001stephan um yes starts the regular uh school committee meeting may 9th 2022 uh the citroen school committee is committed to providing an environment by the current meetings we ask all members to interact in polite manner and even when there is disagreement we value the participation of our community around participants including marginalized and minoritized communities feel welcomed and perspective advanced committee members can all participate with standards and support i just want to respect our community uh this is our second in-person meeting it's also being uh available presume it will be available on the citra tv youtube page after meeting community members can also email me at mlogix.org with any questions or comments uh after the meeting uh so moving on in our agenda the next item is hello uh we're celebrating student learning let's turn it
002over to you very nice to see you um i'm just going to share my screen at this time and i am very excited to remember how to zoom first of all which is great but also to have this time to talk with you uh and we're gonna be talking okay um just to have this time to be able to talk with you about our partnership with uh mass insight which we started this year um i do have a few folks uh some of whom are able to make it live and in person some who are hopefully going to be able to join us through soon um and i just want to introduce them before i get too much further uh first of all i'd like to introduce kathy wall a phenomenal teacher here at scituate
003high school has been really involved with ap lying especially in journalism and some other classes excuse me um and as we go throughout i'm hoping a couple of members from mass insights that they'd be able to join us just trying to work through some technical issues and if they can join us great if not um they're going to be watching this and they'll be able to answer any questions that people do have here uh i may have a student but uh we will see hopefully get a backup for that though so good to go um haven't said that folks uh what i'd like to do is just to go through a few questions just to answer as you can see here just to make sure that everybody's clear with what ap looks like dla here
004at shs a little bit of background on mass insight talking a little bit about how math insight has helped teachers how it helps students but then really the big questions which are so what and what next right that's what we're looking to get into for here so uh the brief overview for ela e courses as you can see we offer two of them ap language and composition grade 11 that's focused on analyzing rhetoric tracking arguments ap literature is offered in grade 12 and that's that more focused on the literary analysis the really deep stuff getting diction word choice um a lot of the figurative language and really how authors craft language uh to develop and create a long-standing literature the uh these courses build up to the exams they are times exams as you may
005or may not know three to three and quarter hours they have multiple choice options they have three free response questions those are generally essays that they would write uh each exam can earn a total of five points free or above is often enough to count for college credit okay so three four or five consider what's called the qualifiers okay um and and this i'm sorry oh good uh at this point i just want to just take a quick look to see if patty or sally uh are with us i'm here oh great thank you sally if you could just want if you want to go ahead and introduce yourself and then if you'd like me to go through the slides i'd be happy to do that for you yeah sure i'm happy to be here
006thanks for inviting me it's a pleasure to see some scituate friends um i'm sally guadagno and i am the managing director of the mass insights stem and english support program i started at mass inside 11 years ago as their english content director and now i am overseeing the whole program and it's been a pleasure this year to work with the administrators and the staff at scituate high school so i'm here to answer any questions you might have about our partnership so go right ahead john all right thank you sally um and just to continue on with this and and um excuse me feel free to add any anything that i missed sally as well uh for this year but maz insight is an organization they partner with states districts schools and communities and their focus
007is to implement customized strategies right and that's an important element of what they offer here and as you can see this is taken directly from their website they build capacity to advance equity and opportunity in k-12 education they are based in boston but they do have a nationwide reach they have over 20 years of experience and the main thing that i'd like to talk about in just a few moments is the mock exams right these are practice exams and what that looks like and how helpful that has been uh before i advance those sally is there anything that you would like to add um yeah our particular mission is uh to help schools and scituate already has an open and thriving ap program and what we like to do with our school partners is to
008assist them as they grow it out even further and dig deeper into their population so that the ap classes reflect the demographic of the building so we like to to think about success in ap as a student who does well in the course gets a great course grade builds confidence to be really college ready and getting those qualifying scores as a bonus um but we really value schools that are digging into their population to find the students with potential and encouraging them and providing the supports in addition to the mock exams we also provide uh student study sessions that are instructional twice a year and we also have teacher professional development and we do um really also include some exam fee subsidies for low-income students who are taking these exams thanks sally so just to
009get into a little bit um talk a little bit about the impact on students this is an image of some of our own students taking the mock exam way back when this was the one in february uh what i'd like to do in a moment though is just to share some of the sample reports that are produced uh and there's a lot of reports there's a lot of data that you can really dig into that mass insight provides from the mock exams and um appears that our student is not here which is a-okay because i haven't backed up um i also want to make a plug though for um the situation our student newspaper they have a nice write-up about the experience of the mock exams and that link's available to you as all to
010you all as well so the first report that i'd like to share is this and for folks who are live in the room don't worry you can't see the specific details it's uh i'll talk about it in general terms this is a student report where it gives an ap score and the general idea is that you get a certain number of points for your multiple choice you get a certain number of points for each of your free response questions that gives you a total composite score and then you can see there's a small chart there where that essentially converts it to what to the equivalent of an ap score right so in this case this is a student who earned a composite score of 85 points which translates to a 5 on the ap exam
011right and so this is the type of report that mass insight provides mass insight they grade all of everything which is a huge huge element for this and these are some of the reports that are generated so this is one example of a student report um that that teachers would have access to and again i will get into the very very small print here but i do want to just share that each student can get feedback on each free response question um and that has a breakdown for a total of six points for each one and it explains how um what they earned for each different section thesis evidence and commentary as well as sophistication but it also offers comments right specific comments about what was done well and what could be improved and those
012are some important things to keep in mind and that feedback as you can imagine um can be invaluable for students and for teachers as they get ready uh to move forward with preparing for the exam um and we will rather than going to our student here what i will do is actually just switch gears to some student testimonials that i was able to get from our ap lit teacher and just give me a moment to display this here we go and just a couple of quotes you know talking about how they felt really prepared talking about the strategies to me that was a really important element that came out of this is that it wasn't just okay i have the practice i have the confidence there were concrete strategies that they took um which was
013great uh doing q1 q2 and q3 for homework felt that they were prepared timing was a big factor that a lot of students talked about just having that timed experience and again three hours can both feel very long but also very quick and just being able to balance those things out this larger quote i won't get into all of that other than to say that this is a student who felt that every book that they studied in class was a good fit for the q3 um and just a lot of the different things whether it's from the scarlet letter to frankenstein to one flew over the cuckoo's nest just feeling um that they had a lot of preparation that there was a lot that they could pull from uh and one thing that was interesting
014uh for some feedback was that there were several students who wish that there were more opportunities to take the mock exams rather than just the same update that you did that okay so uh getting back to our excuse me getting back to the presentation i do want to start talking a little bit now about the teacher side of things and for that um it's important to recognize the context teachers have done practice exams for a long time they use released items to do this but as you can imagine bell schedule is limiting right you only have about an hour rather than a three three-hour chunk um and so it just split over a few classes it doesn't feel about that right it just feels kind of broken up um and again teachers should be focusing
015on teaching right on the instructing it takes a lot of time to do the assessment so the fact that we can give a full uninterrupted mock exam and teachers don't have to spend that time grading is just a a win-win overall um where the kids get feedback and other folks get feedback i want to show a couple of the teacher reports and then i'll welcome uh miss hall up here uh this is a sample report where for a class i i took out the names as well as the student names but again just for kids who take a test you get your multiple choice score each one for the for the free responses composite score potential ap grade and so you just get that data at the class level right so that can help you
016identify what are some areas of strength what are some areas where things can get approved free response analysis is down at the bottom for the class rather than just the individual student this is like an eight-page report just a very brief sample for this is it just is an item analysis for the multiple choice what percentage of students score chose which answer which ones were distractors if those were chosen um and so again just a really nice detailed analysis of what students were doing um and while data and analysis is important human beings are also important so at this point i'd like to welcome one of the most human human beings i know okay thank you i'm an english teacher so i was trying to figure out a way to present this in a metaphor
017and i will say this this is the metaphor i came up with i teach juniors ap language and composition when they come in in september one of the very first activities that we do as a class is they bring up their college board account they've all taken the psats as sophomores compliments of sichua public schools and i show them this magical button where they can take their psat scores and they are tied to khan academy s.a.t prep and it's a personalized preparation that they can engage in all year long and when you see their eyes light up uh that they may possibly not need a 500 tutor you know that they can do this on their own uh it's very empowering for students and so my metaphor is mass insight has been my khan academy
018because i didn't know it existed when it was introduced to us this year i was sort of like where has this been all my life right um it has been a um tremendous support for both myself and my students it's more than a week in st johnsbury or a workshop in october um a a youtube video here or there you know it is an ongoing support i've engaged in many discussions with sally and julie alexander and other people who are part of mass insight schools my students have utilized all the different workshops i've utilized the workshops it has just been a game changer and i want to say especially this year it was very much appreciated because as you've heard i'm sure you know many students are struggling and it's that emotional you know that
019feeling of maybe not having the kind of control that they want and um to be perfectly honest having the support from mass insight i think has gave given me you know maybe more of a feeling of control and and i have to believe that that's been transferred on to the students um and i know they've appreciated this kind of support so i just want to say thank you and and again i've been teaching ap this was my eighth year uh it was it was a significant uh game changer for me so i really appreciate it thank you and to that point as kathy mentioned in terms of um where this goes and what this means and how um where it ultimately goes to is what i would like to get into next and this has
020to do with the so what um talking about data right there's the forest there's the trees and there's the weeds i hope we have hit that balance so that we're not going to get too deep in the weeds so um what i want to talk about though and share first of all is how our students did on the mock exam okay n is for the number of students that took it and then the three plus column is for the percentage of students that got a three four or five on the mock exam so for example you see with lang 82 students took it 61 of those students got a three four or five lit we had fewer students which is common for our school and for the country 38 students took it 52.6 got a
021three four five now we need a little bit of context for that so what i'd like to do is just to share with you um something excuse me as i click on it the correct way this time um just to talk about uh how students did in uh last year's actual exam right so again for scituate in terms of percent that got three four and five for lange 130 students took it 64.6 earned a uh qualifying score for lit the numbers are as you can see here uh 59 students 61 now one of the important pieces of context to keep in mind with this is that when our students took the mock exam they were only halfway through the course okay so just to keep be mindful of that that's one of the important differences
022there where obviously when they took the exam last year that was the entire course and just to give the context some context when we look at the ap exam scores in terms of the national numbers for three fours and fives uh yes 476 000 took playing but 57 uh only 57 across the country got a qualifying score for length where um last year 64.6 percent got a qualifying score and then for lit 44 got a qualifying score nationally last year so just think those numbers are important context keep in mind for that right so this is where the mock exam uh puts us this is where it gives us everything for now all right and then just as i get ready to wrap it all up here um the what next right for students ap
023lit exam was may 4th and they are relieved i'm sure to be done with that we heard some of their feedback ap lag is tomorrow so i'm sure that uh any students watching right now will go to bed early next practice all of that it'll be great um but we're excited for that right a lot of teachers have talked about how how confident students feel um compared to years past as far as what's next for teachers they can sign they are signing up for free mass insight ap institutes in the summer uh we'll be calibrating and adjusting curriculum plans over the summer based off of the results and we'll review that exam data when it's available um and in terms of excellence i know this question comes up and so i just wanted to be
024uh ready with that there but i think the and this is an ongoing goal and i want to give credit both to our central office administration and our building administration the goal is that every student who wants to take an ap class will take the goal is also that every student who takes an exam will get a three or above right that that's the goal um i forget who said it i heard it from al pacino is a man's reach should ever exceed his grasp right we should have lofty goals um that's what should push us um and one concrete way to help make that happen is to keep a nice low student staff ratio that was for me one of the important things to hear anecdotally from mass insight is is what type of
025relation what what are we seeing for high performing schools in terms of class sizes we have had in the past it's miss hall to test sometimes class sizes of up to 30 in ap lang we've been able to bring that down year by year um but that's a concrete thing that can help us do both right in terms of enabling a lot of access hopefully also working towards excellence that looks like it's just over 20 minutes i'm sorry i tell my students that you have to do it 20 minutes or less but um i just want to pause there thank you for the opportunity i'm happy to take questions sally's here kathy is here as well so if we can be helpful please just um let us know and thank you for that mr scott
026that's a great insight to have you know you do an issue with ep exams and then you know how it's impacting us it's a great insight for us to have and for the community as well um i'll turn up the committee seeking so i i also uh the chairman said that much gratitude for you bringing this to us because as you i'm sure know better than i do there's lots of conversations around ap exams with the rankings that are coming out and that notion so i'm wondering um john if you could talk a little bit about you know i read articles that say schools are pushing everybody to participate because it bumps the rankings then there are schools that say we're only going to have the kids that we think will do well because that
027bumps the ranking so can you talk about sort of how situate is managing because i know you said anybody who wants to take the exam will be able to yeah and then we'll also pass that's the goal yeah and you sort of talk about how because math the thing i really loved about math insight was this focus on equity and opportunity so can you just talk a little bit about the behind the scenes like not just the prep but like what's going into talking to students about ap selection all that sort of you don't mind no no not at all and um one of the things i can speak uh i can speak to a certain extent about this um and is that uh there is and i forget the formal name but there's essentially
028an ap council if you will that's with the high school um dr mcguire is on that um math department chair science department chair an english teacher who's been deeply involved and really enjoys um getting involved with this they meet regularly and they they are the ones that are kind of that behind the scenes work i can't speak in too much detail to that um but what i can say is that they have these conversations frequently i get moved into them as you can imagine but and this the commitment to access is one that has existed since i've been here for the past four years um that's always been a big focus uh for here and certainly and again i think to me the i look at what i have some type of control over right
029and that that's when it comes to assigning classes and creating the schedule the class size to me is really one of the big things where the rubber harbor meets the road um and i think that's ultimately the area where this concrete thing that can happen that can help with the scores i can speak very anecdotally to that when i was able to make sure that our class sizes got to 20 or fewer or ap lit over the past four years you can see it's a clear trend of scores go up as as the class size has gone down again that's small sample but it's enough to be there and um yeah does that answer the question it does yeah and i just had a follow-up sort of related so you know i understand the three
030plus is sort of the sweet spot with perspective colleges um how are you how are you and your team defining success more sort of broadly than just that that test score like what else are you sort of looking for yeah yeah i think this might be i'm not deflected but can you import it uh yeah no i'd be happy in fact uh someone from mass insight julie alexander came in and spoke uh with all all three of my 89 composition classes uh and she started her lesson uh with a very powerful statement she said to students you know that this test that you're going to take in may does not define you this this course is about building skills and that's what we're really working toward and that i did speak with julie afterwards i
031said that is music to my ears because uh as a district i don't think our message has ever been it's about the score or it's about the test um and and i certainly you know have tried to project that in my own teaching but you know the skills that students are learning in ap language and composition as john said you know the argumentation the analysis the commentary those are skills that are going to help them in you know any endeavor academic or professional so i i really do feel like scituate's philosophy and mass insights philosophy you know it's very aligned and is that at the core of your question or yeah and i'm just i'm just curious and i'm sorry my colleagues have taken up too much air time here this will be the last
032one i promise it's just you know in addition to these the mock exam scores that you're getting for example i guess i'm wondering kathy how are you sort of being able to see or like if a student like if i were to not get the three but i did all those other things how will i know like what's the evidence that i did achieve those other things i guess oh okay so well actually the college board has very clear rubrics um but i will say you know even with those rubrics i've often times for the last seven years kind of felt like well you know a little some of it's a little bit subjective and again this is where mass insight you know has really helped me understand you know what some of these rubrics
033really mean um and using those rubrics for essays and the students do a lot of essay writing which again creating such a valuable skill um and uh you know putting the specificity into their writing putting putting like we call it deep commentary um or global commentary again those are college level skills um the sophistication that we're pushing them for in their writing is something that you you actually do see students kind of turning the corner and i was mentioning to john you know a few of my students they've really only recently turned to the corner um some of them frankly they come in in october and they probably don't even need this course um that's very few by the way but uh yeah no you do see it as a teacher you really see it
034and again it's very driven by what we're looking for in these rubrics or what the rubrics are wishing us to look for thank thank you can i i'd like to add a couple of things to kathy's statements uh some more um evidence you have are course grades um students that do really well in the course and maybe just have a bad test day all right uh students confidence level where they in grade 11 they took this class and in grade 12 they are more apt to sign up for the next round of ap classes in the 12th grade they're not reluctant um they're a lot of transferable skills kids who study and do well in ap lang probably do well in ap statistics ap biology and ap us history there's a lot of skills transference
035in these other courses um and i think when you start to see your students and more of them taking advantage of the opportunities to get into these classes that's really some evidence about that it's working um we also i can't emphasize the supports for students enough if if you're letting if you're opening opening this up as you do you're using pset potential score using teacher recommendations etc to find the kids who are who have potential and interest and motivation um you just have to scaffold a little bit more you have to be available for extra help you have to make sure that these students are coming to our study sessions that are above and beyond classroom instruction talk about paying for tutors this is at no cost to the students and twice a year they
036get six hours well three hours each time of instructional um experience that reinforce what the teacher does we also offer in your please your school counselor should be hearing about this soon through state funding we are offering all massachusetts high school students and our partner schools get first dibs at registration uh a summer bridge program and it's an intro to all of the ap stem and english courses science math and english as well as a general study skills class it's one week in august it's virtual and students can choose either an afternoon or a morning session two and a half hours and from last year what we found was students in their surveys talked about what a confidence builder that was particularly for kids who weren't really sure and i would suggest that sally i'm
037sorry just because there's a packed agenda and i just want to turn it over chairman i'll let you know about summer bridge no no no thank you no it's hugely important but it's no time okay i have to play all night i get two kids i get to students and teachers get the feedback if you do find identify student needs more supports you know what do those supports look like are you referring to the feedback yeah yeah yeah i mean the mock exam is one piece but um you know there is feedback all throughout the year but the mock exam specifically uh yes it was very informative for both students and teachers yeah so it really did maybe confirm you know probably what i knew about many students but again um it's it's very interesting
038when they get uh specific feedback from someone other than their teacher absolutely so i think that there's power yeah yes very needless people right yeah i actually i had one student she's a top student she had written an essay that unfortunately didn't you know match the the prompt closely it was a beautiful essay she was very discouraged by the grade and so we sat there and we talked about it and we went through it and you know then she could clearly see based on what had happened in this mock exam where where yes she's an incredible writer she's a college level writer but she wasn't really responding to the prompt the way she needed to yeah i like that individualized learning element that's really kind of coming through as a whole um it seems like
039a really successful program so far so it's great um yeah thanks very much for doing this i i think that um obviously we probably owe a lot of this to heidi we weren't aware as a school committee much like you guys weren't that there was this ask insight program so thank you to heidi for doing that it's nice to hear i know that she had mentioned it and we kind of like oh madison we have a relationship but we don't know what it is it's great to see it kind of in practice um with that being said i have a couple of questions specific to mess inside the um exams you said the mock exam was three hours is that during school or i think you said it was after school or is it a
040week no it's during school what we did is um again figuring it out right this year where we did it um what we decided was to do it on a delayed start right a late start um just to be able to have that kind of hour where the buses still run so people take the bus could still get a bus and get in here um and that includes our boston resident students also were able to get here and have access for that uh that just seemed the best way and teachers have just been great as a staff you know willing to give up basically the two first blocks um it's not just for english it's for science and math as well so there's a big time commitment there but again if this is something that
041students are taking that seriously that we give them the opportunity to do that sure this might be for sally um why would districts not use massive sites why aren't you in every district i wish i were quite frankly um some some districts have all they need they have all their resources they don't need any other resources um there is a program fee that matches that we're that are is matched with state funding and private funding that we have at mass insight sometimes that becomes an issue um and sometimes people just don't know about us despite my many efforts believe me i try try and we we really try to target schools that do have a demographic of where marginally underserved kids exist and aren't getting into these classes and we try to help them figure
042out why so there's really a host of reasons and um i taught in your neighboring town of marshfield for my career and i was the only one that taught ap lang when i was there and i wish i had this program when i was there so how long has mass insight offered these programs for this program well uh they're they've been in existence for about 14 years and when they were first started this particular program this ap program was part of a national program and um that that partnership no longer exists we're our own agency just with mass insight we're publicly privately funded and i've been in the program for 11 years great thank you thanks to heidi and thanks to you guys for providing us inside our mass inside england thank you okay oh
043i'm sorry sorry um so not having a student yet who is taking an ap test they don't normally get any feedback they just get the score from when they take the real one the real test so having this feedback is so beneficial i think it's great um and i wonder how what was the percentage of students that didn't take didn't take advantage of them on exams and every single one of my students signed up laying the vast majority of students in lay did i do have those numbers i don't have them off the top of my head a very high percentage of playing i want to say at least like it was like 92 95 of blank students took it it was a smaller percentage for lit though um and again there could be a
044number of reasons for that anything from you know getting wanting to have your debate started right but also having the experience right like it's senior year they they would have had experience taking in these things um so so um so there's that but yeah i want to say it was high ninety percent for like understandably a small percentage thank you yeah maybe once they hear the success or how helpful it was for their peers that graduated or you know as it goes on they'll see the value in it even more and they're not really well and i think you're making that a really valuable thing about my 500 too from the college board exam yeah the only feedback you have is your score right right you don't know where and frankly you get that in
045july when you're on the beach yeah yeah that's great so i just have one question for you a lot of myself do you see i it was great to see that students wanted to do the mock exam more often through the year do you see that being beneficial in like in november january when they're just getting the ap class or at least say you know here's the question you know it's struggle during that build on invoice no it's a great question and i think i think what it comes down to is um if it's possible is trying to find maybe more than just this one day this one time you can take this one exam are we able to do something structurally right where we can offer it okay for whatever reason you have something
046on this wednesday that you can't come can you you know could we offer the same tests maybe a week later but that gets into the logistics of um you know just kind of everything from the bell schedule to try to you know balance off the time there i think doing it at the halfway point is probably the earliest that we want to do it especially for the turnaround right because it does take a lot of time for the grades there um but i think it's certainly something that um you know the kind of the ap council that we have here to look into more to investigate that and explore that i might add i might add too that um math and science mock exams occur later in the year because the students really need to
047cover more content otherwise the mock exam would not be valuable okay that makes sense my question was probably more for english as opposed to right and in english in english january is about right january february and traditionally before covet and when everything went virtual we scheduled a saturday morning for our partner schools to take this mock exam with the kids came to the building on a saturday morning and you read you administered your own exams and they slotted a three-hour um and you know schools sometimes give them breakfast we give out raffle prizes and things like that when when it's in person on a saturday morning and if you give the students enough lead time with the date you know that would take care of you know work schedules it's only three hours once you
048know so if you tell them in september that on you know january 23rd your mock exam will occur they can plan ahead and you know with families all right thank you very much for having this presentation all right thank you sally i just want to thank you again for joining us remotely it's really helpful so thank you thank you all right thank you any of you have follow-up questions please feel free to email me all right thank you all right so next on the agenda we have our student intensive report so one of our businesses in person today first time in two years it's nice to meet everyone okay finally uh john is not with us today which is so upsetting um alrighty well before i get started on that i just wanted to say
049uh with like the language department particularly i've been an ap student i've been thinking about since sophomore year um and i think the language department in particular and this is just to share with you guys it's like the department that across all students but definitely particularly myself has made me feel most prepared for ap exams and i was one of those seniors with senioritis didn't writers um but i know jesse took the my brother jesse he took the lang off exam and he said it was helpful and he's not a strong writer but his writing through taking specifically the eighth online course has made his writing a lot better i've noticed as his critical sister um but that department just as the school district you should know the fantastic job of teaching students preparing of
050courses and that goal of getting all threes on the exam i think it's totally useful because i think that from the student perspective i mean you'll always get those students that just like have an off day or whatever it is but that students are prepared i think and especially with the box stuff that sounds fantastic i'm already getting my neck in the woods um last friday the 29th our senior class had prom and it was so exciting it was absolutely fantastic was that and he pondered kingston everybody had a great time the dj a former student here nova okay um he was fantastic he was there it was amazing everyone's dancing there was places to go outside may have been a bit of a coven hot spot but that's okay it was it was worth
051it even the food was good so it just it worked out it was fantastic and it was definitely going to be a night that everyone remembers i think we all needed that um as you know during this last week in this upcoming week um ap students are taking their exams everybody's preparing i think lots of students feel very prepared from the student perspective i know i felt prepared um for mine that i took last week and i expect many fives between this group of students and the teachers that we have um meanwhile underclassmen right now are making their course selections for next year we've prepared various sets of like oh as an upperclassman who's into music like these are the courses that i suggest they'll prepare you for music if you're interested in that those
052kind of videos and instructionals this there's a lot of inner grade talking we get to know each other through that and underclassmen can hear from us so you know they're preparing for their futures with that and the class of 2023 national honor society's abduction ceremonies were last week lots of shf students from the junior class and a few seniors who are now qualifying this year got inducted into the national honor society and their respective language honor society so that's really exciting school play legally blonde has been postponed to may 19th at 7 00 p.m i definitely suggest coming the theater group does an absolutely spectacular job they're so good they've won their besties and leagues and corners and they're just fantastic it's so much fun seeing them they're such fantastic personalities um seniors haley mccarthy
053and johnny who's missing won the patriot league scholar athlete award which is so exceptional that's a league honor and that's a great honor for both the school district and themselves personally and that goes to students who are both exceptional athletes and have high academic standing and the last thing as the senior year comes to a close the events are stacked up for seniors the last day of school is the 25th and the senior picnic and elementary school visits follow on friday the 27th on tuesday the 31st the class is taking a trip to la boston and on wednesday the 1st we have our dinner dance that's at the river club for the usual on friday we'll graduate which is so exciting and that's followed by the all night party which is held at the u
054and that is all and that's also my last student report i think you're getting some new juniors coming next week so i didn't really fully prepare my thoughts on this but i just wanted to say as a student who's been through the situation school system k-12 i think that i have received a good education a really good education and i think that a lot of people on school boards digital monthly whatever it is are tend to be a little overly critical in my perspective of whether it's the education or all these different factors of what it is and of course criticisms are valid and there's some things that always need to be worked on but i found that success for students is completely possible i mean the colleges that we're all getting into is crazy
055and that happens like you're here and it seems to only be getting better in my eyes because you know we've all been stuck in the past classical pages and it's like it's we're achieving incredible things as students and i think the departments the teachers here particularly in high school because those four years of working consciously remember learning have taught me to become better writers certain thinkers my math skills are now pretty decent which they weren't going into it which is great and i think that the education the opportunities to become a leader whether it's sports things like this um clubs those different facets of where students can find their excellence is something that you could absolutely find in situations i just want to commemorate everybody for that i had a great time here and i
056know that's not the same for everyone but um i think that majority of students whether will always be more criticism than our our athletes have found success there's not good memories here and so that's i think and that's all well first off thank you your response but you know you want to push forward i mean you've given a lot that's a lot of things to be challenged on and try to act on so thank you for doing this yeah absolutely okay anyone has any questions about it i have i have a general comment i guess so ran to steal your one a couple months ago yeah yeah um and it was like probably the third or fourth time i've seen her out in town and she's just she's everywhere she's the hostess at the achievers
057she works at dribbles in the harbor um and it turns out we i guess i reminded her that i was actually at her brother's like fifth birthday parties in her house like whatever it was 12 years ago our my son and her brother went to ecc together um but you wouldn't know from celia that she's working hard she's obviously succeeding in school she comes here and does her past she's going to harvard um i don't think anyone would know that she's way too modest i think that we need to promote we need to promote people like celia she's going to harvard i think that everyone that watched this high school you have a chance to go to harvard if you take advantage of whatever you do here and reach your maximum potential you can do
058it too and that's all that we ask a school district to do so celia told me a little bit of her specifics she wasn't the all-star student going into going into freshman year she's not the valuator she's not the captain of three sports i think you said you don't play any sports no no she still has the platform to get into a college such as harvard so i think that we need to celebrate her and everything that our district offers to provide the opportunity for us to have so i just wanted to say that in public i know that she wouldn't say it but i needed to because again when i first saw her and dribbles i was like this girl is great but like i would never imagine that she's an all-star student and
059i was just that was a stigma or stereotype that i may be attached to to her and i was just surprised and very you know i guess excited and enthralled no i figured someone's going to harvard i think they're studying studying study that's all they do is study but that's not what celia does she she takes everything the town has alcohol that's really what life wanted yeah absolutely and that's what i was trying to get at earlier i think that's the case for so many students that i think this district has a lot of fantastic opportunities where students can find places where they excel and find like i joined student government freshman year from that that spiraled into being invited to like one of dr mcguire's councils from that this like all these different things
060they build on each other and there's so many opportunities those kind of like poop pools of opportunity happens for so many students whether it be the students i know that are taking precalc sophomore year or freshman year so that they can take av pals and all these things advanced courses that kind of thing manipulating their gpas whatever it is or the theater students they have incredible opportunities as well and there are so many areas where students can excel and i think that's something the district has built that you all should be so proud of because without all of the opportunities i might have never fell into student government and fell into these different representative community committees and all that stuff that has built up my confidence and different things that push students to achieve greater
061things going into college and that's something that the district people love so absolutely both the students in the two-way street [Laughter] thank you thank you for this one great thank you for having me here tonight um we'll first admire this beautiful picture uh because we go to a beautiful school we work at musical school we learn in beautiful school but what really makes this school community an exceptional place is the 600 students that exist inside and the more than 90 staff members come to work every day and create magic that happens inside the walls uh so i am the lucky one here tonight uh to share so many of the great things that happened at gates middle school um like many of the principals before me who have shared the magic of their schools this
062is such a hard present for me to do because there is just so much going on in our schools every single day that it's hard to kind of limit it to what we're doing so i wanted to thank all of the students and staff at my school uh who are at our school for contributing and giving us great ideas to share with you tonight each morning at gates we recite our core values and these core values have existed since before we moved into our new building and so each day we commit to generating academic excellence each day we commit to appreciating every unique spirit inside of our building we commit to thinking creating and collaborating we commit to empowering each other we commit to standing up for a safe positive learning environment what makes um
063our core values so special specifically this year is that they align so nicely to the two pillars that have been the focus of our work which is excellence collaboration and personalization and so when you look at our mission statement kind of big things um that that should pop out is that we understand that we are having students with diverse learning needs and diverse learning profiles um and it's our job as a school to find people and meet them where they're at and kind of push them in a direction that promotes learning growth and excellence and so we thought starting with the core values because that is how we kind of help make decisions as a building how we just everything that we do ties back to our core values like all of the other schools
064we are aligned with the two district pillars the pillar one collaboration and pillar two meaning excellence with that beautiful personalization coming in between and what was really exciting for the team at gates as i said with our core values is we really really really do believe in things we believe that is our responsibility every single day to work with people students work with families work with teachers we believe that it's our job every day to move people one step further whether that is a test score whether that's a boost of confidence whether that's uh exposing someone to something new we believe that and it's been exciting this year to have these as the pillars to guide our work so we'll take a look uh just first at the idea of this concept of collaboration collaboration
065exists with all different it's just our staff collaboration we're fortunate that gates have a schedule uh that promotes and provides time for educators to work together during school day uh to collaborate on a bunch of things at gates every single teacher has the time to work with their grade level partner to ensure that curriculum is aligned and consistent for students regardless of who their teacher is believe it or not you could go into a seventh grade math bus on the first floor and then walk upstairs to the seventh grade math class on the second floor and they're doing the same thing and that's not to say that you know teachers are robots but teachers are given time to work together to say okay where are we what standards do we want to focus on how
066do your students do how did my students do let's look at some data and then together plan out lessons that target specific needs and kits we can ensure that every single student is getting a good experience quality experience in the curriculum because we have the time during the school day for teachers to work together during this time they also look at data whether it's mcas data excel data pair data when that youth risk behavior survey data comes out and we really take a look and say you know where are our students you know doing well where are areas that we need to kind of put intervention in place whether it's academic intervention or any other type of intervention and from there we designed targeted instruction and opportunities for either support acceleration or enrichment we like
067this because uh without this time built into the day it would be very hard to guarantee that consistency but teachers at gates use that time wisely to figure out exactly what we need to do for all students in terms of family and parent and caregiver collaboration this year we really tried very hard to create many opportunities to bring people into the building just as we once did prior to coped we started the year off with our expectations tonight which was standing room only each month we've offered a coffee with caregiver opportunity during the school day um and they'd say we'd have anywhere between 10 and 20 10 attendees per month which is great and ultimately these are opportunities where we can share information but then we can also get information from people um if anyone
068knows me i like a really tight agenda with no surprises and uh that second half of that meeting has been great because it's okay now it's your turn and give us good ideas and give us good um you know what's going on with your students what questions do you have about what's happening in gates um it's really been a nice opportunity to hear what community members and parents are curious about or want to see or questions they have and so uh that will be something that we will continue on from year to year uh and we've been doing it each month uh we have used data from our peer survey as well as uh from parent input to offer two different workshops for parents uh one focusing on executive functioning the other focusing on student
069anxiety as we're seeing kind of uh increased numbers with things or with challenges dealing with anxiety and depression we recognize that students are with us from eight o'clock until 2 31 and that we need to work with parents because the day continues on and we can be partnering to support students with things like executive functioning or anxiety or depression we have more likelihood of having an impact on students and supporting them in whatever way they need new this year we also have a parent caregiver expert panel um and we strongly believe that uh the community and our parents and our families can offer so much to our students and to enhance their learning um so in the beginning of the year we sent out a survey that said who are you what do you do
070will you talk to us and um we collected you know over 60 people uh within our school community who are willing to either come in as experts or come in as a judge for a particular exhibit that students are putting together um or you know in terms of will help practice interviewing with students it's really been great and we have that we hope to add on each year to that because this year we did in geography a unit on um africa and was actually a retired professor of african studies who said let me into this and you know he skyped he worked with our seventh grade geography teachers um and they worked together to say how can we create an experience um and expose kids to someone with even more knowledge and and that's just
071been really uh really exciting and so if you didn't sign up for it you're more than willing to be more than able to uh to share your expertise uh this year we revitalized our student council um we haven't had a student council at gates in a while and so it's been great this year we have over 70 student representatives so two from each classroom and it's been great because we student input and the decisions we're making as a building we need student spirit in terms of you know i can plan a spirit week but my idea of a spirit we might look different so we need their input and uh it's just been great in terms of uh things like looking at our handbook at the end of the year for revisions for next year
072we're very interested in hearing the student perspective of that and the student council is our vehicle for that we have our gate slip team so every school has a lit team ours this year we can say we've been very successful because we've hosted a number of opportunities for our students as well as the community and so we started the year off working with jameel adams to have three smashing this is our house presentations um which was great we'll have one big one next year but three mini ones were three times the fun uh three times the love and the inclusion to start that year and then it was great we have a lit wall so anybody who's feeling like they need some love or inclusive messages can go to that wall and take a message
073and we have a group that creates those messages each day or not each day each week and that's been a great addition to our school we have a staff monthly diversity equity and inclusion inclusion digest which we have three staff members who are very very very committed to seeing practical ways to incorporate this into our everyday teaching practices and so each month they put out a dei digest um and finally we've hosted a targeting talk how to take a stand and lend a hand workshop for students and teaching them how to be upstanders teaching them how to engage in conversations dealing with topics relating to diversity equity and inclusion um and finally just that cultural lunch piece which uh my colleague tracy rudin at wandertuck they planned a great cultural lunch there we are in
074the process right now planting one for dates um and everybody loves food and it's a great way to learn and then you know just kind of celebrate all of the great things members of our community and open people's eyes and taste buds to new things and uh good way to learn finally for collaboration we have the most outstanding pto uh ever this year they've provided ten grants to us to enhance our cultural enrichment opportunities within the curriculum in the past our pto has said all right we have money and how can we share it this year they worked very hard with us to say all right what are your school goals for this year and so they provided us uh with i think it's about 24 000 worth of grants to enhance um cultural enrichment
075opportunities for students relating to the concept of home away from home and academic excellence and so some things that we've done is we had a collaboration with the south shore arts center uh they came in and did a great partnership with us focusing on japanese art with one particular social studies class they have funded chu chupal which is a swedish game um too it's fascinating and it's just it's good ways of you know enhancing our curriculum um and weaving in some you know eye-opening experiences for kids to see how different things are in different places in the world right here so these are our pieces uh linking to collaboration our next piece is uh our next pillar deals with the concept of excellence um if you remember at our march 23rd school committee meeting i
076was joined by john scopaletti and liz grindel and we look very closely at our title one math and ela program and so this year we identified 128 learners who needed support in order to close the gap in their math in their ela we administered a progress monitoring tool a diagnostic assessment in the beginning of the year from there we then identified those 128 learners we designed schedules for them that included both push-in to the regular ed classroom as well as some pull-out and every student was in terms of all students are right now the data shows that they are all within or above grade level achievement expectations and those students receiving services or supports i'm sorry are those gaps are closing as the year ends and so kind of two two things with that piece
077um this progress monitoring tool that i excel um we have not necessarily used this as a whole grade level before um and we like the fact that we have an assessment that we give to everyone multiple times a year um instead of just raids and work completion we're mcas so we use this and we've been using this well to help us kind of close some gaps that exist okay so we've offered 12 situated engagement academies so we've been very fortunate this year to have many students take advantage of academic opportunities uh that will accelerate their learning and their interest in particular areas and so we had a hispanic tradition and culture which is a continuation of all the spanish six seven and eight uh that has run three times and each time that groups gets
078bigger and bigger and bigger we've offered them in robotics design and creation uh and those are very well attended and that was done by our district technology director and our technology teacher and again that is a continuation of the engineering classes and technology classes that we offer at gates so we were able to kind of recruit those students that needed more and had an interest and a passion in that and provide them something that you know perhaps could not be achieved in the regular classroom and then finally we offer different grade level math workshops for grade six seven and eight um both a combination of those students who needed some acceleration uh two two close gaps but then also those that needed an extra challenge um and either are getting that in the classroom and
079wanted more um or just wanted to challenge that so these are still going on um they're going on until the end of next week uh very well attended 70 students um very proud that we can offer 12 of those um just to continue kind of our mission of creating opportunities for additional excellence at gates in terms of students social and emotional excellence we administer the pair assessment each year we've been administering this for about six years we searched grades six seven and eight uh when we get the survey in december we get the results in january um our idea is let's take a look at the data uh in order to develop interventions to kind of you know remove some of the barriers that exist for students and to promote their growth in this area
080at gates this year we're really proud that our top strengths as a school is our empathy relationships with peers and emotional control and then our top challenges for this year were assertiveness learning interests and relationships with adults and this work is really um you know it's work that we're committed to because if we can uh get students interested in their learning we can get students kind of to persevere and have an optimistic outlook in life but then also when they have a hard math test in front of we know that we're going to start to see increased academic achievements and it's growth and so when we talk about social emotional learning you know teachers at gates what we do is we try to design interventions whether they're tier one interventions meaning everyone in the whole
081class gets them or tier two or tier three interventions that use students uh strengths to grow their challenge areas and that's been really fun and it's not fun but it is fun but it's also um you know it's it's good work because how do we how do we use the idea that kids like working with each other to build the fact that they don't like sharing their own opinions and so you know through that we say all right in our curriculum instead of saying what is the theme of um of mice and men we say take a stance on this position um use your peers to kind of together create an argument but make sure it's an argument that you believe um and so we the sel kind of interventions are not just you know
082stand-alone interventions it's how do we use our curriculum how do we use our time how do we use our resources to build these skills in order to kind of remove those barriers that currently exist for students personally and then finally celebrating excellence we had 414 students earn honor roll or high on a roll in trimester one which is exceptional our kids are working hard kids are earning grades um in the second trimester when kind of things get harder we still have 370 students which is exceptional um and then in this year's eighth grade class we have invited 81 students to apply for induction into the national junior honor society um so we have very high performing students um students that get good grades students that are supported that take advantage of all opportunities to kind
083of accelerate their learning to enhance their learning um and we are proud of kind of not just what we can offer but the fact that students take advantage of everything that we have finally when these marry excellence and collaboration and we start talking about personalization one of our goals this year was to improve our response to intervention and student support team process we know that when we offer a rigorous program that stu to some students are going to need more support this year 82 students have been identified through our rti process and what that means is that 82 students have been brought up of needing something more and through our rti process we have teams of teachers every single teacher in our building is on an rti team and what we do at an rti
084meeting is we look at some data um we say okay you know what data do we have on johnny and maybe johnny you know is struggling with reading because his ixl scores this maybe johnny's attendance is uh is below uh maybe johnny's conduct is up um and his visits to the counselor are down this month and so what we do um is we put all of those together and then we say all right what is the question we can develop in order to address kind of some of these needs and what is the data we're going to use to indicate kind of that this intervention is working and so every intervention is different every intervention looks different and is measured differently um but in terms of typically some of the data points we use to
085determine if our interventions are sticking our grades work completion attendance behavior students feeling connected to school among other things and in terms of we talk sometimes about kind of success with interventions if we can intervene and provide students with what they need in a way that kind of is shown through things like grades we can perhaps avoid having to do a referral for special education if we can together come up with a plan for a student and exhaust you know everything that we can do prior to making that referral for special education so um that is something that we as a team as a whole school-based team we've been working hard and each year we seem to be getting better and better and better at it and more creative with the interventions and that is
086i feel like a piece that students and families is a strictly personal piece and so parents are involved in this process and they know that interventions are being developed and they're on the same page and all we're all supporting that student to get and grow and achieve in whatever way we're looking to improve um at gates this year the personalization piece we've done some home away from home challenges so 100 of families like dates received a welcome phone call prior to the first day of school 100 of students received a handwritten postcard from staff member to acknowledge their achievement and growth and contributions to our school community and our third challenge 100 of our staff will also get a personalized message from someone uh build up the survey and we're working on that right now
087so kind of uh just this idea of we want to create this culture uh where everyone our students family staff really feels like they belong and are a part of and are recognized for all of their contributions and we're proud that we reached our goals 100 of all time so last one incorporation celebration of students interests and passions uh we strongly believe that at the middle school level kids need to be hooked in um kids need you know to be interested in what we're doing uh in order to feel that connection that they need to grow in each way we've had an increased use of authentic and performance-based assessment within the curriculum that oftentimes allows for voice and choice in students demonstration of mastery or progress of the standards that they uh set for them
088100 of our students were placed in their top interest based clubs we offered 71 clubs this year in during the school day every other week which students strongly enjoy and feel connected to one another with we had an increase in our participation in the band and chorus programs with over 200 students involved in that and super strong and super proud of our music program this past weekend it was the semspa piece of it and our own mr lassar is the guest conductor and i heard it was a great day for our students and for him our athletic athletic intramural programs we are offering eight intramurals this year which is an increase from the past so we've added volleyball because that's what people wanted and uh volleyball's huge now it's great we also just added disc
089bell so it's another great one taking advantage of our you know partnership with sef who built and contributed to our school that's been a great one and then all of our extracurricular programs we offer 15 of them and increased participation so we're really happy that students are you know feeling like their school is their home away from home and we're proud to offer kind of so many different things that allow people to be exposed to different things but also kind of find their niche because that's what middle school is all about it's you know learning who you are as a learner as a person and getting support and being challenged so where are we going um as a school uh our instructional leadership team uh is continuing to talk about the concept of excellence in
090an area that we want to start talking about is grading and assessment practices um you know we give a's b c's and d's um we want to make sure that we know what an a means what b means what c means and we want to make sure that you know there aren't discrepancies between our grades and our test scores and our um you know student interests and things like that and so uh we're continuing to just have conversations about that uh as it links to the concept of excellence um rti or response to intervention we are going to continue to work with our director of special education to work towards a multi-tiered system of support which will allow us to kind of proactively address some of the needs academic social emotional behavioral personal needs of
091students we do a good job with rti and we're excited to kind of transition as we learn more about ntss and kind of the elements of it to support even more students than we currently are um and we're excited to continue our efforts to promote inclusivity and celebrate diversity uh activities we have done great things and with our our diversity equity and inclusion director uh junior we're very grateful for his support his direction uh and that's one of the things that we are going to do to continue to go from great to even even greater so that is gates in a nutshell here are some pictures to to end showing smiling happy people doing great things challenging themselves um and again thanks for listening to me tonight and thanks to everybody uh contributed from gates
092to what we were able to share all right thank you it's a great conversation um let's start returning with many friends that they have questions um i have a question about the parent guardian volunteers for the expert panel that replace career day so i don't want to say it replaced career day it gave us more of a you know i'm a bank of okay instead of just having one day where we talk about careers let's find opportunities when we're in that eighth grade science class studying chemistry look we have a real live chemist who can come in and you know one teacher's talking about atoms but this chemist can come in and talk about a real-life connection in that moment so for this year it it may be replaced um we're looking to find that's
093the word practical and kind of fitted in more organically to to kind of really if we're talking about enhancing learning um whether they're randomly relevant yes um in the student anxiety workshop that doesn't surprise me but that was requested um middle school was such a tough year for kids compounded with you know being going through changes and social media and now pandemic so that's the uh rti workshop teams i should say but i i know like you have the students for six and a half hours a day the teachers are doing their job and i'm forever amazed all this extra work that goes on in addition to the teachers just teaching and that's hard enough so it's all it just you know just amazes me impresses me all this other background stuff that happens in
094the background that a lot of parents might not know about to make sure students needs are met and they can become excellent students and you meet them where they are and help them excel so thank you the teachers do phenomenal work and i think it's when we talk about teaching we teach kids and sure we teach science and math we teach kids and i think that rti process is about okay how can we help joe learn science and often times the interventions are strictly academic we're going to break down the content but sometimes it is that all right you know joe needs to build his um ability to persevere so what can we do you know in the classroom in those moments and it's great to have teachers working together to do that because it's
095not about just the science it's about joe's individual needs and so teaching is a lot more than just just you know planning lessons it's really getting to know your kids using data but also using that human piece too that helps us to help get teaching thank you thanks i have a question or just a curiosity more thank you first for the presentation that was really great i have kids in elementary school so it's nice to hear what's going on at the middle school so um in addition to what chance was saying about the parent caregiver panel and the targeting talk curious um what what lessons are you learning from these experiences that perhaps we could use at other buildings in the district or with the community i'm just curious what are you learning so i
096we're learning a lot but we are and i think we're learning that everybody's coming in to uh these conversations with different understanding of what it is and everybody is at a different you know place on this continuum of understanding um you know what we mean by how do we become more of an inclusive environment and i think i think the biggest takeaway we've learned is that we need entry points for everyone for every student for every family perfect staff member and that you know we need to listen um we need to listen to everyone um we need to work together and so i think um the work that we've been doing with um jamil is so i think the work that uh we've been doing with jameel um has helped us to say okay like
097sure we want goals and we want objectives but we also need to work together to see where everyone is and similar to how we teach science we need to meet people where they're at and one step forward each day i have a question too so i i love a good building with strong core values i think it's like such a when they're simple easy to understand it's an entire building to get around it and that's what creates positivity and positivity creates you know um confidence and confidence creates better outcomes and successes so um all of that is just so good for you know social media of social emotional well-being um i love i feel i know other buildings do the tiered supports of course but you just really explained it really well i think for
098a middle school level and the mtss so i was wondering from a principal leadership level um in terms of like this all the anxiety and depression i know what epson flows where do you think gate stands kind of globally from your role not as you know obviously counselor you know individual data stop but more as a building leader where do you think the climate is for gabe given all this work that's been done sure so in looking at the pair assessment error assessment does not diagnose anything in terms of that piece wrote it down so 13 of our students were found to be in tier three means that those students had all challenge areas and no strengths listed in terms of things like optimism perseverance relationships with peers and so i don't want to say
099that that means 13 of our student population but i would say that 13 surprisingly is very similar to the cohort the year before and so we were expecting that number to increase as a result of the pandemic and the isolation of being away that number has not has stayed fairly consistent and i think that that could perhaps be you know attributed to some of the tier one interventions that we do to create that sense of belonging and to create that sense of support for all students um but that doesn't mean that our counselors are not very very busy every single day and it's been i think you know a different couple of years and we're very very very fortunate to have you know strong counselors strong adjustment counselors strong school psych but also a strong
100staff of 90 people who believe in social and emotional learning um and are you know capable and equipped to intervene and provide support in those areas right yeah i i guess i have to come i think what four of us of course have to see firsthand the great brothers no pressure yeah the great work that's going on and um we've been supported through a lot of the um functions that you're you're performing so i just want to thank that and we do see it firsthand pretty much ideally so and i know it's hard to i guess read people and words exactly but when you see it actually happening you can be thankful that those supports are in place the energy the positivity the skill level is it's just amazing if you could actually have tears
101in your eyes and some other concerns and this is because i'm afraid i was going to wait in case it wasn't mentioned by the end of the meeting but i think a lot of people um i was at the junior science fair this weekend and uh in um oliver ames high school where frank lasard was conducted the band and um he was awarded the wrote down rachel hallenbach teacher of the year award for some spa so i didn't want that to go unsaid tonight he was recognized for all the hard work he does not just here but it sounds fun so that that was a proud moment sitting in the audience saying okay they were talking about him and i'm like oh it's going to be great not even realizing the connection that they were
102doing it because he's gonna be conducting like that it's great but yeah that's excellent and i think when you have excellent teachers um have excellent you know he's gonna stop job with the middle school yeah i think a lot of comments you talk about the experiences uh celia talked about it earlier uh just not not just what the kids are doing in the classroom learning kind of learning perspective which is what they they walk away from in the school whether it's you know all six schools but really you know i mean having a daughter in the middle school and he's right here outside of her what's going on um but like hearing her and her friends talking oh we did this we did that it's like did you learn today but just those experiences and
103you know what they're taking from school it's amazing and i know we talked about band but like beyonce's family production a couple of months ago i mean the stuff markets are doing just amazing um you know the teachers and the staffers learning programs but also just being able to do their indigenous problems as individuals so it's great to see across all the schools thanks so much um we are going to keep you in the hot seat though yes come up twice in the meeting um the next the acceptance yes um i think we have the members of this journey first yes yes would you like to come sit up here all right um so on behalf of gates middle school i wish tutor we wish you thanks such a community christmas for their generous donation
104and the amount of four thousand two hundred and eighty dollars ten cents to offset the cost of camp horndale for sixth graders um this donation helped us to ensure that every single student had the financial means to attend we're thrilled uh having just come back for now last week that nearly 100 percent students participated this year this partnership between camp warrendale and central public schools has existed for over 30 years uh and the memories that kids make at this last a lifetime so we are very very grateful to the scituate community christmas for all of their support uh over the years but specifically this year with our return to warrendale uh knowing that you know there were many students and families who have faced hard difficult economic times and just knowing that such a community
105christmas was there was a lifesaver for so many so thank you very very much such a great experience right exactly i'll make a motion to accept a great appreciation of donation amount of i think it's four thousand two hundred eighty dollars and ten cents right right correct um from situate community christmas to lester j gates middle school offset the cost and four deal trip for sixth grade students i like thank you very much thank you thank you thank you very much uh so next on the agenda um we have new business so the first item there is the uh plus things we'll turn it over to doctor okay so in your packet you have uh some details regarding the lease arrangements just to give you some background we have 20 buses that we lease 19
106of those buses come off lease at the end of this school year june 30th so we are looking to release 19 new buses we have our 2023 buses that are available to us for july 1st the cost per bus is 99 which would be paid over five years sixteen thousand dollars a year with a residual thirty thousand dollars per bus the annual cost to us is three hundred and four thousand dollars as you know the town um provides 250 000 towards that expense in the annual budget um as a payment directly or as an offset directly to us um so i look for a motion and a vote to approve the purchase of a lease of 19 buses and the parameters are provided any questions i just have one is this so if we approve
107this is this that have to be approved by the body selectmen as well or it does not they approve it in the process of providing bus lease this sander bank has protected others in paper all right thank you next on the agenda we have um the south shore educational collaborative liaison position uh yes this is when i nominate myself to represent the committee at the uh social collaborative uh meetings and respond back uh after each meeting committee with updates so i'll be enjoying very much actually this year meeting with colleagues and being part of that process so i'd be honored to do it again pretty good our easiest items for more work you did a great job for sending it this year i enjoyed it is there a motion on this agenda motion to appoint
108superintendent bill burkhead as such a public schools liaison to the social education collaborative with the 2022-2023 school year second next on the agenda we have something that's important for any student uh let's say school okay if i go over to uh superintendent crystal um um the four days of no school that kicked this out to the 27th so defending anything in natural disasters anything like uh participate monday june 27th will be the official last day of school for hospitals i know on monday june 27 2022 okay so next on the agenda we have the superintendent's evaluation so with the cast the school committee charge is started behind the superintendent but also evaluating them in public each school committee member completed their own individual evaluation of superintendent burkhead and then um i used to share once
109with that put a compilation together of that evaluation which i'm going to share in a moment all of this super network i'll you can actually see that um so what i'll do is i'll go through each section of the um the summative evaluation um i'll stop as you go through the comments for each look and remember the way um each for each of the sections whatever comments i just literally copied and pasted comments both changing either voice as part of the evaluation um let's let's get right into it so step one with assessing progress with the goals there were three items there the professional practice goal the student learning goal the district recruiting goal um each of the school company members said that said that as met on their individual evaluations easily that step one
110um one thing i did do as i went through each section each of the rankings that were available uh almost all of these were pretty pretty close and free even if there's a majority on one of the items you know they're all going around and you receive like in the individual evaluations you'll be able to see the breakdown of each individual school committee member and all of this was based on the feedback that you provided in their last committee meeting as well as some of the additional backups provided requiring the nsa uh participation so all of that plus everything we've seen there are the public meetings our sub-duty meetings and necessary interactions with yourself and staff really going to creating this this evaluation also in terms of their four standards uh standard one which is
111instructional leadership you can write commission management operations you can give it a reading of exemplary then standards three and four for family community engagement and professional culture and then the overall summary of performance uh for the evaluation has given us provision um and if they give us enough rankings this is this is a template that we're provided by the state um having only four examples one of those things is certainly hard to reach based on the guidelines that we're given proficient doesn't just mean you know average you're doing your job um and as you'll see through a lot of the comments some of the rankings you know the work you've done has been well appreciated by not only the committee but we've heard the community as well as our staff provision is probably the best
112term for the evaluation that you received but it's given by the state um i'm not gonna get every line on every comment for you but i will as i said i'll start with the um anyway as i put the week's section um there's some of their comments for this do to have you as our superintendent um you've navigated us through navigated our schools and informed our community on a weekly basis via email um television uh not only what you've done with kobe but also with the progress you've made you have the best district in the world you understand you cannot do it all it must rely on a team of staff to successfully leave the district after the interview process you often emphasize or minus building a team and bring the best people on board
113it's a vital factor to your success um the committee pretty uh unanimous the fact you could get it put together an excellent team that's addressed the curriculum needs improving the culture of our schools strengthening communication and promoting a culture of excellence collaboration and transparency in all aspects of school life you've shown a steadfast commitment to collecting and interpreting data in our district and then creating action steps to accelerate curriculum through online alignment initiatives coursework documentation connection with framework content skill and then in order to provide a full view into the district superintendents made a staff available for the community to meet with and ask questions assistant superintendent driscoll has become a regular basement in our school committee meetings in each school is also in the progress of providing a state of the school presentation which
114has provided greater insight towards received in past public sessions are there any additional feedback that could be one scoop so in terms of the performance goals this came directly out of the presentation that you provided two meetings ago it's a student learning goal that's one product two professional practice goals in the uh district we're gonna hold one um all of those give up and then in terms of standard one so the instructional leadership so there were six different standards you were or indicators that you were ranked on as curriculum instruction assessment evaluation data informed decision making and student learning and then there was an overall ranking for that section uh so for each each of the indicators in this standard you get a ranking of proficient in the overall ranking and just some comments on
115um standard one two superintendent ford had a clear focus on curriculum having a very capable assistant who's experience i believe we need to analyze data in order to identify weaknesses relative to overall student and district performance um you use all available sources to make informed decisions the purpose of the best district in the world does not focus on rankings that's different to how those rankings are compiled all students to challenge the day classes that of course the video that they could which after we've seen um earlier tonight the feedback from this race um you've done a fantastic job gathering analyzing and creating action steps around student academic growth this is a enable the community to see their mediations from hypnotic funding laws being utilized with growth of students throughout the year the new leadership collaboration
116skills and guidance has resulted in a robust budget that is transparent fiscally responsible uh you've made strides from increased professional development opportunities for staff and faculty enhancing professional skills for staff the community communication and feedback with the south by professional development is an innovative staff towards enduring people i was tough on you last year about curriculum and this you so i did want to comment and say that i'm really proud of the work that you led the district towards i think the curriculum piece is just it wasn't just about i think the work that you've done isn't just about one you didn't go all in on one aspect like materials or staff or it was just it's been you know professional development and you know tools for staff tools for students evaluating the needs smart
117investment in tools and pieces like mass insight you know things that i love that there's outside the box thinking bringing in you know i guess when i you know from my from the school committee steve it's like okay we want to see we get feedback from the community especially coming through the pandemic curriculum curriculum but i think you took that and really made it just leaps in bounds you know more depth more breath than i even was considering you would have in just 12 months since the last time you looked at this so i just i thank you for all of your really a tremendous work that's been done by you and all the staff thank you i know you're not done you know but it's a huge leap uh so the next section of
118the evaluation by standard two is management operations the indicators there were environment human resources management development scheduling and management information systems law ethics and policies fiscal systems uh so for environment scheduling management information systems law ethics and policies are you and then for human resources management development and physical systems we're giving a ranking of exemplary and then overall ranking um in this section of some of the feedback uh the district needed a refresh of its management operations was prominently uh needed to focus on safety health emotional and social needs for students this was demonstrated through the establishment of district acl teams it utilizes their data to determine specific student focus and training for educators how you've implemented strong and sustainable systems and policies but for a good stewardship of our accountants or resources is support
119appropriate effective and ethical ways of hiring and carrying out the works of the schools eliminating fees while also continuing to stay within the budget and our requirements during the town for regional funding uh during negotiations demonstrated fairness and standing firm for what is best in the district your leadership collaboration skills and guidance have resulted in a robustness that is transparent this will be responsible uh you may strive to increase personal development and the communication and feedback with the staff personal development it's an innovative establishment otherwise uh you've built a strong relationship with the district's legal counsel not only shot away from confirming the appropriate required by the district to respond to requests by end that section of the meeting see peter run around again and then the last comment was as you continue to move
120forward it will be important to continue to work with staff to provide a healthy work environment um distraught related relationship unique leadership first few years um continuing distrust will continue to build on youtube i think for us keeps up with the different benefits right i just wanted to point out here because i think um as a newer member of the committee and i think hannah you and i saw this last week in the forum that there's been some criticism out there about the focus of pd and shifting away from particular topic areas to sel and i just want to point out that this was strategic on your part that i really appreciate the flexibility and even more flexibility that you're bringing into it this year that teachers are partners in this and together you're figuring
121out it's not just sort of we do this this and this every year because that's what the way it's always been done it's we're in a pandemic we need social emotional so we shift now it's shifting to whatever the next need is and i just i think i just wanted to pause for a moment to again similar to nicole just commend you and also your leadership team and see heidi's sitting here too for being adaptable to being flexible and bringing teachers into a partnership discussing what it is we need instead of just following into a model because of the way we used to do things so thank you for that if you couldn't agree more i think it evolves that you you did a nice job tonight of saying that that look at data we
122have and the people we have and what their needs are as our children and that's what we do thank you let's move on to standard great uh family and community engagement so the um for indicators here for engagement sharing responsibility communication and family concerns uh so your ranking in all four was proficient and then the overall ranking was also professional some of the comments the thursday thoughts and coconut updates has been a welcome addition to the sps community and the level of transparency needed i consider consistently addressed family concerns by responding to the communication utilizing staff and the dlt that we best solve problems uh resolved issues that come up in addition each teacher and building principal has been challenged to have regular communication with each family either this experience values are very teacher to
123teach you the engagement has been real improvement to build strong relationships between school following the community um super nintend has made great strides collaborations with all stakeholders in the community to listen to the concerns and topics important to the community when it comes to communication strengths growth and clarifying facts there is your improvement the opportunities and outcomes for students are increasingly opening doors and minor upward directory but the messaging does not completely support uh strongly enough because i believe that one of the school committee members believes this is an area that can be improved upon in confidently communicated reporting hearing more directing their communications another member appreciated your approach to family engagement thus far um you described it as being open and transparent then uh see it through the activities that you do like seaside
124chats regular in-person meetings with families finding responses to questions and emails at the same time would be important to figure out strategies with listening to concerns about diverse families but also honoring the values and diverse needs of our old school community and then the current landscape of social media reveal uh real-time responses a fair amount of false information spreading the decision public schools committee and administration i will need to work together to identify ways to identify important points and respond through public themes difficult community it would be important that building on that as we make more information about up there this actually any additional comments can commit i would just comment that i think that the um guy was keep up a little bit on as i was completing this section i feel as though
125um bill has made a little bit more i feel like the district prior to the last couple years never really had regular communication um whether to parents uh students or whoever i feel like bill's effort to obviously with the uh thursday thoughts is really the one that comes to mind initially i know that was i remember through the interview process and a lot of things i remember the interview process when the search said he said he will do a weekly memo or a weekly uh communication to the entire district i said there's no way you can't do that um and he did and then he realized that that might have been a little bit too much but now it's twice a month but the fact that we're getting communication from the superintendent i know that
126it's spent through all the the building principles other leaders that are contributing to that but the fact that we have that i think for me as a school committee as a parent is something that we've never had something we've really made tremendous progress on so that's what i was looking through this particular section i felt as though um rings of release proficiency were appropriate for sure uh we've never had that as a just as far as i know um and even the teachers now are communicating on a more regular basis that's obviously a result of a home away from home theme and the importance that we put on communication staff and parents yeah and i'll be honest in this when you read the sort of disaggregated bill i was a little harder on you in
127this section and i think it's it's partly because i'm you've set the bar very high um you've done such an excellent job we've been comparing your leadership and your team's leadership to pass administrations and i think my pushing you is i'm not comparing you to the past anymore now it's you against you versus you right so what's the sort of next growth opportunity for you and how you continue to expand what you're doing and i think the thing i'm looking forward to is as a parent is i understand and have seen your strategies for listening and at some point you're going to listen to me and we're still going to disagree and you're going to make a policy where you did listen to me but but my my view was not included and you're going
128to have to navigate that as a leader so i'm looking forward to seeing how you step up to the plate and i know you will how you navigate that so i think that was sort of what i was hinting at in my comments to you thank you i agree with that great i am undefeated against myself and i would add to that too i mean as evidenced by our amazing student representative tonight and she was advocating for that you know she's sitting here saying hey like we are working our tails off work we're really accomplishing great things my you know fellow students and i there's so much and then they see the negative um you know kind of negativity let's just say you know that and it's disheartening as a student and i know that
129that there's no way that a superintendent or school district can really control every single message every day every time but i guess it is more of a challenge for us going forward to say how can we do better at this thing recognizing as peter said we've already made leaps and bounds of improvement you know unparalleled communication is actually happening yet we still have this kind of room for more growth there the best district in the world it's popped up in everyone's comments multiple times but it's you know you're right you're going right up against how do you become the best district in the world it's almost to the point of nitpicking well how do we do this one percent better two percent better um yeah there's a lot out there but you know it's not
130not necessarily enough against all the hard work that's going on no i appreciate that because it's any feedback how am i gonna get better so this is where you're doing so i i accept the challenge i think it's really one and i think it's true and i'm looking at the rankings across the five committee members that have got to do about ranking you will see as you go through uh standard drain standard floor it's all over the place you know you do it it's a company's improvement here a couple examples on the same item and it's you know doing a great job of what we need to do both yourself and in our stock as a whole but now it's getting to how we can continue to occur okay so the last section of your
131review uh standard four which is professional culture so the indicators there are commitment to high standards cultural proficiency communication continuous learning to envision and managing conflict across in the obviously overall ranking so across all those indicators in the overall view the average ranking was a proficient uh some comments in this last section uh superintendent perkins leading the district to call for a safe and respectful learning environment for all his use of data to inform decision making and collaborate with the team i'm very strong uh you're doing that hard work hard and important work of building professional culture advocacy evaluation it's improved beneficiary cultural proficiency and continuous learning and i believe that our district still has much work to do how it's a community might not necessarily make um you've done a great you've been a
132great leader in starting this work and i'm hopeful that this will continue in the upcoming academic year mr adams creating a new coordinated position for our mecca program two very important steps to see how we continue to build this inclusive culture in the future uh your ability to negotiate with the sda in all of our unions during cope with impressive sda uh your honesty is an asset again hiring a dei director will assist in the developing culture commission still a lot of work to do the professional culture and commitment to high standards but in the school district cannot be changed overnight the district has been summoning transition with a relatively high turnover in central office over the past 10 plus years you recognize this recognize this is a process that he's definitely demonstrated the chemical
133taken by the incept program they continue to be impressed with the number of hours required in the binding binary such reverse curriculums continuous learning to create impression on all staff members as developed to improve superintendent brooke continues to work with the outside resources to improve himself as a professional individual celebrant assistant supreme driscoll also worked at bridgewater state university built a strong relationship with scituate find avenues to benefit our staff in the district's future and again the term best district in the world is often spoken publicly by superintendent mercado he lives by this model by pushing his staff to find ways to improve the district even if things are going well a larger piece of the budget has been put into curriculum by adding programs to keep the district moving forward uh school committee meetings
134also shine a light on how the district is taking such and improved through celebrating student success state at school and having any comments from the committee on this last section that is your evaluation of this year in a nutshell obviously you still have until june 27th this school year um and then all of next year we do this again um but i think that sounds like he's very impressed by the work that he staff has been doing so thank you very much this is very helpful i can't wait to dive in the gist of it which is very impressive so thank you and it's a lot of work i have an effort so i thank you for this help we give feedback to our students or our staff i was really impressed with seeing all
135the different names that's my goal so it's a team effort our great teachers you know cafeteria duty buildings secretaries our professionals it's a whole team that makes a great district and i'm really excited about the challenge to get more of that good news up because i think that and i'm feeling it too that the message hasn't been clear enough loud enough that we are for real even during a pandemic and hopefully it was shown in my last presentation that um was mentioned once still in the pandemic two years that's a credit to our students our families our staff and to all of you for the hard work and many hours of time and effort so i'm blessed to have a great team i know a lot of me here tonight uh great supportive community and
136i look forward to just continue to meet people learn and build a strong strong team that will make the committee and community proud so yeah thank you you know the questions or comments in the committee very much obviously i i this form that desi provides to us is awesome actually man i say that every year but i want to say that super network you made it a lot easier because you actually provided evidence and artifacts uh i think even in the order that the evaluation is asked of us so it may at least be for me at least it made it a lot easier to instead of remembering everything that you've done over the past year you gave us a reminder and provided us guidance evidence that these are things you actually did as opposed
137to us trying to remember and recall and so i appreciate that but again the form is still miserable hopefully they can change it i don't know as you know the comments will entertain a motion to the evaluation motion to approve the superintendent's evaluation oh there's a paper all right as i said i'll give you the option six evaluations um okay so next on the agenda is the superintendent's contract um in february uh superintendent burke had reached out to me through the answer program and you heard other other superintendents you know coming up and doing one year left in the contract but beginning to work with um fiscal committees to look at what a future contract could look like that came to the rest of the committee in multiple executive sessions um and the overwhelming response
138was yes we want to keep this part of our district um not just for and one year you have luck in your contract but also you know strongly committed to yourself the approach you've taken to our our schools and then you know obviously the staff you've put together to some providers professional as a whole um so working through the committee and also with you uh you know in our legal counsel we will find out a contract that would take effect on july 1 2022 absolutely made the last year of your current contract and run through june 20th of 2028. um some of the changes in the contract obviously the length was one we didn't want to just do a three-year contract you agree with you that you know you want to show commitment to yourself
139to have to continue to put the district forward which is why we've got a six year contract some some changes to their contract obviously there's an impact of salaries each year and you receive a confirmed salary increase based on um based on our cola increase but that there is also their contract to the school as a whole if they chose to um uh to increase that amount year over year uh the starting salary for july 1st 2022 is about 210 000 which is um in line mean actually towards the middle of how other superintendents are are paid among the region um there are some changes to the specifically either but a lot of some buyback at the end of your contract if you did have simply time that was that was remaining vacation and personal
140days all stayed the same so overall the majority of the contract continues to look in line with what you've had before um the only the only big change is the amount of time that the contract is as well as the salary some buyback that was allowed through the concur i i do want to say having worked with you as the chair to get this done it's just a very applicable and quick process and some background some things but overall um completely professional i really appreciate the work that you you seamless process um on top of all the work you've been doing there with that so i can personally say that this is a strong commitment to our school district as well as viewers look forward to seeing what you can do with the rest of
141the i appreciate i reciprocate that working with you as a chair for the committee i think we both agreed that you know hearing um and seeing districts around us go through superintendents don't get to start new initiatives and things it's going really well and having some stability uh my position i can create stability in the district central office always principals teachers uh commitment to a vision it times it nicely with a strategic plan that we're going to be working on next year which is a entire school community celebration of what's going on but also to help create that vision so i think it ties up nicely so very committed i love it here i want to be here play retire so my job is to uh keep my job doing great so i promise you
142i will do that commitment to our i don't i guess i have a couple of comments first obviously thank you superman burkin for uh last two years and hopefully even more than that six but i just wanna i'm sure that there'll be some folks who will wonder why we're doing this but just i just did a recent surge of uh superintendent positions that have either recently opened or been built the last two years in no particular order boston public schools worcester public schools brookline public schools hingham public schools um all right boys scroll down uh after willston leicester sucking bear ham sandwich southeastern my point is simply that superintendents turn over very quickly um and when you have a good one you want to make sure that you keep them um i would say that
143as superintendent burkett said the new superintendent you bring in um you know i guess new challenges go through process um and we didn't want to risk losing superintendent burkett um as there are potential opportunities nearly every month um in addition to those i named just two more minute and regional bars to both winston hamilton when i'm still greenfield north dakota going to show air shirley oxford's aims free those are all within the past 14 months um so it's in my opinion um then we have some like superintendent burkett that we do well we can yeah i would just say in the spirit of what we've been talking about which is celebration i think the other piece of this is rather think about risking a loss i think we're also celebrating a huge win for the
144district and trying to demonstrate you know just as superintendent burka keeps saying how committed he is to our kids we also want to share with you bill and celebrate all the great work that you and your team and the teachers are doing together so really thank you thank you mentioned during the review process and to hit you harder quicker than last year being strong strong strides i don't know if the higher stressful but also you know just the the presentations and the music and the changes that you've made you staff i made over the course of the year um a couple other things in this review in the first few years your time here in citric and as we started going through the evaluation that we did this contract extension obviously it was the evaluation
145was strong the commitment to extend the contract is also strong that's why we're able to do both tonight thank you very much uh so there's no other questions or comments in motion i'll make the motion to approve the superintendent's contract exactly july 1st 2022 june 30th 2028 second uh so the last item in new business um is a job description from the director of supplemental services we have the information in your backup pack but tonight we are asking you to consider vote on a one grand funded position for director of supplemental services this person would serve as a support for district five programming calibration practices across elementary schools and for district-wide program documentation and compliance we're looking for someone with experience curriculum and administration for this position are there any questions from the committee regarding
146the job description that we receive yep this is just to clarify this is a one-year ban funded position so at the end of the day there's no no impact to the budget either because this will probably rent outside the budget and at the end of next year calibration piece and so this person will have um interactions at all six schools yes primarily complimentary motion to approve the new job description director for supplemental services second those in favor bye uh and then the next item on the agenda under all business is an update on the school calendar of the 2022 so you'll see in your backup packet we have our second graph which hopefully will be our final threat the school calendar this included the professional development days and it also indicates that the kindergartens start
147beginning the september okay starting with the same following on monday so the year is the same this just indicates which professional development needs to any uh questions from the committee on this item those are the highlighted names well there will be there's always additional opportunities okay that's what we use our growing students yeah the january pd set is a little bit different from past practices can you explain that um those january ones just so sure absolutely um so if you look at those days some of those half days are actually um high school finals where you can excuse the midterms who are indicating those so parents are aware and people are aware that those aren't that happy yesterday and there is the thursday about not mistaken is a full district halfway like that i'm not
148even impressed we've looked at this right now so that is a full district of early movies we have two opportunities for those one in june and one in january the regular early stage for elementary middle and high school has collaboration time as you know every wednesday motion to approve the 2022 2023 revised school calendar as presented hi thank you for seeing me on the ask just to make sure it's broadcasted uh so next on the agenda we have a leadership report from dr dutch thanks for having me back here so i wanted to provide you with an update on where we are with the heatherly pushing msba process so the next the next step in this process is selection of the owner's project manager which is what the acronym opm stands for i'm going to
149just give you an overview of the different steps within this process and then i'll explain each of those steps and include some timelines for you in this process the first step is to develop a request for services next you would have to get approval of that request for services from the msba once they've provided that approval you would post the rff the request for services so that you would get responses from different contractors after we have all the responses by the deadline you would evaluate those responses narrow it down to finalists those finalists would be interviewed once you have uh rank order those finalists you would negotiate with the top choice so what's unique about this process is when you're putting out the request for services they're not submitting a price so the evaluation is
150absent any knowledge of what the cost will be it's not part of the decision making process until we begin negotiations once we've negotiated with the top choice we send our information to the msba to get their approval of that opm so i'll walk you through each of these steps first within the request for services which is being developed now we provide background information about the school about the town and then we provide details from the previous feasibility study details that are included in that request for services are letting the lpm know what the project objectives are some examples of that would be you know the configuration of the school um or of schools if we were looking at restructuring all of the elementary schools uh even some considerations as to whether you know we want
151to put an auditorium a swimming pool um we want it to be a green building solar panels lead certifications those sorts of things then a timeline for the entire process so from the time the opm is hired until you put a shovel in the ground and get to completion we also put the minimum requirements so the qualifications of the opm and then we let them know what the criteria are that we will be evaluating them based upon so they can target appropriately within their response by a request for services any questions about this part of the process so msba approval we uh once i finish with the request for services which is 90 done uh it gets sent to the msba they review it make sure that it has all of the components that it
152beast needs to have that they are sufficient um and then they would let us know that we could move forward that so this this rfs is due to the msba by may 12th so that's thursday they need that much time they need about two weeks to review it have their legal department review it and then give us the okay once they allow us to move forward we have to advertise it we're required to advertise it in at least two places one of which is required to be the central register which is a website or a document that is run by the secretary of commerce calvin's office then we would also put it in a local newspaper either of the page ledger or the scituate noun the target date the the next um next date that
153we have to get that to the central register by is may 26th to allow it to be in the central register for june 1st that'll allow us to continue to meet the timelines that the mspa requires basically doing a backwards design identifying when will they look at our recommendation after we do all the work and then work backwards to make sure we can meet those timelines evaluation so we currently have a building subcommittee i will be inviting some members of that subcommittee of that committee to become part of the evaluation subcommittee to evaluate the respondents so we'll have we will put the criteria for evaluation in the request for services we'll then turn that into a template that we'll be able to score as we go through each of the responses and then once we've
154completed that we would identify the top three um and then interview those three again just like you would interviewing any candidate for a job you'd use the same questions for everybody and you'd have a scoring process based on that we would identify the top finalists then begin to negotiate with the top finalists for a price and we will start with the price just for moving us to the uh designer selection and the feasibility study at that point their work can be done or we could continue them if we're happy with their work we wouldn't negotiate that price with them until we were finished with the feasibility study and we knew what the design of the building school would look like so once the terms are agreed upon with the the opm that we've identified as
155our first choice we forward that into information to the msba that is due to them by july 6th which time would go to for their review and their approval they would do that approval at their august first meeting if we miss any of these deadlines we would move to their september 12th meeting so we would like to try and and get this done by their august first meeting which for us means july 6th that's our deadline if they don't approve our selection we go to choice number two and we negotiate with them and then choice three negotiate um so that's kind of the process uh once the opm is on board they will walk us through the process of choosing an architect designer who would help us with the feasibility study once the feasibility study
156is done they would do a preliminary schematic design which would go to the msba that's when we would begin to go to the public where obviously go to the public feasibility study we get lots of influence but the real challenge will be obviously is asking for the money um and that will start once we have a feasibility study done and we have a design in place you know what the cost will be we have a range obviously until we actually design a facility we don't know what the actual cost would be so that's kind of this process i hope that gives you an in-depth look at the this phase questions um i just have two questions so you um you mentioned that until uh june um so but prior to that we have the five
157the major 26 deadlines so is does is msba aware of that particular deadline so they gave us the may 12th date to get it to them so that we could have it get it to the central register by may 26th central register tells us to get it on for june 1st you got to have it by may 26th from june um from june 1st there are then some some time restraints as well so then the request for services will be available in the central register or through my office beginning june 1st they will have to have all of the responses in by june 15th so there's a two-week window for them to put together their response from requests for services after june 15th i can tell you now the dates are set june 16th is
158the day that we are going to review the the requests and do the evaluations june 23rd is the day we'll be doing the interviews and then we will be negotiating between june 24th and july 1st so it's a pretty tight timeline um dates are set we have targets i feel like as long as we have the targets and we know what they are we can meet those and we and we will put those targets in the rfs so that someone who is responding knows they need to be available for an interview on june 23rd that's part of their commitment if they're applying to be a candidate um you said that you negotiate for the first piece and then if like that what they do you negotiate for a second so if you don't you go
159back to the drawing board with a new you go back to you do go back and have another rfs for a new opm and it would be a whole new rfs with that first piece so we could provide somebody it would just be an rfs for the construction for the designer for the actual schematic design and actually just the construction event well the lpm really isn't going to do they're kind of guiding us through the process of selecting the designer and they'll give us some guidance of if part of our interest is um sustainability we're being green they're they're going to help us with that along with the architect it's really the architect who's going to get the ball rolling on what that building looks like the opm in this first phase is probably a
160little less important from the strategic perspective than they are when the actual instructions happen because they're really our uh work of the works speak instructions thank you it's i will say in talking to other people it's pretty rare that you don't continue with europm um because it's a lot of work to then go back out to bid so they've got to really be pretty egregious in their lack of ability to provide you the services that they said they would question configuration um janice probably speaks to a little bit so just the history on looking into what configurations should be um scituate seems to be different than sometimes at a change configuration in terms of we're going we're not going from three to two buildings you couldn't do just one k to pre-k to a three
161four five six seven eight high school we would have to do two since we have jenkins so you would have to go two one one one flipping it is a good idea well i think you know that that would come about through the feasibility study i think there's all kinds of options for feasibility with five buildings [Music] pre-k up to grade two and then you can have a three through five two three four five something like that i i don't know um there are people smarter than me with that kind of background think about different practical configurations but i i don't know that there's any interest in that mean when you look at where we are now there's a strong desire it seems to continue to have neighborhood schools while you move from four to
162three it's going to change the neighborhood school structure it doesn't do away with it so i i don't know how that feasibility there was no indication in the previous feasibility study that people wanted to have grade level buildings that were exclusively one grade level only one per great you know grade level configuration i didn't seem to have that feasibility i think it was that was kind of it was like 50 but then we made an ultimate recommendation yeah yeah i mean ultimately you know change is very difficult to try and change the way you do things will be a challenge itself if that's what the consensus is then that's what you're going to do but ultimately that'll result from feasibility study the key is making sure that you have a lot of input from as
163many different people as possible and that would be sort of also guided by the architect that's guided by the art yes well they're they're really integral to the process and the green school piece i feel like that's come up with a decent amount of community members and parents so is are there certain you know home environment the school environment so is there a sort of a check boxes of like what would what a green school looks like there are elements that you would want in a green school there are also cost differentials you will see that um so that's part of what the rfs rfs is going to identify based on the previous feasibility study is you know that there's a desire for um you know green school so you're gonna want an opm and
164ultimately a designer who has expertise with that um there is you know there are points you remember i mentioned that we're getting 43 reimbursement well that could go up because there are points for uh doing building an environmentally sustainable school so each each component whether it's solar power and whatever whatever you're using for energy source your window types um you know how it's structured there there are points for those things so you kind of by looking at the state's criteria for giving you increments in the funding tells you what they're looking for but you still want an opm and a designer who understands that if that's what you want the school i'm going to show you a couple of quick questions for you so that um first the rr fancy says do you rather difficult
165maybe backwards in two weeks um what is it look like if they come back and say hey can you give us additional information or you know this section is needs to be redone we're going to be on the september 12th agenda there's no yeah if we don't we don't have the request for services in the central register first there's no way we get them by july 6. so if there's so if there's a couple things we need to fix that made 26 days out we're going to be able to do over the next two weeks when there would be more startups i think you know the other thing to keep in mind is i look at things this way i don't know if this is the case but my assumption is that they they ask
166for that two weeks as a maximum and there's good likelihood that they'll get in for better feedback to us sooner than that um which would give us the opportunity to make some changes to it get it back to them um whether we get it back then in time depending on you know it's it's not the end of the world if we're on the september 12th agenda it's just moving everything down the line and i'm not assuming that will happen obviously i'm just curious how the timeline is impacted by yeah it's this timeline is pretty tight and then in terms of um are there any reasons why an opm might not be approved by the msbi it's things we need to look at as we're going through that i don't know i don't know the answer
167to that um i'm not sure why you know i think it would be if we did something wrong in the evaluation process or the interview process more so than anything else the group felt strongly about a specific opium and the amount of criteria they have this video expect nobody would say no we don't think that okay or be more technical as opposed to yeah and uh the last question i have to do so assuming the timeline of the layout is followed by the point does this get to i'm talking 2024 talking about from now about 18 months feasibility study and schematic design will take so you're looking at fall town meeting something for us to consider as we obviously push this project forward with the time to get that kind of support now this is
168the only opportunity for public comment well uh so next on the agenda is the appropriate minutes so uh in our backup we have the april 11th school committee meeting april 11th uh annual time meeting minutes and then upper minutes from april 25th um will there's other promotions on each of these items uh separately to approve the april 11 2022 regular scheduled meetings all those in favor aye a motion to approve the april 11 2022 annual town meeting as written motion to approve the april 25th 2022 80 minutes that's written all right so there are no warrants to be read as part of this meeting also no additional correspondence to the committee is there any additional business that have made important food i'm sorry there was a mask in our backup first one is there any
169other business members that you wanted to bring up tonight uh so we do have a meeting that was posted today from may 11th to 5 pm that meeting will be assumed only it would just be an executive session regarding contract negotiations there will not be a public portion of that meeting our next public meeting is may 23rd at 6 pm a hybrid meeting uh something else to from the committee i'll entertain emotion to adjourn at 8 40 pm boo-boo hi hi thank you everybody