MRSD School Committee Meeting | 4/30/2025

001She has some answers left. No, she's like, I don't want to. I'm glad I dislocated my meeting to at 7:02. Uh Matt's not going to be with us tonight. It's his birthday and his kids have kidnapped him literally. Um he might join us late. He might join us online, but I'll give him the night off. Um starting with uh remarks from the chair. So well uh this is my last uh full meeting as chair. So I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for you know getting through probably a fairly tough budget season for most of us and for the help and all the work that the subcommittees have done. Um I want to touch base on on something related to the budget that we've gotten we've proposed. um and just talk to why

002I think we've done a reasonably good job. So, anyone who's been looking at the news lately might have seen a story on on Milton where they had a uh more than $9 million override on the ballot. Uh $6 million of that which was for their school system. Uh and they voted on it I guess yesterday and they approved it. I took a look at their budget and to see what the size of their problem is and I wanted to compare it to what our budget looks like and what the size of our problem is. And I think it's a little bit telling um now there's a difference here in that I think they have a K through 12 system and so their cost structure is going to be a little bit lower than ours um

003just in terms of the number of administrators and everything else involved in running a a bigger school. you don't need as many per student. Um, but anyway, so their their budget, they had an increase of 9.44% year-toear overall, which was $6 million. We're asking for 7.4% override. So, we're um, you know, a good two two and two and a half% almost below I'm sorry, 2.05% below them. But let's look at what the actual individual key items are. Their salary increase was 5.61%. Ours is 2.9. That's the item that we can control, folks. So, you know, we've done a reasonable job, I think, of putting forward a number that hopefully our constituents are going to agree with and vote for. Let's look at some of the other numbers they have. So, out of district tuition, theirs

004went up by 7.27%. Ours went up by 32%. Transportation, their blended transportation costs went up by 8.65%, ours went up by 14.9%. So, these factors that are really outside of our control, and these are necessary factors. I mean, we want our special education kids to get the right services. We need to pay for transportation to get kids to where they need to go. There's no way around it. No one is arguing that we shouldn't be doing this. All I'm trying to do is is to call attention to the fact that we've been, I think, very fiscally responsible in what we've put forward. The number might look big to folks at 7.4%, 4% but the underlying numbers behind what's gotten us there ex they tell the story and um I just wanted to share that with

005everyone because I do think you've all done a good job um taking some tough votes making some hard decisions uh so thank you for that and with that said we'll move on to the agenda comments from the audience Anyone with comments today? We're off to a good start. We just see the student advisory board. Um, hi. Hi guys. I'm Ethan Savon. I'm the current SAB at large and I am a freshman from Boxford and here are the updates. It's our last meeting on April 9th. Some upcoming events are the junior prom is coming up in a couple weeks. will be hosted at Seaglass in Salsbury. And unlike senior prom, I will be attending this one two in two weeks from today. We will be hosting our cultural fair where high schoolers will be able to

006represent a country of their choice and represent their culture. And the freshman walk will be hosted on May 30th and will allow the freshman to get some of their community service hours in. some of our previous events where we just came back from April vacation. Our current events are there are no current events and there is one form of concern is um there's been a lot of talk about the potential chance of us losing our study halls next year because of the want to fill students schedules with more academic courses. A lot of other students believe that a lot of students believe that study halls are necessary for a lot of them and it allows people who need academic support to get it. It allows people to make up work, do their homework. And some

007people, especially myself, have a lot of homework to the point where it's really stressful. And having a study hall allows a lot of these people to get rid of that stress. Especially with a lot of people going to the school having a lot of a after school activities. It's a lot of work for one student to manage and we have mlock for the most part but it's not enough time for people to get stuff off their plate basically. Um that's all I have for today. Thank you for listening. Have a great day. Thank you. Any questions for anyone? Okay, you're free to stay or leave. Um, brings us to director and of teaching and learning presentation. Kevin, Kevin, do you want to sit? Kevin, do you want to sit at the table? Sure, I can

008sit at the table. Yeah. Yeah. The only reason you'd be over there is if you're going to use the Okay, great. For the presentation, which Yeah. No, it's more standing plenty today. Thank you. All right. Well, good evening. Um, thank you for bringing me here this evening. Um here you can see um you know the bucket of responsibilities um under the director of teaching and learning and you know you've seen these um obviously you know earlier on during the budget process and you know from curriculum to assessments uh professional development programming strengthening of PLC's district data team and educator evaluation so there's several buckets under the realm of my responsibility um certainly this is a team effort um but these are the major buckets that I'll be delving into this evening. Um, as far as

009visibility goes, I really wanted to put this out there because this is who I am and I I just felt it was important. You know, this may not speak directly to the buckets, but I, you know, I'm an active um administrator um in classrooms. Um, you know, teachers are used to seeing me in hallways. I attend uh you know department meetings. I attend faculty meetings. I attend student and community events. You know to me I think this quote is very telling. Seek first to understand then to be understood. And that's my philosophy. You know I didn't come in here and say um I said I I need to get to know the landscape and I really need to get to know the key stakeholders and have a better understanding of this community. Um and that's

010what I continue to do. um you know and it it allows me to do the formal and the informal. You know when I'm in the schools it's it's there are times when I'm in classrooms but then there are times when I say oh gez this is a great opportunity to further connect with a teacher who um is in their class without students um you know someone grabs you in the hallway. So this is a big part anyone that knows me is um you know I don't care what position you're in I think it's you know it's a key ingredient is relationship building. So I just wanted to, you know, really highlight that um at the outset of of of who I am. Um so here you can see our portrait of a learner competencies which

011I know you're familiar with. You haven't seen this visual before. Uh we wanted um conversations I've had with with several stakeholders was we said why don't we have students really put their stamp on what the portrait of a learner means. So, uh, Stacy Mannheim, uh, the arts coordinator and myself pitched pitched this idea to the graphic design class. We pitched it to the students to say, "Hey, this is what we want our district. This is the face of our district. You're somewhat familiar with these competencies, but this is your opportunity to really own this." And, um, you know, we certainly got to I got to thank Stacy and I got to thank um, this work was the work of uh, James Payne and Owen Walsh. Um, Karen juniors, I believe. I'm both juniors. uh and

012you know there was a number of um you know good good work here that the students did and these were this was the visual that emerged and this is going to be I'm proud to say the face of our school community moving forward and you know it's I think it's important to have the visual student stamp and this will be what you will see in classrooms you will see this in hallways um you will see this across the school community as we continue to um really promote and and talk about all the work we're doing with curriculum what you hear about tonight um is aligned to to the portrait of a learner. So you get you get your first glimpse this evening. Professional uh learning as far as the overview goes there are you know

013several uh facets to this but from a leadership and collaboration standpoint you know I saw it as my job to really empower the professional development committee and we've been meeting throughout the course of the year. This is a group of teachers and administrators and this really um they help drive the framework for professional de development and I meet with department heads regularly for the actual implementation um on the ground level. So you know department chairs and certainly uh this committee um has been influential in shaping professional learning uh for the year. Um we we receive consistent uh educator feedback. We are constantly getting educator feedback. They I I said to the faculty today, I said, "You probably feel surveyed to death." Um, and a lot of that is professional learning because we truly do value

014their input. And it's, you know, as you'll see this evening, it's it's a big part of what we do. Um, we're about flexibility because we've had to, you know, at times we've had to shift gears. We have an accreditation happening at the high school. We had a build in time for our accreditation teams. Um we were fortunate to secure a grant for a formative tool that our teachers were asking for that they had before a technology tool that we wanted to bring back and with the timing of receiving the grant you know we felt the need to really want to build it into our professional development program which I'll get to uh so you know we needed to be flexible um but through this framework we've been able to have conversations um within and across

015departments uh conversations with the tri town as well um which you'll hear about this evening um so for the when I say vertical I'm talking about those conversations we're having with elementary teachers um with with secondary teachers that are happening as well. Um supporting all roles and students. You know, there is a certain level of compliance, right? There's a certain level of, hey, we have a new IP here. It's important that all of our general educators and our special educators understand implementation of it. So at the beginning of the year and and certainly a credit to Brad Denton and and and Marie Bridges and his office and you know we were able to bring in Merin's consulting and really do some work with administration and with our our our teachers all teachers um all roles

016around implementation of the new IP and trying to get ahead of that. So that was at the start of the school year. Um we've been able to bring in CPR, first aid, stop the bleed for our par professionals. uh you know we we safety's at the forefront and um I you know I really owe a big thank you to Julia Label the the townwide nurse who has helped coordinate these trainings for our for our faculty uh you know and it's um they're very wellreceived and I think for par profofessionals you know I think that they feel it brings a certain value to the work that they're doing and a sense of fulfill fulfillment both personally and professionally so they really appreciated that so we actually trained two cohorts um of PAR professionals. Uh inclusive practices

017across all roles is something we continue to strive for. We, you know, if if nurses needed X, Y, and Z or um school counselors, we were really deliberate about having those conversations and building in the time uh throughout the framework. Uh that's always a little bit trickier with what we call the CISP faculty because, you know, what might apply to the majority of teachers doesn't always apply to those roles. And uh that's where we get creative and we tap into some of our partnerships as well. Um which you're going to hear about tonight. Curriculum and personalized learning. Um a major focal point I outlined for you uh at the beginning of the year was I I said it was um we needed to prioritize curriculum development and alignment and we needed consistency across the curriculum.

018And I heard from department chairs early on, you know, first my first ask was where is the curriculum, right? And then it was there was some inconsistency across departments in terms of um where we're at in terms of approach. Um so we've really worked at that with alignment. Um we refined to transfer skills. We came back this year said I think you know we think transfer skills deserve another look because um you know with the portrait of a learner competencies are we truly and if we're really approaching curriculum with big picture questions right we call them essential questions and we weren't I want it was my goal to see these across all departments and if if we're seeing those essential questions and we're framing the learning for our students um then we really need to

019understand what transfer looks like and we need to own it and and departments and teaches they run with they really ran with this and um they run with everything actually. So I'll give you more examples but um that framing of the curriculum was a big part of our work. Um supporting personalized educator goals which I'll get to and then taking advantage of our partnerships um you know both our external partners like PD Collab and and MPY which is the mass partnerships for youth. You know this allows us to hit the mark with so many of the different roles we have. you can only do so much in house and then you have to really take advantage of those partnerships as well which you're going to hear um which I'll get to. Uh so as far

020as curriculum development and alignment goes, as I said out of the gate, this was the priority in my eyes and I worked closely with leadership department chairs and and to really ensure alignment um you know across grades across um departments um but also taking a look at like I said the vertical piece of some conversations we've had with the tri town um you've heard about some of the conversations happening in special education you know, so I'd like to really build on that as we move forward. Um, but this this I can I can say now we have a we do have a consistent format. Um, this curriculum is accessible to our entire internal professional learning community. So that means whether you're a counselor, you're a teacher, you want to see a curriculum in another department,

021um, special education teacher, it's all at our fingertips through a shared drive, which um, this deserves a lot more time and attention. there's never enough time for this work. In fact, the faculty is asking for more time, right? Um so we um you know this was this was woven throughout everything we did this school year. And I did share some research with you here um around you know what the what the research says around essential questions. And you see here a 35% improvement in higher order thinking skills over one academic year according to the journal of educational research and ASCD the association for supervision and curriculum development uh demonstrating a 25 to 30% increase in concept retention and transfer so we look at transfer skills and we look at alignment to those habits of mind

022if you want to call them those you know those skill sets that's a big part of of of what we are doing um as we move forward Because you know students it's not about and you know and and our teachers do a good job of this of when you walk into a classroom you often do see the framing of the learning happening around um what is that big picture outcome and and it's about being clear of what the expectation is for students and the more clear we can be about that and not get caught up in facts the better off we're going to be. Um so you know this is really big picture in terms of um you know when I speak to curriculum development alignment but then there's a certain level of calibration that's

023happening across departments in terms of just format and you can see this example here Mike uh not well but you hopefully you've seen it your own copy this so this is two um the reason I chose this is you're looking at an algebra 2 course and you're looking at an acting course right so two very different departments And you know if you if you look carefully here you're going to see words like um respect, problem solving, patience, adaptability with real life problems without a clear solution. Our teachers are really look working at that resiliency piece and building resiliency with students. And if you look at the new curriculum shifts that are happening, you know, whether it's the open sed um that that that really or even up open up resources in math, you're looking at

024a shift of responsibility on the student. You're looking at that push happening um where you know we're not giving you answers right away and that and that's you know that's important to really frame the learning and and this is an approach that our teachers are taking. um you see adapt quickly, cultivate a a mindset um where there's risk-taking and vulnerability, right? So these are these are all key concepts that if we're looking at portrait of a learner, we really want our graduates to get where we want them to be. It needs to be um woven within the curriculum. So these are like I said two very different examples I wanted to share with you so you can see the consistency and you can get our understanding of how we're um when I speak to you

025about does that make sense like transfer? Yeah, go ahead. So, is it okay to ask a question now? Um, just a question about in doing this revision, how much of the curriculum, and I'm sure this varied by content, but just kind of overall was changed and adjusted to include these competencies or maybe there were some gaps before versus like the reformatting work because both I'm sure were necessary, but just curious how much of like the content and skills needed to be revised just in doing this work this year. Yeah. No, it's it's been I guess the good news is like we we've set it up so when and you'll hopefully you'll see the whole story tonight because the first chunk of time was dedicated if you want to say to curriculum development. Um but the

026truth is it was um we we moved into what we call you know a personalized uh learning pathway um for the second major chunk of the year where so many of our teachers really worked at this piece of and I'll give you examples of skills of um transfer. So I would and it's still happening because we're about to go into assessment. So, I would say it's both. I mean, out of the gate, we had to and you know, um, department chairs and I really, you know, we agonized over this a bit, but we we got to a place where, um, we could all agree on a format. So, I know it sounds trivial, but format is important, right? Consistency for students is important. Um, so I'd say it's probably been less about format and more

027about the integration of these skills and competencies throughout the which hopefully you'll hear that story tonight. If you had to say like low, medium, high, how much revision to the content would you say was needed across board? How much revision to the competencies across the board? Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Was that the question? Content competencies other than formatting. Um, we're probably at this point low to medium. I mean, this is work is this is a multi-year goal. Well, for sure. I just mean like what was the need? Just out of curiosity. The the need or how much? Yeah. How much was how much if we looked at the algebra unit one for linear functions in September to now? How much change has there been? Um, in terms of Yeah, it's more what we'd refer to like

028stage one. There's a there's been um the majority of like um when you see essential questions, you see content, knowledge, and skills and dispositions, the majority of that work has been done, but not across all courses because as you can imagine in certain departments, the number of courses that we have, we have new courses we're adding. Um and we're we're about to get into assessment, but again, I I don't want to put uh some teachers are have already jumped on assessment with the work we did. We really honored personalization trimester. it's the second trimester of the year. So, it does it's very it does differentiate across departments. But, um I would say um I'd say medium to high if we're just looking at the the work done around um framing the learning around essential questions,

029the content, knowledge, and the skills. Yeah, I I hope that answers the question, but I think you'll I hope the puzzle fits as you hear me go through this this whole uh piece to see in terms of how we framed it this year. Kevin, I've got much more basic question. I think uh inquiry based learning. Can you explain what you mean by that term? You're not are you referring to like the Socratic method or is it something Socratic meth method is certainly a good example? It's, you know, the ability to ask the right questions in the in student discourse and and not right, not so much heavily teacherdirected. Um, but to be able to approach and and understand how students to be able to see and understand how to apply a skill across whether it's

030I guess we call it the real world, but whether it's in their personal lives or um when they go to another classroom or Yeah. So that's that speaks to really the the transfer and the portrait of a learner. Um all of them that really is the focus of so like the open sedge the math program again it's open up right open up. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean that's these new programs that are coming out there you know giving students problems that are very open-ended and saying okay bring what you know to you know what you've already learned to be able to solve them and that's novel approaches to you know to these problems. Yeah. In some ways, I think it's harder for the teachers than the students at times because it's really like you got

031to really let go and you got to sit back a little bit and but I app I think it's hard for students too because I think a lot of times there's you know experience that kids just say just tell me the answer. Oh yeah. No, it's for them too. I you know that's the difficulty that's how much I I really appreciate what the teachers are doing. It's not easy for them to to make this shift. Um, and that's where like we're grateful for the grant we we received in open sed it's it's but it's you know there's a good amount of training that's going to go into that and I'll tell you one big reason we received that grant is we've got teachers that are saying because I I'm familiar with these grants and if

032you don't have teachers that are willing to to do the professional learning and it's it's hours upon hours of but it's great networking and it's um you don't get there you know so that's not it that doesn't happen everywhere so that's um I can tell you right now cuz I said in those interviews um those those teachers are really um doing everything they can and set for setting our students up for su success there. But yeah, it's not easy for the kids either. I don't want to lose sight of that for sure. Um I think Bill has a question. Yeah, just a real quick one. Um are you finding that the the teachers are welcoming this this change? Well, I'm going to give you the feedback in a moment. share just share some of the

033That's cool. Yep. No, I appreciate it. And I still have I can still add to it. Yeah, that's fine. Um, so as far as curriculum development alignment goes, um, I'm going to be honest with you, Bill, it's not the most exciting work. You know, it's it can be a dryness to it, but it's important. I It's exciting for me. I This is what I do. Uh, but it's, you know, it's um, and our faculty has been engaged with similar work and for years now and they've done a nice job with it. It's just, you know, when you come in and you see the differences across curriculum areas, there's an opportunity to calibrate it across the board and really uh make sure. So, here are some of the comments you can see. I I won't read

034through them all, but again, time to collaborate. We've really built on a lot of collaboration time this year. Middle and high school teachers coming together. Several several tell me that that really happens. Uh you would think it would happen more, but that really did happen quite a bit. deepening of trust um improving the student experiencing reflecting new standards with the new curriculum uh you know I think with whether it was the open sedup resources even the shifts happening at the high school in science I think it's the teachers really appreciated the time you know um support day-to-day work finally tackled updates we've discussed for years collaboration time like this is rare um a little bit more focus on the next slide on student impact um better understanding of transfer goals, the vertical alignment piece, right?

035Identifying areas of repetition where gaps may exist, improving our teaching, collaboration with high school teachers. A lot of comments about the ability to work like interdisciplinary across departments or um middle and high school. Uh so there were and this isn't this is you know teachers and leadership running with it and saying I um you know I really wanna because I I I gave a little bit of leeway. I mean I gave direction believe me department has wanted direction and teachers want direction but I also built in some flexibility to to to all of this work. I think that's important. Um so here Bill you can and not just Bill but I to answer your question you can see in terms of relevance um you know this was how this was on the specific work we

036did around curriculum development and alignment and looking at relevance most on a scale of one to five being most likely one being least as you can see here the majority of the faculty gave it a three four or five great um application majority of the faculty gave it a three, four or five. Um I can tell you because we've we've asked the faculty um that their one of their top ask is more time for curriculum development, curriculum alignment, collaboration, the gift of time. We can't overlook it. It's um you know I I come from a family of educators. I I I I was a teacher. I I live I've lived it. I've I've lived this and I I understand it. It's um there's what you don't want is initiative, initiative, initiative, initiative. Um so, you

037know, that's hopefully that's where we're trying to get at here. All right. So, we uh Katie Donado and I also we we got some input from students at the high school. This is a small sample size we we tried to put out there over the course of several lunches. I think we had some ML blocks in there. uh Mike Mike joined us for some of the conversations as well and you can get a sense here of what students are saying. I think there is value in this. Okay, it's not like I said, it's a small sample size. We have other data points coming. Um, but you know, you start to you start to tell a story and you look at engagement and connection. Students love group. They love hands-on work. They love interactivity. Uh, they

038they they embrace field trips. And I I got to say, I can't get over the the field experiences we have for our students here. It's it's truly amazing. and um how we've we've prioritizing funding with field experiences in in this community. It's it's like I've never seen before. And so, but it's good to know, right, that our students really appreciate that outdoor classes. Who doesn't want to go outdoors? Uh we had a group of middle school students yesterday going out to the tennis courts to write poetry and I wanted to join them. Um I was on the way to a meeting but I mean who doesn't love that choice of personalization um electives project based learning the unblock personalized incentives they say they want to name certain teachers and it wasn't about the teachers but

039they they wanted there's a number of um you know teachers that give like personalized incentives uh so which they love they love any any incentive um memorable experiences you see travel highlighted here any time quality time spent with teachers they said staying late with teachers collaborative projects that validate students strengths and that's the work we're going to be doing starting in two weeks. Um, student suggestions and I say this to teachers. I teachers will ask me, Kevin, what are you looking for? Um, well, I want to see student discourse. I want to see interactivity. I want to see excitement. I love when students are out in the hallway. I it doesn't mean I walk in your classroom you lecture and you got have to stop and shift gears and you know but um there is

040certain um the perception amongst our students that there is a little bit um we'd like to see lecture heavy instruction reduced at times um increasing any opportunity to increase interactivity u but that's not you know that's not it's it's not easy right it's it's a balance and and uh but the more we can provide student centered learning opportunities. That's that's going to be my goal my time here is is is make it more and more student centered and less uh less teacher centered that way. Uh flexibility, offering flexible homework structures and more time for support. They're overwhelmed. They're having a hard time um balancing any any parents probably get a sense of this, but balancing the demands. They are having a hard time with that. I don't have an easy fix for you tonight, but

041I want you to know that um access improving access to mlock and and promoting collaboration with peers. you know, it's I don't know how much that I said to the staff today, I don't know if that's how much of it is just wanted to hang out with, but there is a sense of they felt it's very rigid. Um, expanding real world application, which is going to lead right into the work that I'm going to speak um to you about shortly. Um, so I thought it was nice, but we are still looking at additional data points as we go along. We we we understand we want to hear more from students. Um, you know, I'm I'm going to be working with the the DECA class around um we've already started to like transform, not transform, but

042revise our student internship expectations for groups of students that are interesting in piloting it where it's much more focused around portrait of a learner and not only for their supervisors in their internships, but also um for the student reflection components that they're really being more thoughtful about those competencies. So, we're going to we're going to get more feedback from the DECA classes um this before the end of the school year as well on on how to shape that because that piece is an important component. Majority of our kids, as you know, go through an internship. Um all right, so that brings us to the second chunk of professional learning, which was the personalized learning pathways. We put our trust in the faculty to to pursue a learning stretch. We wanted them to model our portrait

043of a learner competencies. Um we really wanted them to embrace the sense of community which I mentioned they they really did they did they went beyond and you're going to see some great examples. Um and honoring educator choice and voice was important. Um I really wanted to do this. So uh this next example this this was inspirational. Um so we took a team of teachers to the tri town of math seventh grade math teachers. Um this was Sarah uh Smith and I and um Peggy who's my counterpart in the tri town's been been great. She's been very open to collaboration and um this is an area we we can continue to build on. So, we take it we took a team down there and I gotta say one of we met with a group of

044sixth grade math teachers and it was a desire of our math teachers, our seventh grade math teachers that that had the ask and um so, you know, credit to them first of all for even saying we want to we want to better understand the kids that are coming up to us in terms of what they're presenting. So we go and there's a there's a sixth grade teacher in particular that raved and raved and raved about building thinking classrooms and how she's transformed. She read this book. She's transformed her curriculum. And our teachers were somewhat familiar with the book. Some had read the book, but they said they were so excited that they they said we want to read this book. And now I can tell you they they took the time not only to read

045this book to discuss and and think thoughtfully about their curriculum, they're looking to transform their learning environments. So they're looking to where you see uh corkboards in the classroom, right? They want interactive whiteboards. This is about getting students moving in out and about in the classroom, problem solving, teacher as facilitator. This is everything I'm talking um I just I I really have to applaud them and and they're telling me that I haven't spoken to eighth grade about this, but eighth grade is excited and they want to do the same thing um is what I'm hearing. So to me, this was um this was a home run. this was teacherdriven. Um it was inspirational and I just hope I can get the support now to start to transform some of these environments and um you know

046I think this little bit of facilities work we'll have to do hopefully over the summer and the fall and I'm sure we will and um just to to really I I can't say enough about like transforming learning spaces and how important it is whether it's furniture whether it's walls whether you know it goes a long way it goes a long way in classrooms. Yep. So, what is a vertical non-permanent surface? Well, that would be the that's these interactive whiteboards. I don't know refers to it. I Jeff, I had the same reaction. On wheels math here, don't overthink it. [Laughter] Do we not already have those in the classroom? We have some whiteboards. This is about taking advantage of wall space. Well, they have them in all the classrooms. This is you would do generally at

047the front of the room, but we're talking about like talking these days they they took, you know, would take whole walls of a classroom and make it one big whiteboard, right? Things like that. Um, it's about giving students students every interact with the with each other with the problem solving with Yeah, it's powerful and it's more it's more the kids at the whiteboard than the teacher. Teacher be more of a facilitator, right? I I mean I've seen the shift h happen in several classrooms um just over the course of my career and it's not always about I mean this would make it more advantageous and um I've seen teachers do it with with limited too but yeah this this would transform it this would make it much easier. I actually did like taking math at

048that point I might actually like taking math if that's it's a different learning math it's amazing to watch. It's is it's um students just embrace it. So All right. So, some additional products here. Uh, we had a number of teachers that so they, like I said, this with this personalized learning pathways, they could have taken a number of different roots on their learning stretch. Um, I'll briefly touch upon these. The a number of teachers embraced AI and AI integration. Okay? And I'm going to get to this later tonight, but this provided the opportunity for teachers to tap into some of our outside professional development partners. We have like 15-hour courses you can take through like the PD collab. We have classes through mass partnerships for youth and then giving them the time to actually unpack

049what they're learning. Um, some took classes together. Um, and these are all of free partners of ours. So, at minimal or no cost to the district, we're really tapping more into capitalizing on some of these partners that we have. Um, and AI was a big one and thinking about their own curriculum and thinking about what this might look like. um with artificial intelligence and when students start to use artificial intelligence in the classroom. Uh we had a a group of math teachers that said, you know, we want to observe one and we want to be reflective and we want to have we really want to have the conversations about what we saw in those classrooms. They looked at a snippet. I think it was like the first 15 minutes of class and what are what

050are other teachers in the department doing to activate student learning, you know, and and let's talk about it and let's have some consistency and they they ran with this. And um so peer observation, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't happen often enough. you know, it's we say we mandate it through like um you know, induction programs, which we do a great job of here, but as far as I'm concerned, it's one of the best uh professional learning experiences, and I'm going to try to open up more doors to that here. Um you know, over time is this idea of peer observations. Um integrating literacy skills into the civics curriculum. Uh this was an example of the eighth grade teachers and the grade 10 teachers coming together um to to think thoughtfully about the civics curriculum

051and especially around literacy and um you know whether it's a novel they're reading and and how to tie that in together. We had English and social studies teachers coming together with uh to develop common assessments um common rubrics around writing and and what the um you know having a consistency and and Meg was Meg was great at at empowering them and leading the way with this but really some consistency across grade nine in terms of across two departments you know her and Eva I got to you know work closely together on this. So, um, which I, you know, I appreciate them empowering the teachers to really do this work. And, um, I mentioned the new curriculum and and some of the shifts happening and teachers appreciate the time to unpack. Um, back to the social

052studies department with Eva Hughes and and they're so passionate. They did such a great job with really taking a closer look at our Native American legacy, what that means at Masinomit. Um, they brought in community members. They they did their research. are building a website. There's going to be a display. They got a grant through the MEF around some of the artifacts around our Native American heritage and um you know they've really um done a deep dive here and and this was um you know I think they really enjoyed this um executive functioning curriculum uh which was you know certainly nice for the for the teachers to be able to really um develop this further. There was a lot of work they wanted to do around executive function curriculum, increasing our mental health student supports

053and our counselors delving into career exploration. Some of them went on some outside visits um brought ideas back, tapped into the mass partnerships for youth. So again, this is, you know, cross roles um allowed us to hit the mark. Next slide. If you look at the educator highlights, the gift of time was the most valuable. Uh working together as a team allowed us to align our curriculum, share strategies that will benefit all students. um being trusted, immediate applicability to my teaching, time well spent, uh experimentation, creating resources directly applicable to my students. So these were just some of the highlights. These are all verbatim comments from our faculty. Um, and then you can see here a little bit more focus on student impact, having time to work with my colleagues on curriculum alignment, which is

054extremely beneficial for our classes, being able to observe other teachers and get feedback on my own teaching. I spoke to you about that. Being able to do subject specific work that will actually matter in my classroom and um, that's what teachers want first and foremost at Masanomic. They want content specific professional development and they want it led by their peers. Um this was off the charts. I mean this was a home run. If you look at um relevance, the majority of the faculty gave it a four or five application. The majority of the faculty gave it a four or five. And again, this is on a scale one to five. Five being most likely. um what this does this and I this is important to me because I it's it's it says that we can

055and again I don't I didn't come in here with a mistrust or anything but if you saw the products that our educators developed and what they did with this time um this is the conversations we are having now with our professional development committee around when we're looking to frame this for next school year Um, we are going to make sure that there is a personalization happening. We are going to make sure that there's collaboration time for teachers. We're going to look at our PLC model. And we're starting to look at a PLC model. And um, you know, there's opportunity here to to strengthen what we're doing in the PLC's to actually perhaps integrate it into our professional learning, which I'll get to as well. Um, so that this to me kind of gave, you know,

056if I was on the fence or or um I'm certainly much further along in terms of where I know we need to go as a district. Um so as far as the next with what's left here in terms of the school year so I mentioned um we're spending some time with assessment and preparing for um artificial intelligence is a big part of this what we have done is we've partnered with and I know this is part of the strategic plan and um so I I can't take credit for this because this was was in the strategic plan and was encouraged and so but we have partnered with um and Mike I know has set up all the surveys through the educator commonwealth project and working closely with the association. Um we're starting to collect some

057meaningful data from our stakeholders. The other part of this is they have a whole uh focus on assessment performance assessment. So we've been able to partner with them around performance assessment and um they've actually come here on site and um it's it was informative because I think we probably in you know we informed them as much as they informed us. So they're the work they're doing at the state level. So this is teams of teachers at the state level that develop these performance tasks with several eyes on them. They're all u you know there's a pretty thorough review before they get u broadcast for educators and they're free across the state. What we're doing is we're helping them calibrate their work at the state level because our um you know our leadership team here um

058gave them some real specific feedback around how we're customizing it. We all did for masking on it. So we took you know we took their their work around it and we customized it and we gave them a lot of suggestions. So, we are working um and I hope we're able to continue to work closely with them around performance assessments. Uh you know, there are some opportunities for our teachers next year um where we can receive some coaching along the way and join some cohorts of educators. So, that's something that I'm looking into as well. Uh but ensuring our assess that our assessments are reflecting real world skills and portrait of a learner goals that is the focus of this assessment component to our work that's coming. the more we can leverage technology integration, the better

059we will be. So, I mentioned the formative tool. Our teachers were asking for it. They wanted the formative tool. This was something that they had at one point. Um, it it helps with the those that are piloting the Google classroom as well to have that meaningful assessment component. So, we we paused and we well, I shouldn't say it was a good transition because it it just happened as we're getting into assessment and we um thanks to the technology integration department, we're able to train our teachers. Several of our teachers ran with it. We had 162 users in the last two weeks. We've had 356 assessments assigned to our students and we've had 66 teachers using it directly with our students. Um this is just over the last two weeks since we um we provided the

060training on the tool and again this would not be possible without the MEF because we're able to secure a grant um and this secures the tool through the end of this school year and of course the ask is are we going to sustain this and we have built it into our budget for next school year as well. Um but you know this is um this is what what this tool does is it provides real time and we have other tools that do it in a similar fashion. Um but the ability to provide real-time feedback to our students um and and to teachers actually have a dashboard of how they're performing um you know and teachers use it to design a variety of assessments. It's just it's it really streamlines it. Um and we're getting quality

061data as well from our students or we will be um and then just the identifying and calibrating our performance assessments which I mentioned. So that's a big part is and then we're going to carve out some time for artificial intelligence. My philosophy on this, and I said this from day one when I was hired, is we're doing our students a disservice if we're not um if we're not utilizing or integrating artificial intelligence in a responsible way in the classroom. Um so, you know, we've set we had an AI team. We started to convene um in November. This is a team of educators and administrators and we have developed a set of policy not policy I don't want to call it policy we all call policy because this is going to change um a set of

062guidelines um for our teachers to set them up for success parameters around um ethical use around um safety and security you know specific we have some specific parameters around age use. So, one thing about the open AI is first off, we're going to need to obtain parent consent. Um, any student ages 13 to 18. So, the plan for as of now as we're rolling out these guidelines is we're we're going to be hands off in grade seven. But for teacher at teacher discretion, teachers that are want to start to use artificial intelligence with their students, um we will have a parent sign off through our through an updated acceptable use policy, which I understand hasn't been updated in 10 years, but we've been working working hard at it. Um so we we would like to

063to um we'll put forth an acceptable use policy with a parent consent um where the parents will have the opportunity to opt out. Um but certainly we have a number of teachers that want to run with this and see the value in this and because um bottom line here is students are using it. So let's let's show them how to use it responsibly. Yep. You just explain what the how artificial intelligence would be used in the classroom. Yep. So um it's so sometimes well a number of teachers use it to for for even just brainstorming and asking the right questions of a chatbot right to so to help a student actually generate their ideas um to even tackle um whatever it is the outcome of the assignment is um you see it used for u

064assistance with visuals and um thinking about interpretation of visuals and you know there's there's so many different tools. Um, but it's more about the ability to interact, asking the right questions. Um, you know, I I am constantly um, you know, this is an area that I have a a real interest in. Um, it's it's constantly evolving and changing as with how teachers are using it and will be using it. Um but I you know I think it's it's about um you know I you have to build in the the civic the the literacy component to it in the sense of you have to make sure that our students are using it in a responsible way and they know what it looks like when you're not using it responsibly as as well. So that piece, you

065know, it's going to be incumbent on us to try to provide some training for that and support and also um more opportunity for our teachers through um professional learning to embrace some of the tools that we already have in the district. Remember back in the fall there was a quite a big lawsuit on the Southshore students that were punished for plagiarism for using GPT. And so we want to make sure we're ahead of that. So, so when you say ask the right questions, I think about how like 30 years ago when you did a search like you had to use certain terms and and and technology has evolved. So, my guess is it's just using that technology, how to use your that technology in a way that's helpful but not plagiarizing. Yeah. And and it's

066also um it's built into a lot of the tools that we probably don't even realize that we already have in the district or I mean it's built into everything now. what what do you have that doesn't have some AI component to it? So, um I I don't want to look I'm not going to force we're not going to force teachers hands out of the gate and we have a responsibility to provide them with the supports. We also have a responsibility to make sure that our students have an understanding of it. So it's that it will be a slower roll out. Um but we want we want to do it the right way and that technically with open AI parents have to provide the consent but we just thought seventh grade would be a little too

067messy with the ages under age 13. It's chat GPT that requires at least 13 or it's not chat a 13 year minimum age to use it. And so we said, you know, so in this responsible use thing, you know, thing, we've said we're not using in seventh grade. Um because they're not they're not 13 yet at all. Yeah, I supported it. It was just sort of confusing now like what exactly it was. But yeah, I still I don't And listen, I do. I'm not an expert on it, but I know it's the right thing to do. I know it's absolutely the right thing to do by our kids. And if you if you don't agree with me now, you'll be agreeing with me in a year. That's how it's strong. See Trevor and it's I'm

068just wanted to bring up and it's probably not a problem for this committee to address but the next committee should ensure that our policies align that are they're open enough to yeah allow you to operate and roll this out how you see I this is more of the uh the um acceptable technology use language that's in the student handbook. Um so it you know that's what Kevin started with revising and adding the AI uh pieces to that. So yeah I've been working pretty closely with um you know the media specialists and a number couple of teachers as well. Let's review it and it's um I said it's 10 years old. Um the language is just yeah it's not just mask economic everyone's self use policy is is really outdated. Um so we just saw an

069opportunity to like committee policy. Yeah, I think capitalize on it's just part of the student use policy that this would probably fall on. Okay. I think the use of policy is a misnomer and I think it's more Yeah, it's more of a protocol or terms and conditions. Yeah, doable policy titled that responsible technology use or something. Okay. But we did just work on it. But I know that Katie is going to bring handbook changes to the committee in June. So that was it. Yeah, I can write the change. Yeah. Yeah, you can write it. Uh Chris, um I'm glad you brought this topic up tonight. Um because I think it's percolating everywhere nationwide. And I think like you said, if you're not on board with it today, you will be a year from now. I

070think I think that's actually going to be like a month from now. Um I think it's similar situation to people who were I don't know 30 40 50 years ago resisting having computers in schools. This is that next iteration of technology and the sooner we start embracing it a grip on it and managing it um we'll have fewer offenses or misuses and I think the whole community can learn from it. Um so I have two questions. One is around who's helping you with this because I think we need a committee. Oh, we we have a committee that developed the guidelines. Um and that's that was probably 15 20 um people. It was teachers, administrators. Yeah, we met November. We met for probably over a 3 four month period. And then from there though, we had

071we we narrowed it down to a subcommittee. And the reason for that is when you're looking at things like the acceptable use policy and just a lot of specific um language and like we felt like we were in a once we felt like we're in a good place with what our educators needed, we started looking at okay well we ran into a lot of like we need parent consent. We didn't you know I don't know we fully realized that. Um and then you know our attorney has you know weighed in on some things. Yeah. So it's it's um it's you know techn to answer your question specifically it's it's head of technology it's my technology integration specialists I mean Al McCarthy and um Ben Hodgeges have been instrumental with this um my my media specialists

072have been um librarians um have been super helpful with this as well and you know that's kind of the core group but the department heads are always you know influential and offering insight and um as well. That's the like and Katie Donado jumps in from a high school standpoint and yeah, everyone's involved to some level. It's awesome because it's Yeah, it's everyone from you know MIT has invested half a billion dollars in this. Uh the the founder of Netflix just gave Bowden College $50 million towards understanding AI in the classroom. it like it it's at big universities, it's at small colleges, and now it's finally making its way down into the high school environment. So my next question is, how are teachers learning about it? What tools would be needed? What could this committee support

073to bring our learning to the next level so that we can understand it, manage it, and then integrate it appropriately? Do you want me to do the the prior sir? So it's just so since we've gone to this new system, you know, the Wednesday PD time. So we've had multiple um AI courses, you know, so that Kevin's talking about Kevin's talking about these 10 divisions and so we've had um I'm trying to remember the provider. We had an outside provider do um at least two sessions, you know, that that covered 40 people and then we actually had the team that Kevin talked to, you know, just described to also do in-house and I think they did three. So I it was it was you know pretty extensive as to how many people have already done

074that and then he can talk to where we're going from here with it. That's us. Yeah. So I was set up for success. I mean our teachers this wasn't totally new to them. I was set up for success and I now so now I have to say how do we implement this as a school district that's where I came in and um but you know we have to um yeah I mean technology integration that's where I need the most support you know and um yeah I think that I've got you know I also have you heard me say teachers want to learn they and they do learn best from their peers I have um I have teachers that are running with this. I have a a business teacher who has the advantage of working with

075Deca and I'll tell you Deco was ahead of this what they've done because I p we paid careful attention with the work we did with this committee. Um I relied on DECA because DECA was ahead of the game with the guidance they were giving to students. Um you know and and that's pretty telling right that like DECA gets it. These are the experiences we want our kids to have. Um, so I I really embrace the DECA model. I'm going to pay careful attention and I'm going to work closely with the business department as well because um, they're they're, you know, that's not just the business department. We have a number of teachers experimenting it with it. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, there some don't want to touch it, which I get, you know, but we'll we'll

076get there. We'll get there. Um, all right. So, I I'll move along here. The performance assessment. Um, back to the performance piece because this is tied into the AI. I just wanted to give you a sense of the calibration we're doing. This is unique to mask economic. Yes, this is adapted from the educated commonewalth project, but when we're looking at common assessments and we're looking at performance assessments, it starts with alignment. And this is what I keep talking to you about, right? Aligning to transfer skills, aligning the portrait of a learner. And this is what's going to keep us honest. This is a checklist that all of our teachers are going through. They're going to start by taking a close look at um existing performance assessments because believe me, these exist already in our curriculum.

077Our teachers are providing authentic learning experiences. I don't want you to think they're not doing that. You know, they're doing that. Um it's just an opportunity to really calibrate across departments, but also to make sure that we are staying honest to what we consider to be a true performance assessment. Are we hitting the mark with our is this accessible for all learners? Right? Student student agency, student voice, choice, what's that look like? Um, you know, is it authentic from an equity standpoint? Are we are we tapping into students? Can students see themselves? Are we tapping into their interests? Are we tapping into their strengths? Are we hitting the mark with rigor? Right? Higher order thinking. So, this is what we landed on. There's a there's a much more detailed checklist which I'm not going to

078run you through, but our teachers will go through that process. And they're also looking at they're are already identifying opportunities in the curriculum where um they can where they can introduce additional performance assessments, right? And if we're truly if we need to get to a point where we're measuring our portrait of a learner competencies because we're not there yet. We're definitely not there yet. um and we're going to we're going to do this in in the right way. This is going to help us get there. Whether it's the internship program because the majority of our students go through our capstone. Um that's one avenue. Um this is another avenue. Um but you know, we have there's a number of pieces that we're looking at, but right now, first and foremost, you see our new visual.

079We're going to broadcast it across the school community, and then the work, I can assure you, all the work we're doing is feeding into the measurement piece. um of those competencies. Um so Mike you can advance. Um so from an educator I I want to update you too because this is another bucket uh that falls under the director of teaching and learning. I guess I'm here we don't talk about it in third person any but um under my under my realm educator evaluation. So as soon as the contract pretty much very quickly after the contract was settled um I convened this team reconvened this team to say you know we we need to we need to update our language and um so we really worked at revising our teacher we've been working at revising our

080teacher rubrics. We're going to be updated to a new teacher rubric come next school year. So a lot of the work we're doing is calibrating to more current standards. it's more consistent with the work we're doing as teaching and learning and the work that we should be doing. Um, so it's going to reflect our updated expectations. Um, so like I said, we convened immediately. We meet we meet pretty regularly. Um, we're streamlining evidence collection for teachers. So we're making it a little bit easier. So what I mean by that is um teachers um per the state right the regulations but we are able to customize it for masconomic in terms of when we are evaluating teachers there are certain artifacts the state calls them artifacts I don't know maybe it's not a good word but

081um the teachers have to bring certain evidence to the table when they meet with their evaluator to showcase how they're performing across the standards. So we'll have updated standards. We're streamlining this process for our educators. Um we're defining we're in the process now of defining power standards. In fact, we meet again tomorrow. Um which what I mean by that is the the more we can all be on the same page with what we're looking for in classrooms. Um teachers, leaders, right? So that's what we're doing. Um because that'll be clearly communicated to our faculty that we say yes, you're held accountable for all standards in the rubric, but these are the power standards. this these are what we are um we feel are most essential um in terms of student uh teaching and learning. So

082yep um this might be jumping ahead but I actually was going to ask this um when we get to I regarding thatou because it's it's asking us to go from three to four on both sides. Was this part of the reason why? So it's a selfish reason. Um so I want to stay on it. Okay. 's been leading it with Meg's been part of it, Ben Hodes has. I'd like to stay stay at the table, but the contract says there's three and three. So, if I'm coming, they can bring another person. It's form four, and we just wanted to memorialize it. That's what's that's what voting out tonight. Great. And they're cool with that. Yeah. and we're not there yet, but we'd like to and we should be integrating student and faculty feedback into the

083evaluation process. So, this is where we're going. Um, I just put such a premium on student feedback when I was a teacher and I know we do it here. It's not it's very in it's more informal, but this is something I'd like to see formally integrated. Um, um, ongoing calibration and feedback. So I've been working with department chairs and um principles to some degree as well on what we are doing is calibrating how we approach educator evaluation. So there's um an agreed upon expectation or format that'll give our teachers consistency with language. We call it a CI CIG approach. What it is is when you go into a classroom because you know I think you know through um the contract there there's more frequent visits happening on a formal basis now which is a good

084thing right um informal informal um but there's a when you go into a classroom it's if you're going in more frequently which you should be doing then it's a snapshot it's often a snapshot of what you're seeing right so when you go in to take a snapshot you need to be clear about what is the claim and This is when we get into like alignment of the rubric, the teaching rubric. Like what is it you really is it is it routines? Um is it the teacher's ability to check for student understanding? You know, just being crystal clear of what the claim is providing the evidence for the claim, which is one thing, but then okay, that's great. What how does that translate to students? What's the student impact? So what we do is we're working

085at we start with the claim, we provide the evidence, we spell out student impact and ultimately you make an interpretation um a judgment sorry the interpretation is the student impact. So CIG um so and then we just it's it's a growth model. It's all about you know you read it in the strategic plan that it's a it's a compliance system now. We don't want compliance, right? So what I'm working with in department chairs have been very receptive and they're running with this. Um we started by doing team walkthroughs. Um I say team it's me and the department chair but um we'd walk through classrooms and we'd start to get a we just to get a sense of some calibration you know in terms of what we're looking for have some discussion also gave me an

086opportunity just to see that right see teaching and learning across the department and learn a little bit more about their teachers. So, we're going to continue with those um those walkthroughs because they're super helpful, but they also help with the calibration um because it's only fair to teachers that teachers have a common language and understand a common language. So, um you know, in in department chairs and or evaluators as well. So, we're looking at so that's what the work I've been doing um ensuring consistency across evaluators and departments. We're updating our administrator rubrics. Um again it's about optimal growth and in reflection which I which I mentioned and then ultimately I'd like to get to a point where we're we're coming up with a set of look for that we're that our teachers are involved

087with the design of so it's one thing to have power standards but it's another thing to unpack those power standards a little bit more to say as a teacher to have an understanding of okay if if the power standard is um the ability to develop student relationships Right. Well, what does that look like in a classroom? And that's what the look for is that I don't know. Is it greeting students at the door? Is it is it um providing in a an assignment that taps into student strengths and interests? You know, what is it? What you know, how are you getting to that point of of developing those relationships? um you know because that's that's where we want to get to is is developing a set of look fors that take that'll take a little

088bit more time there but um okay I don't know that this bucket is falls under um this this this happens every 10 years okay under director teacher this accreditation happens every 10 years um in terms of it's a it's a continuous cycle but the we're at a point this school year where we have to produce results. Okay, we have to produce results in the sense of um there'll be a team on site here come October. They'll be visiting classrooms. They'll be meeting with um teams um they'll be likely meeting with some of you um to really get a sense of what we're all about as a school community. What we are doing now and we've been meeting um I think we started in December. Is that right? It's I can't wait is it beginning of

089the year? October. Okay, we're doing it all. All right. I confused all the different committees. And so, um, anyway, this this team's been amazing. Um, and Katie really helped with the selection of these of these educators and, um, because I didn't coming in at that time, I didn't really, right? I didn't really know the the teachers. So, Katie really um, selected an all-star team and they're running with this. So what they're doing, what their charge is is they are there are five standards that speak to teaching and learning, culture, facility. Um and basically across those five standards, they're developing a self-study. They're writing a report um which ultimately and I'm sorry if you already know this, but um and ultimately leads to a set of strengths. Let me just back it up to like basic

090level. So the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, BASNC, is the organization that gives accreditation, you know, it's a it's a provides a set of standards to high schools and colleges all over New England, actually all over the world. And so every 10 years they come back and review your program to determine whether you've met their standards. Um, and the big piece that Kevin's been leading this year has been, you know, the a big piece of it is you do a lot of self-reflection and then tell them what you think how how how you think we are measuring up to their standards. Uh, and then they'll send a team here to verify what what your self-study report actually says. And so that that team's coming in October um of next year. Thanks for backing

091up. I need to I had to back it up. No, he's just started from square one. I It's um No, Sarah. Been I've been through so many of these and I forget that you know you put Kevin do you know how much it costs for the self-study year? It's a we we build we have to build it in how much it costs for like the the visiting year an annual tell for us only every 10 years we pay there's a there's a membership fee every year I'm pretty sure and then there's another it's gone down a lot. Yeah, they've cut scaled it back. Look. Well, you mean dollars? Three $30,000. Typical accreditation. It used to be I mean it might be 10,000. I don't It used to be around. Yeah, we require It's expensive. So

092there's no requires you to be a member but it's or is it like a n accreditation or like it's like a n it's there's not so we you're required to we're not required to be a member um but you know it you know we have the NAAC seal on our transcript for example and that's supposed to show to the colleges that we've met you know that standards of standard of quality for schools. Um what you really hear a lot of times is if you know it hasn't been a recent I think it was uh the Burke had their accreditation on uh warning or was going to be pulled in Boston and that was a big deal. So generally everybody's, you know, if you talk to anybody else around any other public high school around here,

093they're all members, but you only really hear about it. There's every 10 years when you get a visit and then if if they come back with a bad report, then it really becomes this, you know, kind of thing. Um, you know, I know even MA uh MSBA actually uses, you know, a a report from NESC about your building as a justification for for funding, for example, things like that. So, um, we're not there, but if personally, I love it. I I I like going on visits. I like visits are really cool. They're really powerful. um you know I can't say that everyone she has my love for it it's part of the process it needs to be done and you know I think there's a lot of good that comes out of it if it's

094truly a reflective process and we drive the bus now it's different it's different in that like the faculty drives the self-study and really and we rate ourselves and it's it's it's different the approach is different um in terms of it's less time inensive too but you know and ultimately our our faculty will um look to approve our work um this group's work um before the visit come the fall and then they'll they'll give their own stamp. They'll give us feedback on what we say are our strengths and areas of growth and it will become a very public report. So you get a a grade or is it just a thumbs up thumbs down? Yeah, it's the recommendation is to continue your accreditation or to be on warning. Um but there's no it's not ABCD. It's

095really it's really a narrative on the standard assess you know the assessment on standards of this is this strengths these are weaknesses. So I I just thought it was important to to highlight um because that's been a big part of of the work this year and where we're going. I think it's going to be and then when you hear portrait of learner that's that's a big part of that. Um it's it's all over the standards in terms of the the measurement and where we're at with that. Um all right, so professional learning communities. Uh just to in case you don't know what these are, this is the the teams of teachers coming together typically across um a common subject area, grade level. Um you know, we've done this is something that I've inherited which I

096think we do a very good job with. I don't know many districts that have this level of collaborative planning. Um, you know, it's not a perfect recipe at the high school. We do the best we can to schedule teachers in. uh I don't but um scheduling team does and and so but basically what this does is it does allow our in our department heads uh facilitate this and it allows um our teams of teachers to obviously collaborate in in on um student work or looking at um you know any myriad of pieces to their curriculum. Um so our goal um knowing that there was a we had there was a training um for a team of PLC leaders. This was um a year ago previous June before I came on board. Um we're we're we're

097looking to reconvene this team to get a sense of wants, needs. Uh you know I don't even know you know I don't have a good sense of what they need moving forward. So, it's it's really an opportunity to really visit with this team and get a sense of where they're at. Um, think about how we can build more leadership capacity for this work based on what I told you about professional learning. I'd like to think that and we've started having conversations um with our joint labor committee around embedding this more into our professional learning model. But in order to do that, we're going to have to build more capacity for this work. And that's going to involve some resources. And it's going to start we're going to start by um reconvening this team to get

098some you know some honest input on on where we're at and where we where we need to go. Um but you know I think that where the more we can um build leadership capacity and and develop teacher leaders the better off we're going to be. So Okay. So, as far as data goes, in terms of a data-driven school community, we've had a number of data points that we um we have here in the district that um we were able to set up a partnership with Open Architects this year. Um Open Architects basically they support school districts on a number of different dashboards. Fortunately, the MCCAST is a free I think that's how they get you in. you do we'll do MCCAST for free and then you can pay for all your other data points and

099um I'm jealous of those districts that have a data a data dashboard um you know across several data points but they we have partnered with them um for the MCCAST and that gave department chairs and teachers a much more richer picture um you know it's just a it's it gives you a comparison with other school districts um really you can you can dive in at the student level you can you can look at certain strands it's pretty powerful and they continue um you know build on this. So this was something we were able to implement this school year when looking at MCCAST and our department chairs do a great job with their teachers really going through um MCCAST results and thinking about um curriculum. Um I mentioned the performance assessments. This is when you think

100about portrait of a learner, you think about performance assessment. um if we're truly embedding this across all content areas and we're being honest about what it looks like, um this is going to be a nice data point for us in terms of um how how students are showcasing their learning when we think about transfer. We implemented the school quality measures survey this was students, faculty and parents. Um this happened in around January. um some initial unpacking of this with department chairs. Um we it's I think we have to proceed cautiously because this is um the first year and they'll tell you that um proceed very cautiously. We need to start to wait to we actually start to possibly see some trends in data. Um but we are going to we are convening with the association

101um in the coming days to really take a closer look um at these survey results and to um start to think about how this might be telling a story and you know the goal here is and ultimately is this district data which we're going to be able to look at all these data points um because we could be doing more with the data that we have right we're adding more data points um the accredit accreditation surveys that went out to all that that's the NIA work that went out to all stakeholders that is a big part of what's driving um our strengths and our areas of growth around teaching and learning. So that's a big piece um which is going to become very public um because like I said that's that's that's how we're performing

102across the five standards. Um so yeah the goal next year would be to really put together a a district data it ultimately it's the building level but you start you have to start somewhere. So you start with a district you know data team to really inventory our goal would be to really inventory our existing data points um and think about how we're responding to the data. So that that'll we'll we'll talk more about that when we push out school improvement plans um I think June. Uh, but that's that's where we want to go with that. Evan, can I just you said you were envious of some other schools that have what do they have a scorecard or something? What and and is there an example that you can share with us because there's I think

103there's a few committee members here who've been it's a heavy price to see something along those lines. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's it's it's the ability to have that data all in one place. Um, you know, there's they they c they punch it all in and and you Yeah. It's it's amazing what what the output looks like, but it's it's a very heavy price tag. Um yeah, it's it's like $50,000. Is it mostly, you know, like what's that? Is it mostly uh you know, trying to think how that, you know, traditional student assessments? What what kinds of things do they actually put on the Oh, they bring in Architects is bringing in anything. I'm everything right now. There's a number of super districts that are running with it. Um, yeah, I think they can whether

104it's SEAL data, you name it. They're they're in they're um putting their mark on across school districts right now and I I you know, I go to these job cohorts and I'm a little envious of that, but I but I you know what we have but we have tools like formative that are going to provide us that data. We're we're exploring at at the se in the seventh grade um a potential uh benchmarking tool. you know, we've had conversations with the tri town around um you know, normative data collection there, but I'm not going to put a data tool in teachers hands right now because we don't you know, we need to make sure that you can't just put a data tool in teachers hands and say go at it. Like you have to have

105I've lived this, you have to have like tiered support structures in place. So what that means is like if you're you're going to get data, right, on how students are performing across the board. So that's what do you do for that student that's really struggling, right? So what does that tiered what does that additional layer of support look like? And we got we're going to have to really spell that out. We're going to if we're going to truly be responsive to the data. So it's one thing it's easy to give teachers a tool and say collect the data. Um, so we're going to be exploring all of that, um, you know, as we move forward. But I know that I've had some conversations with me in the seventh grade and even, um, math department. Um,

106you know, to that might be a nice place to start over time here in terms of really, um, getting a solid benchmark as when students are entering and then, um, being able to get a sense of how they're performing. I like I I do like the value of having a normative tool. Um, and I know that our teachers do too. And and what I mean by that is the ability to really um cross reference nationally, right? In terms of how our students are performing. So, I guess following question for me would be, you know, there are state standards, right? I I guess a question I would have is, are you guys thinking about who your peers are that you should be comparing to? Like, you know, is Lynfield as a district, would they have a

107scorecard and we be comparing ourselves to them? Is it North Andover? Is it, you know, is it? I mean, we did that with MCCAST a little bit. We we uh I relied on the leadership team for that who we tend to compare ourselves to here. Um but yeah, I don't have an easy answer for you there. U but those I think that is a question we should be asking through this district data team, right? I do. Yeah, I know. I think because it gives you perspective and I think it's important, you know, I think we need to look Yeah, it's important to look beyond the walls of of Mascanom and um in in terms of because then you can say, "All right, well, what is it this what are they doing over there?" You know,

108not that is always it's always helpful to to to not to not just look from within. So, yeah, I agree. I don't have an answer for you, but other than it needs to provide a list just if there are any dashboards out there, other schools doing things that you like. I'd be really interested to see what kind of caught your fancy if you'd share that with us. Yeah. Right. Um it would have to be almost like a demo. No, I'm not expecting to make one. If there's if there's other people doing it, you like their stuff. I just like to get that's what's out there. That's what it looks like. Maybe I can steal something. Okay. You just link to whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's where they a lot of districts are going right now.

109Um my question was about open architects Kevin are they so is there angle that they are helping you capture the data and then dashboard it or are they just taking all the publicly available mess and creating something useful and actual yeah they create something useful and actual all I basically I give them permission I we we sign off on consent to access the M like the yeah the state results they I download it all into a portal and they build it right they build it customize it. I tell them I I have some say in what I want. Um but I mean you said like they get they get you with the MCCAST and then else you'd want to do anything else kind of charge. The upcharge though is that them still taking publicly available

110data or the proprietary data directly from the district or are they helping you capture through other tools? Do they have their own proprietary capture tools? No. No. They work with you on what you have. They work or what you have. Yeah, it's I mentioned them. There's other there's other something in class. There's another side hustle tedious work. They're going to be out of business by AI. It's just Yeah. I mean, what a great AI use case for you guys to want me to come into some prompt engineering with you. I can spin that. Wow. Okay. Um I'll move along. So yeah, I mean in terms of student impact, I hope you're seeing the student impact here, right? I mean having an aligned curriculum means, you know, consistent highquality learning experiences. Um where we want to

111go from a data driven standpoint. We're starting to collect the data. Um we have we obviously have some work to do there from a calibration standpoint, a real analysis standpoint. U but we see opportunities and we're going to capitalize on those. the strengthening of the PLC model. Um, you know, the the more our educators grow, it's only going to lead to student growth, right? So, the more we can go into a classroom, take a snapshot, and really provide targeted um reflection for our educators, the better off we'll be. Ultimately, if we're measuring our portrait of a learner competencies, then we're embedding these essential life skills um into into our learning um which is which is certainly, you know, critical for our students as they move toward graduation and beyond. Um, I'd like I mentioned tech

112integration. I if you're asking me where I would like to see more support, um, that question came up. You know, I think that there is going to be I mean, I tap into tech integration a lot. It's it's only going to be exponentially as we move forward. Um, and the more we can personalize student learning through technology, the better off we're going to be. And then ultimately, I know you've talked about communication and celebration, right? I think there's a real opportunity uh to think about ways we can celebrate and communicate um you know on the student impact as we move forward. But um so you know I I think that I just want you if one thing is heard this evening is that um and again I I said this to our teachers this isn't

113a um this hasn't been an inclusive process. So everything we're doing it's it's truly what we're honoring an educator voice. Um this isn't the director of teaching and learning saying this is how we're going to do it. Um there is a certain element of me saying this is what what do you think this is what we should be doing and then you know department heads certainly recognize and see the and the leadership team um is quick to jump on and see the value of it. Um but yeah curriculum valid we got a there's a lot more work to be done. This is um but this is several multi-year goals. Quick question about tech integration. What does that look like for you? Is that you know more IT resources that can deploy training and tools or

114No, it's it's less about I'd say it's it's less about the IT well it's there is an element of no matter what you purchase of rostering and things like that but I think that I'd like to see even with the tech tools that we currently have in the district and they've done a great job of they've really built up the website for our educators to to really say hey these are the tools that we're embracing as a school district, but the teachers need more time and support with those tools. So, it's it's being able to provide the professional learning uh the I mean more like the integration into their classes. Teachers need the opportunity to play. They truly do apply. They can't any technology um it's overwhelming for teachers very quickly for anyone um unless

115they have the time to almost like a coaching model, right? So that's where like I said we do have it's hard though because they're teaching classes right so we do have a number of lead teachers um I'm trying we are trying to I'm trying to build some incentives to um recruit some more teacher leaders for some of this work um you know I I've built into a budget even just a stipend which is a small it's a small thank you but it's something I I I think that's something we should absolutely be doing is is um because It's the impact that they're going to have on their colleagues. But back to your question, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the support more like a train the trainer kind of model. Yeah. Yeah. It's

116it's it's less about Yeah. I mean, there is an IT component, especially in the beginning, and there's some troubleshooting, but I feel like we could be doing more with the tools that we have. And I think a lot, you know, a lot of times it's one training, you don't go back to it. Yeah. people people latched on and figured it out themselves and took it and ran with it. There's there's always that group that does it, but you know, you have those thirds and yeah, that's why I felt going back to it. You don't pick up that bottom third. I felt bad about the timing of the formative training, but just the reality like by the time you you're lucky to get the grant, it just things move slow by the time you can execute

117it and but they they're running with it, you know, they're running with it. Um and they know we have it for next school years. Ideally, we would have had it in the fall. Um well, thank you for coming out tonight. I think a lot of the committee members appreciated it and were waiting for this presentation. So, thank you. Um a couple um just one quick thing. Um and I know the school and the district already does a great job at integrating what we do in the building here out in the community whether I know seventh graders power one project. Um I work elections and the gov students are at the polls working alongside me. So, I see what um we do for the community and how we integrate what we do in this building outside

118of here. Um just some more examples of something that maybe we can work on in the future like the Native American display about the masomic um legacy I think is what it was titled. Like that would be a great opportunity that maybe we partner um with the community relations committee and do something at the town library or do something at the senior centers or multicultural committees that we have in our towns just to try to get what we're doing here out to a broader base and kind of plant our roots a little deeper in the community. So just a thought, not an action, but if you ever see opportunities like that that maybe community relations could take up or we have a liaison for that type of thing, um I think we'd be more than

119willing to Yeah, I I think we could do a better job because I think some of that is happening. I know it is. It's just better job communicating it. Yeah, I agree. The well the internship fair coming up at the end of end of May. Um, you know, one of the things that this group, you know, Kevin, under Kevin's leadership, they've actually redone the rubric for the internship to now include portrait of a learner competencies. So, we're measuring, you know, those those competencies through students internship project and that's what they're reporting on what how how they measured up to those competencies through through their, you know, six weeks out at work. Um I just have a question about slides 10 and 11. I'm wondering what's your hypothesis or like what's the story around those who

120voted three just looking at that data set compared to for the curriculum development and alignment compared to the learning pathways. I'm thinking like I I heard you name some great ideas about things that you want to keep doing or continue doing for next year. And since of course as teachers we're so engaged in what we're doing, I'm wondering like why that really big cohort of people who rated it a three, which is fairly neutral. Um yeah, I'm just interested in like the story there. Yeah. And I'm going to be honest. I think that this So I think it's a couple of things. I think that I hope I know there's a there's um and I'm not saying these are the ones that gave it four and five, okay? But I know that there are um

121a population of teachers that saw this as something new in the sense of we are now with a full appreciation and understanding of what transfer means and alignment means that we're able to really run with this and embrace this. Um I I'm going to be honest. I think there's a group of teachers and and and maybe that's a fault of mine. maybe we didn't communicate well enough. That's saw it as something they've already done. Um but that that was not the I think we hit the mark with the majority. Um you know I think the more we can in moving ahead Erica I think we need to think about we've got a number of new electives right. So I mean there's the curriculum development that just the the basic just development of the curriculum knowing

122now that we have a a consistent format a consistent approach. Um but I think that the more work we're doing around alignment and transfer to um whether you want to say those transfer skills or portrait of learner you hope that but yeah I mean I I feel that that's where it's going to shine through um you know and I think that when we the work we're doing with the evaluation process and if we're we can reach a common understanding of what we're looking for when we go into classrooms. You would hope that they're being intentional about that in terms of their curriculum. So, it's constantly it's it's constantly um it happens. Any good teacher, which I know we have lots of good teachers here, more than good, um they all no one questioned the really

123the relevance of it. I think any good teacher sees the value in it and the relevance. Um it's it's but it's the work's never done and that can be frustrating, you know, and it's um curriculum writing is I'm telling you is and you probably know this from your own work. It is not what you always want to be doing. I love it. I love it too. I love I love it too. Um but people versus and I'm hearing what you said which I completely agree with. It's a multi-year share a little more about this school there. [Music] Yeah. No, I think it's a very good question. And I'm going to tell you this, too. Like there were certain departments that were way ahead of others. That could be part of it. Um where and I

124gave the department chairs flexibility. I mean, we had so it wasn't like I don't there was some flexibility built in with how they approached it with their teachers, you know, and we even had like in um you know, I I know Meg's here, but like in Meg's department, they had counselors join their um join the the English teachers and the purpose of that was to get a better sense of of the books that kids are reading and and the why behind the choices and um really really unpacking some of because because you know counselors are they're hearing hearing from students, right, around some of the the choices in the curriculum. They're hearing from parents. They're at, you know, they're sometimes the first ones to receive some of those calls. So, the more we can be

125on the same page in terms of curriculum and understanding um because, you know, the English department was one of those departments that they and it's probably more natural, but they were running with essential questions for, you know what I mean? That's not that wasn't anything new to them. Um some departments it was new. So thank you. Yeah it's just it's we were we had a really diff we're going to have to continue to really differentiate anything further. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate having those. Okay. Uh FY26 budget communication plan. I'm wondering um we just update town. It's a Seattle meeting. We met last Friday to do a quick coordination too. But yeah, I guess just a a quick question go around the table. I mean, is there anything more that people need? Does everyone

126I'll start. So, uh from the Boxford perspective, uh we have our town moderator um forum next Tuesday. Uh yesterday we had candidates night where we went through the three questions on our ballot. Um one of them being our budget. Uh and so I presented what I had at the time which was largely derived from what was in the topsfield collection of slides. Um I have to do the same thing next Tuesday before the moderator group. Um, I've taken the um two pager that we had and I've left them in several places around town. Um, I think the words getting out um I've gotten some feedback from some town um officials and they basically said we're not concerned at all about it about it passing. They're pretty confident that Oxford will vote in favor. Um, I

127don't know if I should be scared about that or not because normally they're not that confident about things, but I think we've uh done enough groundwork or put enough footwork in with them. Um, so we'll see. We have all the all the information we need. Top get to go first next week. We had our moderators forum last night. Bill and I attended and made a presentation. Um, there was probably only five people in the audience, but it was at 5:30 p.m. So, I wonder how much of an impact that had and um, getting people there. There were some question, some tougher questions. Not really unexpected. Um, but we're going to be having coffee on Sunday and inviting the public to come and stop and talk to us. Saturday. Saturday the Earth Day. We have the

128Earth Day activities in Toppsfield. And um well, if anybody wants to come to the town meeting and help us hand out flyers or whatever, what time is it? 700 p.m. town meeting. So, usually we gather around 6:30. Tuesday. Tuesday the 6th. Next Tuesday here. Next Tuesday. Uh anything else? Yeah, I was just going to add that um yesterday morning I had a rather uh hastily pulled together meeting with some members of the Toppsfield Council on Aging. Um, and it was a challenging conversation. Um, I think uh to and it was four members plus the executive director. Um, and you know, these were people that I think in every case were longtime Topppsfield residents. um had had kids that had gone through the public school system and were very very happy with it. Uh but are

129at a stage in their lives where um being mostly on a fixed income that they were mostly concerned about uh uh tax increases. Um and were um you know certainly not um you know understand that the you know having a healthy school system uh is is is good for them as well. But you know that was not more important than uh than tax increases eating up you know a greater and greater part of of their fixed income. Um, and I, you know, I I, as I was listening to it, I was, um, you know, disheartened quite frankly that, um, you know, in in this setting where we've had numerous discussions about the budget and things we could do or not do and the implications associated with it. we had a, you know, a steady stream

130of students and parents and educators uh telling us, you know, why we shouldn't make cuts or changes. Um and and I thought, well, gosh, wouldn't it have been, you know, a richer discussion if if if some of these these folks on a fixed income had had joined us here um and engaged in the conversation and provided their perspective, you know, to this um as opposed to it basically being a totally separate conversation and frankly, you know, very late in the game. Um and you know certainly uh you know wondered you know going forward is you know what can we do to um encourage a more uh let's say full spectrum conversation here um you know that would include those those perspectives so that we all we all are getting that point of view as well.

131So, we have work to do, you know, among that group. Um, you know, they frankly, and again, it wasn't a huge sample size, but I'm I'm I'm not going to think that they were really outliers. Um, uh, you know, are these folks going to go to town meeting and go vote? I don't know. Um quite honestly at least one person said that um you know the there's families who are families who have kids in the system are going to would most likely overwhelm uh their numbers. Um so it really doesn't matter. Um, which obviously that's that's that's a horrible perspective to have that your voice doesn't matter. Um, but you know, it's certainly, you know, if we're here trying to ensure that we're doing what's best for the entire uh three communities that we we

132represent. um we really got to figure out how to get you know that perspective included in this in this debate um so that uh you know we're we're taking their their point of view you know into the discussion as well. That's a good point. Very good point. So for Middleton, we had a public forum about the budget override separately than the moderator forum or pre-town meeting like Middleton calls it. On the 14th, we had a pre-Town meeting. On the 28th, which unfortunately we thought we were going to be granted the opportunity to present slides and we did not. We're not granted that opportunity. Um, we have a dis uh public discussion with the elementary school committee reps at the library tomorrow night at 6:15. Um, that's open to the public to come and talk to

133us about the education overrides. We're trying to really team up with them. Trying to get a broad coalition of town meeting into the ballot. Um, we have a meeting at the COA on the 7th, I believe, that Mike is going to help us out with. And also, we're having a meeting, me and Matt are splitting up. Matt's going to the PTO meeting on the 7th at 6 p.m. because they've really organized very well the elementary schools. And I'm going to be going to Fuller Pond, which is one of the um housing associations we have in Middleton that primarily serves um 55 plus community. There are some exceptions, but a good um community to tap into and explain our story. And we have town meeting on the 13th. Um some other updates, the finance committee supported

134our override. The select board. Um I was told we were going to get their support and we did not end up getting their support. It was two to two with one abstension. Um however they are leaving the one abstension had asked that they pencil in a meeting for the day of town meeting depending on how Toppsfield votes and that might influence their decision one way or the one way or the other. So no pressure on pressure. Um I'm hoping we can earn their support. I mean I think we are and have done the tough ground work to get us there. Um it's a little disappointing that I thought we had the votes and the day of that apparently changed. Um but yeah, I'm hopeful that helps field will pass and we'll have a very different

135discussion on the day of how meeting. One problem I am seeing with our communication strategy and I've tried to address it and currently it hasn't been working is when our override is right next to the elementary school's override and they have a list of positions they're going to cut and we do not and it's a glaring difference and I'm fully comfortable explaining that on why we didn't feel we could provide that detailed list. Um, but the message isn't hitting the people or I don't know if it's that they don't want to hear the message and they're saying, "Well, we don't know." But I've told you. I don't know if it's just they don't want to hear the message or, um, they're using it as a sort of scapegoat to get out of supporting us. But

136um I'll continue spreading that message and the reasoning and why and what would happen if we unfortunately did not pass the overhead. So one other thing that I want to come up with like a one pager explaining the scenarios. Our town moderator was a little confused about is our town administrator was throwing out scenarios and I was like well that could be true but only if x y and z happens. trying to almost downplay scenarios of what if the budget were to fail in one town compared to the other town like what shapes out. So I just want to put one pager together to distribute to the those who have had questions um and so that the process is very clear that we could be the very difficult situation at the past and the town

137could also be in a very serious situation. How do they not know that answer? I mean it it's you can only explain it to so many times, right? Getting glue in the face. So want to put it in writing. It's pretty straightforward. Yeah. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what they don't what they don't understand. They don't understand if just um the town administrator's office doesn't see it as it would be as big of a deal as it would if it were not to pass. And that we could very well, which is true, sub resubmit the same budget, right? Um is that likely to happen? Probably not. Um and then the scenario that if one town were to fail it, we would just bring it back. and I said, "Well, it's not incumbent upon

138the school committee anymore to bring it back to help solve your problem." Um, so there's a lot of just I I don't want to use the word misinformation, but trying to downplay the effects of a failed budget for the school district. Sometimes I feel like it's intentionally to tell you the truth. I could I think we have to thank the MTA for their support because they have been pushing out information. I saw them standing out during drop off. Yeah, they actually So, um Did you talk to Okay, I was going to Okay. Yeah. So, the MTA is planning on um I don't know what you call it, a demonstration or a demonstration of support, I'll say, uh out front, a rally, out front of the school um before classes start at 7 o'clock from 7

139to 7:25, this Friday, and then next week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Okay. And they're asking u they're inviting us to join them. I can't make it this Friday myself, but I think I can do all three days next week. So, I'm going to join. And anyone else, someone could show up this Friday, that'd be great. But anybody wants to join me next week. 7:25. Yep. Can you just send out the dates in an email? I'll forward this out to the committee. Thank you. 7:25 7 o'clock through 7:25 in front of the school. Out in front of the building. Which way we going? Um, I just wanted to add because I was going to ask the Middleton other Middleton reps too. The Earth Day festival is on Sunday. Were we going to go out there as

140well? And I wish we had buttons like ask me questions. I made some t-shirts. I can make more before this weekend. If people want them, just send me your size. I'll grab a size. What's on the t-shirt? It's good question. small maskomic logo on the front and then um Masco School Committee on the back so that we're noticeable. They're red, white lettering, easy. So like you guys can be a presence when you go to these events. And maybe don't bring a whole stack of papers if you choose to go a little put a QR code on the t-shirts that are left. People could just scan it. Oh yeah. Were you were you guys gonna go? I actually have to um MC the step up for Colleen in Andover Sunday. Fortunately, not be able. All right,

141fine. I have a new dog. I'll just walk around. I'll get people to come up and say hi to the new dog and talk. So, the dog always works. Dog always works. T-shirt on the dog. Yep. Yeah, we might be adjusting our time eating slides. And I was going to tell Matt to make it. Did you get that? about a week left before we have to send this to the moderator was looking for slides. Oh yeah. And the moderator also did say that you could speak. Oh wow. And our moderator is allowing that too this year which is unusual. And not you Mike but I'm going to try to fix this even have to sit in the back. All right. Anything further on that topic? At least I get sit with you guys in Middleton.

142I have to sit in the back front row this year though. Okay, let's move on. Um, policy manual review. All right, so this is the event that we've all been waiting for for a really long time. Um, so the drive that's there has all the final sections as cleaned up. Um they're they're all the um policies that we've approved to date. What the purpose of this is have them all revised all approved as of one day. Um so that there's not we don't have to go back over the last four years and have one date. So um it's my motion would be hold on one second. I have to read it. To approve sections A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, and L as previously approved in form and as presented

143for immediate adoption and to repeal all previous versions of the policy manual. So, that's the motion I'm going to need to make. Um, there's a little nuance in that. Um, I then have to motion to um approve um some Title N policies and resend others based on a January court rule, federal court ruling um that reverted the changed policies back to the 2022 policies. um when this was all happening while we were approving and we didn't we weren't aware of that or advised by mask masc until after we had approved the the title N policies the last time. So um so get it right. Yeah. So now so we have to approve then revert and then resend um and then what's in the directory as final policy A with title N um reverts reverts is

144what the final policy second so to the first yes yeah I'll say bill seconded it all of that do it all at once. I think you have to do you have to approve A through L and then we'll just got to do a res those title N and replace them with the the correct ones. Any discussion on the first motion for approval of A through L. You don't need to read read false again. You like to if you'd like to. That was the homework. Yeah. Want to go the night? That's great. Um, and like I said before, it's not really I think I said it before, it's not whether or not I agree wholeheartedly with every word in every policy. It's more so um a stamp of approval for the work that the policy subcommittee's

145done for the last four years, five years a and I'm ready to vote process. So once it's finalized, what is this reviewed again? Is it just start up? tomorrow. Yeah. So once it's finalized um it will actually be hosted on the M um ASC website so that it'll be easily um searchable and then um we'll have to determine like a regular schedule for reviewing policies or as they come and mask often I think quarterly or as needed they provide a list of what we should update. So there's there probably actually is a whole bunch. I think there are I think she told us that at the last one um that probably already need to be revised. We'll be informed of things that are wide changes that we need to incorporate. Yeah, they send out a

146bulletin on policy updates. Thanks. Yeah. So, it's on it's always ongoing, but this is the this is the work to actually get it hosted as searchable and easy to use. And you know, normally the policy working group would then next year take three sections and say we're just going to do these this year, you know, and just do a regular review process. Nothing further. Uh does this need a roll call or can we do a No, you do. We don't have anybody online, right? We'll do this as a simple voice vote. Um all in favor say I. All opposed? Nay. Any abstensions? Okay. Passes by unanimous voice vote. Okay. I'm gonna make a motion to approve the following policies as revised based on the federal court ruling on Title 9. AC non-discrimination policy including harassment

147and retaliation. AC-R non-discrimination policy including harassment and retaliation. ACA non-discrimination on the basis of sex. ACAB sexual harassment. And then I'm and then and then to resend the following policies as revised based on the federal court ruling on title 9 ACGA civil rights grievance procedure ACGB title 9 sexual discrimination grievance procedure discussion none okay then uh we'll do voice vote Again, all in favor say I. All oppose. Nays. The abstensions passes unanimously by voice vote. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for all the hard work. Also emailed Terry to actually I think. Okay. vote to set June 13, 2025 as the last day of school for students. I have a motion. And just make sure it's a 10:30 a.m. dismissal. At 10:30 a.m. You can be dismissed. So move. A second. Second. Any discussion?

148Voice vote. All in favor? I I opposed. Any abstensions? All right. unanimous voice vote on that one. Um, vote to approve with MTA regarding joint labor management committee committee membership. You want to Yeah, I kind of explained it earlier. Um, the joint labor management committee has been meeting regularly. Um, right now the contract outlines that there's three members from each side on it. We would like to add a fourth for both sides. Um, as I said, I I'd like to stick on that committee. I actually have some some training in it and some interest in it. So, um, that's really what you know, the union agreed to that to to the language that that's presented there in theou and it's got a uh definite end to it once we complete um the areas that are

149outlined in theou. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Voice vote. All in favor say I. I. All oppose. Any abstensions? All right. Unanimous voice vote. Superintendent's goals progress report. So, um it's a report on the uh annual goals that we presented back in August uh to the committee. Uh a lot of it u Kevin actually already covered. So I'm going to kind of and keep it high level on those areas. Um just so we don't so we don't go through these things already. Uh you can see there the goal uh on curriculum alignment uh was uh was presented as I said back in August uh to make sure that we're aligning the competencies uh identified in the portrait of a learner and those department transfer goal documents. We should have a consistent format and accessible to

150the entire professional learning community. Um, I actually qualified this as significant progress, which is one step below MET. Uh, just because as Kevin said, this is going to be an ongoing goal for us. Uh, this is something that will keep coming back. We want to make sure, you know, that the curriculum really is a constant process that we're going to be continuously working on. Uh, I am very pleased with the progress that we've made this year. Um, but um, as I said, it's the worker in this area is really never done. Um, but you know, as I said, really happy with how how we've went so far this year. And move on to instruction. Um, this the goal um on meeting the needs of all learners. Uh was for the special education team to develop

151a plan of action for improving service delivery uh that aligns with the identified student needs. Uh the plan will follow review and analysis of relevant program data including IEPs, out of district placements and co-taught classrooms. Um again the goal on this one the status is significant progress. Uh we have completed um reviews of our out of district placements. We've completed reviews of our prospective courses, our co-taught courses. Uh we've looked at vertical alignment of programming. Uh, one of the other things, uh, under Brad's guidance, uh, the special ed department has done, uh, this year is actually get outside of our own walls and do some some site visits. Uh, so they went and looked at, um, a program, uh, for students with reading difficulties at Manchester Essex Regional School District. Uh, really picked their brains

152and talked about, you know, some of the things that, uh, they're doing and how they're, you know, some of the success they're having there. Uh, they did a visit to, uh, PBD Therapeutic High School. Uh again, the same ideas and really kind of see what what kinds of things are happening outside. Uh Brad has really taken this uh as a as a goal to have regular meetings with the Tritown Union staff. I think that's something that's been lacking in past years to really kind of keep those lines of communication open and you know to understand what the needs are uh coming up through the Tritown Union and to really make sure that we're thinking about how we're going to address them when they get here. uh also partnered with the uh Massachusetts rehab rehab's uh

153pre uh ETSs program to enhance prevocational skills in our learning resource center. Uh so really the LRC is um really looking at how do we uh provide more vocational training for our students uh who who need this. Again, you know, going back to even the whole idea of transfer, we're trying to prepare students for life uh not for success in school. That's the real idea. And so, uh, those are the pieces that we've, uh, you know, really done so far, uh, on that background work. Um, we should have a draft, uh, plan of action actually in like two weeks. And I think we'll have that thing com have the plan actually completed by the the close of the school year. And so, that's why I qualified it as significant progress. Uh, some of the things

154we're going to address in that plan, uh, really looking at unilateral out of district placements. That's something that came out of the uh review of our out of districts and a striking number. You really look at it, more than half of our students in out of district never set foot at MASCO. Uh you know, roughly 20 of those 40 that hadn't been here were were students that were still in the Trittown Union in sixth grade, but then decided for whatever reason that in seventh grade um they weren't going to continue here. So again, trying to think about, you know, addressing that uh that that challenge and how we can how we can work for that. Uh we're going to look at uh in the plan middle school reading programming. So it's a it's a new

155thing. How do we reorganize some of those? Um we're seeing students with reading difficulties coming up from the elementary schools uh that need some pretty significant reading interventions. Uh and so, you know, how how can we better address those those issues while they're here? Um, actually, if you're paying attention to the the elementary school overrides, one of the things that they're asking for is a brand new reading instruction program that'll be consistent across all three schools, all all three school systems, uh, which we hope will help us, uh, as we, you know, but we won't see that, you know, those benefits for another three or four years probably. But I think we're all talking about these reading issues. They're only starting with a couple of grades, aren't they? They're starting early, early elementary, but I

156think I don't think you're going to see the It'll take a bit. Okay. Yeah. Other pieces we're looking at in the plan is uh refocusing the high school student support center. Uh one of the things we are seeing with some some of the students that are not being successful are school refusal students. Um and so how do we you know refocus the the SSC towards in that direction. Um, another one that kind of is look at the vocational piece of strengthening the vocational aspects of our LRC programming. Uh, and then they also to review the co-eing model. So, those are things that you know you'll see in that plan uh, as it comes out in probably about a month. Uh, and then also this is looking at the district data management and collection. uh you

157know Kevin I think did a a great job of explaining you know looking at these things from open architects uh looking at training uh for our professional learning community um teachers I'm looking at student work um you know this will be the third trimester of of uh PD that'll look at the you know assessments that are tied to the portrait of learner competencies uh the ESC uh education commonwealth projects assessment team uh has in here to talk to us about uh best practices in assessment. Uh and as I we mentioned earlier also that student internship performance rubric uh was revised uh to include this portrait of learning competencies. We also talked about formative uh you know as as being a software package that we've here looking at data management and collection. Uh, you know, I

158think as we go forward into next year, we're going to really try and do a better um inventory of what we have for debt, you know, because there's lots of questions about, you know, should we have a reading screener in the middle school? Well, you know, to Kevin's point earlier, we could do that, but if we're not showing people what to do with it, it really doesn't help. And then if we don't have uh a a tiered model of support, which we don't currently have, we can have this, you know, this information that shows us that our students aren't doing, you know, what we expect or what we'd like them to do in in that in reading. Then what do we do about it? Um and so that's really the the kind of hand and

159glove model that has to has to go here has to go together. And then looking at the area of culture and well-being, uh the goals were looking at uh enhancing short-term small groupoup support for increased targeted instruction in the area of psychological health at tier 2. Um we're fully implementing our student support centers to provide intensive treatment uh for students in crisis and some cognitive behavioral therapy groups. Uh and then working with the Tritown Council on the youth risk behavior survey uh and collecting and understanding one more piece of data that we have that you know again probably could do a better job of actually doing things with that data. Um so on this uh for the first two bullets under that goal um I call it quote that as met uh we did our

160universal mental health screeners uh this year for all students in grade seven in September. uh all students in grade 11 in December and then all students in grade nine in March. And those results of those screening tools um are used to identify students who would be suitful for those tier 2 interventions, those cognitive behavioral therapy groups, those students who would be uh you know working in the uh student with the student support centers. Uh and so that's how we've built those groups um based on the results of that of those screeners. And then around the youth basis behavior behavior survey that goal was met. Uh we had the presentations from uh the um the YAD um in the fall of 2024. Uh we had pres presentations to the high school student supports team and the

161middle school student support team as well as the both the full faculties of both schools in November and December of uh this past year. Uh and then as we as I said we're going to be looking at how we integrate that uh this data from the YRBS into our data team work going forward. And then the last one uh it's a community was actually to uh the goal was to work to build support for implementing the education commonwealth project surveys to monitor student and staff well-being and communicate school successes. Um I actually had to put this one as exceeded. The goal was to to sort start exploring it and we were actually able to implement it. Um we actually um began meeting with the um education commonwealth proh project and uh union leadership back in

162October. Um we got agreement from union leadership after reviewing the surveys and you know the the questions um that we got agreement to initiate those surveys uh for students, faculty and parents and those were done in January of 2025. um ECP reser uh shared those results with us in February. Uh we've currently already had pres presentations from uh ECP on the results to the executive leadership team uh and the department heads in March. Uh and then as you know Kevin actually already said, we're going to be looking at uh bringing together a team from union leadership to have a presentation uh with uh union leadership to share those results with the faculty. Um, and then we'll use the this results to inform our 2526 goals. Uh, and then administer this again in January of 2026.

163Um, as Kevin said earlier, it's it's one point right now, but now we want to start looking for, you know, to continuously do this and look for trends and patterns. So that's the goals. Questions? Not a question at first, just a comment. I just want to express gratitude. I'm really jazzed about slide five. I feel like throughout our budget conversation, we kept coming up on some tough points that we couldn't really move on now, but like the reviews that I'm assuming Brad is leaving leading here with the district placements, prospective courses. Um, just thinking about the variety of supports that we do offer. administration, I'm sure, is thinking about this and will need to partner to make some decisions around potential level of services and just opportunities that we're providing here for students related to

164that. And I just think that that review I know that the goal at the beginning of the year was around um co-eing and I remember asking a question around like what this is just so much broader and this feels really important um like really important work to do to consider that um and I just really appreciate it and I've heard Brad speak throughout the year around work at Manchester Essics a lot of these other programs this just feels like the big picture stepback work that we talked about throughout the budget season. Um, so just gratitude for that because that's a lot of work. Um, and it feels like incredibly relevant, really important. Um, and just I think I don't want to say across the board, but yeah, just bigger really big picture. Um, and so

165I just appreciate that. And then kind of overall, this is like a process question for the school I I can't remember this for the school improvement plans that I think someone said will be like shared in June. Is that where the next year's goals will be included? The next year? Yes. So, we're we're working on as we speak this set of goals for next year. Okay. Yeah. Um and then the the um you're going to get a presentation I think it's the first meeting. We actually meet back toback the last week in May and the first week in June, but it's the first week in June. We'll have the school school improvement plan results and also the school improvement plan for the school improvement goals for next year. Great. I and these goals we have

166to put together too for them. That makes sense. My push for our team would be in looking through these goals. It's easy to see were these there are a lot of inputs like were these inputs accomplished? Were these things done? And the question that I asked myself in reviewing is aside from being able to check the box, what is better? What has improved? What could we say in terms of growth? Um, so I' I'd be really eager to hear are we looking for a 10% growth on X? Are we looking to like in what specific ways would we really be measuring growth? Um, aside from are the inputs done because I'm sure we've all faced we do all the things that we said we were going to do, but are we actually better? Have we

167improved and how are we measuring that? So, I'd love to um yeah, I'd love to hear more of how uh administration is just looking for that in the improvement plans. Jesus, sorry. Um boss and my youngest daughter both in person. Sorry about that. Um, just a comment on on slide five again. Uh, and we've had this conversation, but I mean, one of the things that happened during the year when we were looking at the ballooning cost and in those areas is I spoke with um, uh, Matt Lacaba uh, and asked him, you know, hey, we've seen this big spike up in Masow in our numbers. I'm curious what the numbers look like in the elementary schools and did you see a similar spike there? And he said, "Well, we can't really share that data because

168there's too few kids in each particular class in each particular elementary school." But I can tell you that things have been very steady and have not moved more than like one kid year to year, which doesn't match what we're seeing here. And so, um, you know, we're all kind of like wondering what's the mystery? Why did things change? And and I'm not, uh, pinging you for not knowing that answer, but I'm I am, um, thanking you for starting to work more closely with the people at at the elementary level to try and get your arms around this thing. Uh, I think you made a pretty good commitment to that. You did a lot of work in that area this year. Um, and it's very helpful because again I'm repeating myself but I I went to

169a moderate or sorry a a candidate forum yesterday and I gave a presentation on the budget and I was telling people you know we need to step up and fund today because I think what we're looking at appears to be perhaps a COVID induced bubble right but I don't have the data or the confidence to say absolutely it's going away. All I can say is that I think this is what it is. We don't have 10 years of a rear rear word looking data that looks across all 13 classes K to 12, you know. Um I'm glad you're looking in that area because I do think that it's going to help us explain budgets a lot better uh and get community support. um you know instead of everyone always saying we need to cut we

170need to cut we need to cut we can instead say hey look we don't need to cut because things are trending down or see things are going to trend up further then we can put more pressure on our state officials to try and do something about our funding uh you know the chapter 70 or or just uh circuit breaker stuff whatever right I think when you and I communicated I am 99% confident in my out of strict data and knowledge and that's why you know Matt and I spoke and Matt was like oh geez I was just you know I wasn't looking at my computer you know and I you know I went through the names and it was kind of like I said you know was legit that those were outplaced in elementary school

171um yeah so I'm happy to go anywhere talk to anybody you know and Brad's Brad's been in he hasn't just been working with Matt he's been in the school elementary schools themselves was working with the program coordinators and the upper elementaryaries going right to the source. I can't go on Facebook, but I can go almost anywhere else. Yeah. So with this there is um as designated in the contract there's a small merit um stipen that comes along on whether or not the committee votes to up or down if um superintendent Harvey has made significant progress towards these goals as designated here and outlined here. So I will make a motion um that Dr. Harvey has made significant progress towards these goals for this academic school year. Second, any discussion? Can you explain to me like

172in five so I understand what exactly? So there's this just for a bonus. It's is it $1,000 bonus payment? It's a thousand bonus payment. It's based on making significant progress towards towards his goals. This is not a review. Review is to come. So yeah. Okay. We need to vote on this. I remember how we did this. All right. Just go uh right around the table. Just do a voice. Do a voice vote. Unless you want. Let's try voice vote. All right. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. Extensions. Okay. So, we've got 10 people here, right? So, eight in favor, no opposed, two abstensions. Okay. Um, that brings us to the process for the superintendent's evaluation. So, we had a lot of discussion on this one in the background. Um, I'm up for re-election.

173I might not get reelected represent re-election, but he's running unopposed. Um, so he will he will be here for sure. Um what we're going to do here is um over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be sending out information rubrics looking for inputs from people on um what they what what how they think Mike's done. Uh this should be going back two years in time. Technically he hasn't been reviewed in three years. I don't know if contractually we can go back to a third year or not, but I've got to figure that out. So, it's not just this committee that I I've got to ask for inputs from. It's the people that were on the committee last year and the year before. Uh, and then we've got to consolidate all consolidate it all

174into um some kind of a report or report card might be a good thing for for a school superintendent. Uh and at our next meeting, formal meeting, we can meet and discuss it and decide on what what we give him for a feedback and a rating and a review. Since I may not be here, um Trevor definitely will. Um do I need to make a formal declaration? But what we'll do is I'll work with Trevor on this and then he will take over for it if if I don't get reelected and I'm not here uh at our next meeting which is when next in May I think right next one's the 28th of May. Yeah, next meeting. Yeah, we're kind of shut down until we Yeah, we're shut down until after election elections until 20.

175Yeah, I think Boxford's like the pretty close to that. Yeah. Is that a Tuesday? The 20th? Yeah, I think we're the 20th also. The 28th, the 4th, and the 18th. So, um, watch your email. I'll be sending it out to the whole committee. Um, I don't know if I'll get it out early next week. If not, it'll be early the week after. Gives me a couple of weekends to sort through the stuff. You guys, I'll have my email, my cell phone. You want to talk to me, it's fine. All right, that brings us to subcommittee reports, community relations, anything. Skip me. Oh, I'm sorry. Superintendent. Everybody waits for an a bit of superintendent. Sorry. Go ahead, Mike. All right. So, we've talked about this already that our budget will be presented for approval at town

176meeting in Toppsville on Tuesday and in Boxford and Middleton on Tuesday, May 6th, the Boxford Middleton Tuesday, May 13th. Uh the Topsfield and Boxford town meetings will be here at the Mascanom Auditorium. Uh Middleton Town Meeting will be in the gymnasium at How Manning School. Uh all three town meetings start at 7 p.m. Um all three communities have made a portion of the mask operating budget subject to a proposition 2 and a half override. Uh that means that in addition to needing town approval of town meeting, the mask FY26 budget will also be need to be approved at the ballot in each of the town's elections. Uh and for more information regarding our budget, please go to www.mmaskanomit.orgmasco planning. Uh, next one up, the Masco Parent Advisory Committee is uh seeking uh help from the

177community. They'd like to provide uh raffle baskets for our staff members uh to show our appreciation and to enhance the fund during staff appreciation uh lunchon which will be next Wednesday uh May 7th. Next week is actually teacher appreciation week. Um, so all staff members will be given raffle tickets as they enter the cafeteria. U and, uh, PAC volunteers will pull and announce winners during dessert. Uh, so uh, PAC is looking uh, for donations of ras raffle baskets or individual items they can add to a basket or people who would like to volunteer their time to uh, help out during the lunchon. Uh Tara uh Tara Tara Donnell is uh uh coordinating volunteers. Her email will be in uh my blog was also on the super the both principles announcements before break. Uh so so

178reach out to Tara to volunteer uh or actually she has a a gift list a registry list from Amazon that you can pick. Most of the stuff actually been purchased already. So thank you everybody. But uh there's still a few things out there. Uh and see next up uh we have school choice applications for the 25 to 26 school year is now open. Uh admission through the school choice program is open only to residents of Massachusetts and additionally a student must remain a resident of Massachusetts throughout their time at Masanomit. Uh the application does not guarantee acceptance into Masanomit. Uh it's just an application to be considered for enrollment. And as we all know, the school committee has approved uh 10 students for grade seven uh for the class of 2031 and then 10 students

179uh for grade nine in the class of 2029. Um the application will close on Thursday, May 8th. Uh if more applicants than spaces, if we have more applicant than spaces, uh a lottery will be held and people will receive an emailed copy of uh their responses. Uh after uh May 8th, um families will be notified via the email if the students have been accepted or placed on a waiting list. Uh that'll actually come out on May 12th. Uh and we'll have they will have till May 16th uh to decide if they want to move forward with uh the school choice enrollment. Uh we are also doing uh Dr. McManus and I are going to be hosting meetings for parents of current sixth grade students uh in the next couple of weeks and parents will have

180opportunities to ask questions and learn more about masking on middle school. Uh so the dates will be for uh follows Spaford Pond will be uh next Monday uh May 5th from 9 till 10 in the morning. Uh Proctor School will be Wednesday May 7th uh from 10 to 11. Uh and then how Manning uh will be Wednesday May 14th uh from 9:30 to 10:30. And again, we'll we'll be holding these uh actually in the middle school library. And we ask people to check in at the main office. This is something new we're starting this year um like get people to get in and informally kind of ask questions and and meet with the administration. And as we always do, our uh high school parent next high school parent coffee uh for May will actually be

181May 23rd. uh and high school library at 8:30 and our next middle school parent coffee will be on May 30th uh in the middle school library at 8:30 in the morning. So we again we ask parents to check in at the main office in the respective schools and we'll have them escorted to the library. Trevor, when do we find out about oh tech decisions? So I have the we have the acceptances right now. Um is it 34 34 34 students were accepted. We don't know. I think they had to let Essex Tech know yesterday. Today, I think today was the day. Um, so we'll start next week on kind of following up with people and seeing if they took what they're going to do. And the number last year was 40. 42, wasn't it? 42

182or 4. 42. That's because I only know that because what I've been telling people, so I'm hoping it's right. How many were What's it like? It was like 42. Uh, I don't know. Apply. What's the word I'm looking for? That took it. That took the spot. 42 took the spot. Did everybody that got accepted go? Thank you. That's a shorter way to ask. That's No, just as the same question. I don't know. It can't be. I would I would think yeah, it would be less than than a weight list. There isn't. Yeah, there was Well, there were students that were put on the wait list that applied. So, sorry, what was the number again this year? 31. 34 accepted out of 70. Thank you. You have to make me look up that email. Quick question.

183Andrea, where did we fall with um doing anonymous exit interviews for families that choose not to come back to Masco where it be anonymous from that? Now that we have this info, then we'll start actually doing that. I think did Julie do something in the winter with the kids from last year. I don't know a conversation, but I don't know. But yeah, we'll we'll start usually like the end of the school year, right? Yeah. Now that we this now we have this list and I said we'll follow up with with students and say what do you know what are your plans then we can start having those meetings as well. Thank you. So if we lose all 34 what is uh what does that do to your numbers? I don't know off off hand, but

184that was something we actually met right before break to look at, you know, high school section numbers. Um, and one of the things we, you know, came to the conclusion at that point, that was the Tuesday before vacation was we really don't know how many kids we're going to have in 9th grade until we find out about Essex Stack, uh, and some of the private school information. So again that's as we'll follow up and then look at see what the impact is on um the ninth grade sections as well. What did we plan for? We planned for certain belt. Yeah I mean we planned for everybody for to come forward. We didn't plan for in the actually no you're right in the enrollment projections I the latest one I used 65 students fewer from grades

1858 to nine um because of the the number of SX tech umations and last year we lost how many was it do you remember last year we lost it was 40 something students to Essex Tech but it about 80 total from 8 to n from 8 to nine. It typically we were using the number of 45 as that 8 to nine change and so the last projection I did back during the budget season or actually was one of the ones you asked for too use 65 as the number have to look it up for you and find it. We're trending lower overall student metriculating at a high school other than last compared to last year. Okay, see there's the easy answer, right? Need a control chart on that. All right. um subcommittee reports, community relations.

186Anything further? We just met. We had our community dialogue tonight. Um it was we had a good group and the topics of discussion were the budget and the two areas of concern that we really talked about were just sort of um how we got here and what happened and why we've gotten to this point and what we can do looking forward to sort of maintain and organize looking at trends to to be able to manage the the budget better and also connecting with the elementary schools. And we kind of you guys kind of touched on that a little bit, but a big concern was within the special ed department not to make special ed families feel like they're the fault of this budget situation, which is it seems like in some cases in some areas

187that it it's putting the burden on them. Um, but to sort of figure out a way to maintain communication with MASCO at the elementary school level so that it's like a pretend K through 12 kind of communication where everybody's on the same page and maybe it will help ease those numbers a little bit. And then we also had um topics of discussion about the state and the money coming from the state and the state doing their job to um give us more money and distribute equally where we need it. So um we don't have any future meetings planned as of yet pending all of the town meetings and elections. So um I don't know. Did I get everything? Is that pretty close? Pretty close. Yeah. Sorry. That's it. So, you got I will add one

188to that. Um, we talked about um perhaps having a community relations meeting before our retreat next uh September. So, because there were a lot of interesting ideas being thrown out and rather than forget about them four months from now, we talked about getting back together in the summer so that we could update what their ideas were. um and have them fresher on our minds um for the uh retreat DCI budget. Uh Matt's not here, but we have to have a vote to approve the January 10th, 2025 meeting minutes. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Voice vote. All in favor say I. I opposed extensions. Okay. Vocal. Um, we've been logistical problems getting scheduled, but we're going to try to maybe post field town meeting next week. This time, try to connect up with a bit. Um,

189we're going to meet with Brad and try to figure a way to coordinate better with that group policy. Anything further? Um, we have to schedule a meeting which will I don't know if we should we have a we have we have outstanding on our agenda a few things. So, we'll probably schedule a meeting maybe for May at some point. June. June. Well, I'm a different be different committee member committee then. So got until May 20th probably 14th uh liaison updates. Anything further? We already kind of talked about what's going on in our towns. Anything more negotiations? Yes, we met with the uh administrators uh union uh the 14th of April at which they presented a uh proposal and we are we have another meeting scheduled for this upcoming Monday, May 5th, um at 3:00 um

190and we'll be getting together as a team uh shortly before then at 2:30 to uh discuss our response. That's it. Okay. Consent agenda. Um $30. No. Okay. I move that we approve the consent agenda as published here. Second. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I opposed me. One one opposition. Any right any abstensions? All right. So passes nine to one and zero abstensions. And with that you're done. Early 9:39. Okay. Yes, sir. Yeah. Did you see my email? How do you send it? No. So, I send Jackie and you maybe Okay. Yeah, I saw that I made together a date. I have that email.