just we'll talk more about that at our next meeting type of deal but if you know versus starting at 6 30 if we you know the situation arises that we can start a little bit earlier would be you know would be good so and with that being said the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session for an update on negotiation with union personnel and a discussion on school security and uh not return to open session thank you bye miss waite second second by ms amaral on the motion any discussion chairing on roll call vote please ms gunter john nunes yes mary wait yes kathleen ambrose yes chris oliver yes thank you very much everyone happy memorial day be safe [Music] you
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in our mmdt account we have 8 million 816 544 spot 43 and a total operating cash balance on may 17th 2022 of 11 million 572 308 13. except the motion the most we're so moved to the second second discussion all those in favor anyone opposed thank you very much yes going uh going down now to the principles uh leo yes i'm sorry um going back to communications you forgot to mention the mtel communication literacy test preparation workshop no i read that you did yeah i did i know i know i read it i maybe read it to myself but i know i read it okay sorry um principal report please uh student report uh farsu yes um i want to report tonight that maureen's not feeling well so she's going to do her amazing student report at our next meeting but i did want to follow up and do a brief report on our after-school program jontos podemos that we talked about last meeting the um students and the um advisors put this together and so in lieu of maureen's amazing report she'll be back um you all have a copy of it but i'll just cycle through it a little bit um so juntos pozamos um has been uh an after-school program for about four three or four years um prior to the pandemic we started this it's together we can and what we found was that some of our english learners that were in the lower levels of proficiency really just kind of newcomers are working really working hard on their english we needed an additional support for them besides just our regular homework help so they could have a place where they can have access to ask questions and also work with other students that they may not see see during the day that are also you know learning english and that are multilingual learners so we've had amazing staff even last year through the pandemic and through our remote learning this this club met even remotely so it meets on tuesday and thursdays from 3 to 4 30 and we always have freshman to seniors which is very nice the team is english learner teachers as well as amazing paraprofessionals they work together they've this year done some crafting games it really is a safe space for that they can spend time it's also a great place for them to take risks and practice their practice their speaking and it's always great they ask some amazing questions there they have a google classroom set up so even if someone misses a class they're always able to take part in the activities or review videos or any updates and you know they always are doing different things and so the the goal of this program moving forward is we'd like to get our students find out what they're interested in and get them out into the community um and in doing some different things so it becomes homework help but it's more directed homework help for our students that are multilingual learners this year a big focus on crafts they made some cards and sent them out to different areas in the community and they were also able to make cards for their own families and friends they some of the most frequent questions they have are about after after-school activities how to join a sport some questions about even school because sometimes from a student that's transferring here from another country they school may look different for them so they ask questions just about like almost like the rules of school also we spend a lot of times talking about college and scholarships and also a big question is how to get a co-op job or how to get a job so the staff supports all of our students um with that um and again there's always uno and dominoes those are two some of their favorites um [Music] a [Music] so he helped me [Music] awesome thank you girls all right oscar why don't you tell us what was your experience this year at does foreign well i heard from the program due to one of my cousins she used to go there and i was very impressing this one because i wanted to like good friends but then i saw the importance of it and miss lafay she really helped me in this past few months because i struggled with chemistry and she really helped me do homework projects and everything she understood everything that happened in my background and everything she tried to like help me and everything that i wanted to accomplish so from the from the students and that's our program and that's my report any questions for our principal yes yes frank first of all thank you for thank you and everybody else who put this together especially hearing from the students the benefit of the program it's great to know that there's programs out here that we have here that's helping our second language learners in the different aspects of what it is within the program i think it was the first time i've heard about it was that i'll ask you it was became a question of what does the program do and how effective is it and it's great listening exactly from the kids why these are the things we need to highlight a little bit more um once again thank you to everybody that puts us together the students for actually speaking um and definitely i would like to at some point for next year pass by and that's what i mean all next year great the other thing i did forget to mention is that this program is um it is funded by title iii so title iii is a specific grant that is directly used to support multilingual learners as well as parent engagement yep quit not a urinal pamper engagement how do we have any of the parents act um supporting or actively engaging in in this program as well with their students we don't have specific parents engaging in the program but we did just have our english learner parent advisory council meet which was the first time we had it in person for a couple years and we had a great turnout and part of the parent engagement for our english learners is also to let the parents know about this program because sometimes you know maybe the students might not go home and say hey there's a homework help program or there's another way for me to learn more english and so we got a lot of parents at the end of the year also interested in it for next year anything further thank you very much superintendent lavoy will update the district committee on the new hire demographics for the last five for the past five years so you you have a handout in your packet that shows since 2017-18 each year up until this year how many new hires we've had and how many were female male caucasian african-american hispanic latino caucasian um and um four let's see one two three four [Music] been about between 25 around 25 percent maybe a little less than 000 when we had 43 hires that year a lot of hires that year but we're somewhere trying to maintain we'd like it to get closer to 50 percent as we continue to work towards making changes in my upcoming goals report i'll go over with the committee some of the changes we've made and some of the upcoming changes we're going to be doing to try to address the need to recruit more people of color into our into our school any questions for the superintendent yes vivian is this including administrators in this graph because it includes staff so it's all staff i'll staff um what strategies have you put in place so far because i'm just looking at these numbers and they're pretty atrocious in terms of the amount of hires that you know every year and comparing it to how many you're hiring um like i'm not seeing diversity at all so i know that this has been a topic for for the past few years i'm not sure how far back this has been an issue or a concern here but what strategies are we actively doing i want to know what are we doing now well now we've been we've been working on putting together a a new booklet for hiring practices which will include new strategies that we're going to use to try to which we have been learning from a program we have four staff members who are attending a dsc program on on recruitment for um minorities and we've had eight sessions this year in those sessions we are working with about 150 other schools are in this program as well which we have an opportunity to have conversations and work on different methods and strategies so we're working on putting a plan together moving forward from this year as to some strategies and methods we may use which include which includes this year looking at everything from our our website to our documents that we use for posting so we're looking at all kinds of data to take a look at what we have that may have an impact on staff putting put together a we put together a committee to look at our culture and does our culture is our culture impacting our ability to have growth in the area of bringing in new more more minorities into the school so it's a work that we have been working on for the last three years and have attended different workshops and trying to change the numbers that we have we're not unique in the state almost every school district across the state is trying to find more minorities to come to their schools it's a problem across the state that's why the department of education has promoted different uh this particular program we're involved in in trying to uh determine methods to get more not only more people of color into our staff and hiring more but also in terms of developing more equity within the school in all areas everything from programming to opportunities for students in uh that are fair and equitable uh for programs and um in learning uh so that's uh we've been actively involved in that this year and uh looking at uh that anti-racist uh uh strategies to improve the quality of our culture within the building it's uh it's been a priority for probably the particularly this year not only for us but for across the all schools and across the state and trying to work at it so that's something we've been doing right now at this point we this year the past year this year when we post we have two companies that uh that are experts uh provide expertise in uh posting and helping us recruit a student uh staff of color um and have we've our hr director and i believe our principal went to a workshop um a a job fair about a month ago for the purpose of trying to recruit people of color and also get the word out so it's a a comp i can't remember remember the name of the company susan that's that we are now part of where we get information on all job fairs and they post all our jobs specifically for hiring minorities so we are doing things but it's a process and we hope to continue to grow and improve in that process when you speak of strategy are you implying that there is a lack of candidates people of color who are applying um for the positions that we're putting out there um and the reason why i asked that is because i know not all positions but there have been some positions that i'm aware of where there are candidates of color who are applying and they're just being overlooked you know and it could be based on qualifications or a number of reasons um so that's the point of my question is the strategies that you speak of are you implying that we are just having a lack of candidates of people of color who are applying or is there other issues that we're not aware of well it depends on position certain positions yeah i would say that there is a lack of of qualified or strong candidates for a position generally that's not the case in every situation because if you look this year we've hired or 2122 we have hired uh nine people of minorities so it's not that we're not hiring any out of 34 positions that's everything from a custodian to administrators so in some cases we get no candidates of color and other times we may get candidates of colors or minorities but we uh i think we're fair and we have a a hiring practice which i think is fair uh to all people who apply here at glts we have a strategy that we use where we put together a a team to do interviewing made up of for the most part teachers and administrators particularly if they're educational positions then it goes from there to the principal from the principal to myself so i don't think the practice that we use i think is done in the fair and we do understand how important it is to hire staff members that are that are of color based on our demographics students and the amount of students we have in the school so i think the biggest thing for us is to try to find get more candidates of color to apply uh for our positions get the word out um and i think you know a lot of times one of the things that we're learning is that people will if they fear if the word on the streets is we're at school that uh that has a culture of acceptance of of of minorities and people of color that they're comfortable uh you look at everything from our our all of our documentation our culture within the building relationships uh how comfortable the people of color here in the building are in fact we're putting a committee together strictly looking at putting together a committee of all of our staff minority staff so that we can get more feedback from what's their experience here at greater lawrence and how do they how do we get the community and people outside of our community to believe that they're welcomed here so you know we realize we have to do a better job at it and we realize that there's more work to be done on it but i don't think that we don't give opportunities anyone that that does apply uh i do think we need more people of color to apply if if someone hasn't gotten a job um it certainly uh you know isn't uh that there wasn't a fair opportunity for a position that we that we may put out there for the most part yes what no whatever you have i just wanted to add one last thing and it's uh you're intrigued me superintendent when you commented on the fact that we do hire minorities ranging in positions from custodians to administrators and it's hard to tell with this graph as to you know to differentiate as to um because to me it's a big difference um the administration side versus the rest of us you know the rest of the positions in the school are we able to kind of demonstrate that in this graph i can i we can break it down to uh if you'd like me to break down which positions they are and um and and give you the demographics on that i certainly can do that as well so we can break these numbers down so you can see you know how many uh teachers were you know uh teachers that were people of color and how many were how many were administrators how many were uh uh maybe custodian or yes we're hiring six custodians it's like yeah thank you that's nice but i would like to see also teachers of color um teaching our students as well or us a candidate of color who's in and you know in the administration side so if you're just hiring them for custodian or um at the cafeteria again yes it's thank you that's a it's a step forward but yeah we should and could do better yeah i don't think that uh we're looking at when i look at eight staff members there that you know the majority of those were custodians or my i think probably the majority of them are probably teachers or uh paraprofessionals yeah i'm not specifying yeah i'm not specifying i have no clue i'm just going based on your comment that we do hire them um in a range of positions so it didn't intrigue me as to seeing what those numbers look like to have a better idea and more detailed information as to where exactly you know we should be looking into and how to improve sure well i have to i you know when it comes to hiring teachers which almost in particular on the technical side of house we um it's a challenge to find people period never mind people of color to apply for some of our positions you know we've had particularly in the technical side of the house this year we've really struggled uh just we just recently had a posting for plumbing we had three candidates um and we have three openings in plumbing i know we hired [Music] one person of color in plumbing and we hired a caucasian and the third person we're looking at hiring i believe is a person of color um which are both and of those three two out of the three were graduates of the school it's fine one of the strategies that i had we had talked about the other day was you know over the last um at least the last 10 years um you know a high percentage of our students were students of color and uh what we're looking at is to try to reach out to our uh our um students that graduated from the pa our alumni so we're doing we're working on doing a posting out to our through our alumni association to try to encourage more alumni uh to apply for our positions because there's you know 80 percent of them are our students of color this year going out doing uh trying to recruit doing a workshop for uh people to come into the education where we did a workshop we had 40 people apply i mean uh fill out an application to come to the workshop of which 20 came and out of that we've had four people out of that workshop who applied for positions so far this year of which two were people of color so we are making some effort and doing some strategies but it's um it's not we we clearly understand how important that is given our student body and having role models that are our educators and that they can feel connected to and and feel like everything's possible to them anything in the world's possible opportunities in terms of jobs it doesn't matter you know in terms of who you are we believe everybody can succeed uh and we have high regard for our students and i feel our students feel um that we believe that and they have good relationships with you know whether teachers a teacher of color or whether it teaches caucasian um one of one of the things we pride ourselves is in the kind of relationships and support we give our students so but we will continue to work hard and come up with and implement better and and strategies for our hiring practices to improve from where we are today mr sorel oh oh saw i thought it was you mr here oh mr hayden mr lavoy when you compile that report that vivian was talking about you tell us how many people are coming can you tell us how many people of color have not stayed have say the last five years so you want to take you want us to take a look at the retention rate for our for our people what our retention rate is that's fine sure we can do we can give you that as long as you've given us everybody just people of color retention rate of just the people how many people of color have left or all people that's what i was interested in but all people would be fine okay well we'll break it down so you'll see mr solo yeah i would like to table this until we get the full data because in order for us to make informed decisions at this level we need to have the full spectrum of the data i mean they are we when we talk about diversifying a system it has to be all levels walk through the school and where you have the moral concentration of um people of color is in the cafeteria cafeteria staff so we're failing i mean looking at these numbers we're not really diversifying at all um we have some in nine out of 25 that's not that's to me that that's not great we did and then and i was here with john um i want to say sue was there at the um teacher thing we were trying to recruit teachers no um they were a mix of teachers of colors and we had 40 people that applied for that workshop informational session i think only 20 showed up so we we have to put a better strategy plan in place and that means going out into the community um and looking at what shops we have here and going out to the shops to garages um all the places that to see if we do a better level of recruitment so one of the strategies that we're using so just to give you an example um this friday i'm going out to two different companies uh for the purpose of trying to recruit teachers and then next week we're going to two other companies to go out and we're trying to connect with the hr's in those companies and take a look at what kind of uh specifically targeting some of the uh openings we have here at the school to try to find teachers and part of that is to try to take a look at companies that that may have people minorities working for them that we can kind of recruit from so uh that's part of another part of our strategy that we're actually going out and i'm doing the first four with a team and then we'll continue our goal is to continue to visit companies for the specific purpose of recruiting staff members um so we've we've made a list i've and we've got the names of these companies to our advisory uh committees um i asked for names of all different companies that they thought we could go out and visit so we're we're starting with these four and we'll continue an ongoing process of going out and visiting these companies for the specific purpose of trying to connect with uh people of color at these different companies just just to get our foot in the door and and see and then what we're hoping for is to be able to put advertisements on their bulletin board so instead of just depending on school spring or or indeed or some of these others these are all local big corporations and companies and smaller ones as well in the construction areas that we're going out to visit for that specific purpose yeah and i know in this climate day and age right now it's hard to recruit any teachers in general or educational staff it's been a struggle throughout the commonwealth that i want to say far more most likely in the nation um but we have to put better strategies in place and to go out there and start recruiting um and it's also looking at the colleges because we're talking about all right we have two sides in our house career and academics so we have to start managing both as well as an administration side so i would actually want to make a motion table until we get the full um information that was just requested today yeah we're not voting on it so no we'll just put it back on the agenda we'll be back on the next uh the next agenda we'll make sure it's back to the next agenda okay superintendent sure okay yeah i'll get that information okay but also have it put on to the agenda please okay thank you also have it put on to the agenda the gender police that was to the superintendent sorry okay anything uh anything further on this matter uh sue i just wanted to share the the name of the organization that superintendent lavoie talked about that we recently joined it's the massachusetts partnership for diversity and education and uh that was our first school like we went to a recruitment fair that was our first one but we'll be working more specifically more closely with them they also are going to partner with our hr coordinator in terms of thinking about they post our job so that's another place where our jobs aren't just on school spring and they specifically target um diverse candidates um you know and you know it was it was a good it was eye opening for us it was also a good first step in terms of looking at different ways to recruit rather than just posting jobs anything further yeah um mr hayden mrs zielinski just to follow up on frank's this is for vocational and academic teachers all teachers all employees yes for all positions okay okay uh superintendent lavoy will update the committee on the shop student teacher ratio john so the data on different programs how many teachers and how many students um i gave you a um a document that that lists the number of teachers uh and how many students were in a particular program that information was requested and i provided that information any questions on the information that we received yes vivian so in terms of the number of teachers and the ratio of students do you find with the numbers that you see yourself here superintendent are there any shops that where you would recommend that there is a need for for more hires so based on the shops that we're seeing here and the number of teachers do you find that there are any shops that we do need to hire additional teachers and if so which ones the the number of teachers in any particular program i sit down with the department heads that's part of our budget process we sit down and look at how many students and how many teachers and we weigh in on a lot of factors not just numbers but we weigh in on the type of instruction that's happening in the space in which that instruction happens what kind of equipment what kind of a lot of times a shop may be far more safe there are bigger concerns for safety issues in another shop there's space issues and also does the program itself lend itself to an instructor working with more than one grade level that can be the case at times so there are a lot of factors we look at when we determine uh also we look at the trends within the program to see if the numbers how big the how large numbers are sometimes a shop may let's say in the ninth grade have bring in 10 new french freshmen but every other year they brought in 20.
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mr massiana was able to schedule a virtual our next meeting will be virtual i think it's june 14th adam um if memory serves me yeah and that would be seven o'clock to review those two policies among others so um i don't know if anybody wants to make a motion to table those two items mr white if you want to move that those two uh policies be tabled to the next meeting uh i'm let me i'll just uh so i movement policies three five four three school activity fund and three four five oh monies and school buildings are tabled until our june 14th policy meeting i'm sorry that would be postponed table okay that's yeah so if you want to give that another shot i apologize all right so i i moved that policies three five four three and 3450 are postponed until our june 14th policy meeting is there a second second any discussion all in favor is unanimous thank you um okay so it looks like we're going to start at policy 1140 does that sound right right yes okay great and which one are we going to start with the our i guess our existing policy sure we can take a look at the uh existing policy of distribution of materials that's 1140 this is our existing policy that you see on the screen i don't know if you've had the opportunity to review that this policy was original i guess last updated in 1996 april 15th so we're coming up on its uh what 28 year birthday yeah by the way dr sullivan i don't see are you sharing screen yeah i don't see it either yeah i'm not sure i'm assuming you're talking about the cpf policy yep not the claim policy that's there how's that here we go yeah good good looking better there we go thank you so again uh april 15th uh 1996 so just over 28 years old this policy uh outlining you know flyer distribution announcement content of those distributed materials basically a statement that really that our kids can't be exploited you know for instance if a local business came and said hey we've got this activity going on we'd love to get some students uh during the day uh to come and and work for three days and uh we're not gonna pay them obviously that's you know being exploited uh so that you know it's all left to the superintendent's ultimate discretion as to whether or not um these things are appropriate and i'll be honest with you we don't get that request uh at least not in the six years i've been superintendent anything like that um and then budget and referendum materials be a bit more germane uh this day uh as we start to embark on our school modernization process basically that we can only share the specifics of time date and location the question or proposal to students this is only two students and again as you know we think about contemporary issues we don't really give a lot of paper to kids to take home anymore we do a lot of that through through virtual distribution so the cave version of that same policy is not frankly dramatically different than um than the cheshire public schools version although there were a couple of items that i wanted to highlight for your attention and um maybe your consideration so the beginning of the policy uh outlines the three same you know rough ideas that are outlined in our policy with this paragraph here all requests from groups or individuals to have children distribute materials to people in the community with the exception of requests from school connected organizations like pto or board appointed citizens ad hoc advisory committee will be referred to the office of the superintendent to determine whether requests comply with overall school purposes and policies they take a little bit of an exception to the idea that the [Music] pto and ad hoc advisory committees would not have this reviewed because i think even well-intentioned you know they may inadvertently send something out that is in direct violation of this this policy unless the board feels like it's okay if ptos and ad hoc advisories violate this i just don't know that it's a great idea so my my recommendation would be that either we remove the exemption or at least refer to the principal who could consult with the the superintendent to review the the policy the other consideration in here again a lot of this language for use of students is is the same um this isn't just a note from cabe that would be removed unless um you wanted to just re remove the cave no we don't distribute paper planners notebooks or anything like that with advertising on them but i don't know that it's a bad idea to just keep that part in there anyway and just take the cabe note piece off but the dissemination of religious materials is something i had a question about materials that have a religious content may be available to students during non-instructional time the district shall impose content neutral time place and manner restrictions on the dissemination of religious materials to ensure students are aware that materials are not being endorsed or sponsored by the district that would be something i would recommend we perhaps consult with floyd about you know potentially removing that piece i you know i i it but that that's your call as to whether or not you'd like me to do that other you know again as i've worked in the district as an administrator for 17 years i can't remember that issue ever coming up although we do have um some religious uh clubs i if this would encroach on that i don't want to do that um the kids may have clubs and activities after school that you know they want to do but um i you know if if this is something more about you know having a religious group come in and in um proselytize or something i know that under free speech is a public building we would have to make the building i'm not really sure what this is speaking to so i i would want to consult with floyd upon you know your consent to our attorney to um get a little bit more clarity around this issue um i don't know for me uh i think that the policy that we have is actually arguably better written than the k policy it's a little bit more general gives you and and your administration a little bit more flexibility on all of these issues with the exception of advertising may you know maybe adding some advertised to advertise clause might be something yeah i i agree with you there adam i i you know i hadn't really thought about reverse engineering it you know just pumping the cave language into ours i think this would be our policy would be stronger if we take that paragraph about advertising in the school push it into our version and then i think we're we're good at that point i can consult with floyd on the distribution of religious materials it's not covered in our current policy to get his advisement but you know it's i don't know what you guys think about that um sammy had your hand up yeah i i would definitely go in the direction of consulting floyd i'm just trying to think of you know jehovah's witness right that's the first thing that came to my mind when i read this i mean are we allowing those types of items to be distributed to our kids during or after school though because you have certain like the temple i know uses hummuston you know on the weekends for religious schools so where does that line cross i guess yeah they they engage in the building use process which we couldn't um any religion we could not exclude based on the on the religion so if you know an objection you know something that we may even not have a religious affinity to they could use the building as well as anybody else i mean i um that sounded terrible but yeah you know i know what you're saying a made-up religion hated dogs well i love dogs i might find it objectionable that this religion hates dogs but i under that we have to permit that i mean i don't want a little bit of guidance about what are we trying to address here that's where i'm struggling yeah and i also thought about like the boys and girls boy scouts girl scouts if there's any any affiliation to a religion of some sort i'm just trying to anticipate all these like you said you know different possible relationships with his memory he probably recalls years ago we had to review a policy that specifically included that we had to permit the boy scouts it was literally written right in the law yeah well yeah aren't they specifically like a group a usage or something like that yeah yeah but that's you know but i think what we're trying to get to here is what are we trying to do with this dissemination of what is this even covering and so we can ask that question tim yeah no so my question is the answer to that i'm thinking is why it's on the agenda why i mean if it hasn't come up in 17 years i i'm just curious like yeah just that one component hasn't come up oh oh oh okay okay so you're just saying that one piece other things came up you referred to the gabe guidance and uh the cape guidance okay yeah i mean it's fine if you i mean if you want to talk to floyd i i wouldn't put a lot of time into it i uh yeah god knows there are a lot of fish to fry these days but uh that that's i mean that's a pretty quick question i mean my my reading of it would be i think it was more of a dissemination of literature kind of like what sam was saying like a a jehovah's witness uh pamphlet for example right or something like that um yeah i don't yeah because i don't think we've had like uh members come on campus and hand me out literature during a you know a lacrosse practice or something like that um because i guess technically that's kind of what this is talking about um but i think i think it was more about um it seemed like you know more in the the the reference of like a student group or something handing out stuff in the hallways or something like that i mean this may be something if if you're going to distribute these materials like the district has to we could do that every tuesday at four o'clock in front of god middle school you know i mean any religion that wants to do it we're not going to say no but this is the kind the the location time and place and it's on your website or something you know that's all i can think is you know maybe what this address is but i would want to get a little clarity seeing is this has never come up in my tenure as an administrator yeah so i guess and then the other thing would be adding that clause about advertising because um i guess in all these years we really haven't had a problem with it but it's not in here either so well we we haven't had a problem with it because we we do that already i mean a lot of the advertising stuff we we are really strict about now there is the one exception to this which you know maybe you carve out or bring to light here we do permit advertising in certain places so like programs excuse me for you know sporting events uh at the uh alumni field there we allow that uh on the game field you know on the softball we do permit that under those limited circumstances so you know maybe we call attention to that here um so i even recall i until maybe even back in the day uh there used to be like you could buy book covers and would have like you know local community average red and white you're like yeah yeah yeah right right yeah right yeah you could fold them over the books and you know do that you know are you gonna do the kids even do that anymore i don't even know right yeah you don't see i mean back in my day it was the uh the paper lunch or the paper um grocery bag right yeah second sam you had your hand up yeah i just wanted to go back to so right now doc's thrown we limit advertising to certain areas right because i know we do a lot of fundraisers with businesses you know wanting to buy banners and so forth so that's only in restricted areas at the moment yeah so the pto can do things i mean if they're doing that as a fundraiser they might have a certain angle on that that's but as a school system the only advertising we permit is when uh we you know sell space athletic venues and we have limited that to the baseball softball and the main turf field just one quick point on that so you don't do you know like the the um drama doesn't do like a playbill anymore because i know we hadn't i recall that in years past just like a standard playbill where it might have they do and like that would be the that's fine when we do like uh game brochures and stuff that falls under that category oh okay you said games i was thinking sports only yeah so yeah okay i understand i was just trying that more inclusively yes we do it for music and yeah yeah and play as well yeah i mean to me that seems all what you're doing seems perfectly reasonable i don't really want to see like cheshire high school presented by verizon wireless right but what you're doing makes sense i think it seems reasonable so we can scrap the north end verizon theater at the elementary school that's no offense to verizon wait no we're ready right because they might be giving us a lot of money yeah there could be some naming rights in there naming rights exactly so um all right is everybody okay with where we are so far yeah all right so the next agenda item was 6145.81 student fundraising activities um we do not have a policy on this in our handbook let me just double check on the cps version um now excuse me we do have it cave does not i knew it was one with that one way or the other so let me present our version this is point eight we need point eight one student fundraising activities four five point eight one yeah it should be uh it's embedded in our it's in the agenda tell you i'm having an off day today would be the title of the document for the policy agenda you're operating off of is policy posting to out there okay i see people in it now all right so school money is in school buildings was tabled so the next item is actually advanced courses or programs correct oh yeah yeah i just thought that since the the other three policies are sort of related that i thought maybe you wanted to do the fundraising activity one first yeah so that's the other one very similar so that yeah that's why i didn't i didn't say uh anything because i i figured yeah that was a very sense adam but i'm not i'm not dealing in a lot of logic today unfortunately all right so um advanced courses or programs these are both new uh mandated policies so i'll pull that up and share screen here okay so we're going in order then we're going to go to 61 41.51 okay so uh so i'll be honest um uh what's the difference between 51.51 and dot 52 yeah so there didn't seem to be a whole lot it seemed very very similar yeah didn't 61 41.52 seem like a succinct version of the the previous one yeah um so i thought maybe i'd clicked on the same one when i was reading it you know i was like uh yeah so in the um in the policy in effect the policy was designed to provide greater access to rigorous course work for kids and um i'm not gonna tell you that uh we were always perfect in this respect but we um do provide a lot of acceleration options for students particularly you know through math at the middle and high school level all content areas for at least core content areas at the high school level have leveling options for example ap competitive college prep college prep there are various options there but on a bit of a history lesson when my predecessor at dodd middle school i will call him the great don malonis because he really was an incredible principal uh first became principal there were i want to say eight levels for each content area and um there's not a lot of data that supports leveling in the middle school so when that got collapsed down the more that it got collapsed down to one level the higher the achievement went and you know so it's a very local example of finding success and it says that you know we should identify students who are performing you know above the grade level um and frankly that's the majority of our kids when you look at their assessments uh so you know yes do we need to continue to identify pathways for to ensure that students are challenged absolutely um but as part of their academic plan we already do that with students this would be an implementation for july 1 [Music] but we do prepare students when they engage in course selection at the middle and high school you know a lot of information around the various uh acceleration options that exist um you know even to give you an example at the high school when students take the psat exam there are predictors based on national data that say well if you got this score on the psat there's this percent probability that you'll be successful in this ap class and because we aspire to give every student who is interested in capable exposure to at least one ap course or ece course or collegiate level class before they graduate cheshire high school will send letters to kids that don't have any enrollments in those classes and have them connect with their school counselor to say hey you know the data says you would be successful here i see your grades are so why didn't you try it you want to try it do you want to try maybe it's not this ap class maybe it's maybe it's an ece class maybe it's something different but in order to encourage kids to challenge themselves for rigorous curricular experiences and you know the title of this policy is challenging curriculum policy you know and it's really about how to have um you know advanced how do we really push kids to take rigorous coursework so the policy itself so just to be clear so this is dictated by statute this policy yes okay so do we have it so it seems like it sets up a framework to identify and at least advanced and or at least advanced because i think there's another policy it talks about gifted i don't know if there's a distinction or not um to in the eighth and ninth grade to almost set up like a a framework on how to identify kids who might be ready for advanced classes so is that something that we do now or is this a formal process that the state wants us to implement i do think they want a more formal process okay do we agree with that well i mean there are some other state laws that i don't necessarily agree with but you know we do have to follow state law um and i you know i i don't think this is going to be something that's going to be terribly cumbersome you know it might be more cumbersome but i don't think it's anything that is something we can't do so do we report to the state department of ed now all of our advanced placement students um that's what this is requiring us to do i don't know that for a fact to be honest with you um that might be part of our required upload but i haven't confirmed that with scott conway and tom lee walk to two guys who who do all of our upload of required information to the state because i thought that was like the strangest thing of all it was like if there was a a data reporting requirement there or anyone who has identified that they you know had they had to be reported to the department of aid so i don't know i think that you know if it's just a matter of you know strangely written law or you know because we've encountered that before um sam go ahead so i read this as and we're actually working on the same thing dr solon on our my daytime life um i read it as basically allowing um expanding the access for kids if correct me if i'm wrong and therefore we do report it i would assume the reporting impacts the accountability index because don't we have to um identify which courses and i'm trying to picture the accountability index right now yeah at the high school level anything that's like a dual enrollment or college level class so ece ap courses those get reported to the state i do know that i don't know if i mean there is a difference between identified and engaged in those classes because not all identified students elect to take those classes i will say the majority do but you know so it is unique um the mandating of this but i like i think you as you said sam i really think that this is a effort to be more inclusive of kids and make sure that all students have access to rigorous coursework which is something we've embraced for as long as i i know um but i do think it's also good to have a mecca mechanism in place to ensure that and if this helps with that then i'm okay with it you know and so this does require um for the 22-23 school year that we do design a pathway or a framework of how to do this it's probably going to be a lot like our talented and gifted framework which we're going to talk about here momentarily okay so um did we determine if 51 and dot 51 and dot 52 are the same or no would we have to advance both and i have to apologize i explained to adam when we first logged on here that the agenda isn't exactly as i um thought it was going to be drawn up that's that's on me it was a miscommunication between i guess carol and myself unfortunately she's on vacation this week or she'd be here in the in the meeting 61 41.51 when you click on that link it takes you to 61 41.52 so well that would explain it yeah which is so you're not crazy adam they are exactly the same as you look at them there because the link for 6141.51 is not accurate um [Music] what i'll do is download 6141.51 and i can email it to everybody on the call on the you know right now and i'll pull it up for people to be able to see it home so so what i just want to try to put this into my own words we're basically this is this we have a we have a program in place for basically for high school ap classes etc etc sort of putting it under a broad umbrella and there's a state law which says we need to the st established criteria which we may already have they might change but we need to set the criteria in stone report those in and then also measure on an annual basis the students that are involved or not involved is that not the the measurement of students involved and not involved is not part of this policy uh the conversation yeah the conversation about the measurement of those involved or not is part of the statewide accountability reporting process that they have to look at each this is like a report card for the school system and one of the indicators on that report card is the percentage of students engaged in you know rigorous coursework um and you know so i think when we talk about measuring that that's that's the reference there is to that report card this is telling us as a school system that we need to uh identify criteria for students to have access to more rigorous school schoolwork okay and we have that already which we already do so the the one nuance here that i would caution is that middle schools advent will offer advanced academic classes and all in the four content areas of language arts math social studies and science to me that sounds like you're trying to dictate that school districts level middle schools in all of those four content areas which i think would be shameful and a tremendous overstep but um like i said there's only data to support that in math but that may be you know a misinterpretation and i think we can look at how do we you know engage in this policy without doing that because that's not in my professional opinion and professional experience good for kids so is it is the state law saying that we have to do that right now the state law says we have to offer advanced academic classes in four content areas they don't really define what that means um so we you know all this is subject to some level of interpretation which i'll review with kevin uh hamlin and marlene uh when we before our next meeting okay so we'll talk about it clarify anything in here and then you know ultimately upon passage i mean legally anyway we would have to design the identification process and so i think we're probably already there but uh we'd have to just put it in writing uh and make it available on our website so we would have to do that anyway to comply with law whether or not the policy gets passed but i think for your edification you would want to know what is our process going to be what does this actually mean for our kids in the policy so i'll also bring up that um now just scanning through um dot 51 um that that there's already a contradiction because uh the definition of advanced uh advanced studies uh specifically says grades 9 through 12 right where there's already so there's already a contradiction between the two policies yeah i'm very uneasy about saying we're gonna start leveling eighth grade classes if you know i i don't love leveling nine through twelve to be honest with you you know i mean i do it as a something that i guess we've already as a not a school system as a society come to grips with you know i just don't i don't know that it's great for kids though so can i jump in adam yeah go ahead so sam i see you shaking your head you're a professional in this particular situation are you generally in agreement with what jeff is saying like leveling at the middle school level is i am not a proponent of leveling in the middle school or any you cut it out and i'm not sure if i missed the word level but specifically in the middle school we actually got rid of leveling okay i said i i'm not a proponent of it at all we actually work to unlevel our middle schools and we do see higher results from the unleveling i think it leads to a lot of segregating our issues are our demographic issues um it prohibits certain groups of students to have access to these types of courses and and that should not be the case so when you have a very diverse population somehow it tends to be that for example all the white kids are in the easy ap classes you know so that's where our struggle lies and i think here it's you know cheshire has been very good like dr solon said in providing access to a variety of advanced courses um my question is is this does this in some way dr solon hinder the kids being able to get credit for courses in the middle school because i know that's out there as well too right so um the access to getting credit for courses in the middle school is pretty clearly defined and it's around language and math uh in terms of advanced coursework at this time whether or not that gets expanded but right now all of our kids have that access to those eighth graders and by the way uh sam what you couldn't make out in your audio was clear in your body language and so i appreciate that that point too and um one nuanced addition i want to just add to what sam so astutely said was that when you compress levels all students achievement improves it's not just the achievement and i know it sounds counterintuitive it's not just the achievement of those who are formerly in the lower level get better all achievement overall improves so it's not and i'll give you a cheshire example the more inclusive we've been in providing access for students with special needs to class kids that have identified special education plans the more successful all of our kids have been including special ed so you know it doesn't it's it's somewhat counter-intuitive for some people but um it's the reality and there's plenty of data to illustrate it so we'll take a look at this with kevin and marlene and we'll come back next month with some more of our so you get a better sense of what does this policy look like in action right so we'll take a look at this but uh and then what does it mean to your point adam against uh 61 41.51 you know the difference in language is there so if everybody's okay we can take a look at 6141.51 if you want oh yeah and just um just so for um a uh a uh an educational layman such as myself leveling means that or not having leveling means that more students are exposed to more rigorous academic courses than they normally would be because because they would have been labeled um not as you know smart or not smart enough to be in an advanced class or something where they can still be exposed to a piece of literature or mathematics or science that they normally would have been exposed to if there was multiple levels of courses of the same thing is that kind of what we're talking about at a base level i think you're right like you know that um i think some people argue that well we'll take all the kids who need the most support and we'll put them in a group together and try and give them more intensive support and then through the best of intentions uh they often move at a much slower pace they often emphasize weaknesses over strengths they're not challenging curriculum down right right um and it's it can be a function of lowering the bar um and it like for me i wasn't i know it was gonna be hard to believe but a gifted runner you know in terms of running any great distances was never my for attack but if you put me in with a group that ran faster than i typically did i'd run faster and i think that's part of the you know it's kind of a an analogy here to to this work so that's an analogy that i can understand 6141.51 adam already gave us a bit of a sneak pre a sneak peek here but again this is another mandated policy about access to academic rigor and they want all students to have access to rigorous curriculum the board should encourage participation in advanced courses or programs communicate information about these programs and courses to parents again you know we are in a district where the vast majority of our students choose to be college oriented um so this is kind of a default position for us even if we weren't in that in that environment i mean we would strongly recommend students take the most rigorous coursework for them possible to benefit them you know as as students and people but basically as a school system you know we need to provide access to these uh courses um [Music] limit criteria that hinder enrollment in these courses uh use a variety of strategies to determine how students will be provided access to these courses like what you see right here under four where we have to consider these all these variables and we're always trying to improve i'll give you an example from probably 10 years ago now when i was high school principal we had a student who wanted to take um chemistry and the student you know didn't meet the math criteria and i asked well is there an exam that we could give to determine if the student would be able to take chemistry and the student took the exam and you know didn't do as well is is the the cut off everybody appreciated that access but we also gave that chemistry exam to the kids in the class the math exam yeah i so let's have the the class take that exam they did the same way that she did you know so we opened access to chemistry then for more people by identifying you know what truly is academically necessary that would be a gateway to these these rigorous classes so um it does hear tim talk about evaluation that we will review annually data on student participation in these classes and that we look at the you know factors such as gender ethnicity and pre-reduced lunch participation and make adjustments as necessary we've been doing that for at least 12 years we do that all the time we we want to make sure that we're opening doors not closing doors um so jeff i think the there there's only one section that i kind of have a problem with okay um and and i don't know if there's any even if there's anything i can we can do about it um but um section 4 part c says the use of students prior academic performance must rely on evident evidence-based indicators of how a student will perform in an advanced course or program so now i'm interpreting that as if a student's prior performance would show that they would not do well in an advanced course almost is saying that want to keep the students gpa up but we're also not willing to allow the student to try it and fail and so is that what it's supposed to mean or am i looking at it wrong because it seems like if the student is all of a sudden just you know wants to give it a shot and but they don't do well i mean i guess i guess it's not like in college where you could drop the course and try again on something else i guess it's not like that but we don't do you know quote try again but you know we do have kids change levels sometimes um sometimes it's you know based on performance sometimes it's not but you know when i look at those uh six variables there i think you're considering a preponderance of evidence to support the student you know either entering or not entering the more rigorous class and one you know such uh piece of evidence is looking at their prior performance and evidence base so when i talked about that psat that's a that's evidence um because it'll tell you with your psat score you know 42 of the kids pass this class with your psat score 100 past this class or zero so i mean that's really evidence-based sort of uh look at it so you know the idea of all right you want to take uh ap bio but when you took um bio is a sophomore you had an f in that class do you really think it's a good idea to take ap bio i mean so some of those things yeah we just use it as a screener not you must pass all six tests you look at the whole body and you try we're trying as a school system to elevate and provide opportunities and supports when needed for success in those higher level classes but those do those uh criteria do sort of form a um a gatekeeping type situation right so you're still determining ahead of time that you're i guess making sure that a student doesn't waste their time is that how how you view it as opposed to not i would frame it in the affirmative in the sense that making sure students make the most of their time okay same i would definitely agree the other flip side to this atom is like parents pressuring kids to you have to take you know the high level courses when it's not appropriate for them to do so um i've dealt with that in you know what i do um and after a conversation with the family realizing okay this might not be an appropriate course for them to be in then they realize okay you know based off the data you're right you know okay understood we have to protect our kids from parents too don't forget of course i mean everybody means well you also have to lead by whatever the data shows in past performance too yeah so i just want to i want to put this into my words and see if this is a fair description when we started this conversation i was thinking like leveling on or off yes or no and when i say that just so i don't know adam you might remember this but literally what goes through my mind in leveling it's still sort of shocked to all of it still shocks me and it did even back then it died and finished in 1986.
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we ended up hiring i believe it was 11 teach classroom teachers and so the statement john made we were able to reduce nine k elementary sections this year um again and so we're working really hard to try to find as many savings as possible for the board that was for a total of over close to 550 000 savings by reducing those sections at the kindergarten levels by strategy by a narrative we were allowed to keep them for the next two years we thought it was in the district's best interest to move on those positions now so we collapsed them through attrition we hired 11 to 14.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i am matthew lingle and i'm a part of this very special graduating class i'd like to take this moment to thank everyone for being here as we prepare to move on from high school and into the next chapter of our lives this graduating class you see before you has endured many battles to be here both personal and shared through those battles we can finally say we've won we went through a lot together the ups and the downs from experiencing online schooling because of coven 19 to readjusting the school back on campus to being here today receiving our diplomas some of our struggles have also been personal like having to suffer through the loss of someone close to you or maybe that pesky class you just didn't want to show up to some of us are still fighting that fight but trust me keep going you're fighting that good fight gilbert high school is unlike any other campus i've seen or been a part of sure gilbert looks like any other school but you truly need to be a part of the environment to understand this begins with the biggest piece of the puzzle here the staff the staff here isn't like anywhere else there are places like our previous schools where you and i have felt essentially drowned out among the sea of voices but here teachers and staff listen and make sure that no matter what the issue is you'll be sent in the right direction to get the help you need there are many people who made getting here today possible like my english teachers from the past year for allowing me to find myself through my writing without them i wouldn't have the chance to be speaking here today so from the bottom of my heart thank you i'd like to thank my family and friends for being there through thick and thin to get me here to this spot my family has been there to see me go through the good times and the bad no matter how big the task was i'd also like to thank the amazing people on the esports team i'm a part of the comets the people i've met thanks to the comets have made a lasting impression on me that shows me that i matter you've offered me for what the past year has felt like another home these people have shown me nothing but trust respect and love i am proud and blessed to call these people my friends so andy matt stephen and william thank you all of us here have special people to thank please take this moment to hold them all close to your heart and gratitude i'd also like to take a moment to talk about what's next for us some of us here may plan on going straight into the workforce some are looking at college and some may not have a single idea on what you want to do next no matter what the next step is for you make it count this is your life now you call the shots this graduation day is also important to the community around us for a couple of reasons this is a new group of people who are going to be your college classmates your co-workers your next anything and everything the possibilities for this class are endless if we can get through the kova 19 pandemic in our own personal battles to be here then just think about what we can do now that the sky's the limit there's a quote that i'd like to share with everyone today steve jobs once said you can't connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future you have to trust in something your gut destiny life karma whatever so you just have to trust in something this approach has never let me down and it has made all the difference in my life today i hope you connect your dots there's also another quote i'd like to share with you today throughout the year at gilbert we continuously heard that this is the way these quotes speak to me i believe that there is no way to ever know what the future holds for you likewise there is no way to force what you want to happen life is always going to be changing you just have to take on the battles and go with the flow of life finally i would like to congratulate the class of 2022 one more time on making it to the finish line we spent countless hours inside those classrooms pushing through our classes day by day week by week to finally say we've done it looking back at all we've gone through and done to get to this point we can all agree that this was no small task some of us have sacrificed more than others for today and that's okay the road laid out for us isn't for everyone and that is okay in the end we can all say we did it thank you and now please welcome elvie viegas our next class speaker [Applause] good afternoon everyone my name is elvi villegas and i am a part of independent studies i'd like all the class of 2022 to give themselves a big round of applause and including their family and staff because you guys have been through so much after everything we've been through we're still sitting here today we've made it and are still going through a pandemic we've had to go through a lot these past two years many of us had to work from home or even lost jobs because of covid school work had to be done at home where we couldn't find a quiet place to study and some of us fell behind a lot we had to learn how to adapt and that's what you have to learn how to do everywhere we have to learn how to adapt at a new job a new school and new locations and we've had much practice from this experience many of us are still recovering from staying home for so long maybe being hot today here today is hard for you because there are too many people here your anxiety may be going through the roof but the fact that we're all here today is because we push hard to get here no matter the circumstance you may be dealing with mental health issues or financial troubles at the moment and have been for years but your endurance and determination has gotten to to get to you where you are today you can do anything you set your mind to you wanted straight a's you got you got it because you worked hard you got your first job and you got over anxiety when you want something bad enough you'll get it done no one can stop you keep that mindset that no one can stop you from what you want to achieve everyone has different goals what might be small to you might be big to somebody else but once you start believing that you're good enough to do whatever you want the sooner your results will shine and you'll feel proud of yourself not only will your progress shine but you yourself will shine as well i hope we can all succeed in achieving what we want in our lives it's been hard but it'll only make your stress path stronger many of us are undecided in what path we should take or what we want to pursue but as soon as we get that passion for something we can achieve it and we can make our dreams and goals come to life do what makes you happy in the end you will be more successful in what brings you joy whether it's in a job relationships or anything you can have control of and in saying that take control of your life don't let anyone tell you even yourself that you can't get something done once you put that thought in your mind that you can't do something you most likely won't but if you have the mindset to do it and be the best that you can be that's what will happen i'm not saying that you will be the best at everyone because no one really can but strive to be the best that you can at whatever you're doing be pleased with who you are as long as you're happy with yourself no one can tell you otherwise now ladies and gentlemen that's my school life but my home life is filled with warmth and love my parents aunts uncles my brothers sisters nephews nieces cousins and many friends have made me be the successful person i am today they've encouraged me not only to take care of myself but others as well and a special thank you to my strong pillars my parents that are with me through thick and thin not only have they fulfilled me with gifts but with love empathy and support and i couldn't have done anything with them without them every experience in my life so far i have been able to share with them and i hope to keep on doing so and i can't wait for the day for us to all realize and look behind and say wow i really did that look how far i've come so keep pushing forward and make yourself proud congratulations class of 2022 i'm so proud of you thank you and now i would like to introduce fabian espinosa [Applause] good afternoon everyone i would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the entire class of 2022.
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i have a motion thank you miss muss a second any discussion hearing none can we have a roll call please mr bail yes mr fazio i have to abstain yes mr januzzi yes miss lima yeah mr minhaus yes miss luzon yes and mr dawson yes okay up to 6.1 resolved that the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions as outlined in personnel resolutions under district high school this is 6.2 through 6.13.
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thank you both for being here this evening [Applause] one of the most important responsibilities of a school is to promote academic education and to insist upon excellence washington high school confers its highest academic honors by designating the top one percent of the graduating class i am pleased to present the three students who have earned the highest academic ranking in the class of 2022. besides graduating with highest distinction they will be speaking on behalf of the senior class i've asked them to stand to be recognized for their accomplishment hassan lookee osuna leyva [Applause] and joining us virtually tonight mark palma thank you students we as a community acknowledge and respect your remarkable achievements thank you for the hard work and dedication you have given to washington high school over these past four years i would now like to present to you hassan loki [Applause] good evening i hope you guys are having a pleasant day my name is hassan luki and this fall i'll be attending harvard university [Applause] today i am extremely honored to be giving a speech on the behalf of such an accomplished cohort of students as i reminisce about the enjoyable memories i created i get the i get a bittersweet feeling that the experience has passed by however this graduation speech addressed to the washington high school academic advisors my fellow classmates and the parental figures is meant to symbolically encapsulate their lasting implication on me as an individual i like to think that each individual begins their journey with a lack of consciousness a lack of consciousness of the world and ourselves is only through our experiences and our choices are we able to come to a deeper sense of understanding and self-awareness before i was born my parents made a monumental choice when they immigrated to the united states for the economic prosperity the country presents they left behind the country they considered their home they left behind their culture their primary language and their family members to come to a country where they were considered a stranger i cannot begin to quantify the alienation they must have felt the lack of belonging to a community hence i wanted to take a moment for my parents and all the parents who immigrated to the united states [Applause] like my parents i made numerous monumental choices throughout my four years of high school which created my current reality some of those choices were mistakes rather i'd like to say learning experiences since the word mistake has a negative connotation attached to it however i continue forward with everything i learned internalizing the experiences and people i met i'm i met along the way i am extremely grateful that i did since i met people with boundless compassion enthusiasm and humility people such as karen danny v selali mark unfortunately he could not be here today but i love you if you're watching this virtually nev who stated that people in switzerland speak swiss and herman and as i once did i now venture out into the world to make choices choices that will create my universe as i leave behind arizona it isn't a fair world to those i know because i have internalized them it is a testament to how they have influenced me to look for harvard's motto in life truth thank you guys for having me as your speaker today [Applause] for those who don't know me my name is leslie osuna and i want to start off by congratulating every single one of you sitting in these seats and thanking those who are here supporting these graduates after graduation i plan on majoring in criminal psychology and i want to thank my law enforcement teacher mr smith for being a big part of the reason i chose that particular major it is [Music] so as we've all come to realize for the first time in our lives our future isn't planned out for us we've all been on the same road up to this point and now we get to choose our own path the societal pressure of deciding what's next is shared by a saw but we can't allow this pressure to make us feel as if we aren't enough sometimes we just have to fig we've all been on the same road up to this point but now we get to decide what we're now we get to choose our own path the societal pressure of deciding what's next is shared by us all but we can't allow this pressure to make us feel as if we aren't enough sometimes we just have to figure it out as we go there's no universal way to measure success because success is different for every individual i want to leave you with a quote by marie curie life is not easy for any of us but what of that we must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves we must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained gracias [Applause] hello and welcome class of 2022.
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so although the numbers may be lower all of a sudden we may not cut back on that particular program because the next year you may have another 10 so we wait till there's a trend we continue to look at the trend we also look at the data for job opportunities and growth so sometimes we find that particular program may be drawing small numbers but so we have to do some research to find out what's going on with that particular program especially if there's a strong job market and students are taking that particular program we want to increase the numbers into that program so we have to do work on figuring out what the issues may be whether it's instructional strategies whether it's the curriculum lack of knowledge in terms of what the opportunities are for a particular program so there's a lot of different factors then if the numbers are might go the other way too they might we may have a program where there is three instructors and their numbers are growing and increasing so the following year we may have to add a fourth instructor uh because of the of that so looking at the particular numbers we have this year there's one program that i see on there there's two programs that will be numbers will be increasing which is uh robotics will have two instructors next year and business tech will have three instructors next year because they're we're adding uh another year to the program and they've been able to recruit uh uh substantial numbers increasing their numbers in business tech in particular so that uh program will we'll be adding an instructor to that program biotechnology we we have three instructors as of now and we're looking at whether we should put a fourth instructor in there or not there's a lot of factors that we haven't made a final decision on that typically we do make a decision by this time but there are some other personnel issues going on within that program that we're trying to weigh out and resolve before we make the final decision in that particular program robotics has a small number only has five students but it will those students are moving on to the next grade level so we need an instructor for that grade level and so and we also need an instructor for the freshman it's also a brand new somewhat brand new program still where we believe there's a extremely strong job market and the future in this particular program has a large increased growth rate for job opportunities so we're not giving up on it yet we're going to go uh so we're going to uh and we're looking at um we've improved the space we've recruit improved the equipment we've made some changes in the curriculum to try to draw more students and we're also looking for a top-notch instructor right out of industry that's one another reason why we're going out to industry to try to find the person that we think is the right fit for that program not only uh that can deliver the curriculum as it's to develop and design by the frameworks but also that can motivate kids that to build interest in the program and increase it so you know looking at it quickly in each of these programs at this point but those are the i think too that stick out that i know that we're going to be increasing the number of instructors in those particular programs vivian even after increasing those the the numbers by one per shop do you find that every other shop including the ones you just mentioned have the adequate amount of numbers of uh teachers according to the ratio of students that they have in the classroom or do we have like a budget concern in hiring additional staff to cover i believe i believe we have adequate teachers for those programs because we've vetted that through the process and so i believe we have sufficient instructors for the program because even though the numbers in some cases might look higher than others the the nature of the type of instructing that's going on may dictate the number of instructors as well so the numbers don't always tell the full story of why we have certain amount of instructors in that particular program so i would say we're we're good to go for next year based on these numbers other than the two i said we're looking at increasing yeah and the reason for my request on this information was just to ensure that the where providing sufficient amount of support and backing on the teachers that you know they're teaching our students and we want to make sure that they're properly giving the necessary tools and resources to be able to teach our students that's the only way we could you know it will be reflective in our performance so you know i i would like to encourage that we're properly staffing each shop accordingly and i appreciate you taking the time to to give me the breakdown george welcome anything further uh zoila yeah i know okay i'm playing with it robotic automation technology you mentioned that this is a new program that's why he has five students and one teacher robotics automation has not had a good draw they've had difficulty in getting students into their program for a lot of various reasons we've had some struggles with finding the right instructor in that particular program we've had uh no i asked if that's a new program oh that's this is a third this is their three years old this is their third yeah this is their third year i thought yes so it's still a relatively new program who has only five students because they've had struggles recruiting the program uh each freshman classes they've had a hard time getting students into the program now they've had if you look at there's no students in being the third year there's no students other than in the freshman class the reason for that is we've had two one year so this is the third year of uh recruitment the first year they recruited one student second year they recruited two students we moved those students into other pro into the engineering program because the numbers were so low and it's very there are some part of the framework parts of the curriculum are similar in engineering as they are in robotics and given the low numbers we didn't want to hire a teacher for one student so we moved them in but now that we have five students and we're going to start to build that program with those five students and try to next year we'll be bringing in 10th graders next year and we're going to try to bring in more students into that particular program when we bring in transfer students so we always bring in a certain number of transfer students so that's one of the programs we're going to try to bring in 10th grade students to increase those number of five to at least 10 students through our transfer process that'll be one of the shops where we have openings and opportunities for transfer students to come into so we are we feel that we'll try to run that program with two instructors one for the sophomore class and one for the freshman class um so it just brings up a couple questions because i'm looking at business tech and this is based on year of graduation am i correct for my assumption because business tech shows like for 2022 there's no um no students graduating for that year 2023 is the same i thing um then you got graphics we know that's gone biotech 2025 we don't have any freshmen and in robotics we only have for year 2025 because it's a brand new program and we don't have any students for this program but we have tons of students that are still on the waitlist that could have been easily selected and put into some of these programs yeah so what happens let's take this year for instance we have where our goal is to have four 400 approximately to 440 freshmen come in so that's our target we don't know at this point how many students are going to go into one program so we've also got to consider our academic programs how many students our student teacher ratio and the academic role i could take i could probably take another we could probably take 475 in order to fill every single program to capacity but we don't have enough space number one academic classrooms nor do we have enough instructors nor do we have enough common space like our cafeteria is a problem over over uh too many students in their lunches so there's a lot of other factors we do but so we figure at 440 which is a high number for us our goal really is 430 students at the end we may start with 440 but in the beginning students uh leave and go back to their regular high school we're hoping to end up by october 1st at 430 students but we don't know if out of that 430 who's going to pick which programs so in the end at the end of freshman year we do exploratory and exploratory they select their shops at the end of exploratory we've had very few students take robotics automation technology and that's why the numbers the number is so low so what we can do is take them in tenth grade so we can encourage students that are we take in transfer students what we do is try to fill in 10th grade where we have openings in the shop and so if we have where we have the numbers start to drop off in the 10th grade we can start to fill so if we had 20 openings we try to fill in with those 20 students in the shop program center that have space that have openings in so robotics would be one of those programs where we can bring in more students in the 10th grade but the wait list we still only even though we may have room in the sophomore year the waitlist is in the freshman year and so we still can only take so many students in that year because it compounds for year to year so if we took 440 this year and we maintained 430 the following year in the following year our numbers get to uh like we're at 1635 right now which is high for us it's the highest number we've had since the school opened i believe so the numbers are extremely high right now and the common space is where we have challenges where the academic programs and um our cafeteria and the hallways get overcrowded when we get beyond that number so that prevents us from you know even if we had a few openings in the shop we couldn't fill those openings without causing an overcrowding issue because you you mentioned earlier that this program is combined with a different program correct with different shock yeah i'm sorry you mentioned earlier that this program was combined with a different shop what was the shop again engineering oh engineering we move some they're not combined with them but they have similar the framework there are similar competencies in engineering and in robotics so some of the framework there's crossover so i mean similar to we have other programs so if you looked at hvac there are a lot of electrical um competencies in hvac that are common to electrical so we could do cross-training if we had low numbers in those particular programs so in engineering because there were there was low numbers in engineering at the time we could move kids we were able to move those few kids in robotics engineering and we can differentiate some of the instruction in engineering to try to target some of the more uh more competencies within the robotics when we know so the goal was those students that were in robotics that we moved to engineering that we would differentiate some of the curriculum for those particular students so their projects could be more robotic based than a different area of engineering whether sometimes there's many disciplines of engineering that we offer the students sometimes as a little civil sometimes it's a little electrical engineering so we're able to target we differentiate for some of the kids some of the different disciplines of engineering when we can um and this is the first year we're doing this this program robotics yeah no this is our third year third this is our uh yeah third year doing robotics we've only five so i can't justify in in the budget why we have five students who are one teacher um so when we're looking at i would have to see what the data looks like next year and maybe that program needs to be merged with a different program in the case of robotics there are five that those that's five freshmen that are going to be sophomores next year and here's the thing with robotics is several things to consider in robotics number one we believe we can uh take in transfer students five more transfer students and then there'll be 10 students in there it's a it's a program we're trying to promote because of the great opportunities for jobs and pathways in robotics we're uh also starting a postgraduate program in robotics uh because we believe that uh the the job market strong it offers many pathways for lots of different opportunities when students graduate so sometimes it takes us a while to get programs off the ground i'll give you an example hvac when we opened hvac the first four years after four years they had eight students today they're there they have maximum students it took us a while to get first to write and what changed it was getting the right instructor developing a curriculum and understanding what motivated students to want to take that program and developing that in that way and hvac was one of those programs and today it's one of the most uh explosive industries out there there are more job opportunities in hvac almost more than any one of our programs and that and the job markets continuing to grow and getting when we work with we've been working with the clean energy center recently and and we've been working with the mass hire which are all telling us train more electricians train more hvac technicians because of the future in those industries there is going to be a need for twice as many in those career areas we have so a lot of times it takes a while for a program to get off the ground we're not going to shut the program when we know that this is a program that offers great opportunities for kids it's for us to figure out how do we get students into those programs so that's why we've kind of taken it slow the first three years of this being the third year with the program and we've learned a lot and we've been continually working with our advisory committee we have a really good advisory committee in fact in that particular program that's working with us to try to figure out ways to get more students into the program and i think the most important key factor in any of our programs is top-notch teachers that really understand what the career is all about and know how to work with kids so that formula we haven't really figured out yet and i think that's one of our goals this year is that's one of the reasons we're going out to we've got a list of 10 companies we run out to visit specifically to try to recruit teachers in that career area as well as a few others but one of our main goals is try to recruit in that particular area because i found that robotics robotics is an area that we can post to the cows come home in uh school spring and we won't get any candidates it's just not the kind of place we've been we've posted in indeed we've posted everywhere we possibly can and have not been able to find can a good strong teacher for this program to get it off the ground we have a few leads uh going into next year that we're working on that we're hoping will pan out for us that we think can turn that program around but it's we i we believe it's a really kind of a career that can make a difference in life so we don't want to give up on it so we're trying to figure out to get enough kids in the program and still cover the what it takes to make it work [Music] okay um are we taking any of the kids through any of the robotics competitions uh last year and this year we haven't had a robotics uh club uh or we may have a small initiative we have a small one this year but they haven't been competing that i'm aware of so there's not a lot of kids in the club so it's not not competing just taking them to the competition for they could see other schools do the program and hopefully that motivates the students to want to join the program that's not part of the exploratory program the students are only in there two days and you know all 430 students go in in and out of that program so we haven't targeted anything of that nature it's because of the time and uh and it would be something that was done after school so we have not gotten enough students interested in that area yet in order to uh use that as a strategy as as you might be that you're talking about we've had a small even not a large number of students that have even participated in the robotics club but again i think that's a problem of finding the right instructor and the right coach uh to make that work we haven't shown them webinars or videos of robotics competition that might not even just taking them to the thing but we're using that as as a instructional tool or recruitment tool in the sixth seventh and eighth grade of most of our ascending communities that might also be a strategy of opening up their minds to what's possible because i know lawrence had um several of their students go to the robotics competition actually win some of them and we have a robotics program i know that we could definitely compete against lawrence public schools um better but it might supposed to be how we packaging and promoting the program yeah thank you you all said john vivian um my question is targeted towards your comment regarding transfers um so if we're getting transfers and plugging them into this shop is it based on the student's choice because they wanted to pick that shop or we're just trying to fill it to increase the numbers so when we have if we had 30 students that want to transfer to greater lawrence tech and we we may have 20 openings so we can only take 20 of the 30 let's say these are the programs we have openings for if you want to come to greater lawrence you can pick any one of these let's say there's five programs so they have a choice of up to five programs now as the numbers dwindle after 10 students may have picked their shop robotics may be only one of two shops they can pick if they want to come here and so then at some point five students are going to come into robotics if they want to come to great lawrence tech anyone else yes i'm still stuck into this robotic tech because i mean since i started here three years ago i remember going into um open house and and seeing the program actually and they earn energy the people and just seeing this graph with five people that are going to graduate because this is year of graduation right 2025.
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did you get your report card adam the levels which was like high above average above average high average average below average and then special like and everyone knew the classroom you were in the home room yeah no sam this is it's true it would go out with every report card that's what we would get um so so what i'm thinking is uh the conversation in my mind it was yay or nay and what it is is really more of a spectrum um you have a whole you have a tool you have a whole tool chest this is the leveling is one tool that you think is inappropriate but there are other tools to ensure the the optimal progress and realistic progress for students is that yeah so the leveling yay or nay thing and i think what sam and i were really speaking to the middle school level having a professional and data driven rationale for [Music] thinking that's not a great idea to start leveling everything and pushing that down at the high school level it's really kind of inherent in the system and we don't have a huge myriad of levels at the high school um you know we'll have college prep competitive college prep and then as you you know matriculate in some of the courses it'll open up to ap level work or ece that that level work we want to encourage as many students as are comfortable with their families to pursue the most rigorous coursework and that might not and that that's not a blanket endorsement for every course that means you know we look at you know what are your goals academically how are you performing academically what are you doing personally maybe we want to take this ap course but not that course over here and you know i'm sure you know you guys haven't had those conversations with your kids yet but i know i've had that conversation and as a principal i've shepherded a lot of families through those conversations about how how do we make these determinations and frankly the criteria listed in 6141.51 you know recommendations how did you do in some of your other courses what are your interests you know what sort of student are you you know you're going to have to do a lot of summer work in this ap class right is that is that you is that something you're comfortable with well yeah maybe in this content area but not that content area so these are this this gate that is being outlined here is really what good schools and good counselors and good principals do every day so nothing in here that i'm uncomfortable with it's really as i said before i think that we as a is a school district culture in a uh high school and middle school really want to push our kids to that level of proximal development as they would say in a theoretical sense um you know hard enough to be rigorous and challenging not so hard to overwhelm or make it impossible or frustration but not too easy either and i think these if these policies help codify that uh approach then i think that's great um i think when it goes overboard is when you start leveling you know elementary school classes and seventh and maybe even eighth grade classes where there's not data to support that and that's where we i want to look into this with kevin marlene and our curriculum people and maybe i'll even ask marlene to come to the next meeting to kind of weigh in we can put it first on the agenda or something tim yes just so uh i don't what year is the first year that as of this year or last year what's the first year that students take uh algebra one seventh grade eighth grade well it's it's a bit of a trick question because again we try and meet students where they are okay so we have elementary school students that have taken algebra one oh okay okay so the point is is that contin that continues and math is the one place where data supports you know that level of got it uh discerned leveling if you will i mean i had a kid in eighth grade i had his parent tell me i want my son is a freshman to take calculus because he took calculus but it was in chinese i want to make sure he's mastered english with it yeah huh that's impressive yeah this kid was really impressive he was somebody that was way off the charts what's that but that's a math thing now you become a language barrier too at the same time you know are you taking the conte the math content or are you really taking it for the english language aspect of it yeah he wanted both i mean he was a ferocious math student and you know but the point being that you know we're going to meet you where your needs are in any class math is unique in its leveling um that it's so sequential other content areas aren't like that so um you know we we do do that now with the levels but typically a student you know in mass uh where we level would be algebra one in seventh and eighth grade in an accelerated you know framework about 60 to 70 percent of our students are taking those accelerated math classes i i will you know review this again with marlene and kevin we'll come back and have a conversation next go around the 61 41 5 1 and 5 2.
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i don't know the exact number classroom teachers specifically for the high school we were not able to collapse any of those positions um and this is because of the increased enrollment growth at the high school so we're still holding on those positions and the funding source right now is essa 2 and sn3 so just want to try to clarify those points the last um point i just want to reiterate that john had made and that's this is the potential um savings for the board and this is um typically about a million dollars um potentially in breakage and we will be working really hard to maximize these opportunities and that is when we have more seasoned teachers either retiring or resigning as a strategy we try to bring in early career teachers and we experience a breakage breakage of salary that is um so we have teachers leaving us on the higher end of the salary scale and we hire teachers on the lower end of the salary scale and that difference between every teacher that's hired um is the savings for the district and so we anticipate another nine hundred thousand dollars potentially from those savings and so we're we're budgeting um close to 1.15 million from those from those two strategies um and and feel good and confident about those two numbers um but but the reality is with the 4.1 million dollar increase from the city um you know we typically have a couple of budget drivers and guidelines annually in our budget um the guidelines and i you know talked about these um a number of times in my public conversations but i'll just repeat them now and the guidelines are really contractual obligations are always going to be number one um we have you know we have negotiated contract terms that we have to honor um enrollment growth is you know our district unlike some other districts we continue to grow um we enjoy an amazing um diversity here in the community but the diversity comes at a cost in terms of services and so our services that that are mandated that we have to provide certainly english language support for our students who qualify for those services and then our students who require special ed support and so the board is required to provide contract satisfied contractual obligations address enrollment growth and mandated services and these are the very basic kind of expectations and then in any budget i think we're also um it's going to be important for us for health and safety to make sure those guidelines are also in place and so because of that you know we have at the minimum i'm an advocate in every school i'm an advocate in every program and a nurse at every school and a nurse at every program and then of course there are other items like facilities food services and those contracted obligations as well given all of those kind of budgeting guidelines and i'm just trying to give you that backdrop we are anticipating uh next year in the year after when john was talking about essentially the three-year budgeting idea we could be looking at a similar ask next year plus a couple of extra million um and so the 8.7 this year uh was for the growth that we talked about um our hope was that we can start the the process of moving away from the federal funding now and continue to use those monies for the purpose in which it was intended which was to provide critical support critical student support to students the federal monies were not intended for enrollment growth and that's this is why our ask of 8.7 uh was was moved forward uh we are now in a position as i mentioned earlier for social distance purposes we hired the positions at the high school we hired the positions at the k5 level we hired a couple of positions at the middle school the only ones we were able to reduce this year um are the k5 positions um and so i'm i'm just really sharing with the board we we feel like number one i feel like i have an obligation to continue to provide as many services to students as possible through the um relief the relief grant um at the same time we're also in a position where um the enrollment growth that we have experienced these last couple years and project to continue to experience we are not through attrition able to reduce those sections at the high school in the middle school and because of that we will continue to move forward with the strategy that we had for essa 2 and essa3 and that is to keep those teachers in the 612 level um but it does just push us closer to the cliff which is what we opened what opened up with during the 21 20 20 20 21 school year um and so we will continue to partner and work with um the city in this regard uh and and try to educate them on our our respective needs um but but the needs continue to grow um in the 4.1 million although i am excited over the fact i mean i've been here for four years and it's the most money we've received from the city and i'm truly grateful for that um but to be clear our contractual obligations the four million covers the contractual obligations and that does not help us with the growth of students who come into district in which we need more teachers for in more staff form and so long story short i am recommending that we use the federal monies to essentially cover our cost for another year and come back and reevaluate again the team and i budget season you know starts in the fall we will start even earlier next year to make sure we have an opportunity to educate on the board and the community on our needs um and we'll try to strengthen our partnership with the city um to so that they further understand our needs as well kevin if i may yes sir just so if i have the numbers right we asked for 8.7 million the city gave us instead of 8.7 the city gave us an increase of 4.1 which left us with uh 4.6 in the hole and we have about a million five to recoup from uh breakage and collapsing a few sections which leaves us to about 3.1 mil is that correct sir yeah so so yeah i have an ass to get someone to take some of that out of the reserves am i also correct yes uh so there there are a couple of things there are a couple of things there so our technically our budget increase was 12.8 for this year in which we were asking the city for 8.7 right and then and so the reserves we had already included as a strategy to get toward the 12 million um and so in our budget request and i'm just looking um looking it up now let's see if i can share this so this is the way we presented to the community and the board so our ask was really 12.8 and i understand this is what we asked of the city our subtotal was 12.8 million that's what we said we needed for this year and part of that ask was the health insurance claims we saw as a significant budget driver as we had learned from our um as we had learned from our consultant and so our our strategy was to use the reserves which is what this asset is for because we anticipated um requests up to 3.2 new million dollars and again this is contributing to the 12.8 um some other new um dollars that we anticipated because of our enrollment growth um an increase in transportation of 1.5 but again we had planned to use our grants to spend down on our grants for that money because we're looking at the whole thing um special education increase six hundred thousand dollars again we were looking to tap our reserves for this strategy um this k5 literacy program alignment uh 1.3 over the next three years but again as a strategy we were looking to go to grants and so the the 87 is the number we were asking for from the city 12.8 million was our total ass all together and so that that's kind of you're seeing a big budget drivers here um so i just want to clarify it so the the gap really is the 12 million because what's happening is when people say well we can close the 8.7 gap by going to your health insurance oh and by the way you got an increase from alliance well we've included the increase from appliance from grants we've included the increase from the we've included you know our reserves as a strategy with health insurance claims so i just want to clarify some of those things our total ask is 12.8 with all the revenue that we have coming into this district and kevin if i if i could add an al i think the re the reason we put the reserves into this request and and netted it the way we did was because uh the previous june and what you saw the board adopted uh june 8th they adopted a spending plan that included the reserves from a year earlier so and that's what we were operating on the budget each month had those reserves in it so we said well we'll continue to do it again we knew they were close to 3 million and that was brought to you on february 2nd it was two weeks later that the city finance director pointed out i said well you can't be counting those reserves you you shouldn't have included them in your budget last june there for insurances you need to write a letter tell us something uh unpre unexpected happened and then we'll release it for that so um i remember we talked about the finance committee we did write a letter and we had the 2.4 uh released for for this year but they've been very clear um even more so than a year ago that that's not money that you should be using to plan your budget now that's what i've asked them to reconsider uh because they're they're sort of um i'd call them house rules uh they can change those if they'd like and that's what i'm hoping they'll do but that's why we thought when we did those budget drivers it was going to be the same as we thought in june right well the difference between 12.8 and the 8.7 uh it's my feeling i mean correct if i'm wrong some of that the difference between those two numbers were from some necessary or wanted or needed improvements that we wanted to make to uh kevin had wanted to put into action for our district yeah there there were other budget drivers in there that um we called them different things uh initiatives improvements uh i think we had a couple pages called graduation requirements and meeting those there were some facilities yes they were close to four million dollars as i recall okay thank you committee any questions please teresa wait michelle good night good night i think you have kate with a hand raised okay um so a couple things john i just want to follow what what you're talking about about that 2.8 million that we carried over from the previous year and added to like our baseline starting point for this last budget cycle so that that 12 plus million ask did not include the 2.8 from the previous year right it was on top of um so john i just want to make sure i understand are we talking about the carry forward no i think the budget driver page so what we when we had 12 something million the way we brought that down to eight was uh what we thought would have been three million in um unexpended funds from the previous june i have it on the screen yeah so the difference between twelve eight and eight seven is two items one is what we thought was about three million dollars of unspent money from the 2021 year the reserves they it turned out they were 2.8 million but we uh thought about three at the time and then uh the other one million was we knew the alliance grant was going up from 17 million to 19 million we needed thought we'd need half of that just to pay for the contractual increases in the 17 million but we said you know there's another uh million that we haven't accounted for so we'll use that for some of these things so i eat a k5 literacy program alignment exactly that's here yep so you built the 2.8 that had previously been part of the established budget i i'm i'm just getting confused because i'm looking at your the summary here and maybe i misunderstood the situation to begin with so so bear with me here um the total new dollars that we were adding on top of the existing budget i thought was put on top of a budget number that included that 2.8 million from the previous year that came out of reserves yeah now they um kate i i just want to make sure i understand the question i'm going to take a shot at answering so when when considering our budget for next year we sat down with looking at these budget drivers that you see on your screen it added up to uh a subtotal of 12.8 million we knew what the other revenue that we have coming in and when i say revenue i'm talking about essa 2 s3 alliance title 1 all of those other grants that we have coming in plus plus the reserves right so even with we will still have those reserves next year and given given those reserves are in place specifically for this purpose as john had talked about that you know quoting dave and so if we experience an increase in health insurance claims as record as as as projected from our insurance consultant we would tap the reserves to help address those claims projected claims right so john said we didn't have 3.2 we have 2.8 in reserves and so our expectation is we would draw down on those reserves to pay this cost you know and so you see the two the two um asterisks for reserves and so that was our strategy we would pay the health insurance claims um particularly this increase that we projected to to experience with our reserves money also increase in special education of six hundred thousand dollars address that with if we have an increase in out-of-district placement we would address that with our monies that we had allocated previously but didn't it didn't expend them down because of the pandemic so once again we would go to our reserves for those for those monies so that's why you see those blue asterisks there the three point two and six hundred thousand dollars we have monies quote-unquote in the bank because we didn't spin them down during the pandemic so that's what the blue asterisks are for and then the 1.5 for transportation this is from enrollment growth the 1.3 uh for the reading program that you guys heard kara speak to speak about our intention was to pay for that with alliance money as john said we're anticipating two million dollar increase one million dollars will be eaten up because just for contract obligations folks will get step movement um yes we will get more money and we need it um and that's just to address the contractual obligations that we have uh because we we have a lot of teachers in in in that grant the other million dollars that we would experience an increase um the k5 literacy program would certainly be eligible uh to pay for that so that's why we have the other aspect of 1.3 so we saw these big these four big budget drivers to be handled by uh to be handled by the reserves and our grants however the remaining um we needed help from the city to help satisfy and that's that 8.7 number so that's what you see here um and that's the number that we're trying to work from now so maybe i'm asking this question incorrectly kevin um i just want to make sure that i understand when we looked at the budget summaries that came through to us the fiscal year 2021 sorry 2122 budget was listed at 139 million 139.5 million right and that included 2.8 or 2.4 i can't remember exactly of reserve funds the previous year um and then the budget asked that we asked for which was the the it was 12 million minus that those dollars so it was really 8.7 right um to bring us up to you know the ask we made of of the city the the the 2022 sorry the 22 23 budget ass that we made was 152 million which was that 12.8 million i see on the subtotal line right right so that to me if i'm looking at those numbers and you're telling me that we were going to pull you know dollars out of our our reserve funds and and from the alliance and and esser grants there um reduces that ass down to the 8.7 million so did we still ask the city for 12.8 even though on the sheet i think i understand what you're asking and i'm just gonna i'm just trying to determine because if we're started if we started from a number that was already higher than what the the city was operating from right and so the gap is even bigger than i'm thinking right so dave made this point dave st hillary made this point i'm sorry kate i didn't mean to take you on that bird walk i understand what you're asking now um and so dave st hiller actually made this point um because he said the district is not starting at 139 they're actually starting at 137 um and so he was correct in that regard um and you know with the new administration coming in here we didn't have that clarification and so it's really 8.7 plus the 2.2 million that's what you're saying and that's why john was saying we have an 11 million dollar gap right yeah okay and so everyone can see that okay thank you that's helpful and then the other the other question i have is like in terms of helping you know the city understand this and and perhaps other people who are watching these meetings or or um you know sort of following what's going on for us financially is it possible for us to come up with like a a list of specific services or or positions that are being funded currently through um grant specific situations i mean i understand like there are some limitations as far as how we're supposed to use those and perhaps we may not want to you know get into too many details but i also think there's some value in people understanding specifically what's going to happen when those dollars aren't there because i think part of the obstacle is we perform very well with the resources that we have which i think is you know to our credit um and to the credit of the administration and the the staff and our our district but um i'm i feel like there's maybe a gap in understanding because folks don't understand exactly what services or positions we're talking about losing yeah and so i i mean and some other folks make well everyone's processing your ask um i am happy because certainly we've had these discussions internally um but at the same time i don't want to scare my staff and have a mad exodus out of this district because people think they're losing their job um and so i i think we have i understand you know we may need to provide a shock for the system to say hey this is what we can be in danger of losing um but but while implementing that type of strategy i don't want to scare the very staff that i need in front of kids um you know in the hope that we will get to react the the the reaction that we need and i um and so i'd like some more discussion on that before we put names and positions um and and post them publicly anywhere okay thank you very much yeah and kate i understand the question because i've been access a couple of times now um but i i also want to be sensitive to the people who are here and taking care of their families and i don't want to implement a strategy again that we may not even implement or have to um and this backfires and we start losing people if folks start running out of you but i but but again i i do understand because i've been active i've been asked this question several different ways now yeah i certainly appreciate what you're saying though i think that's a good point to you know be sensitive to everybody who's involved in this thank you thank you teresa um so the 141 thousand dollar budget approved by the city council does not include the reserves correct correct okay because that's where i think we were stuck for last year's budget thinking we were going to use that those reserves and so now we're right now john is going to work on uh with the city finance people see if we can utilize that is that all we have in the reserves so no no there's close to and john this number might be different now but last time i looked it was like close to 10 million dollars and by the way teresa i'm happy that you asked that question because the the issue was not us being allowed to use the reserves the issue was the reserves actually counting toward our base because um and i don't want to speak for the city but if if our number if our base is 139 which it was not this year was actually then when they give us an increase the increase is coming from 137 at 139 um because they're just basically saying hey we're giving you back your own money from the previous year because of the pandemic and that they were just very careful that we didn't did not include that as our base which we did this year and then we had to um correct that so we they did as john was mentioning uh we did have to officially notify uh the city that we wanted to use those monies um and that is in motion so that we can draw down on them for this current school year but as a strategy we would like to do that again next year but again it will not be applied to our base so the 141 will still that base will remain but if we are allowed to use our reserves it will not impact the base it would basically just be hey we're gonna give you your money back from you know 1920 school year that you didn't draw down because of the pandemic here it is but this does not increase your 141 base and kevin i think it was uh the finance committee's i want to say october meeting might have been november we had a description from the city of the reserves they were i think seven or eight different categories um some of the big ones were specialized out of district placement right one of the other ones was technology food services with food services yeah so they really were in in two parts there was 2.4 million that was we had baked into our budget those were unspent funds from the 2019-20 school year and what the city did was they put those into three or four categories i believe on their own the ones kevin described so when we realized in february that we had to ask for that money we asked for it in those categories and we've drawn it down at the end of the 1920 year 2.8 million went up to replace that and from what i understand it's all in one general category but below that if you looked at their page there were three or four other designations one of them which had to do with health which has to do with health insurance involves what's called a corridor when you self-insure for health insurance you have to provide a reserve for this corridor that's an amount that's in between what you insure and when your stop loss kicks in if certain things go a wrong way you have that money to pay the bills there's some other very specific reserves i think one has to do with workers compensation maybe unemployment insurance when i looked at those other than the corridor i think those probably could be also released um but maybe what i could do out this afternoon is i could send that sheet around that we talked about at our meeting and you could see for yourself what they were setting aside that helps thank you john eddie mr wilson any additional items on our agenda for today i think michelle has a question just a quick one you were saying that with the retirements that we were gonna possibly save somewhere around a million dollars how many how many uh teachers or pensions whatever does that signify like how many teachers would that represent right right now we're about we're anticipating 40 to 45 staff members retiring or resigning that's and historically that's kind of been our sweet spot um john i'm sorry i cut you off i was just thinking kim is here too and she may have her list right so as of 10 o'clock this morning we're at 49 and that you're saying is typical um yeah it is i mean it's really hard michelle to tell what's typical because of covid so last year two years ago we had a lot of retiring teachers because they just were not wanting to come back this year we're seeing more of kind of flight because the job market is so liquid for teachers right now there's lots of jobs out there so it's really i don't really have a beat on it right now 49 is right where we always are but we still got another you know four weeks left sure and so are we looking because i know that we typically say that we're looking to hire at least about 100 new teachers does that include this 40 or would it be like 104 okay and then my other classes my other question is regarding the enrollment because i know we had been talking about that since i got on the board um i guess we were talking about somewhere around 300 what is our our current unexpected enrollment as of the beginning of the school year no i'll need it i'll need a minute to look that up um but if we keep talking i can look up see if we can find the latest numbers great hi michelle any numbers would need to include um after october 1st um until really september for next year right now we're at about 12 300 and change so that growth because i think we had spoken it was is that like five or six hundred students i'm looking for the actual number that we didn't anticipate and so for the following years we're talking about students coming in and out after they register after the school year begins what kind of numbers are we looking at this current year and anticipating for the following for the next year as part of all these calculations right i i could look up an updated projection for you um as you know we've blown all our projections to date so we're we're kind of shooting from the hip on a lot of these guesstimations at this point so we'll look at you know what's coming in what the new kindergarten enrollments are and kind of take our best best estimate but we do have the numbers for this year we should have a solid number for that right yeah that's that 12 300 something number that i was uh that i just said um and it you know it fluctuates day to day where do we start i guess i'm looking for a start and a finish number for the year yeah i don't have the start number for you i'm sorry i could look it up though great that'd be great thank you so much eddie the state demographers which are always below the curve on us where do they put us um i think they had us not hitting 12 300 for about a year and a half two years out so um we're we're well ahead of schedule all right yeah and without the state demographers where else will we get our number or projections from that's it i mean we will you know we'll make our own estimates based on you know what we see coming in but you know the demographers that's the rule then we just have to see what the registration numbers look like and and make the accommodations accordingly i'm looking for my crystal ball thank you if you find it let me uh let me know i could borrow it i'm willing to share thank you ladies and gentlemen any additional questions so mr russo i i do have a number for you um i i don't have that stuff readily available on my watch here but i have 2021 our state reported october 1st collection was eleven thousand eight hundred and thirty four in twenty one twenty two the october first um collection was eleven thousand eight hundred and forty three right and so that was our number submitted for this year in october 11 843. after october 1st we were already up to 12 06 on january 28 2022 we are over 12 300 today how much over today today we're um mike said we're we're over 12 300.
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the admiration i have for you and your perseverance and triumph over your adversity is beyond anything i've ever witnessed from my fellow classmates i'd like to shine a spotlight on the faculty and staff here at gilbert high school which ranges from the security staff on our campus to our very own social workers and counselors i want to especially thank every single one of the teachers on this campus whether i had your class or if you gave me a welcoming smile on hello as i walked by you are very much appreciated when people found out i went to gilbert they were in disbelief and to be quite honest with everyone i felt the same way i myself always talk down on gilbert and believe that if you went there then there was something wrong with you i vividly remember putting my own brother down until i came here firsthand and realized gilbert is not what people say it is it is more than just a continuation school it's a community i'd like to give a special thank you to my family more specifically my older brother carlos espinoza who also attended gilbert high school and who encouraged me to wake up every morning and continue to strive for greatness my opinion of gilbert had been solely based on others words and opinions imagine how many times we have humans made assumptions without knowing the beauty or potential another person holds within them rather we judge them by their appearance by what others have said about them i am sure many of you have struggled with your own battles i too have struggled with mine every single person here has a story and today i'd like to share mine with you i call this the beauty of life you come into this world without asking you don't choose the circumstances you're born into as a child i didn't understand this growing up was challenging i constantly heard my parents talk about being short on rent or not having enough money for food i remember having to sneak food from school back home and sometimes i would get bullied because of it i remember being put down for the clothes or the shoes on my feet something no child should ever have to go through a core memory of my childhood is spending christmas without food or lights on in my home like all of you i had something to hold on to i found solace in music and football even though i wasn't consistent i was i was consistently reminded that i was too small to play football and i would like to add that i won mvp and was even called up to play varsity football boy for all the naysayers wrong this motivated me to keep waking up for school even after a rough night sleep on the couch or not having a meal to look forward to maneuvering through life with a positive attitude became my greatest asset i learned that no matter how terrible things may get there are better days i also understand that everyone has their own story whether they build them up or break them down is on that individual having empathy for another story helped me to truly comprehend my own when i sadly lost my grandpa due to kovid and my hero my brother lost his baby due to a miscarriage i faced adversity and took the pain headstrong despite the tool this took on my mental health and this taught me how to truly empathize with others now i understand my parents struggle which was difficult for all of us but not a day goes by that i don't appreciate that lady and that old man that i call my mother and father i am honored to be standing up here speaking to all of you i thank each and every one of you and i acknowledge each of your stories i greatly applaud you and know that we are all grateful to our teachers for helping us get here i'd like to close by saying no one is perfect and everyone has a story i'm a young man learning and growing from his past and i'll strive and continue to be open-minded as i graduate and share my knowledge with those who are still learning the meaning of life as we walk down the path to be greeted with our diplomas i encourage everyone to look forward and never back as we continue our journey after high school thank you once again and a big round of applause to the class of 22.
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