Masconomet School Committee Meeting 12/1/2021

001all my kids my oldest hi everyone i am calling uh our regular meeting on uh december first second first i don't know what day it is it's the first ticket order um i'm filling in for zilli who has a previous engagement um tonight but maybe joining us later so um because i'm just playing chair i'm going to have a quick remark i just wanted to make a comment uh let it everyone in michigan know that our hearts are with them feel really bad for these uh kids these days they're either having to deal with a national or international pandemic or a school shooting so i i hope that we when we do go forward we can continue to think about the social emotional mental health status of our children that we're um we're here for

002and always put that at the forefront of our brain so our hearts are with you guys in michigan that's all from me um any comments from the audience and can you guys hear me yes okay we'll do some uh trials but please like you know right away if somebody's speaking and you can't hear them please put up your hand and say speak louder because obviously our meetings here are for us to work together and in order to work together we need to hear each other so um hopefully this little bit closer knit situation will help okay with no comments from the audience we're going to go to a negotiations update um which is me so we have now met twice in mediation with the union uh which is a interesting setup for those who haven't

003been through this before we are basically in different remote waiting rooms with a mediator and um other than a quick introduction of who everybody is at the beginning of it we only speak through the mediator so we never speaking directly to the union they speak to him he comes back to us so i'm pleased to say that we've made some substantial progress um over the past two weeks had some very long meetings i think we were there from three until about quarter to seven when everyone was getting a bit angry um at the end but it was it was good because we've got over i would say a substantial hurdle um just a little bit of language to go back and forth with and we have our next meeting with mediator on this coming monday

004and that's the last one that's set up for now so fingers crossed it's the last one period anybody on negotiations want to add in anything to that um student advisory board update stella welcome um so just please speak as loud as comfortable i know it's a little awkward um so good evening everyone i'm stella nagle the class of 2023 student advisory board representative thank you so much for allowing me to speak on behalf of the student body tonight as you all know this year hasn't exactly been what we are used to and the new challenges of navigating school and planning school events has been tough but we are nevertheless finding new solutions to these challenges the student government and student council are identifying where we can promote community and connection in a safe way these

005past couple weeks have been stressful for both the students and the teachers so i want to thank everyone here including all the teachers and administrators here at moscow for working hard to enable students to continue to have this face-to-face um connection in preparation for tonight i've sought out the feedback from many of the student council reps and other members of the student body for their thoughts on how this on how this year has gone so far here is some of the information that i have obtained from many of the students so as the midterm schedule has been circulating around the school students are becoming overwhelmed with the idea of having regular classes on the same day as the exams we understand that masco is not allowed to have a week of half days like we

006used to however we think that there could be a less stressful way to make this change a popular idea is to have a study hall instead of our regular scheduled crosses there is an understanding that many of our teachers may do this anyways but the absence of a guaranteed break between these long tests heightens stress for many of the students the student council strives to ensure that each member of the masco community's mental health and well-being is taken into account this is why we advocate for not only the students but for the teachers as well due to the reduced amount of study time for these students in the prep time for teachers there is a consensus that having exams only during midterm week would benefit everyone students will get less sleep and have less time

007to study for midterms following a new schedule despite these critiques we appreciate that the overall weight of the midterms has been reduced to 10 of our semester grades as it shows how the administration takes into consideration the well-being of its students we are thankful for your care and efforts to help the community so thank you for giving me the opportunity to share on the behalf of the student body thank you stella yeah anybody have any questions for her i know i'm certainly curious about the whole new exam schedule we think that that's something that mary jo could talk about when she speaks okay um okay next thank you um okay class of 2021 report irene draws getting to be regular at our meetings [Music] oh all right okay good evening everyone thank you for having

008me here tonight i hope everyone can hear me wonderful well tonight we are actually going to be celebrating the class of 2020 and the class of 2021 graduates 2019. since we've had an opportunity to do this type of a college report so i am excited to be here tonight and share some of our successes i will ask if um if we could hold our questions till the end of the presentation as there's a high likelihood that i'll be answering your questions as we navigate through if i don't i'm happy to answer questions at the end so how are we going to be spending our time together tonight so we'll be talking about college admissions during the covert 19 pandemic we'll be looking at some national trend we'll be looking at what college counseling services are

009available here at nasco to our students we will also be looking at the important factors that are taking into account during the admissions process we'll be looking at some nasco college specific specific statistics and then finally we will end with student outcomes and questions from all of you college admissions and covert 19. so we're going to have to travel back a little bit to the fall of 2020. like i said our last report was for the class of 2019 so fall of 2020 was an interesting fall for all of us including our seniors and so when they were applying to college it looked a little bit different for them because a lot of aspects of their life had been interrupted during spring and so what was what was nicely done from the college admissions standpoint

010is that about 300 college admissions counselors came together that summer and they drafted a report that was available to everyone but it was geared toward our college-bound students and it was called care counts and crisis college admissions deans respond to covert 19. and basically the premise of the report was to help students understand that college admissions counselors are human too so they too were impacted by the pandemic they had events canceled they had um to work remotely they had a lot of changes happen in their life so they could relate to the students and they wanted the students to understand that all of the changes that happened as a result of the pandemic would not be held against them during the college admission cycle so they wanted them to know that they understood that their

011academic record their transcript would look differently just like maskos did so for the first semester we went past fail they would understand that a lot of colleges and universities would have to go test optional a lot of test centers for standardized testing s-a-t and a-c-t had to close we had many cancellations because of covid they also understood that their activities sports extracurricular community service all ceased and then even when it did start up it started up in a modified form or in a completely different form and then they wanted them to know that what they were looking at is how they were able to manage during a pandemic because it's not something that any of us have experienced before so they were looking at self-care they were looking at academic work service and contribution to

012others and family contributions so anything that they were able to do that was meaningful to them or was it or they were able to impart some good to someone else in their community was highly valued and all of those types of experiences were evaluated within that context during last year's college admissions season having said that we are now in the fall of 2021 and prior to covert 19 many colleges had seen a surge in uh college applications so for example texas a m university one of the largest universities in the country went from 49 000 students in 2010 to 71 000 students in 2020. addition to that the second largest university in the country the university of central florida went from 53 000 students in 2020 to close to 72 000 students in 2010 to

013close to 72 000 students in 2020. so this is what we were seeing we were seeing just an influx of students you know applying to schools schools were booming and they were trying to expand as much as they could but couldn't necessarily accommodate right all of the folks that were applying to their schools having said that proven 19 impacted college admissions as well as i mentioned for the 2020 season and again for the 2021 season so for this this particular uh season that we're looking at these are some of the top trends national trends that we're noticing that are obviously going to impact massachusetts students as well so colleges are seeing increased applications to selective schools and so the reason that the numbers are increased could potentially be due to three different factors factor number

014one is that most colleges and universities are test optional as a result of being standardized test optional which means you don't have to submit your sat or ac a lot of students are throwing their hat in the ring to apply to more competitive schools that maybe they would not have ordinarily thought about had they said that they needed to submit their standardized test scores a second factor well in addition i'm sorry to that factor is that even though colleges are receiving um more applications per student it does not necessarily mean that more individual students are applying to college so we've looked at statistics that come out of the common application which is the common app that the students use in order to apply for college and those statistics show that there was an overall 11

015increase in the number of college applications submitted that that only person represented a two percent individual increase so only two percent increase in the number of individuals who applied but eleven percent overall in the number of applications the second factor to take into account as to what might be contributing to the increased applications to selective schools is virtual recruitment strategies so that's something that was um an important way for colleges to reach students during the pandemic and it was actually very helpful for them because they were able to reach a wider audience of students georgetown university attributes its 19 increase in applications as a result of these virtual recruitment strategies and then other colleges such as virginia tech and the university of georgia attribute their increase in applications as a result of joining the common

016app so by the sheer fact that you join the common app is just easier for students you know to submit applications to that particular school the second trend that we're noticing is decreased acceptance rates and the acceptance rates to schools does not um translate to an increased number of seats okay so even though more students are applying to college that doesn't mean that colleges are have more spots available for those students as a result acceptance rates have dropped the third is that fewer applicants are applying to less prestigious schools or less prestigious schools as they pers as they would perceive them and so one of the things that we're looking at is to see if that would increase with this particular season as a result of the pandemic transfer rates decreased so overall student mobility

017decreased by eight percent during the 2020-2021 cycle and so this year we're expecting that uh transfers numbers to increase nationally more schools um oh i'm sorry the fifth one is a focus on diversity equity and inclusion that's another trend that colleges and universities are looking to expand opportunities in order to diversify their pool also to reach out to more first-generation students and to students that have historically that represent subgroups which historically have not attended that particular school more schools as i mentioned have gone test optional we have expecting longer wait lists this year we also saw a longer wait list at nasa and then again they're highlighting that the most important factors of the application are the writing components which represents the student's voice and story those are the essay and the writing supplements for

018the colleges what school counseling services are available with regards to college for our students here at nasco as i've mentioned in previous presentations this year in years past our model is comprehensive developmental and preventative and our goal is to reach each and every student every year and help them navigate the post-secondary process our post-secondary process begins as soon as as soon as students enter their freshman year so our whole goal is to help students find their way post masco by introducing them to opportunities as freshmen helping them to engage and connect with their academics and their social environment the soft during their sophomore year we that's a year that we explore work and careers junior year is when we delve deeper into the post-secondary process and start to really have students understand which route are

019they thinking of taking is it a two or four year college which the majority of our students do do at nasco are they going to be joining the military entering the workforce pursuing a gap year or any other technical schooling and then finally senior year is customized and specified to what their actual post-secondary customized plan is a little bit on the college counseling services that are available here at masco we do offer individual college meetings with our students i think i've shared this statistic before when i started here in 2008 we would have one full period meeting with our senior so we would do a whole classroom meeting a small group meeting and then a one-to-one full-period meeting since then we have weekly meetings with our seniors especially those that are on the november 1

020to november 15 deadline track weekly meetings for a full period with all of our seniors that are either applying november 1 december 5 or november 15. and for some students we meet twice a week so it really depends on the strategy that's behind the application and it depends on what the needs of the students are and it also depends on you know the independence level that that they have and so you'll see some variability with that but uh that is something that we're really fortunate that despite all of the other tasks that the school counselors are tasked with uh there we do have um we do make time and prioritize the seniors when the school year begins in order for them to achieve their goals to develop their customized plan we determine what strategy they're

021going to pursue early strategies regular decision strategies create timelines and checklists we'll plan for standardized testing help them with their resume conduct mock interviews really work on strategic marketing that's something that we implemented maybe four or five years ago all about helping them to understand what unique attributes they bring to the table and how is it that they can capture that in black and white on a screen either through a resume writing supplements an essay or some short writing prompts that they have which sounds easy but it's very difficult and so one of the things that we tell them because it's a very hard question and i ask them what is it that makes you unique if i was to ask that question of all of you and just put you on the spot right

022now i think that all of you would probably struggle to be able to come up with three to five things that make you unique so we ask them to reflect on that we ask them to talk to their parents or caregivers in order to be able to share stories from when they were young and sort of how they get to where they are so we try and have it be a very holistic process as they're going through this in order for their writing to be authentic to be genuine and so that way the college gets to hear their best voice we help them with all aspects of their application brainstorming organizing editing and proofreading essays resumes supplemental materials uh this year for our second year we did virtual college visits at moscow because of covid

023we're hoping to resume to in-person visits um in the future uh when i did this slide we had 118 college visits i think it was up until november 15th we had a few more after that now we're we're done with college visits they began the first week of september and finally community college opportunities for our students every year we host a community college breakfast we do that in the spring and then we also host an on-the-spot admissions day for community college we invite marshall community college and northern essex community college for our students that are pursuing the two-year college option college counseling resources i have to say the pandemic definitely helped us to propel this a lot faster than i think we would have done had didn't have the pandemic so last year we used

024blackboard quite a bit and so because we are students some of them were remote some were hybrid some were fully in person we had to be flexible and have all of the information available to them in a way that was easily accessible and consistent so that way all students got everything so we were able to digitize and make all of our materials available on our blackboard site for students and so this year we've updated everything and we'll be continuing to use them in this format we have parent programs that are available to our parents we have annual conversations with school counselors that are offered for parents um freshmen sophomores juniors and seniors we're actually having our freshman one on december 16th and we will have our junior one sometime in january we already did the

025senior one in uh september we have our annual parents college admission and financial aid night which happens every year in september and we have senior paranoid financial aid through mifa this year because of covid we ran webinars with nifa we have our community college night and then individual meetings that are available families as well key factors for college acceptance nothing has changed from years past the transcript is the number one thing that colleges look at the overall strength of the students curriculum how it relates to the school profile and what types of courses we have and opportunities here at moscow and then in relation to that how did they choose it how did the student choose to challenge him or herself they look at the overall grade point average to see how students fare in

026relation to other students here at masco the application looking at the writing pieces of the application which we discussed as well as the activity section provide students with um counselor letters of recommendation which are the holistic letters as i've mentioned in years past and then domain specific letters of recommendation which are teacher letters of recommendation our students do a resume some of our students that are applying to competitive school will also do highlight pages that we work on students level of interest in attending the school depending on the university some students colleges and universities still track that others don't and then again standardized testing um for schools that are test optional this year it hasn't been um as much of a a requirement as in years past however a lot of our students did have

027an opportunity to take the sat because we offered it and so uh they did submit their scores and so if what the research is showing is that if your scores are at or above the average for the school then it's worthwhile for you to submit your sat and act scores um in order to give you again a little bit of a leg up our mascot statistics so for the class of 2020 we had 277 students we had almost 1750 applications for an average of 6.3 applications per student class of 2021 had 279 students and then ironically i was thinking this must be a lucky number we just happen to have 1747 again for an average of uh 6.3 students this year were over 1800 applications so far we haven't hit quite the january and uh

028february timelines just yet as of november first i was curious so i checked how many had applied 65 of our applications were sent out november 1st and by november 15th we were up to 79 of masco has already applied as of november 15. it was a busy early year so these are our early trends so i'm just going to talk a little bit about this year's class so for the class of 2022 we had 792 applications for november one and we had 64 early decision and there's a double asterisk here because early decision two for some schools is december 15 or january one and so those haven't come yet but we saw a significant jump this is our highest number of early decision early decision for those of you that may not know or may

029not remember is the binding uh version of applying early with the reaction you apply early you find out early but you still can wait until uh may 1st to commit with early decision can only apply to one school you apply early you find out early you commit to that school here i just wanted to highlight just some of the um highly selected colleges and universities that our students were accepted to for the 2020 and 2021 year um i only picked some so i know it's not fair to all of them i picked some of the ivs that we had and then i picked uh schools that have an acceptance rate of under so those are the ones that are represented here or some of the ones that are represented here not all and then student

030outcomes so we don't you know discriminate right we we specifically chose as a university to be test optional so that's something that we value and obviously we thought is important so because they selected this and it was not imposed upon them it was highly valued and so they would come up with a more holistic approach to be able to review the applications with the pandemic hit and it imposed certain schools to need to go test optional i think that's where you'll see you know a little bit of a difference and i think that what i was looking when i was reviewing all of my research what i found interesting was that some of our competitive students both at moscow nationally and internationally found a way to take a standardized test and do very well and

031submit it to the college and university during the pandemic admissions seasons 2020 and 2021 and so there's statistics on that and so the statistics on that just show that the average bear who applied to the university who chose to submit their scores always had high scores that was the trend that we were seeing so they colleges haven't come up with any other trends on that uh the students that chose employment were significantly higher than previous years do you attribute that to any yes what was your question costa the percentage of students choosing 0.9 when in previous years it was under one yeah so we're attributing that to the pandemic just because of the uncertainty so a lot of students said they'd rather work for a year but they weren't doing a structured gap here you

032know with a program or community service component or a travel cultural component and so they were saying i'd rather work for a year and see what happens because if i do decide to do a two or four year college they wanted to do it in person and not remember i had a question i i know we have the 87 of students that attend college do we have any statistics on students that graduated from college so we do we actually we actually purchased the alumni tracker here at masco and so that gives us access to the national clearinghouse database so then we're able to see um how our students you know have fared and so i don't have those numbers with me today but we pull them up pretty regularly and typically our students are higher

033than the national average for completing in four years so they look at four years or five years yes um one of the things that i heard anecdotally was that the uh modified uh admissions process specifically that uh kids weren't able to have the traditional uh on campus visits uh in many cases that that what i've what i've heard is that that led to [Music] perhaps a higher level of dissatisfaction in the school that that a kid chose um [Music] so i'm just wondering you know what you've heard about that explain it a little bit more clearly in the sense specifically that um you can't see it personally you're not you're not able to go to the school so you're making a decision uh based you know in a different way than it's been done historically

034and how many of those kids after they got there um based on that you know that information versus what they would have gotten from from a series of in-person visits uh had some buyer's remorse and wondered if they had chosen the right school so i'm just wondering if if you've heard that um and and um do you do you think it's going to get back to the way it used to be with the uh readily available on campus visits and if not uh what uh what could we do about it so so that's a great question thanks for clarifying because i didn't know if you meant the college visits here or college visits on campus so anecdotally as well it's all quality and it's not like research qualitative data right so this is just you

035know just hearsay from from other i've heard that as well i do think that it was a challenge for students um not to be able to visit a campus and to sort of experience it what we tell our students here but i'm going to come back to even saying that remark like publicly because i think and i'll actually i'll just comment on it now i think that masco is very fortunate so the tri-town is very fortunate as a community that we have the resources our families have the resources to be able to travel and have these experiences so this isn't the case for all communities in massachusetts in new england or the country right and so our students are just used to being able to travel and be able to see campuses for some of

036our students that don't have that feasibility as reality as um you know easily available to them what we say is find something local and comparable right so if you can hop on the t get into boston see a big school see a small school right go a little bit outside of boston see like a suburban college so even the ones that don't have as many opportunities readily available just because of the nature of where we live they still have more opportunities than other students so i think that yes for masco students i did hear that but that's not something that i think that's something that is ingrained sort of in our culture and it definitely contributes to making a wiser decision but i'd be curious to find out more about colleges from colleges what do

037they do for students who cannot have those types of opportunities now i know what they do for students that are first-generation students or part of certain sub-groups they have fly-in programs they have scholarships for them to come out and visit so they do offer different types of events but yes anecdotally i did hear that is the bell from 2021. so are we is our expectation that uh schools will be able to have on-campus visits that they as they used to but didn't last year and if the answer is no then that's something we do about it the two things so we're hopeful that yes next year we'll be able to do that just like we're hopeful that next year we'll be able to host the in person you know college visits if not i think

038what's very important and that's something that i did stress to our students this year and they did attend the virtual ones but not as high in numbers as i had wanted them to okay so i think it's very important and i say this every year and i stress it to our students that when a college makes either in person or in the last two years a virtual visit appointment with masco 95 of the time the person who's visiting virtually or in person is the reader the one who will read your application in your application okay because they read from masco so it's very important for you to come to that visit because they've gotten a sense of who we are as a community so then they you can ask your types of questions right and

039they understand where you come from so they could give you a more accurate picture rather than trying to go to the general they should go to the general virtual tours and everything that they had offered but those ones are are offered by anyone and not necessarily someone who knows masco and who knows the tri-town community so that's something that if this were to continue next year i would want our students to you know to have more contact with admissions and i would also see if admissions in turn could offer us more student experiences or if we could offer some panels available to our students from former you know from former masco grads right so that way they could share their experiences but i do think there are colleges that did open up this fall you

040know to do not all of them but we had more than last fall so i'm hoping that next year it'll be even higher so i'm staying optimistic on it thank you so you have a slide showing highly selective colleges and there are 22 colleges on it how many students got into highly selective colleges got into the selective colleges yeah yeah what are the numbers on that that's a good that's a good question i should remember it off the top of my head unfortunately i don't so for the class of 2021 i enlisted brown cornell dartmouth georgetown and yale as some of the top ones correct yeah so we had six students get in rep out of um six students so that represented 10 of those who applied to colleges to those particular schools got in

041so that is actually sounds like a low number but it's actually a high number when you think that in the 2019-2020 year harvard's acceptance rate was 6.5 and then last year was 3.4 colombia's acceptance rate was 6.7 and last year 6.1 and that sure went down to 3.7 so for us to get so even though they sound like small numbers right getting 10 of those applied into these top schools is pretty yeah and out of just that little cohort i just mentioned these two for these five for the class of 2021 and then it was it was comparable i'm sorry i don't have my reader glasses on it was comparable for the class of 2020 as well irene our overall acceptance rate i'm sorry no problem her overall acceptance rate is about 66 it fluctuates

042anyway between 66 and 70 acceptance overall just to give you some perspective a couple questions just about s.a.t to kind of back on to what um casa was talking about first of all do you think that more schools are going to stay optional because i know that the trend was starting to go towards sats not really being a equalizer in terms of you know when you're looking for a point to how kids do since there's a money component and a socioeconomic status component to it as well so do you think that schools are happy with this new optional thing and that they will continue so what we've heard from the colleges is yes okay so the ones that were that have already gone test optional want to stay test optional the ones that were trending

043towards test optional and the pandemic just tipped them over into it they found that you know that it was worth the try because they were thinking of dabbling in it and now they had to dabble in it right so i think that it is this trend is going to stay just because of those factors that you mentioned having said that of course that doesn't mean that big companies like college board who owns the sats and um the act organization they're always coming up with wonderful ways to make everything better and more accessible and all of that so they're still going to keep trying well and given in the more accessible thing i know that um we had sats here for the first time in a long time um last year i don't know if we

044this what that was this year are we going to continue doing that so and i know we did it because of the pandemic and because all the test centers were getting canceled um always had you know sats at nasco we were at a test center on saturdays and then because of pandemic we had to close the test centers um out and so we offered school-based sats which was a new that was it it was a little more restrictive um you had to qualify for it it you had to have certain percentages at your school in order to be able to you know partake in it and then the pandemic hit and all of a sudden it became more easily available like as a center which was us and i would oversee the test center here

045at masco it was just easy i said i would like to do a school day test and they allowed us to do a school day test so we did um our first school day sat last april okay uh for juniors only and so it worked out very well we got great turnout kids were happy and they got to take it in a familiar place all the good stuff so because it did work out well what we did was we offered it again in conjunction with the psat so the younger ones 10th and 11th took the psat and then we all we offered sats to seniors so mary jo dr karabazo said i were actually speaking today and we're planning on offering the sat once i get it approved through the college board we're hoping to

046offer it march 2nd to juniors only on december 6 this december 6th all the students who took their psats psat scores are going to be released to students on december 6th all 10th and 11th grade students are going to get an email from the college board asking them to log into their account and have access to their scores who will be following up with next steps with that typically we follow up with helping them to understand what the scores mean translate them into something see if they need to do any prep work and then to let them know what offerings we're going to have available and like i'm like i said dr caravaxus and i met and were planning for a march 2nd s.a.t school day administration that's great thank you any other questions yeah

047i don't want to go back to you know tools that say they're a test optional you know forgetting you know the pandemic you know for a school to say that they're going to be test optional and to really mean it they have to have an increase of their admission staff at the same time because it takes more work to evaluate the applications if you are not really using the tests scores so if then don't do both i'm not sure that they really mean saying we're test optional do you want me to comment or no i'm just you know you know the comment or question quite honestly it that's one thing you could look at i mean they also could be fundamentally changing how they're looking at the applications um so that they're not increasing their

048staff but but they would they absolutely have to be doing something different so my daughter worked in college admissions yeah for two different universities and talked with a lot of other admissions you know councils from you know other schools invariably the schools that said that you know they were tests optional if you looked at who they admitted a high percentage of those had submitted you know yeah i mean that that's a bit of data i think that would be available did the um when they went test optional um what percentage of the applicants that they accepted took the test so i submitted it so i i think you know people who and as a percentage did it go up if you do well right you're gonna submit it right if you don't do well you're

049not gonna spread it well i think that i think test optional prior to the pandemics was more iffy like it was like well let's just do it but i think with the with kovid a lot of people just didn't have an option you know and it was really hard to submit i mean for the class of 21 that was a hard thing to any kids didn't have an s.a.t test wasn't optional for them they couldn't get it right it wasn't available yeah so um so i think it's just different depending but i hope that schools continue to trend towards not requiring it since it is not necessarily the best indicator of success at college okay i had one last question um have we ever has it ever been explored i know other districts in the

050area do have an offer a dual enrollment option for students that maybe are thinking about you know like a trade or certificate program or something so just to get a flavor for what that's like while they're in high school so we have a dual enrollment here at nasa we don't we do it just looks a little bit different than the traditional dual enrollment model and that's because of the limitations of our rotating schedule and so we do have a horde of students anywhere between six and ten every year that will participate in the dual enrollment program any other questions friday i just want to say it's so great to have such a knowledgeable and experienced person in your role so thank you for thank you for this it's really helpful i think we always love

051hearing from you so thank you yeah very kind well thank you for your time i appreciate it have a good day thanks next up we have mary jo our new principal in high school well it's great to be here tonight and i appreciate what um dr duros does she is very knowledgeable we're very lucky to have her and it makes it a lot easier when you're trying to manage a school and you have parents and students who are you know getting to college any of them is sort of that end goal that's all they think about from the day they come in and so having someone with a lot of knowledge just help temper uh the anxiety around that is really important um i'm just going to get started because i know i'm sorry because

052we lost connections no worries i'm gonna i think you have my slide deck so i'll get started i have a copy in front of me so i know where i am um i want to just start by saying you know the big purpose for the big goal this year is to sort of create community and get kids back engaged in school really actively so i'm pretty much trying to start with sort of that student-centered stuff that builds community right the activities that are building community um thanks so to start off with some of the events at a glance you know we had the senior halloween dance outside it was such a great actually great venue for that and so hopefully we'll be using that a lot in the spring it's maskless which is really nice

053we started doing field trips again when we can get buses the bus situation is actually getting a little bit better although i just sent out a bus email right as the meeting was starting but we also have an alternative opportunity for getting buses so that's really helped augment some of the you know when when nrt can't get us a bus we have another option and that has been a huge win for uh the high school lots of clubs are meeting regularly um in this week's memo that we just finalized that date so again from that perspective for our students who participate in all levels of athletics from our you know jv teams to our varsity teams again just another way to engage in school try something new and be a part of something bigger than

054yourself so we're excited at what the fall brought school council is going to kick off tomorrow we got a little slow in recruiting members but we got there we'll have our first meeting tomorrow we're actually going to meet again in two weeks so for tomorrow mostly introductions talking about our school improvement plan getting that work started we're going to meet in two weeks again school improvement plan on our mind and then switching to the handbook the handbook is really going to be the goal of that committee this year uh just to revamp it what do we want in it what's important to be in it etc sort of as the outward-facing representation of our school so we'll have all the legal things in it but what are the other things that we want that are

055important and they're given sort of the digital age that we live in and sort of moving that handbook to a user-friendly parents and students and other adults to get information so this is our schedule and we are offering the meeting both remote and in person so some people will come some people will be remote depending on what's easiest for them uh to attend so both are an option for them so i'm excited about kicking that work off tomorrow so um i mentioned in my memo of right before the one before thanksgiving actually that we're sort of piloting this mass break idea so we started running into issues when we were really lucky this fall we had a very mild fall if you're a regular new englander it wasn't really a bad fall it was kind

056of warm most days we had kids eating lunch under the tent students wanting to go outside for mass break but we had a few weeks there that the weather was starting to turn and students were not necessarily wanting to go out to mass break and so it started to sort of bubble up that we were finding kids making poor decisions we had large amounts of kids hanging out in the foyer because they didn't want to go out they didn't have their coats uh last year we had a mass break as well but students had their coats because they didn't have lockers so there's sort of a logistical problem in that they don't have a coat with them so when it's cold then they'd have to go to their lockers there's sort of reasons why we

057decided to consider this pilot the idea is that you can either take a mass break now in the first 15 minutes of that extended block or the last 15 minutes of the extended block the class would opt in go out for the mass break come back to class um if you don't if your class isn't going out for a mass break you can opt into a mass break here in the courtyard you can come down one at a time into the courtyard have your mask break take your mask break take your mask off and go back to class and what that allows us to do is to the students who want the mass break they can take it a teacher can decide like you know what i think the mass break being out in the

058cold might be good right now maybe we all need to go take a mass break um which a teacher can actually do at any time right a teacher could say instructionally from an instructional standpoint like i think we should go outside for five minutes right i could do that if i looked at my class and thought oh i think we need a little exercise or something to wake us up so again that exists anyway that can happen any block of the day there's no restriction on teachers moving students to do things for class so this would just allow us to get away from those students who if the majority of the class doesn't really want to go outside and they're trying i need to use the restroom they go into the restroom their classes outside

059etc it's becoming a little bit of a supervision issue um so we decided to do this pilot it is a pilot we're just trying it on i like to try things on that's kind of the way i roll and um i have a survey all ready to go at the beginning of next week it will go to students and adults to try to get some feedback from students and adults now there have been some concerns interestingly all from parents so i haven't heard from any students um about the mass break so but there are some parent concerns and i just want to alleviate those you know will they miss instructional time no because the mass break will either be at the first 15 minutes or the last 15 minutes teachers are have been asked not

060to give any direct instruction during that 15 minutes it doesn't mean kids might start their homework if it's the last 15 minutes it doesn't mean that a student might say can you help me with this problem and the teacher isn't going to help them but there is no direct instruction that would be missed if you choose to go to the courtyard and have a mastery there's a concern about them going one at a time and i understand how we lose the social aspect of the mass break right my whole class goes out i'm with my friends we're all talking that's great the purpose of that time though is a mask break and so students can still go to the courtyard it is one at a time because we don't want large groups of students heading

061outside we can provide supervision as students come down i've been doing that from my office actually there's been very few kids who are choosing who are in the courtyard i should say students will be singled out that there's going to be some tag on them that they want a mass break our schedule rotates so actually you might in your course of of the six days you might go out on break twice because those two teachers take breaks and four times not go out so it would be i can't i'm it's hard for me to imagine that a student be singled out like you go for the mass break like okay i do i like to take my mask off um could we have a designated space to have a mass break yes we do the

062courier any student can step into this courtyard at any time of the day and take off their mask and they do it kids step out their first snack kids are in the library we'll take a step out there and have so we have a space that kids can take their masks off if they feel they need a break during the day they can also go outside at lunch if they have study hall in the cafeteria they can go out so there's definitely opportunity for kids to take their masks off uh during the school day and then the one parent concern was the other way which the whole class was going out the student didn't want to go out and why did the student have to go out so i think again we sort of have

063both sides of the issue here coming from some parents but again i think the idea is to find some happy medium for students can take a mass break they're not losing out in instructional time but if it's 20 degrees out or pouring rain and most of the kids don't want to go outside because they don't want to be out in the rain there's still an opportunity for you to have a mass break safely and with some supervision that's the goal of this um and i really wanted to try it on this is a good week because it's been a little chillier this week than say last week and the survey itself collects data like that like do you take this so there's an adult part and a student part do you take the break how

064frequently do you take the break do you go to the break by yourself so i'm i'm looking to collect all of that data so again pilot i like to try things on nothing's written in stone we'll look at the survey data and go from there i will say we have teachers who go out every day because they like to go out take their mask off themselves and have some breathing space without a mask and that's great so it's just trying to allow some flexibility a little giving room here for some of the kids and adults as we kind of the weather starting to turn so i just wanted to give some context for that so looking ahead um so the national honor society is doing this peer tutor program where they're going to be set

065up in the back of a study hall so that a student in study hall could seek out help from them say hey can you help me with math in the moment uh the other thing that we've done is i announced it at faculty faculty meeting on monday that we now have a pretty good list from the original members we'll be adding the inducted members uh to that list of k students who have volunteered their time to tutor other students in a particular area so if i'm teaching physics i was a physics teacher i could reach out to national arts society they would say these are five students dr carabasis who could tutor susan and physics and i could then reach out to the student and try to make that connection to get them some maybe

066they have a study at the same time or maybe it's after school or maybe it's remote now that we can do remote and try to make a connection for peer-to-peer tutoring i know of this being done successfully twice because i'm sort of the interim adult of national honor society so i played a more active role in those first two connections but i'm hopeful that now that teachers are aware of this the teachers can help create those connections so those would be meetings that are scheduled that agreed upon time between those two students versus the drop in that's just during study hall where a student knows like i have a study i can just head back there and someone might be able to help me uh depending on what the need is so uh the second

067thing is semester one exams good lead-in uh it was already on my schedule so on my plan so um so the semester one exams are taking the place the weekend of january 18th which is a four-day week for us they are two exams per day the exam itself is 10 of the semester grade and we have created a modified schedule that allows for longer assessment blocks so the senior class as well as perhaps the junior class likely had one midterm semester exam you had to right two midterm semester exams and in the old schedule there were two exams a day there was no other learning taking place in the building and you came in and took your exam and you went home those exams were worth more they were worth 20 percent of the overall

068grade at a minimum in some cases more and so the reason why we moved here is multi-fold um in the current schedule and i can share it out it's it'll it'll be on the website shortly i just shared it with faculty on monday so um i was waiting to get feedback before i shared it publicly so i now i have it um but in the new schedule normally one period would drop a day for students in the current exam schedule three classes draw so they would normally meet with six classes on a given school day and in the current exam schedule they would meet four they would have exams and two of them and they would have a shortened 45-minute class for the other two blocks so the end of the day would end with

069a study hall and that was intentional because we need to be thinking about teacher preps and union contract obligations so the day is basically exam a class exam a class study hall the benefit actually of having additional classes is that you allow for relearning in reassessment and or review an extra class now under the old schedule you would leave on the friday before the long weekend you would never see your teacher again you would have your exam period you could go see them for extra help after school but that was it there was no relearning there was no reassessment there was no review of the exam now potentially you could see your teacher on monday have your exam and then see them again on wednesday perhaps review relearn reassess on areas maybe that you fall

070short um if your exam is until tuesday you'll be able to review for your exam so there are wins to the schedule although i feel like i understand why it feels like a loss to some people the other thing about this schedule is the students and adults put too much emphasis on a week of exams so you'll see later not to get ahead what is on my mind are these end of semester exams right that we put all of this emphasis into this one day of learning it's not even of learning it's of assessment taken in whatever form that is right it's ten percent of my grade so i just feel like we're building all this anxiety into this week so trying to run a more normal schedule for kids where they're not not sleeping

071till 10 because they don't have to be until noon just having a normal school week for them hopefully will alleviate some of the anxiety that we put into this exam week so that was sort of the thinking and the work that went into the new schedule it's department chairs um and then and us sort of working through a lot of different scenarios one of which was actually keeping the original schedule sliding some exam periods in here and there so we've sort of backed off from that and dropped an additional two classes per day so i do think for it sort of allowing some breathing room for kids trying to alleviate some anxiety that the schedule that we landed on um allows us to continue sort of learning but allows teachers who want to give a

072sort of larger assessment in a larger period of time which is really when talking to teachers sort of what they're looking for just want a lot of a longer block of time marijuana to give a slightly larger assessment for kids to put more information together that schedule sort of allows us to do that so that's sort of why we landed there i'm going to tell you that that discussion actually started the second week i was here whether we should have exams and being here two weeks working with a brand new team it was really hard for me to sort of not defer to the will of the team um but we talked about this these exams for most of the fall to land on that final um exam schedule that felt like it balanced some

073of the needs of the teachers and what they wanted in order to give these sort of end of semester assessments the mental health of students including um having them be 10 of the grade versus 20 or 30 in prior years i love the reasoning behind that and i hope and and i assume that that will be explained because you know hearing our students concerns which would be totally expected but i i would hope when you hear like hey it's not that big of a deal that's why we're trying to put it into this kind of a situation where it's not that important of a great grade 10 versus 20 and and you should feel more normal like so i think that's probably the most important thing is getting it out there and it will probably

074take time and next year maybe the kids will be a little bit less anxious about it because they'll see like hey it really wasn't that big of a deal but right we did build in like our day normally starts at 7 35 as the first fell the first exam starts at 7 45 and that was intentional so like kids can get off the bus they can grab something to eat they can sort of make their way to class they don't feel you know if your bus gets you here at 7 20 you're running because you know you have exams so we built in break we started like 10 minutes later in the beginning buses are still arriving at the same time but they need to report at 7 45 we also built in longer breaks

075between so normally we have five minutes of passing time and we have 15 minutes of passing time um it's likely that the exams probably won't take the full 90 minutes is what i'm thinking in many classes so i do think we try to think of mental health and well-being i'm sure you did again i think the teachers who are going to be in the middle of those two exams are going to know that potentially kids are in the middle of those two exams i think the other thing that i don't want to lose sight of is that when we looked at the number of students who have a period schedule like a a six period schedule where perhaps an assessment of this kind would be given so if you take out your sixth period as

076art for example where i spent some time with um stacy manheim and and randy o'keefe and the kinds of assessments they give which are not going to be the paper and pencil assessment critiquing and reflection there were likely a lot of students who were only are going to have major exams in five classes anyway so there's like there are going to be windows where there's if i normally if it's an exam period for period seven and i'm not giving an exam my kids just come and i have a 90 minute ex period seven class with my students to do a project or a lab or something else which is i've also encouraged people to do if you're not giving this big assessment just do a lab and there's no grade attached and kids can just

077do it to learn so but it will get socialized more again i presented it at faculty monday so it really hasn't been socialized very much um but it will so i'm hoping that messaging finds it its way there yeah i just missed it how did it bubble up at the beginning of the year is it was it coming from the department heads i think the idea was just are we going to have semester exams because during covid they didn't have them okay so we had no mid-semester exams meaning end of semester one sorry at mid-year exams last year so they didn't exist so i think the idea was okay we're back in person right do we need to we need to put them back which is sort of on the next slide more of what

078i want to think about right so in that discussion which is a great discussion i think and i was swayed i'll be honest i was like okay like i'm i'm good um but i think as the fall went on and we talked about them for me it's purpose what do they mean what do we use them for you know what is the goal of that assessment those are the questions we need to spend some time on to figure out do we need a special schedule that week or is it just the end of the semester uh because we're doing these assessments all along that's great i love that you guys reconsidered it yeah so i think we landed in a place that sort of met the needs of all the constituents with actually the students

079front of mind uh in the in the conversation but it's going out so it'll be on the website i just again um the other thing that's happened recently and i think someone mentioned this junior internship um katie dinardo had uh her meeting with the seniors to outline the schedule for the senior internships and that has been in my memo and that will be sent was sent out through blackboard to senior parents i believe um so we have the informational assembly on the 19th of november the application window is opening on january 3rd with the applications due on 2 11. so uh students seniors have been instructed to sort of begin the search for their mentor for their internships uh their masco mentor and not to wait until january third when you're sort of trying to

080get your application together but to try to start that live work now and so the adults in the building have sort of you know heard that this is going to be happening and students might be reaching out to us so the idea is to restore the in the interim program to its the way it looked um prior to covet so prior to the spring of 2019 is the last time uh we had a functioning internship program the good news is that there were some wins that came out of last year student council um and sort of a series of workshops in the spring in lieu of the internship and the hope is to bring some of that back and keep some of that so the idea of having these sort of one-off workshops i presented

081at one other people presented at them um to keep that as well so in addition to so that's great to hear and that's open to all students not just seniors so there's some wins for other students in that we're just trying to figure out the timing uh in our current schedule of where those could fall that kids would have access to them and so what's on my mind we started sort of our work today with the department chairs on our school improvement plan we'll be talking about that in school council so that's sort of front of mind vermont for me thinking about the goals and how we can assess them social emotional learning that came up again it's really all we talk about again front of mind even in the exam schedule like how do

082we sort of maintain students and sort of give them tools in a toolbox our big conversation now is developing that social emotional sort of toolbox for students um irene and i met with we have something and i'll present it at another time we have some an interesting um opportunity available to us to help students develop their sel toolbox because what happens right now is what we observe is anxiety levels seem really high but some of those anxieties are actually anxieties that existed before covid and trying to help students be more resilient and recognize like yeah like you just applied to college and that's nerve-racking but you gotta find a coping skill to deal with that because you're gonna have other anxieties in your life not maybe applying to college that are gonna make you feel

083similarly so our goal is to develop programming and initiatives that allow students to develop that toolbox because they have been resilient they've had to be resilient over coping but really identifying and naming them like yes you're anxious this is this is like normal anxiety right it's an evolutionary thing that we're actually anxious to actually helped us at one time and so that is kind of on our mind whether it's through um jack or tri-town council or some of the things that we're doing is and hitting all the constituencies right not just the students but helping families and parents identify like this is okay like it's okay for them to feel this way this is just normal stress or you know emotion for a teenager so semester exams long term grading and assessment is like i

084i could talk about grading an assessment every day all day um it's really friend of mine for me and those will be the conversations that we'll be having as a school why do we give exams what do we want them to be what do we do with them when we give them what's the importance of them what's the purpose of them um because i think my own thinking on that has evolved from my very first day teaching it hannah ride to where i feel about it now and sort of using uh what we know about how kids students learn and and trying to embrace growth in learning uh instead of that sort of i sat down on this day and i was able to deliver on that um that's really on my mind and i

085think those will be discussions that we'll be having in the school for a long time actually those won't be one-hit discussions um but i do think it's something that came up in this conversation in the fall which is why do we have and what is their purpose academic recognition is really on my mind as well um in part because we didn't we don't have a national army society advisor so i'm sort of the adult interim liaison to national honor society and in thinking about that process as well as our current honor roll system and then our graduation honors and sort of they don't really match very well and so i think it was just i just recognized it more as the advisor to nhs of how those three things don't actually speak with one another

086and the question is around academic recognition what do we want that to look like how do we get there you know again you don't make academic recognition changes like this is the new thing for the class of next year i understand that i'm not going to do that but the idea is how do we find our way to a place as a school where we celebrate academics in some way but that they're connected to one another and there's sort of a connection between them yeah last question it's sort of related to these these last two bullets here well the whole thing really is in addition i really like what you said about the rationale for the exam yeah change and i wonder if part of this is also thinking about um this intense focus on

087class rank and grades not the grades aren't important but i just find i mean you know maybe it's just such a difference from when most of us were growing up but i mean just the idea that kids are looking at i mean their homework is being graded and if they don't do it it's an f and of course it's an app because they didn't do it but just the amount of the sort of the power that that has over them i think is really unhealthy and i know it's not just about it's not about mascot it's just where our culture is but that's just an opinion that i have based on watching my son and i just wonder it sounds like you have a really great sort of what i consider to be a really

088great um approach to this and i just want to see that part of the conversation too still sorry stella um yeah and i i think you're completely right um for a lot of the students here at moscow and i'm sure it's the same for um other schools around um but definitely like power schools on all of our phones yeah notifications as soon as our grade goes up or down yeah and it holds almost too much weight it's it's really so awesome imagine that realized by it yeah well um i know like participation grades is a huge thing that some teachers are doing this year they weren't doing before and that's having a huge effect on certain kids um grades and it's just it's it causes a lot of anxiety when you look down at your

089phone yeah and you see oh my grade just dropped yeah and you can go running to the teacher and it creates like this constant everyone knows when they're not participating you know like i don't need an app on my phone to tell me that i didn't do a very good job today so yeah i mean this is just my opinion and a lot of the parents have they have on their phone too yeah so the parents get to get the immediate oh you got an ass yeah why'd you get an ass and then you got that whole yeah it's like we've come we've come too far you know it used to be i wouldn't find out that you got an f on one as ever or you could hide it from your ever right exactly

090you're great right it's too late yeah right so it's like you kind of want this happy medium and we've definitely gone far over the crazy line but we talked about that i mean we've been talking about this for years but i do remember like i think it was three years ago the apps sending out a notification that your grade has changed was supposed to be shut off but i i don't know what happened i think it's like a setting that you can do yourself yeah it's a personal setting okay a lot of parents keep it on right carolyn you're right though i remember conversations about if it wasn't controlled by the creator of the app yeah that at least advising the user like i know that i i've been given that advice as a parent

091and i've taken that advice and i i check in every blue moon i don't check it you know so the hope is that more parents would take that advice and not be checking as frequently yeah so it's the stock market approach to power right like i i'm making really good money in the morning but i'm not making great money when it closes at the end of the day that's sort of what you're describing um and i will just say grading and assessment conversations are really personal and every educator has their own way that they approach this and that's the work that we need to dig into as a school which is what's the school that we want to be when we talk about grading and when we talk about assessment and i play my hands

092to people who who come and talk to me about it and i'm doing a workshop on rethinking grading on monday so again it's just one of those things that you know it's like any profession when you do something for a long time switching and again from where i was as an educator when i first started to where i am now that took a lot of time and a lot of reinforcement positively to sort of switch how i think about grading an assessment but what i will say is i think recognize you know participation is one example this came up in my interview so this isn't like a new statement for me because the student asked me about this but participation is engagement and i describe engagement in a lot of different ways and so i

093think that again that is a personal what does participation mean in my class so i think there are larger discussions as a school about what is important to us what is it do we want kids to know and learn how do we want them to demonstrate that to us and is is grading about growth or is grading about i didn't know physics in september but i really understand graphing and data analysis now and that's what my grades should be because my teacher taught me and i learned so but those are very big philosophical questions that take time but they are all it's all tied together right the social emotional health of our students how we grade and assess students academic recognition and what that needs to look like or what it should look like as

094a school they're all sort of tied together and again i've been here since september and those are multi-year conversations but and that my the executive research team knows this but grading and assessment is like i could talk about it every day i'm so glad to hear you say you're thinking of it in terms of are we looking at growth in learning because you think about a lot of our students who go on to college and the reality is they need to know the process of learning and to be able to really understand all the steps and be somewhat independent and you know most of college's paper writing and you know things like that so i think just keeping it in a context for where they're going to land too is correct that's great yeah so

095we'll it's a long long uh it'll take a lot of work to get us to a place that feels good for moscow because i think that's the other part about this you can't just say this is what this school is doing and we're gonna do that you have to find that point where it we have the best of masco and we kind of move to a place that feels good for our students our community our school our educators and that's just work we have uh in front of us i just think it's a great example too of why it's so nice to have you here stella because you know that you can hear like it that it's not about making less time you know i just i think it's really helpful that you raised this

096i don't know that as well don't know why um don't like understand i think like we all see the grades we don't understand how they're put together a lot of times right yeah and because they're obviously could you get a question wrong then it's wrong but there's a lot of different assessments that we'll have where right it's almost like we don't know what question to ask to get out of it yeah yeah so again i think that that that is a long-term project that is front of mind for me and not because of anything that i necessarily see or don't see taking place here but more as a response to sort of where we are and the pandemic has moved this a lot because we moved away from paper and pen tests for a year

097and a half and we made progress sort of in that way of doing more project-based learning and or skills-based learning and so it's sort of it's it's a really nice inflection point for all schools it's just nice to be new at a school and to think about this work uh to really think about what we want learning evidence of learning and assessment and grading ultimately to look like as we kind of come out on the other side of this i love that you're thinking about it yeah and last time when you presented i said like you're here and it's like the exact right time for you like i all of the stuff that's going on in your head and as you're bringing it to masco like it's it's what we need and so thank you

098well i'm happy to be here and it's fun doing this work even when it's challenging work right but it's fun work yeah so great awesome you're listening to students you're listening the needs which is any other questions from rachel okay well thank you so much thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you and what are the odds i'm going to get kicked off are you hardwired is that what it needed the hard wiring yeah there was yes there was something wrong with the uh the port over here i don't know so i switched it to another one on the other side of the room it's her connectivity yeah he's law yeah that's right for that role i just found out that that's not just about bad things i had this full discussion with

099myself murphy's lives just whatever can happen will happen it doesn't happen it doesn't happen to be bad just have this did you have it with murph what was it i don't know how did you take it so this is working now yeah yeah it just cut out a couple of times between irene and mary back on and it's mike's superintendent update so it's going to start out with uh the typical the new usual covent case report um back uh before thanksgiving on monday the 22nd uh the commissioner riley held a conference call with all the superintendents in the state and during this call he advised us that we should be expecting a spike in code cases between thanksgiving and the holiday break and going on into january uh he actually showed us the the graphs

100from back last year and pointed them out and reminded us to continue to follow those protocols that were issued by the department of elementary and secondary education and the department of public health and to consult with the department's rapid covert response team uh if we felt it necessary um so here at masconomi you can see from this chart uh we are seeing this predicted rise um see a very nice v-shaped graph there um we're we've reached the total numbers of uh 43 positive cases since september uh as you said you see in the chart we started out the first week of school with eight cases uh and then this past week we're back up to eight again um you know with some some reasonably lower numbers there in the middle um so we're continuing to

101monitor and watch what's uh what's happening in the district this next chart shows uh the month by month and by school um one of the things we're looking at is that we're trying to pay attention to is that rise in middle school numbers um i said i think i said must have spoke too soon because i think last time i had pointed out that we did not have a lot of middle school cases and you can see we're you know 13 there over you know 13 total cases between middle school and high school in november but six of them are middle school cases which is about 46 percent uh considering that middle school has about half of the total population of the high school um you know it's a disproportional number right now so uh

102we are keeping a close eye on that um and doing our normal contact racing uh working uh with julia lobel um so we're gonna keep continuing to keep an eye on it and onward to sorry i'm skipping back and forth between slides here our vaccination rates uh are still creeping up um up a half a point over the month of november uh to 78.35 percent um but at this rate we're we're still looking you know had a long way off uh before we would actually hit that 80 percent threshold to apply for the waiver with the with the department that would allow vaccinated students to uh remove their masks in the building right now that goes through january 15th january 15th is when the commissioner is going to reevaluate um so we'll see i mean

103he may he may just extend the mass mandate then you know depending on where we are if the predicted surge comes i would assume he will so um and this one i think joe asked that question last time did go dig into this this data it's two to one unvaccinated to vaccinated uh student cases the first floor we actually went back and looked the first first week in september we weren't even asking that information from our cases so i don't have it um but you can see there for from there i think starting that second week in september um you know we're looking at double the number of students uh unvaccinated students who are positive cases than unvaccinated those breakthrough cases so that makes it an eight to one ratio in terms of probability or

104vaccinated versus on vaccinate considering that there's so many more vaccinated people yeah that's what i'm saying yeah yeah about what we've been i'm glad you're here because i would have no idea it's really helpful we did we went back and dug it up joe we had the we had the data and then except for those first four so it's more likely if you're on the back oh okay so uh moving on we are having a delayed opening on monday the sixth that's next monday uh both the middle and high school will start at 10 o'clock uh teachers will have a professional development programs in the morning from 7 45 to roughly 9 45 we planned a menu of activities for teachers to choose from for the day for the morning the options include a presentation

105on anxiety and school performance that's presented by the massachusetts partnerships for youth we have some programs on new zela which is a software uh package that we've purchased that provides curriculum resources so there's an introduction in newsela new zealand culturally responsive teaching and newsela and guided inquiry that's presented that's all going to be presented by new zealand's staff that's part of the the package in purchasing the software uh we have an introduction to another software package called formative just want to write up mary jo's alley it actually is a online assessment uh software just track assessments uh and collect them and so ben hodges and ryan king will be leading that session we have a session on struggling strategies for struggling students and that's presented by meg smith from our student services department uh we

106have a session on rethinking grading and dr carabazos and dr mcmanus will be leading uh that session uh and then we also have time uh sessions for uh co-teaching pair meetings and so one of the models that we have is where we have co-teaching where we have a regular educator and a special educator working together in this in a classroom at the same time um unfortunately most of the time their schedules don't mesh so that they have any kind of planning time and so uh we've reserved some time uh for those partners in co-teaching to get together uh and to do classroom planning so it's a fully packed morning and we're getting uh everybody's uh people are choosing and signing up for these uh different sessions for for monday morning i also wanted to give

107uh an update on the search process uh for the assistant superintendent for student services position as they announced last time patty bullard has announced her retirement uh and so we're going to follow the process to identify her successor we're going to advertise that position beginning monday december 6th uh applications will be due january 7th of 22. we're going to have an interview team that will be developed over the next two months the interview team is going to be co-chaired by dr carabazos and dr mcmanus we'll have resume screening done by our executive leadership team uh from january 11th through uh january 14th and then we'll be conducting initial interviews by an interview team uh during the week of january 24th uh that interview team will forward at least two finalists uh to me and we

108will have those two at least those two finalists maybe more uh in for second interviews and visits to masconomet during the week of january 31st and that visit includes meeting with faculty and staff public meeting with parents in the evening meeting with students during a school day meeting with department heads executive leadership team and other key staff members and then all individuals who meet with those finalists will be asked to provide me with written feedback regarding their impressions on the candidates and i'll also conduct a second interview with each finalist as part of that visit uh we'll then conduct uh site visits and reference checks uh during the week of february 7th and i'll have a leading a site visit team that will hopefully go visit um on site for each of the finalists um

109and then we're looking to offer the position to the preferred candidate by february 18th so it's the uh end of vacation week i think right before right before right before uh april uh february break um i'm gonna my plan is to present my recommendation of the preferred candidate to the school committee on march 9th and that's at our regular school committee meeting so and then the new candidate would uh begin at maskinometer on july 1st of um patty's actual retirement date is in august so we'll have some overlap time which is good um so that we'll have both wealth together to somebody you can show somebody their ropes for your last couple of weeks so that's there for a report today anyone any questions no questions is that going to be written you know will

110i be able to put a link to the whole thing's going in my block tomorrow okay oh in your blog great okay thank you thank you mike please take over i have so much there's so much left to do um bandit over the gavel um all right so no questions yes so we can move on to super subcommittee reports uh terry anything from community relations um since our last theme we haven't met but we are meeting next wednesday the 8th and i am not going to be able to make the move so patty has the family roots chair um i don't know if bill if you would want to give an update on the holiday concert thing just because there's not a lot of time coming is there anything you would want to say about

111that the only thing i'm still waiting on dates from um from the topsfield coa executive director okay so following up the only timely issue um do you think it could still happen this year it's hard to tell okay i think that you know it my hope is that it that it can a conversation with uh randy o'keefe was that they were pretty flexible about it and open to it um worst case scenario instead of december it's january i think people appreciate it in january maybe even more it's kind of like a only boring dark cold month yeah with no with no cheer yes okay sorry to put you on the spot no no that's fine that's absolutely fine i mean it's important to get that get that out there so that's how we and that's

112a great point tasha so uh may actually work out better all right uh tasha budget um we have nothing we have um i know mike sent me an email earlier that he has invited um the department heads to a january something meeting which is the next official budget um meeting that we have i invite everybody from the school committees you're always obviously welcome to join but that would be a good one to come because it's always good to hear and the question is whether or not we need to meet to have a discussion about questions to ask them to make this meaningful we've asked stuff in the past and you know wishes and well for you it's not gone well um kind of want to tail it tailored a little bit more in tight as

113to um to get the most amount of information and you know giving everybody 15 minutes of of fame for the night so um i think we need to have a conversation about if where there's time to fit in a december budget subcommittee meeting um i i think it might just work better if people send me questions that they think we should ask because i think december's just going to go by too quickly and having a meeting just to come up with questions seems like a waste of time personally i would agree i think so i think if so you're suggesting that if we have questions we think that we'd like you to direct toward the department heads to send them to you ahead of time yeah to send them to me before the end of

114the year let's say and then i can put together something yeah when do you want them to have a question yeah i'd like to give it to them in the next couple of this within a week yeah yeah how about by december 8th you're thinking about it now okay so and if not then i'll come up with some questions um i had a clue oh and that will that be in person yeah okay just check out something i just checking because i didn't know if i grow a growth and then so many people i don't know i don't know if that would be something else changes that's so the answer is zoom no in person first in person okay it wasn't clear yep yeah we're doing all meetings in person if we can so i

115think maybe my mindset was thinking it'll probably be here and not in the bunker in that case maybe yeah don't let us know that is i just edit that's why i think that's why i was about to ask i don't know many people in the basement yeah yeah or somewhere different than there all right that's awesome thank you uh and questions for her anti-racism yes unfortunately we weren't able to put together a meeting over the thanksgiving shockingly um a little ambitious there but we have uh actually scheduled one uh now for next tuesday uh evening at the 7 pm so tuesday uh december 7th uh at 7 pm we'll have our first meeting you zoom are we doing it in person my my hope is to do it via zoom thank you bill do you

116have minutes that i sent you i think i'll go from days gone by i do okay somewhere okay excellent i'll make a point to find them and we can discuss them because i don't know they sent them um all right thank you um so after our last meeting i consulted with zilli and it seems though the policy should um continue the conversation about the the numbers on the size of the committee um so i was going to consult with our members after tonight's meeting and just see if they have any availability before we meet again to have a meeting we can do it via zoom but i was thinking that in person maybe better so i have to i'll send out a doodle or something like that and see when people are available um because

117we'll need to have a plan to talk to towns yeah so um can i ask on that question about the committee size um one of the like just to make sure it's clear like my hope is that the town each of you guys are talking to your respective towns to bring that feedback back because i'd like to have the conversation before the end of the year but it seemed like it could be helpful to have the policy subcommittee collect that feedback first and maybe bring it back with a suggestion from that committee so that we have that to discuss so that we're starting with like a motion of something specific to to discuss so that we know whether we need to even be bringing it back to the towns again and i don't know if

118either lily is on some bad conversations with their sounds sorry i can't okay the liaisons have conversations with their talents after our last meeting yeah do you want to get that under liaison update what did you think do you want to do those now or under liaison updates next well like under leaves on updates and move on to liaison all right you want to start yeah okay i went to um the boxford finance committee meeting last night it's the first one they've had this season and um they assigned an uh an increase to all departments of two and a half percent for budget for next year and they followed up with the email to mike and jeff and all the boxer members after that meeting they are also aware that our enrollment percentage has increased

119the allocation of it by 40 basis points so that's not going to help us get to that number so at least they are aware of that and they acknowledge that in the email that they sent which doesn't really mean much but um they are aware of it i also this was just the finance this was the finance committee and not the select board but i mentioned to them the idea that we were considering about reducing the number of numbers from 11 to nine and they were receptive to it they didn't appear to have any issues at all and then our select board is meeting on monday and i asked them to put masco on the agenda so i will go to that and you guys are welcome to please join me and i will talk

120to them about that thank you after our last meeting i spoke individually with the other four members of the select board and the co-chairs of the fincom they were all you know receptive to the idea of a reduction in size and proportional voting weights and taking out the jail population you know in determining the weighted voting percentages uh as far as the select board and the fincom are concerned they would just await a draft proposal on which they could you know officially uh give an opinion but you know it's there from middleton's standpoint there is no reason why this mascot school committee should not proceed to that step on a different topic last night middleton had its annual tax classification hearing and as part of that process the assessors provide a plethora of statistics you

121know some of which are uh should be of interest to moscow the uh last you know this current fiscal year there were two new single-family homes in middleton that has financial implications as far as growth goes it also has implications for population growth and student enrollment growth there's only two two new houses wow the prospect for growth for this coming year are better but not great as to what has been you know in the recent past so that makes it you know hard to go up much above two and a half percent that's under the prop two and a half law over the past five years we've averaged 26 and a half new housing units how many 26 and a half per year per year 16 of those have been condos that you know again

122condos do not produce students have fewer occupants so it's population and student growth impact there are now condo units mostly occupied by people that have not raised their families in middleton which has implications for their connection to masco and so that presents a challenge for masco's project that will come down the line on a positive note for that yesterday uh middleton sold the bond to finance the 61.7 million municipal complex the interest rate was 2.05 and in the presentations to the voters to get them to approve the project the projection that had been used was 3.5 so that there will be a significant reduction you know in the interest costs that will be paid by the middleton taxpayers and perhaps that will make it more feasible for other bonded projects whether there are mascos or

123local initiatives can i ask a question about the condos like how how do you know who lives there i i just asking like are they age-based some developments some of them are and you know for instance you know the oldest condo project in town is the front croft tower that's been there maybe 50 years now and in those 50 years i'd be surprised if they produced 10 school years during the entire 50 years there's i like how you talk about the condos producing this school i know what you're saying i'm sure that's intentional so all right i was just curious and the the i know in other towns sometimes when they build condos it ends up with an influx of school-aged children in a relatively small tax space i'm just trying to understand because all

124all of our condo projects produce very few children so thank you that was would be the liaison was there anything else for me now takes over from my liaison before we jump to tax field i just want to also like i think the data is definitely helpful and appreciated i also think but we caution us for making assumptions about what the data means because you could also say that in topsfield we've had our recent developments have almost all been 55 plus housing developments and that has had no impact on the town's interest in supporting schools no negative impact which assumption that sometimes i hear when we talk about households that don't produce children um so just data is helpful um liaison test field so i will be reaching out to about the um about this

125the size of the committee but i am i'm so sorry i'm really i will be reached out about the size of the committee okay to the top fields in common selectmen and town administrator this week and um zilli did get the guidance from doxfields and she shared it with me and we found out who's going to be liaison and liaisoning from the fincom and topsfield's guidance basically said they would like growth to be no more than two and three-quarters percent um but they would also like us to strongly look at um our programs based on declining enrollment um trends in the school system so i think that's probably a yeah a theme and i don't know if you got any more insight silly no and that was they cop and i hopefully they'll start copying

126you but they did copy uh jeff and mike so they'll be able to incorporate that with the other town's suggested guidance i'm gonna call it suggested guidance all right i think that's it for liaison updates yeah i have a meeting coming up with um a middleton school committee number should be tomorrow but i'm i'm moving it the following week so i'll have that um for which just with a middleton school committee member oh nice um i can get that going again yeah um especially around budget season the frey town union school committee is meeting tomorrow and on their agenda is their regionalization effort so yeah it's a good thing to just kind of keep track philly i also joined the cpac literacy subcommittee meeting which was really eye-opening yes into yeah and the work they're

127doing is great so they're really looking at the um reading instructional approach that each of the town elementary schools are using and their initial looks at that is that there's a lot of inconsistency and they're building toward their working toward hopefully having more consistency and more effective literacy approaches um because they're finding the approach currently is not necessarily positive which would have an impact on kids coming into middle school and their reading levels so they're doing some great work yeah so can i just ask my what i've garnered from whatever i've tried to follow on that it seems the focus is definitely on the elementaries yes the impact will impact us it will impact us there if it's on any changes it's more elementary yes entirely yes thank you okay i don't think anyone else

128has any more liaison updates so we can move to the consent agenda does is everybody okay with keeping it together in that case i will entertain motion and make a motion to accept as presented second okay all so now i will make a motion to adjourn into executive session for the purpose of strategy relative to collective bargaining the masculine teachers association and power of professional association executive session purpose number three determine that holding this discussion open session may have a detrimental impact on the district's position the committee will not return to open session after the conclusion of the executive session i always need a reminder we that's it we need to set it right can you take a roll call [Laughter] yes all right so we are adjourned we can stop recording thank you you