001Okay. Um, I believe we have a quorum. So, I'm going to call the meeting to order at 6:05 p.m. on February 3rd, 2026. And I believe the first order of business is to review the meeting minutes from November 3rd and December 1st. Does everybody have a copy of those minutes in front of them? >> Yes. Yes. >> Okay. Um, is there any discussion or questions on the minutes from November 3rd? >> No, no, not for me. >> Anybody else? Okay. So, do do we have a a motion to approve them? >> So moved. Andrea. >> Okay, we need a second. >> That would be you, right? >> Okay. So, that's that's all right. I'll make the second then. >> Yeah. Just something. Do Do we have a quorum here before we start? >> Yeah. Nothing.
002>> Yeah, I believe Miss because there are only three members, voting members, um Ian would be your third. Um because you because you and Dr. Acriman are here, that would count. >> Okay. So, we have a quorum. [laughter] Thank you. Okay. So, the meeting minutes of November 3rd are approved as is with no changes. Correct. >> Okay. Um, the meeting minutes from December 1st, has everyone had a chance to review them? And are there any questions? >> Yes. No. >> Okay. Is there a uh motion to approve the minutes? >> So moved. >> Okay. Seconded. So, if no one has anything else, we're consider those minutes approved as is for December 1st. Okay. Second order of business, excuse me, the third order of business is review the middle school program of studies. And I believe
003we're going to turn the floor over. Matt, is that you? >> No. Samantha, I believe. >> And that's the high school. >> Okay. Hi, [clears throat] Samantha. >> Hi. How are you? >> Good. How are you? >> Good. >> This is my first time, so have some patience. >> Mine, too. So, don't worry. [laughter] >> I also have my nine-month-old next to me, so if you hear me crying, it's him. [laughter] >> Okay. Boy, it's a boy or a girl? >> Uh, a boy. Winston. >> Oh, very nice. Okay, >> Sam, I'm um share the document if Clint can give me some sharing capabilities. >> I am working on it right now. >> The light on behind you. You are now a co-host, Amarie. Okay, Sam, the floor is yours. So my question is do
004you want me to go through the I have not done this before. You want me to go through the program of studies or >> I think probably the best thing to do Sam is go talk a little bit about um the program studies how it's organized um any anything that's new in the program of studies um and a little bit about um the process that the students go through. Would it be possible for you to open that um up? I just see the agenda right now. >> Oh, I do have it opened up. You can't see the You can't >> I just see the agenda. That's odd. Um I have the document open. >> So I think you're sharing the PDF window and the link is to a Google Doc, Emory. M. >> So, [clears
005throat] you may want to stop sharing and share the new one. >> Okay. Give me a minute. Let's try this. >> Can you see that? Okay, great. >> Looks great. See video right there. Got to click it when the red line's there. >> I apologize. My I'll be honest. My husband is supposed to be home and he's stuck at work right now. So, I was not anticipating my um >> All right. So, um I know that you received this um earlier, but this is our most up-to-date program of studies for the um upcoming school year. So, this is very much a living document that we do update yearly. Um while currently there aren't any new courses for next year, although we are discussing looking at the option of um one coming from the high school,
006that hasn't been um confirmed or anything yet. But um every year this document gets sent out to all of our staff and I ask them to update it prior to completing course requests. So what you have in front of you is the whole um the whole course catalog. What we do when we um do classes is I send this out by grade level. So I remove anything that's not like there's a course catalog for sixth grade, course catalog for seventh grade and eighth grade as well. Um I apologize. Let me sorry. >> So, are we going to be going through each one of these? No, she won't be going through every um every course. >> Okay, >> I apologize. Um so, as I said, every year this document gets updated, but when we send it
007out to parents, we started doing this recently in kids to make it less cumbersome. We did it by grade level. So, it says, you know, course catalog grade six because if you start looking at through the courses, you'll see that some of them are very grade specific, especially our computer science and STEM classes. Um, so it just makes it easier for them not to have to read every single course description. Um and then what they also get when choosing courses and this is an important piece as well is um each grade level gets what classes they have the option of picking or need to pick. So depending upon what our requirements are. So sixth grade is very prescribed in the sense that they um take a lot of the same classes and electives like design
008and modeling which you can see right there. um they have access to marine biology which is a very popular course and actually that is one of the new descriptions that was just updated um as well um and that course also encompasses our se perch program through EB which is a funded program by EB so we don't include information about it in there because yeartoear we don't necessarily know if it's going to be something that we have um but this year we do which is great. Um and then um if you keep scrolling also some updates were made recently to our green architecture um course as well as our um flight and space. Those two courses specifically are very um heavy reading. So the teacher made some updates to those so students know you know what
009the course entails or encompasses. Um but we also have made some changes if you keep scrolling to our interventions because of the testing and diagnostic testing that we're using such as I am ready [clears throat] um or the dibbles that they use throughout intervention. So those get changed um as testing changes. And then if you keep scrolling um health and PE are classes that every student takes. Um and depending upon um the grade level obviously is the content of those courses. Um and then sorry if I keep scrolling. Um it explains what you do in PE um at the different grade levels which is very similar. We do have combined PE classes. So, it's either 7 8 or 67. We never put um six or eight together. So, depending upon um the channel that it's
010in, two grade levels are um always mixed. And then in one of our um PE classes, we have adaptive PE. Um and so those students mix with eighth graders. We just happen to make those classes smaller, which you saw at the top. If you keep scrolling, um it goes through also our required core courses, um like our math, science, social studies, and language arts as well as world language. Some of our other um steam courses. So, art ATL um is one of the classes that's required at the sixth grade level. And then additional courses that we have um if you keep scrolling, these are offered as electives for our students to take. Um and in terms of our music courses, students are required to take at least one music course in sixth grade. um as
011well as have options and opportunities to take additional music courses as electives such as world drumming, guitar, music technology. Um if students do not take band or chorus in sixth grade, then they take music six, which is sort of like a general music course. Um students have the opportunity to take theater and we do let them take theater more than once. So, you can take theater or musical theater um multiple times if you keep on scrolling. And I apologize I'm going fast. So, I I know you guys I don't need to read through every course description, but if there's something specific you see that you have a question about, our resource classes are special education classes. So, we do include course descriptions in here, but those are um manually entered by the counselors for course
012selection. So our students don't select that. Um it's part of their IEP. And then if you keep scrolling, >> re resources six, seven, and eight are part part of the IEP. Is that what you were just saying? >> Yeah. Yeah. So in they do similar things. Um you know, working on the goals of objectives of the IEP, but there's resource six, resource 7, resource 8. >> Understood. Thank you. >> Yep. um our science classes, those are our core science classes, so different than the ones that I previously went through at the top. And then it breaks down social studies a little bit more specifically into um the different areas that they focus on. Our power up class is our supported study hall, which was added a few years ago. Um and um it's a good
013opportunity for students to set goals within the class. It's monitored. Um, so it's not really a time just to play games. Students have to be actively engaging in work completion or working on I Ready, which is something that we use for our math classes. Um, if you keep scrolling for the arts, we do have um some arts classes that students can take. All sixth grade students take art six accompanied with ATL. So that approaches to learning class that was previously on here. And then um intermediate art, you can take that. And in order to take advanced art, you have to take intermediate art. So that is one of our um prere prerequisites. And then I think here, yep, to the bottom. Um so every year, as I said, we create a course catalog by grade
014to make it easier and less cumbersome. And then we create um course um you know incoming course selection sheets so that everything is done now through powers school which is great. So parents students can sign on to powers school and select the courses that they um want to request for next year. But we do provide these sheets um via parent square and or in person when we go down to the fifth graders um schools to make it easier so that they can check things off so that when they go into power school all they have to do is select the courses or if you know we have new students who aren't necessarily in the system we have them complete the course selection sheet and they um the counselors can then input it for them. But
015it just it does a nice job. Um, I know I don't have sharing access, but it does the course selection sheets do a nice job showing them the areas that they have to select courses in and the ones that are required. >> Interesting. >> Any questions? >> Um, I had a lot of questions about the language arts section, but I don't know if you want to go into detail about that or not. [clears throat] I just had I'll I'll tell you what my questions are and then you can say, "Yeah, well, I don't want to do that." Um, I [clears throat] was interested when I first saw in sixth grade that um, uh, speaking and listening skills were emphasized. And then, but I didn't see that in seventh or eighth grade. And then um I
016realized that that must mean like talking in class. And at first when I saw it, I thought, "Oh, they're giving speeches." But that's not what that means, is it? >> There is public speaking components in the in that class in all those classes really. Um yeah, I know in eighth grade, especially just because I came from the eighth grade last year, um they do a they do a huge um piece on it. um with public speaking as well. But um c can you tell me a little bit about that? >> Yeah. So for example um I'll give you a specific example. So a teacher has students bring in objects that um have some sort of meaning for them. Um one girl actually wanted to bring in a saddle um which caused a little bit of
017we had to figure that out with the stairs. But um and they have to um explain it to the class and also explain and present on it the meaning of that object to the class. So and it's obviously more in depth than that um but they do different presentations um within the language arts classes um and they do collaborate so they're similar in nature. That's just one, you know, very specific example. Um, but things of that nature, >> right? That that's what I was hoping to hear. That's great. >> Okay. Um, and and that continues in the se seventh and the eighth grade. Is that correct? >> Yeah, that particular project was in the eighth grade, but I know in sixth grade and seventh grade, they do um different activities where they're doing public speaking
018as well. >> Okay. I'm really happy about that. Um and the other thing uh let's see something about um let me see something about Oh yeah focusing on the the um the use of the language. What exactly does that mean? Yeah. um and a deeper appreciation of the use of the language. What does that mean? >> Um so focusing on it in um writing speaking um right now um and maybe Annarine can speak to this more just because she might be more of the expert in the language arts field, but they um use common lit. So grammar, those aspects, sentence structure um >> right there, you got my attention right there. when you talk about grammar, how do you approach that? >> Um, I I don't want to I'll be honest with you. Obviously, I'm
019um I'm not in the weeds of the curriculum, but um I don't know, Anie, if you I know you meet with the language arts teachers, but um I know that they a lot of our language arts teachers do um a lot of writing so that students are learning um how to write specifically, you know, handwriting things um because a lot of times the computers will do those things for you. Um, so teaching our students, you know, proper sentence structure, capitalization, simple things like capitalizing your name, um, putting, um, the proper punctuation in sentences, those >> where they learn what let me go back. What to me that's mechanics. So let me learn what a preposition is, what a gerand is, what a participle is. You know what happens when let me let me give you
020an example in terms of your writing. So if I said the man in the back shot him, there's a prepositional phrase in the back. Okay? The man shot him in the back. Big difference. where you put that prepositional phrase in the sentence could turn you from um just shot him in the back to hey that's the guy that did it in the back. So where you put th those you know phrases is going to affect what your writing actually says. Where do they learn that kind of thing? So in sixth grade they I mean I can speak for our school in sixth grade they start learning those type of things and as they move up only advance in those you know type of um prepositions and different um I I think that's what you're asking
021>> sort of that's the beginning of my question and then how is it that they were expected to demonstrate that let's say not not in sentence But let's say in their writing, you know, do you say, I want to see you use, you know, four prepositional phrases brilliantly in your writing and I'll just I'll decide what brilliantly means in terms of how um how your writing affects me when I read it as the teacher, you know. Um I want you to to you to use seven girundial phrases in your writing. and you'll be able to talk to me about that. You know, how do you do that? That's something that I I I would think about, but how do you do it in the middle school? >> I'm going to throw Sam a little bit
022of a lifeline. Uh I don't know what Sam's um content area expertise is. Um but I I don't think she taught middle school English. Um neither did I specifically, but you know, Dr. Acriman, I know you're very familiar with the Common Core and um the Common Core outlines very specific standards for each grade level including um you know grammar, speaking, writing standards that you know >> that answers my question. The you're using the common core elements. >> Yeah. As as the guidelines. Now, if you want to know specifically in in each grade level, you know, I know we have Amy McKenna on the line and she probably was a big part in developing the curriculum for the middle school level or at least overseeing that and I'm sure she can kind of say to you
023specifically, oh, in in grade seven, here's where they really emphasize this piece. Now, I'm I'm speaking on her behalf and maybe I shouldn't do that. >> You got my question. >> Yeah, you you got my question. You understood it. Yeah. Great. Thank you, Emry. Thank you very much. And Amy, whatever you have to tell me why I'm listening. >> No, I mean I think one of the questions that you're getting at is, you know, is is grammar instruction happening? I think and it is it's definitely happening especially through their writing. Um all all the language arts teachers are are very dedicated to the students understanding um how to use language well, how to be clearer writers and how knowing different elements of grammar for certain writing pieces would will be helpful for them to kind
024of grasp at those building blocks that you're talking about Dr. Acriman. So it's very much alive in their classrooms. Um Okay. And I think that that's kind of the heart of what you were trying to ask. >> Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. >> No, for sure. >> Okay, that's I'm I'm done. Are there uh any more questions or comments? Okay. So, I guess we can move on to the uh to the next item on the agenda, which is the uh high school program of studies. Thank you very much for your presentation, by the way. >> You're welcome. All right, for our uh for the high school um for at least for the program of studies, uh I believe Amy, you're gonna kind of lead us through some of the questions that were
025asked for us to present on. >> Sure. Yeah. Um and if if you wanted to post it at any time, you can, but I'm probably um our documents quite a bit longer, so I probably won't be walking you through page by page, but I am going to speak to a few things. First, the organization of the document. Um in the opening pages um we have the principal letter, our vision of the graduate which was developed through our work with accreditation through NEASK um program highlights and our table of contents. And then once you kind of get into the table of contents you'll see that our program of studies is 75 pages long which is why I won't put you through a painful scrolling right now um or put um Dr. Mancini through it either. Um
026after the opening pages, our next section covers the graduation requirements, uh information on college planning and admission, important policies and information for course study, special programs that we offer, and information about working with our school counseling office. After those really two opening sections, all of our departments and content areas have their own special section and they are all kind of mixed in for grades 9 through 12. We do not delineate per grade because the program is for the entire school. Um, and each department lists all of their classes and descriptions of each class. Um, we don't really expect any new really great new changes to the existing program. It is completely up to date as we start students start course registration at Fitch by the end of the week and the eighth grade has already
027started. But we do have a handful of instructors that are working on getting dual enrollment status either at Yukon, Eastern or Three Rivers. And that just means that we have some existing courses at Fitch that are having a sort of I guess you could call it like a syllabus match. And if those syllabus um matches all go through, then some of our existing courses that are just fetch courses could become dual enrollment classes. I believe for Yukon that notification may be happening sometime in midspring. For Eastern, it's a little bit later. It's in later spring. So those are possibilities but essentially the program of studies is complete and will remain the same. Um in terms of the back section um after all of the department sections we have a section for additional information. It's kind
028of like an appendix I guess you could say like if this was a grad paper that would be our appendix. Um and the appendix offers a lot more in-depth information on advanced placement IB. uh both diploma my and career programs project lead the way Yukon ECE Eastern um college experience partnerships and three rivers community college partnerships um in terms of where you can access our program of studies on our school counseling tab on the Fitch web page you can access our program of studies as a Google document as a digital flip book and we have tabs on our website that are organized by department section. A lot of that organization under the school counseling tab, we have to attribute to the hard work of Rebecca Bea who meets with us um and kind of like
029partners with us especially in January to make sure that our program really looks as best as it can on the web. Um, our students can use and families use the document to read descriptions of courses and see how they can sort of make their program and allocate credits for graduation requirements. Um, every year we kind of have a timeline for producing our program of studies. We begin in early fall. Our department chairs review their sections with the departments. They revise course descriptions as needed. They look to see if all classes should remain at one credit. Sometimes they get kicked back to half a credit. Um, all that work kind of gets done in early fall and then in December and January the administration and the school counseling department um take a look at the, you
030know, any revisions that were done. We finalized the document, kind of fine-tuned some things that we learned from the previous year. And in January um once everything is complete then we'd have our communication with Rebecca Beas for website updates and post everything online. So now um on our school counseling page we have our 26 27 program of studies which I believe Dr. Mancini shared with you last week um when she prepared for the meeting and we still leave our current program of studies kind of in the bottom of that school P counseling page just because as we begin to plan for next year we are also entering semester 2 and we want to make sure that our students can access the current year's program of studies in case they make any changes for semester 2.
031Um the one of the last things I'm going to talk to you about is our course selection process. Um in January, our teachers make course recommendations for grades students in grades 8 through 11 um in the power school portal. And then shortly after the start of semester 2, so it's kind of right where we are right now. Our eighth graders in 9th through 11th graders can access the registration portal in P school to select classes. And when they go into the portal, it's really cool. What they see is like kind of like a condensed screen where they see like how many credits they're allowed to carry next year and if if their English teacher recommended um you know their classes for next year. They'll see that it's almost like a line item. they'll see it
032on the English line and then below if teachers recommended any electives all of their sort of like suggested electives from teachers appear below and the student can then from there sign up for any class but it's nice to know that teachers really work together to sort of make up a menu or playlist for for students um as as they access that that portal. Um the other thing we do is we have uh students going into classrooms to help our students plan uh with these course planners that we have for students that that was kind of the hard work of of another group um that has worked really hard to help students plan out their credits from the beginning of freshman year to graduation. And because we are paying a lot more attention to career pathways
033and getting kind of excited about some of the career pathways that we're able to offer now, those course planners are an essential piece and the involvement of our students in helping other students with those course planners are an essential piece. And I I do have to give a shout out to the Black Student Union. They do take uh a considerable amount of leadership with that. and our school counseling department began that process at freshman orientation with the ninth grade specifically this year. Um after course registration is complete in late February, early March, um what we do as an administration is we look at our enrollments and then we decide which classes are going to be allocated towards the master schedule. um department chairs receive those allocations and they draft teacher schedules for the administration and
034then the administration um works with the school counseling department to develop the master schedule and powers school. Um there's quite a bit of stuff behind the scenes going on with the computer and the people working with the computer for that. And then budget depending um our master schedule is usually ready in the spring and then we wait for our staffing outcomes after the budget process and try to release our what I would say final draft of the master schedule sometime in late spring. Um, in terms of new courses for 2627, not too many this year. Uh, we are offering naval science 4 so that our students that have been in our naval science program now for some time can go on to the final year of that of that study in that program. And we
035have one course that is pending. Um and I know that there's a lot of excitement behind this course and that is introduction to robotics but that still needs to come I think before this committee at some point um to make sure that that course will be ready to run next year. I know that there is some planning for that that is has been ongoing um and that we're working on um seeking out the curriculum for that class. And at this point I know that was a very long overview of our POSOS as we like to call it but we'd be happy to take any questions. Uh this is Mitch. I I was quite impressed with the uh um process that you described and I was also happy to hear that it looks as though the
036teachers provide direct input to um what they believe uh would be better for the students. Um do the uh how do the guidance counselors fit into that or don't they? Yeah, the the guidance counselors definitely fit into it. They are heavily involved um in in course scheduling and in course selection. Um they really do advi advise students that have questions about when to take certain classes or what classes could be best for them at at any point in time. And they also have quite a pulse on, you know, which classes are sort of our highfrequency classes that students are just drawn to because either they have high interest or maybe it's something like culinary or sculpture and they are just plain fun and students love taking those classes. So, I would say our school counseling
037department really has a huge pulse on uh course selection um throughout the whole process and also um after course selection with sort of modifying schedules as changes need to come up >> and really making sure you know they're on track graduation wise with graduation requirements. They have to kind of map that out with the with the student. So when when the the students make their their worksheet of the their projected schedule for the four years, they have to kind of verify and check that throughout to make sure that they're they're fulfilling all the credits that they'll need, if that makes sense. >> Okay. Thank you. Does anyone else have any questions or comments? >> No, very thorough. Very nice. I do want to say that um the middle school follows a similar schedule and system
038with course selection. We actually worked with the high school a couple years ago. I worked very closely specifically with Amy and Carmea um with a power school liaison and so we do something very similar um with our course selection as well and just making sure that although we don't have credits making sure that our students are picking classes that are you know based on their interests. Um and our counselors do something similar where they're um helping with um the classes like the resource classes and things like that but and inputting those but the scheduling of those courses after we complete the master schedule through poweruler and um load all the students which is quite a process. [snorts] >> Well, I know I saw some courses in there that looked interesting to me. Okay. If there's
039is there anything else on this particular agenda item? >> No. >> Okay. Thank Thank you very much for the presentation. It was excellent. I was impressed. >> Yes. Andrea, do you have something? >> No, I just wanted to agree with you. >> Oh, thank you. [laughter] >> Okay. So I think we probably are moving on now to agenda item four which is uh discuss removal of class rank. Mr. Brown I believe that's you. Is that you? >> Yeah that's me. Uh if there was a presentation that I shared uh in Maria can you post that? So, one of the biggest as as I'm waiting for that to get displayed so I can help with my uh presentation, but uh we decided we really wanted this this part, you know, the actual discussion of removing class
040rank to be part of this meeting because there's a there's a piece in our program of study which talks about class rank. Um, and really what you're looking at in front right now, it says uh class rank. We'll be adding the sentences in red. So, we want to add that to our program of studies for this year. Um, and the reason we want to do that is uh we want to start with our incoming ninth graders. So, where you can see it says starting with the class of 2030, we will no longer publish class rank at the end of each semester. Um, at the seventh semester of high school, the counseling team and admin team will then look at class rank to determine really validictorian and saludiatoran. But we really feel strongly that there's been
041too much of an emphasis by us and by the high school for a long time on class rank and it's really kind of steered our students into uh really like stressfully worrying about where they fit in in against their peers. Uh and it's really kind of persuade what they take as classes and so forth. Um so that's a real big reason why we're making this push. Uh I I did a lot of research with our um with uh local ECC principles to see where they're at and I'm going to present that in a second. But we feel like it's really important because we want to make this push for our current eighth graders and incoming ninth graders to really get this into the program of studies now. Uh we don't we felt like it's it's
042important not to start with uh our current nth graders or tth graders or 11th graders because they've already started the game, right? they've already started um you know working towards uh fulfilling their class rank or or their weighted GPA. So we didn't think it was fair to just take that away from from groups that are already already working on it. >> [snorts] >> So, I uh we had an ECC meeting recently uh was hosted actually of Iitch with uh some other local ECC schools and I uh those that weren't able to attend I I did send them a survey and really the questions we asked are do you publish class rank? Um, and I we had 16 different respondents from ECC schools and or other local schools close by. And my eyes are awful, but
043I from what we surveyed, 68.3% of the schools no longer publish class rank >> and about 30 31% still do. So, the trend has really started already where where most schools aren't aren't publishing class rank anymore. Um, [snorts] however, most schools still utilize class rank to determine validictorian and saludiatoran. Uh, as is indicated by the the pie chart on the bottom right. The the pie chart in the top left is really just how many publish the class. [snorts] And then the next uh I'm not going to read through all of these, but these are just really these are actual quotes from the uh local principles about their failing on class rank. Um, and uh, as you can kind of peruse through some of those, I'm just going to highlight the one on the bottom. Students
044fixate on completing competing with other students and it drives students and parents to levels of stress and um, can't read the rest of it right now. Uh, and competition that are not in the best interest of our students. Really, it's it's unwarranted stress. uh our kids are really competing against each other when actually when they're when they're actually, you know, applying to the different schools that they're applying to, those aren't even the kids that they're they're going up against. So, so kind of looking more at a percentile ranking system, uh we think is is more productive for our students and and more valuable when when schools are looking at at uh their information. [snorts] Um, and again, if you I'm not going to read through each of these, but uh I I just thought it
045was, you know, appropriate to put these on so that you you could get some input as to uh what other principles are thinking or seeing uh currently in the region. Um we also have a uh our counseling department reached out to Yukon to see uh what they felt was the impact of class rank and whether it be published or not. Um and uh they have yet to give us an official statement. They had to go through uh their channels but uh they are working on an official statement to provide with us. But in actuality, in a lot of uh our counselor's uh opinion, uh they feel that when we're publishing class rank every single year in their applications, it's actually hurting more kids than it's helping. Um we do uh get opportunities with Yukon and
046other local schools with with full scholarship opportunities uh for our top really top two, the validictorian and saludiatoran. uh and that we would still get get those awards uh even if we didn't publish the actual uh student ranks. And on the last last slide, it really just uh I I provided a link to the different scholarship opportunities at Yukon. Um but most of them really just talk more in percentiles rather than the actual rank. And I think that makes a lot of sense because when you're comparing a school like our size or NFA to some of the smaller schools, you know, what does top 10 mean in our school versus what it would mean in in a smaller school are completely different things. [snorts] And we don't want it to penalize our kids. >> And
047I'm Go ahead, Mitch. I I reviewed uh the uh the presentation before the meeting and I found it to be interesting. Um and one thing I I I'm just kind of guessing at is this is p primarily, if you will, uh not necessarily a problem area, but an area of concern for people in the top of the class, not necessarily the middle or or any area lower. Is that correct? >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean it it's it's uh at least even even like the top 50 or top 30 I think it affects all of them. Uh really it it but you're you're 100. You're really correct that especially in the top top of the class they really get persuaded. I mean it gets to the point where students sometimes will not take uh you know
048continuing music if it's not at the highest waiting you know or where where or where or where or where or where or students will take >> they're forcing themselves to take all AP IB courses uh and even at times in the past they've even wanted to take classes over the summer just to bump their their GPA up. And it's just like a it's not a healthy competition that that it's created for our our classes. And I think that it gets echoed by almost every school in the area. >> Most school or not most, but a lot of schools had made this change probably about eight years ago or close to it. Uh and and a lot of the ones that are are still in the >> the area the the one-third that are still publishing,
049they're in the process of of eliminating class rank as well. >> So is this um what impact does this have? Okay. So you are you are tracking class rank. You're just not publishing the information. >> Correct. Yeah. Yeah. It it'll still be calculated. We can still check on our our our top scores. We could if we wanted we could still even you know recent like we still award uh >> uh especially at the senior level our you know right now we currently honor our top 25 and that's something that we're kind of discussing. you know, we don't want to highlight the rank as as highly as we do right now. Um, we want to kind of shift away from that. So, so just to eliminate the stress in the competition, [snorts] >> does any anyone
050have any questions? No, I just have a comment and that is when I review the uh Martin Luther King applications which go out to every middle or every high school in New London County, so many of them just do not do class rank anymore. >> Yeah. I think more than many more not do it than than do it. So, and I can see from the rationale here why that would be. Yeah. >> Yep. Okay. I I have a question. It was a long time ago since I applied to college, but um when when I did, I thought I recalled some requiring or that the students have be at a certain place in the class and um and that was a requirement that the school had. Is that a possibility now? and the student might not
051know. And how would such a situation be handled? >> I I believe like in most most aspects they would be giving their their percentile basically what percentage of the in their class they're they're they're rated at like top 10% top 5%. >> Okay. And if they really made the request, there there are schools that still if they make the request to submit that to an application, um this they this the high school can still give that ranking to the to the college if it's asked for. If if I can just jump in here with your permission, Mitch. Um that's one of the things I have my I have my hand up about is I actually did a little bit of research on this um in the last week knowing that this was going to come
052up on the agenda tonight and um there's been some studies lately because certainly there's a lot of schools that have moved in this direction. Um, and I think that what I read in the studies where there's about 18% of colleges nationwide now that are um still, you know, looking at class rank that what they've noticed is that, you know, every high school even even if you look here at the um at the schools just in the area, um they uh we rank students differently. So we might have a 4.5 scale. The high school next door might use a 4.0 scale. somebody else might use a 4.3 scale. And the colleges have recognized that these um everyone does it so differently that um when you look at a student or you know the students from the
053different high schools and you compare um you know their ranking it really is winds up being kind of meaningless. And so that's why so many colleges have kind of gone away from looking at this and you know and saying okay what is how does this student what's their GPA and and where do they rank in the class? Um, and so, um, I I I agree with the, um, high school here in terms of, you know, their proposed move, uh, and that's why I support it as well. I don't believe that it's going to negatively impact any students. >> Um, I I wanted to apologize. I didn't see your hand up before. >> Oh, that's okay. That's okay. >> Okay. So, are does anyone else have any questions or comments? >> No. >> So, I think
054and Amarie, I'm going to ask you for some help here. It seems to me that probably um we could take an action to make a recommendation as to whether or not this should be brought before the um the BOE. >> I believe this is going to be something that has to be brought forward to the full board. And I'm also going to um ask Dr. Arian for her guidance. You know, having been a longtime chair of this of this committee. Dr. Acriman, do you believe that that would be the case? >> Do to recommend that we get rid of class rank? >> No. That we have to bring is this something we have to bring forward to the full board? >> Yes, >> that's what I thought. >> Yeah. Yeah. This is not something that
055is within our jurisdiction. >> Yeah. So this is something that we that we would say we're bringing forward to the full board but with with this uh subcommittee or with this committee's support. >> Yes. Definitely. >> Exactly that way. >> Thank you. >> So your next steps would be to um to let Bev know that this is something that we've discussed that the that the committee um is in favor of but would be um you're requesting to put on the agenda for a a regular board of ed meeting. >> Yeah. and I'd let her know that you're we're recommending it. >> Yeah, >> we'll do. Okay. It was a very good presentation. I thought it was insightful >> and um I think it's a good way to go. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Was there anything
056else on item five which was discuss removal of class rank? If not, we'll move on to item six, uh, review referral tracking sheet. Who's got the lead on that? >> Well, thank you. I'm going to sneak out because I uh I'm going to go catch the basketball game in Strings Strings Orchestra. Okay. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much, everybody. >> Yes. Thank you. Thank you again. It was excellent. >> Thank you. Okay. So, who's left here? I'm going to see if I can get the tracker tracking sheet up here. Oh, I had that somewhere. I have a hard copy in front of me, but that doesn't do you any good. >> First one is the program review that we just did it. So that's done, >> I think. >> Yeah. R2022-16
057review program of studies for GMS and FHS. >> Yeah, >> I would agree with you, Andrea. I just would like to get Amarie's um >> okay on that to make sure I'm interpreting correctly. >> Yes, that that actually was uh that that was we we did that intentionally. >> Sweet. Okay. So, for date completed, we'll put 2326. >> And I am really struggling to get this up here. Okay, I think I got it. Can you see that? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> It matches the paper I have in front of me too. [laughter] >> Great. >> Okay. So, for the top one, we can say completed 2326. >> Correct. Okay. Is there anything else on the referral tracking sheet that we have to address today? >> There's not. But I can let you know that
058our next meeting in March, we have a couple of new um course approvals um that um will be brought forward by the high school team in anticipation. One only one I believe is a course for next year and that is a course that um Amy McKenna referenced. It's for uh the robotics um and that's a that's a course that they're going to it's a pre prepared course. It's a course they're going to purchase. It's already written. um but they're exploring a couple of different options. So that's something that they're going to bring forward. There's a course that um a that's been written. It's the proposal was approved earlier this year and the course was written by the two teachers and they'll be bringing that forward for review. Um and so that will be something that
059the that the committee will be looking at. And then there will be two courses uh two course proposals that will be brought forward as a part of that agenda as well. And they'll be taught during the 20 728 school year. And so sometimes because our process takes a while um teachers want to get an advanced a little bit of a jump on the uh on the process and so they'll be bringing the proposal forward um for review by this committee. So, we'll we'll be looking at uh four different courses, you know, in various states um on the March 2nd agenda. >> Excuse me, that's my insulin pump. I apologize. >> No problem. >> Okay. Thank you for the heads up about um what we're in store for at the next meeting. Um, is there anything
060else on item seven, future meeting topics? Okay, I don't see any hands up. Um, >> I can barely see my cataracts coming off sometime soon. um the discussion of IB and it that that's what that I just wanted to make sure that's what that says right >> for >> 2024-34. >> Yeah, >> it says discussion regarding the study of IB and then the parentheses it. >> Yeah, I don't know what it is. What does that mean? >> I believe Dr. Aman. That's Ian Thomas. >> Oh. Well then. Okay. >> Okay. And I bet the AJ is Adrian. See, I catch on sometimes quickly. >> Yeah, that's correct. [laughter] BW is Bev Washington. >> Okay. All right. Does Does anyone Does anyone have anything else? >> No. I >> Okay. >> Except one thing. Except one
061thing, right, Marian Amory? I always do that. That's cuz I'm dyslexic. >> I know what I know what you're thinking. Go ahead, Dr. Arian. >> And I missed it last night because I couldn't hear anything. So, I don't know who did this last night, but I'm gonna kill him. whoever it was. [laughter] >> Uh oh. I I think I believe it's our it's our chair here. >> Say what? >> I believe our chair had the honors last night. >> Oh. Oh, okay. Well, then motion to adjurnn. [laughter] >> Second. Okay. Thank you very much, everyone.