001all right i'm gonna get going and call the uh wednesday december 16 2020 meeting of the quest school committee to order uh reminder that due to the public health crisis uh this uh otherwise in-person public meeting is being held uh virtually via zoom it's being streamed live on facebook on cohesity143tv um and uh would all members of the school committee that are present tonight please indicate so enroll call um mrs coleri mrs maher is not present tonight mr kearney is not present tonight mrs st onge present and president craig mcclellan so with three out of five members present we do have a quorum so we will continue the meeting at this time uh i will take any public comment public comment is of course some people heard me say this before it's reserved for any
002statements or discussion points that are not related to uh items or issues that are already listed on the agenda if your discussion points or topics of uh discussion are uh are related to agenda items just please reserve those until we reach that point of the agenda second to the attendees to chime in with anything um excuse me for one second i'm noticing that there's no chat box on here i just noticed that as well so i um we need to go into settings pat i yeah the host can probably resolve right now i think i have to go into let me see i know if you want to make me a co-host i can go in and do it if you want well you gotta go back into the actual meeting the problem is i
003don't know that i can go into the settings when we're going live here dr scollins i know that's why i wonder if you make me a coaster but i am afraid i will shut everybody down i don't know why it's not on here but uh maybe what you could do dr collins if you maybe go off camera and call uh dan he'd i will i just talked to him about something else okay he may be able to adjust this for us and i guess i'd recommend um chairman mcclellan that we hold public comment until we're able to resolve that issue which will hopefully be shortly if you didn't i would have dr sullivan and here's what everyone can do they can email me at c mcclellan that's c m-a-c-l-e-l-l-a-n at cohasset k-12 dot org c-m-a-c-l-e-l-l-a-n
004at cohasset k-12 k12.org and co is it cohasset m-a or k-12 org or is it cohasick12.org k12.org so email me with any questions i'll be checking my email but in the meantime we're going to move on to the superintendent's report uh so that we do not keep the building principles on longer than they need to be uh including our student advisor as well so with that turning to uh during the meeting to our superintendent schools dr patrick sullivan dr sullivan thank you chairman mcclelland and uh thank you principals for being here and jenna and of course the committee um obviously we're on the the eve of a big storm our first storm of the year it's always exciting and also a historic event in cohasset public schools where we have our first full remote day
005where we would have had a cancellation we're going to talk about that later in the meeting and i should say that the specifics of how we handle uh full remote days or cancellations or delays will will really have a lot to do with some of our bargaining that will go on with the cta and then of course our work with school committee and and what school committee you know determines is appropriate but this one coming up we were able to have uh some conversations quickly with the uh coastal teachers association leadership and get enough um sort of support to go for this day the the basic idea is to continue to keep the continuity of learning going um obviously we have because we had a after labor day start this year we have a june
00623rd the last day so with that in mind you know we don't really want to go too deep into any deeper into the summer than we have to all i'll say is that uh this i view this as just another tool in our bag of tricks when it comes time for weather situations and decisions and i i don't think we'll do it every single time but of course you know if we are able to prepare and the conditions are correct for us to do it i think it could be a very good move for us um for the reasons i just stated we'll talk about that more and of course i was able to get out my frequently asked questions to the community and i was able to provide that for the school committee ahead
007of time so we'll take a look at that i'm sure there'll be some interesting conversations and i don't think what we have that will happen uh tomorrow will necessarily be indicative of the way we handle uh full remote or non-formal days even next year uh but in in the in the short term i think it's something we should we should discuss and then obviously have more discussions later as we think about this and the impact of it um quick covet 19 uh update obviously as we had anticipated our rates uh are moving up in the uh community and the the i should say the the town um it's been happening you know everywhere so we're in a a tough uh time of cobit and we just have to all of course double down with our
008precautions i'm happy to say we haven't had any new cases for school community members this week clearly some of our school community members um did uh test positive last week and i communicated all of them to the community and our thoughts and warm wishes go out to those community members we haven't had any transmission within the schools to date that's a good thing but we're mindful of of everything that's going on not only in the schools but outside of the schools and where we're really watching the data and making sure that we keep safety first in everything we do um we're doing pretty well but we are we're being thoughtful and and are listening to you know what's happening around us and i just want everybody to to be aware of that on a very
009bright note we did uh come to terms with a memorandum of memorandum of agreement with our cohasset teachers association now the school committee took a vote on that last meeting the um cta did ratify that so that's great as we move forward together and of course we're on the brink of the holiday season where we're moving into a much needed break for our wonderful students for our incredibly hard-working um and amazing staff and faculty and are really dedicated and committed leaders and i'm lucky today to have principal scott principal mills principal farrell and principal sullivan with us you know in addition to obviously uh sue owen and um dr scollins but and i'm going to have them speak in a minute but while i have them here and publicly i just want to tell them
010how much i appreciate their leadership and the whole school district appreciates your leadership i know i speak for the staff and that and that um throughout this whole ordeal and really it's been non-stop for them since march 13th and i don't get enough chances to thank my principals personally and certainly not publicly so i just want to make that uh known publicly that how much i appreciate the work that they do and it has not been easy uh for them it's been a a real um as you all know and the community it's been it's it's been a never-ending uh saga of twists and turns throughout this whole thing and they've led with a lot of calm uh compassion and i really appreciate that and of course we have our amazing student representative here today
011we have jenna giglio jenna is a junior i had the pleasure of introducing her to the committee last meeting along with jake and of course caroline who will be sort of our all-star rotation of updating on how things are going uh we did have a wonderful superintendent's school committee advisory council meeting last week and i'm sure jenna will update on that and then jenna whatever you want to update on about you know how how you're doing and how the the uh students are are holding up you know obviously we started our sports practices and whatever whatever you want to update on would be great and the committee will have an opportunity to to ask you any questions so jenna i'll leave it to you all right awesome thank you so much so like dr sullivan
012was saying we had um a student superintendent council meeting last wednesday and we kind of finalized our survey that we were making and i know caroline touched upon that two weeks ago in this last meeting and it was the survey was just a way that dr sullivan and dr scollins could get a deeper understanding of how student life is going um it missed the whole remote learning hybrid plan so that was really great and thank you principal scott for sending that out to all the teachers and i found i'm in cohort a and i found that on tuesday all of my um my tst teacher was super adamant about getting all of our students to take it and i know mrs reardon she's a she's a science teacher if some of you don't know she
013told all of her classes to check their inboxes and take the survey which is really great to hear um yeah i'm super excited that everyone got to give you guys the feedback um and another topic of discussion we had last wednesday was how the new alternating wednesdays are going and personally i have found that among the student body it's going really well and we're super thankful to have an extra day in in-person learning which is something that isn't you know the most accessible right now um and it's just obviously like the many other things happening right now during covid it's gonna take some time to get used to for the teachers and the students because wednesday used to be like a synchronous day for both cohorts and um some assessments are now in school that
014would usually be at home and vice versa so um it's just gonna take some time to get used to but once again i am super thankful personally to get an extra day in school and i know a lot of my peers are as well so in other news happening this week best buddies a club at our school was putting on a pajama day on tuesday for cohort a which is awesome and friday for cohort b and it was just a super fun way to spread some holiday cheer and the most um like the most cheerful pajamas gets a prize from best buddies so that's awesome and then another project that's been going on at school this week was the pulsara project run by the spanish club and if you bring five dollars to school or
015if you venmo the pulsara project you get this fun little brace that i'm wearing one for five dollars um and they're made by children from central america and all proceeds go to them which is super awesome um and in other news winter sports started this week and i know basketball um both girls and boys and i think hockey started too um and i'm super thankful that swimming starts on thursday for me i mean sorry it starts on saturday for me and then morning practices which is looking different um at 6 30 in the morning in weymouth start next monday which will be once again something to get used to but i'm super thankful for that opportunity i'm super thankful shout out to my coach bill burnett he's done a great job um organizing all this
016and i'm super thankful that our town gets to have winter sports which is something that other towns around us don't get to have so um i'm super thankful for that once again and we have our snow day tomorrow like dr sullivan mentioned um and that was a big topic of conversation among all my classes today and how that new snow day is going to look something very very different once again um but they for most part um an update on the student perspective of it we are going to be not zooming in most of my classes for attendance and throughout the day just getting done any assignments that um the teachers have been like doing for remote throughout the week so i have for example a couple slide shows like of work that i have
017to turn in or a couple like written essays assignments that i have to get done um which seems pretty pretty good so i still get to enjoy some of the snow outside and yeah thank you for all your hard work all of you guys and i'm super happy that it's the holiday season and i hope you all enjoy your holiday break so thank you really well sad jenna thank you and it's obviously going to be a great addition here um you know it's nice that uh that the students recognize that as a staff you know like we don't want to overwhelm students with remote work on a on a day that is you know snowing and there's all kinds of scenarios with and it's also tough for for uh the staff to try to do
018that with their own family so we're all kind of looking at this as as continuing the learning in a particular scenario like we had um for this storm we had some build up our very capable staff had a lot of contingency plans they were able to build in for you know if we have power if we don't have power um if if it ends up being a super storm and there's a friday so this was kind of a nice uh time to try this and to really get a sense for how we can make sure it's a good learning experience without taking all of the joy of a snow experience away from our our kids that include our younger kids and you know and all that so i and i realized there's a real social
019emotional feeling with that i certainly enjoyed my snow day and i don't want to be like the grinch that stole snow days you know but um but i do think that jenna i think you put it well where we can continue the learning we can have a good learning experience given power scenarios we can have more inter we can have some interaction if power doesn't afford us the opportunity because we are able to prepare for this room we can uh create a learning environment that's appropriate within a window of time to get assignments in and this is a good example of when a remote day would be very i think very positive because we had time to really dig in and plan for it so that that's a that's good to hear that any questions
020for jenna our thoughts for jenna on um what she presented and i'm so psyched about the student advisory council with the suit you know my advisory council with dr scollins it's what i love about it is it's going to open up even more student voice and we're looking to get some middle schoolers in there for our next meeting and move that survey down to the middle school and then try to get deer hill involved in some way before the end of the year as well but um you know you know principals all the principals here have been really working on getting more student voice uh icia for instance that you'll hear more about um next time with principal scott and principal mills but uh it's good to hear that uh students are answering that because
021that will help um the building i'm sure questions for jenna yikes audio sometimes is a little bit difficult um fabulous thank you that was a really great update um you actually answered most of my questions as you continue to provide your update and i really appreciate your enthusiasm it is refreshing and a lovely way to start the meeting so thank you very much thank you so much thank you mrs coleria mrs saint orange um yeah kudos to you that was a very well organized presentation so also compliments to your teachers who've prepared you to do that um i am curious and i don't think we've had an update on this but just along with um winter sports starting with basketball and swimming will there be will there be spectators allowed do you know like what
022is the no no um at least for swimming personally we are going to have virtual meets which is very different but um i think we'll be like zooming the coach of the other team and just taking times manually and sending them over to the other coaches and i don't believe there'll be spectators maybe they'll get them on the zoom somehow but i don't i don't know other than that but that's great to hear it's just a creative solution to keep keep the winter season going that's awesome thank you so much um right now lydia the um the social league we're not having spectators that's the plan so that that may shift as time goes on right now we don't have uh fans planned and i'm not going to put principal scott on the spot but
023brian if you want to jump in he might know more than i do if their questions continue about that but yeah we have a gradual agreement to see how things go see how the cases are working and gradually include spectators if the conditions allow us to the biggest difference between the winter sports and the fall sports is that a lot of the modifications have to do with the physical spaces so how you have to set up your gym uh as jenna mentioned you know not having teams cross in the pool uh so we really have to get a good sense of how that's going to work um and a lot of the teams in the south shore we have already suspended some sports so we want to keep them going uh but we think that
024it's prudent to kind of leave fans out for now most of the if not all of the meets though i believe are going to be live streamed so people will have an opportunity to watch them that's great it's just so nice to hear that the kids can still be active and engaged in exercising and do it in a safe way terrific thank you mr st orange thank you jenna for an excellent first update great job very upbeat and optimistic and enthusiastic it's clear that you'll be a hugely valuable asset to the committee so thank you so much for taking the time to join us and i think we all hope that you get to enjoy a little bit of your snow day i'm sure that dr sullivan and principal scott are also looking forward to
025building a few snowmen tomorrow so uh hopefully we can all do that so thank you so much thank you thank you jenna and i'll let you go now so you can um enjoy the watch the weather forecast right see this the snow coming about all right thank you guys so much thank you bye shall i press on a chair mcclellan you certainly should dr sullivan thank you okay wonderful so um next on our agenda as i mentioned i have uh our four amazing uh principals here to give us a brief presentation uh each regarding their school improvement plans and i should mention they may mention but the school improvement plans are created by their school councils which obviously include parental representation school committee person on the on the committee and staff clearly on the committees
026to create improvement plans for our buildings each year these school improvement plans we discuss as a group but they do tie into our strategic plan as we move forward forward with our strategic planning uh that will all always you'll be able to tell that we're alive in alignment because they will all uh really relate to the strategic plan so i will share my uh ability to share screen and the lucky uh beginner is principal scott so i'm making you a co-host principal scott and i will let you take over the sharing of your screen you're all set all right so i think you can see it very clearly so i appreciate um letting me present this evening i'll just begin with a brief kind of orientation to school council and the school improvement plan and
027then get right to our goals we are very fortunate to have a veteran committee all of the teachers the parents and mrs cleary our school committee liaison have been on the committee for almost three years which is really helpful considering all of the changes that we've kind of gone through in the evolution of the school improvement plan and we have three new students this year so ninth graders charlie lankau and noah mcdowell and eleventh grader bridget mahoney and they've been very good in the first few meetings that we've had for those unfamiliar the purpose of the school council is really looking at five things that culminate in the school improvement plan and drive our priorities for the year and those include looking at the budget and the needs about students developing goals that meet those
028needs within the resources and providing awareness of of new initiatives so we look at things like the handbook school policies uh or school procedures um and as dr sullivan said make sure that we're in alignment with the strategic plan so that we're driving it from the top uh all the way through the district typically underlying those conversations is a review of certain data points and those would include things like standardized test scores enrollment projections class sizes discipline statistics attendance information because of the closure in the spring and the model that we're operating that data isn't as useful right now so while we're still paying attention to enrollment and historical data a lot of what we're using this year comes from the institutional climate and inclusion assessment because even things like average class sizes take on
029a lot of interpretation when you're in a hybrid model and you might have a total class size that's pretty high but only 15 students may be in one location at a time so we've kind of pared down what we're taking a look at uh as people know some of the goals we were able to accomplish last year included more awareness of physical security measures and better communication and both of those data points were shown within the icia survey and anecdotal feedback about community communication seems to suggest that we have largely met those so the icia survey for example showed a big increase in in student awareness of policies around bullying physical security responses we've already had a few incidents this year and the students of staff have responded very smoothly so i feel very confident
030about that i feel pretty confident about our communication um and so they're not going to be listed as as goals in the plan although obviously they certainly remain priorities we knew going into this year that we were going to have capacity issues room capacity issues and so as early as last spring we were able to identify some learning opportunities where students could work on meaningful work that was comple that complemented our program of studies but didn't necessarily happen or have to happen within the classrooms so for example we received a very generous grant from the cef for students to work with the center for student coastal research in learning uh geographic information systems in that platform and they came up with a variety of different projects that were in the process of trying to make
031a little bit more public uh but they're very creative informative expressions that work with some of our community partners we have students taking second languages in addition to our french and spanish offerings so we have a student taking swedish for example we have one that just signed up for arabic we have two students taking versions of calculus that we don't offer and we continue to partner with places like holly hill 143tv and in addition to that we've expanded the number of virtual high school seats that we offer so we brought that from 40 to 55 and so our students are having much broader experiences where in many of the cases they're driving not only learning but also the entire project itself they set the goals they set the parameters they work with some of the
032adults but it's very independent so we're happy to see that that is going as well as it is the second goal is an iteration of a goal from last year in alicia initially we were looking to collect a variety of data that would inform the health of our school so almost call it a data dashboard of sorts that would help us look at student behaviors academic performance and help us determine the areas of focus some of those data points are on hold for example like an mcas data point isn't particularly useful because we didn't take the mcas last year but much of the work that we're doing around how students work remotely is going to help us create better solutions to things like chronic absenteeism we've had a lot of really surprising success with the
033remote program and students who were school refusal before um our tiered support system so students who are hospitalized or out for a variety of reasons all of these flipped remote models now that we have them create a lot of additional tools that we can have for for students to close gaps in their learning and close it a lot quicker and just instruction in general so this year really is is less of the data dashboard looking and more collecting some of those resources that we can really feel like we'll close some of our gaps going forward our third goal is also an evolved version of a prior year goal around your universally designed assessment practices and the hybrid of the remote models kind of forced this discussion in a way that wasn't as urgent before so
034we've really identified the need to reevaluate the purpose of assessment the ways in which students are able to communicate their ideas to drill down on the skills that we're really after to build in student trusts into our assessments to make them more authentic not that they weren't before but to give them kind of a more broad collaborative approach as opposed to just the regurgitation of content and we've had some professional development and we have some coming up on this as well but the conversations have been really rich since august in terms of the way we formatively assess students the way we create summative assessments the way we adjust our practices in the moment in ways that are efficient and that was one of the real challenges is that when we get into the students and
035teachers alike said the volume of what we're trying to do is significant so our ability to kind of look at that is going to help us i think develop a good toolbox of ways that we can assess what students know what they're able to do in ways that are more engaging to them and give us more information and then finally and i'll speak more about this on january 6th we're continuing our goal of cultural responsiveness by following up on our institutional climate climate and inclusion assessment this was conducted last february and it clearly shows that there are subgroups in the community that don't feel as if they belong in the same way that uh other students feel like they belong so we've identified seven subgroups and we're working with a consultant now to really help
036us unpack what those experiences are understand what that data means how we can create a plan to number one increase their voice let them feel like they are represented in this community that they do have a place um and right now we're in the process of forming our subgroups when we turn the corner in the new year we're going to work with our consultant who's going to independently conduct those what we call affinity groups which is groups who identify with the same kind of subgroup and then we'll bring in the larger community voice with focus groups with the eventual goal of creating a kind of a strategic plan uh or something that will be included in our school improvement plan and in our district strategic plan to be more attentive to those students needs in
037particular not at the expense of the majority of students i think you know creating those that understanding that dialogue is going to benefit everybody so i see it as a real positive uh for students to feel a sense of belonging um and so i'm excited about how that's going and miss elisa gettings carl has kind of really helped us understand some of what we can do and that has been a good good voice for us so so that is the brief version of what we're trying to accomplish this year and i can take questions if folks have questions proceed however you like thank you so dr sullivan what i think i'd like to do with these school improvement plans are just sort of address them as each principle goes through them because then we can
038um then each principal can um even though it's not necessarily as fair to principal sullivan and principal farrell uh each principal can sort of uh leave the meeting as we get through their presentation but we gotta promise to start with oz good next time and move up that way i think they'll all hang in for i think i think we decided we'd if it's okay that they'll all hang in for the end but we can do that i think you're a pro you're plus i i'd have a complex i didn't feel like i'd be picking on principal farrell which is you know don't want to do but um if it's okay i think that's a great idea so we take questions one at a time as we go through them sure principal scott had told
039me he wants to stay for the whole meeting anyway so absolutely um sure principal scott could you mind would you mind just going back one slide just i was just still reading it when uh okay so um let's uh does any any members of the school committee have any questions for uh principal scott mrs caleri i i don't have questions necessarily but i do have um some thoughts and i um i want to say that whenever anyone asks me about our district and what i think the biggest assets are in our district always at the very top of the list is our leadership team and i'm just gonna gush for a minute uh just now i want you all to know that this applies to all of you all of our building principles i feel
040like we are so so fortunate to have each of you in the position that you're in um i thought that but especially as we've sort of navigated this very unchartered territory this year you have all at every turn i think demonstrated how how focused on your student and staff's safety but also achievement you are and i really really value that and you know dr sullivan and dr scollins i feel like i hope hear it from me often also that applies to them too and principal scott uh you are certainly um i remember when i heard the commencement speech last year i think was it last year that we went years ago we didn't have it last year oh yeah sorry uh what year is it um that was such an amazing opportunity for everyone who
041was there to see how much you value each student in your building and how well you know them which is different right like it's hard to really know who kids are especially you know when you look at the results of the climate assessment there are there is work to do but it's very clear and you demonstrate it often and really well that you know these kids and you appreciate them for who they are and i think that that also stands out in this improvement plan and i want to thank you for that i think that in in this time it's very easy to see the transition to remote instruction as only a challenge and an obstacle and it's very clear that you have made it a priority to find the ways that you can use
042this opportunity to benefit our students as you outline with your language courses that people are that the students are taking and so i think that that while it seems maybe subtle in some ways is so critical and so important to have leadership that looks for the opportunity in challenges is priceless and i just want to thank you so much for being one of those leaders and of course um anything i can continue to do to participate in any of these very uh well-constructed goals happy to do so thank you thank you i appreciate it okay thank you mrs callery and i agree i'll be telling my grandchildren about that speech um this is mrs hunge any questions for principal scott um i don't have any questions if everything is very clearly laid out i would
043just like to add to ms cooler's compliments i'm just i'm very excited about these goals which i feel like is maybe not a phrase i say often but um just even like independent just especially the independent study um element i just i went to cohasset high school and was able to participate in an independent study and i just think that our student population is so incredible and such an amazing resource in our town to be able to have even further connection between between our schools and the community and and the great organizations that are out there is just really exciting that um it not only you know is great for the kids but but all the organizations will benefit from it too and i'm just excited as that you know is further developed in town
044it's i'm excited that my kids will get to be a part of it um but also that that um you know it's a it's a two-way street and and the community benefits and the schools benefit so yeah i think it's been a great it's been a great partnership and and thought partnership with jack buckley with cscr too um and a lot of these overlap so for example we had one student gis the geographic information systems is like a big mapping software that students learned and one of the student projects was recognizing the lack of diversity or at least lack of obvious diversity in cohasset to send out a survey to the faculty that would map their cultural experiences so for example i went to the soviet union when i was in the sixth grade and
045so i have you know that is as part of my repertoire and i worked in boston for 10 years and so that you know has an element to it so i'm really curious to see what she comes back with where our mostly you know white affluent community now all of a sudden spreads out across the globe into different continents uh and can kind of reflect on different experience i think that'll be really really interesting so i i like the overlap and i love the fact that you don't have to really work to motivate kids they come up with the ideas and and really drive it and we've had some some really awesome work over the years you know we just had one student graduate um from college and got i want to say he's a
046rhodes scholar now he's going to study shark population in indonesia and that started a little bit with an independent study that he did with um uh dr tomay as a part of a science project uh he got a fulbright didn't fulbright that's what it was fulbright yeah so you know exciting things it's terrific thank you so much for for guiding guiding the school through that process it's terrific thank you mr st orange um principal principal scott i don't i don't have um i don't have any real questions other than i agree so i just asked you to go back to that slide because i was looking at it and i i completely agree um that um issues surrounding gender should be highlighted and i wonder though if uh number five and i'm not trying to
047tell you how to uh how to write your uh your presentation but i'm wondering if it may be more appropriate to just uh rather than females say something you know more abroad like gender and gender identity or something like that because i think that that's that may be more uh i may encompass more and uh it's just a suggestion for you to consider um as you move forward through this process yeah the females one is a little bit different it's not it's not the gender difference in the same way that like the lgbtq kind of fits into a separate marker or a black student fits into a separate identity group the females one is a little bit more coming out of some of their different experiences so before i get to find a point with
048that i wanted to kind of unpack what they were talking about when they felt like um for example one of the points is that the community wasn't as caring as the male population thought so what does that mean you know in what ways is it not caring in what areas um and to try to kind of unpack that a little bit it was very different than the other six groups so brian are you saying unpack those individuals who said they identified as a female so when you look at the survey data and again we can go over it on the sixth a lot of your providers presenting yeah when they break down the survey data they break it down by middle school and high school by grade level and by male and female and then
049by sub subgroup so you'll see that black students for example feel like they are disproportionately targeted in terms of discipline procedures now if i print out the discipline reports from school that doesn't show that so i want to go in and figure out what exactly their experiences in the classroom are that give them that perspective the females is the same kind of idea if they're reporting 15 percent less than males that the community is carrying or what part of the community in what ways is that being represented you know is it um is it associated with anything in particular so really just getting a big enough subgroup to say yeah you know whatever my experiences is this is this is kind of how i feel when i'm in the building um because if you look
050at some of the other certainly the academic markers the college acceptances and some of the um quantitative data it's very even so what's the difference is it's kind of what we're going after okay thanks well i trust your approach i just it was something that sort of stood out to me so i wanted to highlight that thank you so much uh for your time and all the work that went into this principal scott and we'll look forward to hearing from you uh during your next presentation uh uh next year that's right right in other words in a couple of weeks yes i can't seem to unshare my screen dr sullivan so i don't know if it's still being shared or not um it is so if you go to um here we go i'm on
051a different yeah okay great i'm glad you figured it out i was gonna have trouble explaining all right principal mills i'm now making you a co-host and you may now share your screen you got it good to go stop john you muted how's that it's it's good you know one of my new year's resolutions is to figure out a better way to say you're muted i don't know what it would be but i got to figure it out no i think yes it's better to be kind of candid and straightforward so uh but uh what you would miss the first time when i was muted i was saying thanks very much for inviting all of us and i appreciate being able to share the work of my school council and uh you know this year's
052school improvement plan you know i'm thankful to be able to work with the parents and the educators that i do work with and and they're all just tremendously dedicated to the continual improvement of uh cms so that's the school council um like principal scott i did want to just include student enrollment uh you know not to not to delve into normally the school council process you do look a lot of different data points really because of the closure in this you know last spring um uh and then we're fully focused on on the hybrid model now uh you know it's kind of an unusual situation where that sort of data wasn't looked at uh much of of uh what we're focusing on this year uh for the school improvement plan uh you know we're kind
053of describing in the school improvement plan what we're doing as opposed to being having the opportunity to build it last spring and then facilitate it or implement it this year so the focus of the school improvement plan is both the hybrid model but it's also the middle school action plan uh on which the middle school was originally founded as as well as district goals uh our the first of the four goals was around seattle really with the emotional toll that the disruptions of 2020 wrought you know disruptions like the pandemic and economic hardship and civil unrest all these things affecting students as well as their families the the council and i really agreed that the social emotional learning and welfare of our students would be our primary in our first goal uh we really approach
054this goal by pro or our action steps are about providing in-school support and counseling and and part of that's made possible by the additional 0.5 counselor that you gave us last year and it's really made a difference and it came right at the right time uh the tiered support system that we that we utilize uh has offered us opportunities to accomplish this goal um workshops led by faculty uh you know around sel for students we've had after-school opportunities to help students feel connected to each other in our school things like pawn street press we have a huge staff this year and then and there we just uh today shared their last uh the most recent uh edition of the newsletter we were able to run our enrichment program completely relying on parents volunteerism and the
055work of the pso to help coordinate it and and that made a really big difference because it gave kids something to to do and something to focus on uh and opportunities to be connected with each other while maintaining either social distance doing it through zoom we're doing it um in ways that we could provide safety and then lastly certainly in collaborating with the district on pd opportunities to help teachers continue to hone their skills uh around sel so that's to us the really the cornerstone of our school improvement plan uh smart the second smart goals are on instruction especially uh in light of the the hybrid model that we're using and really our faculties have really had to reinvent their instruction in their curriculum almost on the fly this year we work to improve our
056instruction to continually enhance student learning this goal focuses on the ongoing innovation and collaboration between faculty collaboration with our it department and specifically the director our new director of instructional technology lisa raden and the the district uh the various district professional uh development initiatives like this past monday so all those together uh clas you know together uh uh you know we've we've tried to accomplish uh or create ways to create uh time for our faculty to innovate so together those are some of the ways we're doing uh keep bolstering and improving and and reinventing hybrid instruction which we're like i said kind of learning about on the fly our third goal is uh around cultural inclusivity really making cms an inclusive environment where all students feel welcome and safe is a critical part of our
057identity and our culture i would say fostering a safe environment for students is it's in the very dna of who we are as a school the process begins by understanding ourselves and our student experience analyzing data that we've collected like the ica the assessment that was recently what was done last year and recently shared with us and really use it as a jumping off point to provide opportunities to explore and further discuss and unpack who we are as a school and then hopefully build build the programming and activities that will really promote like positive relationships and continue to make the school a more welcoming place and our fourth goal is around family and school collaboration which is always an important part of the school improvement plan uh the challenge this year really is how do
058you foster this this continued collaboration in a uh you know in a pandemic world so that you can't invite parents to events like concerts and plays and an open house for instance that naturally fosters collaboration so we've worked on our action plan is about you know leveraging the technology and tools that uh that we have in order to continue to collaborate with with parents and and make them feel connected and involved and knowledgeable about what happens in school every day so those are the four parts of our our school improvement plan thank you principal mills any members of the uh any members of the school committee have questions for principal mills relative to the uh uh school improvement plan mrs cleary uh again i do not have questions but well actually i do have one
059question will still the middle school and the high school i think the first time the culture assessment was administered it was the same school and now you've also taken it again as separate schools right did that happen to your question last year it was conducted and we had 6 through 12 take the same assessment the the initial data was shared as a 6 through 12 building we've worked with the consultant uh that did the assessment she's been able to um uh sort of uh disaggregate the data for me and it's taken a little bit longer but she's been able to provide it in sort of chunks uh by you know sub groups in the six through eight range so um we've been able so and we're continuing i just got the last piece today continuing
060to sort of focus down and look at what's going on just in our school instead of looking at a 6 through 12 institution and and so i just want to say that i'm grateful that that work continues and um i think that there's probably there's value in both right like being able to analyze the data set for the same sort of large group but i understand why it's useful to you to know what's going on in your building specifically right so i'm just glad that that work is continuing and i'm glad that you both have been incorporating this into your plans and your goals and i want to thank you both for your continued um focus on that i think that is essential i think happy kids learn more effectively and i love it that
061you both emphasize that in your plans so thank you thank you i think it's really important to focus on what the data says because i think sometimes we have those like really powerful moments and um you know we we can't make you know broad sweeping generalizations or conclusions based on anecdotal experiences so it's it's really important to have data like this at our at our uh you know at our disposal so we can better understand what's going on and throughout the system as opposed to like i say just a brief encounter great thank you principal mills thank you mrs clary uh miss saint alex before uh you asked a question i just want to repeat because there's a few more attendees now um the chat feature isn't working tonight for anyone that wants to chime
062in and so um we will rectify that for future meetings but in the meantime um take my cell number down and you can simply just text me any sort of comments you want me to uh to read i was given my email earlier but it's probably easier to see my cell number um which is i think frankly on the internet anyway but but uh it's six one seven seven five zero zero two seven seven that's six one seven seven five zero zero two seven seven so if you have any comments please don't be shy about texting me and i'll uh i'll i'll make your your voice heard okay and sorry for the chat feature not working tonight um but that goes for the folks watching uh via facebook too uh that works that way um
063so moving on this is uh mrs saint and you have any questions for principal mills um no specific question it's just exciting to see the middle school continue to be developed as a middle school i think that is just such a precious population i guess as i say as a former middle school teacher and to be able to look at it as its own school and its own population of students is just this unique place in development and i just think these these goals um are terrific for this year there's so much to work on this year i mean if you're just talking about instruction alone that is just such an enormous thing to tackle right now with hybrid and remote learning so um just thank you for all of your work and for taking
064care of our middle schoolers you're welcome it's a pleasure thank you mr st onge uh yes principal mills thanks for all the work on this uh very relevant purposeful uh meaningful uh improvement goals and uh thank you for continued efforts in making our middle school a a wonderful place you've been great thank you oh you're welcome um dr sullivan can we can we move on to uh principal sullivan yes you certainly can um principal sullivan are you ready i will make you a co-host yes i'm ready and you now may share thank you principal mills for that and what's up scott should be good to go alex yep are we good right on it looks good excellent all right so i'm gonna skim through these first couple slides um hold on if i can get
065it to advance that is there we go all right i first want to begin by introducing our school council members for this year we have some returning members actually we're all returning members with the exception of mrs st onge our school committee liaison so we were very excited to welcome her to our council this year and as principal scott shared it's really nice to have that consistency especially during these times um also our data it you know is a little sparse this year without without the mcas to factor in um so really i just included some enrollment data um that is you know probably shifted since this plan was submitted a little bit ago but um we're in good shape with our class sizes and our cohort cohort sizes and i do think a silver
066lining of this year is that opportunity for really small group instruction in a lot of different capacities as you know we are all defining our goals through the smart goal format so i will get right to it my first goal and one thing that our school council really looked on with this year is a smooth transition from our goals from last year and then also um you know trying to be responsive to our current climate um while still moving our school forward so cultural competence has had a role in the school improvement plan since i've been here and it really um is a a very cornerstone of what the kinds of things that we're trying to accomplish at deer hill to highlight some pieces of this goal really one thing is that this year we
067are making an effort um to think beyond the idea um what it means to be a culturally diverse and inclusive school and then also touching on some of the themes that the secondary principles talked about you know with gender and other pieces and identity and other pieces like that that drive a truly inclusive environment um i'm really proud of some of the things we've already done to address this um an example of that is a fifth grade identity unit that was implemented across the grade level this year that really helped students think of themselves and kind of their place in our school community but also their own sense of self i think fifth grade is a really important time to do something like this as they're beginning to transition to the middle school and i
068really see the staff as anchoring anchoring them in a way that will serve them well as they move forward into that into that you know kind of a little bit scarier position in school um this goal also recognizes that inclusion extends to learning styles and needs as well um and we addressed this through again our curriculum and what we are presenting and including students in the process of creating for themselves but then also the different models that we have in place for instruction such as our co-teaching that helps you know address the needs of students and and provides those multi-tiered systems of support another part i wanted to highlight in this goal is the idea of the collaborative relationships that we continue to build and i'm um you know whether it's families presenting traditions you
069know school-wide which we enjoyed this year or our continued partnership with the high school the diversity working group just shared a activity that they created for our students around hanukkah and so having those kind of partnerships are really important to making it you know deer hill a welcoming place an inclusive place and a place where you know students feel that they they can see themselves the second goal is um geared around our new math curriculum and really if you come to deer hill right now the buzz in the air is all about math and i know we had a learning walk recently and it's really exciting to see just the presence that math has taken in our building it's evidence very physically when you go into a classroom you're seeing a lot of number corners
070and math thinking on the walls and really student driven instructional products there's also just a lot of enthusiasm around math right now a lot of positive energy and speaking as a former reading specialist who loved teaching math as a classroom teacher um it's really just a nice thing to see and so um i really we couldn't be happier um with this new bridges adoption i was actually speaking about it with dr scollins today and we were just saying that it sells itself that teachers are very invested in it students are invested in it and so you know our role is to just make all of that possible through our pd through outreach to families to make sure that they are as excited as we are about it and and understand the why behind you know
071some of the things that are happening and how it might look different from math as we experienced it ourselves and as even our students experienced it recently at deer hill um to that end our math specialist christy thonay recently presented at our pso meeting that was a great way to connect with families bridges itself has many ways for families to get a real sense of what they're about as well um lastly i want to highlight just the role of pacing in this year's action plan this year you know more so than uh ever we are really again in tune to our student needs and how do we close gaps that are you know inevitable in a pandemic and how do we build mathematicians that are confident about their skills and again i want to refer
072to a conversation i had with dr scollins today about the really high level critical math thinking that our students are doing right now and their ability to articulate that thinking and be flexible with that thinking and that is going to serve them well it's not as linear as past math programs where you march through a curriculum and if you don't get to something then it's gone forever there is a much more of a spiral to what we're doing things are integrated and embedded if you're doing a math lesson about fractions the likelihood is high that you're also incorporating money time and multiple other concepts and so that really speaks well to this program and this goal i have three goals to share with you tonight and the last goal is also driven uh in large
073part just by the nature of this year though i think it is a long-term goal as well and that is how we use technology at deer hill and you know i think that our learning curve we brought on board a lot of new skills very quickly in our current climate and really our responsibility now we're at that point where we are looking at them critically really making sure that we're crystallizing and coming together around the ones that are most purposeful and relevant to student instruction and learning and then making sure that we have all the tools and resources and knowledge and pd and support that can make those things happen and you know google classroom dream box you know um lexia all of those things as well as things such as loom our pd last
074uh just earlier this week we were introduced to jamboard which was a great resource i was sharing with lisa radden that it was so nice because teachers are comfortable now when something new is introduced to them because they can anchor it to another piece of technology that they know uh so jamboard is has characteristics that are similar to google slides and similar to loom and so teachers were like oh i can do this and i think a year ago it would have been overwhelming to them and so and to students alike and so that's a really exciting piece for that as we look at really the why behind our technology use again that goes back to the sammer model which our district has done work on and also making sure that we're supporting students where
075they are and moving them along that continuum of learning and so that is uh technology really you know belongs as an integrated resource and not as a as a standalone thing it has to be embedded in that why and that's something that we are working to do through this school and uh that's what i have for you tonight thank you so much principal sullivan uh members of the school committee mrs cleary thank you principal sullivan as usual a very informative well thought out organized i really really love the specificity that you lay out in your goals um i also like that you refer to the medco team because i don't think miss satisha gets any shout outs and i she has done a lot for our students this year especially our students in teca she
076provides a lot of support to them yep um and i really love the third goal i think it was it's it's obviously timely but as i said before i think a leadership team that sort of embraces the challenges that we're facing and can reframe them as opportunities um is really preparing us well as we move forward and so i appreciate that thank you thank you mrs cleary um mrs st orange thank you so much um sullivan i um i also just appreciate how how well laid out your goals are i am i am i share your enthusiasm about the bridges program i am just so excited about it and i feel like us literacy specialists getting pretty psyched about math is a big deal um but it is just so approachable and i feel like
077there's been just such a shift um mentally about math in in our household um it is something that feels like a reward now like doing dream box on remote days we get like yes clara has unlocked some sort of arcade i was like wow you guys are crushing the math right now so it's just so nice to i feel like that is not like the typical response to math i don't but it's really really nice to see that shift and to just see it um just across the board in school out of school all of it so um major compliments to the teachers for rolling that out because the curriculum is one thing but presenting that and sharing that with the students is a totally totally different thing and they are doing it beautifully um
078and obviously being well supported um by you and then also the um the technology i just it it made me really happy to hear that like people's people were in a place where they were feeling ready to learn and hear something new on monday this has been such an overwhelming year and our brains are flooded and the teachers are doing a million things all the time so to hear that they're feeling comfortable and confident and ready to learn and take on new things is just really heartening and i'm i'm seeing it on my end like it's it's a really seamless delivery and i know that takes so many hours on the on the front end to make it look that way but um but i'm just really impressed by how well how well a few
079platforms are being embraced to deliver things so clearly to to our students so um just my compliments to to how beautifully it's being done thank you mr principal sullivan um thank you so much for your presentation uh with regards to smart goal number one um i i love seeing that because uh i truly feel that uh these concepts are best introduced at a young age so i love seeing the elementary years um the elementary schools focus on this and incorporate this into the curriculum um mrs coleery uh had uh i it some point in the distant past uh at one of these meetings raised a point that has sort of stuck with me it was really specific to gender but i think it relates to really any sort of um different groups of humans and
080gender is certainly one of those differences um but uh i wonder if uh in in sort of uh implementing goal number one i voiced this sort of similar thing at the osgoode school council um meetings that i've been at with miss farrell um principal farrell and that is to ensure that so when i'm just looking back you know given my own experiences as a kid in school and and typically when you break up into like small learning groups or teams or whatever it is right so um you know boys will pick boys girls a big girls and then they're you know in in sort of gender segregated groups and and that that you know could also go for um you know racial differences or whatever um you know any sort of group you can think
081of and i just don't know if there's some way to ensure that because i really do think it's so important that one major way to ensure that that we are developing very culturally competent young adults is um is to obviously just familiarize themselves with with differences and and familiarize you know all of our students with the various differences so that it's not they don't really perceive it as a is such a succinct difference it's just really like okay well uh that person's female i'm male or that person is you know asian and i'm not or that person's black and i'm not it's um i think that just working with them and and and sort of like you know basically um having more interactions with one another really at a very young age really i think
082works to diminish um the schism between you know any two groups of people so i'm wondering if in implementing that group if that would be something that is that that the faculty in your building would be sort of cognizant of in sort of ensuring that when students are working with small groups and you know having more one-on-one time that they're just not always able to choose the sort of their own groups it like sort of either looks like them or is the same gender as them absolutely i think that's at the forefront of a lot of what they do and they do all kinds of different things to form their groups um from random groupings to allowing that choice to encourage you know naming it and and noticing things like oh i notice all the
083boys are grouped together or you know this or that um and so i do think that it is something that when you're aware of it and and you can kind of put it on the table then you can better address it i think we had a great um i followed in the footsteps of principal mills and we also had a presentation in the spring from p flag and there was for the staff and there was just a lot of things that that had really visible and concrete changes in our building and some of that is also just our language that we use you know teachers um i shared a graphic with teachers in my morning email the other day that was all these different ways you can identify students besides boys and girls you know
084you can talk about mathematicians or scholars or um scientists and and just how we are are helping kind of expand their identity and it's very fascinating to me and also the intersectionality of identity is something that's always interested me and and there's research on what um what dominates like if you ask someone and this came out in our pd the pd that we've had as a staff has been really um powerful in this regard and if you are asked to name yourself in four different ways what what rises to the surface you know how do you think of yourself and so i think that the district's opportunity as a staff to analyze that for ourselves translates into the kinds of conversations and groupings and interactions that our students are having so um you know that
085that self-awareness as adults um is is an important piece of this yes thank you so much it's exactly what i was driving out i really was having sort of a difficult time articulating what exactly you know i was trying to drive at but you you definitely understood what i was saying so thank you so much i think that's that's really important it's really exciting to see in the improvement plan um so thank you so much principal sullivan for your work and your continued efforts at the deer hill school um moving on to uh our osgood school principal principal farrell dr sullivan is that all right with you moving on absolutely thank you principal sullivan i will move to principal farrell and i will give you the co-hosting rights which you