DCRSD SC Mtg March 11 2026

001We're going to call the meeting to order of the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District meeting at the Shepherd Hill Regional High School Library on Wednesday, March 11, 2026 at 6.30 p.m. for the public hearing of the fiscal year 2027 budget. And we're going to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance. And have a moment of silence. And a moment of housekeeping is that we're also... Having this live on Vimeo, recording on Vimeo, and currently there are no members of the public here, so I don't have to go through if anybody's recording this in the audience. And we're going to have Mr. LaMarche. Commence with the public hearing of the fiscal year of the 2027 budget. Madam Chair and school committee, this is an opportunity for to we have to advertise for this. This is

002a hearing so if people had questions about the budget prior to school committee taking a vote. the budget as presented in any way this is an opportunity to ask questions seeing as where we are I'm not going to go through this entire presentation as I have over the past couple of times you've seen in a couple of times now so I am going to try to highlight some of the differences or changes that have been in here since we've last met we have some additional information to help us with the fiscal year 27 budget and obviously I'm I welcome questions at any time there we go so again I'm gonna you're gonna see me go through some slides pretty quick because we've gone through some of these slides so now on slide number nine this

003is the assumptions and risks as we've this was the first year that we had a couple that were a little more greened or grayed out or something of that nature keep in mind that our excess and deficiency is stable and we have that little bump from last year's per pupil chapter 78 that we've putting against this fiscal 27 budget presentation school choice chatter assessment we're still looking at that we still have that as an offset we don't have any information that has changed on that for us to make a more definitive response to that and The rest there, the one that I wanted to talk about here is the federal entitlement grants stable for 2027. This was grayed out at one time. We did receive word that the feds have passed the budget. The only

004caveat with that passing the budget is they passed a level funded budget. They did not pass any increases to their budget for our Title I grants, Title II, Title IV, 240. So we had a little bit of information that they were going to be level funded, but we received additional information. I received most of it last week, is that the poverty level in the United States has gone down. My guess is that there's a reclassification definition of what the poverty level is for it to go down in our country. Therefore, we are being warned or asked or it's being stressed by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that even though the title grants are level funded, we should be budgeting only 85% of that level funded because of the poverty level going down. It

005looks like there may be up to a 25% reduction in that aid for... us in the state of Massachusetts alone I want to clarify that is not us moving things into the operating budget that's not where we're at with this we still have to you know a little bit of wait and see on this and we will live within the grants that we have if we need to go into operating budget that will be a different presentation that comes back to you as a committee Not that I want to say that we're very comfortable living with an 85% budget of these entitlement grants, but I think we're going to do our best to try to make them work now to try to support the requested operating budget as it is right now. Any questions on

006that? Because that is kind of a lot of information about the entitlement grants. Again, I'm not sure how the poverty level has gone down, but it has, according to the feds. Exactly. And so this is just, you know, that's a national trend. That's not just Massachusetts. That's not just us. We're not the only ones being asked to, you know, budget our entitlement grants at a certain percentage. It's, you know, ours may be 25, another state may be 30, and another state may be 5. It depends on the size of the state and what's going on in that state. But our state has not given us any indication that they will backfill any difference or variance in the federal grants at this point in time. a number figure associated with what that would well again oh

007go ahead no please do you go ahead it's approximately if if we go with the 85 percent um it's around 65 000. for title one for time just for time not the rest of them yes do we have a ballpark mr stantis or i would take 25 off 2 million okay okay that would be that's those are rougher numbers we don't have the exact number again this is fresh information we just got last week so it's yeah it is but we're gonna try to do the best we can to live within these grants as best we can and maximize their use in our district which we've been doing thanks to director Harriman and director assistant superintendent I was gonna call your director you can have lots of titles Kelly I can tell you that but

008assistant superintendent true they've already been working on trying to maximize any of this funding so I think that we're staying within that trend we're not at a point where we think we've overly maximized it we think there's maybe a few other opportunities but again if that comes back that we need to make up that 25% which I don't think would be a hundred percent of the 25 if we need to add something back we would for operating we would come back to the committee and present that to you okay any other questions on it So I wasn't going to review them again, but we still strongly believe in the two positions that we've been recommending for this, the SRO and Charlton at a value of $30,000 to $35,000 and the Assistant Director of Special Education

009and Student Services. So again, if we tried with slide number 22. If we were to take everything that we need to put into our budget without looking at any offsets or ways to try to reduce the expenditures, we're looking at a 5.69% or $3.5 million increase to our operating budget, operating in capital. We don't think that that's the best approach. We know that our community sometimes struggle with the finances. So we have used offsets year over year. I haven't heard anything different. I haven't heard. an edict from the school community to say don't ever use an offset again you know something of that nature so I just this is what it would be if we didn't touch them or any way or try to sharpen our pencils and try to find offsets this includes the

010SRO and the assistant director for people personnel services so what has changed a little bit in here is the no correct now no what has changed in here Sorry, it's highlighted in blue. Is our active employees health insurance, the percentage is coming down a little bit. So we continue to work on that. The Mass Strategic Health Group did vote to eliminate GLP-1 specifically for weight loss. It's the trend across our state. The GIC did it. Blue Cross Blue Shield doesn't do it anymore. Medicaid doesn't do it. Medicare doesn't do it either. So, Mass Strategic Health Group did, so that's a reduction already off the top because that was running the organization around $3 million. You know, to give you an example, the GIC, which represents 400,000 employees in the state of Massachusetts, it was running

011them around $50 million just for GLP weight loss drugs. And so that's why they took the tact of eliminating that. Now, GLP-1s are still accessible if you have comorbidities or other reasons for it. just strictly for weight loss purposes it is not going to be available so that again that reduced that number that's why we have the three point five three five three eight five four one which is a little bit different from the previous presentation of this So with that, how – so that's the starting point to get to 2.706116, which is a 4.35 percent increase. So we're using the offsets of the per-pupil increase from E&D that we talked about from the fiscal year 26, the Amazon money, taking that out of the operating budget to support the costs of high-quality instructional materials

012that either we've adopted or we're adopting. then you have the school choice assessment we're still reducing it by 140 because we don't know anything different we still believe that that's a good number for us and then class size management that's a reduction of three teachers to get into the fiscal year 27 budget so what that does is that brings us to the target and what we would administratively recommend for you to approve for a budget of 64916011 or 4.35 percent increase for a total increase of $2,706,116. What I want to point out here is you have to understand that that total number and that total increase also includes capital. Some of that is capital that the towns, for example, the town of Dudley has a debt exclusion for. That's built into this number here. So

013if you were to take out the capital from both towns and remove it completely, we're right around a little over $2 million as an increase for fiscal year or roughly 3.3% increase for the fiscal year. if you were to remove the capital. Now, it's okay for me to articulate that here, but when you look at the real numbers, they're still the numbers. You're not going to change that. $2.7 million increase to our budget is what the increase, including the capital. But the cost centers that they use to pay their capital could be different for the towns. So it's really just, it's still a lot of money. It's a $2 million increase, which is still less than what we did for getting it to FY26, and it's obviously less than what we did getting into... Going

014from FY25 to FY26 to FY27 now, we're very consistent in our approach in what we're asking for. Any questions on that? So this was the original assessment sheet. This is the one where we started with. We tried to move everything forward without offsets or anything of that nature on slide 26. This still is reflective of closer to an 8.7% increase, total increase. That includes the capital and everything else in there. Roughly a $2.8 million increase. Through the through the changes, but that is not what we're recommending for a budget tonight This is the one the draft version again for March 11th for this hearing is we were looking at this particular assessment sheet to the towns so if you Look at the assessment sheet. I think we're in pretty good shape to a certain extent.

015So for example the town of Charlton a 7.4 1% increase for their assessment is much lower than we had last year last year was over 10% And if you look at Dudley, it's a little bit higher than at 3.83%. It's a little bit higher than it was last year, but it's not that far off from what we asked for last year. Any questions on that? The next slides were all the capital. Director DeSantis has been working with the towns on capital. That's not going to be, we're not requesting that school committee take a vote on that this evening. Those slides are still in there because this was part of the budget presentation in case anybody had questions on the capital. We are still working with the towns and we're coming up with a plan for

016the required votes, school committee action required votes in the process for debt exclusion for capital moving forward. So that is in the pipeline. But right now, it's really important that we kind of separate that a little bit from our operating budget discussion tonight. So I wasn't going to go through all of that, unless there were people with questions about it. So this assessment sheet is really what we are going to recommend that the school committee take a vote on for the operating budget for FY27. But we're getting to the point of concluding the hearing. I wasn't sure if anyone had any questions. Anyone in the public has any questions? I have one question in reference to the current escalation of fuel prices. And if we have any, of course we don't have a crystal ball,

017but do we have any preparing best contingencies for either transportation or heating, et cetera? Yes. So I actually was going to add that into my report a little bit later. But since it's a relevant topic, I'll touch on it now. Obviously, given current world events, it's important for me to briefly touch upon the potential rising cost of energy, specifically with regards to oil costs. DCRSD negotiates its prices for oil through French River Education Center, or FREC, which you've heard, on an annual basis as part of a purchasing consortium. So what happens is... We go out, we open that up to bid through FREC. The bids come in usually around May on an annual basis, and then we know contractually for that year what we're spending on a per-gallon basis. This year through June, we're locked

018in at $2.70 a gallon through the end of the year. What's important to note is FREC as an entity had a 530, about a 532,000 gallon reserve coming into this school year in addition to what we purchased at that $2.70 price point. As of January of this year, in 2026, we still had about $1.5 million in reserve for gallons, which is a healthy point right now. I did have a preliminary discussion today, actually, with FREC to get an update on where we stand, and we still have a very healthy reserve going into the last quarter of the fiscal year. So we are in a very good position to, again, build up reserves with FREC. going into next year. This is important because it will lower the gallon request of fuel that FREC will have next

019year because we will have a reserve built up and our reserve that's built up is locked in at our $2.69 price point. So now if there is turmoil in different areas of the world, it shouldn't have as large of an effect on us because we are doing a good job working with FREC being able to build up our reserves in case of a situation like this. Do they have a set time of repurchasing or is it when they start? This is on a later topic in the agenda. And I know it's important, but we do have a hearing. I understand, but I just... And we also have kids out in the hall that are rather young. So, and this is an agenda that's also, this is also a topic that's further down on the agenda

020that we can have a full, robust discussion with after we finish the public hearing. Okay. Right. So... I think, I think, through the chair? Sorry. I think your ultimate question is, are we considering this within our budget proposal? Ultimately, I just want to make sure we have eyes on that. Yes. I just had a question, and I'm sorry I didn't bring it up when we were on the page, but page 16 about the assistant director position. I just wanted to clarify. So when we did have it prior to the Dudley override, which was in 23, what year was that? Was it 23? No, 22. Okay, time flies. Maybe it was 23. Dudley was 23. 23. Okay. So previously allocated that position was 40 to 50,000 but now we're budgeting 105 is that what they're go

021I just was just wanting to understand was that a subsidized position before like somebody had multiple roles? It's a great question. No that that was a very part-time position. Okay. So the reason why it's 105 now is the reason why the 40 50 is there is because we'd like to restore that. Yeah, which if you would to do the difference and you're looking at a fifty five thousand dollar difference But that those were those were two individuals that were very part-time Okay, and we eliminated that that position then but we need we need some of that back But we need a little bit more than that. So that's that's why it's a difference in the in the cost. That's good I just I couldn't remember I could Okay, perfect. Thank you. Yep. Any other questions?

022Okay, so we're gonna shut the hearing down at uh seven at six six forty eight six forty nine okay okay yeah all right so um and since all right so since uh so now entertain a motion and it's rather verbose so please bear with me so entertaining a motion for tonight we'd be voting on the fy 2027 operating budget capital budget and municipal assessments version 3.0 as presented today march 11th 2026. assessment version 3.0 reflects a 920 136 reduction in the overall operating budget and municipal assessments requests from version 1 dated february 4th 2026. the recommended fy27 operating budget being presented for approval tonight is $64,916,011. The FY27 budget recommendation includes to the Town of Dudley an operating assessment of $12,677,503 and a capital assessment of $348,400. $95 for a total of $13,025,998. The FY27

023budget recommendation also includes to the Town of Charlton an operating assessment of $21,420,000. $299,793 for a total of $21,720,494. I could really use a so moved. Thank you. Second. Thank you for not having me read that twice. Any discussion? Through the chair, I'd like to finish my first question. Thank you. Before we call for a vote. That's fine. So I think I have a pretty good handle on that diligent work you did, and I really appreciate it. I thought you gave good clarity, but is that in relation to just heating oil, or does it have anything responding to diesel fuel for transportation? So diesel fuel for transportation isn't going to be impacted at a high enough degree to where it's really noteworthy. Our electricity costs, outside of that for other energy costs, that's locked in

024with a company, Nextera, who we get a discount of our national grid rate based on locking that in. So based on our contractual obligations where we stand right now, we are prepared for completion of FY26 through operating. Thank you. Any other questions, discussion? The administration has done a robust job presenting this over the number of months and answering questions, and we appreciate that. Thanks, Olimo. Caitlin? Yeah. Slide 24, and I'm wondering if I could have some clarity on the three FTEs that were eliminated. Where are those specifically impacting? I believe those were attrition, weren't they? Yep, they're attrition, but if you look at the class size slide. That was presented there on slide 20. It will be identified on there. There are two positions on there. I thought it was in addition to attrition. And

025then there's one, we have identified one position in Shepherd Hill, which is 2DD. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Okay, it's unanimous. So I have your slides ready, so you just have to tell me which one you want to start with. I am cast. Okay. I did that one. Okay. But I'll have them ready to go. All right. I was just waiting for that. So we read Tom Thumb, we talked about it. The next day I was introducing our new story which was Thumbelina, which again, probably you're familiar with Thumbelina. So I asked the group, I said, if Tom Thumb is about a little boy who's the size of a thumb, what do we think Thumbelina might be about? And so I had one of our students, Maddox, Maddox raise your hand.

026So Maddox said, well, it's probably about a girl who drops things off, which wasn't expecting that. So I said, well, why, no, but what would make you think that? Why would you think that? She would drop things all the time. And this was in the fall, early in the year. And he said, well, if her name's Fumbelina, and she fumbles things all the time. And Maddox, he's on the Charlton Dudley Rams. He's a football fanatic. So I said, no, but that's an amazing idea. And I think we should write a book about a little girl named Fumbelina who drops things all the time. So very close to the beginning of the year, they wrote their very first Fumbelina book. And this one, I didn't give them much guidance other than, little girl named Fumbelina, she

027goes somewhere and drops something. So we did that one very early in the year. Then they want to immediately, I want to do another one, let's make this into a series, we need more Fumbelina books. So as we've been learning different things in our knowledge unit, decided, okay, we just got done learning about outer space, Fumbelina's going to go on an adventure to outer space. and she's going to go to a different planet, she's going to drop something, and why did she drop it? And so some of them tried to tie in things they learned about their planet into why she dropped it. So that's the second, but not last, edition of Fumbelina. So we'll go down, we'll introduce, and then they will each get to read their page. All right, so do you want

028to say your name? Victoria, the one and only. So I will read. So before I read, we did work on the introduction together. This was part of our writing lesson. What does a sentence need? Capitals, periods, and marks. We need to introduce our characters. So we were able to, you know, we used this to do our writing lesson. So once upon a time, there was a little girl named Fumbelina. She is called this because she drops things all the time. Fumbelina goes on many adventures in outer space. So she wasn't paying attention. She dropped her book because she wasn't paying attention. Dropped herself because she lost her balance. She tripped in a crater and dropped her air tank. Oh no! She needs it to breathe. Luna went to outer space. She said, I can't fly.

029This is awful. Then she walked into a planet. It was burning. Mars, she said. Oh my gosh. She fumbled. But alien because. Uh, things locked in it. Pumbalina went to the planet Mars. She dropped a baby alien because it broke out of her hand. Pumbalina went to the planet Jupiter. She dropped her camera because she wasn't being careful. A lot of us drop our cameras because we're not careful. She dropped her gummy Saturn because she was opening it and she dropped it. So we have a student that's not here, but his page needs to be read. So this is not hers. Bumble, you know, went to Neptune and she tripped and dropped her pizza. Mrs. Desto jumped down to get the cheese pizza. All of the kids know how much Mrs. Desto loves pizza. She

030would appear in our book. Not in Rockies. No, she would not. Not in Space. Bumble, you know, went to Neptune and dropped her Neptune stuffy. She dropped it because she was having fun. It made her sad. The end. that is the second installment of Pumbalina, but there's more to come. We're going to be learning about habitats, so Pumbalina is going to visit all the different habitats and write about the animals that she sees and what she dropped around those animals. Feel free to come to Mason Road anytime you want. We have ongoing books that are being written. They're in our library, and they've actually written quite a few books that the whole top shelf is devoted to their books that they write for the library. That is amazing. Thank you. That's really great. Nice job.

031I'll be taking you up on that offer. I said I'll be taking you up on that offer. Come check them out. These guys are amazing. Very proud of you guys. Nice job. Nice job, everybody. Thank you. All right. We don't have a follow-up. We're going to just watch. That's a good idea. All right, Gerald. I'll see you tomorrow. I know. I'll see you tomorrow. I'll miss you. What? I know. It's always so great when you go from the tension of a public hearing and then you're like, oh, that's why. It feels good. Unfortunately, back to business. Consent agenda items. So we have the approval of the minutes for the regular meetings of January 14th, February 4th, and February 10th of 2026. I guess we can tell that Celeste is back. All right. So does anybody

032need any of that pulled out, or can we go right into so moved? Awesome. Second. So all in favor then? It's unanimous. All right. Any communications? Friends of John Pair Golf Tournament will be held at Heritage Country Club in Charlton on May 16th. And registration is up and running. So this is the ninth year. Next Wednesday is the CPAC meeting at 6.30. That's the 18th. And at 6.30 is for the board. And then at 7 o'clock is for everybody else. And they're meeting at the Shepherd Hill Library. Anything else? Any other communications? No? All right. And then moving on to student representatives report. Haley? Winter sports season has finished for all sports, and spring sports tryouts begin next week. Show choir travel to Ohio for the Voices competition in Grove City, winning grand champions in

033their division and second place overall. Show choir also won grand champions, best vocals, best band, and best choreography at the Flamingo Show Choir Festival at Leominster High School this past weekend. Varsity cheerleading won the Division II Championship at the Regionals competition and traveled to the States this Sunday at Worcester State, winning third place. The academic decathlon team competed at MIT this Saturday for the States competition. National Honor Society is hosting a hygiene drive during the whole month of March, with all proceeds going to Abby's House in Worcester. National Honor Society will also be holding their inductions tomorrow the 12th. And finally, National Honor Society Kids Night Out will be held this Friday the 13th. That's David. Yep, Madam Chair of the school committee, I do have a couple of items to share. As you know,

034we've had, February's been kind of a unique weather-related month for us in Dudley-Charlton, as well as our state. But I want to report based on the school calendar and snow days that have been used to date, the last day of school for students is currently scheduled for Wednesday, June 16th, 2026. Should additional weather-related cancellations occur, that date would be adjusted accordingly. As always, the district will continue to monitor the calendar and keep families and staff informed of any changes moving forward. Next item, Shepherd Hill Engineering Program. I am pleased to share that the Shepherd Hill Regional High School has been awarded a $10,000 grant from the 1-8 Foundation in support of the Project Lead the Way High School Engineering Program. This funding will be distributed over three years and will help support and expand opportunities

035for students to participate in high-quality applied learning experiences in engineering and related fields. Through this program, Shepherd Hill joins a network of more than 350 schools across Massachusetts implementing PLTW. As part of the grant, the district and school representatives will participate in the 1-8 Foundation Grant Convening on April 15, 2026, which will bring together grant recipients from across the state to collaborate and learn from one another as these programs continue to grow. The next item I have is a student recognition, and this is through Project Lead the Way PLTW Biomedical Award. I would like to recognize Shepherd Hill Juniors Addison Foster and Elise Peculis, who were recently named winners of the Project Lead the Way Biomedical Award through Student Industry Connects 2026. Industry professionals reviewing their project highlighted the students' comprehensive research, analytical thinking, and

036ability to interpret diagnostic data and develop targeted recommendations. Their work was described as highly organized and reflective of a strong understanding of diagnostic testing and data analysis. This recognition speaks not only to the students' dedication and intellectual curiosity at Shepparton Hill Regional High School, but also to the exceptional instruction provided by Mr. Tom Kortemash and the opportunities available through the PLTW biomedical program at Shepparton Hill Regional High School. The next item I have is the USS Constitution essay contest. I am pleased to announce and would like to recognize Charlton Middle School student Wesley Albuquerque, whose work was selected as a winner in the USS Constitution historic essay contest. Wesley's essay received high scores from the contest review panel and earned him recognition as one of the statewide winners. As part of this honor, He will

037receive a commemorative plaque and a duplicate plaque bearing his name in Charlton Middle School will be permanently installed on board the USS Constitution. His essay will also be published in the ship's commissioning book that will be kept aboard the historic vessel. Congratulations to Wesley and to teacher Charles Farrar who encouraged students to participate in this meaningful opportunity. The next item I have, this is a very positive report this evening. I don't know if anyone's caught on to that yet. The next item I have is Massachusetts School Nurse Leader Award. I would like to congratulate Stephanie Moisson, who will be recognized by the Massachusetts School Nurse Organization Spring Conference on March 21st, 2026 at the Massachusetts Nurse Leader as the Massachusetts Nurse Leader of the Year. She is a nurse at Mason Road Elementary School, but

038she's also our nurse coordinator for all of our nurses within the district. This recognition highlights the important role our school nurses play in supporting the health, safety, and well-being of our students each day. We are proud of Stephanie and grateful for the care and professionalism she brings to her team and to our community. Clark Tournament Appreciation. I would also like to share a note of appreciation received from the Clark Tournament Committee, thanking Shepparton Regional High School for hosting the large school boys quarterfinal games of the 85th Clark University Tournament. The committee specifically recognized the outstanding work of Athletic Director Chris O'Donnell for his planning and coordination of an event that brought together eight teams, officials, staff members, and hundreds of spectators throughout the day. The next item I have is Teen Driver Safety Program. On

039April 3, 2026, upperclassmen at Sheppard Hill Regional High School will participate in a Teen Driver Safety Program presented through the Think Fast Interactive Initiative. Teen driver safety is an important issue nationwide and this program uses an engaging and interactive format to reinforce safe driving behaviors aligned with state and national guidelines. Through peer engagement and real-time learning activities, the program encourages students to view safe driving as the social norm and promotes responsible decision-making among new and future drivers. Programs like this support our ongoing commitment to student safety and preparation for responsibilities beyond high school. Please note that this program is free and it's endorsed by the Massachusetts State Police. So we're looking forward to this. My review with Principal Elwell, this is something a little bit different than we've done over the years, so we're looking

040forward to see what this program does and the feedback we receive from students on it. But it's engaging. I put a link in there, but if you were to look at it, it's kind of like a mix between Jeopardy and... some other game shows and stuff like that that some questions are asked so I think it's really interactive the students will have a controller to vote on things and stuff like that so we are looking forward we think it's a good engaging opportunity for our kids And the last item I have this evening is I would like to share information regarding the Jocko Foundation 5K Run Walk, which will take place on June 13, 2026 in Oxford, Massachusetts. Please keep in mind that we've had a growing relationship with Jocko. They've supported us establishing a

041Hope Squad for us as a district. Working with Principal Elwell, we'll have Hope Squad come into a school committee meeting and present what Hope Squad is at Sheppard Hill Regional High School. Oh, and I also, working with Principal Elwell, have asked that the... Juniors Addison Foster and Elise Peculis come in and present their biomedical presentation as well, how they received that award. So we're looking forward to those opportunities. But again, as we continue to work with JACO, which is a great local foundation, it supports mental health awareness and suicide prevention through our region. Events like this will bring our students, families, and community members to promote awareness, connection, and support for those who may be struggling. We are also, we have a meeting set up, I think, in two weeks to go over our 5K

042that we started last year. uh stop the stigma and we're looking to continue that going into next year and our continued relationship with jackal the jackal foundation and others uh for it and i did provide the flyer for the jackal strides for mental health memorial run walk as a strong partnership for us as a school district and that concludes the supernatants report this evening a lot of good good in that state any questions for the superintendent Since there's no public here this evening we're gonna move past public comment going straight into new business And on to Student Achievement Report, the Assistant Superintendent, Kelly True. Thank you. One of your many hats. Yes. Thank you very much. I am going to start with our MCAS assessment results report I did prepare two reports for the school

043committee this year I had done a report with the teaching and learning subcommittee on kind of our current state of performance from our own internal assessments and I thought that that information of just seeing where we are currently from the beginning of this year to the middle of this year would also be really helpful for us but first we're going to go through the MCAS assessment results and within that we have what we typically see in the student achievement report which is achievement in both math ela science and civics for grade eight also our student subgroup data for those populations and also our ap program highlights so we are going to jump into that the first are just kind of a few at a glance metrics that we have one of them is we did

044have full participation rate this year the the MCAS for last for last spring was a little heated only because of the graduation requirement timeline so at grade 10 I can see you know there definitely being some kind of unrest around what was going to happen with MCAS and with all the talk around that but we did have 97 to 100 percent participation rate throughout all the grades that take the test which is 3 through 10 we had 43 percent proficiency which was equal to the state average for grade three language arts grade four math proficiency was one above the state average at 44 percent grade five science was near state parity we had 45 percent the state was at 46 percent our ap students scored it was the number of ap students scoring three plus

045on their exam was 82 percent which is at a five-year high for us And then a 26 to 45% proficiency range for all subjects and grades. We fell within that range for proficiency ratings. So those are just a few highlights from our data. So the first slide really speaks to ELA proficiency, the district versus the state. So when we spoke about state averages for testing last year, I did not include the state information, and I did that purposely because... My belief is that here in Dudley Charlton with the raw material that we're working with that we should be well above the state with our scores being that you know all of our cities are factored into MCAS scores into the state scores I think you know we have opportunities for students to work more in

046line with teachers to do more than they might be able to in other districts or other areas and so I don't always like to judge us by what the state averages I always think that we should be a little bit higher than the state but I did include it this year there is a statewide trend of low scoring so it's not just our district there's a lot of districts that also are suffering from low scoring but i thought it was important to include in this round around so our grade three ela scores that's where we were matching the state at 43 percent proficient and then we unfortunately do decline from there with the greatest decline being in grade 10 ELA we were off by 14 points between what we achieved and what the state achieved

047which is a pretty significant amount difference when you're looking at achievement should be saying next slide but for math proficiency we did have a bright spot at grade four I will point out again that grade four is the only grade in the entire district that has extra time for math we typically we have 60 minutes of math at the elementary actually all the way through eighth grade even probably into high school we have about 60 minutes of math for grade four We switch from 120 minutes of ELA down to 90 minutes, so that extra 30 minutes is available. It's the only grade where we have that extra time is available to put towards math. So they actually have about 90 minutes of math in fourth grade, and that's the only year that they really have

048that extra time. So we typically see strong MCAS results from fourth grade, and that's why. We did not have strong results in grade six and grade eight for math. Those are two definite areas that we really want to target and look at for our students, especially our grade seven students this year and our grade nine students this year. So in grade six, we were 15 points below the state. In grade eight, we were also 15 points below the state. And then at grade 10, for ELA, we were, as I noted in the last slide, we were 14 points below the state. In math, we were nine points below the state. In science, we were four points below the state. The 14-point gap in ELA is definitely the most concerning out of our numbers. You know,

049that test is... a signal for post-secondary readiness for colleges. We don't want our students needing to take extra courses in their freshman year to have to kind of brush up on their ELA skills, their writing skills, their math skills. So it is concerning when we have our high school students that are not able to pass that test. For science and civics for all grade, we start testing science in grade five. We had 45% across the district were meeting. In grade eight, we had 35%. For grade eight civics, we were at 33%. And grade 10 science was at 42%, which was just below the state, which was at 46%. And this is our student subgroup and equity data. This is the place where we need to focus the most. We need to focus on the learning

050for all students, but we particularly need to really focus in on our subgroup performance. So on the left, in the first two columns, we have ELA and math for grades three through eight combined. And as you can see, The all students for ELA is 37% proficient. For math, it's 32%. And then as we go down to some of our larger subgroup populations, our low income, we can see that that goes down from the all students. The students with disabilities is a significant decrease from all students. And our English language learners is another significant decrease from all student proficiency. So we're at 37% of... students in three grades three three eight are proficient in ELA only 4% of our English language learners were and then this is the detail by grade for ELA proficiency and math

051proficiency for all students versus our students with disabilities specifically we had let's say our highest difference looks like was at grade 8 in ELA with 31 point gap between our all students proficiency and our students with disability So this is an urgent and critical area of need for us. Our English learner gaps are also a critical need for us Typically we see a lot of, well, there's newcomers at every level, but typically we do see a lot of newcomers coming in at our primary grades and our elementary grades, and then they're usually with us for several years while they are increasing their language proficiency, and we do start to see huge gains in those areas. We are seeing gains on our access testing, and we are seeing kids being moved from being multilingual learners into...

052graduating out of that program and being able to not need those services anymore so we we definitely are seeing progress but when it comes to taking a test like the mcas test our students are definitely not performing at where we would want them to so we didn't have any students proficient in ela at grade three in math at grade three we had six percent proficient in ela for grade four and the average grades three through eight combined ELA was a 4% proficiency. I probably shouldn't have put the AP program highlights right after our student subgroup data, but we did do, once again, really well with our most capable learners in our AP program. Could you go to the next slide, please? So in AP, we're at a five-year high of 82% scoring three or better.

053That's a 23-point increase from last year, which we've been doing really well. We've gone up almost every year, and we're definitely trending in the right direction, and it's definitely something to be proud of. Those students work very hard for that. So some of our strengths. would include I don't consider participation or eight really a strength but Considering it was a contestable year with 10th grade I I was a little worried about what was going to happen there and we didn't seem to take it from that so that was good our grade for math was above the state our grade 10 science we had Only 9% were not meeting in grade 10 science Which is 7 percentage points better than what the state had 16% that were not meeting in science Our grade three ELA met

054the state average. Grade five science was near consistent with the state, and then we had the AP five-year growth. And then for areas of concern, you know, several of these have been areas of concern that we've been working on for a few years now. Math came up as a concern last year. We did talk about math last year, and that is why we dedicated elementary PD this whole year to making math accessible for all learners. This year was the first year in trying to combat some of our mathematics problems We're also going to be looking at new curriculum in math at the elementary level so that will be a help But we still continue to really struggle in mathematics across the district Our subgroup population students with disabilities and our English language learners are definite

055areas of concern and our priority for us With two to fifteen percent proficient across most grades not just in any one subject for our students with disabilities our low income achievement gap still continues to be persistent and grows and our middle school ELA grades six through eight the gap is widening between the low income and students with disabilities they're the most impacted by that gap widening and our grade 10 ELA that 14 point drop from between What we were able to achieve in the state average was pretty significant and we definitely want to be looking at that one thing I did want to talk about is we we do have an opportunity in math in that when we were looking at the math data there seemed to be a more so in math than any

056other subject a Huge group of students who are at the partially meeting partially meeting level but at that higher level of partially meeting So it's it spans a number It's a pretty broad number. It's probably about 50 to 60 points. in that category for partially meeting, but we have a lot of kids who are right hovering at that cusp of almost there. And so we have to look at the instruction that's happening in tier one in our classrooms to look at for these kids that are almost there, you know, how can we give them just a little bit more to get them there? Like, do we need after school programs? Do we need clubs? Do we need, like, what do we need to do to get these kids that are kind of on that fence

057or on the higher end? of maybe being able to be successful at this assessment, how can we get them that little bit more that they might need? Because a lot of these kids, I suspect, are kids that maybe don't make it into a Tier 2 intervention because they're not... really showing that they need a lot of extra help, but they definitely do need some extra help. So they might be like right in that gap between kids who get a tier two intervention versus kids who are in the classroom maybe at a tier one. So I definitely want to dig more into the opportunity we have with some of our students that are really close to that cusp of just passing or just mastering that content in math. So that's something that we're going to be

058focusing on in the upcoming year is how can we get a little bit more support for our students that are showing that kind of need. And for our next steps. we definitely are going to be focusing on math as an initiative across the district we've already started this year at the elementary level as I said with the professional development that teachers have been getting all year that work that we're doing is also going to help us with the selection of a new math program and with the implementation of a new math program I am meeting with Hope Mifflin which is our program that we use at the middle school level for math I am meeting with them to talk about our scores about our curriculum to look at our usage to look at how people

059are using the program and to talk about what type of Professional learning we can offer our teachers at that level That will help to improve our scores at the middle school level because we're for see the four or five years into our implementation of math at the middle school so we should definitely be seeing our numbers climbing so I want to look a little bit more with them at the curriculum at how it's being used and and what we're doing but again without a whole lot of oversight in our buildings it's not easy to to know exactly what's happening in every math classroom and to be there to see how the curriculum's being used. Is it being used with fidelity? That's the kind of oversight that we don't have. And that makes it very difficult.

060So a math initiative for the district. I'm looking at working with the same company that we worked with this year for professional development in math at the elementary level to work with our middle school teachers next year and then bring that up to the high school level. It's also an action step for looking at our students with disabilities, our English language learners. All of those things kind of are wrapped in together with the professional development because it all goes hand in hand. One of the things that I'm trying to do through professional development, which is difficult, is to bring in coaches and people who can work in classrooms with teachers on a regular basis. to do some of this work and to have some oversight on some of this work. However, it's difficult because the

061professional development money that we have comes essentially from our Title II grant. I use all of that money for professional development. That's what it's for. But if I'm using that money to then bring in people like coaches to work in the classrooms, then valuable money that could be used for more instruction in professional development is being used. on the job, which is, that's the way professional development should be, but that's a lot of money going into things that we should be able to provide for ourselves. So, we're using a lot of money for professional development, and I'm not seeing huge gains in our scores. we have high quality instructional materials we're doing high quality professional development but we're not seeing a lot of gains in our scores so that tells us there's a breakdown in

062the system somewhere and I would say that that breakdown is oversight Question I think earlier you said in grade four they spend an extra 30 minutes on their blocks do you think that has any impact on some of the drop-off for the next grade levels Part of the equation? It could be part of the equation. But I feel like in fourth grade, they do a lot of... leveling the playing field. So it's a lot of bringing kids back up to speed that maybe were not as up to speed, doing some enrichment for our students who are ready to move on for more, but really trying to level the playing field in there and get that real mastery of the content that they need till fourth grade. So I think they do a lot of kind

063of leveling out more so than really, you know, getting, because they would, there would be a lot of exceedings. On the MCAS, if that were the case, if they were really stretching them, we would see a lot of exceeding. The exceeding doesn't come out as much in this report, but that is another area that we really do need to look at because our exceeding numbers are not there. In most cases, in many cases, it's 1% or 2% that are exceeding. So not only are we not showing proficiency, but we also aren't moving any of our kids from proficient into exceeding. It's hard to say. I mean, you know, it definitely could be a factor. Just something you had said that kind of jumped out at me. Yeah. I tend to believe that, you know, math

064gets harder as these kids get older. And in the, you know, from my experience... after fourth grade and on, you know, work that's sent home isn't necessarily parent helpful friendly. So for those parents who want to help their child but can't do them, it's not coming home with here's the breakdown of the examples anymore. So it's harder for the parent to help and parents are used to, you know, paper and pencil and work it out and see it and we're doing a lot more online. And that's just not for everybody. So I feel like if there's programs out there or ways that, you know, you almost have to reteach these parents to help these kids. Obviously I'm not saying we need to teach, but have some of the supports in place so that the parents,

065there are some parents who want to help their children but cannot. I'm thankful for my husband. Every time math homework comes along for my eighth grade, like I just couldn't do it. Fortunately he can without looking, but you either know it or you don't. And if the parent can't help, you know, where's your homework? Oh, I did it. And they look at it and go, well, I don't know this. Ask your teacher. Like, I feel like, you know, you missed that help. That's a tool. You just missed that helpful tool. And it kind of drops off, obviously, as they get older in most of the curriculums that I've seen. I will say that any curriculum that we have brought in has a very robust home connection and parent. connection, they have newsletters, they have all

066kinds of information that can go home. So maybe we need to make that more of a priority that teachers are sending that home. So I did come up with some very modest, very modest improvement targets for 25-26. I'm looking for essentially a five point increase in ELA and math scores. It's really hard to make a lot of progress in one year. So to go up any amount of points, I'm really looking to go up any amount of points at this point. More points would be better. Looking at modest targets five points for ela and math three points for our students with disabilities I want to reduce the low income gap by at least three points and sustain our AP progress For next year and that concludes the MCAS report of the student achievement report any

067other questions on that report before we move into the Second report which is our growth and achievement report. So In Dudley Charlton, we use a few different internal assessments and our internal assessments help us to kind of keep the pulse of what's going on currently in our schools. Every year we get a baseline at the beginning of the year with beginning of the year data, which is assessments that are given to students as soon as they start as fast as possible, right in the beginning of September. Is there a breakdown between on the MCAS results between W. Charlton grades between like could you tell like say the Charlton students in grade four are through the roof and the Dudley ones aren't or vice versa or something or a different subject like is there that kind

068of data you can get that kind of data yes okay and in this report and I did disaggregate it by school okay well that's what I was wondering if it but they do have that for MCAS as well yes okay that's what I was wondering if it would be worth looking at So in this report, we have two main assessments that we'll be looking at. One of them is the M-Class assessment through Amplify, which is also known as DIBELS. That is an assessment for decoding. It's how kids are able to decode as readers. So it's a lot of letters, whole words, fluency, that kind of thing. So that goes from grade K all the way through grade 3. And then we have our MAP data, which is our measured progress. It's from NWEA, and that

069we use for both MAP and ELA for different grade levels. So at grade one, we start testing with MAP, and MAP is pretty much the only assessment that we have for MAP. But we do Amplify, MClass, up to grade three, and then we switch at grade three. We also do MAP going forward through ninth grade. so we have two different assessments with a whole bunch of different data at different grade levels and this is how we are doing from the beginning of the year this year to the middle of the year this year with the students we have in front of us right now if that makes sense So on the overview, K through 9 is assessed in reading. 1 through 9 is actually assessed in math. I don't know why that has an 8.

070That shouldn't be. We do assess 1 through 9 in grade math as well. All seven schools are included, and we have fall and winter benchmark skills. Interestingly enough, our youngest learners learn the most and learn the fastest. So our kindergarten scores are off the chart for both. Mason Road and Charlton Elementary. They are doing outstandingly well in kindergarten and I should have included the national kindergarten norms so that you could see what the national norms look like for kindergarten because they definitely start with more students in the red and have still more students mid-year in the red than way more than we do at these levels. And as you can see both Charlton Elementary School and Mason Road are pretty consistent with the progress that they were able to make. which is nice to see

071as well. So we started in kindergarten with 62% of students at the beginning of the year reading below grade level. In kindergarten at Charlton Elementary, at Mason Road, it was 72% below. And then at mid-year, we had improved that score to only 27% being below by mid-year at Charlton L and 25% being below at Mason Road. And that's pretty impressive when you think about it such a short span of time from kids coming into their first school experience for a lot of them and learning what school is all about to being able to make that much progress in reading is pretty good. looking at grade one and this is reading again we had 15% below at the beginning of the year at Charlton L now we're down to 12% below at Mason Road at the

072beginning of the year we had 44% below and now we're down to 34% below so about a 10 point percentage increase for both of those schools at first grade level which they're doing pretty well the gap is shrinking So the first grade benchmarks for the beginning of the year, unlike kindergarten, there's a little bit of a difference between Charlton-Allen and Mason Road. Yes. Do we have any guesses on why that data is skewed a little different than kindergarten? Well, they're definitely two. different populations Mason Road has a lot of Well beat the as they qualify for title one. They have a lot more low-income Low socioeconomic, but you know those that's definitely not the only reason It would be hard to kind of tease out I'd have to look at their last year's or is

073there spring score is going into first grade unless it I know Jen do you have any Oh, sorry. I thought you were looking at me like you had something to say. We're talking about the disparity between Charlton, Allen, Mason Road at the beginning of grade one. It's very close in kindergarten, but there's a little bit of a difference when it comes to the beginning of year for first grade. The year benchmark went up like, we're going to do this. And that's what I was thinking. And I think the expectation, even from the Dibbles, is different from what they had in kindergarten. But I do think our demographics are very different. And, you know, it is sad because we don't have a lot of families that have time to read to their kids at night or

074have their kids tell them a story by flipping through the book. But I have to say, like, yeah, the numbers say something, but these kids, given their very best, something's working. They're amazing. I'm just wondering. frequent the library in Charlton every summer with mine and the place is packed yeah and so I'm curious without any data if if they are keeping up with their reading over the summer and it's showing on their return to school in the first grade I'm just curious because they make it up as they go through the chair for clarity these are two different cohorts two different cohorts from yes they're not these are not the same kids that went through kindergarten right now in grade one the two different cohorts Yes, because this is current. These are current. But, you

075know, I... Understood. I get you. I see what Stephen's saying now. Yep. When you look at the... And so this shows you also... With Mason Road having Title I and having additional people to provide interventions because we have more students on that side that need intervention, but you can see that they're able to keep up with, like, if 15% of Charlton L students were below at grade one, you can say that's probably... 20 kids maybe 20 kids or so and only they've gone from 15% below to 12% below with those you know probably same students But we had 44% below you know like we've made the same amount of progress with a bigger amount of students At Mason Road, but they're still I mean they're they're all making progress So you know we are shrinking

076that gap and that's what that is showing us And the students who are in the red are definitely students that are in intervention. They're getting additional, beyond their traditional ELA blocks, they're getting additional instruction beyond that. But these kids, though, are they also, are these just grade one Charlton Elementary students? Or are these also grade one Charlton Elementary students in a sub-separate? No, these are, oh, I see what you're saying. Like, is this every single grade one student? I do not believe that the sub separate students I think some of them do DIBELS but I'm not sure that every single student does a DIBELS it wouldn't be appropriate for every student but I can't tell you off the top of my head how many are included this is the kind of the aggregate data for

077the school looking at grades two and three for DIBELS we have improving trends at both Dudley Elementary and Heritage School We have for grade two in grade three is a sticking point at both Dudley and Elementary and Heritage School we have Gone up in our below students so at the beginning of the year Which is it's funny that they have the same numbers and I did check that twice, but it's a different makeup of both That is their numbers make up the same amount but different numbers so Dudley Elementary went from having 25% below at the beginning of the year to having 31% below at the middle of the year Heritage went from 25% below to 31% below so we had declining rates in the amount of students we had in the red for grade

078two it was increased and then if we start looking at our elementary math data in grades one through four this is map growth This is going to show us our achievement if we look for grade one at Charlton Elementary We see it. We have an improving trend. We're stable at grade one at Mason Road. So The fall achievement was the 52nd percentile. They went down slightly, but that's still considered considered stable At Charlton Elementary they had gone up six points For grade two at Dudley L. We are definitely improving we went from the 55th percentile to the 62nd So we had good improvement there at Heritage it went down it declined from the 61st down to the 57th at grade two for math Grade 3 at Dudley L, we had a slight gain from 57th

079to 59th. At Heritage, we went from 66th to 67th, so we had gains there. And that achievement is a pretty high achievement to start with. 66th, that's pretty high, and it's harder to sustain. So getting that point in there was pretty good. Dudley L for grade 4, we had a slight gain from the 52nd percentile to the 54th. And at Heritage, we went to the 55th to the 60th, so improving there. So when you're looking at our elementary map growth data for mid-year right now and looking at that achievement, we're seeing from our own internal assessments that, you know, 66th percentile for achievement is pretty good. And, I mean, if we were achieving 66% proficiency on MCAS, I'd be a lot happier right now. So these assessments are more targeted towards what they are learning

080in their classrooms around grade level skills, but they are standardized, nationally normed assessments. So they should be showing us pretty accurate data. So if this is an accurate picture of what's happening right now, then I'm hopeful that our scores in spring on our MCAS testing will go up. And then in grades four and five, we have map growth data for both those grades, for both those subjects. For grade four at Dudley Elementary, we are improving from 54th to the 58th. At Heritage, it went from the 59th to the 68th, so strong gains there. they are also for the growth when we look at growth it's how students have grown kind of against where they were for themselves and growth is usually measured 40th percentile rank to 60th is considered average with 50 being right smack

081in the middle so just to call attention to grade 4 reading at Heritage right now they had a 76th percentile growth in reading which is a pretty high growth percentage that's even above the high end of average and kind of off there so I definitely wanted to call attention to that and for the rest of the grades you know grade five math we are improving at both Charlton middle and Dudley middle we were able to increase in both of those For grade five reading, we had a slight dip from the 64th down to the 61st percentile. And then at Dudley Middle, we went from the 58th percentile to the 67th percentile, which was a pretty strong gain. But if you look at our growth, it's in the 50s and 60s for every one of those

082scores, and that's really great growth for kids. And then here is one of our priority concern areas, which would be math at the middle schools. Math at Charlton Middle, we declined from the fall achievement to the mid-year achievement. Grade 6 at Dudley Middle, we also declined from 59th to 55th. At Charlton Middle in grade 7, we improved from the 56th to the 61st, which was great. At Dudley Middle in grade 7, we went down two points and declined there. At Charlton Middle, they are stable, or they call it flat. They are flat at the 46th, but they didn't lose any gains. And at Dudley Middle, we declined from the 63rd to the 56th for grade 8. So those scores are a little more in tune with what we're seeing, you know, with MCAS testing and

083across that board. When we get into middle school reading, it's a little bit more of a bright spot. We're improving. We had two stable, you know, grade 6 and grade 7 at Dudley and Charlton Middle both. They were both stable at grade 7 reading at Dudley Middle, improved by five points. So the reading data is a little bit more of a bright spot than that. Grade 9 at Shepherd Hill, for Algebra 1, the growth percentile was 69th percentile, which is a really high growth. The fall achievement was the 48th percentile. The winter was the 52nd, so they're showing gains there. Fifty percent of kids are in those top two growth tiers, so like meeting and exceeding. for reading the fall achievement percentile was the 65th percentile. We did not do mid-year data in ELA this

084year. I don't think we did it last year either. They, as a department, they decided they wanted to do pre or baseline data in the fall and spring testing in the spring. So they get a beginning of year and end of the year. But I believe next year when we really start in with our interventions, we are going to have them do mid-year data. so that we have that mid-year score for them for ELA. But we do have the benchmark for ELA, which is the 65th percentile for achievement, which is pretty high achievement for ninth grade coming in. So we also have a lot of the strengths that we talked about, dramatic gains in kindergarten at both schools, heritage in grade four, 76th percentile for growth. Grade nine algebra growth is huge at almost 70%.

085The grade nine reading baseline is strong with, you know, what it was 65th percentile. The grade six reading at both schools shows above average growth and grade seven Dudley for reading was the middle school's top result at 67th percentile. There's a lot of priority actions for the data for this year because we have these students in front of us right now, which would be looking at the gap in the grade one decoding from Charlton versus Mason Road just to kind of dig in a little bit there and see if we have any other things that we can be doing intensive intervention and grades for one in three oh I'm sorry intensive intervention for one in three of grade two to three students are still below decoding benchmarks at mid-year so we really want to look

086at who those students are that are still well below make sure that they're in the appropriate interventions and see if they might need more intervention or they might need a different program or they might need a smaller intervention group or how can we change things up at this time Seeing where they are right now, and if they're not making the gains that we expect them to make how can we change that with their intervention programming We really need to do an urgent review of grade six in Both grade six and grade eight at both schools for math to dig in and see what what's happening there You know there's we have been trying to do a lot to combat Some of these areas that we know are priority areas for us, looking at our professional

087development, looking at our programming. trying to we bargain to have an intervention block put in at the secondary level at our middle school level we're working on that for the high school level we have that block in there and now the work begins with what do we do with that block of time so particularly at the middle schools we have an intervention and enrichment block in there now we need to make sure that we're looking at the right assessments that we're making the right groups that we have programming that fits what those targets need that we give professional development to the teachers in how to run interventions versus their regular core instructions because it is really different and we haven't really done any intervention work at the secondary level at all and we're looking at

088doing the same thing with the high school next year as well so we have these intervention times in there we need to really get effective at using those at the elementary we've been doing that for a lot longer we've had intervention blocks for a lot longer we've been using data to guide our instruction and to do those those practices are really firmly in place but they are just starting out at our secondary levels so a lot has been focused on that and a lot will be focused on that for next year when i was looking at the beginning of your data with math at the middle schools and such and then you look at the mid-year review is it possible that maybe there's certain units Within the curricula that are the more challenging than others

089that might need that focus not necessarily because our Assessments are adaptive assessments. Okay, so they're individualized per the student. So they start out on grade level They begin to asking you know be answering questions As they get questions wrong, the test changes. And it will drop them down or it will go up. If they get so many right in a row, it'll move them up. If they get so many wrong in a row, it'll move them down. So that it really, through that process, that really fine-tuning through their answering of questions gets down to exactly their strengths and weaknesses so that you can see, even in lower content or higher content, kind of how they answered. So I'm not necessarily... Thinking that it's it's that kind of an issue with that. I think it's because

090the test is adaptive. It's less likely I'm just wondering if they're stumbling on some of the acquiring of material as it's presented and so that when they get to the test that's when they're that's why they're having a slide. Yes and that is very possible which is that's the premise behind a multi-tiered system of support is that when you're giving instruction in your core areas in the classroom and you see that kids aren't grasping the content then you provide an extra intervention to kind of get them back up to speed so that when they do take an assessment they do well on it and those are the systems and practices that we haven't had in place at the middle school up and this year we're starting with it but we're really in the beginning phases

091sure yeah includes the total of the student achievement report for Dudley Charlton for this year through the chair is it possible next year if we could have This data since it's already been comprised and then next year's data as it's available so we can see the trend sure I know personally I'd like to see a graph because I think it's like I've seen that it'll give us a historical look back I've seen like a heard Very similar stories over the past four years and I would like to see a full the trend Especially since I've heard about of three different people now Update professional development assistant superintendent Kelly true. Yes. We'll make this So we do have another full day professional learning day our second one this year coming up I am very excited to

092get this underway we have some wonderful things planned for the day a lot of what you are going to see in here are things that you have seen before it's a lot of continuation of things that we have been working on and Keep in mind that along with anything that I have scheduled on here Our teachers also also always have the option to write a proposal for the day. So when I send out The the big communication to staff that has all of the different options for the day They always have the ability to write their own proposal for collaboration with colleagues on a project that they want to work on, a PD that they found, anything like that, they can put in a proposal and it will be approved as long as it matches

093all of our criteria for professional development. They also have our PD library that they can choose from on this day, which helps them to do assignments that will... get PDPs for their re-licensure and all of the books that are in our PD library are geared towards making learning accessible for all students so they have that option as well. We have several different content areas that will be receiving professional development on our full day, one of which being ELA. At the middle levels, they are going to be working on how to use Writable, which is part of our ELA program, and it's an online writing tool for students and teachers. It benefits both of them to use, so they'll be getting some professional development in that. our grades six through eight math teachers will be getting

094professional development that is geared more towards what i spoke about during the student achievement report which is what if we're using high quality instructional materials where is the breakdown between what's being taught in the classroom and the scores that we're seeing on our assessments i'm working with houghton mifflin to design that professional development after we look at some of our usage data and kind of what's happening there so they will be having that professional development grade five teachers who will be implementing into math starting in totality next year we have our Charlton teachers started using it this year our Dudley teachers are learning about it this year and will implement next year so they will be having professional development in math on that day through Houghton Mifflin also our ESL curriculum that we have is

095through Houghton Mifflin. Our ESL teachers will be working with a Houghton Mifflin representative on English 3D, which is our new ESL program that we're working on. And then we have a new company that we're going to be working with, JFY Consultants, on the best way to use AI in the classroom, tools for students. Then we have an AI session that is about AI for educators, productivity, and more specifically, lesson design, really looking at how AI can help teachers with lesson design. So we've done a lot of work with Universal Design for Learning. We've done work with Eric Scheninger, who's also coming back on personalization. you know frankly when we're doing walkthroughs like we're also not seeing a lot of UDL practices and those kind of practices in classrooms so we've done a lot of professional

096development we've seen some really great work from a lot of good teachers but With the introduction of AI and with the tools that teachers have at their disposal, in my opinion, there's no reason why this work isn't happening. I mean, for any lesson that you need to do, any standard that you need to teach, you can put it into AI and say, universally design this with choices and options. It will do it for you. So we need to get the right tools and the right... learning into teachers hands because if that is the barrier that they don't have enough time to plan that kind of learning or to design those kind of lessons then this is what's going to help them to get there and this is what our students need so so we have

097a few different sessions that will be looking at different aspects of how to use ai both with students and from the lesson design perspective those are only two professional development providers, but they're offering multiple sessions. That's why it looks like it's a lot of sessions. We also have Melissa Davis coming back. She's been working with our paraprofessionals for the last two years. She is going to be taking a little bit different of a track with our paraprofessionals, and we'll be focusing on how to address behaviors related to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in the classroom. So she'll be working with paraprofessionals on that. Eric Schoeninger is going to be coming back. He'll be doing two different sessions on implementing personalized learning. We also are going to have the ladies from Love and Logic back. They are

098going to be doing something a little bit different and doing some sessions, repeated sessions, that will introduce us to the concepts of discipline with dignity. And it's essentially about how our behavior as adults helps to shape students' behavior. So when you're calm, they're calm, you know, like those types of things. So we have that coming back as well. We do have several in-house things that are going to be happening, which I always love when teachers and staff offer to do things for other teachers and staff, and I think that's a great way to professionally develop our educators. We have one of our behavior analysts is going to be doing a session for paraprofessionals on how to create independence through our prompting and lessening our prompting. We're also our one of the special education coordinators and

099a school psychologist at the high school level are going to be doing some work with teachers around lesson design planning Writing special education reports that are more parent friendly and have more real-world examples in them They're going to be doing that session. So we have a few different things that are going on in-house as well So there's a lot happening on this day. But one of the things that I'm most excited about isn't actually part of the professional learning per se, but we are trying to, I had an intern this year, which I was very lucky to get an intern from Nichols, and she has been doing amazing work for me. She's very capable and talented, and she's been helping me. I've always had this idea of putting together an educator expo. for one of

100our full-day professional development days. It's something that you typically see when you go to a conference. It's something that's expected at professional events that are professional. And so I'm trying to maybe lift the level of our professional development day a little by offering an expo for teachers. It's going to be an expo slash wellness. So we have three different sessions happening on the professional learning day. They will be able to select the expo slash collaboration as one of their sessions. So it'll be a total of two hours time. And within that time, they'll be able to work with colleagues to collaborate, but they'll also be able to go to this expo. And the expo is going to have educators side to it. Magic School is going to be there, Really Good Stuff, which is an

101educational company that teachers love, is going to be there. Mifflin is coming with some of their high school materials for teachers to look at. We have a lot of different curriculum things that are happening, and we've invited a lot of those people to come in so that teachers can talk to them while they're walking around. But on the wellness side of it, we also have classes that teachers can sign up for for wellness. So we have yoga coming in. We have meditation coming in. We have Reiki coming in. We have a painting class that's coming in. So things that teachers can sign up for that is a small snippet of their day. You know, it might only be 20 minutes, 30 minutes of their day, but it's something that they can do just for themselves

102on a PD day where it's kind of an odd day anyway. It's not following a normal routine. So it's something that we can give back to teachers that they can do that I think is going to go a long way for. the professional learning. Everyone's more open to professional learning when you've had a good Reiki session. So I'm excited about that. Are you excited about the PD or the Reiki? I'm excited about all of it. All of it. The PD is my favorite, but I'm excited to see how this is going to go because I've never done an expo on a professional. There's so many moving parts to the professional development alone that if I didn't have the intern, it would have been really hard to do. But having laid this groundwork for it now

103and having all the forums, all the stuff, all those things, then we'll see if I'll be able to pull it off in the future. Yes, everything's gonna be at the high school so that people can move freely and have time to go to the Expo when they have time to go and not have to travel so It's easier. I think to do it all here the underlying messages don't get used to it because it might not happen again Yes, yes by very popular request the Expo That's what we have planned Thank you any further questions for Kelly true She's got one. I do have an extra throat loss. Oh, thank you. All right. So then seeing none, moving on to Director of Finance and Operations, Joe DeSantis, who has C, D, and E on the

104agenda, which is the Charlton Elementary School Fire Panel upgrade, FY26 operating budget suspension, and FY25 fiscal year closeout since he put it all on one budget memo. thank you madam chair i just have a few updates for school committee with relation to those subjects matters listed as new business first the charlton elementary school fire panel update the fire alarm panel at charlton elementary school is the final project that's yet to be completed of the projects that were identified and funded by the capital bond from 2023 The project will be available to bidders today, March 11th, at 9 a.m. The general bid deadline is April 22nd at 11 a.m. At that point, DCRSD will provide the school committee a summary of pricing sheets and a recommendation of an awarded vendor once the bids are collected. Replacement

105of the fire panel itself is slated to commence. at the toward the end of june late june after school is out for the year and right now our final completion date is targeting early to mid-august prior to school beginning for 26-27 school year moving on to the operating budget suspension well the operating budget and subsequent suspension for FY26. FY26 is still within our established operating parameters. That's inclusive of our encumbered costs such as salaries and other contractual obligations. This is Also inclusive of what we have already created purchase orders for for the remainder of the year. The budgetary suspension was instituted the week of the 19th, January 19th of 2026. So from that point to present, any additional purchase order that's needed to be put in has had to... receive approval at my level, the

106finance director level. So I plan on in an April school meeting, school committee meeting, I will provide a full detailed operating budget update that is through March. That'll give us an idea of where we stand going into the final quarter of the school year. At that point, I will also move to request any transfers, cost center transfers that may need school committee approval. So I'll have a further update. in April school committee meeting. Finally, I just want to update our FY25 fiscal year closeout. The FY25 closeout is still in process. As you know, CBiz, our audit firm, started and commenced their annual audit for DCRSD financial statements back in November. We're still awaiting the final financial statements to be issued. and subsequent audit testing results to this point we don't have any identified findings excess

107and deficiency certification is in process for finalization with our certified results expected in the coming days so happy to answer any question on any one of those subjects okay anyone else for Joe Are we talking for specifically for the oil? Yeah, yeah That was everything I apologize You sure you don't want to recap the oil Questions on it more than having to go into further detail about fracking going into old business proposed handbook changes we still need to vote on that for the school year of 2026 2027 so in the packet should be all the updated language from from that so i need to entertain a motion to accept those all right motion second we have any discussion i'd like to request the middle school to be pulled from the motion for discussion second that

108so then everybody but the middle school everybody but the middle schools okay so do we have any discussion then all right you want to come back to the middle school for discussion so why don't we just vote on the other ones we'll get them out of the way and then we'll get the middle schools okay so then this one is for the elementary schools in the high school okay so then all those in favor All right, it's unanimous for those. And so now we'll just go to the middle school. So I brought up the question last meeting about an infraction log that was in practice at CMS, and it's still not in mention in the proposed handbook. And so I'd like to know if that's going to continue forward or not. if there's parity between

109the two middle schools if that's a common practice and further if it is being in practice what is what is the structure of that look like because as a parent at CMS I just would like to know what that what that framework looks like so that I can support as a parent and sympathy with the schools Chris are you coming up Madam, through the chair, just as a reminder, Mr. Destow presented the handbook changes the first time. Principal Bogosh was not available that night, and Mr. Destow is not available tonight, so Principal Bogosh is here. So why I'm saying that is because you will hear parity, but for that clarification, I think it's really appropriate. In regards to your question, I hope I answered it correctly. We did think about that, but one of your

110suggestions was to let parents know in the beginning of the year, teams to know how it is. Because we don't, across the school, different teams, we give them some autonomy to how they want to do things. So we think that needs to come, like you said, in some communication, rather than making one... Thing in the handbook if other teams don't do that So we want to give them some autonomy to do that, but they do need to communicate it So you know so that will have to come out in the communications and like the beginning of the year how that is if that's what they're doing And I appreciate that giving that autonomy to different groups of educators. However, if you are a family that has multiple students at the school and now we have

111one standard for one child and one standard for another child, that seems to be kind of tough to mitigate as a family. By standards, you mean like... Well, if you have a seventh grader and you have an eighth grader and they're in different groups, or even if you had twins that are seventh and seventh and they're in different groupings so that if the way that the infraction log is implemented, now you have one standard for one child and one standard for another, and that's where I have concerns that we're not having consistency, and it's hard for a family to parent. for lack of a better term, because you now have one standard for one child and one for another. I'm probably not phrasing that right, but I just really, maybe it's the referee in me

112that a consistent standard, at least a baseline, where you can have different levels of elevation on the ladder for discipline, but the base framework should be consistent, it seems to me. So are you concerned that they're handling things differently at the teacher level? Or are you saying how they're logging it is inconsistent? I thought you were talking about the log. Well, I guess we don't know that because we don't have any framework whatsoever. Like you said, we don't have any communication. So it's a very... On how they log it or how they do it. Or what does a student do to progress to an infraction log? What kind of offenses? How many recurrences? After they get in the infraction log, what is the... It's just there's no framework or understanding from a family. and how

113to support the teachers so that the students don't get themselves on the infraction log or if they have the unfortunate they get on the infraction log don't do that how not to get there again you know like if I can turn to the to the to the handbook and say hey you know what this remember we talked about appropriate I'm using a hypothetical use of technology I can I can kind of make up examples based on the language that's in the handbook but with an infraction log What constitutes an infraction? There's nothing for me to work off of. So I'll have to work more with the teachers on that because stuff comes to us. We let you know all the time what it is. Some things are handled. We want kids to, we might give

114them a warning or a talking and let them self-correct. So it's really hard to be black and white with... some disciplinary things so we try to but i see what you're saying with the infraction log if one team has something and the other team doesn't we have and it's not uncommon that a family has multiple kids within one school right right right so i don't know if it belongs in the handbook one in sub separate one and sub separate in inclusion and one in the include you know so it's just a little bit of a nightmare for me you know as a referee i understand you know somebody commits an infraction, I have at my disposal option A, B, and C, depending on severity. But it still falls in the bucket of this, and I

115can use it in an example or a teaching tool, say, hey, you crossed the line, make sure you don't escalate to this, and next time let's do this. But if I don't have anything, then if it's not in the rule book, then... I'm not allowed to, as a referee, to use it. And so I would think, as a parent, if I want to support teachers and make sure that any occasion that kids are kids and they step out of line, hey, here's a kind of an example of what we could get you in this kind of hot water. Let's stay away from this or how we can pivot away from it. I don't, because there's nothing at all, no framework, I as a parent really feel lost on how aspect to work in that arena.

116And it almost, it's just, it's too vague. Because there's no guidance, there's no framework, there's no anything. I would say we'd have to work on something like that. That would take a long time. Like you would need like a committee. I already like think about things just within the school, like what's teacher handled versus what's administration handled. We still have work to do with that because sometimes they send them down or we're doing all the, you know, like meeting the principals or communicating more. Maybe it really should be the teacher. But I do receive questions from parents saying, where is it in the handbook? My kid came home. They got an infraction log. I don't know anything about it. And then I go, that's a good point. I don't know what to tell you. Let

117me think if I can figure this out a little bit. Okay. Well, I think we need to work on that. I don't know how to put it in right now into the handbook. We need to work across schools what that looks like. I don't know. To the chair. Would it be okay to consider approving these changes? Yes. And then have Principal Bogosh and Principal Desto come back? I would support approving the recommendations tonight as proposed and please inviting them as maybe in the summer before we disseminate handbooks to families to at least have a very basic. understanding of it may be implemented differently with different groups but here are some examples of things that may fall in these categories before august yes so maybe july or um but yes i i would i would support

118approving this through the chair You know, I know that the committee members, some members at times have asked for this timeline for approvals and stuff like that. This is one of the reasons why, because it does take effort to put things to changes. So usually it's the end of the school year. There could be something that still bubbles up between now and June that requires a handbook change. I can tell you if school committee takes action on a policy tonight, that policy is going to have to go in the handbook. So that's another change that's going to have to come. So it's an ongoing process. You know, you do look at it as kind of a policy. I appreciate that. But this is... know part of the reason why we did this was also because

119of our integrated monitoring thing as well so i appreciate the school committee's support but i also appreciate that you there are some other things that still need to be done between now and august sure um we uh are you would you entertain a motion oh yeah i would entertain a motion i entered uh i motion that we accept the middle school handbook changes as presented tonight second since we've already had discussion right all those in favor thank you thank you thank you all right and then moving on to policy action up for action mr lamarche would you like to pick this one up i would love to right madam chair and school committee these are three policies that have already been distributed I didn't write down the distribution date. I usually inform that as part

120of this process. But they were distributed to the school community, I believe, in January. They were sent out to the community for feedback. Weren't they distributed twice? I was getting to that. Oh, sorry. You can take over. No, I'm sorry. You can take over. I'm not chair of policy sub Maureen. I wasn't asking Maureen to take over. I wasn't going to throw her under the bus either. So there was... There was absolutely no feedback on these three policies at that time so the policy subcommittee decided to resend them out to the community to see if we can get feedback. We did receive one response for feedback on these. The feeling from policy sub and others was that these are at least two out of the three are considered what i would call heavy or big

121policies so that's why we wanted to go back out uh the one person who did provide feedback i did communicate with that person and said well it was a great point and we'll provide that feedback and then the second part of our feedback was more procedural so we'll look at that from an administrative perspective after if school committee takes actions on these policies okay So these are up for action this evening. Again, they've already been distributed. They've been distributed twice, actually. The first policy is EFBA. This is school food and nutrition meal modifications. This is a new policy to the district. This has not only been reviewed by... by you as a committee when they were distributed, by the Director of Food Services, and also the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. This is a

122requirement for us moving forward, not only for grants, but the opportunities to be part of continuing to offer free lunch, et cetera, those types of things. So this is an important policy to put on the books. It really speaks to... that the district will ensure that school meals offered through the school food nutrition program meet usda meal pattern requirements the district will provide meal substitutions or modifications at no extra charge for students whose disability or other special dietary needs restrict their diet as determined on an individual basis families must complete a required request form which can be provided by the school for school school food and nutrition program and there's there's a link in there and that will be on the website as well the meal modification request form So I would recommend that this

123policy does get moved. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? It's unanimous, Steve. Excellent. The next policy is the IKF graduation requirements. Keep in mind that there's already an IKF graduation policy on the books, but the state did come down and say that there was more work to do. If you recall, when I distributed this, I shared that the state and the governor and committee are working on other graduation requirements that they hope to get out in June. So this will be in place now. We did have to submit the components of this policy to the state. The state did approve what we submitted based off of this policy. And this is a policy we didn't we receive zero feedback from the community after two submissions to the community So I would recommend that

124we move forward with this policy as well Any discussion hearing none all those in favor? It's unanimous again. You're on a roll All right, let's go three for three. This next policy, this is a new policy for Dudley Charlton. This is JIH, student searches and seizures. This really came about because of where we are with technology, especially personal phone, personal devices. So the policy sub worked. to try to build this policy. There are some very small or similar policies that MASC provides, but this is really uniquely designed for Dudley-Charlton. We did get feedback on this, as I said, through our last submission. The only change that was under the feedback, and the policy subcommittee also agreed and really supported it, was on page two, number two, if you look at student consent. In the case

125of a student who is 18 years of age or older, the student may voluntarily provide informed consent. And you'll see a footnote there. I'll have to cover that in a second, but I want to finish what this says. Authorizing the search and defining its scope. Such consent must be documented and may be withdrawn by the student at any time prior to during the search. Consent must be clear, specific, and not the product of coercion or missing an or. I will find that edit. I don't know what happened there. But basically what the feedback was on number two was the footnote which is on page three to really try to define what age of consent is so that we have some clarity on that. And under Massachusetts law, you'll see on page three, it's italicized footnote

126number one. Under Massachusetts law, a person under the age of 18 is generally considered a minor and does not have full legal authority to provide independent informed consent except in limited circumstances authorized by statute including those outlined in MGL. Chapter 1 and 12F, those are obvious, just to be clear, those are exigent circumstances. Life is at risk of being in peril and stuff like that. But otherwise, someone under 18 does not have the, if we're looking to see if somebody sent something to somebody else, under 18 does not have informed consent to say, you know, Steve Lamache, go ahead and search my phone. You have to work with a parent on that. You have to keep it at that level. So I thought that was a great point out and a great point of clarity.

127Again, PolicySub started with this. They agreed to. This is where it started. But the feedback was to can you really clarify what informed consent means so that when people read the policy they understand that. Other than the semicolon in or, I think it just means, I'm sorry, the way this is written, or is goes on to the next number. There's nothing missing there. It's not or, you know, bubble gum. It doesn't say that. It's just, you know. You got it. You're all right. Sorry. It was just me reading out loud. I've got to work on my close skills. Is that what I've got to work on? But I would recommend this is a great policy. I think this is important for the rights of everybody, huh? For the rights of our students and families. I

128think there's an expectation. Sorry, I missed it. Because it's a great policy. I just love the commentary. I love the commentary, Stephen. I believe it is. This is one that I actually have. This is the best color commentary by you. I'm a little proud of this policy because I think it's the right thing to do. I just really do. Sorry. Sorry to be a little out of character. I'll go back to being stiff. You have no idea the policy sub that was going on. I mean, it's a pretty lengthy, but I'm just curious, what if the student offers up, like, oh, look at my phone, this happened. They cannot do that, correct? No, they don't have to. I'm just making sure that I'm reading. So what I've thought about for school committee on this is

129to maybe pass it and say we'll start implementing it, like, May 1st or something like that, because that will give us administratively a chance to go through this as a meeting and really. work through some case studies and practices of that. Yeah. Okay? Because you don't have it in place now. I'd like it to start tomorrow, but I think if you approve it with a start date of May 1st or something, I think that would be helpful for us administratively. Okay? Yeah, because, I mean, if we pass it without a caveat of a date, it starts now. We start tomorrow, yeah. Is that going to be a sufficient time for the administration? May 1st? Yeah. Sure. We'll make it work. Right now? Sure. Based on your confidence. Yes. I make a motion that we accept

130policy JIH to become effective May 1st for implementation. May 1st, when? 2026. Thank you. All right. Any further discussion? Great job, guys. Hey, we're awesome in policy. It's fun. I don't know why more people don't want to be part of it. Right? I'm glad you guys have the glory. Yes, please. Keep it all over there. Maureen, Jamie, and I rock it. I don't know about you. Okay. All right. All those in favor? It's unanimous, by the way. Thank you. Okay. Hold on. Did you have anything else Stephen? During the meeting there were two things that came up in my head. Because you can see them. I did send you the town of Dudley's meeting schedule. I've worked with them. They would really like us to target March 23rd to be present at that meeting on

131March 23rd. So to me it's a representative group or something like that. Can we post it as an agenda just in case there's a quorum? Sure. Yeah, all right. It's not just to attend from past experience at the town of Dudley. There's no it's it's not a deliberative It's just informational but yeah, but we can you know, this is a town I'm just so used to town always what a selectman in the FAA. I'm just so used to put for peas and Q's post-state I Don't I don't mind post, you know putting an agenda and posting I'm just so used to doing that just to make sure. Just in case, I'm fine. So that I don't have to look back. Do you know what time? Is it 6 or 6? I think it's 6. It

132was in the email. I know. That's what I'm saying. I'll resend a calendar invite or a message out about it. And then, Madam Chair, I apologize. The other thing is we are getting ready to launch our AI working group, and I would like a school committee member to sit on that. So I wasn't sure if anyone, you don't have to answer today, but if somebody could email me or you guys as a group could work it out, I have one representative as part of that. Those might be the best questions. We'll take anyone. Do you have a meeting time frame? Not yet. Okay. It would be after school, though. I can do it as long as it's not a Monday or a Wednesday. Yeah, those are bad days for me, too. Let me know, possibly.

133Okay. Right, I would need to know a little more of what you're looking at. How often? together and see where as needed yeah see where it drives okay you can always like do do what our wonderful student representatives do and just be like hey if it's on thursday it's me if it's a friday it's kelly and before the happiest motion ever happens Any other housekeeping? Any other future agenda items while you're all here? Anybody want anything thrown out on the next agenda? You can hold your piece. You can email me. It's okay. I'll round back. I have a few things bubbling. All right. Who wants to throw out the last motion of the evening? I'll make a motion to it. Second. All those in favor? Look at that. It's unanimous.