001all right miss bernalillo that meeting is yours have a good meeting thank you 609. yes thank you everyone uh the situation school committee is committed to providing an environment of respect during meetings we ask that all members 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 uh in response to governor baker's declaration of a public health emergency and the related emergency executive order david march 12 2020 town of situated public phoenix shall sleep remotely until further notice this meeting will be recorded and will be posted following needed public comment will be available by
002zoom community members can also email and bring me at 6.org questions um as last meeting and will be on a standard protocol i do have our public comment policy up at the desk and all right so we will start with public comment tonight i will try to toggle as best that i can between soon participants and in person so if anybody would like to start our meeting off the public comments and come to the chair and state your name and address our school affiliation please absolutely my name is patricia weight 695 one can say i have no affiliation because i have no children in school or that my affiliation is with all the schools to say that i support all the parents who are talking about small class lives because i feel it's very very
003important secondly at the second board school board meeting at the last school board meeting each every school's leader presented their future the first is one from multiple source assignment the sample about vocabulary was to talk about gender sexuality these would be answers to multiple translations tragedy asexual cisgender gender care heterosexism gender expression gender identity intersex transsexual or transgender the second item is the gender breakthrough which is a tiki teaching tool breaking the funds every concept of gender benefits given his visual similarity to the gingerbread man i would assume this is designed for younger children from a generated person you learn among other things that sex is assigned at first that there are a lot of options for sexual attraction and direction between women and more feminine and working out people when students leave our schools
004they will follow many past careers not all went into blend in the business world but as a former executive the largest tech companies in the world here is what we look for in confidence problem solving ability excellent communication including direct member and great technical skills none of the strong things in math and science thank you i do just want to remind everyone during public comment that um and we should be making sure that agenda it pertains to anything within the purview would spoke with the school committee and to uh that we will adhere to our policy of three minutes for electronic anybody else related to this my daughter by the way she just graduated from such a good experience um kate 12. overall she got a lot out of it but i'm just going to
005mention this one thing that happened it was refreshing and it's related to this the school made it very difficult there was a speaker coming in in health education health slash sex education class and it was a speaker coming in to talk about gender identity and the school made it very difficult we wanted we didn't want aaron in that class in front of that speaker that day okay we were told we would have to come and dismiss erin and then bring her back and i thought that was extremely unfair because parents work okay and this is where the school needs to be held accountable in my day if the teacher wasn't there or something went on and my dad was a principal here in this system for 27 years it send the kids to the library
006what's the study the school did was not accommodate to make me i work out of town come dismiss my youngster for an hour and then bring them back you're it's teeing them out to forcing them to listen to some of this gender gender identity stuff that i really don't think should be part of the school and the education anyway and i think that needs to be changed i should not have to come in and dismiss my youngster okay if i don't want the youngster that day to hear this outside speaker coming in to and i googled that outside speaker and i did not like what i read about that and i'd like to know as the superintendent what the paul current policy is with regards to this right now [Applause] does public comment not public
007q a for the policy okay you can always email support or myself or anybody with questions you might have okay so i'm letting you know the two of you i i don't know you carry but i'm letting the two of you know that that's a big concern i pay a lot of tax dollars here thank you and miss brandolini we do have a hand raised uh virtually if you would like to take that all right yep here we go uh charlotte you can just identify as your name addressing or school you work later with thank you charlotte cody kent street and i'm affiliated with scituate high school i um i was considering speaking last school committee meeting but i wanted to talk to the high school administration and get some um this isn't a qana
008in that and speaking with them i should be able to get some answers i attempted to attend the caregiver coffee on june 17th at 9 00 a.m and was not permitted i made every effort to attend with parents not permitted i was able to get an audience with two of the administrators and asked my questions which were related to this year's graduation i had concerns about previous graduations um let's say 2020 in 2021. prior to that i had i i i didn't have an issue um but the previous graduations what i had seen that concerned me was gender inequality in this the graduate speakers in the at the graduation um and i don't think there's any place for that in a um in a co-ed you know pretty much 50 50 um graduating class um
009and and if the idea was to combat prior gender inequality i don't i don't think that's the answer the way you combat inequality gender racial or otherwise is your best effort at equality so that was my concern of previous graduating graduations i had viewed via video so this year again i i viewed this year's graduation via video and i was extremely even it was even more concerning now i would say i didn't view the same gender inequality in the graduating speakers but what i saw was extremely concerning um i saw two of the administrators pulled two tables apart and in the middle of them was a yellow line on the um football field and the graduates were handing the principal uh yellow ping-pong balls and the yellow ping pong balls were going on to the
010field um and and clearly there's some sort of significance with that i i did ask the administrators who i spoke with um and they that i it wasn't really an acceptable ex response it was something about tick-tock and um there's got to be a significance to it and and um and they also claimed it wasn't ping pong balls which i think was a blatant lie because i saw the principal take her foot and roll one of the balls from the um from the floor that she was standing onto the field so in that audience i had two administrators and i was getting i was getting fraudulent information from them regarding what was being handed i believe um i'm just going to ask you to uh wrap it up if you put kind of final if
011a final statement in terms of that i do i think that you're right it was like we led there were rubber duckies that the kids did a senior kind of almost like senior funding kind of a prank thing with i don't know that there was any further personally i don't know if there were any okay my point is graduation is about the graduates and not really about making a point um that may or not may or may not be relevant but what i do see in the administration is a power struggle um and i could see it in that you know when i spoke to them i can see it in documentation i have um and i i can tell you that all three of the administrators have have uh been inappropriate in front of
012me and my children and i could tell you stories that we just you know addressed thank you any other public comments or wanna as a matter i would like to mention it's very concerning because my family is part of the first responder community it was brought to my attention that the ddi director mr adams has made a video titled who shot you which was posted under grindhouse recording in the video mr adams was a t-shirt with the word equality on it however his words and feelings for law enforcement are quite the contrary some quotes from the video praying every day not to get shot imagine every blue uniform you see gives you flashbacks getting shot are you tired of this imagine i'm actually tired of getting charlotte our children are easily influenced at their belief
013they need to know that they can trust first responders and law enforcement i would like to know the protocol for children who are chosen to partake on dei committees or any other community my third grade daughter was chosen from her class and taken out of her class moved to a smaller group of kids to meet with the ddi director this was done without my permission with all my knowledge again because of the video made by the dei director i have concerns especially because we are a law enforcement family transparency is key hi i'm natalie wagner 457 country way and i have two at cushion okay so two weeks ago i attended school committee and i was very glad to hear that the confirmed goal of the administration and the school staff was to ensure that
014all students feel seen and feel safe in the situated public school system i want to urge this committee to consider to take that commitment a step further by confirming their safety from retaliation and harm by issuing a new statement one in support of critical thinking and any on any and all issues as well as the free speech to express those ideas that they may research discover and invent allow these students to feel the enrichments of a free thinking community they're afforded by hard-won heritage and this uniquely special country adopt a free speech statement for scituate public school system community members don't let our kids grow up in a vacuum chain that's all anymore any handsomer um the contract i believe it was six years ago or nine years ago um if rich hebrew sent me
015a copy of contract he wasn't on that bargaining team who from the school committee was on the teachers association this time myself okay well i communicated to peter um the last time my displeasure the fact that the teacher's contract they removed after school it's a mandate that teachers for years here had to stay 20 minutes or a half an hour after school and whoever was on that bargaining committee gave that up in exchange and they change the words to as needed okay i just want to communicate that i don't think that's work he has needed my daughter in the seventh grade had problems scheduling after school times with her math teacher she had a very good math teacher she didn't want to you know not have that teacher the teacher was very good but he
016had commitments after school and i i think the staff the principals should step in and that youngster needs help and needs it after school because erin was told that she would have to either give up her lunch or do it during music time there and play the flu so that wasn't an option and if you saw erin she spin as a red you know we weren't going to give up lunch it was a 20 minute 22 minute lunch okay and aaron was a morning person so um ryan lynch was the principal at the time of the middle school and i went to ryan and ryan basically said to me well i can't make the teacher stay after school and i'm letting you know the board here know that in the future i think the committee
017needs to rethink that re rethink that and i noticed during coving and it's not a good look for the scituate school system i'm a graduate of situ okay i sent all my kids to situ i didn't send them to you know notre dame or whatever and my father was in this system and i still believe it's it's a good system and i wouldn't have sent them there if i didn't think so but i like to fight from men i don't i don't want a bad mouth situate and then put my kids out and take them somewhere else i want to fight from within and that's why i'm here but i think we need to rethink during poverty i know things were different okay but i see staff members cutting me off when i'm picking up
018my kids okay and they're leaving before the buses leave that's not a good look for the superintendent of the schools here and i don't know i totally understand and you know i will say that we had a really great negotiation process with the fda peter and i felt like it's been you know wonderful and i um i think we can kind of uh answer some of your questions more about that for sure right yeah i just and i know it doesn't happen but it's going to happen to some other kids okay and i don't feel as though they should have to give up music or or lunch in order for a simple thing that we can you know take care of thank you thank you so uh business we have our um 2022-23 meeting dates
019in their backup package computer did um okay nobody had any questions or changes i will entertain a motion on our 2024 entertain a motion to improve the 2022 non-union personnel contract again yeah motion to approve sorry motion to approve the non-union personnel contracts for 2022 seconds all in favor okay get our situated teachers association memorize them from understanding make a motion to approve the memorandum of understanding as presented favor and have a motion for the different teachers association memory memorandum understanding motion to approve the memorandum of understanding as presented a second i am a favor hi all right uh scituate teachers association 2022-2045 contract okay so we started um negotiating a couple months ago a new process called interest-based targeting that's a process where administration sits down with teacher representatives and representatives and talks about
020the issues mediator present both attorneys are present and it's more of a conversation back and forth hardline we get to the bottom a lot of issues it takes a little longer and certainly did i think probably the i think this will probably be the united states the um best negotiations that i have some really hard-working dedicated teachers the contract once approved as a three-year contract i wanted to modify and sign and agreed upon shared more details with the community i think there's a lot of links here a lot of good discussion and i think this will move our district forward very positively so i recommend to the community and vote to approve the contract between the state i would agree as i said discussions student child first from every angle possible administration committee and union
021leadership it was a very good process for peterborough i will make a motion to approve the 2022-2025 situate teacher contract as presented second okay all this paper bye leadership reports so okay all right so the first thing i'm going to do is jenkins and cushing principal search yeah i can thank all those that are involved hiring committee which is a representative from both schools and pushing jenkins community professionals great representation and we had a really good strong interest in scituate the committee came out of that crystal grand accident assistant superintendent just confirming that process he came forward to me with um two exceptional candidates that rose to the top we moved on last friday on the 17th the central office team interviewed them and confirmed that experienced highly qualified event profile that nearly had put
022following week last week on wednesday june 22nd both candidates visited both schools and then met with me expensively and had follow-up conversations and at this time the agreement with contracts that he voted on um tomorrow as a timeline update tomorrow there'll be a press release going on to both communities in our community at large introducing the principles at this time um thank you everybody we're extremely excited i think it's a great time for scituate and these two these two candidates are only applying you they wanted to come in they want to be their experience in the fits for each of the schools that i think are just wonderful so i can't wait for them to meet them and get that information next more good news the msba process new building adelie project electrician project built
023we advertise requests for services which are called rfs's for what's called an owner project manager and there were seven responses which helped me speak is a good number these are the representatives that will represent us the whole process based between the architecture designer running the processing feasibility study all that i think um springboard on that meeting to do that the responses we got were evaluated uh selection committee on june 16th using predetermined criteria which were then aggregated the top three were identified and were interviewed this past thursday 45 minutes to an hour each we again evaluated the interviews recorded them and identified a one two third choice i will say there's a line vote no publications and came out the building a few buildings in the community building in town among others very good reputation
024references were certainly checked now the negotiation process begins dr dutch will be working on that with me and we'll be posted on the update on that i also want to thank uh john burwood who's our community representative representative construction fabulous kevin kelly from the town side was involved dr nash and i we're on that community so thank you all and again we're going to be excited to give out more details once the emotions more good news some of the capital money that we've been sitting on for several years is being utilized the frozen boys locker room in the high school demolition has begun it's been a long ways three-phase project it's very comprehensive it's going to bring that program new life the goal is to have that uh new girls and boys locked in phase
025one done by the end of the summer the kids come in a beautiful new place to go phases two and three we'll be giving out more details of that team rooms and things like that basically renovating the whole physical education ethnic environment indoor conference we're currently working on all the tech looking at the portico in the parking lot trying to um we've got a person bidding on that we're working with that company if you will to try to get that work done a lot of exciting things on the capitol have been kind of doing there for a while and we're you know thanks to dr dutch baltimore town partners for getting those things rolling i also want to give a shout out as we end the year bringing back a lot of fun traditions that
026we hadn't been able to have with field day being one of them my first full experience at the scituate to see different field days just a real community effort with ptos really rallying and organizing those things with other parents and teachers administrators um this year we personally sent out an invite to uh thompson to ask the central police to come and they could and they showed up in droves volunteering and working alongside our parents from our parents as you know it's a lot of fun and a really good time it's something that just nice to see kids and the adults the whole community kind of rounding around having fun a lot of smiling faces very active community service class invited me down parents were there as well it's a class where the kids really pick
027a topic that's of interest to them they work in small groups and they kind of solve that problem as opposed to the eighth grade civics budget we have so i like the class i just want to thank the kids i was thoroughly impressed most were 10th graders and so you just write it for us and i can't wait to see those projects coming the last piece of information i wanted to share was a follow-up overall where critical race was brought up and on several occasions throughout the year there have been allegations that our school district teaches critical race theory crt at our last school community meeting and the first time in my 27 years career as a teacher or administrator i was pointed at and called a liar i take this personally because my integrity
028as your superintendent is paramount building trusting relationships students staff families caregivers in our community i was accused of making a statement at the seaside chat that central public schools do not teach the parade a worksheet was left as evidence that we will address later i stayed here tonight we do not teach critical race theory in central public schools stand by my word in my arm i will not be intimidated or distracted from the great work we are doing as a situated school family community unifying each other as a school district we have committed to a collaborative and inclusive school culture that values diversity recognizes the contributions and uniqueness of each learner through love inclusion and trust we strive to instill a deep sense of appreciation and respect for diversity within our schools and create a
029sense of belonging for all a home away from home we know the school community supports this as evidence through our recent thought exchange survey where a top unifying theme ranked number 21 out of 1647 rates stated this this was a person taking this exchange that put this up here it was voted number 21 as a unifying theme so the numbers don't lie we should contribute to quote we should contribute continue to promote community acceptance for all in a safe harbor in which all students feel comfortable to learn and vote acceptance on all fronts race creed lgbtq plus developmentally those with special needs can only lead to happiness and success among all students end quote it's important that we work together starting with the common goal of doing what's best for each and every one of
030our students if you and it was also there was some concern about where to go to get questions answered talk about license because public comment it's not a q a it's not ideal we're having these conversations we just wanted to clarify that any questions or concerns solutions or even compliments you may have um you may address them at your building level first encourage that whether it's appropriate for a teacher or principal or a staff member if not then central office one of our staff will be happy to respond um and then if you're not satisfied the school committee's job is to oversee my performance so my performance my answer is certainly to go to school over the summer our leadership team is going to take this on as a priority communication how can we communicate
031better how can we also talk about what's the best way for our community to communicate concerns questions thoughts and arguments so those are all things that i think are important i want to end with a document that was put out by the south online mass association of school superintendents a member of this and i saw close to 300 of our superintendents across the streets our members of the association they came up with a position statement on k-12 curriculum race theory which is in line with our own beliefs and values across our commonwealth the issue of critical race theory has been discussed debated and questioned critical race theory has become the new quote unquote challenge in education threatening to distract and derail racial equity diversity and inclusion work that is fundamental to strengthening and improving the
032future of our public schools for all students and families across our state in the following position statement massachusetts association of school superintendents seeks to clarify what crt is and what it isn't we seek to state definitely what we actually do teach and why we teach them why we teach it ultimately mness seeks through this position statement to open a broader conversation with all around race equity diversity and inclusion what is critical race theory and do we teach it simple answer is no do not teach preparation rickle race theory is a analytical framework process it had its beginnings in the 1970s it is used in higher education to examine structures in society it is not a curriculum pre-k to 12 we do not teach in massachusetts rather we teach the mass curriculum frameworks for history and
033social science but there's a more complex answer to this question it involves the character of who we are as a society who we want to be what do we teach we teach the mass curriculum frameworks for history and social science since the groundbreaking 1993 education reform act the authorized in 2010 curriculum standards have been required in all of the major academic areas including history and social science periodically in 1993 each of these frameworks have been reviewed improved reauthorized massachusetts history history and social science frameworks were last reviewed and approved in 2018. the mass curriculum frameworks provide clear expectations for student learning at each grade level for content skills and competencies concepts of racism discrimination oppression societal biases of all races and groups are historical facts as well as concepts that are included in our teaching
034of these frameworks any allegation that teaching these historical facts and concepts constitute teaching crt is inaccurate why do we teach what we do massachusetts law requires public schools to teach students the history of the united states including the constitution the bill of rights the declaration of independence and the federalist declaration asserts that all men are created equal and democracy values equally all the people measuring the gap between principle and practice is part of the study of history public schools were created in massachusetts as early as 1642. we have modified our methods a bit but still strive to provide students with tools to learn how to think analyze facts to conclude we reiterate we do not teach crt but you do have a fundamental moral responsibility to teach history and social science and in all its
035truth the pleasant and the unpleasant sign the massachusetts association of school superintendents i'd like to just finish up with asking miss crystal to come up and just address a document that was left for public record last time um so last time we met um it was presented to us that it was a lesson plan that was used in our students um and it's left here for us to look at it we chose so of course we want to look at it and examine it um it is not exactly a lesson plan it looks like it might be worksheet and i reached out to the individual who provided this to us to get some context as to what classroom which child felt uncomfortable the story for how this was excluded as a student and when i
036reached out to the individual that information was not available it was said that it was in a civics class at first and then it was a health class we know we don't have the information that this was used in any of our classrooms when and again it is definitely not a lesson plan um but if anybody would like to share um any specific experience like i think we've heard from today um that are relevant and happening please reach out to your principal please reach out to us we definitely want to know what happens how kids feel stuff to make sure that this is a place where everyone is welcome including um thank you okay thank you for following him no problem i will say uh thank you again miss janice for following up i support
037your plan of superintendent market to increase the clarifying uh communications in the community that's very important um you know i i i've been tonight i've saw the gender example i've made that one come up a few times i think it was clarified on certain levels but if you need to clarify it the community meeting in this way that's that's okay um as long as we get clarification i support your goal doing what is best for all children as well as you know effective and respectfully adhering to the chain of the fans as you mentioned that's important i know when you get when a parent gets upset about something or extremely concerned you know want to get guest parent obviously i want my answers you know as well and it is important that we go to
038the you know try to put a teacher first and then kind of follow the process that's really important um yeah and i'll just end with a compliment to um mr jamil adams marcavius barnes and all who participated in the uh and attended the juneteenth celebration it was full of inspiring energy um and i just want to thank all teachers and staff we cannot let the day go by without noting this lasting school so thank you all teachers staff parents everybody who made this year successful it's been nice to see things like field trips field days the superintendent broke invention plays performances dynamic learning environments children thriving you know hugs i will say as a counselor one of the more interesting pieces of the year was for the enemy i should say was the fact that
039even my own kids and kids at work everybody was so upset and crying and it you know it's because we formed these relationships this year that we were unable to perform in the previous two years because of you know coped and math so i think that speaks to the just wonderful relationships that students have learned from teachers administrators school building personnel um paraprofessionals folks in the lunchroom you know bus drivers everybody in the whole system i just think um it's really so nice to see the wonderful bonds that have formed between our children and yourselves and we thank you for uh making this school um one that ended bittersweet in my opinion so thank you um that being said forward yes i just wanted to um have actually what superintendent had said um and more
040importantly the association that we teach what the state tells us to teach so i know people get upset for some things that their students might be learning in class but we don't have anything to do with curriculum it's we're following the state frameworks so you know there's a framework that you disagree with it's you know take it to the destiny if there's something that in addition let's have a conversation if you're concerned about something happening in class let's reach out to that school that's the best way um leadership report part b okay i'm going to invite a baby gregory um what we are sharing tonight is the result of a ton of work that teachers and administrators and meghan have done this year to bring to provision something this district i think hasn't been for
041a very long time um we piloted research piloted and selected um common ela materials for our k through five classrooms and megan's going to share with you the very independent process um i want to thank megan and our highland teachers and our principals and everybody who's involved um and i'm going to let them take it away but first i think we should sure i'm yeah thank you so much for having me tonight i'm thrilled to be here to share all of the work that um a huge group of teachers really pour their hearts into over the last few months um thinking about moving forward with our healing curriculum so this is really exciting um we started our curriculum review um at the beginning of the year thinking about our strengths and needs in our ela
042curriculum in scituate we wanted to make sure that we were building on our strengths and we identified our one of our strengths as our came to foundational skills instruction this year we adopted foundations for phonics instruction for our two learners um and the gaps that we saw as a result of coping over the last two years i'm really excited to share that data is coming in and we're closing those gaps you know we have effectively closed the gaps that we saw at the end of last year so these are things that we want to continue with our teachers have embraced this explicit phonics instruction really really exciting basically we want to continue with the strength that you want to build upon another strength is writing instruction across across the grade levels we put a lot
043of thinking into this we want to make sure again building upon that strength the writing construction happening in classrooms um and the third part is that we're using assessment to drive target construction during midtime but we're really looking carefully in data meetings and targeting what each individual student needs and forming groups to target those individuals we have some needs that came out of this assessment we noted that we need some intentional tech sets that build knowledge for kids so that kids are reading multiple texts about the same topic so that they get a depth of knowledge in their reading we need some connected reading and writing materials and tasks so that reading and writing aren't separate um uh functions but that we're connecting them and showing the bridge between them because they're reciprocal processes and
044then we'd like some common like common texts across grade levels so common experiences for our students at each grade level so starting with this strengths that we want to build upon and the needs that we're looking to fill we started our curriculum review process by looking at jessie has curated ratings they've rated um ela curriculum and we only looked at um curriculum that were highly rated from desi so we knew right away the pool that we were looking for were all high quality curriculum we reached out to reps from those programs to get samples and quotes and we narrowed them down to three programs that fit our needs in scituate we sent out a request for pilot teachers um to all three to five teachers for teachers who would be interested in piloting um to
045look at what these programs would look like in a classroom and the pilot teachers were selected to represent a range of schools grades as well as job roles we had special educators literacy specialists and classroom teachers after that we sent a survey out to all k-5 teachers for input on priority constituents we know that we were looking at high quality programs we wanted to find the program that was the right fit for scituate um that teacher input was used to create a pilot pilot rubric that was specific to us in situations these are the things that we're looking for here in the ela program we wanted to make sure that reading and writing were integrated we wanted to make sure that there was differentiation for all of our learners for our striving readers and for
046our readers who need to be pushed to be enriched we wanted to make sure that they um kids were engaged and there was cultural responsiveness of what we were reading that kids can see themselves and see the broader world and what they're reading we wanted to make sure that there was foundational skills instruction support to build on what's going so well for us that materials and technology were usable and that the unit lesson designs um were accessible and that they were something that we could easily fit into our schedule so there are 24 teachers which i just really want to take a minute to thank the incredible educators who really spent hours and hours of their time in an already difficult year coming back from home helping kids fill in those gaps we have such
047dedicated and talented teachers in scituate that gave um so much of their time and talent and expertise to dive into these programs um and give us their feedback on what they saw um so that we had a we were able to make a really informed decision as you can see there were teachers across all four schools across every grade level there were literacy specialists and special educators so we have a lot of lenses from which to um uh look at each of these programs that we piloted which was really exciting um so for each of the three programs we piloted my view wonders and bitcoin one classroom from each school reviewed the teacher and student materials and they piloted one unit so in one classroom there were at least two teachers who were piloting that
048either a special educator or a literacy specialist along with the classroom teachers so we really had a lot of eyes on the materials each pilot teacher received all the materials to teach one unit from one program they attended a 90-minute overview training from the company this program that they piloted they worked collaboratively with that one other educator in some cases there were two to implement that pilot unit all the students in their classroom and then that group met on may 19th on an early police to discuss the pros and cons of each program and again i just kind of want to talk about this amazing pilot teachers this was one of the most collaborative discussions i've ever had really people sought to understand more about all of the options that there were and really working
049together to make sure we found the best program courses which was super exciting um we asked students for feedback student work what came out of this and then each of these teachers filled out the pilot report that i showed you before based on their experience so we had a lot of data from these teachers so this is the pilot teacher feedback um rated in thirds from the bottom third is low rated the middle third is rated average the top third is highly rated so as you can see two of these programs had mostly highly rated components from our rubric the difference between that you'll notice between my wisdom was in differentiation that in my pilot teachers saw that we were able to support our struggling readers as along with kind of push our accelerated readers
050and there weren't as many opportunities for that in the wooden wisdom program we also reviewed for bias using a standardized tool to make sure that there were there was diversity and representation perspectives we want to make sure that our kids have windows and mirrors and what they're reading um that they can see themselves that they can see others so um this was the culturally responsive english language arts curriculum scorecard steinhardt and nyu puts this out all three companies had filled this out for their their programs and so this just shows you all three of these programs really had a broad um perspective of characters so this this focused on for the characters in each of these programs you know it's a little hard to see from um from far away but as you can see
051from the um the myriad of colors on the pie chart um we were really we were able to um have diverse perspectives of characters from different backgrounds which was exciting from all three of these programs we also dug a little bit deeper into that curate um system that desi uses to find um feedback from massachusetts educators who use these programs so for each of these programs there was some um information in for my view it showed that the selections in grades three to five had a more diverse range of topics than the characters invaded two there was some concern in the upper grades historical events were not considered from multiple perspectives for wisdom high quality texts across cultures and perspective perspectives with a little gap in the grade four texts and um for wonders that
052the texts cater to appeared to be stereotypical depicting diverse cultures um while three to five represented diverse characters but again limited uh perspectives um for social studies for um social science selections so we really wanted to make sure we were gathering all the information we put from all the sources across different sources um all educators all k-5 educators attended an early release professional session in the jenkins gym on our early release on may 19th to review the materials from each of the programs but also talk to the program reps who were there and talked to our pilot teachers our pilot teachers were a wealth of information and it was great that our all educators had a chance to look at the materials and then ask questions from the teachers who knew those materials really really
053well um each of those educators provided anonymous open feedback about the program so we really took this into account too because it's important to think about um you know broadening our perspective this is a snapshot i'm not going to read what all of these are um people felt that um my view was aging student friendly um there were intervention materials for struggling learners the writing mirrors um the writing workshop that we're using um there was um uh notes on the online tests here's what kids are expected to do on mcas um people with with wisdom like the use of trade books the embedded reading and challenging writing um some uh feedback was the workbooks weren't as engaging and it wasn't user friendly there were a lot of a lot of feedback with wisdom through the
054lines new foundations which is an important piece for us wonders there was feedback that it was reminiscent of a more traditional way of teaching it felt like an old-fashioned basil series kind of taking a step backwards there were there was also feedback developmentally appropriately engaging so we kind of took all of this um into account when we looked at this data we asked kids um which was my favorite part kids who were in pilot um classrooms from all three um programs all said wow that was a lot of work i had to do a lot of writing and we said wonderful we are so so we're definitely thinking about um uh we're having kids read complex texts and do some complex writing texts so raising the bar for you know what we're expecting of kids
055we were psyched to hear that some kids said that was a lot but they had some great feedback also we had a kid who said historical fiction was just fast but it helped him see that you're taking real characters and putting them into a situation that could have happened um so the student feedback was great and we really took a look at student work too what did kids writing look like as a result of this what did his critical thinking look like as a result of um you know the reading and discussions that the kids were having so this was a really important part for us um there was a parent advisory committee which ms branolini was kind enough to join we had a member from each school's parent council there as well and the
056feedback from the parent advisory committee was that it's critical that we have differentiation for all learners that they're engaging in relevant topics that we're instilling the love of reading which is something that we're doing so well um in our class in our classrooms we want to continue with that we are teaching comprehension from the earliest years and that there's a quality virtual component but it's balanced with quality books that we're not um too focused on the um the online piece but we're making sure that kids have that opportunity to kind of toggle between both um and that we're focusing on teaching skills and not just teaching today so i really appreciate the feedback from this parent advisory committee also lots and lots of really great discussions about what our kids need um taking a look
057at our cost negotiations this is these are the five uh the three um pilot programs kind of taking you from the quote for given at the beginning at the top all the way down to the negotiated quote at the bottom so the quotes in bold black areas sorry about that um are what um situate public schools would be paying in red is the total cost and in green are um the free materials that we've been getting so as you can see negotiations for my view we started at 577 000 negotiated down to 354 with almost 400 000 dollars worth of products material the same wisdom 407 to 373 without 260 000 worth of um product material so really working with the um each of these companies to make sure that teachers will have we were
058making sure we were being basically responsible for our budget as well for all of these what's included all teacher and student materials for all of these quotes student consumables for six years uh we will not be paying for workbooks or anything that needs to be um purchased yearly so this is one of the one-time upfront costs for the six-year life of the adoption online platform access for students and teachers for six years in pd i kind of um show what pd looks like for each of those three we wanted to make sure we know that uh program adoption is only as strong as the professional development that they put behind it so each of the programs has a little bit of a different um approach to what that looks like but each of them is
059very robust we want to make sure that teachers have all of the knowledge and materials that they need to really be successful with their students so based on all of this our recommendation is to go with um the saabas my view for the high quality diverse complex texts there's differentiation for all of our learners and that was kind of where that one discrepancy was and we noticed that with the other highly rated program with wisdom there weren't built in interventions for our striving leaders and we really want to make sure we're meeting all of our students and helping all of our students move forward there are structures that build upon our strengths and that fill in our gaps the materials are engaging for our students it was the most highly rated by our pilot teachers
060and our pilot teachers have really the experts they learned so much about programs we were really excited to be able to have conversations with them so that's our recommendation i'm happy to answer any questions thank you so much i already asked her 600 questions um so we expected to vote on this shoot oh oh okay it was not even oh i do have one question about the feedback because if you sit there you said it was anonymous feedback was that given to the companies but it was given to us okay and so was any information any of the um any of the feedback you got passed on to the company's providing we have not we have not shared um the surveys with the company um i haven't shared i was just curious you know um
061i i've actually i'd like to remember um megan gregory our humanities curriculum coordinator pre-k five this process was a super speed typically that would this process would take a year or two um it was such a great need for us to have planned materials at all for elementary schools that megan did a spectacular job got a little chart negotiations for example um that was something that is not typically or hasn't been done and i don't know how long in this district and megan um did it like a pro and that little chart cannot represent how many hours she personally took into communicating with each of those companies typically we wouldn't say to a company hey here's what we love about it because then there's a hundred thousand dollars and graphs into it so what she
062did this whole time was worked with all three companies to make sure we got the most amount of free materials to go with each program um and um made sure that she was still managing that pilot process and communication with teachers and principals so that's again a snapshot um for everybody but a deep dive from highly teachers and i know this feels like a long presentation but it's been going on all year i remember hearing about like three different readings i hope every parent in scituate and our community members are going to either watch this later or watching now because to me this is really opening up the process and showing us as a community that we're not just selecting these things out of the air that you've started i love the path that you
063showed that it was first coming from desi and then you had a process that with your expertise group so i think it's just the presentation alone is such a nice education for our community so thank you so much for bringing that to us um i also want to attest to the notion that you talked about the how the fundations is closing the gap because i have two twins that are benefiting directly from that so i want to thank you personally for that which is great um the one question i had was kind of a curiosity totally understand the evaluation love all the data makes a lot of sense obviously you know no company can be all things to all all students teachers and classes so for example the pie chart um certainly seems to cover
064diversity in race and ethnicity right what i wonder is you know what are you thinking about in terms of obviously there's going to be need for supplement right for other you know representation as a community member pointed out what i think you want to do in situation schools is build student confidence and to do that we do need those mirrors and windows so i'm thinking about neurodiversity lgbtqia um even hobbies like you know like my daughter doesn't just like daughter girls kinds of things right so i'm just wondering what you're thinking about those situations yeah and so that was kind of you know those pie charts again it was from a standardized tool yeah so that was you know the information we got from there and we really relied on our pilot teachers who dug
065into um some of it uh we had some great feedback from teachers who looked a teacher who looked at wonders and said while on the surface this looks like there's great diversity you know in fifth grade they're learning about rose person junior began learning about cincinnati so that was much more qualitative data of um you know were these materials engaging to kids did it um you know provide some windows and mirrors but also just kind of hook kids and that you know important piece of the level so those were more of those qualitative conversations that they had um a whole program and not just a unit piles of boxes in my office for the entire year so we really did do a lot of thinking to make sure that the new programs really are focused
066on knowledge building uh a focus on reading materials being connected to science and social studies which is exciting so there's a balance of i absolutely love that because kids need to not only see themselves but also see the world and i just love that analogy no yeah you know again kind of credit compliments to freddie meghan and every teacher who piloted i think uh you know such a huge feat john such a small window of time really but as you said it was such a high priority so needed something we wanted for a really long time um having all our elementary schools kind of federal aligned and teachers provided there are elements that each teacher is utilizing right now that are fantastic and we don't want that to be lost either so i feel like
067my view allows for us to keep pieces we love that are working and then also have a solid foundation that everybody can leave them all road together so yeah it's fantastic i'm very excited thank you i'm um any other business um it process future gender items our next meeting i just wanted to say happy summer everyone long lasting but i wanted to welcome our eyes i want to thank first of all you mentioned our union leadership we have to be excellent leaders that are um moving on if you will and not coming back and leadership roles eileen roddy and those guardians congratulations i want to thank you for your dedication i want to welcome new leadership that's effective july 1st i believe that's victoria kate martinez we had a meeting today um previous previously a
068lot of time and effort [Music] all right um hi [Music] oh