School Committee 10.6.22

001that's good stuff yeah yeah yes I agree okay great thank you okay are we ready okay you guys hear me yes yes okay all right good evening at this point I'd like to call the meeting of the Hamilton Regional school committee to order on Thursday October 6 2022 at 7 pm and I will Begin by inviting you to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance to their father for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign okay um so we'll start things off with um uh I'll just let you all know that this meeting is being recorded um and it is also being live streamed on HW Cam and we also a zoom link available for public comment as well as we welcome public comment here in the

002room um and I think I said everything um if you'd like to wish public comment if you'd like to offer public comment what I'd like you to do is um share your full name and spell your last name so that we can get it right for the minutes um I ask you to keep your comments to three minutes I've asked Amy today to be our timer she'll let you know when you've got about 30 seconds left um and please remember that citizens comments um is the time it's a time and opportunity for you to share your views and for us to listen so it's our your opportunity to be heard um it's not a dialogue but it is an opportunity for us to hear what you have to say we really are grateful for anyone

003who is willing to do that either in our citizens comments or in by contacting us through email um we appreciate that as well all right so if there's I'm going to start with any in anyone in the room if there's anyone in the room who would like to offer public comment I'll ask you to please approach the podium sure step right up and let's just make sure the podium mic is working if you could just start off with your name and spelling your name please hi Sue cook c-o-o-k-e for Puritan Road in wynnum good evening committee members and superintendent Tracy I do appreciate your responses to my communication today I had two topics that I was looking for further clarification on one was about our rebranding but due to the three minutes I'm going to

004focus on my other topic which was diversity equity and inclusion efforts that are interwoven into the school curriculum particularly at the high school for those that didn't read my email sent earlier today I shared a book talk or I won't call it a book talk I'm sorry it was a class discussion or a class that took place in ninth grade English class last week this book was used as part of a unit the students are working on called coming of age or identity the teacher printed out a handout which was a segment of a book called this book is anti-racist the cover of the book tells students they can wake up and take action do the work the teacher presented this segment in Google classroom and read it out loud to the class afterward students

005were encouraged to write on a piece of paper things that represent their identity for example the teacher presented that she was a cisgender female and then shared other things that she feels represented her identity here's a piece of the passage that was shared with the students students read that they decide which identity they will share with the world they get to choose how to name their identities and in a bold text box 14 to 15 year old students read that many others will try to get you to fit into an imaginary box this box includes what we call the dominant culture if you are white upper middle class cisgender male educated athletic neurotypical and or able-bodied you're in this box students read in class that if they don't fit in this box they're considered to

006be a part of What's called the subordinate culture includes black brown indigenous people of color of the global majority queer transgender non-binary folks in cisgender women youth Muslim Jewish Buddhists Etc there are many more who exist outside of this imaginary box than those that fit inside of it Etc somehow it's okay to invite 14 to 15 year old adolescents to choose one of these profiles from this passage to represent themselves do you feel that this passage brings students together my interpretation is that this language invokes anxiety and potential agitation and frankly places me in a box described by the writer I ask our community and committee members are you ready for this to be served to your student these are the direct results of the work that's being done by this committee 30 seconds thank

007you thank you okay uh is I don't think there is is there anyone else in the room who'd like to offer comment okay um Mr Tracy is there anyone on Zoom who'd like to offer comment I do have someone on Zoom who's raising their hands let me get the video great hi Rosie can you hear me hi yes I can thank you you are all set thank you I don't have a personal comment but I did tune in to hear um the public comment and I wanted to make a comment that I couldn't understand anything that the speaker said so I don't know if in the future you could try to work on that so that would be able to hear it it just was um unintelligible okay um thank you Rosie I'm so sorry

008to hear that um Rosie just for the record can you please state your name and address so that we have that okay sorry about that Rosie Kennedy 61 Ross rust in Hamilton thank you um I I'm not I I know I did normally say we don't respond um but because it's a technical issue I am going to respond um I um I do hope that you and possibly or others in the recording will be able to hear it when it replays on hwcam um typically it is usually easier to hear and I'm so sorry about that thank you okay thanks very thank you very much thank you Rosie okay Mr Tracy is there anyone else on Zoom okay at this point I'll have you shut them down and they can continue to watch on HW

009cam if they would like to okay we'll close in the video link and if you would like to continue to watch I can go on to HW Camp thank you thank you okay um next up on the agenda um this is something that is for those of you um been paying attention we did a vote and approve a mission statement um and I have asked um Anna the vice chair to read that mission statement I promise we won't read it every single time but I feel strongly Mr Tracy made us a beautiful poster to have it there and I'm going to ask Anna to read it sure when reporter did you want to do the protocols yes in my mind I skipped it but we can if is it skip are we skipping it no

010we'll do it out of order is that that's okay with the committee I just want to make sure all right the 2022-2023 school committee mission statement the Hamilton winter Regional school committee will lead and inspire a district that attracts and retains high quality Educators by acknowledging and respecting their expertise and professionalism that empowers administrators to seek Innovation responsiveness and creativity in all aspects of different District Operations the supports and guides the superintendent to execute and achieve the approved 2022-2023 District goals that inspires all students to realize their fullest potential and feel a powerful sense of individual and Collective belonging and that is a source of civic pride and Municipal engagement to serve the community for generations to come thank you I hope the committee will feel free to gesture towards the poster at any point

011throughout the year I did I actually did skip the our regular review of school committee protocols it's my turn to do that so I'm going to go ahead and read um as elected members of the Hamilton Regional school committee we including the superintendent accept the high honor and trust that has been placed in us to ensure that the students of the district receive the best education possible to that end we hereby commit to the following in the conduct of our business number four school committee members would Channel Rick will Channel requests for information reports and data through the superintendent and the school committee chair rather than to staff the superintendent will ensure that each member of the committee has equal access to this information in a timely manner recognizing the importance of proactive communication and

012avoiding surprises school committee members will whenever possible contact the school committee chair and or the superintendent in advance of a meeting if they have questions or concerns about an agenda item or we'll ask the chair at least 48 hours prior to a meeting then an item be placed on an agenda I hope you all appreciate that I took a long one [Music] Mahala note the record um okay uh next up on the agenda is the consent agenda does anyone have any items they would like to hold from the consent agenda nope nope okay Amy do you have a motion I move that the Hamilton modern Regional school committee um approve the consent agenda as listed in the war and the in the meeting agenda second second by anesthesic all those in favor more in favor

013and the motion passes it is unanimous of the four members present all right um next up we have Mr Tracy are you going to introduce the school Improvement plan it will this is the annual School Improvement plan presentation we have all five of our principals here this evening and they'll follow the usual order we'll start with the elementary principles they have always shared goals this year we broke away from that a little bit they have a couple of shared goals and then one individual building goal they have also worked with the principals have also worked kind of alongside the work that we did to the district goals so that you'll see alignment direct alignment there with each of the the goals and then the school Improvement plans uh have all been approved by school councils

014at the school level so it's important to note that's a that's a big piece of the requirement of school Improvement planning process that your school councils approve uh your school Improvement plan so without further Ado I'll call up the elementary principles Mr Charleston Ms Schneider machetiak it's all about with the elementary team good evening everyone I'm Juliana Schneider and it's a pleasure to be here and to join Hamilton Regional School District so thank you for having all of us here this evening together we are presenting our first two goals and then we have individual goals for our third goals and our first goal is connected to the district goal 2.8 which is around strengthening our mtss systems across all of the three elementary schools while targeting our learning outcomes at the elementary level and so

015our goal for that is around the implementation implementation of our ckla which is common knowledge language arts curriculum which is a very large initiative in order to enhance our tier one instruction or Universal instruction in classrooms for all children to access in addition to that we're spending time this year reviewing our current math curriculum for the purpose of refining that potentially and making a plan for moving forward and Carolyn will speak to our steps for that goal good evening I'm Carolyn chetiak I am the principal at the Winthrop school and I will speak to the action steps to go with our goal one our first action step is to identify a common math screener that we will use consistently across the elementary schools we also will administer our benchmark assessments three times a year both

016in math and in ela and in math we will use the identified math screener and we will be do using the Dibbles for all students and then we will be using the past which is a phonemic awareness screener and the qpi which is a phonic screener for identified students who need some more investigation we will have data meetings three times a year our first round begins uh in two weeks and at that data meetings we will be identifying tier one instructional strategies that we need to refine based on the data as well as identifying students who might need tier two and tier three interventions and what those interventions might be uh part of our the fourth action step is communication with families regarding the changes in literacy instruction so one of the drivers for this

017is a parent letter that goes home at the beginning of each new unit in the ckla curriculum to inform families what the new unit will be about in the K-2 grades their ckla is divided into two parts the first part is a skills part and then the second part is a knowledge development part so there will be parent letters going home for both of those units and then in grades three to five it's all knowledge based with all of the skills embedded in the knowledge units foreign our second goal is a is a Dei be gold that's connected to the district goal there as well um thinking about meeting the evolving and varied needs of all of our students and school community members in a manner that respects and values each individual the pieces that

018we're focusing on there are recognizing acknowledging and celebrating differences within the community promoting Justice impartiality and fairness and welcoming and inviting diversity into decision making the big first step of this will be reviewing the equity audit that was performed last year and speaking with Mr Tracy before the meeting it sounds like in the next week or so that should be coming out um getting a hold of that reviewing it with staff with families with caregivers and then beginning to look at what are the next steps that we can make at the elementary level based on that report all right um the third girl goal for Bucher this is a school specific goal is thinking about supporting our English language learning students by developing a system to track language acquisition and expand teacher skills in supporting

019English language learning students we have a number of new El families this year here at Bucher at varied levels of English some are quite skilled and some are just learning it now what we've been thinking about is how do we track the progress of that you know we have our benchmark assessments for ELA we have them for math but we have this new need of how do we track this this movement in uh in learning English you know we have our once a year standardized test that we do with them through the state but we need something that can give us a little more granularity to that um and then also thinking about how do we communicate with those families we now have eight different home languages that are spoken in spoken to Bucher and

020making sure that our Communications that go out support the translation needs of our families thank you so our Cutler specific goal is really I'm focusing on my own entry plan this year so as part of coming into the district over the summer I met with all members of central office um asking the same questions which are what do you see as the strengths what do you see as the opportunities what are the challenges and what are your expectations of me as principal of Cutler school I have done the same with every staff member in the building I've set up listening groups with parents and I will be visiting classrooms and asking similar questions and really comply and that in combination with my own observations conversations at school council in our building leadership team meeting and

021our IST team meeting having those same conversations there um with my observations will allow me to have a lens into the school and be able to identify the work that needs to be done that will be meaningful for teachers and the larger Community I will synthesize all of that information share it with teachers certainly share it with Mr Tracy um and the parent community so that we can really think through intentional goals for the next school Improvement plan cycle although of course get working on much of that this year as well so that's our cool three foreign 's third goal is for staff to deepen an understanding of inclusive practices to support all students identify and Implement consistent school-wide inclusive practices to improve the learning outcomes for all students this goal is also linked directly

022to goals to District goals to a and three and some of the things that we want to consider is that this is the beginning of a multi-year process tied to our elementary mtss goal we're going to begin working on this goal in January where the staff is going to complete a self-assessment on their understanding of inclusive practices and udl which is Universal Design for Learning we're going to use the results of those of the self-assessment to inform our ongoing PD in our building meetings in February March and April will be focused around this idea and we'll be looking for evidence of what teachers are learning and how they're implementing that through observations and then their evidence that they're submitting under the standard two for teaching all students thank you do you want to do questions

023for each level I'll wait till they're all done we were already there let's Oh you mean with that yeah with just the elementary yeah that's true any questions um okay um thank you all very much um for that presentation um I'd like to ask the committee to if you have any questions let's start with any yes I do have a question yep um I have a comment and a question I just want to say thank you for being here tonight after a long day I know it's not always your favorite thing and I appreciate the effort you put into the goals um I guess I have two questions and I think that your goals seem like they addressed this but now that this is sort of the first year back in a normal-ish environment from

024covid do you feel like a lot of this is sort of a the goals to me read as a little bit of a reset on a lot of evaluation a lot of new technology to try to get a better sense of where kids really are is that an accurate non-technical summary of kind of what's driving some of your academic goals here so I think that the first two goals are continuations of work that we began last year and it's more refined and then the addition of ckla as our core English language arts curriculum is a driving force for a goal our goal one but yes I do agree Anna that we are now trying really hard to sort of see where kids are and what the implications of the last two and a half years

025have been and moving kids forward there is a piece of the of the literacy part that does date Back to Before covid um in the months prior to the lockdowns um we were beginning to have conversations about literacy we had pages and pages of data on the wall in the conference room at central office looking at four or five years worth of literacy data and we were beginning to have those conversations we were beginning to interview Consultants to be help us tease through this and then the world shut down so part of this dates back pre and then now it's kind of we're looking at through a different lens of also how do we get a sense of where kids are right now okay um Ben don't go away my next question is for you

026too uh you said there are eight different languages in the mix at Bucher I'm curious to know you don't have to get all eight and pierced to know what they are and related to that are we at all moving towards comprehensive translation of District Communications to be bilingual at all times because that's something a lot of districts do but I haven't noticed that we've been doing that yes um Eric and I actually have talked about that recently I have moved my buchar bulletin over onto the website as a blog post there which does translate into a number of languages I've reached out to the tech department to get some more languages in there and Eric and I have been talking recently about how the Blackboard system that we use for his newsletters at the end

027of the week does allow for translation that we can pick specific users with specific languages so that our emails that go out through that or even text messages about school being canceled can go out in multiple languages awesome all right and I'll see if I can do the eight English Spanish Portuguese french Armenian Russian Korean Chinese right I think one thing to note Ben's really kind of led the way and saying I want to try this so he you know it started with his his newsletter to say all right how do I get this out he does he holds the L population so just by that group being in his building he's going to have a higher number of languages and home languages so the goal now is to really I work to identify the

028correct home languages in Aspen which syncs with our uh with the Blackboard connect program and according to what we're we're learning that trigger will allow the letter to be translated via Blackboard and it'll be received at home in the home language and we have high confidence in the accuracy of that automated translation the the translation is is uh I forget the engine name but it's similar to this the one that we use on our website okay and oddly the company that owns our website just bought Blackboard so um I'm gonna assume there's some integration there it's it seems I mean using it it seems to be accurate I think Ben said to me the other day he said one of my parents commented about that you know that it was in the language the home

029language so that's great it's sometimes hard to get families to tell us what the home language is because they'll they'll want to say you know I want my child to learn in English but we're trying to just work on making sure we can get that right first before we push it out and I also want to make sure that the languages that we are communicating in are um are the right language we have a number of families who marked on their home language survey no I don't need any translation services but having spoken with some of these families on the phone I think it would be better if we could um and so I want to make sure that that option is out there for everyone even those families who said they don't need translation

030services see one more thing yeah it's also good to note that we have a translation service so if there's an issue at school and they need to communicate at home they meaning the principal a counselor we have a third party translation service that we call and they connect with the family and they'll do the translation for us so we can have a real time uh phone call with Communications we had a family who started a couple days into the school year when they came in we immediately called the line we were able to get a portuguese translator and have a really nice conversation between me and the parents yeah no we music we use a service like that at my employer and it's it's amazing how quickly and um it's assuring too because everything is

031at least in that service I'm assuming it's a state contract end to end encrypted and everyone is you know trained in confidentiality and compliance and whatnot so that's it's great okay David um how how do we Benchmark out at the moment on math schools and and has do you see a detectable impact of covert on that and where are where are we in a recovery if there is a recovery how do we Benchmark out of I didn't hear what you said on on mathematics schools on mathematics yeah um just a little closer to you sorry before my back out tonight um so a piece of that right now is using local assessments um every unit within investigations has an end of unit assessment um the screener that we're doing is more of a number sent

032screener another point of data that we're using is looking at MCAS data um it uh from my perspective is better looking at how math instruction looks at the at the classroom and building level as opposed to individual kids but combining that with um the local assessments we can really get a handle on where kids are and how do we align with the norms how do we sorry how do we align with the Norms with are they are they where you would expect them normally oh like where where are we right now yeah um we're we're doing okay um you know obviously the last two years was really tricky um I've been looking at some of the MCAS data um and you know fractions were were were hard um that was one that that really impacted

033people um so we're you know beginning to look at some of that data which also gives us some ideas of where we need to do some backfilling this year as we continue on with the curriculum thank you thank you okay other questions um I I had a quick question Anna actually asked part of it about the language I just wanted to ask I I was really happy to see that part of the goal I believe it's in goal one about the communications regarding the literacy um I was really excited that that was part of the action steps um because I think the community has focused in on knowing that this is something that the district is really working on um I just can you I wondered if you could just tell me I I a

034little bit more about the anticipated ways that you're going to communicate that out I know you said I just may have just sort of there was a lot of information there So within each unit at each grade level there's a parent letter at the beginning of each unit and so Cater 2 they have the two components the skills component and the knowledge component and as the grades start each new unit that parent letter will go home to give parents that information and you know to say that that's on top of the teachers that send home their bi-weekly newsletters and are keeping parents surprised that way also I personally try to include a little bit about ckla in my family newsletters each week or if there's something that each grade level is learning about I try

035to throw in a little bit of a blurb so we're just trying to keep it a constant flow of information and we're open for questions and you know parents want to know more we have we can certainly give them what they need okay thank you um and just to tack onto that we've talked um about a potential for like a family literacy night um to really be able to communicate with parents around this is how we used to teach literacy this is how we as adults learned it and this is why we thought it was a good idea at the time this is what we've learned in the last 15 years and these are the changes we've made and this is why and this is you know why we're doing things the way that we

036are and why it feels different from the literacy instruction we had when we were in school thank you I love that idea that's great okay anything else all right thank you all so much that was really helpful thank you thank you I'd like to invite Dr Zachary Brett best our new Middle School principal to tell us a little about the middle school goals hi good evening everyone I'm Zach best I am the new Middle School principal and I'm really happy to be here thanks so much for giving us a chance to share a little bit with you tonight um so we have three goals that I would like to share with you tonight our first goal similar to the elementary goal is directly related to The District goal so it should look a little bit

037familiar we are going to implement a data process to review student progress and starting in sixth grade and then we anticipate moving to 7th and 8th grade and that's part of our mtss structure at the secondary level some of our actions that we're going to implement to achieve this we're going to select a common literacy screener we have not historically used A literacy screener in the Middle grades and we feel like this is a good opportunity to start that we will also continue to utilize i-Ready i-Ready is a math screener that we have historically used at the Middle grades level but it has not been used consistently and we want to bring a consistent use to that practice we will create and establish an assessment calendar and I can tell you that at the Middle

038grades this year we have already selected our lettuce literacy screener and that is the Dibble screener that the elementary uses we will take this year to evaluate if that's going to give us the most benefit but we had access to it and there is a through line with the work that the Elementary grades are doing we're also going to work with teachers to provide them training this is something that is a little new to them so we want to make sure that they're comfortable and have the tools and skills to be able to use that data to inform their instruction our second goal is really an operational goal by the end of the year I hope to complete I will complete a systems audit to ensure that there are clearly communicated practices in place that

039will help support Student Success we have a lot of great things happening at Miles River I don't know if it's the pandemic I'm sure there's a lot of factors but this is really an opportunity for us to sort of reset how we track those efforts and how we're ensuring that those efforts are implemented with Fidelity some of the things that we look forward to implementing we are going to create we have created and convened an attendance team attendance is something that's really important to us I do know that the pandemic has impacted attendance across Massachusetts across the country and we want to take a very concerted effort at making sure we're periodically reviewing that and putting supports in place for students who might not be attending regularly we will also Implement a consistent discipline reporting

040process at the middle school that is not something that we have historically had and the staff and the administration feels like if we have a consistent process in place we'll be able to not only hold students accountable but hold ourselves accountable for making sure that we're supporting the students with disciplinary needs we are also working on a complete audit of our 504s we have come to find out that some of our 504s are just in different stages we want to make sure that we're following the guidelines for revisiting those on a regular basis and make sure that those are we that we've had opportunities to meet with the families make sure that those supports that are in place are appropriate and then that they are updated regularly and finally we will put in place a

041plan to support the social emotional learning needs of our students at the tier one level I've seen a lot of great work at the tier two and tier three level we we really take care of our students what we lack right now is as a systemic approach excuse me to making sure that all students have access to high quality social emotional learning and we know that that's really important now more than ever and our third goal is to transition is to excuse me strengthen the transition process from fifth to sixth grade I believe this goal was in place in the former Improvement plan I also received some feedback that this is an area that some stakeholders are really interested in pursuing I do want to be clear our sixth grade team our counselors do a

042tremendous job with our students a lot of positive feedback from our families to that effect what I really want to do is make sure that we are thinking earlier and making sure that all stakeholders feel like that process is is really as strong as it can be so we're going to going to start by surveying families to see about their experience what went well what would be some areas for growth we want to involve key stakeholders in getting some additional feedback I'm interested in working with my colleagues at the elementary level I'd like to put myself out there to attend some parent meetings early on and the other thing that we really want to do is look at some of the things that we already have in place some of the things that we might

043learn from this process and create and make sure that we have communicated a really strong process that's grade wide and see how that might carry through the students experience into their seventh and into the eighth grade years we know that students struggle with executive functioning organization these are things that our sixth grade staff our counselors do a great job with how can we capitalize on that work to make it a school-wide expectation a school-wide experience as they move throughout their time at Miles River because we know that when they get into eighth grade they don't suddenly know how to keep their materials organized and suddenly develop you know excellent executive functioning skills without constant support so those are the three goals that we have as I told the site Council as I've told the staff

044as I've told are building leadership team this is not an exhaustive list of those things that we're working on but it seemed like a really nice three goals to capture and share with you tonight so happy to answer any questions you might have thank you that was very helpful um all right uh does anyone on the committee have any questions Anna um thank you it's nice to meet you I don't think I don't think I don't think we've met before either so welcome to your first school committee meeting too um I guess my question is whether or not there was consideration of a specific Middle School goal around Dei issues and culture because that was one of the preliminary findings from the equity audit is that the Middle School specifically was suffering and it's interesting

045the elementaries have principles have identified that as a goal but you have not it's not really a criticism just more of an observation that that was something that audit produced as a bit of a red flag for us and I know it's part of our overall District goals and planning so part of me feels like it's covered within the broader umbrella but I was just curious to know if you could address the issue of Middle School culture as a goal as your onboarding you're getting to know this because I think that that is an identified weak spot in the district in terms of that practice yeah you're absolutely right that's a very fair question that is something that was identified in the superintendent Century plan it was identified in conversations with families that I met

046with it was identified in conversations with staff that I met with prior to the start of the year it is something that's very explicit and our building leadership team we have sort of three overarching themes that we're working on throughout school year school culture is one of them deib is another so that is two of our three themes we did discuss where does that belong does that belong in the school Improvement plan ultimately we felt like it wasn't necessarily appropriate to include it here but we wanted to make sure that everyone that is a stakeholder in the Middle School understands that those are two very important things it also felt like just based on timing my newness to the building the assistant principles newness to the building that putting it putting a finalized goal at

047this time might be somewhat premature but yes we have absolutely identified that and that's work that our building leadership team has begun and will be our Focus throughout the school year can I jump on that sure it's important to note too that we still have our deib group working and our professional development committee the PDC group working so they'll also be integrating opportunities through the year for teachers like we did last year because you're talking about about at the state level they're Shifting the cultural competence is a big deal right now they're actually changing the the rubric for teachers to include cultural competence it already includes social emotional learning so it's really encompasses a kind of a broad spectrum if you will and I think one of the things that Zach and and Kirsten Losi

048and the staff have done a nice job with this year because I I feel it and I've seen it is like getting right into the whole belonging piece including with families like there was a an open house the other morning uh Tuesday Morning Tuesday morning for new families to you know to invite new families in so the friends group sponsored this opportunity and I think I think that's the work that Zach's committed to on the outside it's important for him and even talking to one of the families the woman at the parent at the family gathering she was telling me a story like her daughter was talking about belonging because that's what they talked about in the introduction of school they met with everybody talked with them and her daughter was like yeah I really

049feel like I belong this is a brand new family so I think I think the works being done is and it's hard with school Improvement plans I think for for you know what do you decide on what's important what's the priority and then there's all the other things you know like even my goals my goals really don't Encompass all of the things I need to do for the year and I think I think that's front and center and with Zach and Kirsten I think that's that's part of something you'd see if you go to visit the school other members have questions Amy let's have a question thank you for laying all this out um I love the idea in goal three of surveying families regarding their experience transitioning from fifth to sixth because that is

050a really difficult transition to go to middle school is there a plan to survey the students as well in an age-appropriate manner yeah absolutely and I you know maybe that's not explicitly reflected in here but whenever somebody asks me how do you know how things are going at school my answer is always I talk to the kids and so I'm absolutely interested I'd like to sort of see the dust settle and maybe catch up with them um with these specific questions later on in the year but absolutely thank you for asking that makes sense thanks um so I also just wanted to make a comment about um I think it was also goal number three about um I just really appreciated the part about talking about the executive functioning and the organization and to me

051that's so much of what middle school is is you know that if if they can learn that in Middle School um that is just you know yeah so I really appreciated that being in there and sort of moving that from just uh just moving that to be a school-wide kind of a focus and I I just wanted to give that feedback that I appreciated that and that wasn't really a question just um all right anything else not for me thank you very much all right thank you thank you Mr managoni present the high school plan good evening everyone uh thank you for having me here tonight uh to prevent uh prevent but present uh the school Improvement plan for the high school and I want to start by acknowledging the efforts of our faculty and

052staff and school council and helping shape this plan because without their input it's hard to say that it really is a community effort so I'm glad to hear their voices on this um similar to the middle school and elementary schools you know we're starting off goal number one continuing our mtss work from last year because we realized that this is a multi-year process and last year our focus at the high school was really working on our curriculum documents to help us move towards getting that tier one foundation in place now as we move into year two we still have some curriculum work to do which I'll speak to in a little bit but where we want to take the next step in terms of building the mtss model for the high school is bringing a

053data process to some of the work that we do to support our students so one place that we want to begin this data process is in the 9th and 10th grade we feel that supporting our youngest Learners can help them as they build and internalize these skills on their own and we when they get to be older high school students the expectation is is that they can manage a lot of the work on their own and they know how to seek out help when they need it however in ninth and 10th grade what we are doing right now is we have support blocks for example for both freshmen and sophomores where during power block time instead of just sort of being in a classroom we have teachers who it's actually part of their teaching load

054who are able to work with the students specifically right now on Executive functioning skills because our 9th and 10th grade students who don't do so well typically struggle with organization now we happen to have English and math teachers in those classrooms which is good because they can provide that specific content assistance but really the focus is helping these kids become strong students understanding what it takes to be successful but in order to accomplish that I think you need to add data to that process so what we are in the process of doing right now is developing exit and entry criteria for those support blocks because we brought the kids in at the start of the Year based on recommendations from eighth grade teachers but also last year when we ran the support block we really

055just brought those kids back in but we don't need kids to be in there all year if they don't need that level of support and furthermore kids who all of a sudden show up in the middle of the year who might need that we want to hook them up with those teachers so we are developing entry and exit criteria based on grades attendance behavior and things like that at the same time we are developing support plans for kids so that way when they get in there into the sport block and they can meet the expectations of that support plan we can start working them out of that support and then we currently have a ninth grade team of teachers from all subject areas who regularly review grade attendance and behavior data on a bi-weekly basis

056and they're able to put supports into place right now for students I think a good opportunity for us moving forward is the Panorama platform that we have across the district is going to now allow us to extend that data into developing intervention plans for students where we can develop the plans assign them to staff track student progress with that and then move students out of supports that they may no longer need that's one example of us using data in terms of developing the mtss model we also have an after school academy at the high school and this really is designed for students who I love them to death they're very honest they say I am not doing any work when I go home that's great feedback so what we can do is before you go

057home we will have a place for you to do your work now it's only an hour three days a week after school but that's three extra hours where kids can get some work done and they're assigned to a staff member who also communicates with a home and with teachers so it's just another support that we want to put into place when we ran it a little bit last year as a pilot what we want to do is enhance it this year again using data where that staff member is regularly looking for students who need that support communicating with the home and seeing over time if students are getting better at assignment completion because that is really the stated goal of that program and then finally using data in a specific academic area we chose to

058focus on math because primarily Math teachers are already good at using data we also feel that there may be some more discrete skills that at the high school level we can still gauge where students are at I think once they get to the high school and you start looking at literacy data it can get a little bit complicated knowing where kids are and what they need for support however with math I think those smaller discrete skills may be something that we can help students with so we decided to start this year looking at math data so we'll be doing something similar to what the middle school is doing in terms of finding a screener developing an assessment calendar training the Math teachers on how to use data which they already know how to do but

059we just want to do it in the context of the data tool that we have and then importantly using the data so developing focused lessons where when you find out students are struggling with something can you hook them up with the right instruction well that will help them get back on track so that was a very long goal number one goal number two is nice it's short we need to by the end of the school year get our curriculum documents in a condition where they're regularly used as part of the planning process a lot of times I think curriculum mapping was seen as a secondary exercise when it is not it is the principle um design document where you should be doing all of your planning work out of because that's where you're not only

060identifying objectives and learning activities and and pasting things out but also embedding in the supports that you can see at the different tiers so the foundation of mtss is really having strong tier one instruction that's where we want to get to by the end of the school year because we need to do that we're setting that as a goal niask has also in their draft report said you need to have this done so they've been very clear about that what we have done so far with this is we've updated the curriculum audit that we did last year based upon the work that was done in 2122 and then right now we have it in our PD calendar to work up through just about the end of first semester getting our core course Maps again in

061the condition where they're regularly used for planning I don't ever want to say done because done implies you put them away and don't look at them again that's not what we want so that is our second goal for the high school goal number three is a repeat of last year and it's going to be a repeat until we feel we are in a better place we want to increase the proportion of students going from the Middle School to our high school we lost 36 students last year from the class of 2026 and that is not acceptable so what is it going to take to get us to a better place we need to continue to analyze the data year over year how many kids are leaving where they're going to because that is an important

062point to consider but we also need to start interviewing these families and the students to figure out what is it that's making you not want to come to the high school you know we have some preliminary findings about why that's the case but I still think that we need to get a more nuanced view of what exactly is going on there the same time we're trying to learn we also want to entice kids to come to the high school so we need to make sure we're disseminating information specifically about our ninth grade program I think we have a pretty strong induction of the high school for our students we have a dedicated ninth grade counselor we have a ninth grade team of teachers um we have a ninth grade mentoring program where our upperclassmen Mentor

063our ninth graders for an entire school year and there really is just a focus in scheduling on choosing the right teachers to work with our freshmen so we have that for our kids and it's up to us to keep publicizing that to the community that we help kids get off to a good start at the high school um we're also going to look in the springtime to have our ninth grade teachers go down and start meeting the 8th graders to let them know this is who your teachers are going to be next year it's really not that difficult just walk through the red doors and down the hallway by the gym it can be that easy sometimes we're also in a couple of weeks going to be having our High School open house as we

064did last year and the point of that is to share our academic and extracurricular and athletic opportunities to the community we are going we're really extending that to all Middle School families because kids start thinking about where they're going to go to high school probably even before they get to middle school but certainly once they're there we want to invite them in to be a member of our community and then throughout the year we're going to be tracking kids plans about where they want to go to high school because I do see that from the Middle School about which kids are applying out and then what we want to do this year with that knowledge is to really start meeting with families as they may consider other options and letting them know individually what we

065have at the high school for their children because I think that that connection with the family is very very important so that's our third goal and we linked that um actually to our diversity Equity inclusion and belonging goal because some of the data that we have about why kids are not coming to the high school I think speaks to the need for us to focus on that and the creation of community and a place where students would want to go then School goal number four is looking to see what performance gaps do we have at the high school now it's very easy to roll through dese's data and see where MCAS scores are you can look at College Board data and see SAT scores and AP scores but there's a lot more to student life

066than those things thankfully um you know we can look and see what is our student leadership structure look like at the high school what our sports teams look like at the high school what are the composition of different classes at the high school looking at grades you know every quarter we put out about 3 000 grades and so we should be looking at that kind of information and we do have subgroups of kids in the high school we have students of color we have low-income students we have boys we have girls we have students who identify not as boys and girls there are many different groups of students to consider and what we want to do this year is really take the time to investigate what are the performance gaps that we may see and

067it's important to us to do that because performance at the high school level I think really is linked to opportunity how you do in school and that's defined broadly I think can determine how many options you're going to have at the end of four years and that's our goal is to to allow kids to build as many options as possible by the time they walk across the stage at graduation so looking at these performance gaps is important because again it ties back to the things that the students are going to be able to do after high school but I don't want to just sort of cherry pick one maybe that I'm interested in or a couple people are interested in we're going to look at this as a school over time the nice thing is

068is that we have several layers of leadership at the high school we have student leadership we have a building leadership team we have an instructional leadership team and we have a school council so we can use these different groups sort of vet the data that we pull out and figure out what are the two or three things that maybe we want to focus on because this is going to be a multi-year goal I think maybe this year identifying some areas of future study and then next year digging into it even more and I would tie this I guess again to the diversity Equity inclusion and belonging goal because we need to see you know how students feel that they belong in our community because when you feel that you're part of something I think you're

069going to perform better and that's going to be part of the work that we do this year so those are our four goals they're all linked back to a district goal and I and they're going to be I think goals that are going to be worth repeating over multiple years till we get to a place where we're feeling better about where we're at thank you does anyone have questions for Mr menigoni David yeah um I'm really really glad to hear that you're you're going to have a systematic investigation of the reasons for for kids choosing not to go to the high school but what's your sense and I guess a question to Eric because you were running the high school for eight years what's your sense of of in rough rank order of the reasons

070why they're not choosing to stay we have collected some data on it already so we I don't want to say we know but what has sort of come up you know is is kids experience in previous years maybe it wasn't great and we're also looking through the lens of the pandemic too so I'm not sure we get really clean information there uh the one thing that is not pandemic related is facilities that comes up right away and it's primarily the athletic facilities that's cited just because of the visibility and the scale of those particular places on campus but uh it's really looking at those two things and the good thing is is that you know we have the ability to change those but it's both fixing both of those things is going to be a

071multi-year process as well all right now thank you okay other questions okay anybody else right oh Anna um thank you I just want to sort of pick up that a little bit too because I think I'm I'm really glad to see so much focus on the high school as sort of the um I'm trying to find the right words to say this exactly the right way especially with the Elementary and Middle School principles listening so carefully but if you think of the district as you know a culmination right like students start as Littles in this you know beautiful little Bucher school and then they work their way through and they go to the middle school and in theory if the district is really doing everything that we want us to be doing I'm going to

072Vanna White at you ready the mission statement if we are doing what we say we want to do then in theory you know you should have kids making that Journey all the way to the end of high school and so I think it's really good that that you as building leadership and we as a school committee are looking at this trend because it really says that our our elementary schools are doing well and people like them here people stay here for elementary and then a lot of people stay here for middle school but then there's this Exodus which speaks to something that is truly a breakdown of the system because if we're losing our kids right before they get to the final sort of Capstone moments that's that is the problem because it's almost like

073if you start the journey at kindergarten but you don't finish them at grade 12 I don't want to say that's a it's not a failure because it's education is is a process but it is kind of a failure like we want those kids to stay here so I think it's really good we're spending so much time focusing on this because what I want to know is how much of it is within the control of this group of people and the principles here and how much of it is going to have to be that partnership with the towns and the voters around facilities and expectations because there's only so much we can do here right and we can talk about it we can advocate for it we can get on the floor of town meeting and

074do some crazy things to make things happen but ultimately there's a limit to what the district can do so I think I really want to know the answers to goal three especially and four because I think that they are related and it's striking to me that when we have kids leave in the district they're usually going to incredible places right I have a friend whose child's you know we have kids getting into Exeter and Andover and you know St John's and Pingree and you know these are and other other private schools around it's not like they're going off to you know poor institutions which says that we through Middle School are preparing them very well right if we have students able to get into schools of that caliber thinking especially sort of the Andover Exeter

075crowd I mean those are tough schools to get into and our kids are getting into them and choosing to go there to some degree I don't fault them because those are top tier but that says to me we're really losing those kids and I want to stop that but I want us to know what we can control and what we cannot control because if we can't control it from this body then we need to broaden our scope of what we're trying to do as a community I also will just say that I like that goal number four speaks directly to the student Opportunity Act and talking about the subgroups and always kind of keeping that at the Forefront and I have to think for Eric for SOI purposes it's good to have this goal on

076paper and have some information feeling back into it is that right yeah so a you mean for the student Opportunity Act yeah yeah yeah I think part part of what will happen is that the kind of be convergent information coming from all the levels because Ben's working on a piece of the puzzle Brian's working on a couple pieces of the puzzle you start to look at the middle school so they start to you know blend together if you will and one of the things I said to all the leadership team at the beginning of the year and we had our Retreat is when we're looking at our data and we're we're determining we're looking at subgroups and we're also looking at taking an equity pause which means stop and try to move away from your

077usual look at data and think about other ways Brian talked about opportunity gaps I think you know we would see them at the middle in elementary as well and we see that in our current data that we'll present you know either I think it's next meeting the MCAS data so there's a lot of information they'll be kind of converging on the same points where the communication piece is part of if you remember you know Finding ways to invite families in of all the subgroups if you will so there is a link that goes through a method to the madness anyway thank you I think these are all really great and I want to say thank you to all the principals for what you've done here it's good I'll send them home thank you absolutely thank

078you all very very much and um you are of course always welcome to stay but please go home thank you all thank you thank you hey um all right all right that was great all right um Eric you are up on the superintendent goals okay thank you very much I um went back from the draft goals last time well I'm stuck here I'm back from the draft goals of last time and um made some adjustments and Corrections uh cleaned some things up added some of the indicators where people felt there should be a tighter focus and uh added in the the bottom goal here which was not on the previous one the fifth goal professional learning to continue with the program and then really it's funny as I went through the school Improvement plans with

079with the principals and started to look at um how they started to make connections there are there are really straight connections through everything right now from District all the way down to school level and in many classrooms too as you start to look at some of the the things that are going on so this is the cleaned up version I think I got everything I went back through the last meeting to make sure I got them all okay does it make sense just to ask if there's any questions any questions unless you want to do any other questions all right questions questions I didn't have one question and it sort of I didn't want to ask it um earlier but I think it kind of ties in um with the school Improvement plans and sort

080of what the urge School informal plans where um you know still looking for 20 teachers right where does that sort of fit into all of this I you know at some point I mean I understand that it's not just us it's a systemic problem but at what point do you know we start looking in inwards and saying how do we fill these roles is there anything that we're not doing to become a more attractive you know um so it's it's one of those things that could be goal six you know the building committee could be building yeah no but I think that's we're definitely working on the mission statement that's an important question I mean we Vinnie and I have talked about it several times you know it's important to note that all but one

081teaching position is is not filled all of our teaching positions we have one and the reason we have one is because we're trying to change the way we're doing business so for instance in this case uh Schneider over at the Cutler said I have three open ta positions and I think I'll be better served by making some program adjustments if I can trade them in for one full-time special ed teacher um so that was a another change that we approved two two weeks ago I believe um in trying to better utilize what we have already in making some of those adjustments so we've done that twice since to start a school with programs to kind of rearrange programs if you will but also to bring in you know a set of three Tas that's kind

082of like the equal point three Tas equal a teacher on the fifth fifth level salary scale and it's we're trying to do things like that we're trying to look at programs themselves we just learned that one of our Tas and on the elementary school is a licensed certified special ed teacher when nobody knew it so I was like hey we have you know we have a job for you so we're actually looking within as well trying to trying to move some people around the majority of the positions open now you have a whole bunch of coaching positions open which is just normal because those Seasons haven't occurred yet so for for winter and spring things like crossing guards substitutes we need a we need a ton of substitutes uh we have very few it's it's

083um unfortunate you know Brian was the best example he and I were talking this week where he had five teachers out and no substitutes um that causes the strain a different kind of strain on the school Tas are an issue so we're starting to move some around we're actually starting to combine some half times into full times which make them more attractive um harder for to hire a 0.6 teacher or excuse me ta for a program when we can now say okay we have a 0.6 here a 0.6 here let's combine them into one yes we lose a little of an FTE but it at least is helping us to service our kids so those are the things we're doing now just to try to try to make those connections we even talked back through

084Vinnie hey what about a 500 bonus for you know like a signing bonus or something so you know those are those are real things we're actually talking with I met with all the North Shore superintendents Roundtable last Friday they're all doing the same thing like okay should I bump up my substitute rate to 130 a day or should I you know create some new way to to entice people using money or other benefits you know one of the issues we keep running into is we hire a TA and they say yes I want benefits and they we give them benefits package they are your choices and the reality is there's nothing left in their check if they take benefits so our TA salary scale may be something we look at in the future which impacts

085that overall budget you know that's that's that's a that's a fairly large uh scale move you know so we are making things like that we've moved we've expanded our part-time kindergarten aids to full-times we're so we're just trying to it's like putting Legos together you know we'll take this half time and this quarter time and move that together so Vinnie it's a little messy this year for Vinnie to keep track of but we're trying to fill some of those voids it doesn't add one yet so um all right um that was that was really important and also I do want to refocus on the goals but thank you for asking that um that was helpful um does anybody have any other things on the goals um I I just wanted to say um I'm I

086think you've done a great job I'm fully in support I want to just say to to everyone there are a lot of indicators on here and I I just want us to be mindful of that that like I know that when we did it the you know first go around we sort of were sort of counseled that there that that might be so it'll just be an interesting experience I think from The Not So Much from your end maybe or maybe a little bit from your end that you have to provide a lot of information so that we can do the evaluations I think it's going to be a learning experience for all of us to see whether we really going forward like whether this is this is a lot or not um and I'll

087organize the data around the indicators to help you know usually I categorize them by standard and then indicator as well so yeah I'll try and make it as easy as possible yeah no I and and again I know that having a lot of indicators is a challenge for you just in terms of um providing all the documentation and things so that's just a comment it's not I don't think it's a negative I think it's we're all learning to work together and this is what happened is that we have a lot um okay is there any further comment all right um and you we need a vote correct yes okay Amy do you have a motion okay I move that the Hamilton Wenham Regional school committee um except the superintendent's goals as written and Linked In

088the agenda second second by anesthesic is there any further discussion okay looks like we're ready to vote um all those in favor right and that is unanimous of the five members who are present and the motion passes okay thank you Eric for all your work on that yeah that's great um next up we have some policies I'm not sure who's talking all I I will start as the chair of the policy subcommittee and who's worked on this for a while but I might at any moment turn to Amy um just for context especially for David and and Amy who were not part of this journey so these policies were really heavily driven by changes at the state and federal level and if you recall I believe it was in September of 2020 policy acab was

089substantially Rewritten because of changes in federal law so we adopted it and looked through it then the msca Masa excuse me went through and made more changes and the last time that we as a body looked at these I went back and pulled it it was April 7 2022 and at that meeting there was a request for a red line version which is standard to which I said that is harder than it seems but we'll try and so then over the next several months we had new election people came on people came off we had the summer and in a way it was good that we bought ourselves some time because then the other thing that happened is that there were more changes made at the state and federal level and in December 2021 the

090masc came out with a bulletin with yet more updates and then the other thing has happened in the intervening time was the passage of the crown act so what you see here I know it's a little confusing and I want to give Amy big credit formal big props for trying to take all the changes and put them into a digestible format so what you see here now in this um explanation is sort of the high level of what has happened which is that policy AC which we had always had was split into two parts there is AC and AC Dash R which is sort of a bit instructional in a way it's it has some definitions the two go together they're not they are not the same that's it's the main policy and sort of

091a supplementary part of it and then policy acab which was previously all harassment was broken into its two more specific subparts which was harassment of students which was moved to the J section and then there still is policy acab but it is specific to sexual harassment so what you see is two policies that we previously had adopted have now become four policies and then Amy um so so that's high level and the reason that this has come up for us is that we had inconsistencies especially in our protected classes the state attorney general and the MSC have been agreeing with that so a lot of the changes have to do with that listing of protected classes the good thing about us making these adoptions now is that we are now in alignment with the masc

092policies and with state and federal law and it will also help our handbook be consistent so I know I personally have always said we have 27 versions of these classes could we please make it have one and the Attorney General said yes you should have one group and this is what it should be so I would move that we accept these tonight and move on with it but what Amy did this is where I might turn it over to Amy because this is her work product to try to make sense to anyone not on policy what has changed and why and Amy I'll turn it over here yeah so I'm going to just that's fine if you want to sure what I was gonna say um is that well okay well maybe do you have

093something you'd like to say because I was going to say is that first we might really just address which I found to be very helpful I printed it this little that was very helpful um well so because what I'd like to do eventually is go through each one but but maybe I don't know I found I don't know if other people just wanted to start with questions or if you want to start giving us a little explanation oversight overview I could just give an overview of what all of the colors mean on the sheets um so on all of the following Pages the current policy is on the left and the proposed new policy is on the right um and the yellow sections are language that is the same and then the magenta highlights are

094the ones that differ between the two um and then in the margin at the top you can see the section name AC when it was adopted by our district and then the proposed so every single page of this document is those are those two pages together with their like corresponding information if you go so this section sorry where there's blank on the left can you just go up one page yeah this Ace um ACR we currently don't have an ACR section so that's why this is blank um the next section is acab which as you saw on the first page was one like giant policy that we've now broken up into two so I've compared j i c k which the language of it is actually very similar as you can see by all the

095yellow um and fit in I stopped on the left of acab where it doesn't align anymore and moved it down to the next page of acab because that's where they start to become the same again um so hopefully you all got a chance to review it and that my marks sort of made sense just helped you decide whether or not the language is appropriate and similar enough to vote on okay um I'm going to open up questions I'm I have one to start with I'm sure so my understanding of the AC um I mean I think this was very clear and this is definitely why I think what we were looking for the first time around this was very helpful um this little chart was very helpful um but just in looking at the AC

096splitting up into the two AC and then the ACR policies um I just want to make sure that I'm understanding what your general the policy committees understand like it appeared to me that AC the new AC policy is sort of a more overarching kind of what I would say is sort of a mission-ish kind of a policy and then the ACR is kind of like a more it felt like a more sort of definitional legal um and maybe even kind of disciplinary does that like is that an accurate like that was my takeaway was from those two I just guys want to make sure I'm sort of understanding it the way the policy committee is understanding it that's you're exactly right um I just want to know it's not that we didn't have AC Dash

097R it's that it is that it didn't exist so it's new correct um and the masc put it out and Dana your understanding is exactly right it is sort of literally the definitions of what do those what do those words mean and providing with evidence and I will say just in general we're seeing in the entire policy review that this is a new thing the masc is doing that you'll have the main policy and then you'll have the you know AC Dash R and the dash R I'm not entirely sure why it's R but it is tends to be here is some supplementary information here is a process here is a definition here is something that makes it a little deeper so um it's almost like a I don't reference there's references too yeah yeah

098I mean it's almost like a footnote you know it's like an end note like here's the main policy and here's pieces of it that I think historically used to be in the main document that they've now separated out for a little bit of clarity so as policy works this way through you will see other examples of main policy Dash R along the way we're seeing it in more than one spot but Dana you're right like always no not at all um all right other questions um so does it make sense to do eat because I have I do have a couple of minor things on some of the so does it make sense to do each one of these one at a time um I understand you want them all at all no I think

099we should and and I'll confess uh I don't know what the terminology would be I I think we've read them too many times even as I read them one more time there are tiny little scrivener's errors that still found one yeah there's a couple I will also say uh it's like a period yeah yeah no and it's interesting um Dorothy was funny too because we of course get everything from Dorothy and we kind of have to customize it and even she at one point in the middle of last week I said okay we need the very most updated jick and she sent me one I said but it's missing this and she's like oh you're right it's missing that so even she is juggling with multiple flavors so there are a couple little scrivener's errors

100that I I would point out and fix before we call them good but I do agree I think we should go each one and uh I don't know if you want to vote individually or treat it like a consent agenda do the whole batch or however you want to do it let's let's do a motion on each one and we can just that way if there's any um I move that the Hamilton runner Regional school committee adopt the new AC and ACR or no just AC I would just do one at a time okay new AC policy as Linked In the agenda second second by anesthesic okay um is there are there comments question or discussion on this on the new AC policy okay looks like we're ready to vote um all those in favor

101all right and that is unanimous of the five members present and the motion passes um all right keep going Amy I move that the Hamilton runnem Regional school committee adopt the ACR policy as Linked In the agenda second second by Anna all right and anybody have any questions comments further discussion Anna this is one I would like to make a scrivener's thing I think there's a funny little space after developmentally appropriate it's inconsistent and I would like to remove that little extra space the top of the first paragraph from the top paragraph here at the bottom yep I see it yep okay a procedural question yes so I I have a few of these little errors and I didn't want to correct them outside of an appropriate meeting on my own so would this be

102a place where I we would want to like list them all out to change or would we just want to say in general I think we could if they are if they are things I mean in other words I I know I found one there's an like an underlined there's an underlying errant underline in one of them I mean we certainly could make a motion I don't I don't know exactly but we certainly could make a motion to uh approve them with we've never had like we've never had to make that motion before and I think that the subcommittee has the power you know we've already elected them to be this community and go and part of the process is formatting right formatting and I mean I think right we could do it I mean

103that's fine with me that there's no reason you're not making substantive changes none of them are substantive no no so many document it's here it doesn't matter how thorough you think you are every time you look I mean I've literally read these I don't know a thousand times and I think at some point it's just delirium so you don't have to go to print with them um so I think unless there's unless without if there's unless there's objections I think that there's just general understanding that the policy committee can you know formatting spacing So to that effect then I'll just state that if there are minor scrivener's errors that are non-substantive before Janelle locks them down then Eric you know Amy and I and David can look and see if there's something that we've seen

104with our eyes I know Amy found some I found some so just before they go live assuming they all pass let's just try to make sure that we don't have the errant underlines in spaces and yeah we can look at that together okay um I think we have a motion on the table correct for ACR correct yes okay are we ready to vote on that yes okay all right all those in favor all right and that is unanimous of the five members present and the motion passes [Music] I move that the Hamilton modern Regional school committee adopt the new j-i-c-k policy as Linked In the agenda uh well I'll switch over there okay Skip One you skip one that's okay is there a second oh you know what I was looking at the chart it's

105okay that was good sorry no one seconded it so you can try it again oh yeah go ahead and try again try again I move that the Hamilton runner Regional school committee adopt a new policy a c a b as Linked In the agenda second second by anesthetic um I actually had just a just this is just a curiosity question how how much of this sort of came directly from the state my understanding from Dorothy and Eric or Amy or David is a lot the Attorney General went through and did a pretty thorough uh redo of a lot of it so not to say that we can't change small things but I would be very hesitant to change it I actually wasn't any suggestion to change I just it read very much like it just

106came straight from the state and I like oh yeah and I sort of for my own this is not me this is just this is not I'm not on the policy committee I just a lot of it I read and I sort of felt like this isn't really policy it's just quoting Massachusetts General law yep and I sort of if to my way of thinking I would it would just be like you could just say Massachusetts General law 119 section 51 and not then repeat the entirety of the law but if it's the way the state does it I'm not it's not a complaint it's just a comment I don't know say this I believe that the law says we have to publish the law I think that's how that ended up this way because

107there are a couple of things like that that we got we we get corrected on with our legal team two years ago when we were doing handbooks they made some adjustments because we didn't actually put like that was the Title IX stuff wasn't it yeah or the entire law felony or the suspension that's the exact law it says you have to put the law in your handbook so it may be that but I'm not 100 positive no I just we've done a lot of policy for me for me philosophically the policy is supposed to be the like the policy and this really got very legally yes I don't disagree but oh yeah okay um other comments or questions no just that this one is the one that has that errant period that is needs to

108come out um the only thing I'll draw people's attention to we had a little back and forth uh about page four where it says list the name of the person and list the appropriate party we kept the instructional in there we went back and forth a little just to show that we were complying with the instructions of the document itself and just to draw people's attention that within our district Stacy has some Authority as the timeline coordinator for students and Vinnie is the Title Nine coordinator for staff and third parties um and that I just want to make sure people see that and that's why it says list the name just to show work and compliance right there it's a little awkward Amy was correct it's it's awkward but I think we decided to keep

109it what it's worth that's how I interpreted it when I read it that that's what you guys did you read our mind Dina okay are we ready to vote okay all right um all those in favor right and that is unanimous of the five members present and the motion passes okay one more okay I move that the Hamilton oneum Regional school committee adopt policy j i c k as Linked In the agenda second by Anna questions discussion this one has a couple little errors and actually it does have a word that was just missed when it was copied over from all the other things the crown act it's missing the of harassment on the basis of race that word really does need to be there and it is present in the other very new Crown

110act language that was put in just last December so I think it's again just a masc has a lot of versions of ASO anything else nope looks like we're ready to vote all right all those in favor all right that is uh uh five and um yep all right and uh that is uh unanimous of the five members present and the motion passes um thank you policy committee and um thank you very much for the lots of work that went into that very complicated um I I'd like to say something on Amy's behalf um I want to say two things the first one is Eric it's my understanding now we've adopted these every time the district has a list of protected classes we can now use this list right these policies yes now that we're

111done with sir I mean I also think we have to kind of resend these out as updates I think oh 100 I actually think one of them requires us to do so so I just want to make sure that is done this one I want to say about Amy is I love having multiple graphic designers on the school committee David and Amy on design table over there but this was a huge amount of work that Amy put in and she has requested that the full committee not expect that she does that at every moment because I don't know that that's a sustainable way to look at policy so moving forward we'll hopefully just do red line changes if it's appropriate but I I just want to give Amy a very specific credit you're amazing and

112I hope you never have to do that again because that was too much well it's okay if we need to we can and thank you for your sketch for the first slide that was really helpful the first slide was a sticky note that I took a picture of I said I think we needed this so whatever the process it was all it was actually all very helpful and thank you um okay oh we did it no not yet almost I meant the politics all right uh next we have the uh budget calendar I just have a quick update on our budget calendar last week we met for the first chairs only meeting and set the two dates for the all members meeting they are Wednesday November 30th and Wednesday January 11th uh tomorrow morning I'll

113probably follow up with everyone with invites in their emails so you all have it in your calendars but those are the two dates that we're all going to meet here at Bucher at around 6 30. [Music] um then you do we don't need to vote on this correct this is just interesting yep okay um so everybody put those dates in your calendars okay and please go ahead ask away so the February adoption date that off cycle meeting February 9th is the date that ideally we would approve the budget but then that backup date of Wednesday is just in case just in case you do not pass it we have one more shot to meet the deadline okay and then we have a regularly scheduled school committee meeting on February 16th would we potentially shift the

114February 16th meeting to that February 9th and not have a meeting on February 16th are we going to go the 9th and the 16th think that might be up to everyone yeah maybe that's why I'm asking be a committee thing yeah I we just can't have the meeting we can't have this vote on the 16th because it'll be outside of the past the deadline okay so I guess I would just propose if we could instead of having a one-off meeting just on that one item on the ninth if maybe we could shift everything to the ninth and not have a meeting on the 16th does that make sense is the sixth sixteenth not the vacation week no no the 16th is the week is the Thursday before vacation I understand what you're asking I think

115I I think we wanna I think we want to make sure that that's doable like everything as we get closer to it because based on this we have to vote we have to meet on the ninth ideally so I'm just saying if we could you know if we only meet on the ninth for the hearing and the vote and then we dispar you know disband and then we meet again I would just prefer to no I I actually I think that makes a lot of sense and I would ask that you know um I think preliminarily like Eric and I should look at the sort of the work plan for the year make sure that that makes sense and then maybe we just bring it back to the committee as we get a little bit

116okay always easier to cancel a meeting always yes agree always better to have just looking at that weak same and we have to meet every week of February three weeks in a row you do get a vacation in February though then um right no it's about three and we know we've done that before that's actually pretty brutal but we got to do it three weeks in a row okay um I'm gonna make myself a coherent note okay okay um all right I think we're on the superintendent's report thank you excuse me just a few brief items uh for this week first uh and foremost I want to thank both of our communities for their support at our recent town meeting for all three articles that were on the warrant I think you know that's a

117big push for us to be able to now begin these processes it's exciting you know we've already reached out to the state to say they passed you know so again another milestone in the process as we move forward in the building project and I think of the opportunity for the stabilization fund will give us the ability to begin to go from a zero budget and not being able to move forward with the fields athletic Improvement projects that we'll be able to build towards that as well so I want to really say thank you to the communities it was an important vote and it helps us to guide our our new next directions with our with our facilities and our our outside grounds um the Dibbles eight literacy screeners they've just about finished all those K-5

118over the past few weeks um and tomorrow there'll be some work done and also in the data teams in the next couple of weeks to to start to begin to organize and put that data into sensible shape for each of the data teams at the schools to review and and um build their interventions for for kids um for the for this for the speaker in the fall uh screening something new this year um the we're gonna we're gonna try to make the devil's information available to the parents um it's a bit nerve-wracking because when you you know it's like when you first got your MCAT scores like what does this mean you know so even worse there are now six graphs or something I think five or six ground but we want to be able

119to share that information we're collecting all kinds of information on our kids that I think is important to be able to say to parents here's what we're talking about when we talk about this particular portion of the score or where your child might be having difficulty so when you're having that conversation saying your child needs interventions in this area here's why here's what we're seeing and then they can also you know have that conversation with the teacher as well okay what's happening with my child in the classroom what's happening with my child outside of the classroom with our with our intervention models um Miles River Middle School as you heard Dr abest say earlier they've just completed for the first time and school-wide i-Ready math screener with their with their uh students they actually will

120dig into some of that data tomorrow some of their teachers that's part of the the work that we'll be doing tomorrow um really trying to figure out now where you take that so this is Baseline data for them they've never had school-wide everybody I think they had 99 percent of their kids actually complete the assessment so that's a that's a big deal for them you probably noticed the mathematics theme through all of the presentations we are really trying to focus on that Pre-K to 12. and then um if you check your email you got a strategic plan survey from me and that is the next step in the strategic planning process the surveys done by the teaching and learning associate group that is uh supporting us they will gather that data over the next week

121or so it'll be open from uh yesterday and through the 12th and I will aggravate people and continue to send it out a number of times until we can get the data the first run even last night I I didn't have it queued up till I think I put it around 7 30 and by morning we had like 170 replies from various various groups it's also important to note if you have peop no people in the community that don't have children you can send it to them as well we really want to get the wider Community as well so we'll work with the towns to see if we can take advantage of any tools they may have to say you know let's get as many people involved in this as possible so that'll be unique

122information that we'll use along with our our regular data in-house data that that's being collected now when we have begin to have our meetings also Hamilton went on Boards of Health we are working hand in hand with them I shouldn't say we it's not me our nurses once again are going above and beyond they'll be offering flu vaccination clinics on Thursdays through October um although pre-registrations are preferred walk-ins are accepted while while the supplies of vaccinations last so we have October 13th uh four to seven at the Hamilton COA October 20th 3 to 6 30 at the miles River Middle School cafeteria October 27th from 3 30 to 6 at the Bucher school cafeteria and there'll be they'll be vax they'll be vaccines available will be quadrivalent flu vaccines for all ages including high dose

123for seniors you do not need an ID or health insurance to get a vaccine but please it is helpful if you wear a short sleeve shirt so and everyone from three plus three and up can receive a flu vaccine so the latest the latest round of work that our nurses are working on it thank you very much any questions for the superintendent um all right moving right along committee reports uh Capital Finance looks like it is me right um um I don't think we have anything right nope uh policy policies meeting again on October 19th we have a couple things we had held from the d section and then we're going to plow right through into the F and the K section uh you you may not know that at the end of last year

124we also finished the J section so our goal is to bring forth the dfk and J sections to the committee for full adoption by the end of the year it's ambitious but we're trying to finish this policy review so October 19th by Zoom always a fun time um negotiations I don't think we have anything nope um okay we are flying right along I'm not sure that I have much really to report in my uh chairs report I really want to Echo um Mr Tracy's um comments about the um two-town meetings and the appreciation of the um citizens to come and spend you know significant amounts of time um at town meeting um and you know to um be thoughtful in making those decisions regarding um you know the three times the three Warren articles that

125were related to schools I'm grateful for the time that effort that everyone put into that um and I'm not sure that I have much else in my chairs report do you have a question any update on the Hamilton master plan so the Hamilton master plan is in sort of a pause at this moment um so we um I can't remember whether I reported that last time or not I don't remember but I um we um got to a point sort of after working through um with the consultant existing conditions and um we sort of got to a point where we were um we sort of took a step back and the master planning uh spent a little bit of time outlining outlining the rest of the future scope um and at this point we're going

126to step back from the original consultant and the I don't exactly sure of the procedure but basically the select board is going to do a little bit of work and potentially looking into the finding a different consultant for the rest of the scope so we don't currently have anything planned right at the moment they're going to go out to bid it was originally put out the bid I think in both towns are they going to um I know well I don't think it was you mean as I think they're two separate yeah no they are two separate ones each Town put out a request for a proposal right and it's actually I'm like I don't sure exactly what where we are in that process right now so yeah I'm not I genuinely don't know I'm

127not trying to be no no yeah um all right curious yeah I um I mean I not that it really falls under chairs report but I would be interested in you the one of them did have their Master planning yeah they've had some meetings and there there actually was an open house that yeah I saw that tonight while we were having this yeah all right so they and we were just trying to get the schools taken out from into public buildings as a the schools done white I'm sorry I was trying to get the the school several people were trying to get the school taken out from just being buried inside public buildings as a separate category but other than that it seems to be the process seems to be going fairly smoothly great um

128all right next up uh well actually anyone unless anyone has any questions for me um okay um topics for future meetings okay don't worry I'll come up with plenty of topics um all right at this moment I would uh unless anyone has anything else I would entertain emotion I move we adjourn at 8 44 pm all those in favor all right and the most fastest we are adjourned