Scituate School Committee Meeting 10-20-25

001There you go. Have a great meeting. >> Thank you. >> The Situate 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 our 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. We'll call the October 20th, 2025 Situate School meeting to order this evening at 603. It is echoey. All right, we will begin tonight with public comment. Before I get into that, just a couple reminders here from our policy behind individuals in the school committee. It is an individual's opportunity to express an opinion on issues within the

002school committee's authority. The public comment segment shall not exceed 15 minutes. Speakers will be allowed up to three minutes to present their material and must begin their comments by stating their name. Public comment shall concern items that are within the scope of the school committee's authority. I would initially like to invite um any students who would like to speak for public comment first. You guys can come up first and why don't you come up to the microphone here. >> Hi, my name is Angelica Hajam. I'm the president of our >> I don't know if they can hear you too much. See if it's Is the mic on there? Can you hear me now? >> Absolutely. Thank you. >> So, hi, my name is Angelica Hajim. I'm the president of our school's robotics team. >> My

003name is Charlotte Lynch and I'm the secretary of robotics team. >> We just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for the new space that has been allotted for our club, room 127. It's been extremely beneficial for our team and having the space has really helped us to keep our organization and the members in our team are really enjoying it. We really appreciate um the help from the committee, the high school admin, and our teacher and mentor, Miss Halan. >> Thank you guys so much. >> Thank you for your time. Thank you. also want to acknowledge anyone who's uh remotely joining us that um if you would like to participate just raise a hand and we will I will do my best to toggle back and forth of course um getting to everyone who

004wants to make a comment. >> Hi, my name is Shane Yuri >> and my name is Maline Poppish. Uh we're both coaches of the Situit um the captain captains of the Sichu golf team >> the girls golf team. Um I cannot or we cannot be more proud of our team and the progress we've made over the past two years if we've been a part of it. We went from winning zero matches in 2024 to being one match went away from states in 2025 to anticipating making the state tournament in 2026. However, this progress was abruptly cut short this September when our varsity coach, Miss Magcguire, stepped down from her position. The discourse surrounding this resignation is upsetting to both of us and adds undertones of unequal treatment. Shay and I please ask the school committee

005to aid us in securing a new coach and equal treatment for our team. Thank you. >> We are here in any way we can help. All we want is a good coach. Thank you so much. >> Thank you so much. I'd like to thank the captains for advocating for the team. The one thing that I know I spoke to the AD and typically we don't post spring sports this early, but in this particular case, we are going to post that coaching position immediately. As a matter of fact, I think it's already posted. So, we'll start gaining um resumes for the position. I've also been talking to a couple of people to do a self- assessment, a title N self assessment of our athletic program and I spoke to the AD and the high school principal.

006That's also in the works and I should be finalizing that this week. All right. Any other students who wish to speak? Look and see if there's anyone online that's a student real quick. I'm not seeing any hands raised. >> Um, hi, I'm Juliet Stewart. I'm a senior here and I would just like to take a collective moment to thank Mr. Adams for all the work he has done um throughout all of our school systems. I know it's been very impactful and I think we all should just thank him for that. Any other students? All right. Um, I don't see any virtual Sorry, I'm also admitting people virtually too here as I do this. I don't see any virtual that I'm identifying student hands raised. Um, granted I also don't see any student hands raised. So,

007I just want to make sure that virtual hands are that's working properly. Um, but while that's just being checked on, anyone in person who would like to come to the microphone, please be my guest. Oh, I see virtually. So, at least I know that that's working. Hi, I'm Nicole Gracia, Situit um public schools educator and a parent of a situ high school freshman. Um I am sure many of you are familiar with the classic game Jenga. Trust me, I have a point here. A tower of blocks interdependent on one another to sustain strength and stamina. Pull just one out and you risk toppling all of the work put into building this pillar. Maybe you can survive a couple of blocks, but that tower waivers. Its stability falters. It's never as strong as it was with

008all. Each block needs the others around it to hold it up, keep it afloat. At Situ Public Schools, each one of us, regardless of role, has this effect on the other. We hold each other up. We stand alongside one another. And that is what makes the student experience here so special. I've had the opportunity to work alongside many supported blocks over the course of my 28 years here at Siduit Public Schools. But no one holds others up quite like Jan Adams. His light, his love for everything that is good in this world, his enthusiasm and positivity has buoyed this district and kept our ship sailing in ways no one else has. Any challenge or adversity is genuinely met with love. Walls have come down and Situate public schools is truly a more inclusive place because

009of him. He will counter and say his famous line of always we never me. But he is the reason there is such a strong sense of we. I've been blessed to work closely with J as a lit team leader among other endeavors. I've experienced firsthand the journey our students have traveled. When our students have been immersed in lit in our district, they come out of it kinder, more empathetic, more ready for the world around them and the one they face in their futures. I understand and appreciate that our school committee is committed to continuing the district's DEI efforts. However, pulling this block from our tower is more than a disappointment. I'd say it could have devastating consequences for our students and community. J has empowered so many of us to speak for our students and

010support them in ways we may not have been brave enough to in the past. But without his leadership, without his light, I fear our district's tower will lose the stability that has been so carefully constructed and our light will be dimmed. Thank you. >> Thank you. Do you I see some students who want to speak. Okay. Do you want to come up to the microphone? My name is Anna Fors and I'm a Jenkins student in Miss McDonald's class and I just want to say like Mrs. Gracia um it our schools are definitely like a big Jenga walk and basically um Jimmy Adams was a big walk of it. It was a big chunk of it. after taking him out of our community, he definitely made a big dent in our place and dimmed our light

011a lot and definitely put our community in a little bit of a rough place. >> Um, hi, I'm Grace Sver. I um am also a student at Jenkins and I will also say I was part of the lit team and it's like a big difference without him. Um, we feel like a lot of kids are like a like annoyed with that and we all just want him back in our school system. We believe that I feel that some kids in our school could really use the help with diversity and equality in our public schools because without that that is definitely a big bulk taking out of our community and that's definitely really important to us as a very brought together community. Please take uh one more in person. Go ahead. You can go and then

012I'll I'll try to take a few online hands. >> Um my name is May Lynch. I'm a junior at Situit. And I just wanted to say the first time I ever stepped into the administrative building at the school, um I was in seventh grade and I was going with Lyla Gates and I remember being so terrified of all the people in there just because I was scared that I was going to do something wrong, think I had trouble with the school. But I remember it was a really hot day right before school ended and obviously I looked very visibly nervous and the first person that came up to me was Mr. Adams and he offered me and Llaya ice pops. Um it was just a really fun memory. But I remember that was the first

013day I'd ever met him and when um he started This is Our House. I believe two years later when I was a freshman or maybe it was in eth grade, I'm not completely sure. But I just know that every single student has looked forward to This Is Our House every single year. Um, I'm in a wellness class right now with a senior, her name is Millie Murphy, and I remember she would talk all the time about how This Is Our House gets all of her hype, and it gets all of us like ready for the year and ready to be inclusive and really open our hearts to people. And um with Jal just like knowing him, I didn't know him super personally, but knowing him as long as I did, he's always been that smiling

014face that whenever you have a bad day, you can see him. He'll give you a high five in the hallway. Um and we have a lot of great supportive staff at this school, but um Jan has just been one of those people. He feels he makes everyone feel like they have a place. um even if you don't feel like you have a place at situate and he did that with his lip program and he did that just by being around people and interacting with them and I think his lessons are very valuable especially in a time where um DEI is sort of being looked at as something that is very um like we shouldn't be doing it or like that some places aren't committed. Um, and I feel like his presence of working at the

015school and being at the school has really made it look like and it has made it like our school district is very committed to continuing DEI, especially in a time where that's really difficult to do. So, I just wanted to say he's an amazing person and I think we we're all better people with him in the building. Okay, I'm going to switch to virtual. See, Michelle Rama, I'm going to try and ask you to unmute. See if that works. >> Muted. Can you hear me? >> I can hear you. I think we can all hear you. Right ahead. >> Oh. Can you hear me now? >> Yes. >> Okay, good. Um, so I'm I am also here to um speak about Jal Adams and I I second all of the sentiments shared. The only thing

016I will add is that when and I know there are children from the district present here so I won't state what happened but when there was a um event in the in the community that was very harmful and um hurtful to Jle Adams. um his response I think was one of the best lessons that anyone could have ever um taken from school from their education and that is that he responded with nothing but love and light. He he joined the community together and um you know by meeting adversity with love and and showing how you know modeling that behavior that you respond with care and love for one another um even when faced with hate. Um, I think that that ful fulfills his mission and the mission that we hoped for for uh a director

017of uh diversity, equity, and inclusion. So I, you know, I I feel like this is a type of position where you're kind of um you're destined to fail because there are no like measurable um you know metrics that you can put in place to to really weigh the value of a director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's not it's not something that you can say well you know he had this many um accomplishments and this many I don't even know what the metrics would be for other roles but it is something that's not easily measured. So you know the the problem with that sort of a role is that it will be kind of thankless and underappreciated and and I'm afraid that in moving away from um Mr. Adams's um example and moving on toward

018a a broader definition of diversity, equity, inclusion that includes social and emotional learning, which is my understanding of what the the actions being taken are. Um, I think it dilutes and is a a step backward and it it just sends a message to our community that it's it wasn't valued. Um, and that and that the messages that he shared and the the bonds that he formed and the community that he developed um, you know, is not is not valuable, is not valued. So, I I just want to say and I know the school committee does not decide on um Jamil Adams's employment. Um, however, I as a message to the interim superintendent and and potentially to others involved in that decision, I would just say um that I would strongly urge you to reconsider not

019knowing and again like I know we can't ask about the circumstances around um his removal, but we do know that this this position is being eliminated and that alone is is reason for concern and um and it does look like we are capitulating to a political climate um that that undervalues DEI. So I ask that we don't do that. I ask that we we value J Adams's work um for the intangible beautiful progress that it brought to our district. Thank you. We'll just go back and make it easy. >> Um, I'm Cheryl Ryell and um, in years past I taught here and years before that I worked with the school committee and several administrators in running a nonprofit here in town. Um, I'm here today as a concerned parent. Um, I spent some time before

020becoming a full-time teacher with the district um, in visiting some of the school committee meetings. I don't envy any of the positions that you guys are in. I am glad that I don't have to make these decisions. Um, but one of the things that these comment sessions allow us to do is to make sure that we are crystal clear in uh, accountability. And I think that through the several hiring committees that I have been in and some of the work that I have done um both within the district and outside of the district in this sphere of diversity, equity, and inclusion, I think um building on uh what Michelle had to say earlier, um it's really important to define what it is that we value, but it's also equally important to make sure that we

021are using metrics to see whether or not those values are being instilled. And I think one of the areas that we continually fall down in is assuming it's all going to work out or not having those metrics ahead of time to determine whether or not a job is being successful or making an impact. And I've seen this several times over both as a parent and within um in my teaching position within the district. I know that we are in um an unusual time um in the district with a change in leadership. I think that the change in leadership um was somewhat destabilizing for the trust that we have in some of the decisions that have been made. And as the public, we can't always be aware of every aspect of what informs certain hires or

022what convinces people to leave or any of those things. We're not going to be privy to all of that information. So what we're being asked to do is to trust um your decision powers and and I do trust but as a person who is invested in equity I also know that we have to verify. Verification is a really important part of the trust. And one of the things that I think is important to understand is whose voices um were sought in in discontinuing a position that means much to a certain set of people um and whose voices were missing. That's one of the concerns that I have. The other concern I have are what metrics are used to decide whether or not this position um was successful or necessary or something we've evolved past. Because

023it certainly seems that if we're saying that our needs have evolved or changed and that we require more, then I'm not sure creating a new position for somebody with a larger purview makes sense. it seems like we're deemed to failure to add additional responsibilities both administrative and forward facing. So, um I think transparency is difficult in some of these situations and I'm really glad to see the follow-up um email from the school committee that said that they would do a listening tour. I'm glad to hear that. I also question um why that's necessary if we've already decided that a new position has to be created because I would have assumed that those voices were sought beforehand and this was a more informed decision. So I question what the process was and I think that's another

024point that we need. If we can't necessarily understand all of the details of the decisions that are being made and certainly most of us do not then we have to trust in the process and at the moment the process of um creating these jobs or ending the positions that process whose voices how that's decided is not clear. it's relatively opaque. Um, and so I would urge some additional work in this sphere to make sure that if we are in this position again that we know the data and the metrics that are being used um to help guide these decisions and we're not blindly forced to just trust a process that we don't know exists. Okay, move to some virtual hands raised. Lindsay Newton is the next one that was raised. >> Hi, can you hear

025me? >> Yes. >> Hi. Um, thank you everybody for your time tonight. My name is Lindseay Newton. I'm the adjustment counselor at Gates. Um, I do not live in Situit, but have worked in Situit for many years now. Um, I'll keep this brief, so I'm not going to repeat everything that people have said regarding how wonderful J is as an individual and all the work that he's done. Um, but my perspective as an adjustment counselor. Um, I also hold a certificate in anti-racist education. So, I feel like I'm uniquely suited to give an opinion on the idea of transitioning from a DEI position to an SEAL position. Um, in my mind, we're actually doing it backwards. SEAL should fall under the umbrella of DEI, not the other way around. Um because if we stop and

026think about SEAL, those are skills and strategies that you're teaching children around self-awareness, social awareness, self-management. But those skill development cannot be done without a greater foundation of understanding differences, diversity, equity, the idea of belonging. Um, so I urge you as someone who absolutely should in theory love having a new social emotional leadership position. At the same time, it has come at the expense of a DEI position. And I really recommend more thought being put into how we can reinvision an existing role regardless of what personnel you want in there rather than taking away a position entirely and creating a new one. Um, I just will also echo the optics of this from a the the national climate of the politics. Like we look at like as a town that we're cowing to some sort

027of bigger issue of not wanting to continue DEI efforts. And I just urge you to really think if that's what's quote unquote in the best interest of our students because as a person who is in the schools working with our children, I do not see that this is the step that we should take now. So, thank you. >> Um, hello. My name is Elena Rodell. I'm a current SHS junior. Um, and I have known Jal Adams since the pandemic. Um, I first met him at the GSA open mic, which was one of the first social events that I attended after the pandemic. Um, I just have one thing to say, um, which is could everyone who's been positively impacted by the actions of Jamal Adams please stand up. There's a large population of students here

028today and I wish to acknowledge that we I I may speak for some students, maybe not for all. I personally believe that we were not consulted for this decision and I feel like it negatively impacts us. So if you say this is for the benefit of the students, which students did you ask? Sorry, I'm not good with timekeeping, so I apologize. It's been 30 minutes. Not my strength. Um, but it's okay. I know it's important. So, um, I'll go to Emily. It's the last hand virtually. So, um, and then we'll do our in person. I think we're probably wrapping up. I I think there's probably three or four books left. So, um, sorry, Emily. >> Hi there. Can you hear me? >> Yes. >> Okay, great. Thank you. Um, hi, my name is Emily Matthews.

029Um, I I uh I'm going to take a different tack. Oh, I live at 158 Clap Road if we need to provide that. Um, I want to identify um a single line of policy GCA. Although such positions may remain temporarily unfilled, only the committee may abolish a position it has created. Um noting that the school committee has the right to abolish any position it has created. Um I've spent some time and I cannot for the life of me find the public meeting when this position was abolished. I think I feel the frustration that others feel that the elimination of J's position lacks transparency and I question whether it aligns with the policy and was due diligence done to align this process with that policy. Thank you. My name is Dina Dre. I was born and

030raised here in Situit and I'm now raising my own children here. Children who have gone through or are currently attending Situit public schools. As a black woman, a mother, and someone whose daily work is to advocate for underrepresented students, I feel a deep responsibility to speak tonight about what many of us see as a troubling shift in our district, a dismantling of the supports that were intentionally built to protect and uplift marginalized individuals. On Friday, a district-wide email went out announcing a shift towards social and emotional learning, framed as an expansion. But to many in our community, it felt like something crucial was being stripped away. The language of inclusion is still there, but the action behind it feels like reduction and not growth. Within minutes of that email being sent, my phone lit up

031with parents, staff, and students reaching out, confused, angry, heartbroken. I share this not to center myself, but to give a voice to what so many of us are feeling and explain why so many people are here tonight. Jamal Adams is not just a colleague. He is a dear friend and mentor and he has been a beacon of light in this community. The town of Situit and the Situit public schools owe him a debt of gratitude that cannot be measured and can never be repaid. He has faced opposition, racism, and even hate crimes and met every one of those moments with grace, courage, resilience, and his unwavering message of togetherness and more love. Situate is a brighter and stronger place because of his work. And the way his dismissal has been handled is nothing nothing short

032of disgraceful. There is no softer way to say it. To remove the only black administrator that this district has ever had without transparency, without warning, without care or consideration, sends a chilling and deeply harmful message to this entire community. We gain nothing from the decision and yet we lose so much. And I will be honest, I'm extremely nervous to be speaking here tonight because I worry that speaking out may put a target on myself. But I know that the work that I do every day is rooted in love, advocacy, and commitment to doing what is right. I also know that truth matters, that integrity matters, and that silence in the face of harm is not an option. So I ur urge this school committee to reflect deeply on how every decision made here ripples outward

033into classrooms, into homes, into the hearts of our children, and the choices you make now will shape who we are as a community and what values we teach the next generation to stand for. Equity cannot become optional. Thank you. Hi, I'm the Reverend Natasha Stewart. I am here tonight both as a parent of two children in the school district as well as the priest at the Episcopal Church here in town. I just want to bring a slightly different perspective. Um, I 100% my children have benefited from everything that Jal has done. Um, I have been a huge supporter of his work here in this district um, in the schools, but as a community leader, he has brought his work into our community in a way that is absolutely invaluable. He has partnered with so many

034different organizations and he has shown up over and over again at community events to continue the message um of DEI work that is so important and he's taught our students through that that it's important to show up when you believe in these things. I do feel very strongly that eliminating his position and particularly him honestly from this um from the school district is not just a loss to our schools. It is a loss to our entire community. And I echo all of what people said also about the transparency of this, about our opportunities to come and speak about this before decisions were made. Um, my church and me were here a few years ago when his job was on the line to advocate for him. And that was very clear that that was what was

035going on at that school committee meeting. And we weren't given that opportunity this time, which really disappoints me. And it makes me wonder as other have said about the transparency and what's really driving this decision. But I think that you're going to find that this doesn't just affect the students. This is going to affect everybody in town. And for that I am just really disappointed. Hello, my name is Lorraine Jones. Um, I didn't prepare anything tonight, but I was inspired by our youngest speakers, so I thought I would come forward. Um, I am a specialized pair professional at Jenkins Elementary School, but I also am a situ resident, born and raised. I went to Jenkins, I went to Gates, I went to the high school. And I have always felt invisible as a minority student.

036I've always felt voiceless. I've always felt powerless in the school system as a child and as an educator until I met Juniel Adams after being introduced to him in my educational career. I've never felt more seen, more heard, more like I matter, more like I am valued for my perspective, for my experience. I've never felt more loved before at any of the schools I've ever worked at um until I partnered with him in um I'm now the new club adviser for LIT and I've never felt more inspired from working with him um in my entire career. Just wanted to say that. Thank you. My name is Katie Sullivan. Um, I live in Situit. I'm a parent of children in Siduit. Um, it is wonderful to hear all of the things about Mr. Adams, but I

037would submit that this was not a personnel decision and that if it were, it wouldn't possibly be uh properly being addressed by the school committee. This is a governance structural issue as far as changing positions, changing resources, all of those things. So, I would urge the school committee to reconsider this. That was my first point. My second is the I just want to comment on the communication that went out and the idea that social emotional learning and diversity, equity, and inclusion are either the same thing or mutually exclusive or it's just not clear because it seems that social emotional learning has been should be a priority. It's incredibly important and just bird's eye view backing up diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging was supposed to address the idea that the social emotional needs of all of

038the community weren't being equally equitably addressed. So the idea that it it reads to me like all social emotional learning matters. It's a it's to to take resources and focus off of diversity, equity, and inclusion now and say, "Oh, it's really because everyone needs social emotional learning." Is a very strange message to be sending. I think. >> So, we're gonna cut it to five more minutes or so. So, >> the last four. Okay. >> Um, let's go to our virtual hand raise here. Jayla. >> Hi. Can you guys hear me? >> Yes. >> Okay. My name's Jayla May and I'm a junior at Situa High School. Um I am also a Mecca student. So which means I am a black student. um h hearing about um Jamal Adams being fired by the school committee and

039the reason why it's very displeasing and I find it unfair that one the black students weren't addressed about this situation and two hearing about students needing social emotional learning over DEI also seems very disrespectful because in situ we have a black community and my sister who is in the middle school is going to be coming to this high school and I want her to feel included I want her to feel respect ffected. I don't want her to feel as if she has to fit in with a certain standard in situ high school because of her skin color. And I want her to feel as if she's just the same as everybody else. I don't like to hear that J has to leave all because of a social emotional learning curriculum that the school committee is

040trying to create. It doesn't really make sense to me. And honestly, if this was going to be a decision the school committee was going to make, they should have addressed it to situ the situ high school in general for students to put their opinion on it. Because if it wasn't for J Adams, I wouldn't even be where I'm at today. I wouldn't be performing. I wouldn't be ad um advocating for Black Lives Matter. I wouldn't be advocating for diversity in general. and his him perform him just being there for all the black students all the in the black community of Situa High School. It made me feel welcomed and it made me feel more confident in my own skin tone. And also another thing I heard about the superintendent's backstory and background and I also

041feel like it's it's just not it's really unfair to have this happen. And I personally do think it's a personal type of decision that he decided to make. Despite J's impact on Situate, the school committee still decided to fire him, which is just honestly disrespectful and offensive to me and most likely to the whole Situate school community community. So just take personally, well, I'm actually asking you guys to take consider take consideration on how his how his presence affects all of Situ and how he radiates positivity. That's all. How you doing? I'm Luke Poppish. >> Luke Pop. Yeah, we got Luke Poppish. Uh, father of two girls who play on the Situ golf team. I first want to say thank you uh to Miss Brandolini for um communicating with parents that were concerned and for

042listening to our concerns. I also want to recognize uh Superintendent Bra for having a meeting with me and discussing the concerns. Um I just I really just want to call out um the rule 43.1 in the MIATE.net handbook around equity and inclusion in sports. Um, I appreciate that you all are doing an internal audit, but I would implore that the community look at bringing in an external auditor to look at equity and inclusion and sports across Situate High School. Um, I have a a laundry list of things I wanted to say, but we we're obviously way way over time. So, I'm going to uh just say in addition to the equity and inclusion portion, what I would like to see for transparency, not just in the public school budget for athletics, I would like to

043see an audit on the booster money raised and where booster money goes to. Um I believe that there's a again unconfirmed, but I believe there's a huge inequity there as well. And I and I know that all that money once given to the school becomes public funds and should be treated the same as any other funding for equity and inclusion. So I don't want to belabor the point, but um I want to follow up with you all. I hope that we will get a report and some transparency. I appreciate the internal, but if I was going to audit myself, I would pick a friendly auditor. You know what I'm saying? So, I'd really like to see uh someone external look into all of the finances around public school uh funding for sports. Thank you. Hi,

044Lauri with row. I just wanted to acknowledge that well, first of all, I've been attending school committee meetings for I think it's going on it'll be 20 years. Um, my oldest is 26 and a half. And if I don't attend them in person, I watch them now since 2020 online or I try to watch the recordings on YouTube. So I've tried to stay on top of most things. And I just want to acknowledge that at a few of the meetings most recently this year, I'd like to acknowledge that the school committee on multiple occasions, I think most recently even in June, Miss Bowski, or in March, I I don't know the exact dates, but there have been definitely instances where it's been brought up to ask about return on investment. and the ROI of the

045department. And this isn't something that with true transparency, it's it's been talked about. This has been brought up on multiple occasions under the leadership of Mr. Burkehead and Jal and that questions have been asked. So, I just to the community that's here, I just wanted to acknowledge that this isn't something that's come out of nowhere. Like, I've heard these conversations in these meetings where there's been they've asked to measure what is going on in results and ROI and looking at accountability and tax dollars and all those things. So I just want I feel that this isn't something that is has come out of nowhere that the school committee has been doing due diligence and when they've looked at all of the departments this has been talked about that this isn't just out of nowhere that

046they are looking out for the community and making sure that every department is doing what it's supposed to be doing. So that's all. Thank you. Thanks. I'll make this uh brief. Josh Roman, uh father of Ben Roman, who's a senior. Uh he's also Asian student, so representing the Asian community here. Um so excited that is coming in. That's great. That should have been here all along. really sad that Jamal is leaving and won't get into the specifics because I just don't know. But the fact that the school board and administrators etc would in any way suggest that SEAL and DEIB are somehow overlapping or that one is a superset of the other shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what is and what DEI are to the point that like uh I surprised that this

047has even gotten this far. My son has been bullied at Situit Situit schools from effectively when he started in Watuck up until relatively recently. He was assaulted in school. He's been uh racially harassed etc. And the administration though has made decent moves in the direction of trying to make things better. He does not feel safe here as a student, as an Asian student, etc. And so the removal of DIB, even though he's a senior and will probably it would be too late for him to take advantage of any of the benefits, additional benefits, is a slap in the face to the Asian community, to slap it in the face to any historically marginalized community. And unfortunately though I'm sure all of your hearts are in the right place. It just reinforces that situate is not

048a safe place for minorities and that is unacceptable and the entire board needs to understand what that says to the community whether the community is the white portions of the community or the marginalized portions of the community as well. Thank you so much to everybody. I'm Elizabeth Robinson. I'm a heartbroken parent, a lifelong educator, and also a member of the freedom team, which hasn't come up yet, but was another contribution that J ran. There are seven of them in the in Massachusetts, bringing together point people in the community to deal with any incidents of racism or bias that come up in the community. And there was a question today about will the Freedom Team still exist without Mr. Adams, which blows my mind because he is the connector and he's connected so many people and

049as an educator I am an instructional coach in Brockton public schools and Situit has been a leader and a beacon for other districts and coming from a place like Brockton to emulate what's being done in Situit has always made me proud and now I'm ashamed. Thank you. So, we are approaching about an hour of the 15 minute public comment. Um, we have two more hands raised remotely which I will take and then I'm going to close the public comment down for I'll let the final two in person people go too because I think that's only fair. You did stand up after all if you stood up so you get to go. Um, and then so our last two hands raised remotely and our last two inerson individuals and then that'll wrap us up for tonight.

050Please feel free to email the school committee school committee set.org. We are hosting office hours. Maria and I those will be ongoing. Hope to keep that up. Um Dr. Rob's hosting is office hours going to be starting um as well so we're accessible. Please reach out. We hear you and we have you know we are accessible like I was saying. Um but I'll take let me take these remote hands first you are >> can you hear me okay >> I I can you hear me >> yes >> I'm I'm very sorry that my video is off I'm insituate and >> absolutely fine Hello. >> Hi, we can hear you. >> Okay. Thank you so much and I apologize for the technical issues. Um, I really wanted to show some respect for the people who came

051out tonight in such large numbers to show support for something that is so critical to the endurance of Situit as a cohesive community. Um, it's completely false that diversity initiatives only benefit black, brown, and minoritized students. Let us think about the kind of future that we would be offering to our white students in Situit who would otherwise think that the world is a completely dangerously isolated place. um without a dedicated platform for equity, human rights, whatever language you choose to use, um we are hurting all of the students in this town. Let us not confuse ourselves to think that it's only a fragment. Um I would also like to ask how students were included in the decision-making process as our town mission and vision requires. Um secondly, how does this administrative decision reflect the district's

052written long-term strategic plan? How will the process be documented? How will it be reported for the next DESIE program monitoring? And finally, that this decision does not reflect current educational researchbased practices. Um in fact it is widely known that SEI is a component of what some people call DEI but what has been around since the civil rights movement and before um what kind of pedagogy are we committing ourselves to here and with whose input? Um the long-term effects of what we do now will last for countless generations. Let us be very careful. Thank you. Thought I had one other remote hand raise and I think I lost that person and I'm sorry it was there it is. Thank you. Let me unmute you. >> Hi, my name is Faithia Maru and I'm a freshman at

053Situit High School. Um, hearing about J's situation has had me heartbroken. Knowing the impact that he has had in this community. Getting um, rid of the DEI system in my opinion is not really a great decision. And knowing that Jimmy is going to be gone because he was one of the biggest advocates for Mechco students or just helping people be included in Situate. It's really um it's really uh it's really had me conflicted because not only were students or like people not included in this decision, people h like students are very uh disappointed by this decision that students had that the committee has made and getting rid of Jal knowing that he's going to be um gone. It also is worrying me about how it's going to affect how it's going to affect um the

054MECO system and other black or diverse um situations. It's very uh overwhelming. And I just want to say thank you to J for being there for people and making them feel comfortable and included in um this community. Thank you. >> I have no prepared statement. I'm Tom Evans. I'm from Whitman. I am the founder of the Whitman Freedom Team. And it wouldn't exist if it had been for J. J has changed my life. You say in 80 years, how can you change? I change because I listen to him. I see his model. He is unbelievably sincere and genuine. I've been an uh an educator for over 40 years. I've um trained kids and supervised student teachers all over the the eastern part of Massachusetts. I've seen it all. And I'm going to tell you one

055thing. I'm going to tell you two things. You can believe me or not. There's two things everybody in this room wants. One is to be liked and two is to meet with some success. And that's the job of a school committee, of a staff, of parents, all of us. And Jal embodies that. The other thing I'm going to tell you, they're always talking about curriculum and this guideline and this one and measurements. And so, you know, the only measurement you need to do is to welcome every child regardless of his or her color or any other kind of difference from the norm and embrace them and provide them with the the with the message. You matter. And believe me, once you do that, your decision will be an easy one because J has mattered. All

056these people sitting here, they're not sitting here because they're angry and they want their way. They know it's right. And I think people sitting in this room are correct. And J's demand. Not he doesn't demand. He's too much of a good man, but he deserves the support of this committee. And not only did he change the schools, he's changed my community and your community. It's not about one, two, three, or or a group who runs anything. It's all of us together. So, I urge you to reconsider and see that J does get a fair shake. Thank you. I'll try to keep this brief. I know we've run quite a while over time, but um my name is my name is Noah Carmand. I'm a junior at Sichu High School and um uh when I I

057I received uh news that J had been let go or however you want to phrase it. Um uh and I mean my gut just sank. Um I I'm openly queer. I'm part of the GSA. And it's it's not a great amount of recognition that we get to begin with. And he was kind of one of the biggest supporters of us and of the queer community in Sichu. um and knowing that he's now not no longer a part of the situ public schools um system um and losing him along with the um the discontinuation of um the our DEI programs. It's it's really scary from from my perspective and from I know from a lot of other people's perspective that I I I just I I urge you to to at the very least consult the

058the the people who are largely being affected right now and largely would be affected and will be affected in the future if we if we don't reinstate some amount of what we had before. Thank you. I'd say you have proof of return on investment here. Here That's right, baby. >> I think we're going to take a five minute break before we continue on with our student report. All right. Hey, we're going to start again here. >> Go on with our student report. >> Right. Thank you. Um, just to start, I'm proud to say that our unified basketball team has started their season off. I started their season and was off to a great start. Uh, games have been very well attended by staff and students. Situate High School is implementing our new MTSS initiative. Administration

059is going to use wind and sailor block to help support students identified through our MTSS process. SHs continues to meet uh with their mentor group to plan leadership roles for the upcoming 2025 2026 school year. One of our goals is to help support incoming freshman students. Once again, the SHS Select Choir was invited to sing the national anthem at the opening of the annual convention of the Massachusetts Coalition Police. This event was held in Hyannis on Thursday, September 18th. Our robotics team went into a preseason competition in Belerica uh and placed second. Uh this is a great this is a great start for our team. SHS was also recognized by Special Olympics of Massachusetts as a unified champion school. Uh big thanks to Mr. Payne, Miss Nyberg, and coaching staff, the coaching staff, and all

060of our unified sports athletes uh for this great honor. Our September sailor of the month were Jacob Kennaway, McKenzie Barnes, Emily Newkerk, Micah Moulder, Charlotte Lynch, Katherine McQueen, and Jayla May Stevens. College, Career, and Community Day is Wednesday, October 22nd. Freshman will work on my CAP and team building activities. Sophomores will go on college visits and attend the Sheet Metal Union in Boston. Junior juniors will participate in credit for life and seniors will complete community service with the elementary schools. Uh principles, department chairs, and central office are taking the RBT uh AATSR course this year to growth our practice as leaders. Throughout our work with RBT and reviewing the research, there are tier one classroom practices such as classroom objectives, formative assessments um that have a high impact on student learning and are the focus

061of classroom lessons. Uh Situate High School is excited to take part in these tier one practices to help students reach new heights. for guidance news. Financial aid night. Uh the SHS counseling department will host a financial aid presentation for grades 9 through 12 uh parent and caregivers on Tuesday, October 28th, uh at 6 in the Performing Arts Center. While the information is geared towards senior families applying for financial aid this year, all grades are encouraged to attend and this event will not be recorded. a preliminary scholastic aptitude test and national merit scholarship qualifying test. Uh the PSAT will be administered at SHS on Tuesday, October 28th for all 10th graders and Wednesday, October 29th for 11th graders during the school day. All 10th graders will take the PSAT free of charge. 11th graders must submit

062payment online to re to register by Wednesday, October 15th at 5, which is already Thank you. Thank you so much for the update. >> What's going on at high school? Thank you. All right, Dr. Rob. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm pleased to present Irene as the interim director of business and finance. And I'd ask her to join us at the table where she'll be sitting after tonight. Um, you do have her cover letter and resume in your packet, so you can take a look. Um, she's a licensed school business administrator with experience and an MBA. She has budgeting experience from work in public school districts as well as municipal knowledge and expertise on our town finance committee. So, she brings both sides of of the coin there. In her cover letter, she says, "I

063will provide you with a perfect mix of experience without excess badges and fresh enthusiasm, without naive take." She had to get that point. So, um, we had three candidates who applied. It's a tough position in an interim position. Um, and we formed a committee um with Miss Brandolini, Miss Fenwick, Ty Fluger, our human resources director, Sydney Seesaw, and um Ryan Lynch. And after a wonderful meeting, we forward to the school committee for consideration this evening. >> Excellent. Questions from the committee, comments, anything? Take a motion. Um, I'll make a motion that we vote to approve Irene P as the interim director of business and finance at Sichu public schools. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. I'm very excited to be here. >> All right.

064And Yeah. Oh, yeah. >> All right. >> Yes. Jeffy from Jello, our director of educational technology. >> So, I've asked Jacela to join us at the table to go over our new website. We launched the website on October 3rd and it's been real exciting and we wanted to Jackie just kind of walk us through the highlights of the website and then allow the committee to give us some feedback and actually open it up to the community for feedback as well. We're always looking to improve the website. We're always looking to make it better. Um, this was a a big change over the summer. Jackie and her team worked really hard with the principles and all the stakeholders here to launch this website on October 3rd. Um, I kind of threw down the gauntlet. It was

065a bit of a a pressure to get it done, but we need this. We need our ability to communicate with our with our constituents here. So, I'll turn it over to Jackie just to walk us through the website, show us the highlights, and then of course answer any questions. >> Hi. Um, thank you for having me tonight. So, as you know, um, we have partnered with Parent Square to, um, host our school communications and our website. So the past over the past summer um and up until three weeks we relaunched six websites. So, we have um our so sorry five um we have our main district website and then we have no I'm sorry right six I can't count tonight it's been a long time um and then all each of our schools have a

066website so I'm just going to take you through um we kept each site um very simple um so it was easy to locate the information um that our visitors need to find. So, here you can see that this right here is our district website. Um, our district website does have a slightly different look than each of our schools. Um, we wanted the schools in the district to kind of set each other apart. So, here um we have the Central Post Schools uh district website. It then flows into all of your navigation menus where you can take a deeper dive into um whatever information you're looking to gather from the website. Um we have our welcome. We have some um quick links. Uh these links were I would say the most popular links on our older

067website that people were visiting. So we decided to keep those on the main page. Um, we go down and highlight our core values, our mission statement, and a link to each of our schools, and then our upcoming events um for districtwide. Um, so we wanted to keep the pages simple, highlight most of the areas that people are coming to our sites for. Um, so this is just the front page to our district. The other thing that we wanted to implement was uh quick links. So up in the right hand corner we have quick links to each of our schools. So instead of having to click through three different layers um like we had to in the past to get to a school um the district site as well as all of the school sites will

068have these quick links in the upper right hand corner where you can easily jump to each school and then also jump back to the district if you are at a school level site. So here you can see um we have our quick links to our schools and then we also have a find it fast which we thought would be really helpful um for our visitors as well. And we put some of the um most visited places that families are looking for. They're always calling schools trying to figure out how to get to. So like Aspen, lunch menus, um transportation. Um and then this website I will kind of point out um does have a staff directory. It's a pretty basic staff directory, but it is something that was a you know um a missing factor

069in our other website that visitors um would come to the website looking for. Um, so our staff directory does list out the staff at each school. The staff directory on the website is sort of like a hole where it has um the entire district um that somebody could search for if they were looking for someone in particular. Um so we thought it was important to kind of have that under the find it fast as well. So this is just our district page. Like I said, we have all of our different navigations where you can, you know, jump into each category and go and locate uh the information that you're looking for. Very similar to our previous website. Uh we didn't change the navigation too much. We did condense some things down, but not enough to

070really make that big of a impact. Um I will hop over to a school So, all of our schools have the same layout. It looks a little similar to the district. Um, I'll also point out that some of our sites and some areas of our website are still a work in progress. So, um, we're still collecting images, information to update some of the areas. So you'll notice here at the school level uh when you are at a school it will have the school name. You will have your quick links over here. So you have your quick link back to the district site. Um quick links to another school. So if you're a family member that has children at different schools, you can jump uh to another school and then there's still your find it fast.

071Um each school does have a set of their own navigations. They are pretty consistent across the schools with the information that's there. Um but the information under there will pertain to that particular school. Um below that we still have our carousel of images that highlights the events and all the great things that are happening at our schools which I know a lot of our visitors absolutely love. Um, once again, this is still a work in progress. We do have some images here. This blank blue area, this is where a little description of what is happening in the picture will go. Um, but with uh timing and trying to get everything up and running, um, we didn't get to that yet, but it is something that we will be starting to work with our schools on

072and keeping um, the information and the images fresh up on their homepages and kind of giving a little insight into what some of these events that they are sharing. Um below our carousel, we then have um some more quick links that um we thought would be very helpful for our families going um to the website. Uh lunch menus and um Aspen are always two biggies, so just wanted to keep that going. And then on um each school page, there is a nice little welcome from the principal um a little message from them. and then it rolls into the school calendar. Um, and that's pretty much it for the main homepage um of the school. So, each school page, no matter which one you go to, is set up relatively the same. Um, they all will

073pretty much have, I would say, the same uh consistency with information. Obviously, um, the high school will have a little bit more. uh they're a little bit more robust with some of the programs that they have. So, they'll have a little bit more information than uh elementary or middle school, but everything is here. Um same setup, same welcome and we are just continuing to, you know, go through the site, continue to make sure that everything's updated. um still working with some schools and departments on getting some updated information, but it's a work in progress. I think for six websites in the time frame that we were able to roll it out since June, um is speaks, you know, you know, great things about the district and how serious and important we feel that this information

074um and tool is. I do want to point out that along with the website, so the website will function slightly different than our last website. So our last website, all the communication was pushed to the website. Um and all the posts and information were right there on the homepage. That is different with this platform. Um that information will not get pushed to the website. So, Parent Square has their own communication portal which all the communication um will be housed in. So, that's where parents uh guardians um will go to get the information. So, it's not something that will be bogging down our website. We wanted our website to be clean, consistent um and have just the basic necessary information and not get boggled down with the communication. Um so for each school um under our

075school there is a parent square page that I just want to point out and this page here will um go back to the district. It will um tell you how parent square works as far as communication goes. It will tell you how you can um customize your communication. Um, so with Paris Square right now, everyone receives the communication via email, just a standard email when a school or the district pushes out communication. Um, parents can customize and control how they want to receive the communication. That was another piece of feedback that we received from families was that, you know, some people didn't want to receive it in email and they didn't want their email to be bogged down by communication. they wanted to control how they um received and looked at their communication. So with

076Parent Square, it gives you two different ways. You could stay with the default way, which is you just receive it via email. Um or you can log into the Parent Square portal or download the app and customize it. So you can choose to only receive communication via text or just through email um or all the ways. Um, you can also choose when you receive it. Do you want it when it immediately gets pushed out or do you only want to receive it once a day? So this page right here kind of goes through and explains that um every um parent guardian in the district that is in Aspen that is like the main contact um they will have parent square accounts and their information or the the account that's set up will either be set

077up via their phone number or their email whatever they have on file with us. So, um, all of that's explained in this information here. So, if there are any families who haven't quite, um, you know, taken the next step with parents square or want to learn a little bit more, they can go to this page and, you know, either download the app or continue to just get it um, via email. Um, the other thing that I do want to say is that we are still in the very very beginning stages with parent square. Um, so with the website, with the communication, we're all still learning. Um, all of the schools are doing a great job with learning the new platform and trying to get their communications out and customize and tailor them to their communities.

078Um, you know, as time goes on, there are a lot of different um pieces to Paris Square that we will be embracing and rolling out. Um but it's just going to take some time um to make sure that everyone is trained and comfortable and um you know is is ready for the next step with parent square. >> Thank you so much for the update. Anyone any questions? I was looking at the directories and including the school committee and there's no emails for like staff, >> right? So, there is the ability to have email. We did actually have it turned on. Um, but we the thing with that is that the email feature with Parent Square does not filter who is sending an email. So, they don't verify if an email address is accurate or not

079or real. Um, and we did receive some spam type emails that came across to some staff members and administration. So, we felt at this time as we're still like in the beginning stages um and Parent Square doesn't have the ability to um verify or put some sort of verification on being able to send a message that for right now while everyone's getting used to it, it's probably best to just kind of >> but in the on the school like each individual school um site you go under the dire Unless all the staff work that work at that school, but there's no like email to so is that connected to parents where can we have um like uh the counseling department like they have their the phone numbers but there's no emails for like the status

080counselors at the high school. >> There are if you click on their name >> oh >> it does um pull up a link to a form. I was just curious about um analytics data. I I think parent square allows us to better understand whether or not parents are actually opening and reading things. So I was just curious what you've noticed or not that we have anything to compare it to, but if you're seeing like a good uptake on usage and opening and reading of um stuff that's going out. >> Yeah, I mean it is it's very helpful to be able to like when a communication goes out if someone reaches out and they're like, "Hey, I didn't get that." we can go in and we can say, "Yes, you received it on such and such

081date. You haven't opened it yet." Or there also is a feature where some people have accidentally unsubscribed. >> So, they're not getting the communication. So, we can go in and be like, "Oh, it looks like you accidentally unsubscribe. Let's help you rescribe." So, it does give us more flexibility. It also lets us know how many people have downloaded the app, how many people have received the communication, who's opened it, who's you know. So, >> how are we doing um downloading of the app? Would you have a sense? >> We could do better. >> Okay. Just like how much do we need to keep talking about it? >> I mean, we we only have about 40% 40% of I try to share weekly update every week. >> Wow. >> Yeah. And I know the principles and

082everyone's been doing a great job. I know at open houses. So, it's just it's it's a work in progress. so new. So I think over time and that could just be some people's preference. They just may >> prefer receiving an email. >> So but we'll we'll keep at it. >> Thank you. >> In order to get an email about parents square, did they have to go on parents? No, it was right into their communication. >> So, when that box pops up that says send us a message like you said with the school counselors, that's going to their actual email. >> Correct. >> I tested it on ours. It does work. >> Yeah. But like for the other, so general, every school has their school directory and it just says what they do, but like is

083there a way to contact that particular person like a teacher? >> Yes, like I said, we did have it on, but there were people that were going directly to the staff directory and then sending a >> spam type email. And although some of them were lovely, um we kind of at this point we just want to avoid >> okay >> anything >> spammy coming through. So while it's still new and everyone's trying to learn, it was helpful to just kind of take that away for right now. And >> um >> they can al always go to Aspen. Correct. They can. And there are instructions on the staff directory page on how they can um email a staff member. >> I know your wish list is probably, you know, infinite miles long, but I have to

084say I think it looks great. And I was looking at it on my phone because I wanted to see how it translated. It's looking really It's looking really good. So, I love that. Um, one thing I love about the PDF calendar is at the bottom it has the school hours and half day hours for all the schools. And I was fussing at home today because I was looking all over the website and couldn't find it. I didn't know if there's a way on the district when it shows that really cool calendar of what's going on today. If there's some place in the corner or I know it's in the main office of all the schools, but for folks who have kids in multiple schools, it's just a really quick view. >> And I didn't know

085if that was something I forget. I'm sorry that's my idiocy, but I do forget like when my kids get out of school and if I put them on. So, it's just nice to have in one place, but again, it's it's not it's not like mission critical, but just >> Okay, I think it looks great. I love Thank you. It looks really that you've done amazing. >> I love the mobile version. >> Huge improvements. Yeah, it's a huge huge improvement. >> The app is fabulous, too. If you haven't downloaded the app, especially if you have children across different schools, it is so nice to just pop in and out. It's >> I haven't because I did the >> toggle between the school. It's good. I'm going to be honest. I was I feel I feel burnt.

086Why? Look, I felt very burned by the old app. So, I've been very hesitant to download. I'm one of the 60% who have not downloaded it. >> Oh, boy. >> I'm sorry. Do as I say, not as I do. Right. >> I'll download it tonight. >> Thank you so much. >> Yeah. Thank you. It's great. Really great work. Assistant Superintendent Lynch, let's talk about the calendar 26 27. Speaking of the calendar, >> would you like me to project it? That'd be great. >> I'm not sure it will be um it's very it's maybe hard to see, but um in interest of sharing um happy to I'll talk about it so people can understand it as well. Uh it's very it's kind of small. So thank you. Uh this is the part of our commitment to

087share the uh potential calendar as early as possible. So you've had a chance to look at this. I'll just point out a couple of things and then the committee can discuss it. Uh in line with last year, the first day of the proposed first day of school for 26 27 um for students in grades 1 through 12 would be Wednesday. uh September 2nd, that is the Wednesday before uh Labor Day. Uh the professional development day um for staff would be two days before that. They would come in those two days, August 31st and September 1st. And then students in grades 1 through 12 would come on Wednesday, September 2nd and Thursday, September 3rd. There would be no school on that Friday right before Labor Day, consistent with this year. Um, and then the school year

088would commence with our PK and K students on the Wednesday after Labor Day, which is Wednesday, September 9th, 2026. The next question people typically ask is about um educator professional development days. So, next year um is midterm elections at the federal level. So that means that election day uh will be held statewide and and nationwide on Tuesday, November 3rd. So that would be the third professional development day of the year. Again, the first two are right before students start. Uh Tuesday, November 3rd, election day would be educated professional development. Um and then the last one is Monday, March 15th, consistent with um the way we did it this year would be that would be the fourth professional development day. Graduation day uh for 2027 would be Friday. The proposed day would be Friday, uh, June

0894th, which would be, um, after the senior's 168th day, which they're required to, um, attend. The rest of the student body, uh, in grades 1 through 11 is required to go 180 days in the 180th day, uh, with good weather would be, uh, Friday, June 18th. um in this in this proposed calendar and per DE desi regulations we're required to make a calendar with 185 so people are aware of what might happen if it snows and that would carry us um to June to June 25th. So this is the proposed calendar with those uh key dates identified and we're happy to take any um any questions about this first draft. Um, so the in the middle of the calendar when you have the election date, can you like put in like PD slash election? So

090because I I mean just glancing at I just figured it was no school but not >> in November. Yeah. >> Where >> underneath the no school list. >> Scroll up. >> Oh, you're on educator PD day. >> Right. But like up here it says March 15th educator professional. Oh, I see. >> And then um Junth is the 19th. Is that was it going to be Saturday? >> Saturday. Not like in those holidays. Yeah, it's it's one of those holidays that is observed on the day the day. Yeah. >> Yes. I did look that up to make sure. So, it is observed on the 19th, which is a Saturday. That's good. Um, I had a question about the start of kindergarten pre um being on the Wednesday. Um, I was just curious what the thought was

091on that. I'm just imagining that some families who have older kids and also a kindergartener that might be a little challenging for them to have to wait a full week before they can send their kindergartener in. So, I was just curious if there was So, I think this year we had the kindergartener start on the Tuesday after Labor Day. And so, I was just curious if there was um some sort of reason why we wanted to do that. That would >> Yeah, somebody would want to explain to parents. >> I can speak to the prek. Um in terms of the prek, we have been working with trying to add five days a week prek next year. And so one of the things as we've been discussing that with the teachers and talking about how to

092found make that happen next year, they asked for that additional day at the beginning of the school year for screening and to get organized. So as part of of those discussions, I think similarly with kindergarten as well, just to have that extra day just for screening and getting organized for kindergarten students. Um, but I need to look a little more closely into why the change in kindergarten, but I can definitely speak to prek on that. Would it be possible to start kindergarten on the 8th and on the 9th or is that too messy? >> We'll look into it. >> I'm just trying to think about families. I think a week between schools starting dates is is really tough childare wise and just sort of family vacation and planning wise. I just think that's going to

093be challenging. >> That's exactly why we're bringing this up now. >> Yeah. does it seems like a big separation but >> yeah I mean we have the 4 day weekend in there so you know it's not like >> yeah but I just >> it does sort of yeah it looks like more on paper than it is in probably practical >> practice but I don't know just fun as but >> that was my one >> it's really like a day it's actually really yeah like two school otherwise this calendar doesn't need a lot of room honestly for conversation because it's kind of just >> In a good way. It is what it is. You know, we're not there's not a lot to discuss the way it's just the way it falls. Yeah. >> I think having

094a half day on the 23rd of December, the day off on the 24th and 25th is logical. Done that before. We have off through Friday the 1st of January, meaning we start up again on the 4th. That makes sense. So, I don't know. There's not a lot here to >> kind of opinions on. Yeah. Yeah. >> One of our next steps would also be bringing it to the professional development council where we're required to share the draft uh calendar as well. So that that's this week. So that's Wednesday this week. So >> share that with the professional development council as well for any additional input. And then like Dr. Rab said to check with the K and PK star. >> Yes. uh because this hasn't been uh internally circulated until the committee has looked at

095the first draft. So our next step is to collect some more feedback internally as well. >> Okay. And our next step so the public knows we don't have a meeting November 3rd because it's town meeting. So the next time we would discuss and vote would be the 17th of November if I'm not mistaken. So >> if there is comments to be had on the calendar, it would be between now and then so that on the 17th we can have that vote ideally and then we'll have the calendar settled >> for next year on the 17th of November which has got to be a record one. Yes. >> Yeah, it's a big shift. Yeah, that would be great. >> My only comment, but I think I just answered it is the um December 10th date is

096parent teacher confuses districtwide. That that's new starting this year. Correct. We haven't yet done >> December 10th. >> Looks like this year it's December 11th. So we'll be consistent with that. I don't think that we haven't been through that. >> In the past has been middle elementary. >> Yeah. No, that that's that's I'm sorry that's not correct. Um they have to be on different um they have to be on different dates. Yeah, I'm not sure why it showed up like that. We had um they were on um three different dates for high school, uh middle school, and the elementaryaries. So, that's not correct. It needs to be added, but it we the draft, sorry, the wrong one is here. the draft we had it they fell in that week prior to um in December and

097we just need to work with the principles to just make sure that those are going to be it'll be in in those two weeks before holiday break and they'll be on different days it's not a single day >> so elementary's have one half day on like a Wednesday gates will have a half day on a Thursday for example >> that's what we did this year right we had elementary and the middle school on the same day correct correct >> and then um then the high school was a is that correct? >> I think so. >> 11. >> Okay. >> But when we bring it back, >> not three. >> No, there's one. >> So, there should be two right here. There's one, but there should be two. >> I have to double check it. >>

098Can we just check this year's calendar, too? cuz I'm just I was just looking at this year's calendar and I see one date on the calendar as well. Maybe just published >> says December 11th on this year's calendar. >> Yes. I I don't remember what we agreed upon for this year. >> I'm looking at it right now >> because it's a new format for >> Yeah. >> for the district. >> Yeah, we'll review it. >> We'll respond to this year as well. >> Okay. Okay. Just give us a moment just to >> Yeah, thank you. >> That's good. >> Yes. Thank you for doing it early. I know that we talked about as a committee over the last couple years and we finally >> Yeah, families. It's hard to remember because we had to have

099it published for or in have a draft in October review by the end of November. And if we hadn't done that, that's when you get pushed into January, >> right? It's really easy for it to go from October to February >> is what we learned. >> You get it or you miss it entirely. >> So, we're finally get it. >> So, true, right? Okay. Um, we're going to talk about our 2526 school committee goals now. Turn over to Carrie. Um, so do you want to bring this out? >> Um, it's up to you guys to or you want. >> You don't have to. We started out um just as a reference point with the pyramid image from the mask training that we had with district goals at the bottom. The next layer up on the

100pyramid being sure um school improvement plan, superintendent goals, school committee goals, the next layer up on the pyramid administrator goals, followed by teacher goals, and the top is student achievement. And so that's kind of the framework that we've been thinking about when we've been thinking about our goals and how they kind of drive from that. Um the next image is um a little circuit board. And this comes from uh when we were preparing um Nicole and I had a conversation about how sometimes the goals that we are setting, it feels as though we have this complicated circuit board in front of us, this system that has the potential to light up, you know, all the all the houses in Situate. Um but we can't actually touch it and all we can do is sort of

101hope that we are asking the right questions and you know making sure that none of the little wires are broken down and that we are you know um watching all the things go in the right order and that they're going in the right order but we can't actually always know. And so for us setting goals can sometimes feel a little bit removed >> um as a process. And so I think this is just something that we've talked about a little bit um recently. >> Yes. >> Um sometimes Marie and I work 40 plus hours a week on so this was one of those times. I don't know if this is making any sense but this is what we were thinking when we included this image because I think sometimes we we've gone in various places

102with our goals. you know, do we go to something super micro like let's get better at communicating, you know, or do we go to something more macro that's like, you know, what we really want to talk about is is student achievement, right? Um that's like our actual end goal. And so um how do we land in the right middle place where we're making goals about things that we actually are in our purview um but are not um going to be distracting to the work pyramid, right? because we all need to be cool. Okay, that's the leadup. Tada. So, uh, and Carrie and I worked on these. Um, this, as a reminder, started in the summer with our retreat. Um, and you guys all had a chance to look at this. I can keep giving a

103quick voice over, but the first one is about approving a trienal district plan um, that really hones in on academic and instructional improvement. So this would be something that kind of puts a sharper point on some of the uh pieces of our um existing strategic plan that that we are at the tail end of. Um and we realized you know needs a little sharpening in a few places in order to be more effective. And so the idea of a trienal district plan is that it would be three years um sort of be a bridge um from where we have been to where we're going ultimately. Um, and this would be a space where we can start including more um specific academic proficiency targets for students in reading and math as well as some of those

104action steps um that we know the district is going to be working towards um through June of 2028. Um we talked about you know in that plan really getting uh granular and proficiency targets both overall and annually so that they could be a little bit more measurable than just saying you know we want to get better we want to get better by x% um you know over three years that's like a really big thing to say is we're trying to think how we can make that feel more bite-size. Um so that's the first one. Uh the second one, something that's very much in our purview is monitoring the superintendent effectively and using um progress to do that to inform that annual evaluation. Um also, we talked about wanting that annual evaluation to feel less of

105a big thing and have it be something that we're more checking in with frequently so that it feels like when the end of the year comes, we're kind of like, oh yeah, we already know exactly where we are. This isn't, you know, feeling like we're on a stage and pulling back a curtain. It's more like we've we've been in this conversation all year and so to that effect talked about sharing progress goals quarterly and which gives us an opportunity to give more frequent feedback. And lastly, we talked about gathering data related to programmatic progress outputs and outcomes and use that to help determine our budget priorities in the upcoming budget. And that can be those can be things we look for in departmental and school committee presentations. Um sorry, school presentations at school committee meetings.

106Um and again this is something we talked about for a long time as well. Um and we I intentionally kept the bucket a little bit broad programmatic progress outputs and outcomes in recognition that not every program is going to have like really neat and clean data that they can pro that they can bring forth and that is okay and we understand that and we want to know sort of the story and the bigger picture behind you know how things are progressing. It's not always going to be like the data went up that we understand. And so we're trying to say like tell us more. Tell us what's what what are you working on, you know, all of those in all of those other outputs um and progress that you're making. >> I mean it. Yes.

107It's not that it's not neat and clean. It's just that it's not the final outcome, right? It's so that's why we that's why we specifically use the idea of outputs. So some years we will spend money on the budget and it'll be that we've implemented or you all have implemented a curriculum and x number of students have used it teachers have been trained you know and so that is an output it is not to academic success necessarily because we know that takes more time right so we tried to think of ways to collect data um and I think it speaks to a larger conversation that came up in public comment tonight which is it feels like some of these things are not measurable I would respectfully disagree they are measurable but it's on us to

108think about what are the appropriate metrics given the different time frames for different things that we're doing and so I think this is an effort to do that because what I would love to see from our our new interim finance person as well as central offices I would really like to see more effort at a look back when you present the budget this year so that when we present to the public when we go to town meeting we can say these are all our successes, these are the outputs and we our expectation is if we spend money on X this year, we will move closer to that outcome that we've been talking about. So I think Marie and I had long conversations about sort of a looking back and looking forward just to build that,

109you know, we we have talked a lot about ROI in the past, >> I don't know, I feel like a couple years. So, I think that's our effort to to do our role. And I and I also think I love the idea of progress monitoring with um Dr. Rab because it made me think of when I teach graduate students, they always have a final project, but I don't throw the final project to them the last month of class. We do a little bit during the semester. So, by the time they get to the final project, they're like, "H, I've got all the one part of this done." And so, for you, when you get to that final, you've gotten all the stuff already. It's just putting it together. So I think that helps all of

110us >> definitely >> which is great. So >> and to the point about return on investment I think one of our most essential functions is to advocate in the town for the school department budget and in order to do that effectively we have to be able to have clear examples of ways in which our money is being well spent and especially as we enter tighter budget years that we forecast are coming that gets even more important for us to be able to do that effectively. And so that's really what's behind this is being able to clearly and effectively do that advocacy work on behalf >> be good stewards. Right. That's one of our roles is to be good stewards of our financial resources. >> Absolutely. >> Any other questions or comments about these draft goals

111and sort of the first look as draft? Anyone else? Peter. Um, I guess I would just ask about um what are the superintendent's goals? Does does >> Toming those are coming first? >> I just wanted to make sure I know that in this transition we we were working on potentially new goals. I just want to make sure that we >> we know what the expect. >> Okay. I just All right. Just wanted to go. >> I just wanted to be sure. >> Yep. you I will uh direct your attention to the triangle. >> We're in the same layer, but one of us had to go first. >> And I think ours are broad enough that that will >> right. They will align. >> Yeah, I think that's true. I did write down some things that

112came up in public comment about accountability and process. And I think that is those are really important points from community members and parents. And part of that is it's hard because of our our position too and that that is that should be driven by our goals. In fact, I mean it accountability and I think our goals are speaking to that point as well as as Carrie was saying, you know, this is where our accountability lies in here and that is, you know, progress monitoring is embedded sort of right in all three of these bullet points here for our targets. So um and in fact I think this is our to be honest I think this shows our progress as a committee actually over the years that we this is an improvement um in our goal

113setting. I can see that our goals developing. We're going a little bit deeper um for sure. All right. Um anything else? >> No. No. Thank you for putting it together. >> Leadership report. Dr. Rab, >> thank you very much. And I'd like to thank the committee for allowing me a few moments to just collect my thoughts after our public comment. I was listening very carefully to everybody who presented and I heard loud and clear about the accountability and the transparency and the need for community input and I think it's very important for me to say right now that I'm committed to diversity, equity, inclusion. It's a critical component to the development of our students and I would ask the community to allow me to prove that through my actions and not what you might read

114about anything that may have happened in the past. Um, I've been here in situ for the last two years as director of business and finance and I have supported DEI efforts. I have supported our students. I have supported these things as they have come up over the last two years and I'm going to continue to do that. Um, we're putting together a job description for the new position as we speak. Um, hopefully we'll have a draft job description for the committee to consider on November 17th. And between now and then I'll be seeking community input on the components of that description. But just to sum up, um it'll be a key district level leadership position responsible for championing a safe and supported educational and school experience for all of our students. The director will work

115in close partnership with school administrative, staff, families, and community stakeholders to cultivate and implement district-wide practices where every student is seen, heard, and valued. And understand that in this time, our district-l committee will still meet. Our student lit committees will still meet. Our commitment to the equity tool for curriculum development will continue. Uh J did some wonderful work with our HR department in terms of equity uh pages that we give to new hires. That will continue. None of that is going to change during this time. Um and again part of my entry plan as interim superintendent from the beginning is to meet people in the community and I will be putting out uh times for office hours both in person and virtually over the next month to six weeks so that any member of the

116community can get to know me better and meet me. Um in interest of time I think I'll stop there but it's important to me that the committee and the community know of my commitment to DEI. There's no question about it. It's it's just where we're moving. Um, so I'll stop there and we can move on to presentation. >> Thank you. Appreciate >> Assistant Superintendent Lynch. >> So I get to tee that up right before Mr. Lynch while he's putting the presentation up and gathering the principles together. Um, so tonight you're going to hear some good news and you're going to hear some areas where we have some concerns. Um, we all know that this was the first year that the Acast did count for the high school students. We're seeing those results unfortunately in some

117of the high school results, but we still take all these results very very seriously. Know that this is also a 30,000 foot presentation. We are committed to the details. You're going to hear a lot of things tonight. There's also a lot of things we're not going to talk about individual uh situations and so forth, but know that our principles and our teachers are committed to the improvement of all of our students. The other thing that you're going to hear tonight is the principles are going to talk a little bit about some of the budgetary needs that they have right now. So, you'll start hearing about some of that now before we put the budget together. Not that we can do everything, but I think it's important that the committee hear now what's on the mind

118of the principles in terms of what additional resources might come in handy as they're working through these results. So, you will hear some of that as well. So, I'll turn it over to Mr. Lynch now to continue the presentation. >> Thank you very much, Dr. Rab. At this time, I'd like to invite our elementary principles to um the presentation table um to share um some of this information and this is exciting to share. It's a collaborative effort with our principles uh myself, Dr. Reb, Dr. Bair, um our curriculum coordinators and department chairs have all uh worked together on this. So, we're uh pleased to share this work and then also talk about um where we have areas of strength and where we need to work to continue to get better. So, I just wanted to

119focus uh here in the first few slides just give an overview of u what the presentation entails. So uh each year uh Jesse runs its accountability system uh which is also includes elements um from federal regulations including like the monitoring of student growth and achievement pieces like that. So um I will share um in as crisp and efficient way as possible th those details. I'll also share some of the statewide uh data for general trends. Um we will discuss MCCAST results for ELA, math, U science and the new civics MCCAST as well. Our group will also talk about next steps and how those are linked to uh current efforts in the district. Um, and the last goal of our presentation is to uh provide a little more clarity and reassurance about our uh planning and

120practices around how we monitor um student growth and achievement and to reassure you that it's not uh simply through the MCAST system that we do that but we have internal systems that provide um I'd swifter uh data for us to use. So that's part of the goal of the presentation as well. This is the one slide with just some more data about um how students across the state performed. Uh there were a slight uh increase ELA results in grades uh 3 through eight with no change in math uh from 2024. Uh this has been widely discussed about the grade 10 results uh statewide that there was a six percentage point drop in ELA performance and a 3 percentage point drop in math. Um in the desi call people talked uh leaders from the department of

121education talked about uh they they believe there was a drop off in effort the amount of time students spent on the test from some of their internal controls that they monitored. So that is something that was talked about. We also acknowledge that students across the Commonwealth are taking this assessment uh including ours, but I just wanted to share that that was a topic of conversation. Um there was no change in science in grade five and the grade eight scores and 10 scores declined a little bit. Again, these are statewide. Um this is the first year of the um grade 8 civics MCCAST. excited that we're excited that got off the ground. Um that's a highlight. And lastly, um 55% of schools are making substantial progress um towards their accountability targets. More schools were making progress

122last year uh but this year it's it's 55%. Again, these are the statewide results based on uh the MCCAST and accountability system. This is the refresher slide of a very complicated system. I'll I'll just for the benefit of those viewing. Essentially, every district um and school is assessed in two areas. They get one percentage which is a normative component which is how well uh did the school do compared to other schools that have the same makeup. And the second area of evaluation is a how did the school perform against its own internal targets. Those bubbles on the right or those bars are the the data that's collected uh by DESIE. So they take a look at how did students do on the MCCAST in terms of achievement. Um it's not just how well how how

123much progress students made in achievement but also uh they put a measure on student growth like compared to all the students who scored those same scores last year how well did our students grow. Desi also looks at our high school completion, uh the proficiency of our uh English learners, and some additional indicators as well, including um absenteeism and exposure to rigorous high school content like Project Lead the Way. Um and in programs, AP and programs like that generally. Then districts are all put on um these are the accountability categories. It can go all the way from the category on the left which is meeting or exceeding targets um all the way over to the right which is the district that might need broad or comprehensive support. This is the same scale that is used for

124schools as well. To make it as simple as possible, our district and all of our schools fall under substantial progress toward targets. So for our criterion reference target percentage, we showed significant growth. Uh we did not meet or exceed all the targets. So we fall under substantial progress toward targets which is like roughly um the top half of districts in in in the Commonwealth um or schools. So that's a really general view of uh the categories that are used. the area in orange. Um, we are assigned percentages based on the progress we make toward our t our targets. So, like I just said, all of our schools in the district are categorized as making substantial progress. on the left there's a percentage number associated with um your cumulative target percentage toward achieving um the desi

125assigned targets and these are each of the um percentages assigned by DESIE the num the numbers on the right in the light blue those are the um comparisons to other uh schools with the same makeup of students. So, our elementary schools are all and middle school are all compared to grade three through eight schools across the Commonwealth. And then our high school is compared to to other high schools. So, um that's a the numbers in light blue, those percentiles are on a one to 99 scale. So, you see our numbers are obviously closer to 99 um than the other other end of the scale. That's a really high level view of uh how the system works in the big picture. And then um each of our schools will talk more specifically about um areas of

126strength and areas um for for improvement. Last month, uh, each school and district was issued its, um, school and district report card. These are all, um, posted on Desi's website and they look like this. Um, you do have a copy in front of you in the slides. Um, each of our principles will talk specifically about what these numbers mean for their schools and what their areas for focus are. I just wanted to use this opportunity to to do a quick reminder of um how the point-based system works. So when you look at you'll notice that in light blue this that category is achievement. It looks at achievement for all the students we have in situ in the non- high school grades and then all the students in in the high school grades. Um and out

127of 12 possible points it shows the points we earned. We earn points by either meeting exceeding uh or exceeding desi targets. If you exceed the target you get four points in the category. If you meet it get three. If you improve, but you're still on at the target, you get two. If there's no change, uh, you get one point and if you decline, you get zero points. So, you'll see all those numbers um for our district accountability report card in different areas. Um, so, for example, just to use the top row, English language arts achievement for the non- high school grades. So, that's grades three through eight. We earn three out of four possible points. Um, so that's based on the average score of all students. The state and federal government are focused not just

128on the average performance. They want to make sure and we want to make sure that the performance of the large aggregate group does not mask underperformance in selected populations. So there's a key focus on some selected populations like um students um students on IEPs um for low income um for economically disadvantaged students for English learners um and another category like u that sub that includes some of them called high needs. So that's a little bit of the um the focus on those selected populations and then there's a really tight focus as well on the lowest performing 25%. So DESIE treats our aggregate population equally as heavily as the performance of our lowest 25% to make sure we are focused on improvement and all students. So in the top row, you'll notice that we got as

129a district two points out of a possible four on the lowest performing students in the non- high school grades. Desi calculates that list. It shares it with the district. Our principles have it. Um, so I just want to highlight for the the committee that it's both focused on all students but also on um there's a sharp focus on the lowest performing 25%. Continuing across the top line, you'll see that then it says all students in the high school grades and then lowest performing students in the high school grades. So notice that in ELA for example three points out of four possible points for English English language arts for in the aggregate for our lowest performing students zero points earned out of the total possible points of four. That means that for those students identified as

130the lowest performing 25% we the average performance of that group declined. So that's how the the district earns like zero points in that category. Um this same setup is how each of the school reports appears and our principles will talk about um each of their schools. I just wanted to provide this overview so you have a sense of like what does a zero mean, what does a four mean and what are these categories? What's the difference between growth and achievement? And I think that um you understand that from your experience in this um district accountability report. Our focused areas obviously from the example I just shared, we are focused on the achievement u for our lowest performing students, making sure that all of our students are meeting with success and that the u performance of

131the aggregate doesn't mask some of our selected populations. We're also focused on chronic absenteeism among our lowest performing students, which you'll see at some of our schools. Um we continue to have to work on uh we're focused on overall math achievement at the secondary level. You can tell from this um our district accountability report in the high school one that continues to be an area of focus. Our advanced coursework at the high school is a strength. Um our strong participation in AP project lead the way that helps us to earn all the possible points um in those areas. And lastly, we're focused on um like I just said, the achievement for the lowest performing students in math and ELA. So that's both a district overview, which our principles will get into more detail with, but

132also sort of a fast explanation of of u how how points uh work as well. Are there any questions about the the general setup before I we move to our principles? Can I just so I guess what I would just I appreciate the explanation that was really clear and succinct which I really appreciate. I guess what's a little it's frustrating for me is when I see the focus areas when I see chronic absenteeism and overall math achievement. This is exactly why we set the goals the way we did this year because those two things have been there for years and we keep saying we're working on them. And so now this year, we want to see like progress. So like in December or January, we would love to hear, we keep saying like there are

133stories. We know there are stories because some of it is we just we're in a place where people can go on these really amazing vacations and they do that. That's one. But there are also stories. And so it'd be great even if it's anecdotal for us as a committee to understand what's driving this chronic absenteeism. I just feel like enough is enough, right? Like we really can. And I'm not blaming, look, I know there's been change and sorting through. I'm not blaming anybody, but it would just be wonderful to really dig into those two places so we can help you. Whether it's funding, whether it's whatever it is, we want to support you in being successful. So, I just think those are two good examples of progress monitoring. >> Sort of like the list is

134the list. >> I'm not surprised the list. And that's what's frustrating is like we should have this should be tackled by now. Sorry. Anything else on the previous slide? >> Sorry, right? >> No, it's helpful. It's why we're presenting this information for the community and for for your feedback. The next slide gets into our school by school presentation. We talked to the we the principles are uh planning to talk 10 to 15 minutes. So for each for our elementary principles that brings us rough that could be an hour and then same thing with our secondary. So we're doing our best to share this really important information and also uh to be to be time efficient. One thing you'll notice on the next slide is um in terms as we get oriented for Cushing this is

135a slightly different view for you to see but this is the MCCast information pulled through open architect. So what this view pro provides you with is the last five years of MCCAST data uh for Cushing in grades three, four and five. There are the standards the average percent correct in the categories that in the ELA standards in the upper right grade level percent proficiency where it says by grade level ELA. So you you'll notice that um that's means 56% of the students at Cushing are proficient or exceeding are meeting expectations were exceeding in ELA. Then you'll see grades four, grade five. Um in the upper left it has the percent proficient, the average scaled score in the student growth uh percentile. This will be the same setup for ELA, math, science for each of our

136schools. So we hope this gives you a little bit um more information on a single slide. So Jess and um Principal Kratic will will share his few slides uh first and then if it pleases the committee could uh ask uh Principal Kratic any questions and then we'll move alphabetically u down the line. >> Great. Thank you, Assistant Superintendent Lynch and good evening everyone. Thank you for carving out time this evening for um all four of our elementary principles to be able to share out uh information regarding MCCAST. Hopefully you can hear me okay in person also virtually. Um so as uh Ryan had previewed uh it is important um for the committee and also anyone that is uh viewing um the the meeting tonight to start to get used to some of these visuals because

137uh Open Architect is um both a platform that um uh some have um we gotten training on and others um will be getting training on it in the November uh professional development day. So um certainly something that everyone will be getting very comfortable with using and and uh and accessing. So um in terms of looking at key points uh I believe Ryan had kind of alluded to the fact that we will be sharing out both um kind of celebrations and also areas that we feel like are focus areas in areas that uh may present some challenges that we want to um focus in on. Um, so this is what you're looking at is kind of big picture grades three, four, and five in the area of ELA, MCCAST from last spring. Um, I've started out

138in terms of key points highlighting the fifth grade um who uh have uh again not looking at it visually right now, but they um moved 7% uh in exceeding from the previous academic year um which I thought was a a tremendous uh increase. Uh fourth grade also was able to um move the needle in terms of meeting and exceeding in ELA by 1%. There was an increase from 57% in meeting and exceeding in grade three uh to uh 61% uh in fourth grade. Uh overall uh collectively there was a decrease in uh grades three to five. So if you look in the far left um line graph there you'll see at the bottom is kind of the state uhwide results and achievement and right above that would be Cushing. So you will see from 2024

139to 2025 there is a slight dip uh in that number. So certainly something that we uh want to be aware of in the building and kind of work closely with our classroom teachers um specialists and um non-classroom teachers as well in terms of being able to um move move that mark back up again. Um the um thing that uh leads me to be extremely optimistic about that notion is that 26% or 58% of our students who fell uh below the meeting and exceeding benchmark were within only 10 points. Um so we are right there with a large um group of students that um that we can hopefully move up into that meeting exceeding uh area. Um some next steps uh and some steps that are actually already being taken um are writing samples are being

140used during grade level CPT times. Um so pulling samples from uh the previous MCCAST and uh collaborating around um markings and why some were effective and others were not effective. That uh is currently and sorry that has happened at the building level and will continue to happen. Uh ongoing refinement of the fall bridge cycle. I know that we'll probably talk about that a little bit later or maybe even other buildings will touch upon that. But uh it was a great opportunity for us uh and for the staff this year to take a look at the data from last year and respond to it in a proactive way at the start of the year. Um so shortly after the start of this year uh we were able to take a look at uh where students were

141and meet their needs uh in terms of groupings and instructional levels and um there was some really good feedback shared by staff at Cushing this year in terms of how we make uh the fall bridge cycle even more effective. Um, I heard it personally and I also know that a lot of the uh there were a lot of commonalities with feedback that were shared by staff to our curriculum specialists. So, we're looking to um hopefully act on uh that feedback that um that was uh communicated. Um a continued focus on writing instruction. So, uh, if you look at kind of that category breakdown, uh, above, uh, certainly an area of need, um, uh, at Cushing, but but potentially at other buildings as well, is how to we further integrate or embed our, um, written output

142instruction in in, uh, other areas, other content areas. Um, so certainly something that we want to note and uh, think more about strategically. and then strengthening tier one instructional strategies to better support areas where students have shown uh greater need. Um so that's ELA. Um math we um are overall 64% of our students are meeting or exceeding. Um so there was a 2% overall increase uh in students uh in the area of meeting from the previous year. we had jumped from 51% to 53%. We had uh a great number of 71% of fourth grade students that were meeting in exceeding. So again, kind of honing in on a a specific grade level that um was um really um kind of moving the needle and and certainly going above and beyond in terms of meeting benchmark.

143right now um fifth grade meeting exceeding uh I I had written linked to a return to departmentalization but I think that's really a the verbiage should be it's a correlation um this was the um just about the the end of our first year of going back to departmentalizing at at Cushing and u I felt like at the fifth grade level um to see that increase in in 8% uh I I think I um I'm trying to link data who potentially an assumption of uh you know our educators being able to go deeper into the content areas and um and a little bit wider than they had been in previous years as well. Um there was a a 5% increase in performance. Um that should be in number in operations fractions. Um so if you look

144at the categories number and operation fractions we um were at the 676% u mark whereas the previous year uh that was at 61% and had been um I believe an area that either was discussed at school committee as a potential area for improvement or was brought to the attention of um school administration at Cushing as as u needing to be a focus area. Um and so that was nice to see that um that increase. Um we did uh decline in a grade level uh in terms of um students meeting or exceeding expectations in MCCAST. Um and wanted to certainly make note um of that. Um so next steps um just I I think as we had done in the previous year with number and uh operation fractions I think the area of geometry is something

145that um we want to take a look at in terms of um you know targeting um some potential PD around or uh just integrating it earlier into the curriculum. So being a little bit more strategic around kind of the the scope and sequence of when that is being introduced. And then I also included again kind of going back to the idea of tier one instructional strategies um and how are we continuing to kind of further enhance that for for all students in the area of math. And then the last slide is um science. We had a tremendous uh jump uh in the area of science. Um and again I will um share that I feel strongly that it is correlated to the departmentalization. um we had an 8% overall increase in students meeting and exceeding

146from the previous level uh previous school year, excuse me. So if you look at that line graph on the far left um you'll see kind of a um slow swoop down and then we are definitely on the uh on the rise um and I would like to think that that will continue with um the model that we have and um you know the confidence that our educators um are starting to to gain in fifth grade. Um we also uh made um slight progress um in from 2024 to 2025 and moving from 5% of students not meeting expectations to to just three. Um as um many of you are aware um we the fifth grade I had listed districtwide but it's specific to fifth grade is um piloting uh the open SIED. So there'll be a

147lot of ongoing training with um the fifth grade teams across the district this year. Um, as I've already mentioned, kind of the ongoing enhancement of the the current model that we have. And then something that I felt um was really worth noting um is our um at the fifth grade level, our science educator has done a tremendous job of creating um uh inerson uh authentic learning experiences both um in the classroom and also outside. So there there are a couple examples from last year of different um enrichment or different field trips that our students were able to uh experience and um I just always remember um growing up those experiences and being able to retain information and knowledge and skills so much better when it's hands-on and um you know you're living it and you're

148um you're out of the building and and and experiencing that. So, um I'd like to also kind of highlight and celebrate the the work that um and the enrichment that is being provided to our fifth graders in the area of science. And then the last slide is the accountability slide. Um so we achieved an 86% accountability percentile. Um which again um reflect kind of a strong overall progress toward the uh the target. um chronic absenteeism improved from the previous school year. Um so if you look at if you have an opportunity to click on the Cushing accountability key points, uh we did make positive movement in that area. I although it's certainly not um uh where uh I feel like we want to be. Um we did make substantial progress with the lowest performing students.

149So again, kind of that that 25% uh of the students who are performing the lowest in chronic absenteeism, we made a a huge jump from zero to three points. Um there was a 5% uh overall increase in progress toward uh improvement targets, which again is indicating substantial progress. And in looking at um specific student populations, the categories of highest needs and students with disabilities increase in total points. Um, specifically I wanted to note the students with disabilities that went from zero points to to four points which is a a really nice jump. Um, so again some of these next steps are I think pertaining to um not just you know Cushing but also to what you'll hear probably from other buildings maybe as well. um but open architects um being implemented through targeted PD uh

150an increased focus on uh both formative assessment and instructional objectives um something that we um have been talking a lot about and have gotten um a substantial amount of training on at the start of the year in terms of evaluators. um the fall bridge cycle. Um so again, incorporating some of those refinements that um can be made to either further streamline it or um to make it just more, you know, overall efficient for our teachers and for our students. Um ongoing improvements to win uh to maximize intervention effectiveness and um again what you heard already uh broadening opportunities for students to engage in more interdisciplinary kind of writing across across all areas. So that is the accountability. Um and certainly happy to take any questions >> question just a clarification thing. >> Yeah. >> Um

151bridge cycle and wind is that like is that the same sort of thing just different language? It's um the model and certainly if someone else wants to provide input as well, I'm open to that. But the the um whereas win uh at Cushing was um a little bit more prolonged. It was starting at least in my first year um a little bit later in the fall season, um win was taking that um that data and you know essentially after a week or a week and a half providing um targeted interventions. So although um the names are different um the bridge cycle is essentially um replacing a time at the start of the year in which um the targeted adventure wasn't as as intentional as maybe it could have been. >> Okay. >> Um so may

152not be directly answering your question but ultimately it's it's a relatively similar approach. >> I can add on some clarification. Mary old, principal at Jenkins. Um the bridge cycle is new this year and it was um we took the end of the year assessment results and identified um this how the students had done over the course of the year who had been in intervention or who had not been in intervention and looked at those students and took them right into um support right after school started. Um, previously we would have waited until the beginning of the year assessments were completed. Um, but we uh lined up the kindergarten assessments were typically about two weeks later. We lined up everybody to be two weeks um later to give um that time for that bridge cycle to

153take place. And so that's new um this year in the elementary schools and we're just starting to get the data in to see how successful um that has been. And then um you know it's really taking like the opportunity of that time block that we had at the beginning of the year to help out those kids that we knew at the end of the year um would most likely continue to need that support. >> Thank you. question. Thank you. >> Hello everyone. I'm Christine Sheen. I'm the principal of Aly School. I'm going to tell you a bedtime story about how I am cast now. So just relax. Can you can you tell it to my my 5-year-old back there, please? >> Yes, you can. >> So, this slide um shows the 2025 ELA. >> Yes,

154you can. >> Thank you for staying. Sure. >> So for the Hatherly ALA MCAST last year, you can see over in the left hand side that 60 65% of students were meeting or exceeding which we were happy about in the graph underneath right underneath that you can see that that was a nice increase from last year. We increased by 8% over last year in our meeting and exceeding which was nice to see. Our average growth percentile is 57.4 which um gets into like typical to high growth. You can see the bar graph um underneath there which really kind of shows how everything how each of those sections played out. So one thing that we had been talking about last year was about the number of students in that partially met not met category. So, um,

155happy to see that in 2024, 44% of our students were in those two categories and that was reduced to 35%. So, we still have work to do there. That's that's a higher number than what we like to see, but it's nice to see that progress there. Um, if you look at the bars over to the right where it says average percent correct by category, our essay and writing are significantly less than the reading in the language. So that is our focus for this year is to really um look at that. I'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to next steps. Last year we also talked about that 0% of third graders exceeded in 2024. If you follow that cohort for this year into fourth grade, um now 6% exceeded. So just

156that was something we were looking at last year. So just wanted to point that out. We had an overall improvement in the language strand category there. And that I was waiting to see because we actually had a focus on vertically aligning our grammar instruction because that was something that was missing from our instruction. So it was nice to see that growing. So that's something that we're continuing with and hope to see that improvement. So for next steps, we are really focusing on writing instruction this year. So what that looks like at Hatherly is that at our weekly collabs we are um teachers are bringing this is the writing prompt that I would like to do. Here's what we're looking for. We work together because at those collabs our special education teachers, literacy specialists, I'm there

157and the classroom teachers. So we're really taking the time to to plan that. What are we using as our graphic organizer? What are our criteria for success? making sure that we have all that for the students. So, we've been talking a lot about that and then when it's written, they actually bring that student work back to us and all of us sit there and compare it to the criteria for six su success um so that we can see and students see that also so they know what the aid expectation is. So, um, we've gotten the furthest in this process with fifth grade and it was just it was wonderful to hear the student feedback that we got that that really made it very helpful for them to know how to be successful. Um, and then

158it allowed us to look at it as a group and say, "This is what we need to do next." So, every grade will be looking at that. Of course, they're all in different places. Right now, first grade isn't writing an essay, but um we're definitely looking at sentence structure and really checking in on that. Um we'll continue our efforts from last year to enhance comprehension and language instruction. So, I talked about the grammar piece. We also have just been talking a lot about what are the real like power strategies for comprehension and really trying to look at that in terms of instruction and what we're focusing on. So not so much skills when you're talking about comprehension, but what are those other things that we need to help students think as they're reading? And then

159that feeds into writing as well. For our math scores, we had 69% of students meeting and exceeding. Um, that number increased by 8% over last year. 85% of third graders met or exceeded the benchmark. That was very exciting to see. Um, our growth at 50.4 is in the typical to low range. So that's something we would like to see climb. And one of the things that we're concerned about and working on is that 53 only 53% of fourth graders met or exceeded expectations. So that's something that we're talking about as a grade level. Um one of the things in the next steps portion of that is that we're really talking to all grade levels about spiraling content within math because the program doesn't do that explicitly. But that's something that we need to keep doing.

160So when long division goes away, you don't forget long division. So really trying to focus on that and how to assess that. So that's something that we've all been talking about. Um getting the math workshop model going for all grade levels. So, we've always had certain grade levels doing it, but now when you walk through, everybody's working in groups, doing number talks, playing games, using manipulatives. Um, so that is a big improvement um just in instructional practices for us to see that throughout the building. I know Brian has talked about what we're doing to improve our instructional practices in tier one. And so, um, a lot of that will focus on objectives, formative assessment, um, and the criteria for success, which we're using for, um, ELA and writing right now. Um, but we're happy to

161see some of this. We'd like to see that growth do a bit better, particularly in fourth grade. So, that's something that we'll be watching as this year goes by. Oh, I think I forgot in that section with the partially met and not met for math, we did reduce that slightly from 39% to 31%. That was a positive. Science was something that kind of hurt us last year. So, um this was nice to see 64% of students met or exceeded. These are our fifth grade students. An average of 510. Um so our average scale score increased from 504 to 510 this year and our percent needing and exceeding increase by five. So we just need to keep that going in that direction and 18% of students exceeded which was nice to see. Our partially and not

162met reduced from 40% to 36%. So trying to really um move students up from that category. So for next steps for science, we have a continued focus on hand hands-on learning, making sure that we're doing experiments in there. Um but also incorporating some writing into the science because that's where PE students really synthesize their learning and process what they're learning. So really trying to make sure that writing isn't only taking place in the ELA. For our accountability scores, we met our achievement targets in math for all students and we exceeded for ELA and for STE for all students. That was really nice to see. Particularly for STE last year, we had zero out of four points. I believe we exceeded our ELA achievement targets for high needs and students with disabilities. So I think we

163went for high needs last year I think we only met 17% of the targets and now we're up in the 70s and for students with disabilities last year we only had 5% of our targets and this year is 99% of our targets where we need to work are our lower um achieving students. So that is somewhere that we need to make sure that we continue to talk about those students to really think about what they need as well as all the people in the other other categories as well. Um we exceeded our math target for students with disabilities and we met the target for high needs. Um, as mentioned with the lowest performing students, our target percentage was improved but below target for ELA and no change for math. So, um, that's something that we

164really need to focus our efforts on. And, um, I already said we exceeded the target for science. So, sorry that's there twice. And so, next we have been working I was excited. So, we've been going to put it in again. It's overwhelming. Um for next steps, we've actually been um working on as a district even of really taking a look at our instructional minutes and making sure that we're hitting those time on learning targets. I put increased there because I was thinking really about fifth grade. So, we were able to increase the time in ELA and math in fifth grade with some scheduling changes and making sure that we're still hitting the other. So that was that was a big deal for us to try and figure that out. We have a little bit of

165an easier time doing that than the other schools because we only have two >> we only have two classes. Others have three. So that makes it a little more difficult. But where we could we did do that and um I think that will give us some improvements in that area. But we are looking at all other subjects and it's not I mean all other grade levels. It's not so much ELA and math all the time in other grade levels. you might have too much time on ELA, not enough time on science. So, those are things that we'll be discussing. The improved instructional practices are there. We've talked about that. Um, our math windblock model is really a pushin model. We did we had some grade levels doing that last year, but not all. So, fourth

166grade was a grade that we did not do that. We had a traditional win model of all pull out. Um, but we found that having the math specialist in the room and still doing when that she's taking small groups and working on where students have gaps and differentiating within her groups while the teacher is teaching the lesson of the day. So, um, students are able to have for a portion of the time anyway a math specialist in the room to be able to do that. So, that's something that we've found some success with. Um, does anyone have any questions? >> Thank you so much. Thank you. >> I I just have one question I think for for Mr. Lynch. Um, could you just help me distinguish in my mind the difference between lowest performing students

167and high needs? >> Sure. Um, high needs is a category identified by Desi that um would be any student that um is on an IEP um um low income or um an English learner. So that takes all three of those categories and identifies it as as high needs. Um Desi tracks progress for um that larger group of students as well as each of those subcategories. The lowest 25% is just based on um their performance regardless of socioeconomic status or their IEP. They just straight take the numbers. Here are all the kids at Hatherly based on their test scores. Lowest performing 25% don't care about any of those um subopuls or anything like that. Just that chunk of the low the lowest performing 25%. Um there's probably there could be based on the average performance of

168you know because we identify the average performance of a student on IEP average performance for a low-inccome student there could be there could be a higher representation but it's not a onetoone so how sorry so how does a lowest performing student earn a point in achievement >> so they take the average of that group's performance from uh like 2025. They take that lowest performing 25%. Um they take that average performance. Then they set a target. It's like they're going to set a target for 2026. If we achieve that target for all those kids that have the lead, they're already identified. >> It's cohort based. >> Yeah. It's that it's that it's that group. Um so they'll set the target um over the course of the winter and if we exceed it it's four points. Um

169if you decline zero. The hard thing is some of those students have already moved on. So um >> a third a third of the group could be totally new. >> Yeah it is variable. Sometimes our schools are really small and so the numbers we're working with are very small as the difference of one or two kids can cause what look like wild swings. And so that's something to keep in mind. I think we're looking at schoolbased data especially for elementaryaries is like it's really tiny numbers. Oh, right. So just >> helpful. I don't think in my mind I distinguished them incorrectly. It was just a I didn't have that clear in my mind but that's helpful. But it is interesting that we achieve zero in in achievement but chew and grow. So it's just conflicting

170to figure. >> Yeah. I mean Desi's summary of the entire system is 13 pages. Their their summary is 13 pages. It's complex. Um and >> achievement grow year to year. So like they're still in the low performing but it's like they're growing. They grew from a lower >> because of the target that they set. Right. Right. >> Right. >> And that's why we have the >> Yeah. >> Like the scaled score and then the SGP as the percentile. >> And then just this is jumping the gun. I know it's getting late, but we we clearly have a problem with writing and with geometry in our district. >> If you look at all of you look at all the scores, those are the two that stand out. were lowest and I think it was one school

171that um geometry wasn't but you have geometry and writing which is low. So that as a committee we probably anecdotally assumed that and now we have the data to show that and hopefully we can figure out a way to increase that. >> Well someone referenced the the scope and sequence of math which sometimes depending if the curriculum is not spiraling a lot in math. Geometry is usually one of those subjects just having been a teacher and being a parent, you see the geometry worksheets come home in the spring. Those are that's a June subject or a May subject, you know, so it's it's one of those subjects that can get sort of short shrift sometimes in teaching and the MCCAST is also given in May in May, right? So like there's just like a tale

172of the year where sometimes content isn't done and so teacher like it's just it can be the thing if it's the last thing if it's the last thing every year then you can have that compounding effect and this curriculum isn't >> that's very true it's it's generally speaking the last unit program and I know teachers >> try to move that forward right >> it's hard it's got to do all your stuff too >> and that's why I think the time on learning is also really important >> because you have be able to get there. So, >> yeah, >> you know, we're every year we make little changes to make sure that we're trying to get there, condense lessons and do things like that. >> Well, um thank you to Mr. dates in this Venwick because

173you um gave me perfect segue to some of my comments um about um geometry and writing. Um I'm Mary Oldac, the principal at Jenkins Elementary. Um I'll start with our ELA MCCAST results. And I first want to um stop and go back to last year when we uh had a discussion about the fact that 0% of our fourth graders at that time um had none of them had exceeded expectations in ELA. And um those students, that's our grade five cohort that we're looking at um with these results. These are the these are the students who are now sixth graders at Gates and very happy to see that we had a 7% increase in the that cohort of students exceeding expectations last year. Um previously when they were in fourth grade it was at 46% were

174just meeting and last year we had 56% of that cohort meeting or exceeding. So that I'm very happy to be able to report back out on that. Our schoolwide uh meeting and exceeding increased by over 5% last year to 62% and our third grade really stole the show with 21 uh 21% increase in meeting or exceeding over 2024. Our SGP is high typical growth at 53.5. Uh we want to see an SGP at 50 or above 50 represents one year's growth for one year's worth of instruction. Um so we're above the 50 but still could be stronger there. Um next steps um as you pointed out um our essay and writing are the lowest um average percent correct by category for English and language arts with reading and language being stronger. I'm looking in the

175right corner of that graph uh of that slide there. Um that is consistent in all across all of our elementary schools. It's also, if you look at the gray bars there, um that's the state. It's also consistent across the state. Uh essay is the longer composition that the kids um write in on the MCCAST. Writing is more the shorter open response um open response to a prompt. um they're graded on idea content as well as um conventions. And under next steps, one thing I'm super excited about this year is that Desi did release the essays again. They did not do that last year and we missed those. Um so the teachers actually have the authentic work of the the class sitting in front of them. So, for example, fourth grade teacher has the essays of

176her current students, what they wrote in third grade, and this teacher also has the essays that her last year students wrote. So, looking at those as a teaching point, they're fascinating um because we can see uh real discrepancies in terms of just volume. um some students who may have only written a few sentences and uh or students who, you know, really hit the mark in terms of answering the prompt and getting um uh a majority of points. But it's really interesting to look at those. you wonder, you know, did we scaffold too much um before there's that on demand or they're typing um and are we giving them enough experience with typing on demand on their Chromebooks? Is keyboarding a potential issue? Um or is there a social emotional component of um somebody you know

177who could have done um more that day but only wrote a sentence or two? Um so really excited to have those um back in our hands and sorry back to give you another chance to talk about your about your science course. Um so um the and you know putting those in the hands of the kids and say you know here's the essay that you wrote last year and surprise we we have it. Um and letting them reflect on that as well. So, in strengthening um the tier one instructional model, next steps uh there is we're very excited to be able this year to have our cross district collaboration time where we're going to be bringing together each of the grade levels. Um we no longer have early release days when that's possible. And this actually

178may end up being a much more effective model because they'll be able to spend more time with each other. And so you know the first one is October 28th fifth grades um will be together across the district and those meetings continue through March um for ELA and math. Okay. For um math MCCAST um we had um high typical growth for uh fourth and fifth grade. Again, we don't have growth scores for third grade um because it's their first year taking it. You'd have to have um two years of testing to get a growth score. Um we had 56% of our students were within 10 points of meeting or exceeding expectations. So 500 is the score for meeting expectations and 56% of the kids who did not meet were just within 490 to 499. So just

179that little bump and you can't really say oh it was one or two questions or two or three questions because of how they scale the scores but it's so close. Um so that's encouraging you know those kids who are just right there on the cusp and what what what do they need to get to get um moved into that um into um meeting expectations. Um overall um our grade levels did decline as you can see in that middle graph um bar graph there from 65% to 59% and um you know kind of disagregating that and looking at um our grade three and four scale score actually increased um and our grade five five scale score actually fell by 7%. So, you know, looking more closely at our fifth grade cohort um in math, you know,

180what what happened um when they were in fourth grade, they actually the meeting and exceeding actually had gone up 22% from third to fourth grade. And then in fifth grade, it's almost like it settled back into um and dropped back down to 19% needing art seating. Um so really trying to understand what is going on with that particular cohort. Um looking at the item analysis um we noticed um definitely some work needed to be done on certain questions around coordinate planes. Um to Mr. Gates point um geometry is um an area um that needs some attention. Um and just following up on the discussion we were just having, it is um a unit that often is taught out of sequence um in isolation or in parts because it is not really as sequential as everything

181else. So um and again our cross district collaboration around that is really going to help um uh figure that out. Um and you know timing is also an issue when MCCAST hits and trying to get everything in um before that time. Um so that's uh again geometry is an area focus for all of our elementary schools. Um and the last next step there I um am really want to make the case when you say what do we need to do to move math achievement forward? Um, I'm going to put on my FY27 budget hat. Give it to us. Um, and really advocate for equitable support for math intervention. We have two reading specialists. We have one math specialist. >> And I don't know why that happened. I I know that at one point in time

182there were two mass specialists and for some reason that position was reallocated before my time. I don't I haven't really found anybody who really knows what happened, but um it it's really impactful because we have one person who is servicing kids across K through five. And if you want to keep an intervention model, keep the fidelity of group size, frequency, skill focus, um you can only take on so many kids with one human. And you know, as Christine said, at Hatherly, they can push in with their math specialists. We can't do that at Jenkins or at the larger elementary schools because you need to take kids who need support around a certain skill focus. And they're never going to be in one classroom. So, you can't just push into that room. You have to take

183them out of during wind block. So, um I really think we could move the needle on math achievement if we could get more support. And I'm going to use the word equitable support for math. So intervention >> to clarify. You're saying that some schools have two math specialists and some have one. So every school has two because of population. >> All schools have two reading specialists and one math specialist. It's just you know population >> no just umly for literacy has a 1.8. eight. >> Okay. I apologize. >> I apologize. >> So, you know, it's Thank you. That's good to know. >> I mean, as we consolidate like there's going to be shifts coming, you know what I mean? So, it is to maybe some of this. So, it is really helpful to know what

184>> you said. Sorry. No, >> thank you. >> Said you used to have a Jenkins I think all the schools number one of my fourth grade teachers was the second mass specialist. So that's that's how you know I know have it on good authority. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Open architect. I mean it just seems so much easy. It's so easy to understand. >> Yeah. Do you all find it that as well? Absolutely. You can see way better than the other what >> Yeah. No, it's great. >> You can see the drop down menus across the top. We can, you know, filter by school, by year, by content area. It's really fabulous. >> Yeah. I mean, just for our meeting, it seems like this is just how many minutes you've been discussing, but for you

185all just boots on the No, no, I don't mean that. I mean, just like for you all boots on the ground and for teachers and staff and and everyone, just the efficiency piece alone must just be able to >> Yeah, I'm sure that just will add up over time. >> Yeah. >> I think one one feature that we all really appreciate is the ability to look at a cohort because we used to have to just go grab this off of all different kinds of charts and create it ourselves, but now we can look at >> the current sixth graders and how did they do from third, fourth, fifth grade. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. >> And moving on to science. Um Ryan did um mention that >> science. Sorry. >> I sorry

186for science. >> Oh, okay. Um so, uh Brian mentioned in his opening slides that science performance has been um somewhat level across the state. I was interested to hear that because that's kind of what's h has happened at Jenkins. If you look at the far left line graph there are meeting and exceeding has been holding steady at 72%. Um we um at Jenkins do see the benefit of the departmental model. We have um probably one of the um most defined departmental models with one teacher for ELA, one teacher for science, social studies and one teacher for math. Um and the uh achievements's been head holding steady at 72% and the percent correct across the content standards if you look at the um upper right hand corner the percent correct by category um that earth and

187space science and physical science were slightly below. Um, we are piloting the two open science pilots this year and that was chosen because it does integrate integrate ELA and math which is something that we uh really need to be doing to get all the minutes in. You need to integrate across the content areas. And um the pilots are going to be on natural water systems and lakes pools and rainwater and how those interact and the different water qualities. And then the properties of matter, the transfer of energy across ecosystems of having um nurse logs which are decomposing logs and how plants, animals and the sun, how that energy transfers through decomposers, which is pretty cool. So, um, that's going to be this year. And mentoring new staff. Lisa Masterson, who's been, um, teaching for over

18830 years, is retiring in December. And, uh, we have hired her replacement, um, who is, um, we said she was like a needle in a hay stack or a unicorn because she's getting her masters in STEM education. She's finishing that up right now. and um she is coming on board um January 5th after she and Lisa transition and um so we're uh very excited to have her on board especially with her having this content knowledge already. >> Okay, so on to the Jenkins accountability. Um our accountability percentile was 88 which is on a one to 99 um scale. So that's a strong showing. Um we did have substantial progress towards targets at 74%. We missed meeting and exceeding by one percentage point. Uh if we had been at 75 we would have hit that. I

189did want to address the changes in our progress towards targets over the last three years. Um we had been um two years ago a school of recognition. uh last year meeting or exceeding and this year we're one point away from meeting and exceeding. Um and I've I've uh done some invest investigation about what was going on there that I'll talk about in a moment. Um overall we've been on target for achievement growth and chronic absenteeism. I'm happy to report that at um three or more points. And our students with disabilities have been on target for achievement and growth in both ELA and math which is um very uh wonderful to see. Um looking at that lowest performing sum group we have their growth has met or exceeded targets. Um the achievement is making progress or

190met or exceeded targets. So what happened? Um getting at the chronic absenteeism and also Mrs. Benwick's comment about small school, small numbers. Um we had um the lowest performing subgroup. I took that and put in um their actual days missed last year and filtered it and there were only three out of the 29 students who were chronically absent. three. So last year we got zero points for chronic absenteeism for lowest performing subgroup be which means there's no change. So that makes me think okay then it was we drop down to those three kids three students not necessarily the same three students and um this year there's been no change so it's remaining at around um three students. I know the stories uh behind those students and have wonderful explanations about that. Um, but I do

191want to say this, generally speaking for the district, chronic absenteeism is really tough because if you have a child in this age group who's chronically absent, it they have to be like to get a child requiring assistance, they have to be willfully not attending school, which is not the case with any elementary student. Um, and then to have a a failure to send if you um are trying to um go at it from that direction. There's a fine in the state is $25 if they're found um to have a failure to send. And um with DCF uh for educational neglect, it's much more extreme situations than we have here. So the tools that we have, you know, we're all writing letters, we're all holding meetings. Um, and you know, it's it's we're down to, you

192know, three students and like how do you move that needle when there are very valid explanations. So just to shed some light on that. >> Yeah. You say that's exactly what we would love, we'd like to hear. I mean, >> we want to be able to help them. I don't mean that. to know what those stories are are really useful. So it can put that those that data in context, right? >> So that I think to know that you know yeah that that's the number and that you are working on it and that you do feel like you have I mean you don't have all the resources you need obviously but like at least you you are able to like make some headway and feel like you have some agency. You know >> we wish

193you had more tools at your disposal but that's something to think about. >> Yeah. Yes. Thank you very much. Um and in terms of next steps, we've talked about the horizontal collaboration and um open architects and what the bridge cycle is and um I think we've all talked about the balance of time on learning and how how to um make that most efficient. Does anyone have any questions? Thank you. Hi. >> It's green. >> Maybe it's just out of battery. >> Battery. >> Okay. going to go through WAC. Um, >> so um we'll start with ELA. Um, as you can see, our average growth percentile was in the high growth overall for grades 3 through five. All students that were meeting or exceeding increased from 52% to 59. and grade three which was a huge

194success the meeting or exceeding increased from 41% to 70%. So we're quite proud of that. Um the year before 41% was quite concerning as you can imagine. So um we did a lot of work a lot of focus in third grade on tier one instruction because when less than half of your kids are meeting or exceeding it's a tier one um struggle. So, we did a lot of work on that and um we're proud of of those results. Um like the other schools, our essay scores are at the lowest when you're you break down the categories in ELA. Um and we did have a slight decline in essay and in the writing scores from 2024 to 2025. We're very well aware of that. Like Mary talked about, the essays were released this year, which they

195weren't last year. Um, we find that to be very, very helpful for all the same reasons that Mary talked about and that Christine talked about as well. Um, those we printed off this summer as soon as we got them. Um, they are already have been looked at and started to analyze and teachers have them in their hands and are making plans on how they're going to use them to help adjust their teaching and to work with the kids who wrote them. So um that work was already started and talking about as soon as we got back in September. Um our next steps um like I said our common planning times um we've already spent time talking about those and analyzing those released essays. Um like the other schools have talked about we've implemented that bridge

196cycle. So using our end of the year data to set up our win groups which we started maybe the second week of school um that was a um a great move forward because in past years we've used we've done all those benchmarks at the end of the year and spent a lot of time analyzing and collecting all that data and then I mean it's great because we love to see the success and the celebrations but this was the first year we actually took that data and did something with it um teaching wise. Um one of the things that we focused on at Wampauck during that bridge cycle because that's also a lot to think about and very very busy beginning of the year and welcoming our new students and getting to know them. So in

197June we already determined that we would focus on grammar syllable types and patterns in third, fourth and fifth grade. So those materials were developed in June and they were ready to use in September when we came back. And then of course we had we had 19 um released questions from MCCAST and um those are helpful to look at and study and analyze to help look see ways that we can help our students improve in math. Um, our third grade meeting or exceeding increased from 54 to 74%. So, these are our current fourth graders. They're the same group that made the huge jump in ELA. It's a very, very smart group of kids. Um, our fourth grade um declined slightly from 74 to 71%. And our fifth grade um declined from 59 to 49%. So, our

198fifth grade was um and you can see our our average growth percentile was low. So, that was concerning for us, of course. Um but I'll say this wasn't a complete surprise. Um our end of the year math benchmarks um especially for fifth grade were very low. And that was a surprise to us because the middle of the year was quite high. So for some reason that group went from January to June made a a huge decline. Um at the time we had a lot of discussion about it. Um and if you remember we're using the state standards to look at our star now and it's about 80% correlates with MCCAST and it in fact correlated >> for our fifth grade. Um so so when I say we were we were disappointed to see such a

199decline but it wasn't a surprise to us because we saw it on the star. Um so again those conversations were already happening in June about what happened um why the decline. Some of the things we've talked about again already right when we came back in September and also in June at our data meetings is really looking at that fifth grade pacing guide. Christine and Mary have talked about that. Peter, you brought that up about the geometry and the, you know, we're we're giving these tests in May. We still have a month of school left. You know, you can't stop teaching in May. Like, there's still subjects to be taught. So, it's like trying to do that spiral review like Christine talked about and how are we getting all those topics in before they're asked to

200take the state exam. Um, so we've really really tried to focus on this spiral review which is not built into the current curriculum we have which is okay. They're not perfect, right? These so we that's why we have to adjust them for um the kids in front of us. Um this work has already started um but we'll continue to get better at that to help improve those scores. Um you know their principles have talked about the time on learning adjusting schedules. Um again those conversations have already started um looking at schedules and the time on learning. Um you know teachers a lot of times elementary teachers are very good in um at ELA and literacy and spend a lot of time with that. They're comfortable there and not always as much as math. Um there

201aren't probably a lot of elementary teachers that would consider themselves mathematicians. um but they probably consider themselves readers and writers. So um so we're working on that. Our November 10th PD is focused on math, helping our teachers grow as mathematicians so that they can be better math teachers. Um so time on learning, we're spending time on that right now talking about making sure we have enough time in those subject areas. And the use of manipulatives is another area that our current curriculum doesn't have a lot of, which is okay, but we need to be more aware of that and bring in more man manipulatives. Um, and then science, we did have a slight decline of our students meteoric seating. Um, declined from 2024 to 2025. Um, but we did, if you look at the specific

202areas, we did have an increase in tech and engineering. Um again students meet or exceeding in that area and um the other three areas slightly declined. Um you know just like the other principles talked about we are in a science curriculum review year which is excellent in the you know this is my sixth year here in Situit. We've never reviewed our science curriculum. So it's time this is going to be huge for us. Um and then we all have teachers participating um in the open sad pilot pilot that's already been talked about. So Watuk accountability um overall we've made substantial progress toward our state goals in ELA all students and all subgroups exceeded state targets at Watuk. our low income subset is on a path forward which means that their um they are meeting and

203exceeding our scores are higher than they were before CO. Um all other subgroups are still on a recovery path which means we have not reached that point that we were before CO. In math all students met state targets. Students with disabilities were below targets. Our low-income students exceeded the targets and our high needs low-inccome and students with disabilities are on a path forward. In science, all students met state targets and all of our students are on a path forward. So, we're above where we were before COVID. And our chronic absenteeism declined. Um, we had a huge jump last year. We exceeded targets last year. This year we did not meet our targets except in one subgroup. Um like Mary, I take deep dives in this because it's just so frustrating to me. Like why don't

204you want to come to school? Like school's great. Like we love, you know, Waffle Talk's great. So why don't you want to be here every day, you know? So it's hard. And I think too in elementary school it's not always the kids not wanting to come to school, right? A lot of times it's the family situation and the child camp to come to school because those kids that don't come, I ask them, "Oh my gosh, we missed you. Where have you been?" And often I hear, "I missed the bus and my mom couldn't get in here." Or, you know, situations that they're not always in control of, right? So, it's not only working with the child, working with the families, too. So, um, so even though he declined and I I was disappointed in this,

205I'm hopeful that, um, that we're doing good things and we're giving the supports needed to our families to get kids to school. next steps. Um, again, we've the bridge cycle, we've talked about the curriculum review process, the time on learning schedule alignment, the data meetings, you know, we're we're all those are happening this week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, all day data meetings at at all four elementaryaries. And then the cross district grade level clap time. Any questions about WAC? >> I just have a clarification. Sure. So when you it says chronic absenteeism declines, but that's the point. >> Yes. >> Not absent. You >> correct. Correct. We last year >> was like good. >> Yeah. No. So Kia absentee went up. So our points declined. We were we are four in all all groups last

206year. >> This year we were zero. >> I know. It's like it hurts my heart because I spent a lot of time on this. A lot of time talking to families and the letters and the phone calls and the emails and you know a lot of time and so it's hard when that happens. >> I I don't have any questions. I just want to commend all four principles. I just have appreciated hearing the progress, the areas you're working on. And I also just love even though it's not always what you want to be happening with students, I just appreciate that like when you were talking about the star score Tracy and you're like we saw it coming that I mean I don't want to impose my feelings on you but that must be empowering to

207know that like you know on the ground what's happening even if you can't change it in that moment. So, I'm just so impress impressed and appreciative of the deep dive and the it just seems like you have a real sense of what's going on and I've just appreciated hearing the transparency and the conversation. So, thank you for all that you're doing with this data and bringing it to us. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> We just have one more slide just >> you got some time. How much time do you have? >> We're still going Ryan and Mark. Sorry. >> Appreciate it. No, I mean we've talked about most of just just these were just elementary ones. I mean I don't think there's anything on here that we haven't already talked about. So I'll

208say that. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. >> I know I'm gonna get mine in 20 minutes. >> Oh wait. Oh wait. I did have one more thing. I'm so sorry. >> Just because Mary asked for something. I'm going to ask for something, too. >> Oh, yeah. That's right. You're supposed to bring your >> Yeah, I have. And on the back of my post-it note here, >> um, a lost opportunity is our parah librarians. We need certified media specialists because we are not doing a due diligence on our digital literacy standards. And if we could do better with digital literacy, we could do better with science and keyboarding and typing our essays and becoming more proficient writers. >> So, we need certified media specialists at both elementary level. >> I will say that's something

209we've discussed with in conjunction with the new school. >> We've talked about that >> because of that massive amazing >> new highlighted space. >> We need it now. Is this a certification or is it >> library? >> We have none. We have none. >> Not at the end. We have we use library. We use parasc. We've just got that in our >> Yes. those other days that we >> and I agree with all those things, but I would also make a foundation, >> right? >> A person is a lot harder. >> At this time, we'd like to invite our high school principal, middle school principal, and director of special education. >> I make it right. for moving a meeting along. >> The 11 p.m. movie. >> Oh, man. >> Hello everyone. >> All right. >>

210Uh, so earlier this evening, I had the pleasure of presenting this to our school council where we went into great detail about the different cohorts. So I plan on doing kind of more of a uh larger kind of big picture overview instead of looking at individual cohorts. So >> appreciate that. >> Um on the whole I I would say all of our uh all of our results remained fairly steady as they had in years past. 61% of our students in grades six through eight were uh either meeting or exceeding expectations. uh average scale score of a 506 which is in the proficient range and our average student growth percentile was 48.6 which is in the typical range. Um as we drill down uh we recognize that writing continues to be an area that we can

211continue to improve in. Um so that will continue to be an area of focus. When we look at the pieces uh reading in the assessment of reading that was an area of strength. Um, so we hope to continue to cultivate that joy of reading through our independent reading program and our library media specialist. Uh, her push into classes definitely has an impact on the culture that is set uh in reading at our school. And finally, we're super excited this year uh to con to begin using the STAR assessment to have data, realtime data throughout the year that we can use uh as a predictor of where kids will do on this state assessment, but then also kind of how to close gaps instead of waiting until the very end of the year to get MES

212results. So, this will be the first year that sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade are using STAR. um students are used to it because they have used it in elementary school. Parents are used to it. Uh so this will be a kind of a continuation that we will extend into middle school. Our previous uh progress monitoring tools as we look at those um results from last year versus uh how our students did on MCCast, there's not a strong correlation between their results uh that we got last year and how they did on the MCAST. So, we're excited to see in January where we think our kids will be knowing that star is more of a predictor of students u success. In math, uh math, 59% of our students met or exceeded the expectations with

213a average scale score of 506, which is in the proficient range, and an average student growth percentile of 51. Uh that is in the typical growth range. So, we're happy about that. We'd like high range, but typical is a good place to be as well. We saw a slight increase uh in the percentage of students exceeding expectations, which we were happy about, and a slight decrease in students not meeting expectations um in terms of areas for strengths, functions, and statistics and probability uh in grades six through eight all seem to be an area of strength. Whereas expressions and equations at grades six, seven, and eight were all areas that need additional development. If you remember last year, we implemented a new math curriculum at the middle school. And so we are continuing to implement and

214use progress monitoring tools in terms of what we're implementing and get ongoing professional development from the curriculum uh providers. We are looking to make sure that uh that specific area of uh growth, the expressions and equations that has place in grades six, seven, and eight. and a lot of time spent on those. And then very similar to how we are using star in ELA, we're excited to use it for uh math as well. So we are looking forward to getting data three times a year uh to say where are our students and what can we do to kind of fill some gaps that exist or to extend the learning of those that are meeting. Um because we want everybody to go up. We want the reds to turn to greens. We want the greens to

215turn to blue. So um having an actual tool instead of just MCCAST once a year release will help us to group kids and provide them with what they need. In terms of civics, civics was uh this was the first administration of the civics MCCAST. Um very few of our students did not meet expectations. Um so we were pleased with that. We also noticed that it was fairly consistent with uh how they did on the ELA portion of MCCAST because a big portion of this assessment is reading and synthesizing primary sources. Um and in terms of breaking down the test, writing seems to be an area that we can continue to grow in. So we will provide students with more opportunities to write for different purposes and different audiences um utilizing those primary source documents. And

216uh I would say we participated in the pilot two two years in a row uh prior to this first kind of uh administration happening and it was fairly consistent with what we saw across the board. So I know our civics teachers are excited um to continue to find ways to support kids to do well not only on this assessment but to actively participate in civics uh everywhere. Finally uh uh STEM uh 62% of our students were exceeding ex or meeting or exceeding 505 which is a proficient score and because uh there is no this test is given once in their sixth grade experience there is no growth percentile. Um we did despite the state seeing a decrease we saw a slight increase in our scores which was nice. Um it was funny to hear not

217funny uh but it was interesting to hear that earth and space science were an area um for growth in the elementary level because this was one of our strengths um in the sixth through eight. And what we think about when we think about this assessment is this is three years of content that students are taking in eighth grade. Um, and so one of the things that we put in place last year was we're trying to embed different pieces into all areas of the curriculum so that what they learned in sixth grade, they're not kind of forgetting by the time they get to eighth grade. So we are looking at kind of spiraling their curriculum. Um, and we are doing this through different systematic assessments, uh, rubrics that we're using that incorporate, uh, different aspects that

218can be seen all three years. Um, and with that, our kind of final big pieces, uh, cause for celebration. We, you last year met 57% of our targets. This year we met 69%. So, we're seeing some, uh, growth. We're seeing growth and that's great because we want to improve in our targets. The thing that I'm most proud of that I think our school is also most proud of is, um, we are exceeding our accountability percentile to preandemic uh, times. Um so in 2018 it was 49%. We are up to 76%. Um and that accountability percentile comes from achievement growth um and chronic absenteeism. So we are continuing to get better and better and better every year. Um by the time I retire in 18 19 years uh that will be 99% uh but I'm pleased

219with the progress that we've seen is 49% to 76% in just six not just six years. we are on target and we are moving. Um specifically the targets that Jessie set for us in ELA and um in science they were exceeded by our lowest performing students. So to me that says some of the work that we are doing the targeted work with groups with um pullout classes with push-in models for our students that we know are lowest performing. They are working um in some areas which is great. All of our student groups were in typical growth. So that's students with disabilities, um, English language learners, low-income students, they were all in the typical growth uh, for ELA and math, which we're pleased with. And then in terms of our targets for chronic absenteeism, uh, they

220were met for all student groups. And so that means that some of the interventions and the supports that we are putting in place, the partnerships that we are developing with families are having a result um, on students attending school. So, uh, lots of cause for celebration, um, and also room for continued improvement, but we're not moving backwards in any areas. We just want to move forward, and that seems to be what our data is saying, too. Next steps, we will continue to train teachers utilizing open architects and uh, that will just allow them to have even more access to the data. Um, MTSS, we're in year three of our academy and we will continue to identify specific supports for students. Um, a lot on the previous slides mentioned windblocks. Um, we have time during the

221day now to provide students with targeted support in an area that they need. Um, and it could be targeted support or it could be somebody who's meeting expectations. How are we pushing them into the exceeding expectations category? So, we're really excited um to have time during the day and a process and the data. And when you have all three of those things together, you can develop plans for every child to help you move forward. And then finally, um even though we did improve in chronic absenteeism, uh we need to continue to find ways to break down those barriers that exist for students and for families uh from home school is it's a challenge. Um so in terms of asking for things um we are very blessed to have lots of lots of great things. Um

222we can never have enough uh social emotional support. Uh so I would say the in terms of family engagement, family partnership, um students need to feel safe at school, students need to have a reason to come to school. Um students need all of this to achieve and I would say shining a light on helping all of our students uh to create those conditions where they are um excited and and able to come to school and learn. That's what we need uh the most support in. Um and if you have extra money, I can always So, thank >> Ryan, can I ask a quick question? Um, >> I'm assuming this is coming, but just wanted to check in. Is there a plan for a writing windblock? >> There are plans for writing windblocks, uh, math windblocks.

223So right now we're in our first session of wind blocks and we have a literacy focus uh which is either focusing on vocabulary or main idea and uh detail and then we also have some math ones that is based solely on this big MCCAST data. Since this MCCAST data has come out we've given the benchmark of STAR which breaks down a lot more. So in our second round of groups you're probably not going to see big things like literacy. you're going to see things like >> okay >> responding to text non-fiction text in writing and that's going to be a group. So >> I figure that is one >> yes um and we're you know very excited for that using star to then say here's the group obviously MCAST data is important it's good but

224it's big >> like small data to really drill down >> thank you >> yes >> thank you Ryan >> okay so at high school is this working I don't know >> battery. >> I don't think you need it actually. You don't need it. Feel like there many people. >> I don't think there's anybody on set. >> So at Situate High School, we had um 72% of our students um exceeded or met um the criteria. Percentage of students went down a little bit. Um our student growth percentile up slightly from 2024. We increased in all subcategories except read and your point um Mr. Gates um and we're dedicated focus on the lower performance students which I'll get into a little bit more um as I go through my slides. Uh some of our next steps implementing

225a new benchmark for ninth and tth graders. Um, we we're gonna start using what they call common lit assessments, which is going to give us, it's kind of like the star of of math, but it's going to give us um quicker data once, like like Ryan was just saying, instead of waiting till the end of the year to find out some of the data that we're finding out, we'll find it out more throughout the year. But that's a new test that we're just going to start to implement this year at the high school level for 9th and 10th graders. Um, one change we made in the classroom, we separated our CP and our honors level courses. They were combined and we thought that wasn't challenging our students enough. Uh, so we separated those. This is

226the first year of that for instructional purposes. Uh, and all all of our ELA uh teachers as well are doing a 10 module course on adolescence literacy which we think will help um throughout the process too. For math, we had a slight increase in our percentile of students meeting and exceeding their expectations. It went up by 1%, we're at 65%. Um, algebra and functions were were a strength this year and and geometry and stats were an area that we're concerned about. Um, and probability areas of focus. Some of our next steps is to ensure alignment of geometry standards throughout grades nine and tth. Uh increase in opportunities for statistics and probability exposure throughout the nth and tth. And we're going to use the star benchmark um for nth and tth grade. And we're going to

227try to create, you know, the lower 25% that we're concerned about. um we're going to create windblock supports for them to help reinforce some skills and concepts that the students need and hopefully we'll see results down the road with that. Uh we're again in the beginning stages of STAR as well at the high school level. Uh so it's going to take some time to to uh to implement but it does give you faster results and faster feedback which is something we're really excited about moving forward. >> Math will go up to n grades nine and 10. >> Nine and 10. Yes. Yeah. No, I was just wondering. It's interesting to look at statistics and probability. It seems like it's strong in middle school, but then there's a drop in high school. I'm just wondering what

228that is. >> Cohort or >> just curious. >> Um our first biology slide is a slide um from two years ago just for accountability purposes. Um we saw a slight increase in percent of students exceeding expectations in ecology and biology is something we've identified as as an area of concern or area that we need to improve in. And if you look at the second slide, our desk accountability reports, um, we decreased in percentage of students exceeding expectations and performed we performed very well in in genetics, but obviously we dropped a tremendous amount. Uh, way more than we ex expected to. Um, and it's an area of concern of ours, and we've got some next steps that we're going to work on immediately to try to improve this. And the ecology is is we I met

229with Pat and that's one of the areas that we're concerned about was the students scored really low on that. And one thing about ecology is it's taught in September. So one of the things we talked to our teachers about was a scope and sequence where throughout the school year they're going to reflect back on ecology. So the next time they see it isn't in May, you know, so that they can reflect throughout the scope and sequence throughout the year on some of the skills. Uh our next step is to increase focus on language skills, review prior learning by providing content through the curriculum and develop wind block groups to support specific context similar what like what we're doing in math. Um and again we're looking at data to improve ecology. We that was a real

230weak point brought our scores down a lot. Um so we're trying to scope and sequence it so we teach it a little bit more throughout the year. Um this next page, our accountability data data suggests, you know, we need to put some supports in place for our lower performing students. Um training teachers on adolescence literacy is huge. What we're going to do for every every teacher in uh English math curriculum will focus on instructional practices and chronic absenteeism. I mean, I we have 90% or so attendance rate right now at Situ High School, but the chronic absentee rate is still up high. And like uh one of my colleagues said, it's it's a concern. It bothers me a lot because I I spend a tremendous amount of time on attendance. I I probably meet personally

231with kids five or six times a day on attendance and and and getting them to school has really been difficult in some situations. Just a group of them. there's a group of students who having a tough time getting into school and some of it social emotional, some of it they get sick and they're out for five or six days in a row. Um but but getting them in school consistently is a major goal at Situate High School because we know that that's a problem and we know we've got to work towards that goal. So the the some of our additional steps um this year we're starting MTSS process and and the MTSS process this year at SU High School is geared towards uh this the students that we're concerned about struggling students. We're going to

232identify students that have high absency rates students that are not doing well in school and and and students that are kind of disengaged and we're going to take those group of students and and add windblock supports for those students. So, we hope we're hoping with the MTSS, it's going to take a little bit of time, but we hope through our process at MTSS, which we're identifying students earlier that need help and support, that it's going to help our overall build, our overall scores. Um, we also expanded Windblock to five days a week. We added a sailor block on Wednesdays, which is really going well. I walk around the building during windblock and I our building is the best setup we've had since I've been I'm in year three now. We have math teachers and almost

233like a math lab type look working with students on skills for 25 minutes five days a week. Our English group is we had students writing essays and working on essays and it was re it's really been good. They have to have a pass if they're in the hallway. If they don't have a pass, they come down in the office with me and some some of their passes they they'll have like a rock in the house. No, no, have your teacher write a pass. But but they're taking it serious. They're not leaving the building without some kind of pass. So, so we're trying to hold them more accountable than than we have in the past and we're seeing the difference in the classroom during windblock. Um, content areas I talked a little bit about identifying students

234with low scores on the STAR test and we're going to put them in the wind block supports um through math and then our English teachers being trained. Um, we're trying to build a buildingwide focus on co-eing. We're trying to, we're not trying to, we're going to take our special education staff and our classroom teachers and they're going to work more together to develop lessons together and to do a little bit of there's some vocabulary that students walk into some of our special ed students and and we're pre-eaching that vocab vocabulary prior to the lesson. So when the when the student goes into the lesson, they've already they see vocabulary and they're not lost. So, we're trying to pre-teach a little bit prior to them getting in so that so that they're a little bit more

235engaged in the lesson. Um, this is funny and I I'm probably going to do it, but we are very concerned about them not taking the MCAST serious because there's no long graduation requirement. I stood outside of the room before the biology test. I heard students saying, "This doesn't count anymore. This doesn't count anymore." And and it does count. It counts for just because it's not a graduation requirement. This counts. So, I'm probably going to have an Ncast rally with the whole sophomore class. Bring them in with slides. I'm pretty good at this. Like, I can ra people with slides and I'm going to talk about the importance of this exam and about why it's important. It's important for our school data. It's important for your possibly placement of classes the following year. There are scholarship

236opportunities. I'm going to send forms and letters home to parents. So, please get a good night's sleep, eat a good breakfast, take this test real serious. Um, so I'm going to do something like that, some kind of MCCAST rally with the kids, uh, and staff as well because, you know, so staff can reinforce to their students. This is an important exam. We need to take it more seriously. Um, as far as, uh, wants, um, a math specialist is needed at the high school. We don't have a math specialist. We're starting to put supports in during windblock with some of our students that that we need extra support with. So, we're putting these supports in. So, mass specialist would be huge. You may think I'm crazy, but we are struggling with chronic absenteeism. I don't know

237if it's ever been thought on this district to do a a district attendance officer, some kind of attendance officer. Yeah. Truent officer. I know they have those in the cities. You know, in Plymouth, we had one and I met with every Friday I would meet with the truance officer and he would come down and I would say these 10 kids missed three or more days of school. those kids were in school on Monday and Tuesday. He went to the house. He went and saw him. He went So, just a thought, really thinking out of the box, but that might help chronic absenteeism in in this in this in the school district if we had somebody that just concentrated on that sort of thing. Um, and then like like uh Ryan was saying, you know, more

238support, more adjustment council support. We're trying to we're going to increase some of our supports in our um program and and and another adjustment council would be really huge to to to help support the kids that that we're not losing, but we're they're falling behind and they're not coming to school continuously. When they do, they go up to lighthouse and we need more support in that lighthouse room to get them back on track and back into the classrooms and and back refocused. So, another another um adjustment council would be huge. Thank you. >> Can I just ask one tiny question? Sure. >> What is the difference between these two graphs about the biology on Cass? Someone explain that to me. >> Can you help me with that, Ryan? >> Sure. >> Um, one is years

239ago and one, right? Yeah, >> that's correct. So, when um they run the accountability system for 2025, they do it with sophomores. Our sophomores all took biology in 2024. that biology exam is the one that's in the state accountability system, >> but our freshman just took this. >> This is going to be next year's data in the accountability system. We wanted to share it with you >> because >> these are our sitting sophomores >> and this is how they did. Um it's >> a principal arrangement. Yeah, you talked about it. We're working with this right now. Patrick Newton's working with it with teachers. We're thinking about ecology and other pieces like that. We're not going to wait a year to dig into it. Um, we're we're already looking at it, but for accountability purposes, you

240don't see this reflected yet. You see last year. >> So, high schools around the state are able to offer biology in grade nine or 10. >> Correct. >> That's correct. >> I needed >> just a couple of things to um if you don't have any more questions, just our we're we're in we're improving our dual enrollment program right now. We have right now we have uh dual enrollment. We have two classes that we do enrollment with through Quinsey College. We're going to add a math and a science class this year which is going to help students because they go ahead and get college credit for it. Um we have two innovation career pathways that we're running right now. Uh one in business and finance with the Shark Tank marketing plan and the other one is

241environmental stewardist. We have students working with the coastal research program. Uh and and that's going really well. And then Project Lead the Way has been a real success in that building. the what those students are doing in that room, working on building things and they they were built a little car the other day that they were riding around, not riding around, driving around through the hallways and it's really it's it's really hard. They tried to hit me with it. They really did try to hit me jumper. I know real quick, but I had to move around. They were trying to hit me with it. But but just some of the things they're doing high rig real real real rigorous stuff that UMass and uh and I think UMass and WPI right now are accepting some

242of the project lead the way credits right now too which is good. I have a I have a question. I think Ry probably Ryan or you Mark. If if MCCAST were a requirement to graduate, how many of our high schoolers might not have made that requirement? Do we know? >> Yeah, it Sorry. Did you want to >> No, go ahead. Yes, they they um >> well the >> well you didn't have to actually meet the expectation to graduate. You you had to score >> you could score in the uh partially meeting expectations and then the district would need to create like a an EP educational proficiency plan for how to help you meet grade level proficiency. It was the students that would score in the red. So if you take those red percentiles and imagine

243they never took another exam that would be the percent of students who might not be able to meet the graduation requirement but you know um even if student failed maybe in ninth grade or tth grade that they would take it again in order to meet it but that that's the percent to go by is the red. >> Um so sorry my >> zero is it zero in biology. >> No it looks like to me that looks like a 10%. Is that what it is? I can't it's not >> 6%. Thank you. Six >> 6% >> but they would retest several times. >> Correct. But that would be the >> 200 folio way they could go above graduating to >> 6%. So it's like 12 kids. >> That's but that's all that's always we are concerned

244about that. But that's been what the number has been. There's always been a >> you know some percent of students that you know need to do multiple times. But um it would be the the students who scored in the >> they don't we don't need a plan for them to revisit biology now whereas before we needed we needed to come to that plan. So we have those available resources that we were using before. >> Correct. There are some curriculum resources coming up pretty soon is the new competency determination policy which >> we are required to set forth some new graduation requirements. sorry um competency determination requirements which will require passing certain number of English classes and math classes um in the first couple of years. So that's coming. >> Thank you. >> You would like

245>> Okay. >> I'm going to improve chronic. >> I will improve it. Give me time. I go to the house. We'll go to the house together. You don't take rides every morning. >> Wouldn't that be fun? >> It would be fun. >> Just start a little earlier. >> Okay. On to special education. Um, if anyone is still listening at home, this is Michelle Boowbert, director of special education. And what I did was I I first of all, I love the open architects. That is a game changer. I I did the data from there and I also looked at our um the published results from from DESIE. But um synthesizing across all grade levels, I looked at percentages of students on IEPs um in every content area and just looked at what percentage were meeting or

246exceeding expectations, what percentage are partially mean, what percentage were not meeting. Um this data includes uh out of district students because they count towards our district's profiles. They don't count towards the school profiles. So where if you see something like 13 um 13% um slash you know 12% or whatever that means that some of the data indicates out of district include out of district some didn't um but basically it's it's always a challenge on reporting out on this because to be eligible for an IEP a student must have a disability and they must not be making effective progress in the general ed curriculum and MCCAST is a test of the general ed curriculum. So, not surprisingly, most of our students fall within that not meeting expectations, which um you know, back in the day for

24710th grade uh still is, you know, passing. Um and so our students uh honores in grades 3 through 10 um range from 60 to 66% of them as an aggregate uh fell within the partial u meeting expectations. 14 to 20% fell within not meeting expectations. Um, and then we also had um for I broke it out ELA 61% um or sorry 21% met or exceeded expectations for math uh 20% met or exceeded expectations. Ever science um 3132% depending on how district if they were included or not met um or exceeded expectations. So we always want to do better. Um and uh you know it's just um again uh working on that. I think the data shows that um because the other thing I do when I look at the the data from these platforms is

248looking to see for the students that did not do as well. Was this expected? Um is their disability that severe? Um what else can we be doing for these students? And then I also look at their flip side for students not on an IEP. If they really struggled, should they be evaluated to determine if they have a disability? Um, I also look at the state average for students on IEPs and we uh either were the same or surpassed them in every metric except with a few um rare occasions. So, um, when I looked at, um, the average scale score, you know, in some situations, we were like 20, you know, 20 points higher, um, in certain grade levels in certain subject areas. Um, we were better than the state average on the percentage of meeting

249or exceeding um, and we were in the lower than the state average in the not meeting expectations. So the only um exceptions to that is that um we uh had um meeting or exceeding uh our percentage was um that was a little bit uh different in 10th grade math. Um fifth grade math was the same as the state and in fourth grade ELA uh we were 7% compared to 13% of the state. So we did a little bit lower in meeting and exceeding expectations. However, when you looked at the not meeting expectations, we did better in the state. So depending on what bucket you're looking at, I know it's it's a lot of lot of math here. Um it was it was hard to um conceptualize because of all the the different pieces of looking

250at all the grade levels and all the subjects. Um some highlights were we reduced the not meeting expectation category in ELA. So in uh 2024 it was 28% did not meet expectations and 2025 was 20%. And we also increased meeting and exceeding expectations in science from 25% last year to 31%. Um, again, if we look at like the 10th grade science, um, just pulling out a few kind of like highs, a few lows, but 10th grade science, we were, um, much better than the state average. So, we were 37% 39% in meeting or exceeding expectations. State average was 15%. Um, we also had increased um, from 21% in 2024. um in 10th grade our uh ELA our um meeting or exceeding expectations was 36% and the state average was only 10%. So like we were

251more than triple that. Um 10th grade math we were um our meaning exceeding was slightly worse than the state average. We were 11%, state was 13% but again we had like a higher what we would used to call passing rate at 68% when we included the partially meeting expectations compared to the state average which was um 58%. Um eighth grade math again we were a little bit higher than state average. Eighth grade science we were more than double the state um average for meeting or exceeding expectations. eighth grade civics. We don't have, you know, past years to compare to, but um we were at 28% uh of students on IPS met or exceeded expectations compared to only 13% of the state. So I think we were um uh compare favorably to the state. We always

252want to do better than the state average, but um I think we were we did um we want to do way better than this, but we did much better. Um the other thing we I like to look at is like the third grade. So that we want to be like capturing all these kids um right away and seeing how they're doing. Um so in our meeting or exceeding expectations 35% um of students at IEPs were in that range compared to the state again of 14%. Um and in math it was really very favorable. 41% of kids on an IEP u met or exceeded expectations compared to 17% of the state. Um so I'm wondering if other districts in the state are not identifying kids maybe picking them up or um earlier for for interventions. Um

253so uh I think and the other thing I want to comment is that the more that situate as is a aggregate um does well the more that our kids will do well. Um so most of our kids on IEPs are in the least restrictive environment. Um 79% attend full inclusion classes. We also have our own state targets in special ed and our own accountability. I think you might have received that little report we got um about a month ago. Um the state target for inclusion placements is 65% and we exceeded that by 79%. Um so that meaning like all the general everything that everybody's doing is helping our kids also on IEPs. Um they're all our kids. Um so next steps really just meeting with school teams, especially special ed teams to really look at

254this um data and adjusting our instruction, reviewing our IEPs to see like um you know, do the do there need to be more accommodations? Do we need to look at more specially designed instruction, especially at these targeted areas? Um also meeting with school teams for uh looking at child find for students that didn't do well. Do they need to be evaluated to determine if there is a disability? Um reviewing criteria for the pull out instruction when needed. Um we started a language based learning disability program at the high school. It's only a second year, but we're building on that. Um so where needed or u doing more small group classes um so that program is is um teaching an ELA class. Um and then I also um we were able to use some grant funds

255and so we're starting a special ed resource library which um I will be delivering uh books like this about high leverage practices. This one's for inclusive classrooms. There's also ones for uh students with intensive needs, but just trying to build like our own um understanding and best practice in special education. So each school will have like a little uh lending library for teachers including Jed if they want to review those. Um and then finally just like collaborating with um the principles, curriculum coordinators um across the district to keep working on attendance and working on any questions. >> A hard category knowing the complexities of IPS and each student's individual needs to lump everyone together in one. >> Yeah. I'm glad you're find useful though. I'm glad you're finding open architect. >> Oh yeah, because >>

256I imagine for you it's really helpful. So I'm glad to hear that. >> Yeah, you can really drill down to each student and look at everything. So you can look at the attendance, you can look at the star dibbles >> um and our teachers going to start using it too because before that they had to like go and find everything. So it really is um it is a lot of fun and it's a great um way to get the information. >> That's great. Thank you. Thanks. >> Thank you all. >> Thank you. >> We had one more slide, but that's okay. >> Battery died. >> It was a long night. >> Yeah. We want to thank our principles for all the work that they did. >> To prepare their slides and stay knowledgeable about their

257data, Dr. Bear. So we really appreciate all that information and and our teachers who do the work every day teaching students and um the final slide is just about where building systems and structures to bring data closer to students um at the school and teacher levels. The big goal this year is to provide time on November 10th to give teachers time u to look at more timely student data um because we know that when they have access to that data, they have the biggest opportunity to change outcomes for kids. We know our teachers work really hard. We're just thinking about how do they to give them the best information to do what they do. So, um obviously our principles are are on top of the data and we're excited to um share those resources with

258teachers, too. so they have the best data um for their students. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Do we do we want to move our conversation about ade >> I think that's fine >> because we do have to do this vote on the LBA and the KC. So per our little memo um LBA is the middle school pathway exploration policy and this was um at the behest of the state in an effort to make more equitable the process by which students can find out about and apply to uh career technical education programs. And so all districts have to do this has to be approved by November 1st, which is why we're doing the first and second reading tonight. Um it's pretty straightforward. Um it's not anything really to need to get into too deep. So hopefully

259you all took a look and yes conversations are great. >> I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the policy LBA middle school pathway exploration policy as presented. >> Second. >> All in favor? Great. And then we also have policy KCD which is the public gifts to schools. This was from last time our first reading was this is just to modernize and bring up to date and in line with mask right >> model policy um which recognizes kind of the proliferation of donations through different venues and things like that. This is just bringing us into alignment with general law. >> Janice, >> well I do have one question because this is going to be like earthshattering to all the people that are accepting gifts and whatnot. So, there should be a lot

260of >> Well, I have news about a more earthshattering thing that's coming in the KS. >> I think the K are going to be big. >> Just I mean, is it going to be like a road show to >> you started the conversations already and some of the PT >> important though. It's important. >> It is. It is. I just >> I'm going to ease into it because you're right. It is going to be a bit of a surprise to some of the groups. So, we're going to go slow, but we're going to bring ourselves into >> Okay. And it includes the booster groups. I I was just going to say that that was exactly when our our public commenter had made the comment but we are we I think that's an important point of

261reference is that this is something they were already or are on top of and aware of and addressing. So it is already happening. >> Yes. >> The other K one that came to my attention was that there's state legislation passed about raffles and that is a whole other case. Anyway, let's keep let's not unless anyone else questions. I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve policy KCD public gifts to the schools as presented. >> Second. >> All in favor? >> I approval of minutes. >> Recommended that the super committee vote to approve the September 29th, 2025 minutes as presented. >> Second. >> All in favor? I >> table correspondences other business etc. >> I just have one more >> what is it? >> Do we have to tell uh who um about

262the which days we're going to the conference? >> Yeah. Like are we going to go there? >> You already have we already full conference ticket. It's one ticket. >> We just had to tell her for lunch. Oh, okay. All right. >> You can still go on a date you didn't tell her. She just Yeah. For yourself. >> I don't think it's all right. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Take a motion to adjourn. >> Move to 10:17 p.m. >> Second. All in favor? I >> Wow.