Scituate School Committee Meeting - 04/25/2022

001a little loud sorry yeah mr long you're good to go good evening everybody i'd like to call the uh april 25th 2022 school cleaning reporter first time this is the first time we've been able to be in person in two years now that we have you know the advent of zoom meetings has been a huge hit we've usually had between 40 and 50 people who aren't presenting um be able to attend our meeting so we wanted to make sure that with that capability um we had that up and running before we would come back in person now that we have that um you know happy to be back in person as well as being online um this is our first meeting back in person um probably into all the technology it's seamless it's possible we

002apologize if there are already any issues but we'll continue to work through them um public comment will be available both for people in person as well as student zoom we'll make sure people will be able to unmute and make public comment whether they're on june or in person but kick off the meeting the central school committee is committed to providing an environment of respect during meetings we ask all members to interact in polite manner even when there is disagreement we value the participation of our community and one of which is all participants including marginalized and minoritized communities to feel welcomed and respected we ask our community members and also participate in committing these standards and to support and respect our community um as i said public comment will be available both through the zoom and

003for people in person uh community members can also email me at mlangxit.org with any questions um uh so the first item on our agenda is celebrating student success i'll turn over to the uh okay um hopefully we won't have any technological issues with this um we're still trying to figure some of it out um for tonight for crushing um i'm kate martin a fourth grade teacher i'm keri phillips i'm the literacy specialist at fishing and i'm stacy sweeney one of the other literacy specialists at quite and we're going to be telling you all about our spring into action project so at cushing school our pbis committee and pbis is the positive behavior intervention system so we created a system in september of 2018 in which all of our students are randomly sorted think harry potter

004into houses we do it for all kindergarteners and then any student who joins us um new each year and the house that they are sorted into they stay in that house for all of their years at cushing school and then as a house they can earn points um and then at the end of each month we celebrate the points that they have earned and every staff member in the building is able to award students points um our sort of school motto the houses are cat houses so we are the cushing cats um and all students know that cats stand for caring citizens who act with respect while trying our best in a safe school and our four cat houses are the cougars lions jaguars and tigers and each house does have its own color um

005kind of big house unity throughout the month we do tally the points that the houses burn um teachers can use class dojo we have one specifically set up for the houses um the middle picture shows our lunchroom um we have coins and so they can be handed a coin for doing something and then they put it in and we count up the coins and then in a lot of the younger grades um it's so visual they use the tally system and then at the end of each month we take all of the points add them all up to figure out which house has the most and then each month we have a house we have a community meeting and the champions for each house each month we do have these beautiful flags and so we

006have a pajama day for that house um a different day of the month they get a hat day their favorite is every friday they get to be first in line to get their visa it's the one thing they are so excited about and then we display their house flag in the lobby and the nice thing is we say um for pajama day for example we'll say if you see someone in pajamas today and they're they're probably a cougar so congratulate them on being the house champions it's a nice kind of visual for everyone to see that the champions were um our pto did supplies with these beautiful tie-dye t-shirts um and we were having our community gatherings outside before we were allowed to have them inside when we have our gatherings we um strongly suggest

007that the students wear their house color so that when you look around you can see all the cougars and their green example um depending on where we are protocol wise we can base it together as houses which is a very fun way we'll say all of the cougars we can show your paws and get excited together and depending on what's happening in the building we either share things that are going on or we set goals for a proven behavior for example if we think we'll allow the launch room we'll set a whole class school goal on improving something from month to month and our one of our favorite things is the wonderful mr munt let's make sure this is weird we have what we feel is [Music] i'll take you oh [Music] is [Music] mr

008button works really hard with the students from kindergarten on so they learn the song and then we all sing it together and then at the end of the meeting we always announce who our house jam is for the next month so um we decided to come up with a project for the students um and we found this book called change things it's by amanda corman and the pto was kind enough to um purchase a book for every teacher our art teacher our music teacher and the librarian so all teachers could read the book to the student we of course connected it to our standards um for example of first graders would read the poem and talk about feeling words and um how it appeals to your senses yet fifth graders would look at the theme

009of the poem and dive into the characters of the poem and how it challenges um the speaker how the speaker challenges um how the speaker in a poem reflects upon that top so um we picked this book because it was written by amanda gorman and she's the youngest presidential inaugural poet in history you can all remember and um oh yeah a little thing one of the things that for example i discussed in my fourth grade classroom is the idea of how many obstacles she's overcome in her life and if you've seen her speak and you don't know this you might be amazed to find she actually had a speech impediment and she was not able to pronounce her own last name until she was in her 20s and she listened to music and poems and

010practice reciting them and she credits hamilton for helping and was able to overcome her speech impediment to become such an elephant speaker so then we talk about her character traits kind of dive into who we think she is as a person based on that and kids were able to you know talk about her perseverance and how determined she is then we prepared a special treat for you the children some children reading the book and we picked by houses so they each child before they read they'll introduce themselves to you and what house they're from hi i'm george adidas and i'm a tiger and i'm reading change sings by amanda gorman i can hear change coming and it's loudest proudest song i don't fear change coming and so i sing along i scream with the skies

011of red and blue streamers i dream of the cries of tried and true dreamers i'm a chant that brought that rises in rings there's hope where my change sings though some don't understand it those windmills of mysteries i sing with the planet in all hills of histories hi i'm bridget moore and i'm i'm a lion and i'm reading change things by medical i hum with a hundred hearts each of us lifting a hand i use my strengths and my smarts to take on you to make a stand i'm as bright as the light each day brings there's love when i change things i show others tolerance though it might take some courage i don't make a tall offense but fight to build a better bridge hi my name is henry and i am from jack

012i am in the jaguars i talk not only for distances from where and how we came i i also walk our differences to show we are the same i'm a moment a movement that roars and springs there's a wave where my change sings change things where inside inside there inside me because i'm the change i want to see as i grow it grows like seeds i am just what the world needs i'm eli and i'm in the cougars i'm the voice where freedom rings you are the love bright your bright heart brains we are the waves starting to spring for we are the change we sing where that world is becoming and we know it it won't be long we all hear james strumming won't you sing along those were all third graders and as

013you heard throughout the book there were many lessons to be learned as students read that book um and not only did all of the teachers work using this book in their literature standards and life lessons we also had our wonderful art teacher alan davis connected to art she um she's working with some fourth graders um volunteered their time to make a mural for our um cafeteria and you can see them working there now it's megan woods nola kudlasik jillian gallagher phoebe razika abby mercurio amelia visco and avery whiting and um mr munt also made musical connections um he's teaching classes using um folk music that's played a role in social justice movements so we have a wonderful project started to and that flows throughout the entire community and it's rare to find a book that

014is appropriate for grades k-5 but this one certainly fit bill and the message of the book was to be the change that you want to see in the world so we tapped into our houses and we started a project called spring into action and of course we started it at the beginning of spring in late march and in this project we wanted to build upon the idea of the students being caring citizens they are caring citizens within their own classroom within their school but also within their town and their state and their country in their world so um we sort of challenged them to actually do something to take some action so um we identified four local non-profit organizations and we invited our older cats grades four and five to vote or prioritize those four

015organizations to see which their house would um support and so we're going to have students tell you what their cause was so the cougars my name is meise and i am a cougar the scituate animal shelter finds families to adopt homeless animals it helps needy families or senior citizens care for their pets so they don't have to give them up my name is chris and i have a jaguar oops hope happens here give help to needy families and reach it out with acts of kindness for people who may be lonely my name is tegan i and i am a lion a rolling wave repairs donated bikes and gives them to other and other items to very needy people a bike can be a ticket to a new life giving someone a way to get to

016work or school my name is jordan and i am a tiger sutri food pantry offers groceries to make sure that no citrus family ever goes to bed hungry okay so our four houses we're going to be supporting four local nonprofits and we really drove home the message to the children that this was not going to be a competition between the houses but instead an opportunity to sort of divide and conquer and support four worthy organizations instead of just one we reached out to families and sent out a message and we of course were as always so grateful to the generosity of pushing families we had communicated with the organizations and asked what their wish list items were and what were they most in need of so for one week's time at the beginning of april

017the um students when they arrived in the morning had these boxes set up in the lobby and each house had their own box but again we weren't looking for them to compete with each other and we also wanted to really encourage the children to give of themselves that a very small donation that is actually their own donation is more meaningful than a large donation um given by a parent so a lot of the donations that came in were like adorable little crinkled up dollar bills like clearly they had been in a kindergartener's hand or the tooth fairy had just delivered it and it was so just sweet and and genuine that children really embraced the notion that everybody could make a difference um so we collected items for that one week's time we decided to

018limit it to one week just to keep the excitement and the motivation high and now we've delivered all of our collections to those four organizations in town um and all in all this was the first year that we've ever done anything like this but um we loved having the whole school community team up to actually take some action and do something to spring into action so we want to thank you thank you for the opportunity to share and um if anyone has any questions or comments for us this was a great presentation and a great thing for the kids to be able to do so thank you for sharing this with us you know any questions yeah i have a couple yeah i would say too this was i mean especially given our hybrid nature

019well done on the lots of things to navigate there so and i will say as henry said in the video about the change he needed i think this is just what i needed tonight so thank you for bringing that to us tonight um i wanted to if you wouldn't mind many families in town have been asking about reading curriculum and choosing books and age-appropriate and how this happens i feel like this is such a great example of the work that you're trying to do and i i heard you allude to it and i was wondering if you could just briefly unpack a little bit more about the process because you mentioned you know that you matched it to the standards which sounds like that's age appropriate so talking about you know first graders focusing on

020senses whereas the fifth graders were focusing on themes and then you mentioned book selection was around amanda gorman and her significance to the country and so could you just talk a little bit more about sort of that behind the scenes process so we as a community can just understand that that work that you do you know there's a lot that goes into it i think one of the things we always start with are the standards um that's kind of any teachers go to and then looking for something that might carry across all the standards i mean reading standards tend to be a little bit easier um although with most of them what they learn in kindergarten or first grade you take that and you build upon it in the next year and the next year

021so um with something like a picture book um as long as the language isn't too difficult it's not too long you can usually find a way to connect with all of those different standards um and then you know we would review it in advance to make sure it follows all of those things um so i would say definitely the beginning point is always our standards um which you know so easily accessible right on online there's usually just sort of a wild factor about a book there can be something that just reaches out and touches your heart and this book definitely did that for us we talk about books as windows and mirrors um so this book you know served to be both the children saw children like themselves but also different from themselves and that

022message was able to make sense to k to five the older children really were challenged to think about how does this connect to what we've learned about social justice and the idea of collaborating within your community so it's sort of the book almost called out to us more than we chose it you know it was sitting there in target and it was like oh my goodness like it you know it just really um right away struck a chord with us and with her being a young author most of the kids when i said the name for example they didn't remember who she was and then i put her picture up and they're like oh that yellow jacket like they remembered her um we actually in my classroom watched a clip of her on the news

023talking about um the process of writing the book and about her own struggles and then for fourth grade and fifth grade it's so easy for them to say oh well when i was younger i couldn't do blah blah blah and i learned how so they were able to make a lot of personal connections to it i think when we were looking for a book uh um picture book ex specifically any way that they can find themselves in it like stacey through the window um and and with that one there's so it's so broad that they can and i don't know if you don't have the book you should get it but if you watch she picks people up as she goes and at the end they've created a band um so there's a music connection

024that most of them are excited about and then for elementary students they start playing instruments in fourth and then play in fifth so sometimes it was their instrument that was on the page and they've made that connection and the art oh yeah the artwork beautiful artwork throughout the entire book that ellen davis could really stick her teeth into and get a project up there um you know to also add on to your question um we read a lot of kids books yes a lot of kids books and we we will try to see where our curriculum is is lacking what standards aren't being exactly hitting to the best that we can and we when we want to bring in new literature always as as teachers we are always reading new new um literature and we

025will spend our summers reading books and trying to figure out embedding them really um we put a lot of time into it put post-it notes on pages that there's things that we want to discuss with each other um so a ton goes into what was lovely was that the books were distributed at a community meeting so they looked around the room we said okay look at your teacher and all of the teachers held up the book at the same time um and we really were grateful that principal moffett right from the very beginning when we presented this idea she you know both supported us and guided us while trusting us to kind of you know shape it as we went along so we were really grateful and it was a collaboration between um the literacy

026and our pbis committee which is always nice to be able to tie them together thanks you're getting a great return on their investment with the art the music the literacy the reaction and we have such great teachers who are willing to jump in with all of those projects what can we do to make it better how can we help you yeah thank you hello um no i guess i wanted to comment this i feel like this is exactly what as a member of the school that we're trying to bring throughout the district so thank you for showing and give us really a lot of great background and what you're doing and how you're talking about it just i'm just reading this here that this started in 2018 so it's really been a couple of mostly

027the houses the houses yes um and so the kids get are assigned a house in kindergarten we have a sorting ceremony where there's a bag and they get to go up they reach in and they pull out a card and then they're like on the cougar and then we have them all sit together so it's already building that and then when they walk in the hallway they might have an older brother who's a cooper or yeah no so the reasons for for creating i think are pretty clear but can you i guess give here one positive outcome that has happened as a result of this have you seen changes in kids behaviors or have you seen yeah i think that we can see it with what i like the idea of the non-profits doing afterwards

028there's some maybe one particular situation or a handful of situations where you had some concerns with a group of students and you saw that once they were identified and carried through you know with this group very motivating for the children like using the best of that positive reinforcement and a little bit of positive peer pressure like they love when someone at their lunch table earns a house point for their house um they really and they support each other we're always careful at the end when the um house structure revealed we emphasize like we're happy for others when something good happens to them so we're all going to cloud whichever house this is um and we really truly do make it be whoever has earned the most points it isn't uh well it's the lions turn

029they have to actually earn it and we did have time where it was the same house two months in a row yeah and they were like [Applause] and you know i think um because we do have the community meetings we are able to as a pbis committee and as a staff talk about where are we seeing some places that we need to review and beginning of the year we go through you know we'll talk about caring citizens we'll have a whole community what does it mean to be a caring citizen in your classroom in our school so we target things like walking in the hallway um and and if they're kids will come back to the room and they've gone to the nurse or something and say i got a house point because i held

030the door for a teacher teaching them those things that like you do hold doors for people behind you so i think you know tasty kind of alluded to the a little bit of peer pressure they want being first in line on fridays to get your pizza you wouldn't think it'd be that big a deal but that is what they are so excited about so it really do they they work together if you kind of say i'm seeing some behavior that could we do we don't do it often that if it's bad enough we do get them they do take away points so we'll say i don't want to have to take away a point and they're all like no so it does that they're you know that works well in the cafeteria it's large gathering

031places um we use them in our small group yes and it works and we announced midway through the month here are the totals so far um i know in my classroom the kids will always ask me let them know how they're doing um tell them every point matters we want them to understand that every choice they make makes a difference and there are consequences for our choices um and we've even had children come up and say can you give her a house point because i didn't have anyone to sit with on the bus and she invited me to stick with her you know so they've really um internalized what it means and they know who the members of their house are from other grades so they'll say oh that fifth grade he's also a cooper

032and they get excited thank you um i guess you kind of answered my question i had was it come from one house encompasses all three yeah it's a better form because i think um the older kids i love seeing like the older kids with young kids like they you know take them right away and you know the energies look back to the older kids such a great responsibility and experience with that but i also want to say that i love the comment that looks okay knows emirates because it's so cool with some of these presentations that we've seen it's you know science was connected to our new big presentation you had like three different subjects come together and really get the curriculum participating students aren't just saying that look reading a book and answering questions

033on it they're coming back really applying it across the board which is only going to help them to get one this is awesome thank you for we don't always see things like this you know really hear how this is coming out and having an impact on students i mean this is this is amazing so thank you very much uh our student advisors cannot be here to help you with that content um i'm [Music] i just well good evening and thank you so much for having me tonight um tonight i get to present on behalf of the ability team what you are going to care about and um the pieces i'm going to share do not happen by one person they happen by every member of the staff and really it's impressive when i sit down

034and i try to write everything by trying to head to blooming because i can be like oh i want to tell them that and that but um so when i went through uh when i went through and um this is just the introduction to the having the school um really when we work with kids at the hadley school we want to make sure that we're working with the whole child we want to make sure that we are creating kids who are critical thinkers but there are also those citizens that are going to be next door to you someday and are going to be great neighbors they're going to be the kids that are going to play cheering somebody else on um and that they're learning and they're not doing lessons but instead learning through doing

035activities and having hands-on the hands-on approach i know that i have the opportunity to listen to my two colleagues um jonah moffett and tracy reer here to come and present to you so when i was putting together my presentation i decided i didn't need to see the same exact things but i want to acknowledge to you and the community that consistency in the elementary schools is happening and it's work but we we all believe in it and but you might not see some things that they said simply because they already said it um so eureka foundations the literacy pilot were covered in the last few presentations if you have questions about them whatever they say i say ditto and i'm happy to answer questions but um i really wanted to highlight not just things that

036are happening at how heavily but maybe some things that i know are also happening at the other elementary schools but they just couldn't fit them in their presentation because this is a little box when you sit down and start telling them all the things you have to do um so collaboration was the first pillar that we worked on as a district and we really at the heavenly school work well as a staff but we wanted to make sure that coming out of home it is time to make sure we're collaborating with families again we had a fabulous school that parents came in um we the year before covert started we initiated a book and had every family come in the morning and read with their own student in the book and then they took the

037book home overhead so as you can see in the first one um one of the things that we have done to bring back collaborative families is we have a monthly engagement workshop at the school so each month we have a different topic parents you don't need to sign up you just come if you want to come we've done meeting with your child we've done homework tips we've done discuss the pier data and how we're using it at the hadley school this will continue we'll have one in the evening and june and that is going to be focused on summer reading how to have your child summer read how do you sit with the child who stumbles over reading and that's really to continue to collaborate with families we also have a number of opportunities that

038have come back to the hadley school we want to welcome parents back in our games so currently we've had student celebrations we've had publishing parties um we have parents that volunteer in a few minutes i'm going to tell you about independent reading anybody that stands still and long enough next to me knows i believe in the better painting um but we have parents who come in and listen to just sit and listen to kids read which is just such an important thing um we have mystery readers kids love when they find out oh it's my mom or my dad or my grandma or wherever it may be we have parents that are coming in to volunteer at centers we will have a book fair in june that will be during the day and then evening

039and we'll have parents volunteers there as well another way that we collaborate is we use data teams um at the hallelujah school we use what's called the driven data-driven dialogue protocol i know that in scituate everyone in scituate um people in 2016 were trained i was not here at that time but i had already done a 10-day training on that protocol and i believe it really really helps you to look at kids cross the whole brain and look at every child so um in that protocol some of the things you do are you predict results before you even start working with all of the data that you've collected and that really is so that you're thinking about what are you going in what are your preconceived thoughts that you're starting this process with you go

040visual and that's really you you get to know information better when you are hands on in it you observe when you observe you just look at the facts there's no because nobody had a bad day that day nope what do you see and what are the facts and then we analyze and we say okay i might get it happen what else do we need to be doing for these kids to make sure that they're moving anytime we do this protocol we always use three or more data indicators and that's simply because you can't use one assessment to be like oh scary um you know you really need to dig deeper and you have to have a cross-section what if it was a bad day that fleshes itself out a few years more indicators um and

041the results of doing data teams are we create interventions as well as our wind groups which i also will address as we get built measurements we use minutes from the meetings we used our data sheets we um survey a survey of the participants just look what we tweaked like now we've gone digital we used our post-its everywhere and now we've all been through that process enough that we will digitally um elementary leadership is certainly a collaboration that we really do we meet every monday morning we meet other times but monday morning we just calorie okay so we went to dlt last week and everybody's doing this well we have to then figure out how four of us are doing it the same way so we meet monday mornings just to make sure we really are

042trying for that consistency um the st um meetings that we have is another way that we collaborate um this again something all elementary schools do we have these meetings um and they have facilitated at the hability school and i believe all schools by the school psychologist but anyone who interacts with any student um being brought to an st team you know is invited i go to all of them anyhow um but when they go in they just present and they say i'm working with this child i've tried this this this and this i'm not seeing any other ideas and those professionals in the room brainstorm we come up with the goal and we try to figure out what ways can we possibly help that student and then we meet again in six weeks just to

043say okay did it work what do we need to tweet like we take attendance for those things well was he in school was the teacher in school what might have impacted him we tweet or we say hey it's working and we move along the next oh i'm going to ask you like a little stuff um the next pillar is the culture of excellence and here i need to give a little bit of credit um carry the customers on my school council so she certainly has helped me to think through what does excellence mean and for the sake of this presentation and what we do in our school um we we really believe that's performing above and beyond expectations so in here i wanted to share a few ways that we are doing this um each

044month we give out certificates of excellence to students and that is anything any staff member in the building can can put in a child's name we share um each monday morning i do what i read book to the whole school and it's on the same theme um and during that meeting once a month i announced the kids and why they're improving and they could be anything the other thing for excellence is that we have high expectations for all there was a time of public education that a lot of uh if a strongholding student was working in a book they were working in a book that was not at grade level we now know that kids need to be exposed to grade level materials yes they also need to work at levels of their own but

045they need both for instance i went into a grade four classroom today and there were three groups going on and they were all reading the book number and that's a high level book but when you watched it it was scaffolded for some it was enriched for others um and that's really what you want kids are going to weld their their vocabulary and you want them to have exposure as they go through the brains um also the data teams like the same high expectations for all we don't just look to see who's struggling if you are really doing well are you still growing we don't want anybody dreading water waiting for everybody else to catch up we need to make sure everybody's growing pbis is a place that we celebrate excellence um that each month we

046use a theme right now we're doing empowerment uh we have this is a place that we teach kids explicitly instruct kids on how to be have social skills how to be a good citizen and then we help them excel at doing applications those skills and we give an example um student led groups is another place kids that excel we have a group of third graders who want to write a newspaper they started their own group and they write a newspaper and it's beautiful um that's just one more way that kids don't have to wait and have their teacher tell them what they're going to do they're going to be excellent man homework group is another way this empowers fifth graders to take time they have the ability to go to the math specialist and do

047their homework and i think that helps them to excel in their own way um and take ownership of excelling like i know i need this i'm gonna go down and that's happiness could be heading down the hallway to do their homework at lunchtime communication i think that it's really important that when we say about excelling um we're talking about everyone and that's it everyone excels at a different level so communication the reason i brought this one up is because we have our kidney i'm learning how to use one of the um audio devices so if you have a child neck and that who's mine so everyone is learning how to interact and speak with her so that she can excel at communication and i think that those pieces are so so important um what i

048win is in my last slide and i'll explain it more but um what i need is not because i'm struggling what i need is because that's what i need it might be we have kindergartners reading magic treehouse because that's what they need and if you don't know my veggie trees i was gonna say it's about an m which probably doesn't help either but it's like a second third grade book but they're ready able and we want the kids who need to be fluency they're getting that but we want the other kids to get what they're needing too so that's why you have to win um so sadly you can't see under seth's box but that is another child who's extelling um and you can see his feet he's not in a wheelchair and he's learning

049to move his legs he is accelerated he is excelling by his own bar and it's just amazing to see i did have permission to say that on tv um in the other corner you don't need to book your box stuff but it's just the certificates of the kids we take a big picture each time we do the um monthly certificates of um excellence right i'm gonna say don't worry um personalization is elementary school but i got two boxes so i had to pick two things to try to show you um independent reading every grade level that happily school has a block a block built in for reading one of the biggest things is we don't want to teach kids to read we want to teach kids to be readers um and this block allows them

050the time i want to be clear first this is not silent reading silent reading research shows does not work if most of them are good for 10 years they know how to make their eyes moved um this is reading out loud and this is their chance to pick the book they want to read and anybody on the pto knows the most have to do more like if we get all the books because kids want new books not none of us go to the library pick up the yellow book right that one that you're like um kids don't want to that we want new books rich quotes that they all are like when can i have that book to read um and this is their time it's a 30 minute block in most grades kindergarten it's

05115 minutes and uh the superintendent will tell you when he comes to visit i always have him in a room for a few minutes to sit and listen we have family volunteers now that come in that's what they do they just sit they pop around the room and they listen to kids read their books of choice the teachers all have conversations with kids about the books that they have chosen to read it's hard to have time to be to have conversations with kids that are really just about them this is their opportunity um they read aloud um this allows educators to take running records that's simply how to how does this child move it also helps them to be able to um be able to decide is this the right book help the child learn

052how to match to a book because everybody's got a harry potter desk you know but there's those kids that can read that and others that you're like let's go backwards and take this home and someone will read it um and i i often hear in these meetings while including how to convince impact students there it is is how they are able to remain focused on a task that drastically everybody could see the difference kids left and home and had had stamina for staying on task and when they came back there's definitely a difference so this gives us that opportunity to try to build it back in um the other piece the last personalization is i already started to tell you about is the windfall and again that's across all elementary schools this is both in

053math and in reading and really what we are doing in that block we use our data-driven dialogue to decide groups to design a focus in a group this is above and above what we do for reading instruction or math instruction and it is those kids that are working on fluency these kids in first grade we have a fluency group but we also have um perception they're reading to decide um what the perspective of the meeting is which is incredible and we want to make sure we have those levels and that's what win gives us um it said how we measure and i'm a data person so i did pretty well only have one box of debt but um i just when you put all of these pieces together you can see the kids are learning

054um i've tried to use we have multiple measures that we use we never use one measure but i did try to at least put in the star is a reading comprehension program that's on the computer and you can just see um how they've grown from september to um these are march because we already haven't done june yet but i just thought you would like to see that it's working and that they are growing um we have all this data for years past so what i do is in june i will send it all to ryan beatty and that way if he ever has a student and he wants to look or he wants to know how this group of students did i haven't happily school has it for all of the students um so what's

055next we really want to increase parent engagement opportunities we want to have opportunities for parents to be here at be in the school to help us for us to help at home if there's things that we could be teaching that makes it easier when you go to do homework um we are highlighting literacy programs at the elementary level you know we need to really need to choose one that creates critical thinkers again we want to teach reading but we want to create leaders even more so um and we wanted to want to continue to empower students to make their voices heard that newspaper club that thinks uh we need this to happen we have a recess committee that has decided that like what we need to do recess and it's wonderful and then you know

056better i don't i go into recess but i'm not figuring out what we're doing and they really do already know and finally i just wanted to say thank you and show um this is one of our community if larva is our art teacher phenomenal person um and we have this for the month of february every person who walked through our tour was invited to put a heart up on our community board um unfortunately you've missed it because florian burton also is always moving and that's been taken down and replaced that great well thank you for uh sharing that presentation with us tonight uh um um i just wanted to say that i've heard almost this identical improvements what i need from others so you know i think it's great because i think a lot of

057parents can serve have you made any tweaks that maybe we want to make a fatherly or vice versa um yes and the data teams are happening at all as well over over the years the parents you know we wanted to see the same things happening at every elementary school because they end up at the same middle school so it's important that when they get to sixth grade they all you know kind of on the same plane level playing field um so that this is great progress towards that thoughts i think it helped a lot too we all capable three of us came in at the same time so and now and tracy has joined who's just a in terms of students who are you know beating bench parks and whatnot but a follow-up to that

058it just more just so that i can understand maybe other folks is though the numbers are good it definitely shows improvement there's still you know between 20 and 30 percent of kids who are not meeting benchmarks so what's kind of the process um of helping those students achieve the benchmarks whether it's by the end of the year or whether it's as they transition to the next grade kind of what supports are they getting and when are they identified so for some of those i would say two different things one will go back so that is one snapshot so when i look back at that data like for instance um i put in one of my notes but so at second grade um it might show that we have that we haven't quite don't have all

059of those kids that percentage but we have kids that in the in that 25 percent that are not there i don't have the number in front of me um but they have made the world like they're almost there so what we're doing to those kids are first of all we look at lots of assessments to be like okay well she scored well in comprehension but her fluency is taking her so long to get through anything that by the time she gets to the comprehension she has to go back so we know fluency is going to work so what we do is we have a document that we track what um interventions that we're doing and we will continue on with those and we promise so we'll do like we just did mid-cycle um so that

060we make sure okay well she was having a hard time influencing because she made it um and we do that for all of the grades um also for like the star in the fifth grade what i noticed when we look at this data is that um that is one snapshot so what you'll see in the some of that data which i think will flush out in june is it's not even the same child like you know he was fine blue green green green um and then red had a red day but coming to you i can't say oh i think he's fine nobody have to do that so some of that i think works itself out as well but yes we keep interventions in place uh classroom teachers will be the next classroom teachers to

061say these are the interventions this child worked on keeping everything at a personalized level so that we can make sure we're not like oh all right good luck um these are the this is the entire population so these are kids on iep's everybody um we certainly believe that what we want to have happen um is everybody to need that benchmark maybe everybody has to do it differently and have on an iep to help them get there but everybody thank you i just had two questions um so thank you for this presentation you mentioned um in the fourth grade they're reading embers i'm very familiar with that with the fourth grader at home you used two words you said scaffolded and enriching and so can you speak a little bit to how the teachers are able

062to do that sort of differentiation in one class are they using the wind block are they in groups like how is that because those are two different things that the teachers are doing so can you speak to that just a little bit yeah so in the fourth grade that i went into today um they have inclusion services so some of those kids on iep are working with a special education teacher everybody's doing the same thing but they're into small groups um and that special education teacher would have to be children with her and they were working on vocabulary they were working on um understanding how the character was feeling really trying to give some basics so that as they progress through the book they understood what was happening and then when you went into um

063[Music] to the the next classroom they were talking about something that had happened in the book and of course it's going to split my mind right this minute but how had that ever happened in normal life like they were putting it into their own words which is just that little next level um and the last group was working on um pre-reading so that when they went into doing something writing they would be um they would have some information so that just gives us different levels but they all get to access yeah i ask i ask because i think it's really important that we as a community see sort of what cushing is doing around one book right matching it to standards and grade and then also at hatherly using another book same book matching skill

064set right so the teachers are really there's a lot going on in terms of matching appropriate reading to age skills as well as content so i appreciate that example the other question is a little bit different but related to your presentation which is around the collaboration piece and you talk a lot about how teachers and families are collaborating with the students in mind and i'm curious as you know as a leader of a school i have real concerns i think the school committee also has real concerns about teachers support and i'm wondering if you could speak to how you as a leader and how the teachers are collaborating to support each other not just in in teaching our students but also in supporting themselves as they come through a pandemic and grapple with um you

065know the racial reckoning and other things that are going on so can you sort of speak to the efforts that are being made at that level so i think that across schools everybody has their own way that they're doing this but um i've been really working recently especially coming out now the masks are off on culture in the building and that is every time we have a staff meeting we start with having highlights what is your neighbor doing that is so great um we talk about okay is there a personal highlight everybody has stuff going on at home and we're people we humans with jobs that we we want to care about each other as well as um everybody else having other pieces that are not like making bread i put soup for everybody for

066lunch that's not true my father um those types of things the st team that we spoke about going to a team and being able to and that is everybody at grade level books um okay can you just help me because i really want johnny to do better and i just can't quite make it happen i think supporting each other in that way is so important um so i think that there's so many a variety of things that we've been trying to do just to help each other out we did set up a little team that is surprised people that nobody knows who they are and they put streets there's a certain date of retreats in the um in the teachers room like things that we haven't been able to do and it's funny how when

067you go into something like what we do like oh yeah we used to do that you know and we're just trying to pull out those oh yeah we used to do that so yeah yeah it does thank you and i'm glad to hear that you're sort of reconnecting with the youth to do's i also hope and encourage you and others to think about what could we be doing that would be different right creating and innovating and looking to other states to see what they're doing to support their teachers so um so thanks for that and i think that point about community you just brought up particularly we saw the different houses the kids were sorted in that story that you brought up about the kindergarteners although you kind of use the same communication device so

068that that one can be included into the environmental assets it's such a great story to hear you know bring it all together um i think having those student life groups is also a great thing i'm sure the kids tell you it should be ninety percent of these techniques but you know just having the kids be able to come in and say you know this is what i do i want to make it better here's how like that's you know it's skill sets they're running out a small level down so i'm going to help them in middle school in high school especially some of the groups that we know um teachers are able to make and they can hear hey this is important for my kids after school group and like you know really down in

069this little bit more that's you know what we should be doing for the kids um one question i have here on the benchmarks and it kind of goes with mr gates head drawn out um so i'm sure you know unfortunately there are some kids that you take the you take destiny and then go down a little bit you just talk a little bit about the process just uh you know how quickly that is captured in between the different times that kids get tested and then you know just how the work is done to help them throughout that time period to you know catch up so we do progress monitoring on all of let me backtrack first it is three times the year that we do all of the data all of the indicators so that

070means that you would have probably five different assessments nobody sat down for five assessments in a day but over time and then we look at all of those three times a year and all we do simply with that is um we put up a chart and we put carry carrick carrie didn't make his bench but his benchmark and we count and we say oh she didn't make four we better make sure what's going on there someone didn't make one like okay that day you know but we really go back to okay that many checks what do we need to do um from there and for the individual pieces like world leading fluency we do promise monitoring so that happens continually so every three four weeks um a reading specialist or a staff member sits and

071does that again and we print out a trajectory to make sure that they are on track to hit where they need to be if they're not it's time for us to come back together and say okay maybe we thought it was fluency but actually their first let their um phonemic awareness we're just understanding language breaking up words maybe that's what they need maybe they need to understand that words are made of sounds maybe we need to backtrack and that's what we can do until we find them pinned one point where they really need and then um that's the intentional put in place psycho starts again promise monitors and hope that they keep marching forward and if not we'll go right back so what we don't want to wait do is wait till tune and be

072like that so we are continually progress monitoring um and reviewing that with teachers and it's teachers doing this you know i do part of it but i'm one person part of the team i don't feel like i love meeting with kids so um everybody's doing it yeah and i'm releasing my own kids you know the teachers are also doing an amazing job but hey i think you know this student is doing something a little bit cute but i'm working on you know make sure you work on it at home so you know the highlights to the south they they do a great amount of work you know just keeping the parents involved and engaged and making sure that they know what's going on instead of just hey use your gimbal score september march june whatever

073you know whatever it's done and they know the kids like you can walk in anybody and say what's going on with this little person and that teacher will know exactly what they need where they're going it's tremendous what they are able to accomplish uh so next on the agenda we have our leadership report so let's start off with a superintendent thank you everyone good evening everyone welcome it's great to be here in person good evening two tough acts to follow so i i think we saw a really good display tonight in person of uh the practical indication of what school is all about so really nice job tough thanks to politics i'll do my best so what i'll be presenting tonight is the superintendent's self-assessment and goals similar to how staff and administrators are evaluated

074the superintendent goes through the same thing setting goals as a cycle of self-assessment setting goals and then presenting to the school committee evidence of those goals and then getting feedback that's the next meeting so uh the only major difference i guess is this is done public which to me is very exciting a little unnerving last year but um you know i appreciate it and um so here tonight i'll like to do uh so the folks know out there that um i share with the school committee a comprehensive document and a self-evaluation document from the department of elementary and secondary education what i'm trying to do here is take a portion of that and capture as much as they can to highlight some of the things that were accomplished this year and you'll see in a

075lot of the clips like we as capital certainly this isn't just my doing it's us it's we it's all of you families great teachers we have paraprofessionals bus drugs custodians administrators families and especially our students so i'll dive right in i'll try to along as quickly as i can so just to review you've heard some connections and i think i was proud to hear the last few state of the districts was the um we haven't heard the middle of high school yet we still have a little more elementary but it's the consistency that was really a big thing that we've been working on and something i heard loud and clear when applying for this position uh is consistency in our elementary schools i think we're achieving that and still have a ways to go but

076certainly a focus area something that's really powerful that's presented and so you'll see a through line of pillars which are cultural excellence communication collaboration and i kind of talked a little bit about the left there i'll summarize some of these slides like reading slides and share these obviously the public um go through so here's here's an encapsulation of the of the goals the beginning of the year and broken down into student learning district improvement and professional practice so now these are district-wide goals and these trickle down into the leadership team the central office and the principles and then through this to the teachers into the students so the first one talks about um i'll just highlight some words uh personal excellence we heard that personalization tonight from both groups that presented already and from our

077previous state of districts high expectations again a word that we don't want to use but we want to back up their actions and how we do that how we define it engaging in students and accommodating diverse learning styles needs interests and levels of readiness that's our equity that's where every single student is at a different place and we're really big on talking about growth you know every student starts a different place but how do we get them from a to b basic fundamental thing is a year's growth a year's time for every student at minimum and we can get even more out of those students that's great the example that uh miss ward gave uh students that are maybe a little bit below grade level every day we'll be reading at their level to practice

078their skills but also being at their grade level where they want to get to kind of push them to high expectation the same with all our kids so that's that in a nutshell the next one talks about district improvement there's a little bit of overlap it just talks about i think we've got to makowski's question about culture and climate um you know we've been through over two years of what we've been doing people are going through a lot of things um uh that's our teachers that's our parents it's our kids um so the big goal this year was to unify folks that's gonna be an ongoing goal that's that's culture you know how are things done around here a simple way to put it and it's good that we started our state of the school

079in the state of districts give you some examples of that so what i like in here is a unifying place where everyone is safe has a voice it's true with respect treated fairly and appreciated so that's really important to us it may seem like common sense but i also i think the christian team gave a great example of uh teaching kids holding the door please thank you all those things we learned at i come away from home at the schools those things are reinforced very important and it is the adults as well and as colleagues and as interactions with communities and with families next goal is uh next two goals professional practice so these are goals um as the lead educator in the district it's my job to model and grow as a learner and

080that's why i became a teacher why i love education and so these are challenging goals for me for those that aren't familiar with the massachusetts new superintendent program or nsip it's a three-year program that i've signed up for i'm in year two and what that does is it's training for new superintendents last year was a lot of introductory methods and it's taught by a group of retired superintendents you may get your individual coach so we have new coaching meetings smaller breakout groups here too it's a little more uh to you so we'll have coaching meetings a lot of small group meetings with superintendents and group elections so you can talk about things that you're dealing with that are unique to superintendents so that's a goal of mine to finish that strong this year and then

081completed year three next goal is a goal that's obviously very important for the entire district is we were fortunate enough to be part of the msba process and which is the new school building project for the potential combination of heavily pushing and the goal was to finish that eligibility phase on time and i'll share the results that doesn't go through next slide i did want to share or the school committee will be familiar with this this is a rubric where the school committee used to evaluate the superintendent so it's four standards so you'll see the presentation you'll see that i'll refer to standard one standard two standard trace standard four that's what these are um and also i have a g1 and g2 g3 g4 for bowls so i reference those in the top right

082corner so if you see those that's what allows the school to be to go back these things over and reference the evidence to support the goals so in highlighting i'll just standard one instructional leadership standard two management and operation three family and community engagement and standard for professional culture i'll dive into these depth a little bit more in the following spines and here's the first example so standard one instructional leadership is broken down into six elements here curriculum instruction assessment evaluation data informed decision making and student learning and my little blurb on the left there is you say i capitalize the we it's how we have promoted learning and growth of all students this year sharing the pillars of excellence communication collaboration is our consistent cornerstones and the work we do and these next artifacts

083we'll talk about how these teaching learning practices have reinforced this stand this was talked about at a prior school committee meeting and it's called tiered focus monitoring and this is a evaluation in-depth evaluation process by the department of elementary and secondary education of our district specifically focused on special education english language learners and their program and civil rights this intense process of self-assessment and submission of evidence and regular feedback from desi uh which we received actually today uh so we'll be highlighting some of that um response but desi comes in and does a deep dive they collect a lot of information about us they want to make sure again this is an old classroom we'll talk about equity every single student is an opportunity to grow and learn and excel in our district and they

084give us feedback and so here's an example of one of the criteria they may look at so you have an idea and a flavor for it in the district and its schools meet the english language efficiency benchmarks by the department over the past three years if not what academic and non-academic supports in the matter of changes will affect the district and he allows to meet their future language efficiency benchmarks so we had a summary of verbal feedback with the leadership team a few months ago when this was wrapped up and so we wanted to get a jumpstart on some of this feedback so the next slide gives you an example of how we use this feedback and information from tessie to start improving our programs and student learning so the goal here would be increase

085the number of sei endorse staff members it's only mandated by the state if you have a student sel in your class we want to be the best in the world we want all of our teachers to have this endorsement so when our action was that the district was to offer this pathway for all of our teachers and uh our assistant superintendent and language department did a great job uh selling this to our teachers and making it available um and get some license so we're proud to report on the bottom there you can see 16 staff members are currently in this cohort uh voluntarily there's something i'll mention later on our collaboration connection with bridgewater state college a new partnership that has really been uh it's given us significant opportunities that we may not otherwise have

086been able to do so that endorsement has reduced costs that's one of the benefits that the partnership has allowed us that we can help pay for that for our teachers and uh not hit the budget so much because we have a partnership with bsu so we'll continue to focus on that because you know as an administrator i took that course really helpful it's really good for your literacy learning for while you're teaching we talk about accountability how we're going to measure success and i do realize the goals this year uh can be more specific and they will be next year but as you'll see through this slide deck hopefully you'll see there's a lot of systemic changes that need to be done this year put us in a place and this is one example so

087this is the odesi provides us it's public information it's a report card and some of the things where they define this is also a presentation that mristal and i did during the school year uh and we met with our principals right off the bat and started looking at you see the color codes there you know we exceeded the target blue being met the target and you go all the way down to no change um which which is you know something we can improve on and then you know the darker red is the worst so you see the point system there i do want to point out if i can know this is small to read but basically you get rated on achievement growth high school completion progress towards english language learning proficiency absenteeism things like

088that so it's a real detailed uh diamond looking at you brush yourself and you across the state and so we uh again back to consistency we did a workshop for our principals to look at this but we now know that we have and you can see this is 19 data because we didn't have this data this is lack of outcast from the forward year so this year we will have this data from our results to look at compare and approval and hold ourselves accountable for student improvement in areas that lack and continue to hold high standards where we're doing well so here's uh an example of using some assessment data with just practices and i actually should just defer to julie's presentation because she's one of the best i mean i learned from her all

089the time she probably took a slide from her interpretation so you know all of our principals do a really good job in department chairs teachers on you know collecting this data and that's why i thought it was so important to do a school state of the schools because people hear me in all of these meetings at this district level when you hear the grass tax of how that is implemented in the school and when i go to the buildings and meet with the principals the first thing we look at we look at is some of the scores and talked about okay how are we using this and then i'll go in the classroom and see it in practice and how are we adjusting and spoken it's a great question tonight what do we do for

090kids not getting started you know how do we adapt and i think one of the one of the great things that we started this year that was consistent is the win program you know what i need what every student needs personalization to do that all hands on deck i think that is really paying dividends helping us overcome some of the obstacles that cope has created for us i mentioned earlier that you'll be hearing some a lot of firsts in the district uh the curriculum acceleration committee the director and people on this again collaboration unity we talked about that a lot of what we do is collaborative not a lot of top down the vision the ideas yeah that's that's shared by me the pillars but here's how it transcends into getting everybody involved to get

091our curriculum aligned and transparent a big goal moving forward into next year so the curriculum acceleration committee is principals and department chairs um collaborating together they volunteered for this group so it's people that are passionate about these work we have several of these committees going on simultaneously and so the first thing we did was reached out to the community we asked them you know some questions about student learning how the children learn best ask the faculty and students here's just one example of questions students projects are meaningful and result in them actively participating both the blue is strongly agreed you can see that the faculty and students were pretty unified on this front but the families at home the parents don't thought of the difference we have what this data sometimes does it has us

092ask more questions okay why are the families feeling like this is a lack of communication on our part um you know is it better involvement more involvement for them this information was helpful we looked at that initially and that helped with our essa esser requests as well uh next thing we talked about is developing expectation guidance for the ebd model participated in the refresher training with department chairs so again back to that consistency um the curriculum was there it was just everywhere i think our department chairs and stressful abroad this year as a goal is to bring that all together one umbrella one place start calibrating start assessing it start making sure it's aligned to the standards we heard that reference tonight and that will continue to be our work here oh time for i

093guess the little break in the action here so i can't get i can't stop thinking about the first line of pizza because we have in central office we have uh era fridays i can see dr duck's wheels going on uh how we can have a game on hopefully first eric you think of that no my question was have you ever run out of people that would be concerned for me why are we sorry about being first true i like my legs all right so i'll i'll continue i guess oh you can see in the back yeah yeah so next thing uh it's very important um and we're doing it tonight this is part of my evaluation thank you again so the next thing that's very important is uh you know evaluation accountability of everybody that

094works with kids okay and we had a model that was not good um so we purchased a new factory evaluation system we trained all of our staff including myself central office we were all trained using the same thing again we had an evaluation committee this is the first this is volunteers collaborating together and then they've come out and presented to us again not top down so for example with this new evaluation system and model to evaluate our doing our job the committee the department shoes came to our central office meetings and faculty meetings actually presented this i didn't present it stressful didn't present it they they had ownership in it as union members and teachers uh to do that it was remarkable they did a really good job and so they had prizes so we

095learned a new system uh this group worked together uh the third bullet i want to reference work as a subcommittee the current interest-based bargaining process to recommend changes to language so we had worked throughout program with uh our teachers union and other unions to you know adjust on the fly and adjust learning and working conditions and one thing we're really proud of is that the values valuation system never missed a b because we were working hand in hand with uh the teachers and making sure that the process was fair it was equitable and had high standards so we went from having google docs and baseline edge which was which again which is not a good product last year to a much improved project to store our information to evaluate to keep our timelines to monitor

096and give feedback okay the next standard is management and operations this includes environment human resources scheduling management law ethics and policies and fiscal systems i tried a little different approach here with just some simple graphics on some achievements that uh and i may tie some of these into two years since we've been here as a leadership team first one uh we're really proud of and some people here the school committee in the audience have given us feedback has been increased transparency in the budget process uh we received very positive feedback from the slack board this year on the transparency transparency of our fiscal systems um again we want to do that with everything in our district we will next thing we're working on is our curriculum sharing part of that tonight but we're real proud

097of that work there should be nobody out there that isn't informed of where we spend the hard taxpayers money so that's you know again we're always hoping to answer questions but we've shared very detailed processes and um shout outs dr joshua's over on next one again establish universal three full-day kindergarten savings of 500 000 to our families in perpetuity to help as long as all year and that's what i would push for is that there's no more kindergarten again that's an equity i should some people don't have the means they're not a full day they want to have to it wasn't right it should be free and same with athletic fees uh this year for the fy 23 budget we're very proud to report there's no more athletic fees 900 bucks on top of your

098taxes to play sports you know i just think that's an impediment to getting kids into red it's also hurt families especially in these times you know the financial things we're going through so this was something we were able to incorporate so if you combine the two together you get 700 000 savings for the community every year a year we budgeted that now we own it we're proud of that and we'll look at other things like buses and other fees down the road i want i want to really emphasize that because you know again when i was interviewing the job this was one of the things that really bothered people was the amount of fees that situated we got rid of the two biggest ones right off the bat very proud of that i want to

099thank everyone it's our meeting especially for quoting um increased focus on curriculum talked about that tonight we looked at how much money we were spending on curriculum buy what you value your money and we can old textbooks and things that were outdated listen to the teachers through the budgetary process and this year we're spending up to four times three years and i also went back into saying that just because we spend more money doesn't mean it's going to work right so we're going to be held accountable for that but things like like i just talked about through textbook technology professional learning for our staff that we don't pay dividends that we're lacking we just simply won't explain it again our first ever in the district is a maintenance fine item and we're asking for a

100new school the gates is fairly new we want to stop asking for new schools uh this room is a perfect example for uh again one of the great community contributors here responsible for helping to get this from it's beautiful and renovated we want to be able to do that stop leaning on the town and the taxpayers so uh i want people to know that we started our first line item last year 125 000 we doubled it this year 250 so that we want to be proactive when broken window theory where there's a little broken window we fix it right now they don't wait three years for the six broken windows and then ask for capital spending for a hundred thousand fix it okay so we're taking accountability in our buildings again a very prominent feature

101that we've heard a lot there from the community was we want to have buildings our kids are proud of and we can do that so we started that and that hard money is going to appears improvements on top of the next path here is the capital we doubled the capital uh investment in our two short years here this was unanimously approved by the capital planning select board advisory school committee in town meeting two years run this year was doubled because i believe it's built on the trust of our transparency and how we spend money what we spend money on that we share what we spend money on and when we ask for it i think we're earning the trust of the townsfolk select boards this board that we're spending it responsive and we're good stewards

102of the taxpayer money so again thank you everyone for doing that and the last one is um just two budgets approved unanimously from all the boards i think that's a good achievement if you look at other towns sometimes it's a lot of squadrons that are very proud of the fact how this town works together to get to the bottom of things up front before it's forwarded off a couple more um again this interest-based property i mentioned this talks about the collaboration i know dr kelsey asked about how are we helping our teachers who i consider them first responders they were in here remember two years ago with doctors and the nurses on the front lines back in school right away i'm pretty proud of that fact and i understand the courage it took to do

103that so what we've done this year was we're negotiating six contracts and do so responsibility responsibly we also have to do it so that we make sure that our teachers have the tools they need to work with and are treated like professionals that they are so this type of bargaining is very unique in which tables sit down and they come up with an interest list of interests okay so it might be the school day length of the school day or length book period those conversations are had as a group with a facilitator and they're ironed out so you hear both sides of things whereas traditional bargaining it's okay you want a longer day you want a shorter day let's do this and it comes to a log gym sometimes so we probably had about 12

104meetings already three or four hours a pot and it's moving very smoothly so again ways to go and i want to thank any members of mr cases on that brandolini for probably hundreds of hours you already put in and still to go it's a long process no goodbye increased diversity of our new hires by three times i gotta be honest it wasn't a lot a minority people working in this district so we're tripling it wasn't extremely hard but it was conscientious i just gave some administrative positions i want to make sure that people know that we're hiring at all levels here uh keeping in mind we want to reflect the diversity we have in our student body and i think we're well on our way doing that where we hire how we recruit but just

105being a welcoming place to work one friend tells another reply here so our application numbers have gone up and again something we're really proud of and something we want to continue to work with next one is uh establish a pathway for new mentors to be trained as teacher leaders is getting our teachers involved and being closed up to train our new teachers and our new teacher orientation time process that traditionally it was a closed pathway basically same people did it no really knew how they could become a teacher mentor to teach you the new teachers so um opening that path we have the teacher mentors coming up with that great idea and now it's open to any teacher that wants to be a leader that wants to contribute back to many teachers um this this

106blue box in the right corner is very interesting i'll bring this up at the end it's the only time i'll mention code in this whole presentation i could have spent this whole slide deck on time my goal was to show you what's happening in our district what achievements are being accomplished in spite of coaching in the face of cold so we had a medical advisory council so i had i wanted to put that there because these are people that are local citizens we are local doctors that were volunteering for that we have school nurse leaders and those people had to make a lot of courageous tough decisions in the line of fire and so that was important it's the only time i'm going to mention not that it didn't happen but i'm celebrating all the

107stuff we did while it was able to pander right so i really want to establish that um next one is the uh you know this brought this up and other principles already because social emotional learning is extremely important uh especially through the pandemic for kids for adults for our community so um started a new district team in school building teams it used to be kind of a one-man show with mr and erie and a group of volunteer groups from the schools would do it now it's very organized highly organized that's consistent students took the peer assessment each school broke it down the district level team helped coordinate and faculty time was spent on looking in that coming up with action steps in each scopes they're a little different with their data a sense of belonging

108for example how do our kids feel about that and what are we going to do about that coming up with some action steps to do that and then guidance our great guidance department went to all of our staffs we had what's called signs of suicide training uh heavy stuff but important oh really important so we want families to know that we're being trained on this stuff all the time to make sure we're looking out for your children and that we're protecting them so this is a training that we went through that was very powerful and effective i wanted to mention that and here's the goal of completing the msba again a lot of people involved this on a secure head dr dutch's office uh we were months ahead of schedule town meeting vote on the

109funding for the feasibility study for the million dollars and schematic design phase so we're proud of the fact that moving into that stage right now that's just presented on that presenting again in may giving folks a constant update on where we are waiting for the process quicker here so again back to the safety uh security of our students and our school family here uh we didn't have a district crisis team we had building-based teams so you know what happens in the district if there's an emergency what do we get's the table and picks it up who's there so we've got and it should be a collaborative membership of community groups police fire uh school representation so we want to thank dr mcguire and ms rondel uh for sharing that putting that together in our community

110liaisons that contribute to that volunteer time to meet they're starting to put together step-by-step crisis responses to when things inevitably may happen how we handle that so we're prepared so we'll keep you posted on that we'll eventually have the report out again something we're proud of that where we found lacking and that we implemented have in place we have in place we'll continue to evolve as we develop that group third standard is family community engagement which involves our community sharing responsibility communication so something new this year's seaside chat had two the first one was focused on the msba project and that was the fall one we had two sessions so folks could make it an afternoon session evening sex session at 6 30 um those first two ones were each 90 minutes my philosophy has

111always been i'll stay the last questions asked and answered and so i give i want to thank all the folks that were able to make it i know you all can't make it um maybe we'll evolve into a hybrid model like this little thing we're doing here tonight but it was just good the timing was good for both those meetings and the second one was just more of an open forum for me to listen timing was right uh social distancing and masters is along we're able to get together each of those meetings went approximately two and a half and there was great conversations and i want to give people credit because it goes back to that thing i talked about about modeling and all the questions and concerns were focused out of me nobody got

112into it with each other it was respectful i took a lot of good notes i got a lot of good information we got a lot of work to do but it was really helpful it was really profound for me a superintendent people took the time to come out and share that it's not always easy to i know not everybody could make we'll continue to do that so i'm trying to sneak one more this year more next year um also just throwing it out there i am i love one-on-one meetings i love people uh i've never turned a meeting down so if you want to come in and talk to me about anything set it up and we'll do that so i probably had 100 meetings with family members students and staff went on that's that

113and just so everyone knows the information taken from that um shared with the school committee they collected it it's all part of that our goals for next year incorporating that something i'll get to in the mid-thought exchange just collecting all this input and then turning it back out into um so next piece here is i mentioned this earlier our connection with bridgewater state university there's only a handful of schools that have this partnership maybe because stress when i teach there right now with the connections my god i graduated there uh so we've got a little pull there so they are great to work with us and just some examples of um things that we may not be able to do that they can't uh is having uh guest speakers in a variety of topics here's

114one um here that's very popular and getting the data back for this we were averaging about five or six people for each of these so um hopefully they can get more but i just wanted to give you the reality that this is shared with all of our families and just a shout out to everybody out there that these are available to our community to take advantage if you can very helpful and powerful so that's one example of the many things that we've done with the bsu family i thought this was very important to talk about equity in our students with disabilities and this is cpac is our special education parent advisory council and that uh you know huge credit out here to talk about her work on this uh she pulled us hard when there

115wasn't a lot of people in that group you know we came in during a pandemic too and things like that but um you know and not acceptable we wanted that to be a very important group we wanted to hear from those parents we didn't want to be part of that team so went from one one parent one to eight people showing up to three board members and 30 20 to 30 people showing up meetings so great job with that uh that's a great sounding board for us very very good information on our special education uh programming that we can do better and we're doing well so some of the things you can see here that that they've done as a group of our community members and parents has updated the website working together have minutes

116bylaws now posted on the website working on the media publicity and communication piece which is important as you know um instagram account and working on an email so i know that's going to be an ongoing program but again from kind of nothing to uh trying to actually want to think about probably the parents that have committed to that process um excellent i wanted to share is there a lot of talk about um how many kids are here and work it's going and you know that really gets home to me i wish bc high as a freshman i moved to plymouth and went to gone to public school so i had that experience with saint mary's boston had a great experience there so i understand the private school experience is for some people and some kids

117some parents it's great um i'm a public school teacher educator now uh having that experience i just wanted to kind of share find out why are people choosing where are people going so this is from our own information uh sharing with you here tonight um even though the analysis demonstrates other than homeschooling due program we have seen no dramatic changes or withdrawals because marching is surging we don't want to lose one student um we've set up something this year where we're doing uh exit interviews anybody that leads this student and the families council team is doing that we started in mid-year so a lot of transition going on at that time so it's been a little slow that'll be full force for the end of the year and beginning of next year so i'll be

118able to share data next year on not only the numbers of students that are coming and going places but the why don't have that yet but you you can see in dates from the 18-19 top reason for those three years as people moved you see the private school number in 1819 is 54 at jump five to 59 this year uh year before is 51 so that's been inconsistent in the 50s the vocation uh vocational school it's actually decreased at this point right now look at the bottom chart from 18 19 to 10 now and then what we've seen our biggest spike is the home scoring but when you see that in 18 nights those two students pre-covered pandemic time pretty much everybody was home so that wasn't a big number we jumped up during the

119hybrid year last year 29 and we had six new ones this year so worked close to 38 students down we actually had a handful come back recently so we'll update this data just wanted to kind of share that make sure that the public was aware of that keeping track of that and then we're not satisfied and that we'll have more information next year and we encourage folks that do decide to leave to share us the why because that's important for us to improve there's some uh moments there personalization and belonging of inclusion and trust model you know we wanted to come to a model that would be uh controversial you know including people loving each other trusting people uh can we all agree to that that's what we wanted to start that's the core of

120things and starting with the we all want what's best for our children right so we can all be there i think we start that with our inclusion trust model and then go and build that up i think with them again with mr adams and his team all our teachers i think their students getting involved they kicked off such a public school's pledge in each building and kids working on this is our house the celebration that will become a tradition where kids are involved families are involved what a great way to start the year that like you know it's nerve-racking for kids to come to school it's i'm saying for the adults right it's tough school's tough sometimes we want this to be one caring place kicking things off this is our house a celebration of

121school and learning is important so that is an example and then mr adams has provided short stops we call them or professional development for teachers how to have difficult conversations something comes up in class or colleagues um just spending time together it's really been good to do that also join faculty meetings to answer their questions and navigate for the school year you know kind of like our other other teams we have loving inclusion trust teams that gets teachers to be part of each building you have a power advisory group uh similar to this special education parent advisory group that any parent is welcome to join uh community freedom team that's evolving as we speak um tier focus marketing which i share with you about our special education um english language learners and how we're navigating

122that the seat back focus and expansion i talked about that and the accountability training which they are pointed out but looking at students economically disadvantaged el students and things like that so looking at all our different groups of children to make sure that we're deep diving into the data to make sure that every student is being looked over and attracted right next is technology so technology safety is important obviously in a district with a lot of information student records things like that so what we did is we hooked up with a technology group that did a an outside agency that did a in devastating security environment technology systems to give us a real good feedback on our areas of weakness of places that need to be fixed and they prioritize for us here's some great

123examples uh we had to beef up our password and people pretty much driving by you could like log on to the wi-fi and stuff so we didn't know that so we found out and we strengthened that two-factor office authentication where so uh teachers educators administrators you know so all the information you're sending back and forth is perfect so i think that's a really good use of our time and a shout out to uh mr long and our tech department all the work they've done with that and then the one to one again that really happens districts it's a long process and we're already ready to implement that i know this long has shared that process for that already again that role is coming we'll continue throughout the next couple years and we've established a website

124development team you may be surprised to know this but the superintendent's assistant is in charge of the website for three years all right miss peters it's good technology that's a yeoman's responsibility so right away we said we need a team so again shout out to our tech team mrs peters mrs matthews here he's part of that team and we're working on a new communication system with a new website all being rolled out for september 1st right so you'll see that we are working on that we are aware that there's been a lot of great improvements but it's been a two-person show and this matthew's computers doing that work now we've got a team that's working on it with a professional to develop that and to move quite honestly the website designer we had wasn't user

125friendly great communication so we're looking at a new system that's more user friendly it's easier to access for families and so work in progress but we'll be rolling that out for you soon and have a wonderful website and lastly uh standard four high standards cultural proficiency communication shared vision and managing conflict right so commitment to high standards um i know we always go to ap but it's pretty impressive what's happened in a short period of time i think working with best insights just giving our kids and our teachers the tools they needed to for example take practice tests uh teachers to be trained and things like that that weren't happening so our goals this year and some things we focused on was increased participation and more kids involved and ap that want to be there

126they want to push themselves to be there it's not for everybody but our numbers did well pretty good increased performance so not only do we want you to be in the ap we want you to take the aap test i think that's an expectation and we want you to do well if passing a score on the ap is a three one to five um different schools have different philosophies our philosophy is we want to encourage all students to take that test because that's a college level assessment you take that course that college-level course and you should be taking an assessment in increased college success which translates into our looking at our sat data how we improve our students that are taking the sat and so we talk about here that we've um with a grant

127goes to the high school and used that money to get to stem courses and that will go into next year as well that was presented high school program studies and we talked about the pictures in trade i mentioned this already this is just a snapshot that i am completing the program keep in mind we still have nine weeks of school left presenting all the stuff we accomplished now which is good nine weeks to finish up a lot of things and it never stops they'll go through the summer and go through next year again just a list of some things because i think to me communication is really the most important thing i'll put ours our district up against any other and if there's other ideas that we aren't using this means a great example districts

128are doing hybrid school communities um state of the district that's not me this spook me uh seth of course his team the first one is going free all right i stated district in schools again new this year i hope you're enjoying that we had a sample tonight uh i think it's really important to kind of give give folks an update on what's happening in schools give examples uh julie mentioned it tonight those slides were five slides on purpose they all were the same back to that consistency all those presentations they had the same template that i used so we're all held to the same okay you got to get it in five slots so that they won't dribble on as long as i am right next one's thursday thoughts um again we were getting feedback

129weekly by weekly because that's the feedback we're getting looking at how many hits we were getting on it who was reading it how often they were looking at it and what we were what we're including it we hope you enjoy that um and again that's work in progress and as we get feedback on it but we're averaging over a thousand views each i think that's pretty good uh superintendent do a weekly cable show if you haven't seen it um you check it out there's every week on the local cable local network is uh just a short tidbit of the upcoming events to do with town administrator it's a lot of fun um and there's no make up involvement i go in there give me a little break on that but a lot of fun and

130i appreciate working on the title of that and that they allow me to do that i hope people can watch it school community presentations um just you know last year part of the feedback that i wanted that i needed improvement was the curriculum stuff um and certainly that was the focus this year i already raised the superintendent who knows the stuff in the bones but you might have noticed in every school committee being exceptional tonight because i knew i was going to be long very break she helped me with this so i said night off but you noticed we've had her present every single meeting real quick going right into the fire so i want to thank her for that so that was that was focused on purpose and continue to do that um and

131just some other things that people need to know as mentioned tonight i meet with all the principals regularly we have focused meeting on goals what their expectations are accountability classroom visits what's important in the classroom the next meeting we're all doing for consistency is mrisco and i are going to each principal talk about their schedules back to consistency it's that time of year we're scheduling so for example the elementaries are we consistently scheduling what's the value system we place on schedule how are we doing at the middle school how do we get to high school how we maximize the use of our time how are we making time for professional involvement during the school day our kids getting most time on learning things like that and then i mentioned the email phone meetings um when

132i talk to our leadership team i talk about email being the lowest level i think even being below that is facebook stay on facebook my recommendation it's a joke i'm not honest it makes me happy so email i tell them my commentation facebook email is the lowest level paid a small-time communication a phone call is the next best level talk to somebody the next better level is to meet with somebody and if it's soon if that's a comfort level do that it's in person that's great too right so all of our leaders are doing that i hope you've seen that and it takes a lot of time but it pays dividends and i think people are nicer to each other they're more civil they're respectful and i hope we can all move towards that tonight's

133good stock for that to have civil discourse have a positive discourse and keep that goal in mind don't lose the idea the prize is the kids our kids love your kids my our kids my personal philosophy and education is treat every child like they were my own i don't know everybody they have children what do i mean by that well i make a decision how would i want my own child impact i have two they're adults now and they were fortunate that great teachers are great leaders so when we make decisions you might hold do we have high accountability for my kids right are they accountable is their discipline um are they supported are they loved that's the word you don't hear in education a lot we are trying to get there we need everybody's

134help to get there where when you send in and trust your kids to the central public schools they will be loved it will be treated with respect you'll be pushed challenged so i think we've got a team we certainly have the teachers and support staff to do it so that's something that we're going to continue to do there's some other things that some groups are involved with superintendents and then the newest thing and i want to again give a big shout out to our community uh this thing is working i thought exchange it's open till friday another little push there if you've ever been on it i hope you're having fun with it with ratings and all that there's been this is the biggest turnout we've ever bought in a survey i don't even like

135calling it a survey because it's supposed to be an exchange um if you if you haven't heard it you're listening to this please reach out to central office if you principal we'll get you a link um we're already looking at the feedback there's already trends developing because students are going to take it families and staff and we're looking at intersections and we look forward to sharing that with the community on what we're finding and that's just one and then we'll get more specific the first one was really general we're getting a lot of good feedback so um i want to include that because i think it's very important that we've moved to that kind of uh you know one more thing about listening to our community and then kind of being transparent about right badly

136we want some innovative ideas that our school community gave us so we're excited to shut up and again we're not afraid to ask the questions about what can we do better finally just looking ahead to some uh next next year we've got a huge piece of the msba's feasibility and design phase which is actually working with a operating op club or a project manager we're working on hiring that person advocates for the school and then we'll be working with this building subcommittee to start getting groups together and all that really busy work moving through the summer into next year again dr dusk will share that may not eating all the next steps for our community equity audit this goes hand in hand with the strategic plan okay again a lot of talk about equity what

137is it where are the numbers but we need to do an equity on it to find out give us give our data look at and see all of our children look at them all look at how they are being treated how is their discipline being treated how's our educational experience being treated our families being treated everybody so this is the best way to do it where it's transparent get the information share with everybody that we do everything else and we say okay this is what's great this is what this is what is it so bad this is what we need to do to fix that we're going to be looking to do that certainly run that by the school committee first uh our strategic plan uh the former administration runs out of conclusion this year

138i'll see you next year but it's actually good timing a strategic plan if you're not for me it's a wonderful experience to involve the entire community students staff families school boards everybody into developing what we want to be that question academic excellence this is a great opportunity for everyone to participate in defining our vision for our district so that's an exciting thing coming next year um less exciting for you all is my third year of the endset new elementary reading program first of its kind and situated again i'm excited about that we're excited we're piloting that now we'll be sharing what um being programmed to go with but we'll be following that and how it impacts our kids in their learning etco you saw our new addition to the team we're reviewing the revising that

139program as we speak um make it more connected with situated communities a little isolated right now we can do a better job of it we have the right people there to do it so we're excited about that putting out that very talked about new works last slide i'm excited to share these things that went over and i said this once again i had one little box one little slide about the pendant all right huge credit to our teachers relentless work ethic our administrators our paraprofessionals our custodians bus drivers administrators and community students of course are getting all of this done and we've got 90 weeks left here we get cast we held this metal still and i also wanted to give a shout out to the school committee um certainly the courageous tough job you

140have it's voluntary i'm getting paid you're not whoever sits in these seats i get much respect so i wanted to personally think thank you for all the hard work you do it's some i don't hear it maybe and i want to tell you personally in public in my two years you pushed me challenged me into account and supported superintendent is the only uh credit card stock that gets to be evaluated in public uh the school committee will has received a seven page uh evaluation changes and is filled out um received that document last week i've asked them to put their individual evaluations together by next monday i'll put together a little um review and we'll share that in public in our meeting night video questions if i didn't comment i think that the um committee

141has been through a lot the last couple of years and one of the biggest decisions we needed today was who to hire as a superintendent um that's always i think number one priority as a school committee and we um i think opened up the application period around january of 2020. um and we i think brought it down to the finalists by the onset of pandemic as soon as everything went remote so i think that the district or the school committee made the perfect decision hiring superintendent um i want to thank him for his effort in navigating you did you navigated up through the pandemic we have to mention it it took up a lot of our time the last two years um it impacted all of us in different ways but i think that the

142district is then the community is lucky to have someone like superintendent marquette um and i think that he was able to i don't know how long this presentation was 45 minutes or an hour to redo all the things that we have accomplished it's quite the achievement so i just want to thank him for his service and his efforts um we are ultimately responsible for the hiring superintendent so we're kind of held accountable to that respect that he did he has proven last few years that we made the right decision so i just wanted to state that and um thank you for the only thing again i'll take a little bit of chairman love's thunder i think this was mainly his idea but um for those that have come to these evaluations over the past 10

143years or 20 years historically we do it in august um didn't really make any sense because we have our elections that are in may so we'd have a new school committee member theoretically that would have joined us in may but yeah we have they haven't read they can't review the superintendent so it was kind of an awkward situation and i just give credit like chairman long for and i think superintendent for kind of changing that calendar so such that this process can be completed prior to the next election potentially a new school committee member or whatever this year next year i think it goes a long way and i think that makes a lot more sense but that is a significant change again the summer school meetings generally i think were used because there wasn't

144that much else to do maybe um so we would generally do the history pretend evaluation that's why we're beginning a year and then the next the next um meeting i guess is when as chairman said all the comments would be may 9th it would be um reviewed and we're required to provide peter's comments about the superintendent parkhead and all the hard work he's been doing he's inspired um and her presentation i think was a good example of all the different things so many what goes on behind the scenes like what has to get done to have such a great district so i want to thank yeah i wasn't on the school committee when um you were hired but i do remember attending your interviews and so i think the thanks also goes to the parents

145and families and caregivers who attended all of those interviews and helped the school committee to make that decision by giving feedback so i also appreciate the community's efforts to participate i'll also say bill because you bring up trust and respect and communication often as a new school committee member i think i've appreciated most that you're willing to take all of the questions that i throw at you um not just in public but in our private one-on-ones and i'll say because as a parent i have i experienced previous superintendents who quite frankly i didn't want to ask as many questions because they weren't interested in engaging conversations so i think not only do you sort of inject that into the culture of the schools you live that and model that by the conversation that we're able

146to have because i have nothing but respect for you and i think it's because you trust each other enough to disagree and so i just wanted to say i'm grateful um speaking of questions chairman long are we allowed to ask questions about the presentation tonight that's okay um so the first one goes back to way back in the beginning of your presentation um you mentioned the increase in the cost of curriculum which i agree we value that tremendously and so i'm wondering what's the thought for us process around measuring the return on investment on the increase in cost i'm just curious how you're thinking about that sort of tracking of that yeah it's a good point one thing i didn't mention was our use of extra money to complement that and the reading program is

147a perfect example over three hundred thousand dollars so if we use extra money for that if we use that for our uh in our budget on the athletics two hundred thousand dollars creative thought so that the obvious question here is how does that impact our student reading levels in our difficult scores our stars all the things that ms ford and our other elementary principals have talked about we want to we expect this we don't look at it as it's not a program it's people so we're getting a program teachers are working really hard and excited about it coordinator megan's doing a great job with it but those scores that um you know i like what julie said about we're not looking at one measure we're looking at multiple we need to see those all the

148while we should see a little bump next year of course i can go anyways with just the focus for doing this that's one example of big big you know we're spending 300 000 in this thing our children's exposure to reading and their ability to read at a higher level quicker faster and better our teachers to be able to have the materials and training to do so should be that trajectory up and those scores as well as our intents um the other question i know and i know this is new bill but i wanted to ask anyway you had mentioned that you're starting to analyze or at least look at the data from the thought exchange i was wondering if you could talk about who's doing that review how you're doing that review what that i'm

149just curious about yeah we actually hired an outsider so they're due they're doing it we have access like okay central office okay uh mrs we're looking at it but the cool thing is this is how we shared to the public was that we don't know who's it's completely anonymous so what they'll do is they'll they'll churn all that information out and break it down into any kind of information we want presentations charts by parents by kids cross-section oh i know that's right up your alley so i think you know when we talk further i'll have them helping me this time with with that so i think that's important so think what they the way they said it was they showed us some examples we were very impressed with what we went with um as we

150were struggling with i know you and i had conversations last year with many parents you know we're not survey makers like there's no the involvement community involvement of these because the interest and the rating and all this um and you get to that that rational majority in the middle of what's important to the districts so we won't be doing that we're looking at it for our own kind of we'd like to get a jump on it at the end of the two weeks they'll turn out a lot share that with us so we'll have some pretty cool graphics and things that we have so many more we'll make a decision to share those thank you anybody that's one presentation just out of curiosity and maybe this is on their website so just tell me to

151go there are they sharing documentation with you on sort of their process for analyzing the data sort of like behind the scenes it is on the website okay now if you're participating in the thought exchange you can actually see the results of work splash right as you'll participate all right well thank you again for quick on the birdhouse right here uh all right so next on the agenda we have the director of business and financial forum uh writing an update on the capital project our culture you so i'll be uh presenting on all of the capital projects that we have uh going right now and go to the next slide uh [Music] clicking on the arrow at the bottom okay um so we've got some combined projects we've got those projects that were approved for

152this year fy22 uh they include technology the locker room one of the locker rooms at the high school the wampaton parking lot stairs at jenkins school which was an fy 16 town meeting approved project that hasn't been done yet the flooring at the high school phase two and the portico and the total for those projects is 1.6 million dollars and then for next year for fy 23 beginning july 1st again technology phase three of the flooring at the high school on the roof at scituate high school and then rigging for the center for performing arts if you move to the next slide i'll go into more detail on each of these projects so technology you could look at flight 22. so this year we've already made these purchases we had a hundred thousand dollars uh

153we purchased 65 000 worth of chromebooks which bought us 250 chromebooks and then interactive display is like the one that you that we're using here for the classroom so those are our fy 22 purchases that have already been made fy 23 we are looking to replace laptops mostly for teachers that are at least five years old in most cases they're six years old we're also looking to address some network controller um controllers that are being phased out because of age as well as uh in addition to the network controllers looking at more access points for wi-fi with um going one to one throughout all schools there'll be a greater greater need for reliable wi-fi system and then the phone system at wampatak is a traditional analog system many of the phones don't work they don't

154fall out of the building in many cases they can't call between classrooms or even to the office so it becomes a safety issue so we'll be moving that to a voice-over ip system similar to what's at the high school in the middle school so that it's more current more reliable teachers can call out to parents from their classroom during a prep period or at the end of the day and not have to try to call their cell phone uh or home landline if they still have high school locker rooms that was an fy 22 project we put it out to bid last year and received no bids the town allocated seven hundred and ten thousand dollars for that project so you can go to the next i'm happy to say the architectural plans have been

155completed we put this out two-bit online through bid docs which kind of streamlines the process we received six bids uh none of them were under the seven hundred and ten thousand dollars unfortunately but one was close the reference check is now complete finished that today i got calls back from all three uh preferences and they were good for the low bidder the low bid you can see it was 783 thousand six hundred and eighty one dollars so we are hoping this week to award the bid uh to that to that company um which i can't share until i reach out to them um they will begin work on june 22nd high school and seniors are actually uh all students are in finals and won't be in the gyms uh and certainly won't be using the

156locker room and the target deadline is august 31st before students come back and that should be 2022. sorry um so just uh to answer pete's question before he asks it uh the difference in as far as the shortfall between the 710 and the 783 um at town meeting this year there was an appropriation of 90 000 for capital projects some surplus funds from the previous year savings they had so we're going to you and that has to be used or at least encumbered by june 30th so we'll be using those funds to pay for all of the difference and there'll be a short amount additional amount that will be left that we'll utilize before june 30. so that's that's how we're making up the actual phone right portico we've budgeted 175 000 um again we

157put that out to bid last year received one bid of 215 000 dollars we were very specific in last year's bid regarding materials we wanted to use which i think is part of the reason that the cost was what it was so the engineering is complete so we are i'm finalizing the bid specifications and post it again on bid docs to increase the number of companies that put in proposals uh with an expectation that they'll be able to do that this summer it's not really a long job so i'm pretty confident to be able to get it done with the dollars that we have there again they're removing and replacing the entry portico and the sidewalk both under the portico going into the school and in front of the school where drop-off interview is just

158just as a point of reference because i know that it's especially if you have kids at wampa tech a lot of times the buses hit that portico because it overhangs the curve so it's been designed to be a little further back so that that will be an issue wampatuck parking lot uh 303 000 was allocated we again that was a project that was um for this year we did not put it out to bid because it will take all of the summer to do it putting it out to bid last year would have been too narrow window since we couldn't do that until july 1. so those specifications are being finalized and it's replacing all of the asphalt around the entire school at wampa tuck sidewalks parking lots trying to address the drainage issues and

159even looking as alternatives depending on the price we get if we can address the drainage in the fields behind if you've ever looked at the swing set and then the new playground if there's any any significant rain you know an inch or more um it floods it's under water from a long period of time so we need to look at that show the kids yeah maybe um so that's that's the goal with that that project high school flooring um phase two is the second floor at the high school and that's an fy 22 project so we'll put that out to bed this summer again not not a complicated bid we know what the product is that we want we're looking at the same materials that we've used elsewhere in the building and it's one one

160vendor there's no subcontractor so it's pretty straightforward and then phase three is an fy 23 project for 300 000 that's the first floor of the school and we plan to complete that next summer so we'll put that out to bid probably in april or may next year um the anticipation to get to work with the journalists they can skip stairs if you've ever been over there there's a set of stairs that goes up alongside the building on their their timbers one of the timbers has failed and the others aren't on the verge of failing the railings are not secure and not safe in my opinion and in the opinion of most uh the town had um allocated fifty thousand dollars to that project we put it out uh to get quotes uh because of the

161price we didn't need to get it bid so we put out for quotes and we received a quote for 49 900 uh it's our contract's been awarded that work begin after the last day of school and should take on it will be concrete not not replacing the temperatures or replacing it with concrete stainless essential high school roof um we're going to replace the remaining old sections so when kate school was built the portion of budding j uh gates was redone so i don't know if you can zoom in on that at all it's counterintuitive yeah so any anything that is black on those roofs is what we're looking to replace um so it's it's uh forget the square footage but it's it's pretty significant um the town has voted uh one million forty five thousand

162dollars based on an estimate um that we have um just based on square footage pricing we did submit statement of entrance interest to the msba to participate in the accelerated repair program so the portion of that would be reimbursed um just so that you're aware also i i've met or i've met with one and i'll be meeting with a second contractor specifically related to solar roofing solar panels on the roof um the challenge is one one wants us to buy the power um net metering credits which i don't think we can do because of the town the town has already committed to all of the power that they utilize now even though we still pay an electric bill the second contractor that i'm i'm talking to like to put solar panels on our all of

163our roofs and lease the space what i'd like to try to negotiate is that they release that space in advance rather than moving forward and pay for them instead so that's that's kind of the conversations that we'll be having um i don't know what their return on investment is they're gonna sell that power to somebody else uh so we've gotta figure out what's their return on investment and is it worth a million dollars over 20 years so we'll see if we can do that so the center for performing arts we have a safety evaluation done annually uh this year there was determined that there's 26 thousand dollars in maintenance items that need to be done historically the goal was that maintenance of the performing arts center would have been through usage fees because of covet

164there hasn't been much usage so they haven't generated much revenue so we went to town to the town and approach town meetings for 26 thousand dollars and they agreed to that understanding of rationality so we want to make sure that this is playing again it's an asset that you have it should be a spotlight performing arts on south shore um particularly at the secondary school level so we want to make sure that we continue to maintain it so that it stays that way related cap so we have 20 buses of those 20 buses lease expires this year on 19 of them i had true concern that given supplies chain issues that i would not be able to find 19 buses by july first since i started looking in february i thought six months would be

165five to six months would be sufficient um everybody that i went to said 10 months found datco we've purchased through before had 19 buses on their property 2023 buses so i agreed to lease them five years it's actually 304 thousand dollars we save two thousand dollars a year uh what they originally mentioned again they're five-year leases historically we've done three years not a lot of miles put on the bus in three years uh not a lot of wear and tear so it seems like the cost is spread out over a longer period of time you're going to get better better return on that investment over five years even with repairs maintenance that you'll have to do filters oil changes tires breaks those sorts of things will start to happen after year free but the cost

166because it's spread out over five years is still less than those expenses so it seems a better way to go it includes a five-year warranty on major components transmissions most non-wearing templates so at the next meeting i'll be looking for your vote to improve releasing 19 buses for 306 thousand dollars a year knowing that town reimburses us 250 000 of that so our costs each year facilities plan that they've adopted the five-year facilities plan and they had an analysis done and in that analysis they identified things that needed to be done over a five-year period to prevent having significant replacement costs of specific materials so the town has budgeted for those those items you see the dollar amounts for each of those uh buildings and if you go into each it gives you a kind

167of a outline of the items that are being done at each school so the jenkins school next year starting july 1 we'll be replacing the air cooled condensing units they'll be making renovations to the elevator um there's asphalt roof replacement you know the build the roof leaks that we're looking at repairs it's not a full replacement and then routine concrete sidewalk repairs changing out lighting fixtures both on the building and pole mounted it's mostly changing bulbs and that sort of thing but a lot of times that doesn't happen unless it's planned and then replacement or renewal of the gas gets around the windows so we don't have leakage issues like we have machine gun okay situate high school we're looking at concrete sidewalk repair same thing with the roof mounted fixtures uh they didn't know

168if we were going to be replacing the roof so there's maintenance there same thing with the windows we have a a unit on the roof you know the gym over the locker rooms that leaks badly when it rains water actually comes in and it's coming through the unit it's beyond repair and it doesn't work so it needs to be replaced there's no air change exchange in that locker room um what's happening as we're doing the locker room renovation we're going to replace that as well and then also maintenance on the elevators at the high school center for performing arts again both tall exterior repairs roof maintenance just making sure that gaps and seams are are treated appropriately preparing the asphalt and shoe patching and sealing cracks that sort of thing and lastly middle school again

169i'm going to work on the asphalt striping it we know there's some concrete sidewalk issues and then you know just unborn roof maintenance it's not it's not repairs it's just maintenance types of ladies that's everything this is odd this is great i mean i think this is something that um just a great update for everybody i realized what's going on and the status of things i think that lasts you know four or five years with you know historically nearly status so thank you for right now i have a couple of questions um the first one the smallest one is it was decided early on about to be purchased um items in the uh technology say laptops network controllers and the flowing system 200 is that going to be requested capital for next year or how

170does that mean it's already been requested so it's approved capital for this year okay that was a recap okay um the one because i learned the hard way one time the the room that's awesome if they if that video did we can accept that it's already come in that's awesome yeah um i don't know how much impact it will have to be very outside of the locker room but i know there is lots that goes on in the gym in the summer so if you haven't already i would be sure to notify wrecked about that because there are regular activities that go on there so i'm not sure how much how much restriction they'll be they'll have a staged area outside the um fitness center called the center which will be fenced off gyms won't

171be impacted it's the boys locker room it is being uh everything's being torn out partition being put up so there'll be a new entrance put in from the large from the small gym um that'll be the girls entrance and the boys entrance will be off the other hand you know what we were paying annually for 200 um yeah 250 000. well i know it was a little bit i don't know what the actual i think it was it was a little more than the 250 i'm not 100 certain right now because you had originally you had 14 buses that came off these last year and five more that could be coming off now we extended those 14 so they they were a little different schedule i'm just curious i'm just curious when you bought those

172buses you bought them for 88 000 you leased them they were 88 000 each these are 102 000 so um you know in four years it's not too too bad and i i think it's great that we're doing that obviously just i'm really impressed with what you're looking at in terms of the solar on the roofs i know the difference will talk about electric buses so just but i i think five years probably starts i looked at electric buses um 350 000 each bus i explored there's a lot of grant money out there through the epa but scituate is at one of the high profile areas that they're looking to to reduce emissions unfortunately they're looking at urban areas i think probably five years when this thesis will attempt to download the times you'll also

173have to look at infrastructure but you've got to provide charging stations yeah so we're going to need some some layers for that as well all right my last question is um all those questions ends including the um the j the uh eric the air condensing use of jenkins that's coming out of which budget no it comes down to the town the town's budget and that's because the town has a building committee that reviewed all the things you need to know before the things that were part of that review process correct perfect thank you good stuff thank you it's all radiator yeah so we have i think in your packet you have a listing of all you do there it is so there are about 108 computers most of them are laptops i think they're all

174laptops um they run anywhere from 10 years old to i think eight years old there's nothing newer than eight years old what we'd like to they they've outlived their useful life here for the district um so what you have on here is their date of purchase cost when we purchase them and then who we purchased them from we would like to put them out to surplus or the town for for individual residents in the town on a first come first serve basis they would need to send an email to rich long they're interested in a laptop they don't get to pick or choose which one or how old and again it's first come first serve um once the 108 laptops are gone they're gone um we've looked at surplusing them um for sale directly to

175a vendor who buys them the amount of money that we would generate versus the benefit that it provides to the community individuals who use like a motion to declare their technology hardware projected at surplus all right so this is the uh first and only off security become uncommon um as i mentioned earlier in the meeting we'll be going back and forth between people in the room here as well as people so you wanna zoom about normal format if you raise your hand unless you don't view people in the room they can raise their hand to come up to the front i'll try to get people in order let everyone have an opportunity i will just remind people this is a public comment a debate or a q a um as students come out of the

176public comment you can always say that it's an agenda item in the future make sure that you know any issues or concerns that the public have we address you know a formal presentation so um first person i start raise their hands on the left um it would be better just so we can hear you okay and then as always either just come closer okay and as always you can just say your name and address hi i'm michelle rama i'm um i have three questions uh or comments any questions one is oh and i'm from cedric drive um our students who go to private schools like in as part of the superintendent's withdrawals report do those students include the ones who are sent out of district are special ed or are they just um for going

177to private schools and if not then where are the students who are out of district sent out of districts for special ed schools um where are they accounted for in that report so that's one thing and the other thing i wanted to um ask about was when you were talking about the um comparing the roi of leasing the roofs versus buying the solar panel panels and i mentioned about the nethering and people who are not allowed to accept it or i'm just curious about how you're deciding on that and what their okay all right so that i have a question about that because it like if it's possible for the schools to own the solar panels and you know get that that power for the schools i think that's ideal especially with the price of

178electricity going up if you're earning a hearing on that then you're going to be earning more money for the school um over time so and then lastly um i you know i really appreciated all the thorough reports and i heard a lot about different differentiation and meeting students where they are and that and i can attest to you know a lot of that work being done with my kids um there are questions i have about whether um you know any thought has been given to giving the kids an opportunity those who especially who have severe anxiety or have school refusal issues of offering them remote dial into classes or other remote opportunities since many students describe during pandemic who are able to work remotely and then secondly um is any consideration being given to a

179twice exceptional program which we do not have and which i know many students would benefit from um this is a very complex issue and i think a lot of students are left behind who have severe needs emotionally but are also very exceptionally intelligent and and they're kind of like not doing anything because they just refuse to you know so just wanted to bring those up thank you so much for all your work i appreciate your report hi richard taft uh 74 brook street um i i didn't really come here today to say something except i was sitting in those scenes a long time they're very comfortable so i felt like they could be food um i think fees are important that's why i can't support you guys um but in listening to today's presentation i

180would i'd like to bring up a point i've done a lot of a lot of research on the ap this guy a lot of talk in our town and um you certainly see a trend in decreasing performance in ap particularly math science um over the last period of time five to ten years and i think it's great and a lot of effort i think mrisco's done a lot of work i think the thing um that you have to that we should be careful of though is of course students who take ap perform better in college that's just the nature of what you expect out of an ap student um so trying to correlate better performance of ap by just increasing the number of people taking an ap test is not really the right thing to

181do this may surprise you since i'm the one who's i've done a lot of this analysis and published it and shown these trends but at the same time just increasing the test values isn't the number of people taking the test isn't probably the correct response um there's a lot of reasons for that one it's incredibly rigorous for the students uh there should have they should be students who have reached a point in their progression where they get to an ap that you can expect them to pass it and not just be able to take the test it's incredibly rigorous for the teachers it requires a lot of work and in the last year when you looked at the evaluation actual data of course a lot of schools had lower performance in ap so that's not

182really the point the point is is compared to the rest of the nation or the rest of the state we didn't perform very well at all and we really didn't perform well in math and science so the questions really are did we correct those underlying problems did we correct whatever it was that made it so that we only had five percent of the kids who took the chemistry ap test packs 20 of the kids that took the biology pad store see i mean it was it's startling because it compared to the state averages it was much lower so the thing to think about is the correct and best use of our resources um not just like to just do more testing and the last thing to think about is great inflation right because great inflation

183affects how our school is recognized colleges know we have great inflation so just having kids take an ap test giving them a good class good grade is like a higher gpa i'm not saying this is explicitly done just saying the implicit expectation of these teachers is they want them to pass they want to do better and so you have these possibilities that occur when then the goal is i think the number i couldn't read it back where it was 720 tests i think last year's test count was like 408. i think in our high high peak here it's around 600 585 or something like that so to go from around less than 500 to 700 tests if that was the number again i could agree or a city um just sounds like an overreaction to

184something where we should be back filling the things up and letting our students get to the point because ap isn't in and of its ap testing isn't you know itself the goal right goals that they're good learners right even if they fail an ap test they may come away with it saying i'm really not good at biology well that's not necessarily good expectation or outcome you want it to be good thank you her country took place at three kids in the uh school system i want to thank you for going to the hybrid model um i also didn't know you weren't compensated but you were i do appreciate your work opening so i appreciate those as well i want to piggyback off the ap as well a couple months ago the massachusetts rankings came out

185and it would be good moving forward and this isn't to beat you up superintendent burkett but maybe six months to 12 months to look at where situate is then where they are now because if you look at all the south shore towns from plymouth to quincy over into whitman pants and hanover we actually work lower than most of the school districts on the scoring and that is out there you can google it or duck duck goes see that because i i know there was some discussion on that when it came out um so it would be good i guess to set our baseline now and then in six to 12 months whatever the testing is going to see where we are i think that we could measure how we're doing um also um is a

186possibility on the next meeting for people who show up in person to get baked goods and coffee like seaside chat um also piggybacking on the slides i don't know if this projector can be used in the future as you tweak things but mostly we couldn't see i know people at home can see them and that's great but they weren't tough to see some of the stats members i'm not sure if this can be used figure the room differently just a suggestion um also on your scl your social emotional learning i don't know if anybody saw the comments by the teacher in this middle school or a messenger i can bring her name up because it was published in fossil globe she brought up some concerning what she stated some things these quotes that she said

187i'm paraphrasing but she did say in the article that depression and lack of motivation is three times what it usually is um i don't know if the baseline is 10 kids out of 100 normally and now it's 30 or if it was 20 baseline and now it's 60 out of 100 that's a little concerning the fact that we have more counselors in most districts which is great to read in that article but maybe that's something in two to four weeks the school committee and yourself come back and say we talked with laura about that what did she say i didn't hear anything about it tonight maybe in the next few meetings also this is the political season in situ this is my 20th year in scituate this one seems more heated than most maybe because

188of social media unfortunately there was some theft of political signs in the past week there has been some evidence turned into the police department and it is coming back to students that have done it uh we're still waiting for more evidence to be collected but i would think that part of all your uh love inclusion trust which is great maybe students should also be uh told that during political uh election seasons that no matter who you're going for no matter who you're supporting doing that is not right you know it's just it's unfortunate but that's where the evidence is pointing based on some video cameras and some evidence on lawns so we'll see where that happens but it's just my suggestion if we have all this sel and dei you know uh implementation of learning

189maybe that's something that could be brought up to you know make it like you were just saying 45 minutes an hour ago better students thank you um you actually got to see three teachers tonight that my kids have had the absolute pleasure of learning from this year i mean does not get better than kate martin and uh i can just say like you think from the top down that's how we get good teachers and keep good teachers so i appreciate what and i just wanted to ask a quick question and clarify two things and i um one thing really and if mr brooklyn can't answer me today that's completely fine um but as we go forward i guess i'm wondering you said we're doing the exit interviews as people are leaving um and we haven't

190done exit interviews up until now and so i'm assuming that at some point the assertion that people have left because of our ddi stances and the progression that we need this year that is not true and there's no way that we could have tracked that by now um my other comment i wanted to make in regards to the political season this year i would hope that it starts at home i hope we're all encouraging our students to get involved i hope we're encouraging our students not to make false accusations um but as we move forward i think that you know we've talked about mr perkins said something earlier if you send your kids to central public schools they'll be loved and i hope that we can teach them that in this political season that's not

191doesn't necessarily need to be filled with hate um and we can all move and see the progress that was so evident today so thank you so much and i appreciate your time uh seeing no other and raised around the same person at the end of the comment uh mr gunther to your point um i'm going to say this unfortunately um since this is the first meeting this is you as well as everybody um this is the first meeting we're back getting continued to make sure that we're the best not only people on the zoo but also so thank you for that feedback it's good to you the slides we've posted online on the website any of the slides i we do not have any minutes to approve uh so our next next meeting um is

192on may 9. we continue to do this hybrid model going forward uh we'll have a superintendent's evaluation as part of that meeting at this time we're going to entertain a motion to enter executive session um we will end the public section of our meeting tonight i yes yes thank you all for coming tonight