001The Citrate School Committee is committed to providing an environment of respect during meetings. We ask all members to interact in a polite manner even when there is disagreement. We value the participation of our community and want all participants, including marginalized and minoritized communities to feel welcomed and respected. We ask our committee members and all who participate to commit to these standards to support and respect our community. I'll call the March 16th, 2026 Situate School Committee meeting to order tonight at 6:01 p.m. >> Um, before we begin, I wanted to make a motion to reorder one of the items on our agenda. Um, I would like to make a motion to move the new school naming discussion to after public comment. Okay. Okay. So, Miss Fenwick makes a motion to separate the discussion, new school naming
002discussion out and have an update, then have public comment, and then have the discussion after that before our student report. So, that's the motion. Do we have a second? >> Second by Miss Limbong. All in favor? >> I Okay. All right. So we will begin tonight with a statement uh new school maybe. So we have an update on redistricting. I some accompanying slides for the update. Right. I I would like to take this opportunity to publicly share an update on the redistricting process. First, I would like to say that no decisions have been made. There is still time for input and feedback. Also, we intentionally gave this process an 18month runway to be thoughtful and transparent throughout and to be able to scaffold the transition for students, families, and staff. As you may recall, this
003process has been in the works for nearly 10 years, beginning with a facility study in 2017 to analyze our aging elementary buildings. From there it was determined that both Cushing and Havenly schools being nearly identical footprints had reached their usefulness and we submitted a statement of interest to the MSBA in 2019 and were selected in 2020. Since that time, in addition to monthly school building meetings, which are all open to the public, as well as regular updates at school committee meetings, the DIS, excuse me, the district has held eight public information sessions both in person and via Zoom, detailing the project in process and progress. We have consistently shared the MSBA's formula which they use to evaluate the capacity of our four current elementary buildings to determine the space and enrollment capacity for our new
004building. The MSBA set the new building capacity at 460 students with over 368 students at Cushing and 250 students at Hadley totaling 618 students. We have always known and transparently discussed that we will need to redistrict We have ample space at Watuck and Jenkins schools for more elementary students to accommodate this need as MSBA determined. Just to be very clear, I would like to state at no point was it ever stated that any student was guaranteed a spot at the new school or that grade 5 SHs class of 2035 Cushing students would be kept together. Cushing and Hatherly schools are both closing and the buildings are being consolidated from a district perspective in terms of resources. The Cushing Hatherly project has always been a working title for the design and construction process and has never
005signified a merger of the two existing school communities. Hence tonight's discussion on the naming of the new building. Redistricting students is also a component of this work. The publicly shared guiding principles for redistricting have always been one ensuring an inclusive process. We have held two public meetings so far in person and via Zoom with public input via two surveys available on a dedicated website for anyone to access. Two, minimizing social emotional impact on children. 18month runway with district leadership team and team as well as our new SEA director. Every elementary school is currently working with their school council which includes includes principles, teachers, and caregivers elected by their peers to draft a school improvement plan goal focused on redistricting supports at their school over the coming year. Plus, we already have strong models to learn
006from both in the transition planning that already occurs when we bring students together for sixth grade and from past experiences of redistricting in town from which we can learn. Three, keeping families and neighborhoods together. The initial survey asked specifically for feedback on planning blocks created to facilitate redistricting so that neighborhoods would be zoned in cohesive blocks that make sense to the people who live in them. These planning blocks form the basis for the draft plans that have been shared back with the community and are still able to be edited with community feedback. Four, communication. As stated above, we have held a number of public meetings throughout the entire school building process and engaged the community throughout the visioning and design of the building. The particulars of the building itself, information sessions prior to the townwide
007vote on the project and ongoing public meetings since. Redistricting itself, as mentioned, has included two public sessions, two open surveys thus far, and as noted at the top of my remarks, will be slowed down to allow for additional opportunities for feedback, which I will detail shortly. I'm happy to share that our project is $14 million under budget and on schedule, which has led us to confidently be able to begin an inclusive redistricting plan as prioritized and discussed back in 2023. We held our initial public information session in December 2025 in which five priorities were established to guide this work which connect directly back to the original established 2023 guiding principles. One, balancing enrollment across all three schools with approximately 20 students per classroom. Two, keeping students close to home. Three, minimizing the number of students
008who need to move from their existing school. Four, maintaining contigious intact neighborhoods. Five, facilitating efficient transportation in reasonable bus times. Following the most recent public info session during which two plans were shared with the community for review and feedback, the internal planning team has received thoughtful input from stakeholders. It is very important to the school committee and the district not only to collect feedback but to truly listen. While we understand that not every outcome will meet every individual preference, our goal is to arrive at a plan that best serves the long-term needs of our students, families, and situ. In essence, our goal is and always to do the very best we can for all stakeholders, recognizing that no plan will make everyone happy. When we see that there are ways to make improvements that align
009with our priorities and stand to positively impact many people, we must always seek to do so whenever possible. The school committee has directed Crocker GIS to craft an options rate based on feedback from the community. This new version will be made available on the Situate Redistricting website and shared via email as soon as it is ready. There will also be an opportunity to discuss it and ask questions on Monday, April 6th at 6 PM in the Gates Learning Common. A third survey will open afterwards to gather feedback on this new option. And we anticipate that the consultant will make a final draft recommendation at our meeting on April 27th. We anticipate voting as a committee to finalize the plan on May 18th. Thank you. Okay. And secondary to that, a quick new school naming update.
010Just the first half. Um, in addition to the second survey on redistricting, our new school naming public opinion survey closed on March 9th. In terms of the procedural component of that naming of the new school, we would like to share the following. Due to some school committee member travel, we will no longer be voting on a name on March 30th and instead we'll push that vote to April 27th. And tonight we'll discuss the process we have followed thus far, share survey results, and allow school committee members to discuss the finalist names together for the first time. So, we will not be voting any of that tonight. We will hold off and we're going to again go slow with that process, too. Uh we would like to now take public comment. We are going to follow
011our policy for public comment. uh please keep try to stay to three minutes assuming that we have multiple people that would like to speak tonight. I always like to invite our students to speak first. If any students are present would like to come to the microphone um you can state your name and your school or adults name and school affiliation. If anyone would like to come up Mr. is here to assist. >> Hi, my name is Ava Schelberg. I'm a senior at Stitch High School and I went to Cushing for Part of Elementary School. I made really great memories at the school and I met friends that I've kept throughout my entire education. Although I was initially sad to hear that cushion was being taken down, I'm really excited for the possibilities a new building
012has, especially with the need. Throughout my entire education in Situit, I've been influenced by so many amazing women that have inspired me to pursue my interests and continually believe that I have the potential to succeed. It's with these women in mind that I'm here speaking on behalf of the name Irwin Elementary after Anes Haynes Irwin. Anz Haynes Irwin was a pioneer of young women going to college and getting involved in civics, whether it be locally or on the national level. She contributed to nationwide initiatives alongside the National Women's Party and with her organization, the College Equal Suffrage League. And even here in Situit, she was fostering a community based on encouraging the voices of those who are often silenced. in her books, especially the Maria books, she used Situate as the setting for stories that
013uplifted children and advocated for friendship, empathy, and independence. Um, and then my mom sitting over there got me she got me two copies of Anz Hin's books. And something I thought was just really special about them is that both of them have a map of situ, which I thought was really cool. Um, but then they also both have inscriptions between young girls as like gift messages. Um, the first one reads, "To Mary from your friend Lorie, July 29th, 1954." That one. Um, and then this one reads, "Happy birthday to Eileen on her 9th birthday, April 25th, 1944, which is day after mine. Um, from Pam." And I just thought that those were so special because I think the fact that they're both kind of gift inscriptions of friendship says so much about what Anz Haynes
014or Anes Hayes Irwin's writing meant and kind of the culture that she was building and the friendships that she kind of facilitated between young children. I thought this was really cool. Um but to me Hayes Irwin is so admirable because she has such a clear connection to this town and it history of leaders in education. Although some people might not immediately recognize her name, they know and live her impact every day. When I get to go to school or when I get involved with civic activities, I'm living the legacy of not only Irwin but also every woman who has dedicated their lives to making change. In a few weeks, I'll be going to advocacy day at the state house for the third year in a row. there. I will advocate alongside the Massachusetts chapter of
015the National Organization for Women for the I am bill which would provide free menstrual products in public facilities such as homeless shelters or schools in Massachusetts. I was able to watch this bill passed unanimously in the Senate in October and I can confidently say that I would not have been able to have done that or had a place in that room without the work of Anes Haynes Irwin. I feel deeply inspired by Irwin in the sense that she believed in any woman's ability to make change through getting an education. I see her values and her impact every day when I sit in Miss Winger's AP government class or learn about rhetorical analysis with Miss Hall. I see how women have been at the forefront of this town's education for decades. And I see an amazing
016opportunity now to show thanks. As I take trips to the capital, lobby legislators, or open my college decision letters, I think of all the women who have helped me get to this point. I think of every woman who taught me in elementary school who built the foundation of my knowledge. I think of my mother who has shown unwavering enthusiasm and support for the name Irwin Elementary. And I think of the Nes Irwin who lived in this town and did what she did so that I could be speaking here today. I don't think I can say thank you to any of these women enough. And I am endlessly grateful for the work that they've done, especially Irwin and her contributions to the community we have in such. I truly believe there is a need to commemorate
017the women who have made education in this town what it is. Yet even without naming a building or street after her, Anes Hans Irwin's legacy will always be her. Her work and her life will always be reflected in the women and girls in situate who harness the opportunities they have and use their education to continue making change. I'm extremely excited that the school committee has shown so much interest in a nice Irwin and I truly hope they continue to consider Irwin Elementary as a potential name for the new school. >> Thank you. Hi. Um, my name is Naomi Summer. I just want to thank the school board for letting me speak tonight. So, >> speak louder, please. We can't hear anything. >> I'm a junior at Sichua High School and I'm the student who proposed
018the name Venus Manning for the new elementary school. First and foremost, I would like to start off by saying how grateful I am for this opportunity working with other students like Ava. um the historical society and teachers has been such an eye-opening experience and I am so glad that I not only get to learn more about our town but help others learn more as well. In AP Lang, we recently learned how impactful speech can be compared to just a paragraph. Yes, word choice is so incredibly important in any piece of writing, but it's how you say it in the tone you use that says so much more than the email ever could. Venus Manning was born into slavery in 1777 and became one of the richest single women in situit at the time of her
019death. Despite being taxed at a higher rate due to her skin color, she was financially literate, a skill only few people had. Manning made countless donations to the Baptist Missionary Society as well as the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, both of which she was a member of. After her death, she left $400, which is equivalent to $15,000 today in her will to the Methodist Society of South Situit in Boston's Baldwin Place Baptist Church to promote the cause of abolition of slavery in these United States. Because Manning was able to read, write, and was financially literate, she set the stage for other African-American women hoping to fulfill the same things. She showed people that it's possible to achieve the seemingly impossible, especially during a time when this was abnormal. When Judge Cushing ruled slavery unconstitutional in the 1783
020Walker case, he allowed Manning and other slaves in Massachusetts to pursue their dreams and passions. Manning saw this opportunity and used it to fight for the rights of slaves all across America. Not only proclaiming herself as an abolitionist, but proving herself to be one through her actions and her legacy. Even if just one person walks out of here today knowing a little bit more about our town's history and who Venus Manning was, I will be so proud that I am able to continue her legacy and teach others her message. As I end my remark, let's remember the power of our words. Just as Venus Just as Venus Manning's action spoke volumes, our words and Facebook comments should too. Thank you. have a virtual hand raise and then we'll go to someone else in person. Miss
021Wro, you can unmute. You are unmuted. >> Hi, good evening. Lori Wro, 62 and Vinyl Road, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. I want to address the process used to generate the names for the new elementary school. My concern is not about any specific name. It is about whether the process truly reflected the community it is meant to represent. At the most important stage, deciding which names would even be considered. Residents were not invited to submit suggestions. Instead, the initial ideas came from a task force and a limited group of students from certain high school history classes only. That meant most residents, most parents, and even most students had no opportunity to participate in shaping the options from the start. By the time the broader community was asked for feedback, the list had
022already been narrowed to just a few choices. At that point, the public was not helping shape the process. It was simply reacting to decisions that had already been made. The lack of published agendas and minutes makes community members question transparency of how decisions were made and by whom. Whether there was deliberation done behind the scenes and not an open meeting as required by law. A new elementary school will will represent this town for generations. Decisions of that importance should begin with the widest possible participation. Because a school name is not just a label. It is part of our shared identity as a community. When participation is limited at the beginning, it can leave people feeling that the outcome was predetermined whether that was the intention or not. That is why transparency and broad inclusion matter
023so much in decisions like this. My hope is that in the future when the town faces decision decisions of this magnitude, the process begins with the entire community. Situit is strongest when its residents feel they are part of the decision, not just observers of it. Thank you for your time and as you know, I do appreciate all you do for Situit. And one last thing, as a first row person who's been watching the building of the building right in my backyard, I just wanted to give a shout out to the builders who have been unbelievably hardworking at 700 a.m. in when you say it snow and wind and rain and all the things in the blizzard. They were there at 700 a.m. no matter what. So, I just want to give a shout out to
024all of you who had a part in choosing this corporation that is doing the work because they are unbelievable work ethic. So, thank you so much. >> All right. >> Good evening. Joseph Given, 223 Ganon Road. I'm a graduate of Situit High School. I went all through Situit schools. I went to Cushing. My three daughters graduated from Hadley School and had uh a very good experience. I have to say I I I I did not want to come up here to have to get involved in this, but when I saw the committee that was formed and the lack of diversity on that committee, I was horrified. I grew up in this town. My brother went to school here. I went to school here. My dad was a principal at the middle school for 25 years.
025And I have to say that the committee lacked diversity. I didn't see veterans on that on on on that committee. I didn't see too many seniors on that committee. I didn't see retired educators on that committee. I don't even know if there was a graduate of Situate High School on that committee. And we had a committee that was dominated by students and teachers. And we all know you're in education. Teachers come and go. Look at the look at the superintendent and the and the high school principles. They come and go left and right. I can't keep track. And I've lived in this town my whole life and and and was education was right in front of me because of my dad and the teach you know teachers for the most part most of them stay
026a long time but the superintendent and the high school principles tend to leave but the elementary principles and the middle school principles seem to stay longer. As evidence we still have Ryan here in a in a different role. Um, but I think the committee just I echo what Lori said. If if you don't have a diverse committee and the process to come up with the three names, if if you're going to have three names and you're omitting people who were leaders in this community, the Sam Tildons who was the director of guidance here, whose family founded this town, um Guido Reesei who was the the first principal at Havly School and I don't even think he was considered to be on to be on the list. We had a wonderful opportunity to in doing this
027to honor prior educators and we're one of the few towns in Massachusetts that don't have a school named after an educator. Cohassid has Joseph Ogood. Rockland has the John Rogers school. It's all over the place. And we don't have a school named after a former educator. I think that's poor. >> Jackie Jenkins. Jenkins. >> Jenkins. Jenkins was the family. The family owned that land and they donated it to the town. And I think if we had people on the committee that Please don't roll your eyes at me, Nicole. I'm a taxpayer. I' I've lived in this town my whole life and I don't appreciate that. We had people Jed Fitzgerald that taught the history of Situit at Situit High School who was a graduate of Situit High School. My father wrote his letter of recommendation
028to Harvard University and he taught the history of Situit here. These are people their names should have at least come up in this process and they did not. Uh lastly, I I don't want to take up any any else's time, but I think this committee needs to be reformed and we need to cast a wide a much wider net at the beginning, okay? And not bring the the public in at the end at the 11th hour when three choices have have already been made. And I'm going to back up what Lori Wro said. I'm very disappointed in in the process of this committee. >> Thank you. >> Good evening. I am going to switch gears for a moment in the renaming and talk about something a little different. Um, good evening chair, members of the
029school committee. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Crystal Hoffman. I am for 205 country. I am a parent of a >> mic closer to the microphone. >> Just hold the mic. >> Is this better? >> Okay. >> Hi, I'm Crystal Hoffman and I am a parent um of a current third grader at Cushing School and I also have an older and a younger student in the district. Um, I would like to say in regards to the new elementary school and upcoming redistricting, I'm here to respectfully ask that the committee consider keeping together the current third grade cohort through their fifth grade year in the 20 2027 2028 school year. Um during discussions about the new school project, the previous super in superintendent indicated on multiple occasions again indicated
030that the students who would be entering fifth grade during the transition would likely be grandfathered in so that their cohort could remain together. For many families, that understanding mattered. Um, in fact, for some of us, that indication helped inform and influence our support for the new school project. Um, there was also a precedent for providing families with flexibility during a redistricting transition when Jenkins was open close to 20 years ago. Um, redistriced fifth grade families were given an option to either remain with their class at their current school or attend Jenkins. we would simply ask that families today would be given a similar option. Um, finally, fifth grade is already a year of preparation for the transition to middle school, separating a cohort of students who have spent years learning and growing together to divide
031them amongst three schools. just one year before that transition can create unnecessary social and emotional disruption during what is already such a critical stage of their development. I understand that these decisions involve many logistical considerations and I appreciate the thoughtful work that goes into that. Um I respectfully ask that you consider both the expectations that were communicated to families and the well-being of the students affected. Um, thank you for your time and continued commitment to our students and community. >> Madam Chair, can I make a comment on fifth grade class? Yeah. because this has come up a couple of times and I actually received some letters from some third current third graders who will be in fifth grade in two years and I've given a lot of thought to the class of 2035 and what
032might be done um with the understanding that it's very complicated and what I'd like to do to be perfectly honest is separate those considerations from the redistricting. The redistricting decision is a 20 30year decision. Those decisions about how we organize the town, how we move students around to the three buildings are decisions that are going to have impacts for the next 20, 30 years. I recognize that and I think it's independent of what we might be able to do with the class of 2035 where the students will be in fifth grade. So, what I would recommend is the committee make its decision on May 18th, as you indicated earlier, for the redistricting process, and then I'll hold a separate meeting with the class of 2035 parents in late May or June. Once I have the
033list, I'll know exactly who's moving where. I'll know exactly what students are impacted. Um, we can do all of our data analysis right down to the student level, and I'll be able to know at that point what we might be able to consider. not making any promises, but I'm willing to consider what might be able to be done, listening to all the feedback. So, I just think separating the two issues helps um because they're very different. You know, issues with the fifth grade is very different than a long-term redistricting plan. And I recognize the sensitivity around both. So, if that helps. >> Hi there. Excuse me. My name is Suzanne Brooks. Um, I want to thank the school committee, uh, interim superintendent Rob, Assistant Superintendent Lynch. Um, um, I'm Suzanne Brooks, as I said, a
034mom to a current third grader, um, a first grader, and a nursery school age son who's really looking forward to go to Sichuan public schools. He tries to get on the bus from like age one and a half. So, he's excited. Um, so, thank you for reading and responding to all of our emails. I know that you have had a lot to sort through since that last meeting and I really do appreciate it. Um, and I want to thank you also, Dr. Rob, um, for what you just said about the fifth grade class. I think that that um, that is wonderful to hear. Um, and it is one of the main reasons that I'm here today. Um, although it is not the only reason that I'm here today. Um, um, I'm here to speak about
035the maps a little bit. Um, and I'm pretty disappointed in the current maps um, and the redistricting options as they stand. Um, while Mr. Craropper has spent time in our town during the redistricting process, he doesn't live here. He doesn't understand the nuances of our neighborhoods, our natural boundary lines within the town, and he also doesn't understand which streets are dangerous. Of course, he understands the big ones, but there are a lot of other side streets that are incredibly dangerous. Um, and you know, you wouldn't know that unless you lived here. Um, we as parents know this. Um, a few examples are splitting up First Parish Road, um, one side of the other. Um, sending our kids down Beaver Dam all the way from the West End to Hatherly School left on Tilden, and then
036moving pockets of Jenkins students specifically off of 3A. Um, I'm really glad to hear that there's going to be a third option that he's going to be presenting. So, that gives me a lot of hope. Um, I campaigned, I held signs, donated a lot of money for this new consolidated Cushing Heatherly school. I voted for a new school with Cushing and Heatherly students. Um, Cushing is a wonderful place with wonderful educators and it's very sad to see our community getting split into three. Um, I ask again that you find a way to keep this current good class together. Uh, please continue to work to make this right, to keep your promises on the new school as it was sold to so many of us. and I look forward to seeing the changes that you make
037reflecting um feedback from all of our community. Thank you. >> Hi, I'm Lisa O'Reilly. Um I have two children graduated from Situ Public School and I was the Hadley School nurse for 11 years. I'm here tonight about the renaming of the school. Um to follow up on what Lori had said, some of it deals with the transparency. Um so I'm here tonight as a member of the community with a few questions about the survey. First, no member other than the school district received the survey. I had found out about it from other people. I then went up to the town hall to ask them if it would be being sent out to the community and they knew nothing about it. That was on the 5th. This survey ended on the 9th. Um, I then went
038and looked back and looked at the school committee meetings and the weekly updates to see if there were any information about it that I had missed. There was one mention of the task force on September the 2nd and on se on March the 9th the survey was mentioned. That was the night it closed. There was nothing else that the public could have seen other than if you were in the schools. Um, I had voted for the Hadley school states uh extension, but on the actual ballot, it calls the school the Cushing Hadley Elementary School. That's also what I thought I was voting for. In 2016, when Gates was being opened, they had proposed to change the name of Gates. Larry Gates wrote an open letter to the community at that time asking us to please
039write to school committee and superintendent McCarthy. The name was then kept because she also noted Jenkins and Havly when rebuilt kept their names. We were all under the impression that that was what we were about we were voting for a new school the Cushing Hadley Elementary. Um, at this time I'm asking you to listen to the community and your constituents who voted for this and to please keep the name is the Havly Cushing Elementary. This is part of his situ. If not the Havly name is very important in this town. Judge Cushing's name is very important to the town but also to the state of Massachusetts. I think that they deserve the respect that they got and it should stay. Hi, my name is Lily. Um, I actually just moved to situ a few years
040ago and I have a 2-year-old now, so he'll be starting a school, right? That changed everything. I want to start off by saying I know it's an incredibly difficult decision redistricting. Um, and you're never gonna have a situation where everyone's happy. And I'm really grateful to hear that you're considering re looking at the fifth grade class because I know that that's a really difficult time for a lot of kids. There's a lot of changes in terms of people, you friend groups, all the things. So asking changes, changers in one row. Um, really difficult and I personally want my parents going through that. But I want to touch more on the redistricting itself. I tried to look at this as objectively as possible just because that's typically how mine works. And so with that, before the
041redistricting even came out, I tried to look at the criteria that was put forth. Um criteria that was also kind of put forth again tonight. Balancing enrollment, keeping students close to home, um minimal family impact, minimize or minimal student impact, maintaining neighborhoods and bus routes. Obviously, there are certain areas that aren't going to be available to public such as bus routes and also maintaining neighborhoods. We don't have the numbers of like who lives in what block, so that's going to make it difficult. That said, looking at three of the five that were presented, they weren't optimized on um the minimal number of students impacted 641. If you move or fishing powder fits, it's going to be zero and it's 666 and 664 the current proposed plans. So that already off that kind of I was
042a little confused. Um the capacities in the school is pushing one of the schools to 98.5 regardless of the two current plans. It looks like the goal is to keep the new school at 95%, but there is an option to keep the schools at 95, 96, and 96. Um, so again, didn't really understand hitting on that point. And then in terms of just keeping families distance-wise close to the schools, based on feedback I've seen from other families, including like how my family would be impacted, we're actually at now the furthest school for us. So, I think when looking at this, I understand it's an incredibly difficult decision and I understand that there is information that's not necessarily readily available to the public. Um, but given the criteria that was put out there, it doesn't feel
043like it was actually what was used. So that's kind of my overall confusion and like the timeline of how it was and the minimal ability to ask questions and gain further information and further educate ourselves. Um, and another area that for me is just a little bit hairy is that typically when you have people voting on something, you want to remove any bias. And I think that there's a decent number of people out of the five impacted by this. And I think that that kind of blurs a line of just honesty. Um, so I guess what I would really advocate for would be a little bit more transparency into how these numbers came to be. What is driving this? Like those were the criteria that was set forth. What's driving the inability to optimize on
044any of them when there are plans that can optimize on all of them? um and trying to kind of understand the analysis behind that just because currently it's not hitting the criteria and there are ability there are ways to hit more of it um pretty easily. Thank you. >> I can address some of that just just to be clear and I I'm certainly committed to talking to um Matt Crawford getting a little bit more of the detail of the analysis, but the main driving force really was the 20 students in each classroom. That was the top criteria and we wanted to make sure that we were maximizing 20 or averaging 20 students in all three buildings. We didn't want one building to have 23 and another building to have 17. And so a lot of
045the lines that were drawn really were to make sure that there were 20 in each section in all three buildings. Um so that really was the top criteria. The other thing that made this complicated is we're trying to project out two years. And so we used averages. We used averages of the current class sizes. Tried to project out two years to see we don't know the incoming kindergarten next year which is then going to be first grade. We don't know the incoming kindergarten two years from now exactly. So, we had to use averages um to try to make all of that work. So, those were the two things that from a math perspective helped us out. Um but um certainly I I'll look at it and we'll have a little bit more of information about
046how that came to be at the April 6th meeting. I think we can include that in there and be a little clearer about how some of the metrics were done. Um but at the end of the day, it really came down to class sizes of 20. We really felt that optimizing that at all three schools was important to this change because you know part of it is we were sort of facing redistricting anyway. We were getting to a point here where some of the schools had average class sizes of 16 17 and others were going to go higher. Um and so this sort of is helping that too. So that's part of what we >> helpful right um are you here for your comment? Yes. Um, my name is Dulovich. I live a ride in
047Sigwood and my husband was a longtime superintendent of schools from 1978 until he retired in 2000. Jill, unfortunately, he's deceased. I'm a little late to the game here, but I was contacted by uh Joe Gibbons about the name for the new Havly Cushing School. Uh, and I must admit I was a little bit uh floored by the niche the NICE the niche nature of the two or three names and I do not think that it actually um comports with the uh the the entire town and I think it just does not have a broad appeal. So, I'm wondering whether or not uh I am able to make some kind of a motion to uh form a new committee made up of different uh residents from the um categories that Mr. Gibbons mentioned. For example, uh
048educators, veterans, seniors, students, teachers, etc. to see if we can't find a name that has a broader appeal to the entire community. Uh is it too late for this type of motion? I don't know how this uh I'm not exactly knowledgeable on the rules of uh Robert's orders. I have a busy law practice. I'm not actually attuned to the school. My kids went through Situa public schools from the first grade through high school. They did very well. They all they both have several graduate degrees. So I'm a f I'm very fond of the Situ public schools, but just a little bit out of the loop this time. So, can someone address that? Whether it is appropriate to make a motion to form a new committee, whether it's too late to do that? We have anybody
049who is up on the >> We don't normally take questions during public comment. >> Okay. So, how would I go about doing this? Would I have to submit something official to the committee? It would be we wouldn't typically that would be counteracted to the school committee's policy on >> I understand when is the uh decision going to be made as to the the name of the school >> I don't think we set a date for voting or anything like that we're just beginning the discussion on this >> okay >> so how does the discussion proceed it proceed through the next >> we're about to talk about it a little bit further in our meeting today. >> Okay. Very good. Okay. Thank you. And I understand that I'm not the only one here who has these
050concerns. >> Absolutely. We're happy that you're here to to discuss. >> Okay. >> This is this is the input. This is the public input piece. This is the feedback, the surveys. This is us gathering. We didn't want to just name a building. We didn't want to just >> send a letter as saying your kids go into this school now. We want input. We want >> Good. Okay. So, you're getting input today. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. We appreciate everyone being here. >> Okay, we are I think we're gonna wrap. You You want to be our last public commenter? >> We have a long agenda. >> Uh yeah, Randy Scott, 25 Bossy Lane, parent of a current Cushing third grader. Um I guess there's a couple bullet point items. One, I would implore the committee
051to make sure the communication on the next meeting is as vast and as broad as possible. I think we were somewhat surprised at how few people impacted by the redistricting were aware that they were going to be impacted by the redistricting. Even the meeting that we had a couple weeks ago, not that many people attended because they didn't know it was impacting them. I mean, Jenkins and Watuk had very little idea that this was impacting them. So, we have the electrical signs on the street for the the shuttles for the the um the heritage days. We have the signs in the yard for taxes are due. All of that. I would just implore any possible way to reach out to the community and make sure as many people know as possible. I would implore you
052all to do that. I know Dr. Rob had addressed my wife had reached out about uh minutes for the planning committee. It seems like those have not been posted despite several meetings. I think that's another way that the community would have been more informed about what's going on with this redistricting, but we could not find those anywhere. I know Dr. Rob, you have addressed that and I appreciate your comments on that, but again, just more communication to the town because I do feel there's a big number of people that don't even know they're being impacted by this. Um, last thing I'll just say real quick, I wasn't even planning on talking about this. I just want to highlight with the naming thing, I didn't I wasn't really invested in the naming. I do want to
053point out that the students who contributed to that did a great job and and whatever criticism that got to that point, sure, but once there, I think the students did a good job, they should be commended for their efforts. Wherever we go from here, however we got there doesn't matter. They were assigned a task and I think they did a good job. For all the negative comments that have been received today, I think at at least they should be acknowledged for the work they did, too. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Dr. Rob. You want to clarify that? >> Absolutely. I can address some of the concerns. So, I did receive the email and I have the request for the public records. So, I will be responding to that. Um, certainly we received that Friday
054>> for those meetings. You just need time. >> I'm just pulling together the emails that were requested. So, um, I have some time for that public records request. >> Um, but I will say in general, the idea of internal planning team is just that. So, it's an opportunity to sit down with the consultant, have some conversations in anticipation of a public meeting. So, we knew all along that we were preparing for a public meeting that we would put out there um in a public meeting and then look for options and then just like tonight based on the feedback for, you know, the request now for a third option. We're going to bring that back. We'll have a meeting. We'll talk to him about that and then he's going to come up with other options for
055us, another option for us. So, um but I am going to respond to the public records request that he's trying to pull off. All right. I just know everyone's gonna stick around for Megan Gregory's humanities curriculum update. We are in fact a public school and the very main focus in addition to building a new school and making sure all children are happy and supported and social emotionally sound is that we educate our students and so that they leave Situit with the best opportunities they can get. That's the main thing that we do. All this other stuff, we will work it out together. We promise you, we're all on the same team at the end of the day. No matter what the school is named, what goes on inside the buildings, but the greatest teachers in
056Massachusetts that we have here, that's what our main focus is. We will we will get this done. All right. So, our speaking of, we have an awesome student here from the high school who's been patient. He's going to share our student report. Um, so we're definitely switching gears now, but um I think we can congratulate our hockey teams here um at the high school. Both boys and girls made it to the Elite 8, which is an awesome update um and definitely a progression for both teams, which is um awesome and exciting to see. Along with this, the cheer team placed second in their regional competition, which once again is just a great representation of Situ as a whole um in the sports department. >> Yeah. Um, I don't know if anyone had the chance to
057make it to the high school play, uh, but they played Pippen on March 6th, 7th, and 8th. Uh, it was a really great performance and I'm glad I was able to go. So, it was a really great show. >> Um, also, the high school and Gates ran all chorus night on this past Wednesday on the 11th, which is exciting. Um, last week we had a number of students take the ASVAB, uh, which stands for the Armed Services Vocational Assessment Battery, uh, assessment, uh, which is sponsored by the Department of Defense. When students receive their results, they'll be able to explore careers in the context of their skills and interests, um, understand all their options, and to plan for the path of their choice, which is kind of another cool thing students are able to do.
058Um, also the robotics team competed in reading this past weekend. Um, and they just keep progressing with their projects which is exciting to see and hear from from our peers which I feel like we get a lot of in class hearing them talk about it which is a new perspective which is exciting. Um, along with this DECA states happened um this past weekend which was exciting for all those who participated. I know we had a few that qualified um for that weekend. Um the situ scholarships uh scholarship applications are available to graduating seniors. Uh the information is on the SHS website. Um and the deadline was extended to March 27th at 300 PM um to accommodate for the recent storm. Um, and then school counselors have also been meeting with current juniors to help uh
059with their postsecary plans uh mostly using score getting everyone set up with that. >> Thank you guys. >> All right, so now we're going to do our new school naming discussion. you carry you lead our discussion. Okay, you can go to the next video. Yep. So, I've been asked by Nicole and Maria to take us through the data from the survey. Um, as Nicole has mentioned, this is a discussion tonight. We're not making a decision. I think you said May, did he? He said May. >> May. So, we're still again taking taking input. I want to echo what Mr. Scott said. Um, I just I'm so proud to be a part of this community that has amazing students like the two that we heard from tonight. Um, it just it's very heartening. I spent most
060of my weekend in this data and as you'll see, I want to warn the students. Um, there are some hard comments to read. Um, and so it was it made me feel really good to hear both of you speak. So, I'm very grateful that you came tonight and took time out of your busy schedules. So, the way we're going to do this is we're going to remind everybody of the naming process. I know Maria, you took us through it, I think, at our last meeting. Yeah. Then I'm going to talk really briefly about the goals and caveats of this survey. Um then just a real brief on the characteristics and then I'm going to quickly take you to the through the quantitative results and then we're going to spend most of our time in the
061qual the qualitative results. And the way I've organized the data is comments specifically by the name and then some themes that emerged in my analysis and then some other themes that I hadn't anticipated that I thought were important to share for context and then we'll go into a committee uh discussion. So committee, if you don't mind, I'd love to just go through the the presentation, then we can discuss. Great. All right, Maria, do you want to do this slide? Sure. Great. Y um and please jump in if I if I've uh missed something or misstate something. So um my recollection, I was thinking about this is actually way back early in the process, we decided to name a task force in the spring of 2025. uh so last spring and part of the reason we
062did that was because we we knew that we would have uh students coming from different schools um entering this new building and we felt like it was an opportunity to have a new name and a new school identity. We knew that there would be students coming from potentially different buildings and you know the existing elementary schools that we have have you know I know at Hly it's the Hornets that are pushing it's the cats and those identities are great but we knew there would be some mixing and melding and that this would be an opportunity to kind of come up with something new. So that was the original thinking behind naming a task force last spring. So that was the initial naming task force um that convened over the summer. Um I believe in that
063process we had directed superintendent Burkehead to lead that. He um asked the two principles at Cushing and Hatherly to find educators um students and community members and family members to join that task force. They met over the summer, so last summer. Um and they did serve as some names. Um, we wanted to really as a committee uh bring in student voice. That was really important to us as an education committee. That should not come as a surprise that we felt like students should be have a large part in this. Um, and so we asked the social studies department here at the high school to create a extra credit assignment that was given in um, social studies classes throughout the high school. Um, there were 80 entries. Um some of them were duplicates but that was
064pretty impressive. Um and from that a staff panel reviewed those and reduced them to 15 options. There was a second panel that came together that was uh educators some of us some administrators um and reduced that those down to five. Um those five were um we asked the students to do additional research. the historical society um added to that research and fact checked for us to make sure that it was very sound and solid. Um we brought those five back to the task force who narrowed down to three um that they wanted to bring forward to the full committee um and also to gather public feedback via the survey. So um that brings us to where we are today. Um three finalists being Irwin, Venus Manning and Stu. Um the survey was open from March
0653rd through March 9th. Um it was sent out via email, parent square, and the town email system. Um and so tonight's our opportunity as a group to look at that survey data and also just for the first time for the five of us to have any sort of actual conversation um about. So that's where we are in our process. >> Thanks, Maria. So as Maria said, the goal of the survey was continued transparency in the naming process with me, which meant inviting voices and perspectives to participate, highlight preferences, opinions, and then also to discuss the merits of those different opinions and perspectives. We wanted to make it clear that this was not a vote. This was an this was not an opportunity and it's not an opportunity to select someone outside of the names that
066were already sort of gone through the process. I also want to tell you that this is not a scientific instrument, right? This is this is not um these are not results that I would submit to a journal. I am a professor and would not submit this to a journal. This is an opportunity to measure the pulse of the community or or what's sometimes called vocal sentiment. Think of it as a snapshot, right? There aren't validity and reliability metrics attached to this survey. I was talking to a member of the select board who said none of the town surveys have that. They're just that snapshots of of what's going on. The strength of the survey having said all that is we did have strong participation. As you'll see there were 2003 respondents or responses and diverse
067perspectives from town residents, students, alums, parents, and others. >> Yep. Again, I said 2003 respondents or responses and you can see the percentages. I will tell you two things about the percentages. They're not going to add up to 100% because if you took the survey and you remember you were able to to select multiple identities, right? The other thing um actually that Ryan Lynch and I were talking about before is you'll notice situate resident you would have expected that number to be higher, right? Because students are also residents. My sense is that often folks picked the identity that sort of made sense around school. So that's why it's a bit lower. All right. So let's go ahead and get into the quantitative results. I'll tell you looking at the quantitative results it seems pretty clear.
068Um but there is a complexity here. Right? You can scroll just a little bit. There you go. So keep in mind these are two liker scales. The one on the left is one not appealing by being very appealing. The one on the right is um not at all representative and very much and you can see from this first one there is strong sentiment in the town around Haynes Irwin not being appealing and not representing situates. Okay, if you look at the look at the bar graph want to go to the next one, Nicole. The same is essentially true for Miss Venus Manning. Again, one not appealing to very appealing, one not at all um representative to very much. And you can see the sort of shape of that bar graph is evidence of how people
069felt about both both of these women in terms of being named. Keep going. And then if we look at Satuit, the opposite, right? You can see that the ones on both of those graphs are low. So in terms of um appealing and representative, many people in town reported that they felt like this name is appealing, very appealing, and very much represents um Situit. So if we stopped here, it would seem pretty evident what the town, the students, what the committee would want. But you'll see in a minute in the qualitative data that it gets much more complicated. So if you could go ahead and as I said I organized it first by each person. So I'd love to give folks this chance to read it. I can highlight a few. So what I tried to
070do is organize for each name comments that represented support, comments that represented concern, and then there seemed to be a lot around historical critique or his history critique, historic critique, so I included that. So some examples of support for Miss Irwin, amazing woman. I think students would be inspired to learn her story. The idea of a local activist and local author appealed to many people. Um in situate we don't have a single school named after a woman. It would be a source of pride. It's a wonderful representation defying the odds. A great example of resilience and the same example of a value of education and shaping a person's life. Concerns. There were lots of concerns across the board around the length of the name. So full name is too long. I'd suggest condensing. Too long
071and difficult. Someone one of the students said, "I'm in high school and I can't figure out how to say that. how an 8-year-old um and again too complicated. So there were lots of suggestions about how to shorten the elementary school name. In terms of historic critique, there were some questions, right? Wonderful story, but not a name that any resident associates with town. Seems like a stretch. She was a summer resident, although she did end up um living here later in life after her husband died. So, you know, you could argue that point. um her literary career and suffrage work all happened before she lived in Sedua was a comment um and someone said never heard of this person in terms of Venus Manning again support concerns and historical critique um the meaningfulness of recognizing an
072African-American loving loving the idea of seeing an African-American female being named for a school very important and valuable in terms of contribution historically. Um, she was a resident, she paid taxes. Um, interesting story. Manning Elementary sounds good. Concerns. Again, I would like this option better if it was just Manning Elementary. Again, with the length of the name was some struggle. This will be shortened to Manning. Um, someone said it counts kind of sounds like a planet, I guess, for Venus. Um, again, someone said never heard of this person. The the main critique on Miss Venus Manning is a lot of people said I only put a few here is that she's really a Norwell person. She belongs to Norwell. Norwell claims her. Fact that she was born in a part of Situit that is now
073Norwell and buried in Norwell. So again that was the historic critique. So to folks said best of the three short and simple again with the length of the name represents our town better and is one word. Um, one word is better than longer names for children. Um, it nicely aligns with wampa talk. Concerns. People had concerns about the idea that I guess because we have the Satuit Tavern. There were worries about will it be known for being a bar? Someone said, "Can I get a burger and fries at this school?" Um, um, someone also said, and I'm gonna try to say it, Satuit and Situit is a mouthful when you're referring to the elementary school. Um so again historical historic critique amazing nod to our history love the tribute from um using original native names.
074Um the name honors our shared history while embracing our future. So you can see again quantitative data seemed clear and then there's some questions when you get into the qualitative data. Go ahead. Um, Nicole can slide through the So, these were the themes that emerged. Just looking at the data a little bit differently, not organized by name, but theme. So, a dominant recurring theme is the need for that name to be simple, short, and easy for young children. That's what I'm calling the practicality of the name, right? Again, these these death direct quotes um call it Manning Elementary. this idea that um the Irwin would be too long a bit of a mouthful set to it is the best of the three um yeah so I known again I thought that was interesting known first
075because of our girl so practicality of the name was a theme that emerged want to scroll up the next one again was this lots of questions about historical relevance people who responded to the third survey were really vetting meticulously ly the social and geographic connections to the town which you would expect. This idea of a Norwell conflict, right, that Venus Manning spent some time there, she lived there, she's buried there. Um, that was a question. Summer residency um became a question. Again, I think these are things we could talk about further and I hope that the committee will weigh in on these. And again, I tried to find some direct quotes that that sort of supported this theme, right? Wonderful story. Not a name residents associate with South Suit is Norwell. Um, we need to
076represent women more. Naming the new school after one of these ladies feels empower like an empowering step. Um, the recognition of an African-American is meaningful. And then there was another two additional themes. As we've heard tonight from folks who have spoken, there were concerns about the process being manipulated, that there was a lack of transparency or social engineering. And you can see lots of quotes. I'm not going to read them all, but they were similar to things like, "It feels pretty rich to be asking the town to honor the planest committee while you have shown no honor or respect to the community perspective. It's infantilizing to provide adults the illusion of choice. We see what you're doing. zero transparency. Who was asked to be on the initial committee that narrowed the choices down? Seems controlling
077and biased. I'm disappointed with these three. Um, Satuit is the only palatable one, but I don't understand the need to erase history. Um, so again, you can see there was some questions and upset about the process. The other theme that emerged that I maybe hadn't anticipated was there were several people that asked for other names. So, preferences for other names. If they asked if the school to be named after a person, many respondents suggested more locally famous or relatable figures. Um, the Bates sisters came up many times. Um, Mr. Ball and other lifelong contributors. Betty Crowley Elementary School. She impacted people in town. There was also unprompted feedback again as we've talked about tonight already of somehow keeping Haggley Cushing, call it Hatherly, Cushing Hly. There were all sorts of iterations or permutations of that
078combination. Um, the last the last theme that emerged, I didn't have a good name for it. You can go to the next slide, Nicole. I called it DEI agenda because it felt like the I don't know the cleanest way. And I before you go to that slide, Nicole, I do want to tell people again that there's some pretty awful things in these slides. And I debated all weekend about whether or not to include them because they are awful. But I do think that we need to understand how some people feel in this town. And I think it provides context if we're going to have a fully transparent discussion. We need to also understand all of the perspectives that are out there whether we agree or not. I'm not going to read them all, but you
079can see you can scroll Nicole. There's two slides worth. This seems like a liberal attempt to rewrite history. Don't erase race history. Why are you wiping out previously previously situated history? Um, shame on you for pushing woke political BS. Um, seems like you just want to fit the DEI agenda. Why be controversial? Let's go for a neutral name instead of trying to fit an agenda. Double yuck. Double yuck. And then it goes on to the last slide. Nicole, I don't see an African-American population here. I think this would be better in an inner city school. Given that Situate is not racially diverse at all, naming the school after an African-American woman who we know very little about just feels condescending or patronizing. It represents a woman only. And to mention our town is still 90%
080I believe Caucasian. So women of color do not currently reflect our town. It's only about women women pushing males aside which is unfair. I feel it doesn't rep represent situ at all. >> That's disgusting. >> Again I I share this to be fully transparent. Um and I'm sorry for folks who are seeing this that it is hurtful. I just thought it I again I really did weigh the value of this. So that's all that's the end of it and so I'd love to >> hurts your heart. >> I'd love to open up the discussion. Yeah, I I'm I'm trying to stay objective and I will share but as I want to listen to my colleagues. I had a hard weekend. It was hard to read those comments. It was upsetting and surprising and just hard.
081So I'll leave it at that. >> Thank you for putting that together. Yeah. appreciate the work that you did there. I was just going to add that um from like a student perspective, I understand the town of Suit history um is very like selective on what we learn about and a lot of the names that typically come up are usually male and I think although there's a lot of influential women in history, I think having these options as memes um and people being upset that we don't know them, this is why. And I think um like putting them out there as names is like super important. And um understanding the situ being able to represent them in any sort sort of way. Um it's not just trying to fit some sort of agenda. I think
082that's wicked important to understand. Um, and I think it would represent something far more than just the white people in situate who want it to be a male name. I don't think that's trying to fit any sort of agenda. I think it's just a quality that we need to understand. >> I would add to Anna's comment that we have a very large Cape Varian community, too. >> That's true. >> Yeah. Um, >> yeah, Carrie, thanks for putting that together. I looked at everything but I didn't summarize it quite like you. I appreciate that. Um to think that there was an agenda naming a school is just ludicrous. Um we as a community decided we were going to build a new school and we all knew there was going to be a new name coming out
083with it and I believe the committee formed a subcommittee to figure out how we can best do it. You can't take everyone's vote on what on everything that we do. There was zero agenda in this. We try to include as many people as we could reasonably possible and to get students involved. So the fact that people think there's an agenda is absolutely again ludicrous. I I guess to this I haven't necessarily been involved in it because we rely on experts and our subcommittees to do their work. So I don't know how people could think that. We don't necessarily care what the name is. we're going to make what we think is appropriate or based upon the research and and all the information that we get done by the subcommittee. So I take a little bit
084of offense at that. Um >> yeah, take a lot >> a lot of offense actually. Yeah, I do too because I have to say the first time I heard about some of the names with Maria and I were having office hours for the town and you shared some of the deployment and I was like oh and so I had to start reading and looking them up like I like you found out about them you know so it's not like I wasn't involved with this process >> and we did have I think in the summer we did have that list five names that the first subcommittee came up with and I was hoping that there may be some more to choose from and that's when the new subcommittee was or the digital subcommittee was created and
085then this these results came up. So there was zero agenda. I it's a school name. We're trying to do what's right. Um I appreciate the students coming up and and supporting that. I think you guys spoke about them tremendously. I'd love to see people that don't like those aims to be so eloquent in explaining why they want someone else. Um I'm not sure my my choices at this moment, but that that's besides the point. I I'm really impressed with the students that came up and Anna for for speaking about I think it is very true and I never thought of from that perspective. We don't know about the important women in situ because we don't have things aimed after that. >> I think even we just started a women's history class at Sichu which I'm
086currently taking and I think it's it's very important to our town and like the um public school. So, I think continuing on with this like progressive movement um like learning more about women as they've kind of been suppressed throughout history and this isn't following the woke liberal agenda or anything just what I believe. I mean, I think when we think about naming a school, I tried to do again, I was deep in the weeds this week and trying to think about what are the n what are the goals when you name, right? And so things that came up and we've talked about it tonight, connection to the community, does the person respect our school values? Will this person's name age well over time? Will the kids who go to these schools be proud? And I
087think in both of the beautiful narratives or essays that our students shared tonight both, you know, the two women, I mean, Satuit isn't a person, but the two women seem to embody a lot of what we care about in Situit. If you go to our website, five core values, building relationships as foundation for safe and supportive community, success for students, active engagement and learning, growth mindset, excellence, resilience, perseverance, integrity, mutual trust, collaboration, and respect. Um, I mean, again, I haven't made my decision either, but when I think of the two women that both of these students so eloquently describe, I feel like, you know, they were good, possible choices. I'm not saying I'm choosing them, but they are good possible choices for a name of a school if we're following the core values of what
088we've put together over the last several years. So, I just I'm I'm trying to move away from feeling upset about the the hurt and trying to focus on like what is important about a name. So, I just wanted to bring that back so we could talk about that too. >> And the names were vetted by the historical society. input on these names which I think a lot of people are you know they don't realize how much input what an impact the historical society had on >> yeah I guess um one other thing I'll just add on a slightly lighter note is I didn't anticipate the um confusion over the length of the name Um I I in uh Gates Middle School is Lester J. Gates. It's right on the side of the school. It's right
089as you drive up. It's Lester J. Gates, but we all call it Gates. No one goes around town saying Lester J. Gates. And I think if we did it would be a mouthful. Um and so to me it seems really obvious that whatever name is chosen gets naturally shortened by the community. I wasn't thinking about that as a choice we would make as a committee. I would think typically most schools are named for the person's name and then the community takes the decision of what to call it from there and it becomes called that thing. So I um was really surprised to see how much confusion there was about that. Um but I think in we wouldn't go around calling this school by the full of any of those people's names. We're not going to
090be calling it Enis Manning Elementary. We're not going to be calling it Enzwin Elementary. it will naturally be shortened, I assume, to Irwin or Manning. And so I think that is just apparently something that we need to make a point of because those um were such clear themes. Um I noticed in the survey you had a lot of people saying, "I love this woman and this name, but it's too long. I'm giving it a one." Yeah. And so I think that was just really something people couldn't get over. Um and I saw that again and again in the in the survey and I was like, "Huh, okay." Um, so that's another factor when we think about the way that the data came out that I thought was just unanticipated to me. I thought that was
091a known naming convention. But here we are. I think too something that I learned is I mean even we think about Cushing and Hather. I think at one point even years ago we're talking about Cushing Heatherly schools, Cushing Hadley communities. Keeping it hatherly to me as a mom of four Cushing students in like right off the gate is totally disrespectful to Cushing and Cushing families that's just not gonna fly. But why would we ever name the Heather School the Cushing School? So that's weird. So and calling it the Cushing Heatherly School is a huge mouthful which totally is supported in data from what you just said and the survey. So that's just another reason and the rationale for starting. This is a new building. It's a fresh start. It's going to be such a great
092just community building opportunity for that school to to have a mascot and have a theme and have just this whole culture building experience around this name and this person and this identity there for them. Uh so that speaks to that. We have Cushing and Hatherly are not being erased. They're everywhere around town. They have a highway that, you know, we've got Hatherly Road, a gorgeous representation of Hather Timothy Hatherley and Chief Justice Cushing, a fantastic man. We've got representation of him here in town, well respected. I think what I have learned is that Situit is full of retired and educators who have since passed who many folks feel deserve honor in our town. And I in I would love to see something. I I am not a Situate high grad. I am the wife of
093a situ highrad and soon to be four others that I mean if this is something that inspires people to come up with some memorialization for former uh students or uh administrators or educators that people can think of a way to honor them whether it's like something around town like I'm happy to support people in that endeavor because it sounds like there were some really inspirational teachers and staff members and who have really touched the lives of our you you know, generations of people who live here. And so, and I would fully be on board for supporting whatever that would be. You know, if it's not obviously this particular school, we can only name it after one one entity. Um, but sounds like people have some great ideas and great people who have really changed their
094lives that are situ and educators. So, that's a great idea. I also I'm on the not a negative only positive. my school council that I sit with is um Cushing and um one of the things that we've been talking about is um is in that redistricting goal that they're working on is sort of how to honor, you know, the the legacy and memory of Cushing for all of the many students and and people in the community that that school has been special to, not only the kids that are there now, but obviously we've got generations of people for whom that building is very special. And part of the that conversation has been about the name and Hatherly as well as a Hatherly mom. You know, I don't think that we have been talking about the
095names Cushing and Hatherly very much. And so I actually think this new naming is a great opportunity to revisit some of those names around town and even the names of our other schools. Like I think it's a nice opportunity to sort of revisit those. Even if we are suns setting some names as school buildings, that doesn't mean we can't have other ways to honor people. And it it also is a great opportunity for kids to relearn about some of those people. So I think this is just overall I think there's ways that we can find little rays of light in this opportunity to make room for more than one individual no matter what or entity as you said. Right. Is there um not to make it more complic I know I asked this in the
096last meeting but um are there ways that we can honor >> other names >> inside the building or in the access point to the building meaning the driveways and >> the driveway is already named. I I found this out um and I and I don't I need to look up more about for whom it is named but I assume we would keep that. Um we do have a policy >> currently has a name >> does have there are other memorials at Hley >> um we have a policy on memorials that we can look at but I do think that's a great idea um there are wings in that building there is the media center you know there are absolutely opportunities within it that we can use to think about that >> I think that will
097help for me for making decisions I think that will make it helpful I don't know if we if How I guess how many naming opportunities there would potentially be for a policy. >> Yeah, >> just something to think about as I weigh. >> It's something we can maybe talk to the architect about. They might have some thoughts on this like what's typical. We don't want to be naming like >> that names everywhere. But we could I mean I don't know you know >> like you said there could be like two wings and you whatever you >> there are sort of naturally you know some wings when you you know when you go in or the media center to me stands out as a opportunity just because it's >> right there it's visible it's very pretty
098and >> whatot Why would we take a five minute break? >> Take a five minute break. >> Yeah. It motion to resume >> back into regular session here. >> I'll make a motion that we resume our meeting. >> Second. All in favor? >> Okay. Uh we have approval of our minutes for March 2nd. >> I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the minutes of March 2nd, 2026. >> Second. >> Okay. All in favor? >> I Okay, we have the school nurse job description on stage revision. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. So, I'm pleased to present a revision of our school nurse job description. Every time we have a retirement or a change, it's an opportunity to review the job description. And our beloved Cushing nurse, Linda Mardus, is retiring at the
099end of the year, and we need to post her position for next year. So, um, I asked Kelly Bell, our director of nursing, as well as the Citro Teachers Association to look at this, and they both approved this as an updated job description. Really, the changes had to do with bringing up the current terminology, current situation, what we call things, hipper rules, and all those kinds of things. So, um, this has been approved, um, by both of those people or organizations, and we're asking for your approval tonight so that we can post the position. >> Thank you. questions. >> Yeah, >> my only question whether you clarified is that we're not adding just the same position. It's just a reordering of it. So, >> yeah, >> I'll make a motion that the school committee vote
100to approve the school nurse job description as presented. >> Second. >> All righty. All in favor? Hi. >> Hi. >> Thank you. >> Wonderful. Okay. Uh SHS robotics team district regionals competition. April. >> Thank you. I'm sharing the update on this agenda item. Um this is on behalf of the robotics team. Given that this proposal is for an overnight field trip, um this would be if the robotics team qualifies for the the district championship. Uh they would go from Wednesday, April 15th, uh through Saturday, April 18th. That's the week just before break. Um they would follow the field trip policy with the number of chaperones and uh be staying overnight in Springfield Thursday night, Friday night um through Saturday. As you know, robotics are full full day competitions. Um so all the students would be
101there all day. You see the numbers 8:30 to 8:00 am to 8:30 and 8 a.m. to 7 pm. Um, also included uh is the cost and um how many days of school the students uh would miss. So those students would miss uh two days of school. So that's the request on behalf of the robotics team for a possible participation. Uh they had a strong showing as um Anna mentioned last weekend. Um they have another competition at River in two weeks. So, seeking the approval of the school committee for this overnight field trip >> questions. Um, so I see the cost of the to participate is $300. >> Is that correct? >> That's correct. So, the cost of the actual trip is that is not >> Yes, it's $300 for each student. >> That includes everything.
102>> Correct. >> Oh, okay. Okay. >> I assume the same applies that if a family comes, we still have that money set aside. Okay. I just like to make sure >> it's actually a very low cost. >> I just see how many meals are included. >> I wish all seriously this is really Yeah, that's it. I appreciate the branding of the cyber sailor. They're always so consistent with their >> Yeah, I can make a motion. I won't do it. Um I can make a motion to um approve the cyber sailor overnight field trip request to Springfield, Massachusetts on April 15 through 18, 2026 as presented. second. Okay. All in favor. >> Thank you. >> Leadership update. >> Thank you very much. So today we had our for professional day here at Situate and it was
103fantastic. We started the day with K to5 elementary teachers working with Allison Melo who really took us through a lot of math interventions and things we can do to make math more fun and exciting for students K to five all the departments also got together and were able to talk about instructional strategies used in the classroom later on in the day we had an update from special education and all the way around it really met the needs of each individual person here um and I was impressed with the day I just I walked around and visited all the different groups during the day And you know, it's a big decision to take a day off from school and really dedicate it to the needs of our staff. Um, and they were working all day from
1048 to three and I was very impressed. So, that's really the only update I had. Um, I enjoy those days. Again, I know it's a big decision for the committee to give us those full professional days. Um, but just know that they're used wallto-wall and every minute of that time. >> Excellent. >> Thank you. All right. We have our report of teaching and learning session. Thanks for waiting. Oh, sorry for doing that together. Sorry. >> Thank you. question. >> All right. Thank you. I'm just going to frame the presentation. So, we're very excited tonight to present um some middle of the year data. So, we have our elementary curriculum coordinators uh Megan Gregory and Heather Allen and they'll kick off the presentation as a unified uh K5 piece and then Tara Simonac and Laura Messen
105will present the 6 through2 data. So that's kind of the format here at the beginning. Um I just wanted to give a general uh frame to sort of shape the presentation. So as I mentioned the purpose is to uh share K12 district data in ELA and math. We're presenting here uh in March because our students have uh finished their middle of the year assessments. So this is a really good opportunity to see how students and staff sort of have progressed over the course of the year. Um so we have two uh periods of benchmark data uh to look at. This data is really districtwide. So if there are questions about individual school level data um I would direct those questions to April and May when our principles and their school councils present their uh school
106improvement plan. So this really is holistic um districtwide data. So it'll highlight the trends. Um each section will highlight the trends and action steps based on what the data shows. Um and I think just big picture I would mention just the ability to have this data uh shows our commitment to uh monitoring student growth and achievement and trying to give teachers and staff those people who are closest to the students an opportunity to um have good information guiding them in how to support students. So in some parts you'll hear that we've uh especially at the secondary level shifted the assessment that we're using and we don't necessarily have three years worth of data. But what we have built is u a benchmark assessment system so that in time we'll have uh longitudinal data that will
107really help to support our teachers. So, um I think it's regardless of the outcome of the data, the fact that we have a monitoring system does help to make sure that uh we're keeping track of how students are doing. Um we are happy to comply with state mandates and federal regulations around once a year testing. I would just want to highlight that that data gives a snapshot of how students are doing at the end of the year and typically is not ready for teachers to look at until the following year. So our teachers are very invested in the success of uh their students and they want real- time information on how their students are doing and this system helps to give them that. So it gives helps us to support students and adjust instruction in
108the year. So that's just um highlight of well why do we add another system on top of it? It's because our um our teachers need more real-time data and students need supports in the school year and the work that our curriculum coordinators department chairs and our teachers and principles do helps to support those efforts. So I'll hand it over now to um Heather Allen and Maggie Gregory and they'll take us through the elementary You're welcome. >> Um, thank you. Um, we wanted to start by talking a little bit about the shift that we made. Um, this year trai we've always um tested uh students three times a year in literacy and math um and use that information to place students into groups and to support students during win and in tier one. the uh about
109the middle of last year, we started talking about that when we test students at the end of the year. We don't really do much with the end of year data. We celebrate the growth that our students have made. We take a look at what what um trends we've seen in the classroom of, you know, what went well and what we need to um improve on for next year. But in terms of the student level data, we would test kids. kids would leave for the summer and then they would come back in and we would test them again as soon as they came in. This year we decided that we wanted to use that data really actionably at the end of the year. So when we had the end of the year data meetings um last
110year we put our students into groups. We obviously didn't know what classrooms they were in, but we identified an instructional area for each of those students saying based on how they've performed in first grade, here's what they need to focus on in the beginning of second grade. And we created what we call a bridge cycle. So, at the beginning of this school year, students um teachers had lists of in their incoming students. They knew exactly what each of those students needed to work on at the beginning of the year. And we started a bridge cycle on September 8th. >> Um we had students in intervention groups right off the bat and um they had a fiveweek intervention cycle before we assess students. So, we usually assess students in September. We assess them in October after
111we did this bridge cycle um and kind of brush the dust of summer off because we find a lot of times the summer slide is very real. If kids haven't picked up a book in a while, if they haven't done some math problems in a while, um it takes a little bit of instruction to get them back up to speed. So, the data that you're going to see today represents that bridge cycle that the beginning of the year was pushed later um as was the years as a result. The data we use for elementary is the same. Um in terms of um the foundational skills for reading, we use the Dibbles 8th edition uh administered one-on-one. And for global reading proficiency in grades two to five, we use the computer adaptive star reading test. Um
112and for math, we these are have been the same for a couple years now. So we use the universal screener for number sense um which is an interview based math assessment for number sense in grades K to four and then the STAR math assessment similar to reading is a computer adaptive math assessment for students um in grades two to five. Um the first data that we wanted to share was the results of that bridge cycle. So the beginning of the year data um if you take a look this is um data from the last three school years uh going left to right you see the beginning of the year the middle of the year and the end of the year this is aggregated as um on the left for dibbles K to four on the
113right for star two to five um so the along the bottom you can see beginning middle and end you see an upward trend when we're looking at dibbles from the beginning of the year where kids come women um with more needs until the end of the year. Wanted to point out that where our beginning of the year was this year is about where our middle of the year is every year because we had that bridge cycle. It was effective. We brushed the dust off. We um you know shook off the summer slide before we tested kids. The result was um a lot of times a lot of kids pop as being needy um when we test in September, but they are just kids who kind of need a little bit of a transition back into
114school when we kind of hit the ground running with doing what we need what we needed for those kids. um our kids uh beginning of the year test scores in both um doubles and star near about where it is um for the middle of the year historically and we saw similar results for math. So if you look on the left hand side on the far right bar that's our fall data. Um and you can see that is almost in line with last year's middle of the year data. So, it's almost identical what we're seeing in the ELA. Um, so we take that as an effective bridge cycle. Um, and the benefit of that is we're not putting students in who are struggling or need extra support just because of the summer into these intervention groups
115for 12 weeks when they don't really need it. We want to save that for our really struggling students. So, this bridge cycle sort of eliminates that. We're giving them the boost that they need, a quick fiveweek cycle, and then they're they're actually in a group that that they need. It's what they need. It's not they're more accurate grouping. Uh on the right hand side, similar, it's the universal screener. Again, you see, um compared to last fall, there's almost no red um and a smaller amount in yellow and orange. So similar results for both um ELA and math. So one of the changes we've also made um is our we've started more robust data meetings. Um so last spring principles literacy specialist, math specialist, Megan and I with Ryan. Um we met as a big group
116which was one of the first times I think we've actually ever done that which was it was great to have everyone at the table contributing to this conversation. And what we did is we developed objectives and protocols for our data meetings because we saw that there there were data meetings happening in every building, but they looked a little different. So this was a great opportunity for us to um create just common protocols, talk through what needs to be there, what we're looking for, what are the goals of these meetings. Um, and there was a common slide deck that all data meetings are using currently and math specialists um take that common slide deck and and um add in the data for the grade level for their building. Um, but the skeleton of that slide deck
117is all the same, which is phenomenal. And Megan and I attend these meetings, so it's nice for us to see that it it's just all pretty uniform. Um, but when you dig in, it's the data is what you're digging into. um and the only difference is the data. So um during those meetings the focus is on tier one trends. So looking across the grade level at that at that um meeting what are the things that we need to fix in our tier one practice as opposed to just individual students. So just looking at how the students are performing bigger picture pulling back a little bit identifying those tier one trends. Every student is discussed at these meetings. So we assign an instructional focus area for every student for math and ELA and then also we're
118bringing in um the social emotional data. So we're having these really rich conversations about the a whole student. Um so that started so we've had three um of these sort of rich data meetings. Um so far we had one last spring and then we've had our fall and winter. Um, and each time we go through the process, we meet the literacy specialist and math specialist and we sort of we reflect how did it go? We refine it. We tweak our slides and and the data that we're using um that's going to best support teachers to support students. Um and then if we're looking at uh our middle of year data starting with um Dibbles. And so Dibbles is testing how our students are doing with the skills that contribute to successful reading. We're talking about
119decoding. Um really exciting to see if you look at the blue, those are kids who are exceeding expectations for the grade level. At this point, um we are we have a lot of kids about half of our kids when you get into the upper grades who are exceeding grade level expectations at this point. Um if you take a look at our neediest grades, it's kindergarten and first grade, which makes sense because those are the grades in which we're teaching kids how to read. Um that's what our tier one is focused on um in those in those areas. And um when we're thinking about those students who continue to need support in decoding and in fluency um in um third grade and fourth grade, those bands of yellow and red um get smaller and those are
120the kids we're both targeting um with our literacy specialists. Um and then if we pull back and kind of take a look at a a bigger view, again, this is beginning, middle, and end um for the last three years. You'll notice that um when we made such big gains at the beginning of the year because of our bridge cycle, we ate into the growth that we typically see from beginning of the year to middle of the year. We're still right about where we typically are at the middle of the year. Um this is for Dibble's K to4. Um in our grade level collaboration meetings, we have really dug into this data. whichever data is the freshest. When we have those grade level collabs, we um we take a look at it. We look at um
121grade level trends and we really think about um how do we match those um student needs to what uh evidence-based instruction um would support that. So our our identified trends just globally K to four and dibbles are are our uh kindergarten and first grade students have really strong phmic awareness skills. When we look at how our kids are doing with um uh phmic segmentation, they're doing great. We've been using Heerty for six years now. Um kids can separate sounds in a word. Gang busters. They're great at it. Um we noticed that there is a need for early letter sound fluency. We need to um get our students in K and one when they see a letter to be able to um not just recognize the name of the letter automatically but the sound of the
122letter automatically. Um in grades two to five our reading accuracy exceeds the reading fluency. Great place to start. Our kids are reading words accurately and a focus area for us in grades two to five is to work on um the rate and procity at which they're reading. Um, are you reading is your reading sounding like talking or is it sounding slow and labored like a robot? Um, and then finally the need for sentence level comprehension instruction grades four and five. In Dibbles, we um do a sentence level comprehension assessment. And we know that kids have to be able to comprehend at the sentence level before they can comprehend at the passage level or at the story level. So, in all of those grade level um collaborations we've had, we've really dug into what sentence level
123comprehension means and how do we understand complex sentences and syntax and how sentences are put together. Um kind of shifting to STAR. So, from the building blocks to reading to how is reading going as a whole. Um you'll notice as a district we need to um uh work on we have kids who are decoding really well and we're working on train um you know the bridge to comprehending globally. Uh star is thinking about our kids understanding what they read. Are they putting all of those pieces together? um we have more students who are popping in that yellow range for um needs improvement and that those are the the kids we're focusing on. And again, when we've been talking in those um grade level collaboration meetings, we're thinking about what are the other components besides just
124um uh decoding and um foundational skills, vocabulary, syntax, background knowledge that we need to bolster that group of kids um who are still who are proficient with decoding but still struggling with comprehension. And then this is the same view of looking at beginning, middle and end of star across um grades two to five. Um the identified trends which are super interesting across the board is that um when we look at craft and structure for literature, our students are able to um identify and talk about and use um craft and structure for literature. um more readily than they are forformational text. So, a big focus um at all of our grade levels has been talking about thinking aboutformational text structure, identifying the five text structures. How do we get kids to ask questions when they're reading
125and to recognize when an author is using a different text structure? Um so, that's been across all grade levels that we're really digging into that. It seems like our kids are really um uh comfortable with story structure probably because they've been listening to stories since a young age and theformational text structure is a little bit trickier. Um there's also a need to focus on synthesizing ideas acrossformational texts. So if we're reading two differentformational texts, we're going to pull out information from both of those. We also see that in our MCCAST data is that um being a need in our um grades three to five. And that interesting because it's kind of the inverse of the first one. Our students are able to read informational texts at a higher level of um complexity than they are
126able to read literary text. So while um they are able to to talk about the craft and structure that an author uses for a literary text, they're actually able to globally comprehend higher levels offormational text than they are literary. So, those are kind of the big trends that we dug into um in our grade level meetings and collabs this year. >> Can I just ask a question? >> Yeah. >> Sorry, I'm probably missing something, but I'm just trying to figure out taking a look at the star reading uh middle year. >> Yeah. >> Uh just grade five, for example, those are percentages, correct? >> Yes. >> So, then when we go to the growth, we have numbers. I'm trying to figure out why we don't use percentages or numbers in both of them. Just I'm
127just trying to calibrate my mind. >> So if we look at the second one um the next slide um these graphs come from open architect which we are using this year across um across uh prek to 12 across the district. Um and they use they use the number of students instead of percentages. Um, so sometimes you'll notice a bar that doesn't look as long as other bars because the cohort changes from year to year. >> We could get um I was just thinking >> manually you just manually calculate. >> You were probably thinking about your data binder. >> I wish you had an update insert. >> You can just run a new report. >> I just did it on I can do that. You could do it but like but Ryan could also just click
128of a button rerun that report would happen. >> So >> yeah and I I think however like that noted. >> Yeah. And I would say too um the reading specialist and math specialist slice this several different ways. They create their own um Excel spreadsheets for assigning students to win um just from this which is a great screen grab. Thank you. when the people when the teachers click down on it inside of each of those 41 as the 41 students as well. So then you have instantly >> who are the kids in green. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Um who had scored green or orange. So >> you're right that it's not a consistent um format, but yeah, we'll think about ways to make sure we can represent it um consistently. Um, and Megan, can you
129talk a would you can you talk a little bit about why the there seems to be why yellow increases over time because I think if we're asking like logical questions on star as well. Sorry, next slide. So, why do we see a little more um in the upper grades? Why do we see the need for more um does the assessment get harder? Is the demand on students more challenging? So can you speak a little bit to the fact that we're not chasing the same uh skills o over time? >> Yeah. And es especially in star. So the um the metrics we're using for star are the state benchmarks which are tied to um uh MCCAST prediction. So basically when we take a look at how kids are doing um in these three bands, it's tied
130to these are the three bands for MCCAST. um and they take the end of the year where we expect kids to be when they take MCCAST and they correlate it back. So a student could take the same test on a Monday and a Friday. We wouldn't do that. great um uh great protocol, but they could get the same exact same questions correct on Monday and the exact same questions on Friday and their percentile rank would be lower on Friday because it's closer to um the end of the year. So th those percent like sometimes teachers have asked like what's the percentage cut off that they need to be at? depends on the day that the kids take it because it is so um finite that it will say like okay at this point in the
131year they need to be here but then a week later they need to be just a little bit slightly higher to be able to reach the end goal. Does that make sense? >> Yeah. That's a that's a great explanation. And I just want to reassure uh people that when you look at these kids aren't sliding backwards. They're swimming upstream in a river whose rate is changing as they're swimming and it there is a pace at which we want them to be making progress. But I want to reassure people that everyone's swimming and moving forward. Sometimes the rate of what the expectation is also shifts. So we're not as students progress, yes, we're paying attention to to who needs more, but I I don't want it's just it's important with Megan's explanation that uh students aren't
132doing worse. there. It's more about their the rate of progress and trying to give us information about who might need a little more support to um get to where they need to be. So, thank you for um because >> yeah, that is I think sometimes parents notice that too on the parent facing star reports. you might see that your kid is like in the green or the blue, but then there are subcategories where it's red or yellow. And so the reason, my understanding is because those skills are not expected to be fully mastered yet because it's still wherever we are in the beginning or the middle of the year. And so sometimes I think that can be a little bit confusing. How is my kid, you know, still looking like they're okay globally, but like
133they're missing these things, but that's expected. So there's like some of that that we just know and that that's okay. So I think this is sort of simple. Yeah, they're on a path progressively. >> And I think one of the most powerful um things that we look at when we're within those data meetings is we look at what is the students performance level and also their growth level. And we kind of take a look at kids with um you know high growth and high performance is what we want for all kids, but we really celebrate those kids who might have a lower performance um number, but they've made high growth. Um and there are tons of those kids and those are the kids that we're really celebrating. like they haven't made it yet, but look
134at how far they've come. So, that's what we really like to highlight in those meetings as well. Um, and then just our our next step action steps are we're really focusing in those um grade level data meetings to identify those tier one trends. So, we're taking a look at globally, how is our third grade, how are our third grade kids doing and what's an area of need that we can address with everybody and not just in small groups, but what what would our tier one instruction look like? How can it change to meet the needs of the kids based on the data? And those change um from the beginning of the year, the middle looked at the data changes. Um, the second one is that during those grade level collaboration days, we're really digging into
135that data and then we're matching it to what the science of reading and the science of writing say about instruction. Um, so we'll take a look at a piece of data from Dibbles from a particular grade level and we'll, you know, notice a need for um, oral reading fluency and then we'll do some digging into what does evidence-based fluency instruction look like in the classroom. Um actually going to come to this the bottom one first. We are in our curriculum review cycle for ELA right now. This year um we're focusing on gathering data. We are looking at our student data. How are our kids performing in different areas of literacy um we surveyed teachers about what's working in classrooms and what's um what's not working in classrooms. and our committee um which is uh made
136up of um teachers from all schools, all grade levels, special educators, um literacy specialists who we're really digging into the research to what does the research say about what we should be looking for um in um in a curriculum. One of the things that came out of that um teacher survey that we um sent out to all elementary teachers was a need for um writing professional development. So, a next step for us is beginning writing professional development in the next school year. So, we really want to make sure everybody has the same level of of knowledge of the um um the current evidence-based practices in writing. So, here is our current the middle of your um universal streamer data. Um clearly I think for everyone that's jumping out is our K to2 um number sense
137is very strong. Um the students coming to us from the ECC and preschools around town. They're coming in strong with strong numbers which is excellent. And then we're continuing that work as they um progress in kindergarten grade one and grade two. Um you will see that there's a bump in yellow for grade three and four. Part of that um speech to grade four is because just the way that our con that our curriculum is laid out they haven't hit some of those concepts yet. Um for example fraction on number line that's part of the universal screener the written portion. The middle of year has um assessment has a interview based part and a written part which just pops the challenge also um but they haven't touched on all of the concepts yet. So, um, the
138past three years, if you look at the trends, they do pretty well at the beginning of the year, and you'll see specifically in fourth grade, a dip, and then they come back up because they all covered um, uh, just certain topics. Um, so the trends clearly um, grades K to have a strong number sense. And the things that we're noticing um after the data communities that we're identifying with math specialists and grade level teens is that we're think we're looking at grade three and four and they're really struggling to think flexibly about numbers. So they tend to use they have one strategy for a certain problem and they just hone in on that strategy and they hold on to it and they're not um they're just not thinking about the approach that makes sense for
139that problem. Um, so if you think if the question was 200 minus 198, some students are going to stack them and do the algorithm. It pains me to see that. Um, but if you so think about that what if if a student receives that and that's what they're doing, then we have to fix our tier one practice. So then we are now reflecting how can we move our students to be more flexible thinkers. And that's exactly what building strong number sense is, is teaching those flexible thinking. So that's what we'll be working on um for grades three and four in terms of number sense. And then here is our um middle of your star math data. And again, these are percentages. Thank you for pointing it out. Megan and I make these just homegrown because
140they are a little bit easier to um to process. Um so again you can see grade two compared to how strong they look on the universal screener um they have really strong numbers. Now transferring those skills to all of the concepts um is something that obviously we're we're working on. Um, so 91% of our second graders were um were meeting expectations for the universal screener and then we have 66 um and a half% I'm pretty sure that's um for our meeting in grade two. So thinking about it's an online assessment. It's really the first time that they're um taking an assessment online and working it out on um on paper. Um and this is also like Megan was describing. This is their they're swimming upstream as Ryan would say and so it's a moving target.
141Um so that's where we are currently. So here is our growth. Um and again because we did the bridge cycle we don't see that real jump from our fall to middle of year which feels nice to look at in terms of math growth but when you think about actual students in front of you this is what's best for students. Um so things that um we've identified as trends through our um our data meetings. We need um to continue to focus on number and operations base 10 and fractions across the board um for all grade levels. Students don't have a solid understanding of measurement and data at this point of the year. Part of that is also where the measurement and data unit falls for their particular grade level. Um so it's a little bit different
142than ELA because they're they're taught in sort of chunks for content. Um, so some of the grade levels actually haven't gotten to that unit yet. Um, we're going to continue our work with fluency because we know grades three and four, that's part of the number sense that's missing. Um, so that's an area that we're always going to be working on. And then for all grade levels, operations and algebraic thinking was our strongest domain. Um, so we're just going to continue to work um, and focus on that. So our action steps are our grade level data meetings. Um so continue that strong work. Our literacy and math specialists have worked so hard to um make these meaningful um data meetings. So the work that they put into it, it's it's really them and not Megan and
143I. like did the work at the beginning to make sure we have these protocols in place, but what math and literacy specialists are doing um and leading these data meetings is really what's making a change and a difference um in classes because not only are we identifying students for the win group, but we're really talking about tier one, which is going to make the change across the board for all students. Um and so the math specialist will continue with that um digging into the data, presenting at data meetings. Um and then they follow up with progress monitoring during common planning time with teachers. So that's something that's ongoing. It's not just three times a year. That's an ongoing conversation that they are working tirelessly to make um an effective impact on student learning. The cross
144district collaboration, Megan and I um have been leading full day PD sessions for grade levels. Um we we've done one a month um for the year just to get everyone for the district together in one room. Um so last week I had kindergarten so we met at the public library. We had a full day of just like strong rich conversation about teaching and learning and sharing ideas and looking at data and what are our best practices. So we're going to continue with that both um in literacy and math. And that's been a really um a really great opportunity for everyone to get on the same page and and move the needle on teaching and learning professional development. Tom had mentioned it earlier. Allison Melo came today. She was phenomenal. Um I've already gotten so many
145emails. When can she come back? She's truly engaging and just she knows the math one and she has because she knows it so well, she's able to um and she was a teacher, an elementary teacher, so she's able to connect with the teachers and really show them how just small little um tweaks to their teaching can make a huge impact. So that's something we're um continuing to be excited about. And with that, she's sharing sort of um resources and hands-on material that are going to enhance the learning. Um, so teachers um left today with door prizes of beaded number lines, which seems silly, but these are the opportunities we have to um, you hear me talk about it in science a lot, but hands-on learning opportunities both in science and math are that rich learning.
146And that's where we're going to take these abstract math concepts and make them concrete and make and let them stick for kiddos so that they can remember the skill they learned in fourth grade and carry it with them to um, middle school and high school math. And then um finally we're really working through those grade level collaboration meetings is to develop a bank of common um standardsbased end of module assessments because the math program that we currently have um isn't um 100% aligned with Massachusetts state standards which is sort of typical of all sort of box programs. So we are want to make sure that the way we are assessing our students is aligned with the standards so that we can give accurate feedback on where they are and predict how they will perform and
147mastering their standards by the end of the year. >> Um I just wanted to say thank you guys for the presentation. I think it was really clear and I really liked both the presentation of the data and your description of the action steps. I feel like it creates a nice like closed loop for us which I think we all really appreciate. Um my only question was just um I think sometimes when um parents might be or parents caregivers might be listening they might have heard both of you mention like how over the summer kids are sliding. a kind of notice and then they come and they do the break cycle which sounds like it works brilliantly. So that's amazing. But I think sometimes parents might be wondering well what can we do to be more
148supportive during the summer. Um we both named fluency both with numbers and with reading and those to me strike as skills that parents actually could really help with. That's not like phonics like you can't have a parent work on that per se. But fluency like if you teach a parent like hey you know you you read and the kid echoes back or you read a page they read a page. there's so many things that parents could actually do with that. Um, and so it just makes me think about that parents would probably be really willing to support. Um, knowing that like, yeah, I could do some of this over the summer and prevent some of that like total like, oh my god, I haven't like seen the like I did my own six-year-old said this
149year, it goes the alphabet, mom alphabet one, go back to first grade and I was like, yeah, the alphabet. And I thought to myself like, "Oops, I guess I didn't do a great job this summer." You know, but I think every parent has that moment where we were like, "Oh, I guess I could have done better." Um, but I think that's just a maybe an opportunity to think about. I just think a lot of parents would >> we do send um their summer work. Um, it looks a little different for Ela and math obviously, but for math um StMath is available all summer for those who choose to use it. There's a PDF version as well for people who would like an analog version um as Brian calls it. Um or there's what I actually
150think is more beneficial is there's um on the thing there's a grid of just games that everyone has in their house um just to pull th those math games out that people may not think of math games. Um, so it could be war or go fish. Um, and they're all on it, but we share them and those for that exact reason because we're >> most of us are parents and it's like, >> oh, right. But you could pull out a deck of cards and play and play a game. That's like an easy one. And then >> the kids are going to enjoy it more and it's not going to be sort of torture sitting at the dining room table to do it too. >> Yeah. And I think if parents kind of see that rationale
151again like a reminder of like why this is important, you know, I think that's also maybe motivating. >> But thank you guys. I thought it was great. >> Wish everybody stick around. >> Yeah, we actually have a pretty good crowd. >> No, I do I do have a question actually for um Dr. U. I just I know that you guys had mentioned that we're going to see uh school level material uh results in April and May. I'm curious if you'll take that into consideration as you consider some options with these pushing fifth graders that potentially want to stay together. From my perspective, I'm thinking how is their performance in their current setup? And hey, if it's great, then maybe it is some evidence that they should stay together. Maybe if performance isn't that great, then
152maybe that's a reason to try something else. Just a thought. >> Thank you. I'll certainly take it into account. The one comment I wanted to make is a lot of social emotional concerns over the transition were raised tonight. But the one area I'm not worried about is curriculum alignment. The elementary schools are aligned. And I just want that crystal clear in this community because that's not the case everywhere, but our four elementary schools and when we go to three, I have no concern over curriculum alignment among all of the teachers K to five because they're working so hard in grade levels and in teams to make sure that the same thing is being done in all the buildings. That's a good point. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> All right. We will continue on with
1536 to 12 ELA and math. >> Again, this is Tara Simon who's the uh math department chair and Laura Mner, the ELA department chair. >> Excellent. >> How are you? Hello. Thank you. Thanks for having us for waiting. just very exciting. Um >> um we wanted to sort of reiterate Brian's statement. Um I appreciate that we have the same discipline. I appreciate that um there's there's continuity um from K to 12, but secondary is a different animal. So um while we are benchmarking, it is um it is still quite new to us, which we'll kind of talk about. Um, and the way benchmarks work is a little different in that year as well. >> Yes, definitely. Although it's really exciting. Like I'm really excited. You might think that the 6 through 12 department chair of
154math is very excited about the data that she's getting from the information, but for me it's really exciting to have this consistent uh program. Um, you know, to to have STAR math that goes up to grade 10. Um although it's the high school is a different creature than the middle school as we kind of all know um it it's just exciting to have that information and to be able to use it to move the department forward and the students forward um before you go away from the slide. So we are we just wanted to remind you we um have moved to star reading and star math as our benchmarking tool um for for me at the middle school for tara at the middle school and the high school um I'm using a different tool at
155the high school um called common lit um I can talk about the rationale for that a little bit and there's an asterisk there because um we only are benchmarking students that are not in AP because they're sort of assessed differently and captured in a different category. Um, Common Lit is a platform like I first got introduced to it around 2016. Um, it's it started as a text library where that would gather data based on text that we would we would plan to use anyway with students, but you could get reading level data on it that was sort of MCCAST predictive. So teachers had been using it all over the place in in as a supplement to our curriculum. Um, and then it came out with it's teacher created. It came out with an assessment tool
156that's aligned to our um state benchmark. So, we decided to go with that because it was already familiar to teachers and students. Um, and I um was not entirely sold that Star was um like they purport that they're a high school tool. I don't buy it from the English. So, that was I would buy it. >> Yes. Can I just provide just a one more piece of um context on from a K12 perspective is that now in the middle school they teachers would have access to for ELA and math essentially since grade two on the Renaissance platform in STAR like a a single line a continuous assessment that's used and consistent. though um eventually be you'd be able to see a student's uh two through eight history in ELA or math. So here in the
157first year, right, if you have an eighth grader, that student did not take it because they're taking STAR for the first time in ELA and in math. So we don't have grade seven results for that child or grade six. they were there in grade five, but with each successive year, we'll be one year closer to having that sort of longitudinal data consistently aligned. Um, so that we're really, like I said at the beginning, we're building a system to improve u how we keep track of how students are doing. So here in year one, you're not going to see how the eighth graders did in seventh grade on STAR, but where we feel like we've made a really good move um toward a more consistent system uh K12. So I just want to add that on
158top uh based on what Megan and Heather said, too. >> Thank you. >> Um so in our math department, um we really believe that every student is a math person, um can succeed in math. Um, we're working on building students confidence in their ability to do math. Um, we foster an inclusive environment where every student has access to the challenging grade level work regardless of their starting point. Um, and we are working on prioritizing that. We're teaching students how to think through a problem and to persevere through their problem solving um, as they're working on it's more than just getting the right answer, right? like what's the problem solving method they're going to use to to to get to um to their solution. Um and here is our data so far this year. I mean
159obviously because this is our first year using STAR we don't have trends for the past several years. Um we have information for uh we um benchmarked the students in grade six, seventh and eighth at the beginning of the year. Um and then at the end of each trimester and because the meeting got moved now we have into trimester 2. So we have a little extra uh a little extra information. Um as you can see that there's um there's the data showing you know improvement in the proficiency throughout 202526. Um we can see sort of from the data that the sixth grade is showing the highest projected proficiency. Um and from when we break it down a little bit further, we have that the students are have a pretty good solid understanding of ratios and proportions.
160Um and we look at the standards, we can see that they um don't quite yet have the solid understanding of geometry or statistics. Although we do tend to do geometry and statistics towards the end of the school year. So I am looking forward to that as we do the end of the year benchmark for the high school. So the high school ob going to sound silly but the high school is obviously different than the middle school. Um in the middle school we have sixth, seventh and eighth grade standards that the star has developed their benchmark around. The high school isn't quite the same. We don't have a ninth grade course. We don't have a tth grade course. um our freshmen tend to take geometry, but in other school districts maybe it's algebra 1. So, it's
161not it's not exactly the same. Um the beginning of the year test does act that same way. It it assesses sort of both those geometry and algebra standards and we use that at the beginning of the year. Uh one of the reasons that I actually liked STAR from a math perspective is you could sort of hone in the test to just focus on algebra skills or geometry skills. For us in particular, honing in on the algebra skills is really important, especially at this time of year when we're making course recommendations for next year. Um, so we kind of liked that that part. So we did an algebra only test um before we had to make our recommendations and the blizzard hit, right? You know, the beginning of February. Um, and I was still able to
162sort of get the information to see what percent are meeting and exceeding. Uh at the end of the year, we're planning on doing another sort of um combined the the they call it the enterprise test, but it has both of the um algebra and geometry skills in it uh and standards in it. So we'll do that again at the end of the year so we can see sort of this over this um overarching arc and seeing how students did at the beginning at the end. Um, as far as sort of when I pulled out the data, sort of where people are struggling, it wasn't really standards based as much as sort of the skills based of um, Heather was sort of talking about it that idea of like what's the right like they they hone
163in on like one way to do a problem instead of sort of seeing the patterns over all of how to solve the problems and that's one of the pieces that we are are working on. Um, so they know how to apply things, right? like they sort of focus in on like how to get the right answer and thinking about sort of the structure and sort of you know what they can do to apply that to to another problem. Uh they do have a really good solid understanding of interpreting functions to describe their key charact I know this is very exciting for you guys. So to describe the key characteristics of functions it's really exciting for me actually as a high school teacher. I think that's really exciting. Um, I look at that as like the
164the new program that we put in that the the algebra 2 curriculum is really strongly focuses on those key features and we're seeing that sort of pass on to this test. That's that's exciting for me. Functions aren't exciting for everyone, but they are exciting for me. Um, you know, we also have AP data. We offer a lot of APs in math. Um, we have our AB stat. We have both we offer both VC and AB calc. you have two computer science computer science um a which is like a programming class and then computer science principles which is not it's not quite programming they do develop an app that they use um or that they turn in and so I did we did have three years of that data so we did promote those three um
165three years of data so that the percent that are three or above but also sort of the total number of students that were taking test as Wow. Um, you can see it's been pretty steady. There's been an increase in computer science principles. I think that was might have been 2022. That was the first year. I'm not exactly sure. U, but that was one at the beginning of the year. They they just started that. Um, things that we're working on. Um, you know, like I said, we're excited to have our three times a year annual benchmarking. Um it's nice to be able to have that information, have that data and and use it um in the middle school. We're using it in particular to create wind blocks, but also our math labs that we use. This
166is our tier three supports within the the middle school. Um we've been working we have this is year two of the new math program. The exciting pieces of the new math program are having that that cohesive student experience. So, if you have that shared math vocabulary from six through um I'm going to call it sort of six through 10 getting into the weeds in it, but up to algebra 2, it um and sort of they they're using sort of that same vocabulary and building off of each program and and they have sort of that shared problem solving routines experience. Um so, we're still working on those aspects of it. Um, we're still working on like which problem solving routines best promote that student thinking that we're looking for so that we can know what their
167what the right thing is to do to solve a problem. Um, they also have their own little intervention program too that came with it. Um, you know, honest talk is last year we implemented it and our brains were exploding. So this year we're really focusing in on um being able to investigate that that program a little bit more. Um, and then we also have been working with Alison Melo too to be working on um, what instructional routines and methods we can use in our high school and middle school math classrooms to make um, math visible, encouraging students to talk and think and and discuss the mathemat that that mathematical discourse is really important I think at the secondary level for us. Um, we're excited to be working with her again next year to continue that
168work. Um, so just speaking as like a I've been teaching here for 30 years. So speaking as a math teacher, what's really exciting is having like math PD, that's a really exciting thing for for me and for the other teachers. Just so you know, we don't get that very often where we just have pure math focused and someone's coming in and knows the math and does the math with us. And that's a really exciting thing for our department. Um, preK through 12, I'm sure. Um, but we're always wanting to work on our tier one. Like what are those strategies in the classroom that make math instruction um work for students? I don't know if that's the right word, but that's what I think about. Um, and after listening to our counterparts there, I think about
169all the ways we can improve our data protocols. I mean, the data is really this this data is really new for us, so I don't know we have those set yet. So, that's sort of on the data. >> We're going to build it. Lauren and I are gonna build it. We're gonna work on that and we're gonna build it together. So, um yeah, I mean that those are the things that I'm I'm really excited and um fortunate and grateful that we have that opportunity to work with here in Citra. >> I had a question. It's not related to the data. I'm just more curious like in conversations around math. Are you seeing any downward pressure in terms of computer science and programming in terms of AI? Like AI becoming a thing? Are they still because
170a a lot of people who are programmers are saying their jobs are being replaced by a and I'm just wondering if you're seeing anything at math conferences or in conversations about >> classes emerging that would >> so and full disclosure like computer science isn't necessarily my >> you know >> strong suit. >> Yeah maybe here to talk more about it but yeah I mean is it a concern? Yeah I'm assuming it is. I don't know if it's necessarily a concern that our students are are feeling. I was just wondering if they were what kind of >> I don't think I I don't think I have. Yeah, I don't think I have heard that. We haven't talked a lot about it. >> Just wondering. >> Now I'm wondering that feels like a good Wednesday morning conversation
171for me with Miss Callahan. I'm always excited about it. >> I was curious. >> I don't know. But I was at the robotics competition on Was that yesterday? >> Both days. >> Yeah, I was there. I was there yesterday, I think. It's been a long day today. Um >> more of a curiosity. >> Yeah, it was just so exciting to watch them working hands-on on on that. And so when you said that, I was like, "Oh, no." They were just really into it and doing the coding. >> But you know what? Carrie was talking about how they do use AI to sort of help with some aspects of it. So they're sort of using it to their advantage. But >> yeah, it's a great question. >> Yeah. Ryan, can you remind us or me, maybe
172everybody else remembers how we found Allison Melo? >> Um, we were reaching out at the implementation of our program last year and looking for somebody who explicitly supports math instruction. and just from my travels and uh professional development circles and I've I've um she comes across she runs a conference every year at Gillette Stadia but >> okay >> um I think um Tara and Heather touched on it well she has experience as a math teacher yeah >> she's also engaging and can talk the math um and is very committed I think as as a as an adult um to helping all kids access math and and really thinking about, hey, look how we're moving around now and look how we can use this simple like beaded number line. So that's we partnered with her last
173year. Uh I think I was joking with Tom today and I said the most successful thing that you can do when you have professional development is get the same person to show up the next year because a lot of PD the term is like drive by PD like someone flies through you never see them again and they're like feel great on March 16th. But Allison was partnered with our district through the strength of our budget and the work of our curriculum coordinators department chair. So she started last year, she's had this full year and our budget is um supporting this work with her next year. So I think um you know people don't have all the answers but your program never has the answer either. Like it could be Eureka um and we we didn't
174talk about programs today. We talked about what can teachers do, right? What what can you do tomorrow that's different? And we learned three things today that any teacher could implement tomorrow program. So that's how that's kind of how we started the partnership with her. >> She has lots of experience. >> Yes. Great. >> And last but not least, >> oh no, wait, I'm sorry. We forgot about the Sorry. Hi. There's I used a littleeration there. I got excited for the end of the math talk. I wanted we want to celebrate the students, right? So, um we have our math team. Um you can see we have our officers up. There's a lot of overlap between the math team and robotics team. Um they had a great season. They finished second in their league. Um we're
175working hard at sort of um connecting the Gates math team with the high school math team. And so the G Gates math team is doing a math meet on it's really just an inter well it's just an internal math meet but it's math so yay. Um, so they're going to do that on um, April 2nd and we'll have some high school students come and connect. Um, Mr. Blake is on that. And then we have our MAP honor society induction ceremony on uh, Wednesday, May 27th. There'll be snappies if you want to come and see that. Um, and then here's our cyber sailor. Um, yep, the pink is on brand. There it is. Um, I did not have my pink sweatshirt yesterday. I had the blue one on, but it was good. Um, so they competed
176this past weekend. They're competing in two weeks in revier. Um, and yeah, they're a big part of the welcome Fortnite. There's nothing more exciting than watching that robot shoot baskets into things. That's kind of fun and it's really enjoyable. So, um, yeah, you can see that the officers are >> somewhere. Yeah. >> Off to the side. So, we want to celebrate the students as well. >> Carrie would like to speak. >> Oh, hi Carrie. >> I'm a better Hello. >> Hi. I've been listening so it's been enjoyable. I wanted to answer the question about the AI bit and >> I have absolutely had this conversation and I'm doing the research on it. But you can't use AI without understanding how programming works. So the fact that our students could learn coding and still use it
177professionally regardless of their use of AI in the future, it's it's a major win for our students. So I encourage as many kids as possible to take APCSA in high school because it's certainly much harder in college and uh it's very accessible at that beginning level and once you learn it in high school uh you can basically teach yourself anything. So, do you have any other any other questions on that? >> No, that's great. That was a good answer, too. So, >> thank you. >> Should have known she didn't either. >> Absolutely. >> All right. Here we go. Last one. >> And now, and um I feel like you the prime the pump was primed a little bit. So um in sort of in lie of a vision statement I I kind of um posed
178the question that I feel like is um most precient for us um in the English department right now which is how do we create authentic uh opportunities for sustained engagement with complex reading and writing tasks in the age of AI. I put it out to um my teachers who um are like to say that that one day is different from the next is like things are moving very fast except of course the systems and education like there's still been no statement from the NCTTE there like Desi is I don't know what's happening at Desi nothing useful so um we're sort of in this place where we have to I'm sorry we have to adapt um and so so we are adapting Um, I think that that a lot of this is probably nothing earthshattering or
179nothing new. I mean, some of this is probably what you experienced in high school. Like, a lot of this is echoes of my own experience like in the '9s. And um, and a lot of it is that there's there are few substitutes for connecting with kids over complex and powerful text. there are few substitutes for connecting with kids or to pose you know um provocative questions um or thoughtprovoking perhaps not provocative questions um to kids to to like really sink their teeth into. I think the other thing that we've really done is is we've seen um a pattern sort of moving more towards personal like engaging kids more um engaging their opinions for them to have to justify why that's their opinion to have to think deeply about it um to focus on process. We've
180spent um a lot of time I mean it's it's also nothing new but sort of with a renewed focus of conferencing with kids so that over with their writing and their reading so that they can view their progress so that they can um which is sort of inherently motivating um with um just making things more personal and then we've done some analog stuff too but like sort of necessarily um but I think what we're really trying to do is is reiterate that like um to the the point that Carrie made is that you know, kids can't um use AI to write if they don't know how to write. Um they can't ask a bot to like refine a response if they don't know what makes a good response um and why that makes a good
181response. And also like writing is thinking and you know that is so much of what we have to do in schools. We have to think um and we have to know we have to think about our thinking and and all that. So, um that was sort of my way of um addressing the vision piece. Um and because it'll help frame some of what's to come. I also Oh, just uh sort of an additional um plug. we uh it has forced us to really revisit a lot of our practices like um we've had uh the um middle school library media specialist has come talking to us about like all the changes that I don't like we're aware of them because we see them but um she really helped us to understand the the influence of these
182changes that Google has made that are just now part of our ecosystem that we sort of just passively accept unless we do differently. And so that's going to force some changes as far as like how we approach research and how we instruct kids to approach research and how they should consider AI and how they shouldn't consider AI um and things like that. And then I also um one of the things that I think we do incredibly well in this district is we celebrate reading and I think that the seeds of that are planted um you know firmly in the elementary school. But like if you walk around the middle school the kids always have their little independent reading book. Um there are spontaneous reading clubs like that the um a bunch of juniors got together
183and just decided to read Slaughterhouse 5 and invited some teachers to it. Um there is there is a robust culture of reading. It's in the classrooms. It's outside the classrooms. Um but it is something that's present and that we're very proud of. Okay. Data. Um so I want to be respectful of Peter's point about um the fact that the charts look different. This was sort of very intentionally different. It's a table, not a chart, because I we didn't want to use the charts because that makes it seem like there's continuity and there's not continuity yet. Um we're we're hoping to build that. Mine is two different colors just to help um remind that there's actually two different benchmarks. Um part of the reason why another reason why we wanted to use common lit um at
184the high school is because because teachers already use it but it has the opportunity to collect formative data which helps us to better understand the um more summitive data of the benchmark um that I didn't mention before but this kind of I don't really know how to interpret this because it's still so new but previous to this we had started benchmarking with um a tool that had given us one data point that was uh I think intended to be more clear. It wasn't because it gave us a data point but didn't give us any data on why that was the data point. So um both star and common are actually very very similar in how they structure it. We get strand level data. Um so whether kids are falling in exceeding meeting or or approaching
185we have some context as to why that we can then act on. So, um, that's a huge benefit there. So, I look forward to giving you trend data in the future, but this is where we are right now. Yep. And our AP data looks very different than math. We've got big numbers. Um, one of the things that I'm I'm Yes. Lots of lots of classes. One of the things I'm really um excited about and a change we made recently was we AP Lang was historically just a junior course. We um last year I think it was last year opened it up to um seniors as well and that was awesome. Um it it opened up another avenue for English APs for kids who maybe weren't ready right off the bat junior year. But Lang is
186such an incredible course for for um for communication. You know, it's non-fiction driven. It's it's focused on um rhetoric and argument. Um and kids who are not your typical English kids really like it. and find value in it. So, um that was sort of a a that wound up being a great thing. Um and then our lit scores are >> good. Pretty good. >> Um I'm happy with those. Um that's our Yeah. >> Okay. Um same fees of three times annual benchmarking. It's a big deal. Um, I I wanted to leave with that because like the the time it took to to train teachers on a new tool, to train students on a new tool, um, to to train teachers on how to read the data, to train then train students on how to read
187the data or how to use the data um to to figure out how to use it in our course selection process. All of that is a very um labor intensive process. So, that's a big thing. I wanted to leave with that. We are in our curriculum review cycle. I know I talked about this at the program of studies night. Um but we have there's a ton of things going on. We have um level differentiation at the high school um where they were sort of colllocated before. We've broken them out again. We have revised courses with new text. We're piloting a bunch of new texts this year. Um we uh are using the training through ATSR and now um also through Hill for literacy to um align better using um objectives and for formative assessment. Um
188we'll also be using our benchmark assessment to help inform some of that. We are piloting an evidence-based structured literacy program for our tier three students at Gates. That is also new. um we have sort of changed the structure a little bit every year to to make it more and more and more fine-tuned. Now we're we're pretty satisfied that this is um we're going to keep it for the time being. Um our data in the spring will show us the extent to which it is impacting um those students. It's basically in terms of closing their um foundational literacy gaps. Um and then so fresh off of today we uh participated in all day training with um a representative from Health for Literacy who is an adolescent literacy specialist. Um I I know I've mentioned it before
189but but literacy is such a I don't know it's such an elementary oriented thing. The entire landscape of literacy is is very very mostly elementary but we know that adolescent kids also have literacy needs. Um, and up to this point, you know, we have teachers that are that are experts in content and experts in instructional practices, but like there's been a gap in how we meet those more foundational needs in a way that also respects that kids are older and have life experience and things like that. So, um, we are taking on again like which is an incredible privilege to work in a district that so values contentbased PD. Um we are participating in this 10 module course um that is like comprehensive training in adolescent literacy practices. I was saying to um Ryan and
190Dr. Rout today that um it what I noticed today I I was like couldn't stay in my seat. I was so excited about this. It dovetales so nicely with the ATSR practices and trainings um with with formative assessment and with objectives and um with feedback and criteria for success and all those things that we're you know we're getting through ATSR and that we'll continue focusing on in the future. just it's a really nice um compliment on deck. Um we have um PD for writing instruction which is partly kind of like help with you know in the AI era partly just because we're kind of overdue for it partly because that tends to be our weakest area and our empath data. Um we are also looking to um train our or invest in our human capital,
191train our teachers on UVD curriculum design. It's also been a long time, but we have a homegrown curriculum. It just sort of puts an additional focus on needing to make sure that the people who are writing and creating it are really really um trained to the highest level that they can. We are going to continue our work on building adolescent literacy instructional capacity and embedding those practices in um inside our curriculum. And then um we are also looking to renew and refresh our grade 12 course offerings to make them a little bit more representative of the needs of seniors which are different now than they have been in years past. So, um I realize now this should be exciting English endeavors if we're really following the alliteration. >> I followed your aliteration. Yes. >> Come
192up with the other thing. >> Um so it's sort of a random smattering of stuff that is going on like kind of right up to the minute. The representative from the Simmons Center for Slavery and Justice spoke to eighth graders just last week. That was super cool. Um they're reading a text that takes place in in um during the revolution. Um, and there's lots of references to uh New England slavery and and typically kids are like, "What are you talking about? Slavery New England?" No, that was in the South. So, she had lots of, you know, um, documents and um, uh, things that like storytelling that kind of blew kids minds a little bit about what they thought they knew. Um, we have a brand new course offering, a selective um, for seniors this that's
193running for the first time this spring called Lean into the Lyric. Um, BA just took a field trip Friday to a reporting studio. Um, which is really neat. It it kind of uses um hiphop as a means to deliver English um standards. It's really um exciting. Fathom, our literary magazine, has been reborn. It kind of died a little bit for a couple years, but it's come back. We have a lot of interest from students about about writing and art. Um, and blending those two things together. There was a poetry slam in February. That was exciting. Yes. Oh, there's more. Um I know you you all had discussed or or had seen the Boston Globe article about the um the gate student who was recognized for uh winning winning the national art contest um to submit
194her beautiful artwork for the IDA trail contest. If you want to know what the heck our connection is to the IDA rod trail meal context uh contest, you need to meet um Brian Hickox, a sixth grade English teacher. He'll tell you all about it. He was a teacher on the trail in like 2019, I think 2018, something like that. Um and he shared that enthusiasm with his students. The book fair was here last week at Gates. It was again great to see kids super excited about physical books. Um, and I also wanted to shout out there was another really cool opportunity that happened this fall. Um, that has happened now at least three years in a row. Um, the we have another selective course called literature of sport. Um and that teacher along with um
195had invited a bunch of the life sciences teachers um to get together to hear from Ray Nicks who's a fellow of UCTE center to talk to kids about like brain science and um concussions and CTE and um all sorts of things. And then I found out after the fact that one of our um recent grads had actually connected with him and went to his brain center and got to do some like holding of the brains while they were doing things with them. Um but just incredible and cool and um and this is only a small cross-section. So they're such good stuff. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. Again, compliments I think on the presentation. I think that was a helpful storytelling and closing of the loop including data and where you're going with it.
196And I think that always helps inspire trust even when we see numbers that we're like ah we want to be better. Um we all want them to be better. We know that you guys do too and that's why we're all here and that's the hard work the teachers. So thank you guys for that. >> Yeah. We recognize you're in the beginning stages of this too. You know great foundation. >> You've done so much. It feels like it >> other things on your plates as well >> and you know just just one piece of what you do and have done. So >> great job to start. >> We're looking forward to what's next. >> You stay with us all night. >> Yes. >> And you as well. >> All right. Um I didn't see any warrants
197in our backup this evening. N >> so we are clear on that. a subcommittee report. You do. Okay. You'll find a memo in your backup this evening. This involves all of us Mario. >> Don't get too cozy or think we're done. Um this is called uh running focus groups to contribute to superintendent hiring needs assessment. So let's not forget that the other important thing that we are in the midst of is this needs assessment that we have uh let me think I think it was either the beginning of January or the end of December when we first discussed publicly um that we were going to conduct a need assessment. Um so and then we and then we hired a first beacon consulting group. You guys remember that? >> Yes. So here we are maybe our
198third fourth public update on this just to be clear for the record. >> Um so I'm now we are >> fast forwarding to the portion of the um process where we're ready to start doing some of this work. Um now you might also remember that we agreed to take on some of the focus groups because uh we wanted to not have our consultant Patty doing all of them. um partly because it was expensive to have someone else do these. Um but we did Nicole and I did sit with Patty and developed questions and kind of like a protocol and um we have set her off to go do some other sets of interviews. So she is doing some interviews, but we are taking on this subset of interviews. So, as a reminder, the outcomes of
199this work will be a candidate profile outlining desired skills and behavioral traits that are desirable for situated superintendent job description and a critique of our current superintendent contract offering advice on ways to update it and bring it closer to alignment with our need. So, those are three things that I think are great, they're important, and we need them. So, this is good. Um the way that these focus groups will run uh they will be run by two school committee members together so that we avoid a quorum but also are not alone. Um they'll be in person. They will not exceed 60 minutes. Um they will follow the script that's outlined below. Um we are charged with taking typed notes. >> Well, we talked about this a little bit. She she advised us against recording because
200sometimes that makes people feel uncomfortable speaking. >> So while that would make our lives easier, um she advised that we should probably >> take notes. You can take handwritten notes, but at some point you need to type. So that's the deal. And you can tag team with the other person that you're with to make that happen. Uh we are keeping speakers anonymous in said notes. Um and we can share them directly with Patty when they're complete. Um, so as a reminder, the groups that we are engaging with are listed below. And one of the things we need to do tonight is assign ourselves to them so that we can proceed with working on them. So as everyone's having a chance to look at our little list here, there are four groups. I want to take
201a moment to talk about students. So um, we really want to get student voice. It's a theme for us, I guess. Um, and we thought you guys would be helpful as our student reps in helping us do this. Um, we would love to have you guys take like a little bit more ownership of this, but we also understand that you are busy and have a lot going on. And so if this feels too overwhelming, just like let us know and we can help you. Um, but what we're really looking for is your thoughts on how we might compose a group of students as representative. It doesn't need to be only high school. You could think about middle school or even maybe some upper elementary. We can think about that. Obviously, >> four, fifth graders, >>
202logistical things, blah blah blah. You got to think through it a bit. you guys can talk to each other. Um, think about what that representative group might look like, how and where, where and when we get them together. Um, and then we have that script down below. If you guys felt comfortable and wanted to, you could be the notetakers and one of us will just be there to kind of like background support in case anything goes ary or you need us or whatever, we're there. But you guys could really lead it and completely run it yourselves. So you guys should talk to each other and then talk to us and let us know after the meeting like what your thoughts are and then one of us is sign up for that group regardless. Maybe two
203of us depending on those excitement and availability and capacity and all that stuff. All right. So that hopefully gave people a chance to think about which groups y'all are excited to run. I'm going to pop our names right in. >> It's the deadline. >> I don't care what group I do. Um, I think we would really like to wrap this a little bit before April break it >> get it done. >> So, what you would do >> because we have so many do what? >> I would do central office. >> Central office. Peter love that. Thank you. >> Okay, Peter and Janice. Awesome. We got our first team. You're gonna take your notes, Janice? >> I am. That's a good team. >> I can help you with Amazing. Carrie and I Great. Nicole, I'm putting
204you on department chairs. Um, >> I will I'll do students. We'll talk. >> Nicole, I can help you with department chairs. Sounds good. >> Amazing. Maria will take good notes. I can certainly she's always typing away. >> Um yeah, we have to do do we have to consent these folks? >> I mean usually when you do qualitative interviews with people, you do consent if you're going to use their data in decisions. >> Um I mean we didn't that wasn't something that came up with Patty. We can ask her with students >> because we're like they're all minors. >> Yeah, but they're minors. >> Okay. I just want to know like even in the school we have to be mindful that there are parents that we need to let them >> I wouldn't want to do
205it without parenting. >> Okay. >> Oh for students. Yes. For the adults I thought you were talking. >> I meant for both. >> Okay. I don't know about that. >> It didn't come up when we talked to Patty. Um but you can see the script below and if you have thoughts on it just given we do have some expertise in this topic please do feel free to make suggestions and we can you know circle up on it. I mean, yeah, if I don't know what her background is. I just know if we're going to publish data from the >> I think we're not publishing data. I think it's well beyable though, right? >> I don't know. I just >> It needs to be rejected. >> Maybe we don't need it. We just take >> I
206can take my research brain off. I'm just >> Yeah. No, it's it's really helpful that you brought it up. It >> is. We could ask. We just want to all our eyes cross somebody >> for sure. >> Um, yeah, the idea was to take notes without names. Um, yeah, but I was not thinking that these notes would be foyable because I think we want them to be they're for a really specific. I don't know. I just wasn't thinking about that, but I think that's a great question. So, I will find out. >> Yeah. I mean, it's just usually typical when you do an interview that like you say, >> we're inter we appreciate you being interviewed. Do you consent to this? If in any time you decide you don't want us to use your information,
207you need to right like those sorts of things. >> Standard standard protocol. >> Agreed. >> Yeah. >> Add that practice. >> Yep. >> Do you guys have any questions before you talk about this to each other? >> No. Um are we like finding students that we >> So, yeah. So, I think what what we'll do since I'm going to be your person is the three of us will talk um and figure out kind of a plan first. So don't go asking anyone yet. Um because I think we'll want to just have a little like a plan first and like we said we'll have to think about you know parent party and consent think all that. >> Okay. Yes. We'd love for you guys to help us with that part in particular and I think part
208of that would be thinking about how to create a representative group. >> Definitely. >> Yeah. Thought that would be a good challenge for you guys. >> All right. Excellent. Um, so now we have everyone's assignments, marching orders. >> We'll let you know. Yeah. Thank you. Great. Great. And at the time, I don't know if anyone heard this, Carrie asked what the timeline was. We would like to wrap these up ideally by April 10th, but definitely before April break. >> So, does does that mean providing you with the notes by that date? >> In the best case scenario, yes. >> So, are we then are we now reaching out to these? >> So, I'm assembling a contact list. Um, so let me I'm just like a little on that, but an artwork is happening at the
209same time as our consultant is doing her. >> I just want to make sure I just want to know. >> Yeah, I'll let you know when that's ready. I have a spreadsheet already started. Um, but I'm just still populating it. >> So, it should be clear who was in what group and blah blah blah blah before we go from there. >> Okay. >> Um, and I have a sample email outage, too. >> Great. So, >> it should be easy. >> Fantastic. Are we compiling it all in one place though? >> I do have a folder. >> Okay. >> Yeah, that would be helpful. So, we can drop it all into one place. >> Yes. Okay. >> I'll show you all the folder. I just want to make sure we're not supposed to. >> So, you're
210the point person. >> I'm the point person. I just want to make sure that we're on >> I'm the point person for that folder. Right now, it is generally shared the two of us. >> Everyone else is on right now. Make sure there's no back. >> I don't think you can share it with all of us. >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's right. Two of us. >> Yep. I think we should just send them to you too. >> I'll send documents as you read them. Contact list. I will have to send you. >> All right. Excellent. Okay. Fantastic. Uh any anything else before we any Okay. All right. Uh just that Friday, April 3rd, there's school committee office hours from 10 to 11:30 on Zoom with Carrie and Maria. >> I think it's usually we you
211we've been posting 90 minutes, but it feels like they've only been going for an hour. So, I don't know. >> I feel like this one for some reason was 90 minutes. The other ones were 60. I don't know why this one came to be >> That's a long time. >> That is a long >> I just mess up. Yeah. >> Maybe the time. Yeah, we'll take a motion to adjurnn here. >> Motion to adjurnn item two. >> Second. >> All in favor? I