DCRSD SC Mtg May 14 2025 (1 of 3)

001Good evening. Welcome to the Dudley Charlton Regional School District. Today is Wednesday, May 14th. It is 6.30. I'm going to call this meeting to order. I'd like to let you know that we, according to Mass General Law, we are recording this meeting. I don't see anybody else recording the meeting. If there is, please say so. No? Okay. Then we will stand to pledge allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Thank you. Just be seated for a moment of silence, please. Thank you. Okay. Tonight we'd like to take a minute to introduce our newest member to the committee, Mr. Anthony Avi. Welcome. Looking forward to collaborating. Great. Sounds good. All right. First up on the agenda are the consent agenda items. Does anybody have any to remove from? Okay. then

002we will remove that and discuss um momentarily for now then i look for an approval of the first two agendas um approval for the first two consent agenda items the warrant and the approval of the minutes from april 9th 2025. second thank you any discussion all in favor and next we'll move to the consent agenda item the approval of the out-of-state field trip for a motion for discussion I hear a second thank you discussion I just wanted to clarify a few points that I had to clarify about this field trip this is an eighth grade field trip that last year's eighth grade also went on and I know there were many students that did not attend last year due to price and I noticed that this year it's the same price so I did reach

003out and ask about the cost The PTO is helping with this funding with the buses, but there was a second field trip in the beginning of the year that the PTO also helped with, so therefore the buses aren't being completely covered by the PTO. I did reach out about fundraising opportunities because I know that there's other classes that do fundraising throughout the year so that was something I brought forward that I'd like to see more of the eighth grade doing going forward because there are so many expenses especially in this grade level and I just think it would be the other part I wanted to bring up is It's hard to not approve it because this is coming up relatively soon, and it was submitted back mid-April, but it was after our last meeting. So

004it's kind of hard to not approve it, and we won't have time to approve a field trip for the eighth grade. But I know it was submitted within time, but only having one meeting a month, it's kind of creating a little bit of a time crunch for us now. So those were the points I wanted to make about this. Does anybody? Go ahead. I would think that we might want to ask the principal to talk about that, but I would think that if a student has a problem paying for it, that they could go to the John Peer Foundation and ask for funding. And I'm sure, knowing Mr. Desta, he's probably seeking out who is not signing up for the field trip and figuring that out. Yeah, we did have a conversation today and discussed

005that as an option, too. But I know it was a big... topic of discussion last year among a lot of eighth grade parents to the cost I know personally my daughter chose not to go not because of the cost but other reasons but Many many other students didn't go because of the cost So I just I know it was an issue last year. They didn't go to a field trip in the beginning of the year. I thought it was to save the PTO money for this. It wasn't. I got clarification on that, too. But it's just something moving forward that I think we need to be more cognizant of with these field trips. That's all. No, I appreciate it. And I was actually going to mention the same thing about the John Peer Fund. But

006I'm sure Mr. Desto is aware of that opportunity. So we'll make sure we can try to get those who want to go. Would you like to say something? Just non-payer foundation, the PTO also does have an account for situations like that that's not that separate from the field trip account. And we also have some things that we have in-house that we sometimes do in cases like this where our staff steps up and helps out. So we think that we can get it to the point where the only kids who don't go, let me just say that nobody will not go because they don't have the money. If they express that they want to go but it's too expensive, we will find a way to help them go. Okay, well some kids won't go because they

007don't want to do something we have to stay behind to get their work done Thank you I mean I appreciate the discussion you know I'm always for removing barriers from the student experience I would just like a quantifiable data number other than many like how many students were we talking about just to ensure that we can like look at that going forward on what our student population is and what they need I didn't get a number. I mean, we talked about the D.C. trip, too, and we knew 90 out of 140 didn't go to D.C. last year, so that was one number that was significant. Of course, that's a much bigger price tag, but I don't remember, and Mr. Destin wasn't here, so I didn't ask him to retrieve that number. I'm just saying going

008forward, it's a good number to track to make sure that people are able to participate if they want to participate, depending upon what's going on. Through the chair, maybe we can quantify some of this data with a survey of type that would be anonymous so that we can determine the difference between people that wanted to opt out for other reasons versus the price so that we can get a better fix on the number of students that want to participate in this activity. Otherwise, we're kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall, wondering and speculating without the data. Obviously we can't look back to last year because we don't have that data, but we can go forward with that data starting now, especially with the trip being imminent, then we'll have the data would be current. So

009just a helpful suggestion. Thank you. Yeah, I wasn't looking to segregate it out of the consent to not approve it, but I just wanted to have the discussion to make anyone that's watching and everyone aware of some of the issues. I appreciate it. Thank you. I think, too, like where we have universal free lunch that, you know, some of our families are not filling out the free and reduced lunch forms, so we don't always know how to capture that data for people. That is a good point, too, because it's always been there, but now it's not being filled out as much because it doesn't have to be. But I would say that I really, I think that... That staff truly knows their students and knows the the needs of each student So I I do

010I would trust that they're looking for Who's gonna who needs that support and who doesn't but agreed like maybe a survey? We can figure that out Thank you, thank you, okay if no more discussion all those in favor Okay. Does anybody have any communication to share this evening? Jamie? I just wanted to share from the Adults and Child Education Foundation that their grant application is open May 1st accepted applications September 30th application deadline October 2025 grants are awarded and then funds to be spent by June 15th of 2026 just another opportunity for teachers and staff to gain access you know for more enrichment in the classroom through the child and education foundation great thank you anyone else um i just wanted to mention that i did just see that the groundbreaking for the fire substation

011is june 18th so just so we're all aware it's exciting i mean obviously they've they've started but the official groundbreaking is june 18th um if there's no more communications then um We have our student representative Anthony Olia is actually not here. I know that there's a tennis match that he's most likely attending. I believe Mr. Elwell has his report for us and we will share with you. We do have a card and a little gift for him for you to pass along to him, please. Good evening. I am a poor replacement for our student representative, but I happen to have availability tonight, so here I am and I ask that you bear with me as I share his remarks. From the desk of Anthony Avoglia, good evening. I apologize for my inability to attend tonight,

012but here are a few quick events as the school year is quickly winding down. Athletics have been on a roll recently with baseball on a nine-win streak and they are currently at 11-3. Softball is also at an amazing 12-2 record as well, just to name a couple of the highlights from this spring so far. The highly anticipated Junior Senior Prom will be held this Saturday at the DCU Center from 6-10. It is sure to be an amazing time, even with the potential for some inclement weather in the forecast. A penny war is currently going on at Shepherd Hill with each class competing for free cookies, which tends to motivate. If you happen to be in the high school during the next week, please consider throwing in some pennies for the class of 2025. And yes,

013of course, that was biased from our representative's perspective. Graduation is June 1st at 1 p.m. at the DCU Center. Once again, hopefully we can avoid any inclement weather and enjoy a nice afternoon with the class of 2025. And finally... I would want to send a big thank you to everyone on the school committee for giving me a great experience as the student representative this year. While I had no idea this position existed before the school year started, I learned just how important it is to have a student sit in at the meetings and provide insight on different issues. I will be able to take everything I learned from my experience here and apply it to my future, which I believe will prove invaluable. Thank you all very much for this opportunity. Thank you. Thank you

014for sharing that. I would also just like to add I know that Superintendent LaMarche has a number of important dates for the next couple of weeks. There is a slight change to the schedule of events. Tomorrow evening we did have a senior sunset scheduled, which is a first. We've had a senior sunrise now for two years, and this is a nice bookend to that event as a class. That was initially scheduled for tomorrow night at 7 o'clock at Carmignani Field. that's now been rescheduled to tuesday may 20th at seven o'clock just with an eye on the weather and also just as a reminder uh the mock car crash exercise will occur friday at 8 45 followed by a discussion after in the auditorium uh this friday thank you thank you yeah i'll get the car

015if you could pass this along Principal Elwell? Yes. Sorry, I had a question for you. For the mock car crash exercise that you're doing, have you provided students who feel that that might be too triggering for them, a different place that they can be? Yes. Okay, so parents know that as well? Yes. Perfect. Thank you. Good question. Thank you. next we will move right into the superintendent's report I do have a couple of items I don't know if I'll be any better than the Anthony stand-in but I'll do my best maybe I should have principal Alba read my report too I just wanted to share with the school committee I know I saw some of you there Friday May 2nd 2025 the entire Dudley Charlton Regional School District Art Department faculty came together for the

01611th annual arts through the ages exhibition This event showcases student artwork from all schools across all grade levels. This exhibition celebrates not only our standout artists, but also those just beginning their creative journeys. Every piece on display stood as a testament to the vibrant imagination and unique artistic voice of our students. It is universally recognized that art education plays a vital role in the development of the whole child, encouraging self-expression, building confidence, and fostering critical thinking. as the large crowd explored this remarkable collection because as for those of you who go it's from one end of that side of the building to the other end of the building it's absolutely amazing. It was a perfect moment for parents, family members, and educators to reflect on the profound impact of art education and to reaffirm the

017importance of championing art in every school for every student. This event would not have been possible without the leadership and dedication of Sheppard Hill Regional High School co-advisors. I'd like to recognize Ms. Stephanie Lashore and Ms. Lisa Hines. We also extend our deepest gratitude to our district art educators, Ms. Dawn Gravel, Ms. Sharon Durando, Ms. Crystal Logan, Ms. Amy Paquette, Mr. Shane Shimke, and Ms. Kathleen Small, whose passion and guidance help bring students' creativity to life. In addition, to wrap this up, I would like to add and publicly recognize the culminating Shepherd Hill Regional High School artists featured this year in the art show. We had Allie Mallett, Courtney Lollax, Jacob Reed, Anna Morris, Jaden Ingram, Julian Cruteau, Mark, I think it's Mari, Mari Bustler, Emma Grasco, Olivia Cronow, Rachel Ciani, Alana Kelly, and Connor

018Fox. It was a fantastic art show, as it always is. The next item I have is the Senate Ways and Means Committee for the state of Massachusetts is currently working through its final budget recommendations and amendments for the upcoming fiscal year. While we welcome the state's continued support and the positive changes reflected in recent aid proposals that will positively impact the Delaware Child and Regional School District, we are also mindful of the broader state budget process that is expected to temper the more optimistic figures proposed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives in recent months. We will continue to closely monitor the state budget process and remain hopeful that final allocations will exceed the governor's initial January proposal. As a reminder, Dudley-Charlton is classified as a hold harmless district, meaning our Chapter 70 state aid is

019capped at a per pupil amount. The same is for 232 out of 319 school districts in our state across the Commonwealth. While we are optimistic that the per pupil figure will see an increase over last year, The extent of that increase remains uncertain at this time. A key topic of their work in the House of Representatives work is a debate to establish a Chapter 70 commission to study the Chapter 70 formula, state aid formula for public schools. Given that 70% of Massachusetts school districts are considered hold harmless and receive only minimum Chapter 70 aid, The formation of such a commission appears to be a logical and necessary step in addressing longstanding funding inequities. It's not a sure thing as of today, but I hope they continue to work on that. Beyond Chapter 70 state aid,

020we also rely heavily on state reimbursements through programs such as Circuit Breaker and Regional Transportation, both of which continue their classification as appropriated, which represents a sliding percentage from as low as 45% to 85% most fiscal years. and then the last item I have in my report is is as principal Elwell indicated a number of dates I did not put all of the events that are going on at Shepherd Hill I did put a lot of events because school committee is invited to many of these as well but I did these are things that are culminating for the school year it's it's amazing to me that we are where we are each year seems to fly by its own record pace I am quite surprised that our seniors which we have some of them in

021our audience today will be leaving us soon but they have a number of events coming forward which is very exciting for them and for us to celebrate their work here within our school district so please review all of those dates and times as well so that concludes the superintendent's report this evening thank you exciting time of year for sure okay next on the agenda I believe we have the Dudley Charlton Leadership Council so we have some students oh sorry missed public comment is there anybody here for public comment I just wanted to add on to the about the arts show I'm just it was an amazing experience and I just I had a chance to talk to a lot of the art teachers and they were you know just thanking them for all the hard

022work they do because it it certainly takes a lot to do all that and I think also our music some of our music department were there providing the band was there and different different groups were there providing some ambience to the event as well I'm wondering if maybe as a suggestion we maybe advertise it as a community event in the future only because every year we struggle with budget and we never, it's an area you don't want to cut and I think if people could see the true impact of, it's an impressive show and an impressive event and I think if people could come and see those kind of things, it's always good just to open it up to people. thank you yes it is very impressive sorry i skipped over that public comment anybody

023else no okay now we get to go with students i was excited this is always one of my favorite presentations so come on up so madam chair i'd like to introduce the dudley charlton leadership council officers who will be coming up to the tables and utilizing microphones i do have their slideshow prepared you're welcome to sit down but i'd like to introduce president lilly durden i'd like to I said that wrong, didn't I? No, I said it right, didn't I? Yeah. Vice President is – I just messed up because I thought I messed up your name – is – Donovan? Donovan Ennis? Is what? Donovan Ennis. Ennis, yes. I don't know what's happening to my mind right now. Secretary is Jaden and George, and Secretary is Tim Krasinski. Treasurer, treasurer, secretary, treasurer, your secretary, your

024treasurer. I've got it all straight. I wonder who your advisor is. I have no idea who your advisor is. but the school committee on an annual basis I have the luxury of working with the Dudley-Chott leadership council at Sheppard Hill Regional High School they work on a number of projects and annually they're coming in and presenting to you some of the stuff that they worked on during the school year I'm very lucky because they're a very passionate group that wants to make a difference they get involved DCLC is not their only endeavor they are involved in so much in Sheppard Hill Regional High School they take advantage of everything that's available to them that they can participate in. We could spend an hour talking about all the things that they do at Sheppard Hill Regional

025High School, but tonight's DCLC. But I really would like to welcome them and have them go through their presentation. Keep in mind, Mr. Ennis Donovan. You were saying in a way that I couldn't. I'm getting old. I can't hear. I'm getting old. Right, Caitlin? I'm getting old. I can't hear. So remember, just signal to me when you want the slide to move to the next one. If you're looking at this monitor, sometimes it blinks. I don't know what's happening tonight. I don't have the technical skill to stop it from blinking. I've tried a couple of times with resetting and everything, but please feel free. Don't be nervous, but go ahead. Okay, so I'll start off. Good evening. My name is Lily Derda, and on the behalf of the Dudley Charlton Leadership Council, we're here tonight

026to share about the projects and work we've done throughout the course of this year. Dudley Charlton Leadership Council, as Mr. LaMarche explained, is a club at Shepherd Hill where we work on year-long projects. throughout the entire year. So for an overview of this presentation, firstly, I'll introduce the methodology and the structure behind our work. Then I'll go over the projects and the specific actions we've taken for them. And lastly, I'll go over final summaries and what's ahead for the DCLC. Prior to any work, we did come with some goals and strategies in mind. Firstly, we aim to expand the diversity of our topics beyond mental health. As being in DCLC for my entire time at Trevor Hill, that was definitely a topic heavily spoken on for a couple years. What's more, we set out to

027carry projects that could carry into future years to increase participation of underclassmen as well as encouraging the growth of our council. And to specifically do this, firstly, we separated the council into five groups and designated roles for each. Then we used our monthly group meetings to provide feedback not only from the peers but from Mr. LaMarche. And lastly, we executed these plans by developing individual action plans outside of our monthly meetings. For projects, we had five overarching groups. Firstly, we had the Mental Health Symposium, as well as the Shepherd Hill Podcast. We also had the composting initiatives for the cafeteria, as well as study groups, and lastly, the alumni network at Shepherd Hill. To begin, the mental health symposium was created to raise awareness about student mental health as well as reducing stigma and implementing

028supportive changes within the school. This shifted from a faculty-led planning just to the students because the meetings were not scheduled on a monthly basis. So instead they met with the principal, Mr. Elwell, to propose actions such as courtyard lunch access for seniors and as well as a mental health advisory program based on Yale's course. And this is just a course. run by Yale that we'd be able to implement where every student is assigned an advisory at the beginning of the school year and what they found is that we could do 30 minute monthly advisory meetings to look over these courses that talk about mental health and the results of this is that we The group members secured approval to run a mock mental health advisory in June, as well as opening discussions about a new

029club, also known as the National Alliance of Mental Illness, as well as a parent outreach. And their future strategy is to finalize these partnerships, as well as clarifying parent communication plans and the support of this new club. And they also want to ensure monthly advisory periods beginning in the fall of this upcoming school year. Oh, it's me now. So, hi, my name is Jayden Jiroge. My service project was the Shepherd Hill podcast. The goal was to share school news in relevant student topics in a fun, accessible format that feels personally engaging. So we would do things like post-game interviews after the football games. We could do interviews of people in the drama club, the show choirs, art, all those things, and anybody can be on it. We were even thinking about doing teacher interviews. Our

030strategy so far was to brainstorm topics like college applications, create a podcast name. The podcast name is Ramblings, and it's because we're the Rams. I know. We launched Instagram, and we promote the episodes, which are coming in the fall, because we thought of this idea kind of late, and since football season's over and everything's kind of over, we didn't want to start something and then have to wait two months and then come back to it. Next slide, please. So the results so far, we've built a 90-plus follower so far, generate interest with the podcast by posting on the story and stuff, and the future strategy is to launch our first episode, obviously, in the fall, with an exclusive branch board, has availability to focus and deliver consistent content. Me and three other students are running

031it. Sarah Miller, Brianna Degwa, and Tommy Dolan are the hosts of it, and that's it. Hi, I'm Timothy Krasinski, the treasurer of BCLC, and I'm going to kind of highlight the composting initiative. So this is my idea, and the goal is to reduce food waste in Shepherd Hill. As I noticed, kind of a lot of kids would maybe like, you know, we often serve tater tots and hot dogs in our school, and oftentimes kids would maybe only have the tater tots or just the hot dogs, and then throw away like half the meal, and that would lead with, you know, with all the styrofoam and the plastic, and I kind of thought, you know, we had... Donovan and I and Lily here, we'd gone to an NHS conference back in the fall and they kind

032of discussed recycling initiatives and how a lot of towns now actually have separate compost bins by like the streets for the waste trucks to get them. And I thought maybe we could kind of like start that idea in our school, just in the cafeterias as a mirror kind of like to teach the students to also separate their food and their trash away from everything else. And so the idea was, strategy was to persuade students to dispose of their, you know, potentially get their food out of the regular trash bins into like separate green bins that the school could provide. And the main reason was of course the food waste and also because it is in the majority of our trash and it can be composted, a lot of it can be composted. Next slide please.

033And so we went through Elwell and a few of the janitorial staff and the initial primary piece of discussion was to find a third party who would take care of the food waste. I know we do have a courtyard, but a lot of that food, you know, it's like a hot dog or whatever, maybe an animal could eat it. It can't really be decomposed in the grass like green beans or whatever. We kind of started the process of finding maybe like a local farmer or something like that who would maybe like accept the food. And I know the janitorial staff recommended a man from Oxford who used to take some food on occasion. But we, after meeting and kind of like the discussion, we decided that to not initially start this year due to the

034fact that it was late. And a lot of times the primary feeding season is in the winter for most animals. And so they already kind of had. enough food that they needed. And so having more would just result in waste for them. And they found that to be kind of not economical on their end to have to drive over and pick it up and all that. But the idea is kind of starting next year is to have green, clearly marked bins and have students like in DCLC kind of like guide where the food will go. And the goal is eventually to become maybe potentially automatic or at least more, you know, separated than it is right now. So that's it. And next slide. I'm also going to go over the Sherbrooke Regional High School study

035groups that was campaigned by a few other students in the DCLC. And the idea was to improve academic performance and reduce procrastination as now with the onset of ChatGBT or Deep CKI, it's a lot easier just to wait until the last minute, write an essay out and submit it and kind of claim it as your own. And so the idea was to lead peer-led study discussions that were not just you on a computer looking up answers on Quora or Reddit or whatever. And so what they did was they ended up holding monthly or weekly rather study groups after school mostly in the library kind of in that studying environment rather than in like someone's house where they can be distracted easier. And the best actually next slide please. And the best idea was to actually

036have it done after maybe three o'clock or after maybe students are busy after school to increase participation. And they ended up having more kids kind of be engaged in the studying conversation rather than just slacking off if you will and it kind of it allowed with other students that had a lot of accountability purposes as it's maybe you're in the same class maybe the same teacher so like they know what the expectation is for those assignments and that overall and for the future they seek to expand the flexibility of the studying and maybe introduce like AP courses into studying which is obviously the more advanced classes and they want to kind of promote more more thinking I guess in the school so yeah. All right, so this was a big project that I spearheaded along

037with Lily and a couple other students. This is the establishment of a Shepherd Hill alumni network. So as some of you may or may not know, we already do have a Shepherd Hill alumni newsletter that goes out to various alumni. This is not that, but it's going to build off some of the work that Ms. Griffiths did, who runs that right now, to kind of expand. the way that we use the alumni after they leave Shepherd Hill. Not use as much, just utilize. But so what the idea that I had at the beginning of the year is that I see that a lot of colleges have a very strong alumni network. They have a very, like a database basically you can look up past alumni by major, by field, by work experience. And I think

038that the people that come from Shepherd Hill go into like everywhere, you know, they go into a wide variety of fields. they go to trades, they go to colleges, and I think it would be useful to develop a system that could securely store and catalog SHRHS alumni information and allow it to be searched by district students, by people who want to basically connect with people who graduate from Sheppard Hill, kind of bridging the gap between the past and the future Sheppard Hill students. This was a pretty technical thing. It involved the creation of a database, which I have a personal version of the database, but I'm still working with the tech team here in DCRSD to get it established as a district thing, so it's not hosted on a local device, but it's more of

039a district network device. Basically, it's a database that will take information that's inputted through a form and securely store it, because this would be storing the work information, the college. and the contact information like a professional email of Shepherd Hill alumni. So we wanted something that could securely store it without having any privacy issues because that's obviously a big thing. If you're gonna put your information in this one, we want it to be safe. Also created a API key, which is something that basically takes stuff from the form that transfers it in. And also we made a functioning website and a form with conditionals basically to segment all of the information as it goes into the database. So you could create a search engine on the website with filters. So you could kind of comb

040through different Shepherd Hill alumni based on what they do. All right, next slide please. Ultimately, by graduation, I'm going to have an alpha testing version of the alumni mentoring program by, obviously, our graduation. And it's going to be something that is going to continue over the next couple years or so. But as of right now, I think I'm going to have a functioning version of the database running by the end of this school year. It is still going to go through a lot of testing because we want to make sure that it's actually secure, that it actually inputs the data correctly, and that all of the debugging is gone through to make sure it functions well, is safe, and is user-friendly. And for the future, for the next few years, or however long this project

041takes to complete, it's gonna continue testing and debugging the search engine and the database, and it'll also create additional consent and security measures for users and alumni. We wanna make sure you know what you're getting into if you fill out your form as a Shepherd Hill alumni. Basically, if you fill out the form, you consent to be contacted by district students about potentially asking for advice. asking for basically tricks of the trade or whatever it is that you want to learn from people who used to go to the school. Next slide please. Alright now we're going to be going over like basically a summary of the results of this year, how we met our goals that we set out for at the beginning, and looking forward to the future. All right, so first off, our

042first goal was a diversity of topics. I think in DCLC, as far as within the council goes, we have quite an eclectic group with a lot of different interests and a lot of specific talents. These are all kids that apply, and they have very involved kids usually, and they each have something that they can contribute the most in. So we think having this diversity of topics that we had this year, we had everything from composting to mental health, again, as a smaller side project, to more tech-focused alumni network thing that I was working on. It allows each of the students to kind of participate in a group that helps them use their skills to the best of their ability. And you aren't as much shoehorned as something that that's not really your forte because everyone

043has different strengths in that way. Next, we wanted to initiate multi-year projects. The great news about our projects this year is that everyone can be transferred over into next year. And one thing that we made sure we had during each of our project groups is a mix of students between under and upperclassmen and even like between juniors and seniors. So there's enough expertise spread within each group to where the projects can be carried over. And that's something that was really important to us because if these projects are nurtured, the kids understand people before them put in work, they'll care about it a little bit. And it's something that can be not very much rushed, but like you take your time to make sure you're doing something truly good. Our next goal was obviously, as I

044mentioned previously, underclassmen participation. One thing that we didn't want the projects to become is a senior only thing. Just because the seniors have been at the school for the longest and are the most focused on serving the school, at times we wanted to make sure that still underclassmen were onboarded well and that they were able to participate in the projects that we were doing. It doesn't matter if it's to a minor or lesser extent. they still participated and learned about why we do the project so they can carry it over into the next year. This is something involving the underclassmen again. We're talking about continuity between the years. Obviously, each group has spent a specific amount of time talking to the younger students, getting the students involved on the projects, telling them how things are

045done, letting them do parts of it, especially for mine, from my experience with the alumni network. I had my little sister, she's in my group, she's a sophomore, I had her working on coding some of the database. basically trying to make sure that they know how to carry on the torch basically for the projects next year. And then again, everything that we did is asynchronously documented. So each group basically put in all their progress reports and their project ideas into forms that I sit in the classroom over time. So those are still accessible for underclassmen who want to go back and backtrack to see what we did. This is a quote I wanted to share from the author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And this is, to give real service, you must add something

046which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity. And that's something that we at DCLC always try to embody, and all of our projects try to embody that sincerity and integrity that we value. All right, next up. We also have a new logo this year. It's designed by me. I don't know who put this slide in there, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I think it looks nice. All right, yeah, thank you guys. That was it for our projects. i i just i just want to thank you all again i don't know why i blanked out on your name you've been such a big part of my year this year um but yeah i i have such a small role in this they are very we i want to be

047clear we only meet once once a month at most they meet beyond that time and then they bring the stuff back to the meeting and again i can't stress enough how much they're doing outside of just dclc and to contribute to this and for the betterment of our school and project and service learning and all that it's just they're capturing so much in what they do. I'm looking forward to a podcast. I did not step up to say interview me first. I did not say that. But I am looking forward to working with Jayden next year on that and the rest of DCLC. But you can see they're an impressive group, and they are, as Dunman said, it's a mixed group with a lot of different interests. I think we're over, I think, 22 members

048right now. So it's really a good group, and we look forward to the continuation. Elections are coming up this month for next year for officers. So looking forward to that. I wasn't sure if the school committee had questions for them while they were here. Well first I want to congratulate you guys. This is very impressive. This is capstone level learning at even a college level and you guys have really really tipped the ball and ran with it and it's a proud moment. You guys should really pat yourselves on the back. As a group I have two questions then and I would let anyone want to field it or anybody want to grab it. The first one is what did you find was your biggest challenge on these projects? And the second question is what is

049the biggest skill set that you guys feel like you developed? on this process. All right, I can take the first one here. As far as the biggest challenge you ran into going through these projects, I mean, obviously nothing goes seamlessly when you're trying to make changes places. The issue we had sometimes is obviously, as Mr. LaMarche said, we are all, everyone who's in the council is already very involved. So trying to fit those meetings in between our official in-person meetings was a challenge for us at first. And it's kind of something we learned as the year went on. within each group to figure out the schedules of everyone in the group. For me, we would meet asynchronously because we were working online. It was easy to just share documents and talk over a call. Other

050groups managed to shift things around differently. The study groups kind of based on the in-person schedule rather than the online one like I did. And I think over the year we got a lot better at it, but it was challenging at first to get everyone outside of the meetings because there isn't that in-person pressure to make progress on the goals. Great, thank you. And I can answer the second question for you here. So the biggest skill set, and I would say is the ability to adapt because obviously we're seniors, been in DCLC for a few years now, a couple years at least. And we noticed... a lot of the projects were like one big thing per year or like a thing per year. And now we're kind of shifting our focus to more like multi-year

051long projects that kind of extend past like our time at Shepherd Hill. And so I think all the students kind of have to have that ability to just kind of like shift their focus and understand that like next year, like it's not the same thing, but it's like the same kind of goals and ideas. And so they have to kind of like know how to like perpetuate that for like the success of like the school. Great work guys. I don't know if anyone told you, but I'm the question person. So I've got a couple questions for you. The first one I wondered, do students have access to make their own Google Meets? Like were you able to do that for yourselves? Yes. Okay, that's great. Good. So I was kind of going through, like when

052I look at your mental health symposium slide, and you were meeting with the principal to talk about courtyard lunch access for seniors. Were you able to get that? I actually don't run the group. We had a form that had every group fill out a summary of their project. Based on what the Google form said, I was unable to attend the final meeting. So I'm not exactly sure, but I'm not sure if Mr. Elwell can speak on it. Permission was granted. Oh, nice. I would just suggest we have done that at my school and it's lovely and we had a senior gift as like outdoor furniture. And that's helped a lot, so as a suggestion. And then question about your advisory periods that you might have next year. Are you thinking, is it going to be,

053are students combined by grade level or are you combined with our seniors, with freshmen and sophomores and juniors, so it's like you're creating like a family structure? I believe the advisory is grouped by the same class as well as based off last name, alphabetical. So you're grouped with the same people all four years pretty much. Okay. Okay. And let's see. I liked your idea of the network that you're going to do, that you've been working on. Are you envisioning that your current students are going to do a single sign-on to get into this? Okay, so this is something that early in the planning process was thought about in pretty pretty big detail How we would get people in and how often it would be Updated or how often it would need to be updated how

054often you need to remember like basically we'd send email reminders that like hey You're on the search engine. You want to be taken off you can opt out. Yeah, that's something that also has been that we have to consider on the back end of it for like tech purposes, but yes, so basically the way it would work is you would sign on, we would offer sign-ons to kids graduating, and we would offer to send the sign-on form to the Shepherd Hill newsletter, the alumni newsletter, and basically once you sign on, on certain month increments, you would be reminded that you are on this database. and like reminded that like you have a business email here, this is where it says you work, you can have, we will give you an option to either opt out

055of the database, you can leave it if you want to at any time, it's not binding or anything, or update information. And that's something again that we've had to try to code, which is why it's taken so long kind of to work through all the technology of like making that work. But yeah, that is how the process for retention works for the whole of that. Yeah, I mean I think I would just be worried about like the People that are trolling for those for that mining for that data, but it sounds like you're really thinking through it. So that's great Well, that is actually a very good idea. That actually sounds really good. You know, I mean, that's why it's always great to meet in a group like we do in DCLC to kind of

056get feedback from everyone because stuff like this has happened all year where, like, somebody will come in and give us a great idea. But, yeah, that's something I definitely should consider. Right now, the people I've worked with in the district is, I've worked with Ms. McDonald, who works here, I believe, and runs the district website. And we have approvals to once it's live and we know it's been tested and safe to put it on the district website. I worked with Ms. Griffiths. And obviously, I've talked to Ms. Dillermarsh about it. But I've not gotten involved with guidance yet. I think this is something where you definitely could integrate with them. And it's very aligned with our goal and their goals are aligned. And I think it would be a great resource for the students because

057you will have many generational crossovers and development. And you guys have developed from top to bottom, from mental health to, I think, the gainful employment aspect. This is just a phenomenal tool that there will be colleges calling you guys. One thing I would suggest too is that not all of us went to Shepherd Hill, but I'm sure there's a lot of community members that would be so interested in always helping and supporting Shepherd Hill grads. So maybe in the future think of it as like Shepherd Hill graduates and friends of Shepherd Hill graduates. Just so that you can get even a broader. base of people that want to help our students. Yes, that is something that again came up in the planning portion of like when we were thinking about like big picture what we

058want this to be. In the early stages while we're still getting it secure we want it to... We want it to be something that is Shepherd Hill first. Because, you know, I mean, it is unfortunate. I like to think idealistically a lot of times, but when it's something like this, you have to be careful about, like, who you let into the network and not because, you know, people get behind a keyboard and they can do a lot of things. So we keep it secure at first, but once we are more comfortable and kind of up and running with the alumni network, which is something I plan to check in on even after I graduate, kind of see how it's going, because I put... a lot of time in decoding it this year. Once that is

059kind of up and running and securely running for Shepparton people, we can totally look to integrate it with kind of like referrals. So basically you could refer somebody who you know, and then if not people refer a person, I think that's a secure way to kind of ensure that it's somebody who's in the community and it's confirmed a person that should be in the database. Then we could work on something like that. Thank you. Yeah, nice job. Thank you. So I just want to say, like, I really thought it was a really good presentation when I had an early sneak peek to look at it. And I really appreciated what you guys did with, you know, and to your point about, you know, the one-off. Kind of projects that were happening before it's nice to

060see a different change with those multi-year and working through multiple grades and trying to work on getting that buy-in to ensure that you have the excitement moving forward like you know working with the podcast and everything but to that point I mean every now and then you might see a one-off need to happen again, which is also a good thing to do but with how you structured this and I do think it's awesome, but When you're also looking at multi-year for projects, have you guys looked as well for touchbacks to go see how's that website going that was done before, you know, for the students, for middle school to be excited about going to Shepherd Hill because that was a DCLC project? Like how is the other ones, like have you worked that into future

061planning or for the next set of officers to kind of look into that? So that is something that I think is a difficult thing about running a group where the senior officers and the ones who are kind of the most involved in most of the projects leave the year after they do everything is that it's tough to then once they are gone, once the main people who did it are gone, it's tough to kind of look back before we even move to the system. But I meant for like the future, like who's a freshman now that could be able to look back and see where these projects are to kind of see them align. Just to ask you for clarification, do you mean projects that were before this year's projects? Yes, like even before this

062year's projects. Like to go back to what has been done to see if it needs to be modified to move forward, how it can work with the current projects. Do you mind if I take? Okay. The way DCLC works is leadership changes every year, so we don't always carry things forward. And this year, the group was, we want to sustain what we're doing, and it may not be the stuff that's been done in the past. Could there be a checkpoint to look at that in the past? Sure. But the website was a little tricky because it's tied into our website. It's not part of our website. We were running into some barriers with that. But the leadership and the students were, I mean, I feel like we're ready to put everyone on the payroll. Well,

063that's what I'm saying. It's such good work that you want to make sure that there's some form of touchpoint and carry moving forward. I feel like NIL money is coming to Sheppard Hill soon. but you really want to go you really want to go where they're going and that's that's the whole point here that's what i'm saying yes well they drive they're driving the bus i'm just a passenger on the bus and to try to support and provide the resources for them but they do a phenomenal job of leading their groups and trying to move forward we did touch touch upon the website we tried to set it up where sophomores would run it and change it and update it but again we get involved in other things and there's so much time and they're

064so involved in so many other things so yeah we will revisit those things dclc is still relatively new for for Shepherd Hill and we're continuing to move forward and I think that they've really established a good series of projects now that we can carry from year to year. We'll have them fill out the W2s tomorrow. And Donovan, I met Douglas Adams. He's one of my favorite authors. That's awesome. I really like him too. I read that like front to cover in like eighth grade and I've just like not forgot about it since you know, so definitely what I wanted to put in there. Don't panic. I just have two things. Looking forward to the podcast when it's available in the fall or whenever it's ready. It'll be exciting. And the other thing I want to

065touch on was the composting. Last fall we had gone to a school committee conference and one of the takeaways that I had, many, but one of them was a school, I think, I believe it was in Falmouth, does that and there's a company that they work with and I can't recall the company's name or if you've reached out to other companies to pair with the school, but I'd be happy to get that information to Mr. LaMarche, Mr. Elwell to pass that along as maybe something to look into to maybe partner with and maybe expand it. they might have funding or something to come to school I don't remember all the details but it's a successful program that's doing that they're doing down at Falmouth and it might be something that we could bring into Shepherd

066Hill and other schools okay that sounds like a good idea yeah Actually, one comment on that actually. We did actually research at this company called the Green Teams. And unfortunately, they kind of had a hard time. We didn't get the funding or anything. So that's kind of why we tried to do the local model. But I think maybe that company may be found with maybe sounds more reputable. Maybe we could try and integrate them. All right. I'll write that down. And if it's the same one, you won't hear from me. But if it's different, you will. Perfect. But the Green Team promised us next year. That's right. They would help us next year, yes. Thank you. You don't have to stay all night, so you're all set. Sorry, Donovan, again, sorry. I don't know why

067I blanked on your name. It happens. Okay. Next we have our Global Studies Advisor, Mrs. Perangeli. If you'd like to come and speak in the upcoming trip. Thank you. Before we get started on the proposal in front of you, I want to take a couple of minutes and I planned this even before I knew the students were going to be here. And I am glad that they're going to stay for a couple of minutes. But I would like to recognize the outstanding cooperation, great behavior, and enthusiasm of the 51 students on this year's trip to France and England. They were attentive, they were punctual, they asked questions, they were eager to understand the connections between the people and countries of the world. I received many compliments on their mature behavior and attitudes. They were truly

068a tribute to their families, to our school, to our communities. And I was very proud of these exceptional global citizens. So thank you guys. Okay, now let's turn to 2026. For the past 38 years, with the exception of the two years where COVID did not allow us to travel, Shepherd Hill, thanks to the support of this committee and to the support of the families of our community, they have had yearly opportunities to extend learning into the worldwide classroom. Advances in transportation and communication have made our world smaller. Creating a globalized economy with interdependent and multicultural expectations, we need to prepare our students to be global citizens. Education needs to integrate global understanding into the curriculum and provide students and faculty with international experiences. So for 2026, I'm proposing a trip that will look at five

069historic cities in Eastern Europe. Students will better understand the horrors and devastation of World War II and the effects of the Cold War through first-hand contact with locations where many historical events took place. We'll start in Berlin, where students will see where the walls separating East and West Germany stood and have the opportunity to touch remnants of the wall. We'll also visit Potsdam, where Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Harry Truman met to negotiate the terms for the end of World War II. While there, we will also see Sanssouci Palace, which was the summer home of Frederick the Great, former King of Prussia. From Berlin, we will go on to Prague, which was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. to Krakow, which was the only Polish city that

070was not devastated in World War II. It's absolutely charming, in particular the Old Town, that's one of my favorite places. And then we will pay a somber visit to the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau, where we will pay respect to the six million victims of the Holocaust. It will be a very somber day, but I think one that's necessary. We'll go on to Budapest where we will have a Hungarian folklore evening and a Danube river cruise. And we will go on to Vienna which was the residence of the powerful Habsburgs who once ruled half of Europe. So during the 12 days students will experience an immeasurable amount of history, art, architecture and culture that will provide real world learning opportunities to enhance their classroom studies. Early planning will allow our students to travel at

071the best price in 2026, the lowest price possible. It would include a $200 early enrollment discount and payment will be extended over a longer period of time which might help some additional families the ability to participate. The cost will include round-trip airfare from the United States, hotels in each city, two nights in each city, breakfast and dinner daily, sightseeing entrance fees to select attractions, transportation within Europe. We'll have one chaperone for each of the six students and a bilingual tour director throughout the tour. The group is requesting a departure of Thursday, April 16, 2026. and a return on Monday, April 27th. Students will miss two days of school on the Friday, April 17th, as well as Monday, the 27th. Although I've requested a late-day departure on Thursday, the 16th, flight schedules might necessitate leaving before

072the end of the school day. That sometimes happens. Hopefully it will not, but I can't guarantee that. And I continue to travel with EF Educational Tours because safety is one of their priorities. They have 600 schools and offices in 50 countries worldwide. So they are, they have a global presence that's unmatched. So if there were an issue, they would have an ability to react quickly and in person. rather than dealing with a company that's just based in the U.S., we would have somebody right there. They also have an emergency service and support team that's available 24-7. They have people in the U.S., in Europe, and just recently in Panama. And so they facilitate communication between travelers and families in the event of an emergency. okay that is a quick rundown um is there any other

073information that i can provide or any questions that i can answer it always sounds like such a wonderful time and we only hear great things about every trip that you've taken mrs princh thank you we appreciate all your time and effort that you put into these for sure does anybody have any well thank you for coming we need to make a motion well i was going to let her go sit if she would like to go sit um But thank you for bringing this all to us. I look for a motion to approve the 2026 Global Studies Strip. So moved. Second. Any additional discussion? All those in favor? Thank you. Have a great time. Thank you, Mary. Thank you. They don't allow school committee chaperones. I don't know why, but it doesn't happen. Thank you.

074What's up? Missed our chance for a minute. Okay. Next up is the Washington. Madam Chair and school committee, this was pulled. Prior, we've tried to put this in consent, but it seems the school committee pulls it out because they have questions about these trips, which is why it's on the new business agenda. This evening, we do have Principal Destow from Dudley Middle School, but we also have Mr. John Dyson. who is an eighth grade teacher at Charlton Middle School and has been instrumental in working on this trip for Charlton Middle School. So they are available for questions that you may have. But this will be, next year would be the third year. that we have conducted these, the middle school principals and teachers have worked on conducting these trips to Washington, D.C. for our students

075in eighth grade. So it is, you do have the applications separate, and again, they're here if you do have questions for them. Okay, so we have trips for Dudley is, let's see, the Dudley trip, it was taking place March 23rd? Yep. Okay. That is how many days trips? Four. Okay, four nights. That is for Dudley. Should we do these separate by, do you want to do them separate or combined? I'm not going to approve one and not the other schools, so combined is probably okay. Okay. And Charlton's trip is scheduled for April 13th. And I'm assuming the calendar's been checked for no major. issues for dates as far as holidays and anything goes. Okay. Did you want to speak about this trip? You've both been on this trip already, or you have not yet? Sure,

076if you'd like to say something about it. Good evening. Yeah, so this will be our third year on it. The trip runs pretty seamless. It's almost structured like a school day. We start off with a pledge on the bus. We have morning announcements. There each teacher has about 10 to 12 students that every time you get off and on the bus have to meet When we go to places the tour guide each bus its own tour guide It's almost more structured than there Probably their daily lives here because when we're with them from morning to night The food is seamless when we show up the hard rock they line us up. They put us all in as a fixed menu We're in and out of there in 45 minutes to an hour Food courts we

077give them an hour and I get $20 The amount of stuff they see in the trip is probably double or triple than you could if you went on a private like by yourself last year We did with the people's phones 26 miles walking So and that's including two eight-hour bus rides in the four days. So it's really like three days of Our students were able to participate in a wreath laying so for John middle school students were able to lay a wreath at the tomb of an unknown soldier So we made a video at school and have that all videotaped and stuff, but I was pretty big honor for them So they have pictures where it says the Charlton wreath So far the kids have loved the trip. There's some very fun parts like we

078have a dance on the river, but there's also some very serious parts like the tomb of an old soldier when we go to the Holocaust Museum and our kids have stepped up to the challenge. They've been, last year's group, both years groups we've gone has been very respectful and when you get a kid outside the walls it's very different how they act. But overall the child and kids I can say my five years here they're great kids. We have awesome kids here. I probably said the same about the Dudley kids too you know I think the trip speaks for itself every time I come back the kids love it I'm sure they're excited to continue on with it as we discussed earlier though cost I'm sure will come into play so are there some additional

079fundraising efforts have we when does it open up for these students so that the parents can plan accordingly We have a meeting if it's approved tonight seventh grade has a meeting next week We wanted to give the teachers some time to plan this want to put a meeting and take their kids out of class So next Thursday for Charlton and the 22nd and then we release and they can start putting down deposits and then there's a payment plan from I think $100 by June 2nd, well not by June 2nd, but $100 when you start, and then in September it's $269 for five months. By January 16th, the whole thing is due. Mrs. Kelly McDonald is starting a fundraiser. That's June 3rd, where the 5th and 6th graders will have a social, and that will fundraise

080money. The 7th graders will run it. That's going to go off the top of their cost next year. We were just talking before the meeting with Ms. Carmani. Am I saying that right? Sorry. I think we're open to anything to cut costs, but still keep the experience high. Looking at different companies or seeing how we can get as much kids as we can in there. It is a high cost, and I do get that. Transportation is high. Even when we go to the Kennedy Center in the fall, they don't charge us a dime, and if we don't get any help, it's $25 per kid just to get on a bus. So we are open to any and all suggestions and help. to make sure we get every kid to go that wants to go. There

081is a certain group of kids that they just don't want to get on a bus and they don't want to be with their families and we totally respect that. For the child side, they do virtual tours when they're here. So every morning they do a tour that kind of, we can't make the exact experience but we're trying our best. This year they were able to go on their own kind of little field trip to have their fun day too because we understand our kids having fun and academic stuff. Same for them. So there's never gonna recreate the entire experience, but we're trying to do our best for the kids on each side of it That's great. I didn't realize that I would think as a committee we just hope that you take into consideration what

082we discussed earlier You know what we discussed earlier by reaching out to those resources and making sure families are aware of the funding available and reach out to to those who can help and make sure we're Covering covering for all those that want to go. So it's great. Does anybody have any any questions? Nursing. Do you have nurses? Will one of your nurses go on the trip? Or how does that work? Our year one, I'm sorry. Our year one, we had diabetic students. We took a nurse and then... My understanding is they look through the list and they determine that. The professionals do. Please cut me off if I'm wrong. So the list dictates it. So we send our list in, and that list comes in very, very early, more than two weeks that the

083field trip is supposed to. And they will go through. I sat with Nurse Rachel this year. We go through everyone's list of stuff, medications, questions, what this is, how this works. We do that very early just in case we have to get in contact with the parents. And if the nurse is not there, who keeps the medications? Chaperones do. As a team, as a lead bus, I have my backpack and the lead bus on the other bus has a backpack. Got it. Yeah, the students do not hold their own. Well, yeah. No, I figured not. Okay. I just want to reinforce what Mr. Dyson was saying. It's a needs-based process. We do look for parents as a chaperone, if they may, or somebody who has medical in the background, but it's needs-based, and we guarantee

084a nurse will go if it's needed. There's no question about that. We do have medication delegation in our system, so that's why Mr. Dyson would have that on his person as well if it wasn't at the level that a nurse needs to be there to administer it. Got it. Anybody else? I would get a motion yet. So it's a promotion to approve field trips for out of state or an overnight for both trial and and Dudley to Washington DC in 2026 do you need them together or separate? I think we said we could do together. It's fine I have no additional discussion. All those in favor? Next one. Thank you. Thank you very much. Enjoy your trip. Thank you for coordinating. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. next on the agenda is our

085director of finance and operations mr. DeSantis some things to present Thank You madam chair I just have a few updates for school committee tonight the first is related to this year's FY 25 budget status update fiscal year 25 is still within its established operating budget parameters inclusive of encumbered costs any new purchases for funds that are not already encumbered are still approved at the finance director level for the remainder of the year a detailed operating budget will be included in a july school committee meeting after the fourth quarter for this school year is complete on june 30th 2025 it's anticipated before that time that any final cost center transfers will be brought to school committee at a june meeting The FY26 budget creation process, the school committee approved FY26 budget will be voted by both

086municipalities of Dudley and Charlton Monday, May 19th, 2025. Myself and Superintendent LaMarche will be attending one of the municipal meetings each. Also, Ms. LaMarche had referred to the budget timeline at the state level. The Governor's and House budgets had already come out. We're at the Senate budget debate level at this point. So hopefully that'll continue to run smoothly and hopefully we'll have a final state budget by next month. So for FY24's audit update, the final FY24 financial statements are anticipated to be completed before the end of this month. A managing partner from our audit firm, Frank Ceretti, has been invited to a June school committee meeting where he will then discuss the results. To this point, there have been no significant findings. Finally, our healthcare rate update for next year, FY26. Last month, MSHG voted

087and approved the FY26 rate changes for its member entities, DCRSD being one of them. An increase of 20% was approved for DCRSD. This percentage increase is in line with what we're seeing from other municipalities and other school districts. and i will note that a lot of productive work was done to trim that number from the close to 30 percent that we were looking at to start to now 20 percent so this will hopefully move the district in a more stable position uh moving forward and that's the conclusion of the finance director okay thank you does anybody have any questions or comments for mr desantis at this time I would just, I have questions for you, but it's more about Director Harriman's report, so I might ask you something later. Okay. Okay. Well, with that, we'll

088turn it over to Director Harriman. Okay. I always have such great news to report. I promise next month will be more positive. You know, recommendations for preschool curriculum and all that. This month, this is the news we got from DESE. So every year, DESE has to provide an annual special education determination. Last year, our determination was needs intervention. So we have gone up a step to needs assistance, which is one step away from meeting requirements, though the rubric is different this year. So DESE had a rubric last year. The weight of each area was different. graduation and dropout rate was very heavily weighted last year and that those were the areas where we lost the most amount of points so when we did our um when we did form a small committee and develop a

089root cause analysis and an action plan it was really based you know off of the graduation and dropout rate our needs assistance rating we had a score of 66 on the rubric a score of 75 is where you need to be to be at needs requirements and 65 is the needs intervention mark so we just squeaked by with needs assistance but it's a little better so if you look at the rubric last year they the rubric was only two areas it looked at performance and compliance this year they added a third area and this Make this new matrix is supposed to be in effect for a longer period of time So we'll be able to do more of a side-by-side comparison in future years So where we lost the most points is the area of

090performance. So there are 20 possible points We we earned 8 out of 20 And that really was because of our MCAS scores for students with disabilities. So in looking at the rubric, we did lose two points for the graduation and dropout. We earned one out of two points in each of those areas. For both the performance and compliance section, each possible score is two points. So everything is weighted evenly. But they broke the MCAS down significantly this time. we have six possible areas for MCAS. So it looks at reading for fourth grade, eighth grade, and high school, and then math for fourth grade, eighth grade, and high school. So out of the 12 possible points that you can earn, we earned four out of 12. So that's pretty significant. So that's obviously the area that

091we're going to need to do a lot of work on. The other two areas in compliance, we only lost one point. That's because of LRE when we were cited. And just keep in mind too, The data is from 2023, so this really doesn't reflect any work we've done last year or this year. The data is obviously a little bit behind. So we are already recognized that our MCAS scores have been on the downward trend for special education for a while, and it is something that we're already aware of and we're already working on things to remedy that. So in terms of compliance, we did great with compliance. The one point we lost was related to LRE because we were not able to fix that in one year. When we were at, I think, 55%, 56%

092full inclusion, to have that closed in one year would be pretty difficult. And then the only other area that we lost a point in, other is a whole new section, but we lost one point. in indicator 14 and that is really post-secondary outcomes so every year at the end of the school year desi sends us a survey that we have to send to students that previously graduated i think it's two years prior we mail it we email it we make phone calls and we do the best that we can to try and get students to you know complete the survey i think we only had one student out of 21 or something like that last year complete the survey so we lost a point there maybe we can reach out to our student group and

093they can help us with it now. Try and get the students. Everything helps. So that's where we're at. So we will end up having to do another root cause analysis and action plan. I do anticipate that it's going to be very consistent with what we're doing now with the high quality instructional materials and student engagement and all the things that we're already working on. Yeah, I was just going to open it up to that. So yeah. So I had the privilege of connecting with director director Harriman and going over the report in detail Which was very enlightening and it was a few things that I that I had to take away from them One was that they've redone the rubrics from previous reports. So we're not looking at apples to oranges data. That's the first

094thing the second thing is that it's It's very delayed in in the reporting matrix. So we're looking at things through a lens of where we are today versus the date of 18 plus months ago correct correct and then so I had a question I wanted to follow up from our earlier discussion about the point we lost for LRE is that a global assessment across the K through 12 plus or is there a specific age bracket that really kind of dinged us it's the whole district okay it was the whole district yeah And then back to your student survey point, that if we had a better populace of respondents, then we may have had a different outcome on those reportings. But because there was only one student, it was very heavily weighted to that response, correct?

095Yeah, because, well, what it is, it's the percent of responses that we get. So DESE wants us to have 25.7. um of our 25.47 of our students that's the target and only four percent of our students returned it so it doesn't matter what their responses are it's the percent of students that return it so we need to graduate students yes and like they don't have any obligation to correct so that's why it drives down the persistence what's there doing yeah i mean those that other section each each um area on the other section is only weighted one point so it's a loss of one point but Yeah. Thanks, Helen. Any other questions? Kathy? My question was on the first page of your printout where it said, it says the LEA is on 71. I just

096want to make sure that we are all in alignment with where it says we're required to expend for special ed in 25-26 at least as much state and local funds in aggregate or per pupil as it spent last year in the district. We're all set with that? Oh yeah, we're all set with maintenance. Perfect. No issues. Okay. Just want to make sure. I do have one more question about our dropout rate. Okay. Have we found... Did we go back and I know that we had talked about in teaching and learning about the students that had Dropped out because they hadn't maybe they hadn't graduated because they hadn't passed MCAS are those students now Graduating or how are we doing with that? the students that Potentially didn't earn diplomas because of the respect. Yes, we're we're

097on par with getting everybody okay graduated because I don't believe the CPAC team has met since this date was released we're meeting next Wednesday though okay that was so it will be an agenda item to discuss for the CPAC I think it's an open meeting can he creates the agenda but I can certainly I just bring yes to get some of that feedback it's a couple of agenda items are a little tight for the board meeting and which always has an update from Heather Harriman I think it's at Dudley Middle next week. It's Dudley? Yeah. I just get confused. That's why I keep looking at it. I do, too. That's why I have it on my calendar. Yeah, Dudley Middle. Fair enough. Next Wednesday. I write it out on my calendar so I don't have

098to think about it. Okay. This one. Next one. I think so. All right. Okay. Does anybody have any additional questions on the report? No? Well, it's nice to see we're heading in the right direction, slowly but steadily, hopefully. Okay. Next on the agenda, superintendent and assistant superintendent will share the district, the draft district improvement plan. Madam Chair and school committee, so to present this, first of all, it is a draft. It's a draft for you to take a look at and offer some feedback. So the way we'll present this this evening is I will provide an introduction. I will. identify the focus areas i was thinking of doing one at a time and then letting assistant superintendent true go over some of the details around that focus area and then i was going to i

099have a conclusion and then i was going to talk about next steps after we go through that draft okay and i did supply you with a written formation of the introduction and the conclusion for that so without further ado I'll start with the introduction this evening I am pleased to present myself and assistant superintendent true as well as our directors we'd like to present to you and our principals have already had a bite at this as well a draft W. Childs Regional School District improvement plan for your review the plan is intentionally focused on three core focus areas that are aligned purposeful and designed to address what our district needs most at this time These core focus areas have been carefully selected to ensure that our collective efforts are targeted, measurable, and impactful. By concentrating

100on these priorities, we aim to create a clear path forward that not only guides our daily work, but also provides a framework to evaluate progress in a meaningful and transparent way. Our intent is to use this plan as a living document that brings coherence to the many priorities across our schools, allowing us to stay focused on the right work while supporting student success and system-wide improvement. It is also important to note that individual school improvement plans for our schools will be presented at the early June meeting for school committee. The three focus areas outlined in the district improvement plan are intended to serve as the entry point for those school level plans ensuring consistency and alignment across our district through this process we will move forward with shared purpose clear priorities and a commitment to

101continuous improvement which is always the goal so you have a draft 25-28 25-28 district improvement plan you have our focus areas which I'll share with you. And then we also have mission and vision for the actual plan itself that I'm going to share with you. So what I'd like to do is start with the mission and vision of our plan first. So that would be on this page. So the mission is to provide exceptional teaching and learning, opportunities that grow and nurture curious and creative students who feel connected to and valued by their communities. and who feel empowered to use their voices for advocacy and equity. Our vision for this plan is all DCRSD students will attain academic knowledge and skills, understand and value themselves and others, and be ready to engage with the world

102beyond high school. So the areas that we have that were a key focus for us to try to build in areas that we can actually accomplish and succeed through, number one, academic excellence. I don't think anyone will argue with academic excellence. I think that that should be in any plan that we have. And what we are looking for in academic excellence is we're looking for high-quality instruction, implement a district-wide curriculum adoption plan and multi-year professional development strategy and emphasizing inclusive practices. We'll look at eliminating opportunity gaps, expand pre-K access, enhance intervention programs, and provide extended learning opportunities beyond the school day. And then college and career readiness, broaden access to rigorous coursework and increase participation in internships and apprenticeships. so looking at academic excellence I kind of gave you the overview there are sub goals

103action steps responsible parties in measurement and outcomes and for that I'd like to turn it over to assistant superintendent Trou to share our main goal number one academic excellence thank you superintendent Lamarche so um The action steps underneath academic excellence there are quite a few of them because there's several action steps for each one of those sub goals but some of the more important ones are like developing a multi-year professional development plan with a focus on inclusive practice and personalization that's something that we've already been working on as a district but now with our completed district-wide adoption curriculum adoption plan I can start to then layer in a professional development plan on top of that curriculum adoption plan to look at multi years multi grades multi topics and all that so that's something that we'll

104be working on is aligning all of that together which is important we want to provide opportunities for additional job embedded PD experiences with coaches and or experts and this is something that We have also tried to do over the last two years with bringing in some outside coaching because we don't have those opportunities right now within our staffing and the DCRSD. So I'm going to continue to look at that and have some things lined up over the next few years to work with different groups of people on that. Things like collecting and analyzing classroom walkthrough data monthly as a district team, administrative team. This is something we started this year was doing more walkthroughs through classrooms. and coming together as an administrative team to talk about the data. We're always looking at the same kind

105of data points when we're going into classrooms and looking at things. And then we come back to talk about what's happening in each school and then what that means, you know, moving forward for professional development, for curriculum, for all of those different things. so that's very important too and then collecting and analyzing student achievement data to guide instructional planning and personalized learning so that all students reach proficiency the analyzing data and having data meetings and data teams in each building is something that we're really focused on with this plan and moving forward and kind of streamlining that process through all seven schools so that we're using some of the same data analysis protocols so that we're looking at our multi-tiered system of support and we're using data to support the decisions that we're making for

106students based on that model so really looking at a lot of student achievement data we have a lot of assessment that we've put in place over the last few years and that we're expanding upon so being able to really use that data in a meaningful way in the classroom is important all of these initiatives under the high quality instruction are pretty much encompassed the whole administrative team including central office the building principals the teachers to some extent our special education coordinators everybody it's an all hands on deck for this plan Pretty much all of those people are involved in every step of the way. And then we're really trying to do a better job with the measurement and outcomes. So putting some more really specific measurements in that are realistic here. So for an example

107where it's... providing opportunities for more job embedded PD experiences. The measurement for that would be that at least 20% of our professional staff should have had the opportunity for coaching or additional PD each year. So looking at kind of how we can structure that so that we're spreading the wealth, so to speak. and we're making sure that each year different teachers are getting that coaching experience and making sure that that happens and that's kind of a realistic expectation 20 percent of people where we don't have in-house coaches would experience that for something like collecting and analyzing the classroom walk-through data the measurement for that would be 85 percent positive responses specifically focusing on the areas of cognitive engagement and multiple means of representation and demonstration over that five-year cycle so those three things are out

108of all of our look-fors those are the three that we focus the most on so those are the things we really want to make sure that we're seeing and we want to see over the life of this plan we want to reach 85% positive responses for that so those are just a few examples from that section I don't know if you want me to go into more detail from that section or if I can go on to eliminating opportunity gaps or if there's any questions from that section. Yeah, it's quite a lengthy document. Yeah, it's probably the easiest way. So my question is, first off, when you talk about 20% of professional staff should have the opportunity for coaching each year, an additional PD, I feel like your data is talking about it as if

109it's a five-year plan, but we have this as a three-year plan. Yeah. So I think we just want to either make it a five-year plan or recalibrate it. Madam Chair, I would suggest we make it a five-year plan. Yeah, I agree. That's how we designed it, I think. I think I designed it as a five-year plan, but when I did the cover page, I only put it as a three-year plan. Yeah. Yeah, that would be a problem. Okay. It's a great point. Yeah. So sorry. No, that's fine. Because then it makes sense within five years. Yeah. When you talk about collecting and analyzing student achievement data, I feel like one area that we might want to look at, too, is how do you collect and analyze qualitative versus quantitative data? because I feel like our

110teachers are going to have some qualitative data that we could use and how do you how do we do that in such a way that it's an accurate depiction and it's it's similar data points you know whether it's an SEL data score you know things like that like I think that's something we might want to look at and maybe they need training on And probably just in general training on how to discuss data. The other thing with collect and analyze classroom walkthrough data monthly, I just want to make sure that as we do that, that is something that our teachers know what exactly they're being... They do. They do. Perfect. Okay. The other thing overall on the plan that I would love to see, and I look at some of my plans, but I would

111love a column on budget impact and a column on the date. So if you feel like you do have some date stuff in there, but if you feel like year one... this is exactly what we're going to do year two you know in each year we can like update like you can almost color code like how much have you completed you know we're still in the yellow here we're in the green we've already completed it things like that yeah we have that planned in for our end of year um admin team summer work to like look at the previous district improvement plan to look at some of the goals that are on there to see you know like where we are with that so that would be automatically built into this plan too like at

112the end of the year every year to look at where we are and recalibrate where we need to go yeah and i think just as we think about this as forward-facing to our community um just think about acronyms things like that like calling it a dip i don't know yeah but but thank you that's what i got for now Ms. True, one of the things I'm trying to wrap my arms around and learn about in the PD aspect of it is so I'm sure that all these units build year after year and each time we have a PD workshop. What about when we onboard new staff that's backfilling retirees and are they coming in midstream and have to play catch up? How does those workshops work? they do they come in midstream and have to

113play catch up and so we get them caught up either through the mentoring program or through professional development that they like if it's um so for example like we use ckla for ela at the elementary levels there's another district i i have a lot of different contacts throughout the state but there's another district that's just starting with ckla and i'm partnering with them for any of our new teachers to attend their onboarding pd you know and sharing that cost so that we don't have to have Amplify come in and do a whole training first, you know three or four teachers So it's you know making connections throughout the community like that Yeah, and trying to kind of work together to get some of those PD opportunities in but our mentoring program is pretty robust and

114we The mentors that we set people up with have experience in all of our programs and are able to really sit with teachers and go through it It's a lot of question and answer they do observations of them. They do all that work together. So that's really really helpful when it comes to that kind of pd planning but i also do things where um like this year we had an eighth grade math teacher who was new this year and on one of the pd days i just said to him look i'm going to set you up with home mifflin on this day you're going to attend this three-hour webinar so you know he worked the rest of his pd day around that so you know it's just being aware of where those pockets are and

115planning for that And do they coordinate directly with you or at the building administration level? Both. It depends. It depends on the situation and what the curriculum is and, you know, what we need in terms of that. Sometimes they'll go to the building principal, but a lot of times they'll do it directly through me. Thank you. Yep. I also want to add too that when principals interview for new staff we don't own high quality instructional materials across the state so we do hire people who already have the experience and so we're just nuancing them into our way of doing things and stuff like that so we do look for people who have great experiences that we can bring in and fold into our staff as well thank you okay we ready for the next section

116okay eliminating opportunity gaps so one of the things that we have talked about and it's It's a lofty goal, but it is to explore opportunities for the possibility of one full-day, four-year-old pre-K classroom. We'd love to think about the opportunity of expanding pre-K across the board, but for a lot of reasons, that's really difficult to do. But Director Harriman and I talked about this for a while, and what might be achievable over the cycle of this would be to explore some opportunities for at least one. full day four-year-old pre-k classroom another goal of eliminating opportunity gaps is to target high impact intervention programs to accelerate learning so we've been working on our mtss multi-tiered systems of support across all seven schools and looking at adding in some we changed the middle school schedule so we're

117adding in an intervention block at the middle schools we're also adding in some intervention at the high school so we're really making progress in improving our multi-tiered systems of support but we really need to make that support targeted we need to make it high impact and really have an acceleration on learning. So that's something else that we're really thinking about. In order to do that, we need to evaluate all of our intervention program needs, including special education as one of those intervention needs, and looking at all seven schools and looking at what we have for high quality instructional materials specifically for intervention in both ELA and math and all of those areas. So that will be a big undertaking. We'll be looking at all three tiers and what our programming is at all three tiers

118and at all three levels. So that is something that we hope to accomplish. We want to implement a structured summer learning program for students considered at risk in academics or mental health. We do have several programs that we offer in the summer through different funding sources and for different reasons, but we'd like to expand our summer offerings. There has been talk about, especially in math, for the kids that don't take seventh grade accelerated math but have the potential to. take algebra one if they didn't take accelerated math they missed out on some of those eighth grade standards and there needs to be some kind of a bridge for kids that maybe didn't take the accelerator that can still go into algebra one but have to make up those in between steps of maybe doing some

119summer programming like a an algebra one boot camp where they can get some of those prerequisite skills during the summer time to go in and have success in algebra one that year because a lot of kids don't get the opportunity if they don't you have to know that you're ready at the end of sixth grade to take algebra in eighth grade. It's just a really hard kind of thing. So we're trying to navigate some of our challenges by thinking about a more structured summer learning program, especially for our at-risk students. This year, we're able to have students entering grade one through grade five. We're doing a Title I sponsored camp. You don't have to... qualify for title one to go but you are it is a recommended camp so it's by invite only we do

120have the ESY summer programming there are some things that go on in middle schools for credit recovery for high school for credit recovery in the summertime but just looking to kind of beef those up a little bit and that's that's that's a pretty slim section that's only three things for there any questions about those Yes, sir. First is on B1, the exploration of a four-year-old pre-K classroom. And this might be Director Harriman and might be a co-answer. Is that going to be explored for each site or one site and piloted? Or I know we have a logistical challenge with space. We try not to do anything in just one site. No, I understand. We try to do everything with both sites. So it would be considered for both sites. Okay. Yeah. if we were able

121to do it we would do it if it could be done at both sides okay ideally yeah for the parody um and then the other question i have is on the next page for uh the summer learning program and and uh it says in mental health in um and i think that's a really important thing that sometimes gets overlooked because it's not super exciting but it is a necessary thing to address and is that in relation, is that targeting a specific age group? And what is the size of that group? Are you looking? It was the next page after 1B. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. So I'm sorry. It threw me off because you were talking about mental health. Yes. Is that in there? Yes. It says implementing a structured summer learning program for students who

122may be academic or mental health. Am I looking at this wrong? I'm sorry. Yes. So. Implementing structured summer learning program considered at-risk in academics and mental health. Sorry, I missed the mental health part of that. Yes, so in previous years when we have run summer programming, we have, where the funding was available, we're able to add counselors in the summertime so that if kids were having a hard time during the summer program, they were able to do that. I did not include that in this summer's program, but... because of the structure of the summer program this time and the amount of people that we needed for academics. So sometimes funding plays a role in how much we're able to do that over the summer, but it's definitely something that we're always keeping in our mind

123because it is really important. And some kids are being recommended for the summer program based on their need to be engaged with peers and to be engaged with friends and for the social communication and just the... routine of school and so it's not even necessarily you know for different reasons kids are being um promoted for this program and so just that alone is a function of you know considering their mental health for the summer so they might not be getting direct services in mental health over the summer but they've been recommended because of their yes to keep them kind of streamlined throughout the summer so those are things that we think about but um They're both the academics and the mental health portion are really important. The whole student? Yeah. And what size groupings is

124that typically when it is? Are you talking about the Title I summer school that we're doing? Because we have several different programs. I was saying pretty generic because that was generic. The ESY program has different levels of programming and groupings based on their needs. The Title I, each grade level, each incoming grade level, we're shooting 415 for each grade level, but some grades will be higher, some grades will be lower. But we're shooting for about 15 kids per grade level with the caveat that if we get a lot more that want to come. I want them all to come if they can come. So I'm trying to look at what we can do there. But it's about 15 kids per grade level for that. Thank you. And then credit recovery, you know, there's other things

125that they do for credit recovery and stuff in the summer, and that's all contingent upon the need. Just clarifying, right so for target high impact intervention programs to accelerate learning Yes, I got it. Yeah You have the have yourself principals teachers I'm assuming director of people personnel services because your part is also including special education program Programming and evaluating intervention programs. Yes, we can add her in there. So and I mean, because I like that, because I truly believe that special education kids are not separate from general education. They're not, yeah. They are general education students first and foremost. But I do wonder, and I'm wondering if this is like a time constraint or an amount constraint, like something where, you know, intervention in both ELA and math, you're not, you're like, what about the

126other core subjects? That's a budgetary issue. It's budgetary. Yes. I mean, typically your interventions, so intervention is done in a three-tiered model. So your core subjects, tier one is the first round of intervention, which is with your core instructional teacher. science class if you are struggling your teacher is going to pull you into a small group your teacher is going to do things in the classroom to make that accessible for you so we're talking about um like you know a tier more of a tier two which would be additional supplemental instruction in ela in math that's not typically done in science or history usually when you're talking about structured interventions for multi-tiered system support it's typically in ela and math and then tier one would be the intervention in the classroom for history or science

127if they needed it. Budgetary. Gotcha. I mean, you're not, if you did a study of districts that offer intervention for science and social studies, you wouldn't find one. I don't know. I would love to hear. I wouldn't know, so that's why I asked. They really don't. I mean, that would be an intense amount of money to have interventionists that could do that. Keep in mind that the targeted areas that we have beyond the intense resources and stuff like that, they're all accessing to get to those other subject areas. So you know that. You know that better than any of us here. But, you know, reading and arithmetic will get you to the other. You know, math is the language of science. Reading, the subject areas are so important that you want kids to be able

128to read it and understand it. So, yeah, those are the targets for most people. You understand that. And if we don't raise our ELA and math scores? I was just wondering about your summer program and as you go to invite students to the summer program usually sometimes we don't always get the kids we really want to come like they there's barriers for them to want to come and sometimes it could be something as I'm not getting up for 8 30 you know and I'm wondering if there's been considerations about like maybe shifting times or are you working on a bus schedule We are doing busing, which is a huge barrier removal. It is. And these are elementary kids. Oh, okay. I thought you were doing middle school or high school. Well, there's other programs that

129don't have busing for that. But, you know, like high school, they usually go on their own or they're dropped off by parents. But for the elementary program, they're elementary kids, so they're usually up at the crack of dawn. bugging their parents to get on the bus for summer school. So the busing is one thing that is a huge barrier removal for kids. But the other programs would be because they're not as well attended and they're really specific to specific students that have different challenges with credits and that kind of thing. Does it ever become an issue where there may be an unanticipated hardship with a family that would trigger a need for one of those students or if someone moves into district in the summer that would benefit from the program or do we just

130basically get a running start during the end of the school year and then set that up yeah that's how we do it because over the summer typically registrations have done it all different times like there's nobody to field at the in the buildings there's nobody to really field you know that kind of look at kids over the summer so yeah College and career readiness. So we're looking at providing access to rigorous college prep courses for all students at the high school level. And what we are looking at specifically with this goal is to reduce the number of foundations courses to one reading and one math course by the end of this cycle. We really want more students to be in inclusion. And with that comes the need for professional development in you know supporting teachers

131having kids in their classroom that might have additional challenges that we need to figure out so um that that really is the big goal and then increased graduation rate and decreased dropout rates would be a measurement for that To see how we're doing with providing rigorous EP for everyone and we also want to accelerate opportunities for career exploration With work based learning post-secondary pathways through internship and apprenticeship opportunities And this is something that we've talked a lot about the internship program here that they had started where they send people that are going to be educators that want to be educators at the high school they send them down to the other schools to work and it's been amazing i loved it as a principal i love it as an assistant superintendent i think it's it's

132really great and i think there's a lot of opportunities there not just for for internships with that but with other things and I know that principal Elwell has been working with community partnerships for internships have been working with the guidance counselors but that's always an area that you know is can definitely be Expanded and should be expanded on some of the things that we're thinking about too is like transportation for internships is always a problem Because you know should kids be allowed to take their own cars and if they are reliable something, you know There's just there's a lot to think about when you're thinking about internships. There's a lot that goes into it So thinking about you know We were looking at a grant that we had the potential of getting a van that

133could be just for you know Taking kids to internships and there's a lot of things that we're thinking about with that But that's something that's really important and I think can be expanded fairly easily. Any questions about those two? So for those career opportunities and internships, are you also looking at community partnerships of ensuring access to, for those that qualify for it, for MICE or for MassAbility to send those referrals out to those that may not typically? automatically get them through their IEP process but may still qualify I am not but I'm sure that Director Harriman can speak to that and I'm assuming that the guidance counselors at the high school and you know people who are involved in that process at the high school are aware My question would be about the college and

134career readiness with providing access to rigorous college prep courses for all students at the high school level. When you're talking about reducing the number of foundation courses to one reading and one math, you mean one section of reading and one section of math? Okay. What about the fundamentals levels that you just added for the high school math? Are we considering that a college prep course? No, I don't think that one is. Right? The fundamentals? No. Okay, because I just wonder if that needs to be in this as well. Well, this is over the life of the plan, that we want to reduce it to one and one. But are we saying... You also want to reduce the number of fundamentals courses as well as foundations Do we have both fundamentals and foundations? That was like

135our last meeting where they came in and added that course Yes, that's why this is a five-year plan for us to look at adding that and then what that reduction would look like over a period of time It's it's not happening next year Yeah, I didn't think it was happening. I just want to make sure that like we just added a course like a reach gonna try to make sure that that's not the new Yes being placed for people. No, that may be the one section that we're identifying here from mathematics We don't know yet. The foundations may take the place of a excuse me The fundamentals may take the place of one foundation. Okay, do we have both foundations and fundamentals? I thought when she came in, when the math department chair came in,

136I thought she said that you're still having a foundations level course for students that is only taught by a special ed teacher for certain students, but she's trying to get other students from there into a fundamentals course. Yes, I think so. Okay. I just think like as we... But we're looking at reducing all of those. That would be... We're looking at reducing all of those. Yes. Yeah, I mean, I think that, too, one of our goals should be to provide, like, all of our students with, like, I want every student to have a teacher that's certified in math teaching them. You know, whether you may need to have a co-taught, and that's great. But it should, like, everyone should be able to do that, and we should really try to get our students to be

137able to be at the level of Algebra II by the time they graduate, even if it's in Algebra II concepts, so that they can go to, like, a community college where, if it's free right now, we want to give them that opportunity. Yeah. We agree. Okay, I don't know how you want to write that it like I just think it probably needs to be more yeah It's tough to quantify that because we're just rolling out a yeah fundamentals an integrated course at this point And that's a new course the fundamentals one Great anything else from this section? Okay, that moves us into the green. Okay. It's my job wellness and belonging is the next section of our three sections here again i think i don't think anyone will argue with all three that we have

138on this district improvement plan our wellness and belonging as we know relationships with our students and the well-being of our students as well as connections to our families are extremely important So for wellness and belonging our focus areas will be welcoming learning environment to ensure that we foster trauma-informed inclusive practices and culturally responsive teaching For all of our students that were that are attending Dudley Chilton Regional School District whole child well-being strengthening strengthening partnerships with behavioral health providers and promote wellness programs district-wide I think you've seen some evidence of us Working on that. I think we need to do much more and I think we will our strong social emotional skills expand social emotional learning sel focused professional development and implement restorative practices to support school climate and student growth within our school district so

139what we're really encompassing here is how do we look at each child as a whole child and how do we support that child moving forward and we've learned more than ever coming out of the pandemic that that the whole child is, the wellness of the whole child is so critical to their academic excellence that it needs to be closely tied to both, both need to have a very solid relationship. So with that, I would turn it over to Assistant Superintendent True to talk about some of the sub-goals and information around wellness and belonging for our students moving forward. we have a welcoming learning environment support and build the capacity of all staff to implement affirming welcoming and trauma-informed practices the principals would be primarily in charge of that and we're looking to reinforce our commitment

140to the district vision for equity inclusion and the use of trauma-informed practices in every building we'd like to create a district ruler team in the 25-26 school year to oversee the implementation of or the pilot of RULER in all seven schools, and then select members from each school for training and begin training with Yale University in the fall of 25-26. So Yale University has the Center for Emotional Intelligence, and they have a program that's called RULER. The reason that we're looking at the RULER program specifically is, one, it's from Yale University's... Center for Emotional Intelligence and also it provides a key to 12 cohesive program. that we can use across the district on both sides in all seven schools and it looks developmentally different at each level so it's not like if you're going from

141mason road to dudley l that you're going to be seeing the same lesson so it's it's grade specific it's level specific and it looks very different at each level based on the developmental readiness of the kids but it's something that will transition from building to building to building all the way up to shepherd hill which we don't have anything in our district that does that this would be the very first that we have in our district that does that and I think that that's really important because you know we do have primarily overly compliant students but they that doesn't necessarily mean that they're emotionally healthy so you know we have a lot of kids that come to school and that sit there and outwardly appear like they're ready to learn but they really might not

142be and we need to do everything we can to help them across the board so having a program that runs from k to 12 and in transitions from school to school where we know the expectations moving forward is going to be very helpful i think and so we're hoping that ruler will will be program that does that for us so we're looking at doing some training next year with it and piloting it next year and then getting feedback from teachers about how the process is you know what they see in the school if it's making a difference you know what's happening with it so that we can make a choice if we want to continue with that after we use it for the year We also want to create more asset-based and culturally responsive classrooms

143and curricula that celebrate the lives of students. Believe it or not, this is actually probably one of the more challenging goals that we have in front of us. Creating an asset-based classroom is a really big mind shift for people, and right now we're in a... society and educational society that focuses so heavily on deficits. So when we're looking at testing, it's always looking at what kids can't do and not looking at their assets, which is what kids can do. So really starting to look at what can kids do and how can we start talking about what they can do and talking about next steps for them rather than what they can't do and all this backpedaling and catch up that we have to do with them. So it's really kind of trying to do some

144work around changing people's lens with how we look at student achievement, how we look at students in general and how we move forward with that. And then also, sorry, what? Could you highlight an example of that? Of? asset-based yeah so like if you're looking at a student so say I look at a reading assessment that I just completed with a student instead of looking at it and saying well they can't you know sound out CVC words yet and they can't you know but I look at what can they do with this well they can identify the prime you know the the first sound they can identify the last sound there it's the middle vowel that they're missing so instead of just looking at saying they can't read cvc words which if i was to tell

145another teacher that they would be like okay and they do all this you know work around cvc words that they might not need to do because really what they need to work on is just identifying that medial sound with them so it's really looking at it from what they can do and then what would be my next step from here? Instead, when we look at it from a deficit perspective, we're typically looking at the big picture deficit where it's overwhelming. When you look at a student who's struggling and if they're struggling across the board, when you look at their scores and their profile, you're like, oh my God, they have so much work to do. But really, we should be looking at what can they do, what skills are they coming with, and then what

146are just their next steps so we can get them to that next spot. That also ties into dealing with the whole student because we're building confidences in the areas that they excel. Exactly. If they have a really good attitude, we can capitalize on that. If they have certain strengths, we can definitely capitalize on that. But that is a definite shift, not just for our teachers, for all teachers, because we for so long have just been caught in that kind of deficit mindset. That's the way education just has always kind of rolled. And then also, you know, the culturally responsive classrooms piece is a struggle for us. We haven't talked a lot about that in Dudley Charlton. We haven't moved very far in the realm of creating culturally responsive spaces, of really knowing our different cultures

147that are in our community and understanding those different cultures. We, you know, a lot of the grant applications that I'm filling out now and that I'm looking at and we... or passed over for a grant this year, then I strongly feel like it was my answer to, or partly my answer to the question on cultural responsiveness and where we are with that. DESE wants to move forward in a strong way with cultural responsiveness, and we're not there yet in Dudley-Charlton by any means. So, you know, we definitely could be losing out on grants and money because of that. Like, this is something that is a sensitive topic, but it's... It's not going anywhere. So we really need to start working on that. So creating a minimum of two opportunities a year for in-house PD on

148asset-based and culturally responsive pedagogy in the form of things like book studies, staff meeting trainings. just looking at wherever we can start that work and put that in with all of our other competing initiatives that we have because there are quite a few. So that, you know, at least trying to attack this in a way where we can start working on some of these things. We're also looking at whole child well-being. Oh, actually, should we stop at that little section? Are there any questions about the first two for the welcoming learning environment? One I had a do you want to go back to it? Sorry up there one I just had a question about cost for the Yale program and wondering about that so the impact cost And then I'm wondering if, you know, I

149talked before about like how do you measure SEL and where kids are and how do you get bench line data? And I'm just wondering, does that ruler program have some bench line data for us? It does, yep. Beautiful. And then I do feel like when you talk about creating asset-based classrooms, like... I almost feel like you need to separate that out into two different ones. From the cultural responsiveness? Yeah. I think cultural responsiveness needs to be its own row. You could. Is it tied with asset base, though? It could be. The culture of our community is an asset, and when kids come in with different cultural assets, it should be recognized. Okay, because the way you talked about asset was more about... It's both. I mean, when you're thinking about wellness and the whole child,

150it really, you know, their assets can be anything. Okay. I mean, we're specifically thinking about this under wellness and belonging. Okay. So I think, you know, when you're looking at someone from an asset-based perspective, that increases the wellness and belonging. Okay. So... I guess my question would be like if, now I can ask it later. I do wonder about the health curriculum, is that coming? Where we are with the, like if we're putting our health curriculum within this and where we're building that. Do you mean if we're looking at the whole child in this? For like a health? Yeah, like when we have our health and PE, like our comprehensive PE and health curriculum. That's not the intent of this. That falls under the curriculum adoption, the I quality of care plan. That was not

151intended to be in this part here. It is part of the whole child, but this is the area of focus for us. Where that falls under the curriculum adoption plan. Okay. I just didn't know if it also ties in to that as well, but okay. So is this a new curriculum that we're looking at? It's a social emotional. yeah it is a series of lessons so it's it's uh it is kind of a curriculum for for social-emotional learning but it's more of like a program that includes like curricular resources and things but it would be used K to 12 so in that sense if it is like a curriculum like we're adopting this kind of curriculum did we have Do we have our staff look at all the different like how did we go about

152deciding that this was the best curriculum? I just want to call attention to miss truth assistance with denture saying we're looking to pilot it next year Yeah, remember this is a five-year plan. So this is we're looking to pilot the next year get people involved I think it says in here select members from each to look at it kills through some trainings and see if this would be a recommendation through the school committee policy for adoption Okay, I just want to make sure like because we got A couple years ago with CKLA we got really focusing on the way we're implementing our curriculum. But that was also before we had a policy on curriculum adoption. Correct. So now that we do, it's, you know. It just seems like we've decided. Like if we're going to

153go through the adoption, like going to look at this. So I can also tell you I did meet with the elementary curriculum facilitators. I asked them to bring it back to their teams, to look at it ahead of time, to talk to their teams, to provide feedback for that. I have done my due diligence of getting stakeholder input for it. And then we'll get much more stakeholder input after they actually see what it is and start using it and can provide actual feedback on the program's use. been jumping ahead but to piggyback on that i was i was gonna uh inquire about um input from your school adjustment counselors and counselors because it seems like they're doing the best they can with what they have but there's not a lot of meat on the bone

154for them to work with and implement in the classroom side so i know like cds Two years ago, we went through this process in depth over a year long study with the school adjustment counselors, with the school psychologists, with the, at the elementary level, the four building principals, we all came together. We looked at five or six different programs. That's where everyday speech came from. So we went through the whole process. We piloted everyday speech in a year at the elementary level. And then at the end of the year, the feedback that I collected was kind of like lukewarm. It was like, People on one side of the district really liked it and implemented it people on the other side of the district didn't so that made it really challenging You know like but there

155wasn't a whole lot of investment, you know from all parties So it's really hard to say whether or not you know so based on that process and having already gone through that process of meeting with all of those people Getting all of that feedback You know, and that was just two years ago. We're looking at the Center for Emotional Intelligence for Yale. It's a very reputable program. It's one of the best that's out there. We've also had some other administrators that have experience with it. So that's how Yale came up. And that's the one that we're going to try and pilot. Principal Elwell? The only thing I was going to add is keep in mind this is presented as a K through 12 endeavor. This is so it's not a specific grade level that we

156can just bring the grade level teachers together. So we're looking at this from all aspects and trying to build that team and build it. But again, the key word here is piloting for next year, see if we can get there. This is a living document. That could change. Ruler could be out after next year, just like Assistant Superintendent True just stated, and maybe something else. But SEL, we've been having staff. Councils, everybody has been asking for some social-emotional learning for our students at this point in time. And this is a comprehensive program that helps with both, I mean... what we're lacking is tier one instruction in scl so there are no tier one instructional programs across the district in scl so that is the most important is um that's what we're most lacking is that

157tier one um this has a tier one component but it also has a tier two and tier three component to it so it's kind of all encompassing and comprehensive which is another reason why we're looking at it mr elwood if i may sure uh two two points on a ruler i do have experience with this in a previous district sent teams from different schools to the initial training to then return to their schools and then train others on this approach. Obviously, the quality of the professional development itself is not a high-achievement scale. But from a high school perspective, we know that... continue to develop tiered supports. You heard our DCLC students talk a little earlier this evening about this advisory that we intend to pilot next month and then have in place for next school

158year. And the challenge at the high school, and I think the challenge in any school, is that you have a clinical team. You may have a school adjustment counselor, psychologist, others that I refer to at my school, either the guidance team or the clinical team. That team has previewed RULER. We participated in a couple of different webinars. And so the challenge is two school adjustment counselors can't be responsible for 943 students. So they do a phenomenal job in their offices seeing students. They have caseloads. But we need something that every educator in the building can... By off a piece of and run with it. And so with RULER, my understanding is that if we did two advisory blocks a month, so 10 months, that would be 20 lessons. That essentially, in 30-minute blocks, we would

159be able to get through the curriculum in the school year. It's designed to fit into a 30-minute session, and it's a scripted program. So I think there's... widespread agreement and consensus that we need to do more to embed social emotional learning, emotional intelligence into everything that we do. I think every teacher knows you have to reach them before you can teach them. And if there's a disconnect, we're going to see that in our student outcomes. But I think the trepidation comes from, I'm a biology teacher. I'm not an adjustment counselor. I'm not a mental health counselor. How am I equipped to have this half hour group of students in this session? And I'm responsible for talking about how to use a mood meter or recognizing all of these different emotions. So I think we're looking

160for something that... could be very teacher friendly, very user friendly to be able to follow a script and to have every teacher regardless of the content of this own piece of this mission because it can't be four guidance counselors in a school of a thousand or two school adjustment counselors. How do we give everyone that year one exposure? And we're gonna have to find a program that allows our teachers to be those agents as well. And so I think having something that's user friendly is super important. Again, with my limited experience in a previous district, this is a very good option. But again, a pilot, a test drive, I think will give us some good information in terms of whether this is something that we can go get involved with reasonably or perhaps not. The

161cost for the year-long training and implementation to get it up and off the ground is about $35,000, and that is going to be grant-funded. I think to piggyback on Principal Elwell, Putting on my college referee hat, we always say if you want to be successful with the stripes, you have to have game management. And you can't teach if you don't get buy-in by the students. Nothing could be farther from the truth as a referee. If you can't manage those players on the ice, we're not going to have a game. So I think to take it with a different hat, this is absolutely necessary. They're not going to learn until they're comfortable in that classroom. And the $35,000 price tag might seem high to some, but you're training the whole district. Because it's a train-the-trainer model,

162so they actually, we would... For cost-effectiveness we would have them it would actually be cheaper to have them come here and do training than it is for us to go to Yale to do the training so to have them come in and to train us as staff and then each Building has a team that then trains the rest of the teachers there So essentially, you know you're looking at training your entire district from K to 12 in this so that price tag is not a hefty price tag for something like this well, and if you break it out to per pupil cost I'm sorry, like so in my head. I'm trying to like compare it to other things, but in this pilot work for it's... Kind of like building out like an extra capacity toolbox

163ease of being able to use just the same way like how the district decap Operates where everyone has that ability to use it and to be able to put it through it. Yeah All right. So now it clicks in my head. Thank you But the other thing is is at a curiosity because you mentioned that we don't have any tier one social emotional supports, right? You know program support right now. What do we then have for tier two and tier three? So the counselors, we have amazing counselors in our district, and the counselors have their own, like they have different things that they have bought into. All the counseling staff uses Everyday Speech. We have all of their platforms, so we have the Everyday Speech, which is the regular SEL component, but we also have

164the social communication. Module two so that we can use social communication language and SEL language with students so everybody has access to that all the counselors have access to that and then other than that they they pull on their own counseling backgrounds and their own Counseling resources. We don't have really any programs across the board in any school It's interesting to hear that we need to focus on creating asset-based and culturally responsive classrooms Only because earlier when we had DCLC come in, they focused on how their goal was to use the assets of certain people in the group. So sometimes as adults, we forget to do the simple things, and they're really capturing that already. Yep, I love that. And then to Mr. Elwell, you know, the bio teacher, that may not be... school adjustment

165counselor i think the biggest thing is they have to remember that at some point everyone that's teaching this ruler was a high school student so it's not that they need to be an expert in this but kind of go back to at some point i was in that seat and and try to relate with them there because they may not be a professional and those signs are that type of conversation but just bringing it down a notch and trying to get on that level with a student well Yeah, right it takes a village. Yeah Well, I guess my only concern is But maybe you touched upon it is really the time like I understand obviously the importance of it But the time to add something else to the to the teachers days like is it?

166You mentioned it being a few like a few times per month Lessons per month or just to then eventually incorporate into every aspect of So as you know, we're preparing for our accreditation visit. Years ago, NEAS was a little bit more prescribed in their approach to having an advisory. My understanding is, because of my three years, we haven't had a period of time labeled advisory in our schedule. Is that years ago, there was an advisory block. We suffered from other classes. If students moved, they were assigned to a different location for either 20 minutes or 30 minutes. it was not well received. And so I think when we think about this content, I'm more comfortable with saying If we have teachers who've already established relationships with students and they know who is in front of

167them, I'd rather carve out 30 minutes two times a month on every other Friday to deliver these lessons in existing classes where we put our pencils down and say, we're going to pause on algebra, we're going to pause on geometry, we're going to pause on world history right now, and this is an SEL block within our existing class. and have those teachers interact with those students with this content because they already know that and they can be able to student in front of them is having a hard time or not really buying in. And so I think we need to use those existing student teacher relationships within those core classes that already exist instead of saying we're going to use the computer to generate 50 different homeroom advisories and mix it up and then of

168course that adds a five minute transition where I have a thousand students moving around the building to get to a place where they're going to be for 20 minutes with a teacher they may not really know to talk about really serious stuff and then spend another five minutes roaming around the building to get back to their regular schedule. So I think it would work best for us to define an advisory as a block of time within our schedule with existing classes that all teachers say we're going to put our academic pencils down. We're going to focus on our interactions with each other. And within those two 30 minute blocks per month, we'll be able to deliver this instruction. At the other levels, there are additional lessons. So like the elementary, because it starts at elementary,

169obviously they have the most lessons at elementary. And then moving up to middle, it gets to be fewer. And then moving to the high school, it gets to be down to 20 lessons. So there's time, definitely. Each building has already started thinking about where they can incorporate this. But there is some time in... in different places like we're adding in the intervention block at the middle school there's a potential there for you know using that once every however you know often to to use that time for this typically a lot of teachers at the elementary level do their social emotional learning stuff in the beginning of the day with their morning meeting and with the introduction of common planning time at the elementary level the elementary principals have come up with a pretty robust plan

170for how to make that happen which includes a longer morning meeting time on the days where those classrooms have common planning time so that's another place where we could put in this additional learning where it wouldn't be too taxing on the teachers That makes sense. I mean, they have a lot on their plate. Yeah, they do. So to put something else on top of that. So to piggyback on that, that's why something like RULER is advantageous because they don't have to create the lessons. It's something we're providing them. Because I think that's what we hear the most. That's why I think advisory, if we had asked them to all do the same thing, we'd struggle with that because not everybody would do the same thing. But RULER provides that platform and format for them so

171that they don't have to create lessons on SEL. There could be a focus area. for that particular month at each level and it really provides that. But you even heard from my students, I'll call them my students because I feel privileged and honored, but they've been talking to me for two years now about some type of advisory even though they know that they've identified that there is a teacher, because we talk about this in our group, they identify teachers that they feel like they have a strong relationship that they can go to, but they don't feel like they have it with all of their teachers. And this will help try to develop that a little bit more. But they even presented tonight that they're looking for advisory for next year as well, something of that

172nature. So this is something that I, you know. I don't disagree. NEASC has always been pushing some type of advisory. That's not the reason why we're doing this. We're doing this because of coming out of the pandemic, looking at it, working on it for years. We don't have a system-wide systemic approach to SEL. We have great people that are doing great things around it, but it's not systemic. And we don't want to put more things on people's plate to create lessons and then share it and then say, this worked for me. So this is why something like this will work. But social emotional learning has to be part of what we do. in our district. It really has to be. So we're looking at a K through, this is a big endeavor to look at

173a K through 12 approach on this and how to make it so that at least we can pilot it, we can experiment with it, train individuals and see where we can go with it over the next couple of years. That's really the goal here. I like the idea of using faculty that are already familiar with that cohort. I think that's a brilliant use of time. Should we go on to whole child well-being? I think so. Hi. Under whole child well-being we have provided continuum of mental and physical health services for students and families at school and beyond where applicable. This is something that we do throughout our schools with our counseling staff, but we have had the introduction of the Mass Behavioral Health Initiative over the, I think that was two. It's two or three

174years ago that they initiated the Mass Behavioral Health Network. And what that is is a network of behavioral health providers throughout the state who are easily accessible. So they have a network that helps put people in touch with wraparound services. So if we refer a family to... counseling, they could be on a waiting list for a really long time. But if you go through the Mass Strategic Health, or the Mass Behavioral Health, sorry, initiative, then they might be able to find you appointments like through a different amount of providers more quickly, or they can help in other respects. They can help with health insurance. They can help with getting in touch with different... people in the community. So there's a lot of resources out there that we might not be necessarily taking advantage of. So

175that's something we want to promote over the cycle of this plan is by the end of the plan we want to have 100% of our staff referring students and families through the MAP behavioral health initiative for wellness care. And another reason for that is that they do all the routine follow-up with people too. So if we are referring people out they help them to make it to their appointments. There's a whole bunch of different things that they can offer that we're not able to offer. So that is a huge resource for us and we really want to promote the use of it. We want to develop school awareness and use of practices that support positive individual wellness and model effective behaviors for students and that's the basic premise of the ruler program so Ruler is

176a whole school program. So it's seen throughout the school. It's not just classroom based It has a whole school component. It has classroom components so that it's it really is throughout the whole school And everybody, you know feels part of that Which is nice because there's not a whole lot of things that that do that any questions about this section Is there a portal that we'd reference people for the Mass Behavioral Health? Yeah, we have sent out many many flyers and the principal is usually included in their newsletter and that has links and things to go to it by Yes, the counselors like people who would actually be referring people to that would give them all the information that they need and we brought them in to meet with all administrators as well and they've

177done a good job we intend on bringing them in again we just we just haven't got to where this is going because it is a great organization but I have seen it in all the principals newsletters we try to get the news out there but you know it's it's hard to get information out sometimes well there's a lot of it there is a lot of it yes there is for the RULER program. I'm just wondering if we can make sure that we have a dedicated plan of how we're engaging our families in the conversations so that if you're having a conversation about this on this day, we can send a quick note home to the families and say, hey, we had this conversation. Please continue at home. Yes. And they do have a whole suite

178of school-to-home information. That's great. Perfect. Yeah. Okay, strong social emotional skills. We all want them. How do we get them? We are going to look at providing varied professional development opportunities focused on deepening staff knowledge, skills, and dispositions to support students' social and emotional needs. There's a lot of needs among our staff. Like when I poll people for professional development, the thing that comes up the most over and over again is that they want training on being more trauma sensitive and that they need more training in dealing with kind of challenging behaviors or students who might be dysregulated throughout the day. So that's usually what comes out and a lot of the professional development choices that I have on our professional development days are geared towards the mental health aspect of it. So we do

179offer quite a bit of professional development in those realms, but I think I need to do a really good job at making sure that that's really varied, that my opportunities kind of span all the different areas of mental health and but also include what teachers feel like they're struggling with in the classroom and want more. And then through professional development, we want to build the capacity of adults in the use of positive behavior interventions and supports and restorative practices to promote a positive culture in all seven schools. So just keeping with that line of professional development and making sure that everybody in the building has whatever they need to be able to implement and to follow through on what the program entails. And if we really focus on creating this culture of support where we

180have interventions in place, where we have Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 interventions, that we're looking at restorative practices, we're paying attention to the asset-based... Things that kids are doing in schools and looking for positives there Then we're hoping that our attendance in all schools will increase by 10% from the previous year So looking at our efforts in social-emotional learning paying off and kids wanting to come to school And we're also looking at behavior referrals to the offices will decrease by 10% from the previous year So those would be two kind of data points that we could look at to see if this is really, you know helping been working for us any questions about those i really like the attendance component yeah i mean if in theory if we do any of these

181things in this district improvement plan attendance should increase right and when the attendance increases the academic achievements increase that's right sure right so just wondering about restorative practices right so i actually do believe in it but when i I think it was like a year or two talking with some of the custodians where we were having issues in the bathrooms and where restorative practice would have been a logical consequence of repairing that. But with the custodians, they were like, we can't do this. We already have so much on our... on our plate, we can't pause to be part of this. Coach a student through fixing this thing. Or patching a wall, you know, like just something. So how are we, what are your plans for? Just like an idea of restorative practices if it doesn't

182fit that but then so there's a lot of different things that you can do with restorative practices there's restorative circles there's there's a whole there's a whole school of thought out there on restorative practices, but You know typically restorative practices repair the damage that was done and in most Most cases that damage isn't necessarily physical damage where it is physical damage We would have them restore that if they could but if it's not in a place where they can But a lot of the work around restorative practice is also about restoring social emotional things that happen So, you know like if you upset somebody else or you cause a conflict or you know You're in a fight with somebody then you also need to kind of restore. It's a lot of relationship type Restoration and

183not just you know physical stuff Any time that you could repair physically something that happened absolutely 100% but you're not going to be able to do that like we had a Sink come off the bathroom wall and you know at the high school once like you're not a kid's not gonna fix that So, you know, it definitely doesn't always match up wherever it can you certainly would Yes. Yeah But you the emphasis is really on fixing, you know Fixing whatever it was that you caused to her And where we can do that, yes, and where we can't. We have other consequences for this. We've got to be creative. Yeah. But to add to that, restorative practices really are in tune with that whole family part of that as well. You really need that work with

184the parents as well, with the students and all that kind of stuff. So that's where restorative practices really have the biggest bang for the buck, is you're actually working and communicating with parents and trying to figure out what is a best practice for that individual child. So you do take it kind of case by case at times. There are some things that you can actually add and do, and they're best practices, but really you need to really be in tune with the family as well. And I know as a principal I went around and did a lot of those fixing things with kids, not the Casterians. But that's okay. Okay, so we're ready to move on to operational effectiveness. Okay, so the last section, which as you can see, even though this is not 600

185pages long, but it's at least 1,000 pages worth of work, the last one we have now is operational effectiveness. So this is really key to where we are right now and how we need to move our district forward as well on the continuum of continuous improvement. And so this is operational effectiveness. And so a key to operational effectiveness for us systematically and for our school district is database decision making. Conduct regular data reviews and develop accessible performance dashboards to drive continuous improvement within our district. and to also continue to modernize our infrastructure. We've done an extensive, you as a committee have supported. We've done extensive work around the modernization what that would look like through capital improvements, but it goes well beyond a Multi-page document on capital improvement. It's the stuff we do from day

186to day in year to year So we need to continue to upgrade technology security and facilities to enhance learning and ensure safety across all of our campuses again These are these are two critical operational effectiveness items for us if we get this right moving forward And we really establish a plan if we take DCLC's lead and look at these things and move them forward and take off pieces one at a time we will whether i'm here or joe's here or anyone's here this stuff will move forward on its own and so this is really what's very important for us for operational effectiveness moving forward for a district and again in the next five years if we get this right this this will benefit our district our students our families and our communities in a profound

187way so With that I will turn it over to assistant superintendent. Thank you. So under a database decision-making. This is obviously, you know huge huge piece of what we do every day and this kind of piggybacks on that other section where we were talking about the need to build the staff capacity around data-based decision-making which we definitely have work to do in that area so things like conducting focused school by school data review meetings every eight weeks to drive continuous improvements at the school and district levels I'm going to be meeting with principals next year to and have been meeting with principals this year to talk about some of their data. We've been looking focusing a lot on walkthrough data but we're also going to be doing regular administrative data meetings next year. But as

188far as building teacher capacity and Looking at that eight-week cycle for continuous improvement We're looking at creating a shared vision for using data to inform instruction support in systems across the district because it looks the same at every level no matter if you're a Kindergarten teacher or high school teacher you're still looking at data in the same way to see what we need to do and then also to create a district-wide meeting structure and complete with exemplars and templates so that's something that I have on my list for for this summer is to really bring that together so we have a cohesive way of doing that across the district And then we're looking at developing, aligning, and implementing user-friendly performance monitoring systems and data dashboards that are accessible to all stakeholders. So Director Harriman and

189I actually worked on this together. We use a data dashboard called Open Architects. Director Harriman uses it primarily to look at all of our special education data and LRE data and things like that but Open Architects also has the capacity to add in other dashboards and as far as programmatically companies and programs that do that that house data from a whole bunch of different sources are pretty expensive and Open they're really expensive open architects is actually comes in way under what any of these other Kind of data warehouse programs come in at so we kind of work together with both of our budgets to look at how we can use Open Architects district-wide with all staff, not just as an admin dashboard, because we can have Open Architects pull in all the school brands data.

190So attendance, discipline referrals, you know, all of that data that we have in our school information system can be pulled into Open Architects. All of our achievement data, MCAS, access, college prep, you know, all of the college boards, all of that, all of our in-house. standardized testing so our map data all of that stuff it will pull it in for all of it so when you pick up when you go into open architects you can look at a student and you can really see that whole student you can see everything about them from all these different sources and that's that's part of you know the challenge to looking at data on a regular on a regular basis and doing this is that when you're looking at a thousand different platforms like if i as a

191principal have to go into log into amplify to look at all my doubles data and then i have to log into map to look at all my map data then i have to go to school brains to look at my attendance data my discipline referrals then i have to go you know when you have six or seven different platforms you're dealing with and they're all kind of daily touches that you're looking at It's overwhelming and people avoid it because there's just too much. So to have one thing that will kind of pull it all together for us, I think it's going to be hugely instrumental. It's just going to be really creating that shared vision for everybody using that. So we're looking at 80% of all applicable staff looking at usage data. We'll utilize open

192architects regularly. That would be a good marker of success with that piece of this. So that's what we're looking at in terms of data and database decision-making in this plan is really creating that shared vision, providing the professional development that needs to be in there, and kind of tightening things up to be more cohesive across all seven schools with different protocols for data meetings, templates, exemplars, so that we're all kind of rowing in the same direction. Questions about the database decision-making section? Did you say what the cost associated with that was? I don't remember the exact cost, but it was pretty low. It was like $15,000 maybe? I think it was $17,000. I think what we have now for special education, and this was something that Bob Bergeron had introduced. We have the MCAS, the

193ACCESS, and special education through our frontline special ed management system, and it's, I think, about 7,000 now. So an additional 10,000 to add all those additional components district-wide is really, we were really surprised, actually. Pleasantly surprised. And what's great about it now is that it actually compares our data from our frontline special education management with... with school brains. So if, for example, there is a discrepancy, it has an error report and we're constantly checking it. So if something was updated in our special ed management system but it wasn't updated in school brains, it flags that right away and we can correct that. So that really helps us make sure all our data reporting to the state is accurate as well and that impacts our reimbursement. And all the dashboards are fully customizable. So even though

194it's pulling from all these different places, we can tell them exactly what we want it to pull. We can tell them the frequency.