001thank you good evening the uh finance and law subcommittee shall come to order uh start off with roll call Mr Vieira pres uh Mrs shavs is absent chairman Dello is present first item on the agenda we have the taau in area school to Career uh see attached memo um Mrs mon Mrs Monahan I'm sorry would you like to elaborate a little bit on this sure um thank you Dr Dello so here as attached to it you will see the task report for February 2025 and the invoice is dated for March 4th which is $12,500 again all the descriptions of what they provided is um on the backup and it is attached to the memo for your review thank you missions of the committee motion receive and place on file I'm going to second that on
002discussion so um I just uh went over the internship placement report for February and again I'm disappointed um with the placements we have um many of the placements within taunt public schools and specifically the notes say in partnership with Rebecca Raposa who is someone that we hired to uh lead the charge and I know her her Duties are are also expanded but um I don't know I mean again we have some uh some of the sectors that they're employed in um honeydew we doogs McDonald's I think we mentioned that before not no disrespect to these companies these small businesses but I think you know the intent was to get them aligned with some major corporations and uh other avenues that could lead them to a career maybe you know a career that they're interested in
003and could of course pursue the thought that came to mind uh with the the the train finally after so many years I think happening on March 24th next Monday at least it was announced at the city council meeting last night the official opening would be uh March 24th I think someone should be probably planning ahead you know we knew the train was coming uh maybe you know there should be some collaborations with some companies you know beyond time that the train service would be able to help and I'm not just saying going to the Boston Direction but we could go south to new Beth and far which there's some pretty big corporations down there too so I don't know if they if they thought about that uh you know what their plan is with that
004but you know what I'm seeing here is just uh you know something that we're paying for a lot of money that I don't think is fulfilling what the intent was meant to be at least what I voted on way back when so Mr superintendent no I I'll just say I think they're scheduled to come in and do a presentation in April yes yeah so the and those are all great questions uh that we can be asking about um know work to align students with internships that they're looking to seek careers in so they get that experiential exposure and then hopefully that leads to uh students want to attend University then he getting jobs in those respective Fields so again I think those are all great questions but I also know too part of this program
005part of the program is to provide students with those soft skills so that they do interview well for college and they do interview and they go out for those um those positions and and careers that they're that they're that they want to explore so those all great questions and I think when we have our presentation we can get all our questions answered great and hopefully set a path too to do more collaborative work with the MBTA and other organizations that you suggested right absolutely you know got Mr VI yeah no I I appreciate what they put together I do appreciate the work they're doing I guess the question would be you know are we getting the best return for uh what we're what we're putting into it are we making the best of it and
006is it the best um use of our resources so that's what we'll have to uh consider uh through the budget process and maybe look to see what we can do better as well that help support the program if we choose to continue to utilize it sure that's thank you Mr thank you okay so uh motion is on the floor all in favor I opposed eyes haveit next up we have the uh procurement card see attached memo uh Mrs Monahan this uh procurement card or PE card is for the months of January and Fe February in year to date again um colorcoded we have blue our our grant funded charges charges in green are the Department's revolving account charges in Orange are charged to the students the school's Student Activity and charges in red are charged
007to Food Services and black are charged to the fy2 school budget if you go ahead and look at it for month of January we have $ 14,327 and those are the description of charges and colorcoded in February we did um we charged $3,975 again for the items charged in colorcoded and if you look at the bottom of it of the chart of the memo you will see that beginning of the fiscal year uh July 1st through July 3 first you see the charges per the amounts by each um account and then you will see the January and February amounts again charging to the accounts and then the total so thus far we have charged a little over $131,000 to the PE card with various um charges into accounts great thank you Mr VI thank you
008Mr chairman I have a question on one of the expenses and looking at the the PE cards I I you know I know that we implemented this as a policy for it what I thought I voted on and what I'm seeing help me understand I see a charge for 3,300 .92 a Home Depot just curious if we know what the charge is for yes that those charges were for some um um ovens stove tops for the culinary arts uh program for their food services in the department yeah yeah actually Mr ver if I may I had a discussion with the superintendent earlier today regarding that same item and I'm still a little bit confused we we presently have I believe two cards uh or two ways of buying stuff with Home Depot three what's the
009third one superintendent so what we have is we have we have the sometimes remember I think we've discussed this too it's like the Home Depot Pro right so what happens is we have that for our custodial supplies so we we go directly with the vendor that is on the state bid list and we buy our custodial supplies through the vendor then we have um the home credit card that we have assigned to our grounds Keepers when they need something to go and get something for their grounds and they're the authorized users and then of course like the superintendent said we do have a third way and we always have is the PE card is an additional one okay I I mean again I think um I'm I'm kind of like on the same wavelength with
010Mr Vieira my intention when I brought this up because I'm the one that actually brought this up was to facilitate reimbursements for our employees and what I was seeing over and over again was they're going on business business trips right to conferences or professional development whatever they were going to and I would see reimbursement requests for airfare for hotels for mileage for per DMS whatever whatever those amounts were and I being in travel at the University uh kind of reformed the way it was done so that employees are not out uh sometimes a couple thousand dollars for extended time frame no blame on us for a delay no blame on the employee just the fact of life it takes time to to reimburse an employee with the receipts and so forth so you know I
011thought the intent of that was specifically for travel related items uh that you know last minute stuff that we couldn't uh procure through a purchase order or something to that effect uh I don't know if using it for Home Depot is the best use of it because we have two cards already and is it is it possible that we can we use those cards for anything else you mean the Home Depot well the Home Depot card currently has the names of our grounds Keepers so if you are hope now it doesn't happen that often that we have other Home Depot charges asking but yes there are times that the culinary Department may need something if the committee wants I can go ahead and request to put additional users on the account um but that is
012just another option is a PE card which yes it is used um for travel but also for things that we need quickly or that we don't you know we don't want to go they don't um get receive our POS and all of that right right we understand that and again you know I'll let Mr Vier wa thank you Mr chairman so so for example ovens they were pizza ovens is that correct they're regular stove top ovens stove top of okay so for example the ones that were ordered didn't fit the space so in a we need it right now situation they went with a PE card and purchased ones was it like was it circumstantial or is this just a way of some were broken some were broken and then others with the whole renovation
013of the kitchen and all we needed to get some stuff really quickly so that's why we did go I'm just trying to understand um sometimes through these conversations you want to see absolutely and Mr ver what your point is exactly okay I'm not saying we can't go to Home Depot and purchase the items that we need I'm just saying the method of payment is what I'm thinking isn't the proper way of doing it one of the other Home Depot cards maybe exactly PR we prefer we prefer to use purchase ERS predominant purchase ERS P cards as s superintendent minan mentioned some of these vendors don't accept purchase ERS right so the P card comes in handy then sure and if something needs to be purchased ASAP the P card does come does come in handy
014but um I think we've done a fairly good job making sure that whatever needs to hit a purchase order it's a purchase order so you get it on the warrant and then we cre up with this process to make sure that the committee is aware I think there was a conversation at a prior meeting that when you were seeing the monthly totals we didn't know what was being charged so if we need to one make sure that we're using the purchase orders predominantly and that we're using the P cards and the pro cards uh the way they the way they should be intended uh we will and if we need to provide more detail then we'll provide more detail too yeah I mean look at February I mean we have uh three flights to Denver
015we have uh three hotel reservations okay we have the Renaissance Hotel what was that is that Deca that Renaissance Hotel one 8,345 most likely it's a large one right so exactly you know that's that's the intent right that's the intent I thought I I'd want to see it with but there are other stuff I mean there's some local venders that fine that you know small amounts of dollars BJs and Tris and so forth and so on not a big deal but the one that's kind of sticking out is the Home Depot one and uh you know and and I've questioned that why do we have two home Depot cards if if anybody remembers and I was told whatever reason one was a pro the St suppies only gotta and on the know we need a
016mock we need a broom gotcha got sorry we need lumber we need concrete gotcha Okay so we've talked about this enough um what are the wishes of the committee it's um motion to receive and place on file I'll second that all in favor I opposed I have it next up we have the special education expenses in Services C attached memo Mrs Monahan back to you thank you again um these are for lions and this one is for the um for fy2 we budgeted $50,000 this is this memo is reflecting December charges which is just under $7,000 thus thus Year services rented to date is about $36,000 which leaves us a remaining balance of $13,900 in this line so the um if I may um absolutely the hold on the Lions Law Group right I think
017there's something in the warrant it's it's not reflected on this update this is the one that's reflected in the warrant that's why we have it on here whenever it's in the warrant December this is the December charges yes and it's on it's in this warrant today M okay all right that's what threw me off December and it's in this morning okay all right so uh what are the wishes of the committee motion to uh receive the memorandum dated March 14 2025 subject contractor Legal Services receive and place it on file second all in favor I opposed eyes have it thank you and last item is bills payable for fy2 in the amount of $64,500 wish of the committee motion to pay the bills in the amount of 64,500 $95. 93 I'll second on discussion Mr
018via thank you Mr chairman I have a question on page 7 in the amount of $ 57,5 um they are sub they are for the custom computers there's multiple different things there as you can see two of them are dated three of them are for e- rate so those are eate Funda bles um under a grant so those are to be licensed and technicians and then the other one um the technology maintenance is 32 hours of technician help2 hours okay um page 12 in the amount of $ 23,5 23,000 the Herz Furniture these are 100 desks and these um for the math department and this is um something that was in budget and um that had come in a little bit later but yes this was do you know where they're being utilized Taunton High
019School math department wonderful okay and on page 16 $26,845 22 New Bedford welding supplies this is for the Taunton High School um construction license program the construction um chapter 74 program so it's specifically supplies corre material y exactly tools Etc okay and then on page 19 $2,773 56 29,000 is that what you said 25 20 oh the school Outfitters these are classroom Furnishings um for eole this was all as you can see there it has all been charged to a grant and so that is the reason being is because of this grant we were afforded additional um supplies in classroom furniture for pole as you can see uh which support that um the grant is for oh absolutely those are all my questions thank you so much great Mr mon I just have a couple
020items so you know on page five you know here we are we have the Home Depot credit card services $22.32 correct you know just that's why I brought it up because I keep seeing those over and over and as you see there the maintenance of the grounds that's the grounds keeper card right thank you next up uh let's see page 11 so uh we still have we have gay and gay ,85 what what what are those items there these are considered to be public record requests and um some unfinished businesses that we were still working with um from Personnel um requests that we have we working with with the um legal okay great thank you you're welcome and the next one is page 16 oh that's the one Mr just asked about no welding supply
021and page 22 uh Boston College $8,250 that is also considered to be purchased through a um paid through a grant and that is called a Lech Lynch Leadership Academy dealing with the high school yeah we've seen that a couple times huh yes we have What's the total is that just grant dollars it's all Grant everything's great funded for that wonderful great okay uh motion has been seconded all in favor I I opposed eyes have it motion to adjourn thank you so much second all in favor I we are adjourned thank you all right uh good evening everyone and welcome I call the meeting to order if you could please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge ALG to the flag the United States of America and to the repblic for it stands one
022nation God indivisible Li and justice for all say can you see by the dawn early night what so proudly we held at the Twilight L gleaming who BR stripes and bright stars through the perous fire or the real parts we watch were so gly streaming and the rocket red glare the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there oh say do that star spangled then yet wave or the land of the free and the home of the brave Mrs Fagan will lead us in invocation Lord as we begin this session let us acknowledge your goodness and mercy and ask your blessings on all our deliberations we thank you for this opportunity to be of service to our community and to the young people entrusted to our care amen
023thank you want the roll call roll call please Mr Reus is absent Mrs shavs is absent Mrs palowski present Mrs Fagan is present Miss Santos present Mr Vieira present m Mr Laura present and chairman Dello present and mayor oon present thank you um approval of the minutes of March 5th 20 appr meeting for March 5th 2025 second motion and second if there's no comment uh all those in favor I opposed none opposed so voted there is no student advisory committee report this evening uh is there any public input this evening no public input thank you and so we will go right to e which is coaching for change presentation superintendent cabal thank you Madame mayor so it's an honor to welcome Maris and his team to the podium with in what has become an annual
024event where we get to hear about the work that is taking place in our schools uh being led by Maris his team and as well as teachers in the to Public Schools who have helped to carry out the program in our in our buildings and I also think it's important for the committee to hear uh the work and the impact that the work has on our students in support of our staff so Maris welcome and we look forward to hearing from you and your team this evening thank you um thank you for having us it's uh a great honor to be able to present I think before getting into the school committee presentation I did want to I think it would be remiss not to just take a moment and really celebrate uh Carol dhy
025she is a huge reason why we're here um she believed in me uh when coaching for change was just starting so not having her here is um it's a moment for me just being in this room cuz uh every kid that we serve will carry on her spirit um and her energy because she had a true love for for Taunton so I just wanted to start off by saying that um thank you uh oh okay so our mission Chris you're messing with me I thought I was doing that um so our our mission is empowering college students to ignite change for the Next Generation we started um we started coaching for change initially as an after school operator uh the pandemic hit and we've shifted our model being able to bring college kids in to
026schools to serve as Role Models mentors to really create a near peer mentoring model uh to improve academic achievement and helping young people um achieve the things that they feel like just believing themselves and knowing that they have someone that believes in them also and so how do we do this we initially partner with the school district and school we understand what the needs are what their desires are then we go out and recruit hire and match college students to work in the schools and then we train them and provide ongoing support so they can deliver the service service that the schools see um fit for for based on their their their needs our model is really focused in on one helping kids improve by providing academic and small group supports whether in the classro
027outside of it helping to improve Behavior through social emotional supports it could be through a lunchroom enrichment recess um and just making sure young people know that they have a network and someone at school that they can lean on and and work with and one of the added benefits to our model is by bringing college students into the school they try on the hat or the experience of being an educator and roughly 40% of our college students are going into a career in education so it's this really nice pipeline right direct service helping the school with operational needs from a from a student capacity standpoint and then also building a talent pipeline for the district and so the way that we're able to provide our services is we collaborate with principles to understand their needs
028that's where we're able to customize and tailor each individual support structure then we work with school staff to customize it based on the interventions because the staff is working with the kids on a day-to-day basis and then we Prov provide we we work through data to understand what's working what's not working what shifts need to be made so that we can have a powerful impact on young people um but not only just making it about feelings we're looking at data to make those adjustments as we go along it's kind of a continuous learning model and so I'm going to pass it over to my colleague Ally to talk a little bit more about how it's worked in in taon you all right cool I'm Ally I'm the program director at coaching for change it's nice
029to meet you all um so yeah I'm going to dive into Maris just gave kind of an overview of who we are generally and what we do and now I'm going to talk a little bit about what that looks like specifically in Taunton um so first step is a meeting between myself and our leadership team and Stephanie so that actually happened um last year in the spring and so what we try to do is reflect on the past um school year really take lessons learned from that and bring it into our vision and goals for the upcoming year um so we met last spring we talked about some big Lessons Learned I think the biggest shift um and and biggest learning coming out of last year was really the importance of making sure that our
030mentors come in with a specific student- centered goal um and then a schedule and responsibilities that align really well with that so that everything they're doing throughout the day when they're working with students is in service of the same aligned goal um after that Stephanie um discusses our vision and goals with the school leaders and we also um join that conversation so that happened with Bennett and fredman um at the beginning of the year last year um or well really actually guess last year and then this year again and then we get to work on recruiting our College mentors um so we were recruiting College mentors this fall who were interested in education and providing student supports and after we recruit and hire them we then train in behavior management oh I should be going
031along here sorry uh relationship building data driven mentoring so there's a lot of training and prep that happens um before programming even starts so that was happening in September early October um we make sure they complete a background check and are ready to go in schools by facilitating an onboarding meeting between all of the college mentors and the school sites at Bennett and fredman and at this point it's the beginning of October and we're ready for mentors to begin mentoring so this is all kind of the leadup and then I'll speak just to kind of who those mentors are or were this fall and continue some this spring um so in Taunton we have 10 total College mentors from Bridgewater State and Stonehill College each College Mentor Works eight hours per week um so totaling
032at about about 800 hours for the fall of 2024 eight of those um mentors are majoring in education related fields I think I'm actually here now yep um and are interested in going into education um four of those eight are ready to graduate this may which is really exciting so coming back to maris's pipeline um Peace we're really excited to have mentors who could be ready to work in tton schools very soon um and five are returners and so we refer to returners as mentors who come back for multiple program Cycles um that is a you know a great sign for us that retention because it means that one both the school and the mentors are having that reciprocal um relationship and that they're able to have a more consistent deeper relationship and rapport with
033the students that they're supporting at the school level um so really excited to see that here in Taunton I'm going to turn it over to Jaylen now who's going to talk more specifically about what programming looked like um in the fall at our school sites at Bennett and Freeman all right take it away jayen how's it going everybody hello uh any anybody uh have a team for March Madness no okay sorry trying to break the ice um so what is happening at Bennett right now so um we met with the uh assistant principal who is also the coach at Bennett and he quickly identified um trying to decrease the amount of time spent outside of the classroom with his students and then also the amount of elopements that were happening so a lot of times
034that the students especially the younger ones were leaving the classroom and obviously we don't want that because that's time away from um lesson planning learning and things like that so that was the challenge that was pres presented with us and the strategy that we used to identify our mentees where um they have what's called a school support team so they meet monthly to identify students that um might be going under their radar or might need some additional support and might be a great fit to have a mentor um so uh Stephen and his team were were able to identify some of those students and that's what the that's the case loow that the mentors have at Bennett right now is students that have a high percent in allotments um out of class time and um
035things like that so we were able to pair them uh with those students all right and then for mentoring intervention so what our mentors do within the classroom so we actually have a mentor name is Megan she's been in the same classroom the last three semesters which has been super beneficial um just for the simple fact of familiarity um within the teacher that's in that classroom so she understands the dynamic of what the teacher is trying to do how she wants to teach how she likes to teach um things like that so they got kind of built that Rapport and that strong relationship um within each other just off of Just time being spent inside that that same classroom um the other thing that the mentors are doing specifically to support our students are helping
036them with math and literacy so they're being proactive when it comes to that um so that's walking down the desk lines um of the students and just making sure that everybody we asking everybody if they need any help they know that they the mentors are there for their help and their support um they're facilitating small groups and oneon-one so this is allowing the teacher and the teachers um that are mentors in their classrooms with um kind of really focusing and honing in on their curriculum and their what their their lesson plan is for the day um and then that way there's not really as much distraction because we have our mentors there to kind of alleviate some of that that stress and some of that time that the teacher does has to stop and and
037do those redirections so there's a lot of less of that because of our mentors and then outside of the classroom um they do support in the lunchroom and at recess so for L the lunchroom support it's more of like um that's really when you can kind of get to get to know your mentee and their personality because it's a different Dynamic than the classroom so you can have those conversations what they like to do outside this outside of school their different sports they like to play and things like that and um we've noticed that with that and those type of conversations that just builds a relationship that much stronger um getting to know the mentee and it also allows the men to realize like hey this person actually really cares for me outside of the
038classroom and and and really Believes In Me In what I like to do and going on Recess Recess is more um it's not the easiest in elementary school for recess especially if um just the kids are are playing with each other and there's not really any um structure and facilitation so what our mentors do is we kind of um have them facilitate the games and structure the game so that way one it's inclusion um everybody's participating everybody feels like they can participate and have a good time and there's not really that um back and forth with the with the students because of there's rules in place and things like that it's more structured and so for our results for Bennett um so we have 20 students that received intensive target supp targeted support 55 students
039who received General support across the classrooms and lunchroom 75 students that were served and then we had 100% student attendance uh when College mentors were present at Bennett um I we did have a teacher unfortunately she can't she couldn't make it today she was under the weather her name was is Miss Pereira she is a kindergarten teacher and she is thank you she is actually the teacher that um Megan's in that classroom so the the mentor that's been with us the last three semesters in that same room with her so if you don't mind I'm just going to read um her State her statement that she sent us um to share good evening my name is Kendra Pereira this is my nth year teaching in Taunton Public Schools I currently teach at Bennett Elementary as
040a regular education teacher in a kindergarten inclusion classroom I previously taught at hopwell elementary school and Mahi Elementary School I was asked to come tonight to a to talk about the impact that coaching for change has made from my students and my instinctive answer was going to be no the audience I feel more most comfortable talking in front of are five and six-year-olds but I felt an obligation to my students and the truly amazing college students who have helped my class grow this year if you have ever been in a kindergarten classroom at the beginning of the year you understand the struggle the first few days weeks and months my classroom has varying needs differences and abilities that require many different support staff the two wonderful women who enriched my classroom each week were truly
041angels on Earth Miss Gabby came two days a week and Miss Meg came two days a week during the fall semester with their help I was able to implement small group instruction and let me tell you it's quite impressive to watch five 5-year-olds transition between groups Miss Gabby and miss EG formed relationships with every single child in the classroom they had the flexibility to sit in extra 5 minutes and listen to weekend stories dreams and random thoughts that popped in heads having the ability to help having this ability helped my children to feel they were heard as individuals a little bit more the relationship between Miss Meg and Miss Gabby helped my kids trans transition to public full day kindergarten which for for many children is hard we are fortunate enough to have Miss Meg
042continue K2 this semester as well she continues to be a wonderful ful role model and positive voice um for my children to go when they when they need a little bit extra love thank you for allowing me to speak tonight about the wonderful college students who have graced my classroom this school this school year they truly have made an impact on me and my students and I'm going to shift it over from Bennett to Freedman now so um a little bit different um challenge when we were talking about Freedman compared to Bennett now uh I met with Riley one of the counselors at Freedman and Sarah Buckley who was the principal at fredman um before the school year had started and we um quickly identified that they wanted to decrease the behavior um the the
043behavior referrals um within fifth sixth and seventh grade students how were the menti how the M's identified with this um similar to Bennett they have um School support team but Sarah actually um right away as soon as we started talking um there was multiple students that had came to to mind already that um she quickly identified that would be a great fit to have some mentors with them and Riley did the same and for our strategy at Freedman so our strategy at Freedman we have mentors almost similar to similar to a Bennett where they're in the classroom with them they're walking down the desk lines and making sure that everybody is being supported um there's some redirection if needed um they're facilitating small groups and one-on ones and again allowing the teacher to fully focus
044in on what they're they're supposed to be doing doing and what they need to do at that time so for the result the results at Freedman we had five student students received targeted support 100 students received General support across the classrooms and lunchroom and then we are we are currently working on pulling student data for attendance in program at this time I want to call up Riley the our coach for Freedman um to kind of give you a more painted picture of what it looks like on the ground okay I don't think so all right yeah uh good evening my name is Riley suvin a school counselor over at Freeman uh just to give you a little background on my role of coaching for change um I've been with them for quite some time now
045uh I started with the after school component and then it shifted to the in school component so I've been there all along um so I do meet with the mentors on a regular basis um and coaching for change has done an except exceptional job you know identifying the mentors to work with our students um I also meet with the with the mentors often and we create a a success plan for them and go over it frequently um and I just want to speak upon briefly you know the impact of coaching for change and what I've seen um once again they've done a great job identifying the mentors but the mentors have done such a good job in connecting with these students building rapports and also helping out classroom you know classroom wide with other students
046as well but we did Target and identify you know a certain amount of students for this past semester and I did see a change with these students as far as them wanting to come to school you know and wanting to meet with the mentors you know I think it gave them another opportunity to connect with someone outside of another Pier or a teacher they had these mentors that they could connect with and um I've saw the change in a lot of the students and how they acted and you know as you can see the referrals went down and it was a positive impact as far as their behavior and their success in school um and now I want to pass it off to Robin who's one of the mentors at Freeman hi I'm Robin uh
047I'm a junior at Wheaten College I was not at fredman in the fall because I was studying abroad um but I was there the previous entire year and I was there I'm there again now um and I've been working with the fifth graders which I really enjoy doing um when I started at coaching for change my the second semester of my freshman year I worked in Brockton with 10th graders and then I switched to working at Freedman which is a little bit closer for me with the fifth graders and that helped me figure out that I wanted to do elementary education instead of secondary education um and at fredman um last year we weren't working with spefic specific students yet so I was just in the classroom um but I talked to the teachers I
048was working with I was like hey who do you think needs a little extra help and so there were two or three kids in each class that I was focusing my attention on um this semester I'm working with specific students who have been having behavioral issues and it was a little bit slower going than previous ly um but I've had several great class periods with each of my students where you know they've been able to sit down and focus and my presence redirecting and um helping them refocus if they get distracted by a classmate or something has helped them okay um so we are getting to close out I'm going to talk through briefly um some of our internal metrics that we use to monitor program success um specifically as it relates to taau in
049so the first is our coach satisfaction score that's um based on survey data that we get from our coaches and School staff um so we had 100% satisfaction which is great to see um our coach engagement score measures how committed our school staff are to our program um and how strongly they they feel like our program contributes to their leadership development um and so that's something that we associate with their retention and also just acknowledging that um a lot of the people who are put into the coach role for coaching for change so that school staff member is somebody that the principal um really values in terms of retention and wants to give some experience with with some type of leadership role so whether they might be interested in instructional leadership or coaching whatever it
050might be this is a a first at that with that um so that was our coach engagement score our partnership score assesses um our school and district attendance at Key meetings site visits survey submission um student data submission and so that number really tells us um how how much important data we're getting back and if we're meeting our goals that help us to have a successful program um next is our coach returner rate so this is from this p fall to this spring um both our coaches are returning for the spring from the fall we're actually in our second school year with both of these coaches which is great for continuity of programming um and then this last these last two metrics here are we spoke briefly about them already but they're about our College
051Mentor returner rate so 60% of our College mentors returned from Fall to this spring um and we actually have three College mentors who worked three or more semesters with Taunton um and so we're just we're noticing that Taunton is a really great place for mentorship and it's a place where our mentors just want to keep coming back so we thank you for that and I'll have Maris close us out and so I think that a lot of what we've learned is that there's really three areas being able to provide direct service to students being able to help improve operational capacity for school buildings and then also building a talent pipeline those are the three areas that we have seen and heard back from school school leaders uh and teachers we're adding the most value within
052the buildings um that we're partnering with so just leaving it open for some Q&A all right well thank you Maris and your team for presenting tonight uh and really educating us more about your program I think everyone is familiar with it and the good work that you all do here in the city of Taunton so we appreciate that uh I will open up to committee members if they have any comments or questions your presentation was quite thorough so that's always appreciated Mr Laura thank you Madame mayor most interesting uh it's another resource to give kids all the benefits and all of the uh techniques and needs for them to excel the program um what is your future in t with your program as far as expanding out to other schools and in this in the
053taught in school system so this is right around the time we begin having the conversation with uh Dr cabal and his team about what that could look like within the district um we would love to be able to grow within the district to go into more schools um because we've taken a lot of valuable feedback from our school Partners to really design and customize the experience um so that it benefits because not every school is exactly the same um and so that's our our goal and desire is to grow um and we'll have to continue having the conversations uh to to know what that looks like thank you I noticed that that the students that are coming out from Bridgewater and ston Hill and I believe you came from weaton college um but others are
054you searching out to other schools to see if there's the interest there amongst the highered yes um so our College Partners in the Southeast region are uh Roger Williams University which is in R Island you Dartmouth um we've partnered or gotten a couple of students from um Bristol Community College um Bridgewater State Stonehill and Wheaten are the core uh schools that that are supporting the Southeast region for us in Taunton thank you very interesting thank you again okay Mr palowski uh thank you Maris and and team for the great presentation um question for you do we know have we have we had any coaching for change alumni that we've actually hired into ton public schools yet over the years because so okay what's that okay awesome no that that that's great because I think that's
055one of the one of the strong points that you're trying to build a you know schoolto School Pipeline and and hope that we're energizing These Kids introducing them maton public schools and if we can get them back in there uh as you know teachers guidance counsels what have you I think that that's awesome so I think that'd be a really cool thing for you guys to track and present in future presentations and hey maybe bring some of those folks in to be part of the presentation but uh awesome really appreciate what you guys do thank you thank you okay Dro thank you mayor thank you uh Maris for coming in and your team I I just could you go to slide 13 for me for a second please all right just tell me when to
056stop uh oh okay it's uh results at Bennett at Bennett got it okay there we go right there so help me help me explain had 100% student attendance when College Mentor was present so the mentors are not there every day nope okay what does that mean they know they're coming in on that day so they're coming into school that's a good assumption we can make that's right like we're saying that they're H our College mentors are having an effect on their desire to want to come to school that's what right because we can't say on days off whether or not they're coming or not but when they are when our college students are there their students or case load is showing up okay so that's great now if you can go to results at fredman
057please uh right there so you're working on pull pulling student data for attendants but yet there's only five students here but have Ben you had 20 why is that yeah so this um this student case load right here are this five specific students who are receiving targeted support at fredman and so there's only there's only five that we're collecting data for right now right at at Bennett you have 20 students received intensive yes targeted support and you have 100% student attendance yeah I think the difference so the difference in the way our programming is structured at Bennett and fredman is our mentors focus on one classroom um at Bennett and so there's multiple mentors who are serving you know like some do two days a week but they're different two days and so they're focused
058on one classroom of 20 kids in that classroom whereas at fredman they're following different individual students okay still a little confused but I think it's Middle School it's like the Middle School versus Elementary School model that's the difference there okay uh and yeah to to I think what you're getting at is like five students here 20 students there why is it different here I think part of what we're recognizing is that our focus at Freedman was not necessarily attendance our Focus was on behavior and elments and so in trying to get data for this we're still trying to pull it and gather it right um because there are a lot of other competing elements and challenges that are happening I I mean this is not it's not being critical I'm just saying if you have
059the secret sauce to bring in 100% attendance because we sit through school Improvement plans we had one tonight and we're we're we're in the 90s you know 92 93 uh 94s uh but I'd like to be at 100% so if you have that secret sauce we want it right so that's that's what I'm trying to emphasize here uh you know what what next uh you know it's it's all results driven we know that you know it's data driven um I don't know I mean do we need to expand this to get 100% student attendance and how do we do it and do we take that and move with it going forward that's just my thought in the back of my mind sitting through a school Improvement plan that chairman fski LED earlier today so that's
060my thoughts thank you so much for being here thank you mayor you're welcome all right if there's nothing further did you want to make another comment sure we have the teachers um letter here I know that wasn't submitted as part of the packet just because it was I will take it right there please just a quick question if I may very brief question uh the young lady from Wheaten College I I'm sorry but your name I Rob Robin so uh tell us a little bit about your experience you were gearing yourself for secondary education correct was that your intent to get certified in so when I got to college I wasn't sure if I wanted to do I knew I wanted to do education but I wasn't sure if I wanted to do secondary or
061Elementary um and I started with coaching for change at the end of the second semester of my freshman year and I got to experience being in a classroom with high school age students and then the following fall I got to experience being in a classroom with Elementary aged students their fifth graders um Freedman and I just found that I enjoyed working with the younger kids more um so I'm majoring in elementary well I I'm glad you stated that because see that opportunity enabled you to make a decision yes where do I want to land and this is it for me yes so that's a great experience yeah and I'm a lot more with my connections at coaching for change I'm much more likely to stay in the area when I graduate rather than I'm from
062Pittsburgh rather than going back home I'm much more likely to stay than I would be without coaching for change great experience thank you thank you m all right all right excellent well thank you so much for joining us this evening uh superintendent cabala you all set no I just want to say uh thank you for the presentation uh I appreciate how you're able to customize the program to fit the needs of the principal to fit the needs of the school and I just want to say to your student Mentor from Pittsburgh you don't have a quarterback yet in Pittsburgh we have a quarterback in New England so I highly encourage you to stay Thank you you're welcome okay so if everybody's ready we will move on to administrative business and the first item is Taunton
063Public Schools Staffing update I just happy to report that we have two remaining vacant positions in the tea we had 99% staffed as a district wow excellent move to accept report second motion and second to accept the report all those in favor I opposed none opposed so voted good night and then next is a field trip request I believe this was the field trip that was rescheduled that was in the packet at the last meeting Mr Mar so this trip is scheduled for June of 2026 okay and does it need approval this evening uh at this point just preliminary approval because it's well with uh well beyond the one year that's just an update because I think last time there was some information that wasn't complete there was a couple of questions Mr bar yes
064um the two advisers Ellie Golder and Christopher gring submitted a memo to the school committee saying due to extenda circumstances is they were going to delay the field trip to June and it was the recommendation of the chairperson to update the entire packet to reflect those June dates correct and that is what the high school advisers have done this evening okay thank you Mr bar so is this just informational and there will not be a vote or do you need it preliminary motion to approve is presented as a preliminary second motion and second on discussion on discussion thank you mayor so again if we can tie in that 90day WI window uh and I I'm sorry the 120-day window and the 90-day window updates prior to departure that'll be part of the motion okay motion
065to accept as stated with the uh requests by Dr D um and that was seconded yes motion second all those in favor I opposed none opposed so voted G subcommittee reports curriculum subcommittee Miss Santos uh yes so um uh the subcommittee met yesterday um with um Dr Harrison Miss blenau and a few others to discuss um upcoming changes to the competent competency determin determinations and um graduation requirements um but I will have uh a more thorough report on the meeting of April 2nd okay thank you thank you High School subcommittee Mr palowski uh thank you Madame mayor uh this afternoon uh we convened a meeting of the high school subcommittee the topic of the subcommittee was the Parker Middle School school Improvement plan presented by principal Mike Byron um they focused on uh their four
066major goals um so goal number one is uh a writing goal and the goal is to double the amount of perfect essays on the spring mcast exam uh two years ago when they took took the exam they had zero perfect essays last year they had 10 so the goal is to get up to 20 so that's that's quite an impressive increase and it goes to it it's showing the fruits of they are in the third year of the districtwide writing initiative uh they're they're they're finding it very effective and it is a um you know K through 12 initiative where all the elementary schools all the middle schools are collaborating uh scaffolding these um Ela skills skills through the elementary so that when the kids enter the middle school they're already they're already learn they're
067already uh working on that same initiative building into their uh Middle School years um they've been creating common writing prompts um and they have a districtwide student tracker in which they're able to track the progress of each students goal number two uh also related to writing um they're they're aiming to reduce the amount of blank entries in the spring mcast exam so last year there were 31 uh stud 31 blank entries they're trying to get that down to 15 and the way they're doing this is they're trying to identify the students who left uh blank answers on mcast so the two goals are the first goal is aimed towards um their their higher achieving students and helping them to achieve more the second goal is more towards the kids who are struggling the most and
068trying to bring them up so it's a very comprehensive uh set of goals towards writing goal number three is to have uh complete implementation of the mindup social emotional learning curriculum throughout uh the school um they're they're holding the Educators accountable for implementing this uh curriculum with Fidelity and they're doing this through a schedule um in which uh each each teacher is implementing in their classroom um they utilizing three of their administrative interns that they've had this year um to do a lot of work on the mind with the mindup curriculum and their restorative practices they're so they're doing some Innovative work with Saturday detention after school detention um having like collaborative uh meetings with the children to to talk about what went wrong you know rather than just punishing them so uh really impressive
069work they're doing there and then the fourth goal what they're most proud of is is attend so they've decreased their um chronic absenteeism from in 2024 it was 22.7% they're now down to 19.4% uh with goal of getting below 18.8% by the end of the year um so they're very very proud of that work and their attendance rate has gone from 92.9 in 2024 up to 93.7 in uh 2025 so really great work uh lots of communication out to the parents they're really working on trying to address the root cause why are kids not coming to school and if they can fix that they're getting kids to come in school so really ties in nicely with the work that we're hearing from coaching for change how do we find that secret sauce sounds like Parker
070has some of that so we want to share that secret sauce throughout the the district um you know additionally uh principal Byron really uh applauded the efforts of himself and the principles at the other two middle schools they really collaborate they try to share best practices they want to make sure that if kids are achieving at Parker they're also achieving at Martin and fredman so it's really great to see uh that that collaboration there um Parker middle school has 527 students so pretty tight for space really uh just about at the uh the the limit of what they can handle um their their population is um 79.2% High needs 72.0% low income uh they have a transient population they got a lot of uh plus or minus 100 students per year coming and going uh
071they have a uh fully staffed newcomer program and they're increasing their after school um activities so um you know Mr Byron touted the benefits of his proximity to Taunton High School it allows him to uh collaborate with Folks at the high school um he he mentioned a story of working with one of his seventh graders trying to get them interested in the the junior Roc walking over the kid to Taunton High School collaborating with some folks so uh you know really good work and then uh the last point that principal Byron made was last year the three middle schools got together had a uh Citywide seventh grade end of thee dance participation from all three schools so a collaborative effort from the administrations from all three schools getting together very successful good time for all
072the kids um and that is it thank you thank you Mr ploski for a motion move approval acceptance of the report made by the chairman motion to accept the report seconded all those in favor I opposed none opposed so voted and lastly we have finance and law Dr Dello thank you mayor uh earli this evening finance and law subcommittee met the president were Mr Vieira and myself as chairman uh first uh item with the tart area school to Career because they appear in our warrant we have asked for a backup of what's going on with the program uh in today's packet they presented us with a update to February placements and there was much discussion out of the 30 placements uh 50% 15 were within Tau Public Schools so uh I'm very concerned with the
073ongoing uh trajectory of uh this uh outside uh provider and uh was brought up you know with the uh train coming I know the mayor announced it last night we had Jean Fox there with the grand opening on March 24th that they could be a little bit more creative outside the box and use the train uh not only just to Boston but to new Beford and Fall River because there's plenty of industry down there too that could align with our student interest so I was hoping that they could probably be a little bit more aggressive with that but anyway uh the report was presented and discussion as I just mentioned uh the next item uh was the procurement uh card um uh we were presented with a a memo there were various charges as outlined
074in the memo from assistant superintendent monan uh one concern that came up by myself and Mr Vieira was a charge to Home Depot on the amount of $3,390 $3,392 cents questioning why uh we are using the P card for Home Depot purchases instead of the two Home Depot cards we presently have on access to and it was explained that one is specific to the grounds the other one is specific to supplies custodial supplies and that this was an emergency purchase uh but I think going forward we're going to better entertain more usage of the two Home Depot cards for other purchases besides uh the grounds and the maintenance folks uh there were some other items that I thought were great because that was the intent of the PE card was flights to Denver uh Deca
075reservations at a hotel in Boston I believe and other hotel reservations and other small charges so again discussion was mostly focused around the Home Depot purchase uh the next item was the special education expense Services uh again we're just provided with an update of the charges that were rendered for December that appeared in on today's warrant and we're still at a balance left for special education student services related matters in excess of 13,000 to actually 13, 90110 so I don't see an issue yet uh we are now approaching into April and the school year has got a few more months so I think we're going to be okay but we'll have to um uh you know deal with the problem if you need to uh supplement the budget and the last item was bills payable
076in the amount of FY 25 for fi25 the amount of $64,500 there were numerous questions asked uh concerning some of the charges uh basically they were all answered uh nothing out of the ordinary but for our edification of you know what that was all about that was voted unanimously by the two members and that concludes the report thank you Dr Mo to accept the report second Motion in second to accept the report all those in favor I opposed none oppos so voted there is no new business on the agenda may I Dr so uh there will be new business on the next uh school committee meeting of April 2nd I was approached by a Community member regarding the launch of the Solar School um uh panel solar panels that there was quite contentious here if
077you all recall one night and that there was some statements made by certain folks on related to the city regarding uh the battery uh issue that we no longer have a battery on property because there was a a savings and that the city and School District removed the battery so uh my recollection after speaking to superintendent cabal uh I don't think that was ever brought up uh as far as removing a battery as a matter of fact I brought much literature along with Mr Vieira regarding the safety hazards of battery storage uh on school property so uh I I just want to clear the air I I'll I'll be asking the superintendent to provide a report on where the battery thing came in and so forth and there were some also some some statements regarding
078the tmlp as you all know I serve as a tmlp commissioner and I had to iron that out at yesterday's meeting and I was provided some backup regarding uh those issues so uh I think on the next meeting we'll have a better understanding of what actually transpired with the Chamberlain solar project where it started and where we ended up so that's so are you referring that to the next yes it is yes so just giving everybody a heads up that we will be doing that thank you mayor you're welcome um unin unfinished B do we have something else okay unfinished business uh action item update any business on that okay and then we have scheduled executive session and we will just need someone to make that motion to go into executive session I was so
079M that and the could you just read it Lou on uh I'm sorry Mr Laura yes uh executive session motion to go into executive session to discuss security protocols pursuant to exemption 4 of the general laws chapter 38-21 item 4 and to reconvene in Open Session can I get a second second motion and second to go into executive session all those in favor roll call do you need a roll okay roll call please um oh mrki yes Mrs vean votes yes M Santos yes Mr via yes Mr Laura yes chairman Dello yes okay may uh motion passes so that'll be fine thank you hey look you got to make the Motions you got all right we are um back from executive session no votes were taken in executive session and I would ask for a
080motion to come out of executive session so moved we need a roll call on that we need second second on roll call please Mr palowski yes Mrs Fagen votes yes Miss Santos yes Mr VI Mr VI say I didn't hear you sorry that's okay happens to the yes okay uh Dr Deo yes and mayor o conell all right great we're all set out of executive session and we continue on in the agenda 2K press time there is no press here this evening so I would ask for a motion to I would second motion motion second toour all those in favor oppos none opposed so voted thank you everyone