001here if the chair that read elected or wasn't continuing okay right um good evening everybody I would like to call the Concord school committee to order at which point I think we need to acknowledge that Carrie Rankin was re-elected correct and appointed at town meeting and then we need to reconfigure um the committee so we would need to reconfigure having a chair and device chair do we have any nominations for either of those positions um nominee Alexa Anderson to be chair of CPS is there a second second okay is this a roll call or all in favor does anyone know why don't we do it by roll call just in case I'm not sure a roll call vote I I was so enthusiastic uh I don't know Mr Booth hi oh sorry I skipped Murano
002why I'm sorry Wayne good night okay and now so can I back you up because I've got the memo open now so you need to seat the committee first a motion to recognize and you're all named as members of the Concord school committee you have to vote and approve that okay listen supposedly to the first order of business is to seat the committee which involves motion uh to okay emotional need to be made by a Concord School Committee Member too so a motion to recognize Alexa Anderson Court Booth Tracy Morano Cynthia Iranian Kerry Rankin as members of the Concord school committee someone can just say so moved second then okay even more wonderful uh I guess we'll it can be just by I uh all in favor okay so nominations for chair nominations per chair
003if you do this again just in case why don't you think about it Anderson second okay the motion is two elect Alexa Anderson chair of the Concord school committee great so okay um all in favor aye hey next we move on to seating of ice chair correct okay would anyone like to make a motion to appoint a vice chair Concord school committee second okay so motion to elect Carrie Rankin Vice chair of the Concord school committee you need a second and then appointment of school committee recording secretary you need a motion to appoint Higgins as recording secretary so I moved again all in favor aye right and I perfect thank you everyone sorry about my lack of preparation on that well now we'll it's like a rehearsal for the region okay so now we need
004to call to order I'm going to call to order the Concord parallel school committee the 10 minutes ahead of schedule we are ahead of schedule today since you're going out exactly okay since you're here okay so we're called to order however Sarah coming at 5 45. when we text her I believe so yeah I think would be courtesy yeah and we can go in there my dinner is um do I just text her yeah but we can still move too we can still move to exact sessions so if anyone has the motion in front of them that would be great I think I do um oh go ahead Court I moved at the Concord school committee in the Concord Carlisle school committee will enter into executive session under purpose three of the open meeting law
005to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the secretaries and maintenance unions and return to open session at 6 15 pm wait a second yes Anderson Eye we're on Murano I for both radii for both Rank and I for both with eye for region all right and we will be back to open session at 6 15. great well done so tonight we have a very special night at our school committee meeting all of our meetings are really special of course but tonight is extra special um it is serving as a graduation ceremony it's my honor to welcome Mr David McPhillips his family friends members of the class of 1968 from cchs to celebrate his graduation from Crawford Carlow High School a Concord Carolina high school diploma is an accomplishment and a source of Pride
006for all of our students for high school senior high school graduation is a first step to becoming an adult as a 17 year old student David McPhillips made The Honorable decision to enlist in the Marines to serve this country his decision to serve was his entry into adulthood after returning from Vietnam Mr Phillips went on to receive a GED a Massachusetts high school diploma and a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts a Concord Carlisle high school diploma will now be added to his list of educational accomplishments on behalf of the Concord Carolina school committee we congratulate you and we appreciate your service and I would like to introduce Dr Lori Hunter superintendent schools thank you all and welcome this has been a real privilege and pleasure over the last couple of weeks interacting with
007David and getting to know him by email and now tonight in person and we're really honored and privileged to to honor him tonight and award him this diploma uh so in accordance with Massachusetts General Law chapter 71 section 4 the school committee May award diplomas to any world war one or two veterans Korean War veteran or Vietnam War veteran who is a resident of the Commonwealth who attended the high school maintained by the school committee who withdrew from secondary school before graduation in order to serve in the armed forces of the United States who did not receive a high school diploma as a consequence of that service and who was honorably discharged from the armed services as Tracy mentioned David McPhillips attended Concord Carlisle High School prior to enlisting in the Marines in 1968 and
008being deployed and then was deployed to Vietnam in 1969. Mr McPhillips spent a year in Vietnam where he was an Engineer Battalion and Drew plans for buildings and different structures that were needed in a 2005 interview here in Concord he described the experience of being building a bridge near a refugee camp called marble Mountain where a whole Vietnamese Village had been relocated he described getting along great with the people and enjoying a lot of laughter despite the language barrier in the 1968 Concord Carlisle High School yearbook which we blew up here Mr McPhillips was described as the boy that had everything going for him in high school but the call to duty was too strong for him at this moment this is from the yearbook at this moment David serving his country in the U.S
009Marines Mr McPhillips is noted to have played hockey and been on the chess club and was nicknamed Babyface by his classmates Mr McPhillips was honorably honorably discharged in 1970 and earned his GED while actively serving he went on to receive a ba from the University of Massachusetts in 1976. Mr McPhillips maintained close ties to Concord as an adult including when his son Brian was inspired to enlist and tragically died in combat in April of 2003 while engaging enemy forces in Iraq two days before Baghdad fell Concord honored Brian during its Memorial Day ceremonies in 2005. a superintendent I attest that Mr McPhillips meets the requirements of the law to retroactively receive a 1968 Concord Carlisle high school diploma it is our privilege to honor him and his family in presenting this diploma during tonight's Concord
010Carlisle Regional school committee meeting well invite David to come on up I'm going to read this near the mic [Music] so David you have satisfactory completed the course of study prescribed for graduation and are therefore awarded this diploma from Concord Carlisle has congratulations I do yes we have three classmates that showed up here tonight Richard Emerson I think they should come up they should come on come on O'Neill and Greg Holland here and they can attest that they actually saw me here in school in 1960s welcome everyone I think the big difference between myself and the people who are graduating in 2023 used I already know what's happened to me in the last 50 years this one's great and I know uh according to the mgl that the name award yes you don't have to
011we certainly are honored to but thank you very much thank you and we're going to take some pictures and have a few moments together but maybe we could get the class of 68 together yeah that'd be great [Music] that's great to see if I'm here um medicines thank you rose again right mostly works I think okay no judgments if it's all done he'll come here [Music] have a great evening watching forward watch the homework thank you all thank you thank you instead of yes all right now my favorite movie thank you all right and now we're back to business it was exciting though very very exciting um we'll just give them one more minute number one okay and we are ready for a cchs student update uh Felicity and Harry and zarya there they are
012um share my screen did you enjoy our graduation yes that was so exciting it was really cool to see I wish we could have been there in person we ever get to see that again in our time still at CC I'll definitely be there um so we have a pretty quick update this week um obviously one of the big things at the high school it's almost the end of AP exams which for a lot of upperclassmen is pretty exciting um big relief of stress so that's gonna be nice and as I've been saying for the past like four-ish meetings um into the woods was actually opening this Thursday um tickets sales are looking pretty good but if you haven't bought tickets I strongly recommend that you buy tickets because it's gonna be really amazing so
013there also shows on Friday and Saturday there's also a 1pm matinee on Saturday in addition to the regular 7 P.M shows every night um yeah he talked a little bit about this next thing um we have a couple of Senate events coming up in the next couple of weeks so this Saturday we have our Color Run um if you're not familiar with that it's kind of a common thing that some towns do but we're gonna have a run around the high school and we bought all this like colored powder um and it creates these like fun clouds and explosives of color and then you can wear like a white shirt and at the end you'll kind of be colored in the rainbow and it's fun to take pictures and things like that and then we're
014doing um a spring Spirit assembly so kind of similar to what we did in the fall but it's going to be outside on the football field we're gonna get a dunk tank Mr Miller Missed all have agreed to participate in that so should be a lot of fun um last week Friday was our metco senior dinner I know that after kovid it's I think it paused for a while and last year they had it but it wasn't really the same but um I've heard from many people that that it's basically back and it's looking good uh it was really fun too sorry yeah it's a lot of fun yeah teacher appreciation week and Student Center is working on a gratitude video uh I think it's probably going to be really good because it's you know
015student Senate is always thorough yeah it should be on the Instagram and the coming days um and then one last thing on Friday main on May 19th nuts prevents happening um so it's gonna be lacrosse games with the boys and girls varsity teams um and proceeds are going to benefit the 100 Navy Scholarship Foundation so it's gonna be a really great event for the community um I'll definitely be there and anyone else who comes out it would be great so yeah thank you guys that's great what time does The Color Run um it's gonna be 12 o'clock well and is this the first time you guys have done this or no it is the first one yeah let's hope fully all right all right great thank you so much and good luck in the show
016this I should say break a leg Felicity are you in it or not in it I'm actually not able to act in this show um but I'm in charge of publicity so yeah all the ticket sales and stuff see some of us there so when you beat the shows you'll be at the show I will be at the Saturday 1pm show okay all right at least yeah yeah good luck with everything and we will see you at our next meeting so thank you thanks thank you all right and that brings us to our public comment section of the meeting and just as a reminder this is the meeting um in the public and not with the public we will start with comments in the room you will have three minutes the school committee will not
017be responding to any comments so if you have a comment and you're in the room if you could bring me your blue form and if you are online you can use the raise hand feature and we will alternate between in-room and thank you so much and online so up first we have Liz Crow name and address right at the microphone over there sorry we're moving things around hi my name is Liz Kroll and I live at 212 Hubbard Street I'm here just before the pilot for embedded levels within the high school English Department in fact the evidence is unequivocal heterogeneous groupings lead to better teaching and learning for all the concern that teachers won't be able to teach such groupings or differentiate instructions strikes me as misguided first of all they already do even in
018BC calculus there is differentiated instruction in every class students come in with all their strengths and weaknesses and teachers calibrate delivery of instruction and assessment based on this often by the way in real time our passionate incredibly skilled teachers in the English Department know how to do this and I'm happy to hear that professional development will be available as well I also need to express a continuous concern I that I've had about since the webinar on embedded leveling last Wednesday and perhaps the incident concerning the police in the mecca bus has only sharpened that concern we simply can't dismiss equity and diversity in any discussion of fair education some of the arguments last Wednesday went so far as to suggest that certain children wouldn't learn as well or be as well served by an inclusive
019classroom even with embedded leveling I feel compelled to say how that sounded to me like your kid was going to bring my kid down it sounded a lot a lot like assumptions were being made about students in college prep classes of course the few said it everyone knows the college prep classes often have disproportionate numbers of populations that may be traditional or marginalized including ell students and students of color even as Miss Hebert I think it was pointed out for self-selection we like to think that these these divisions are based on ability or ambition but they are not they are fabricated here some seem to come dangerously close to pleading some weird exceptionalism about writing and reading language that exceptionalism exceptionalism is not only untrue we only have to look at the world to know
020how dangerous and demeaning it is especially to those already marginalized please can we stop feeding the method Division and attend to every student's strengths furthermore there was an interesting discussion about Bots and apps and artificial Intel artificial intellivision intelligence that may impede original work I can't imagine a more virtual and fair and intense workshop for original thought than a heterogeneous group of students tackling the written word and writing for each other students are so much more likely not to use these devices if they start what they write and share it in class we want students to understand their connection to each other through literature and we also want them to find what is original to them thank you thanks thank you impressive three seconds left thank you so much and now we will go online
021and please uh if you could unblock your screen I we have Heidi k hi I think I'll leave it as it is that's okay um yeah um so in the last school community meeting address please sure Heidi cater I live at 100 Elm Brook Lane in Concord thank you so I joined the last school committee meeting and there was mention of a proposed cell tower that will be installed potentially on the high school property um until that particular meeting I was unaware that of this cell phone uh or rather cell tower um installation and ironically just the previous week I was involved in submitting testimony for a Massachusetts House Bill 2158 which will recognize electromagnetic sensitivity as a disease and also a public health concern my son is a seventh grade student at the Concord
022Middle School currently and as many in the room know he has the disability of hearing loss so that makes him particularly susceptible to um you know the effects of electromagnetic radiation some common symptoms of exposure to EMR include tinnitus sleep disruption headaches nausea and vomiting skin rashes nosebleeds fainting loss of focus and heart palpitations to name just a few um so since last meeting I did a little homework and I determined that in the town of Concord cell towers can be no closer than a thousand feet uh uh near a school building I called the tricon church where there's a proposed cell tower that will be installed and I found out that they had a pre-existing Sprint Tower Hardware that they're upgrading to a Verizon 5G tower that will be placed in their steeple I
023called the Middlesex School spoke to the dean and in 2018 found out that there was a cell tower that was installed because of again a pre-existing Hardware installation there and they were going to place it close to buildings where students were but they had to remove it from the smokestack and they placed it in a far corner of the campus so I have four questions and a concern that I'd like to raise so maybe someone can jot these down and they can be addressed when this item is actually spoken of in the agenda so my first question is if a cell tower is going to be you know bulldozed through and just installed without the vote going to the public will there be independent monitoring of the EMR levels similar to you know carbon monoxide
024detectors and who who would do that would it be internal with the school or would an outside organization monitor the levels of electromagnetic radiation um there was mentioned of an undisclosed location an alternate location uh besides the tricon church where a cell tower may be installed in town I'd like to know what that undisclosed location is our citizens allowed to have public access to know the locations of 5G Hardware in town and how do we go about that my last question is sorry what's the process for approval is this something the school committee can uh vote to approve or is it going to go to the town and my other concern is about the potential of placing a tower near Walden Pond thank you okay thank you all right we'll go back to comment in
025the room anyone else in the room or public comment and I will go back online if you'd like to make a public comment used to raise hand feature and state your name and address Aaron Fife hi everyone Aaron seif 174 Hill Street in Concord I wanted to thank the superintendent for the email follow-up about the incident with the metco bus and the police being called last week I really appreciated um further details and the acknowledgment that we have a lot of work to do still as a as a community school community and a larger Community I think it's really important to acknowledge when we can do better um and that was the the message that came through loud and clear and I really appreciated that um we're all still on this journey together and these
026are the conversations we need to have to move ourselves forward I would also uh take a moment to encourage the school committee when they start looking at policies again to think about the transportation policy I was noticing that um there's a lot of discrepancies in terms of the transportation policies um sort of student behavior and family expectations for Concord families that sort of get to so many Concord families and then what is written down for metco families and I was wondering if this would be an opportunity to take a look at those policies and sort of compare and contrast just how they're worded to try to sort of see if there's any kind of implicit biases that come through in what's highlighted what's bolded what's underlined things like that um I'm sure there's a lot
027of sort of extra things that need to go into the metco policies because of the differing circumstances and the length of the drive and things like that but it might be a good opportunity just to take a closer look at that so thank you very much okay thank you and any other public comment before we close up yes Elizabeth hi there um Elizabeth Frank I'm at 1283 Elm Street um and I also just um wanted to second that appreciation of Dr Hunter's second email to the community and just really appreciating the clarification that the students weren't at fault and that implicit racial bias was likely involved in the mistakes made by the adults um at the same time it doesn't lessen the pain and Trauma that the children and families experienced um and I'm just
028discouraged and angry and heartbroken that this happened in our community um and uh in addition to what Aaron suggested um ask that additional Dei training be given to bus drivers and regular updates on Dei training especially for those on the metco routes um and just to note that this incident although it's a more public one I think from what I've heard from friends in the community is is only one example of the injustices that the black and brown students regularly face in our district um and it really highlights the impact that implicit bias has on kids um so I just asked that we all educate ourselves me included and work to dismantle any racial biases that have been passed down to us through our culture so that we can better serve all of our Concord
029students thank you all right and anyone else all right we're going to close up public comment thank you so much and moving on to recognitions we have cchs math and I think I saw Miss Kiesel back here you can come on over and join us at the table I'm just going to grab you it okay the magic of Aaron at home yeah Aaron was going to do it I think Sarah the magic yeah it's just happening do you want to sit I'll stand over here that's that's fine you're just verbally cue Aaron and children or say next so it's usually our fancy word there's Aaron she said Mom I got it Aaron I'll just say next when I'm ready okay thank you and Sarah kissabok is the department chair at cchs of the math department
030so thank you for joining us all right well um thank you for making time in the agenda tonight for me to share some of the exciting and Innovative things that we're doing in the math department um this is exciting for me and my whole department on their behalf um I could easily spend more than my 10 minute allotted 10 minutes but I've timed myself nine minutes 30 seconds so I've got it um one of the biggest changes that really started last year for us and the department was our interest in Peter lesla doll's building thinking classrooms teaching strategies and student learning opportunities we've participated um thank you Kristen through the K through K-12 pass this year the PD workshop with Peter we were able to meet with him over Zoom he lives in Canada and
031close to all of our teachers are utilizing a number of these practices that we value um next all right so to summarize some of the goals of the thinking classroom the overriding philosophy and theme is that the classroom has shifted from a teacher-centered traditional lecture style experience to a student-centered experience where students are exploring Concepts in a strategic format but built on prior Concepts and understanding while challenging each other in a collaborative and supportive environment so in a nutshell there's a lot more doing in this style of thinking classroom than what we are used to experiencing in a more traditional classroom next place so what are some of these changes that are taking place in our department if you were to walk into one of our thinking classrooms these are some of the things that
032you would see first and foremost students are randomly put into groups of three and that's very precise three is kind of like the magic number according to Peter and and we really do think that thus is working in our department so by doing this students don't have the opportunity to place themselves into the category of being the smart one in the group or the low-level student in the group or the student in the middle so that randomization that we do and most teachers do it daily I do it daily we've really seen that they don't fall into those preconceived notions of each other um so randomizing the group increases the level of product productivity of all students students also work at vertical whiteboards and these are hung around the room this prevents some students from
033shying away and not participating so we found overall much higher levels of participation amongst all of all of the students we also do frequent Mastery checks so that we can assess and the students can know how well they know a topic we do this very regularly a few times each week and then there's of course this is not really thinking classrooms but a lot of the teachers are incorporating some fun and engaging online platforms um and I listed them there so you can go back to this if you'd like to learn more about those next please thank you um so I'm going to shift away now from discussing the thinking classrooms and share with you some of the other changes in the math department of course in all situations seeing finding the Silver Lining is
034important and albeit the pandemic was very challenging it also gave us an opportunity to reflect on our priorities so we've made a commitment in the math department to prioritize the mental health of our students while maintaining rigor so what's the most important what is the most stressful thing for students grades right um so I'm pleased to announce that all Math teachers and I do mean all are rethinking the way they assess and have adopted some motivating assessment strategies um such as the some of the ones that I've mentioned up here on the slide so um test quiz overrides so we're focusing more on the summative assessments they do better on a test than a quiz from the same unit the quiz grade gets overridden by the test grade we do frequent assessing to allow students
035more opportunities to show Mastery which avoids the high stakes testing environment quiz retec retakes and another example is just checking for Mastery which is similar to homework but it gives again students an idea of where they're at next please Okay so in addition to these thinking classroom and assessment changes I've included a few slides from a handful of our courses highlighting some ways in which they engage students so this is from AP Statistics an example that that teacher shared with me they start each class with what he calls a thinking task so this allows students to explore new ideas by applying existing knowledge in an engaging way so this is an example of a thinking task that's going to be generating conversation related to the law of large numbers so you can think about that
036later next please okay so another example is from our math fundamentals which the teacher just calls it math fun um they he approaches his class in a very different way they have a daily quiz um or what he calls a check-in which gives the students structure and repetition so that they build in skills and confidence for those of you who don't know what math fundamentals is it's for students who are two to three grade levels below the grade that they're in so it's it's before algebra next please all right my last classroom example is from the standard statistics class which is a course largely Project based and what the teachers of this course are doing is I thought this would be interesting for y'all tonight a statistical analysis of data comparing is a bud burst
037so that's when flowers first appear between the 1800s and today so in the 1850s Henry Thoreau journaled about when different flowers bloomed and then another famous naturalist Hosmer continued the data collection then there was a long Gap like 150 years um maybe not quite that until Richard primac who is a professor at bu began collecting this data I think around 2000 2001. and our data our students are actually continuing this data collection from our cchs native pollinator Garden so this is fantastic for them because they're seeing firsthand that the blueberries are flowering approximately two weeks earlier than in the mid-1800s so it's pretty powerful to actually be a participant in that right next so I just want to quickly mention a few other things before I wrap up the presentation and I know that the
038calculus project was introduced to you all in the fall but it is something we're really excited about so I felt it was important to mention to you again tonight that this program is something we are participating in with the goal of having more students of color reach AP Statistics in high school so I I think these slides are shared with the school committee and that I included a hyperlink so if you'd like um to learn more about the calculus project if you didn't if you weren't there in the fall I embedded that links and we'll share it with you all um I've also added we've also added two new courses to our program of studies one is which which is called geometry Essentials and this is pretty exciting for us because it allows students an
039opportunity to get on that track to calculus who maybe weren't ready for that in middle school so students who did not take Algebra 1 in middle school and eighth grade will still have an opportunity through this supplemental course called geometry Essentials which would allow them to get to calculus so those are a couple of really exciting things that we're doing next okay so our computer science teacher and computer science is part of the math department so I included this tonight has set his goal this year to increase diversity in computer science and engineering courses at cchs he formed an ad hoc Committee of Math teachers engineering teachers and students to brainstorm ways to accomplish this and in the late fall he began posting slides around the cchs monitors showing a diverse set of people that
040work in a variety of computer science and engineering jobs and as students were starting to sign up for these courses he recruited students mostly girls I had some come to my class that's how I know um to tell other students about their experiences in person and that was really powerful while we don't know for sure until the schedule is done it looks like these efforts have yielded a lot of success and I saw the preliminary schedule it shows that his intro class will be around 50 percent female which is very different from previous years so next please so I just want to put in a plug for the senior internship program at CC it's not part of a specific department and so we think of it as like tangentially related to the math department because
041Lori Fortunato a math teacher runs this and it's really exciting the students are doing incredible things and so again I sent if you click on this picture it's hyperlinked to her website so that you can see what types and if you scroll down you'll see there's about 15 students in each one of those students is a link to what their internship opportunity is so I just invite you to check that out and see what the students are participating in some of them are really really interesting next okay so last but not least I wanted to end the presentation with a slide containing some important data so during the pandemic the College Board did not omit topics from their AP courses at least not for math um and these are the scores from last year that
042we received in July and so you can see the kids are rocking it they the average scores are well above Massachusetts and National averages so we think we're really proud of this and we think that um you know the kids are doing a great job and demonstrating that through not just through AP scores but in many ways of course so thank you for listening tonight and if you have any questions please reach out to me via email and you'd be happy to correspond with you thanks thank you so much all right any questions I was assuming that Mastery checks were kind of like synonyms for quizzes but that seems to maybe not be the case what is the difference for example between like a quiz and a Mastery check so when when I think a
043quiz I think um it's an assessment that would count towards your grade their grade that's part of their test grade yeah or assessment grade so a Mastery check is more like a check-in um that doesn't there's no points attached to it does it just gives them a sense of like a quiz but it just isn't the question really is will you see a master check in Aspen no no no it actually got it no no no I had liked what you said about um like the fundamentals class where there's like an expectation of a daily quiz or it you know it just it creates structure and the ability for the kids to plan and I was thinking like is a Mastery check sort of like that like an ungraded quiz think of it as a
044as a quiz that needs to be passed but they get an unlimited number of chances to take it so typically Mastery checks are done um following homeworks and on the Mastery check the problems will be similar to what they would have seen in the homework so it's just checking to see if they understand it and they do that once in class if they don't pass it yeah they have to come back it's usually during one of like their lunch the next day or a free blog Flex block maybe next week's block something like that yeah that would be a good idea for sure until they come back and they and they try it again if they don't pass it again they do it the next day okay so they basically are required to gain that
045Mastery wonderful but it's not attached to grades and like that's exactly what I was curious about you nailed it right and I think that's definitely a departure like even the fact that you can have retakes on quizzes and tests that was not always the case a few years ago so so that's really that's great yeah and I think what's exciting you know I showed the the data from the AP scores and that that does speak volumes um but the kids seem happier you know I mean I've taught on I'm teaching honest geometry this year it's probably my 10th year teaching it and the kids are still being assessed on really hard problems um yet they seem happier and there's more motivation There's Hope right so I do the test quiz override that was my contribution
046to that list and you know I just gave a quiz the other day and some students weren't thrilled with it and they turned it in they're like I'm going to learn from my mistakes and then typically the score on the test is much higher right that's the whole purpose of formative assessment is to figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are um and then the summative is where they can demonstrate that they've gained that mastery um right any other questions could you talk a little bit about the process by which you brought in the randomized trios and the fact that they're uh thinking out loud with each other what was that was the transition like for students and teachers was it almost implicitly expected and quick or did it take a lot of introduction how'd
047that roll out the randomizing is pretty quick and easy it was a little strange at the beginning of the year because I I implemented that this year and they're like really randomized seating again and I said no we're just gonna I'm just gonna click this button and the seating chart is going to be displayed at the front of the room you're going to find your new seat every day so that that took a couple days to get used to the vertical whiteboards it was much is much harder for them um it's tiring because they're thinking a lot more you know if you're if you're at a table with three people somebody's usually take charge and doing a lot of the work but if you're displayed and your your work is displayed and your person is
048displayed You Can't Hide and you have to be a contributor so I asked my students and I have asked former students who aren't my current students so they have no reason to tell me one thing or another um how that experience has gone and they say it's very tiring I asked them at the beginning of the year this is just anecdotal and they're like oh I don't know if we like it it's so much work you know but they're it's because they're they're thinking a lot more and then I asked them just out of curiosity I saw a couple of my seniors they just took the AP yesterday Monday um in calculus so I had them last year in pre-calc and they said oh yeah we got we got much more used to it so
049I think it's like anything you sort of build up an endurance and you know and they've gotten used to it my students like it a lot it gives them an opportunity it's almost like a competition too because they can see everybody's work yeah so and I would say overall those sort of basic building thinking classroom strategies have um it's been pretty seamless to be honest that's great because you think of like math as math but this really is different this is a different way of teaching math so it's a very different way it builds in a lot of opportunity for differentiation because kids can go at different Paces you know you there's a lot of opportunities for the for a teacher to build that in but the collaborative nature like it's it's right you know
050increasing the level for all of the students so we're seeing some good things and I think many of the Christian the Middle School teachers have adopted this 100 School teachers and most of the middle school tomorrow I have three teachers visiting from a b um who are coming to to observe some classes and learn more about that as well it's great thank you so much for coming this is you're welcome exciting stuff and it's exciting to have other teachers come into our district to really learn from us so it's fun to share because it is it is um you know exciting to to let you all know what we're doing and what we're up to we're good thank you thank you all right and we are back to a reading of the minutes so you
051should have received the March 14th March 28th March 11th and I'm sorry April 11th and April 12th minutes from Erin anyone have any changes or additions Corrections I think they were excellent they were excellent I think I had made one name change on one of the minutes I think that was it so I think we're good do we need to know that here uh I think she had already corrected and resent it so I think we're good all right so I would take a motion to approve the minutes of March 14th March 28th April 11th and April 12th so moved second any more discussion no all in favor hi all right and a bunch of Correspondence so I'm going to start with you Alexa we're seeing this and Conquer pop-up we had two pieces of
052Correspondence one was um from an eighth grader uh they're kicking off their Civics project I hope this is the first of many pieces of Correspondence we sometimes get at this time of year um and the other one was oh um about the hold on I did it I saw it I had it just had it up sorry um the other one was about the cell phone tower no you know it uh that's how it came today that's why um was it from Kristen Haggerty uh oh just thanking us uh for uh the correspondence on um the incident on the bus and at the region um we had three emails on embedded embedded English at the high school and then we had one on a cell phone tower which I forwarded to today which was a
053link um to a study so you can take a look at that and that's all we had for this week and then we'll go on to chairs superintendency report so Dr Hunter I'll start with you you know and I'm going to be brief tonight because there's so much other great information coming to you um I just want to publicly note that Justin Sparks has been hired as the rose next principal Justin's coming to us from uh Fitchburg where he's already a sitting principal and bringing a lot of great ideas and thoughts and people skills and we're just really excited to welcome him so he'll start July 1st and do a little transitioning before then including coming to one of our meetings before the year is out otherwise it's just really really busy it's spring so
054we are enjoying all of the rich activities that happen as the year starts to close and engaging in all of those and half a foot into next year with all the hiring that we're doing schedules that we're building planning and really setting the year up for success I think we this morning we spent quite a bit of time in the Strategic plan and fine-tuning metrics and rolling that into school Improvement plans that are going to come to you and that then rolls into where the PD time is going to go and it just all feels really correlated and synchronized and all going in the same really strong Direction so more to come on all of that but we're working really effectively on all of that and that's thanks to the collaboration of the community and
055the committee and everyone involved so it's a really busy time you're going to hear a lot of all the work that's going on in events since they happen right um and then last night Lori Bob and I went to Carlisle Town meetings very exciting over in Carlisle there were no questions about the regional budget at all and it passed really quickly which was great um and as you know there's a significant change in the assessment to Carlisle for next year so they were well planned for that so thank you to Carlisle do you have anything else it's good all right perfect and moving on we're just going to keep going we have a special education update tonight and I see Deb Dixon is with us she brought a big team from the high school I
056don't know if you want to introduce her if you want me to it's really up to you are you gonna bring everybody up with you or myself all right well welcome come on up and I think this is the last time you'll be with us this year right and so so that means ever ever so thank you so much for being with us these past two years lots of changes have happened and you've certainly I think someone said it the other day this you left it better than when you came so you know it's been it's been really great having you with us a pleasure activity so unlike previous meetings um my part is very short and I will try to keep to my time here um so this is my last special ed update
057um Erin you can go to the next slide and I just wanted to start by updating you with some facts and figures about where we are the um this information that you see on this slide is from the March 1st Sims data collection and I think what's um very interesting is that as you can see the the current numbers or the March 1 numbers are in red and the previous October numbers are in parentheses next to these figures and there's been pretty significant increase in many areas over the course of this year as we're evaluating students and students are coming on IEPs and most notably we're seeing the increase in autism emotional and communication um the other areas have had moderate or minor increases and or decreases um next slide this once again you've seen
058the slide before but this is a comparison of our head counts for um the schools from last June to the October count to the latest March head count and our numbers are here staying relatively um the same and the percentages are basically the same and I think we're in keeping with a state average which is around 17 percent and for those who um who don't know the itinerant number number is for students who may be either homeschooled or privately placed at private expense but they access services in the school so they come in it could it most of the time it's a preschooler who may come in for speech and language therapy only they're not actually participating in the preschool program here but come in for direct service um next slide is a slide that
059I have not shared with you before but I thought it was interesting and timely um one of the pieces of information that Desi collects is regarding our placement patterns of students who are on IEPs and what you can see here and this is just for in-district students what you can see is that we the vast majority of our students at both at all Elementary's Middle School and High School are considered full inclusion students which means they're pulled out of the Gen Ed classroom for less than 21 percent of the time um and the numbers dropped dramatically when we look at partial inclusion which is pull out from between 21 and 60 of the time and sub separate which is um being pulled out and taught into substantially separate setting more than 60 percent of their
060day next slide so this you've seen this before and once again we're very proud of the Continuum of service that we've been able to complete um this is um the time for me to think actually actually thank you all for your commitment and support in the development and completion of this Continuum um with the funding and edition of staff that was required to create these programs and this Continuum um we are thrilled that this all of these programs are in place for the students Concord and Concord Carlisle I think that it for the near future I feel that special education is appropriately staffed with our programs and the next step and the next Focus will be more on consultation with Specialists professional development and training of the staff involved in these programs and that includes
061both special education staff and General Ed staff to support these programs so I'm hoping that there's not a need to come back for more staff requests but it's more focused on professional development to support the programs and enhance the programs at the last meeting that I attended and presented at I was asked to highlight um what's happening at the high schools so the next part of this presentation is specifically for the high school and um gives me great pleasure to introduce some folks now um so we will be you can actually join me here um Tom Keane is our Pathways teacher at the high school has been here for many years and grown the program to what it is today and I I can sort of sit in the back Courtney Lada is special immature
062I'm working in the harbor program Aaron no is the department chair this year and is also a learning academic support and their teacher and then and lastly Fran Fran wolf is the high school special ed administrator and they are going to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the high school programs you know I'm gonna actually give you a microphone yes obviously just use this microphone you can pass it I hope this will work tomorrow don't tell me it's not working it seems like I need to think it through close first after now all right hello everyone sound like it's working but it's actually working okay great thank you um so I'm here with my some of my talented staff talking about special education at our high school um and then that slide
063we're going to start with 8th to ninth grade transition um which we are working on and have been working on since the fall um we work with Carlisle middle school and Concord middle school as well as many private schools that um and their programming in eighth grade and parents are looking to bring their children back to the public schools so we start having transition nights we start coordinating with um guidance counselors special education staff we have visits where they come and tour our building and see our programs and we go to their buildings and see their programs so that has been going um ongoing and is still happening now next slide and the first one I'm going to give this to Aaron it's going to talk about ninth grade academic Academy so this is just
064a slide that we um present when we do this presentation for um upcoming middle school students um and it just is a way to reinforce for families students parents that um the special ed department is connected to the 9th Grade Academy which I'm sure you've all heard about and um that we have um we have academic supports which there's a slide coming up in a little bit that will describe how we as a special ed Department support the transition as well so next slide please um the goal of the ninth grade academy is to create an emotionally healthy socially inclusive and academically supportive first-year experience for ninth grade students it's done through a team model with um core academic classes next slide in addition to the special education programs that we'll talk about in just
065a few minutes um the high school is committed to providing support for all students and some of these are in academic support programs branches specifically for ninth graders Circ is a more Humanities based academic support and it's for all students the mark focuses on math we have challenge for students with um attendance difficulties um in 10th Grade we have a two-time a week English seminar that helps strengthen literacy skills for the MCAS and then finally we offer a homework club Monday through Thursday it's stacked by two tutors from the special education department but it is a um it's a support that's open to everybody next um and then all of the special education services that we're about to discuss are determined by each student's current team so for the eighth graders it's determined at the
066middle school with consultation from the high school Staffing and then up here it will be your students current case manager guidance counselor and academic teachers and so our ninth grade academic support class is a it's a class for students um in special education and it dovetails really nicely with the ninth grade academy we were finding that students that were coming in ninth graders that were coming in needed support across all three areas listed at the bottom executive functioning academic strategies and literacy skills and so we created these support locks it's only 9th graders in the program and it is completely focused on helping them transition providing that extra support that they may need and teaching them how to take the um skills and strategies that they have and apply them to their core academic classes
067next slide so after night um ninth grade academic support we um are we have two big academic support study skills classes one is more literacy based and one is more executive functioning based so rap is our literacy based program it stands for writing reading and academic processes um so the focus in here is really strengthening and developing reading comprehension and written expression skills but teaching them how to explicitly use them in their core academic classes we also cover things like note taking trust preparation test taking skills General executive functioning and then we're always working with the students to help them understand where they are at and how to advocate for their needs and then next slide are other major academic support program is our LEAP program which stands for learning executive and academic processes so
068this program is focused more on goal setting organizing tasks time management task management planning and prioritization and study skills memory strategies um and the reason why these last two programs are 10 through 12 is because we wanted to have an opportunity as a staff that works with them at the high school to determine where these students should end up so after they come out of the ninth grade academic support the teachers who have worked with them in that program determine which of the these two programs students would go to yes the next subject so the bridge program is for grades 9 through 12 for students that are on the autism spectrum disorder or have social communication difficulties staffed by special education teachers School psychologists speech pathologists transition Specialists and tutors it's an inclusion program which
069means that all the students go into the general education classes some with tutor support some without but they have a home base where they get their study skills and they get Social pragmatics and social skills training by the people listed under the Staffing and they work also um things like executive functioning as well and [Music] they do that in the bridge classroom and they have a lot of consultation time with the general education teachers to support them and the the children are very successful successful with accessing the curriculum with help and you know uh they're able to really shine with um with tutor support and we notice that as you know they start in ninth grade maybe needing more tutor support um and by 11th grade really um scaling that back and by their senior
070year most of them are not supported by tutors in the classroom there are some that still are but really the goal is for Independence and generalizing the skills that they have learned in previous years next slide and I think the next slide actually outlines what Fran just said okay yep next slide okay next um literacy and uh Beyond which is our new lab program that was just I just started in September we started to Pilot it unofficially um last January um with the first cohort um and this is staffed by two special education teachers tutors and we have partner teachers we get um outside support and consultation from Landmark Outreach it's also supported by school psychologists and a speech pathologists next slide and in the lab program we work on the language and literacy skills
071executive functioning social emotional development and there are lots of co-taught classes and supported content classes again this is another program that is more heavily supported in ninth grade and a little bit of a release in 10th Grade and mostly Independent by 11th and 12th grade slide and Courtney Ladd is going to talk about anger hi everybody my name is Courtney Latta and thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight um we are very excited to merge Harbor and All Pro um so this is my second year at cchs and I've been the Harvard teacher and next year we are going to combine horses um and so we have one Continuum of services in a a really strong team to support the needs of our students so this continual Continuum of social emotional and academic supports
072um we'll use to address student well-being abortions who have an emotional disability so our staff includes two special education teachers myself and another special education teacher two mental health professionals will be on staff with us all the time a school psychologist and also a licensed mental health counselor um and we have General Ed co-teachers and a transition specialist all of which will come into our space and work with us and the students in addition to um plenty of tutors on staff and I think the best part of this program is that it provides a feature of security for our students and our students will benefit from a strong relationship with all of the staff that we have within the program next slide and specialized instruction what we'll be doing in here we focus a lot
073on self-regulation and coping skills we are facing a lot of what we do in DBT work and mindfulness and things of that nature while also also of course focusing on our academic and executive functioning needs um we will have some separate content areas available for our students math English and social studies so should students need a little bit more support we'll have that available within our program but then as students continue to progress and grow in their skill set we'll be able to support them as they are you know transitioning maybe back into a general Ed classroom and of course we will have our crisis management and response on the ready for our students who may need it next hi everybody I'm Tom Keane I work in the pathways program and the pathways program was
074created in 1999 as a direct result of federal legislation the idea individuals with Disability Act 1997. which really prompted school districts to look at inclusion and bringing students with more significant needs back to the district um since then we've evolved over the years in 19 uh I mean in 2019 we created the launch program which broke up uh Pathways from uh a 14 to 22 to a 14 to 18 and launch which we'll talk about in a minute is from 18 to 22. okay so in terms of Pathways we look at it from a three-prong approach academics social and pre-vocational the academics piece is a combination of looking at a student's individual needs really trying to figure out um do they need skills-based remediation courses which could be functional uh Ela math life skills and
075more importantly how do we support them in an inclusion environment and the inclusion classes could be planet Earth in biology but we also look at students backgrounds for example next year I'm going to have a student from the pathways program take French one and I've been collaborating with Caitlin Smith because we really want to support the students skills abilities and most importantly their interests so in Pathways we have an Eclectic range of Staff members from special ed teachers to speech and language Pathologists transition Specialists School psychologists and tutors this past year under Aaron Fran and Deb's leadership we created a a bigger Affinity program where we're actually having students from outside the district come in and that's created a wonderful opportunity to grow the program um and also it works to support the students from
076a co-curricular standpoint now we have uh students playing unified basketball we have students we just finished up our track season today we had our end of the season banquet unified track but also the co-curriculars give students that opportunity to try other opportunities whether it's the School Musical this year for the first time we had a student participate in the downhill ski team which was a magnificent from an inclusion standpoint so it's really that blend of helping these students become the most productive citizens they possibly can before they transition out next step slide please and here's a sample of some of the supports from vocational programming during the covet time we've had the opportunity to support the help office where my students would deliver supplies to the elementary and middle and preschool and if you think
077about that what an awesome opportunity to have unscripted social opportunities coming in greeting people unrehearsed and the students really enjoyed it they understood the importance of their role um from an academic support standpoint the students received support during a school day as well as um after school and in terms of vocational counseling we really look at how do we support a student from a vocational development or three critical vocational behaviors which are career investigation career acquisition and most importantly career retention and it all ties back to that social piece that I mentioned earlier and the social piece is carried out by not only a speech language physiologist working on the pragmatics but having a school psychologist really breaking down social interactions that may have happened I think every Friday last block Jenna Caruso our school
078psychologist runs um a a group that I am fortunate to be a part of and they really talk about the week but also talk they talk about the weekend because we understand the importance of thinking about school not just from a uh eight o'clock to 241 but more of a holistic approach and uh as you can see this is a picture from our unified game acton-boxborough we played them this fall and at the end of the game they shared posters welcoming us and I mean tell me that is an inclusion in a nutshell there and that's uh that's just a phenomenal picture um maybe the next slide would you like me to talk about lunch yes okay next slide please okay so the Watch program as I mentioned was created in September of 2019 through
079Dr Hunter's uh initiative and it really gave the students an opportunity to identify themselves as students that are looking for not only vocational opportunities but post-secondary and that's so powerful because as we know that legislation was just passed in July talking about uh post-secondary opportunities for students with intellectual disabilities so the launch program uses Ripley as truly a launch pad the students go out to vocational opportunities whether it's competitive employment whether it's volunteering we can't emphasize the concept of service enough but also with radical grind and Mary Desmond really taking the helmet working with students we have a lot of students taking courses at Middlesex Community College and it's just an exciting program and uh and I know the staff at Ripley loved having the launch students there because um that they're there as a
080real entity they're part of the Ripley Community day in and day out and uh and it's really nice when I get to come over and see the interactions they can place the truly authentic let's watch the presentation yeah I think there's a shortcut it's just three minutes so that this is a presentation that was um written and um designed by the launch program students thank you let's go is there audio sometimes we struggle [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you so you can see they have lots of fun at lunch it's always a great place to stop by and see some smiles and see some great learning going on in the community and in the building itself and then we have math services for all the special education students that have map goals on
081their IEPs that um go and get special education to help from special education teachers also general education Math teachers and math tutors that are assigned to the resource center as well as next slide there's also reading skills we go it's a skills-based class that focus focuses on the um the reading that needs to happen so that kids can really access their curriculum fluency comprehension writing and grammar and that is taught by a special education teacher as well next slide and we have a transition specialist which has been mentioned in many of the programs so she is very busy she supports a lot of students in our high school um she traditionally the position was supporting um kind of just Pathways and launched prior to last year and we really changed what the job description was
082and broadened um her reach realizing that she could definitely be used in other areas as well so she goes into our essay programs and supports him there as well um teaching a transition seminar class as well as other students that are in cchs as well next slide and these are all our related service providers that we have at the high school that are available depending on the student's needs and lastly next slide a big thank you for hearing about all our grade programming and we appreciate your support thank you nice thank you wow that I mean that's really excellent I have to credit Debbie too with getting all of the program descriptions on our website so for all our viewers at home if you want to see every program we have to offer here they
083all are on the website which has been a really great addition and a great resource for parents um you know kids have special needs so I'll open it up to anyone at the table for any questions that you might have for our great group of Educators here Gary yeah I have a couple questions I also so first Debbie thank you so much I know it's your last meeting you've been such an incredible resource for this community um and I feel like every time I've heard you speak which isn't incredible amount but like you are so steady and just even healed and I think that that is just spring such a calming presence um so you inspire a lot of confidence and you have helped a lot of people so thank you very much um I
084I had a couple of questions on this um I know this was mostly focused on high school but on the Sims Data Page was that K through 12 so that was the data that was the increase or the numbers of students who are um who have IEPs or what is that K-12 I think it's pre-k through 12. maybe may also include out of District okay so when the numbers don't necessarily match on from one slide to another because of the way that Desi provides us with the information I guess I was just wondering in some of these like some of these jumps as you indicated are pretty drastic um are you seeing that across the board like is it evenly distributed amongst you know K pre-k through 22 or are you seeing that mostly at
085the elementary level and and what do you attribute it to um so I think that one one of the things I think we're seeing it across the board okay um we seem to um invite a lot of move-ins there's been an extraordinary number of children moving in with IEPs um and it seems that many are moving in for our they're very knowledgeable about our programs in spite of it not being on the website yet but I'll know about it so that I think is one one factor the other piece that I do believe is that our teachers are um completing more thorough and comprehensive evaluations and changing um disability categories maybe have mentioned a while ago that um neurological was one of the higher um most identified categories of disability and I think that in
086digging deeper through evaluation that numbers ships going down and the students are being identified with specific learning disabilities more so it's hard to tease out sometimes but I think the teams are doing more of that that and I think that shifts the numbers somewhat and again students with ages three to nine are can be classified as developmentally delayed to catch-all and once they turn nine they then have to be identified in one of the other categories okay so I think there are a lot of factors so do you see jumps like this typically I'm wondering like is there a is this like a covid things have gone undetected piece or uh the the increase in the emotional disabilities um is rampant across the country we're all hearing about the mental health needs um that are
087that we're facing right now so I think that's part of it and I do believe that's very much coveted related I think there was um a Slowdown during the coveted period where students weren't getting evaluated and then there's been an uptick that we experienced last year and this year the other thing that happens is that the cycle of reevaluation which occurs every three years is coming due in the next couple of years so we're dealing with that as well and one of my other questions I have um one I was went back and looked at your October presentation and you you talked about um you gave a lot of like beginning of the year end of your data is it too soon for some of that achievement data I think it was MCAS um and
088I think it might have just been MCAS but um just at where where kids with um disabilities are compared to like at the state level and compared to their peers okay so I'm probably in the fall for the okay you know literally taking them right now yeah there's no new data yet um and then I just my last comment I I love the focus on um inclusion wherever possible um I think that it speaks to our values as a community and as a district and um it's really apparent and how you all are talking about these Services too so obviously there are instances where that's not possible but um I love this I love this focus on trying to keep kids in their Community Schools and with their peers as much as possible so thanks
089the teachers here are phenomenal on both General Ed and special ed and embrace the notion of inclusion and we continue to say inclusion isn't a place or a location it's a belief system and we just need to continue to promote that belief system here and support the teachers who work with our kiddos there's some prom attendees right for Pathways exciting I have a couple questions um first I'll Echo carries sentiments um uh as someone who has observed and liaised with the CPAC Community what you have brought in these past two years is exceptional and extraordinary and I do appreciate that I certainly wouldn't want to speak for those parents but you know even just as an observer I've seen such a difference um in what is shared with the community both both the CPAC community
090and in our little micro Community here at the school committee and how it's communicated and um we I think I I really appreciate that my question um same data set that Kerry's looking at the obviously the increases are remarkable um when I look at specifically the autism spectrum disorder jump that obviously is I think the big one that kind of is not just remarkable but extraordinary and I have heard um their antidotes I understand that but um several people who sell homes in the area have been talking to me about how people are coming in and saying you know from Texas from California my Advocate recommended this town specifically for this program I mean and so I'm talking about people this is not like someone from Bedford and someone from um you know I don't
091even know Bill Rica or whatever this this is Interstate kind of something like can we continue to scale this um if we are becoming like nationally known is there a limit to the capacity that we can take on like how it's it's such a fascinating I don't know that it's a problem yet but it could be I don't know I guess could it become a problem and and how how do we scale it is there even an answer to that nope okay great we'll see well but we have built it it has and they are coming and so you know that's interesting to me I it speaks incredibly well to the program I think this is um I've experienced this in other districts as well so I don't think it's just conquered um going back
092many years Realtors were trying to sell homes in a previous community that I was in um actually several and they use the school system um I actually believe that the special education is only as good as the Gen Ed program and conquered in Concord Carlisle have very rich and robust strong exemplary academic programs and I think that's the first draw and then secondly the special ed is an extension of the General Ed program um there are some families though who have very specific needs our children with specific needs who do shop around we get inquiries all the time again I'm thinking of moving to Concord my child has an IEP for X you know can you tell me about the programs um and they're doing that to every single community in here in Metro West
093so um I know that it happens I don't I think it's been happening for a very long time I don't know that it will tip the scales and yeah I don't know what we can do about it if a family moves here and has a student with a need we must and we will provide now you can just think about physical space you know it's it's interesting it's it is it is I will if I could just add to that that's also interesting there's also been a handful of families who didn't even know those programs existed when they moved into Concord and we're really surprised and thrilled that we had a really strong Service delivery for their child so it's a mix of both and then we pulled the data because we were all intrigued
094by this and it was only 11 of the people that actually moved in like over right so clear it is the draw of the entirety of the school district I think first and foremost and yes certainly some parents really advocate for their child and know what they're looking for and what IEP needs they have and then there's some who just come here for other reasons um we had some move out of the Air Force Base and they landed in Concord sort of coincidentally and were thrilled we were going to be able to keep their child in District so it's a little bit of everything I tend to agree with Debbie I I don't expect it to balloon so fast we can't accommodate as things things roll and remember there's always kids rolling up or rolling
095off or ruling out so um I just want to piggyback off that that I know the numbers are startling when you look at them but it doesn't mean that every one of those numbers they need you know full support substantially separate some of those numbers are um complete inclusionary um rooms that the resources are not a huge drain on ourselves yeah so it's it's not as if you know we're talking about you know putting Wings on buildings so yeah and I imagine this dovetails with what you're seeing nationally with the the increases I think so yeah yeah I'm done okay I think uh Sarah or Sharon Sharon Sarah Sarah as Carlisle family's transition to Concord um how did they find out about your cpec meetings and to to learn more about your programs I think
096I looked on the website I didn't see anything how can we uh help Carl families with that information we do do a lot of work with um the special ed Department in Carlisle as Fran mentioned earlier it starts early and the contact is Is frequent and often and we do um then offer orientation meetings um we had several both zoom and in person for Carlisle families in terms of how they get involved with CPAC I think CPAC will tell you later when they present um but there we we were told last year that we weren't communicating well enough with um I think when I at the beginning of last year that we were asked to really communicate with Carlisle and include them in the process and we've tried to do that over the past two
097years and and there are things that happen like you do I'm assuming to transition meetings just like at CMS you go over to Carlisle and do those transition meetings at IEP has participated in many many many transitions yeah yeah yeah so and so in January February and they had a transition needing in their Auditorium that I was present along with the two whole principles so we're we're visible there good good I think I heard decoding when we were talking about literacy is that something that we use um still because I think it was mostly around High School data is that something that yeah that we're utilizing at the high school level yes there are some kids that um have the services of reading whether it be like a Wilson program or um something of that
098nature that they are sort of working on reading so can you use the wireless mic sorry thank you so they they are still um you know significantly behind grade level in Reading um not many but there are a handful that still get that service yes Sarah yeah sort of follow up on uh some more about the the literacy stuff so the the lab that started piloted last year started officially this year it that sort of grew out of a lot of your work with Landmark is that true or it just happened to coincide with the work with Landmark or Landmark so we identified a need in our students um we have students with language-based learning disabilities and dyslexia um many families felt that they that we were not able to meet their needs um and
099potentially um go out of District to places like Carroll School Windham Woods Landmark type programs um we had services at each of our buildings but we didn't have a program per se so we indicated it indicated that we needed to grow our program and and become a little bit more structured and focused and that's what we did and we created the lab program because of that we then engaged with Landmark Outreach to act as the ongoing consultant with our teachers both gen Ed and special ed who are affiliated with the program so the stuff it wasn't a one and done it's an ongoing person as needed kind of support okay that's great um and then I have a question about the you were said mentioned I think that teachers and just building building-based people are
100getting better at honing in on what the specific needs are of the students I wonder in Carlisle we've seen some interesting Trends in the past few years in terms of how evaluations are sort of initiated whether they're initiated from the school or from parents and and trends that correlate to that I'm just wondering if you've seen any remarkable changes um in in that not any specific numbers but um but I think I think the takeaway from if I'm understanding sort of the teacher initiated ones have gotten much more um I think to your point like more specific more more identifying the needs um and I think that the a lot of the parent ones there are a lot of gross concerns um that I think get alleviated through these evaluations that that they're not I
101think there used to be more balance between when when a teacher and when a parent brought them brought a concern forward and I think there's a Divergence in Carlisle there I think we're seeing the same thing and you can speak to the high school but parent referrals we might get more parent referrals um but we have more findings of no eligibility um and the school-based referrals that come out of the child study team or teacher assistance team um are often those hospitals are yeah so that speaks to the ability of the classroom teachers um and the teams at the school of Jenna and teams um to identify children who who whose needs cannot be met through mtss and other interventions and really need more and they're we then are able to evaluate per law we
102have to evaluate in areas of suspected disability and we are doing comprehensive evaluations well and I think the fact that the numbers are going up means that you guys are like that that one needs when needs are there they are they are identified right yes they are it's not a it's not a way of massaging now yeah I can speak to the the um numbers in emotional um disability and the jump there so about 80 to 85 of the initial evaluations this year the concern was uh emotional so um and with that um the majority of those students are being found eligible and so even the emotional ones are mostly coming from the school more than they're coming from both they're coming from a mix but it's um it is a level that I have
103never seen before and this is my 13th year in special ed Administration so I think um it speaks to like it's not just the pandemic like we can't just continue to say it's the pandemic there are other factors involved um and the numbers are growing yeah oh and I have one more question you've talked about a little bit about um that you see down the road um possibly a need for not for more positions is like things hold more or less um but but in terms of PD um did you have specific ideas about or you're just suggest like you're just thinking that that's that will be what the services need is just a bolstering of of professional development I think that we can um enhance our programs with greater expertise enhance the teachers repertoire
104of skills knowledge um the the research is changing daily or you know the best practices so keeping um abreast of that for the language-based learning for social emotional for autism um things things are coming out daylight so I think it is incumbent upon us um to keep Pace with that information and utilize that information to enhance our programs so I think that's done through professional development research training and it's ongoing and as teachers well we have a fabulous staff not everybody stays forever so it it there has to be some revolving training that occurs to bring people up to speed okay thanks there's one more question for me um are the teachers receiving any training around like the science of reading um and Carl we had you know we had a few meetings about the
105sold to story podcast and um all of the conversations around that um our teachers being trained around the science of reading and how to support students through that type of thing all yes all of the special education teachers um are trained in they're all aware of the science of reading many many are trained in the Wilson Reading Program which is a research based Orton gillingham-based program we have some teachers who are in Gillingham base trained as well so they um they do many of our students need that type of approach in That explicit and direct multi-sensory instruction where are we seeing the need is it spelling is it um sounding out the words it said writing where are we seeing the need with students around that so most of the students have that we identify
106the who require that multi-sensory sequential explicit instruction um are considered dyslexic or specifically reading disabled and they um if if a child is not able to decode they're not able to encode which is spelling and that comes later so they need to master the language code first in terms of reading and then that will expand to the writing in terms of spelling and then larger writing uh you know paragraph sentences paragraphs essays I don't know if anybody wants to yeah I mean we're not seeing that so much at the high school but by the time they get to us at ninth grade are that pretty much has been taught for many years um hopefully they're not you know coming to us at ninth grade um right having those intense needs um so yeah I think
107the the more training at the elementary level is where they're doing the interventions and the things of that nature usually by the time they get to ninth grade at most a lot of that is remediated um if not at all and I don't think about where we do see it um I think in the answer to your question into Dutchtown with what a friend said we have screeners we use the star 360 but in kindergarten all the way up now to the 10th grade we just added Denver and there's five areas of raging and if students are showing a vulnerability like below grade level in any one of those five then we do a deeper dive we call it using a nipples which is like the state of the article that is used to diagnose
108dyslexia so that's how we pick it up and then there's waste Mike and I said that you're going to see a shift um I think you're going to see a shift over time with the dyslexia screener kindergarten first grade um the interventions multi-tiered system of support with a very structured intervention model um to remediate and address issues earlier on and rewire the brain quite honestly so children are are readers and don't struggle the way that they once did and again that goes back to the comprehensive evaluations that we're now doing as well if it comes to the level of special ed referral and we know so much more it's amazing it's exciting he's great anyone else my questions have already been addressed thank all of you for coming and it's it's a big ask and
109uh you're very gracious with your time and all your information thank you and especially Debbie I know extra thanks to Debbie because this is your last school committee meeting with us so thank you for all of your time you spent with us thank you I know and it's you know it's really great to just see all of that High School programming come alive through your presentation because you know I think that you can read about it but I feel like we could definitely hear about what's really happening there and adjustments that have been made over the past few years and even like study skills in ninth grade versus like when you have an eighth grade parent saying I don't know is it leap is it rap I don't know which one it is but to
110have that year in ninth grade to really figure out which path those kids are going to go in has been great and then the new merging of the programs it's really really exciting to see what's happening at the high school so thank you all for coming I appreciate it yeah thank you have a great evening yeah you can feel free to stay of course but you know we're gonna send your new merry away because there's school tomorrow morning over the Celtics are on too okay we'll expect some updates I know I know well um so next up we have CPAC will be joining us and I think we have Casey Atkins and Chris Christie Carlo sorry Streeter Charlie Streeter tarlo sorry and I'll ask you to please speak into the mic because we'll be reminded
111that we're not speaking to the mic thank you thank you no just share share it all right um you've had some very nice uh looking presentations this evening very informative very um pleasing to the eye as well we're more minimalist in our PowerPoint approach this evening very sort of very Circa 1996. um we are the Concord public and Concord Carlisle Regional special education parent advisory Council so what is that well were the parents behind the students many of whom you just heard about through the programs at the high school I'm not entirely sure Dwight Aaron's not in the room you have a New Mexico right I'm just this is new for me um so just a quick overview of what we're going to discuss this evening we do an annual report to you all each
112year this time of year talking about what we've done reiterating our purpose our mission our membership what our priorities were for the year and our accomplishments and what we have looking ahead next next that you earned I'm going to see if my eyes can reach the screen here it's always important for us to reiterate our purpose there's so much that could sound like legalese and sort of you know fancy mission statements that have been crafted together but our purpose and our charge are codified in Mass General law we're here to advise the school committee on matters that pertain to the education and safety of students with disabilities and to meet regularly with school officials to participate in the Planning Development and evaluation of the school committee's special education programs our mission statement is to ensure
113an appropriate education for children with disabilities and to Foster and support a collaborative and inclusive culture in our schools and community that values diversity and recognizes the contributions and uniqueness of each learner we work in partnership with the school administration and the school committee to support students and further their goals of diversity equity and inclusion we provide Outreach support and education to inform and Empower families and members of the community Through events workshops and communication via newsletter's social media and our website we welcome and encourage all members of the community to engage and take part in these efforts next our membership is comprised of parents Guardians and caregivers of students on individualized education plans and 504 plans and other interested parties the CPAC strives to cultivate a membership that reflects the linguistic religious racial cultural
114Geographic and socioeconomic diversity of the districts and intends to include members from the preschool each Elementary School the middle school high school inclusive of alternative and transition programs which have been renamed as you just saw 18 through 22 program and out of District placements inclusive of case collaborative and our membership includes parents Guardians and caregivers from Boston Carlisle and Concord next okay a little less of me reading off the slides and a little more um a little more I guess off the cuff um my name is Casey Atkins and I am currently the president of our volunteer board at CPAC I'm joined this evening by Chris tarlow yeah hi I'm I work on the events Chris very kindly stepped in to help us with publicity this year as any volunteer board sometimes we have folks
115who can devote a lot of time and attention to the work and other times life gives us different options um our board is uh we also include on here Kelly O'Donnell who's our vice president sir Bettencourt who's membership chair Ashley Healy who's our secretary Megan Carroll publicity chair Chris issue Kumar remember at large and Ava mustafi a member at large and former School Committee Member next this um really just visually impressive slide uh is there to show sort of our liaison some of the openings that we have but ideally what we try to do is have folks in each of the schools and programs so that we can start to build a pipeline of community and a future board to carry on these efforts so there are openings in several of the new programs uh
116relabeled programs at the high school and some of our other programs as well it also is a great sort of map to look at to see all of the programs that are in the districts and start to put some names to the faces next our priorities and accomplishments for the 2022-2023 year uh included some carryover from last year we partnered with the interim director of student services Debbie Dixon as you've all heard of him on a wide range of programming and events for caregivers Chris will get into a little bit further but we switched up our model this year and every other month instead of doing business meetings every month we did a topic area of Interest Chris will get into some of the ones that were really popular this year but a way to
117bring out more education to parents bring them into the fold a little bit more give them something a little bit more interesting rather than just the regular Daily Grind of of our business meetings we continue to work to raise the visibility and profile of the CPAC we participated in a lot of hiring committees search committees this year it was a busy year for you all and we deeply deeply appreciate being included in those search committees we also participated in the district strategic planning committee as well as the district's deib strategic steering committee next Debbie received a gift from us last week it's a mug that says I came I saw I conquered It's Kind of Perfect for her um Debbie helped facilitate monthly communication with Dr Hunter but Debbie and she has always been and
118really sets a high standard for engagement and involvement which we're very confident will be carried over with our new um sorry new student services director Angel Charles um we'd also like to note that both Alexa chair Anderson and Sarah Wilson were frequent participants in our business meetings and our events along with other members who joined along as well Court you would show up too we'd see lots of folks there so we really appreciate that engagement it's important for the school committee and the public at large to be aware of what we do and to have knowledge of this base of students events um it's Crystal speak more when you're when her slide comes up unless you want to pop in now but the events were focused around parents as partners extended school year and summer
119camp um options as well as a delightful overview of Decap and 504 and what does it mean because most of us in fact it did not know what it meant next um our appreciation awards are one of our favorite things to do as a board um we celebrated last week our sixth annual CPAC appreciation Awards back in I believe it was 2017 we had our first and there were about 24 nominations of teachers administrators staff who get nominated by families who say you know this is somebody who's gone above and beyond for my child they've been wonderful in these many ways we'd like them to be to be recognized um this year we had another record-breaking year last year we broke our previous record now we broke it again we received 150 submissions um out
120of curiosity uh Dr Hunter how many how many educators are there in or how many staff are in the district total total 7.50 including tutors and all the amazing people who support our kids so this this was a pretty big percentage and it speaks to the build out of the community Continuum of services that was just spoken about because that build out isn't just ftes it is culture it is inclusion is recognition of our students within the entire buildings there were teachers administrators uh custodians other staff Librarians who were included in those nominations so it really was building wide um over 70 families uh participated and nominated usually multiple people and there were of the 150 submissions sorry that was 114 specific recipients so several people received more than one um and Willard was kind
121enough to host us last week next please one of the wonderful Parts about the appreciation Awards is we invite students uh from the high school to do their presentations for for the folks that they've nominated every year they never disappoint the students are thoughtful they are so um eloquent and so moving in their remarks and it is a really sort of tangible way to see the difference that Educators and staff make in our students lives um I think there was there were not there wasn't a dry eye in the auditorium after um these two presented their uh Awards to their honorees Pam Gore and Clark Whitney uh we also recognized Chris Chamberlain of Thoreau a breeding specialist who received the largest number of submissions um it's kind of a big deal um and Donald balmuth
122who has been an occupational therapist at the Concord integrative preschool for I believe in 19 long time years it might be longer than that actually is it 29 that's 29 29 I know I think I'm gonna need some crackers it was bigger on my screen um 29 years of service um and her the comments from her families were were really beautiful um also our new state representative reached out to the CPAC and said I would really like to recognize the folks who go above and beyond on this and whoever receives these Awards we have to we had to inform him that that might require a lot of toner from the printer because it's over 100 people and then we narrowed it down to to sort of our top two there but it was great to
123see his involvement as well we honored Angel Charles who's the outgoing principal of throw who's really responsible for so many of the programs that started at the elementary level the bridge program at the row which focuses on autism Spectrum as well as other students in needing in need of similar types of services all right Aaron my slideshow is gone and I might be flying behind here oh man okay texting me I'll panicked probably no problem I can go off of yep she just got kicked out I can get it Casey I'll just okay no problem um Angel Charles he was host how did she Angel is uh dudeby in on I believe July 1st the new certain student services director for those of you who don't know as I mentioned Angel really is responsible for
124some of the robust programming that started at the elementary level and throw and has continued through the high school and Beyond um what that meant for many families uh is that through angel's effort with the support of Lori many young families were able to actually see a path in a journey for their children within the district thank you that's me I got it I appreciate you I always appreciate Debbie's support she's always there for it oh now you're on the pdf version I am you know it wouldn't be as it wouldn't be uh Casey Atkins CPAC party without a little technology glitch you're here um um we also honored Dr Hunter uh right there again this year um as this is that sort of rounding out of the Continuum of services in terms of Staffing
125within the district this is your sixth year here yeah and so much has happened in six years transforming special education within a district is like trying to parallel park a cruise ship and it was kind of funny there's a lot that goes into it not just budgetarily culturally within the schools and across the entire system building to building the families the staff everyone that takes a lot of concerted effort and we appreciate it and it doesn't go unnoticed it hasn't always been perfect nothing is within in in this world um but it really has been remarkable what's been done in six years next or scroll down please thank you um so yeah we had um this year we did I think four parent copies or meetups and we have some more planned um the first
126one was very well attended but I don't think we had like 30 people come which was nice to have new newcomers to special ed and there was a lot of out-of-towners like you said a lot of new totally new people um so it's nice to see them come and then um we've done let's see we had Dr Ross Green do a presentation on collaborative and proactive Solutions and we had it was in person so as our first like in-person event that we've done since pre-covet and um I think we had like 40 or 50 people at cchs and then there was 500 people registered I think not everybody could log on and hear it very well um but since then we've posted online and we've had I think 350 people view it so it's been
127right pretty well well viewed um uh we did the basic rights presentation this year we tried to use someone outside the Federation we used Danielle Green and um just to get a different perspective I guess and that was good um the summer camp presentation I think was awesome you know everyone sort of came together and brainstormed ideas for summer camps and Debbie did a great presentation about what Concord offers for summer school and yes why and then we had Concord Rec come talk about their inclusion program um and let's see it's extra steps Tim really Timberlake sounds different yeah because we also timber timber nuts the same person okay okay um and that was nice to hear about just other things in the community that people can access the Peter Pan Center she gave a
128good talk about what she offers there as well um and then we did have Debbie again did the um the dcap 504 IEP what's the difference talk which was really interesting because I mean even people in special ed just kind of don't really know what what are all the differences and um Allison Novak talked to that I think Francis Francis Wolfe also spoke um and Laura Brandt um so I think that was really helpful to do just like these these talks with the district that you know the Specialists and all the different people that have so much knowledge coming together and um working with us to inform parents um and then we had the parents um as partners with Dr Hunter and Debbie and that was sort of how to work together and to support
129students within the school um and this was in the summer we had um the CPAC had a design Forum about the middle school and um who was that that came the chair of the building the CMS building committee and they had um another woman there um linking on the name of it one of the part of the Architects yeah and sort of like inclusion like things that were going to help people with disabilities within the building and people could ask questions and that was I think very informative too that was basically it Chris is being modest she works very hard on these events and coordinating them and it was really uh the Ross Green event was really something to be able to get Ross Green to come to the district so you Chris deserves a
130huge amount of credit for that and there were hundreds and hundreds of people who are online again we want to reiterate just this was a wonderful result of partnering with the district these programs the dcap 504 and IEP what does it mean what does it mean for my child most people don't understand or have the opportunity to sort of demystify what a multi-tiered system of support is what a d-cap is what are these layers of intervention when something is coming up that doesn't seem right or out of the ordinary what are the steps and processes in place and my experience in the district we had not had that before so a lot of this was going towards demystifying the process and gaining more sort of interest and engagement and how to be involved but also
131how to advocate for your child this is sort of a bit of a stock slide we are on social media we hope that you follow us over on Facebook Twitter Instagram um and you'll see us post updates and interesting articles there further profile raising our board got quite Adept at logging into finance committee meetings um throughout the the year school committee meetings ptg meetings and um it was very uh Illuminating and educational for us to see the process with the finance committee uh that took place this year and how the CMS budget came to pass at town meeting um I will get to that in another slide uh go ahead and move forward please the search committee participation so much appreciation for Kristen Anderson for how she runs a search committee I got to experience
132it with the Thoreau principal search and it was it was something I need I need Kristin to organize my life actually I think um but we were invited and included in the search committees for the deputy director of student services which also that role includes the out of district coordinator Chris served as our representative on that the director of student services hiring we were we had two seats two Representatives on that and for Thoreau principal Thoreau has I think it's is it roughly 20 percent of the student population is on an IEP or a and we were included in that and it was a really thoughtful inclusive Outreach to us from both the PTA president and from Kristen that really means a lot to us having representation on these boards means a lot and we
133really felt our Voice Was Heard and our perspectives were taken that goes a lot to forming that relationship into making sure that the administrators and staff that are hired with are we feel part of that process and some ownership so thank you next slide the district's strategic planning committee again hats off to Kristen for organizing how many people are in that strategic plan is it 50 yeah not a small group um and again we had two Representatives myself and Evan mustafi the [Music] I was on the well-being and mental health subgroup which is certainly very pertinent to our student population I was on the Mission Vision core values and theory of Action Group our placement on the groups was very thoughtful and well done and the Strategic objectives really wove in so many uh important
134factors of our student population multiple paths to success while being in mental health inclusive culture and Innovative environment I'll note that well-being back in 2018 that objective did not include Mental Health on it and it does this time around um I think that's something that certainly is a national Trend it is a trend here it is something to be eyes open towards in terms of the student population and what is an emerging theme we know that from our student population that many of our students may be the first to sort of present on some of those um in the mental health realm and appreciate the uh that it's raised in its importance and that it is part of the objectives of the district next slide please the deib Strategic steering committee we were involved the
135year prior uh as well and our CPAC representative with Sarah Bettencourt our membership chair um we were having part of it from the beginning as I as I mentioned and um a lot of this was sort of staying up to speed on the professional development student achievement the bias incident reporting metco hiring Equity audits um and inclusion and um I will note here that actually we it is a good example of of where some collaboration came in nicely where April is traditionally known as autism Awareness Month um and their uh the deib director Andrew and the district sent out some information on it and um there's been a lot that's shifted in the autism Community around the organizations that are um that are appropriately highlighting the resources and elevating the voices of self-advocates Andrew was
136very responsive um he issued very quickly a another email citing more resources and we appreciate being able to work like that that's important for parents and caregivers it's a shifting landscape and and we're learning as we go to I certainly I know I used to be more into Autism Awareness I'm very aware of it now and now it's more acceptance um and you know we're we're running with those themes and shifting and we appreciate that flexibility in working with us on that as well and being adaptable as this is a moving environment next slide please looking ahead we are always interested in increasing family engagement because it all sort of leads into the build out of the Continuum of Education now Debbie mentioned that the FTE process is complete for now on that but the
137um building into the fabric of our school community and our Greater Community is work that continues every day whether it's through PD whether it's through the consultation contracts with landmark or other organizations whether it's through just having a better understanding between Community students typical peers and students who are neurodiverse or have other disabilities that is something that is dynamic it is work that's very intentional every day and every year so it will be part of our long-term planning every day and every year it's making the Greater Community aware that our student population looks very different today than it did five years ago 10 years ago 20 years ago and that is a district the entire process of planning whether it's budgetarily policy wise staffing has an eye towards these students who are protected by law
138for a free and appropriate education that either happens in their Community District or out of District and it is a dollars and cents equation as well as a feel good opportunity when these students are in our district so that is something that we will always have an eye towards whether it is through budget advocacy whether is it it is through our continued collaboration and partnership with the school committee and with the administration and all types of other Outreach in being thoughtful of our own needs to be better at including Carlisle better at our Outreach with our Boston families that is something that we look both internally and externally for slide please thank you edit that's it so any questions that we can answer for you this was excellent I really enjoyed CPAC appreciation though I
139mean like that was visually just such a great event to see all of those Educators being honored for their work that they do every day and it wasn't just the special Educators it was coaches it was custodians bus driver like you name it everyone was there so I really appreciate there's a ton of work that goes into that there's a ton of work that goes into the events but they're so important to the community to keep having those events so thank you thank you I also want to point out with those appreciation words one of the things that you see is a lot of General Educators that are that are in there and that is really important and it also speaks to the PD that is given to our general Educators because to be very
140clear I'm fairly certain that they didn't receive their licensure or get their postgraduate degrees with this with a specific set of skills around students with disability or neurodiversity that comes through professional development it comes through exposure it comes through how the administrators both in the district and in the buildings set the culture in tone anyone else it's very thorough yeah very much foreign find out about your meetings how can we get that information so we can you bring up a really good point so our previous president a couple of years ago was a Carlisle but uh Carlisle member and I think one of the things as we sort of hammer out our specific priorities for the year to come because we've got our Board elections that are coming up next month is more intentional Outreach
141and partnership with Carlisle um and I know Eva mentioned she's like we need to do Carlisle needs to do these appreciation Awards it's a great way to really bring people in and just how much growth we've had in six years with doing those Awards really it just sort of cranks out the um it's more and more teachers understand it more families get it because it's really up to the families to know that they're going to nominate people and it brings people into the fold so I think that should be a you know a bigger priority in credit to Chris Chris reaches out to them quite a bit to partner on events yeah actually yeah so they're they are invited to all or event events that we have and um meetings that we have I do
142send to their newsletter so whoever manages the Carlo newsletter I'm not even sure I just send it to the email but um we post all that to the newsletters for each School um if they if they search it out they can find it too I think also with a lot of the information that is now coming up on the on the district website in terms of what the programs are so as you saw with with the cchs overview of programs part of what will be helpful for us to coordinate with and I would believe it happens in Carlisle at the Publix at the pre-k through eight level um that mapping of what the programs are and what the supports are is important for families in Concord and Carlisle and Boston to see to be able
143to visualize their child's Journey Through the district and um that I think will help maybe bring some of that Carlisle transition piece on from the parent perspective I think it's really robustly done on the school on the school side of things but building some of those Partnerships within the two communities as they see their path going forward so we welcome any introductions to folks in Carlisle if you'd like thank you all right well thank you so much for joining us this is excellent we look forward to it every year and tonight's meeting was just I mean it was great that you you know you just followed Debbie's presentation I just want to thank them because you see how engaged CPAC is Yes we made the invitations and they have to engage and participate and um
144that really mattered a lot your your presence keeps that lens on at all times so thank you thank you okay all right um does anyone need a break no we're good keep going okay all right so next up I'm gonna it's moving on next up we are going on to our quarterly updates and so you have the Thousand level and I'm just gonna ask Bob um we we had a meeting this week and I'm gonna have you do the overview of kind of what we're looking at so going forward we will be voting our our quarterly transfers but we want to get it right so I've asked Bob to kind of help me with this Okay so we've actually gone through um um hang on one sec so we've actually gone through the 1000 level
145and the 100 level um previously we presented it what we're moving forward with is voting on a quarterly basis these are the same reports that were presented uh previously um tonight is just a new Step where we're going to be voting on these what we're voting on is year-to-date adjustments the second column um right now um we're in the CCS ccrsd meeting so um what we'll be doing during the action item section is voting on the adjustments that we've made this year at the 1000 level and this is kind of consistent with the guidance that Tracy novik provided to us um and again this is kind of after the fact as we move through the year right now we're catching up at Q3 and just for clarity we did talk about this in our budget
146Workshop you know as things occurred during the year we are making adjustments but we're pausing at the end of each quarter and requesting uh approval um from the school committee yes kind of a best practice ultimately what's required is at the end of the year we have a final vote by the school committee on the transfers for the year at the Thousand level which is the level that we um present and approve our budget at um so this information's tonight is the same information you've seen on April 3rd and um somewhere thereafter but I just wanted to clarify that we are voting and we'll present year-to-date information as we go um each quarter going forward all right any discussion or questions on that okay all right so we will vote that in our action items
147the end of the meeting now on to the cell phone tower and we have um David tibnon with us and he's joining us on Zoom but just to give it just a general background and overview of kind of how we looked at this process so as you all know there is very limited um cell phone information data like you can't make a phone call on the campus you can't practice on the campus it's coverage and so and it really is safety this is not so parents can text their kids to say hey I'll meet you at the flagpole it's not that this is safety of children in the building it is safety of athletes on the field visitors to the campus I think we have a very vibrant campus during the week and on weekends
148so it's probably one of the most densely populated areas in the town during the weekend actually on weekends with 1300 students probably 200 teachers I don't know about 1500 people are on that campus every single day and with basically no coverage at all so we started to explore the options of um possible cell phone tower that is one option and then this week just to give you a background as to what we've done this week Alexa Lori and I met with Jason Bulger and Chris Carmody and we talked about what is kind of happening with the town and terms of cell phone um maybe additions and so you know there are some things happening in the town but nothing is a done deal right now and we all know that downtown Concord is also a
149problem so we started with that this week and then we also I think is Peter Kelly going to be on two at some point tonight okay we also met with it Peter Kelly's director of I.T at Concord and Concord Carlisle and we ex we met with him about other options too there are three other options that we're looking at so it's cell phone tower is one another option is Wi-Fi calling enabled inside the building another option is Wi-Fi calling outside of the building and then the fourth option is you might see it on a college campus they are the blue lights which are like it's like a whole system or ecosystem as I think Peter called it of connected if there's an emergency you at least know where to go so if you're down at
150Memorial Stadium and there's an injury down there you know where the blue light is you can hit the button and you're going to get assistance right away so we're in the exploring all options mode right now so I just wanted to line that up before we started talking about the cell phone tower yeah and I think just one note to make to some degree that's because certain things are timlier than others some of the things internally we could do might be more effective quickly um quicker uh than the tower and I think you know Dave's here to talk a little more on uh Barrett from RIT is here to we're at a very high level on those options you just like we don't know how much they cost if they're viable there's there's no information
151significant very uh piece of information we don't have but we're just really exploring everything because the need is acute and urgent I think from our perspective and just to be you know transparent with anyone that is on the call like we are exploring all options that we have to improve what's happening on our campus and to improve safety for everyone on our campus so I just had to just say that is to kind of set the stage for our discussion on the cell phone tower so I would welcome David if you want to um unmute and I don't know can you show video or do you want to I don't think no maybe not okay so um maybe Bob you and I can talk about what we did with David sure I don't I don't
152hear him David are you with us yes I'm here hello great do you want to start first and just kind of give an overview of kind of where we're at in our process well I I I just heard you say that you you folks are actually still in the process of making a decision as to what you actually want to do so one of the options is of course a cell tower so I'm here to I'm prepared to answer questions if I may um if you have questions about the Tower versus the other options that you're looking at okay that makes sense I mean if the um if the Regional School uh committee decides to you know to to pursue this uh the cell tower option the school committee would have to release an RFP
153request for proposals and it would be open to you know Verizon ATT whoever else would be interested in responding to it and we all right I'm told by Verizon management that we intend to respond to it with the intent of winning it and um and we did provide you know uh three options some lease exhibits that could be used as you know for the exercise for you folks doing your your due diligence and figuring out which option you want to pursue um with not only technology but if it was a cell tower where on the property it could go um it makes sense so David can I ask of the three I'm looking at the site plan that's attached to our agenda does from your perspective from a usage standpoint um do you guys have
154a preferred site meaning is there a location that is of the three places you identified that the tower could go is one um optimal or preferred in terms of which would solve um the greatest problems at our on our campus sure so you know I'm a real estate consultant for Verizon Wireless so my job is basically to keep as many people as happy as I possibly can you know we're obviously trying to provide a service to the community uh the campus specifically um option two in my mind would perhaps keep the most amount of people happy um I think it's the least intrusive it's most disguised it's tucked into the woods so there's you know there's several uh I'm gonna call it 50 feet of trees of existing Woods like existing trees that would be
155you know blocking the view shed of the compound below um it would still provide excellent like someone's uh coverage to the school campus as well as the surrounding areas so I think option two was probably most hidden I mean they'll all do the same thing you know in layman's terms from a RF perspective but option two was probably most disguised and just anyone that might be watching I'll just try and do my best to describe option two so if you are at the high school campus and you are driving up the hill the main office on your right and you look at kind of that lacrosse practice field with the wall ball there um it's the it's behind that large concrete structure is that a fair description box and then the second option is halfway
156up the field uh just extending further up um well I don't know what number options we're calling them there's two options on the side of the field one behind the container and the other one is about halfway up the the field the grass field there um and I think are we only we talked about option three which is closer to where like the throwing circle is about that really needing a lot of excavation didn't we talk about that not really being an option and also um yeah it's closer to the school that the the distance to the school was was more significant too in the in the two locations we're looking at I don't know what the exact number was was it six to seven hundred feet David I don't remember either but this one
157uh you know again in in trying to keep as many people as happy as we can I think this one's the uh it's most you know it's hidden best yet yet still providing excellent service because it is a high area um topographically speaking so it would work well for Verizon and the other carriers and um again I think it's tucked away so it's behind the school of course too so I think this is the best location and can you remind me how many feet would it be up is it 125 probably yes okay David do you mind just reminding us and walking us through the timeline of what happens first and when sure they'll be up to you folks sure you're driving the bus so you folks would have to make the decision to choose
158this option for technology providing service for the campus and if an RFP is to be released again you folks really control that time frame if once the RFP is released there's a time frame as to when it's due you know would we we would respond to that we intent of winning uh then we go into the lease negotiations and once that is finalized we would apply for our zoning permits with uh with the town of Concord um all that said you know these things do take time unfortunately even when I'm dealing with a private entity but you know from if it it takes between a year and 18 months if things move relatively quickly for the site to be activated and again that would be for Verizon Wireless only the other carriers would um that's
159it Verizon Wireless wins it the carriers would have to follow suit yeah and I think that that's why you know we have we're starting to have other conversations about how can we help the safety of our campus right now as quickly as possible which is you know why we're talking about other options either in addition to a cell phone tower because we really we're at a critical point right now that um we really need communication up there to understand yeah yeah what's the um David thanks for joining us um I'm Carrie I don't know if you can see that's what I'm speaking um I'm just wondering what the coverage area of a tower is like is there a radio like a radius around it or how does that how does that work um let me
160think how I can explain to you um I I you know the short answer is probably about a mile um so here are the sites that we have currently on the air in Concord uh we're on the Emerson Hospital on Route 2. um I developed a tower on Nurse Knack Hill I also developed one of the towers over at the wastewater treatment plant and I was involved heavily with the the tower at the Middlesex school um if this Tower goes up we will still need a tower site well I should say a sell site downtown and we're looking at one of the church Steeples as well as the the umbrella building so no and so both the high school is needed and so was in the site downtown either the umbrella building or one of
161the churches so you know they're pretty they're pretty tight um I hope that gives you an idea of where we need to be we're also we also have an open search ring over in uh West Concord which is not currently active it's not funded right now so and I guess this is more of a question for you all but um like I I heard you say Tracy that you all met with the town earlier this week but it just seems to me I just want to make sure that we're not doing anything in isolation if that makes sense no no not at all um because it does seem like it's a town-wide problem this is not just a high school problem yes correct um so anything that we do at the high school I would
162want to make sure is to solve the town wide or to help solve the town right right and are there any other sites David in Concord that you've looked at or are possibilities other than shirt other than uh other than the the high school campus and the church are there any other active places that you're looking at not really I mean the um the downtown was the priority site um I've been working on that I'm ashamed to say close to seven years now various reasons um so and then again I you know these these can be controversial but people have phones and you know we're trying to figure out the best path of uh breaking the ice and getting one side up and then let the other one follow suit so that's when you know
163when I had met a you know years back with uh Dr Hunter we had discussed that and we thought it was best to go forward with the um the town first and the school second and I've been you know I've been having a difficult time with the various administrations in town and figuring out uh a place to go so that's happening it's still happening but we still need a site here as well so we're kind of taking a double barrel shotgun approach to it now we're working on both aggressively I have one other yeah go ahead [Music] you think about Wi-Fi calling is it currently disabled like are you not currently allowed to do that kids are not allowed to have their phones on the Wi-Fi right now oh okay so they would mean which
164would drastically change yeah I think and Derek's on he'll interrupt me if I'm wrong um what their studying is if we could allow just texting uh allowing the kids to get Wi-Fi so they can text or parent we get a lot of parent requests to be able to reach their children at school these days um it makes sense we can all reach everyone everywhere these days and um so trying for a minimal approach we feel a little more but I feel better about that now that the phones have a structured house during class so that we're not texting author clasp but we do need to do something I think we're getting a lot of parent requests I mean I literally stood at the high school the parent came to pick their child up it was
165after school we're downstairs all she wants to do is find him yeah she can't get a sell signal to go through to find him and then I mean it's not funny right the office was closed like it really was paralyzing so and it's a building you can't just go walking around so there's just a practicality piece to it um yeah okay yeah I mean I I will say I had another issue the other day unified track there was a torrential downpour and they were at Emerson Park and there was actually like a they actually ended up getting a bus there were all sorts of wonderful things that happened I didn't realize that's what happens you know if like in the middle of a track meet there's just a torrential downpour so the kids were brought
166inside of the hunt gym and I'm getting like a phone call it's like that nothing and so I'm at the high school just looking around there's nothing happening I'm like I don't know where any of these kids are and they're like 40 kids somewhere they're not at the high school I'm driving around the whole campus I finally see Aaron I like like I'm done he's like hunt Jim the bus is coming there at five but you know it's just and then if you're by Emerson there's no service at Emerson either so it was really just really super challenging to find a kid so um does anyone have any other questions for David um if I could just jump in this is Derek um David uh quick question if you said you had a site currently
167on Emerson Hospital right now um and as Tracy just mentioned uh you're not getting very good signal by that location either why would our repeater system not be picking up that signal um from where we are right now Eric why don't we call David tomorrow and we'll ask all those questions just because our agenda's full if that's all right okay okay super and sorry mine was Emerson Fields not Emerson Hospital which is in the downtown area sorry just for clarity um Court did you have a question yeah there are three High School sites noted um and I know we have a high school specific problem but to Kerry's point we have a town problem too um were you instructed to uh keep this on the high school property or only to solve the high school
168problem that's my first question hmm what was the question to David well we we were in touch with David about specifically the high school campus okay we were in touch with him yeah the town was not so in fact uh we could conceivably address the high school problem without insisting that the tower beyond the high school property I think that's what we're trying to figure out trying to figure out now yeah and then uh next question you gave us three sites at the high school what were your criteria was it cost was it uh was it signal strength was it Aesthetics how did those Balance out you've got a number of criteria but how do you weigh those criteria is that question directed today yes please yes uh well I guess well I think the
169the first location it came in is option three well I think Dr Hunter originally wanted to be down below where the softball fields are but that's a whole so I mean a tower down there would not propagate you know would not cover provide sufficient coverage unless a tower was probably 300 feet high I'm saying that you know uh Joe you know tongue-in-cheek because it's well it's very very low the high area where we're proposing option one and two first of all it's high ground it's it's tuck you know everything comes into play it has to work from an engineering perspective but it has to work aesthetically as well and I just think it really hits it hits everything it's it's well disguised it's behind everything it's in the woods it's elevated and the tower could
170be of a of a reasonable height to accommodate not only Verizon but the other carriers as well without being overly obtrusive so it's all of these things as I mentioned earlier I'm like a juggler trying to keep as many people as happy as possible but it has to work from an RF perspective for Verizon management to move forward and can you just talk about cost to the district David I mean that was the other part of course well I think I mean I don't think the cost would be diff any diff you know the the access road is going to be a little longer for option two than option one other than that you know that's the only difference in that class the option three will be coming from a different angle um I think
171I think we all agreed that that's not a a viable option because there would be some major surgery having to be done for a retaining wall and whatnot and the access rule would be Crossing multiple paths that are currently used by the athletes and parents watching games so district is zero correct that's correct that's correct so the RFP is basically you're gonna you're gonna propose how much you'd pay us in rental and the cost regardless of where we put it the cost will be borne by whichever carrier wins the RFP correct we have a solar farm about a thousand feet away from the high school has Verizon ever looked at that have you had conversations with the town about that property yes not available [Music] you know I think the other side of Route 2
172was kind of just off off the off the uh option list all right we always note here in Concord that the action of a school committee doesn't bind a future school committee necessarily same with our select board um I do remember well that uh that episode that you're referring to but that was quite quite some time ago okay so at this point I think you've given us a lot to think about um does anyone have any further questions for David well he's here yeah no not if it's gentleman but I just want to know what our next steps would be so our next steps um and it was so David I think we don't have any more questions for you right now and we're going to continue to talk with you and we'll keep you
173posted as to kind of where we're at as a school committee okay great thank you I'm available anytime you guys actually Dave to clarify one thing too we talked about the location and potentially other locations can you just clarify the um how well this works based on where it's located you said a coverage area of a mile but is it more functional if it's closer to um the high school for example no I think the locations I think option one and often too are would work fantastic for the area um and if you think about it but you know again I'm a real estate guy I'm not the ARF engineer the town does have an ARF engineer that can talk to a horse directly with propagation maps and such but you think of like the
174pieces of a puzzle and these these when the when the signals propagate they have to work with topography usage all kinds of different dynamics that uh make them work well together so if we we will be successful with the installation downtown and this will complement that and it will also reach the crossroads too and and into the Walden Pond area so this is a very good site and then in my opinion hey is there any question yes yes thank you okay all right David I appreciate you joining us tonight and um we will be in touch okay thank you all thank you good night um and in terms of Cynthia's question next steps so I think we're at the very um beginning of kind of investigating what we can do now um you know if
175you remember like probably about a month ago we had received correspondence from a parent as what are we going to do right now so I think we're just right at the beginning of that so I think there's gonna be more to come with that um I think that Peter Kelly and his team Peter and Derek have been starting this investigation to kind of see what some of our other options are that we can really get put in place quickly and I think um I am curious to see this sort of I call it like the three-pronged plan the Wi-Fi enabled calling inside the Wi-Fi and they will call it out calling outside combine the blue lights the ecosystem um because in our conversations even with Peter yesterday um I don't remember uh we were talking
176about that even with a cell phone tower to really bring the level of safety on that campus to like where we might want it I know we haven't discussed that explicitly it you might need some of these components anyway or they might be a good idea to have anyway so you know you might even if we have a cell phone tower we should in fact I think do the due diligence of determining what these component parts of this ecosystem on the campus might cost us so that we can analyze um you know how we're going to best keep the campus safe and Achieve what we want to you know I think to Carrie's Point are our our scope I think at this table is kind of narrow right we want to make sure that the
177campus is safe however we can best achieve that I think is probably what we discussed next if that makes sense but again I think we don't have the data to have that conversation without knowing the costs right yes yeah so yeah do you expect it before we time out this year or not like when we would get that information I would outside of this yeah like hopefully hopefully in the next few weeks do you think we'd get some information hopefully no hopefully but now the problem is that we did hear from Peter is if like depending on equipment you know first of all we'd have to see what the prices are first and then it's like then see what the equipment is and then everything some things get delayed you know so it's it's it's
178kind of like we're not really sure what the time they still have some supply chain supply chain issues in certain areas so you know so I think that that one thing like the Wi-Fi calling that's the easy First Step but again what is it but there's still costs associated with everything so we have to see everything allowing all the students on our wireless network take a huge burden well so right and so what he talked about is having like and Peter can correct me if I'm wrong but splitting it off so like one way and then everything else goes now I am not a I like to dabble in technology but you know I'm not an expert on that so I think that that's that's kind of the way to do it so that the
179instruction is is really what's critical at the high school so you've got the instructional piece so you don't want to eat away at their bandwidth right so yeah and Lori we'll have an update for you on the Wi-Fi uh cost by the end of the week oh there's Peter hi Peter thank you how you doing everybody it's like the magic of the voices speak to another part of the analysis that we can think about is and again Peter correct me if I'm wrong but my memory serves that um given that the timeline for a cell phone tower is lengthy these three this this ecosystem would be far um far more easy to implement from a Time standpoint so again I think all of those things will be what we kind of analyze here in making
180a path forward good yeah this is more to come my next meeting yeah I mean I think you should we should probably expect to keep seeing like it's my intention to keep this on the agenda so it's right in the Forefront of because I do think that we've all known about that we have an issue on the campus with communication so it's like let's just keep talking about it until we can you know make some Headway at this point because it is so early nothing's off the table nothing's off the table no for example when we put the skate park in we put a call box in yeah make your cell phone in there yeah that was uh very suitable for them yeah nothing's off the table we're in exploratory mode I guess that's probably
181the best way to describe it so the cell phone tower can be the new covet update on every agenda it won't even say that it's not funny any other any other comments feel good okay thank you thank you everybody thank you all right uh very quickly CCS early release there is a calendar attached to the agenda with the 10 release dates we will be voting on that in the action items so I don't just to clarify this is all part of the schedule changes that we've made we had hoped to build a more early release these are 115 releases so it's an hour and a half ish it's not half a day it's a period or so so um we're really excited to be able to do this we saw in covid with early release
182the difference it made for kids to have a little um edge off in the middle of the week and then give teachers time for collaborating and preparing together which is exactly what it'll be used for so we're excited this is a piece of the new schedule and it's 10 days yeah which we saw earlier we saw that earlier um in the year when we approved the calendar but the dates for TBD so now you have all those and so all the early releases are at 1 15. it's not that they're these are new ones that are 115 but the old ones well it's not quite that simple of course so the PD path days that we affectionately talk about all the time when the middle and high school are both out those will be a
183little different than that because we need to start at one o'clock so we'll clarify that the the true half day is like the day before Thanksgiving um which is a strict three hour day so we will be crystal clear with everyone as we roll all this out we'll have to be because there are it's actually three or so options yeah yeah okay okay so on to our action a first up and I don't know if let's see let me see if we have motion I said I moved at the Concord Carolina School committee's Vote committee votes to approve the CISD fy23 Q3 quarterly budget transfers do we have a second any further discussion hey we actually have to vote these by um roll call so this is just for region go ahead Anderson Eye who's
184High Murano I Randy I Frank and I what type of region Wilson I Perfect all right and next up we have the cchs early release days for 23 24. um anyone hit the motion I moved at the Concord and conquered Carlisle School committee's Vote to approve the 2023-2024 school calendar including the 10 additional early release days at cchs give a second any discussion all right all in favor hi hi opposed all right and last up is uh a vote to approve the contribution for All Night Live and this is from district attorney Marion Ryan's office yes we're eligible to apply um it's probably the first year we've really tidied up enough to work directly with the all-night live committee and have the paperwork we needed and effectively execute in a timely way which we were
185able to do with their help um and so we submitted and received a check in the mail yesterday there it's going to be an exciting subsidy to the to the event it's great it's a it's a grant it's not a donation right it's a grant yeah yes it's a grant yes sorry yes Aaron and I debated the word for quite a while there that's where yeah you can use grants if you'd rather okay all right I even want to make lotion sure I'll move that the conquer Carlisle commits school committee votes to approve by 500 Grant from the Middlesex District Attorney's Office in support of the All Night Live alcohol free event do we have a second second I'm very excited about this event you know if you have a senior it's very exciting that
186it's back here and the kids will have a great place to go June 3rd yeah so graduation is June 3rd you were all invited you're invited to sit with us all night long not to All Night Live for graduation and we'll send an email out you can sit with the school committee I was gonna say you can volunteer you kind of are invited yes yes but if you're a senior you shouldn't volunteer Sarah and I will not be there you're exempt you can guard it before yeah so we'll do the setup and Cynthia I'm very involved in the senior week activities if you so remember that's happening soon too so anyway yes yes Sarah and Tracy yes you can all right so we are gonna vote on this all in favor opposed okay and I
187would like to adjourn the