good evening my name is tom sadiq and i'm the proud principal of amherst regional high school welcome to the senior awards night i'm happy to be able to be here to help celebrate the academic accomplishments of the class of 2022 we're going to start the evening by acknowledging the academic achievements of sehan islam as most of you know seihan is a member of the class of 2022 who tragically lost his life in a car accident about a month ago there's no easy way to get through a loss such as that it's important to remember to hold each other close and continue to support one another and to celebrate when we have the opportunity and tonight is indeed a celebration of say han the two awards that he was awarded are the choral section leadership award by the performing arts department as well as the improvement in spanish 2 award from the war language department say i'm left a positive impact on all of us that will not be forgotten it's important that we continue to honor his memory as best we can now we're going to continue with the celebration and have the department awards read by one of our guidance counselors kelly garcia thank you mr siddique this year department awards will be read alphabetically by by student the descriptions of each award are in the document linked just below this video on youtube we will also post the link in the live chat this event is being recorded for future viewing as well so if you miss award you or your student has received you can come back to this video later to review i will now begin with the reading with reading the names and awards we'll begin with isla allen isla allen is receiving the excellence in social studies award daniel allen is receiving the sharp as attack literary analysis award the western district chorus award the allstate choral award or allstate chorus award the cor choral section leader award and the excellence in computer science award elizabeth allen is receiving the art department book award the excellence in social studies award and the excellence in computer science award rowan allen is receiving the excellence in engineering award clara amaral is receiving the english department book award the excellence in social studies award the spirit and ap environmental science award and the electronic media book award raphael ash is receiving the sharp as attack literary analysis award analysis award the choral section leader award the theater company legacy award the excellence in social studies award and the spirit and ap physics award joseph barboza is receiving the orchestra directors award sarah baxter is receiving the western district chorus award and the spirit and physics honors award mark benedetto is receiving the excellence in english award dorian benjamin goldfein is receiving the perseverance in ap physics award helena benjamin goldfein is receiving the bright light award akira bix is receiving the excellence and electronic media award ruby kane is receiving the big scoop journalistic writing award in the william e moore memorial award katie cardosa is receiving the effort in growth in math award catherine carville is receiving the english department book award the spirit in physics honors award and the excellence and electronic media award issa mahal castro macaulay is receiving the effort and growth in math award matthew champa is receiving the effort and growth in math award and the perseverance in physics award delia kloppfelter is receiving the art history senior scholar book award in the excellence in english award griffin connor is receiving the curiosity and anatomy and physiology honors award adelia cook is receiving the sharp as attack literary analysis award sylvie cove is receiving the bright light award the ghost light project award and the excellence in social studies and the improvement in spanish ap award angus cox is receiving the curiosity in physics honors award alice crawford muscat is receiving the excellence in english award the excellence in social studies award in the excellence and electronic media award kyle crosby is receiving the excellence in social studies award the perseverance and ap physics award and the effort and french ap award mina kunif is receiving the western district chorus award the choral director's award in the annie baker creators award helen dalton is receiving the excellence and electronic media award audrey davis brand is receiving the bright light award penises de la torre bermudez is receiving the dark and stormy night creative writing award the effort and growth in math award and the outstanding contribution to the ahs conjunto de bomba award jean door is receiving the curiosity in ap environmental science award louis duville bodwin is receiving the math book award and the spear in ap environmental science award diego joelle duran costanza is receiving the ell department senior book award in the outstanding contribution to the arahs conjunto de bomba award lex ephraim is receiving the excellence in english award the effort and growth in math award the curiosity in anatomy and physiology honors award and the hollis moore memorial award daniel espin is receiving the dark and stormy night creative writing award and the achievement in french 2 honors award madison essel is receiving the bright light award and the perseverance and physics award kiara falca santos is receiving the excellence in english award the excellence in social studies award in the latin 5 ap magna laude award phoenix ferreira ford is receiving the sharp as attack literary analysis award in the spirit and physics honors award elizabeth friedman is receiving the excellence and electronic the excellence and electronic media award m gripco is receiving the sharp as attack literary analysis award and the excellence and social studies award teresa hafner is receiving the outstanding contribution to the arahs dance program award gare hartl is receiving the sharp as attack literary analysis award the excellence in social studies award the curiosity in ap environmental science award and the improvement in french ap award veda ruth harvey amay is receiving the outstanding contribution to the arhs dance program award the excellence in social studies the curiosity and physics award and the improvement in spanish 5 award galen harwood is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement and fine art award ada hennessey is receiving the bright light award the social studies department senior book award and the curiosity and ap physics award alden hinkle is receiving the curiosity and physics honors award in the senior book award in computer science jude holazofski is receiving the excellence and electronic media award rebecca huang is receiving the spirit in ap physics award in the achievement and french ap award sylvie hope is receiving the excellence in english award the curiosity in ap physics the excellence in engineering award in the latin 5 ap magna laude award allison hoon is receiving the spirit and physics honors award the science book award and the improvement in french ap award ruth irenkundu is receiving the effort in growth in math award emily ireland is receiving the bright light award and the effort in french ap award hannah gemmae is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement and fine art award and the dark and stormy night creative writing award lyndon jamison is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement in fine art and bright light award and the perseverance and anatomy and physiology honors award andish johansson is receiving the spirit anatomy and physiology award pierre katsaros is receiving the high achievement and financial literacy award in the excellence in social studies award alexandra katsulakis is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement and fine art and effort and growth and math award in elektra katsulakis is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement in fine art and effort and growth in math award i'm now going to turn it over to lisa zephyr for the next set of awards thank you the next award goes to tenzin kaizen who is receiving the bright light award eva lashaway is receiving the sharp as attack literary analysis award the excellence in social studies award and the spirit and anatomy and physiology honors award use in amy lee is receiving the ell department senior book award kathryn leonard is receiving the bright light award and the curiosity and anatomy and physiology honors award tristan louis scherder is receiving the artful essay expository and creative nonfiction award the performing arts department award the social studies department senior award and the achievement and french ap award clara lindsey is receiving the bright light award the effort and growth math award and perseverance and physics and honors award jackson lingo is receiving the perseverance and ap physics award and the latin 5 ap laude award dayara lopez montero duarte tavares is receiving the effort and growth and math award william macleod is receiving the latin five ap laude award delaney mcfeeders is receiving the sharpest attack literary analysis award naco merudas is receiving the artful essay expository and creative nonfiction award the new england scholastic press association special achievement award for his editorial advice from a senior perseverance and physics honors award and the amherst academy prize for dedication to latin michael mourilus is receiving the perseverance and physics honors award rebecca marshall is receiving the big scoop journalistic writing award and perseverance in ap environmental science moss and geisha is receiving the effort and growth and math award george mead is receiving the western district chorus award and the spirit and physics award eva mendelson is receiving the excellence in electronic media award dash merrill is receiving the sharpies attack literary analysis award the ghost light project award the excellence in social studies award the perseverance and ap environmental science award and the achievement and ap french award claire michaels is receiving the effort and growth and math award nathaniel mills is receiving the big scoop journalistic writing award maritza montero is receiving the bright light award sophia monti is receiving the western district chorus award the all-state chorus award the liberty woodbridge actors award and the senior choral award lizzie marquette is receiving the bright light award sevda nagsh is receiving the academic achievement and math award chance naira mahirway is receiving the effort and growth and math award renee o'brien is receiving the latin three laude award benjamin oates is receiving the excellent and social studies award and the improvement in chinese for honors award gianna perrault is receiving the sharpest attack literary analysis award the academic achievement and math award the western district orchestra award the national school orchestra award the social studies department senior award the spirit in ap physics award and the achievement in spanish ap award cole perkins is receiving the curiosity and physics award alvin finn is receiving the bright light award meredith pickering is receiving the outstanding contribution to the ahs dance department award shohana quizpi tanezika is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement and fine art award in the ell department senior book award mira wrath is receiving the patrick c smith orchestra award the theodore modern memorial award and the latin 5 ap magna laude award helena rao is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement and fine art award madeleine reman snyder is receiving the excellence in social studies award and the curiosity in the anatomy and physiology award isabel rich is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement and fine art award the bright light award the perseverance and physics award and the achievement in spanish 5 award zachariah richards is receiving the excellence in english award the excellence in social studies award and the curiosity and ap environmental science award brisette rivera is receiving the outstanding contribution to the aohs de bomba award and the perseverance and anatomy and physiology award grace roves kenworthy is receiving the dark and stormy night creative writing award the effort and growth and math award the western district chorus the chorale directors award the excellence and social studies award and the achievement and spanish 3 award simone robinson is receiving the larry kraus award and excellence in social studies award alia rosa is receiving the effort and growth and math award carlson rose is receiving the bright light award lucas ross is receiving the bright light award and the silas technical theater award quinn shane is receiving the scholastic art award gold key and drawing and the latin five ap magna laude award melana sadrakian is receiving the western district chorus award azumir cemeto medina is receiving the effort and growth and math award and the achievement and spanish one honors award jack semler is receiving the bright light award miura seti charity is receiving the excellence in social studies award jasper shackleford is receiving the larry kraus award the excellence in social studies award the curiosity and anatomy and physiology award and the excellence and engineering award rohan chenoy is receiving the curiosity and ap physics award gwendolyn shear snow is receiving the latin 5 ap cumulati award siddharth said rahman is receiving the sharp as attack literary analysis award sage slobin is receiving the excellence in social studies award the spirit and physics honors award the curiosity and anatomy and physiology honors award the engineering book award and the improvement in french ap award evan stewart is receiving the excellence in electronic media award bryn sullivan is receiving the new england scholastic press association journalism special achievement award for her feature story school nurses lean on each other to get by sophie sweeting is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement and fine art award and the bright light award shire thompson is receiving the bright light award the excellence in social studies award and the curiosity and ap environmental science award yukio uwekei is receiving the excellence in english award the social studies senior book award the sueno award in physics the latin 5 ap magna laude award and the amherst academic prize and excellence for latin daniel valit is receiving the bright light award noah vamasi is receiving the bright light award and the excellent and electronic media award avi via lobo charon is receiving the academic achievement and math award the excellence in social studies award and the curiosity and ap physics award henry webster is receiving the senior artist of merit book award scholastic art award gold key and drawing and the spirit and anatomy and physiology honors award bowen woodard mcniff is receiving the spirit and physics award elaine wu is receiving the sharp as attack literary analysis award the excellence and social studies award and the achievement and spanish ap award is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement and fine art award alexander yu is receiving the excellence in social studies award and the excellence and computer science award nomi zeitenberg is receiving the excellence and social studies award and curiosity and ap science award and sky zephyr is receiving the dedication motivation and achievement and fine art award this concludes the specific department awards portion of our evening and i will now turn this over to ms alessandro mucho muchiramos who will read the bi-literacy announcements and then the scholarship awards thank you thank you so much mitsefire and thank you miss lashovec for reading our department awards first i will read the by literacy announcement the literacy achievement award is an award given by a school or district and the language opportunity coalition a recognition of students who have attained astfl intermediate mid level of proficiency in speaking reading writing in two or more languages by high school graduation the sale of by literacy is an award given by a school or district at the department of elementary and secondary education a recognition of students who have attained proficiency in speaking reading and writing in two or more languages by high school graduation this award is included on the diploma and transcript the two winners of the excellence in biliteracy scholarship are sevda nagash and ruth iran kunda the coca-cola scholars program scholarship is an achievement-based scholarship awarded to a graduating high school seniors students are recognized for their capacity to lead and see and serve as well their commitment to making a significant impact on their schools and communities this year our own rebecca hong has won this prestigious scholarship as part of her award she has chosen to recognize one of our ar hs educators we will now share a video from rebecca to reveal who she has chosen hi everyone i'm rebecca hong a senior at arahs and a recipient of the 2022 coca-cola scholarship as a coke scholar i'm honored to be able to nominate one educator of distinction and for that i'd like to nominate miss iverson my 11th grade african-american literature teacher she taught me how important it is to take initiative on issues i care about such as climate change and racial injustice and also met with me when i was still leading international students club on how to better help the ell students in our school and help them connect to the rest of the student body so congratulations ms iverson and i hope you have a great rest of your year and great summer great and now we will move on to our other scholarship awards the amist area chamber of commerce coulee dickinson healthcare scholarship is given to students who will be majoring in business or medicine this award goes to simone robinson and rebecca hong presented to seniors who have been involved in the ms lsse community theater the ames community theater founder scholarship goes to ruby kane the ms lodge of all falloff scholarship is awarded to a senior with a record of significant community service and the intention to continue with education and vocational training this scholarship goes to simone robinson the amish pelham education association award is given to students pursuing studies in the field of human services or education i'm happy to present it to leila alkali rebecca hong and simone robinson the amish rotary club scholarship are given to seniors continuing their education for academic achievement extracurricular achievement community service and or work experience this year four recipients and they are luis de vil bodwin alfred kyle crosby ava mendelssohn and simone robinson the amith regional middle school ultimate award goes to two students who participate in ultimate at least one year at arms followed by at least three years at american high school the recipients must be a positive influence a good teammate and a team leader and exemplifies spirit of the game the winners are louis de vil baldwin and nomi zyndenberg amis women's club scholarship is awarded to a senior of any gender will continue their education after high school decision is based on academic achievement financial need work and extracurricular activities promise and evidence of interest and ambitions expressed in their essay this year the award goes to carlson rose [Applause] the atkinson family practice scholarship for girl interested in health profession goes to simone robinson the atkinson family practice scholarship for a patient of the practice goes to rafael ash the barbara and arthur elkins scholarship is for a first generation college students with high academic achievement and continues for each of the four years while the student is in college the scholarship goes to diara lopez monteiro duarte tavares the betty jane donley memorial scholarship is awarded to a senior who excels in languages the recipient is pierre cat soros dean's beans organic coffee company awards a scholarship to seniors who have displayed a strong commitment to social justice and leaving a positive impact on the world this year recipient is m gripko dorothy and maltom miller memorial scholarship is given to a senior for outstanding achievement in one or more of the live performing arts theater music dance and interdisciplinary forms presented to in-person audiences this award goes to rebecca hong i worry to a senior with an above average scholarship record who plans to major in business field educational counseling at a four-year college the florent bank scholarship is presented to alan given to a senior who graduated from an uh it attended four river school for at least three years the forever parent cancer scholarship has been presented this year to sylvie hopp the amscher chorale society scholarship is given to a graduating senior who exemplifies the unsure chorale society goals of fostering enjoyment of and participation in choral music special consideration is given for students who send in the young people course i'm happy to present this scholarship to rafael ash the hurricane booster organization support arhs athletics in many ways they are awarding several scholarships this year to dedicated student athletes looking to pursue their education after high school the five recipients this year are ada hennessey nolan clays delaney mcfeel filters ryan schneider and shire thompson john's group reality gives the gerald jones award to a student who demonstrates initiative innovation or entrepreneurship performs community service and who is pursuing further education the scholarship goes to dorian benjamin goldfein the leo vinolt memorial scholarship is presented to a senior who is going on to further her education or his education and has demonstrated good character by overcoming a major life obstacle and has shown significant academic improvement i'm pleased to announce the winner is dorian benjamin goldfein presented to an amer regional high school senior who has overcome adversity and has demonstrated the motivation and perseverance necessary for personal and academic success the lorraine cabernet memorial scholarship is awarded to carlson rose the michael domeck junior scholarship is given in memory of michael domeck who graduated from amist in 1996.
um this meeting is being recorded your image or voice may be broadcast we're going to start with the pledge of allegiance the flag is right over there okay we're going to move on to public comments and first we have katrina um i first just want to say thank you for allowing me to speak and i'm just going to read an email that i wrote to every almost everybody here um i do first want to say before i read this that i'm not placing any blame on anybody i just think as a community we have a duty to do better for our children regarding security i don't think the burden is fair to be on teachers for security any school employee and then rely on the police department when they're not set up for success so my name is katrina lawton i'm a mother of a third grader at boylston elementary given the recent school shooting of texas and the current state of our society and requesting an armed security guard at the school at all times while children are in the building this is an immediate request the security at our schools is not sufficient in this current environment placing our teachers and staff in between children and the shooter is dangerous and very irresponsible we need a trained officer or veteran at each school to properly protect our children and staff we can't afford to wait for meetings or legislature we have a duty to protect our children and the staff while inside the buildings we need to protect them like we do politicians banks and federal buildings i wish i didn't have to be up here i wish it wasn't like this but the sad reality is it is like this and we can't wait we have to make sure the officers the staff are ready and prepared because unfortunately this is the environment we live in this could happen and it can happen in our small world thank you katrina jessica david third grader at bes as well um so on may 24th the four president members of the boys and berlin regional school community voted to pass an amendment to the evcf or face coverings and kobe protocols this protocol amends deci massachusetts dph cdc current recommendations by removing a mass requirement on days 6 through 10 of confirmed coded positive students and staff it also promotes the requirement of unvaccinated closed contacts from quarantining for five days and masking until day 10 from last exposure every medical provider's return to school note requires masking until day 10 following deci massdph and cdc i confirmed last week with massachusetts dph epidemiologists that no new data has come out since december 30th 2021 when cdc changed their foreign policy to five days quarantine and five days mass if over 24 hours asymptomatic the cdc decreased from 14 days because omicron showed how viral shedding closer to 10 days rather than 14 for delta variant omicron still sheds virus beyond day five if mass are removed more students of staff would become exposed and sick with coconut my own daughter press deposit on antigen day eight even with mild illness for only one day how does the hypothetical emotional toll of a student or staff member wearing a mask on day six through ten outweigh the emotional and physical toll of another student or staff member being out for at least five days and then any additional toll of an at-risk relative is then exposed and gets sick my daughter wore her hand in five she would expose six days in a row at least from six other cases within her class she wore her can any five she missed softball she misposted her softball she missed her recorder concert that she worked so hard to achieve her little black ribbon on her recorder because we can't wear mats from school when did the individual freedom of a confirmed positive coveted person outweigh the public health of the community i live in massachusetts and not texas because i recognize that public health is sometimes more important than individual freedom last weekend there was five thousand sixty covered cases in massachusetts six people died six sixty worships hospitalized 67 in the icu and 22 intubated thank god the covid is a usually mild disease for children but we cannot lose sight that we are a community with individuals that can still become very sick and die a childhood friend i grew up with in boylston attended boylston elementary school in toronto was hospitalized for a month and intubated but thankfully survived and now she lives in the trinity scar is her worth the life force any less than an individual wearing a mask for five days after being affected last meeting the school committee cited the fact that in school contact tracing produced very few positive cases within the school i have to make a very important point that factors with a mass mandate there was very little spread in school with a mass candy the schools of the community have no such protection during this recent surge within the wisdom berlin regional school directed and cannot be used for reason for the amendment to the last policy it is extremely dangerous for the school committee to remove these mass requirements on day 6 through 10 and for the unvaccinated exposures it goes against the cdc massachusetts dph and deputy guidelines it puts our students at understand risk and it puts our staff at risk and our community our school nurses were not involved in the decision to make this amendment to dusty policy they were not present for the subcommittee meeting on may 18th near the may 24th regular school committee meeting when the amendment was voted upon the nurse's letter back in february was also ignored when the mass mandate was coming down and their pleas for different policies were ignored our town's local boards of health were not involved in the forming of this policy in fact no person to my knowledge in the healthcare field was involved in the amendment passed by the school committee on may 24th please feel free to correct this assessment i encourage parents and treating members to let the wisdom berlin regional school district know that politicians that go outside the cdc mass department of public health and destiny are not acceptable it puts our children community at an unnecessary risk for personal freedoms thank you jessica is there anyone else that would like to make a public comment um we're going to move on to communications does anyone have a communication that they would like to share did you raise money i would just like to note that we did receive a letter from the nurses late this afternoon to please look at that it's in your pocket i also was told by a parent and wanted to share that the girls varsity lacrosse team coached by dev draper eric rubino and laura banis had a playoff game yesterday and they came in second in our league and finished as a runner-up in the class b cmada tournament the team plays hull tomorrow at 4 15 here at tohonto in the first round of the miaa tournament come support our girls and go green this is a very young team with grades 6 through 12 playing and only one senior with a lot of heart bella yuba who graduated on sunday kudos to the coaches and to the girls who despite being a really young team have done amazing things this year is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented discussion all in favor as well opposed motion to approve the consent agenda as presented passes okay we are going to move on to mr conrady yes so you have my report um i'm just going to run through shown there the first item is related to the regional transportation uh revolving fund and um with um school committee approval you'd like to place at least fifty thousand uh potentially in more revolving fund we get a reimbursement from the state for this we've in fact budget budgeted to um put this in the republic fund and have it as an offset transportation expenses next year so you know we need this vote to support the fy23 budget it does require school committee models to vote to deposit the funds there which is why it's on the agenda there's no questions on that one the second item i'm going to defer that will be presented at the first school committee meeting next year annual authorization student activity accounts essentially the same list of funds there might be one additional account added the next item is authorization for evolving funds these are all existing funds i did highlight changes there's recommendations on limits to funds and um there's a there's one highland fund that's been spent down uh revolving kindergarten reform that we no longer use as well so later in the meeting during the business items that request that this be approved it's essentially the same as last year's we do have um you know pandemics created some financial challenges for families i had this in my report last year as well um we are recommending that we clear our balances as at the end of this this year via a combination of write-offs and partial payments as well as donations related to balances load this is primarily in preschool we're fairly up-to-date in the after school program so we seek your approval to do so i will say that bounces won't just be removed we'll require families to respond and provide some demonstration of inability to pay but recognizing there are cases and we will we will have um parents who do document that they cannot have some financial challenges we wanted the flexibility to write them off or to solicit donations he did receive some donations last year so that's your question yes i think that's really powerful um what is the balance um it i think we did some recent payments i'd say it's probably around 5500 to 6 000.
foreign okay okay we're going to call the meeting to order would you please join me in the pleasure of the flag and then remain standing for a moment of silence 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 keep in your thoughts this evening all the people dealing with these needless uh shootings and the men and women protecting us around the world okay thank you very much so would you uh call the roll call for uh attendance please [Applause] miss mama present mr rossi mr president miss fitzgerald president mr lamontagne president okay we will have one of our members joining us remotely this evening mr rossi and for the governor's orders that governor baker announced in march 12 2020 that district committee meetings can be held virtually uh there's need to be stated that which members are virtual and which members are in person mr rossi will uh will take and be the only member this evening uh held remotely you'll have the record show that yes okay thank you thanks for getting that also this evening to uh every vote because mr rossi is remote uh every vote will be a roll call this evening oh okay yeah no problem we'll be done by the time you get back okay okay um minutes from may 24th have a motion on those please discussion uh sue would you call the roll please mr ross he has to be present anyway so mr rossi yes it should be present because you weren't here for the meeting frank so you really tried to vote on the on the minutes thank you frank miss fitzgerald mr is this for the minute this is for the minutes yes because they weren't here they weren't here both they weren't here okay they really weren't honest with us yes mr hayden mr cirillo miss mamo yes and mr lamontagne yes uh joey could we have a cash balance report please sure cash balance report it's a may 31st 2022 account balance on may 17th it's 2 million seven fifty five seven sixty three seventy we had deposits of two million five twenty two nine thirty nine twenty five less payroll on may 26 of nine eighteen six fifty thirty 36 and warrant number 22 on may 24th of 846 spot 33 leaves us with the book balance may 31st 2022 3513 14 spot 26 and a corresponding bank balance on the same day of 5 million 257 672 2222 in our mmdt account we have 8 million 816 544 spot 43 and our total operating cash balance at may 31st 2022 12 million 330 258 spot 69.
and then we will still provide district provided transportation in the pm to select training locations um one of the things we're proposing is that this upcoming year will grandfather in some many of the studios that we have done so those families have one year to make a decision if they want to continue or find their own transportation and then the other thing is the blended learning that has been quite successful will continue in grades four through six at mesquite elementary support available daily and opportunities to catch up academically after competitions so that full school experience like i said at mesquite elementary you've got the academics the electives that students typically go to in elementary art music as well as pe extracurricular activities and clubs they can go to at mesquite elementary and they continue to also go on many of the field trips that the k-6 students enjoy at the school as well this kind of gives you an overview of a sample schedule of what the performance academy has looked like over the past four years and so this is a snapshot of what a grade four through six performance academy student would look like you can see we have the core academic areas of ela social studies math and science and then also that electives are special areas a bit of time too for lunch and personalized learning support before then in this model the bus will depart for south valley junior high and then on to the sports facility and i'm going to turn it over to marcy taylor who's going to talk a little bit more about that question about this you mentioned spanish as an elective at mesquite elementary i mentioned you mentioned in here you have spanish as an elective at mosquito we do that because they have the personalized learning platform through buzz we are able to offer that for those students all right thank you all right madam president governing board members dr mccord we are very excited for our 7th and 8th grade performance academy students to be joining south valley junior high next year they will receive the complete support of the south valley staff the administration we have principal jonathan schley here tonight who's in support of that and has helped be instrumental in some of the planning and what's gone on like jason said they will have access to the full junior high experience which we believe is very important for them a couple years ago we changed our start times to later for the junior all of our comprehensive junior highs so it has allowed all of our junior highs to be able to offer a few more things to students before school as far as assistance and support in addition to some of the schools offering an a hour so when we get to the schedule you'll see how that would work with the start time for the performance academy at 7 30 and then they would leave at 12 35.
so all the way back to the left we are in june 2022 [Music] today we'll be presenting the proposed 23 budget and then on the preceding governing board meeting on june 22nd we'll be presenting the adopted these include several of the increases that we've talked through through this whole fiscal year and what was tentatively approved in march moving forward pending no changes and or approved state budget by the governor will present the same budget on june 22nd as it mentioned if necessary again you know in december the district has an option to revise its budget and that is if the budget if we over budget it and we need to revise down as you know we are very conservative in our budget numbers and in this year we did not have to revise uh down we could have revised up but we chose not to and so some several of those same assumptions is what you're going to see here tonight or this afternoon excuse me uh then in may like we just went through last month the district will legally revise the 2023 budget as required by state chat state statute again the governing board will have had five months as we can see as we will plan on being in front of the board early um next calendar year uh to talk about again everything that we've talked about this year proposals assumptions compensation increases for 2024 and then we started the process over again so there's the full budget cycle as a reminder so getting into the 2023 budget highlights due in part to the state not having any sort of budget pass at this point we are still assuming the same budget highlights that you've seen throughout this year so one no additional covert relief those bills have and propositions from the federal government have all but stopped and so we are now finishing up spending down what we have remaining we do have budgeted in fiscal 23 the second 1500 retention stipend um which will be expended in september and for those employees who come back to us next year and work those first couple months second um even though in every single budget bill that's being proposed the aeo limit is um being exempted for 23 there still has been no official budget so we are um i'm still assuming um because nothing has been no pen has hit the paper that we would face this potential cut again as it is right now so we are planning on holding a larger contingency for this just in case those bills do not go through we will be prepared mr moore um our governor has said that or the legislator at one point had said when they passed the aggregate spending limit last year that that we shouldn't expect it for the following year is that correct say that one more time we should not we should not expect that they would pass an exemption for it for the following years yes yeah but i just want to make sure the public's aware i think it would be a good thing for the public to hear that they have said that they won't keep passing it for us so that you should write your legislator and let them know that we would like it passed again so we can use the money that's all i'm asking thank you moving moving down the list we did have the asr contribution rates come down slightly that is going to be a small budget savings bullet point four we are still transferring 4.4 million from mno to capital to pay for the school lease payment in addition due to the additional budget capacity being proposed this afternoon we are trans transferring an additional 3.6 for capital contingency this is due in part to help provide some contingency pending our bond for 2022 does not pass again if that does not pass we will be right in the middle of depending on where we are with adm we may need capital at a moment's notice so rather than bringing a revised budget we would have that budget contingency available and be able to make any sort of capital purchases at a moment's notice we would like to revise this if the bond the 22d bond does pass we would bring this 3.6 back to mno in the may revision so and then lastly higgling fight is moving to a self-insurance plan for fiscal year 23.
it is given to two students who have shown interest in michael passions sport history music agricultural farm work or conservation effort and civic involvement either through school or community service or volunteer activities this year recipients are luis duvel bodwin and nomi zeidenberg the mitchell family scholarship is awarded with students who will be the first in their family to attend college this award goes to azumi semedo medina awarded to a graduate of pelham elementary school planning to continue his education after high school the pelham elementary pto honors jackson smith awarded to a member of the tritons and amer regional high school varsity swim team in memory of rob branch who graduated from amir region high school in 1996 the raw branch memorial scholarship is awarded to simone robinson to a student two s students were shown by israel volunteer action a commitment to improving and preserving the quality of life in the school and community the sheriff patrick cahilan award is being given to jackson smith the shoesberry elementary school pto scholarship for a graduate of the school are awarded to shire thompson and ayla allen each year the sojourn truth memorial committees awards scholarship to graduating high school seniors from local public high school these scholarships are awarded to students who demonstrate in an essay their experience and commitment to social justice and equality the amish winner is simone robinson to one male and one female students who have attended ames schools for 12 years and have shown sincere dedication and service to the amist community i've been active member of the army regional high school senior class and attending college in the fall the stan ziomax scholarships goes to m gripco and nolan clays professor leland varley was an english professor at umass from 1940 until his retirement 1975.
um that's not necessarily a long time period yeah it's just from this year right uh but it doesn't take that long so um you know i'd request and recommend the vote but for flexibility on that the alternative would be we could tell families and they can no longer attend which we've tried to avoid during the camden so you know that's the guidance that was provided we don't have a good we have programming as a district to do that we do with athletics have the ability to treat five teenagers students for special ed can attend for three because they're um at the age of three there's that they can have iep services that were required by iep services um so there are some students who attend their free because they're specialized but regular students it's on a lottery basis we have to be more that want to go than you know there are eligible spots at this point if we that if that's an idea industry could think about it you would probably need to then budget for the general fund to absorb some of that or adjust the rates of families is this the first time this has happened last year as well we didn't charge um there's no question for the questions i'll move on to the last day so this is um something i wanted to leave the district for a lot we've invested in a lot of things in recent years that were important from an educational standpoint and we found ways to kind of manage financially my strong recommendation is that the first thing that's put into the budget the next next few years are reductions in the use of split choice funds so that the goal is for so the district has to make plan to spend more money in school choice than we take in particularly berlin memorial is not an issue we have a very very healthy balance of school choice funds there at bes it's diminishing in part because the school is filling up with resident students and we haven't reduced the expense accordingly for various reasons schools have had a lot of needs and then in toronto it has a very healthy surplus but we do budget to spend it down each year and prove like a savings we've been able to avoid that um my recommendation to kind of stabilize things is listed there but it's you've been created i'm not gonna leave it here but it's basically if we if we make adjustments to how much school choice we're using and i'll leave this for my successor and job as well we should we should look to reduce our school choice usage um in boylston elementary and to honda and and get to a point where the revenue that we take in is equal to the expense that we plan into our budget yes the expense of the diversity is coming out of schools are those school u.s expenses related to external placements well are they covering other financial budgets those are covering teacher salaries the places that you're talking about is a separate line it's school choice commissions so that's not practice and those irons that temporarily are fairly small we don't have a lot of students going out of district who are net revenue generated for school shows we have more students that might come here that's referring to some of the special placements we have that were particularly expensive this year those are out of district special education so that's that's the heads up on school choice so you know you are planning next year eyes to be careful to make that a priority um similarly the town of berlin has kind of highlighted this it's not a requirement but other post-employment benefits for retirees we pay for those costs out of our budget and the idea would be that over time this is a there's a both that trust that's created when that gets with enough money in it that can generate it's from its income money to pay for these retirement benefits so we've created the trust we've started to fund it what i've mapped out here is a plan to fund it at higher values so that at some point you're not spending the current budget to pay for benefits for people who don't work there anymore that should be from the terms in general intergenerational equity you should be paying for those costs during the lifetime of the employees while they're here it's not a requirement there's a lot of districts and towns that are moving towards getting higher funded this plan has some significant increases but i think they're it's mapped out in a way that that you can do this and still invest in educational resources over the next 10 years so that's a longer term one the school choice one i think can rectify fairly quickly so i just wanted that to be out there and you can have it because i think somebody's stepping in it's kind of it's going to be amazing things to do so when i look at these and see you know the healthy balance that to hunter you know whether person's very small balance of what a small boundary at bds are we required to keep those funds within the school that we've listed them could we call from one fund to help support our government that's a good question i would say i feel like from an equity perspective when these were separate three separate districts um the town of berlin accumulated the funds in berlin memorial school so those i think yeah i don't think i want to steal burlingame i don't think that's my okay we're waiting for some people so we're going to move on to ms fitzpatrick who is going to give us an update sure um so you have my report as well i have a few things to report on the first is that the special education parent advisory council awarded a small scholarship again this year um to a student that met those criteria a student that attends aspect did um with the scholarship this year which is why we didn't care presented at graduation this weekend but if you want to share that information with the committee um on to preschool um historically the berlin preschool has had two sessions um a monday wednesday friday morning session and a tuesday thursday morning session um for this school year we had an increase in students with special education needs and we added a third program in the afternoon on monday wednesday friday it turns out that was a one-year need only we um on on my next item on may 24th jesse announced that the end of his school year and at the end of the continuation of the programs that run through the summer such as extended school year and the acceleration academies that will mark the end of the state one school testing program so they will no longer be providing at-home testing um through the schools or symptomatic testing supplies or any other districts that are using other versions of testing such as pool testing et cetera will be discontinued and there's a recommendation for districts to continue to do symptomatic testing in the nurse's office through arrangements that are made through the district i updated the vaccination data for you one more time for through the end of the school year for all three buildings and um all three buildings have seen you know an ongoing increase in those vaccination rates for students as well as the final report here on the participation from stafford students in the athletic testing program the last distribution of those tested kits is going out to families this friday and we did have the opportunity to order additional supplies again for our extended school year program and the acceleration academy that i'll be running this summer so additionally testing tips will be provided to the families that often at the end of the school year at this time i would like to tell mr conrad that if he would like to exit the meeting we'd like to thank him for his service [Applause] okay so we are going to move on to reports and our first report is from superintendents indeed okay thank you i wanted to talk a little bit about the security plans that we've had in the building and things we've done i do want to say this you know the security of these buildings is they really are the responsibility of everyone on a day-to-day basis it is responsible um so i'll start again we wanted to talk a little bit about some of the security measures we've put into our schools and i do want to emphasize that the security in our buildings is the responsibility of everybody it's the responsibility of administrators it's responsible teachers the central office and the school committee and on a day-to-day basis it's the school committee probably has the least amount of responsibility in those buildings either something happens within a day it's the teachers the administrators we're going to have to work that solution out at least until the police get there so i know please probably talk about that later we've been working on security measures for our buildings before i got here when i got there cal had been working with a crisis management local crisis management team and put a lot of measures in the place so we'll go over some of the things that we've put in place and some of the things that we have for the future and then i think if the officers want to speak that would be good on all of the windows that roughly two inches up from the on the ground the top we have this 3m security film that we've put on um that means that anybody who tries to smash through those windows um it had taken four or five minutes to get through and if you if you want to go to youtube and just look that up they have pretty impressive demonstrations on how effective that film is we put buzzers and cameras at all of the entrances as well as change the locks on all the doors from the keyed systems to swipe card systems we also trained staff from the alice training and we you know before we did a big training right before the pandemic and we will continue that next year students are familiar with the protocols again we need we need to continue to work on that to make sure that they and the staff know what to do with emergency um the administrative team and all of the first responders in both towns we need biannually to discuss just whatever is going on in the community anything that's happened in their world you have to remember that as educators this is really not what we're expert at doing and so having the first responders bring those ideas to us and suggest solutions in our building is very helpful as a matter of fact the idea of 3m film came from the first responders that was a couple years ago we've added tabletop simulations to our our crisis management team meetings and these are exercises in which the principals sit down and first responders is that various um situations that they that the principals then have to respond to in real time and as they go through them the first responders um give them give them other you know hurdles to get over and so they just go through those responses and rather than just rather than just having a plan and talking about it it gives them a chance to practice what they're what they're going to do in a real situation this year this committee signed an mou with the both police departments that allowed for sharing of information so that'll also be helpful we have sros in each school they are full-time police officers in both towns and they work in our schools pot we've also numbered all of the outside glass in this building so that in an emergency first responders from the outside will know what room is which because they're not as familiar with these buildings any questions about that so far before i talk a little bit about things we're gonna we have we have planned okay um based on the budgeted funds we are going to add some additional security locks to bms and to handle this year currently at bes if you've ever gone in the building there's one you have to be buzzed in one door then there's a vestibule and then there's another door there both of them require you to be buzzed in so we're going to add those two solutions to both toronto and to uh to bms in addition that 3m film that i just talked about that we have on the other windows will be added to the inside of that vestibule which will which will in effect track trap somebody in there and they could push out they won't be able to push into the building uh we'll continue the tabletop exercises we carol and i met with the first responders monday and talk to them about designing starting to design a tabletop exercise for the sun so they're working on that but some some version of that now and we'll present it at our summer meeting we have crisis manuals and all of our schools we're in the process of updating those and those those will be done shortly in addition um if you can't congratulation you noticed uh there were more offices than usual so we would continue to have additional police presence at our uh at update and our big events and that's always that's always helpful it's always at the turn so um carlos anything else you want to do do the officers want to say something from our standpoint the the best uh uh upstairs with the school department and then with our principles um there's a free line of communication um i think it was diane that started it where uh we uh the police department lots of schools know whether it's the element of school [Music] if we're dealing with kids that they um if the school isn't sharing information with us we're not sharing information school we're always getting half a picture and then maybe some of these kids get overwhelmed but we have that kind of free fall information uh that's really helped us uh on both levels um adapting it is part of our job that's kind of what we do there are obviously terminal incidents that happen at these meetings we uh share knowledge uh we uh chief john eric uh go to barbados you know we have these meetings with our colleagues to figure out what the new best practices are it's like in education there's always this constant changes um unfortunately we're progressive where we do change sometimes um so one of the things is the flip books will be discussed um i don't know if you guys are familiar with with them within their emergency booklets are in every classroom um they have a list of different scenarios on there um what i think would i talk about for the july meeting is make sure we go over and we update that um but i think one what's important here is the the just uh free fall communication that the school has between the police department please contact the school also uh office about video officer building or security as as chief and nunciat who sent out the two resource offices in our buildings and um chief china i i was wondering if you could just we did our meeting on monday you talked about alice girls being a skill set and the importance of them not necessarily here but in luck in life and i thought it was a great point and you know part of the issue we've had um you know we do we've been doing fire drills since forever and i don't think the school's burnt out since the since the 50s and there's so much stuff in them now they're not built they're non-combustible materials but we continue to do them and there's there's reasons for it so when the same thing has to happen yeah well i think the major thing is that when we do alice stranger it says the school shooter training and i think we should get away from that that's going to be a life skill it's an active shoot training just last weekend alone there was ten active shootings in the united states you know um when we do the fire drills in school you know i remember ever since i was a kid and they still do it you bring that knowledge home to your own pups for fire drills and i think that the active shooter training we have to stop saying in school shootings it's active shooter training it's a life skill and i think we really need to start incorporating to the kids lives and i think it's going to help them pass school into college and then into adulthood as well i mean chances of it happening here very slim but you know you start you can go to the garden for a concert you can go to blood stadium you have the tweeter center or that's what you're spending but just life in general you know traveling vacation las vegas uh anywhere so i think we have to stop calling it like alice training school shooter drills they should just be active shooter drills it should be a life skill yeah i think one of the one of the components that was kevin um forgetting is that that these active retros it's all about education um so so i i think that that got lost over time where uh people are just going through the motions because they've been told they have to go through the motions but the the goal of this is to slow everything down and educate our staff why we're doing an educator our students what we're doing by educating them we're preparing them for life but we're reducing the anxiety and any concerns they may have what that is talking at least to the elementary school kids talking to them it's not a fear of doing the drill and at least there it's a disruption to their routine and then not knowing what to do is given is giving them the anxiety so if we slow it down and we take the time to explain it i think it'll be one of the more successful program but we're setting them up for their futures because unfortunately it's a part of our reality and on opening day usually it's really the only time during the year when we have all of our staff in this room and representatives from both police departments will be here um talking just about what the two chiefs just just mentioned that it has to be a skill that they take with them again to reiterate what chief shotgun said schools are still very safe places but you know this week i was watching the tv just this weekend i saw the video just on a street corner where the shooting broke up and it's more likely that that's if it happens that's where our kids will be in those kind of situations we want to make sure that they're safe in those also and so i think i think they're right i think the messaging about all of this has been in the wrong direction it's probably because it's only after school shooting that we talk about this stuff publicly and we really should be talking about it all the time so we're gonna we're gonna step it up and do more communication and more training and along with making a a golden state that that stuff we have control over um how many times a year i i know they did it this year because my son came home and talked about it before the texas shooting he didn't like it but how many times a year are you proposing the kids do like an alistar we're gonna propose that they do three times a year without a proposal we're gonna require it to be done three times a year that's how many times five dollars are done in the building and you know again we gotta get used to these things you know my personal beliefs aside the principles personally society they have to be done and so we'll we'll we will we will do them this year they'll be required and you know this will be on the scene for each of them i've got a question yet i read that it's you said uh there'll be extra police for major events one that i'm at [Music] i believe we have two other graduation years we had four so anything where we have the public public i just want to point out to the boylston people the berlin representatives know what we're doing in the schools and see if they're very active and we're proud of the life there and their families and the superintendent have pointed out the two chiefs but what you haven't seen before and i'm very proud of is chief sharpener new chief and chief and under are communicating on a daily basis this didn't happen before i've always felt like an outsider and now we're included and they're meeting weekly and talking about strategies we share information we were at the one in boylston that never happened before we came up there with our own representatives to see what can we do to help and share information and it's very important to us so the fluid between the principles and the superintendent have increased so much more prior to the recent incidents we saw this when we saw the change in regime and we were looking forward to this and it's very open and what i like also is he introduced we're police officers but i know also i'm a parent first as all these gentlemen in uniform are and our kids go to public schools and we're very confident how safe they are we watch the numbers and we're well aware of that so we really care about your kids and your staff as far as the drills the teachers and staff can be doing internal things it doesn't have to be a complete alice drill every day learning a life skill looking at the room and doing things and we work behind the scenes with tactical things that we can't share obviously but we keep the superintendent informed of the principles and it works very well together and i'm just proud of the cooperation more than anything that i've seen in the last six months prior to these major incidents and and you must see that too uh from the superintendent's point and the staff get so yeah just thank you all for being here and being part of this conversation tonight um i guess you know from my perspective you know we can't solve the problem of guns on a local school committee right and at the end of the day though there are two things i think we can impact one of them is the physical facility and securing it the other one is a police presence right um my understanding is that if we currently we have school resource officers that are assigned part-time to the district to the schools and will be there at varying times at the schools um is consideration being given to a more permanent full-time presence in the schools and if so whose decision really is that because budgetarily that's a sounds like a town decision to be at that point one when i uh i think i shared this story with chief when i got here when i first arrived at 2018.
jail appreciate a motion on the uh cash balance report okay okay uh discussion sue when you have a moment uh could you call the roll please miss marmal yes mr rossi yes miss fitzgerald yes mrs disla mr haydem mr cirillo and mr lamontagne yes okay moving along uh in your packet there was a consolidated cash reconciliation report uh revolving fund report and uh budget report are there any questions on any of those documents okay donations uh 2007 honda pilot valued at 4 375 donated by mr uh emilio valent valerie of andover articles i've seen them posted here is there no public participation this evening that i can see we have no student report this evening okay at this time the cheerleader appreciate a motion to table the student report till casey shows up to a later date later term this uh discussion sue could you call the roll please mr cirillo miss mama mr rossi miss fitzgerald miss disler yes mr hayden and mr lamontagne yes this time the superintendent will be presenting a report on his evaluation oh okay this time the chair would appreciate emotion at the table the superintendent evaluation and i seconded it yes would you call the royal school when you have a moment mr hayden mr cirillo miss mammal yes mr rossi yes miss fitzgerald yeah mrs disler yes and mr lamontagne yes uh superintendent new hire demographics please should have in your packets a copy of the hires the new hires that we had this present school year in uh demographics um whether they were a diverse candidate or not um based on these are based on positions um yes i have a question uh being that i believe i was the one who requested this data um from my understanding it was an extension of the previous data that was attached to our last meeting which was a it was data worth of the last five years um so i'm not sure if there was a misunderstanding regarding the fact that what i had specifically asked for and it was to kind of gain an understanding because the question that arise was how many staff of color have been hired in administrative administrative positions um so given that you're giving me a specific specific details regarding the positions itself i can't tell which ones are administrative at all um and it's only within the last year and i would like to add that um mr haydem also requested retention something regarding retention of those staff of color who within the last five years as well and i noticed that that is not attached i'm not gonna lie i didn't know it was five i don't think the um was in the minutes that i can recall when we went back looked at the minutes to see what the committee requested the retention was it in the minutes if it's not in there we'll so it's under um in the previous minutes paragraph five part c mr hayden inquired of superintendent void could provide a retention report of minorities and or people of color within the last five years okay so we'll provide we don't have it with us we must admit missed it when we went through the minutes the other day but i can provide that for the committee the next meeting i appreciate that thank you sir vivian no i just wanted to clarify i'm not sure if um how i worded it like is am i confusing you guys as to okay but specifically because i appreciate seeing the specifics of each position um but i just wanted to make sure that if you're able to understand where i'm coming from that based on seeing these positions i can't tell which ones are considered administrative positions and which ones are just which you know i think that can be separated also um excuse me one second john i'm sorry mrs fischer i was just going to say that perhaps an asterisk next to each position if it is an administrative person sure something simple like that is yeah thank you i'm sure you're good uh john well um thinking off the top of my head i believe we have one administrator that is of color yeah on the uh on the staff right at this time no i understand that what i really would rather do rather than take it off the top of anybody's head i rather we do a report and you know bring it back to us on the uh is it the 21st then the next meeting you bring it back to if you don't mind john please sure i can bring it specific on administration yeah and uh how many so in terms of retention we're looking at um just people of color uh the retention rate for the last five years is that what we're looking for okay okay so that's clever francis yeah yeah she's also john um with that can you give me the breakdown percentage of how many people we have of color and and every other ethnicity um for staff present present in the building right what's the percentage of um staff that we have that uh of color um and and i bring this up because with the other night when we're at the school committee meeting i mean at the school committee meeting the um city council meeting this is one of the things they were asking for so i want to make sure that we see it before oh you add our budget on our budget the budget meeting right yep thank you okay anything further okay um meeting schedule are we going to do what we normally do i'm presuming this is the summer or the summer meeting schedule we're talking about this is a schedule for the school year 2022-23 oh the whole the whole thing not just our summer uh summer of health next next meeting well it's the committee votes for it yes it has to it has to come up with the committee vote whether we take july usually we meet the the first uh just before the beginning of the school year so the 21st i believe i think it's the 21st of june of june correct that's not this though you're saying this is the this is the yearly schedule here you're talking yeah this was next year's school community we have one more meeting june 21st for this school year then we don't meet again until tuesday august 16th the way this is scheduled right now right that's what we typically do every year but if the committee wants to do something different that's fine correct too but we also have to remember too that we we are the beginning of negotiations you know what i'm saying so we may be having to call a special meet you know correct hopefully if they move if they move well if they move along well we'll have to call a meeting sometime in july i mean that's a possibility depending you know what i mean on what mrs michelle yes i would like to make a motion that we accept this um school committee schedule as printed with the addendum that should a meeting be required either due to negotiations or other pertinent business that um the chair called the meeting during the the six-week time frame where we're not meeting when the next meeting would be so that would that would be fine the 16th do i have a second on that okay any discussion sue could you kindly call the roll when you have a moment please miss dislove mr haydem mr cirillo yes miss marmal yes mr rossi yes miss fitzgerald mr lamontagne yes okay john we uh are you ready to go uh back to the regular the art of our business with your yes okay standard she'll accept a motion to go back to the break uh order of business under um superintendent's evaluation have a motion on that please i don't think we need a role for this all those in favor anyone opposed yeah i'm sorry you don't need i don't think you need a roku all right all right so you want to call the roll i'm not going to get into a discussion over it now miss fitzgerald yes mrs disla mr haydem miss cirillo miss marmal mr rossi and mr lamontagne yes john all right so you should have a yellow vanilla folder with the evaluation form that we used last year committee still has to take a look at it and decide if that's the form we want to use to evaluate the superintendent this year but what i'm going to do this evening is present to you my self evaluation with some documentation to help you understand some of the work that i did this year um and allow you to ask any questions that you may it's going to be there's three different basically three different uh sections to it so there's the eva the powerpoint i put a powerpoint together to kind of highlight all that a lot of what i accomplished this year because the evaluation form references this powerpoint uh with regard to some of the standards and then the my goals form the form on the goals i had this year and the progress made on the goals and then some artifacts material that aligns to both my goals and the evaluation itself i'll try to highlight a lot of it as we go through it but i thought i'd start off by doing the powerpoint just to give you a sense so you'll have that understanding when i reference going back to the powerpoint where it might be so if you look at the first page it's building projects so back a year ago when we were when we did the uh or in september when we were doing goals a lot has happened or changed uh from my initial uh expectations of what needed to be accomplished this year when we didn't have a business administrator or a director of finance um and uh so that the time needed to kind of oversee that position along with uh a lot of the esser uh grant funding that came through was another unexpected um pace of uh what needed to be dealt with this year as well which was a huge task in itself and then um working closely with the superintendent with the principal being her first year although she did an exceptional outstanding job this year i guess very very fortunate given the year that we had such an outstanding principal this year who really did a lot but still work closely with her in helping her learn some of the things that she needed to learn this year but uh we were she did just an exceptional job so let me start with building projects we've [Music] not only have done some building projects but a lot of planning had to go into a lot of the major building projects that are on the books a lot of capital um projects that are had a big impact on the work that had to be done this year given a lot of it's going to happen this summer and all the lead time and materials equipment having labor issues and other kinds of issues in order to plan and get everything organized but the first one which we started talking about long time ago is the child care center which i work closely with the architect to design and put a program together development program for the project that project started about three weeks ago and the spaces almost completely been gutted in terms of walls and equipment but still probably another week before we have it totally open and ready to start actually putting construction to build back uh there was the um there's the reggie closing of the four of the child care center meant that we had to move the reggie so meeting with architects to design and determine uh what the new reggie would look like and the impact on the four winds reservation so a lot of work has gone into that and planning organizing with each one of these projects that was that he's looking at i needed to sit down with architects with the director of facilities to plan and organize and stay on top of on a weekly basis to make sure materials and subcontractors were hired in a timely way to make sure that what because once we close a reggie we've got to have the new regime four winds open for september and we have to have the child care center open for september as well so there's a lot of tight timelines the library renovation which was started looking at almost two years ago now some of the changes necessary to be done in there required sitting down with the architect librarian but each one of these projects meant many hours of sitting down and organizing and planning designing um which i was involved in on each and every one of these projects typically i get heavily involved in a lot of projects in order to try to save the school money so we basically between myself and the director of facilities we become project managers which allows us to save a lot of money in in terms of not uh having to do an rfp on each project so just the child care center for example we expect it to come in at around 350 to 400 000 on the streets we're probably looking at close to 750 to 800 000 on that particular project but that just kind of shows you the kind of savings we're able to gain by doing a lot to this ourselves but means organizing planning and working with our own staff to make this all happen but it saves us money that we can reinvest into educational programs or other projects advanced manufacturing expansion so we expanded the machine program across the hall where we now have a second space in which we have a lot of for the upper 12th grade i believe the upper class the 12th graders are going to be able to utilize that space which opened up more space in the because we were so crowded that program is about six years old now uh and has continued to grow and is used uh practically from the day from the time the school opens to the time the school closes with between programming for day after dark and workforce development programs and has provided lots of job opportunities and helps many of our manufacturing companies throughout the merrimack valley with skilled labor since we've done that but we had to expand that space and program uh because of the high demand and we were able to bring in four new pieces of advanced equipment into the existing space so that constant growth we did that we started that back in [Music] november and that's completed we were trying to get that completed so we wouldn't have to do that during the uh summer as one of the so that was a major project that's been completed and is pretty excited about the expansion and what it offers for the future uh the cosmetology design and uh project which is another uh renovation we were completely demolishing the existing space so there was a lot of uh architectural design uh work that had to be done and enormous amount of time in pre-ordering so we've spent the last three months making sure that we um meeting with different uh uh vendors to get three quotes or three bids on everything from um furniture to equipment and so that has been an ongoing uh project as well the tennis court project which we started beginning of the school year and they're going to be i believe painting the courts next week so that's pretty close to finish phase three of the field project was finally opened we had a few problems with the sprinkler system that we had to resolve and but that's now open and being utilized uh the automotive edition design and when uh rfp had to go out uh that went out once uh we only got we only had one bidder so we uh put it back out so it makes to try to make have some competition so we made some changes um as you'll see tonight that we still only had one bidder on that project uh and a lot of work went into that landscaping horticulture barn was designed and built this school year the wellness garage was designed and built this school year metal fabrication ventilation and rfp has gone out and has has been awarded that's to redo all the boots throughout the space for welding boots and common ventilation space for quality of air improvement of quality air which was desperately needed a control project for the hvac throughout the whole school to upgrade all our controls for all our hvac systems and rooftop units that project went out on an rfp the parking lot rfp has gone out and we're waiting for bids on that and then the completion of the guard shack project or a few of the building projects that were worked on completed and looked at this year the next page is school cte growth so some of the work that we did we've been working on since the start of school this year is the um starting an environmental science program we put in an approval application way back in september step was it was approved to go to uh the next two steps uh so that approval process i've been working with the cte director on that um for the last nine months uh thursday the department of education will be coming in to re look at the space for safety and there will be a advisory meeting to do a final advisory meeting with the department of ed once that's completed we expect to get final approvals which allows us to open the program for for september uh postgraduate approval application for the robotics and automation again uh is in its final approval uh process uh department when they come in thursday we'll also be looking at that space so developing that program getting that ready to open also in this particular program as a pilot program have met with northern essex to look at aligning this program with possible associates degree credits for those who want to pursue that not necessarily has they have to but it allows another pathway to for young people who come out of high school and haven't had an opportunity to get any training vocational training the postgraduate program will offer that it'll be the first one of it that we've had in probably 35 years we haven't had a post-graduate program maybe even longer than that 40 years um so we're kind of excited that it being a pilot program and future opportunities for aligning other pathways for other of our vocational programs for the future and then the third one is the aviation program research and application um we have not submitted the fin a proposal for the application yet we've had to do some what was recommended when we talked to the department of education they recommended we spend this year doing some uh foundational work uh and then do the application process next year so we've done some work on that and i think we're ready to actually pursue the full approval application beginning in next school year and we'll be doing some work over the summer to continue to to look at the opportunities for space and other things one of the i think one of the things that have happened recently that will make this application even stronger is that the state put out a new um kind of like a capital skills grant for for expanding and putting on to expand your school in order to bring in more students you can apply for up to up to 5 million to put an addition on your school or build a new program in your school that's a brand new proposal that just came out this week state received 100 million dollars from the federal government to expand vocational education by expanding existing schools and programs so we plan on utilizing those funds to get the aviation program off the ground as well so that strengthens some of the things we're looking at with the airport in terms of trying to build or go into a partnership with the company out in the airport so we're excited about that strategies for learning teaching for improving teaching and learning uh working with um susan and and part of our work with our consultant uh in the committee that worked did a masterful job really in developing the new master schedule research and approval process that we went through to engage all stakeholders in the process was very successful including our students and parents um and i think our principal susan did a really terrific job in overseeing that particular program in in meeting with me on a regular basis as they progress through that process uh implementation of our saturday tutoring student support at risk for students attendance makeup due to covet absences that particular program has i think was successful and if you look at our data from last year versus this year we had less kids fail this year more support for at-risk students and i think that had up these two programs really had a a big impact on that given the continued challenge of covet this year in the uh in some cases some high absentees uh isms due to uh dealing with covet in in other emotional and and uh mental health issues uh it really had a i think uh a positive impact on helping students through the year and then weekly operational instructional meetings working with susan to present and manage operational instructional meetings this year which were done on a weekly basis so just so you know i think about two weekly leaders operational to look at the operation of the school and some of the things that impact the operation of the school administrative team comes together it could be look at can be looking at programming it can be looking at safety many issues that arise throughout the year and instructional analysis which um i think instructional organizations we started almost 13 or 12 years ago having an instruction online specifically to deal with all this structure [Music] insurance consistency and i think the instructional meetings has had a huge impact on the work that's done to move our school improvement plan forward our professional development all the things that will work as a team closely to align our and stay focused on all of our uh school improvement activities and aligning everything closely and consistently with the school improvement plan everything from evaluations to our professional development so all of that it's [Music] and the success of that happens through those friday instructional meetings admissions we've revised our admissions policy for the school committee and dsc approval let's go county approved it so the dsc automatically approves it but they look at it and ensure that we're following new regulations that were put in place this year um to ensure that there's more equity and fairness in our admissions process so that work was done at the beginning of the school year working closely with the director of guidance and admissions who reports to me um also the implementation of our i did continue the implementation of our digital admissions acceptance program continuing to work with our uh central communities to ensure that that process works uh well and uh has had a big impact in helping us deal with the uh managed to increase admissions this year we've went from about 1400 applicants last year to all 1600 this year so that has put a lot of pressure on trying to manage that emissions policy this year and ensure that it was a fair process professional development started with our atss improvement on multi-tier system of support uh udr universal design for learning was part of our professional development work that we did with our staff this year administrative team and staff the decap district curriculum accommodation plan was reviewed right now and um i have to say that the work that was done on that was really i thought exceptional it will have a huge impact on supporting all students uh specific accommodations uh in curriculum so work out particularly in our programs where we have inclusion classes that will make a difference in helping teachers work together as a team to improve instruction and learning starting right with curriculum and making changes and adaptations to meet all student needs our uh dbei diversity buying equity and inclusion work that we build all around that including our new uh equity company that we put together this year that's been doing some work around [Music] our freshman programs exploratory editions and also co-op um affirmative assessments for results which is where we started our professional development at the beginning of the school year and continue to work on that throughout the year as you'll see some of the artifacts that i provided you tonight showing [Music] the results of that work social emotional learning the two program to uh programs that were [Music] that were offered both to staff and students this year um i think were very positive well well received and really had a impact on helping the culture and positive environment within the within the school this year and then the dsc teacher diversification plc which uh for staff members uh including myself attended eight webinars throughout the year and which was aligned to our improvement plan and was specifically to work on diversifying our improvement of staff hiring these are just uh organizations that i serve on as a member of the board of directors the great laws chamber of commerce we meet once a month the mass higher workforce investment board we meet typically every two months the advantage [Music] particularly in both those cases is having access to business people uh in order to keep them informed as to what's happening in the school where they can support our school workforce investment board has led to many of the workforce investment workforce programs that we offer in the evening and after school for close to a million dollars this year so that serving on that board has had been beneficial career center youth program which is also part of the mass higher workforce investment board that i serve on uh to benefit programming for youth that is funded through the workforce investment board mass higher the large partnership which is made up of business leaders throughout the merrimack valley we meet typically once a month [Music] the gold institute is the institute that we work with that offers apprenticeship program here in the school we partner with them to help our students uh who are graduating particularly in the construction fields and as of late we've off we are now offering uh three of our own apprenticeship programs which saves the students money makes it easier for the students and what we've done is linked our day programs as 12th graders to transition right into the apprenticeship program what we found is more students are staying in their career areas when we've done that and are are better prepared to take their license or course abc contractors and association i serve on that committee which are made up of open shop contractors and who hire some of our students for co-op cress is the our program that we uh that i serve on our organization that services some of our students in need specif with specific needs marva on the board of directors for massachusetts association vocational administrators and the greater lawrence revolving loan fund on the board of directors which is one of the organization which provides uh for our house building program finance uh this year worked on negotiates closed out the school year 2022 budget at the beginning of the school year uh we had a 1.3 million dollar net school spending uh leftover uh funds that we had to move into this year's budget uh we had a little difficulty with that but eventually got it straightened out developed the score 2223 budget this year's budget working with all staff including teachers administrators in all other [Music] departments throughout the school our aid certification which was a three months ordeal and lots of complications and issues spent a lot of time with between our auditors maria and our own business office trying to get that resolved but we're finally successful in getting that done on the last day that it had to be done based on the dsc's requirements in order for us to present our budget our budget to handover that day is when we finally got it certified so that was a major task in itself presentation of the budget to the committee in other organizations developmental essa grant proposal for spending funds uh the essa grant proposals which was probably somewhere between nine and ten million dollars which was a major task in itself because it needed to have input from all stakeholders everything from parents um students community leaders so trying to and are lots of regulations and requirements that were required that had to be sent in in order to get get that grant approved student opportunity act proposal for spending our funds was our second year in uh obtaining uh student opportunity act funding through our chapter 70 funds and the year report certification which happened at the beginning of the year where we had a little bit of uh back and forth with their auditors again in trying to get that completed uh and then the net school spending resolution resolving the issues that we had around not having spent all our funds last year because of covert i would say 60 percent of my time this year was spent on financing grants these are all the grants that some of the grants that these are a few of the grants that we obtained here you have a more thorough document artifact that goes over our grants that uh i worked on with sue armano particularly the um any workforce development vocational grants i spend a lot of time with her on the narrative piece of it and then developing the budgets um so the essa grant the essa grant proposal uh says here but i think it was closer to 10 million the all the rfps contracts permits budgets all had to be built and submitted for this for these the spending of these dollars the workforce development grants we had this year was over a million dollars developing programming we had the most workforce development programs in the state of massachusetts this year um which also our clients started our program with uh high school students coming from our currently our three communities i believe are involved in the program students at the end of this month for the first time will be going to workforce development programs in three or four hundred hour programs right out of high school uh under using utilizing workforce development money institutional after dark program expanded from last year's difficulty of although we ran it but we've uh we're able to bring in more students again this year we also expanded the program so that andover and methuen are now involved so we had to develop and put together an lu for that expansion for those both those communities we had a equity grant this year that was utilized to for the equity committee to work on and around some of the issues that i talked about earlier we had an admissions grant to re to redo our admissions policy cte assessments grant and a capital skills grant that we wrote and were able to obtain this year as well and then there are additional ways to show the grants that we worked on this year other accomplishments um cte teacher community workshop retail intel course development with uh one of our school commanders and uh sulano in personal spray advisory working with the cte team revision of the school safety plan redesigning cyber communications hired college so we're in the process of [Music] hiring somebody to oversee a higher higher ecology and industry recruitment for diverse candidates will be part of that person's uh duties developing that process and um job description for that particular uh candidate um by week long newsletter that went out susan and i wrote um every other week uh to keep our parents and our advisors and stakeholders up to date on what was going on in the school and working closely with um many of our staff members to put that together professional development workshop assessments for working with rbt earlier in the year [Music] many zoo meetings for scheduling input panorama survey for families and many connected calls for updates of what was happening in the school for parents mr lloyd i got a few questions um according to this and i told you this before you're wearing too many hats there's only a certain amount of time we can expect to get out of you before you burn yourself out and it's the same thing with the principal she's wearing too many hats i'd like to know while you're doing all this work and the principal's doing all of that work what's the rest of the administration doing so all of this work doesn't happen by just soon myself this all gets supported we either oversee lead manage a lot of the projects with the support and help of our administrative team so administrative team is helping develop a lot of the work that's happening so um so just as an example all the grants right all the grants sue amano is our grant writer so she writes the grants i sit down with her and develop the plan well i'll take for example the uh capital skills grant well when that comes out the art that goes out for that i'll sit down with the cte team and i'll have a discussion around where the leads are for for particular programming in terms of equipment we read the grant we see what the targeted funding is to make sure that we're on target for whatever we're going to develop the grant for then once we do that um and we determine who will assign different tasks to different people on so let's say it's going to be a new piece of equipment and middle fab the uh instructor metal fab will then meet with the um coordinator from metalfab and talk about um if we target that what their needs are for equipment then i meet with that team will then meet with the director of cte then they meet with myself and then susan and then once we've determined that i'll sit down with susan and we'll put a budget together and i'll help her with the narrative on the specifics where she doesn't have the background and knowledge about certain aspects of a career i'll sit down and help fill in the block but she does the actual writing so i i serve as a uh um advisor or um guidance guide to helping her develop stuff so that's just so it's not me doing everything by myself it's overseeing helping and making sure that the work gets done and that the people who are doing the work are meeting the expectation the timelines and all that so it's not a one man it's a it's a complete team effort you know uh a lot of times soon susan and i are meeting on a lot of topics and issues and we might determine who are the what administrators are going to do with a specific task or who's going to be involved in what projects so um so like the example that would be the scheduling committee we're made up of five particular administrators for the most part so the administrator spent many many hours an enormous amount of time and hours on developing that with the consultant that we had and as the process was going i would meet with susan to go over uh what they're looking at because we're not going to go through the whole process and at the end we say oh i don't like that i'm not so sure that this is going to be effective or it's going to work so i get an opportunity as the process is going on sit down talk about you know what they're thinking why the directions and all that so it's always a team effort tom it's not in everything that you see here it's it's all it's everything by not just me but a team um like if you just the budget itself when you think about when you were here working you the budget started with your shop right i was still here yes but when you're a teacher i mean you're the first one that got to put start that budget process and and everyone had their responsibility and then eventually it got to myself where we looked at all your work and took a look at the budget and set the priorities and everything but we gave you the priorities before so you it's it's just everything is a process and a procedure and uh so that's how it all works but it it's somebody that's helping drive and making sure that the timelines are met that um you know that it fits within the the priority so i as like budget priorities always is teaching and learning so instructors the things that we need to teach and make sure kids have what they need to learn and instructors have everything they need to resources they need to do their job are the first things that we look at in the budget and then we start to build from once we know those things are met then we can look at where the rest of the funds are so it's a process two other questions if i can mr chairman um we had mentioned the ventilation and metal fab is going to get started what about the auto body shop that's part of the project that's built into that project yes yeah and uh you would said uh building at the airport money to build yeah are we thinking of building at the airport or building on our own campus utilizing our own space here yeah so we're looking at both sides we're looking at the possibility of a um a hangar space on the airport so we want to have access to the runway so at some point if we're going to do work on airplanes you got to be able to have a access to the runway so we're looking we're pursuing we don't know for sure what the final options are but we need to understand what they could be and what kind of funding we need we visited westfield academy who has an aviation program they have a hangar out at the airport they also have space in their school where they have three airplanes in a space where we have space where i think we could do that as well and so we're pursuing and looking at what is it in terms of resources equipment staffing all of those things that we need to get the program approved as well to meet both the federal state and dsc regulations because when you're talking about aviation you need you have to meet all of those regulations so kids need to be certified faa certified so we are looking at we do so it'll be a combination of space in the building and hopefully space out at the airport as well last one do we have an organizational chart or leadership chart or a chain and command chart i know we had one with dr judy and mr berzerka i don't know if we have one i'm interested to find out who's under who who oversees who we do have an organizational chart in fact susan and i have been looking at it and meeting now that we have this first year done we will probably bring a revised organizational chart to the committee looking at you know um how the the year went and who should uh report to who in order to make things um more consistent and more that sort of the workflow the workflow and responsibilities are are uh in direct alignment to the most likelihood for success so we you will soon get a i don't know we could actually actually bring it to your next school committee we can bring a proposal to the committee next school committee for an organizational chart that we can that we'll work with next school year i'd be happy to do that okay thank you john thank you mr chairman other questions vivian i just wanted to ask regarding the aviation program you had mentioned that an application was not submitted and i'm a little confused because i could have sworn you said an application was submitted at one point so i want to see so an application was submitted and then when we submitted it was recommended that we pull it back and resubmit it the following year because they felt result would get rejected when did you receive that recommendation very early in the process very early in the process that's why we started doing research we quickly knew that there was no way we could get this process we could get the program approved because it was just too much uh we had we had lack of knowledge number one in terms of what the program needed to be until there was no framework the framework wasn't completed until january i think so there was no access to any framework in order to build the curriculum and understand what we needed for materials what we needed for equipment what space we needed all that information we we had none of that so there was no way we could put a proposal together and it was recommended by the department of education that we hold off a year so we pulled our application uh because it would have been fruitless to try to process they would have just rejected it right out the get-go okay i would have liked to have known that early on as well since i was under the assumption that it was approved um and when being asked regarding the an update about this program i did not know that the application was recommended to you know to hold off and to continue to do some research which i understand considering how complex this program could be um okay in regards to building projects is it possible um that you're able to let us know as to what projects are actively being worked on which ones um have like give a start date if they're not being actively worked on and an estimated time of completion sure i'll go through i can give you start date and expected completion dates that's committee meeting for each of these projects that i presented to you i'd be happy to do that francis i'm sorry did you have a question zoila did you have it don't fight children hmm zoella yeah i have few questions um one is regarding admissions i know it's not much said here other than um it was revised and we approve and dcm d c e d s because i if i remember correctly it just came as the way it is um written and we just went through it we didn't we didn't do anything else um so i would like um to understand more how the admission is going because um i know i mean there's a lot of questions um on how the process is and we at least i i'm not exactly clear how admission is working even though um so i need to i would like to get more information on admissions and maybe um get the director here like we have one time and she actually presented um how admission was being done i'll ask the director of admissions to come in next week and give you an overview of how the process went this year from start to finish and she'll start off by explaining the policy again and then how the process what were some of the difficulties what were some of the challenges this year what the admissions process and what we're going to do next year to try to overcome some of those um on your other accomplishment list that that that means that all these things have been done i just want to make sure that some of them are started and some of them are done so they're not they're not accomplished if uh depend it depends on which ones you're looking at most of what you're looking at has been completed but some of them are ongoing such as the projects those a lot of those are ongoing on on my accomplishments so they are completed all the accomplishment means other accomplishments that means these things are done so my question was are these things that are completed or stopped or just things that are you're you're hoping to be done things are all done on the other accomplishments those are completed um okay um so my other questions i know we got a package yep i didn't go i'm gonna go through that package okay i was just i know so i was hoping to see what it was um i was hoping actually that this was a i understand there was um a effectiveness survey completed recently effectiveness survey yeah so i was hoping this is it because that's one of the things that i i want to request for us to have that information of the survey because it will effectiveness service so um they both the results of the conditions for effectiveness school survey and the panorama surveys that we talked about for families students teachers all of those will be when the superintendent and i present the school improvement plan for 2223 for your approval and review and that is at the next meeting but we will share all of the data all the survey data out prior so you're able to review it okay we're finalizing we're finalizing um that our administrative team took a last look at it today at the draft i have the final vote from the school council next tuesday and that the whole document along with all of those data points will be shared with you and for your review for the school improvement plan for next year at the next meeting but i will share out the survey results ahead of time do you say we're going to get all the data yes before that meeting so we can thank you you all you all said joining that's great francis oh vivian um yes i want to piggyback off of azoyla's um questions regarding admissions um i do agree that we need to kind of tap into this subject because i know we approve the changes and that's great but i still think a lot needs to be done to improve the process because i today i received um a phone call from a parent that tells me that a month ago she requested an appeal she's called she's left messages and she's not the first parent to tell me that they're not getting a call back upon sending an appeal or upon even asking questions regarding their child being wait listed so i think we need to go a little bit further in improving the process on how we're communicating with our parents um a lot of them don't understand the process of appeal it's not really clear apparently in the letters that we're sending um and i know we have policies and procedures as to the information that we're able to tell the parents regarding why their children are being waitlisted but i'm just wondering like what more could we do um because how could a parent appeal when they have no clue why their child is being denied or weightless and and i know that no child is being denied at this point but if it's because of an attendance issue or if it's because of an academic issue i don't know how a parent could properly appeal something if they don't know what documentation they're able to bring in for that appeal to support x y and so we definitely need to improve uh how we communicate and we need to understand why you know why is it taking more than a month for someone to get back to a parent um so later on in the meeting i in the meeting i will provide you with the parents information and hopefully we'll we're able to kind of get back to the parent and give them whatever information is needed so that's just something i wanted to add so i'm not sure that in the next meeting when um if she's able to add what strategies could we add even though we've already made improvements and we voted on it if this is something that we could continuously work on if we're seeing flaws even after the fact so we've had several meetings we continue to have meetings throughout this process admissions and we have our equity team one of the things that they really look closely at is our admissions policies and procedures to see if there are ways to improve the work that we do so we're not satisfied with with um the admissions work at this point we know we need to continue to work and uh you know just to give you one example of an idea that's come about is that we go to every school and do a presentation to the kids so maybe we need to go in every evening have the parents come to a meeting to also so that we can clarify some of the things that we talk to the kids about so we go during the day to the school in the evening we go and eat i mean then in the evening go and just specifically to meet with each school's parents who who may be interested if their children are interested in coming to the school and that was just another idea we said we need to invest a little more effort in time there are other things we're looking at as well but we know that you know how heartbreaking it is for students can't get into the school when they really want to and so many kids can benefit from it and so that's you know that's why we continue you know when i started 12 years ago we had 1200 students today we have 1650 we will be close to 1700 next year we have not stopped growing and we've expanded we've done everything but we also know that like we're going to take advantage of that two and a half to five million dollars and try to put enough a uh proposal together so that we can expand a little bit and take in a few another at least another hundred students so we're not we know how hard it is for kids and we want to that's why we offer the after dark that's why this year we started uh provide opportunities for students graduating from lawrence high school particularly we have 60 students from lawrence going to be in our workforce development program this year those are all you know as a result of knowing that you know we we need to do more we got to figure out how can we do more and how can we help those kids and we're looking at some summer programming so we won't quit we'll just keep trying to figure out how we can do more so but i will we'll have the admissions director come in next week and we'll talk about some of the i'll have a talk about some of the things we've already discussed for trying to improve improve admissions vivian probably was a slip of the time but you said that you were going to notify the superintendent of the parent you meant after the meeting you said later in the meeting okay i just want to make sure i don't want a parent all right okay i just don't want a parent or a student's name brought out in session that's all that's no it was just i heard it wrong incorrectly or whatever no problem francisco jesus you're you're very you're very magnanimous this evening yeah unbelievable i know i just this is uh mrs fitzgerald yes i kind of look at this as the elephant in the room and i know it's a little bit off track from talking about our the superintendent's evaluation but to stay on the admissions we mandated at a committee meeting that we not grow this school so much in fact we asked that a limit be put so that we weren't in the position that we were in back in the 80s of being so overcrowded that it education didn't take place the way it should and we all received those phone calls i am a much smaller community in terms of applications yet i received three phone calls from parents whose children did not get accepted and and the appeal i explained to them the appeal process even though they had that right in front of them you're right the parents either you know might not they don't want their child not to be accepted but the bottom line is if we keep making okay we'll take these two more we'll take these two more or whatever we're until we grow the school either programmatically space whatever it takes we can't get in that position again where we are taking too many children because we don't have the space we we are limited more than a conventional high school in terms of there are some shops that can only have x a number students because of the safety issues involved in the machinery and everything so as a committee we we all get those phone calls and we want to help the parents out but at some point and we did mandate this that we wouldn't keep growing by 50 students last year 25 more this year and so on because we will be in that problem again so i just want to remind the committee that we did take a vote and mandate it to the superintendent that we not grow at that great rate thank you francisco um so i wasn't at that meeting but my understanding when this building was expanded it was for 1600 students am i correct what number are we right now uh we're i think around 16 20.
again south valley's a great school jason already mentioned that their last designated letter grade from ade was a was an a in addition to being an a plus school of excellence from the arizona education foundation so a multitude of additional academics and electives that would be offered to our junior high students they would have options to take honors courses in their core areas in addition to the honors we would also be able to support our special education students with the option for some on level grade on grade level curriculum support and co-taught courses as well as a resource option for them if they needed that as far as electives our junior highs all offer quite a few different electives including facts industrial tech spanish some of the languages stem all the performing arts which was what we had to transport a lot of students for to greenfield junior so they could take you know choir orchestra band drama any of those if they wanted to so that that would be a good thing they would be able to participate in their junior high athletics uh on the campus and get getting them back in time to do that we have four seasons now so they'd have a you know quite a few kids that might end up being multi-sport athletes they would have more opportunities for extra other extracurricular activities some of those uh clubs that are more in line with what our high schools offer and field trips same thing a little bit more offered at the junior high and high school level in addition it's so important for these students to learn alongside of their peers in the classroom it's very important for them at the junior high age to socially adjust to a larger campus and switching of court classes and so forth so to be along with their same aged peers we think is very important and a benefit for the students they would also have the option for that personalized academic support that we'll kind of demonstrate on the next slide you can see the options but all of this would be accomplished within the existing staffing ratio at south valley so that's also an advantage to to moving them so i do have a question these students will no longer use buzz they'll actually be attending classes with their peers that is correct so if they we mentioned when they go to competitions if they miss to go to competitions how will that be managed for these students in the same manner that most of our secondary students receive their work student teachers work with them but they also have that option for that personalized support too so that they have that additional time when they're away for a tournament or they miss a couple days that they're able to be supported in that some of the advisory things that we do at the junior high campuses would be incorporated into an ar that's a little bit longer than the rest of the courses if you take a look at the schedule you can see there's some additional time incorporated into that a period so the sample schedule on the left is an option without an elective course if a student just wanted to take their four core areas then they would have that fourth hour lunch and personalized support before they got on the bus to depart for the sports facility and if they wanted to take an election an elective course option it would be similar to the schedule on the right where they would attend five class periods and then have the kind of a grab and go lunch our food services does an excellent job they've been doing that with our summer programs that started yesterday they are able to facilitate that kid grabs their their lunch on their way out that would be the same manner at the performance academy if they took that additional choir or orchestra or stem class then they would be able to eat that on the way to the sports facility on the bus madam president governing board dr mccord thank you once again for allowing us to be here this evening this has been a fun process it's been fun to both learn the history and jason's always keeping us reminded of where we started and how we got here's our historian he is our historian and um but it's wonderful in in in detailed notes from from how we started what the concept was from its inception where we are today um dawn koberstein and her background and research has been instrumental and as well as looking as previously stated the programs that are surrounding us um i feel as though what's being proposed tonight is something that's well beyond anything comparable to our surrounding school districts i think we've taken some steps with some strategic planning that separate us from from maybe what some others may have set out to do previously and a lot of that is in partnership and is a result of partnerships that are have been proposed to us from local vendors and we're fortunate to be in a community where so many people want to be heavily involved and to support the students the way that the way that we all want to be able to the biggest piece moving forward we felt was increasing access participation numbers a result of something right and and we know access isn't there for everyone all the time no matter what the topic is and so how are we going to open the doors to more students to do that we we knew that a structure needed to be provided we knew it needed to be financially responsible and something that families could afford and we knew that it had to be structured in a way where a student could really opt into it and we had created the the platform for them or we had created the relationship for them some of the feedback we heard from our families was that it was a challenge to find something that was consistent on a daily basis for them to be able to go to to access to have coaching readily available for the hours that they would really needed and outside of a few particular sports that was that was a challenge so we wanted to address that we wanted to remove uh barriers academically and and to your question ms humphries if we're gonna miss school how are we gonna remove those barriers for a larger number of students so that way they don't fall behind in their academics and miss taylor outlined a lot of planning and with with mr schlei and his team to make sure that that that's taken care of building an academic support on a daily basis was was essential to this reducing the volume of of vendors that we're transporting to ms betts is always very quick to remind us of of um transportation needs and and how we need to look after those as well as costs that are affiliated and that's responsible and it's something we really need to look at and so all that being said we did go through an rfp process where we wanted to see what the interest in the community was and what services others would want to be able to join us and providing to our students so the rfp process began over 100 local vendors were notified of their opportunity to to bid on this or to provide a a scope of of what it is that they would be able to provide a gps committee was formed and put together to identify what the scope wanted to be really focused on and what services we wanted to be able to provide those committee members thank you those committee members then were able to review the proposals submitted by vendors after we provided an opportunity for any community vendors to come in and meet with us as a committee and ask any questions that they had and then a scoring rubric was put together thanks to the support of of barbie wells and and her team to lead us through that process we felt like we we did took a number of steps to make sure that the appropriate vendor or vendors were selected and identified to provide this to our there you go thank you to our to our students into our school district all that being said after a number of things were taken into consideration including location pricing some vendors actually provided bids but didn't have facilities they wanted to use hours there were a number of reasons why we went through and at the end our recommendation is for legacy sports usca to be our our selected vendor the live vendor that we partner with to provide this opportunity to our to our students in our community legacy sports offers over 15 different athletic competitive environments for students to be trained in everything from speed and agility and and baseball basketball softball cheer gymnastics dance the gamut of sports that a majority of our students are affiliated with they're in phase one with plans for multiple phases to be added on we're optimistic that this facility would be able to provide something to our students in terms of choice and option and access that we haven't been able to previously provide other rationale for the recommendation is also their desire to partner with us in a strategic marketing and advertising campaign that would assist us in making sure that the word was able to travel with relation to this program that's a bit of a challenge sometimes is to make sure everyone in gilbert public schools is aware that this is an opportunity for their children and a choice that they have to make and so we're excited about their partnership and the pieces that they have to offer us to be able to support this and being successful for our for our students if you haven't been there legacy sports usa is the largest athletic of this facility venue in north america and the uh the the the fact that it happens to reside only a few miles from us is is pretty fortunate the fact that it's constructed and opened less than half a year ago is fortunate to us and our students and our families and so for those reasons and a host of others we feel as though this is a great partner for us moving forward i should probably know the answer to this but where is it so if you're driving down the 202 and you see lights just glowing that's that's legacy so ellsworth and ray road no no ellsworth and um it really connects into the 24 that comes off of the 202 and ellsworth road i think dawn was going to come up and share some of the marketing partnerships yeah thank you um yes mr ryan mentioned that the proposed partner a recommended vendor we'd offer significant marketing opportunities and we thought that would be worth noting those because it's quite exceptional what they've offered and alongside traditional email blasts which would go out to a database of over 120 000 living within our community who are already interested in athletics also having a page on their website uh banners and signage throughout the facility they specifically reference in the soccer area baseball pickleball and also indoor banners within their three generous field houses that they have and then also they actually have digital signage if you haven't been there that's something that's really notable when you arrive including 55 led boards throughout the facility and 54 tvs so these are all things that have been offered which we think would be significant as mr ryan mentioned the part of it is about expanding the program and making it more accessible and sharing the opportunity far and wide board members do you have any questions i i do have a question um back on the academic support time included in vendor proposal what does that look like the academic support that the vendor's going to offer so students within the framework of their time at legacy in this in this scenario would have a set period of time that would be for academics they it's an interesting combination of employees that are running and looking after legacy sports usa some have background in athletics obviously but many others in k-12 education and so two of their strategic leaders that have been assigned to this project from their campus are from a prior experience in k-12 education and will be looking after students and their academic support needs on campus as part of their schedule perhaps in their downtime while they're waiting for their turn on the fields then they can have time to do homework or it's a specific rotation so they'll have a specific rotation with an allotted amount of time they have a venue that each of those students will go to for a period between 45 minutes and an hour depending on the age of the student and they'll receive academic support and they'll be able to assist each other in their academic work during that time as well okay sounds good i had a question on the tax credit situation here um so apparently the way i'm reading this parents can actually pay fees to the venue uh through tax credit program is that correct the parents would actually pay through the school district through the school district with a with a tax credit correct an annual tax credit yes sir okay if he's negotiated uh some uh with the district couldn't yes okay yes that was part of the bid process um one of the factors that we looked at was the cost hourly for a student athlete to take part and their proposed price point was far lower than other competitors price points that came in um also um important to mention there will be a 50 extracurricular fee on a quarterly basis which also can be paid through tax credit okay thank you so i have a question about that because you and i talked this morning um if because we talked about the fact that these students now can practice in the afternoon and they can be brought back to the school if if they choose to do a school sport they could do that school sport and would that then be they would have to pay one extra curricular fee for the opportunity to go to legacy the transportation then they would also have to pay if they chose to do a sport for example baseball the typical athletic fee would still be yes they would have to pay that fee okay that's what i wanted to clarify correct mr ryan i wanted to thank you for the answers to your question to my questions this morning a couple of things that i think are important as we discussed and that is for those families who may or may not have the wherewithal financially to be involved in a program of this type but who have athletic ability or who have supreme interest in a particular athletic event does the venue or legacy sports offer assistance to those families and you answered yes yes sir yes they have a foundation created specific to raising funds for a variety of purposes one of which and one of the main purposes is to provide access to students who may not otherwise be able to to afford to attend such a um or be part of it thank you i think that that's an important factor to market as we uh look at joining forces in this in this venture the other is that the cost of the district if i understood you correctly is basically the transportation of the student from their location to legacy sports yes sir that's correct any other questions yes i do how is this the present families who who have children attending the performance academy has this been presented to them as what we're doing or how is this going to be presented to them currently they probably have other relationships or other venues that they're attending and so i kind of like to know how it's going to be rolled out or if they were consulted in the process and just communication with them so the families do know that we were going through a process they don't know which gym or studio in this place legacy because tonight that's what you are voting on later for tonight but mrs koberstein has let them know also too that this coming year at the gyms in studios that are fairly nearby would be the last year that we would be transporting students to those studios we did have one one gym that was in north scottsdale and we let that family know that we were not able to sustain that for next year but we've also let them know too that they will have the opportunity as soon as we get this information out that they will be one of the first families to know because they may decide that they already love performance academy but they may see that legacy could be maybe a better partnership for their family as well too so she'll be reaching out to those individual families so it's important to note that if they're currently doing or attending some other venue or organization that can continue absolutely transportation's the key and so we're only transporting to this specific area and i actually have one year just like everybody one year to continue as they are and then the next year it will just be to legacy right and the other thing too that we've talked about as we anticipate too that families are going to hear about performance academy both at mesquite elementary and south valley junior high and they will take it upon themselves to find their own partnership and transportation or we may even have families that just like the alternative schedule as well and i will tell you that we've worked with bonnie betts and and joanna catanzaro our state reporting specialist and the students here we are getting full adm for the five hours requirement for our grades four through eight students so in this climate of school choice i see that some families may see that this more abbreviated accelerated daily schedule just works personally for their families as well too down the road okay i have you given thought to when these um seventh and eighth graders move on to high school yes i have to ask that because you have to look ahead a few no it's great we already have some of those students uh that have gone primarily to gilbert high school because of the proximity to mesquite elementary but all of our high schools the way they're set up right now along with um having classes that they can do a mixture of global classes they have the ability to do that at any of our comprehensive high schools right now as well okay thank you i would encourage you to keep an open mind with our other junior high schools because i have a sneaky suspicion that interest will expand absolutely that would be a that would be a great goal if that happened and if we can expand it to other places we will without a doubt um can other school districts partner with legacy at this point now part of the rfp process is that we would be the sole educational provider or partner of the of the selected vendor thank you but we could accept students or zoning variants right thank you very much we appreciate your work we appreciate the work that's gone to into it these past years and then this opportunity going forward um i assume we'll be busy after we we vote on this tonight it's part of our it's part of our consent agenda okay i really appreciate the thoughtfulness and the innovation that this brings forward i mean this is i mean when performance academy began it was a unique and different thing but now this is really something very different that maybe families will be interested in i really think it's interesting very well done thank you guys thank you that will take us now to 5.02 grading beliefs and practices dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members i will have um dr cox and dr burton up our uh directors of elementary and secondary curriculum instruction and assessment they're going to talk about grading beliefs and practices and we could probably talk about this for 100 days because it's the topic can be all over the place but they're going to talk to you about the process of how gilbert public schools came to our thoughts philosophies and beliefs related to grading practices so my friends it's you're up maybe is it on did they turn did you turn it off here we go all right madam president members of the board and dr mccord good evening dr burton and i look forward to presenting uh the work that's been conducted over this last fiscal year on the grading beliefs and practices for gilbert public schools with that we would like to dive into just some of the historical aspects that have led us to the why behind the work being conducted throughout this fiscal year so in early 2018 there was professional development that was provided to all administrators in the form of expert presenters book studies sharing resources and discussions within plc groups how this looked on campuses though was dependent on the readiness of the campus staff as well as how it fit into other campus initiatives in the spring of 2020 we quickly identified the need for more formal guidance however this work required the insight voices and expertise of larger groups during in-person meetings therefore at the time more refined recommendations were created shared with all administrators in the spring of 2020 and then again in the fall of 21 for that 21-22 school year and that brings us to this school year where we were able to create a committee which the timing ended up being perfect because we had just started implementing the instructional framework and within the instructional framework it references grading frequently and therefore as we continue to go through quarterly check-ins with our campus administrative teams which include the principals their instructional leadership team and assistant principals teams reinforced that there was a need for support and further clarity surrounding grading practices and beliefs so uh with that we will dive in a little more closely to this year's specific timeline so we broke it into kind of the three seasons of the school year so in the fall we created the committee we outlined goals and objectives and really started to put together an intentional strategic plan to make sure that all of the work was specifically aligned to the instructional framework the whole purpose of this work was to make sure that there was clarity surrounding the instructional framework in regard to what gilbert public schools grading practices and beliefs were and then with that in the winter we transitioned into really diving into the committee work which we'll talk about in just a moment reviewing current practices and policy and guidance that had been provided previously which included many conversations with campuses different stakeholder groups and a lot of collecting data and so this may have looked different at each campus we trusted our building leadership to really provide us feedback from different stakeholder groups on their campus that they see fit so for example some campuses provided surveys out to their students some provided it out to teachers some to their parents i know even dr mccord had taken this to the student senate and that has representatives there where the students had kind of put together their own version of what they would like to see and so all of that feedback that was collected from each of our schools was uh included and taken to the committee which um then used that as the driving force behind the sole focus of that work and then in the spring and kind of really even into the summer now what happened next was we took all of that work and created a very simplified handbook that can be provided in the fall to all teachers and administrators to answer those questions that were there the how to how where do i get more support and we'll dive into that a little deeper in just a moment as well we wanted to take the time to share the work we were excited to share with the governing board to just show the work that we've put together to better support teachers when it comes to grading again that support had been there previously but with the creation of the instructional framework we felt it's a really in-depth tool our instructional framework and people are very excited and it's a three-year implementation plan and with the grading aspects being covered uh frequently throughout there we felt that it was best to have just as many supports in place for that grading piece as well and then that wraps us up with the professional development that administrators will need we'll be rolling out professional development to all district administrators on thursday and then we do have a professional development plan that all administrators will get to uh support their teachers throughout the next couple of years which will go more into depth as well in just a moment so that covers just the timeline of what occurred this year and as i mentioned we did have a grading committee that was comprised of district administration cabinet members site leadership and many many teachers teachers were the the priority and the main focus within the committee and that was representation from kinder all the way through 12 and we worked to make sure that there was representation from uh one stakeholder group or another from each of the each of our campuses the best that we could there were a few times through the year where meetings were adjusted and we had different groups coming in at different times with that the committee worked to really work to excuse me focus with the instructional framework and make sure that they stayed true to that throughout and established what that clarity was going to be and not lose sight of that this is a lot of work there's a lot of research there's you there's so many books you i mean we could spend years diving into this and so we really just tried to hone in and zone in on what gilbert public schools believes what we have done and how do we fine-tune that and so if we started to get off track we really held ourselves accountable to stay true to that and within that the committee was able to create the following which include a common philosophy and mindset guidance to the teachers and support to the teachers essential elements which dr burton will talk about in just a moment we will dive in specifically to the reporting aspect because what a grade means and what grading practices are are different than how you report your grade so we wanted to make sure that there was clarity between the separation of the two and then what those recommendations are for the grading best practices good evening so as dr cox intimated the work that we did was really in centered on providing a consistent and standardized message and guideline for k-12 campuses and administrators the other thing that was really important to us was sustainability of this implementation to create the most consistent experience in terms of the professional development as campuses rolled this out because the reality is campus administrators are hosting a lot of these conversations and facilitating this work and so it was really critical for us to create a plan that allowed them to do that um consistently across all 39 of our campuses so moving forward looking at those essential elements we really focused on the alignment of assessment instruction and grading paradigms and we did this by kind of parsing out these four elements um really making sure that our grading practices were equitable it doesn't matter what your zip code is or what classroom you land in you should be able to find consistent grading practices throughout our schools in all of our courses k-12 accurate the fact that reporting structures are there to communicate to our students and their families their progress on the mastery of the skills and standards that are the foundation of instruction within our classrooms was really important and so accuracy is critical specific providing very specific guidance to our administrators and our teachers in terms of what students and family can expect to be in the ways in which they can expect to be communicated with about their learning was critical and then finally timeliness learning is you know a day-to-day experience in the classroom and so focusing and making sure that feedback was provided on a in a timely and specific manner was very critical but i do have one question on when you talk about accurate grades are skill based not behavior based can you talk about that and what you mean by skill based and behavior based absolutely so central to this work is the fact that we are really asking educators to assess students progress in learning the skills and standards that are involved in the course and we do that by providing that separation between behaviors and so sometimes things like compliance or effort can be included in those grading practices when we're not espousing these beliefs can impact a student's reported grade and then the thing that's really frustrating for our gps students and families is when and i've had this experience myself you know your student has been getting very high marks in their uh in their grade book all year long however when i receive my state assessment results for math my student happens to be minimally proficient that's a disconnect for me because that my student clearly hasn't mastered the standards and skills within the course but my student is extremely um she works really hard she's quiet she's a people pleaser she wants to be liked and and she she does everything she can and so by separating those behaviors out of of the conversation it provides students and families with a more accurate picture of a student's actual learning which is critical and that's what i wanted to understand is that you know we have to be careful to separate what students know from you know we might have a a student that is kind of you know moves around a little bit a little bit challenging you know kind of has to move around a little bit but they know it really well as opposed to a student who might be more quiet but isn't really drawing attention but may not know it as well absolutely and so that is you know that's important absolutely well just following up with that then i do think that it's important it is important to have opportunities for behavior or accountability and responsibility in different ways as well so what how do we then communicate behavior and how do we support teachers in having expectations for behavior and communicating that with families and support that you know to be a positive experience and to be a learning and growing experience because we want our students to have that absolutely it's a critical part of the communication so within our reporting structures still exists the feature for educators to report on a student's academic behaviors any kinds any kind of opportunities for growth or challenging challenges that a student may be having the other component for that is just regular communication between that educator and family partnership around a student's behavior in class and things that can be communicated to help that student a little bit more another thing that is part of the standards-based mindset is really providing support to administrators and their certified staff the fact that part of our job is to teach the expect the behavior expectations and routines that are expected for our students and do that in a very explicit and clear way with our students and we're doing that in a variety of ways through the professional development that we offer through pgd um the the professional development that we have included within cia ourselves and so those are elements that absolutely are part of the conversation and are very um much at the forefront of this discussion oh and really i just wanted to the one last thing i wanted to say about this is it's really important that we're providing with our gps students and families that those consistent and accurate feedback on their students learning it's really key uh moving on to grading practices the committee distilled the work down into these five areas and so what we did was provided recommendations for around these topics and provided very explicit guidance in terms of what it does look like and what it doesn't look like and those items as you can see are retesting and redoing opportunities because we believe that all students learn at different rates and they should not be penalized for that missing late incomplete and zero work being very explicit about our policies around those practices because as we all know if it takes you a little bit of time to get in gear academically and do what you need to do in order to turn in work it can be really hard for a student to come back from when those zeros are averaging into their grade which is you know the case in in our secondary schools homework practices because homework should be valuable practice on learning that has happened in the classroom with that professional educator formative and summative assessment practices and then behavior-driven grading moving away from that may i ask of course how how are you addressing the zeros how are we in how we're going to do that i i know that's a huge issue and i'm going to be honest with you um it's we have because we are separating our practices we have a very uh consistent k-12 message i think from the elementary perspective the embracing of not giving zeros has been something that we've been we've evolved to over the last decade or so and so it's not as difficult a cell i'm not going to lie to you we still have those sixth grade teachers i used to be a sixth grade teacher who really believe that we are teaching students responsibility by engaging in practices and and you know teaching them that lesson but the reality is that the conversation needs to be around the learning is what's important and so that's a major component in the standards-based mindset training that we're providing and those learning opportunities in terms of secondary it's absolutely going to be a transition and i'm going to let dr cox speak to that and i will share um because that question is a little bit in my next part as well no it's perfect timing it's a great question before you answer can i add to miss eugetti's question yes i think it may be consistent have we established a floor and a ceiling relative to missing late incomplete or zeros for teacher autonomy within that structure does that make sense yes yep and both of those questions will be answered and i'm actually going to refer each of the board members to the grading beliefs and practices because this handbook that each of you have received a copy of that both of your questions those are the kind of questions teachers are going to have those are the questions teachers have right now and have never been provided this in-depth um support and so i'm gonna have you all turn to page seven and this will just give one example for the sake of this presentation so you'll see that this is the missing late and completes and zeros grading practices and it outlines a brief one statement description of what it is on the left is what is recommended on the right is what is not recommended and teacher teams and campuses are going to be trying to aim and focus on what is recommended and then they have so when you talk about that ceiling and uh the floor this is when you said those two terms i immediately thought of this because this is what those two things would be it's going to give them some things to strive for but it's going to help to outline here's what it's not and i will reference my own teaching experience um 15 years ago this wasn't nobody ever when you walked into the classroom said here's how you grade here's how you don't grade there might have been some outlined beliefs or a brief policy on it but it wasn't as specific of this to know this is what i want to stay away from and this is what i want to aim for and so um one of the things at the secondary level mrs yeti to answer a little bit more thoroughly on your question is there's even settings within our technologies that support some of these structures as well so for example when a student misses an assignment even if they were out sick and it's excused which per policy and uh best practice would be if a student is out sick we're not penalizing them we're not giving them a zero but currently the way we've had our settings set up just historically it's been this way as long as we've used ic is the minute that you press uh missing it goes it generates a zero automatically there's no way around that uh moving into next school year our tech team has gone through all of this and have found those little pieces that they're just flipping that setting and so now when a teacher puts in missing it will remain uh where it is not negatively impacting a student's grade now if the student still at the end of the term has not done that and has been given ample opportunity then that goes back to then yeah they can put the zero in which really even goes back to your point of the accountability it's not eliminating that from them they still can have that uh penalty if they truly are never doing anything because if you have no evidence of that progress at that point and so um our tech team really has gone through quite a bit of this to dive into what an infinite campus we have control to help support some of these because at this point if we're asking teachers to do that but we're setting a setting to work against them we're trying to find those different nuances and remove them to help support teachers and their grade books i know that you know i mean there's kids can't even recoup from too many zeros right no matter what they do and i'm sure you've gone all over this but in a previous life i dealt with some of this um at the secondary level where and i believe it it's been a while so it's uh if even if you just gave us a 59 which is still failing they can still recoup from a 59 but not the zero have has that been a part of the discussion absolutely and so in in the inclusion of support documents uh around plc's creating consensus around these topics we have built into the pd plan those conversations that will be um of course helped to be facilitated with by administrators but establishing those parameters as a plc so that there's consistency across the course or the grade level in the school yes so all of those things are included and as you're going to see later a little bit later in the presentation we have some minimum expectations for teachers in terms of engaging in these practices over the two-year implementation because it's really important to establish that minimum level of expectation right and principal can always an administrative team can always increase it if their campus is ready as some of ours are but we've got at least this minimum level of expectation that provides that consistency i just want to say thank you for this because i know i'm i'm gonna get i'm getting a little ahead of what you're going to do but i think it's it's way past time and i understand having been a teacher you know when a kid doesn't turn something in but at least give them the opportunity and it still can be a failure but at least give them opportunity and i think you said sixth grade teachers but i think high school teachers are probably the most resistant yes am i correct on that i i believe so and i think that as we get further into the presentation we start talking about reporting you'll see that we've got a couple of differences with the way we're doing reporting which we're hoping really helps to support our teachers because high school is a different animal and we do need to support because our there's a lot that our teachers are doing really well and we can't treat high school like in elementary and vice versa but our mindsets and our philosophies and our beliefs can be the same k-12 right and and once again it's sometimes it's just needing to bring it to their attention and showing them the difference where they don't realize when you when you add it or when you um put a zero in five times and you put a 59 in five times the difference that can make so thank you yes and i i will share um one last thing i just wanted uh this next part was to just really talk about the handbook that you received and your questions helped me to do that uh but the feedback that we received not only during the committee uh the committee work primarily from teachers we then started sending this draft out to the committee at first but then more people were hearing about it and more people wanted to see it uh and then we started sending it out uh principals might have said this teacher wasn't on the committee but there are our department chair of this or they're our grade level lead and can they take a look as well and um the feedback that we started to get there was so much like i there were days where that was all we were getting emails about was feedback on this and it was really good and it it's made us very proud of the work that we have brought today and that i feel that teachers are excited for this and look forward to receiving it and the biggest thing to your point mr eugetti is um teachers made a lot of comments when they see the research and when they watch there's even youtube there's so many great resources out there that walk them through scenarios like what you're speaking of and we just keep hearing we've we've graded that way for 10 years and we just didn't know and we can't like they they internally we're never intentionally trying to do anything different but that's the whole purpose of this is to bring our job is to research and do all of this and we're just trying to get that into the hands of the teachers um because i do believe that when they know um better they want to do better so and then that does lead us into the part that i mentioned which is the grade reporting so up into this point it really has been the grading practices and beliefs that philosophy the mindset as we transition into reporting it is truly what is entered into infinite campus which is the reporting system the output that is communicated to our parents our students and how they're doing that is the reporting part so um that is going to look a little different for our 712 versus our elementary and so for 7 12 we are going to remain consistent with what we have done the purpose behind remaining the same is due to the fact that we do have gpas we have transcripts we have scholarships and although they're in research there are some secondary schools across the u.s that have gone to standards based reporting uh primarily um it always looks a little bit different at the secondary level and so our committee uh was in favor of truly sticking with achievement letter grades and so therefore it truly is your a through f system and uh everything in our handbooks uh policy procedures surrounding our high school um reporting will remain consistent what will shift for secondary is that we have put together in the training and pd and resources that we're providing we're focusing more on getting our secondary teams to become more consistent so if we're talking about a ninth grade english team their plc should be grading the same if a student leaves one teacher's class and goes into another teacher's class right down the hall those grading grade books their configurations their point systems they should be the same they're the same standards there's the same teaching there has to be consistency there and you really run into a lot of concerns and issues that even teachers voiced um when the students met with dr mccord during student senate that was the biggest feedback that we had received from all stakeholders and so the best way around that is to take the time to create those consistencies so we've carved out a little bit of time for plc's to do that they've been having these conversations throughout this year teachers know that that's coming and we've created the tools for them so when we welcome them back they can apply fill out a form that gives them that consistency and then they set up their grade book to match that and it's as simple as asking them to put those same consistent parameters within their syllabus communicate those out to families so that administrators can make sure that those are there and so on so dr cox and dr burton as a teacher in the system this achievement letter grade rubric grid call it what you will uh is our standard and as a teacher i can't determine on my own that i'm going to start my baseline for an a at 94 to 100.
we project the estimated budget savings to be over 500 000 and as we finalize our numbers we're realizing an even greater estimated savings remember though under self-insured the plan the district is responsible for claims incurred next year so we don't know what those claims are going to be but on paper it does look again like we are making the best move for our district both budgetarily and then we hope to use those savings again to put not to sit in a you know district's bank account but to use those next fiscal years to enhance our medical plans and and give those back to our employees mr moore and just in in looking at this most of our medical claims good work um our pregnancies uh we have a very healthy district overall so um hopefully that will continue yeah i think preliminary you know working with ms martin's and the benefits team we're looking at potentially having a claims percentage for this year at 79 percent um and again so we are not self-insured so we pay even though we have claims at 79 we pay 100 of those and so that's you know 21 of our our budget that we're giving to unitedhealthcare um for coverage so that's part of the reason why we're going this direction just because we've had experience um low claims and continuously over the past couple years so um and just to note while this change did not this change you know does not change the employee medical contributions um it did change a few voluntary coverages that ms martin's and her team have been working hard on communicating out to employees sites departments and etc so we are still working through communicating that out especially with the rollover and out-of-pocket premium expenses so those are still continuously being communicated out and working with employees all right let's get to the budget the fiscal year 2023 proposed budget we'll start up top so this 21 22 general revised budget is what we just revised in may it was noted that i was less than one percent off but that was a total we still incurred a total revised budget of 2.2 2.7 million in increases a lot of that again was based on adm increases that we budgeted flat but we experienced growth looking at the 2023 proposed budget we're showing a major increase in general budget limit uh compared to the estimated numbers that i use tentatively in our approved budget back in march the difference is an increase of 4.1 million to 116.9 million up from the estimated 112.7 million that i project are presented in march this increase can be attributed to several things so first we are projecting again no adm increase for fiscal 23 and the budget forms is consistent with our budget practice in just another area where we taking conservative approach however as you know we are experiencing growth throughout our district so we are still staffing for that growth and you noticed a lot of that in our fixed cost increases that were absorbed in our estimated or tentatively approved budget back in march second we are keeping the two percent inflation as knowing that is the minimum which the state has to fund us um considering we realize the state realized in 2021 seven percent increase in inflation but by statute we are capped at two percent so we know that is a given um third this is where i'm taking some assumptions in what is being proposed and what is being talked about with our legislators as well as working with our policy groups um and what they're advocating in for k-12 education um we are um assuming that not assuming in every single bill that's being proposed right now um we are seeing approximately 100 million towards a group b sped weight that is a consistent and so i i am capturing that in this new estimate um we are also seeing anywhere from 400 to 600 million in additional k12 increases due to the large budget that the state is sitting on in terms of surplus and as well as realized arizona is kind of anomaly right we are experiencing growth outside of the the national realm and so um the state did not project that so they are experiencing some increases in budgets across the board and so any in any given bill that's being proposed that k-12 is seeing an increase from anywhere from 400 to 600 million and proposed increases to the base level support i'm taking a way conservative approach in projecting 200 million um and that would equate to approximately three percent increase to the base so while we while this is up four million from my march proposal this could potentially be up another four million um when all said and done with the the state budget so yes an increase but a conservative increase to not inflate our budget and not have us revise down i do not feel we'll be revising this down i feel if anything we'll be revising this up going forward so moving down the list we are still assuming the mno transfer of 4.4 million with the additional 3.6 for capital contingency this also takes in concern the asrs reduction and then it also assumes that we will still can carry over 22 million in budget bounce carry forward which is approximately 19 of the total budget so safety nets all across the board as well as our ability to to still provide compensation increases for our employees and move forward with staffing our schools for the additional increases that we are expecting for next fiscal year um in summary looking at the bottom formula you can see now that we're experiencing 7.4 million an additional budget capacity from our revised to our proposed and then adding in the 2.7 an additional budget capacity that we rise from may you'll see a total of 10.1 million an additional budget for fiscal 23.
his three children stephanie jacob and natalie grew up in ames and all attended american high school natalie's son zephanian valley who attended american high school graduated in 1991. throughout the many years that the varleys have called amist home education particular reading and writing has been an important family value to be cherished and nurtured among friends and family alike this scholarship has been established by stefanie in memory of the influence that his mother and grandfather had upon his own education to help future generations of students and scholars further and continue their education beyond high school with the intent of inspiring others to develop their own love of reading writing and learning this year's worldly scholarships goes to simone robinson the u.s figure skating's graduating seniors awards recognize the hard work of student athletes who have participated in figure skating throughout high school awards are given at the platinum gold silver and bronze level based off scattered levels of competitive achievement in high school selection for this award speaks to a skater's continued commitment to succeeding in their athletic and academic endeavors these awards goes to ada hennessey the vincent clearly humanity's scholarships is awarded to a student who has experienced adversity in their life and who plans to pursue a degree in the humanities the students who despite challenges along the way has clearly shown their possess to have clearly shown they possess the greeting determination to shine in college and in life the scholarship goes to jude or sofsky given to seniors who graduate from wildwood after attending for at least three years and will be attending a two or four year college or trade school in the fall the wildwood elementary pgo scholarship is presented to alfred kyle crosby the francis heart scholarship is very special to the town of amherst chief francis hart served for many years as police chief in town at the time of his retirement the chief had one request in your of a gift he asked that the scholarship be set up in his name and that the recipient be chosen by a confidential committee at american high school senior spear by his request this goes to one male and one female student who have shown industriousness and potential for success and have performed throughout their high school career to the utmost of their capacity and capability as a student even if such performance has not earned high academic standing the 2021 francis heart scholarship recipients are simone robinson and lucas ross given to a member of the class of 2022 from money designated by the amer region high school class of 2021 this annual award is given to a student who has exhibited the qualities of going out of their way to live life to their fullest encounter opportunities and embrace all that is offered to them the spirit of the class 2022 awardee is catherine carbon the final scholarship awarded this evening is the amist rotary stan zomec scholarship which is given to a senior with great potential who did not apply for many scholarship and may not expect to receive this one the scholarship committee has chosen diego joao duran constanza congratulations to all and this concludes the scholarship i want uh hello again and thank you miss majoramos for reading all the scholarship awards now it's time for me to read the names of the valedictorians and our salutatorian yes with 12 valedictorians this year and i'm going to read the names in alphabetical order first is daniel allen elizabeth allen rafael ash lewis deville bodwin otto hennessy rebecca hong jenna perrault jasper shackleford rohan and elaine wu my salutatorian is sylvie hope congratulations to you all i have no doubt that your hard work and dedication will continue to create great opportunities for you in the future and please check your arts account for an important email from his camera and all of you all the awardees congratulations to you all i should be very proud of all your accomplishments and i'm very proud of you and you will all receive your physical award packets at graduation rehearsal nine o'clock friday morning at the moment center please be on time and again thank you everybody for joining us this concludes the 2022 senior awards evening i hope everybody enjoys the rest of their evening and please remember to take good care of yourselves and each other good night
i had a visit from a select book and i've been talked about um having a full-time i can't remember what happened in 2018 but i'm guaranteeing something that happened in school wasn't it we i had him when i was a building administrator um i'm in favor right now um but it didn't it didn't go anywhere it would require and please jump in it requires full-time offices so the schools would be open to it it's something that happens at the top level and with the police department yeah so so speaking of speaker boyle said um i get i guess you kind of gotta ask yourself what are you looking for um a lot of districts have one sro that oversees all the schools and that's a full-time position um what you're gonna what do you ask where are you asking for police in every school for safety and security or are you just looking to have a full-time passive role that oversees all schools but those are two very good things one reply just one full-time position that's in the school one required two um two positions um but ultimately that would uh further spoil something that would uh that's not something we could uh kind of just figure out in our budget how much is already set for the year um i'm not that familiar with budgets uh but i'm guessing that for us they'll have to uh go to a special power meeting or something if we want to get tonight down for the august um school year i know uh a neighboring community it has a regional school system seventy percent of the officer's salary comes out of the school department budget and thirty percent comes out of the town [Music] um yeah yeah so if we were to make a boylston regional school district uh school resource officer we'd probably do that 70 would come out of the school budget 30 percent come out of the town um i'm sure between chief ninjado and i we can if he doesn't have anything lined up we can supply it and vice versa and we can we can accommodate that i'm saying the only way we get the seventy percent to cover iron is for both of us in the first place so it's all about money yeah correct correct yeah it's not fair to the town of boylston to have to pay for everything from breakfast so that's why they come out you know i love to say it but it depends on what step they're at if they have a degree or say things they did i mean a rough figure today it basically costs 100 000 a year per officer so it'd be a 70 000 bill there's money coming available because of recent incidents there's packages there's emergency is being transferred and maybe a district like this that doesn't have an established sro position which is very common in the state may be open to getting grant monies or monies uh through that as it becomes uh federally available there is emergency packages going through but i mean we have a very open communication we have an officer that just went through the brag training and i've already told chica luziado that she's more welcome to come over here you know at our expense because it's our students as well so you know we're into sharing as well and so we can get something concrete and solidified what's interesting is to think about today that we were building a police station in an elementary school today this time we probably vote from the same place right so that they're right next to each other because it seems like from what i understand most is the response time and the sooner you get there the less likely it is that more people die right so you know given that we don't have that that's one of the things the alice program covers is um it it doesn't take a lot of time to hurt a lot of people um but you know the figure of pocket three to five minutes right um so so so you know so it's something even having it next door but i get i get the rationale behind it uh but a lot of carnage can still occur in that very short amount of time um you know so i think they i i can get the number but the way alice breaks it down um there's a figure of amount of gunshots uh depending if there's a gun that's used amount of gun shots uh what target uh statistic target ratio is um it's a very large number and a thirty second period again again they're not during these incidents they're trying to cause the most damage they're not they don't have a target in mind um you know what that's a thank you i mean that's a good honest evaluation of the situation i don't think it's something that people even even educators realize i remember the first sro that i ever had as a building administrator it was like a thousand you know okay you know you're gonna have to keep yourself safe for a while because we're not gonna be able to get in there it's not gonna be a snap in the thing anymore so that's the employment of just the teachers and the administrators being able to keep the building safe until someone gets them so it is everybody's responsibility so i work uh prior to hearing work of the delhi police department who has a very great uh sro program with checkered hell um and what we found is that the school he has a school resource officer acts as a deterrent but having that school resource officer available to the students the staff on demand to close out some of those red flags um is really beneficial and what this sro found is a lot of times this was the only opportunity kids had to talk to a law enforcement officer without having to go through an adult and he was got a lot of good information that the staff wasn't even aware of because they just went to the sro so that's kind of the sro is more than just a higher gun in the school they provide that bridge between you know one of our more vulnerable populations and law enforcement i bought the principles here tonight they weren't scheduled to be here but they didn't comment so is there anything anything that you want to add about your building so if you have any questions can answer questions too and and i understand that we can only control what we control um but a lot of what we're talking about are reactive things right and it's hard to hear that this is a way of life that we have to prepare for and just get used to it might be a reality and that's what we have to do with it certainly so certainly don't want to put any of the officers on the spot today but if there's any way that maybe you could talk about some of the things stuff like this happen to proactive um without divulging um protocol they use but maybe in the future just a if there's any way for the departments to maybe talk about some of the principles that you use to just kind of keep an eye on the communities and take a more proactive approach and you share that with the community that that might be a helpful local perspective so that's one of the that's one of the great things about these crisis meetings that the uh super accountants talk about by annually is um what we're able to give recommendations so one of the recommendations i i met with last week with carol um was that you know we've got a stack of controlled access points where i know it's difficult you can't compare our elementary school to uh two very different animals they are in our school doesn't have kids running up to the cameras coming and going as they please just they're older and they it's just different but i i one of the recommendations i'm going to be giving is we have to have a controlled access point meaning everyone goes to the front door everyone goes out the front door unless there's an emergency um and that that's a that's a way we can slow down um entry come in after coming out but that's what these meetings are about sharing this information getting different perspectives um and then again instituting best practices for the safety of the schools i think that's a great idea um thanks for sharing that you know i don't know maybe this is an idealistic thinking but even at a higher level uh the problem is if somebody wakes up and decides they want to go kill a bunch of kids in school and so you know to whatever extent apartments can maybe share what what measures can be taken and what they do to try to manage that but not now certainly but we again everything we do is proactive is about help so i'm asking you as a parent if you see something say something you know if you see that red flag if you notice something the school bus drivers the janitors we're all in this collectively i tell the kids our job in our dare program is all about help the conversation with the fifth graders last week was prior to the buffalo instruments that person needed help just like somebody sitting next to you may need help and that make me more proud of handing if you've got them help that's not tattletailing that's not getting him in trouble that's help if we slow down you leaving the committee here and write you a ticket you didn't crash i tell the kids we helped you you know so everything we do is proactive so the tactics will always be secret you know people can figure them out but everything we do is help and communicate it communicating with the staff when a bus driver tells an officer hey i noticed this you know all right i'll tell the school psychologist and we're not there to spot there's a letter of understanding we have very strict guidance and rules as to what we can report and not report and we share information to get the best help for that student or employee or visitor that may need help so everything we do is proactive i think one of the more proactive things the school department has done was hired those actually those extra counselors um this year it wasn't last year too right then but this year we've seen like a very high number of uh um people suffering from mental health emergencies at least to me it seems that it's been an overwhelming opportunity with having i mean nationwide we have a mental health crisis and it's probably politically correct but we can pump these kids full of drugs immediately uh physicians can pump these cases on drugs immediately but to get in and see a psychologist or a psychiatrist or women wasted waiting weeks months so even if those red flags are not overlooked we're still waiting weeks months to do it puts the school in a hard position because they see these they see these problems they have the counselors there to deal with it but they didn't deal with it in school and if there's no place to put them out there that's it that's a nationwide problem that unfortunately it's all a fear yeah just to be clear but you know my comment wasn't to suggest that there are proactive things i absolutely know there are and i would encourage a conversation about to whatever extent we can with the community where we can feel engaged and not and complement the reactive procedures that we're putting in place but also know that we aren't just you know fortifying windows uh and waiting right and it sounds like that that stuff is happening in whatever scene we can show the conversation right yeah no i mean transparency transparency transparency right um you know i think again that i i've kind of gotten some feedback that some of the parents aren't happy with the alice program itself um but again i think a lot of that is due to the um a lack of familiar familiality with the program i think it's one of those things that if we educate parents on it they're gonna they don't understand why uh why we're using that program good points about mental health we need to go further and say we look at his incident it's men's mental health it's a young man and i'm interested to look next to what we can do in the high school in particular tell him other programs we can bring in the things we can do in particular for young men who try to help those who so i think his name is jake he was a former psychologist here he runs a uh a uh a um a mentoring group um the kind of thing the kind of quote that to help help with those um you know but it's more there's more you know we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about you know the mental health crisis um you know it really is it's those students that feel isolated that don't feel connected um to their schools into their community um you know research shows that you know um a high percentage of you know these individuals that perform these acts are um those that are feel isolated and not connected um it's so programs like like the um mentoring program um you know as well as the addition of another school adjustment counselor um can only help but i think it has got to be a community effort including parents because again the schools can only do the schools can only do so much and um you know students that we have been able to to flag we have very good communication between the parents and the counselors um so the student you know did have a difficult night or did you know get up and and apparently something that was a little bit off you know they're on the phone or they're on their email and saying hey can you check in um you know but it's that type of communication that is so um important and keeping can't stress it's enough looking at the kids social media that's it's so important because oftentimes it is communicated through social media thank you officers for being here i think uh where i initially came into tonight i was going to ask you slightly different questions that's what happened but from hearing you talk you mentioned parents and anxiety i think that's a lot of questions we got over anxiety you mentioned mental health you mentioned office of video uh for the past six months you're very proud of the two towns coming together and communicating more than you've ever seen yeah that that one comment to me that was sort of the surprise in the wake up i mean the entire district's been regionalized since 2019 like right and it's only within the last six months that you're saying and notice of change in communication between the the two towns coming together to take care of one school district one set of kids so that's what really stuck up to me and sort of changed my mind tonight i think i was going to ask you you know what what of the events from last week in texas do you see that that's making you change your mind or is there any lesson you can take over that makes you change the way you approach school security and all that but i think i just want to say it thank you for coming here and speaking letting telling me as a parent hopefully it's helping the other parents and uh i would like to see if the school committee wants to have them back here we are here just to sort of continue to build that community one of our goals this year was community engagement and trying to get drop off a little bit but i think this is a perfect example of where we can build that community through the committee through the two departments the one school district that you've had so hopefully next year maybe we can talk about having that again more regularly if there's a budget issue that needs to be picked up to figure it out that's what i want to say thank you thank you my dad i just want to add uh chief of nozzle and we meet with area chiefs frequently and we meet with chiefs that would actually have the promise of response here so it's not just about berlin you know clinton and sterling you know we have everybody because we're all on the same team and we call the blue team and we all help each other so it's not it just doesn't end with merlin worlds and it's all the worrying towns that we also invite uh for our coffee mugs and and school safety is probably one of our priorities um okay i wanted to say a special thank you because not just for coming tonight but because you put yourselves out there for all of us and i'm so grateful for all of you i mean i i just think it's it's wonderful that you know you're coming here you're speaking to us you're making us feel better we're all parents we all have kids in the school and we have the same concerns that everybody else does and i know i feel really really good after hearing from you everybody has work to do but it's just really nice to know how much work you guys are doing behind the scenes and even besides this just thank you for everything you do for our communities very grateful one thing i will add on a personal note um someone if someone asked me if i had this conversation at home with them have these have these comments have these conversations they they're i'm sure they're hearing rumors you might as well give them facts um and hopefully reduce some anxiety where unfortunately this is an unfortunate part of our lives have those difficult conversations with them tomorrow's field day in berlin we'll be playing kickball and the fire department will be there helping and including two years ago the highway department they come down they're part of the community and they come down with the clouds and trucks and everything like that so we're interactive and i have to go back when i say six months i felt the change in the two chiefs let me be clear about that five years ago john and i started working together close ties with diane it felt good the last few years to be able to call her and know her you know it was always the mason dixon line for me when i went up the other road where did the kids go and it was different rules of thought and the towns didn't work as close together the schools did and we did get in here and we did work together with his staff so i just want to say the administration changed and they both have a clear message as parents that it's important about the kids in the schools and they encourage all their officers that have different likes and traits to be involved in school so let me not just six months but we've made a lot of progress um in that time and if you really want to invite us back the superintendent will warn you i can go for a long time all right at this time i'd like to release the principles go home and see your families oh oh and the officers too thank you we appreciate your time hey just remember he gets a four hour minimum yeah salary you're gonna play in the four okay we are going to move on to the superintendent evaluation and what i'm going to do is i'm actually going to kind of go through the process um you know for us as well as for the public for the first time this was well this was the first time for the majority of the board completing the report this year we did not do the summarization um as we i was concerned it could lend itself to bias additionally while past reports were impressive completing the evaluation as an individual can take actual days involved in this process are any or in my case all of the following review the year's agendas minutes subsequent notes review of the superintendent goal updates watching past meetings to review delving into the rubric and actual writing itself it's a very timely process very worthwhile and i can tell you that the members gave it their all considering all of this because the summarization is not an essential part of the evaluation but rather a beautiful extra it's not in this year's report knowing how much work this was for the members as well as the added hurdle of the new rubric after the superintendent's goals had been presented amended and accepted i want to thank every one of you genuinely for the immense amount of time that went into understanding the task as well as completing it and especially for the thoughtful comments this is a very busy time of year in everyone's lives and i know the hours that went into completing it so thank you so now i'm going to explain the evaluation process i watched chairman spencer's presentation from last year he did a wonderful job laying out the process so i'm going to model what he did after my explanation i will begin by asking superintendent zany if he has any comments or questions for the committee pertaining to the evaluation all answers and questions need to be directed to the superintendent from the committee there is to be no discussion or deliberation between members because there is no motion on the floor however you can engage with the superintendent when that open question and answer period ends in order to deliberate i will ask for a motion and that will be to accept the final report as written even if you feel that it needs to be amended we cannot discuss it until the motion is made seconded and we've gotten to the discussion portion if during that portion an amendment is warranted the motion for an amendment can be made during the discussion and voted upon when we are done i will ask all in favor of accepting the school committee superintendent evaluation report as written or with amendments if any and we will vote i will then ask for a motion to approve the overall rating of whatever our choices for the 2021-22 superintendent's evaluation performance are there any questions okay before i hand it over to the superintendent i just wanted to share a few notes that i took um we didn't have a summary but i went through and pulled out what i could from people's final thoughts superintendent saying has many strengths he's an effective leader he's a good manager he's surrounded himself by highly confident leaderships uh leadership team he's worked effectively with town officials for budget approvals what was mentioned over and over again is that he prioritizes student learning and he always has the student's best interests at heart and i think that's really really important um he kept current with desi which was constantly changing he was on call for crises completed his goals despite everything changing and such upheaval he works tirelessly he puts immense time and energy to complete and deliver on goals the budget was complete and approved despite all of the changes in deci guidelines and the resignation of the chair during budget season was not easy for him and he got that extra counselor approved when it was questioned by a lot of people and so kudos to superintendent for standing up for that he has straightforward communication with the community the suggestions that came from the board were to work on community and community engagement together with the school committee because we need to engage more to alleviate his burden some people asked if he could work on his communication style with parents some people asked for more student voices and they proposed that we follow the equity survey as suggested in the fall for the students some people want equity to be taken the equity work to be taken in-house to re-allocate financial resources on the unique character of the bbr phoebe rsd without inside influence and we have created a new budget and finance subcommittee and we know that they will work together with superintendent zany we're hoping that something that we can look forward to in the fall there were five members and the overall rating was proficient and with that i will turn it over to the superintendent i did have one question someone who ever said bring equity in-house does that mean not have for us to do it here or and not have um teachers21 yeah yeah okay i think we would talk about that we actually talked about that as a budget item today and we didn't put aside a little bit just in case but we we're committed to know the these the style we use as a train to trainer style so when we brought them in the whole goal was at some point we would we would not need them anymore so we think we're at that point now we might bring somebody in just to talk to the staff just one or two while presentation but we think we're on our way we think we've done enough we've got enough people involved now but we can continue this work so make it our own there's a lot of the stuff they do it's just general equity stuff and it's our goal to make it our own and so i think i think we're at that point now so feedback yeah the problem was basically it was mostly a budget issue given all the problems the last two years have seen the assessment scores this year i was hoping whatever money could possibly be to getting those kids back should take precedence over thank you could i have a motion to approve the final superintendent evaluation report as written second discussion yeah we've heard some um we've heard feedback at times or the school committee feedback that it is essentially a rubber stamp for the superintendent i think that if you were to read the comments we made we appropriately gave constructive criticism to him i think jeff would probably disagree with any idea that we are a rubber stamp for what he wants to do but i just wanted to make that coming we all all five members that completed the evaluation didn't rate him as proficient which is the standard across the state um with with some variance from one thing to the next but i think generally speaking there was a lot of consistency across everyone's rating as i had the opportunity to read them and feel really confident that we've made the right choice as i've all right um so we are in the motion all in favor to accept the um to approve the final superintendent evaluation report as written i'm and i as well opposed society um okay it passes we have approved the final superintendent evaluation report as britain um could i have a motion to approve the nothing surprise but can i have a motion to approve the superintendent evaluation rating of proficient for the 2021-22 school year second discussion all in favor ivan i as well opposed is there anyone that will abstain all right the motion to approve the superintendent evaluation rating of proficient for the school year passes congratulations thank you thank you for your hard work it's not an easy job i as becoming chair quite suddenly i've had an insider look at what goes on at central office and god bless these people i mean they work tirelessly there's things coming at them sideways all the time and they still get all the work done they care so much about the students and no matter how things are said they still show up for the job and i appreciate that i really do would you like to give us um an update on teaching and learning positive things that are going on yesterday i did want to mention a follow-up to bob's presentation before we spoke about the future budget priority building financial stability and sustainability [Music] um so a couple good things happening around the district we are go for the summer acceleration academy again this year all it said we were missing one or two folks last week i have everybody in place now getting the nurse we have the buses set um to go and we're very excited about that this year we'll be running our acceleration academy from august 15th it's monday to friday august 19th we'll be inviting students um specific students in from grades k one and two those are current students in the district from both berlin and boylston elementary so i'm i'm grateful for that keeping in mind that's sr3 funds and we're focusing we're targeting that money on what we feel are the most we're going to get the most out of for that kind of short period of time although we're lengthening the time of the day that we're doing that before we did it we ran the program from about 8 30 to 11 30 12.
okay this year we were at about 16 20 16 50 16 50. okay the the um but we it the addition was built for 1600 but we've expanded space wise and we've added on certain areas also we've increased uh the amount of staff we have our student-teacher ratio is within you know recommended size we've added some new into the budget we've added new academic instructors to ensure that our student-teacher ratio is uh reasonable and fair so you know we're clearly you know we look at all the um you know we've added more programs um you know when we like we're adding aviation we're adding environmental science these programs um we add them because there's a good job market and we want to and we want kids to have opportunities for that so we don't add them to bring in more students we add them because there's a job there's a skills market gap and that's when we add the program to offer jobs so when kids graduate we're not just simply training them and there's no jobs we're training them in their job opportunities thank you i just wanted to clarify that um and i know we all get the calls i probably get more calls than i care too and a lot of them are not from my community but at the end of the day is it is not just the parents need to know as well and one of the biggest issues and i think john that we you and i discussed is um some of the schools are given the false information to to the students um as to why we are looking for what what they're able to apply why they why they can't apply i think having a communication with the schools as well as what the admission policy is and so forth um but let's not talk too much about the admission policy uh one of the things i want to say you mentioned earlier the failure rate compared to last year i definitely that's something i want to see again broken down by grade like we did the last time as as well as combining with the attendance policy um you also talked about and the deci teacher diversification plc self-improvement plan for you and for your staff went through this plan um to this um webinar or training yes are they either personal or over the phone i mean or zoom um so my question is go revolve back again um what is the current plan that we have for diversification i know that one of the things we've worked on is um the workshop for teacher diversification because it's in the back somewhere um and we have the intel preparation program and the vehicle preparation program but what else are we doing um what what came out of that those trainings that was able to put a plan together to help diversify the the school system yeah so i can uh present to the community next week some of what we learned from that webinar and some of the things that we're looking at um not so much about developing the next school year to help continue improvement that we've seen this year um so far this year just to give you a quick uh update which is in my documents we've hired 13 new staff members this year so far and of the 13 uh six are uh diverse people of uh of color so we're that's at a forty five percent in uh number so that's a big improvement so so far we're we're seeing much better uh results in some of the work that we've done and um i think you'll see in the end that we're gonna have uh last year we're at about 20 or maybe a little less than that so we're doubling what we've done up to this point at least that includes teachers a good percentage of those were actually teachers most of those were teachers so we continue to i think we're continuing we understand the importance of it and understand that we've got to try to do more work as we as as much work as we can certainly you know um we had meetings after the diversification meeting uh webinars we met monthly on trying to look at what we learned and what we can do moving forward um it's we have not invested i would you know in all honesty say we haven't invested enough time or effort into the process because of the challenges of the year um hoping next year will be will allow us more time to it's not that we haven't done anything but we definitely haven't had the opportunity to spend the kind of time we want to spend on that on the uh on that effort but i feel confident that we will get there just was a very challenging year this year given all the gaps in terms of personnel and and it seemed like every time i turned around there was another grant we had to look at was uh i spent most of the year trying to figure out how to spend money okay um and that goes coincide with having a solid team around you because you can't be doing everything because every time you do everything something is always going to get missed along with that report i want to see something on staff retention what are we doing as a plan to retain the staff we have because when you're looking at when a student comes back to the school or runs into a a teacher or or a person in the school um that every that they connected to when they were here and then it becomes more of an impact on their life as well the lives of their kids that they sent over here because they've had they've developed that connection already with the school so i want to see something as well on staff retention along with that and i think that's going to be it for my thing for you to finish on your um presentation hey john can you ask that any other questions or comments okay as far as the oh i'm sorry mrs fitzgerald i'm sorry i didn't see i think you were just gonna state what i was gonna ask so go for it oh yeah i was gonna wonder how the celtics were gonna do tomorrow night that's what i wanted to know but okay the evaluation report that the superintendent handed out it is supposed to be in by july 1st i'm not sure 100 whether hopefully we'll make that decision uh do committee members feel like they could they could um if the information is if they receive their information in a timely fashion do they feel like they could get it back to the school by by next tuesday or what's the pleasure of the committee i have some input i'm sorry no but i mean but it has to be compiled no no no no there's no apology necessary but it just has to be compiled it's what has to be what's the pillager of the committee francis frank frank um do we have this in a um google doc form right so do we have that and uh no no we couldn't do it in teacher points we don't have access we wouldn't be able to do in teach points but we might be able to put a document together that will make it easier for you no no it's it's too many people only one you can only have one supervisor yeah right so is that do we think that that's a possibility to do it within a very timely uh sit down with sue tomorrow and see what we can develop to make it easier if the if the committee wants to do it electronically we'll see what we can come up with may not look exactly like this but it'll have the same it'll have all this uh you know the standards and it'll be written in similar to this but might be be done in google docs [Music] sorry um google docs will be the same way all you're doing is really copying and pasting and putting it in the right order yeah we'll we'll scan it in and then we can work with it from there um but it doesn't have to be that's just my question no it's a good it's a definitely a lot easier to get back to the school that way when you hit just send you know have to do uh any other comments on that as far as doing into a google uh google doc or does anybody have any concerns with that yes zoella my concern is the timing you said something about next week that's too soon okay a week is not it's not enough okay how much time do you need me yeah yeah i guess you brought up the question so i guess you yes a couple of weeks before then by monday the 20th i don't know i'm talking about me i just don't have the time no no it's supposed to be by statue on july 1st okay i mean if we ever missed july 1st and yes we have we missed july 1st we also have may july 1st so but just we're trying to get into that timeline in the specially seeing that we're we're meeting only the next time on the 21st and from what everything that just happened i think we should pack breakfast for the next meeting because i think we're going to be here you know dinner is going to be no problem i think we're going to be here for breakfast the next morning well you know once you see we'll have to break it up that's all yes um marilyn yes i had a question if do we have to vote once we've all individually submitted and it's been compiled do we then have to vote on the final document we should vote on the final document okay so it's not going to be every number is not going to be what everybody wants it's going to go by a majority right okay in other words if if he gets five five um excellence on one and two you know needs improvement to the excellent you know it's a democratic thing i understand that so i guess my suggestion would be if next week being the 14th seems a little soon my question to you and to sue since you'll be doing the compilation um if it if we used the 16th which i think is a thursday would that be a too shorter time then for the 21st to have it ready that would give you three working days i know i don't i don't believe um you know we established a process we voted on it and what did we vote for the chair yeah that was last no that was for this oh process starting this process that's how we voted do you believe that we can be able to do it within that period of time okay yeah sure please so all these reports am i all right to speak i just have a question so all these reports that are requested you need them by next meeting or is it something that can wait till beginning like august it's it's it takes a lot of time to get a lot of these reports together a lot of people have to come together to do it so um my question is if that's what you want that's fine i just didn't know the urgency if there was urgent urgency to getting this so quickly like retention rates five years um other stuff that was requested before the end of the year yeah some of that stuff was requested not it wasn't the way i i at least understood it it wasn't all pertaining to the superintendent's evaluation it's information that the committee wants to know correct about the return you know my question is is it something that has to be done for the next our last meeting or is it i think we should have the reports uh the reports by then okay i don't think it has to be for the the 20th for people to make up their mind as far as superintendent's evaluation i'm not putting words in anyone's mouth no i know but a report takes a lot of time oh no i'm not i'm not making light of it this last hour we just pushed on a ton of work you know no but we just designated a ton of work in this last hour you know i would like this i would like to ask please give me this please give me that so yeah there was a ton of work but that's what i was saying that all comes in on the 21st it's going to you know which is fine we're going to be here we're going to be here a bit you know what i'm saying that's all we're going to be here a bit all right so yes uh sorry excuse me are you so upset yeah zoro thank you mr chair um well part of the answer is yes because some of these things that we asked for the report for example the survey it's going to be towards um we making decisions towards the evaluation so in my case i we need this report yeah no we need yeah no and some of the reports i don't even know i didn't even write down the list of what was what was the timing of getting the evaluations ready is going to depend on some of those reports sure superintendent thank you if you're going to utilize the reports on my evaluation then i don't think we can give you the data until i can present the data because data is only data doesn't always tell the full story some somebody puts a comment in there and you can have a disgruntled person that puts a comment in there and someone can take that comment as if it's you know real uh when it's not real um you got to be careful with surveys and data so you know nobody puts someone into it so they can say whatever they want and they can mark whatever they want it's not always you know a factual or a fact or or you know reflective of what's real and so you've got to be very careful so if you want to use data such as that to evaluate me then i'm going to have to present the data so i can articulate what that data actually represents and means that's going to take a lot of time and a lot of work okay uh why don't we try to narrow this down why don't we try to get as much data as we can for the 21st okay uh and if you could get me the information from the department of ed uh so that we can i'll contact the department of try to get an extension or at least tell them that we're working on this you know i don't want to just ignore it and they just don't get the report for the first i don't like doing things that way i think they should get a phone call and you know they should uh some sort of explanation yeah i can reach out oh you can reach out okay just switch out and see if we can get uh an extension whatever whatever that is yeah you know absolutely if it's something if we have to meet at a meeting in july uh ladies and gentlemen i guess we'll have to do it you know i mean i don't know what else to what else to say but i don't think i don't think physically we can put this together um you know especially if you're gonna you're gonna present um you know you want to present it all what you have your perfect right to to want to do that and i understand your reasoning for wanting to do it uh but it just was time you know your time and compiling it you know what i'm saying yeah so other questions just do we i'm not even sure i understand the process that we're doing right at the moment but we're going to compile as much data as we possibly can whatever we can get out to a member or members excuse me i don't want i don't think any member should get just one thing just you know like vivian asked for x y z i think we should all get x y z you know this is the same you know the same thing so um i think if we can get it out as much as in the timely fashion we can without you know nervous breakdowns um i you know it's a lot of work there's no question about it we designated a lot of work like i said in the last hour um but if we could get that even if it's in dribs and drabs so uh that we can i know i like i like getting a couple of things rather than a bunch of things uh as far as to be able to review so if we can and then try to have it if at all possible i know maybe the superintendent can um can maybe we can get uh sue some help uh through hr or i'm not being a wise guy i'm just i'm just saying you know yeah i know and right and you have to depend on a lot of people you make a phone call to this department and if that department doesn't get back to you it it doesn't happen i understand but maybe we can you know in this particular case try to you know uh but i am serious though john i do want to i do want to it is the department of ed we're going to be contacting about your evaluation wouldn't it be yeah i can yeah that's not a problem right so i can reach out i just like them too i know that there's probably no problems i think we've put it in in august before without any without any problem but i'd like not to do that yeah i'd like to uh i'd like them to have at least a heads up that it has come it is being worked on seriously and it is you know it is coming sure okay is uh any other questions because i don't have any answers all right okay moving along um school year 2022 leo up oh i'm sorry yeah we're not we just started we haven't even really started the evaluation here's what i'm going to say just because of time i haven't gone through the document yet but i'll i'll leave it i've done a self-evaluation here which i've identified the different indicators and what i've accomplished to meet those indicators based on what i self-assessed and a lot of it the information comes from the powerpoint but some of it does not come from the powerpoint and i've uh identified um in a narrative form information on the document so the committee can read it and then if there's any questions on the 21st i can give you that and then the other document i gave you was my goals there's a lot of artifacts that went with it that identify so i went through the goal and i outlined what i accomplished to meet the goal and what i might still be working on as some of it is not needs to be continued on an ongoing basis because of the the nature of the goal and the work that continues throughout which will continue throughout next school year because it's aligned to the school improvement plan so um but out it's out the document outlines everything that was accomplished this year for the goal and there's a lot of documents in here but it's i think brings value to the amount of work and accomplishment that had to be done in order to meet those goals so i'll let the committee read that as well and because this would take me another hour and a half to get through so rather than that let the committee go through it and then i can answer questions on the 21st does that make sense yes makes sense uh makes sense to me everybody okay okay all right the superintendent lavoy the next uh item on the agenda the superintendent avoid will ask this district committee to approve uh only new job positions and postings for school year 22 and 23.
correct they are to follow this per policy thank you yes absolutely doctor dr cox i have yes a thing to bring up but maybe we can look at this going forward okay the past i i would like to address that at some point in other districts a pass is not neither a 2.0 3.0 4.0 it's just a simple pass it doesn't figure into your grade point average and so it's something again i i don't understand why we would penalize our students here compared to in other districts when they receive a pass it doesn't figure in so if you guys could look into that and see a proper way to address that just absolutely benefit our students and i know that we do look through my mind goes to the course description book process so i will add that into my notes to review um and one of the things that we and i know uh we'll get to this in a moment as well but we don't want to stop here we may not have solved all of the the areas of support that our teachers need and so we do plan to continue with an advisory group moving forward so as things that maybe we didn't think about come up we can add those in and if we have to make revisions uh annually to increase this and continue to make it as valuable as a tool that's our plan thank you you're welcome may i tag on to mrs wood can you explain that just a little bit it so if if a student or i want to make sure i'm understanding it so if a student takes a class what class can they take to get a p in so we have a few courses in our um in our offerings that have been written to be a pass fail grade and so you're putting me on the spot i want to say that a couple of those include our gc our community service class okay and actually i can i can take you off the spot on that then let me just go back to the question that that tags on to hers so basically if they take whatever class it is that we allow the past fail they instead of just getting nothing for it they're they're getting it a c right no matter what how they perform into their gpa that is correct so how is that fair it's a great topic to take is that is that an option for them to take pass fail or graded they with there's a few classes in the course description book that that is the way that the setting is set up okay and that's the way that it's written into the course description book and i would say that the few that come to my mind because we do have a there's a few scenarios that are not just this one that i'm thinking of um that were justified for different reasons if it's that maybe the seat time is not the same or whatnot and they do know that going in but i can't take a um a biology class past failure no okay no no it's like a student no let's let's talk about that though there are some out there that might just to get the credit to pass to graduate so let me let me muddy the water even a little further okay as i recall again like miss eugetti from a former life the advent of a p really came to fruition because of non-competitive grades in our special education realm that's correct then it was expanded because you have within our system and correct me if i'm wrong because i may not be recalling as i should at my age but there are some in that upper five to two percent within a class who select ps because it doesn't hurt correct their gpa that is and yet they want the benefit of that course for a variety of reasons so the initial entry into the p issue was not to penalize anyone ever but to provide them a benefit of some grade if they chose that rather than nothing to that so those are the categories that come working at a high school those are the ones that come up every year so maybe again we need to just maybe look to address again what how can we i think the goal of all of this is to help our students master what they're learning and to provide opportunities for our students to have the gamut of opportunities that we wanted to have so if yeah i think if we just if you guys take a chance to look at that but i think with the highest best address and junior high course description book that now that we have this in place that's and so in depth it really encourages me to want to look course by course at all because there's a few different grading setups based on the courses in the course description maybe it would just be electives for the certain ones you know but again maybe it would still yeah their their benefit there's a full body of research out there related to this topic and uh it is quite complex as you look at trying to assess i agree with mrs wood and that we ought to be focused on the mastery of skill sets within every discipline that's out there there is a however caveat to that though and that is sometimes the reporting of information to the parent and to the student gets balled up in how and what was accomplished correct all we're wanting to say is according to our best information and the standards that we've established this is where we think johnny is skill wise and we're reporting that to you according to these rubrics this information uh and there is a dimension to that that also signals this is the mastery of this young person it's kind of like you said at the beginning there's kind of two parts of it right is the the two different parts is the reporting is a separate thing compared to the granting the actual grading the instructions yeah yeah okay and they equally could you could look at the research on both ends of those they are like you could spend a whole day on each of them or longer so um with that are i'm hoping i'm good to move on from the 712.
so you know as a reminder the board approved the seven percent compensation increase to all employees back in march which was an estimated 4.7 million with the additional 1.2 million in fixed costs that we feel that we're going to realize um next fiscal year that totaled 6 million so you can in new budget expenditures so taking the 6 off the 10 you can see we're presenting approximately an additional 4 million tonight in this proposal any questions on this there's a lot of moving parts um but again i hope that the board and you know our community feels safe in this budget proposal that we are not inflating our numbers more or less taking a conservative approach to next year and hopes to continue to provide compensation increases for years prior but also provide our schools with the necessary supplies and capital needs they need for next fiscal year yes thank you mr moore and again to reiterate that we are we are um we have to submit this regardless of what's happening at the state level so i can understand this flux and being on the conservative side not knowing exactly what they're going to do frustrating but nonetheless it is what it is across the board the good news for higley and and what we can do for the future i feel very confident that we can make a lot of our initiatives funded and it's it's nice to see the state start to invest some budget into k-12 in addition to their regular obligated statutory inflation percentage so that is encouraging news second [Music] in the proposed budget is also a chance where the district updates the average teacher salary calculations and so if you recall the higley formula took into consideration a number of things that we did not consider appropriate when calculating average teacher salary those included various supplementals that were not offered to all teachers such as leadership longevity mentoring tutoring and summer school to name a few so discussing with cabinet we felt this year was it provided an opportunity to reset the calculations so we can reflect an accurate number one that is realistic of an average teacher salary and legally unified the calculation now considers only two sources one being base pay and the other being classroom site fund you'll note the upcoming classroom site fund calculation for this fiscal year 23 7 000.
we're running it until 2 o'clock in the afternoon so we have extended time we're building in math and ela support for those children as well so that'll be an invitation only to begin with unless we don't have enough numbers but we're limiting the classes to about 10 to 12 students each so um you'll be hearing more about that because invitations are going on as well i don't know if anybody have a question about the academy at this point okay okay so there's one thing you already know the right we also have a special educator on board and we have five parent professionals joining us we have only 12 kids per grade 12 total 12 children per grade level that's what we're looking at is an ideal classroom give or take the numbers here are there if we have 15 students we'll probably take them but we don't want to exceed that by too many many students because then that will take away from the intention just to really target those children who need that additional support who face greater gaps in their learning and we want to get them ready to go um for the school year i'd love to see some kind of hearing failure i would love to do we did run a parent survey last year with the program one was funded to a specific grant for that program but we could certainly do that again and thank you for saying that because we'll get we're doing this for grant funding we're not sure how long the funding will be available to us but if we can figure out a way to do that through some other grant that's where we definitely want to continue but it's especially imperative now to run this kind of program i think in the summer i wanted to just do a quick shout out to jessica gallagher she has been handling our internship program she's been putting together a database this year for us she ran the panels the career panels at toronto for grades um 10 11 10 and 11.
john excuse me one second frank uh do you understood what we just did because if you did you're the only one but you know do you unders do you understand what we just did i'm sorry i didn't mean to ignore you yes okay and we'll be able to get everything over to frank in paper form or whatever yeah i'll get everything over here sorry i can't even i could come and visit frank and go through this make it your firm to understand when what before yeah you said that whatever however okay i'm sorry do you mean to interrupt your head john please uh job postings you have an hvac instructor for teacher contract 2022-23 it's a replacement position one no john we're doing uh we're doing the um district committee um oh to approve for jobs i'm sorry if i wasn't clear superintendent will ask the district committee to approve only new job positions slash postings for uh school year 20 uh 22 and 23.
yep i know there were a few okay and then uh dr burton's going to proceed to discuss the k-6 reporting so looking at the k-6 standards-based reporting basically what you have in front of you is the performance levels that we are utilizing to communicate to families their students mastery of the skills and standards that are presented within the content area for the grade level for being highly proficient this demonstrates a mastery of content knowledge concepts and skills which is consistently shown a three is proficient two is partially proficient and notice the verbiage sometimes able to demonstrate basic understanding of the knowledge concepts and skills and then one being minimally proficient and this uh indicates really a a very emergent understanding so even with assistance from the teacher the student is showing very little or no understanding of the materials some of you may notice that these align with our state assessment performance levels that was intentional to increase students and families understandings of that connection in terms of the mastery of the content area standards i do want to say that for traditional and our summit programs these classrooms will continue to utilize the achievement letter grade in fact traditional campuses and summit will revert back to with k3 achievement letter grade so um that means our neely campus our canyon rim and spectrum traditional classes and then our classrooms that are engaging with some alarm excuse me summit learning they will continue with the adaf letter grades so we're going to have a through f letter grades for k through 6 on our traditional campus and summit and summit yes but summit isn't k through three summit is just four or five you're correct okay okay correct so so i need to go i need to just um ask a question about of course our grading history because um i have a little history absolutely with 25 years with kids in public schools absolutely we did start out there was a grading where we were using letters to represent outstanding satisfactory unsatisfactory needs improvement and then we did go to letter grades for elementary school was that as a change in statute or no so the change that you're referring to actually coincides with the implementation of what people sometimes still call the new standards that were implemented in 2010 originally i believe the terminology was common core then we transitioned to our arizona career and college ready standards and then we tried to transition to the arizona high academic standards so it coincides with that so 2011 2012 gilbert public schools did implement k3 standards based grading across all of our elementary programs um up to that point we were traditional achievement excuse me achievement letter grades you are correct so our k-3 programs across excuse me our k-3 classrooms across all of our programs conventional traditional summit have been standards based for over a decade okay and so that's why i'm referring to that you know reverting back for k3 in traditional programming to that achievement letter grade and then for our conventional and our accelerated programs we are transitioning to k-6 standards-based okay you got it does that help it does but i'm gonna i'm gonna ask you a question afterwards okay great just to clarify not to take up any more time but absolutely i so this structure yes sir how uncommon is this uncommon yep or common whichever way standards based yeah um actually it's it's pretty prevalent across our east valley schools mesa public schools embraces standards-based mindset uh pretty wholeheartedly at the elementary level our i know chandler unified uh talks about standard space quite a bit in terms of um actually transitioning to a standards-based reporting that is not as frequent as just the embracing of the standards-based mindset deer valley unified school district has also gone standards-based reporting uh dysart as well so and if i went back to my scrapbook and looked at my report cards from my elementary years at vaults elementary as well as prescott unified i was on a 4-3-2-1 system at that time so for me personally i remember coming home and the question was did you get a four yes of course we translated that to some kind of grade and obviously it indicates some kind of type of learning but um and then 27 years ago i sat in this very room and we had this very conversation with a group of teachers and administrators about standards-based grading so this isn't something that has just come up in gilbert public schools and arizona and education in general this is something that has occurred has happened has not happened has discussions so i appreciate the work on this absolutely really the i'm sorry i just wanted to ask dr mccord if he ever got it for listen i got ones that i was really good at turning into fours no it's okay oh i think it's funny um so now before you you see our two-year implementation plan a little bit earlier in the discussion i talked about that minimum level of expectation across all of our campuses and that's what this implementation plan is intended to provide for our campuses and so for 22 23 school year we are expecting teachers to become familiar with our gps grading beliefs and practices and that is embedded within the professional development that we as a cia team have provided with our campus administrators and ask them to follow all teachers will follow those reporting guidelines as outlined and then throughout the school year they'll be working towards utilizing those recommended grading practices and transitioning away from those not recommended as i said before of course uh an administrative team can make a decision about their campuses readiness to conti to move forward more quickly um but for 22 23 that's the minimum expectation and then in 23 and 24 we will fully step into that standards based mindset and fully embrace the recommended grading practices and no longer participate in those not recommended practices finally you have our next steps as dr cox indicated many times we will be on thursday in fact providing our administrative teams with a very detailed overview of the pathway timeline expectations resources and guidelines that they will be utilizing with their certified faculty for the 22-23 school year and how we're making this transition all teachers will be engaged in professional development and training that includes an introduction to this these practices and beliefs mindset rationale the handbooks will be provided widely upon the welcome back to um school ongoing support is embedded throughout the instructional framework because this is directly aligned with all of the work that we're doing within the instructional framework and those tenants they are highlighted with specific grading connections that are embedded within that instructional framework also plc support is going to be provided in guiding them with consensus building conversations as they embark on this transition which will do two things it will generate the conversation within the plc with those professional educators but it also will provide our administrative teams with really valuable feedback in terms of where their plc's are and so that can help them to provide additional support as necessary in really specific ways based on evidence and i do have a question sure so as a teacher as they move through this process will it make grading more simple for them easier for them to manage i believe it absolutely does because i because there's so much here that it's not oh how am i going to handle that that that's laid out here to say this is the way we're going to do it and if you just get in the practice of doing that it seems like it would take a lot of way away a lot of questions and issues both for the teachers and for the students um you know instead of in this class we're doing it this way and in this class we're doing it this way mrs so and so allows no late work and misses so and so says here's your due date and she's reminding you along the way so that you're prepared absolutely i think that it it can help reduce uh teachers workload kind of twofold piggybacking on what you intimated just now in your question by providing those consistent expectations and parameters students and gps families absolutely understand what the expectations are and and and what the pathways are in terms of late work and zeros and multiple opportunities and so by having those very clearly um described that that eliminates some back and forth that maybe has been happening historically the other thing that's embedded within the professional development that we're providing um are conversations around being really intentional and centered in the learning and so you know in the past as a junior high school teacher i probably was one of those people who had don't judge me like 600 points a semester which is a lot that's a lot of points because i had a lot of assignments there was upwards of 30 assignments per quarter and as an english teacher i was doing a lot of grading if i had known about the these beliefs and practices i would have been much more intentional about my instruction the assignments the practice that i gave because i would very clearly tie this to specific learning targets success criteria and then providing students with feedback that they could digest and internalize and therefore promote learning and have a an improved impact and i would say that most teachers um that we've had conversations with they try to grade everything can't and this really eliminates you don't need to grade everything um we may have to work on those beliefs and and sometimes change getting that is what i think we're going to spend the time with the professional development of showing the research and helping them see the why but as far as the amount that goes in it should significantly simplify so we love to do group projects parents i'll just tell you i was one of those parents i'm like why doesn't any other parent ever have to buy anything for these group projects i not only funded my kids but everybody they worked with so when we're talking about group projects and grades for group projects i i don't see a lot in here about group projects so help me understand when they're going to grade those group projects how that's going to work i think that at this point um it's going to depend on the instructional focus behind that group assignment uh nothing in here is going to say that group projects are no longer a thing those are instructional practices that would be supported uh there's a lot of kagan structures and avid structures that support group work in collaboration and i think they are really really important it's just annoying sometimes and with grading this is gonna support that when you're grading the assignment there shouldn't be a grade for who brought in and paid for the materials as opposed to you're being graded on your academic understanding of this standard of what you needed to comprehend and learn to articulate whatever your output is on the project okay and kind of piggybacking on that it might the alignment to the instructional framework might help center teachers on that clarity component with the learning targets and the success criteria to be really intentional about the expectations around the assignment and what the true learning is okay i just i i know that through the the years that i'm i know it's improved we've done a lot of work on this but it still is something that and that's why group projects are so important is because students learn to work with each other they learn how to manage that and sometimes they have to learn there and they're not the only one to do all the work so they get the grade and and carry everybody else i mean it is a you know it is a it's definitely a good learning experience but it's not just about academics it's about social working with other people and doing a good job absolutely well and i think those experiences that those students have in terms of doing group work translates into what you guys are doing here this evening and that's the culmination of a committee coming together and solving some issues as well as putting the direction forward for our grading philosophy so thank you guys absolutely so i guess if i had one thing to add to this book that you put together so well is maybe address the issues in group projects i just remember i had i had one daughter who struggled in her math class and is very frustrated that the math teacher would put kids together in different groups to take a group quiz and he put them together based on how they did on the last group quiz so the ones that didn't know anything that failed last time got put with everybody that didn't know anything and the ones that did well got put with the other ones who did well it was a very frustrating oh i can imagine um you know getting through that class was before i was on the board so yeah and i don't think that's a grading issue at all i think that's a structure of whatever projects put together and how that's managed by that educator and and you know it takes some time and some some experience to be able to put those together but i think there's no issue with grading when it comes to group projects because i think teachers who understand how to do that well will understand how to finalize that in a great form so absolutely thank you and i i did want to take a moment before we wrap up to just articulate our appreciation of tech services uh the entire reporting end and so much more uh has come to fruition with their help and so it's without hesitation that i just wanted to publicly uh say thank you to their entire team they are helping prep all of the professional development and are going to be on hand to support our teachers as we transition into this implementation and then we did want to share that we have reviewed policy ika and its regulation uh while there's no change to policy there may be a small verbiage clarification which dr newman has uh wanted me to share with uh the governing board that would be shared within the the coming weeks what that change would be and proposed and with that uh i know that there's been great questions throughout this entire presentation but we did want to just give a moment if there were any final questions as we conclude i think my questions just would be how do we communicate this to parents so that it's a positive experience with parents because change is always hard and trying to assess and understand where their students stand although i was thinking about elementary has already been doing k through three so they're familiar with it um in high school again how do we best support our students let's partner with parents and make sure that they understand what the process is as best we can you know as we're moving toward this so that it's a it's a partnered role that's how students have the best success is when parents understand absolutely and can help when they can you know it's not perfect but wholeheartedly agree with that so some of the things that we have already put into place for the 22-23 school year is we have a communication that will be distributed to all administrators to send out to our student families k-6 about the transition to k-6 standards based we also will be providing consistent standardized resources in the form of a few slides perhaps a short video just explaining the approach the standards-based approach that can be played by teachers during the open house or curriculum night in addition don anisinas and i met at length today to start the process and conversation about our public-facing grading website that will contain k-12 information but then also separately sections for elementary and then secondary because there are some there there are some nuanced differences so um i agree it's really important to inform families at the forefront to get them as our partners in this conversation because really we're doing it to help communicate better with them about their students great and that's what i think i wanted to say to me i appreciate this and how this will help our teachers but i really appreciate how this will impact our students in that we are looking for student learning we're looking for students to grow we're looking for students to master we're looking for students to have opportunities along the way to really have learning happen in their classes in their in their you know in the things that they're doing each day we're learning that the lessons and the work that they're doing really contributes to learning and mastery not just busy work or extra or anything like that so it's probably going to be a little bit of a shift though in how like you're saying just it will take time but i'm hoping and hopeful that this adds to all of our goal that we're student-centered that we have outstanding learning opportunities in every classroom for our students each day so i'm excited to see how that will impact that so thank you board members any further i just want to say thank you it's a lot of work and i think this will make it easier for teachers and for students because it's simple and clear and getting those ex getting those expectations out there and helping students to understand that you know they're you have more chances it's not one and done and i feel like sometimes in the past you know you fail and then you go on but if someone hasn't caught it the first time then they just get further behind and in this way we give students more than one chance sometimes it takes two or three times to learn something so you know or or sometimes it can take ten times it just depends on what you're learning and and how it connects so um i really appreciate it so thank you thank you well done thank you all for such an engaging conversation we appreciate it yeah and thank you for the handbook that will be very helpful board members and those here i know it's been an interesting meeting but as far as just we've gone back and forth but i wondered if we could take a five minute recess to address any concerns that we have and then we'll be back in five minutes okay thank you you shouldn't be on a school board if you're bored by budget that's all i can say all right i think we are ready thank you for indulging us we will now move to 5.03 uh presentation about the fiscal year 2023 proposed budget thank you okay here it is yes are you ready i'm ready away you go governing board members president wood dr mccord we're here to present finally the fiscal year 2023 proposed budget to you as a high level comment i just want to make sure that you all know that we are proposing a budget that has not really been approved by the legislature we are obligated though to adopt a budget by july 15th we have used the current year forms because we wanted to make sure that we were ready to present to you today and so there's still a lot of flux in the budget deliberations at the state legislature we are confident though that the governor's budget still represents the worst case scenario and the presentation to you tonight is very consistent with what you have seen so far the other thing is remember that this has been a tumultuous year are we done with covid or are we not done with covid remember that just two months ago we were looking at a 40 million dollar potential reduction in the current year associated with the aggregate aggregate expenditure limit fortunately in around the 20th of march the legislature voted to allow us to exceed the limit so that was good news we've seen a lot of additional federal funds over the last two years and there's still a lot of question marks about how the future is going to look and so everything that that we're sharing tonight is considering all those things to make sure we're prepared for any possibility that could happen in the future so with that we'll go ahead and begin i think thank you but we're not ready we're not displaying it may i ask just one question though before we get started on that sure since we are dealing with a situation where we don't have we don't know for sure and you said that you felt that the governor's budget was probably what was going to happen or the worst case scenario what happens what what would happen what would be the timeline if it all changes in terms of what we're doing right now and obviously they can't hold us responsible if they haven't done it right correct that's correct we're still obligated to meet the july 15th uh right so as soon we plan on moving forward with the proposed budget we're not allowed to have any increases in the adopted budget from the proposed so it will largely look the same for the adopted budget but as soon as we have any information at all from the legislature we'll turn it around immediately to do our first budget revision for the 2023 school year so to begin go ahead jack you can move it to the first slide so this is what we're going to go through this evening just inter introductory remarks the 2023 proposed m o budget the 2023 proposed unrestricted budget just a short snippet on the other fund budgets and then a reminder about the proposed budget risks and opportunities which i shared some of with you already in the introductory comments and then finally our estimated tax rate at the end so again the proposed budget alignment to the strategic operating plan and the override commitments we have been very disciplined about ensuring that any request for additional spend is directly and fully aligned to the strategic operating plan and as we were successful in november of 2019 we have also been very disciplined to ensure that we are meeting the override commitments that were made in november of 19.
of that 3 500 is in the base pay for teachers and the other 3 500 is going to be in a performance pay plan that the meet and confer team and hr will bring to the board once it's approved by the teacher association in august so you'll see that detailed plan on that second 3 500 and how that's earned in this upcoming months so reading the calculation you'll see our projected teacher salary fiscal 23 so that takes in consideration we have some experienced teachers and we have some new teachers that's all higley's average um plus the seven percent increase that we provided in march is an increase of approximately thirty five hundred dollars and forty thirty five forty four from the prior year and the percentage increase as you'll see is asterisks because it's showing six percent because of that um calculation reset that we are proposing today so we feel this is a better accurate reflection if somebody were to go on our website and look as you know this by statute a couple years ago this came about this needs to be posted on our website and so we just hope um we'll include that astrix but we just hope we are not while we did do seven percent that percentage increase is not is because it's calculation reset and not a faction of us not forgiving the seven percent in reality so i just want to make that clear any questions on the average teacher salary calculation okay so with that um tonight or this afternoon this is the proposed budget that we're proposing this will be public on our website for the next couple weeks it will also be posted by statute in our local paper um so if you do not have internet access you can find it in the paper and then we will bring it for adoption on june 22nd for uh the board to formally adopt our budget for fiscal 23.
she's going to be working hopefully again with us next year on that supporting the council when they shift positions in the counseling office and we have that college and career counselor in place we'll be taking over the internship program the following year but for next year's week we intended to focus this year on those panel discussions bringing these folks in from different fields in stem and other areas to kind of fight the fire of the children to see what they potentially could be and do next year we'll be having that as well we'll be offering shadowing opportunities i know some teachers are very excited about doing field trips out into the stem field jessica has reached out to some of the corporations that are community members who have invited our students to come in for that purpose so you know funding for field trips but that's okay but we we have the places where we'll figure out a way to send them there so um so that's great and then the following year we'll start this internship internship program for the seniors so i'm on looking for target opportunities through those problems because some don't have offices that just dedicated to schools you know where they have an education they have yes i can send you um the email to jessica she's been reaching out i put something in my my newsletter and i know diane had been putting something into hanto today if you have a contact or you know anybody in the community other than the ones we've got you can send that to send that along to us but we keep advertising to send that information to us so more we can add the better opportunities for the students the other person i wanted to mention tonight is mike real mike real is a parent and tahanto he has been instrumental in bringing the grade 5 connects challenge to both the elementary schools each year for the past several years we had to hold off with one year because obviously the president but mike is enthusiastic he brings his team from thermo fisher dynamic and we are involved what he does he gave the teachers in the fifth grade all new kids connects kids this year because he felt that those others were a little little worn used they were a couple years old but he's like here's brandon kids and we're going to be running that on friday june 10th from 9 to 11 30.