DCRSD SC Mtg June 8 2022

001The republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We'll have a moment of silence for meditation. Okay. Approval of the minutes. I'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes of our regular meeting of Wednesday, May 25th. Do I have a motion? Discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Motion carries. It's unanimous. I'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes of our executive session of Wednesday, May 25th. Do I have a motion? Do I have a second? Okay. Discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Okay. Motion carries. Michelle has to abstain. Oh, that's right. Okay. So we have one abstaining. approval of the warrant this evening we do have a warrant that will make its way around the table to be signed um communications mr lamache do you have any

002madam chair do not and i do not how about our members okay superintendent's report madam chair and school committee um i have i have do have a couple of items to report on this evening um i think the first one will probably take a little bit of time but let me start This is Mrs. Catherine Kabbalah's last school community meeting. Therefore, I take this opportunity to thank Mrs. Kabbalah for her service to the Dudley community and her unwavering dedication to the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District. Mrs. Kabbalah has been a positive, outspoken advocate for doing things the right way in the Dudley-Charlton schools. Mrs. Kabbalah consistently focused on responsiveness to the community and quality improvement practices within the schools. Mrs. Cabala's input was very important to the school committee and the Dudley Charlton staff over the

003years. During tough times, Mrs. Cabala understood the impact and sacrifices that would have to be made, but measured all of the tough decisions by their outcomes and their impact on children and staff. Mrs. Cabala entered every meeting and every discussion prepared with an unwavering commitment to every child in our district. It is always hard to believe how fast time passes. Mrs. Cabala, you have served your community. the Dudley-Chelton Regional School District for nearly 40 years which is an exemplary achievement and categorizes you as a volunteer extraordinaire. The Dudley-Chelton Regional School District would not be poised for the next chapter without recognizing your investment and without appreciating the knowledge you have imparted to those still here. We are, this is this is my favorite one here, we're not saying goodbye as we hope that you will

004continue to support us in new ways. we strive to be the best school district in Worcester County in the state of Massachusetts Mrs. Kabbalah thank you for your contributions of time and talent you will not be forgotten And Kathy, thank you for your 38 years of dedication to the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District. You will be missed. We were a team. So you're going to be missed. And this evening, I will have a little recess, and we're going to celebrate. We have food for everyone, okay? And Catherine, now you can talk. Thank you, Mr. Lamarche, for those kind words and Mrs. O'Coin. And I also want to thank all the people that have emailed me, sent me cards, and also I've met in the street of a church or the grocery store, wishing me the best

005and saying they're going to miss me. I'm going to miss all of you, too. With a little help from the Bible and the folk group, the Birds, I don't know if you know the Birds. I'm sure some of you are that old. but who I saw them in Worcester in the late 60s early 70s and they said to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose a time to plant and a time to harvest the summer of 1984 was a time to join the school committee and the summer of 2022 is the time to leave I can remember my very first meeting in July 1984. I came into this building. I had never been in Shepherd Hill. My kids were little. One was not quite four. The other one was just 13

006months. So I had never been in any of the schools. But anyways, I came into the room. I had no idea where to sit. Mr. Cameron, the superintendent at the time, had to show me where to sit. I had no idea. And here I am 38 years later. I got my seat since that time 38 years ago I have worked with 44 school committee members eight superintendents and four finance directors I always tried to do my best now is the time for me to go I want to wish the best to everyone in the district from the students teachers staff and my co-workers my colleagues and thank you very much for your support throughout the years So I think we'll have a little recess now and then we'll continue. Okay? Feel free to eat during

007the meeting. Okay, Mr. Lamache, you will continue with the superintendent's report. Thank you, Madam Chair and school committee. I do have a couple of other items. All schools conducted lockdown drills and consultation with the local police department since the last time we met. We appreciate the community's support and the help from our local police departments. We identified summer train-the-trainer opportunities for ALICE, which is Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate, which is now owned by, I think, 360 Navigate, I think is the company that owns it. and we have a number of administrators signed up to become Dudley-Charlton Regional School District ALICE trainers for our staff for next year. Next year we will identify the number of drills practiced in our schools as was requested at the last meeting as we begin the transition to ALICE. A

008common number of drills that I have seen through other districts is three per year. Minimally please prepare and plan for multiple lockdown drills and subsequent ALICE drills during the next school year. Lastly, the best tool we all have is communication. When it comes to the safety and well-being of our schools and the people in them, something noticed is never too small. Your call and email is always welcomed, which I've received several over the past couple weeks, and I really appreciate the people who've reached out and gave us a chance to check on something. Last Thursday, I attended an impact breakfast at Heritage Elementary School. What a remarkable celebration of students and a gem of a commitment by Ms. Donna Morin, Ms. Ann Marie Clem, and Ms. Patricia Hawkins. Here is a great example of a

009piece of universal design for learning, multi-tiered system of support for 19 Heritage students who exhibited adversity while transitioning into the school to start their school day, ready to learn. This is a before school activity once the student has entered the school for the first 10 to 15 minutes of the school day. Impact was actually started in 2006 by Mrs. Donna Warren, Ms. Lorinda Allen, and Mrs. David Deremian. A great example of engagement, self-regulation, expression, communication, and executive functioning, expanding opportunities and practices to meet individual student needs through UDL and MTSS. It is worthy of our collective support and district-wide training to ensure we expand our collective instructional strategies like this for all of our students. Last Thursday was the senior banquet at LaSalle Reception Center in Southbridge. I thought it was a great evening and

010I appreciate the hard work by senior class advisors, Ms. Becky Boussier and Ms. Ashley Rassicott. It was actually my first senior banquet since I've been superintendent in the Dudley-Chelton Regional School District. And the last item I have was Sunday's graduation ceremony. I thought it was a fantastic ceremony at DCU Center. They were great. The students, all four students had great speeches. I just thought, you know, the celebration was about two hours and 15 minutes, I think. Somewhere around two hours was the length of the celebration. But I think... you know all the speakers had something of value to share with us and to say and i thought it was a great ceremony and it's great to get back to a graduation event like we had this past sunday congratulations to all of the class of

0112022 and that concludes the superintendent's report this evening okay thank you any questions for the superintendent Okay, that brings us to public comment this evening. Public comment will be a duration of 30 minutes. Each individual speaker will get three minutes to speak, and it's open now. If you would like to come up, come up to the table, and you can address us. We need a chair, though. There's a chair there. Okay, I didn't see it. I thought that was the end of the table. Thank you. Stefan Sage, but let me preface before I really start. I feel a little bit guilty. It's part of my Jewish heritage, I guess, on coming on Ms. Kabbalah's last day to bring up an issue that is an unfortunate issue as opposed to a celebratory occasion that we're having

012right now. So be it I guess it has to be done I would have attended your last meeting but I had a another board meeting that I'm a board member of That took precedence and I would have reported this out to you as well at that time, but On May 11th, a swastika was drawn on the side door of the Charlton Public Library. Not only am I a citizen of Charlton, but I'm also a trustee on the Charlton Public Library. Fortunately, the library personnel were able to promptly remove the symbol of hate. And I do have a small photo of it here. It was a small swastika, but it was a swastika all the same. Several days later, a student leaving Bay Path Regional Vocational High School and driving on Old Mugget Hill Road was

013heard shouting out the window, I hate the N-word over and over again. This was reported to me by a friend who lives on the road and witnessed the voice of hate. I spoke with Superintendent Brenner a few days later to let him know about the incident because he was unaware of that. I also informed him that I would be having a protest at the end of their driveway at a later date. I expressed my opinion that I hoped it would encourage some discussion at the school. In the Town Hall of Charlton, behind the select persons, there is a sign that they were given in 2002 that... I modified a little bit, I say since 2002, that Charlton is a no place for hate community. And I did have that protest holding these signs up at

014the end of their driveway along with a couple other people joining me. On that day of the protest, I also learned that an interracial couple happened to live on the road and the shouting may have been directed at them. And although the First Amendment protects such speech, this hate speech cannot and should not be ignored. And then through secondhand information, I have heard about an unfortunate incident of what I believe is anti-Semitic harassment at the Charlton Middle School. As I informed you tonight, or as I'm informing you tonight, at some point I will be holding these signs, or a sign, at the Charlton Middle School. I will not be standing on the Charlton Middle School property. but just off on the road with the same hope that it may over the next days that school

015is in session create some discussion at the school the actions of a few sadden me that these hateful incidents have occurred in our town and I cannot sit by and remain silent thank you oh one other thing I heard the bell ring when I was in school as a child in the 60s. We never got past, I think, World War II, World War I. I know very little about World War II except what I've learned. Nothing about the Korean War. I lived during the Vietnam War and the fight for civil rights. I really encourage the school to maybe think about putting some of the modern day history into the curriculum. I know you start way back into ancient Greece and things like that, but I have a feeling that if students were more aware of

016the atrocities of World War II and the Civil Rights Movement, maybe these kinds of hate might be lessened. Thank you. Good evening. It's Colin Humphreys, Dudley. Tonight I would like to address two concerns that I have for this district. First of all, I am gravely concerned about the recent budget cuts that were made. The cuts will cost the jobs of six full-time employees, will completely eliminate the high school French program and leave our middle schools without a full-time librarian, according to a report that was given on March 9th. Additionally, the March 9th presentation... had some indication that there may need for more cuts. There was mention of cutting middle school foreign language program, which thankfully appeared to be revised. Elementary level librarians, kindergarten classroom assistants, and more teachers in order to meet a 1.7% cut

017that might happen in the future, or goal that might happen in the future. As our country becomes more diverse and multilingual, foreign language programs are more important than ever in order to create a generation that can interact with people who may speak a different language, a very important skill in life, especially in a nation that continues to become more diverse. Our librarians are the lifelines of our schools. They curate libraries where students can enhance their learning and studies by researching on a myriad of different topics. Our libraries also create an environment where students at all levels can read, write, think critically, and be creative. Also, if this cut of kindergarten aides that was suggested in the program, it doesn't appear that's happening right now, but it was within the presentation, happens, it would be personal

018for me, as I once depended on my classroom aides as a young student with special needs. Without these superheroes, I likely would have stayed back a grade or two. Tonight, there are many students here who don't want their beloved teachers to be let go. Their outrage is understandable as many of my teachers served as role models for me and helped make me the successful political science major at UMass and candidate for local office that I am today. Additionally, I am concerned about the recent increases to the cost of school lunch as laid out in a memo by Director Matthew on April 13th. As the COVID free school meals program expires, the district has moved to increase the cost of breakfast from $1.50 to $1.75 a day and the cost of lunch from $2.90 to $3.30

019a day. When I was younger, I can remember the cost of school lunch being very reasonable. But over the past 15 years or so, the cost of school lunch has greatly increased to a cost that many families who don't receive the free lunch program can't afford. As a result, many students have gone without nutritious meals on school days. While I continue to hope the state legislature will move to make free school meals universal as California did, I believe that in the interim our district should strive to make school meals as affordable as possible, not increase the cost burden. We need an override. It has become abundantly clear that the district does not have enough money to successfully meet the needs of our students and families. The 2018 override might have worked at the time, but

020COVID has changed the game and we must adapt. So I'm calling upon the school committee to do an override and to convince the residents of these towns that it is necessary in order to fund our schools. Thank you. Hello, my name is Caroline Doering. I'm a part of the National Honor Society here at Shepherd Hill along with some of my friends here today. I'm a junior, soon to be a senior next year, and I have come here to voice my concern about the school's budget in relation to the course selection next year. Course rigor and variety of classes is imperative to college. admissions. When I first came to Shepherd Hill through school choice, the main factor that drew me in was the expansive course selection the school had to boast. I was able to tell

021all my friends at Bartlett and Bay Path about the unique and diverse selection. Unfortunately, I do not believe I am able to do that anymore. I have heard countless of my classmates express their worries about their favorite classes being dropped. Here is 120 approximate classmates that are impacted by these drops of classes. No longer were we able to take astrophysics, calculus, below AP, French classes that go beyond the two-year requirement, and AP computer science. And I've heard the disappointment of teachers and students alike when class ideas are unable to be launched, such as AP European history. I'm not here to express anger, but rather express my concern. I'm entering into my last year of high school, and yet the classes my peers and I are so willing to take are being taken away from us.

022I come to you as a student. as a student yearning to learn. My friends and I come to you on behalf of all the other students that are voicing this exact same concern. I don't know what the proper solution is, whether that be raising the funds or allocating them from different departments, but the changes being made are at the detriment of students here at Shepherd Hill. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Maria Pekarczyk, and I'm currently a junior here at Shepherd Hill. I've come to you this evening with a pertinent issue at hand that is surrounding our school's budgeting. As the vice president of our school's NHS, a few weeks ago my fellow officers and I had the honor of receiving for the third year in a row the Commended Chapter Award, simply

023meaning that out of all the NHS's within the state, we were recognized as the best. Larry Murphy, the assistant director of the Massachusetts School Administrator Association, who was the gentleman who presented us this award, commended us for the adversities that we had so wonderfully overcome this past year, that being a pandemic, working in masks every day, and a school that is, quote, selling the budget. Yes, a man who helps oversee development, training, and the organization of student activities within student council and NHS and other educational areas was able to pinpoint our school out of the thousands within the state as one that was struggling, that had a struggling budget. I'm not sure how this makes you feel, but it makes me greatly upset. Shepherd Hill has always been recognized and upheld by our academics and

024having a multitude of educational opportunities. But now this fact is being threatened. This budget cut has effectively stopped and isolated students from taking the classes that are not only important to themselves, but to their futures. I know of multiple people who once boasted of the vast classes that were offered here. And now, what could we say? That we offer a rich foreign language education that is comprised of a French program that only goes up to the second level? Or perhaps that for a short time we had zoology, and then we lost it? And that we almost had astrophysics, and then it was cut, to which we let down nearly 30 students? I also don't think that we could boast about teaching our kids advanced European history, as that idea was immediately shut down and we

025were told that that class would never come to life. Are we seeing the issue at hand? It's actions like these that solidify my fear that our society is holding money to a higher value than that of the children's education. I know we aren't the first school to face a challenge like this. Plenty of districts around us are seeing it too. And schools are trying to help raise money to curb this effect. Unfortunately, the voices of students will remain unheard if we do not get your support here to advocate for this issue. We need you on our side. I'd like to leave everyone with this final thought, however. Within this district are the very minds that will be leading and forging the path into the future. The decisions that are actively being made here without our

026input are directly jeopardizing the outcomes of these minds. I don't know about you, but I most certainly would do anything in my power to ensure that those who are going to be leading the future receive the most out of their education. Cutting classes will only lead to us continuing this harmful trend, and at the end of the day, cutting the budget may save money, but it is only at the expense of our education. Thank you. Hello, my name is Aria Humphreys. I'm a resident in Dudley and I'm currently a junior going into my senior year at Sheppard Hill Regional High School. I'm one of the many students personally affected by these cuts as I was planning on and very excited to take astrophysics. By definition, astrophysics is a branch of space science that applies the

027laws of physics and chemistry to seek to understand the universe and our place in it. I believe that this could be a very useful and interesting course as outer space is such a complex concept that there is still so much left to learn about. In a more general sense, it's important that we keep a variety of science classes offered at our school since science education is a vital tool for understanding and improving our world. Even more generally, education is power. Students will be more motivated to learn if they are able to learn subjects they are interested in. If we stay in this direction of cutting classes, students will have less and less opportunities to explore subjects that may influence their future career and will become more uninterested and possibly even defiant in their classes. Allowing

028students to have a variety of classes to choose from is shown to have increased engagement and overall inspiration to learn. I understand that increasing funding is no easy task, but I ask you to please take a look at us, the students being affected by these cuts. Here we are asking for a better education saying that we want to learn. My fellow students and I are the future of this community and the future of this world. Thank you for your time. Good evening everyone. David Smolsky from Charlton. Sorry to be absent for a few meetings. We've had spring sports so I have a Wednesday night off which is great. Mrs. Cavala, congratulations. Thank you so much and it's good to see some new faces here at the table as well. I appreciate hearing that we did

029the lockdown drills recently, and it sounds encouraging about Alice. I also just want to mention a conversation we had around our dinner table within the past week or so, and it was in reference to what happened in Texas. And it was kind of an interesting conversation because we were talking about, you know, that young man who did what he did also being a product of the school system. And if he was growing up in the school system, he likely understood how they prepare for these types of events. So I don't know exactly a solution, but it's almost like the deck is a bit stacked when somebody knows the game plan from the inside. So just a comment. It was an interesting conversation with two young kids at our dinner table, and I thought it was

030worth mentioning here. The other thing I just would like to share briefly, kind of rolling back the clock to last summer, I know we had that forum here at Shepherd Hill where we talked about CRT. Is it culturally responsive teaching? Is it critical race theory? Dr. Eakins was up on the big screen. And a friend shared an article with me today. It's from New Boston Post. I've never read this article before. I'm not familiar with the publication. The article's a little political. And I just want to be really clear. I'm not a registered member of any political party. I've never actually voted for somebody who's been elected president of the United States. So I don't have a dog in the fight when it comes to politics. The article is titled, Massachusetts Democratic Party Passes Resolution

031Acknowledging the Value of Critical Race Theory in Schools. And it goes on to say, a common argument against banning critical race theory in public schools is that the schools don't teach critical race theory. That is no longer the position of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. Not only has the party acknowledged that concepts derived from critical race theory are being taught in schools, the party is now openly supporting it. The Massachusetts Democratic Party held a statewide convention last week. The party determined which statewide candidates would make the September 2022 primary ballot. However, the delegates also voted on six resolutions in the weeks leading up to the event. It goes on and on. It's a pretty long article. I just wanted to mention it in light of that meeting that we had last year, in light of people

032having different interpretations of what CRT is, and just thought I'd bring it to your attention. Thanks for your time tonight. Much appreciated. Thank you again for your service, and welcome to the new members. Thank you. Yep. Anyone else this evening? Okay. For probably next agenda, we will address some of these concerns of the students that they brought up to us. And any other concerns that we've heard this evening? So we'll have that on the agenda for the superintendent to address. Okay? Or designate. Yes. All right. So that will conclude our public comment. And we go to new business. Welcome our new Shepherd Hill High School principal, Mr. Darren Elwell and Mr. Lamache. Madam Chair and School Committee, Mr. Elwell, if you wouldn't mind coming up because I'm sure you'll probably want to say a few

033words. But I want to start by saying that this is a perfect opportunity because in recent time we haven't had as many Shepherd Hill students here during a school committee meeting as we do tonight. So it's great that Mr. Elwell heard your voices tonight because it's extremely important and great for the betterment of Shepherd Hill but also for his induction and introduction to Shepherd Hill Regional High School. So, with that said, I am pleased to announce that Mr. Darren Elwell has accepted the appointment of Shepherd Hill Regional High School Principal. He will be responsible for leading and managing all aspects of Shepherd Hill. Mr. Elwell was the unanimous choice of the Principal Search Group, and after meeting with Mr. Elwell myself, I am confident in his leadership and excited that he has accepted the opportunity

034to lead Shepherd Hill starting July 1st. Mr. Elwell has exhibited dedication and loyalty to public education for more than 15 years. He established his professional zeal as a tutor, library assistant, teacher, assistant principal, principal, and director of curriculum. In addition, Mr. Elwell's references identified him as a person of sound character, integrity, intelligence, and that he is well-spoken. He is a collaborator who establishes visibility and voice throughout his leadership in his schools. Mr. Elwell holds a Bachelor of Arts from Bates College, a Masters of Science in Education from the University of New England, and he continues postgraduate work at Harvard University in School Management and Leadership. As I already said, he will officially assume his role July 1st, 2022, very less than a month. Mr. Darren Elwell is replacing Mr. William Chaplin, who has accepted a

035leadership position in another district. I welcome and I introduce to you Mr. Principal Darren Elwell of Shepparton Regional High School. Congratulations, Ms. Galloway. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Well, I appreciate that very kind introduction. It doesn't get any easier when you hear people talk about you, but I appreciate it. I also want to... Welcome the students who are here this evening and I give you a lot of credit for coming forward and identifying some of your concerns which will now be on my list of things to address. So I think we have some things to discuss and I look forward to that officially when I begin on July 1st. It's an honor to be chosen for this position and as I mentioned throughout the interview process, in any district it's not about the programs

036or the buildings but rather the people. And one of the things that was abundantly clear to me after my first hour in the district, first hour of interviewing, was that I felt a connection to the people and I felt as if philosophically we were on the same page. And I definitely felt as if this was a team that I wished to be part of and hopefully can contribute to as well. So I'm very excited. And July 1st can't come soon enough. So thank you very much. Congratulations. Congratulations. Report of the Director of Finance and Operations, Budget and Finance Subcommittee, and the Capital Outlay Safety Subcommittee. And Director Matthew will be speaking, and Chair Terry, who is not here right now. But maybe you can finish yours. If she's not, then maybe you can do the

037capital. Sure, of course. So going out of order, going to Item B, we have the end-of-year report audit. You guys should all have a copy in your books. I don't know if anybody has any questions. There were no findings reported there, so it was nice to get back to that level on the end-of-year report. Seeing no questions, next is the French River Education Center paper bid. The French River Education Center, FREC, conducted its annual copy paper bid for the participating districts. There was only one bidder, W.B. Mason. The submitted bid price of $49.86 was rejected by the group. When compared to the bid price in 2020 of $23.75, this increase of more than 100% was viewed as unacceptable. The district will pursue procurement of copy paper on its own and there are opportunities to purchase

038paper, perhaps with a partial recycled content, much closer to the past price of $23.75. At this point in time, the intention is to buy a truckload of paper from Hammer Mill off of Amazon, believe it or not. And that price will be just over $27,000, so a little bit more than what we paid in 2020, but far more reasonable than the bid price that we received. Good work. These times are becoming more and more challenging. We've already gone through a couple of months of budget discussion, and we certainly heard some of the concerns that we all have on the budget raised tonight. You know, I think it's appropriate, you know, that we've started the discussions with the town of Dudley to talk about an override, and hopefully we can get to a point where our

039budget increases resemble more, like other communities, you know, in the 3% to 5% range as needed, as opposed to the 1.5% to 2% range, and be glad when we get 3%. But, again, those are discussions for another day. If there are no other questions on the paper bid, the disposal of surplus materials, technology. The district has a number of items sitting in their technology recycling trailer that are ready for disposal. Mr. Darkangelo has requested the following items be declared surplus as they have reached the end of their useful life or are in a state of disrepair and not worth further investment. These materials will be taken out by a recycling company for appropriate disposal. We have 625 desktop computers, 350 monitors. 177 projectors, 32 UPS systems, 93 network switches, 11 printers, 123 tablets, and 1,180

040Chromebooks. Please note, these are not simply extra things that we had from this particular year. This has been a... Area where we've stashed stuff and when it reached an appropriate point in time where basically more stuff couldn't go in We've decided to bring it forward so motion to declare Surplus the equipment stated by mr. Matthew Do I have a motion? Okay any discussion on it? Seeing that all in favor anyone no, okay all in favor Motion carries. It's unanimous. Thank you very much. And lastly, just an update on the first student parent app. On Tuesday, May 31st, the district sent out invitations to families in Dudley and Charlton to be early adopters of the first view app, the first student parent app. Those invited are the families on bus 8. Roots in Dudley and families

041on bus 56 and 27 in Charlton. As of this writing, which was last week, there were 41 families. When I looked on Monday, there were 43 families who have signed up for the app, and both personal experience and communications have indicated as a success. The district looks forward to rolling out this information to all families over the summer so it's available to any who want to utilize it for the first day of the upcoming school year. IT'S A GOOD THING. I'M GLAD. I'M PLEASED THAT THEY WERE ABLE TO OFFER THAT TO US AT NO COST. AS SOME OF THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS MAY RECALL, WE LOOKED AT THIS PREVIOUSLY, AND I THINK THE COST WAS AROUND $12,000 OR SO, AS QUOTED. AND IT WASN'T SEEN AS AN INVESTMENT THAT WE WANTED TO PURSUE AT THE TIME.

042AGAIN, NO SURPRISE TO ANYONE WHO'S BEEN PLUGGED IN, BUT THE DISTRICT HAS STRUGGLED WITH BUDGETS FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS. So the fact that it's available and works well and provides a timely notification is good news. And we look forward to having the dashboard rolled out at all the schools so that we can see that all the building secretaries and building admin can see those things, as well as utilizing the VersaTrans program a little bit more and spending a little more time with the transportation automation this summer. you will do the capital? I will. So we did meet last Friday and went over the proposed schedule of items. So on June 14th, we'll be before the Board of Selectmen in Dudley to talk about the capital plan. On June 15th, we'll be before the Board

043of Selectmen in Charlton. On June 21st, we'll have a public meeting on this at the Charlton Middle School. And on June 28th, we'll have a public meeting on the capital plan at the Dudley Middle School. The intention is to have One of these many meetings videotaped so that we can post that on our website so that people at a night able to join us are able to view the information and we'll follow this up with meetings again to it towards the latter part of August or early part of September next year the target date for a special election on the debt Assuming the school committee votes to approve the issuance of debt would be Tuesday September. I believe it's 27th It's our intention to bring forward the request for school committee to vote on the

044debt at its next meeting. No, the Massachusetts primary is the first Tuesday of the month, so I believe the sixth. Any questions? 6 p.m. Are only registered voters allowed, or can the students come as well? Anybody can come to the public meetings. Only registered voters can vote, unfortunately. JUST THANK YOU, MR. COMMERANT, FOR BRINGING THAT UP. POINT OF CLARITY FOR THE STUDENTS, THIS IS FOR CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS TO THE BUILDINGS. SO THIS IS LIKE INSTALLING A NEW ROOF AT DUDLEY MIDDLE SCHOOL OR A NEW ROOF AT CHARLTON MIDDLE SCHOOL, JUST TO BE CLEAR ON THE FINANCING AND THE PURPOSE OF THESE MEETINGS, WHICH ARE VERY IMPORTANT. WE WANT YOU THERE. SO I JUST WANT TO SHARE IT WITH YOU. AND WE ALSO WANT SCHOOL COMMITTEE THERE AS WELL TO HELP OUT AND SUPPORT THIS. IT IS

045A REQUEST FOR CHARLTON OF A... CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT VALUE OF $4,700,000 ROUGHLY, AND FOR DOUBLED, IT'S AROUND $2.8 MILLION FOR CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS FOR NEXT YEAR. SO THAT'S IN THE WORKS AT THIS POINT IN TIME, JUST SO THAT PEOPLE ARE AWARE. OKAY? THANK YOU, MR. COVERNING. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? OKAY. AND THAT CONCLUDES THE REPORT. THANK YOU, MR. MATTHEW. Report of the Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, Dr. Ackerman. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. I want to open this report by expressing a collective thank you to the entire Dudley-Charlton Regional School District Elementary Teaching staff. Year one of CKLA implementation has been a major success. The Dudley-Charlton Regional School District has taken a significant step forward thanks to the collaborative efforts of our teaching and leadership teams. Visiting classrooms throughout the year, seeing a high

046level of student engagement, and watching teachers skillfully teach CKLA content has been a feather in the cap for the entire district. Additionally, Dudley-Charlton became a curricular resource for other districts this year. Receiving positive feedback regarding the quality of CKLA instruction from other district teams shows a level of commitment and the teaching expertise of our faculty. I would also like to thank our Early Grades Literacy Grant Team. This group played a significant role in leading the rollout of CKLA, as well as informing our collective knowledge of reading through statewide and network meetings. At the recent Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's showcase event, Mrs. Christine Marrier from Mason Road School showcased a 12-minute lesson snippet of her classroom interacting with the word exposed, showing the entire network's skillful implementation of CKLA. By pairing the grant team

047with CKLA, our cohort was able to ensure a successful first year of implementation. We hope to receive another year of additional funding from the grant to complete this vital work. Last week, I wanted to reach out to the elementary teaching staff seeking feedback regarding CKLA, including both the successes and opportunities for growth. So I've gathered some quotes and this I'm just going to read them to the committee directly. Quote, kids are truly learning to read with explicit instruction that they can apply to authentic stories supplied by the CKLA program. The decodable readers are super engaging and motivating for my students. Quote, kids are getting the opportunity to dive, really dive into topics. These multi-week units allow lots of opportunity to make connections with topics and become confident in their learning. Quote, CKLA does not always

048correlate with our progress reports, which makes grading difficult. Quote, nearly all of my students are at or above oral reading fluency on DIBELS, and I attribute a big part of that to CKLA. Quote, it is lecturing, lecturing seven and eight year olds, sometimes things they are interested in and sometimes about things they are not. Quote, students are doing more complex writing. Quote, students enjoyed most of the topics. Quote, in some cases, the depth of knowledge was too complex for students. Quote, a well-rounded program. Students are exposed to non-fiction, classical, fictional novels, as well as a focus on poetry. And quote, grading was very involved and time-consuming. I think it really represented accurately some of the strengths and some of the challenges for us I think our next layer of work is going to be looking

049at aligning the curriculum with our report cards and doing some work to align scope and sequence with other content over the summer but I'll have further updates as those plans emerge with with the teaching staff the school can ask questions I just have a concern. I guess I've heard from a few teachers, good and also some of, I guess, the not so great. You know, if it is lecturing seven and eight-year-olds for an hour, seven and eight-year-olds, I feel like kids with short attention spans, even most of us adults don't want to be lectured two for seven. for like an hour on a topic that we may or may not enjoy. So I find that to be maybe something to look into. And also, I'm under the impression that there are some state standards that

050aren't being met with this. So I'm wondering if we... What kind of adjustments we're going to be making to get make sure that those standards are being hit so for ela All the state standards are covered for English language arts I think because it has taken us some time and because in year one of implementation you have to elongate your time span We have not captured all of the science and social studies standards So part of our work going forward will be to look at the crosswalk between CKLA and then where we can intersperse those standards in science and social studies. So that's part of the work in year two and year three. Because the teachers are correct, and just to reiterate, when you start a new program, you do have to commit more time

051typically in year one just because people have to get their feet wet. But we are aware of those challenges, and that's really going to be the work in year two and beyond is to address those head on. So one way to make it our own is to break it up. So again, to Mrs. Elder's point, for an hour consecutively is a lot. And really, what we want to be able to do with our staff is to give our staff the flexibility to say, okay, if you need a pause point, take a pause point and then circle back to it a little bit later. We really try to provide guidance and direction. But we don't want to put people in a box because flexibility is really important. So, Madam Chair, if I could add just a

052little bit as well. Notoriously in elementary schools, reaching the science and history standards has always been a struggle because elementary teachers tend to focus on mathematics and ELA. So this is hitting all of the ELA, which will be the entry point to science and social studies standards. But, again, it's always a struggle at the elementary level to hit all of those science and social studies standards. I'm not saying it's acceptable. I'm just saying even before CKLA, that was an annual dilemma. for elementary teachers. The other part, and Dr. Ackerman did talk about it, and a great example is, because there is some planning to do, do some planning, is like when we shared, when the teachers came and shared the Viking unit, that was taking that long lecture period and breaking it down to something

053that's more manageable, but also more alive and more authentic for the students. And so that's the work, that's the creativity, that's the best part about teaching, is the standards give you kind of the roadmap, but actually how you meet those standards is really the instructional piece. And now that we have these high quality instructional materials, we actually... and we're seeing anecdotally and this is what i was going to say because i've in the buildings i've had staff members come up to me and say they're blown away with They didn't think it was going to work. They were concerned about it. They were concerned about the hour lecture, all of that. But the results that they're seeing in their students right now, anecdotally, are off the charts to them. And that's with interrupted learning, too, because

054that was part of the concern. So we will bring some of that data in at some point in time as they finalize their benchmarking right now. But, yeah, I mean, any program is going to have some gaps, pitfalls, stuff like that that we have to work on collaboratively and together on. So I just wanted to add to a couple of your. concern is if the grading is really involved in time-consuming are we giving our teachers any help with that or is there a way to adjust that so it's not as time-consuming because we part of the work we're gonna try and do over the summer is when we do that scope and sequence work is to look at where those opportunities are because at some point and it may take a little bit of time

055we have to eventually get to a point where we're able to have our report cards aligned with what our curriculum is. So we will, it's something that we have to work on and address with our staff. Thank you. And then I just wanted to update the committee as well that the Curriculum Subcommittee for Teaching and Learning looks forward to welcoming Dr. Katie Novak, the founder of Novak Education, to our meeting on Monday, June 13th at 3.30 p.m. Dr. Novak will identify key facets of universal design for learning and have a discussion with committee members regarding the benefit that UDL provides for students and teachers. that if any committee members are going to join in on that meeting, only the committee members that are on that subcommittee are allowed to ask questions or else it would

056be violating the meeting law. Correct? Mm-hmm. So if you have questions, you can always submit them to Jamie or Jean or I, and we can ask those questions for you. Oh, okay. Okay? Good to know. Thank you. but all members are welcome to attend yes and then and the agenda and the link will will be posted because it's a video conference meeting be presenting any of the slides or information that the teachers will be seeing based on that I know she's going to really talk about what what UDL is and you know it's proactive approach to design of instruction I presume that she will incorporate some portions but I haven't seen specifically what her slide deck looks like through the chair maybe we could if you could email her and let them know that how

057like just past history concerns and maybe she could bring some type of an example sure okay that concludes your report all right update special education department director Bergeron chair members of the committee thank you for your time So I'm here tonight to present an overview of the Department of Student Services for this year to the committee. This presentation, I thought a lot about what information would be valuable to school board members at this time of the year after the past few years that we've had. So this presentation is intended to kind of give an overview of special education in particular. The way I see the Department of Student Services, the way I view my department, and I think it's helpful for school board members and people who are unfamiliar with special education, is we are

058a safety net that exists around students in the public school setting. When students are having difficulties in school, whether they be students that experience homelessness, students that are in foster care or DCF. All of these things fall under student services. Special education in particular is designed to address the needs of students with disabilities that we have here in district. So when we think about that safety net, over the past few years experiencing COVID shutdown, the loss of learning, the return to schools after that loss of time for students, it has really strained that safety net. And a lot of what I'm going to talk about tonight is sort of the after effects, what we're calling the wave of need, of high need that we're experiencing, that all districts across Massachusetts are experiencing, but how it

059affects us in particular. I thought about how to explain that wave of need succinctly to members of the committee without going into too much detail and spending too long on it. And I came up with this statistic that I thought was telling. But before I share that with you, I just want to review what we do. What is an IEP? How does this function, right? So when there's a concern about a student, when someone suspects that a student might have a disability that's interfering with their progress in school, they're referred to our department. That student goes through what's called a comprehensive evaluation. We look at their progress in school, we look at indicators that a disability might be present, and if they qualify for special education, an IEP is written. The team, the IEP team

060around that student writes a document that identifies their strengths, their needs, accommodations they might need in the classroom, modifications to the curriculum that might be required, goals, services, and placement. It's in that order, right? We identify the needs that a student requires in order to make progress. We identify the services the student requires, and then we decide where is that student going to receive those services. That's just a general overview, but it's important to understand the process. Every year the team gets together, we look at the progress a student has made, and we propose a new IEP based on how the student looks in front of us at this time. Kids change a lot over the course of a year, so it's a very important part of the process. Since August this current school year,

061the Department of Special Education has processed over 500 evaluation requests just this school year. There are less than 650 students that receive services in this district. That is an astounding amount of work that the teams have done this year. Each of those evaluations requires hours of work on the part of special education teachers, school psychologists, related service providers. regular ed teachers that are involved in the process is a collective effort that we didn't add a lot of staff and you know I wasn't here I just came in here in October so you think about the safety net that was built around our students the past few years and I think that that number represents the strain that's been placed on our staff this year so I think it's important for members of the board to

062understand that the strain that we've been under this past year and that all districts have have experienced So I'd like to start with this slide. It's just an overview of who we're responsible for. The Special Education Department is responsible for every student in our towns, not just students that attend our schools. Some students might be serviced outside of our schools for various reasons. We're responsible for all of them. When we look at this top language up here, this is a summary of what we call FAPE, a free appropriate public education. So that means that students are entitled to the services they require to make educational progress at no cost to parents. We are required to provide those services. The difficulty historically has been that these laws are unfunded. They're not fully funded. So the burden

063of paying for all of these services, which are quite expensive, falls on local towns. And that can be quite difficult. So when we go through the budget process, special education is always under a bit of a microscope. Under that you see listed 1 through 10. These are a series of the environments where students might be receiving special education services. It's a list, sometimes we call this the least restrictive environment flow chart. And it's just for school board members to understand if a student has a long-term stay at a hospital, we are still responsible for providing services. Students who might be in custody, we are still responsible for providing those services. There is no situation where we lose responsibility for educating their students. So it's important to know the scope of our responsibilities. It's weird having

064a presentation behind me trying to make it work. This is an overview of the students that we have in district broken down by disability category. I'm often asked about this. We see communication disabilities being the most common in our district, followed by specific learning disabilities. We're right about the state average for identification percentage. In the past year, we've gone up a full percentage point. We were under 18% previous to this year. With the additions of students that we're servicing this year, we've gone over 18%. That's happened statewide. Across the state, almost every district has gone up in the number of students that they're servicing this year. Also, we have the percentage of students identified that are receiving services in what's called out-of-district placements. We're a little bit under the state average in that regard. I'm

065going to talk more about that in detail in a minute. When students are receiving special education services in school, we identify their placement as being full inclusion, partial inclusion, or in a substantially separate program. This is delineated by the percent of time they spend in the regular classroom versus the percent of time they're removed from that classroom for services. So this is our district compared to the state. One thing that's interesting is the amount of partial inclusion that we have. It's larger than I would expect for a district that has really focused on services in the mainstream setting the past few years. So it's something that we need to work on. This next slide is also telling. It looks at a historical view of the students that receive services in our district from 2017 through

066current. The 2021 number is from our state reporting in May 2021. And the current was pulled this week from our database. So you can see over time, especially during and after COVID, we saw a pretty drastic increase in the number of students that required special ed services in district. Since special education budget is always a hot topic, I always think school board members need to know where our funding is going. So you can see it on this slide. You can see tuitions and out of district. TUITIONS COMPARED TO OUR SALARIES TAKES UP THE MAJORITY OF OUR BUDGET. THE LITTLE SLIVER YOU SEE THERE ARE THE MONEY THAT WE HAVE TO SPEND ON THINGS LIKE MATERIALS AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, THINGS THAT ACTUALLY SUPPORT TEACHERS DIRECTLY WITH THEIR WORK IN THE CLASSROOM IS A VERY SMALL AMOUNT

067OF MONEY COMPARED TO WHERE THE REST OF OUR FUNDING IS GOING. WE DON'T HAVE ANY CONTROL OVER SALARIES. SALARIES ARE CONTRACTED, RIGHT? BUT WE DO HAVE CONTROL OVER THE... I THINK IT'S RED. IT'S RED. the red out of district tuition amount and what I always talk about is we either invest in programs here to improve our programming in district or we pay to have students go to programs outside of our district it is the choice Looking at the students that receive services outside of our district, the two disability categories that are seen the most out of that list of students are autism spectrum disorder and emotional disabilities. They are more than all other disability categories combined. So when we look at the idea of building program, building programming that is going to support students here

068in the district, these are the categories to focus on. This is where we can have the biggest impact and keep students here with us. One thing I say a lot about special education is the philosophical goals that we all share about keeping students in district with their neighbors, with their peers, accessing this amazing school, this amazing school district and all it has, all the clubs, all the sports. That's why I want kids here. I don't want to lose any students. I don't want any student to have to get in a van and go to school somewhere else. They should be educated here in their district with their friends. That aligns with budget responsibility. because our district placements are incredibly expensive. Both the transportation, the tuition, and that student loses so much in terms of access

069and relationships. So if they require it, they obviously require it, and we do what's best for students. Their education is first priority, but if we could invest in our own programming and keep students here, it's a win-win situation, both for budget and for those children. so on the topic of budget we've had circuit discussions about circuit breaker pretty often so i think as board members you should know what we're referring to when we talk about that circuit breaker is a state program it's a massachusetts state program remember earlier i talked about special education regulations where it's an unfunded mandate we don't receive the full amount to pay for the services these students need massachusetts seeks to alleviate that somewhat with the circuit breaker program and how this works is they set a baseline amount that

070all districts should be paying for students, which in FY22 is $47,363. Any costs above that for out-of-district placements or in-district services, if they reach that amount, have a reimbursement piece, percentage. And on the next slide, I give an example. I hope that's about as clear as mud. So I give two examples here, so two student tuitions. The first one is student tuition. That's $58,500. You subtract the foundation amount, and then the remainder is subject to that reimbursement. Reimbursement has historically been 75%, and that's what's listed on DESE's website. It is interesting to note that one year... A certain governor decided to reduce that amount to I think about 30% and caused quite a bit of hardship here in the state. I was lucky enough to not be an administrator at that time. I was just

071a teacher. I'm not sure why I left that profession, but that's- It was very, very difficult for districts who were counting on that 75%. That has not happened since. I hope it doesn't happen again. But it is important to note that that percentage is at the governor's discretion. And all of these funds are subject to appropriation. So once the funds are used up, that's it. In the second example, I give a higher tuition. And you can see that the district still, you take that 47, 363 off the top, and we have 75% of the remainder, and that's the amount the district would be responsible for at the bottom. I thought it would be helpful to provide examples. Circuit breaker can be a very complicated and confusing process. Also important to note while I'm on this

072slide is recently the department has decided to do some reimbursement for transportation. That was two years ago, I think, was the first year they did it. They've been increasing it by increments each year. This year we expect to have 75% of our out of district only transportation costs reimbursed to us through Circuit Breaker with the expectation that it will go to 100% next year. I'm getting away from the microphone. Back to the microphone. This is important because at some point, Director Matthew and I will be presenting some changes to the van pool contract and the funding system. So it's important for school board members to know that when we discuss that, that we are looking at increased circuit breaker, transportation reimbursement moving forward. Hopefully the state continues that trend. So looking a little more specifically

073when we're talking about tuitions, which is usually where I get most of the questions, about five students this year were determined by their team to need out-of-district placements due to emotional need. Previously when I said when you go through the IEP process, we identify strengths and needs and goals and services. If the team goes through that process and gets to the placement part and we cannot provide the services that we've identified through that team process for that student, we need to start looking at out-of-district placements and tuitioning that student out. Again, it's our responsibility to provide what that student needs. So if we can't do it here, we have to look elsewhere. The lack of therapeutic programming in this district has caused us to have to look elsewhere for quite a few students. It is,

074in my opinion, a pretty glaring hole in our support structure. We're also looking at additional placements if we can't get that support structure kind of strengthened by next September. I'm going to talk about what we're doing about that issue in a minute. This is a cost analysis of going through all of our out-of-district tuitions. I did an average. Just so you know, these tuitions are all over the place. We could have a $50,000 tuition. We can have a $300,000 tuition. It really depends on the placement and the level of student need. But just looking at a quick average just to give you guys a sense of kind of the cost analysis that we do when we think about investing in programs here in the district, the average cost of a placement right now for this

075district is over $100,000. The cost of transportation per student is about $30,000. Again, that varies pretty widely depending on does the student need supports on the van, are there other students that are sharing the van with them, et cetera. But that's just a rough average. TO STAFF A SPECIALIZED PROGRAM, WHICH IS SALARIES, MATERIALS, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR A THERAPEUTIC PROGRAM, THIS IS WHAT I USE AS THIS MODEL, IT'S ABOUT $180,000. NOW, SALARIES FOR STAFF CAN VARY PRETTY WIDELY, RIGHT? BUT YOU CAN SEE, ONCE YOU GET BEYOND TWO STUDENTS, WE'RE IMMEDIATELY, WE'RE IN THAT COST SAVINGS, AND NOW WE'RE KEEPING KIDS IN DISTRICT CONNECTED TO THEIR FRIENDS, CONNECTED TO OUR STAFF, CONNECTED TO OUR BUILDINGS. SO IT'S A WIN-WIN. WHEN WE HAVE PROGRAMMING THAT WORKS, and is able to take students with these higher levels of need.

076It's a win for everyone. So since October, just shifting gears a little bit, I've looked at the strengths that we have in DCRSD. I've considered the needs of our staff and our programs, and we've identified some initiatives on our special education administrative team. Yep. Very strange. No, thank you for telling me. It's weird having that behind me. So the strengths of our special education staff, this is where our strengths are. We experienced this post-COVID wave just like lots of districts did. We didn't add a bunch of staff to our special education departments in each building to help deal with this wave. We have had staff that have gone above and beyond to get things done in a timely manner, to make sure children are cared for, to provide just thinking about during COVID and coming

077out of COVID, students. who didn't have the opportunity to practice pragmatic language skills, for example, for over a year, because of interrupted learning, come back to us with significant deficits. I think it's one of the reasons we're seeing communication as being the top or the most common disability category that students are receiving services right now. Think about the amount of time our little children didn't have to communicate with other children. That's how language develops. So they lost those experiences. They're coming to us with higher level of need than we've ever seen. I've done this for 20-something years, and this has been very, very challenging. I'll say that. So the strength of this department is in its staff, because they have gone just above and beyond to make sure the children are cared for. We also

078have a really solid team of administrators in the building now. Thank you for the addition of the coordinator for the middle school. Now we have a coordinator in each middle school. We have two coordinators visiting us tonight to hear the presentation. Looking at those 500-plus evaluations, every single one of those evaluations has gone through one of our five coordinators. It is an overwhelming... process to deal with all those. Each one of those evaluations has federal timelines attached to it. They have to be done within a certain amount of time and the state is not interested in hearing that we have that many to deal with. They care that we're meeting that timeline. So I have to thank the coordinators and all the special education staff on all those evaluation teams for getting us through a

079difficult year. So the strengths of the staff dealing with that wave, they've shown both flexibility and resiliency. Staff have done things that they have not had to do before. They've taken on increased student need. They've participated in more meetings and done more report writing than I think they probably ever have done before in their career. And they've handled it really admirably. I'm proud to be here speaking on their behalf because they've just done an outstanding job. THE RELATIONSHIPS AND TEACHER-DRIVEN INITIATIVES. I THINK WE HEARD EARLIER THIS EVENING FROM SUPERINTENDENT LEMARCHE ABOUT THE INITIATIVE AT HERITAGE TO GET THOSE STUDENTS TRANSITIONING INTO SCHOOL MORE SUCCESSFULLY. IT'S JUST ONE EXAMPLE OF MANY OF TEACHER-DRIVEN INITIATIVES. I'VE WORKED IN A NUMBER OF DISTRICTS. THIS DISTRICT HAS PROBABLY MORE TEACHER-DRIVEN INITIATIVES THAN I'VE SEEN IN MY TIME, WHICH IS

080JUST SOMETHING TO REALLY APPLAUD. TEACHERS HAVE AN IDEA. They create a plan for that idea and they push it forward for the benefit of students. It's very admirable. Those are our strengths. Areas of need. This district lacks... What happened? How is that coming down? I don't know why that's happening. I'm sorry. So... Why is my arrow not working? Why is the mouse moving? I apologize. So some areas of need we've identified this year. District-wide protocols, processes, and guidance. We have seven buildings that have kind of been doing their own thing for a while. That's the best way to say it. Some programs work a certain way in one building, work a little bit differently in another. As a district, we need to have a set of protocols and processes that are similar from building to

081building. If you're a parent of a student with disabilities that receives services, you shouldn't have markedly different experiences or expectations as you transition from building to building through the district. So something that we've worked on very hard this year in our leadership teams was establishing district level protocols. How do you identify a student that needs a certain service? What is the process you go through? All of these things. Our ILC programs, what are exit criteria? What are the entrance criteria? What are the expectations while a student is serviced by one of these programs? Lots of examples of this. I think Superintendent Lamar shared some of the documents that we've been working on. um this year but that is a major initiative of ours and teachers appreciate it they having some guidance around the services they

082deliver and having clear expectations is really helpful special ed teachers don't have time to figure out you know with these rule what are the rules for this they don't want to live in the gray so they want to make sure that they're supported they're making the right decisions and they're following the right process so that is very important The next two go hand in hand, which are compliance issues. There were a large number of compliance issues. When I talk about compliance, what I mean is that a student's IEP is implemented in a way that doesn't meet state regulations in this district. That is very serious. I don't sugarcoat things. When I came in in October, there were a larger number of compliance issues than I would expect of a district this size. We've worked very

083hard this year to clean those up and to set a path forward so that these do not reoccur. But I would call it an unacceptable level of compliance issues. Now, why? How did we end up here? I didn't spend a lot of time working backwards in the previous years, but I think the biggest issue has been turnover with administration. Most of our coordinators are new to their buildings or new to their roles. Their roles have changed. I'm new. There was a period of time where there wasn't a director. We had an interim director. Whenever there's turnover, because special education is so regulation-driven, we start having slips. So happy to report that as of now we've addressed all of those. Heading into next year there should be none of these issues. I don't expect any further

084problems here. But I will say we spent a lot of time this year, I'm looking at my coordinators, cleaning these things up. It was very time consuming. Specialized programming in this district, I already mentioned, but it's kind of a lack of therapeutic program, which is really hurting us. So that's an area of need. We also want to look to strengthen the ILC programs. So I'm going to talk about that initiative on the next slide. Strengthening reading support. So identifying the roles of our reading specialists, who delivers reading instruction. That is also an initiative that we're working on. So each of these areas of need leads to an initiative that I'll talk about in a little more detail. And finally, flexibility. So I'm going to talk about this for just a minute. I know that I'm

085droning on a little bit. I want to be mindful of how much time I lecture the board. the biggest challenge that teachers or administration or special education departments face in schools is the variability of children from year to year our cohorts if you walk into any school they could tell you where's the toughest class in the school where's the toughest grade level where the media's kids everybody can tell you is we don't get the kids with the same kind of learning profiles every year that's not how public schools work So we have to be flexible. So one year we may have students that receive special education services that could be delivered largely in the regular ed setting. That's wonderful. That's where we want to see kids. But the next year, the next cohort of kids

086coming up, they might have higher needs. They might need more specialized instruction outside of the classroom. They might need more access to specialized programs. They might need more behavioral interventions. We have to be able to shift our special education resources. to meet the needs of each cohort as they come through our schools. So grade three comes through, grade, the next grade three, the next grade three from year to year. That's very important. That was lacking here a little bit. we were kind of locked into a model of co-teaching across district where every grade had special education teachers kind of locked into being into the regular classroom all day long and what I heard right away coming in was how do we meet these kids needs when our teachers are in this co-teaching model all day

087long. So something we've impressed upon to principals this year is to move away from being locked into this model. Use co-teaching when it works. When you have cohorts of kids that will benefit from it, that need it, use it. Absolutely. But we also need to be shifting our resources to meet the needs of all the children in that cohort. And that means unlocking that model sometimes. And these need to be grade-level discussions, grade-level analyses. And it's a change of mindset, so I think it's going to take a little bit of time before everyone kind of understands the purpose of this. But it's something that we're working on with building principals and special education coordinators and all of our teachers. Teachers and administrators and coordinators, they need to be looking at each cohort of kids as

088they come up and shaping those resources to meet their needs year to year. I know there's been a lot of discussion about co-teaching and probably a lot of rumors flying around. I was a co-teacher for five years at Wellesley High School. I love co-teaching. I'm pretty well versed in it. I'm not anti-co-teaching. I've heard that a few times. I just am resistant to a black and white model that locks our resources in one place unless we get some bounty of money and we can hire additional special education staff so that we can have co-teachers. providing services outside the classroom, but I don't see that coming. So we need to use the resources that we have. So last, our initiative priorities. In response to that need for therapeutic programming, we are looking to increase the supports

089at the middle school. We had the beginnings of a program this year at Dudley Middle School. We're increasing the support in that program. We're increasing the support in the program in the high school, which is called the SEL Classroom. It's currently staffed by adjustment counselors. And we are going to open a new therapeutic program at the elementary level at Dudley Elementary School. So this will give us a continuum. So just like we have the ILC programs on the Charlton side all the way through so students can access that program who need it throughout the district. The goal is to have, I call it therapeutic program. It's been called ALCs, it's been called different things. It's my term. Therapeutic program to meet students' needs who have emotional concerns on the Dudley side. So we'll have matching

090intensive programmings on each side of the district. We are on course to open that new program at Dudley Elementary in September and to strengthen both the middle and high school programs as well. So that should shore up a lot of the hole in our safety net come September. We're also looking at strengthening our existing programs. We have been vetting ILC curriculums K-12 with our ILC teachers. This year, we've gone through, I have to thank Tammy for doing the great bulk of that work with those teachers. They've met several times. They've looked at, I think, three different curriculums, and it looks like they finally settled on one, so I look forward to bringing that to curriculum sub to have the board members take a look at that. Sure. The ILC is our intensive learning center. That's

091on the Charlton side, and it services students with kind of significant learning gaps. Sure. Thank you. I think it's good to say it's a substantially separate. It is a substantially separate program, yeah. So we're looking at strengthening the curriculum supports in that program. We're also I have a meeting with Wilson tomorrow to look at getting more training including foundations for our early grades As well as Wilson certification and training for teachers We have a large number of teachers who volunteered for this training, which is really exciting It is a project to take that on that training is intensive Looking around people are nodding so they're familiar So I'm very grateful to the teachers for willingness to jump in and take that on to benefit of our students compliance and supervision look forward to going into

092next year with no changes in the on the administrative team I will be here to the start of the year our coordinators will be in buildings to start the year I will let the board know that we did make a change for September and our coordinators miss Stacy Prosko is going to be coming to the high school and miss Carrie Flynn is going to go down to cover Mason Road in deadly elementary school That change was made based on our coordinators areas of expertise. We think it is a better fit and they're going to do a great job with the kids at those levels. finally flexibility we're going to keep working on that I talk a lot and principals are probably very tired of hearing about it I talk a lot about a continuum of

093supports that students need access to at every grade level the student is able to receive what they need in the regular ed setting everyone's happy but we need a continuum we need if students need instruction outside the classroom students need access to specialized programming we need to be able to offer that for all students at every grade level and that is my goal um so they're gonna get i'm gonna keep saying it until we have it so um i think they're getting tired of hearing of it um but that's that's the goal um finally the one last thing i had my little chicken scratch note uh we're to be more budget responsible we're moving away from our reliance on contracted services so the district is looking to hire a speech language pathologist for the high

094school and to hire our own physical therapist to date or this year, at least for the past few years that I'm aware of, we have been contracting with outside agencies for those services, and they have gotten significantly expensive. It will be both a cost savings to the district to hire our own staff, and it's also a benefit to everyone to have our own employees providing these services. That concludes my presentation. Any questions? I was just going to say, when we're in the contract, that came up about the amount of time needed. amount of time needed for me doing those evaluations we try to put some building time into the contract but your advice so that should help a little bit I would hope for the fall I think so also I really have that there's

095cross that this wave is gonna die down and we'll get back to some more reasonable levels because I don't know that how long we can maintain this as a department but yes I'm grateful to the work of the committee on the contract to get some time in there to help teachers being late the concert was only a third over when I left but it was great so far and there was no parking spaces and no seats in the entire the entire auditorium I wanted to go back to you said five students this year were cried to out of district placement is that because of emotional disabilities yes is that across all grade levels is it specific to a certain area so when you're trying to think of it ways to do interventions is it Are

096you able to focus in certain grade levels? Sure. No, that's a great question. So statistically, where we lose students is the transition from elementary to middle school. So that is the area that I'm going to focus on when we open our new program at Dudley Elementary. We shore up the program at the middle school. I'm very excited about the steps that have been taken at the middle school with that program. I think we'll be in really good shape. Okay. And you use the word therapeutic and maybe a lot of people here understand what that means. I think of therapeutics as like physical therapy and occupational therapy. Can you tell me what it means in your realm? So this is also my background. I prefer therapeutic to, these programs are often called behavior programs and that's

097really misleading. A lot of the kids that they service, they don't have externalizing behaviors. They might be suffering from depression or anxiety. THINGS LIKE THAT. I DON'T WANT PEOPLE TO THINK OF THESE PROGRAMS AS KIDS THROWING CHAIRS BECAUSE THAT'S NOT WHAT IT IS. I SPENT ALMOST MY ENTIRE CAREER RUNNING THESE PROGRAMS. A THERAPEUTIC PROGRAM, SIMPLY PUT, TEACHES STUDENTS THE COPING SKILLS THAT THEY REQUIRE TO ACCESS THE INCLUSION SETTING. SO ONCE KIDS MAKE PROGRESS WITH INDEPENDENTLY USING THOSE COPING SKILLS, WE INCREASE THEIR INCLUSION TIME SO THEY'RE ABLE TO PRACTICE THOSE SKILLS IN THE CLASSROOM WITH THE SUPPORT IF THINGS AREN'T WORKING, AND WITH THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF THEM LEAVING THE PROGRAM AND GOING OUT ON THEIR OWN. sorry I do have another question um co-teaching that's what my question comes at do you envision this to

098be I'm gonna give an example first grade the kindergarten class currently moving into first grade would not benefit in your professional opinion from a co-teaching model as it is currently set up in Charlton so you're going to change it up for Charlton, but it will not necessarily change for Dudley because Dudley will have a different cohort of students. Is that what I heard you say? Yeah, that's exactly right. So what I want people, the staff at the building level to do is to look at the needs of the incoming students. And that's the process they're going through right now. We've had transition meetings. We have coordinators looking at who's coming into the buildings and saying, okay, at the grade level, these are the resources we have at the grade level. How can we best meet

099these students' needs next year? Let's create a plan for that. And that should happen every year at this time. Okay. And is that something that you involve the teaching staff in? I know you have coordinators, but the teaching staff that are currently in a co-teaching model, are they involved in actually going through this process to evaluate? Absolutely. So all of these decisions get made at the building level. Okay. So they involve teachers, they involve coordinators, principals, related service providers. Everyone's involved in this. Okay. And then... how does that happen when you switch buildings? So first grade going to second grade, if it's a building-based decision, you're talking about two different buildings with two different staff understandings of those students. So the current first graders that are going to go into second grade that may have

100been in co-teaching, but maybe that wasn't the best. scenario for use of our resources how would the second grade staff and the school the new school know sure that's I mean that's part of the transition work the transition work that happens at this time of the year is not limited to in just in building inter building okay I'm not sure what prefix to use there one of the things that we do is our coordinators we meet regularly okay and we're constantly talking to each other and sharing information and that's one of the benefits of having this coordinator team the move to administration on the coordinators is making this process much much easier than it would be previously okay this as administrators that they're meeting with me as a leadership team and looking at all these

101things okay so this vertical alignment I should have started with that it's an easier way to have said it but my brain doesn't always work the way I wanted to and then you said you're adding physical therapists I think I wrote down here and then something else speech-language pathologist from the high school okay is that different positions than what what miss Glenn sent out today because I saw occupational therapist on that list okay so it's a different thing that is a different thing okay occupational therapist left us this year so that is a one-to-one we have okay and that's a quota position or that's an occupational that's an occupational therapist it is okay yep it was and I know why you're asking that possibly because I mean no because I made a mistake on the

102posting when it went up and it initially read as if it was a coda and it alarmed some staff so I apologize to them and I did fix it. Okay, thank you for your time. Great presentation. Any other questions? I have a question. I know it's a shock. So for, because this is a really great baseline moving forward where the vision's going and but you know me, what data will you be using to actually come up with benchmarks and objectives that you're going in the right direction? And when would, when, and also what would the timeline be for reporting out on that so we know that, well, there is great work in actually looking for curriculum. Like just an example for the ILCs, how do we know then that the curriculum is working and moving

103forward and it being implemented and the PD and all that? That's a great question. So each of these initiatives should have progress monitoring areas attached to them independently. So if we're looking at a curriculum implemented in the ILC, one of the things that should result is IEP goals that are clearly measurable, that use data to measure. The data should be coming from the curriculum that we've implemented using the tools that are in place. So we should see that. We should see increased student growth across all areas if we're implementing a full curriculum. These are all in. I could keep going. We should see better goal writing. We should see more students in the ILCs being included in the mainstream more often because they're learning the skills that they need to go out into inclusion more

104often than they are now. These are all data points. And each of these initiatives will have its own set of data points to consider. In terms of timeline, I am happy to report to the board any time. So I don't know what the schedule is. I mean, typically I would think at the start of the year and the end of the year, but I'm happy to report with the frequency that is desired by the board. Personally, I like to start, middle, and end. Just kind of like CKLA with devils, right? Honestly, I would too, because I feel like this is incredibly educational for me tonight to understand better. Where we're at as a district Special education is complicated and this is a really general overview If the board desires me to drill down into any

105of these topics or any other area of student services I'm happy to do a more in-depth presentation And this might not be a question that you're able to answer tonight, but on the partial inclusion I'm wondering if you know if you and your team could look at that how it breaks by by grade level I know that one thing that concerned me when we did the presentation on MCAS data was that we found that our high school level students that had disabilities did not even meet the requirements. The high school MCAS, I'm just refreshing because other folks weren't here, for students with disabilities was significantly lower than the state average. Yes. and I just wonder if there's a correlation between I'm sorry there's such a feedback if there's a correlation between where we place those

106students academically and in what level of teaching they are getting like are they being taught by a like a math teacher or an English teacher are they being taught by a special ed teacher who's then teaching math Research is that the progress of students and their performance on standardized testing of students with disabilities is most closely linked to the performance of the regular ed peers. That is the single strongest correlation of all the factors that may influence a student's performance on MCAS that's receiving services. So I'm looking at that exact thing. You actually spoke to the exact thing we're looking at. Why aren't they keeping pace? If the regular ed peers are performing consistent with the state average, why aren't they? We need to figure that out. Hearing all this, would it be beneficial for

107us to consider trainings on... for all teachers in special education as far as professional development or something so that everybody has the baseline and some different tools to work with with every student? It's a great question because it's actually state law. We are required to do that every year. So the coordinators are working with principals to set time with all the regular ed staff in each building. We are specifically required to train regular ed staff on the inclusion of students with disabilities in their classrooms. The other part of the answer to that question is all of this aligns very closely with universal design and the work Dr. Ackerman is doing because by breaking down those barriers that exist in the mainstream classroom settings, students with disabilities will be more able to participate and engage and

108be active in those classes and they'll benefit academically from that. So it's a two-part answer. Thank you, Mr. Bidiger. And that was a well report. Well taken. Very good. Okay, next on the agenda is introduction, superintendents evaluation. Mr. Lamache. Madam Chair and school committee, as I indicated in an email, it would be a document that I would present to you this evening. So you do have that document in your packet. It's also on the table over there for the audience, and it's also on the website with the agenda. This is my introduction to the summit of evaluation review for the month of June. So this provides the mid-cycle review and additional information. Remember, the mid-cycle review was in March, so that was only two months ago. So I did provide updates to all of these,

109or as many as possible with that. I also filled out the form again on TeachPoint, which all of you, if you didn't have an account and you're getting an account, go back in and take a look at all the information in there because it's now your turn from this evening to move forward to the next. process of pulling the evaluation together. So the reason why I gave you a cleaner word version on top with the links, which is on the website as well, is when you print out the TEACH Point 1 with all the information that I plugged in for all of the standards as well as the goals and information supporting the work, it does cut it off at times. So I just wanted to give you a clean version of that. And then

110you have the last document just for visual. That's the actual document that I think you fill out. It's the one of the last two pages that talks about the... I'm getting there. It's obviously a lengthy document. The last two pages, which is what you fill out, and it talks about the goals, standards, and where you feel I have met in that process. Now, I want to reiterate again that I'm doing the best I can to work through. I was in one place for nine years. We did it this way. this year because this is still the second year that i'm doing this and it's still not 100 clear to me um on what the expectations are because the more i checked around the mid cycle there is no mid cycle uh there are districts that

111don't do mid cycles um because as you know there's no forms for mid cycles um as i shared with with you and i spoke with dr morris at amherst pelham and he i shared my mid cycling says you know that's a summative that's not a mid cycle so you actually did a summative So I'm trying to work through this. I once again, as I did in March, request that this summer we set up a small subcommittee of the school committee to go over deliverables and expectations for my evaluation so I have a better understanding as to what you actually expect of me through this evaluation process. I'm pleading with you to be able to do that because I'm giving you the best that I got according to Stephen LaMarche, not any other way. So I

112just... you know i've watched other school committees i've watched other superintendents some superintendents do a google form for just the four indicators and ask their committee for feedback on just those four indicators not all the standards i don't know i want to do what's best for dudley chalton i'm here so i'm just respectfully asking for that in the future but i'm giving you all the information i have which is now up to 19 pages worth of information for my evaluation Plus additional information within the document for focus areas and specific standards that identified as needs improvement I again talking to some of my colleagues. They feel I identified way too many needs improvement categories That's just a self reflection of me. I guess as Steven Lamarche But I should really focus so I can really

113just focus on those things and not focus on so many needs improvement categories, but There's so much work to be done for Dudley-Charlton and from my perspective, and I want to continue to work on it and make this the best district I possibly can for my position. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. You have this. What I would strongly ask again, which I've asked in the past as well, again, there were nine years of doing it a certain way, is now that you look at this document, please feel free to schedule an appointment with me and come in, and we can go over this. You can ask questions of me. What did you mean by this? What did you say? What is this? What's this piece of evidence? Do you have another piece

114of evidence for this? Because the evidence isn't supposed to be in total. totality it's supposed to be artifacts that support it so if I did a hundred things I only have I should only provide you know a certain percentage of that to reinforce it that this is what how I met the standard or the the point but again I would respectfully ask anyone to set up an appointment between now and the finalization of my evaluation to go over this so okay and then Aaron you're going to let everyone know how to get into teach point And the username, because I even forgot now from last year. I will make sure to do a very distinct step-by-step because I would also use a reminder. So I will share everything that I learned with the committee. Can

115we just be clear? Last year I did my evaluation on TeachPoint and then was told no one else did. I did. Well, some people did. Some people probably wanted, but most of the people didn't. Then there were different ways of doing it. So I just want to make sure, like, are we all doing it the same way or not? We should all do it the same way. And I thought. Most people did it on TeachPoint. I know I did. I know Kathy did. You did it. And Jean did it. There was one that was written out. Jamie did it, right? I don't remember. No, you didn't. You wrote yours out. I know that. But it's easier to do it like you just said. Everybody do it the same way. No, it wasn't just one person.

116It wasn't just one person. I was going to look it up, but there's no need for that. But, I mean, the new people need to know how to do it, and I need a refresher because, like I said, I forgot about the username and that, what I used. So I know there's something generic you can put in and change it. We should do it. Isn't it in the contract before June 30th, right? devaluate you that was in the contract so we should get it done by next school committee meeting I would say we've got everything now he gave us everything so we can get started on it right away yeah right compile it again with the timeline so if it has to be completed by June 30th but we all put it in a teach

117point it becomes summative and that so do we need to actually have it ready before the fourth Wednesday of June or do we need it right or do we need to have a special meeting And then also, as a reminder or a helpful, can we resend the DESE superintendent's guidelines on the evaluation to all of us again? You sent it last time, but I mean at least like... The guidelines in the rubric is actually in TeachPoint. But again, I want to be clear. I've watched a ton of districts and a ton of superintendents. I think it's good to have some of that extra information. And they all do it differently. Everybody does it differently. I would say, now that we've got everything... I think we should have it in before next meeting so it can

118be all put together for the next meeting unless we have to have a special meeting before June 30th which I don't think would be necessary I think we can do it in two weeks I just I just think that the whole committee what you guys think yeah I mean I think in order to be to have time for you then to turn it around right we need to have it done by probably like next Wednesday Right? To give you some time. I will tell you, Kathy, even when we set a deadline, no one paid attention to it. And they got it in. You probably did. I paid attention to a deadline. Well, I think there's new committee members. No, the new committee members, you know, have to learn that. But I'm talking about the older

119committee members. We didn't get it in by a deadline, but they did in the end. But we went a little over the deadline. So once you set a deadline, try to get it in by the deadline. But I think we should get it all done before the next school committee meeting. We've got everything now. Correct. So, Justice, that deadline is for us. Okay. Could everybody have it done by next Friday? Would that be good? And then that gives you a few days to turn around whatever you need to turn around. Because you need to do a collaborative one? Is that the thing? Yes. We put it all together. Right. And it's an average. And I think that's the time for people to meet with Mr. Lamarche. That's what I'm concerned about. If we have seven

120people that might individually go meet with Mr. Lamarche, we have to fit that in to his schedule and to our own. It's a priority for me. You've been very amenable to fitting it into schedules. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I'm saying there's seven of us that also have schedules to fit it into. Agreed. I think, though, like one of the things that I see that's different or maybe additive this year is that you really did a nice job including, like, the hyperlinks within your documents. for like last year there may have been confusion on well can you show me that now it's it's clearly there it's still a progress no it's not perfect it's not perfect no i i guess i have a question but if you want to figure out the dates and all that first

121it's not that so if you want to figure that out first i think we should in a week from this friday right i think so i i does everybody agree to that can you do that That's why we have to. Yeah, you'll have, she will show you how to do it. Like I said, it's new to me as well, but I had last year that I couldn't work off of, and because there are also new members in addition to myself, I will make sure that there is a very clear guide that I can share with you. So there are as many questions answered as possible. I'll come up to the office so I can make sure we have questions. If it's okay with the committee, like, can I'm well versed in teach point I can

122make as long as I remember what my code is to get in I can make a screencast of how to go through and what you should do and then you'll be able to kind of like view it and then see if you have more questions Would that be helpful? The hardest part is logging in. It truly is. It's pretty easy once you get in. That's what I said. I forgot the code, so that's why I have to go over that with her. But once you're in there, it's pretty easy. And I'm sure Erin can answer the questions. Constantly. I don't leave for lunch. I am there eight and a half to nine hours a day. So if you guys need anything, I am happy to answer questions. And Kathy, if you want to do an

123additional... No, I mean, or I can individually just Zoom with people and take you through sharing a screen how to do it. We're saying it will be completed by the 17th. Right. Okay. I'll do it for the next meeting right away I'm just wondering if we can get that weekend like an additional weekend and do it have it Monday morning Once I get it Friday I'll do it right away it doesn't take me Is it okay to put our deadline at Monday morning of that week or is that too late There's a lot going on with four kids in the end of the school. I'm aware. Right, it's busy, but I just want to not put you out if that's going to be an issue. And maybe I'll do it tomorrow, I don't know. If

124you can't get it in, you know, another day won't kill me. I'll try to get it done Monday. Anyway. So last year it got called out, Jamie Terry says this, Kathy Camagnani says this, but I think that we talked about it after the fact that it should have just been all. We've always done it that way, Jamie. That's why it was like that. But if you guys decide you don't want to do it that way, fine. We've always done it that way. I just thought we had a long conversation about it after the fact that if we could just summarize it, including. Kind of every I don't know how you summarize people's comments Okay, because you can't summarize a comment I mean if yours is good mine is bad. What am I going to say?

125The here's the good ones and don't put the names but I don't think I can summarize For clarity aren't they all like aren't they public information? Yes, so He has every right to see every comment that's made by any member. By any member, right. Okay, so why are we, why are you not just giving the overall scores and not writing a narrative? That's what I can do. Like maybe you don't write a narrative. Maybe he is just allowed to see the narratives of everybody. Like I said, we've always done it the way we did last year. We didn't have any good direction, remember, because it was the pandemic. Right. We started later, so we did it like we always did it. But if you don't want those, anybody can see anybody's remarks. So we don't

126have to do that. I can just give the average of the marks like I did, which will make it easier for me too. So I'm not complaining. I just wanted to say that's the way we had done it before. We listed everybody's comments. And if you don't want that listed, fine. Jane's point doesn't necessarily need to put who said them. Yeah. But like I said, it's public information, as Kathy said. Anybody can say it. So whatever the committee wants. I'll go around whatever you guys want I'll do I think this goes to Mr. LaMarche's point that we need to have a subcommittee and we need to have set standards and we probably all need some training just to make sure we're all keen on how to evaluate the superintendent and what what to look for

127so that you know, he knows what to expect from us. And Tracy Novak didn't come in last year. Yes, that's part of what we're doing. Yes. Yes. You can watch on Vimeo. Tracy Novak came back in March during the pandemic over Zoom to talk about the process. And to Kathy's point, I do agree with having a subcommittee to really streamline this. And so it's like the voice of the committee and not very disjointed. Madam Chair just in school the school committee again there are guidelines Tracy Novak can can do her thing but it really has to be something that you feel comfortable works for DCRSD and that's with me obviously but I mean I just it has to be something that works for you you know so just keep that in mind you don't have

128to follow exactly what Tracy says from A to Z I'll tell you the farm is good that comes from DESE we're going to fill the form out It's the comments. If you don't want me to list the comments, fine. If you want me to list the comments without the names, fine. But the public has a right to see anybody's comments because it's like you said, it is public. So what does the committee want this time and then figure it out another time? Do you want me to list the comments without the names? So can I kind of explain to you what I thought when I was saying summarize it? I get that the comments are going to be through our own lens with a different spin on a little bit of it. But if you

129read... If you read through them as yourself and you said, okay, this is a general theme, this is a general theme, I don't know why you need to say five people said new curriculum was implemented well. New curriculum, you know, there was new curriculum that came in. There seemed to be positive feedback about new curriculum. Why do you need to have five different comments that say that when you can summarize to say the new curriculum that was implemented was well received by many members of the committee? And so if you summarize it... if it was my evaluation, I'd be able to read that and digest it better than reading seven different people's individual lenses. But I get that it's a lot more work on you or a committee, a subcommittee, if we did that or

130whatever. I just think as a person receiving that information, it would be easier to digest. Important to kind of put, you know, whenever I write an observation, I always have commendations and recommendations. And I think that maybe if we align that with that, that gives him, here's some areas that we thought you nailed it on, and here's some areas that, hey, we all, you might need to grow. Right? You know. Well. I think I liked Kathy's idea. I think for just this time, then next time maybe we'll have the subcommittee to decide exactly how to do it. I'm going to probably have the comments listed. I won't give the names. So now you see the pros and cons. You'll see maybe there's three bad comments on this subject, and maybe there is four good. One

131you know, so you'll see that so I'll list them that way You know So everybody agreed to that and I won't put who said it. I think that was the big concern with some people That you didn't want your comment there Yes, you have to but I but I don't know that I think that's constructive from Miss Dillamarsh yeah, I think it I think if Well, I thought it was constructive, and we did it for many years, and I just feel that people do see these comments, and they do see, like I just said, if you have five bad comments and two good ones, well, then here's an area that we need to work on. So I'll list it that way, okay? That's how I'm going to list it this time. And then I average

132everything up. I average all your marks up, and we just give the average, okay? So anything else on that? Mr. LaMarche, you're all set. You gave us this. And again, it's on the table over there for the public. It's also on the website. Once I will go, once I know how to get into the... program I'll be all set if you have any questions you can call me or Kathy she works with that at her school so she can answer for you too you're willing to and this typically done earlier in the year no we did it right this time oh yeah no We forget about the whole thing and all of a sudden we do the evaluation for the and most schools do it that way But mr. Lamar did go through They used

133to So it makes it difficult It's gonna be difficult for the new members to That's And you're just gonna go by the evidence in front of you what you've known for the past year as a person and you're gonna go talk to mr. Lamar Something further if it like it to your point last year should we have done it prior to you being on board so that those other members So and I think that's something we might keep striving for but I'm not sure that would it be a subcommittee? When Kathy did too, but it's you you know, we should do with that but this is how we got it this year I don't know if it'll help because this is also my first year, but I do have the documents that he's provided in

134previous meetings for mid-cycle leading up to this point. So I'm happy to share those with you so you have some background information as well. Could you share them in a folder? Absolutely. I'll put it in a Google Drive and just send it to the full school committee so you have start to finish. Because I know it's difficult for you. It's not fair because you're new members. But he has had the beginning, the middle, and now this is the end. And you're just coming in. Right. That's fine. So that concludes. Mr. Lamache, do you want to add anything to that? No. Okay. school committee summer meeting schedule okay in the summer now for a July and August we only have one meeting okay and I've got two dates that if it works for everyone but if

135it doesn't you we can decide on another date but in July how's July 20th for everyone for one meeting Because I'm away on the 20th, so. Oh, I don't remember discussing it either. It's on our calendar. I don't know. It's on my calendar. I have school committee the 13th and no other dates. We didn't do any on the day. Maybe I just made it up on my own. That would be the second Wednesday of the month. It's on my calendar, too, because it's automatically the second Wednesday. I don't have it on the 27th, though, so that's why I thought. And did you have a problem with July 13th? No. No? So does anybody have a problem with the July 13th gene? Okay. So. Don't ask me. No, I'm not. One will be here and one

136will be in Charlton. So the first one will be here. Okay. That's the one I'll work on, then finding somebody from MASC to come and do the workshop. All right. And then we discussed, because getting it closer to September, Steve and I discussed how about August 24th for our August meeting. You can have it if you want, but I also will not be around that day. Sorry. Yeah. I know. Yeah. It's not a lot on my calendar, but those are two days. Okay. if everybody has no problem with August 24th we'll have it then okay I think we just have to remind ourselves like just for the new members that you may have to go you know just keep an eye on the on the warrants and the payroll because you're gonna have to do

137that electronically or you can go into the office to do that but he definitely will need it done I say that because I didn't always remember to do that One simple sentence you can say, I approve for payment warrants and say the name and sign it. Okay? I don't know if it was communicated, but new members by law have to take charting the course through MASC. So sometimes they offer a summer one, like a boot camp one during the summer. I think they have it during the conference usually too. They do. The conference is a good thing to go to. Okay, so listen, we'll have July, mark that on your calendar, July 13th, August 24th. Okay? We'll go to next meeting dates. School committee. Wednesday June 22nd that'll be at the Charlton Middle School at

1387 p.m. budget and finance subcommittee that'll be to be determined policy review subcommittee that'll be to be determined curricula subcommittee for teaching and learning that's set for June 13th And 3.30, and that will be video conferencing? Okay. That's correct, that date? That is. Okay. Capital outlay and safety subcommittee to be determined. Now, the video conferencing, when is that going to be up? In August or something? So far, anything I've heard is August 1st, but we'll keep monitoring that. All right. Future agenda items? School Improvement Plans, June. School Committee Reorganization, June. Summative Evaluation, Superintendent, June. School Committee Summer Workshop, July. District Plan, August. Student Handbook, August. Superintendent's Goals, September. Any additions? Go ahead Madam Chair for the June 22nd meeting I'd like to put an agenda item around staffing changes I know Mr. Bergeron mentioned a

139couple of things today but there's been a lot of staffing changes this particular year so I'd like to put that on as an agenda item for the school committee to be aware of some staffing changes As I said at the beginning I do like to address the concerns on the public comment so we'll put that on And anyone else, any members? Go ahead. The issue is with that in June, if that's acceptable. Okay. And anything else before? I'm respectfully requesting executive session at the next meeting for independent contracts to set salaries for the athletic director and the assistant principal at Charlton Middle School. Okay. And that reminds me now, the teacher's contract, do we have it to sign yet? No. It's not ready yet? No. If you want to stop at Aaron's office, the sheet

140will be ready. Yes. Not the new people, no. Kenny LaFerria asked me to because he was on it and he wants to sign it. Okay. Anyone else before we adjourn? Okay, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? We're adjourned.