School Committee Meeting 3-27-25

001I [Music] get up there and sit down ch [Music] one two and extra hang e folks Sam you good all right good evening and welcome to the U midboro board uh school committee meeting for today uh Thursday March 27th please join me in the Pledge of [Music] Allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right I'm going to start off that's my apologies for when I kicked that about a million times tonight um we going to start off with student recognition from the John T Nichols Middle School for the stem fair thank you Mr chair I will uh call Dr Tucker principal of the Nichols Middle School Britney boy our stem teacher at the

002Nichols Middle School and I know we have several students so I'll ask um if you could introduce the students up uh and if you want to do that now we can recognize the stem fair that I had the pleasure of going to this week and I don't want to steal anything thunder so I'll turn it over to the the two of you okay if I can welcome Alec Grant and Sebastian up to the podium here come on up you guys and while you guys come on up I'll tell you a little bit and then I'll sit back um so exciting that last week we had the 68th annivers the 68th science fair so to think about that longstanding tradition where this year our submissions really showcased the incredible and fast talents of our young people

003and the students were able to combine the Wonder and passion unique to each of them to embark on this Learning Journey that extended beyond the school day so what you need to understand is this was not something that just happened here at school but families and students and partners worked together to create these projects um which really highlighted that spark of curiosity in that inquisitive thinking you know that really helps to look at what we have to offer in the Next Generation so I'm so proud of how these um these amazing students really use that Curiosity to show the heart of what the Nichols Community is so I'm going to um also give some big props to uh the department lead uh Britney bully because her well one love for science two incredible organization had

004us have more students double the amount of last year with such incredible um submissions and I really owe that work to miss bully just speak sure um so I just wanted to say the science fair was extremely successful this year we are super proud of all the students that did participate um this year we had 33 projects and 44 participants which is a record number for us in the school and I think it's really a testament to the fact that the science teachers are working so hard with the kids and really they're working hard themselves just to get these projects done um we had a really hard time judging because the projects were so great this year um so I will get right into it let's have some of our students um showcase some of

005their work so first we have Sebastian glasby this is one of our eighth grade students um he entered in the research category and his project won first place and it's called how school start times affect Teen Health so whenever you're ready all right good evening my name is Sebastian glasby and I recently participated in the Nichols Middle School stem fair with my project how school start times affect Teen Health my project showed the effect of early school start times on teens health and helped to prove that a change in our middle and high school start times would make a difference for the teens not just here in Middle bro but across the country sleep is extremely important helping to improve improve mood behavior and focus raise teens's rational thinking lower the risk of type 2

006diabetes release important hormones and lessen the risk of anxiety and depression now teenagers need between 8 and 10 hours of sleep each night however due to shift in their circadian rhythms the release of the chemical melatonin is delayed by an hour or two this means that while most adults might get tired around 9:00 teens aren't usually feeling ready to go to bed until closer to 11:00 and if schools are starting before 88: a.m. that conflicts with when teens go to bed making it hard to get enough sleep and make it and make it to school on time leaving many teens sleep deprived in fact 60% of middle schoolers and 70% of high school students do not get enough sleep to see what it's like here in Middleboro I sent out a survey to students grade

0076 to8 on student sleep habits getting 50 responses the average amount of sleep students got on a school night was just over 7 and 1 half hours 76% of the students said that they thought that if the Middle School start time were delayed by just half an hour they would benefit physically mentally and emotionally this is a problem that affects teens all throughout the world but also here in our town pushing Back start times would help teens become healthier and more focused both in and out of school and you are the people with the power to change this just 30 minutes of extra sleep each night can make a huge difference thank you [Applause] okay so next we have Grant TBO and Alex sheret these are two of our sixth grade um students they entered

008the math research category and one second place for their project on quantum physics theory so do you want to tell a little bit about your project yeah so we did quantum physics and um the definition of quantum physics is it's the stun it's the study of energy and matter and and its properties decide how matter changes and moves there are four main parts of quantum physics wavelength Duality superp position the unknown principle and quman tlement wavelength Duality dictates the color of waves moves a certain distance and we found out that green waves move a certain distance that it connects with the chlorophyll in the chloroplast of plants that makes the plant turn green red is the most straightest trajectory when it comes to the line and in fact that's why when you look at a

009crystal you often see red at the top um superposition principle basically talks that all the all the electrons in an atom need to move the same speed at no matter how many electrons they are an atom so if there were more electrons that it shouldn't have a different a vastly different effect so this brings us to the unknown principle which basically states that you can't in the quantum realm you can't find where a position where the object is and the speed it's traveling finally Quantum intangent which basically States when two atoms together no matter how far apart they are they always stay in sync one of our main findings was that in the recent years to come if we find out the answer to the uncertainty principle and can calculate both distance and speed we

010could understand where um meteors will be years in advance and could better protect the Earth from an astrological raid great can you just say why did you pick this so we decided to pick quantum physics because we felt like it was a very untouched part of math and we feel like us as sixth graders we could probably simplify as best as we can to help people unknowing of quantum physics understand it more yeah and also both of us really are into math but as well science and quantum physics cover covers both of those topics really well well thank [Applause] you okay and then just to highlight our last project that we have up on the S the stage there um we had a sixth grade student Sam Bradbury enter the engineering design category and went

011first place for his prototype of a working um model called serial to go so you can see it on the front of the stage there he just wasn't able to join us so just highing highlighting that as well and then I just wanted to appreciate you students for coming here and your dedication to no more to learn more and to think about the ways in which your wonders and passions can make the world a better place and we are so happy that you are here today and you did a fabulous job thank you thank you very much I hope [Laughter] not yeah what's the question are you Smiler than a sixth grader the answer would be no really commendable work all of you um also wonderful work presenting to us tonight thank you for being

012so thoughtful in your comments and so poor poised in your presentations and uh very impressed with your project so thank you so much for for sharing them with all of us incredibly interesting also the application in each one of the projects is really interesting so thank you all right yeah thank you very much uh we are now on to uh public comment is there anyone with that would like to address the board under public comment how you doing Liz Tobin 281 Everett uh I was also the special educator in the sub separate language-based program at the high school until 10 days ago uh I understand that exit interviews and retaining teachers has been a pointed contention on this committee for quite a while uh and I've been planning to speak at this public comment uh

013for a lot longer than the public schedule was released teachers across the country have been leaving the Fe because kids are difficult uh and the pay isn't good enough in my case it was neither the only thing that kept me in my classroom as long as I stayed was my students and I took a pay cut to take the job that I took and to be clear I was not offered another position that made me leave I left for my mental health and searched for another job I have spent the last count of 15 years of my life serving I served my country and after that when I when I came home I served at this community my students were going to the colleges of their choice which was not very often heard of in

014my special ed program and they were going into the trades and the military branches that made them happy with my support but the administration of Middleboro High School some more than others pushed me out by being unsupportive uncommunicative and in some cases just plain mean no one no professional deserves to be treated this way even less a veteran and least of all someone who loved and supported her students as much as I have I am available for exit interview or questions should this committee be uh interested and I can provide my letter of resignation at request thank you very much anyone else on a public comment hi Bridget Kars I just wanted to come here tonight I know tonight is Mary's last meeting um and I wanted to just really give a huge shout out

015and thank you to Marcy um for her time on this committee she really has been an incredible voice for a lot of the parents who felt like they didn't have a voice um particularly um with the administration um with the school district so she's really been helpful in listening and guiding parents and how they can best reach um the people they need to and how they can get their voice heard she has shed a lot of light on how this committee operates um and she's been the squeaky wheel that has really helped um hopefully move some of this forward in the future I know that this time for you Marcy was really frustrating particularly when you're often a lone person voting um because you're not willing to be part of a group think process and

016I think that your voice was really valuable so I think that even though you may have felt that you were outvoted a lot I think everything you did will help move the committee forward in the future so I just wanted to thank you for that tonight anyone else all right discussion items uh report from our student representative Jess is going to speak through Ed I'm not speak for Ed I I have his notes I will happily uh Ed apologize for not being able to be here he uh has a lacrosse scrimmage that he found out would conflict uh so he shared his notes with the superintendent and I offered to read them on his behalf so here are his notes for this meeting um at the mech preschool screenings for incoming students were conducted during

017the week of March 24th that's this week if I do my calculations properly um kindergarten registration for next school year is ongoing the character word of the month at Mech is responsibility students are learning about being responsible at school at home and on the bus for hbb updates the readathon fundraiser they raised $21,300 with students reading a total of 178,0 47 minutes that's fantastic and uh congratulations to all of those students raffle prizes were distributed as a reward and the PTA extends its gratitude for making the fundraiser a success some recent and uh future events today uh at grade four there was an author visit by D Jude Miller and that same author is visiting grade three tomorrow mcast testing schedule is coming up for grades three four and five it will be April 7th

018and April 9th for ELA May 5th and May 7th for math May 13th and May 15th for science which is grade five only reading spirit week is coming up the week of April April 14th um in collaboration with the mkg PTA so some of these are hbb and mkg sorry about that um and uh a community engagement um earli this week yesterday first graders visited the shaw home reading books with the residents there to build intergenerational connections that's a fantastic wonderful idea at the middle school as we just heard there was the science fair with record participation and we just had some presentations of some of the wonderful winning projects uh there was also last week the wrestling uh I believe middle bar Mania is the proper name for it fundraiser um the spring musical

019has begun rehearsals and those are going to continue and spring Sports and clubs whiffle ball begins March 31st and will run on Mondays volleyball will start April 2nd and run on Wednesdays and there are still various clubs having meetings throughout the spring including art chess GSA and student council at MHS mcast testing occurred for grade 10 um early this week and it has concluded math mcast will take place in May tomorrow there is a field trip for juniors um into Boston to the National College Fair it's quite an impressive list of schools that participate in that event um and tomorrow there's also a student versus teacher dodgeball tournament um so look forward to the pictures of that and hope my son comes home whole looking at you um and then some student recognition uh Jessica

020Perry and Ryan marzelli were named Southshore League scholar athletes and we had some students selected for boys and girls State and the student Trooper programs that will take place in June and July um our boys and girls State students are Braden pittsley Hannah Fontaine and Lily price and the student Trooper program um participants are Payton Leana Lily price Natalie Corey Anna Machado and Caitlyn C so congratulations to all of them and then there were a couple General announcements bus stop reminders students must be outside at their designated spots before the bus arrives and um for parenting resources the peace atome parenting Solutions library is now available in Spanish so thank you for listening to Eddie's report thank you Ed uh report from from school committee members Su uh since our our last meeting I attended

021the uh exit survey task force meetings uh and which we will be uh Carolyn will be speaking of more but I just want to report that I found them uh the meetings very fruitful uh there was really good discussion from different perspectives and we worked our way through different questions and have come to some consensus and in consensus of Direction though there's more work to be done uh to to Really sess all of that out but it really I thought was a good good work together uh also I want to add my thanks to Marcy for serving on the school committee our time did not cross over very much uh but I do know the time commitment that it takes and uh thank you for your service Jess um so I also participated in the

022exit uh task force and um also continuing on the negotiations and some work for the policy subcommittee um I don't even remember what day it is as obvious by standing in for Ed um but I I think that uh in the two weeks between meetings um congratulations are due to um the um middle World Theater students who participated in the semi-finals presentation of the um Massachusetts educational theater Guild uh presentation it was a wonderful day of theater and the students um were well well represented and they had just um it was a not just a fantastic day of for them in doing their performance um they did not move on but what they got out of the day supporting fellow students um was probably more important than just seeing them support each other and root

023for each other and cheer each other on was really uh a marvelous thing um there was also the presentation of the high school play last week in Lys Strada which I was able to see a rehearsal of um and really kudos to that cast and crew not only did they perform some very difficult material very well but the cast itself was integral in adapting the script to make make it appropriate for um a high school performance and so um congratulations to them for all the hard work that went into that um I can't remember what else has happened um but I did also have on my list to thank Marcy for your time on the school committee um and um as has already been said whether um we agreed or not uh we both were

024here to do what we felt was best for the district and I always appreciated hearing your perspective and the work that you put into the process so Chris I didn't want to uh steal the Thunder from the guys who were just presenting um but the science faere has definitely changed a lot since I did one as a kid um I B water on dirt yeah uh that kind of thing on the scope that we're talking about with the number of participants that doesn't happen just at random so um now that they've got their Kudos I want to celebrate the uh the teachers and Dr Tucker and her team for really creating that engaging environment to get as many participants as possible so thank you very much for that um also going back to Nicholls uh

025last week was the spring Sports try out um and can be a very stressful time I mean everything in Middleboro or anywhere in middle school is uh stressful um for those kids but there were times where some of the practices were rained out and they had to move inside and I just wanted to let the the coaches know how much the families appreciated the communication uh there was almost a nightly email with updates about what was going to happen uh contingency plans all the way through so that's just a great example of communication between the schools and the families and then finally um thank you to Marcy for your time um you were definitely passionate and you fought for it you believed in and gave voice to people who felt they weren't being heard and

026it was a pleasure to serve with you so thank you Marcy um really just thank you to the community for allowing me to serve the last three years it was definitely a learning experience um and just keep showing up getting involved um get your voices heard because that's the only way to make change within the district that you want to see happen thank you Zeke um yes so real quick um in Ed's statement did he go over the musicals that's happening at the hbb he did not and I did not so please go so there is uh there are musicals going on at hbb um as I am reading this uh this year it was WR both all of these musicals were written by uh Miss McGovern and uh Mr Dawson um at the hbb

027um there are a total of six performances of three different grade groups uh three during the school day and three in the evening um so it's April 15th 2:30 to 3 and then 6:00 to 6:30 um and then the same times um on the 16th and the 17th um and then I would also like to say thank you Marcy I um I know that we butt heads on a lot of things certainly uh but I one of the things that I really admire was the courage to speak up and that's something that that I think everyone should do and I thank you for your your public service thank you thank you Zeke um one quick thing for me I had uh the opportunity to attend a a a chairs meeting was very informal this past

028Tuesday with a couple chairs of school committees from around the southeast um and Senator uh Dylan Fernandez State Rep uh Michelle Badger and State Rep uh Kathy latra Kathy represents a section of Middleboro out towards Oak Point um and we we were talking about budgets circuit breaker money special ed and things like that um and I I you know as we head into the town meeting and vote on the budget I can't tell you how lucky middlebar is and if you don't believe me just look at the other towns because they're facing layoffs they're facing Cuts they're facing overrides and the town in in partnership with the schools is not facing those things so we're much better situated I think because of our leadership um than a lot of surrounding towns so you know look

029into these things if you don't believe me and and check them out and just be thankful that we're not looking at an override in the spring you know we're just we're going to pass a a balanced Town budget so those are the things that are important to a lot of people whether or not you have children in the schools it's still the town budget um so those things are extremely important uh real quick about the uh the science fair is um I know Grant and Alec and uh they're not just good students they're great athletes and great all-around kids as well um I don't know where Grant or his parents find the time to research quantum physics and Play Soccer five days a week uh Alec plays I think in two different leagues on baseball

030as well and his uh his parents are the same way so it's um it's just a testament to the families to the kids and to the Nicholls middle school so thank you very much for all that masi thank you very much for your time on the school committee next up superintendent's report okay good evening chair pry members of the school committee tonight I have um a couple of items on this report we're going to um look at curriculum and instruction tonight which is exciting because we're going to talk a little bit about this very multifaceted department and all the goings on um I'm going to invite Sue and Jess to help me as I go I'm going to go through some of our exit survey task force give you an update let you know where

031everything stands um and then finally we're going to talk a little bit about a draft methodology that I'll present tonight for teacher and professional staff retention I came up with some Concepts about information that I could be presenting to the committee on an annual basis um and that's really open for discussion what do you think is this information that would be helpful um what remaining questions would you have so with that I'll invite um the curriculum team up Dr Marius is here along with our curriculum coordinators Lori leblan and Kelly stukenborg um and tonight they're going to be talking about um the entire department across all five buildings including um expenditures some of the allocations and how our on how the money in curriculum is being spent and then some of the truly amazing work

032going on at the building level um as always special thank you to our teachers who were the ones who make it happen so with that Dr Michael maret is welcome and I'll turn it over to you thank you superintendent Lions um chair fley and the super the school committee thanks for having us we are very excited to present our updates tonight we do have a very long presentation I'm sorry in advance we will do our best to make it as um exciting as possible oops don't be sorry at all we're happy to hear it and if you go back that to that previous slide and click your presentation is got embedded oh sorry thank you I see that's beautiful by way of review while you're looking at this slide you'll again see our strategy icons

033those are not just pictures those represent our four strategic initiatives that directly tie into our work tonight you're going to hear a presentation on curriculum which really looks at all four discret initiatives so I think I bought you a minute to get yourself did I appreciate that thanks for the teamwork um so you have all met me I've been here several times I do want to introduce um the rest of my team which none of this would happen without them so I have Lori LeBlanc who has been an educator in the district for a very long time and she um two years ago moved moved into the role of humanities coordinator and we are so thankful for her knowledge um and her work ethic um it which has just been a tremendous help to our

034department and over here is Kelly stukenberg who came to us from Hanover a few years ago she has been with us for three years um and also we could not make any of this happen without her expertise our agenda tonight we're going to go over some of our ongoing work we have quite a bit of it um we are going to talk about our curriculum reviews uh I am going to take some time doing that because I think there's um some misconceptions about what a curriculum review is um and why we do them and then we'll have an opportunity for questions at the end there's a lot of stuff on this slide I'm gonna break it down really easy so over on the left you see that big bucket of curriculum and instruction and then

035in the middle you see all of our funding sources starting at the top with the student Opportunity Act which is also um sometimes referred to as Chapter 70 monies um what we have been funding out of the student Opportunity Act which by the way let me just give you a little background information on that um it's really state aid for schools um it establishes minimum spending requirements for each School District um and it's a program designed to ensure that every student in the state experiences high quality learning opportunities to prepare them for the future whatever that future may be um and so what we have been working on um funded by our Chapter 70 money or at least in part um training for our K through three teachers in literacy I want to just say

036more training they've certainly had training in the past uh We've also used this money to help establish an mtss block at Nicholls middle school mtss stands for multi-tiered systems of support and we um along with Dr Tucker have called this the win block and it is what I need so it's really looking at what every student needs to be successful whether that is support in a specific content area um prevention in a spe specific content area or enrichment um it's really allowed us to Target um what students need um we're going to go over the title grants in a lot more depth so I'm just going to say that we have four title grants that um give us a considerable amount of funding towards our initiatives and then through state and local funding we really

037work on our curriculum development resources for classrooms and professional development for staff if you have questions about this particular slide I'm happy to answer them um there is a lot that goes into budgeting for this department because we do have um I I want to say our hands in every bucket um so there is a lot that is behind this thank you I would like to provide a multi lingual Learners update um so we are fully staffed I am so happy to say that um we have a teacher an ml teacher in every building in our district um which you know it has taken us some time um we don't have a huge population so we're not attracting um teachers but we have a wonderful ml staff right now our access testing which spoke to

038you about when I reported on data that was completed in February um I will be reporting out on those scores at a later time our ml Educators excuse me are currently working on curriculum support at all levels um this is something that we identified an area of need to really put in strategies to support our students in all of our classrooms um we are up to 100 multilingual Learners in our district um and those numbers continue to grow so we will continue to improve our practices um across the district to support multilingual Learners so moving on to title grants I'm not going to go through this slide because we do speak to to each thing individually I just wanted you to see the scope of what our title funding allows us to do title funding

039um supplements and does not supplant our other funding so we really work on seeing where we can get the most bang for our buck um and we spend a lot of time doing this um these grants are not competitive which means that we are giving them every year but something that we do need to know is that we have to show evidence that what we say we're using the money for is actually effective so we cannot just say hey we're going to buy some books with this money we have to say we bought these books we introduce them in this classroom and here are the results of that and we have to do that every year and that is something that takes a great deal of time because as you will see I have to

040do it for every initiative that is funded by the title grants I would like to invite to the table um some of our funding goes towards staff and tonight I have our instructional coaches who are going to speak to the work that they do at the mech school we have Jen Santos and at the complex we have Amy Anderson and Rachel Howard we do not have instructional coaches at the secondary level you over there Lely is that okay so good evening everyone my name is Amy Anderson um I'm a 26y year veteran teacher in Middleboro um three years ago I left the classroom for an instructional coaching position before that I had also been the department head of math at the Nicholls middle school for 12 years and we came tonight because coaching really offers

041a really amazing opportunity I never had an instructional coach available to me as a teacher um and so when I had the opportunity to become one I want this team is pretty amazing so coaching is an access point we we made a bunch of bullet points and we had to cut a bunch out because our printing ended up like microscopic so we really wanted to boil it down coaching is an access point for teachers it's for them to reflect on practice try something new but do it in a way that's free of a valuative structure and that's really important as a teacher it's really hard to want to try something new because every day has to keep rolling we don't have a lot of there is no downtime um in the classroom we ask students

042to have I wonder moment ments as they grow uh as a learner but we want that within our teachers they need to have the ability to have an ie Wonder moment and coaching really becomes an I wonder partner that's that's really what we do we ask teachers what do you think you would like to try and then give them the support to do that and it really moves curriculum students but more importantly it bolsters a teacher and if we're looking at longevity practice that's it what you want is somebody to feel really supported and know that they have that um that structure for them to be able to try something new we talk about data all the time I'm a math girl so that's really um but the minutes in classroom are more important and

043when we want teachers to analyze data it it has to be actionable when it's actionable it does something when we just collect it that's all we do like nobody likes the spreadsheet more than me but but that doesn't help teachers asking them to produce and look at all or even do too much testing for what purpose and we should always be asking ourselves coaching really does um Rachel really looks at the ELA I look at math and Jen gets to do everything at the kindergarten um but kidding aside we work together a lot we meet together a lot we talk about teachers um and what they need and then sometimes we trade off where we are and I think that makes it a really strong piece for this District um which leaves me to the

044last point and that is flexibility I think every in the unit a realm we should have some people that are flexible and coaching really does that it isn't we can be anywhere in the buildings in any given grade level so Rachel and I work across two buildings one to five so it's a lot of teachers Jen is like a little lone soldier over there at the at the mech and and as I said we do go over I talk to a lot of teachers I belong to a lot of local organizations about teaching not just about math and I'm surprised at how many places do not have coaching so while middlebar has not only a managed our money really well that we are looking at level funding and we are able to really work at

045keeping positions that make a difference I'm amazed at all the places that we used to consider like districts that we were striving for and I want midaro to be that District I want other towns to look at us and be like the structure that they have in place is a structure that we want to mirror and I'm happy to be a part of it thank you okay so they did not really do themselves Justice they are amazing um I need to tell you that managing um their workload which is pretty intense um they do it with a smile and they always come at everything they do from a place of inquiry which is what we want our Educators to do um and they are here to support our students through their work with our teachers

046um and we are so thankful that we have them I'm going to move on to the next group that um we find have a lot of impact and these um these teachers work with our students directly and they are also partially funded by our grants and these are our interventionists they are sort of our unsung heroes they are behind the scenes they work a lot with data um to determine what students need um and I just want to actually put names to it so we do have one of our interventionist here um and that is Liz Gunnison Liz can you just give a little wave um Liz is more comfortable speaking to kindergarten students so we're going to let her enjoy that wave over there um Liz is our interventionist at Mech and she gets

047to work with our smallest population making sure that they are absolutely ready to soar into first grade um at the elementary level we have four interventionists across the complex that is Melinda Madigan Diane Phillips don't tell me don't tell me I'm GNA get them all and I'm not goingon to look Alexandra Anderson and Cynthia tarnowski I did it I got them all um and really what they do is they use data to determine who needs what intervention they monitor the progress and they report the progress of their students not just to families but also to their teams so the teachers who have referred these students they have to work with them regularly to say this is the progress that they have made um I did forget one and that is Roseanne Marino at the middle

048school Roseanne is our newest interventionist she is not new to the district she has been a teacher in this District a math teacher for quite some time um and this past year she transitioned into this role and her work is yielding remarkable results our students um are making gains faster than we thought possible um and by her account which she did share with me she loves it um so we are so thrilled that um we found the right person at the right time to do that work one of our brand new initiatives this year um is our district data team this is funded through Title One um this is the first of its kind in this District not to say that we haven't been looking at data not to say that we haven't been doing

049this work but we really have had to work to align our language our practices and the way that we look at data um this team um has both building and District administrators our work is grounded in the department of education's robust resources and protocols and Kelly stukenberg our stem coordinator is leading our work and I'm going to turn it over to her so that she can speak to what she is doing good evening this work is ever so important so we are developing metrics for reviewing and analyzing the district's strategic continuous Improvement that's a lot of words Amy Anderson one of our coaches just put it perfectly we are being very thoughtful about the data that we are going to look at and making our choices actionable so that we can change student outcomes so

050therefore I've been working with the dis this District data team to help us understand that that it's not just looking at our data but creating a cycle of inquiry and what that means is that we are taking a look at the mo three most important components of a school district our students our Educators and the content and skill that in which that we teach that's our engine but we have to know where to go with the engine so we do that by finding a navigation system a GPS and that's our data they have to work together to reach our end goal which is a journey of student achievement also another goal would be that we take all of the learnings that we are doing with our district team and move that down into the buildings

051so that we are creating a culture of responsive actions towards data that will lead to increased student achievement thank you um Kelly has a lot of experience with data work um I worked with her in a previous district and I'm still amazed by what she knows um and what she's willing to share with us Patiently by the way we're all at different levels and she is um she's managing that beautifully and thank you um now I want to talk about professional development um we have a lot of work to do in this area we um are looking at ways to provide more choice for staff to be more focused um on District needs um that go beyond just the everyday um but for right now um these are just a few of the things few

052of the areas that we are focusing on this year and in past years um professional development is often tied to training that is required ired for new programs you saw us go through this last year with a new IEP so it's not just my department that is working on this it really is across the district where we have to do professional development um PD is also in response to student need so if we identify an area say in math um where our students are chronically underperforming we know that we have to look at that is it our curriculum is it our um instruction is it our alignment to standards which often it is um and then we have to do that work there through professional development um we also have to provide professional development with

053all of our title grants every single one of them it's a required component of it um and there are specific parameters that we have to follow for each of those grants so sometimes we are limited in our offerings for those reasons um I'm going to ask Kelly to speak to some of the work that she has done this past year um in datadriven instruction thank you um so this past August one of our first full PD days um I had the opportunity to work with our all of our six through 12 teachers in um introducing this datadriven instruction cycle so the importance of of um doing your instruction watching students grow uh in their understanding and skill of a concept um through what we would call formative assessments leading up to a culminating summi of

054assessment that would inform the teacher on whether or not they need to go back and retach or are ready to move on or to see that this is a wonderful opportunity for enrichment um it was a wonderful PD as a former secondary teacher myself um because sometimes when you're teaching five classes a day and seeing 100 50 students it can be um a little bit of a whirlwind uh so to have a reminder that the work that you're doing is um something that can be measured and then acted upon is very exciting and Lori is gonna speak to some work that she's been doing hi so through our data analysis we've identified writing as an area of opportunity for growth growth we have partner with empowering writers and we have trained all of our elementary

055teachers starting in grades three and moving up through five as well as Middle School English history and special education teachers we have included a number of high school teachers in this training to create common language understanding structures and expectations for our students so it's not across just grade levels but also vertically through our district and right now we are in the first year of implementation and we are seeing fantastic growth already so laui and I just spoke to two very specific instances of professional development that is offered to our Educators here in the district but please know that there are multiple um members of our Middleboro um Team including say our instructional coaches that respond to the need of what they're seeing as they're in the classrooms and provide professional development whenever we can um

056to help those teachers so um I'm grateful for all of the work that they do as well as the collaboration with our building principles who allow us to set up time for our teachers to have such Rich professional development from their colleagues okay so much of our funding um regardless of the source supports our curriculum and assessment needs um including the online platforms that you see on this slide I'm not going to go through them all but I am going to speak to a couple of them so Lexia which is also known as core five at the elementary level and PowerUp at the middle school level supports our students in their literacy practices in grades K through 8 we are very lucky to have this resource it is the gold standard in um online literacy

057platforms um and without all of our funding sources we would not be able to provide this for students um one of the other things that we are really excited about is stmath um stmath is a program that has been around for a very long time um it's really engaging for students they love it um and it gets them to practice those skills um in a way that you know they don't really realize they're doing work it's just so fun and um just to um add a little extra we are bringing it down to kindergarten next year through a grant that Kelly applied for and received so so we are going to be able to um add that to the kindergarten um curriculum it's a wonderful thing so something that we have been talking about um

058both at school committee at executive meetings and Leadership meetings is opportunities for leadership throughout the district for teachers um really anybody who's looking for an opportunity to do something more different to learn a new skill um and I just wanted to speak to this because I think it's I think it's really important um portions of this work that is ongoing is funded through the grants we wrote the grants um with opportunities for teachers to develop leadership skills in particular we have teacher leaders at the um Elementary level we have Department lead teachers at the middle and high school level we have the brand new middle ship Middleboro Leadership Academy and they're going to present in a few weeks so I'm not going to steal their Thunder but Jeff Sylvia our assistant principal at the high

059school and Kim orc our special ed coordinator at the high school are leading this work and they have 15 staff members who are joining them on this journey of leadership other opportunities for leadership our curriculum reviews our vertical articulation teams our vision of The Graduate work our foundational literacy team which we're going to speak to a little bit more and our upcoming math and literacy teams okay the foundational literacy team I really wanted to highlight this because the work this team has been doing is invaluable to our district um this team was developed after Lori our humanities coordinator recognized the need to do work with our staff um in the K through 2 grades on the science of reading and the application of that in the classroom um she has done a lot of work

060and I'm going to let her speak to that uh but I do want to say that this team has created assessments for us they have looked at data for us and made some really important decisions um and I thank them for the work that they're doing and I can't wait to see what comes out of this team I know I shouldn't have a favorite but foundational literacy team is my favorite it's such a fun place to be um with all the research and findings that have come out in the past few years we really knew that we had to make some changes so we put together this committee um can you jump ahead for me um all around the science of reading um and the coaches have been absolutely amazing with this part of it

061too so the science of reading is a a vast interdisciplinary body of scientifically based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing it's been going on for a really long time it's just getting it in Educators hands the findings are that the five areas that we really need to focus on in Reading are phic awareness phonics fluency vocabulary and comprehension so all of this research put together comes up with this graphic on the right hand side that you can see Scarborough's reading rope and there's two parts of this that weave together to really um put together a skilled reader so the top part is language comprehension and the bottom part is word recognition the word recognition part at the bottom that you see in the Orange is really focused on in the primary

062grades and really is what creates the foundation for our our youngest Learners our primary kids um and so our team focuses together to work on science of reading and bringing it into the classroom based on instructional practices and what we're seeing going on and the recommendations that they're making is it's just amazing their work is phenomenal so again I'm gonna just add to that because everybody is so humble um a couple of years ago when I started to look at at what we were doing for interventions at the elementary school I realized that we didn't really have a system of reporting out on um our interventions and I I sat with Lori and we started to talk about this and she was like well this is work that we can do in the foundational literacy

063team and indeed they did um and with their work and some support from special education um we created this intervention flowchart um and assess flowchart and it really has been a great resource for us um I do also want to say that this was a shift for many of our teachers um and they have been remarkable in coming up to speed and our data is really showing great gains um so we're excited about the future okay moving on to staff strong which is our mentoring and induction program this is fully funded from title 2 um and it's important that you know that because title 2 really does work on professional development and in this case new Educators not just new Educators but new Educators to the district as well I met um a couple of

064weeks ago with Kate heu who is at the middle school and Colleen Randall who is at the elementary school they have long time been coordinators of this program and have a have expressed a wish to to do so again this year um we look at our program every year and we think of ways to make it better and so what we did during that meeting was really talk about um some of the feedback that we've gotten and some of the changes that we are going to implement so just to give you a little more information about staff strong um new Educators participate in this orientation program as an introduction to the district we review many many things and I listed some of them here District safety procedures um the staff handbook best practices in the

065classroom an overview of special education the educator evaluation system Mentor training and many other topics this year staff strong will be August 19th and 20th at the Nicholls middle school and then we have added a third day based on feedback that we got teacher on that third day will be meeting principals at their new school so the principls can show them around give them the lay of the land they can find out where their classrooms are where the Cofe machines are where the lunchroom is where the bathrooms are you know all things that make for a successful first day of school um so we are looking forward to this year um and if anybody ever wants to stop by you are always welcome to join us for lunch we'd be happy to have you so

066our funding also goes towards family engagement um we try to do as much as we can to bring our work out into the community and we try to do that in ways that is going to attract the community so we have had two Title One Nights this year one for lower and one for Upper Elementary both were a huge success I think we had upwards of8 80 people at both it was unbelievable we have curriculum events um and nights at the secondary level we had a multilingual learner evening early on in the year and we had about 60 people at that um we are having another one in June we had a literacy night at Mech that also saw um a lot of community turnout and then we have a lot of resources to support

067families some of these resources can be seen through one Middleboro but we also have them Communications about student performance that go home um information about how to support your students at home we also put together welcome bags for our new kindergarten students um that's just some of the work that we do um to engage our families and to make them feel welcome in Middleboro another thing that we do with our funding and it's exciting work um last year was the first year that we implemented vertical articulation teams here in the district I think first time yes um and it is a wonderful group of Educators that review curriculum and recommend revisions and adjustments that need um using established District protocols so something exciting that came out of the work this year is that um we

068as a team came up with a vetting protoc call so when a change wants to be made say to the third grade math scope and sequence we want to teach um decimals in a different place decimals I Amy help me out decimals third grade no fourth grade that's why she say instructional coach math geometry uh that would come through say a suggestion from one of our teams of teachers um the lead teacher would then fill out a specific form that then comes back to our V team where we look for alignment to State Standards we want to make sure that um there's data behind why we want to make that change and then as we look over that change um in the vertical articulation team we can make a decision upon it um it comes

069back up to Lauri and I depending upon the content area and then um we communicate out the change um it has been a very collaborative and wonderful um protocol that we've built and very important because it just solidifies our Communications with one another and the assurance that the um changes that we make to how we are instructing the state standards are based in research and data um we are also the group that shares recommendations and revisions with grade level colleagues during say their PLC meetings or during other opportunities such as faculty meetings um and we also are ones that can analyze multiple data points to inform our curriculum decisions now some times those data points are not just say from test scores or from common assessments they could be just from Rich conversation when you

070have multiple grade level Educators in the room and realize that oh you're doing that project in fourth grade amazing now I know that maybe I should make a slight change to this project that we do in fifth grade so it builds upon that skill and content knowledge you me so I'd like to talk a little bit about how a lot of the um our funding the majority of our funding um is for us to acquire curriculum resources um here's just a list of some of those resources um I'd like to talk specifically about some math resources for the classroom and interventions because this came about from um collaboration with teachers our VAP team and our instructional coaches in that um through observations that and conversations that I may not be able to see all the

071time um we came together as a team and realized that there needed to be um cohesive manipulative safe for all kindergarten classrooms so with that being known we picked the most appropriate and research-based um manipulatives for our kindergarten students we purchased enough for every classroom and Then followed up with um professional development on how to use them those manipulatives and it has been a huge success um Amy Anderson instructional coach has been going down to the mech and helped with making sure that our teachers felt comfortable and using these manipulatives so it is a very um thoughtful process in which we listen to the needs of our students and teachers make appropriate purchases and then make sure that we support our Educators in the use of those um resources laor thanks a couple of other

072resources that we have purchased recently are decodable text which are used to support and create a strong foundation for our youngest Learners in the primary grades it goes back to that scarbs rope the bottom strand that I was just talking to you about picture books for read alouds and novels for classroom that support literacy engagement um and we recently purchased common novels for grades 6 through 10 to support sustained reading um it adds rigor to our classrooms and creates continuity and experience for our students okay so as promised I said I was going to give you a little information about what a curriculum review actually is so when I came on board three years ago I introduced our curriculum review cycle um and that's just a way of saying we can't do everything all at

073once so there has to be a process that we go through so that every content area in the district is given due diligence um but what that due diligence looks like is something I've not spoken to here um and I want to take some time to do that so what is a curriculum review it is a critical evidence-based examination of academic programs so it could be any content area and this is done to optimize student learning and experiences it's often led by Educators and administrators and it aims to identify the strengths and areas for improvement in a program there are 10 components to this it is a huge undertaking for a district to do while they are doing all of the work they do every day every year it is a lot and we know

074that um so the first thing you do in a curriculum review is you establish the goals and the scope of the review because every review is different you analyze existing curriculum as a team you review state standards alignment it's incredibly important to make sure that part is there you assess learning objectives and content and you evaluate instructional strategies important pieces of this are to really look at our assessment practices make sure they are aligned to our standards it's important to gather stakeholder feedback and stakeholders are members of the community teachers students um and anyone else who really has in you know input into this we identify areas for improvement and then we create an action plan we Implement changes and we monitor the impact that is what a curriculum review is this is Middleboro cycle

075for curriculum reviews I just want to highlight that in 2223 we did an Abridged math curriculum review it was not a full review it was an Abridged one um we are in a science review right now um and I'm GNA have Kelly speak to that in a moment we have also looked at social studies and science I mean sorry social studies and physical education we have more work to do in those areas um and as we build our practice around curriculum reviews as we go through this cycle um I think we're going to get more and more comfortable doing this work uh I think that's pretty much what I wanted to say there and I'm G to pass it to Kelly so she can speak about the curriculum review sence so this year we're in

076phase one of the science curriculum review which means that we are looking to um we're doing planning we're setting goals um and we're also developing things that we need to um look over assess and then um make some action plans towards so our goals for the science curriculum review would include um inventory of supplies and equipment for each building to assess need okay um as a former science teacher myself there's a lot of stuff that goes into teaching science so we want to make sure that we have a really good understanding of what we have um for each building in order to um deliver our science curriculum um we also want to develop what labs and projects are assigned at each grade level um this is important because there was a progression of skill and

077understanding of content as you go from prek through 12 in science and sometimes um we don't have the opportunities to talk to one another to realize that maybe this a very similar project is being done over and over again just in a slightly different way so we want to um document what labs and projects are being done at each grade level and make sure that those almost are sacred to those grade levels and so that our students get the most out of their science um experience here in Middle ball Public Schools um another goal is that we are rolling out a online um resource for our students called gizmos um I was part of a group of science um curriculum coordinators in the state level who were trained on a brand new science mcast type

078question that will be rolled out over the next few years years um it is a question that is simulation based so it is a very different way of assessing students understanding of science um from this training I know that gizmos is a platform that can assist our teachers in helping our students learn how to manipulate analyze data and situations in a online phenomenon based platform um just so you know this mcast science question is not going to um be actually graded until the spring of 2027 so we have ample amount of time to work with this um I can tell you that gizmos of right now is is being used 6 through 12 um our six through eight teachers were trained on it our high school teachers had experience with it before um and we

079have already planned for our grades three through five teachers to be trained on gizmos the First full PD day for our teachers in August um another very large part is that the science teachers and science sence um education is not solely in our science standards we have responsibilities in the ELA standards as well so part of this review will be to ensure that we are upholding our literacy responsibilities um for each grade level with our Ela standards and then obviously with all this information that will be gathered it will drive um future PDS and trainings for our teachers around Science Education um some things I'm already thinking about would be that we have a very um common instructional framework for science called the 5es um it came down from the National Science um Next Generation

080science standards group um from about 2016 when we redid our standards um and that's something I can see that we would benefit from having some trainings on great thank you so as Kelly mentioned she's in the midst of a science curriculum review we are also undertaking an English language Arch English language arts curriculum review um this is the first comprehensive review we will do um to my knowledge in the district um we have done other reviews as I mentioned um but they have been Abridged uh English is you know one of the skills that transcends every content so it's really worth our time to do this right um the goal of our English language arts curriculum review is to ensure that our programs are relevant effective and aligned with state standards and best practices which

081ultimately enhances student learning and student outcomes our team is made up of Educators administrators community members and a School Committee Member which we are so thankful that Sue asked to be a part of our team and we're looking forward to that work um our guiding questions are on the right hand side what do students need to know and be able to do at each grade level how will we know students have learned the content what will we do if they haven't learned the content what will we do when they already know it and then are our materials resources and instruction reflective of the community that we serve there is some confusion about the difference between a curriculum review and a curriculum pilot a curriculum review is comprehensive and looks at every component of the curriculum

082a pilot is often the the result of a curriculum review we are doing things a little bit differently this year a pilot is a small scale preliminary trial used to evaluate the feasibility cost risks and adverse effects of a proposed program before a fullscale launch basically making sure that the products that we bring on board are effective and userfriendly um why are we piloting now because we are going to be piloting our elementary principles identified a need for a common resource that is both easy to use for educators offers common language and experiences for students and is aligned to State Standards our pilot in ela in grades K nope yeah K through six will begin April 28th after mcast testing um and they will be reporting out to us as they go Lor's going to

083speak a little bit more to the work that will be happening there when we were looking for piloting programs we looked at the Department of Education and they already have a process outlined with criteria that they've identified you can see on the bottom part there in the yellowy orange and the blue um this rubric that they created is known as curate which is developed by teachers looking at curriculum and they're rating it in different categories so the two domains are standards alignment classroom application and the criteria is under that on the bottom we are looking for high quality curricular materials that exhibit a coherent um sequence of lessons and Target learning for GR appropriate skills knowledge and instructional strategies that's well supported by research and so when we had the programs pitched to us we

084chose two to go with um the first one is uh hoton Mifflin hardcourt hmh into reading and they have a k to6 program and savis has a split program part of it is called my view K to five and then grade six is my perspectives and so in the essence of equity we're going to have two classroom teachers at each grade level um pilot the program which would mean four teachers at K because they're all in one building and since there are three English teachers at the middle school one would do each program um and all would include special Educators um with their input as well so pilot teachers will be provided training before we start with this before April vacation and the pilot begins and then also throughout the process they'll have training and

085meetings and check-ins they will be meeting with each other to give feedback as we go along um they'll submit questions that they'll get answers to as we go they will fill out it's like a workbook that we've created from this curate rubric that they'll be checking in on um and then eventually they'll be making recommendations to the director of curriculum and instruction um by the end of the year the end of the school year thank you okay we're almost there so last last slide is our summer programming update um I will have more information to come however I did want to give you just a little um insight into what we have planned so this is also funded in part through grants um and it allows us to offer lots of scholarships to students who

086need them so we are fortunate um we will have our intro te K one of my favorite things because it um is the brainchild of two of our kindergarten Educators um Courtney CER and Cari paling um we are adding to our program this year more to come on that we also as I spoke to you about a while ago have shifted away from our Splash model um and so we're calling it summer at the complex I'll come up with something better I know that's not really very catchy um but it you know it's it's a work in progress so summer at the complex in partnership with Champions we are so excited about this so it's really giving our families an opportunity to have their students engaged for a full day um whether they're in classes

087at the complex or whether they are engaging in outdoor activities or other fun stuff with Champions so it's going to be a multifaceted approach where there's a lot of fun and there's a lot of learning going on um and you will be seeing those flyers coming out pretty soon um I need to we just posted all the positions so I need to wait until those applications come in before I can say what we're going to be running so um bear with us for a couple of weeks while we get that organized um we will have summer school at the Nickels we will have credit recovery at the high school as we have in the past um and our sessions at the elementary level will run from July 7th to the 31st we will have a

088morning session 9:30 to 11 and an afternoon session 12: to 2 that is an increase over last year based on feedback we had from families and staff um and then at the secondary level we will run those programs from July 7th to the 24th and those will run from 8:00 a.m. to 12: p.m. questions I have a couple um I'll make them quick I swear okay um so you uh I have uh two maybe three so um let me see if I can't find that slide my apologies uh so when it came to the um and if you want to bring it up it's slide number eight the district data team oh yeah sure so I love that you have this District data team and you are going to be building um uh you're you're

089going to create a building data team for each building um my question is is that I know that there are General grumblings when it comes to making changes in data analysis for educators um and I'm wondering what the strategy is going to be for those teams in developing the Buy in from Educators to to make those changes that's a great question Zeke so I think we're starting this work at the district level at the administrative level of the district so that we can really train our administrators to bring this work down to their buildings the first thing they're going to do is Garner interest in their buildings we want those early adop doors so those people who are like yes I love data and there are those people who love data there are other people

090who are not the data people and they're not going to join those teams and that's okay we don't need them to what we need them to do is work with the data team to develop their practices um so I think that we have natural inroads and just like in everything else every building is at a different spots in their evolution of this process it's going to take some time and I do think we have to take our time do it right to build Buy in but um we have a lot of Educators who are really interested in data and are very skilled at analyzing it before training so it'll be exciting to see what comes after the training thank you may just jump in through you Mr Vice chair um I wanted to take another

091crack at that because uh we had the same question data is a very delicate topic with Educators and it really turns on how you talk to your staff about it um we have been very intentional about wanting to not just destigmatize data but not weaponize it either so one of the things we did actually last year was plan to develop not just this District data team but a plan to roll that out through professional development so in April we're going to be getting together as an entire District well within our buildings but we have you know an early release day right leading into the Break um where we're going to be talking about this from the perspective of collecting data on our strategy but it's actually the district data team's opportunity to soft pitch what

092we've been up to um in a disarming way so um I'm a member of the district data team will be Fanning out across the district to engage those conversations um again so that we're partnering with our Educators not um having unreasonable expectations or alienating them with it so that's one of the takeaways I just sorry I needed to jump in there no I think that's great and I do I think that data is often a prickly subject because it is so personal to us as Educators um but I think when we take away those stigmas around it and we really look at it as an opportunity to improve what we're doing for our students um I think we it goes a long way and it makes teachers feel empowered thank you just following up on

093it it's actually something that I wrote down of how excited I was to hear how that you're integrating um data with the coaching and the intervention because that's at the teacher level yeah um and the coaches being non-evaluative but really helping them see how they can use that information in their day-to-day practice I I had the opportunity to do that um in my past profession was serve as a coach but what's exciting for me to hear here is how it's being more it's more systemic yes and then how you thought through the different levels of that from the district down to the to the buildings to the classrooms and integrating that that you're really um developing real reflective practitioners um and also providing the content uh in through the professional development H it it really

094is very exciting to hear awesome thank you under my second question I apologize I don't generally ask as this many questions um if you move to slide nine on professional development that last piece is outside provider PD opportunities and conferences are you referring to guest speakers sometimes so at the beginning of this year we brought in Charlie applin um who was remarkable he spoke about um well the topic of his speech was um there's no such thing as a bad kid and we also bought his book for every teacher in the district and he really spoke to you know what trauma does to students and how it affects them and how we can disarm that trauma in our classrooms in really safe ways so that's an example of our outside provider as far as conferences

095um I sign off um as does the superintendent on conferences that our teachers attend they either identify them on their own or um their departments suggest them to them for you know further learning um and we have a lot of people that go out um we just went to the matsol conference which is um for multilingual Learners we actually ended up going virtually because it was filled so um our ml teachers attended that um I'm trying to think of some other outside PE would be another one to talk about because oured teachers I mean this is a good example of a particular role in The District where you don't have 100 gym teachers so how do you how do you provide that highquality PD to a role that specific that's where you would um I'm

096blanking on the name of um the initiative that we send them to I've heard it's map her I say it wrong so I'm not sure what it's the pronunciation is m- a p he ERT but it's a state driven conference so that you know they're hearing from other physical education Educators um and I think you know providing providing them with opportunities to enhance their practice we do that a lot for um our smaller groups of Educators so we have um our Librarians go out often um on training and also our Performing Arts um folks get opportunities to go off District I actually have my kindergarten music teacher who is going to a conference out of district and the math team I believe at the middle school level so we have a group of um math

097Educators actually Amy Anderson will be coming with me as well as our um Department Lead Teacher at the middle school and our instructional um our math interventionists we're all going to Bridgewater for a math um professional development coner conference for K through 8 which will be really exciting for us to just be in a huge enormous space with um fellow math enthusiasts thank thank you uh and then the the last one I have comes on slide uh 18 on the curriculum review yes now you have on number six and you did touch on at the examine assessment practices you're referring to your general rubric that you've developed correct when you that's what you're assessing no so we are assess what we're looking at when we look at our assessment practices can you go to the

098next slide no previous there you go um what we look at is how are we assessing our students on the standards so that's what I'm talking about when I talk about examining assessment practices so sometimes you develop an assessment and you think it's fantastic but then you deliver that assessment to the students and three of the questions every student missed okay what happened there so we have to look at it was it our instruction is it our curriculum is it how we wrote the question which often happens sometimes you have a word in there that is just not developmentally appropriate for grade five right and they just missed the question um so we'll be looking at our assessment practices another um facet of that is how are we assessing our students because it should no

099longer be multiple choice tests alone there should be a variety of ways to assess our students and an English language Arts we are really quick to say write an essay that's not the only way we can assess if our students know the content so we need to look at all of the different ways that we can assess students so that students who don't test well have the opportunity to shine awesome thank you for clarifying that I was just a little confused on six thank you yep anyone else have any other comments questions I just have one one question about the science review I know you said that and understandably that you did some abbreviated uh assessments uh and I'm not questioning that you did it this way I I more just wanted to understand why

100in the Science Why content the rubrics the standards why that wasn't looked at it seems like science is something that really uh that's been that's been looked at I'm sorry I I didn't want to talk forever about my passion of the sence curriculum no no no I can tell you that from our our teachers have done um amazing work in starting out with just deconstructing the science standards for every grade level from there making sure that it's connected to our curriculum documents um that our vat team looks at and that we're reviewing um a piece that we're going to have to um work in conjunction with the the ELA curriculum review are those literacy standards that we share understood yeah so when I talk about to about what projects and what activities are being done

101the lower grades that could be a um a book study that they've done you know it may not necessarily so there's going to be a lot of teamwork between Lai and I with the results from her review and then input that we'll have on my review as well thank you you're welcome just really quickly um Terry I just wanted to thank you and your team I really appreciate you inviting them to come and I appreciate you all coming to be here tonight um it I think it really helped me to hear directly from all of you as to how you're engaged in the process and to hear you speak so passionately about the work that you're doing really gives what is a lot U just a different perspective um you know and and to I

102know Tera you always speak in such an upbeat way about all of these really things yeah I get it complex things um but to hear the rest of you um just so engaged in the process um it it really um helped my perspective a lot of of the work that you guys do and I just wanted to thank you for being here and speaking about it thank you you're here thank you for giving us the opportunity thank you very much we appreciate it okay thank you thank you curriculum team great job um I'm going to move us actually if you can click back into my slide deck if you don't mind the next item I'll be talking about tonight is um the exit survey Task Force update special thank you to Jess and Sue who

103have given their time um to being members of this committee I sent out a document to the committee via attachment and then again today in the Dropbox to lay out what we were going to do as a group um because I thought that would be helpful um by way of review there are the strategy icons specifically about engaging in collaborative data informed planning and problem solving so I thought that matched nicely with this group but then also creating um Innovative responsive and safe learning environments for all okay so when I say all that means the adults that work in the system and the and the students so uh the document that I shared with you really laid out a couple of pieces about this task force the first was data review what what information would

104we be looking at in terms of taking this step together this exploratory step what questions really uh Focus questions would we have as we approached this task and then finally the purpose of us getting together was to actually make recommendations to this committee um and that I'll be will be doing that this evening and likely again Beyond tonight as well the group did meet on March 3rd 10th and 20th I do anticipate us getting together again likely after April 9th and hopefully before the break I don't want to get too far out um and I'll turn into that some of the nitty-gritty right now and looking at our Focus questions as a group um these were some of the inquiries we had when we started the process how do we as a district get valid

105accurate and productive feedback from employees who leave I think that was the General inquiry um naturally how do other districts obtain this feedback um who can review this information and then what questions arise from the data review um once you have it what are we doing with what what are we what conclusions are we going to draw and you know what steps are we going to take um so I again like I said sue and Jess if I miss anything feel free to jump in um this slide really very briefly um encompasses our three meetings and I would say very productive I would Echo what Sue said productive Lively discussion about this topic um and you know presents some additional questions and inquiry and you know I think that's a good opportunity to present this

106tonight and talk with you all about it um beginning with the retention data that we have and if you remember when Sue presented this data and this is exactly where the group started we were looking at our teacher retention numbers here in Middleboro which are better than what you see in the state and also better than what you see nationally so that presented a conundrum because there's clearly an appetite this committee's talked about it a few times for determining well what are the trends for people who who exit our system and shouldn't we be interested in that and what are we doing about that so we talked about that at actually I think all three meetings um we had discussion around what I'm calling perception which I'll break that out a little more implementation feasibility

107and ultimately confidentiality slash legal so when I say perception we spent a lot of time talking about the perception of the survey takers um when you are presenting a survey to someone you know are we asking for their name is this a matter of public record um what are they going to think about this are they going to be truthful what are we do with the fact that we're collecting this information and it represents one side of a story but perhaps not all sides of the story so these were things that we talked about we talked about the perception of existing employees if we're only asking employees about their experience as they exit the door is that sending a different message to the members who have been here and then finally the perception of the

108data collected and how do we navigate that so okay we collect this data now what are we going to do what are one how are we going to collect it and then two what are we going to do with it so that's what I would call perception from there we moved into implementation okay let's let's talk about what we would do if we had this survey would it go to the superintendent's office and if and we kind of quickly talked about the fact that it really could only go there if it wasn't going to go somewhere else entirely um in many districts and that was one of those questions where we began in many districts where they do this they have an HR department and that's nice and clean nice and seamless the employee isn't

109asked to report to the superintendent so it creates a bit of a barrier for them to be as honest as they would like to be um here that's not the case and I think it continues to be the recommendation of our committee that we that we are actively seeking the opportunity to onboard HR in our district I know that that's a monetary issue um but I would say I would renew that out of the recommendation here um so implementation wise who's going to do it and then privacy what I'll call privacy issues Personnel issues whether or not these are public records protection of confidentiality these are all pieces that will matter to at least some people and the school committee should also busy itself with being concerned about you know is it lawful to to

110have these records created and possibly produced publicly and if so is that going to chill survey takers desire to fill out the survey so again these AR I know I'm asking a lot of questions or presenting a lot of issues but I think it's important to begin there without drawing conclusions about that and then feasibility we actually got into the nitty-gritty we talked about logistics functionally when is this person going to take this survey um at what time on what Hardware is there concern conc ER about asking an employee to use their own work device or through their own Google login if ultimately what you're looking for is an anonymous survey so we talked about that we actually brought John ciciliano into the fold to say hey how might we approach this to export that

111data um in a way that protects as much as possible the identity and the timing because we are a small District so there doesn't need to be very many exits before the identity of those of those of those um employees are known and so we talked about that in terms of feasibility and again confidentiality from there the team worked very diligently on the development of a draft survey which I also put in the drop box today and I would encourage the the entire committee to look at it um see what you think you know I think there was a lot of discussion about what specific questions and how those questions were asked and I think everybody was very thoughtful about that particular aspect we looked at surveys that exist pretty much from all over the

112state we looked at private sector we looked at um other public schools and we kind of mixed and matched with what we thought we needed um and then there was additional discussion and possibility of working with our town Department Our Town HR department to help with facilitation of this survey is there room for that to occur ultimately I think our group came to the conclusion or at least preliminarily that we think using this draft survey in a pilot scenario like a one-year pilot might be something we'd be interested in it would allow us to trial and get some feedback and see what we think about that before committing to a formal and long-standing practice and actually I missed a bullet we do know that we want to have legal review of this process and um

113you know have have the school committee's attorney kind of weigh in on what do you what do you think about this um and what I forgot to put up here and I think it's a very important bullet is also to talk with our Union and get their opinion these are I mean ultimately I think it would be interesting to hear the perception of if we did this would would you be interested in this if we did not do this would you know what I mean this is where you have to vet it and um I think our Union would be very communicative about this but I didn't want to I don't think we should go to the union until we have our have our um dinner made a little bit more first right but uh

114th those are two more pieces as well so really that's um I think that's everything in terms of this particular topic I'll open it up to Sue and just and certainly anybody else who has questions in case I missed anything or misstated anything I don't think you missed anything I think the the one piece that you touched on um that we started to have more discussions on at that last meeting was the the perception of what what what do we want to be engaging our Educators in the district our staff in The District in terms of getting feedback from them and there really was this desire to see if this could kind of parallel develop more of a satisfaction survey process and that leads to many of those same questions about confidentiality and feasibility and

115how would you implemented and um I think that's something that as a task force we wanted to explore further and look at what some options were I think that'd be a great opportunity for engaging with the Union as well um you know maybe it is something that doesn't have the same um level of confidentiality concerns about it maybe it is more of a confidentiality concern you know I know there are businesses out there that you can um hire for short term to implement a survey for you so that there is that kind of um they'll execute they'll compile the data they'll bring it back to you kind of confidentially piece and maybe that is a worth a pilot as well so um it was a a really good discussion to engage in to say you

116know maybe this is um just a jumping off point of um other ways to seek that engagement within the district so so um look forward to continuing those discussions and seeing where they go I think the only other piece that I would add is a little more about uh we talked a lot about how this particular draft survey how it would feed into a report that would give general information and that is what the district would see and that we would see it it is not about and that's why we want it to go to an HR office so that that happens with with confidentiality that an HR office um provides so that individual responses would not be identifiable this is not trying to find out why did someone leave a person this uh exit

117surveys specifically are used to look at Trends and that that would be the purpose uh and that's why we thinking that the possibility of having the town's HR office do that and then create the overall report that um would go either through Carolyn to us or to both or however that happens um uh but this is not to be looking at individual people very specifically we want to make sure that uh people understand that for you uh I just want want to say this is fantastic I'm looking at this and I I I love this entire thing every piece seems like you've really gone through and you've you've worked hard to to really try to get as many um I don't know the word I'm looking for here just as many as many pieces to

118the puzzle as possible to try to parse out the data and I I really love that and I love the work that you guys have done clearly this is very important and uh you know I wasn't a real proponent of of these exit exit surveys but I've come around so thank you guys thank you um and I apologize because I didn't think of this till tonight but um would anyone be interested in changing this from an exit survey to an employee survey how about we ask the people what's working instead of what's not working that's kind of where satisfaction absolutely two parallel processes yet I've had more than one job where I'm leaving and the guy comes up to you know my boss comes up to me and says well what can I do to

119make you stay I'm like well it's too late now yeah yeah and that's that's on my Pock yeah and that's what Jess was talking about if somebody's leaving their mind's made up they're gone but if they're staying if they've stayed for 25 years what are we doing that's that's kept them here for 25 years exactly you know those are the things you know let's try to be proactive rather than reactive actually if you take look at the literature what it speaks to is using both data points um of the people that leave as well as those uh the information around the what Jess is calling a satisfaction survey uh and ways that you look at that data in justos to one another to help you understand some different things and so I think that both

120both are important I mean if we did a an end of the year employee we'll call whatever you want satisfaction Service employee survey and we get those at the in June and we analyze them or whatever and we can start to implement those things for maybe the next school year yeah it just all comes with that same difficulties related to how do you do something like that and make the survey takers feel comfortable answering the questions I in no way shap of one did I think this was going to be yeah no no and and it's one of the reasons why you know talking about a p and how would we time something and and you know if we looked at starting something in the fall for the you know kind of exit retention survey

121process would that give us more time between now and then to implement an additional process for evaluating you know whether it be satisfaction or just you know the state of our district kind of encapsulating that but what would be involved in it um you know at a certain point if it's we could get what we want more easily if we found $6,000 to hire an outside company to just send out something we created and gather the data and report back to us is that money that we could find is that money that we could get Terry to worker magic and find a grant for us for I don't know um she's like don't ask me to find another Grant um but it's it's absolutely something that we had a lot of discussions about and want

122to keep engaging in I think we asked everybody help with the uh anonymity of the whole process too because now you're not just looking at 24 people you're looking at 650 people yes but in order for the data to be actionable what do you need to know because if you ask somebody you know how do you feel about your your um work Community you know your the the community of the building you're in well if you get responses from here to here and you can't say well we can narrow it down we can put steps in place because we can see a trend in One Direction or in a department or something like that that's where you start to come into the HR department's very helpful because they can look for Trends and look at

123data with more specifics gathered that don't become public and don't break confidence potentiality or don't make the the staff taking the survey feel um like they could be targeted for being truthful and we want everybody to feel safe in answering it um you know I only have the experience of doing things like this through my own employer and it's you know everything's going to be um confidential but sometimes all it takes is somebody quoting somebody and using a phrase and everybody's like oh I know who wrote that because the word choice or you know you see it with punctuation and it's like oh that person puts ellipsis in now I know who wrote that so how do you how do you depersonalize things in such a way that you can get value from the feedback

124and I think that's one of the the questions I have is if you ask everybody a general question and you get a lot of information but you have a wide variety of answers and you can't then call the information down to the level that you need to implement any process changes how valuable is the survey in the first place so we'll see where we can can get to all right anything any other comments questions all right thank you very much for that okay so I'll move on to my last item which is the methodology this is the other requested piece um to develop a methodology for teacher and professional staff retention and so we'll revisit that October calendar we were just talking about in in this case and you have the draft um from the

125the draft box today uh for this um this proposed draft methodology ultimately the first question had to be okay how often are we going to do this and when and I think that an annual presentation of this information um is important I think once a year is good I think more than once a year is probably not likely and I think less than once a year is too far apart so that's how I came up at one year um and then we had to decide when there is a cycle to I mean we're it's year round in terms of hiring and exits in our system but there is a cycle to the bulk of the moves because of our school calendar um and so most of those hires occur in late spring and through the

126summer months so I selected October I'm certainly open to feedback about that September is a big month for opening school you're focused on a lot of different things by October you're you're not you're not settled anymore you're not settling and that would be the perfect time that wave has sort of now passed um where you can really take a look at this information so so what could we collect and share and you know reasonably go into with detail um so I came up with categories the first would be just total staff exits how many employees left our system in a given year and then break that down into categories because I think that's important are we talking about administrators Administrative Assistant um Educators which is a large category um paraprofessionals therapeutic assistants Food Service employees

127custodial staff specialized transport you I think it's important to know who we're talking about when we're looking at um total numbers next in general categories who in general categories General it wouldn't be spe it wouldn't be specific but there are many categories of employees so I think you have to kind of give some information there um total retirements not broken down by category so just you know if 10 people leave and three of them were retirees I think that's valuable information unfortunately same with deaths I'm sad to say that does happen sometimes so I think you have to understand understand that piece um total internal promotions and job changes this is one of the more misunderstood ones because there can be a vacancy that makes you say h why is there a vacancy Until you

128realize hey that parir of professional became a classroom teacher so there was a vacancy there because we promoted um one it's a good thing to celebrate and two I think that's a number we should pay attention to particularly as you hear about MLA or middle barough Leadership Academy that's a number trend-wise I would want to see increase over time that would be an indicator of hey we're getting we're getting people in our web and we're keeping them here so uh that's why I included that and then the last category would be resignations also broken down into categories and this is where um you have to kind of be thoughtful and I have to be careful about what is shared because this information is you know part of people's employee record so sometimes people move you

129know across the state they move out of state they move somewhere that makes working in their job no longer tenable um that would be one category sometimes people receive external promotions where like you know I've had an administrator leave because I didn't have such an upward position for that particular administrator um so I think that's important to understand hey I left because I got a promotion which means an increase in Pay hopefully and everything else um sometimes you have people that are changing careers entirely uh leaving education and or leaving teaching or the thing that they were doing here for us and then lastly is other and I know that's not a satisfying other but there kind of has to be an other because there's always other reasons that I don't know that is it's

130something I can always disclose but I think it would be an important number to capture how many are in that other category and then finally I I want to look at um previous year's data and this is where it gets tricky if we begin this in October of 25 you're not I'm not going to have this necessarily broken down by this degree but I still think I can present some of that whatever I have I can present from previous years but this year kind of becomes year one all I was trying to point out in this metric is this should be something you Revis it each year and then you compare it um in years to come so that you're looking again at those Trends are we seeing those promotion numbers go up um are

131we seeing a spike in retirement are we you know what I mean whatever whatever the trend is I I think it's more beneficial to see that over time so that's really the presentation of um of this of this methodology but if you have any questions or feedback let me know just one that I thought of this afternoon after I after I looked at this I'm sorry I didn't say it to you earlier uh on the resignations yeah um other than through the exit survey you're not going to know for sure why they left and so it's not going to the sum is not going to equal the total number so I think you just have to stay with resignations on this report sure to be to be informed by the other report because you're not

132going to necessarily know uh and the other was that I think it might be um helpful to uh in this report to continue to report the states one so that we are comparing ourselves to other other districts um I and I know that the methodology is different and so it won't be exactly the same number but um it does give us kind of a okay everybody else went down and so did we or no everybody else went down and we went up isn't that great um but it just gives you something to compare to it's also I think helpful because it's what other people can get access to so to know what the perception could be versus the data that we're able to collect y yes so so we had uh early earlier this meeting

133uh during public comment an educator who was not happy um and left for dissatisfaction purposes reasons she made I think she made that very clear um and yet I see moves external promotions career change and then other and so my question is is there another category to add for that if we call it you know District dissatisfaction or something something that makes it General something if you look at the survey that we've proposed there are many more categories that we've Incorporated and the approach that we wanted to take was to ask the participants to choose a primary but then have the an ability to go and say what were there any other factors and so that we could have a better sense of is it you know everything other you know down to the culture

134of the community the culture of the the um team that kind of thing so we are hoping that if we can formalize the process that we will be able to capture those feelings through the survey and have more of that information it's just one of those things that until we get to the point of executing the survey uh Carolyn isn't going to have that information for something she could present to us this October but moving forward yes it would be it would be the goal is to to get that information and I noticed that that was part you know and I and I love that piece um that's in here and I'm seeing multiple opportunities to do it um I just want to make sure that that because it's obviously being collected I just want

135to make sure that we're able to share that information in a way that doesn't trample on anyone's toes and doesn't you know so thank you appreciate that any other questions so well I'm going to revise this and send it out again probably not by tomorrow's fles but will do it very shortly so um with that I'll uh actually that's later in the meeting um there was I think I had one other item on my report which was the reads board of directors yep and that's this form I currently serve as the vice president of the board of directors um for the reads collaborative and you in order to have me continue in that role the committee does need to vote on my post the Reeds collaborative is here in Middleboro I've served on the board

136for the last three years and prior to that was the um president of the special ed administrators um Association as well so I turn it over to you chair entertain a motion to uh grant me uh allow me to sign the uh so moved Caroline to the board of directors at Reeds so moved second motion a second any comment questions all in favor I oppos passes unanimously and that completes my report for this evening thank you I was that for government efficiency speaking of government efficiency the next item on the agenda well first we're going to talk about the annual Town ele that's what I mean yeah yeah on Saturday April 5th um the opportunity to vote uh hopefully we get more than 10% of turnout but uh if you're not going to vote hey

137that just gives more Credence to everybody else's vote so don't blame the people who vote for your dissatisfaction and people who don't vote because you're the ones who give us all the power um polls are open from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. thank you it is uh for those of you who never know when you walk into certain precincts if you're seven or 7A or five or 5A it doesn't matter at this election because there is no uh no question on that depends on your your uh districting to vote on so makes it a little easier for some people so and you can also go and vote at the clerk's office now which I I did because I'm going to be away so uh lot of opportunities yep in case anybody's wondering next year it's

138going to be the first Saturday in April as well and the year after that yeah so I hope it doesn't sneak up on you oh and uh I want to wish Chris good luck yep that was my next thing as well all right uh subcommittee policy uh subcommittee updates yes um so just to start off with last time we talked about three things um because of the schedule of the meetings for negotiations committee we did not have the ability to regroup as a subcommittee and relook at the communication guideline um so we took that off the agenda today so that we could um address some of the questions as you wanted to go through and we'll bring it back to you hopefully soon it just kind of depends on schedule and um but we will

139not uh be leaving off that uh project and uh we're also in a probably at that meeting we'll be able to talk about the uh late night and overnight travel uh policy and get that moved forward again so we can clarify for everybody when trips need school committee approval and when they do not to make it just a little more efficient um and as mentioned last time next up are all of the donations gift giving um crowd sourcing policies will be will be up and all of the cross reference policies that come along with them so um in terms of what is on the agenda for today the first um is the policy for uh lovingly categorizes bdb for school committee officers as mentioned at the last meeting uh most of what was um incorporated

140into the changes um were focused on looking at adding a kind of a clause related to to unforced circumstances and time sensitive approvals of routine items so that would be again those potential for school trips looking at the school trips of the hey if somebody wins some competition and there's a trip that they might be able to go on the next week but it's going to require some late night travel because of how far away it is it'd be nice if we had a way to make sure that it could get approved um and not have a Time issue with um when the meetings occur and are students missing out on an opportunity um and um with that being said that is the the Crux of what was added everything else was mostly just a

141cleanup of some outdated language so this is an opportunity if anybody had any questions about what was posted consider it the the second read we do have one more with the hope that at the next one we can clean up any last things and vote on adoption of the policy any any comments questions all right all right the next policy is JJ which is the student fundraising again um we did not make uh a significant number of changes to this um well no this one we made a significant number of changes to our existing policy uh because it was like I no out of date 12 years out of date maybe um but um in general fundraising activities do not need to come to the school committee we would like them to be informed so

142that we can be uh aware of what's happening in the district and congratulate everybody on the wonderful initiatives that they do and the work that they do to help support the students in this District um the change that we made from the model masc policy is just to be a little more clear on what type of activities we're talking about um and making note um I know um superintendent Lions you were going to review things with um our athletic director as well to make sure that we weren't having any issues with um our groups such as the boosters um but in general the thought is if students are involved in raising the funds we want to make sure at least the building principles and the superintendent approve the fundraiser if it's a fundraiser that students

143can volunteer at and support that's a different process because that's a a personal decision um so in general buck stops at superintendent and that should expedite our fundraising process uh grief um any comments questions just to check in did you have any concerns with the um no well so I met with uh athletic director Sylvia this this week gave him the entire copy because I think it's important that he read the whole context we did talk a little bit about substantively I don't I don't foresee any issues but I just wanted to give him time he's actually at a conference so I can shoot him a text okay either tonight or tomorrow to just say hey if you could you know give us a little feedback if you have it but I think generally he

144was in favor of it and he also expressed his thanks for Consulting with them great so we may then propose adding in the statement that says fundraising activities that include student that involve students including PTA and booster group fundraisers shall be submitted to both the building principal and superintendent for approval just so that there's Equity between those outside groups that work so diligently to help raise funds but again if the boosters are going to sell concessions uh sell the the Athletic Apparel that kind of thing that's a different story The the wonderful golf event that they do that's doesn't have to go through the district um or through the superintendent for approval um it's only if they want to have the students sell those gold cards and that kind of thing that we would need

145to to review so all right I will make that change contingent upon um director Sylvia having a chance to come back and confirm canning no canning no canning no canning yes no canning either but that's a different policy from a long time ago I'm glad you said canning I thought you were saying candy would have been opposition I just didn't know what it was but that's all right U I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented so moved second have a motion to Second any comments or questions I'll read them we have a uh fundraiser for hbb elementary school PTA after school club for the penny wars April 14th through the 18th and we have a fundraiser at the John T Nichols Middle School PTA roller skating on May 4th I

146have a motion and a second any comments questions all in favor I I opposed say unanimously and the approval of warrants uh with that entertain a motion to adjourn so move second have a motion to Second any comments questions no just again thank you Marcy for your time served uh we did that it was approved y with that we are adjourned thank you thank you