Scituate School Committee Meeting - 06-16-2025

001Thank you. All right. The Situit School Committee is committed to providing an environment of respect during meetings. We ask all members to interact in a polite manner even when there is disagreement. We value the participation of our community and want all participants, including marginalized and minoritized communities, to feel welcomed and respected. We ask our committee members and all who participate to commit to these standards to support and respect our community. Right. See, we'll call the June 16th, 2025 school committee meeting to order at 6 PM. And we'll begin with public comment. See anyone in person who would like to make public comment can come to the microphone here. Anyone would like to make public comment, please raise your hand virtually. Seeing none, seeing no one in person. Okay. All right. We will move forward with

002our first presentation here with our Situit High School assistant principal, Lisa Kirk. Presentation on SHS peer mentor program. uh testing. Uh yeah, you guys can take it right off the stand. Yeah, there you go. All right. Uh, my name is Parker Shaw. I'm a upcoming senior at Citro High School. I participated in the mentorship program for I participated last year and then I'm participating in it this year. Last year we had 17 students participating in the mentorship program. This year, that number has grown significantly to 38. Hi, I'm Kira Schneider and I have also been in the mentorship program since it started. Um, our goals are to bridge the gap between upper and lowerassmen and really make people feel at home in this school and work to achieve an inclusive school environment. And we also

003want to serve as a resource for freshmen who need it, giving our friendship, guidance, trust, and our advice. And we also want to assist freshmen in having a smooth transition from middle school to high school. I'm con I'm also a rising senior. Uh, why is a mentor program needed? It's uh for upper classman and freshman. Uh freshman year is very difficult for kids because coming from middle school and they're going to high school where they don't have as much like help and they need it and it gives the upper classman also a role model to follow in the school by leading by example. [Applause] You have any questions? Anyone have any questions? Um, I mean I don't uh at some point I'd love to know more about just kind of like the structure of what

004you do. like how like how do kids get involved and how often do you meet and things like that? So, I guess maybe just like a smidge more detail, I'd love to know. But if you don't want to go into all that right now, maybe we can add that to the agenda next year. Sure. And I can provide some information. That'd be great. Um to the school board that you guys and then can put questions back. Awesome. Yeah, it's my first time hearing about it. So, thank you guys for coming. Thank you so much. [Music] [Applause] All right. Up next, we have our honoring of our 2425 SPS retirees. Are we starting with principal? Hello everyone. Am I on? I take it off. Um, so I'm honored to be here tonight. There are four amazing

005educators retiring from Watuk and I'd like to say a few words about each one of them. So first we have Deb Edgrren. Deb has worked for the Central Public Schools for 19 years as a school psychologist. She has been a pillar of the Watuk community supporting staff and students alike. She's not only a trusted adviser in working with students and parents but al has also been an exceptional school psychologist. Deb has conducted countless initial and reevaluation assam assessments with dedication and expertise. Over the years, she has skillfully and compassionately communicated results to hundreds of families and caregivers, helping them to understand their child's learning profile. With a steady and reassuring presence, she has guided families through challenging moments, always reinforcing that they are not alone and that we are here to support their child every

006step of the way. Deb's deep commitment to collaboration is evident in the many hours she is spent working closely with staff, consistently placing the needs of students at the center of every decision she makes. Her professionalism, empathy, and unwavering advocate advocacy has made a lasting impact on the school community. Deb's most precious gift is her ability to connect with children and families. For the past 19 years, she has dedicated herself to building a positive, lasting relationships, a commitment that shines through each time the seniors return to Wamp. Deb always welcomes them back with a genuine excitement and often recalls a special memory or story about each one of them. Her true love for this community and her dedication to all of us will be greatly missed. If we need her, though, we need only to

007find the closest live band event and listen for the tambourine. Congratulations, D. I'm just going to hand her gift. [Music] The happiest. There it is. Congratulations. [Applause] The next one is Lynn Flannry. Lynn has worked for the Citro Public Schools for 16 years. Lynn has been the epitome of professionalism, compassion, and quiet strength. Over her 16 years with the Central Public Schools, she has inspired a love of reading and writing in hundreds of children, and supported countless colleagues with generosity and grace. She's been the go-to source for the latest in children's literature, always one step ahead with the newest titles and an honest, thoughtful review. Her passion for books is matched by her incredible work ethic and deep reliability. In the classroom, Lynn has helped create an environment where all students feel encouraged to see

008themselves as scholars. She has high expectations and consistently goes above and beyond in her role as a literacy specialist. Whether supporting instruction, designing curriculum, or offering thoughtful guidance, Lynn gave her all, always with humility and heart. Lynn is the kind of colleague you would turn to for anything, from a trusted professional advice to a quick proofread of a parent email. So many of the things she did went unnoticed. simply because that's who Lynn is. Quietly dependable, endlessly generous, and always thinking of others. From recommending just the right book to a reluctant reader to cooking meals for a sick teammate to handling every last makeup screener, even math, she did it all with care and kindness. Lynn's passion for literacy and unwavering commitment to the Walker community have left a lasting legacy. Congratulations, Lynn. Michelle Daniels.

009Michelle has worked for the Situ Public Schools for 21 years. She has had an extraordinary career as an occupational therapist. Her deep knowledge and expertise are evident in everything she does and we have appreciated her insights and professionalism every day. She is a thorough and thoughtful with each evaluation she writes, often sacrificing her own time to ensure every detail is just right. It's not uncommon for Michelle to be the last one to leave the ECC or to be working on reports from home late into the evening. And yet, no matter how much is on her plate, Michelle always takes time. Time to answer questions, time to offer support, time to contribute meaningfully to conservations about students. Her presence has grounded our team. She's been the calm, steady voice of reason. And when Michelle begins with

010can I just say something or let's talk about that, everyone knows to learn, lean in and listen. Her clarity, compassion, insight to every discussion will be missed. Michelle is more than an incredible educator. She's a true friend, a trusted colleague, and as we often say, the best of us. We will miss her even more words and even more than words can express, but we are so grateful for the time we've had with her and we wish her all the joy and relaxation she so richly deserves in retirement. Congratulations [Applause] Peggy Dugen. Peggy has dedicated 38 years to the Sichu public schools and her contributions have left an indelible mark on our community. Her historical knowledge of Situit's families and the inner workings of the town is truly unmatched. Peggy knows everyone. Everyone. And for everyone

011she knows, she always has a funny story, a fond memory, or even a few kind words to share. Even the student who just spoke, peer mentor, she leaned over to me and said he went to Wampuck and I'm sure I'll hear a story tomorrow about him. Peggy has been the heart of Wampa for many years, ensuring the school runs smoothly every day. She knows every corner of the building and she always is ready to lend a helping hand with warmth and grace. But Peggy's greatest gift is the love and care she shows for children. She treats every child as if they were her own, greeting them every morning with a bright smile and making sure they feel seen, heard, and valued. Her presence in the office has made Wampuck feel more like a home, a

012place filled with compassion, joy, and a genuine sense of welcome. Peggy, you're going to cry. Thank you for all the years, all the love, all the laughter. You have made a difference in more lives than you'll ever know. [Applause] And those are our four retirees. Thank you. [Applause] Gates retirees. So, unfortunately, uh, four of our retirees could not make it tonight. Uh, but I'm sure they're watching, so we will share all of our wonderful memories. First, we'd like to honor Louise Fitzgerald, who has dedicated 27 years as our beloved cafeteria manager. Louise, or Mama Mama Lou, as she is known by the kids, uh, is known for her loud, funny personality and her ability to run a tight ship in the cafeteria. The kids absolutely adore her because she treats each one with kindness and

013respect. Her unwavering commitment to nourishing not only the bodies but also the spirits of our students has made an unwavering I'm sorry a lasting impact on our school community. Louise's warmth, her humor and her dedication have been the cornerstone of our daily school life. We are deeply grateful for all that she has done uh to make our school a better place. So congratulations to Louise. Uh, next we proudly recognize Marielleen Gaziano, who is a dedicated 18-year veteran of our school community. Marie Ellen has worn many hats, a math specialist, a math teacher, a mentor to new teachers, the math coach, the peer leaders and academic advisory coordinator, and so much more. Her commitment to excellence is evident in the high standards she holds for her students. and her passion shines when she can be found

014nearly every day after school working one-on-one with students to help sharpen their skills. Marielle's leadership, her dedication, and her unwavering support have profoundly shaped both students and colleagues alike. We are truly grateful for her many years of service and the positive impact she continues to make on our school. Next, we have Moren Keys. Moren Keys. Uh we celebrate her, a remarkable 19-year veteran instructional paraprofessional whose dedication has supported hundreds of students in reaching high academic standards. A true math wiz, Mrs. Keys has an incredible talent for breaking down even the most challenging concepts into manageable, understandable pieces. Students are drawn to her not only for her expertise, but because she boosts their confidence and helps them believe in themselves. Beyond her work with students, Mrs. Keys has been a mentor and a confidant to many

015new paraprofessionals and special education teachers often call her a godsend. Her generosity extends beyond the walls of the classroom. She supports student projects. She helps with our gardening and landscaping at Gates and she even collaborated with her husband to build birdhouses for our birding club. We are so grateful for her passion, her kindness and her commitment to our school community. So congrats to Morin. And finally, we honor Dory Reid, who has devoted 18 years to the students of Situit and over 30 years to the teaching profession. Her passion for science, engaging instructional methods, and deep belief that every student is worthy and capable of success has made her an invaluable member of our team. She cares deeply about her students and her generously served as a mentor to both new and seasoned teachers alike. She's

016played a key role in the planning of our school's vernal pool and has consistently prioritized experiential learning, inspiring students to become thoughtful stewards of the earth. Her compassion, her dedication, and her unwavering commitment will be greatly missed by all who have had the privilege of working with Dory. So, congratulations to Dory. [Applause] Thank you, Principal Bey and Dr. Rab for Thank you so much. Tonight, I have the pleasure of honoring Erica Brady, our lead bus driver, transportation coordinator, who's worked in the district for over 20 years, beginning as a driver and retiring as lead bus driver and coordinator. When I began in Situit two years ago, Erica was one of the first people that I had met. I had a request to see if a school bus could fit down a particular street in situ.

017And me being me, I went on Google Maps and Google Earth and I had my protractor and my compass out and I was trying to figure it all out. And Erica came into my office and I was showing her all my petty research and she took the keys out of her purse and said, "Let's go find out." So, it was awesome. So, we took the first of what became many field trips um to see what we could do. and we checked out the conditions and in that particular instance we learned that a bus really couldn't fit down that street. Um, but due to Erica's expert driving skills, we managed to quietly and quickly back away before the neighbors had a good laugh. Later in the fall, I learned about high tide bus stops, a very

018uniquely situate thing. Um, this can happen. And one morning when a storm was predicted, Erica let me know we had to call it and let everyone know they'd have to swim to their bus stops. We could pick them up, you know, after they got there. Um, and I took it in stride. I figured, you know, I'm getting into situ now. I get it. Flood water. You guys have a real kind of thing with flood water. Um, so she said I said, "But how do you know it's going to be a high tide 16 hours beforehand?" And she told me she had been rowing in the river and she could feel it and she knew it was going to be a high tide. So, I took her for her work. Later though, I did find out

019there's an app that predicts the time. However, in any case, I was aed by her talent, at least at that time. Erica is a very hands-on coordinator. During the winter, she takes a ride early every morning to be sure all the roots are clear of any debris and ready for pickup. And despite some hiccups this spring, no one will ever know the hundreds of runs that were saved due to her quick thinking, crafty scheduling, and overall can do attitude. It has been a pleasure working with Erica during the final two years of her 20-year career here in Situit, and she goes on to spend some well-deserved time with her family. However, please know that whenever you're in town, we'll be calling you to sub. Bus drivers never really retire in situ and so when you're

020here, you'll be coming back. Congratulations, Erica. Thank you, Dr. Ab. And congratulations to all the retirees. Well earned, welld deserved. And thank you so much for all of your dedication and hard work to our children over these years. We are grateful and thankful for all that you've done and appreciate you so much. Thank you. Enjoy your summer and beyond. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Congratulations. All right, moving on here. So, new business. Uh, Mr. burns. Come on up. We have HBCU trip here. We're going to Washington DC potentially. Yes, ma'am. Tell us all about how we doing. Y'all can hear me, right? Yeah. All right. Cool deal. This back. That's okay. Um I was going to say congratulations again to all the Tyrese. They went on retirement. Congratulations again,

021guys. They're gone. Um, no, really inspiring to to see that as I'm super far away from but uh very inspiring to see that this day will come for me one day. Um, yeah. So, today I'll be just um presenting on um proposed HB.CU tour trip for um February break of 2026. I'm a little ways out. Do we have the president? The committee has it. Yeah, we have it in our backup. Can we project it though? Sure. Please. Would you like me to pull it up? Oh, you can. I think I unless you have it already. I'll race you. Competition. No, you can. Sorry. I mean, maybe you can do it. You can do it, right? Want me to just hold it like You can start off. Just All right. Here we go. My bad about

022that guys. Um all right so the uh this is something that has been in my goals and plan since I very first started institute about um three and a half four years four school years ago. Now coming up to the end of my first year as metco director um having the opportunity to present this um is such an honor. So, um, going into this, this is a trip that, um, that I've reached out to other METCO districts prior to putting this together to see what have you guys done as far as HB.CU tours, what companies have you guys doing, what are the reviews, how how do things go, what wasn't great, um, kind of get a general gist of feedback and kind of some of the companies that that other schools have operated with. So

023what I've come back with is that um over the course of five days um the tour is presented to to uh toward nine universities, five historical sites across four different states. Uh the key information relative to the trip that I think is is critical information for everyone to be aware of. First is the organization that we're going on the tour with is College Campus Tours. This is a this is a a company that has done three H.B.CU PCU trips across the state in the past 3 years. Um Lincoln um Lincoln Sbury um Belmont and Bedford Public Schools used this company to do their trips, but they actually took trips deeper into the south to Alabama and then also to Georgia. Um this one again is to the DC area. The dates for this trip are

024February 16th to the 20th. So it's the Monday of February break going into that Friday. Um students will be leaving from here at Situit and then returning back here to the high school. Um this trip will be open to 10th and 11th graders with select seniors possible because typically during this during this time of their senior year students have students have already decided where they're going to be going or kind of at least have an idea of what they're going to be doing postgraduate. So, if there happens to be a case where students, senior students are presenting interest and they haven't yet decided where they're going or this trip kind of makes sense for them, then we will open that up to them. Um, as that makes sense on a case- by case basis. Um,

025this trip is slated for uh 30 students um 10 through um 10 through 11th and then six chaprons. The the trip is it's not we're not flying. It's all motor coach transportation. So the kids will um board a coach bus here and then make their way um down towards DC. Each night uh there's there's hotels um each night of the tour. There is nightly security provided by the by the organization. They also provide us with a tour guide and director. So the chaperros on the trip, their goal main purpose is to chaperone and they don't have to be leading tours and walking us through schools. That is all taken care of by the organization we're working with there. Um, aside from just the the tour uh and the historical sites, the company will also be

026providing educational seminars for the students throughout the the week. So, at each school they attend, they will actually receive a seminar based receive a seminar relative to their college experience. There's one about like college 101, there's one about like financial aid and um intramural sports and schools. And there's there's I believe there's seven different ones that the students will experience throughout their time. So, not only will they be able to get on to these college campuses, but also be able to go into classrooms and actually sit for a lesson or a seminar in that um they will have lunch on on all of these campuses. And then, um moving on to the next page, breaking down the objective of our tour. Um so, the objective of the tour is uh pretty centrally to just really

027expose educate students to the experience of what H.B.CU CUS are um college campuses in general and the the unique academic and cultural um perspective that these campuses have and really to to bride to broaden the perspective of our students not only of like what their options are but also kind of enhancing the knowledge and education um on the educational journey. Uh the three goals of the trip is to increase college awareness and access opportunities for students, provide students with exposure and experience um on incest and H.B.CU BCU campuses and also to educate students on the cultural and historical aspects of HB.CU and their uh significance. The schools on this tour um they there's nine schools in total. Six of them are H.B.CU. Um for those who may not know what HBU is, it stands for

028historical black college university. And then three schools um on here are not HB.CU but will still be a part of the tour. So the first is Howard University, George Washington University, Buoie State University, Delaware State, Kenny University, Lincoln University, Morgan State, the University of Maryland, and then the University of District of Columbia. So the first stop coming out of Massachusetts will actually start in Pennsylvania. So ch the um Cheney University, Lincoln University um will be our first stops and then moving down into Maryland. Um I believe DC is actually on the third day and then coming back out um we'll work our way back up and then um the University of Delaware will be our last stop coming back towards Boston. So the student selection process um so once uh we kind of get back

029in the uh early stages of fall, we'll be hosting an information night in the fall regarding the college tour just to present it to students uh and families. And then students from there will then complete an application um of interest via Google form which pretty much just asks them generally um some of their interests relative to college. Have they looked at college before? Have they heard of any of these schools? Are they looking at any of them? And those don't those won't decide if they are able to attend or not. It's really just a gauge where students are in their in their thought processes about college is also being able to provide additional support for them maybe on the tour with guidance or kind of being able to answer some additional question. But the first

030step in the process will be students submitting um an application of interest and then from there um pretty much with with guidance and high school administration we'll go through a selection process um where they'll be they'll be selected um in collaboration with myself uh well MECO team administration and guidance will based on a demonstrated interest in college and then um really standing on their behavioral disciplinary standing. The goal is that nothing stands in the way of students being able to attend this trip. Um but those two things on the bottom will be the two pieces that we um really look at when making the selection of the students that are attending the trip. Um the next piece of funding and budget overview. So the biggest thorn about the trip is the cost. Um so the

031total cost of the trip is $65,840. This covers um 30 students, six chaperons, everything included except for dinners. Um so with that um has I see the transportation, lodging, intrafuse and meals, all meals aside from the dinner piece. So with this, the goal is to do corporate sponsorship um over the summer and early fall so that there's really ideally no monetary um barrier for families or students to attend this trip. So, uh, looking in the fall to seek out sponsorship from, um, community organizations like Community Christmas, I'm sure the high school PTO, um, St. Luke's Parish, and then also some other organizations local as well. And then, um, connecting with students about potential, um, fundraising options as we, um, look to kind of go, uh, into the early stages of the fall. Um, additional funding

032sources, um, looking to, uh, allocate approximately $10,000 from the METCO grant 317. Uh and then additionally um doing um uh programwide fundraisers in the fall that hopefully that this price that you see at the top is a number that was able to be paid in full um from sponsorships and fundraisers so that students do not have to essentially pay money out of pocket going on to this trip. Um post followup. Uh I think it's critical for students to bring back what they've learned um not only to their peers but also to the educators in the district. Um so following the tour I would like to have um student reflections and presentations um to their school um or to school committee. Um uh implementing surveys to evaluate the impact of the students. So how they appreciate

033a trip, what they learned, what they took away, what they maybe learned they didn't know prior, but really kind of gauging what students took away from the trip. And then the bottom piece is ongoing mentorship um or college planning sessions for participants in collaboration with guidance. Um so the goal for the chaperoning on the trip is to be um members of the MECO team. The um at least um two guidance counselors so they can assist students while like actively in the in the time of the tour and then also being able to bring the information back to other guidance counselors um and then also to have um at least one high school administrator on the trip. So again, I think this is not only critical and important for our students, but also for our educators

034to not only um expand our knowledge, but be able to best support students with that may be looking at some of these options in the future. And does anyone have any questions? Is it? We can hear. Okay. Well, I first wanted to say that I was so excited to see this in the packet. I think this is an amazing opportunity for our students. So, I thank you for really working hard on this. Um, my question is really for Tom. Um, I know in the budget we had set aside money for our families who struggle to, you know, pay for that. So, is this trip also qualify for that? And if there happens to be a cost for the family, they could come to the school and request funds to support them if they get chosen.

035Is that true? Yes. So, those funds are available. So, it's still that's what Yeah, that's that's what I meant to ask. Is it just available? So, great. Okay. Thanks. Um I love that you started off by letting us know that you've done some research in other districts. I think that was really helpful for me to see that this might be new to us, but it's certainly not new in other places. I think that was a really smart move. I was curious if you learned in those other districts if they are able to raise the to fund raise the full amount or if that is an ambitious goal. Um, so two of the districts raised it to the amount where students only had to pay $250 um, out of pocket. Um, and then one district was

036able to well, one was 250, one was 300, and then one was completely paid out through and a lot of it was through corporate sponsorship. That's great to hear. Be nice. You know, this is great. Bringing this new idea to to us, I think it's really going to benefit the district and the kids. Uh my question is I guess relative to that is when we're using a third party to run the tour for us, do is it maxed out at 30 or is it is the cost the same whether we bring 30 or 20 and that gets back to do you think that we'll be able to get 30 students to attend? Got it. Um so the the max that we can bring on the trip is 50. um because they have to off onto

037a bus. But this contract that part out is is at 30. Once we pretty much once I put forth that this is the contract that I'd like to sign and move forward with, we will be locked into that number. Um so if there were less students to come, then we would still essentially be responsible for the same amount. And the biggest piece of it is the transportation. It's like whether we have 20 or 50, like transportation is about the same. Um it really kind of comes down to the the rooming that that kind of knocks off some of the pricing, but essentially once we move forward and say, "Okay, this is what we want to move forward with," then we'll be locked in at that number. Um but the goal is that um if we

038do reach a spot and there's like 40 45 kids that are interested then being able if we're able to to put the money forth that the students aren't being turned away but the goal is yes to reach 30 and then if we happen to un fall underneath that then I think we will still be responsible for the amount put forth but I I think that I think 30 is I'm very confident and ambitious that we'll reach 30 100%. Okay. 99%. No, I think it'd be great if we could get there. I just I don't know what the majority of students I don't know who I don't know what group of students would be. Is it mostly mechco or is it like what where's the profile? Yeah. So, ideally, this is open to this this is

039open to every student in the district um grades 10, 11th and um some 12th graders. Um I think one of my big goals with this whole process is to really um negate the notion that H.B.CU BCUs are strictly for students of color. HB.CU are now more diverse they've ever been. Um and I think I want to kind of just help students to understand and realize that which will be a lot of um you know like in in the fall doing the information night and like doing a whole presentation on HB.CU and then I think potentially doing something in collaboration with guidance in the fall to really just I I think that there's there's connotations that come along with HB.CU She was like, "Oh, I can't go there cuz I'm not of color, you know, things

040of that sort." And like I said, my goal is really to expose students like no, like it's really just another another university. The historic were created by people of color, but that that doesn't mean that students don't have the option to go there. So the goal is that there's no demographic of who can and can't go. Um I would love to see a lot of situ students go. I think majority of our Boston students will will be on the trip. But the goal is that yes, that this is this is an inclusive trip to all and that a lot of students are not only learning about HB.CU but realizing that they have a place at them as well. I don't think you're going to be more than I have no I have no idea. I

041guess you said kids. Well, if you think about well the cost is high, but if you think about I was doing a quick calculation. If you think about the number of trips that families will take to show these schools to people, you don't know that it's actually that high. Plus, you're getting sort of the red carpet because you have a person that's going to give a tour. And so, and even just like the seminars that are being off, a lot of families take a lot of visits to colleges. So this is such a great chance to put so many in one trip. So I think a lot of people are excited. Great. Yeah, for sure. No, it's great. It's very exciting. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I I appreciate the thoroughess too. I think in

042our discussions with, you know, with Assistant Superintendent Lynch and Superintendent Burkehead and our policy subcommittee on all the trips that have been brought forward, I think you're you've done a really great job with a really good example for what we're looking for in terms of thorough examples and detail into kind of when we're outlining what a trip should sort of look like when we're trying to approve something like this. um detail level of you know just everything that we're sort of looking for to encompass and answer questions as we approve things as we send our kids out into the world and and what we need to see um you know checking the boxes and things um you know it's hard to know kind of initially you can only give us so much information because you

043don't know yet can only have so much up front but um personally I think this was fabulous what you described and brought forward so thank you so much for the the work that you've already um to bring in here tonight. Awesome. Thank you guys very much about the fundraising. You talked to the other towns that have done this trip. Um are they giving you fund rate? Like you said you said you're looking for corporate sponsor sponsorships. Are you going to reach out to who they used and or would you be like competing for that money? Are there other towns doing this trip at the near the same time? Um, so to my understanding, there's no other districts currently doing like have has a trip in the works. Um, I haven't necessarily connected with them about

044who they utilize for the sponsorships yet. Um, I was kind of waiting for this step to then kind of take that. Um, but yeah, my goal would be to connect with them and see if there was any um like franchises they kind of went through or um I know there's a lot of like franchise based fundraisers that people get involved with like Chipotle and pizza um like Papa John's and other things of that sort. So that will be things that I kind of question and ask about, but I think as of now I haven't done those. And then I am aware though that there are no other H.B.CU tours um currently in the worst of the districts. Awesome. All right. So let's take um make a vote. Um I make a motion that the school

045committee vote to approve the HBCU tour field trip to Washington DC as presented. Second. All in favor? I Thank you guys so much. Thank you. I just want to say that it's been incredible um just kind of being under you guys and this is my one of my last tasks as my first year's medical director and thank you guys for Thank you very much. Have a good night. All right, Mr. Thomas. anywhere else. One trip to the next. Feel like I should not vote by I love it. Well, good evening everyone and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. Um, we've been doing the Disney trip by annually since the year 2000, so we know pretty much what to expect. Um we have had some um interesting learning experiences. The last of which was

046with uh 2020 with the pandemic and that gave us an opportunity to vet our vendors once again. And we will go with Trudeau uh theatrical tours. Um they represent the best price. We have mandatory trip insurance as part of the deal. Um, and we're asking for Thursday, April 30th through Monday, May 4th of this upcoming year. Transportation will be chartered bus during the entire time down in uh, Disney properties. Um, accommodations will be made off um, Downtown Disney area. Um, expected cost probably somewhere between 1,600 and 1,800. Um everyone will be corey checked as in the past in terms of our chaprons. Um we routinely bring a nurse or a doctor. Um the trip the educational benefits for the trip really begins a ways before the actual trip. We have to prepare a performance submit

047a recording of that performance to the uh Disney organization and get uh get cleared for performance there. Um supervision is typically 1 to 8 because that's the room arrangements um but sometimes it's 1 to 10. Um as I mentioned the travel insurance is mandatory for all participants and academic eligibility would come into play for participating in the trip. Um, to give you a perspective of the amount of students, it's typically in the 90 to 100 range. It's so much fun. I'm so I'm sorry. It's awesome. It is awesome. I've seen Disney quite a few times. The kids are great. It's so much fun. They represent situ. Kids are awesome. So, I don't know if you have specific questions. So you're taking a No question for me. No, we would fly. I love watching my son

048hit the triangle down in Florida. So once we uh we we would fly to Disney and then there's a a secured bus for us for the entire time bus. And it looks like you're the kids would miss just two days of school, right? Just the Friday and the Monday. Yeah, that's right. My way. They take an extra day. Yeah. I just want to comment to Mark Davis. You're like, "Your trip also is no school days missed, which is awesome." And this is good, too. I like I like how you're only missing two days. Yeah, we tried to minimize it. Um the differential in price for over a vacation period versus this is enormous. Yeah. Especially Yeah. Especially Florida. Yeah. I mean, sounds good. The fine arts department is just such they know how to do

049it in a very efficient way. We hear you. You guys are asking me to stop now. Yeah. This is probably my trip to Disney. I know it pretty well. Janice. All right. Um, I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the Disney World Orlando, Florida field trip for 2026 as presented. Second. All in favor? Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. [Laughter] Okay. Okay, let's do our liaison. There's some new stuff added. I didn't know. Are we going down the list? Yeah, in the in the I'll pull it out in the PDF. It's in the packet. I just met at the bottom. There's a new outlines. in mind. No, there's the one that you said. [Music] All right. So, let's see. So, school committee lays on assignments. Does anybody have any

050particulars they would like to Um I just wanted to talk about capital planning for a minute. Yeah. Um that was I was happy to do it. I learned a lot actually um and I enjoyed it, but it was really tough for me scheduling wise um just because it's like eight Wednesdays in a row um in the fall. Um so it's just really tough family-wise for me. And so if I not have to do that again next year, I would really appreciate that. I would again in the future just two years in a row. I'd like to also stay married. So just really helped me out if I didn't have to do that again. It was a lot of gymnastics getting people places on Wednesday night was just tough. So um I would just Janice in

051fact I somehow on our official list was listed as the alternate but I think I don't know what happened. I went I don't know the first one maybe next year I'd happily be your alternate but if you want to go we can leave it like this. Is that okay? Thank you. That was the only one I wanted. You can go right down the list if you want to just confirm one by one. Okay. Advisory Committee Janice, very entertaining. Okay. When I when I go, I'm happy to entertain some swapping and bargaining. Yeah. By the way, how active is advisory? [Music] I think more so heading into like the um when the different a um boards groups are presenting budget and they get busy. Yeah. Yeah. Just curious. I also kind of think and I know

052we're all on Zoom. I think this is like gonna kind of be um something to talk about maybe at our summer retreat and like I know we try to do this every year but we should talk about how to better explain these explain them and time commitment the time commitment and also just like give kind of reporting back. I guess it's like tough because some of them just don't meet regularly enough that we have much to discuss. Well, like technology and stipen didn't meet at all, right? So, I don't even I'm not even sure what our roles are supposed to be. So, it feels like we have assignments. So, it looks like we have committee assignments, but we don't really. So, thinking about routinely as it appears, we don't meet at all. Yeah. So, so

053it just it's like you're counting that as a committee service, but then it's not really. So, doesn't see. Yeah. No, not at all. Okay. I mean, I had been interested in policy, but then I noticed that you have a new task force on here, so I'm kind of curious about that and like sort of reserving that interest depending on what you say about that. So, okay. Um, select board usually chair and vice chair, right? She can change that. But you don't go to every meeting, do you? I typically watch the recording slash I circle up with the chair and we have Okay. So, you're just in the know kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'll talk to Andrew. Okay. Um that makes sense. But yeah, that's okay. I just I watch the meetings just like we'll

054watch the playback. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. I don't have any official role when just like I check their agendas when I talk to Andrew occasionally. Y and I think um I just feel like skipping around makes sense because there's some that don't need like the sick like the sick leave bank. We just had a probably our last meeting, right? Don't you think, Maria? For the summer. Um, and the the union presidents who are also on it asked if we were going to remain on it because there's some things around policy that we're thinking about taking on and they so Maria and I were hoping to stay on it one more year just because we've both been on it. So, we feel like we could work with the Kates to come up with some just

055clarification on some procedures. Okay. So if that's okay with everybody, I think probably Janice and I and we say through Janice, but obviously we got the same adult school building. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Anybody else have anything like you want to stay on? Peter, you want to stay on? Yeah. I I just to your point, Nicole, I never got invited to anything recreation, so I don't know. Yeah. So, I don't know. I mean, I'm happy to stand up, but I didn't do anything last this past year. Yeah. Planning board was great about inviting me to stuff, and I would just look at the agenda and note that it usually didn't involve anything related to us and therefore didn't usually attend. But their their stuff's on Zoom, too, so it's easy. Um, but that was

056nice. I was included a little I think we can touch base maybe um with and get you on there. Okay. Because yeah, Nick, we can touch base with Nick and get you. Oneing I have is I've been trying to do the finance committees in order to um learn as much as I can for the inevitable day when Peter is no longer here. Um, and I wonder if someone else might also want to learn in the same way that I have been trying the finance committees. Um, just because I don't want all the knowledge to live with one person, Peter. Um, and I have been learning, but certainly I'm not going to ever replace Peter's depth there. Um but that's one place that maybe um if someone else wanted to take on any of those finance

057forecast financial forecasts in particular the meetings are very random. It's like they're like nine in the morning 9 on a Tuesday like one o'clock on a Wednesday. You just never know. Um there's not very many of them. They're in person. But I know I didn't sell that particularly well. No you did not. But I'm just saying if anyone else wants to get in on the finance stuff, don't ever volunteer to do the marketing for the financial. I have learned a lot. Tom is great at explaining things, but I'm just saying like I don't know. Makes me a little uneasy being the one to carry the torch after Peter leaves um alone. That's all. In Tom I trust. Okay. In Tom I trust. I would definitely do it. Do you want to do it? Sure. Okay.

058Yeah, I'll do it because I'm not doing any other ones. If you haven't noticed, my name's not on the real. Oh, because collective bargaining won't be a thing this year. I'm just on the new school and that's an opportunity. Yeah, I think it's good to have on select board. Yeah, but I talk you have some big time spent together, but I think it would be good for you to be on financial forecast, too. It is very helpful. It's just called finance. Financial forecast. I think they're two separate. No, it's the third one. They're very different. They're different. Yeah. But finance, I think we only really get called in to look at the budget a little bit ahead of the budget going to everybody. I don't know what else falls under that. Oh, signing warrants. That's

059been the warrants. Signing warrants. But you're going to stay on that one, Maria. I I'm happy to, but if you want to take that one, too. They could be as a package bundle. Look at her. Do you recommend that those go together, Tom, or They don't have to. Again, it's, you know, it's warrants. Learn as much as you can. The warrants are a little different than the financial forecast or the budget. So, I think financial forecast is the one you're going to learn more on. So, I'll keep I'll keep that. Y Okay. Um All right. And then Peter, would you you probably want to stay on your West again. I did nothing. Favorites. It's bad luck to take you off. Keep that. There was some sort of trip, too, but I didn't know anything about

060it. Um the new ones that we had added um this year. So, Oh, data data sub. It's at the SC data sub commmittee. Perry and Maria are staying on. Feel like we should stay on so we can get some. We barely got started. We barely got started. So give another year. I would like to stay on that. All right. And the one that I added today, but I'm sort of jumping ahead of, was sort of this bullying prevention and intervention task force, which I know I'm jumping ahead of, but it would be a person theoretically from our committee jumping to an item way down list on our agenda, but it technically belongs on this list. Should that happen for a conversation later on in our agenda, that would be something be added here. that were

061the case, would somebody on our committee want to volunteer be on that? I would. Should we have a conversation with Superintendent Burhead? This is Superintendent Lynch, but someone would be a representative from our committee joining the district their recommendations. Sure. our our representative if that was something that the district wanted to take up. Yeah, that's fine. I think Carrie would be great at that. I'll be the person in waiting. It happens. So, do we just vote like conditionally in there? Yeah. No, you're I'm in. Well, whether or not it Well, you could still leaz. True. Okay. Any other ones that anyone wants to Oh, and then these ones. master plan, advisory, charter review, like those are basically obsolete. Yeah. Now, collective bargaining is collective bargaining. It stays on there, but just I mean, I don't

062think stipen is anything either. I don't know what that committee is for. It was tied into collective bargaining. Yeah. Who'sever whoever is on collective parking. I think we made a mistake on that, you guys. I think that was using up. Okay. I think it was supposed to be and I Yeah. from being on colle. So I think it should technically say and I but I don't think we I think it's just okay. We won't be using it. All right. take us through. Good. I think so. Unless anyone has any others. Um, all right. I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the school committee leaison 2025 to 2026 assignments as presented. Second. All in favor? Okay. So, in terms of the summer schedule this out, um what do you guys think about

063So, we'll wait for the district and Superintendent Burkehead's um leadership retreat. Do you all have a date, Superintendent Bhead, for your We always kind of follow Superintendent Bhead's lead on the retreat, their retreat. I'm refer to part of the bill's guidance on what they're doing. around like the end of that week and then we've got school starting on the 27th or the beginning of the week of the 25th. Yeah. So, we want to do something after there. Yeah. Hold on. 25th is convocation for the staff. So, right. Okay. So, you're talking about retreat like the end of that week. Yeah. Like the 21st or 22nd people do during the day or 21st would be better for me. During the day or in the evening or during the day would be fine day. During the day

064yeah yeah we did it during the day. Okay like half day or day takes as much time as um anyone's willing to personally. I mean I don't want to go 9 to 4. I don't think we need to do a whole day like 9 to one or 9 to two. 9 to2. Why don't we say 9 to2 and then if we don't need it, we can walk it back. Okay. Yeah. Are we going to do it at the library again? I like the library. Yeah, that's good. 9 to2 we're thinking. Yeah. What date you say? August. August 21st. We had the new staff orientation that day morning till noon. Would you want to join us in the afternoon though? Or did you switch it to the afternoon or do you want to be there? Well,

065clear. We usually go. Are we not going? I don't. Yeah, they did. Everyone goes, so flip it to afternoon. You said you're done at noon. 12 to or Yeah. 1 to four. Can we do 12 to 4? Well, because they finish up at 12, so 12:30. I'm just thinking otherwise we just shortened it. We went from like, oh, we're going to have six hours. So, we're going to have like three. We just cut it in half. That's all. We started get over 11:30 or Oh, okay. 12 to 4. 12 to 4. Somebody call the library. Yeah, we can do that. That's the retreat and we have to come up with the meeting dates. Is that what we're doing as well? Um, well, this is summer schedule. Summer's online. So, this is our last meeting for

066the summer. Yes. Yeah. [Music] Summer schedule vote required. I thought we usually schedule one meeting in August. Um, well, you mean like our first meeting? We have one on paper just in case. Yeah. Oh, well, this year if school starts this starting May 27th, first meeting, I'll have to connect by Zoom, but Well, that is that what you guys were thinking about the year? Had you guys thought about it at all when Yeah. Do you know if that's in your calendar at all yet? Last year we did it late August right before school started. We did one of these was we had two in August. One was the retreat. Yeah. And the other one was the meeting. The meeting. Just looking at like would we do it the 25th right before the first day of

067school or would we want to do it? We can't do it the first. It wouldn't be the first, right? And it can be the 18th because that's before the retreat. Just doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. It's fine. This is fine. I just have to connect by Zoom. So, is that all right with you guys? However, you have Zoom meetings. We'll be here. Okay. So, you want to do 25th for a meeting? Okay. I'll be here too. We have Well, that would Don't we usually vote on the calendar for the next year? Is that when we do that on August 25th? The dates for next year's open meetings or something. Yeah. I was wondering too, usually like every every other week on that. Yeah. So you're saying voting for the helping for the full

068calendar, right? Just the school committee meeting dates. That's Yeah. Yeah. So if we just have the retreat and now we can probably figure it out during the month. Or we could draft it, have it ready for the retreat, and then have it ready to go the 25th. Yeah. Yep. Is is it would it be possible to get those like as meeting invites too in our calendar? Mhm. I know. That's I would do it for the group. I'm just saying I sometimes I don't have school committee every other week for like forever. Forever. Just put it in. But then sometimes I do not have it or it's like town meeting instead. I don't know. It's just helpful. But I like things. We can do that. Yeah. He does all the It's like two meetings a month.

069But not always season it changes. Yeah, it changes season. It changes around vacations. It's just not that hard to track. I don't know. Calendar's on the website. Figured out 25 26 It's not always every other week. Especially with like school vacation weeks. It's sometimes we only have one or two by what's on really busy. So, do we have any of these school? We're done after this meeting. This is it. Nothing. So, I can take it off. Yes, this is it. This is the last meeting. Your calendar was August. So, just to clarify, we're going to have the No, nothing. Nothing in July. See you in August. We'll have our retreat 12 to 4 on the 21st and then we'll have our first school committee meeting on 25th 6 o'clock. Yep. Sounds good. Okay. Be here

070before you know it. All right. And we don't have to do our Monday uh weekly updates. We're not going to have Monday weekly updates over the summer. We're taking a break for six weeks. Blackboard does what we don't. Seth gave us the the summer off. He was kind enough to let us get the summer off. Better than he would. No, we wouldn't. Nothing doesn't really make sense. I said I would do the last Monday, I guess, after school. All right. I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the school committee summer schedule as presented. Second. All in favor? I. All right, we got the rest of the calendar settled soon enough. Eagerly awaiting the dates. Okay, let's move on. Principal You're up. It's middle school. Hello again and thank you for having

071me tonight. Um, I look forward to this meeting or I have uh the last three years uh to share our school improvement and I'm genuinely uh serious because uh developing and sharing a school improvement plan provides us with the opportunity to celebrate what we've accomplished in the year and then to set goals for the following year. Uh so every year I I look forward to sharing the wonderful things that we've accomplished uh and kind of give you a sneak peek into what we're doing the following year. When we talk about a school improvement plan um it's exactly that. It's a plan for improvement. Uh and the most important thing that we can do as a school is to improve academic performance. Um, and when we look at how the Department of Education asks schools to

072design school improvement plans, they ask us to kind of consider student performance in ELA and in math. Um, two important focus areas for us. Um, and this links directly to our district's strategic plan, uh, which focuses on increasing academic excellence for all. Um, our school council, we have the best school council ever. uh there each member is intelligent and witty and shares lots of opinions and so our school council worked hard to analyze data related to ELA and math performance. They posed really good questions to some key stakeholders um and together we have designed a plan for next year. The goals in this plan um are not ex the only goals we're working on. We have lots of other goals. Um, but in terms of a school improvement plan, we are focusing on the academic

073component of it. So, uh, when we think about our first goal, we're going to talk about math. Um, and our goal for next year. Uh, before we get into our goal, I'll give you a little bit about the story. Um, in 2024, so last spring, 60% of our students were meeting or exceeding expectations when it came to math MCCAST. um it doesn't mean that 40% wasn't at at the total bottom because the other two categories are approaching expectations and below expectations. Um so at in 2024 60% of our students were at meeting or exceeding. Um in our spring benchmark assessment for math uh which was using the LL tool 60% of our students performed at or above grade level. Um and so those are fairly consistent. And what we like about the consistency there is

074uh last year our tool provided us uh with information that was not necessarily on par. Um so we like that the MCCAST score and the tool we were using are fairly consistent. Um in terms of setting a goal for next year um we want to continue to use benchmarking data three times during the year to measure progress in math for all students at Gates. Um, we want all students to perform at grade level, perform or exceed. Um, and we are specifically looking at uh subgroups of students. So, special education students, lowincome students, and lowing lowest performing students. When we look at MCCAST from last year, um, in terms of our high need students, the Department of Education sets a target for us. In math, our students in that category for high needs exceeded the target

075that was set for them. So, we anticipate that we're going to continue to improve with that subsection of students with what we're doing. Our lowincome students also exceeded the target that was set for them. Um, our students with disabilities in math exceeded the target that was set for them. And then our lowest performing students, the lowest 25% of students also exceeded the target that um was set for them. So, our goal um is to continue to work with math. Um, we have adopted a new progress monitoring tool for next year called STAR. It's probably something you've heard of before. Um, and what we like about that uh is we are now going to have one assessment tool in grades uh K through 8 um or 2 through 8. And that will help us uh to

076kind of instead of abandoning what happens in fifth grade and starting something new, that will give us kind of some data over time. Um what we also like about the STAR math assessment itself uh is it breaks down specific skills whereas kind of gives us information about different things but uh the STAR assessment provides us things with uh information about geometry, expressions and equations, fractions, functions, ratios. Uh so it gives us targeted areas that students can continue to grow in along with recommendations for teachers and specialists to provide for students. and we are right now in our first year of the implementation of our new math program. Um, and so it's nice because we have some consistency with high quality instructional materials. So we also expect there to be gains uh based on the curriculum

077that is uh set forth. Um, in terms of how we will measure progress in this school, uh, if we achieve this goal or make progress in it, our beginning of the year, middle of the year, and end of the year assessment data will tell us that as well as our locally designed uh, common assessments in all grade level maths classes. So, that's how we will tell if we are moving forward. Um, it is an ambitious goal to say we want 100% of kids uh, to be working at grade level um, or exceeding grade level. But if we say something smaller, we are not setting the bar high for our kids. And that's what we want. Um, we can drill down uh with the data that we have and the data that we're going to get

078to make sure that individual students are growing. Um, and again, they're exceeding the targets that the state are setting for them, but we can continue to do better and we're excited about the work we have for that. So that's math. Um, in ELA, we it's a very similar goal. Um the story behind this is we looked at our MCCAST data from spring 24 and 59% of our students were meeting or exceeding expectations. The other students fell into the category of partially meeting expectations or not meeting expectations. Uh we gave a assessment called achieve 3000 this year. Uh and we gave that at the beginning of the year, the middle of the year and the end of the year. Uh and at our end of the year for our current 6 through 8 students, 47% of

079the students are performing at or above grade level. Um however, when we look at our MCCAST scores um and our MCCAST data, the average ELA student growth continues to fall into that typical growth percentile. So, we're happy that um when kids are being compared to themselves, they are growing. Um we did a lot of talking with our English department chair and our assistant superintendent uh and our English teachers to say talk to us about this tool that we adopted this year. Um it provides us with a student's uh Lexile information which is their literal reading comprehension. Um and that's a very important tool. But what it doesn't do is it doesn't tell us kind of so what what do we need to work on? Where are the areas each individual student needs to grow in?

080So we are adopting STAR next year uh as our ELA progress monitoring tool. Again the consistency between elementary and secondary will be valuable to teachers will be valuable to parents as you are you know getting the same reports and same information and you'll be able to see growth over time as opposed to saying we've started something new. Um what's great about uh this star assessment two is it breaks down into different strands. So instead of just saying you are reading at a sixth grade reading level, it's going to tell us where the students strengths and areas of growth uh are in terms of reading literature, readingformational text, language. Um so we are abandoning our friends at achieve 3000 and making new friends at STAR. If we uh make progress in this goal, we'll be able

081to tell through the data that we get from our beginning and middle and end of year assessments uh through STAR as well as our grade level locally designed uh common assessments. So that is math and ELA. Both very important areas and those are going to be part of every school improvement plan we ever bring to you. Um and only because that's a large percentage of our student um accountability. uh these areas also when we look at MCCAST data when we look at you know how is our school doing uh these are two very very important measures and we're always going to want to improve whether that category is you know 60% of kids are at grade level or 90% um when we look over time the growth um we're pleased with the growth we obviously

082still have a lot of room to grow but um we're pleased with what we're doing uh goal number three uh is the story behind goal number three is We were fortunate to participate in the S3 Academy. We're in our second year. Um, and it's been a wonderful experience. we've had coaches and what the S3 Academy is, it's uh kind of a way to implement this concept of a whole child review looking at students uh as human beings, as students, as academic scholars, as uh growing little human beings and then kind of help us to design plans to support and promote the growth in all of these different areas. Um it is a three-year academy offered through the Department of Education and Boston College and the Renie Center. Um we are entering year three next year.

083Um by the end of next year, what we really hope to do is we hope to have a conducted a whole child review for 100% of students at Gates. Um and design plans that are targeted to their individual needs. This year um we were able to conduct 229 whole child reviews which is 35% of our student body. Um that was with having bianual or not by annual bi-weekly meetings. Um every member of our staff is a member of an MTSS team. Every counselor facilitates one. Every administrator is a part of one. Um so by capturing 229 students and kind of making some changes to our schedule for next year we hope to by the end of next year have conducted 100% of um whole child reviews for students. So the evidence of that goal will

084be the number of whole child reviews that we have been able to conduct. Um we kind of uh move very quickly. Uh the academy suggests uh kind of implementing after your third year with the academy. we year two jumped in so we are ahead. Um we're happy with the progress we've made. Um we also have evidence of you know the students who do have plans in place already making progress but each plan looks very different. So when we're looking at the success of whole child reviews it's it's kind of catered to the individual plan. We will need to determine what's um successful there. And our very last uh very last goal, goal number four, um and this is, you know, this was the exciting one that our school council worked on. Um we worked this

085year to uh do a lot of research into schedules um and scheduling specifically how to offer targeted support and intervention and acceleration to students at the secondary level. We did a lot of visits to schools around us. Um we had lots of conversations with high schools, with middle schools. Um and we ultimately came up with a schedule which needed to uh be you know worked on and then a shared understanding built with lots of different people specifically teachers. Um and we are proud to say that we adopted a schedule for next year uh which will allow every student to have a block of time uh every single day that is meeting their needs uh based on a targeted specific area. Um and so in the past we've been able to say about 50% of our

086kids will get some intervention or we'll get some support. We can say with confidence that 100% of our students next year will have a block of time that they are getting direct instruction from a member of our staff in an area that they need to. So that was a a big part of our work for this year. Um 166 students this year received supports uh from uh ELA and math specialists. So that's about 26% of our student body. Zero students received formalized math uh or ELA acceleration. They got it here and there, but nothing was formalized. And 30% of our students received formalized SEAL supports through different groups. next year um 100% of our students we will be able to say received tier supports in either academics social emotional um well-being learning uh and specifically

087math and ELA. So uh what we can say is this uh we're excited about this and when we come back next year to celebrate um you will see the data that we bring will be the progress data um not just to say 100% of kids got it but it will say these number of kids received supports in this particular area of math and here is how they improved post pre to post um this number of students received attendance intervention and uh this is where they started and this is where they ended. So, we are really excited about this. Our school council um you know is really proud of the way we were able to maneuver everything because um you know middle school is a is often a time where kids want everything and sign up

088for everything and once they you know start to sign up for things their opportunities are limited given the constraints of the schedule. But um we are super excited for this one um and ultimately look forward to bringing it back to you next year with the success. So, those are our four goals. Again, um this doesn't mean that we're not, you know, looking to do lots of other things, but um these are the ones that are linked to our school improvement plan that we're excited to work on next year. Thank you. Um these are great, Ryan. Thank you so much. Um, I did have one question on the star and Ryan Lynch, you might know this. I might not explain this well. I'm going to try. I know in the elementary grades we moved to a

089star benchmark that was a higher standard than the typical nationally normed star benchmark. Um, is that what you are referencing or are you referencing the the Massachusetts version or the nationally normed version? you know, it was was it was a a shift that the elementary schools made. I think just this year after having implemented STAR for a number of years, they kind of realized the reason the STAR was not ending up at MCCAST. So, I was just curious if you sort of were coming in at that level or if you're kind of starting and moving from the national first. I know what our math and ELA department chairs have been doing is working with their elementary counterparts. um you know in terms of selling this to people the the predictability from star to MCCast that

090is why we want this um so we are I would say going with the yes for the higher yeah that's great thank you the state benchmark that's right thank you that's what I was going for um and then my only other question was I really like the way that you described um the wind blocks and the you know 100 guaranteeing 100% of kids receiving interventions that they that they need that Sounds amazing. Um, I know that we will probably get questions about are IVC still going to be around? What's happening with, you know, advisory? I don't know if you're ready to talk about that publicly, but if you had any assurances about that envision questions, we're not taking away all the fun um in this new schedule. But how this how this is going to

091work is um wind blocks will be every six to eight weeks. Okay? So um they'll do a windblock for six weeks and then we'll do IBC's for a week. Okay. Um every day. So instead of doing it like every other day, we will use a week to do introspace clubs which will then allow us to look at our next set of data to say and these we're going to move these kids into this group. It also serves as a you know middle school sometimes kids need a carrot. Um, and it's nice to say like if you work very hard and you're you're wing and we're going to work and use our brains now, we're going to take some time to do what we're interested in. And you know, if we can run those a couple

092times during the year, um, to me, that will be a win for every oneird of your clientele will will be none the wiser anyway. That's right. That's Thank you. I thought those were great, Ryan. Thank you. Thank you. Questions. I just had a question around um goal one. I know it's student centered appropriately. So I'm just curious, Ryan, knowing that the new math curriculum had just been implemented, I was surprised that none of the action items sort of reflect pedigogy or observation of teachers or sort of what does that process sort of look like? because while it's not a direct to the student, it is obviously a huge contributor. So, I'm just wondering what are your thinking about that or how are you thinking about that? Yeah. No, I think that's a really good question

093and I think um the the how how are we going to get kids into uh you know this category of 100% of kids performing at grade level. It's not just about assessing and and analyzing results. It really is let's look at the student experience. Um part of kind of an improvement plan uh is the action steps we're going to be taking to measure progress towards uh you know the goals that we have set. Um I would say going to the idea of not every goal that we have is linked in the school improvement plan. I think the analysis of of teaching the collaboration or not collaboration but calibration of effective teaching strategies. You're going to see these in different pockets. Um it's not necessarily a math goal or an ELA goal. Um but I would

094say it's it's definitely a focus. Um, in terms of could we expand on some of the action steps and say we will do a you know we will do a training uh to make sure we're utilizing the resources effectively and using instructional strategies that get outcomes. Yes. So I I do think um those can definitely be added and I appreciate that um you know that feedback in the sense of where does the teaching part come in. Um, I think when we're talking about measurable impacts, um, you know, I I I think that is an area that we can continue to have conversations on of of how do we measure the impact of specific teaching strategies on student learning. Um, but I I think you've given me good good ideas for the Well, I think it's

095also, you know, we we are parents in the community and we hear. So I think even just getting ahead of questions that are coming from families, even if it's you coming, you know, late fall to tell us sort of what's the reflective process look like and what were you doing and what are you doing differently around pedigogy might be a good thing for families to hear because we get all sorts of data in different ways that isn't always good data, right? Um, and I think that links to my other just sort of wanting from the middle school is I appreciate that there'll be some sharing of success stories in June. Um, because some of this is new and exciting, the whole child review, the wind blocks, the math curriculum. You know, I know you're super

096busy leader in the schools and I would just encourage maybe to come mid year and not wait till the end because I know we'll all be wondering how it's going. And so to the extent you can give us even just sort of anecdotal updates might be helpful. Thank you for that. And I think we we've learned from our elementary counterparts of having kind of family nights and um ways to communicate instead of just sending you par parents and caregivers a report of here's here's your child's data. Um we need to help people interpret that. We need to help people understand what it means and what it doesn't mean. So whether it be coming back to the committee and then sharing that or finding ways to increase kind of parent and then caregiver involvement in that

097academic piece, I feel like that we're learning from our elementary folk um how to actually do that and then the success behind it. So I really like your focus especially in goal four on you mentioned like acceleration. I really think there's so much to capture there and there's just so much energy that can be and just that spark of learning in the middle school level of young learners still. really saw that innocence that you can really sort of springboard with some of these kids that you know is there and that I think we just haven't we've just had an opportunity to really you know especially with co and it's like really kind of pulling ourselves back together and there's such a joy of learning still that you can really um especially in your building just

098like the environment being um you know it's just there for the taking and I think you have the the right you have the recipe and you can just take it and run with it so I think you can do well with that especially in that goal. So excited to see you bring that to life in those students. Well, and we have the time now to do it because in thinking about kids schedules are so jam-packed um and when you have a classroom of you know 25 kids uh and their needs are are very different. Yeah. um this will give us an opportunity to really use the data to say who needs acceleration and great we're going to you know provide you with this opportunity for acceleration knowing that kids have different some kids might need

099acceleration in math and and extra support in ELA. So it really um the structure now that we have the structure we're going to see some very hopefully great results that will transcend uh into not just the academics but that joy and that love of learning too. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. See you back in a minute. Yes. Mark will be quick. All right, Mr. Langer. Thank you. You talk about lacrosse for a second. Yeah. Oh, exit out. You need to exit out. Sorry. Forgot to say it in the beginning. You want to say it? You want to say it? You can say it. Lacrosse. Congratulations. Congratulations. So, our high school won two state titles, which is really difficult to do. Really difficult to do. So, uh Scott Payne, believe me, he knows he's

100he's he's pretty excited about. He knows. We kind of give him a hard time about he's athletic director of the year doing really a lot of good things. So, my my school improvement plan, I remember I came up here last year and I had six and and some of my principal friends uh that I shared the they you have six. I said, I get six. You're crazy. You're not going to do six. So, so I got it down to three now and and we worked hard really hard with our um school council to put this all together. Uh our school council like what Ryan said is outstanding and we actually enjoy our meetings. We have a good time. Sometimes they run longer than than normal but there some really really good students on it are

101outstanding. The parents are great and the community rep was my high school principal. So he lives here in Situ. So when I got hired he reached out and said if you ever need anything please reach out to me. So I reached out to him and said, "Would you be interested in being part of my school council?" So it's really nice to have. We tell a lot of good stories. Sometimes him and I stay later after the meeting and just talk about high school days. It's kind of fun. Um so our first goal is our uh wind block and and we're still trying to put some supports in place for our kids um to receive more academic and emotional support. So, so, uh, some of our action steps is, um, we're going to run windb block

102this year for seven seven-day cycle rather than five. And that gives us more time with our kids, it gives us more more more time with the, uh, students, particularly the the students that are struggling academically. And what we're going to do is instead of it being a fiveday cycle and day one being the day that they sign up, and that kind of gets eaten up, half of that block kind of gets eaten up. We're going to a seven-day cycle now where it's less meeting times with kids choosing their blocks. Uh and then this is a really good exciting thing that we happened. We have a uh we proposed a new sailor block on Wednesday. Citrate High School's never had a a um uh a wind block on Wednesdays and we got voted in. Staff voted

103it in. What we're always trying to do is find time for students. We're trying to find time to work with our kids. It's so hard to find it in our schedule. So, we got this sailor block voted in. It's going to be a two lunch format. Uh, and it provides another good chunk of time that we can work with our kids in that block. We're going to put things into like um academic overtime. What academic overtime means is that any student that's failing a class, he or she has to two times out of the seven-day rotation report to that academic staff member for extra support to try to increase our grades. Uh we're going to have quiet study rooms, test rooms, AP study uh sections, um things like that because one of the things the

104staff was saying to us was that our windblock, the way it's currently formatted, the students go into a classroom looking for support and the teacher also has two or three other kids there that are there for other reasons. We're going to have within each within each group, we're going to have study groups. So they're going to be able to there's going to be a spot for students to go to do some quiet work to study for for for tests to do sort of things they want to do. So I think that's going to be a real good thing and I think adding that wind block sail block is be a huge huge change and and improvement to our um support that we're trying to put in place. What's going well our peer data we we

105talked I think I talked a little bit about this before but in 202 uh3 91% of the students at Sichu high schools felt connected and last year this year it was 95%. So that means people are crossing the line on graduation feeling good about Situ High School, which I think if they don't want to be there and they're not happy to be there, it's going to be really hard to teach them and keep motivated to be there. And then our attendance rate to date right now is 94.3% which is a good good number. Um AP numbers, we had um 76% of our students uh received a three or better on their AP exams uh last year. So, we're trying to increase that each year, but we're trying to get that to a better number. And

106how are we going to measure it? By tracking improvements, using data, uh, benchmark assessments, our students grades, and, um, we're going to try to decrease, one of the big goals is we're try to decrease our chronic absentee rate. The junior class has a high chronic absentee rate, so we're going to try to decrease that by 50%. I think there's like 21 or 22 students in that class alone where they and and the high chronic epsy rate means that they've missed uh 18 days or more. And some of it's due to social emotional issues. Some of it's due to certain things. But we're going to try to really pinpoint and meet with those kids. I'll go through from the next school with our new MTSS that we're putting in to try to gear some of our

107supports towards those students and see how we can support them. And this is your current junior going to be seniors next year? No, current was going to be junior. Oh, yeah. Wait a minute. I don't think your students are on that. Our second goal. No, our second goal is the new MTSS format that we're institute high school for next year. Um, and that that format's going to be support and help all students. Ryan has actually helped me a lot with this because the middle school has off to a good start with this. So, we're picking up uh and getting it started this year, this upcoming school year. We're going to establish teams of teachers to review data and go go through with the open architects program that we're putting in. Um we're going to complete

108the whole child review process for every student at situ high school. might take a couple of years to do so, but we're going to we're going to work towards those goals and uh creating time for teachers to meet uh to look at MTSS support. So, we're going to put our teachers in groups of six to seven with a with a group of kids, a list of students that they will uh track and take a look at, look at their scores, look at their attendance, look at the social emotional, and then put supports in through some of the new windblock supports. Uh so, the windblock and the MTS is going to work hand inand with supporting our kids. So, we'll take some of those students and we'll make sure that they're supported during win. What's going

109well? Um, we have number supports in place, number support classes. Uh, we have math support classes, foundations of math for 9th and problem solving for 10th, biology support classes, the windblock supports with the new AOT format, the academic support um, for students that are failing classes. We're going to put those into place. And then guidance check-in. So, guidance during windb block uh is going to have an open door policy where students can go into guidance and meet with their guidance counselors and and and and go through anything as far as even college writing essays or or into uh them social emotional support if they need some some extra time with their guidance counselors. Uh we're going to try to add more tier 2 and tier three supports. Uh and we're going to track student growth

110through achievement based on um on courses, grades, benchmark assessments, MCCAST, PER, and other indicators. And our last goal is this is selfishly one of my favorites. I I really we really are trying to keep our high school and build our positive uh equitable community school culture, creating a safe, welcome environment in our high school. And I think that's why you're seeing our peer data really comfortable with kids coming to school and and hopefully that would help with our chronic absentee rates and so on so forth. But we're going to do year two of our career college and community day. Uh we're going to improve that. We've got some changes in place. One of them is we're going to go to a another trade school. So that students because not everybody wants to go to college.

111So we're going to give other students opportunities. So we're going to go to the um laborers union which is also sheet metal work and that sort of stuff. And then um electrical as well. So we're going to hit the electrical unit too. So couple of field trips there. Um we are going to do a wall with students this year. And this is kind of funny but I kind of love it. So every freshman student that walks in, we're going to have a freshman wall, a sophomore wall, a junior wall, and a senior wall. And yes, I'm going to cover with some kind of covering because I know kids will draw mustaches on their but every single student, we're going to get a picture of every single student in our building and we're going to make

112a wall with them. So, every student's going to head because they're all important so that every student understands that you're important and each grade will have a wall um with students, you know, with whatever grade they're in. Uh and then continue with student celebrations. This year we gave up cards. We had asked faculty to write a card for every senior that's graduating and it's part of my graduation speech. They read the card and the teacher said something nice about one of the graduates. So it was really cool. So things like that. Um what's going well sale of the month is awesome. I still I I love kids still go down the hallway and you know April sale of the month. Best things ever happened to me in this high school. And we had a kid

113playing in the Super Bowl and he got sale of the month the day he was playing in the Super Bowl. And I said to him, "Whether you win or lose on on during a Super Bowl, the greatest thing that's happened to you is you were sailor of the month. Forget old." So he's he's walking on the field. He goes, "Mr. Ranger, win or lose, I'm sail of the month." I go, "You got it." So So having some fun with that. Um our new mentor program that Mrs. Kirk brought some students in. I think we're up to like 38 mentors now. Making that connection from the, you know, with the ninth graders coming in up to our uh our older kids and mentoring them, which is really good. class cup participation and our PA data is

114really good. Um, we're going to add some of the mentioned success. We're gonna add positive changes to college career and community day. Like I said, we're going to look at other avenues and and create some student surveys and what are they getting out of this and what would they like to see down the road, you know, so students can give us some feedback and input. And then year three, we're going to take that data and really add some changes to it. I'm going to create the space for that wall, those important walls for the um the four grade levels. Uh and increase the number of students and extracurricular activities is another goal of next year. Going to try to get a student involved at least one activity. We have a lot of clubs, band, sports,

115so try to get students involved in at least one activity. And when we study our MTSS data and we look at meeting with the kids and do a whole child review students that aren't involved in activities, that's going to be one of the goals is that we're going to get together and say, "What activity are you interested in?" And try to get them in something outside of the classroom, some kind of support, some kind of Yeah. And that's my three questions. I guess I have I have a question that really cuts across all three goals. Um I think it's similar to the conversation we had with the elementary schools. I'm trying to figure out given the pair data, the strong connections that they're feeling, the better um attendance rate say for the juniors that are

116that are having trouble. The AP seem to be in good goodstead. You've gotten lots of positive feedback around school culture. I'm just curious like what problems are we solving for? So when you want to restructure the wind block, how are you going to me like what's success going to look like if you already have you know this pair data that's saying they're strong connections and they're doing well. Um you know with the MTSS you said you're going to look at changes in pair and MCCAST. Well, what what changes are you hoping to see? We're going to we're going to look at like even simple things like how many students are failing classes, you know, and and try to lower that number by by adding these extra supports. So, how so give us a sense so

117how many like what percentage of your students are failing classes? I don't know off the top my head what percentage it is, but it's it and it varies from term to term. It really does. It varies from term to term, but but when we look at um students that are failing classes and a lot of it's geared towards not just academics, it's just that there's stuff that is a personal life that that's that's going on. So, we're trying to put in some kind of supports that would help them emotionally and maybe get them in school. I I don't So, I don't disagree that these things are important. What I'm wondering about is if if this is important enough to be a part of your school improvement plan. It it makes me wonder like what's the

118compelling data that's saying failing classes is the issue or you mentioned activities like being really critical. 100% agree. The question I have is what percentage of our high school students are not engaged in an activity that's leading you and your team to pick this, you know, positive and equitable school culture as a goal right now. that's under 10% are not involved in an activity. So then then the question is what makes this an important get if 90 over 90% of our students are already engaged in activities. That's all I'm because the the students that aren't involved in the activities are the students that are not doing well. Not all of them but a lot of those students aren't doing well academically. Yeah. Then I guess what I would say is and I'm gonna stop and

119I would love for my colleagues to speak up. I guess what I would like to see in your goals is have them be specifically targeted. Okay. So, if our juniors like because the first thing I saw there was 96% or 95% attendance and I was like, oh, all the work you did to meet them and drag them in and not make them late is working. But then it said I want to increase I want to reduce chronic of juniors. So, like it should the goal be more focused on our juniors or the rising junior, right? It seems like there's a very specific place where this is a struggle. Um, but again, that's just I don't know. It's just my opinion. I just I think the last thing I'll say, Principal Langer, is my worry is

120we're going to get to the end of next year and so like for goal two, your your measure of success is changes in pair and MCCAST. Well, if pair is already at 95 and 96% feeling connection, what I'm wondering is how are we going to know that what you did was successful? Is there another part of pair that you're going to be monitoring to be able to come back to us and say all that great stuff that we did? Look at the look what happened to pair. And what I'm worried about is if you're already at 95%. You don't have a lot of room to move. Some of it might even be to to maintain that level and keep it at that point where we're not we're not dropping. If we're dropping, we've got to

121analyze why in Yeah. So, that would feel more reasonable to me than saying like a change. And I just want to I want you to leave yourself room for success. And so, just being clear about what that is. Thank you. Yeah, I really agree with that. I had the same thought. And I also just was thinking about um what um so like you referenced benchmark assessments as a metric, but it's a little bit unspecific and I think we've talked about this before as like that's an area that high school we've been working at trying to get figure out what those benchmark assessments are and I'm not sure that we have them fully yet. And so if we don't have them yet fully in the way that you need them in order to be able to

122say like yes I really know that I'm able to track like Ryan was talking about the usefulness of STAR and how that's going to provide him with exactly what he needs to know in order are the kids improving. That's obviously the goal of benchmark assessments. Um and that's the gold standard. They're not as available I guess for high school and we've talked about that before. It's a little more challenging for us to find them and implement them all that. What I wonder is should your goal actually be back a step and are you still at the kind of like identifying those assessments and getting yourself to a place where you are able to say you know really that you're able to monitor like I think some of the you kind of are getting there on

123some of your win um goals. I think you have the same idea as Ryan like you want to be able to know what each of your kids needs and know that you're able to give them what they need throughout the year, right? is the same concept, but I think you just might be in a slightly different place. And so I'm just wondering about how and I don't have the answer. I don't know if Ryan if you even have other things to add, but I just was thinking about maybe if high school's in a different place and we don't have those assessments yet. And that's why this is vague. Maybe the goal is actually that we focus more on the implementation and sourcing of those um so that we can get to the place where we

124can be more specific, you know, about the type of growth that we're looking to looking for. Yeah, I think it makes sense. I think our midyear um data share out is um pushing that process forward. I know for Burkhead's going to speak about that later on as part of his goals goals pres presentation, but like the stamp testing and like world language I think is evidence of a strong benchmark. Um some of the work that's happening in our like PE and wellness domain. So it is a good point that those are still developing but I think we have a lot there's a lot of strength across departments that um they can converge. So I do we're going to keep working on our our benchmarks to align them but I think that's all detail that could

125have gone under goal one is to continue that work as well. Yeah I'm just trying to think about how to get this to a level where it's like a little bit more specific like agreeing with what Carrie was saying. we would love to be able to know for sure in a year from now, you know, did we do these things? And I feel like what I'm just grasping for still is like I'm not sure we're going to know that. You know, pair is the clearest piece of data in here, but that's also the shining star and like you were saying, our goal is maybe to maintain. Um, so that's great, but we don't have that same kind of corollary in other areas named here. And so it's a little bit hard to be as specific

126and that's kind of what I think I would love to see. One of the specific goals piece was the AP exams of three and better. You know, I think I think we're at 76%. Um, so I'm very interested when that data comes out to see where we scored this year and then with these supports in place, are we going to be able to increase those? is not only we're going to look at to support the students that are struggling academically, but also the high level thinking students, students that are doing well with AP study sessions and and allow those students that are taking those rigorous courses time within the day, especially with the new windb block on Wednesdays with a little more block of time, time within their day that they can prepare and study

127and and and improve their schools as well because, you know, they're they're dying for time. They have they don't have enough time to do their schoolwork. So, so some of this extra wind block and that extra wind block that we're doing on Wednesdays is going to help some of those students. Yeah. Yeah. I just think you have to be a little more creative maybe, you know, especially with changes to the MCCAST in 10th grade. We don't know how that will affect, you know, students um scores on those. We're not sure if they'll be as reliable as they once were. And so, um I just feel like I I know it's there. It's like we got to just pull it out a little, tease it out just a bit more. I feel like in order to

128really say with more certainty like, "Yeah, we're we're getting there." That's good. Thanks. All right, J. Handbook. All right. Um, do high school handbook first or Sure. All right. So, our high school handbook changes. Um, we have uh we rewarded the course selection policy in room 21. Um, it's just it most of its wording, but um just to make sure it was a little bit more clear on on when students can can ask to change courses. Sometimes students are coming in saying, "I don't want to take that course anymore. It's because they don't like the teacher or because they don't like somebody in their class." So, so coming up with some wordage in there that that does it like you know it's it has to be educatively it has to be an educational decision uh

129with with the teachers input and things like that. So uh the next one is uh we updated the cheating and plagiarism to include AI page 32 that's consistent throughout the district. Our compassy determination policy in place of MCCAST requirements is on page 35. our new National Honor Society language. Um that's on page 48 and then we updated the student response use of technology uh so that we're consistent with the district at all that the tech department had sent us. Uh and then we removed sale from the handbook because I think that's just a little bit outdated. And we took the anchor blocks out of because we no longer have an anchor blocks. There's no more studies. Not a ton of changes. And then we Scott Payne had one athletic uh change too and he was

130he rewarded the we would have we were having students that were going on driving time. They were taking their test their driving test and in the handbook it said if you take it you know if you miss practice or you you can't play in the game. So we rewarded that that if it's driving time you can't reschedule the driving not driving time testing to take the test. You can't reschedule the test. So we reward it in the handbook saying that if you have an appointment to take your test, let your coach know in fashion and you won't be penalized from the team from that and there were no other changes in that. Does that include permit or just licens? Yep. Because those are scheduled appointments and it's not fair to the student. Like I had

131a student come down to me in tears saying I can't play my game because I said no no no wait a minute you can't. They can't reschedu the appointment. It could take six months. So, so we're just trying to work with kids. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Make a motion. High school handbook. I'll make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the Situit High School student handbook for the school year 2025206 as presented. Second. Okay. All in favor? Thank you very much. School handbook. Okay, so we have a couple of changes uh for the proposed handbook for next year. Page seven and eight, just some updated staffing lists. Uh page nine, the updated district calendar. Page 19, we removed language about the enrichment block because we no longer have the enrichment block. Uh

132page 20 to 22 updated the immunization guidelines. Uh we had some leftover pieces in there for COVID which uh the nurse leader gave us approval to remove uh for the proposed handbook. Uh on 25, we updated and clarified our um National Junior Honor Society academic eligibility requirements and it's long overdue. um it used to say a cumulative GPA of 3.8. Um and does that mean every year or does that mean overall for your three years? So we really spelled out what that meant so that there's not any confusion for anyone. Um as principal Ranger just said, we uh adopt or we are proposing adopting the updated plagiarism, cheating, and artificial intelligence information um that was created by the district AI group. Um what's nice about this is it has kind of a clear process uh

133for students and families to be aware of um in how we're going to not only educate students but hold them accountable um if they are kind of violating this uh policy or or this way we handle it. Um and then page 28 to 29 uh was the updated student responsible use of technology which uh was produced by the technology department and uh group that is responsible for that. So those are our proposed changes for 2526 and we're proud that it's still under 30 pages. It could go to 31 and we had to get rid of some. Excellent work. All right. Motion Gates Middle School Handbook. Make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the Gates Middle School student handbook for school year 2025 2026 as presented. Second. Okay. All in favor? I. Thank

134you. Thank you, Mr. Bey. All right. Um, Superintendent Burkehead, turning it over to you on our um legal u engagement and fee agreement from our law firm. Thank you. Thank you. So, this um is this contract between our attorneys Lamir Murphy and Laamir, which expires June 30th of this year. Uh we had an existing three-year contract. I believe we've worked with this firm for at least five years I've been here and then several before that. So, they represent the school committee, but they also do a lot of work with us on the front lines. you have multiple attorneys that deal with different parts of litigation, advice, feedback, those types of things. Um, so the three-year contract that you have in your packet will be something that you vote on and discuss. The salary or excuse

135me, the cost per hour is slightly above um current rate, but just know in the last contract it was a set rate for three straight years with no raising fees. So, I don't think it's unreasonable and doing a little shopping around this. This is not uncommon, not too high, not too low, affordable, and they've done according to our team a good job. So, we'll leave to you and be happy to answer any questions on like Thank you, Superintendent Bhead. Anyone have any questions about this contract? All right. Um, I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the legal engagement and fee agreement from law firm Murphy Laneir and Murphy as presented. Second. All in favor? Hi. You can vote on I'll explain why don't have to we go. I thought that was

136up to your decision that we didn't have it. So we don't Okay. Uh, Dr. Right. Correction. Yeah. Sorry. Do we just make a motion on that one? Yes. Yeah. Is that signed by the chair? Correct. See the change to the motion instead of saying that for Dr. That's it. That's the one. Yeah. All right. I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the non-union contract with Dr. Rab as presented. Second. All right. Okay. Uh all in favor? Hi. Thank you. Okay, turn it over to Dr. Rap. Thank you very much. I'm really pleased to present the negotiated union contracts this year. We've spent the entire spring, we spent two hours in executive session a few weeks ago going over the details of each one of these. And I think as you and

137we'll we'll vote each one separately, but just to talk in general, every one of them really support retention, longevity, but also recruitment. And so we worked on both sides of the equation to really make sure we were bringing in the best people but also retaining the people that we have. And I you know particularly if we can begin with the situation you know Mrs. Brandolini Mrs. Benwick were at each of several four five six hour meetings and I think what we learned is really working closely together with the teachers. Um you know money is important but so are some of the other language language information that we talked about. We standardized common planning time. standardized collaboration time and all of that was important and really uh great work that we did. So again, I haven't

138done this kind of thing here before, but really over the spring working with all the unions has been very instructive for me learning about the needs of the unions and the needs of the people that work for us. Um and I think we came to very fair and equitable contracts with them. So I I do think we need to vote individually um on each one. Um and we can begin with the STA. You ready? I'm ready. When I'm ready, I'll vote. Good stretch. Yes. All right. Uh I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the Situate Teachers Association 2025 2028 contract as presented. Second. All in favor? I keep going. Sure. Next is our power professionals. Yeah. So I I do you want me to say a few words or just going

139to run through them? It's up to you. I think we came to a very fair and equitable agreement with our power professionals. We had one meeting. We talked to them. They really outlined some of their needs and wants and they're very excited moving forward. Okay, great. Uh I I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the PAR professionals chapter SEI SEIU local 888 2025 2028 contract as presented. Second. All in favor? Hi. Similarly, we work very closely with the situ cafeteria personnel. Uh, in this contract, we really focused on retention. We wanted to keep the cafeteria workers that we have and so we added some steps to that contract and it's worked out very well for them. I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the Situate Cafeteria Personnel

140SIU Local 888 2025 2028 count contract as presented. Second. All in favor? I thank you. And for our situate um bus and van drivers, we worked hard to come up with an equitable contract that has pay similar to surrounding towns as well as first student again with the same notion of retention. I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the bus and van drivers AFS CME local 1700 2025 2028 contract as presented. Second. All in favor? And similarly with the Situate school custodians, we worked hard to add some steps to retain the custodians that we have and the excellent staff that we do have. Make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the Situate School Custodians AFS CNE local 1700 2025 2028 contract as presented. Second. All in favor? I.

141Thank you. And I'll respectfully request that we table the administrative assistance contract for now. We're still working very closely with them. We're very close to finishing, but we just need one or two more meetings just to to firm that up. And I'm certain that we'll have something for you for the summer. Okay, good. Thank you. All right, let us move on. Thank you very much, Dr. Rap. All right. Um, let's move on. Are we going to discuss now our bullying prevention policy JICFB? Yep. Um, okay. So, I can get started. I was the one that brought this up last time. So, um, I think we I can put it out there for you. Oh, thank you. Um so in the interim between last meeting and now um I've done some additional reading and learning and

142so I think our typical process with policy when we bring it up for discussion is that it gets kicked to the um policy subcommittee which we have now established will be going forward myself and Janice and Ryan Lynch. Um and we also learned that within our policy is the um bullying prevention and intervention plan which is in fact due for a review and that that review is typically conducted by a working group or task force and um superintendent assistant superintendent Lynch was not here last time when we did this um but um I think is under superintendent B heads and assistant superintendent perview to figure out how that working group will work and who will be part of it and all of that. But it seems to me that the policy uh review should happen

143in tandem with that working group so that one does not get ahead of the other because they have to work together. Um I will also say our current policy is very much aligned with masks model policy. Um so I think keeping the policy as is while we're conducting the review makes sense. Um, and I think that also is the process that we would typically follow on this. Um, I don't know if anyone has any other thoughts or if you guys want to talk at all about the I don't know if you've thought about this at all or if this is something that we would pick up in the fall, but Superend. Yeah, thank you. And um this topic has come up recently and I I think it's great timing and something we're obviously um very

144attuned to and it's extremely important to all of us as educators and as parents as members of the school community. So um I do want to um read a little section of the the bullying prevention intervention plan because the policy is one thing and a lot of the things mentioned in the policy kick over to this. This is like a a little more detailed process. So, a couple things I think the community would appreciate hearing to know that like Miss Fenwick said is um this is up for review. So, the timing is great. Even if it wasn't, we'd likely do it anyways. So, um this fall or some will be working on putting that team together. But under one of the district priorities it talks about the bullying prevention and intervention plan is a comprehensive

145approach to addressing bullying and cyber bullying and the school or district is committed to working with students, staff, families, law enforcement agencies and the community to prevent issues of violence. So it is a collaborative approach on this. It's not just developed by you or us. So that that there will be involvement in availability because I know community members and parents have volunteered to be part of that work as well as school committee members. So I wanted to point that part out. Um also just to get a little more insight into what that may look like. Um under the leadership section of this plan under part A, it says public involvement in developing developing of the plan. So, what this might look like in the fall, um, as required by Mass Law, this plan was developed,

146um, developed in consultation with district and community stakeholders. Consultation includes notice in a public comment period before the plan is adopted by the school committee. The district will involve representatives from various constituencies and ongoing aspects of the plan, including needs assessment, working groups, task force, and public meetings. So all of the above there will be included. And lastly um and not comprehensively just picking out some things I think would be helpful for the community tonight. Um assessing uh needs and resources. Uh this plan serves as a blueprint for enhancing capacity to prevent and respond to issues of bullying within the context of other healthy school climate initiatives. As part of our process, school leaders with input from families, staff, um assess the adequacy of current programs, review current policies and procedures, um review available data

147on bullying and behavioral incidents, and access available resources, including curricula, training programs, and behavioral health services. Based on these findings, the district revises or develops policies and procedures, establishes partnerships with community agencies, including law enforcement to set priorities. Finally, the district will consider the following needs assessments. Surveying students, staff, parents, and guardians on school climate, school safety issues, collecting and analyzing building specific data on the prevalence of characteristics of bullying. example focusing on identifying vulnerable populations in the hotspots in school buildings on school grounds or on school buses. So pretty comprehensive. There's surveys, there's community members, there's discussion input on both sides into improving developing what we expect to keep our kids uh and staff safe. So I think that as Le also talks about professional development there resources all those good things are included

148in this plan in detail and looking at our current plan it's good but it's not great. So I certainly think we can do better and and it also is it should be it should reflect the community's needs and wants. It's very specific to the community. So and it ties as as you said Mort back to the policy and should be done simultaneously. Yeah. The other thing is that there's a lot um enshrined in Massachusetts general law related to this. And so the policy is really the place where we're making sure we're in compliance with the law. But the but the bullying prevention and intervention plan is I think an opportunity to think about um the user experience of some of these materials. Like the policy itself is never going to be the place where I

149mean it's available, people can look at it, they should. But the thing that's more kind of like geared towards users from like the family and student and even staff perspective is this document. And so I think there's the opportunity to have that working group think about that. You know, not only is it are we in compliance with the law, yes, but also where are these resources housed? How do people sign them? How do they use them? Is it, you know, even formatted in a way that invites a person in to understand it? And I think some of that stuff would be really nice to have community input on. Um, I also did find a really I don't know why a lot of the stuff on Desi is very outdated. This is from 2010, but it's

150a checklist of required components for the um bull prevention policies. And it is actually helpful because I do think it can be really hard to wade through some of the longer documents. And this really breaks it down. And I was happy to see as Bill noted um the survey component because I think that's also a really great opportunity to hear from a broader group of families and understand the ways in which our current policies and the implementation of them is and is not working for people. Um, so I think the survey is a great idea and I'm glad that you brought that up. was also in here. And I think Superintendent Burkhead and team have done a really great job with other models of this in the district just with like safety planning in general

151and that there's already structure for that that can be used in this you know for this bullying and intervention planning just with other safety planning that you had teams and structures in place and other for other means that this can be kind of like you know I mean I just think that we have built great teams that I think the emergency operations team is playing a really close resemblance to this but we didn't have one and their policies were average that team with you know working collaborative with community groups and safety officials has just off the charts and you've seen this presentation so I think that's a good example and this could be the same it should be exactly yeah right it's great the relationships exist already that correct are so solid that I think

152it's going to come together a great uh great confidence in it. And um just thinking about the liaison positions and the task group does it make sense for like say Maria is a lot of the research to and carried beyond that policy because you're on policy just as someone Yeah. I'd be happy to do it if um that's what everyone wants. I think we should let them figure out what the numbers are. Yeah, that's true. overwhelm the group. Too many school committee people on it. But I agree. Yeah, there are models out there that have like massive groups and then there are some that are smaller depending on the size of the district. But that's where a survey or focus groups can come in too. Like you can still gather input and feedback from a

153large number of people without necessarily having comment public period. Exactly. You could always have like Carrie be the lead and Maria be an alternative alternate if Carrie's unable to attend. Yeah. I'm just thinking like if we're looking at the policy Yeah. We just want to be working and if it's at the same time like just make sure like what the working group is working on translates over to policy. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Involves a lot. Yeah, I suspect it's going to be a lot of the prevention like the meat of it and just making sure that what we're proposing aligns with how the policy reads. I feel like that's the places where we can affect user experience and student. Y thank you. So in terms of the timeline for that, we think fall. Yes.

154Okay, thank you. Get started. We'll do some of the framework over the summer, obviously. Yeah, I thought we were going to talk about it at the retreat, too, potentially. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Okay, sounds like a plan. All right, Superintendent Burkehead, back to you. Thank you. Can you help me with that presentation? Go see one or two. Okay. So, as we're getting set up, just for a refresher for our community in the committee, um it's my fifth year at Situit and I was being evaluated yearly by the school committee and public. Um and this year, we moved to a after year three, you are able to move to a two-year format. That's where we are now. So, this is year one of two. In the fall, I came and shared my goals

155that were approved by the committee. This is a check-in report out to get your feedback and the um goals certainly be can be flexible, adjusted, whatever we need to do to uh keep them on track and be successful. Um like Mr. Bey, I'm excited tonight. I think this is a way to celebrate all the great things happening um and to be honest about things we can improve on. The good thing about a two-year plan that I found is that you know if you didn't make something, you know, you kind of you know what do you do with that hanging piece? just need a little more time. So, I think we can be more ambitious with our goals and we were knowing that we've got two years and then having a check-in like this is a

156really good way um of sharing out what's happening. Again, getting some feedback, working with our team to adjust and so that we ensure that we reach goals um all our goals. I'm happy to say that we're on target to meet them all. I have strong confidence that we will. Um, so what I prepared today is a um a document that I'll include online because it is a lot of narrative. So I'm not going to read a lot of this tonight, but just for the community members watching and for those that can't make it tonight, I'll put this on the website. And my goal was to be able to tell a story kind of like our blue book when we do the budget and all the things we do is try to um make a document

157that um the lay person can pick up that's not an education and understand it understand where we are. So I think that's um what's done here. Before I start that, I just want to give a a shout out to the entire um Central Public Schools family, our central office team, principles, district leaders, department chairs, curriculum coordinators, teachers, and all support staff. I want to thank you for all you do. While the work is intense, it is undeniably the most important work in the world, my opinion. You should be commended for yet another successful year serving our students, families, and community. your dedication and hard work are clearly reflected in every accomplishment that I'll discuss tonight. So, thank you. Okay, so the executive summary and I'm going to cover a lot of this in more detail

158there. I'm just going to leave read one first paragraph to kind of give a little flavor of what this talks about. This is basically an overview of the entire document. Throughout the 20 24 and 25 school year, we remain focused on advancing Situ public school strategic plan by supporting every learner through instructional excellence, strengthening systems for continuous improvement, fostering meaningful communication, community engagement, and investing in our people and culture grounded in equity, collaboration, and continuous improvement. That's the overall favor. Can we go to the next page? Okay. So, as we go on, we have a um little summary here. Again, I'll just read a sample of this on the left. It's um message to school committee. I am pleased to provide the school committee with an update on my progress toward achieving the 20 24th

159through 2026 superintendent evaluation goals. These goals aligned with the situ strategic plan act as a guiding framework as we work together toward our shared vision of educational excellence. On the right side here, we start with the goals. The first one uh is provide engaging and rigorous curriculum and deliver high quality instruction to meet the academic needs of each learner. I think what you'll see tonight throughout is a thread of some of the school improvement plan conversations that we've had this year. Uh report outs by Dr. Rav and Mr. Lynch, um Dr. Bober, our central office team, and um department chairs throughout the year at student learning. So all that stuff um hopefully we encapsulate in this report. Broke it down into a kind of we will these are basically what uh I said we would

160do in the fall. So I'm going to kind of gloss over that a little bit. That's kind of the you know the promises made. The key actions are things we've been doing. So again, I'll highlight some of those and then we'll get into some of the processes we did to get there and then the outcomes or the obviously the meat potatoes that we can discuss and how far we've progressed what we've done. So what we talked about in this first goal is you've heard this a lot throughout the year and it's something we're really proud of is continue with the MTSS implementation um ensure coherent systems for screening and monitoring student social emotional support. we've heard through our peer analysis. Um the new math program 6 through 12. Um we've broadened that out to include

161a curriculum management plan which we'll talk about. Um a new data review process um equity audit um sharing with the staff and identifying achievement gaps and addressing them and also acceleration through our wind blocks. So those are some things you can expect to see. So the actions we've taken um engage learners uh in their growth, measure our competencies includ um monitor growth, uh share best practices. Hadn't said that a lot in the past, but we've uh as I'll talk about through the new February data meeting that we had and our leadership teams, we've strategized them. So now we talk about uh for example a wind block. talk a lot about windblock and at an elementary meeting or district leadership meeting we talk about windb block and then we talk about what each school was doing

162and then we share ideas and then come up with what's working best how can we reflect the best practices in other schools we hadn't done that before so that sometimes when you do that some of those best practices are left unchecked and some schools are doing things very differently than others you lose a little bit of consistency in that as well next Okay. So the process these are in the benchmarks. So the um wind schedules we talked about and and best practices I alluded to a little bit in there. Spent a lot of time talking about how we use wind block this year. um it was used differently in a lot of places and um what we talked about at the mill in high school where uh didn't necessarily exist or wasn't used to um

163what we wanted it to look like to align with the MTSS protocols and to be able to uh as Mr. be to put it impact all students instead of 50%. Or in the Gates example, having kids choose between band and getting extra help or acceleration that won't be a problem anymore. Um so those are some things that I'll get to in the outcomes to eval evaluate evaluate our peer data. I've heard a lot of feedback in the last few meetings from the committee on peer data and um learned a lot about that where I think on one one school we talked about or the elementary sips feedback was that we should focus on some things that that are issues. Let's narrow it down where it's so big. Then hearing tonight the feedback from Mr. Langer

164is that wow 95%. My question too right now is okay what are some things that we are 95% better 5%. Maybe we look at those as well. So these are growth areas for us on that data. So big I think narrowing the focus on that and being very specific and attacking that will be a better plan uh moving forward. So the outcomes I think there's been significant prog progress. I want to thank um you know Mr. Lynch and our department chairs and all their work on the open architects gate school. Jenkins taking it on this year. A lot of extra work and time. This thing's really good. Um and then on the wind blocks. Um I think what's significant here is seeing the big picture and seeing how this stuff all integrates. So for example,

165open architects is really awesome and you saw some pictures and some presentations and all the time it takes to go and get data from all these different places and all the extra work that teachers have to do and department chairs and um you know coordinators and principles and central office. just getting the data is is overwhelming. Then when you have the meetings, they're often rushed and so you need time. So you need time, you need access and then you need time and you know commitment to making a plan and then following through it. So I think that's all what we did through a couple different processes because I think open architects on its own in that dashboard is good but if you don't have the time to use it or to implement it to follow

166up with it it's kind of useful. So I think what you'll see tied into that is our negotiations. Some people say, you know, I thought somebody mentioned tonight it's not just about money. Think we have excellent contracts and excellent trust built with our all our unions. Um but what I'm specifically impressed with was the ability between the teachers uh union to hear us on this and say we need time and collaboration time to work on MTSS processes and they agree with that. So you see in this contract that um at the high school for example on Wednesday mornings there'll be time now for the administration to have um to work with our staff on MTSS that never existed. So that's just kind of a through line on when are you going to do all this?

167When are you going to have time? Another part was the elementary staff's agreement um that collaboration time was in the teachers hands. Administration had input but they didn't necessarily have say So the teachers had to give up some authority there. Again, all part of negotiations, but for a good cause. Now we'll have times in those meetings to talk about and learn about each student through the MTSS process. So if just want to let you know that not only did we cognizant of having the MTSS work done as a major goal in the district and part of our strategic plan, but that we had a plan through gaining the time through negotiations and a process for doing that. So, I thought that tied in pretty well. And then the which I'll get to later on as

168well is the new it's on this here is the February data review meetings that also ties in um to kind of mon model you know slowing down looking at our information this year. You know, credit again goes to to Mr. Lynch and our team for coming up with that. It was very powerful. It comes um right after the midyear benchmark. February is chosen because it becomes after the midyear benchmarking data comes out and it's a couple months right before MCCAST on the on the middle and high school end as well. So it was good timing and we broke it up between elementary and high school. So it's really the first time we all got in the room together with department chairs, curriculum coordinators, um principles and office team took our time and just slowly went

169through all the information and look for trends, look for what's going well, what's not, how are we addressing this and then coming up with action steps um that were implemented right away that each principal then went back and at faculty meetings, at ILT meetings were able to implement these right away. Um, so I thought, you know, that was really powerful this year and it could only get better with now adding open architect the dashboard in those meetings, right? Because those department chairs and coordinates had to go dig up all that data just to hold those meetings. So that's going to be a lot easier when we have less wasted time doing that. We have it all at our fingertips and it includes not just academic but includes the social emotional data, the uh peer data

170all in one place and so we can plan and manage better. Uh it's also um smarter because what typically was done is you wait till MC class a year later then you have these meetings and do all this the kids are in the next grade they're all mixed up. So I think the comm curriculum management plan excuse me the February data review meetings the open architects you see on these outcomes have tied in. We've got work to go certainly we have to expand this now to um the other elementary schools to the rest of Jenkins. So there's a lot of work to go there, but we're committed to it as is the committee. So thank you. The budget process is there. Um so we'll be working on that year round and excited to report back

171how that impacts student learning. The equity audit presentation um was included in your packet. I'm not going to break out to links, but when people want to dive into this some more, they'll see that. That was really good just for us to even though it was a few years back and we have new staff and new people. uh the district uh team come up with a really good presentation. It was just good to have conversations. We did that with the entire district, not just the teachers, our professionals, bus drivers, custodians, administrative assistants, everybody. So, I think we're all on the same page on what the expectations were from the audit. We're ready to move into the creating the um tool, the equity tool that will help with making um equitable equitable decisions in our district.

172So, that's to come. So I think that wraps up kind of outcomes on that goal. I'll pause there if there's any wait till the end or whenever you're comfortable. I'll make a a comment. I think it's it's a lot of work to learn systems while there's also like children and there's so many moving parts to this. So I think it's a lot just want to recognize the amount of work that goes into all of this while there's so many moving parts in a school system at once. It's a lot going on at once. I would agree. Takes many hands. Yes. Many people, but you're right. Yeah. I guess for me it's a yes and yeah that there are many moving parts and it makes it really it makes it really hard for me to assess

173the progress that's being made. So like when I look at the goal engaging and rigorous curriculum high quality instruction meet the needs of each learner and I'm just trying to find like if we're progress monitoring what's the evidence of the goal. I'm kind of surprised that there's no qualitative or quantitative data anywhere. Um because you mentioned key action close the equity gap. That's a huge that's like a huge statement. Yeah. And I'm just wondering like where are you seeing that? Um and Yeah. And so like in even the pair data, I know we've brought it up a couple times. I'm curious in relation to your goal if you see changes in pair data, what are you learning from the data that would inform how you're feeling about that learning goal? So, so yeah. So, I

174think I appreciate the work Nicole you're mentioning. I just think it makes it really hard to to find the outcomes for the goals that you're setting. Yeah. And and back at my goals, I'll I'll pull that up now because I and when I when these were approved by the school committee, how will we know progress is being made on our first goal? So for the first one um June 2025 evaluate um implement an effective MTSS process and examine data related to student interventions and outcomes as 2526 um improve percentage. So a lot of these in this one were 2526. So I think we have another year. So I think what our goal was on this first part of it and I think that was explained in the fall was that we're trying to get all

175these things in place you know and then of course we need to look at that data next year I should have that and that's very you know clear expectation that I think we should expect. So when I look at key actions on this presentation these are mostly ongoing two years that's well that's what I'm just trying to figure out. Okay. One thing I've been thinking of a lot about is um the um competencies. I think um just been noodling on this because we talked about this a little bit how we have our um director of um guidance who oversees currently all the college prep stuff and also all the sort of um guidance counseling seal. It's a really big bucket. And so I think um when she presented to us, we got a little taste

176of some of the SEAL um stuff that's going on. But to me, that's an area that would be great to understand a bit more as as you're from all angles, whether it's here, whether it's, you know, in that presentation next year or wherever it might come out. I just think that to me is one of the things that's least clear. Um, and I think, you know, if we're talking about measuring and improving those competencies, um, I feel like that's an area that we could stand to get a little more specific on on the PO data. Yeah. Yeah. I think we've we we reference it. we see every now and then a pair data point or maybe a couple but I don't know that I have a good sense of the holistic you know what the

177tool is telling us holistically about our students and therefore you know what are we doing about that I think that's hard to tell can I refer back to your question your comment Dr. because I'm taking notes too. What specifically would you like to see? Well, I what I'm trying to discern is I understand this is a two-year process, but I'm just thinking like in the key actions where it says inform staff and close equity gaps. I'm just curious like that just feels like a really big statement to say close equity gaps. So, is that happening now? Are you seeing a a reduction in the gap? And if so, where? Um, you know, are you progress monitoring that? What does that look like? Um, have you closed the gap in some areas? Those are things that's

178all just just discerning from year to year. The pair data too. Like that's remember like a really long time ago where I did like a pair overview like that would be something interesting and then we had someone didn't someone from the company come at some point Hather student council maybe I feel like someone came and gave us I think Greg brought somebody from the company last year he's come every year he does come every You can never come enough. I think yeah, I don't know. Something about that is always interesting. I think I think it's just interesting. Parents find it interesting. Maybe it's a good beginning of the year thing like social emotional bullying. And now that we're doing it twice, the pre the post, the I think for your new parents coming in, a

179good learning kind of um intro presentation even just to like um with um gosh, I know I have it pulled up on my own computer. What's it called? We have to block off an hour though. You are not wrong. What's that call pulled up on my computer? Um, somebody help me out. What's the social emotional HSA? Um, no, the curriculum. Um, character like I don't know. Those are things parents like to know about. Little overviews of like what? Yeah. But I think you're talking about pair and I think just as a bundle bundle as a bundle on pair. Yes. But also as a bundle back to back to this presentation at hand. I think as a bundle we're just looking for um anything more specific like with we can get our teeth into a bit

180on any of these. Um, and I know that that some of that is is coming, but it's we are still measuring this as we go. So, it's kind of like, you know, even if those measurements are coming at the end of next school year, there are measure there are benchmarks along the way. And so, knowing where we are on that uh I think would be this might even tie to something you said, Maria, too, about like some of the binder Oh, yes. pieces of like the data. I think we have it. We just aren't seeing it right now moment of like we have the pair pre and post. I think it exists the progress. It also will really help honestly having our stuff in Google Drive um in terms of making things searchable for us

181to go back because I even thought that um I wanted to go back Bill and find your presentations from the fall and I was like what month was that? And I'm deep in the folders of the X drive. Yeah. Um how's the new stuff? Great. We love it. We're very happy. Thank you. Yeah, that's great. Google drives. All right. The next one is um strength comm strengthen communication to build support and collaboration among school district and town partners. So, this was more um to do with communications, the new school project. Uh continue the MSBA process. Um did we skip? Yeah, we skipped one district. Go back one. District one. Oh, boy. Bill, where did you find this fancy thing? You just showed it. I just gave an advertisement for it. I've never even heard of

182it. Yeah, we can keep a hard copy as a backup to improve the functionality and outcomes of the districtwide teams. Um, so this was the uh school councils and school improvement plans. Part of the goal was to create consistent processes uh for school councils, they were a little, you know, they weren't up to specs with public meeting laws and those types of things. Update revise the school improvement plan template. Um again, wasn't great. Then align the school improvement plan with school committee policy and expectations. The other one, so key actions, we had several meetings to go over this. We had trainings on public um meetings, how to pick um school council, uh to run those meetings. I think that is where we put put a lot of our emphasis this year in time. Obviously have

183improvements to make on some of the content in those. I'll get to those next page. Page eight. Page eight. Okay. I know. Yeah, that's it. Okay. All right. So process we wanted to ensure the meeting laws were um were following the open meeting law agendas membership um to meet was prescripted using desi guidelines. We aligned with that. We got that all done and the outcomes were we created guidelines and expectations consistency um after meeting with principles trainings and the meetings will run consistently and uh with all the expectations of a public meeting um thing that we uh are going to improve on and work on this year and I've got and you know thanks the committee for giving me clear expectations and feedback on that. And I know we got a follow-up meeting with a

184couple of you too that shared some resources and expectations. So that was my question. I think it was a lot of question. All right, we've gotten this far. What do you recommend on what we can do to do better? So I think that was well taken. So that's the goal for next year on part two of this. We've got the template, got the meetings running well, and now the actual product, the end product we want to see. So I think that can be an expectation for next year. It's why I added that line align with the uh school committee policy because that policy has done very well. We spent time on that recently and updated it, but also the expectations and what to look for. Um, using data to tell a story, but also to

185have, you know, focus goals that really move the district forward. Oh, you added a line with school. Yeah. Are we doing feedback now or I was so I I think you definitely the template is so much better. I mean I think we told all the principles that to be the case. It was so much easier just to follow. I think the one thing if I could offer a suggestion in the process and I don't know if it's possible with our schedule but I have to say I hate that we show up at this meeting and it's even though we've prepped it's the first time we're talking to the principles about these sips and I cannot stand feeling like the bad guy in this. I I I want them to feel supported and that we're being

186curious and asking questions. So, I wonder if it's possible and still honor open meeting laws to have like a almost like you know how we do the policy stuff. So, like we bring a policy, we discuss it and then we do some because I just think it's unfair. We just we don't set them up for success um when they come to us and we're only seeing it for the first time. I think some of that will change because we're doing our homework around data. We're trying to get better prepared. So, some of our questions, but I always feel like we're not setting them up for success and they it becomes um adversarial almost. I don't want anyone. This is like a personal problem. I hate when people don't like me. It's like why I should

187be in therapy. It's not even that. I just think if if I had had if I had had one conversation Well, I don't think for me it's not bad though. It keeps me up at night. If we had had one preliminary conversation with the principles and and whomever their representative, I think some of that conversation that we had would have disappeared, right, with just a couple of questions. And I don't know that's for you know you have to think about it but if there's some way our policy reads like that though our policy says we review. It doesn't say we publicly give feedback or vote. I think that there is wiggle room word to interpret it in different ways. I actually do not think we need to do that. I think we could do a

188whether it's a preliminary round of feedback and I think we should honor like kind of like what we do with you, Bill, which is compile. We compile the feedback and one we give you one document so that we're not bombarding so that we do the same thing. We all have a chance to get feedback. We compile it and one person reaches out judge and jury like no it's just questions and so then when they come and present the finalish thing it's it's a different conversation and potentially more fruitful right I agree I mean to me the policy reads like an opportunity for that casual it also more to collect our thoughts like we don't have a lot of time right now and I don't want them to dread coming to school June is a very

189busy month Like yeah. So anyway, we're doing that work anyway, taking the notes and all that stuff, but we don't have the opportunity to talk to each other. We also don't know what are my colleagues going to wonder or say, and we don't have that opportunity either. So it's also just the setup is not not helpful. Well, I appreciate that feedback. I think it's something we want to resolve. We all on the same team. We want this these to be great, but it's good to hear your perspective that just getting the weekend before you if you dive in all in there's no opportunity. And so thank you. Yeah, we'll look into that. I think there's a great opportunity there because I think that we all want that. The principles want that. We want that. Yeah.

190You know, and now, you know, even thinking about even tonight's process, you know, when it's when it's a one-year one, I always got these out a couple weeks in advance. Got got feedback. I do a self assessment. So, right. This this feels weird, too. It's just very different. Um, weird, right? I usually get preliminary feedback. Yep. And, you know, now you're like, what are they going to say? It's just had a great night's sleep last night. But even but even this I'll I'll learn it year one, you know, next time it'll be like there's no rules on that. I can get it to you three weeks in advance and get written feedback like you said. So I just think we could be more helpful because like I think I could ask better questions if I

191had more conversations. That's all. I mean I think the well-intendedness of this two years thing was like everyone last year were like, "Yeah, that's such a good idea. two years is much more runway for like working on things long term and now we're like okay can I just say one more thing about the about this one sorry um just actually two two quick things one is just we are still driving towards this three-year goal setting process too yeah thank you for bringing that up and yeah and I just I say that not because it's in the policy which it is but because there's a reason behind it which is that we don't want people to feel like they're getting whiplash every year I'm focusing on this and now I'm focusing on you know, we want

192people to actually feel like they have time to focus. Um, and then the other comment is just to me when I read this, it still is very complianceoriented to me and I feel like there's room to infuse some thoughts about why these matter more than just the paper they're written on. You know, that the idea of like why are we doing all of this in the first place? Um, it's not just about are we checking boxes or are we complying with opening? Are we complying? This is very complianceoriented to me and I just think Bill you in particular given your role have an opportunity to really set the tone around goal setting and why we do it and I hope that it is more than just an exercise and something that we have to do

193anyway. There is research around the importance of when it's done well it can actually lead to the outcomes that we want and that's what we're ultimately going for. So my only piggyback on that is like I'm a big fan of like to to that end the school council's meeting more regularly. I know that people are busy and it's hard but in order for that to happen they almost have to meet more than quarterly but the policy says minimum quarterly I think right I guess that was a it was a point of contention in the policy committee a couple years ago when we did that um policy but we set it as a minimum but yes I'd agree in order to really do this well you can't just meet four times a Um district improvement goal

194two started the communication to build support and collaboration among school district and town partners. Um communication thread here was through the building process with new building process with an upcoming enrollment plan. um formerly redistricting plan. It's called the enrollment plan now. Um and then to get families as partners to be involved. So um a lot of this leg work this year for this one was um done on the front end by central office. A lot of this the actuals will happen next year. So basically the I'll share with you the timeline that's I think we linked on the outcomes. We go to the next one Tom. So process was to gather is to gather input from stakeholders holdformational meetings. We had one this year at the beginning of the year and it was more to

195give them what I'm going to tell you tonight. I think it did put people at ease to let them know that we had time a but then with some specifics um that we're going to have working with a partner that does this for a living in a geographical study a very complex and comprehensive one um that will have a timeline which I provided with you tonight starts it's already started with us meeting with this individual uh and the company getting them their data they also thought or know that um the the more enrollment information closer to the time of the building opening which will be next October, not last October would be useless. So that we really couldn't start these meetings before uh this year coming out the upcoming year. So that was the in-person

196meeting we had this year followup correspondence. I think people in a good place with that and so what now where do we go here is we have you know a pretty comprehensive practice and I'm just going to read out some of the things. So data collection is happening now. It'll go through October and all through next year to kind of analyze the entire district, the amount of spots we have at each school, the space, the space, new school, etc. the new kids coming into the building and then um they'll do it uh that will be all through September and October. Then the data assimilation which they do is they you know they they plot everything on a grid and then the internal planning there'll be an internal planning team that will work and just talk

197about those numbers the geography the buses all those things that play a role and so the timeline shakes out to just to give folks an understanding September 11th will be the first internal planning team meeting um to start talking about getting ready for this October 2nd. There'll be um be the second meeting. October 16th of next year for your calendars. It will be the first public meeting. So that we're hitting the ground pretty early. Um that will be a webinar that will be open to the entire community. Um, right after that, there'll be a website set up, a separate website that'll be linked to our website that um, the proper company that we're working with. We've got a mockup of it. It's very impressive. It gives you all the information you can imagine. You could

198click on where your house is, what school you would be going to or recommended to with a Y and all that kind of information. It's very informative. Gives our goals for the process. kids information. Also, we'll be doing a survey. So, there'll be a survey going out at that time. We'll be collecting all that information and people will be uh in the know. They'll have an opportunity to speak about it. They'll have an opportunity to survey about it. It'll be a very inclusive process. And then after that October meeting, there'll be follow-up um internal group meetings. After getting the feedback from the surveys, the public meeting, all that kind of information, the initial plot lines, we'll start carving out a plan, and then they'll on December 3rd, there'll be the second public meeting where the

199initial plan will be laid out. Pretty aggressive timeline, but done smartly with these folks. Um then feedback gathered from that plan, a final plan developed, another internal planning meeting December 18th and at the January um school committee meeting we'll share the plan for feedback input committee kind of like a first reading and then in February the goal is to get a vote by the committee on this is our rolling plan. I think that times up really well. almost 18 months prior to when the new school opens so that folks can plan accordingly. We can get bus routes assimilated and we'll know class sizes where kids are going to school. So I think that's far enough out where we can, you know, let the dust settle, let people get used to that, make plans, gather any

200more feedback and work out any unique or individualized situations. So that's very specific on that. I did want to spend time with because it was kind of a dual public announcement on where that is and that was a big part of that goal include um communications in there as well. Um so I don't want to overshadow that but a big part of our goal as a district was our communications and how we did it. So we did a comprehensive this is part two of this goal um communications audit with the Perry group outside group basically to come in looked at focus groups input talk to parents talk to staff uh excuse me not staff principles um couple of I think maybe one or two school committee members um so um and just uh our tech

201team obviously and then just looked at all the things we were doing. you have that entire report. They've given us some findings and recommendations. Guessed it was 100 last time just by the weight, but it was only 64 pages. But the recommendations are the goals in the back. And that's kind of, you know, you can read that too. But I just I think the next step of the plan some of the things just for the community to know and for you to know that we found out is that's you know the main uh problem we were having is school bundle our our vehicle for using our communications although it has a what attracted us to it was it has a good website um app which is decent and appreciated by most people uh and the

202app is is pretty good at getting information out there. everything else was not good. And it was actually, you know, it took us this to get this feedback to realize that that was a big kind of um obstacle in how we got information out. Um for example, if we sent an email blast from the district, it doesn't come out situ. It's very impersonal. You know, that was one of the feedbacks. They couldn't fix that. A lot of things were getting bounced that people weren't getting. um principles and the tech team had to jump through hoops to get uh get things out. So just well going on I've the good news is the contract ends June 30th. I've already been in touch with them. We may keep the website because I think dismantling a website and

203creating a new one is not a good idea. It's from scratch where that's their strength. But looking at other um communications um platforms is what we've already been working on been reaching out to other other uh districts. We've kind of taken a kind of survey there and Ryan's looking their tech team is looking on where the tech people are saying we're narrowing it down to a couple. So we're going to look at a few platforms, communication platforms that could be better right away. Um really for the fall. No way. What? That's exciting. Stop it. I mean, I read all 67 pages and at the end I was like, "Okay, Nicole, have to wait. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. We got this." Because I know I understand how like, you know, that's a

204big deal to shift like that. It takes time. You got to be patient. It's a big big district. Yeah, it is. And I understood the recommendations to like make it work for the year. You I I heard that Perry group loud and clear. We're going to make this work for the year. We're going to do this. We're going to rally. And if you read deeper into that, it was a lot more workarounds and made my day. So, I'm gonna still hold tight though. I'm gonna hold tight. Still I think there's a lot of good news in this. It's like getting too excited. There's a lot of good news in this because it's um not a lot of it was a surprise, but how like how do we fix it or detail group report in one

205word or like one page? You could have sent just one one page that said get rid of Well, I think the other things like simply um people wanted want to read something in the body of their email. Yes. Yes, I did. And even my Thursday even my Thursday thoughts, school bundle wouldn't allow that. They had to link it to our website and then when you got to the website, you you had to go down and click a PDF. It couldn't even come to the page. I even was frustrated with that. So, we just didn't when we called them, there was just they couldn't fix it. We just had to live with it. That's kind of how we move forward. Yeah. In the and probably the things I should have started with was they they don't

206have analytics, right? Like we can't tell how many people are reading the Thursday thought. So we can't tell. I mean Small, Canva, all those little ones have this. They have analytics. So it's it's kind of embarrassing. So you know, that's that's something we'd like to have and I think to hold us accountable. I think one of the goals for next year, what I like what they put in there too is, you know, I'm working on personally as principal as superintendent now super whoever superintendent is already a superintendent having specific goals around the data and what I want to achieve. So they they put in for example are 40% of your of your items getting open if they're not you should be doing right% so we don't even know on some of that but 40% is

207actually like that's real it's really good. Yeah. So that's what the professional is saying. Yeah, we'll have some like, you know, really strategic goals and objectives to to go by, but we already have some low hanging fruit that we're working on. Like the principles were frustrated they couldn't get stuff out, right, in timely manner. Digital coms teams who were there to kind of proof everything and do everything and working on school bundle uh was getting frustrated because a lot of work was coming their way. They don't want to do that. So I think it's going to be good news for everybody to kind of go back to some basics, you know, body and then hearing back from from families and and folks about what they find is important is, you know, we were sharing some

208stuff that they were just getting overwhelmed with. It was too much. It was coming from different directions. We're going to kind of we'll start this over the summer already started it just to kind of streamline some of that, simplifying some of it and going back to some basics. Then with this new communications platform, we'll be able to do that smoothly quickly and have some information on and how many people are actually open to these things, spending time on it, getting feedback, and there's other recommendations in there, but um we are already we already diving into this, assessing and evaluating it. Would welcome your feedback on it too, what you think is important, what we should prioritize. But I think it's really a bold line of treasure trove of good information I think is well worth

209it and some action steps we can they can definitely and easily take and have this thing turn around within the year. I think the PTO and principal feedback was really just they were really well put in their the way they delivered their messages to the Perry group was just nicely put constructive. No, I appreciated that trusty that people had the psychological safety to share that like, hey, this isn't working, you know. Great. So, yeah, there was a lot of honesty there and good feedback and without that, this wouldn't happen. So, I think that's that was very helpful. Yeah. Well, I'm I'm impressed that you all are boldly moving forward with all the other things going on that you're taking the steps to. Yeah, this is a book. We know this is most important to many

210people. It's like you could be doing great things, but if you don't know how to talk about it or tell people about it or you're people, we heard one, you heard some anecdotal stuff from the parents that, you know, just stopped checking it because it was just too much or it was, you know, I just wanted a school menu or something like that. So, you know, we have to get back to simplifying things, but so that's that. And and I think like any other plan eventually we'd like to get to like a three-year plan vision out. Right now what we're going to do is take the low hanging fruit have a plan for this year and then look to go after next year a three-year plan. So we'll be okay. This is what excellent educational

211communication looks like. This is what we can get done now. For example, a social media page. We're not ready for that. Uh we can't even, you know, handle all this with people we have. So that might be a year or two down the road. but we know it's important. So those are some examples of things we can put in a three to five year plan. Okay. Um next one is a succession plan to grow the next generation of teacher leaders also administrators that include in that. So there's been a lot of talk with our our staff about you know how do we I know we've had this conversations here. How do we, you know, create keep the leadership pipeline going here? Make this a unique place to be, make it a place that people want

212to come and stay. And one of those things was, okay, can we get some coaching for our teachers? We have it for, you know, administrator, central office, but can we get it for more folks? So, we that was our goal was to try that to build capacity, to build leadership, to build culture. Um and so I think we were successful at piloting this. I think we still have questions from this. Key actions were um well the other part of this was negotiations because of the culture of support for teachers administrators. So under the key actions we negotiated six contracts. Five were voted on tonight. So five out of six will be going home with contracts before school year ends. I think it's extremely impressive with the the culture of of contract negotiations going on right

213now. Um expanding search resources is another way to implement and keep great staff. Um equitable search processes are also another example. Next one. Okay. So the outcomes for this were uh completed negotiations successfully with five unions. We've made significant progress or I may even down to this a little bit with the leadership coaching pilot. We implemented it. We got feedback. We've had three teachers very small sample size. Um they all enjoyed it. I think they thought it was helpful. I don't know if we could continue that individually um and afford to do it um in mass with all coaches. We're going to have to kind of continue looking at this, but we do have three people that have gone through it that can offer us feedback. uh some progress on expanding search resources uh including

214teacher lounge, nemnet and mpde. I'm sorry I didn't spell these out but these are um you know sites that we typically don't post jobs to to expand our ability to get a more inclusive wide ranging application pool. The next step we'll need to take is are those people actually applying on these and get some numbers there and share those with you. Um and then the next one is a training document for our hiding committees which is um you know our committees. Now we've spend more time on who's on those committees. Is it well represented um Mr. Adams and Splooker talked to those committees about process. We shared 10 steps that we use just to kind of get that ball rolling. It's new and about just to keep consistency on how we interview and look for

215people and you know check our biases at the door if we can. just being people being acknowledged of all that. I think it's a good first step how we hire people. So that's the goals. I'll pause on that one. Okay. The next thing is this is more for the committee uh but also for the committee to know that um superintendent evaluated on four standards. instructional leadership, management and operations, which you've you've seen throughout family and community engagement and professional culture. Um, the next slide, these next few slides are just examples. Like I said, if people are reading this and don't necessarily know what these are, they're just examples. They're guides, examples on the evaluation focus indicate indicators. Talks about the superintendent, which I did pick six to eight every year to kind of focus on

216because there's a lot of them. And the next page I on standard one instructional leadership I try to tie these all back to the work I just shared on the goals. And so and I appreciate the feedback on things we could do to improve this the curriculum piece. Um you know I think another big undertaking this year that was very successful was the curriculum management plan. Again great job Mr. Lynch and your team and all of us kind of saying that we needed this and we needed some, you know, we're spending a lot of money. This ties in with the budget. We're spending a lot of money and committed to our curriculum um plan and we didn't want people to be to misinterpret that as just textbooks just providing books. What is all this? And

217we also wanted to make sure we were getting our money's worth that we're investing u and that was impacting students. So this curriculum management plan uh will do that. We've now got something in writing. We've got also got, as you saw when Mr. Lynch presented this, we have um our departments lined up. So, it's organized. It's in a timely manner. It's a specific process. So, we're going to go through that. And example I can give most recently is this year we've had the math curriculum. I know we've been talking about it. Um so kind of as that is being implemented we had an outside um professional come in as an outside set of eyes and go into classrooms and back to what Dr. Kelsey had talked about before that we got to do a better

218job is talk about pedigogy look like what's being taught in the classroom and you know we're in there all the time but getting an outside person to come in and focusing on each discipline as we implement the curriculums to start um had spoke to teachers had focus groups talking about the curriculum teaching learning students the new uh the new curriculum all those things were discussed and basically an audit or a needs assessment from an outside source and I think we're getting the feedback back in a couple of days on the 18th. So, we'll get the strengths areas of growth back from that um whole little mini study. I think another strength of that too is that and something we're proud of is that the staff was open to that and acceptable wasn't I don't want

219anyone looking at you know and I think that's a cultural shift where people are now welcome to that because we're doing it at central office we're doing with these February data meeting is that we all got to start just talking about the stuff and how we can you know do better what's going well what are some things we can improve and let's just be honest about what we're what we're seeing and hearing it's even more powerful I think when you have someone from the outside uh in this particular case come in and then so this is our first go at this. We'll share that how that went with you obviously, but we're looking forward to that conversation. But again, that's part of the whole monitoring process on okay, how are we doing? Are we using

220this how it's supposed to? Are we advancing with teaching practices as they evolve? And is the curriculum meeting our students needs and are we doing it with fidelity? So, it goes back to goal one there where you know that curriculum um and instruction piece ties back into that. So, got some a few other things in there, too. But I think that all ties in with that. It ties into our wind block um where now that we've uh using MTSS, we have the um dashboard. Now, we're going to actually be able to have time to work with kids in different settings and use that wind time more specifically and more focused. the instructional leadership time, the Wednesday mornings at the high school, and the wind block at the middle school are all going to be changed

221pretty dramatically with that time. So, it's all interconnected, I think. Keep going through these. These are goals. The next one, um, management and operations. Uh, this talks again, some of this is repetitive. It talks about managing expenditures and the Christian Hadley school um is an obvious one. The fiscally responsible agreements with five unions is another one. And then the budget book something I think I don't you know give our team enough credit for and I want to thank Dr. Rav and you know all the teams for putting this together. He puts the final book together but it's just a I don't see it everywhere. I've asked around for it. It's not something you walk into a town meeting and you get what you get before. There are some slides and things, but I think this

222budget book tells a good story. I think it uh a person that is not an educator can read it. We've got a lot of good feedback on it. So, I think I wanted to mention that. I think this year was with a lot of um um overrides and uh stress on budgets, stress on contract negotiations from those budgets. Again, all interconnected. Um everything costs money. um very proud of the fact that for five years now we've we've carried a successful budget um within our means and we're able to meet all of our um you know all of our asks as far as and I want to give the principles and our and our staff could too. I'm going to give you an example of principles. They were told to tighten their belts. That's all they

223heard this year. But we weren't going to sacrifice curriculum or staff people business. 80% of the budgets people we have made no cuts in five years. Again, very proud of that fact. And we even next year where it looks even tighter. That's our goal. And I think to give credit to our our teachers and our other unions, they heard that loud and clear, too. And I think they heard it through the last cycle. They're thinking ahead and they're saying, "Hey, we're going to be reasonable on our requests for anything that's cost us monetarily." Um, so that, you know, we keep all of our people. So I want to give our whole, you know, staff credit for understanding that through the budget process because we didn't get any unreasonable requests for financial asks where sometimes out

224there you hear these crazy thing. They were, you know, they were pretty rational. They were good. Um, so again, just very proud of that fact. I'm proud of them. Next one's family and community engagement. Um, we talked about this, I think, um, with some of the upcoming things we talked about tonight, we can do better at the survey piece. We haven't done a surveys in a while. I think we were survey saturated with the new building and COVID and all that, and then we've taken a year or so off, but now with the bullying work we're going to be doing, um, there'll be some opportunities for interviewing surveys there, including our students. That's a good opportunity. With the new enrollment plan, there'll be definitely some surveying going on there. I think just intertwined in what

225we're doing in the future and our goals, we'll be able to do that survey. It talks about that a little bit in here. And as you just reiterated, the new school enrollment plan with the timeline talks about that in here. Um, and even something as simple that we learned from the I learned from community audit about the um the Thursday thoughts um is that people weren't feeling my personality and it was a little dry and a little top and quite honestly that was my goal to be a little drier, a little more informationoriented. People were kind of bored with that now. We don't want that. So that was cool to to hear that. You don't get that unless you survey or ask people. So again, I'm excited for a new Thursday thoughts look. I know.

226Stay tuned. That's how that's gonna be an interesting one. my beach time this year, I'll be thinking about that and just how that could be awesome. So again, that's just little insights into how we can communicate better with our families and just by listening to them, but make it more interesting and make it more um of what they want and what they need. The last one is professional culture. One of my favorites. Um I think every foundation of any great school district, business, community, anything is is culture and it's the way you do things. I think it just continues to get stronger here. We gave I gave a lot of examples tonight. I think that we had a strong culture. I just want to give two more that were evidenced tonight in our presentations by

227our two principles. Um both made monumental changes in their schedules to accommodate the wind block to allow MTSS to work to allow um kids to get more help um into more acceleration and to meet their needs better. And in our contract, it says those schedule changes can't happen without without being impact bargaining. And we didn't even get there because of the way the principles so professionally handled their staff and knew their staff and worked with their staff and collaborated. They took trips to places. They met with them. It was all year long in intensive work. And that's why I want to share that with you because I'm so these cultures aren't built overnight. And those two principles worked on that. When the votes came out, they were both very nervous as a result because you

228don't know change is so hard. These are big changes. Mr. Pet changed major major changes to get to this. Things had to be sacrificed when you do that. And for the teachers, they had to take some sacrifice to see the bigger pictures. But they go both got their messages across. Um, both, by the way, uh, had votes by the, uh, by the membership and both passed overwhelmingly. Wasn't even close. I can remember talking to Mark before his vote. He was very nervous about it. He just didn't he didn't have a feel. He thought it was going well, but didn't want to get too overconfident. And it was last Friday. So, I'm like, I'm here going before the school committee. Go, I want to brag about you on Friday on Monday, so you better get this

229passed. and he had a they both had plan B's if not just would have been hard but I just want to give those as two stories or examples of concrete um ways in which our staff and our administrators are working together listening to each other um and doing things purposefully to get major changes and so this might go across to some people as Mr. P's presentation tonight was oh we've changed our you know our MS schedule to MST MTSS model or Mr. We're not just saying, "Oh, Wednesday's changed slightly." Those are monumental changes because change is hard. And to get those in the schedule, it's in a contract. Didn't even come to the negotiation table. And I give the teachers credit as well uh for supporting it. I saw a few at the um lacrosse

230game this weekend that I sitting with Mark. Couple came by and that's what they talked about. And that's really cool to me that hey, aren't you glad about that that passed that you know what was it? Mark said over 75 80%. And so they were like just excitement about it. So I think when we get excited about that, I think we're all excited about helping kids. That's the goal. So that's my two cents on culture. So I think we're moving in a good direction there. The coaching is on here too because I want to continue on that. I think we're one of the few school districts that um have tried that and want to continue that to help our teachers with coaching, but also we do that with our administrators. the MAS MSAA, the principal

231association has started a new program on coaching two years ago. We jumped right on it. It's probably one of the best things we've done. Uh the principles have tough jobs and when they get in crisis or deal with things, they have another voice to go to outside the person evaluating them. So, it's just another support. I included in your document the feedback that each of them had. Um I know it benefited me. I know Ryan's using it, benefiting from it. So, I just think it's something that uh we're proud of here. Again, one more thing I think we're doing to attract and keep the best people. So, I want to thank you all for that support. Then the last page on that one, I just wanted to note you could add also the collaborative time

232that you've all been able to carve out on PD days for teachers and that's something that that we've heard rave reviews about from them and that's another thing that really I think builds professional culture and speaks to the sharing of best practices. Yeah, great point. Just I think the collaborative time was something. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of this those contracts by the way. We could speak all night. We did an executive session for two hours, but they're just awesome. And well, I want to sh Well, I'm there because I want to again share this. I know I've got we're going three we're averaging three and a half hours now anyway. So, I might as well I'm just so happy. I think I've shared this in executive session with you, but I want the community

233to know because I think it's the end of the year. Everyone's tired, exhausted, you know, making their summer plans. It's an exciting time. Honor the Kates anyway. What's that? The only ones to honor the Kate anyway. Oh, okay. Kate, this is to you. Kate Square. With the Kate, there are generally. Well, I need a template just to email the union because it's it's two Kar. So, I always put K squared to make it shorter, but uh they've been wonderful. I think you know, but it's it's all our negotiating teams. I think they all were good. But the interested bargaining approach that we use, which is extremely rare in Massachusetts, hardly ever used. It's risky. You don't get a a good group of people on the table, it could go sideways just like anything else. But

234I just think uh both the administration, the school committee committing to that process, taking risks and being on that part of that, it's a lot more time, takes a little bit more time. But I think what's even more important in that contract is the trust built within that room that now permeates out into the district because at the last meeting, we all ran around and the facilitator asked, you know, honestly, how did this go? and to a person it was all extremely positive. The MTA rep who I have a lot of respect for um who you know who was a great negotiator and and a great rep for our union from the MTA and you don't always hear that. So as a superintendent I want to share that good news. Elise I throw her a

235shout out. Um she was excellent throughout the process. Um she got emotional in a positive way and just said how how this was the best one she's dealt with. She deals with a lot of that process. The facilitator also mimicked that by saying this was the best one and she does a lot of them. She's a former MTA rep as well. So, just a shout out to everybody that was part of that process, to our community and to our um negotiating team and to all of our teachers for, you know, they have to ratify this. So, they all got together and they ratified it. So, all all five and all six unions because our our six unions is working hard at this two and close will be there. No problem. I'm not worried about that.

236But those are those could be very contentious times when you're negotiating contracts. Um, we started out with a group statement. I think we should end with one just before I forget. Um, now that it's been approved probably whoever the officers were. I think it was maybe Nicole, Mr. Fick, maybe we can get together with Kate Squid and Ter and come up with a statement that it's over officially tonight. So, we'll do sounds good. I think I said enough closing statement is there for people to read. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Fantastic. All right. Thank you, Superintendent Burkehead. Anyone else? Uming the update and the goals comprehensive the data committee update first. Data committee update. Okay. Just do something quick. What? Do something quick. Oh, very quick. So, I don't know if you guys

237had a chance to see your email today. I'm sorry that I got to you all so late. Victoria and I didn't meet until Friday and then things got busy, but there were three things in it. Um, so we owe we said as a data set committee we were going to offer two resources by June. So, here we are um offering those. So, the first one was um what we are referring to as an assessment cheat sheet. So, we've talked about this before. Um this is like a mockup I guess um for MCCAST and uh there are three columns. It has kind of the basics of the assessment in the first column the types of data generated in the middle column and then the final column is examples of questions this can answer for us. And

238so what we are hoping to do is make these for some of the big assessments that you know the district is offering so that we as a team as a school committee team can approach those presentations with a baseline of knowledge about the assessment that will hopefully enable us to ask better questions and focus ourselves a bit. We also thought that within the examples of questions that these could answer for us, we could spend some time maybe at our retreat, bolding or italicizing the ones that we really want to focus on to keep ourselves focused on the things that we've already said are the things that really matter. Because honestly, Uncast, we could ask five million questions, but we shouldn't. We don't want to be asking five million questions. We want to be asking like

239four. And so this will help us to really narrow down a little um on right the things that are really mattering. So I think in terms of process what we'd like to do is in the summer continue to build a couple more of these out and then we want to definitely meet with someone like Ryan Lynch um to look at them and make sure specifically that specifically Ryan Lynch or or his designate. Let me put it that way. or he can designate someone but um to help us make sure that we are correct. So like you know obviously we're not going to just any old internet for this. We're going to good places but obviously we also want to make sure we're accurate before we disseminate these and start using them. Um so that was

240the first artifact. The second artifact we'd like to propose is the creation of data binders for us that these can be physical or in Google Drive. And you all can tell us what your preference is. So Carrie's going to pilot virtual. I'm going to pilot physical and the rest of the three of you. It's up to you what you want. But rationale behind these will be to keep key data at our fingertips so we can easily access and reference it throughout the year. This is because right now when we get presentations and even I was thinking back to the nice lovely one pager I think it was Mr. Lynch that made this of the district goals I was like what month was that? You know our only way to go back and find these things

241is to remember what month it was presented in and then within that which meeting and what is it called? And so this will be a place for us to keep these things front and center. Similarly, Bill's goals, we can just have them right there so that we are not then asking Bill things unrelated to the things he's already told us he's focusing on, and we have agreed that those are the things we want to focus on. So, it should help to narrow and keep everyone more on track. In addition to goals, we thought we could put some assessment data. This is where the assessment cheat sheets can live. Um, we thought we could put departmental presentations when they come. Um, we thought a highle budget summary because oftentimes, you know, we get those huge binders,

242but those are not going to be coming to all meetings, but it's nice to remember. Oh, yeah. One of the, you know, just maybe the summary pages at the front. Um, student student data. So, our enrollment, some of the bed data, um, calendar, district calendar, school meetings, school committee meetings. Janice already has them in her phone. And then we thought maybe at the back select policies as we are um reviewing them um just because again as we're trying to familiarize ourselves with a bit more our policy manual maybe there are some that we want to keep front and center maybe there there's other things maybe there's other things but those and recommend and Tom that we just would think that we would [Music] yeah you all can let us know if you want a physical

243copy or a virtual but we'll work on those for um next year. It just had the nice Google doc. I'm usually online person, but for some reason I feel like everyone gets what they want. I like that we get a choice. We don't have to decide now. Don't have to decide. Um and the last the last thing we talked about, do you want to talk about this or keep going? talking about um the written reflections for for Bill. Oh, I just closed it. So, we so we had also talked about for Bill because we again felt like we didn't have enough time to look at what you had given us today. We thought we could do what we've done in the past and just a very simple template. We could collect notes from the group

244on progress thus far and what's still developing um from everybody. Everyone kind of a chance to write stuff down. Carrie and I can compile it and then share it back. And this is in replace of the desi template. No, this is just the onyear since we're in the mid year. We don't do a formal evaluation. So that and we're the goal is brevity. Yeah. But maybe like to give Bill a little bit better than what we were able to do tonight, which I feel like even I was like not making sense. So just to progress developing and then we'll have a line for other if you have other feedback that doesn't fit in those two categories. And then Maria and I will gather it up and then send send. I haven't made We haven't made

245the temple yet, but we will make it. Yeah. And we will send it to you. Pretty easy. It's going to be Yeah. So, keep it simple, please. All right. Three boxes. Three boxes. Sounds good. Yeah, that's it. I was thinking, is it helpful if anyone else has the binders? You don't have to. Whoever would like a binder may have a binder. Anyone else want a binder? I was thinking just you all let us know. Um but yeah, I just was thinking a handy binder. I agree. But I'm just you know, we wanted like the set goals like just have them all in one place so that we're not wrestling around and trying to remember what everyone said they're focusing on. It's a lot of information to hold obviously, you know, keep us focused. Sounds good.

246Quick on the fantastic. Okay. Um All right. So kind of piggybacking off of that. Um so those were that was goal one data. So you check check check it would appear. So um so we can we'll start working on our 25 26 goals at our retreat. I think we took a big step forward with our goals this year but I think we still have room for improvement. Yeah. And I would also think we moved them. We can also take a look at our operating protocols. I did attempt attend the silly I don't say attended the recording but doesn't make any sense. I listened to the recording of the mask chair chat that took place last week and we were talking about operating protocols and sort of the best practice to review those annually or every

247other year or so. And Peter and I put a decent amount of work into those operating protocols um a couple years ago, maybe three now. Yeah. Um, so that might be something to put on our review list, too. Um, I'm interested to think about our communication goal, maybe in relation to some of the communication work that the district was doing as we tried to, you know, piggy back on the, um, town update in part because it was one of the only channels at our disposal. Um, you're talking about our pride in our schools goal. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's worked. I think it's worked. I support it. I think we should continue it. I would love to know what everyone else thinks. Um, yeah, but I also wonder if there's other opportunities if we are

248as a district. We think I mean we kept it pretty light. I would I would I would I mean we did we kept it pretty light. Our benchmarks were by December we identified two mechanisms for developing and sharing points of pride in our schools. um you know we a to begin sharing out by January and continue monthly through June and we really kind of tied it in through those updates. So and then we sort of left it pretty open-ended that we would reevaluate this strategy. It was sort of a starting off point to do this. So maybe that is sort of just where we piggy back off of what's come of that report and work with Bill on what that looks like going forward. Um we also had our DEI goal number two here. Again,

249Bill mentioned the equity audit and the district goals there using that um tool and system to track progress toward that goal outlined through the equity audit and district goals. Um, again, maybe something that we need to revisit this summer, sort of looking at next steps in the district's um approach to DEI and sort of what happens there, what that work looks like. I think you can also use that as a springboard to think about that bullying stuff. Yep, that was exactly my thoughts. Uh, and lastly, again, pushing how to leave school marching forward with that going. Yeah, I think the DEI stuff we I feel like we've lost track of a little bit. And if you read the research, they're sort of stages that organizations go through to show progress. And I don't know that

250we're quite at the stage, but there's a heroes and holidays stage. And I think people do like the events that we have. And I would like to see us progress. I mean the final the banks thinking of banks his like six stages that you go through. And so I just think it'd be nice to think about those kinds of frameworks and sort of like how are we what's our goal like what is the central office goal around that and like what is just sort of like what does that look like to move from heroes and holidays to you know some of the deeper. Yeah. I mean, I think integration is the final where it's like seeped into everything. Um, that it's not just a sort of extra anymore. Um, so just sort of I'd love

251to do some work around what could be a progression in our work. So, yeah, something to think about. Sure. Sounds good to me. I can't think of the other woman who does that work. It's Thanks. And then there's a woman I'll think of it. And then we have some room and opportunity for some new goal setting over the summer as well since some of these we can sort of take off of our main list and they'll be sort of secondary looks like here too. Sounds good. Um we have some minutes from June 2nd to vote. I make a motion that the school committee vote to approve the June 2nd 2025 minute. It's too time. I heard you tonight. 2025 minutes. Second. Okay. All in favor? I um no warrants for tonight that I saw on

252the back or anything. Okay. Um no correspondences or anything. Uh any other business future agenda items I think we covered pretty clearly tonight. All right. Um nothing else. I will take a motion for adjourning. Motion to return 9:30. Second. All in favor?