School Committee Meeting - 2/26/2026

001Okay. Uh, good evening, Hollist, and welcome to the February 26th uh, meeting of the Hollist School Committee. Um, I'm going to call things to order and we will get set. Um, I think we'll start with our consent agenda. Um, I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. >> Second. >> All in favor? houses and we will move right on to report from student representatives. >> So this Sunday, theater 370 is performing their very own written and directed show relevance educational theater guild festival competition and they hope to advance to the semi-final round and then auditions for their spring play the Laram Project are next Thursday and Friday. Uh yesterday the Medway Hollis and Norton co-op girls alpine ski team including Hollston's Maggie Morton won the alpine ski state championship and over break the

002boys and girls track teams competed in the D4 state championships where the girls team finished in a strong fifth place. Um numerous school records on both sides were taken down and Lucy Downin became the D4 state champ in the mile as a freshman. Now Lucy Downin is individual individually qualified to compete at the New Balance Nationals meet in March in addition to the girls 4x800 team. To continue with sports, the varsity boys hockey team had their second round playoff game today and suffered a hard-fought loss against Pemroke, but still have lots to be happy about after their exciting win against Nshoba Valley Tech last night in the first round. And then the boys varsity basketball team is going up against Burlington tomorrow and hopes to advance into the second round of the playoffs. And then

003finally, wrestling has also had a busy last two weeks at their sectionals competition here. They placed third, had three individual champs, and sent eight boys and two girls to the D3 states state meet the following week. And then at that meet, they put up a great effort coming only two and a half points shy of the team title. And then individually, Henry Miguel became for the second time in a row state champion. And seven out of the 10 athletes placed. And then all seven of those athletes have moved on to the All States um championship this weekend. Uh our two regional student advisory council representatives uh have been hard at work with other Central Mass reps researching the effects of different lengths of unbroken learning time in school. uh they have begun the process of

004collecting data from schools and administrators to hopefully begin drafting a plan for presentation to uh DS de in the coming months. And then to close, so students are concerned about going to the June 26th date, but are very open to finding solutions, whether that be professional development days or other holidays. Um, specifically, many students have expressed concerns over jobs because they begin around the time of June 26th, and it is simply not feasible for many to have to be able to take finals on the 24th and 25th when they already have commitments to to jobs in other states and things like that. That is all. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Um, let's see. School committee individual comments, Frank. >> Yeah. No. Um just quickly there we survived the snow total dead 26 so that

005um but um you know really the resiliency of the town too. Really appreciate all the town resources. I know streets are still being cleaned if you look at other towns. I've heard roads haven't been even touched yet which is wild to think about but everyone came together and we we got back to school on Wednesday. So appreciate everyone who stepped in and helped there. I just want to thank the number of people who have reached out regarding the school calendar. I know there are lots of emotions and feelings about it, but we got a lot of emails. There's a lot of talk about it and um I'm looking forward to the conversation tonight because I know there's a lot of stuff going on. >> Uh no comment from me. >> Oh, no. Good. Thank you.

006>> No additional comment. And I'm set. Um do we have any public comment? No. Is there any public comment on Zoom? If you can raise your hand if No. Nope. Okay. So, we can move right on to our midyear goals update. >> That's car. >> You're the first one. So, we're going to start with doing a quick district update. Um, but I really want to dedicate most of this time for the principles to share because really the midyear is about trying to present data and where we are in the goal process midyear. So, I'm going to be very brief and then hand off to principal list and principal Manning and then we'll hand off again to principal Kim and Dr. Slingy. So, as you know, um, we're always aligned to our strategic plan. This will

007be, this is our fourth year of our strategic plan, and next year will be year five, and I imagine that the district will be starting to engage in the process of considering another three to five year plan with our mission and vision. I've been very clear in all of our work, our budget, our PD, and all of our goals have been aligned to the strategic initiatives of our building bridges together strategic plan. You'll see on these links for each um of the lead slides. If you want to delve deeper, there's a link to each school and then the district and what the the multiple 33 um initiatives, the specifics for each of those because we're only going to hit some of the key things for this conversation tonight, but feel free to delve into those

008at the links as well. So under archwan communication practices at the district level and you'll see anything we discuss districtwide then the principles will address more specifically at their building. We've been still continuing to work on updating as we've done curriculum reviews and have had um curriculum resources change. That means we have to go back to the drawing board on stage one and update of all all of those. And stage two is continuing and um all that work every time we align a new resource has to be looked at year to year. The curriculum team is meeting horizontally and vertically regularly. We've done a lot of work on our website to help support our multilingual learners related to the resources for families. The kindergarten night also that's a night where we've really tried to work

009to expand how we're reaching all diverse learners and expanding resources for those nights. And then we're working on cyber security districtwide as you know a lot of districts and we've been u with power school we've seen a lot of cyber security breaches. So um Mr. Mloud has been working very closely to try to get all of our district. He's trained a lot of par professionals. We'll do additional training with our teachers as well. Under Arch 2, social emotional well-being. As you know, we've spent this year, we talked about our goals really focusing on MTSS tier one, multi-tered systems of support. And all of the work we've done as a leadership team this year has been aligned to that. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later. Um you'll see that we're really delving

010into tier two and three, but we're going back to tier one consistently to try to really align that work. And that's going to impact some of the work that we're doing at the district level for our DECAP and our data team. Absenteeism continues to be something that we're chronically working on. As you know, we've seen some improvements in that area and the schools will talk about that a little bit more, but that task force has really worked to expand and try to get kids back in school and help them support with their social emotional well-being. We've also been working on looking at an equity lens for all the Metro West um surveys and aligning all the work that we're doing with mood check and so forth. And that also aligns with our work with PBIS

011and ruler. They were all aligned to help support students in tier one as well. Under Arch 3, teaching and learning, you heard us talk a ton about the data dashboard. That's really become an incredible tool districtwide, but we're trying to expand that. We didn't want to overwhelm teachers with that. Um, we started with giving it out to curriculum leaders and all of the um administrators. We didn't want it to seem like more work for the teachers to go through this, but it's a really helpful tool for them to be able to look at their students in real time when we give assessments. So we are going to expand that as a pilot to miller teachers not expecting them to automatically but they can voluntarily look at that and then as more and more people get

012comfortable using that tool we imagine we'll be able to roll that out to the other buildings as well. And then if you look at central admin team has really looked at some of our meetings we we've actually changed our strategy so that every other meeting with the central team we're actually looking at data together that had not been something we were fitting in and we've decided we're doing um pro problem solving protocols together. So each of the leaders at central office had presented a different problem and then we'll turn back to those a second time throughout the year. That's been a nice change this year to really dive into data as a leadership team together. And again I talked about PD already aligning all of that work with our MTSS work. You'll see you know

013that's a common theme every time we do PD days and Joanie presents on that regularly and the visionary graduate has really been immersed into the curriculum review process as well. under talent and resources. Um I'm working with our HR department to we've drafted a hiring manual. Uh we really want to make sure we're trying to be more consistent with the hiring and retention and mentoring process. So we're really working to try to streamline that process and have that consistent with all the buildings. Everybody does it a little bit differently. We want to make sure from an equity lens that we're really trying to bring diversity into district and try to follow a consistent process with that. So that'll be rolled out by the end of the year. Dr. Jordan and the team has done a

014lot with capital improvements and we've been working with the town manager. As you know, one of those will be a big discussion hopefully to try to get the MSBA feasibility study on for a spring town meeting. And then in addition, we're working on infrastructure at Rams and the high school. And we're also working on our learning walk process and trying to update that year to year. We have another one coming up that we just had to cancel because of weather at the high school. So, we'll be rescheduling that and we'll have updates on that in the future. So, this is where I wanted to talk about just the real work that the leadership team has been um dedicated to this year. We really did a team professional goal that I shared with you at the

015be beginning of the year around mass multi-tered systems of support and particularly tier one and really looking at what happens in the general classroom before we go into tier 2 and tier three interventions. We also want to look at what we can do with our decap district curriculum accommodation plan because a lot of the accommodations and modifications that we can give students within a decap are general ed accommodations. We don't necessarily have to write a 504 or special ed for plans for students, every child to be entitled to certain things under our DECAP. So, we're working to rewrite that as a team and then roll that out with staff so that they understand that these are not like additional time for students. You don't need to be on an IEP or you don't need to

016be on a 504 to get additional time. That's just good practice. So, I think trying to streamline that and avoid having to write plans for students that may just need a little something extra that we can do in general ed in tier one. And with that, Dr. Slaney, um, assistant principal Marorrow, assistant principal Taylor, and the assistant principal Kif attended a datawise workshop. I attached a link there if you want to learn more about that. It's through Harvard. Um, I did this training many years ago. It's it's continued to refine and review and been updated and I know Miss Marorrow has done this training and some others. It's a three-day very rigorous training and I really appreciate that the four of them went to this training and gave up the time. um we tried to

017support them in the building, but it's a lot of work and they have a lot of projects to do in between um all of these meetings and then they'll receive coaching throughout the year and they'll continue to work on a problem practice together and then they're coming to our leadership meetings, our monthly meetings with the full team and they're presenting how we can move some of this data work as a district aligning again with our MTSS work in tier one and then also making sure that the decap aligns with that. So this is really something as as a leadership team we've dedicated this year to because this work will live on regardless of what strategic plan or visions you move forward with in the future. And with that I'm going to hand off to principal

018list and again there's a link there for his specific action steps that and the progress they've made midyear at the high school if you want to look into that but he's going to start with his slides. So there is the first one was a link to all of the action steps, the goals and action steps. Um here's some overview of um uh focused in on some of the the goals that we have this year. Um and just to remind everybody, a lot of our goals at the high school level stem from our NEAS visit. We're actually in year 10 of our dennial cycle. Um at the end of March, we'll have a a visit from NIASK um to talk about um how we've done through our goals. And the the hope with the ask is

019to help sort of shape sort of the strategic plan for the high school. Um shape how we move our work forward over the next 10 years. Um and we'll start working on that um with them at the end of March when they come to visit. They they come in, they will talk to um different teacher groups, they'll talk to students um and they look at um how we progressed. Um so this is some good practice for me. Um so um you know just looking at these here again looking at a lot of ours again have to do with how we support um our our most struggling students our high need students how we build in tiered supports for our students um how we bring that supports as Dr. Kusker said into the classroom um and

020how we create a a positive school culture for our kids and our teachers. So that that's a lot of what's going on here and and a lot of that shift is going on with the with the new school schedule which I'll talk about um in a minute. So >> um in terms of uh you know for all of us we keep talking about attendance um one of the things that our schedule gives us if you look at that bottom chart there is we get because of the block schedule we get a snapshot into like actual grades at the mid year um and looking at how students are doing overall and you can pretty much see there that that nice you know correlation between attendance and student success in their classes. Um if you dive deeper

021into that each one you can start to see that being in school matters. Um and so we really have had a a focus on that this you know last year and the year before and this year. Um also looking at our data this year what we noticed is that we looked at our chronically absent students um that more than half of them are um they are excused absences. So um when you look at our seniors and how many of them there are there's a ton of college visits. when you look at um you know our our junior and sophomores and freshman a lot of excused absences for doctors and all that and so we're seeing more of that than we are of students who are just missing and we have no idea why they were

022absent so it was actually a good sign to dive into some of that data and understand and see um probably have to have a conversation about college visits because they are just like there are tons of them a lot of school days missed u you know it was I think it worked out to like the average senior is missing like seven days basically already um for some college visits this year. So, a lot of college visits this year. Um so, again, we looked trying to understand like why kids are missing school and what they're doing. And so, um our counselors do an amazing job of bringing schools in to visit, but there is a need and a want to go visit a lot of these schools and and to see what's going on. So, it's

023it's a lot. And our seniors are actually leading the way with when you look at our um chronically absence, our seniors leading the way with the chronically absence and most of that is um again attributed to college visits. um it's not as much vacations as it used to be in that. So um so it was just interesting to see there. Um and one of the areas that we are trying to you know right now we're doing a great job of identifying students. Uh we can find them but we need to what we're working on right now is building out how we support those students coming back. So students who are chronically absent those who are out five days in a row, six days in a row, especially in a block schedule. How are they making

024up their work? How are they getting time? How are they getting those supports? Um, and so that's that's sort of the piece that came out with this is is looking at how do we support those students throughout that that's some of the work that kind of shifted for us. Um, we weren't really looking at originally, but now now we are as a team trying to understand how we can support kids. Um, and especially again no matter what schedule we're in, um, when you miss that many days, it it's hard. And when you're behind the um, I I tell all the freshman when they walk in the door, like my my biggest piece of advice to you is just don't get behind. Do your work. Don't let it linger. And that will solve so many of

025your problems. Um and so we need to figure out ways to support kids when you know not by choice they're out or they're sick or whatever is going on. So that's an area that that sort of has shifted in terms of our thinking um with attendance. Um another area that we're looking at is we we talked a lot about you know you know students taking their AP exams and um this year uh we had 350 students take um the PSAT exam. Um, one cool thing that the PSAT does, the exam does is it tells you based on the students success on the PSAT, how many of them are ready to take an AP class? And again, depending on how they do on certain questions in certain areas, are they ready for which AP classes? Um

026and so what you can see in this um chart here is that um just if you look at um something like uh chemistry um we had 41 exams taken and 40 uh uh 41 exams taken in 2425 but we had 213 students who based on the data that PSAT gives would have scored a three or higher had they taken AP chemistry. So we have really bright kids across the board here um who are very capable and so we need to find ways to challenge them and get them the confidence and and want to take to jump into some of those AP classes. Um because that the the when you look across the board at this something um that like we have so few of these students actually taking these classes but based on the scores

027and their PSAT that they would do well in those AP classes. Um and so as we look at um making sure that our students take the AP classes next year AP test, sorry, um encouraging students to find something that they want to challenge themselves in science and this is looking at this data now because we start our scheduling process and those students are looking at what classes they want to take. And many of our AP classes count as their core classes. They're not all electives. Um so really giving students an opportunity to really to to find something they're interested in and go after it and pursue it if they're if they're passionate about it. Um because I mean these are supposed to mirror college classes and almost all of our kids go off to college

028so they should experience what that that's like um if that's what we believe our kids should be doing. So um again this is some of the the this the the we data we didn't have before because our students weren't taking the PSAT uh or all most of our students weren't taking this PSAT. Um, also just thinking about the future, more and more schools are requiring SAT and this type of testing and so wanting them to start thinking about um, how we support that. And I think we talked about last time um, at the beginning of the year about how we give students, you know, start thinking about how we give students the opportunity to take the SAT here because it's becoming more challenging for students to get access um, in testing centers and in different

029schools. So something we have to look at for for next year as we uh, start planning. Um something I talked about beginning of the year was our grade distribution of students um without that are not label that students with a disability students without disability. Um we're seeing um we wanted to look at the outcomes of those students and we are definitely seeing a growth in students um not only getting A's and B's but that are passing all of their classes. Um what you can see was from the the end of last year um at the top for like students with a disability uh students with sorry without a disability 89% of them had A's and B's in their classes. Um the so far this year we're halfway through we're at 90% and 99.6% of students

030without a disability passed all of their classes. Um and then when you look at um at the end of last year um and then this year again you look at we have so far we have 83% passing all the classes. Um and sorry we had last year 67 and 83 and then so far this year 75 and 92 the bottom is this year. Um so we really worked at trying to identify students. One of the only measures we really have is what the teachers share which is grades um when it comes to the high school. Um, and so you we really started to try to identify students early um and try to bring in supports for them um either through interventionists, either through our SAT um and to try to find targeted support for them

031in content areas um to help with with you know making sure that they're able to um pass their classes. So we've seen some some of that work there improving. Also just thinking about again our students pushing themselves and our students going taking things that they're passionate about. um is that this year so far um 75% of all of our students are enrolled in at least one honor or AP class and 86% of seniors are. So it's uh again just seeing that that trend going up for our seniors uh who who are really trying to put move themselves forward. >> Look uh this is this is a document we gave out to to uh incoming seniors next year about how to help them understand their schedule for next year. Um, a lot of our work has

032been on making sure that our that our teachers are ready um for the shift in the schedule. Um, we're looking at aligning our curriculum with the added minutes that we have. So, looking at scope and sequence documents, building in um those tier one supports, doing RPD around that, making sure that students are, again, as was said earlier, that it's not about necessarily having an IEP or a 504, but that we can build these supports into the classroom for students. Um, and there are ways to do that. And so looking at how do we build that into the planning that's going on now for next year um working um through our PD days in professional learning communities um on the building in these tier one supports and again looking at this this this stems from our

033our our NEAS um recommendations. Additionally, we are extending those those endorsements in college and career pathways for students. Um and so we submitted um for more grants this year uh areas of biomed technology um and computer science and information systems. So hopefully we get those and um give students access to some some pretty cool opportunities. And last but not least, um a lot of what we talked about is how do we share what's going on here at the high school? Um again building this culture and community and we did an um our students and our teachers did an amazing job highlighting that uh at our opportunities night. um you know, we really want to find ways for the community to understand um how how great this place is. Um how uh the relationships that our

034our teachers build with their students and then with each other. And just as a sign of that, I'm sure you all know that yesterday we were dealing with our uh the gate valve issue and having to go home and you know, we were worried about buses and how we fit all these kids on the buses. Um but the amount of students who you walked by and everybody's like, "Hey, you want to ride home? You want to get home? We get you home." Like it was just really cool to see the students taking care of each other um and making sure everybody got home. I think we ended up with like like 40 kids on the buses and most of them ended up taking the bus to middle school so they could walk home from there.

035Um so it was just cool to see that that the culture here um you know is in a really amazing community with of our teachers and um it was really cool to be able to share that out um on that opportunity night um to to hear what's going on and I just wanted to shout out my my the kids on that yesterday because they did they were they were awesome. It was pretty cool. So happy to answer any questions >> or not yet. We do questions after we do questions >> specific >> except to everyone. >> What's up? >> Um you mentioned AP's really good news there. Do we have any insight in how many are test? >> Tell me what >> how many are signed up for the test or >> it's the middle

036of it right now. So they're signing they're finishing they're doing signups right now. the slide you had with the SAT correlation to the AP like suggestion is that shared directly with and explicitly with students like you should take this >> not yet. So I mean just so I just actually so I was I was playing around with it actually like about three weeks ago three or four weeks ago. Um and um I was like oh this is cool let me see what this is and so then I I just saw it. So looking at how to though now I had to figure out what to do with it all. Um, but it was just great to see and thinking about how do we get students to think about what they might be passionate about and

037what they do and and how to use that that data as well because again I want to we want to make sure they are ready um and and and wanting to take that and then also and so making sure that they're prepared with that and it's also hard within you know any schedule we have now to to make sure that they it's working with their counselors to make sure they have that information so that they can help guide them through that process because I think just to hand it to them might be overwhelming for some students who may not have been thinking about it or might not have thought themselves to AP students. Um, and so I want to go about it in a way that's supportive um, for the students and not just hand

038them like, hey, you got to listen, you could do all these AP classes. That's really like an overwhelming thing. Whereas their counselors would really be able to sit with them and think through what, you know, what they might be interested in. >> Even their teachers as well in that subject area. I'm just thinking like, you know, if you've connected with a subject area, you know, teacher to have them say, I think you'd be great at this. >> Absolutely. Yeah. So, it was just cool to say. I've never seen it before, but it was Okay. So, hand off to this meeting. >> I made a fun puzzle out of my slides. I guess that's my third slide. So, >> what happened? >> Um I don't know. Um if if you can go one slide up. >>

039No, no, the other way. >> There we go. Um this is just the page that has the link um where you can you can dig into kind of our midyear updates and if there's anything anybody wants to dig into a little bit more then um come to conversations in the middle which is a monthly coffee at our school that no one comes to but we're still having them. Um, so that's that link. And then, uh, on the following page, that's sort of our highlight reel. And I think what you'll notice about, um, the district goals in the high school and the middle school and both elementaryaries is that we have some through lines as a district. Um, you know, our communication practices are are focusing on accessibility and translation and improvements. And then our social

040emotional well-being. have our ruler through lines which is our social emotional um curriculum but we also have some some really strong MTSS supports for kids uh teaching and learning you're going to see a lot of MTSS updates and um a lot of UBD and sort of curriculum review information um and then talent and resources we we're just still aiming to um reinforce the the things we have in place to keep the great people that we have and then attract um new people as well. I really wanted to focus a little bit more on the data today rather than reading through all the slides. So, sorry, but if we can go back to the slide that says why attendance matters. There we go. >> Um, so what I did at the top, you know, we talk

041about attendance at the beginning of our presentations every single time. And I heard somebody say last time, I forget who it was, like, yeah, yeah, why why are we talking about attendance? we know our attendance is good. And so I wanted to kind of I added a link there that that really suggests some reasons why it's so important. Um and so you can click on that link and kind of find out a little bit more. Um it definitely talks about, you know, the the decrease around the the COVID times and then the the increase, but it's very slow. And um I think that's kind of what we're looking at now is like we're sort of at this plateau and kind of figuring out why. and just using sources like the American Academy of Pediatrics. Doctors

042are looking at um as attendance at a as a a pulse point for kids, especially in middle school. U middle school attendance can be one of the greatest um determiners of you know how a student does in college um more even than high school courses. So we are really focusing on this heavily at Rams. Um there's great news of course um if you look at sort of both of those columns um the attendance on the left our attendance rate is 95.3% which is great. Um and you can see some good news in our tardies. Last year we had at this time 2,100 tardies and this year at this time we only have 1,700 tardies. That's a lot but it's better by 400 seats, right? There's 400 more kids in the in the building. Um, but

043I I put some more some stronger numbers in in there so that we could really see what that looks like. Um, so our total absences this year is 2391. Um, that's a lot. That that feels like a lot. Um, and even though we've improved in our tardies, our average tardies every day, we have 17 kids that that average tardy. Um, why that's important to us is those are starts and stops for kids. So when when a student is absent um they have to catch up and then they also kind of feel a little bit less confident and may lose some of their sense of belonging that we work so hard on. Um those are really big deals to us and to middle school kids. Um we we do find that um most of our absences

044are verified so we know where kids are but they're unexcused. That's about 65% of our absences. And we do find um a a decent decline on Fridays. Um our attendance rate is 87%. Prevation we're down to 80% and after vacations we're down to 85. Um chronically absent students, we have plans for those students and they're all improved um from last year and they continue to improve this year. But there is a group that we I don't know if we're meeting all their needs and I I'm kind of just bringing that as a as a problem today and I um I'm hoping that we can kind of get a a little bit more work around it as the year goes on. Um we have the same issue with tardies. Um Mondays and post break we jump

045up to 29 to 39 tardies a day. Um whereas on an average day we're at about 17. Um we do have some kids that are chronically absent three or four times a week. So we're working with those students. Um if we can click to um it's not the next slide but it's that this slide quick example and next steps. Um just to put some some teeth in this. So um you know I know the numbers are super small but the the top scatter plot is our ELA scores from last year and then the bottom are the math scores from last year MCCAST. And you can see um at the top we see from kids that have zero to two absences to kids that have 18 or more an 18 point drop just in their MCAST

046scores. And then in math it's it's greater than that. Um probably because math is sequential and it's a 24 point drop. Um so those are those are pretty significant things that that we're seeing. Um, and I think we're trying to manage like what we know families value, which is that flexibility, and we're trying to balance that with like the momentum that our students have. Um, and when one student is out or or comes in late, it's sort of a ripple effect, you know, uh, there's there's that stop for that student and then that kind of catching up, but that takes that requires a teacher and then the other students who may need assistance or may be able to dig a little deeper are kind of on hold waiting for those catch-up moments. So, um I

047know it's important because I we see it every day and and we hear about it every day. Um that family flexibility. I just don't know how to balance that. We have programs and we have um MTSS supports like you know we have tier one all the students get their their attendance and tardies. We have tier 2 where we're kind of like meeting with um counselors. We're meeting with families. We're we're making phone calls. We have tier three where kids are maybe re-entering after periods of time being away from school, but it's a there's a group that we aren't sure what, you know, what to do with right now and there's there's probably about 80 students in that category. Um, we just don't have the bandwidth to kind of like meet that need. So, that's that's

048the issue that we're facing as we dig deeper into attendance. Um, next slide. I'm going to talk a little bit about our climate and culture. This is a a really important part of our building um and and what we do every single day and we have our supports in place for this. There's a a really big connection between what the what we have as goals for the kids and what the kids want and then um what we do to support the teachers in in that work. So, um, we do have tier one sort of culture and climate work for all kids in all classes. And, uh, we have our ruler lessons, but we've adapted those further this year and created a sort of reservoir that, um, teachers worked on that those lessons are more RAMs

049friendly. They're real-time needs for what our kids are going through, like in those moments, and those happen every week. And we also have our peer leader lessons um, that are identified through our data, our behavior data. Um some of our tier 2 work and culture and climate around kids um is that we're working with you know um counselors. They're working in small groups. They may have a quiet lunch where they're doing some activities. They may have um support services. And then tier three and this is more around behavior. This is where we get into that administrative support. But um some of the exciting um some of the exciting things that I think to me when I look at our data is if you go over on the right. So, um, this year we've had 55

050incidents kind of reach that tier three level at Rams. Um, not 55% but 55 incidents. And out of those incidents, because of our approach, our multi-level approach, um, only 69% of those kids have kind of um, reaffended, right? And that's only 38 kids. So, most of the kids are making a mistake. um maybe if it's at that tier three level, they're getting that administrative support, they're getting those restorative practices, they're getting that coaching, maybe some community service, but then they're not doing it again. And so that's great encouraging news. We do have some students that are still, you know, um a little higher, but it's still only three to six kids. Um and they're very low-level incidents. We don't have any out of school suspensions for the last two years. Our goal is to keep

051the kids in the building. Um, and our high needs kids make up about 42 and a half% of those incidents and that matches the percentage of of overall kids that we have in the building. Um, so I think we're doing really good and I, you know, I I can't say enough about the teachers and the staff in our building. Um, what they do for each other and what they do for the kids every day. Um, anecdotally, we recently met um we we were meeting with the interventionists and I said, "We haven't had anyone come through our our revamped SST. Like, I'm nervous. Like, no kids are being referred." And so, we went back out to the team leaders and they're they're handling so many um situations with kids at the tier one level, which is

052appropriate for middle school. I'm so um proud of them and just so happy about the work that they do every day with the kids and with each other. Um, and then, uh, we're going to talk about teaching and learning a little bit. So, um, I I ended up putting in our fall to winter growth, um, this year on EXL because it's a really great data point to kind of take a look at. At the top, we have our ELA fall and our ELA winter. At the bottom, we have our math fall and our math winter. Um, and super small numbers and you can, you know, dig into those later if you want, but these are some of the the gains that we're seeing. Um, so sixth grade ELA had a 4.5% increase in students on

053or above grade level. Um, 8th grade ELA, it's the strongest cohort performance, growing from 69.6 to 74.6 on or above grade level. Sixth grade math, 12.9% jump in proficiency. Um, seventh grade math significant foundational growth with 24.7 increase in proficiency. Um, and we have to remember that LL testing, if you're like, "Wow, we should see bigger gains." It's adaptive testing. So that means at the beginning of sixth grade, it tests on the beginning of sixth grade. In the middle of sixth grade, it tests on the middle. So the test gets harder. Students have the opportunity to work on where they are consistently throughout the year. and they work on that a couple of times um a week during Rams block and through some of their classes they have the opportunity to jump forward if they

054would like um but the benchmarks are the benchmarks and that's for everybody. So the growth is really more significant than what the numbers show and I'm really proud of the way um the kids and the teachers are working on that. Um the staff meet to look at this data and make adjustments real time in their curriculum and um the curriculum interventionists um meet with the kids all the time and look at their LL data. We did increase the math um intervention model by 274% this year. Um we did we were able to increase the literacy by 158%. Um in in terms of numbers of kids that we see and we're hoping that next year that increases more. So, the more kids that we can see in those interventions in the tier two and tier three

055situations, the better. Um, we're also going through some curriculum reviews and during those curriculum reviews, we're really looking at um our kids with high needs um our ML resources, our um different ways that kids approach content. And so all of our curriculum reviews currently happening are considering all of our high needs kids as as you know one of the greatest priorities in making those resources high quality. Um next slide. Um just a little bit more about you know our strongest growth and kind of what we do to support kids. And then some student examples anecdotically like we might have students that are plateauing, right? And it looks like their grades or their ISL scores aren't increasing. Um but uh a third of those kids are already above grade level. And so, you know, when we

056really dig into the data a little bit more, we can see the individual kids. We can see who's performing above grade level. and and even though they might dip a little bit, those dips and plateaus are very normal in the range of what we see with adaptive adaptive testing. Um, next slide. Um, and this is just I don't know these were some sort of um big wins yearover-year because I like to look at sort of what we were doing last year and what we're doing this year. The details are there and you can dig into those, but um generally speaking, year-over-year in math. So um in math students are now on or above grade level compared to 240 last year at this time which is a gain of 141 students on or above grade level.

057Um, and then year-over-year in ELA, right now we have 430 students now on or above grade level compared to last year. Um, we had 243 and this is winter measures and that's a gain of 187 students. Um, so um, go Rams. Last slide. Uh, this is how we do it. We we don't just look at the data. We look at every single group. We look at every single historically marginalized um you know group of students. We look at every kid. We look at every cohort. And it's our MTSS strategies really just talk about you know the teachers and the approach and like all the different layers in our um in our behavior in our attendance and in our teaching and learning. The end. Do you have any questions? >> Yeah. Can I ask a clarifying

058question? Um, I just want to make sure I if you go back to this slide with the I uh data. Um, I think it's slide 18. Yeah, perfect. I just want to make sure I'm understanding this. So, if I look at the fall, >> Yep. >> Um, eighth grade students, y about 70% on or above grade level. So in the fall before they've been introduced to eighth grade material, 70% of kids were already demonstrating proficiency on eighth grade material. Am I reading that correct? >> Beginning of eighth grade material. >> Beginning of eighth grade. Okay. >> So basically seventh grade mastery and yeah, not they're not done with the eighth grade curriculum, >> right? But they're already showing some they're mastering some of the eighth grade skills. >> They're ready to go on the eighth

059grade work. And then when it gets to middle of the year, we've gone up to 76%. Yep. >> So we've added like another 10 to 12 kids to on or above grade level. >> Yep. >> Okay. >> And that's with the material getting more difficult. >> Okay. I mean, our kids are coming in really strong. So just like Mr. Liz pres presentation as well, um there's a lot we can do to really support and accelerate that growth. >> That's great. Thank you. >> Math. >> Yeah. They have some strong skills. Yeah. >> Um, since we have you, can you give us a little bit of an update on where we are with the roll out of the math uh changes in in in math that we're >> Yeah. I mean, we're following the subcommittee recommendations.

060We have accelerated in seventh grade and then we have the algebra one in 8th grade. Um we're just pulling out the data now because we just did the winter benchmarks in January. So putting together the recommendations for um the students. We did follow the um the guidelines and we sort of took out any um teacher recommendation. We're really just looking at numbers right now. Uh we know that when it gets closer to the time, we'll have many conversations with families who have questions about data or wish to move their students to or from, you know, a different group and we're open to those conversations. Um I'm trying to think. Yeah, I mean that's kind of where we are. We're just really pulling out the data because we just got the benchmarks. And >> how many

061levels are you planning for eighth grade next year? There will be the there's the small group math and then there's eighth grade math and then there's algebra 1. Those were the recommendations from the subcommittee. >> What is the small group math is? >> Um it's uh different level of math. The kids may be working on different skills. They may be working on some seventh grade skills or some gaps. We always have had that. It >> exists now. Mhm. >> Yep. Yeah. So, what we added was the seventh grade accelerated piece. Um, you mentioned that you got a big jump in number of students that are receiving interventions. >> Yeah, we in math because we were able to add the math um tutor this year. Okay. We increased the numbers um by 274%. >> That's great.

062>> Yeah. Which is awesome. And in >> do that during RAM's block or is it do kids >> throughout the day? There's different points throughout the day where we can where we can do that depending on what the needs of the students are, but the um the math tutor typically sees kids during Rams block. >> That's great. And even though there's a onewoman show at Rams right now, she increased the number of students that she um sees by 158%. So adding a reading tutor to that would >> be great. >> Thank you. >> Anything else for >> Okay. Thank you to the ele All right, Dr. lady. All right, can you just go to the next slide? Hi everyone. How are you? I'm a little blind so I can't see that far, so I'm going

063to focus in front of me as well. Um much like my colleagues, um these this update reflects middle of the year updates across our four arches, communication, teaching, learning, and talent and resources. And what you're really going to see um as my colleagues have talked about is that we've just built stronger systems, clearer communication with families, consistent seal practices, stronger tier one instruction, and we're really tightening up our MTSS alignment. So that's really the theme of what we've been doing at Plastentino. Um and today I'm going to really highlight some of the key points in our attendance in math and literacy. So if you could go to the next slide. So overall, you can see our chronic absenteeism data year-over-year is getting better. Um, last year at this point it was 15.2, now it's 11%.

064Um, our tardy data is holding pretty, you can see that trend line is pretty similar as it was in the past. What we found when we dug into that data, the families that were tardy last year are tardy this year. Um, but it hasn't increased by time. It's usually five minutes, 10 minutes. So, that trend didn't really change with um Mr. Alfred, I know you talked a little bit wanting to know if our tardies changed with the change of start time. It's pretty similar and it's it's the same it's the same trends that we saw last year. So, what's working? Um, we've increased our family communication. We have individual plans with our counselors where they're reaching out to families to really support them. And we're really trying to capitalize on proactive outreach. We're monitoring our

065data in real time um with our counselor team so that when we notice trends we can reach right out to them instead of waiting till our concerns really escalate. Um can you go to the next slide please? So this is the pattern. Our chronic absenteeism is by highest in our preschool and then as our grades um as the kids move up in the grades it goes down. I believe it's kind of that trend of especially in preschool because it's a paid program that a lot of families it's it's daycare as well. So there there's a different level of commitment to coming to school or not. So what we're focusing on in preschool is really looking at our students who are there on um IEPs and receiving special education and look at our chronic absenteeism for

066those students um as it really impacts their progress. Um then what we did was we dug into our chronic absenteeism of the reasons why. So one of our biggest contributors is um daily illness. So if a student has, you know, the flu or that piece, we're not getting doctor's notes for that, but those are reported from families. And then the other um part of that category is just unreported. They're not telling us why. They're just calling it absent. The next category is travel and vacations. Um, our travel and vacations, it's 36% of our absences. We have families going on a lot of vacations at our level, ranging anywhere from a week to um some of our families who are traveling up to five to six weeks. Um, and you can see that counts for a

067lot of our absentees. So what we're trying to do is really focus on absences that are within um the control. So we're not really focusing on our chronic illnesses or that piece, but more on um preventable absences. So much like Mrs. Manning talked about like we're trying to balance that peace with families of having empathy with expectations, you know, um trying to have proactive communication with families while also um having them help them understand that impact of misinstruction. And while I think that there's a a thought of well, they're young, they can miss school where they're young. What we're noticing is our students who have chronic absenteeism in second grade, when I look back, they had it in kindergarten or first grade and then they had it in kindergarten. those who came to preschool, they

068also had it in preschool and it's just going to keep carrying up. So that's what we're really trying to do is educate our families now of the importance um of making those decisions to help them come to school. If you could go to the next slide, we're going to transition to academics. We're going to start with math. So we're really seeing that our um our math program is is becoming successful. Um, we're still seeing growth in some areas which I'm going to talk to you about, but as you can see, this is our overall math placement. 64% of our kindergarteners are now at or above grade level compared to 29% at the beginning, 49 in first grade compared to 19, 50% um at second grade compared to 33. This reflects our stronger um tier one

069instruction that's happening in the classroom. And as I said, we believe this is really a result of the continuity of the adoption of the new math program of the consistency from preK to two and really up through um grade 5. Next one. So our goal is around algebraic thinking. And as we dug into this data um this won't be much of a surprise. In order to have strong algebraic thinking, you need to have strong number sense. So we are still focusing on both of those areas and for the students who are struggling in algebraic thinking they are still struggling in number sense. So you know while that's our long-term goal we know the pathway to get there is through building stronger number sense and our students need to build a deep relationship and understanding of

070numbers before we can successfully get there. So much of our focus of our instruction um in our small groupings and our tier 2 and in that MTSS model is intentionally strengthening their number sense and their foundation for algebraic thinking. Okay, you can go to the next slide. So how do we get there? Um we are working a lot with our teachers around building um in data meetings identifying students who are still identifying their number sense and um building that balance before if say if a unit is really working on algebraic thinking having our teachers understand that number sense building has to still be part of it. We can't just kind of push through to algebraic thinking. And so, um, Kristen Marino, who's our incredible STEM, um, person at Placentino, working on how we can build,

071um, in real time PD for our teachers using that through curriculum meetings, staff meetings, grade level meetings, coaching sessions, being able to support teachers. Um, all I would say 80% of our teachers adopted the goal around number sense and algebraic thinking as their teacher goal this year. So teachers are intentionally using hands-on materials in any lesson. This is a major focus and um it's helping support our students get there. We're going to transition to literacy next. So overall um these are our I Ready results in each grade level. And as you can see um green is on or above grade level. You can see that the top line is our middle of the year and our this the line underneath it is the beginning of the year. So you can just see visually the shift

072of how many more students are now in the green than where they were at the beginning of the year. You know this reflects our teachers strong commitment to um you know adopting the science of reading and being able to support all students. If you can go to the next one. you know, 66% of our kindergarteners um are now at or above grade level compared to 36% at the beginning. 45% for first grade compared to 11% 60% for second grade compared to 40%. You can go to the next slide. So beyond I Ready um as you know that we have a strong focus at Placentino and Dibbles and our goal this year is actually looking at zones of growth. So beyond just having students being at or above grade level or meeting benchmark, what is their

073growth from where they are and where they're going? And this is a new measure for all of us to be honest with you. Um so what we did was we set every student at average growth. We thought that was a good place to start for our first time using this measure. And what we're working on with teachers is not focusing so much on, you know, are they on track, are they not on track, but really looking at the months of growth that they're working that they're meeting and helping them identify students um on where their gaps are. So things that we have been doing and you can go to the next slide is looking at really how to benchmark and progress monitor for our students. So um I'll talk a little bit about this at

074the end when I give our um dyslexia um guidelines update but something that we're doing at Placentino and I know that Miller would talk about this as well is that we've increased our progress monitoring for our students. So, some students are being progress monitored monthly, some students are being progress monitored every other week, and we have some students who are being progress monitored every week. It depends on what their needs are. And what we're able to do with this data, um, especially if we see a student who we felt wasn't making growth, the first thing we do is increase their progress monitoring so we can look at where they are. And how we read this piece is if you're looking at um that trend line, if you Is that too small? >> Nope. >> Okay.

075Um if that trend line, we look at those dots and if those dots are above the trend line or on the trend line, um we're moving in the right direction. If we see three to four underneath, that calls for us for a shift in what we're doing. So if you go to that next slide, when we look at students not making progress, the first thing we do is we dive right into the data of what's happening and we look at how do we adjust our instruction? Do we need to adjust our group size? Do we need to in group um to look at intensity of what's happening? Are they receiving it two times a week and now we need to increase that to four times a week or do we need to change our approach?

076And this is really what our focus has been for um literacy um and really kind of digging into that piece. So I feel really good about um where we're going. While I share that that's a new data point for us and sometimes it feels a little alarming when we see some of that data, we have to start somewhere and um our teachers are really up for those conversations. So that's where we are at Placentino. on that last slide when you uh mentioned students that were receiving um small groupoup instruction and monitored weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. Um is that small group instruction with a reading interventionist or with the classroom teacher or combination? >> Yes. Yes. And yes, and yes. So that's the other piece that we're looking at. So no more is it just you're

077going to go somewhere and get additional reading support. It's um it's a it's a partnership with the classroom teacher. So they might be working with a reader tutor or a special educator or a reading specialist and the classroom teacher is also building into interventions into their win block as well to be able to support that. So this is a change from previous years. Our teachers actually do our progress monitoring, not just our reading specialists or our tutors. our teachers are actually doing. Um, we all kind of have case loads where we kind of dig into it, which we find that since they're actually taking the data, um, they own the data a little bit more. So, >> and I know you're comparing like beginning of middle of year, beginning of year to middle of year

078literacy data, are you since you've changed the model this year, are you also looking at it from last year to this year to see if we're seeing more growth? >> Yes. Yeah. and and really what we're seeing um is that we need to increase and strengthen our tier one instruction. That's why we're really excited about this ELA curriculum review. We've seen the the fruits of the labor from math and the outcomes for that. And our teachers are working really hard, too hard. They're creating and they're creating materials. They're creating all those pieces and it's not consistent from classroom to classroom. So once we're able to have that consistent curriculum, then we can really focus um on what instruction looks like in that piece for every student regardless of the classroom. So um I think we're

079doing really well in spite of not having that curriculum and I just think that next year it's just we're just going to kind of keep going and fly. >> Yeah. Before we get started, I want to do an advertisement because next uh Wednesday and Thursday we have the um book fair uh in the multi-purpose room. It's always a fun time uh for students to get books. It's like 3:00 to 8:00 both nights. Also, next Thursday night, we have Math Palooa. Uh a fun STEM evening for families. Uh we encourage everybody to come out. Last year we had huge participation from the Leos uh at the high school who came down and helped us. But those are two big things that are going on uh at Miller. >> And is that your birthday? Is that your

080birthday too? >> No, not this year. >> Not this year. Not this year. Some years. >> Not this year. So, uh, tonight Brenda Morrow and I want to highlight the action steps this Miller School has taken, unpack key data points, celebrate progress, and identify where we will continue to focus on for the second half of the year. A theme you're going to hear throughout the presentation is intentional focus. what we've been focusing on this year. The areas we are prioritizing were identified at the start of the year based on the MCCAST results and um beginning of the year I Ready uh data. Next slide please. Our goal in arch one is to increase efforts to inform and engage families in academic behavioral and attendance progress. This year we have strengthened our weekly family communication with

081audio and translation features to increase accessibility for all families. We launched a report card landing page to support clarity around our new standardsbased uh report card. We've strengthened monthly attendance communication and you're going to see some positive data uh uh later on in our presentation. gathered feedback from families through surveys and s'more polls in an effort to ensure our communication is meaningful uh to parents. You know, we we ask families, what are you looking for? What do you have some questions? Some things out there where, you know, even on the aesthetics, you know, put a link to the the the lunch calendar instead of putting a picture of it because it takes up so much room, you know, when somebody's popping it up. Other things we might get questions, um, what temperature do you go

082out at recess? Uh, or what do you have to wear to be able to play in the snow? um or you know what does a switch day mean at an elementary school for unified arts? Uh we're just trying to even out the number of unified arts days uh throughout the year. Just meaningful feedback that we we assume people know but they don't know. So we're trying to adjust to that. We have a student advisory council and superintendent roundt to elevate stakeholder voice sharing ideas about ways to create a culture of belonging and being our best self. One of the things that they did this year was cram the cruiser. Uh and we we really did cram the cruiser this year. um and how we got them involved. They made flyers, inspirational posters, you know, and

083you know, they made announcements uh in the morning uh to help spread the word to bring in foods for families. In the second half of the year, we'll refine our communication based on feedback uh that we're getting. Next slide, please. Our goal in Arch 2 is to foster a positive inclusive school environment with tier 1 PBIS and ruler implemented with fidelity. This year we uh have a building based in districtwide goal to strengthen Holliston multi-tiered system of supports working to better align school and district systems. We have added MTSS drivers and domains to all our meeting agendas so we are aware which components we're working on whether it be curriculum meeting whether it be grade level grade leader meeting whether it be our district admin meetings. We strengthen PBIS aligned across schools and um expanded

084ruler um with differentiation informed by midyear survey feedback. Um both Brenda and Jamie on our PD day um presented um uh professional development um J um Brenda did uh PD on executive functioning uh for all of the teachers uh unified arts teachers, classroom teachers, special ed teachers. Uh while Jamie um took on the task of doing it with our pair of professionals, some of the feedback we got in return was it was the best P PD they've had in a long time. This piggybacked with Peg Dawson uh doing a more global view of executive functioning uh that they all uh got to participate in the afternoon. Um, we also strengthen strengthen subgroup monitoring of attendance uh and behavior particularly for students with IEPs and multilingual learners as our data showed a need for this at

085the beginning of the year. Next slide. >> All right. So, I'm going to just review some of the data related to attendance. Um, and as Dave mentioned, um, we prioritized looking at all of our students and also looking at the subgroups that either showed the highest number of chronic absenteeism in the past or had made significant improvements and we wanted to make sure they stayed on track. And when we look at our chronic absenteeism data, you can follow the the category across the slide. Um, knowing that we're looking at all students first, then students with disabilities, followed by our our English learners and fells, which is how the state calls our multilingual. Um, we use the state's accountability target from last year to help us know if we are on track for this year, knowing

086that a new target's going to come to us in the spring. That's the only gauge that we have at this point to check that. And we are really careful about monitoring anybody who's absent 10% or more no matter what time of year it is because we know that that's a precursor to be chronically absent. So the numbers that we have here are showing 10% or more absent as our percentage. So let me just give you a overall summary of that. Um overall our chronic absenteeism rate is currently 6.6 6 for all students, which is below our accountability target from last year, which was 7.1. For students with disabilities, the rate is 12.0, which is um below the percentage from last year, but above last year's target. And for our English learners and former um L's,

087the rate is 14.7, which is above the target from last year. However, it's important to note a distinction um around the way we're gathering this data. Many of the students included in the state are under 18 days absent, which is what it is to be fully chronically absent by the state's terms. Um, they're not chronically absent yet, but they are approaching that threshold. So, for example, if you follow across all students, 37 students are currently between 11 and 15 days, which is not chronically absent, but they're included in that percentage because we want to make sure that we are intervening in a timely fashion with those students. Um, and then a smaller subset have crossed into the 18 plus, which I think it's a seven up there that are 18 or more days absent. And

088that's for the whole school. That's the number of students that we have in that C category. And we know the story for all of them. There's interventions and supports in place. Um, this tells us that we have a window for early intervention and we're monitoring these students closely and working with families. We're also leaning on community supports um when we can and recently learned about a new service from Cartwheel called the school avoidance program um and so uh Jarielle Verne gave us that resource at our last task force meeting and we're bringing that into our school to use as a resource for those um tricky situations where we feel like we don't necessarily want to make it a legal or court case, but we want to be sure families have what they need. So, we're

089trying to be sensitive in those cases, and that should be something that will be helpful for us. Um, our school-based and district attendance task force are working to analyze root causes, identify subgroup patterns, and strengthen our tiered outreach before patterns become entrenched, which is what Jamie was talking about, those second graders who were chronically absent, but actually they were chronically absent in kindergarten. We want to try to continue to work on that. Moving on to teaching and learning, our goal is for 80% of our students to meet or exceed their growth targets in math and literacy with special attention to numbers and operations in kind of in alignment with Placentino there in math andformational text and writing and literacy. These domains were identified at the beginning of the year based on MCCAST and beginning of

090year I Ready data and we entered the year intentionally targeting these areas. I want to point out a couple things that are pointed out here and then I'm going to go into some data. Um we weekly are um are reviewing our I already my path usage which we know is a a precursor to growth and performance growth for students and we're removing some barriers of time and access. We are recognizing that it is becoming and I think we talked about this last year as well. It's a bit of a challenge during the school day to find the allotted time. So, we're working through some of those barriers still to this day. Um, we have targeted intervention cycles um in literacy and math and also with our multilingual learners linking interventionists with curriculum specialists and our

091ESL teachers as part of our student support team um to discuss student assessment data and integrate supports. That was a missing piece last year that we found um with all of the students that we had on success plans from not making progress on access last year. we really need to link those teams. So, we've been doing that work intentionally. Um, we're reviewing student progress with classroom teachers and special educators, but we definitely need more time for this. Um, and adjusting the frequency and focus of interventions based on need, which was what Dr. Selene was talking about um, on her slides as well. We also have a focused writing unit um, that has been created and implemented with grade four to explicitly teach responding to text, which addresses the writing issue. Um, and it's also pictured,

092there's a little debrief pictured, which I'm sure you can read. It's really, um, legible in the middle of the slide at the top. Um, that's one teacher's example of their progress towards their goal this year for students because our fourth grade teachers all took on the goal of working on this. They've been collaborating and thinking deeply with our humanities specialist Caitlyn Kinsky to look at instructional moves, resources, real-time coaching during instruction and looking at student work to adjust instruction based on need. And there's been some really great progress made there. Ally Curley, our tech integration specialist, has also been working to show how online resources like Cammy can remove barriers for students when writing. We have a lot of maternity leaves in grade four this year and I want to give a huge shout out

093to all of our long-term subs for all of their hard work jumping in and being a part of this writing goal and all of the goals. It's a huge task and they're doing a wonderful job. Um, our next steps include identifying high impact tier one strategies, strengthening collaborative planning structures, monitoring growth of students with low achievement and/or low growth, and piloting the updated ELA curriculum resources that are happening very shortly. The next slide talks about our divs. Um, we did not use the growth measure um at Miller this year. We are looking at the placement of students and thinking about um who is who is being who is noted as needing intensive support, strategic support or are they on core or above core. um it aligns with how we look at our um I Ready

094data as well. And we are committed to following through on our goals that we set at the beginning of the year of looking at the cohort of students with disabilities and students that are that are not labeled as having a disability because we are committed to seeing growth in both categories and looking at that subgroup. So that's why you see data in that way here. Um overall the majority of students without disabilities are at or above um benchmark. They're in the blue or the dark blue. However, students with disabilities represent a larger percentage in the strategic and intensive bands. Of the 94 students on IEPs require requiring strategic or intensive instruction, 84 of the 94 students have a targeted reading goal. So that was important for us to explore to make sure that the needs

095were being addressed. Of the 73 students not on IEPs requiring strategic or intensive instruction, 50 are currently receiving a literacy intervention from a literacy interventionist. 10 have exited that support due to growth. So they have most likely shifted from the um intensive area to strategic and that work can happen in the classroom. talking about um the question related to who's delivering interventions and then strategic inter intervention is happening twice a week for 30 minutes and intensive intervention is happening three times a week for 30 minutes. Doing this deep data dive has allowed us to ask more questions and dig deeper into the experience of the students not accounted for in services or intervention with classroom teachers. This data also confirms the importance of strengthening tier one literacy instruction while simultaneously ensuring highquality targeted intervention. Um,

096we are applying practices from our dyslexia study group to this work using what we learned. We're analyzing error patterns more precisely. We're aligning intervention strategies to spec specific skill deficits. And we're collaborating closely with literacy interventionists and special educators to identify next instructional steps for students requiring intensive support. This next slide talks about our I Ready growth at the midyear. Um and you'll notice that it's broken. There's two different boxes. One is focusing on our reading growth and one is focusing on our math growth. And each grade um has its its name, its label and arrow pointed to where it plots in the quadrants. It's broken into quadrants and the the plots mean the growth in performance related to national norms for each grade in reading and math. We want to be on the right

097side of the plot. This shows that the majority of students are increasing their understanding of grade level standards in reading and math overall. Um, if they have high performance, it means their performance is within the 50th percentile or higher. And if they are showing high growth, it means that they are meeting or exceeding the growth goal for them um, from the beginning of the school year. So, we're in really good shape in both areas um, in general for all of our students in reading and math. And that's kind of giving you the overview. Um the next slide goes into our goal specific to reading for this year on I Ready. At the midpoint we want students to have achieved 50% or more of their typical growth. That's our goal. Um and in reading 64.9% of

098students are currently on or above grade level. Uh the median progress toward their typical growth exceeds um 100%. It's 106% up there. meaning many students are making solid mid-year progress. Our goal of achieving 50% growth at the midyear was met by 69% of students. We have seen nice placement shifts from the beginning of the year with tier 1 shifting from 50 to 65 of our students, tier 2 shifting from 30 to 35 and tier three shifting from 20 to 10. Our focus domain andformational text has also seen some improvement and I'll explain a little bit more about that on the next slide. And then just like we talked about on the dibble slide, we want to be sure that we're looking at the cohort that we wanted to see the most progress in and also

099dig deeper into the data to learn more about the student experience. So on one side you're going to see the breakdown of students with disabilities and their performance in the domains on I Ready and then specific to our focus onformational text and then you'll see students without disabilities so that we can look at the the similarities and differences and look at some patterns there. Um and so when we disagregate by subgroup, particularly students with disabilities, we see higher concentrations in two years or three years or below grade level um in most domains, including our identified school focus area offormational text. So this confirms a few things for us. It confirms the need to continue to prioritize the domain that we set out to to prioritize. It also um helps us know that there's an ELA

100curriculum review coming at the right time. Um and the visioning, learning, and resources identified through this process will help strengthen our abilities to strengthen tier 1 experiences overall, specifically comprehension strategies and text complexity and also the district curriculum accommodation um being updated. We also need to dig deeper into this subgroup's experience and we have started doing that work. Um but this is a whole school issue. It is not um it's not a special education issue. It's about the curriculum, the instruction, the inclusion and also scheduling, staffing. There's so many pieces that goes into this go into this work. When we talk about math, um 58.9% of students are currently on or above grade level. Growth is occurring and median progress trend is positive. Our goal of achieving 50% growth at the midyear was met by

10156% of students. We've seen nice placement shifts since the beginning of year with tier 1 shifting from 38 to 59%, tier 2 from 49 to 33 and tier 3 from 13 to 9. Our focus domain of numbers and operations has also seen some improvement. I do just want to add something about students who are um who are presenting um on or above grade level. Um this accounts for um we are trying out a new model for enrichment intervention in grade five with our STEM specialist Ashley Ashley Buchard to grow students who are above grade level in the domains of algebra um and numbers and operations. Ashley is working closely with grade level teams um to also be to do in all points of teaching and learning and also building a resource bank of instructional videos

102to model all components of math instruction for teachers um in addition to going into classrooms. One barrier has been identifying times to meet with staff this year due to limited access during our PLC time. And in looking at the math domain um both students with disabilities um and um students without disabilities numbers and operations again our identified focus continues to require attention particularly for students with disabilities. This is year two of implementing Eureka Math Squared and this data reinforces the importance of ongoing professional learning, structured collaborative planning, clear modeling and use of visual representations and strong alignment between general and special education instruction. We will continue to work on deepening highquality tier one imp um implementation and working on accommodating and modifying curricular resources for students when needed, which is a focus for our upcoming

103um curriculum meeting next week. Overall, we're seeing growth, but subgroup growth remains an area for continued focus. Next slide. Our goal here is to clarity of systems and strong collaborative planning. This year staff and curriculum meetings have been structured around student growth data and instructional moves. We conducted district learning walks in January and have grade leader walks. We started them today and we are um doing some next week as well. Like uh Dr. Slaney said, many of the professional prof practice goals of our teachers are aligned to strengthening tier one practices. Um, and one of the things that we talked about, we do have a lot of new teachers and how do we keep new teachers is coaching those teachers. And Caitlyn Kinsky, our humanities specialist, Ashley Bousard, our STEM specialist, and Ally Curley, our

104uh, technology integration teacher, are getting into those classrooms and modeling for those teachers so that they can be successful in the classroom. So, we'll pause for a second for questions specific to Miller. I think you'll see a common theme tonight is how much we're really digging into the data in recent years. We really focused on that and at all levels using that to drive instruction and interventions and it's making a difference along with the curriculum reviews and the curriculum work that we've done. Okay, just a quick update on the >> super quick, super quick. So, um this is just an update um that we presented the dyslexia action plan last year and we just wanted to bring to you just some updates. A lot of the updates um have already been embedded in our midyear

105um presentation, which is important. So, that means it's not an add-on. It's part of the systems that we already have in place. Um we've strengthened our alignment across schools. for ensuring consistency on how we identify and support students. Our instructional practices um are becoming more unified through collaboration. This isn't just our special education team. This is all of our educators looking at the data being able to support students and identify students earlier. Um and our data systems are becoming more responsive than reactive, which is really important. We're watching students um in their progress and our response to their progress in real time. So the key is we're moving from more isolated practice to more cohesive district practices. The next slide, please. Um the action plans really embedded in all of our instructional systems across our

106schools. And I I think what is really important for us to think about is how we are now going to move it into our MTSS process. So thinking about it's not a plan. It's not something that we're doing. It's not just about dyslexia. It's about it's about reading. It's about early supports. It's about early identification. And as we build our MTSS plan, how do we take all the aspects of the dyslexia plan and the things that we've learned from the institute and make them part of our systems and our practices um in our everyday lives in our schools? And I think that we're well on our way of doing that. >> How many OG certified staff do you have now versus 2, three years ago? Oh, I specific all of our special educators. >> All

107of our special educators um who all of our moderate special educators, >> correct? >> Um are now OG trained and I would um even uh a couple of our severe to be honest with you are as well and our reading specialists are as well. So I don't have the exact percentage but from when we first started training where we might have had one or two to now all it's impressive. >> So also MLL right >> and she's becoming trained. >> I just forwarded her PO so she's all set for that. So yes >> yeah our multilingual learners teachers are as well. So they're going to be able to utilize those practices in their interventions as well. >> So we went from very few to pretty much everyone. Yeah, >> that's great. >> Yeah, >> I

108would say you have one of the highest percentages against many of the other districts that I've worked in. And it's not just all of these people because this takes 100 hours to get your certification. So, this is time and effort uh where you really have to respond to those training you, but also you have a smattering of general education teachers as well because we need >> they all want to be trained. We just can't >> if you just have you really have a huge saturation. You should really be grateful. >> Yeah. Know that that's great news is really that's wonderful. >> And I know you just shared with us Dibbles and I ready data which are both DESIE approved dyslexia screeners. Um once you have the information, how does a district inform inform families that

109their child might be at risk for reading difficulty? >> Sure. So we just did our mailings. um everyone invited just got their um home and then um and and on top of those mailings um are I what I'm most happy about is students that were identified in those um benchmarks have already been identified um in some type of intervention either with the teacher with a reading specialist or with one of our tutors and then that communication continues with both the teacher and with the reading specialist or the tutors. >> Yeah. >> Really just We grown the teachers and being able to explain that data when they have conferences as well. That's a big part of the teachers really owning that data and helping parents understand it. >> Thanks everyone. >> Thanks. >> Thank you very

110much. >> Math Palooa >> midyear >> book fair. He really wants us to go to the book fair. >> Is there a book fair? >> I think so. >> Okay. Um, we can move on to central office. >> Yes. So, I really um just I know that was a lot. So, you know, I'm going to forgo any comments that I might have for tonight so that we can keep the movement of the meeting. >> Just a couple of quick announcements. Um Tracy joined us. We're in the middle of our Miller principal search. We had interviews last night. Was that only last night? >> Wow. Okay. We have more interviews on Monday. Um with the tenative scheduled dates of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, excuse me, Tuesday, Wednesday, not Thursday because of Mata Palooa and Friday. Um

111so we will be bringing forth the committee will be bringing forth its recommendations on uh Monday the finalist at the end of Monday. Um so we're working hard a great group of people that are giving a lot of time and lively pertinent conversations. um math puzza next Thursday and also um we have set up tentatively you will hear us present on the elementary ELA resources no later than a May meeting uh school committee meeting. So the recommendation will go to Superintendent Kusca prior to that and RAM's curriculum review for science is in the works. Um, and we will be presenting that prior to the end of school also. And Principal Manning, I just sent the PO off also. So, we are set on that. All set. So, the snow. Um, so, uh, we, uh, I,

112I have been in conversation, uh, with Frank, our town manager, as far as the spending that we've had on just snow removal and kind of what those thresholds are. Um, we're still kind of waiting to hear kind of more and more guidance of whether we've kind of exceeded certain thresholds as a among our towns, other towns of whether we'll there will be any kind of emergency reimbursement for some of the the costs cuz as as a town, but even as a as a school system, we've kind of exceeded what our what we've kind of budgeted for for snow removal. um and you know crossing our fingers that we're out of the woods, but I you know I've been watching the weather two weeks out at a time um out the um that said um I

113am just incredibly grateful and and thank the the community uh and families um you know this was a difficult time and I felt like our community kind of got behind this. I didn't hear, you know, too many bad examples of feedback despite kind of some very, you know, very challenging areas that we have within our community. Um, first just a big thank you to DPW and and Robert Walker. He's probably very tired uh of hearing me at at 10 p.m. 12 p.m. 2 am 4 am um uh for the last five days. So, uh, that's that's kind of been my buddy for for a while, uh, lately. Uh, but that said, um, also to kind of our, um, our maintenance cu crew, uh, Matt Rob Shaw, um, just kind of in his first full year

114of leadership has just done a fantastic job. Um, in kind of, uh, you know, putting in the hours, uh, getting a really c great crew hired. Um that being Sean Geese uh who is the maintenance tech at the middle school. Um Stephen Okconor who is the maintenance tech at uh the high school, Jim Shepard who is our district-wide um electrician and maintenance tech. Uh and then Jan Roi um as well who served the Miller Plantino. uh without them uh putting that exceptional effort in and hours in uh coming in uh all day Sunday, all day Monday, all day Tuesday is uh putting those kind of in late into the night and early in the morning. Um as far as those hours are very appreciated. Um also to officer Woods uh who uh we we have

115a K Cabota that has a plow on it, but it's not it's not a registered vehicle. It can't really drive from one campus to the other. So we got police escorts steering heavy snow to kind of escort the our small little K Cabota um from one side of the town to the other uh so that we could kind of have that additional access to kind of continue our plowing in some of our targeted areas. So um I'm just really appreciative of that. Uh a little update or a little bit kind of conversation on um the high school and our kind of emergency closure that we had to have yesterday. Uh you know I I was very grateful that uh we were not looking at anything catastrophic. Uh but that was the fear going into uh

116into um when we had to make the call. Um I think we were sitting at a point uh David List uh Dr. Kusca and myself um not quite getting answers and it didn't seem like we knew where whether we would have them um at a certain point let alone a fix. So, we just needed to close school um immediately and get people uh where they needed to be. Thank you to Karen Manning and the middle school for accommodating a handful of our bus riding high schoolers. Um I could tell that they didn't really want to stay there for for the whole day, so I think they for the most part found their rides home, right? >> All right. Uh but we uh they pulled their they were able to pull their crisis team together and

117we prepared as if we were going to receive a couple hundred kids and we ended up getting 45. So that was uh great news um there as well. Um as far as the the high school um uh the the town water department was able to come. Um we we kind of crossed our fingers on one theory that we thought it was that if we replaced uh that it that it was this problem was the source at which the water was coming into the building. Um and that that entry point. Um what it ended up being is that we have a the main shut off valve. Imagine like uh you know a submarine like big turning wheel or whatever has been in the open position probably for you know 500 years or whatever. Um and they

118got maintenance on it and last week and when they closed it for the first time um the puck that as you're twisting and shuts off the valve to the water. Um that's the first time that we've ever done that and when we rope opened that up um to test it wasn't a problem last week. Uh but when we you know one 800 high schoolers and a couple hundred staff members flushed the toilet um over the course of the day it kind of knocked that old rusted block off of there and so we just got continual flow of water into the into the building which took away our pressure. So luckily it was um a quick fix. uh we were concerned that the water was flowing under the building um and under the under the foundation

119which would have been a much bigger problem and we would have been trying to hustle on that uh MSBA uh feasibility study. So >> all right uh but that's what we got. >> Can I just kind of piggyback on I just >> I do have to say something about the high school students yesterday. We were worried obviously about the timing of the situation and trying to um deal with elementary dismissal as well and really having a small window time. The high school kids were phenomenal. I can't tell you like how polite they were. I kept, you know, was up here. We were asking them who needs a ride, who needs um transportation, whatever it was. And they I've never seen them so cooperative and polite. Um sure, they were happy to get out early as

120well, but honestly, they were really the kids were great. I was really happy to see how they all been together and supported one another. And I did want to also just echo how lucky we are to have the maintenance staff. We were talking about that today on a meeting about the fact that they will do anything pretty much. I mean, they they never complain and I really do think that they deserve a lot as a team how well they work together. So, thank you. >> Um, also just remembering um thanks to Tim Holmes. I think I called him at like 12:30 or whenever that we were trying to figure that out, whatever that was. I heard music in the background. Who knows where he was, but he wasn't near a bus um at that time.

121Um, and he was able to wrangle uh four buses um on emergency notice to kind of get them over over there. Enough time to be able to uh escort high school students to the middle school, but then be able to arrive at the elementary school um in order to run those routes as well. So that's great. >> And having them high school students, obviously it was a lot easier than our younger students that they could get rides. So yeah, it worked far better than we expected. So >> anything else, >> Dr. a child of >> well this was a good week to be 9,000 miles away is all I can say when I started getting messages about water I'm like what water so uh so I don't have a lot to report because I have

122been gone for two weeks but I do have two important things I want to share out with everybody is that you know we're back from vacation now this is sort of the turning corner and I'm looking with our SSAs at all of our programs again when I came in we looked at them and now we're starting to take a deeper dive looking at them for um depth and breath, see what else we can do. Uh leave recommendations. Jess and I will be talking as the the spring progresses so I can give her some of my viewpoint and she certainly will pick up and do what she feels will also be helpful for the programming. The other thing I did want to share with everybody was that I'm very very grateful to all of the SSAs

123and the teaching staff as well as the work Jess did last spring when she put together most of the documentation for the public school monitoring review for the department for student services. Once every six years the department of elementary and secondary education pays us a visit and this is our year. So they will be coming in. In fact, uh I have my orientation on the week of March 23rd, although I can't tell you what day at this time. I'm sure they will drop that in my email soon, but they'll be doing that. The next week, we'll be looking at civil rights and the next week after that, uh the dis the department will look at the documents that have been submitted and eventually they will make their way onto the grounds the week of June

1241st. So, I'll update the committee as each of the weeks comes closer and I get more information. All I got was a fiveline schedule thus far and nothing more after 6 months, but we will have more. And I just want to let the committee know this is happening. Uh, you know, a lot of times, very few districts ever get a perfect review. And for me, I find it's really helpful to have a bird's eye view from the Department of Ed come in and really look at what we're doing to help us improve, maintain, make changes as needed in order to comply with all of the regulations which seem to change rapidly every year. So, I just want to let the committee know that's where we're at. And >> you may want to touch base with

125principal list just to make sure what the NES dates are because you wouldn't want both of those to be going on at the same time probably. We we were assigned last spring, >> so we'll have we'll we'll catch up. Coordinated. >> Yeah, >> we'll be good. >> Thank you. >> Uh subcommittees, I had the newsletter on. I think maybe I think it was left over, but also >> good news. >> Yeah. >> Um I really have to thank Dan McCloud, I know he's still here, um for all the help with the newsletter. It was a doozy. There's a lot of incredible good news. Um, and with that, uh, I think it's probably higher now, Dan. I don't I got the latest update you sent, so thank you. We had 5,000 views of the newsletter go

126out via the email. That's huge. And that was a week ago almost. So, probably over that now. So, um, >> I think 2500 would mean >> was that I mean, >> does it count if you click multiple times, Dan? How does that work? >> 4,000 times. Okay, we're going to leave it at 5,000 views. Leaving Dr. Slaney's in there. Um, but uh numbers aside, it was just a ton of great news and something I think we want to continue just especially with the even thousand views minus Dr. Slaney. Um, well, I guess we're negative if we take Dan's out then, too. So, we will continue that. that I think it's something we should do probably on a I wouldn't say regular basis but probably every seme every um half year um as it warrants and

127if there's special good news we'll we'll share more um so that was the update communications no uh next meeting planned yet >> how you did officers >> no we did not do >> no >> it is it is March 20th 1st >> 21st >> apparently so I I misread the 21st is on both months are Saturdays So, I thought it was last Saturday. It was not. Thank you, Tracy. We will be at Rushford and Suns on March 21st at 2 p.m. Um, and talking about anything, but uh primarily for the budget and any other topics that may come up. We'll have another update on March 12th when we meet >> policy. Nothing from policy at this point. So budget has not met, but we will probably meet maybe twice before the 12th because I think

128we're going to try to have our recommendation by the 12th so that way someone so we can have something to talk about at office hours and then we have our hearing set for the 26th. Um has that been posted properly? Uh do we do we >> will be >> but you know what the the rule the process okay >> um because I don't so that's fine. Um days. Seven days. Seven days. Seven days. >> Okay. Um, so we'll get that posted. >> What? >> Seven days not more than seven. >> I thought it was more than seven, but I >> Dr. Jordan. He's going to get it posted. >> Yes. >> And we're going to do it March 26th. It's also in the newsletter. >> And if it gets wrong, we'll blame him. >> Push

129it up. >> No. Yeah. I validated with the law. Yeah. So, we um we have a a a uh poll to uh to cover, but we'll we'll figure out some some ways there. Uh hopefully the administration will have some recommendations for us. We'll look at other things. Um but certainly not in certain amounts, but we're waiting for March 1st, too, because that is a a big sort of cut off date for a lot of decisions and things that notifications that we need. Um we sent uh little letters of uh you know complaint to our representatives >> expressing our displeasure with our chapter 70 uh number um in the governor's budget >> and um >> I don't know if you saw my email I forwarded the email from Frank >> so they're also going to be

130here in town if we want to March 9th at the select board meeting. So >> something at the high school too it's a very busy Monday. Um, interesting just factoid just to prolong the meeting a little bit. Uh, snow and ice is the one line item in in town is actually allowed to to uh spend in deficit and so you actually try to budget low and anyway um so but we are $200,000 over as a town uh on snow not including the last storm. Uh though usually when the governor declares a state of emergency the the state does come forward with some money. So that doesn't impact us directly, but >> um good to know. >> Just stop. >> Can I just add because I know you're attending. Um the legislative breakfast is also on

131Tuesday, March 3rd in Newton. Sarah, myself, Joanie, and Dr. Jordan were all attending. So al it's also a time for us to talk about this with the um the less obvious. >> Okay. Um so we can move on to the Miller principal search update. >> I just want to add a little bit actually to what Dr. Mahard said. Um Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday are the finalist interviews, but there will be a I believe it's going to be a webinar from 6:00 to 7:00 that people the community can log in and observe. And then um similar to with the superintendent search that Friday um there'll be a a survey going out to the community um at that point as well to get some community feedback. So, um I know it's a tight turnaround, but just keep an

132eye out for that next week. >> So, I'm sorry, which night is the webinar? >> Each night of the candidacy. So, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. Um it's currently scheduled from 6:00 to 7:00. >> Correct. >> That people can log on. >> Okay. Is there going to be a recording that we can send out? >> Uh direct from a cloud. There's going to be a recording, correct, of the community forums. >> Correct. >> Yes. >> You could send them with the surveys probably, right? >> And when when do the final >> Yes. Can you please Sorry. Monday night. >> Sorry to put you on the spot. >> You and I could talk about this, but I just want to make sure I was right. >> Sorry, I missed the question. >> No, that's okay. For the Miller

133Principal Search, >> we were you were sending out a recording of the community forum with the survey. Correct. >> The webinars. >> The webinar recording. >> Correct. The three webinars. Very similar to the superintendent search. If we move forward three finalists, it'll it'll look very similar with the bios, the recordings, and then the survey. >> And are those emails going out to the entire school or just the Miller families? >> Uh, we are planning to send it to Miller and Placentino families. >> I was I was going to re I was going to request that Placentino be >> open to suggestions there, but we think that's that's as far as it needs to go. So, >> and the communication will go out tomorrow that Director Mloud and I are working on to the Miller staff.

134>> Correct. We're still trying to finalize the site visits. Everything's condensed with all the snow >> rescheduling. So, it's it's tricky. >> Break the havoc. How many times have we now? >> The school committee is either on there or it's forward to to us. I don't Sometimes we get emails from some schools to our um school community. Sometimes we don't, but just >> Sure. We'll make sure that you're um >> the emails to the staff. Is that what you're referring to? >> No, the emails to the to the families. I don't know. >> Got because Miller families. I got you. Yes. >> The webinar. >> We'll make sure you're on there. Yes. >> Is it possible to make that available to student uh families that are not part of like on the web page? Like

135I know some families do like to stay involved even if they're they don't have children at that level. >> Sure. That's why I was open to you know suggestions there. Um, we can absolutely make a web page similar to the superintendent web page. Absolutely. Great idea. >> We'll just clone that page and change. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Any other questions? >> Okay. Um, MSBA update. I know Frank and Hillary, you met with Tina and working group for the MSBA. Do you want to talk a little bit about >> how that went? >> I mean, it was a great session. Um, you know, really, it was incredible to see the partnership that's being built between select board and school committee. Obviously, no decisions were made. We had a very productive conversation on how we

136want to proceed with certain aspects of this with clear direction tonight to discuss how we want to handle the May town meeting. Um, which should be inclusive of definitely a presentation to inform the community of what are we asking for as part of the feasibility study and then also the potential vote in which we'll take for the feasibility study, the dollars, the capital dollars for it. Um, I mean that was I mean we met for an hour and a half, but that was pretty much the discussion we had. Um, so I know we're not voting on it tonight, but simply we got to get to soon is like what how what we're going to do for town meeting or what's our proposal, I guess, because we do have to work with them and the broader

137town on that and warrants are due next week. >> I I'd be strongly in favor of of vote on in May. Um, and obviously we could do a presentation with that as well. Um but I think we have consistently over a number of years heard about um the community's strong interest in moving forward with the high school and so um anything if we if we didn't vote in May that would just be a delay. Um but I just don't think anyone is interested by a little bit louder please. We can't hear you. Sorry. >> Um I am in favor of of both a presentation and a vote in May. So, so I'm a little confused where October is even coming from. So, Sarah Don and I met with the select board back in December with

138Dr. Kuska and Dr. Jordan when we got invited into the the um eligibility period. >> I think we all were there actually. >> Were you all there? >> Yeah, >> we're all there. >> We were all there. >> Um and and I thought it was made pretty clear that the school committee would like wanted to proceed with the you know a vote for the feasibility study funding as soon as possible and being that being May. So, I'm not entirely sure where this October uh discussion is coming from. I mean, if you if you think about the process, we get into the eligibility period officially, >> June 1st, and you then have 270 days to essentially fund a feasibility study. that leaves October time meeting is the only potential town meeting if you wait that long

139or you hold a special town meeting and we know how the town feels about the special town meetings. Um while I don't anticipate there being an issue with with getting uh support for this and town has been very vocal about this in the past um going in May does provide a backup plan for you know in October if if for something if something goes wrong and while we do need to educate the community on what exactly the feasibility study is and what it includes and what it what it doesn't um the amount of the as well while significant is not so out of the question so out of the sort uh you know size numbers that that we we just had two roofs that we funded which are you know over over $2 million. I

140mean it's not like this is this is um something sort of you know a crazy number. >> The only thing to set the record straight Dan just what you said just mean we had discussion we were coming back to our individual boards which I believe site board met last night and we're meeting tonight to then come back as a working group and and bring this feedback. So I would say the discussion was not specific on a date specifically. It was more of these are the options. What do we feel most comfortable with? So I think um I guess one does anybody have anything else to add because we definitely >> watch this like it's fair to to talk about options. I think, you know, I do think May makes sense from a number of I

141mean, even we continually get feedback about, you know, even as recent as um when we did the survey for feedback on the superintendent, we got a lot of information about schools in general. And one of the topics that came up repeatedly, and I think Ben saw this, um you know, he was involved in the looking at the comments from the survey. We get a lot of questions about when's the high school coming, when's the high school coming. So, I think the town is has been looking for this for a number of years. We've applied for a number of years. So, I think it it does make sense. You know, when you look at building costs are, you know, they they're not going down. The longer we wait, they don't go down. Um I also think

142there there was a statement in on the MSBA website that talked about the eligibility period. And while it is um it starts it will start for us on June 1st. It's a 270day period in which we have to um fulfill a number of requirements. There are number of deliverables that have to be um put together by various people um many sitting here, some in the town side, some the select board people. Um, it did have a statement that said, um, districts that are able to successfully complete the preliminary requirements in less than 270 days may receive invitation earlier than 270 days as determined by the MSBA. Who knows if that would happen for us or not, but I, you know, if we get stuff done early, I I think it's always beneficial. So, >> one

143thing we left was put out in the where we wanted to, I think all of us were trying to get clarified. it doesn't hurt us from getting ahead of things, right? And that's incredibly important to think about. So, if we get ahead of it, it does show to an interest from our town that we're excited about this and we're there's a lot of positive energy. >> I thought I'd mentioned it at some level, but maybe I didn't. I I know too in the conversation I had leading up to the vote, uh, they really wanted to know that we were committed and they really wanted to know that we were going to put it forward in May. again knowing that you had a follow-up if something didn't go the way you wanted, but they really wanted

144us to kind of certify that we were going to do it for the Maytown meeting prior to the June 1st and then obviously we have a fall back. So I I want to make sure that that's clear. >> That's good. >> That's really good information and I I I think mostly that's been the the the line of thought that we've been working towards. So I think we can you can bring that feedback back. Yeah, I mean it's it is at least I'll speak from my own perspective. We're we have to work on this with the town and the town's been hugely supportive um including the select board. So I I think as long as we bring back the feedback and we can align it. I Hillary, anything to add? I mean it was a good

145session. >> I agree and and the only other thing that we talked about of note was um communication. So that we imagine the community has a lot of questions about the process. So um you know the presentation at on the main meeting will be important but we can also work on you know a website and some other ways that we can answer qu answer some of those initial questions to the community. Yeah, I meant to mention that I also had talked to Ben yesterday um from the select board and we have been talking about a presentation at town meeting but additionally um you know back we were doing presentations at like the senior center to we could do that even before town meeting partly to also hear questions that may also come up at town

146meeting you know so it's it's like kind of a prevetting process to make sure we've got all of the information that the community is kind of looking for. So, um I think we can work closely with the select board to put that kind of information together, too. So, >> Tina did offer from and I I think Hillary and I agreed on and Hillary to speak up if she didn't. Um you know, the town's going to we're going to work with Chris Mayo to set up a town website and then schools will link to that site just so we're saying the same thing, right? There's no point in us creating two different versions of the same truth. Um so, we're going to start working on that as well just to share information, have it out there.

147But to be clear, this website is supposed to be the school building committee website. >> Correct. >> Which we need a school building committee to have a school building. >> And it was also discussed and we are fundamentally aligned to get started immediately on that. There are some that are deacto roles that are defined by the position and then there's others that are at large where there's a broader conversation of the atlarge roles and who will take those up and >> need the atlarge roles to get the building committee. Correct. But we don't need a building committee before we have website with information. I I think we agree with you on the building committee. We'll be ushering that website after they're created, but we don't have to wait for one to get a website started.

148>> Okay. So, to be clear, everyone is in is in agreement that we would like this to be on the May warrant for and we will do a presentation and then the vote on a number that our budget subcommittee will be. We don't have an official vote on the agenda tonight, but we will take that back with >> the consensus. >> Consensus and then we'll Yeah, we'll be Yes. And and we got to beat this week with her cuz we got to get that on the warrant as soon as possible. >> It's that frank to your point on getting the warrant as soon as possible. Um the warrant language does need to be approved by the MSBA. They want at least two weeks lead time before any kind of um place like any kind of

149like local deadlines are for when the warrant needs to be. So I've been in conversation with Frank on that. So, it just gives us more um that's probably our most looming next step um is that they they and and the template they provide the template um warrant language they're kind of suggesting slash requiring you to to use. Um >> we have that. >> We do. Okay. Yeah. Uh, and we just need um we just need kind of like a big thumbs up from from the boards on on uh and then Frank and I can kind of draft what that we're wanting to send and then send that over to uh the MSBA for them to kind of send back to us with their approval for it. >> But they need two weeks before we get

150locked down. >> No, two. So, the warrant closes on March 9th. >> Okay. The select board may open and change the warrant at any time before it needs to be finalized, which is 7 days before town. >> Okay. So, we just need to get in before the 9th at their changes. >> No, no, you have to have a place you can put a placeholder. they can open up the warrant, put a new article. select board has autonom basically what what can't happen is new citizens petitions new sort of there's no right to get something onto the >> so we could put what's in the template already and we can make changes if if there >> yeah I think I think whatever is decided to be put on the I mean obviously I would like and

151Frank would like and I would like to get something over to the MSBA as soon as we possibly can but let's say that um whatever is planned to be put on the March 9th warrant um I would like to be in a pretty good place that we could share that with the MSBA if we need to make an adjustment based off that language. I do think that if we're I mean the way the template language works is just like insert name of school, insert amount, insert that is we're pretty comfortable as far as what that approval might be. >> I'm saying we're two weeks I think or from >> we're just two weeks. >> We we have more time than than that. We want to do we want it to be on there as soon

152as possible, but I'm just saying we >> Yes. It's not a a fire bill yet. >> How will you vote again before March 12th? Is this something we're voting on to make a recommendation for the language that goes on since we are also pushing it? I >> again we can we can we could vote on different language on March 12th. It's not I mean >> different than what we've already submitted. >> Well, the language needs to be approved by the >> select board. No, no, sorry. By by the MSBA. So, in some >> I think we should get their feedback. Uh yeah. No, actually, I mean, >> if we're >> we could have a quick meeting if we need to. >> Okay. >> We may want to consider having a quick meeting after we get

153their feedback and voting on something and recommending it, >> but I'm not sure we'll have it. >> But the question is, do we want to put anything in that's different than our template? Because if we submit their template to them, the highly >> we're getting we're not getting back from SBA, they are approving it. So, like once they they final >> Yeah. They're kind of the final say on what the warrant >> but but feedback's important because if they don't approve it, do they give feedback on >> Yeah. Okay. >> Otherwise, it's dead end. >> I do think for community and I've heard a few voices, not many, but a few. What is a feasibility study? I know we've said it a few times. I think we're ingrained in it, but I think it's important

154to have the community understand what the amount we're looking for is for as it relates to the building >> that we're running through budget sub and and really relying on on Dr. Jordan and and all the work that he's he's been doing >> with uh Mr. Geese and you know other town. So, but that will be part of it. >> Yep. >> Okay. >> So, we may need a meeting shortly. I guess David, can you share that out with us? The >> Yeah, and I've shared it. Um Sarah, I believe, has a copy of the warrant language, too, and so does Frank, and I think uh Ben has a copy of it as well. >> When does this national And we will we're planning to meet with Tina again next week. >> We got to

155find the time and date. >> Okay. >> Yeah, we said after we all met with our board. So, >> okay. Well, there more news after next meeting. >> Okay. I'm going to um so we have a couple things but I think I'm going to bump up the discussion on the 25 calendar or this current year calendar. Um 25 26 we're in 2026 sorry um because obviously we this is a tough uh week. Um we've had a lot of snow and so our current calendar we have um we're concerned about the very late um last day of school at this point. If we just so I understand if we did nothing to any other days the last day of school right now would be uh June 26th and obviously there's no potentially next week doesn't seem

156well some some say it's a lot say it's none so it'll be none a lot nothing >> um so I I know that we've gotten lots of emails Um there have been lots of conversations. I'm not sure exactly how to start this conversation other than I can well can we take one of the suggestions was to take another look at the um March PD date and see if we could come up with something creative surrounding that whether that would be possible to turn the full PD day into a half PD day and get a half day of school in um on that day. So, I would prefer to instead just swap it and have the PD day on on April 3rd, Good Friday, so that we have a full day of of of learning for

157for the students. I we we we have to look at half PD days and and that kind of stuff kind of going forward. But for right now, rather than sort of changing that, I'd like to, you know, my you know, thought is keep a full day of learning and on 10th for for student not keep move to a full day of of classes on the 10th for for students and um move that PD to Good Friday. I'll have an unpopular probably in comment here, but if there could, and it could happen at any point, but if there's other looming days, do we want to make a decision now to cover what has already been done or wait a little bit longer? Understanding we're not going beyond the 26th. >> Just take a break. And I

158I wonder if if I I think probably some of the people in this room have um >> maybe have some ideas that we could listen to first and then and then kind of >> so you respond to those. >> A couple things to consider the 180 days for students and 185 for staff. That's contractual as well. >> One of the ways could be what Dian suggested is that we could obviously we'd have to discuss it with the union. Um, but you could foreseeably do um PD on Good Friday. I would suggest if you're doing it that day, you would do a half day because that other people on usually around noon time. I'm hearing sometimes earlier in this um a lot of our Catholic staff might be attending Good Friday things that start typically start

159around noon, but I'm hearing even earlier in Hollist. So, I think foreseeably we could manage a half day. we would lose a half day of PD, but it would allow us to have the full day for students on the March 10th. And I think there's an willingness from the leadership team to make that work. Um, and still and still meet all the needs of staff and PD that was planned, but cut cut it down to a half day for that reason and get the day in for the students, which would get you back to the 25th with the understanding that we don't know if there's going to be in the future. I do think the weather for next week is looking okay, but we don't know, right? The other thought is having a half day

160on Eid and Good Friday. You know, those are the things to consider. You could do leave the PD day alone and potentially do half days for students and staff on good on Eid and Good Friday. I don't know. I'm just, you know, kind of throwing out things that are hypothetical. If it was a half day on Good Friday though, it would still be the students would be out, but would the staff be hitting the 185 days or they'd be at 184.5 now? >> Or would be okay with that? >> Either way, if we do a half day for staff, it's technically a full day for staff, whichever way we do it. You know what I mean? Like it contractually it's 185 full days, but I don't think we're going to split hairs on that. We

161would be I think everybody would make that work because even like you know the day before Thanksgiving for example that's technically a full day for staff. We don't sit there and make sure that they're staying a full day because we all it's past you know it's so I I don't think anyone would have a problem with that. Everybody would be satisfied. Is one day enough to get back? >> I think it's >> Well, I I think if you're sitting at the 26th day and there's a a one snow day, you're you're rolling into June 30th or June 29th >> and then you really just have the 29th and 30th. You have one more day to give. And if if those days come too late into what would be the winter season, the very end of

162March, um we don't have many places to kind of carve out. So, we have some opportunities of some dates that are immediately in front of us. I don't I don't want us to be in a spot at the very beginning of April where we're kicking ourselves on some days that were available to us in March >> because the other holidays are federal holidays after that. So, you can't do anything with except for April vacation and we have done that before >> uh after March 13th of 2020 sometime at the very end of March I think we took away April vacation not Patriots day but if >> the thought and the thought on March 10th is that's that's a middle of the week day so it's like a it's a Tuesday um versus like I think

163when we're looking at staff outages and planned vacations they're usually flanking like a Friday Monday um And so like how we think about that, I think there's greater flexibility. And then with the the Good Friday or Eve, um if we're just doing staff, we're not as impacted by a by a school day. Could say we have extreme staff and student outages. There might be a scenario where we can't open the building due to the number of absences. If it were a PD day, um, regardless of who calls in sick or whatever that would be, we we could still count the full day. >> Well, and the other piece is if it's a if it's a half day PD for our staff, it would only be our education staff. It wouldn't be our PA professional staff

164because that's not one of the days. Uh, they've already had their PD. So, it's because that's another issue. It's like March 10th. Right now, our PA professionals are not expected to work that day because it's full PD day. So we also would have to work that out and make sure we have enough pair professionals to come in on March 10th. >> Do you think we could do that and you know have a lot of time between >> I think we'd want to have that conversation sooner than later. >> Yeah, I I think as a logical next step here is there's some type of vote that comes out of the school committee that at least allows Dr. Custo to have that conversation with the HFT to be able to to see where that where that lies.

165>> Yeah. And Dr. Jordan and I could do that together. Do any of you all have any additional thoughts on this >> or are you is what we're saying does >> what we're saying make sense? >> There's limited options. >> Um have we not have we missed something major? >> We talked about as an option but we want to keep it as a 24th knowing we're at 26 right now. Do you look do you look at putting the PD day as a half day for Good Friday or Eid? So you get a half day with students extra. You save the PD day. They get two days back and you're going out the 24th. >> Wait, what? >> Get one day back. >> How do you get two days? >> No, you would get the PD

166day back and a half day for eat or Good Friday. >> So you want kids would go to school on >> eat or Good Friday for a half day. >> For the rest of the day, he wants the students part of that day, too. So then you get >> I'm more trying to protect from going into the 29th right now rather than trying to sort of claw back during during the week. So a lot of feedback I don't really want to mess with the the holidays right now because I think that we need a a bigger conversation before we we start getting there. I think we need to take a look at all of this, but it needs to be done in a thoughtful sort of. >> So the key thing right now is if

167we're touching March 10th because that's going to be before our next meeting and that's like in >> correct and then so if next week turns into a you know another one where 4 days out they said nothing and then we get you know 19 in then we meet on the 12th and we can have you know meaning two or three days of of no school then we can meet on the you know the 12th and and try to sort of start talking about that. But yeah, then you're looking at having to either eliminate those those holidays or start looking at April vacation and none of that will be popular. >> Yeah, >> I would be my recommendation as well for focus on that the 10th and because we will have other successful school committee meetings

168if we need to approach those things there. I just think we have the immediiacy of the March 10th date in front of us. And again, my caution of at the moment, I think it still might be something we have to if we end up getting the weather of trying to vote on students coming on Good Friday E right now is um that kind of concretizes it right now and we may not need it. And um the other part portion is still like the risk that not enough staff for the students to meet those needs are or we're hitting the requirements that we we need to and I just don't even want to like get to that risk at this point. >> So one thing um being just two weeks away from this um that I'm

169aware of is if the paras were not scheduled to work that we're now we need a sufficient number of paras to be able to pull this off. Do you think it's more likely that we could have a sufficient number of pairs if it's a half day and not a full day? Because I imagine having a day off, they may have scheduled appointments or they may have things that could conflict. I could see doing a half day of school making it more likely that we could get a sufficient number of pairs unless you disagree. >> I don't know that. I feel like I don't know that it would make a difference to be honest with you. I think >> and I don't think we know the answer to that yet. I I think what we would

170I think I'm in agreement with Susan. I don't know I don't know if it would make a difference or I don't know if we know the answer yet. I think I think the I imagine the HFT is accommodated and want to to make as much of this happening happen as much knowing how close those are to the deadlines. But I the reality is we're going to have some folks with some looming uh looming appointments that are scheduled on those days. I think if we can work with the HFT to kind of just identify a process that makes sense and is as supportive as we can to the pairs that do have needs um and and at the same time um kind of meets the needs of the district. I think I think that that's something

171a conversation I think we can have. >> I do think this illustrates though why it's so important not to have a last day of school initially in the 20s just because you get a bad winter. >> Yeah. I mean, we we we should not be having to have this this sort of concern with just four snow days, right? We build in kind of five. We have had these kind of years before. So, >> another question. I know when we extended the schedule um last year, we bought like 15 minutes for um school, right? 10 to 15 minutes. >> Do those minutes add up enough that for the remainder of the year, we could take away a day? >> No. like the minutes they don't like >> they only get credit for the days that you

172attend like the dusty website says like 990 >> time on learning is separate from day >> 180 days is the law not to add up >> yeah because I think >> yeah theoretically we're doing more minutes now than right so I >> yeah you need the minutes and the days you need both >> the minutes you know add up to equivalent for most students of class you know about seven days of additional Yeah, that's why I wasn't sure that we had any wiggle room with that. >> But it doesn't change. >> I didn't know that. >> It was both. >> Yeah, I didn't either because I when I was looking at a lot of the school calendars, there are definitely some schools in the district that are at like 174 days on learning because they

173have a lot of half days. I'm like, how are they getting away with that? >> Yeah, they a half day still counts as a day out of one. You know what I mean? And that's where it's like it's >> Yeah. Okay. >> This Desi needs to do a better job, I think, of trying to have equity. Why do we like twohour delays and half snow and 180? >> I'm sorry. One thought I had for the future and I don't know if anyone's interested in doing this is writing another letter to our they're going to start to to kill us. Um but but maybe our administrators can weigh in on the thought about this is allowing superintendents to call two to three remote learning days um instead of snow days because what we what we found

174during co is we can teach remote. It is definitely not as effective as in person, but I also think it's much more effective than uh June, you know, 26th. >> Yeah. >> So, right now, like Desi would not approve remote days as days. >> No, no, no. Understood. So, we would we would want to advocate. >> The other issue I like has come up is pivoting that quickly and making sure everybody has computers is always an issue, but also um what happens sometimes if you're having inclement weather, that's when a lot of the internets go, you know what I mean? So I in theory, yes, but the only way you could really do it is if obviously Desi allowed that date to count. And I think it would have to be something that could be

175done without a computer in the event of, you know, they have >> Well, and it would have to be something that there would be plans were in place, right? And it would be up to Virginia's discretion whether it's a snow day or remote learning day. 50% of the power in the town is out. Obviously, that that, you know, couldn't really be a remote learning day. >> Um I I just think it to have that flexibility to allow for it. >> It would be nice. Yeah. be at least I mean I've seen some of the private schools have these you know remote learning days and it's different I get it but we do have oneto ones commissioner so I don't in the past they were not willing to entertain that that's certainly something that could be

176brought up with the new commissioner I have no idea what he would say in that situation he seems very much of a rule follow as far as those things go >> can you tell us about the impact to the PD what what was planned for the march town >> yes so one of the things that was planned was Peg Dawson was going to be doing um half a day PD with our middle school because we had a different schedule for them and then also the high school had planned remind me uh partners >> we had outside >> right so we would have to look into whether that can be rescheduled or not I don't know and hopefully there will be >> we have elementary school ELA uh curriculum review Dr. Laney, do you want to

177speak to that? >> That's a little tricky just because that >> Yeah, we have a group of um we're in pilot season right now. So, we have um PD that day for a um one of the >> curriculum resources that we're choosing, but we'll figure it out. >> And then also there's an ML curriculum review which might have to be rescheduled. I'm not quite sure >> because that's districtwide. So, I don't know if they'd be able to get coverage or not. So >> I'll have to talk to the principles about that. >> The one thing I would say about the half day PD day on on Good Friday and while I understand and appreciate the sort of the the incentive there is there's already would be a a religious exemption anyway. So to have it

178as a full PD day allowing you know staff who who are observing to observe in in the way they mean would allow at least for more time to >> we could certainly have that conversation. Yeah. >> The only thing I'm concerned about, principles, do you guys have any uh reservations about potential presenters wanting to take that day off? >> We don't know. We have no idea. >> Yeah. Okay. >> We haven't even like they were scheduled for the 10th. We have no idea if or not. >> We have might have to pivot on some of the >> Right. It would certainly give us feedback on attendance for rel for at least one of the religious holidays, right? Right. >> Although I question how the first time you try anything, the attendance is going to be

179tough. So I think it would be hard to really get a good judgment from just doing it once. But >> yeah, >> tough year. >> So where do we where are we landing? Are we um >> I think we're are we just sticking with looking at the 10th for this meeting and then considering Okay. and the 10th we're thinking of moving to third >> the third or >> and I think leaving that at least the half day or full day for the third for for PD I'd be fine leaving that in the administration's discretion I suppose >> so I think there's two options right either March 10th becomes a half PD day and a half curriculum day right half day for students >> um or uh March 10th becomes a full for students and we

180move um PD to Friday, April April 3rd, Good Friday and make it a half PD day, right? Those are our two options. >> What about child care? I mean, right now obviously people would have to plan a full day of child care. But if you switch it to only a half day, does that is it easier or does that change? >> Well, it depends on your situation, but it's easier to cut things down than go find it. Certain certainly, but we're not asking anyone to go any none of the solutions that we're we're coming up with are to ask people to go find >> But from a PD presentation perspective, you keep it the same day, but make it a half day. They're already there all day right now. So, you're truncating that. You're not

181disrupting that as much. >> Students are expected to be in school or not expect >> no, they're off. >> Yeah. So, they have care, but they only need it for half the day after 11 a.m. So, it's not ideal for either side, but it's, I think, less disruptive. >> It would be helpful for parents to know that they have a full day for their students and that's less impactful than having to find child care the other way, right? >> Yeah. It also keeps the time on learning. >> Yeah. Especially in when the students are more engaged than they would be in June, >> right? Well, it gets a half as a half day >> and then you're not touching a holiday like >> No, we're not touching holiday right now. >> Not for students for

182>> regardless unless something massive changes. >> So, does it make sense to try for a full day on the 10th and half PD day on April 3rd? I'd say >> assuming it all >> I'd say half or full and we'll >> PD day on the third and we can let >> the discretion of the industry >> and and the 10th will be subject to making sure the pairs >> we would start that conversation right away. >> Yeah. >> Feedback from administration. >> Could we I mean is there the option of doing on a third or on uh what's the other Friday that's off? Like what is a reason why we're locking it into the third? >> What the You're saying the 20th? >> The 20th, right? Yeah. So like either or whatever's >> I think

183my I know more about Good Friday than I do about Eid. And I I just I know that Good Friday usually would start noon time on which would allow people to get out. I really Eid I think runs did hear last night at the um at the interviews that the local church starts Good Friday celebration at 11:00 >> which >> I don't know if that's true or not >> and we'd have to consider that >> last night when you and I were talking >> although I don't know how many of our staff >> are in town but I mean correct for >> Gar right there's no great solution here right I think we're just trying to figure out what's the best way >> to keep students >> in and getting their instruction but also support

184staff with a last minute pivot I think from our perspective though it shouldn't like 20th or the third cuz the presentation the presenters have to come too >> right till the third gives you a little bit more time to hopefully >> fair yeah >> also eat is our the most recent holiday that we we added to >> fair yeah >> that was just my >> I think the 10th should be a full day instruction, not a half day. I know that was floated around. >> I think we could shoot shoot for >> we're not doing PD unless there were some unless there ends up being an issue with parents or something like that, but >> just for parents, >> but even I mean if there are issues, it's less than two weeks away at this

185point. I feel like we kind of need to make a decision so that people can just adjust and not leave it too up in the air. >> Please. >> Yeah, we will we won't meet again and we prefer not to do this on an ad hoc basis, but I agree with you that that the time should be a full day. >> Okay. So, >> can we do it with the contingency that if we have insufficient pairs for a full day, but we're going to have sufficient pairs for a half day that we then >> we can do our best to try. I just I don't know. >> That way we don't have to >> gather that data to ensure one way or the you know, I mean, cuz last minute things happen too. So, we

186might think we have a certain amount and then find out, you know, >> we will do our best. >> It's all it's all contingent on having covered the the staffing that we need. I thought, >> but it's already the other problem is if we made it a half day, >> the par professionals already paid for a full day. So then that would actually they we'd have to deduct that from them because we annualize a salary. So I don't want to do that to them either. We'd want them to get their >> right. >> So full day is better than ever >> if they show up. So then I would make a motion to uh shift uh March 10th to a a full day of regular school um and move the PD day to um Friday

187the 3rd. Um >> yeah. >> Second. All in favor? That passes. >> Can you clarify to a half day or a full day? Can you just clarify on the third? I didn't specify. >> Oh, okay. Just PD on the day. >> Just PD on the day. >> And this would make the 25th a potential last day of school. Is that right? >> Right. We might be back here. >> Well, at this point, should we vote that so we can have an updated calendar up? >> Yes. >> Because I feel like it's feels it's a little challenging for families too right now. >> Um where you have to you pull this up and you >> Yes. >> have to adjust in your head. >> Yeah. >> Yep. can always vote it again. >> Okay. So, uh

188I'll do this. Why not? Uh to adjust the last day of school to uh June 25th. >> Second. All in favor? That passes? >> Okay. Um >> is that all pend Sorry, is that that's pending? >> Yes. >> Right. >> They could revote to the 26th if they had to do that. Okay. >> But that way Tim has glasses for us, too. >> Oh, good. >> Okay. Confirm that. >> We got to get kids to this community. >> No, I'm just bus drivers have to be available. >> The 10th is supposed to be up. >> The 10th and the 25th. Yeah. >> Well, no, the 20. I mean, that's happening right now. >> He's got your 25th. >> Here's here's the thing. It is going to be a little bit messy, but it is much

189better than people who are on the Southshore and they're looking at, you know, eliminating April vacation. It's going to be very messy uh for a lot of districts down there. So, I'm just >> Yes, I can attest to that. My daughter is one of those teachers that had the full week off and my grandson and her have been home for two weeks together. So, nice, but they will not be happy. We ask everyone April just sort of you know good answer best >> but having having school on the 29th >> that's of course we have two calendars >> I know so do we want to do we want to take a break let's take a break this year >> we're talking calendars >> um okay so we're going to move on to um we just

190have the director of teaching and learning job description um with a vote. Um I did talk to Kimmo. He weighed in on this. Um so we just need to approve the job description. Um >> are we 700? >> We can hopefully post it tomorrow. >> And David Jordan is running. >> Yes. Dr. Jordan, the facilitator of the search. The one thing is um that I did want to consider is I know um because it's a title change and potential salary change a different role slightly. Um Dr. Jordan and I would like to be able to look at this description much more closely because there are some things that are already not part of the current role. So if you could give us an opportunity tomorrow or the two of us could look and u make

191some adjustments and then potentially share it back to you Sarah if the committee would allow us to do so to get final input. That's fine. >> But I think >> I did leave this just um because Kim had looked at the >> Okay. >> So I wanted to make sure um >> one thing I noticed right away that I think we could probably delete is attends all attends all school committee housing committee. >> That was one thing I noticed and also the curriculum council doesn't exist in the same way but they have curriculum meetings with the various curriculum. So, >> but still to attend school committee, school housing, school building committees as as necessary or as as requested, you know, as >> or as requested. >> No, more more so like if if the superintendent

192asks >> took out as requested as requested. >> Yeah. I mean, as as Dr. Gus and I talked about when we're just looking at things that are don't make sense to be in there, just have the opportunity to kind of make to make those those tweaks, but still with the intention it would with with uh Sarah's approval of the changes that we've made that we can post tomorrow. >> So, we would almost be voting subject to Dr. Pascal um Jordan and >> Sarah >> and then >> Okay. Well, so so >> coordinating with Sarah, >> I'd like to do that and then I'd also I think we should we should vote on the salary arrange specifically separately. >> Okay. So >> directors and assistant superintendent are similar salary bands. I think that was said previously

193or >> it depends on the position and the person there there's overlap but you can there's a lot of overlap directors who are paid more than assistant superintendents. Generally speaking, assistant superintendent or paper director. I >> feel like there's a lot of overlap though in this band versus where assistant superintendent is. >> Depends on who the applicant is. >> Experience. >> I think there's a pretty good range there. >> Yeah. >> I'm not a good I'm not a fan of tight ranges. In fact, this seems tight. This is tighter than I'd like it to be, but it is within sort of where it seems like >> agree. It's not a tight >> public education >> probably tighter than you'd like it, but it's not that tight. >> I mean, the the the bands in in

194the corporate world are like 50%. >> I know. >> Yeah. >> Okay. You want you want the space to be able to hire somebody who is limited to no experience, but has has really demonstrated this is somebody we want to take a risk on. Uh but then you want to have the opportunity if if just somebody with a ton of experience and you're in need, you have you have the flexibility to be able to make this. >> So if well within that um I think I'm with Dan in should we widen the range because I have especially if we're considering somebody who has less experience. Um I've seen directors of teaching and learning or directors of you know STEM or humanities at a lower um salary than our minimum. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. because we

195don't want to get locked in if you do find someone who >> The one thing I'll say is I mean I personally I think that is is good. I I have been looking at a lot of different sort of postings that I've seen out there. 35,000 uh range is not something I've seen. Most of them are are 10 to 20,000. >> Could we be different? I mean, you know me, I love to, you know, break the mold. But >> I think I I I personally am good at 175 by not raising that, but I What's the harm in making it a little wider on the lower end side to to open the net? >> I don't think you're opening the net going down. >> That's you're potentially >> It's opening the net for us like

196to find to Dr. Dur's point like if we find someone who doesn't have direct experience but we have promise like we 150 is not small. I I I think if you go down probably to 140 you risk scaring some qualified applicants away thinking that they would get the job and then get low would would be my guess. And given sort of where our other similar title people are with similar sort of responsibilities, I'm okay with this range. >> How do you feel about the range, sir? Um >> I I chemo saw the range so I I'm okay with it as um cuz he was kind of talking about relative to >> other positions um >> okay so >> that makes me think that was kind of where where this came from. So >> positions here.

197>> No. >> So I'll make a motion to set the salary range for the um director of teaching and learning at $150 to $175,000. Second. >> All in favor? >> Passes. I'll make a motion to approve the job description with modifications by the administrative team as they deem non largely subsided, you know, as they deem necessary >> And consult with Sarah. Yes. So all that in the motion and change to to are we 2700 students? >> Oh, how many plus? >> Yeah, we'll we'll not shrinking that fast. Second the motion to finish the motion. >> Okay. All in favor? >> I'm sorry. >> Having discussions. >> Okay. >> Let's see. >> I think we're down to the last item. >> So, will this position be posted in the next uh few days? Maybe tomorrow. >>

198We're going to try to get it tomorrow, but we'll try to get with Sarah. just we're not going to make a huge change, but we need to try to make it work for what we >> because something should come off if it's not the assistant superintendent. >> Yeah, I I think you're right. >> I think that the timing will roll as soon as we can get it posted. I mean, ideally you you kind of want to have minimally a recommendation or a person feeling that they have the job before spring break. >> Yeah. So, goal tomorrow, but no later than Monday if we can. >> Okay, that sounds reasonable on that. And there is a um time frame or timeline in the folder too. I um I don't know if anyone do we want to

199name a school committee member to be on that? We we probably should because what? So where it says week of March 2nd, >> is that meaning an email is going to go out to um look for people to join the committee? Yeah. >> And when will then the committee will be formed? >> I believe by March >> Definitely before March 23rd. >> Yes. Um, but you're going to send something out um as early as next week asking for people to submit interest. Okay. Um, and in terms of the week of March 23rd, meeting with the interview committee, reviewing the candidates, are we thinking that's going to be in the evening? Do we have I mean >> I I would considering the process we've followed with our other openings we've had it seems like and Joan

200to chime in. It's been evenings have been what's worked or late afternoons? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Anyone is anyone interested in being on the search committee? Hillary. Yay. >> Excellent. >> I'm interested as well, but we'll defer to you. So, if you're only doing it because no one else volunteered, I will. >> She loves there. >> I am interested, but I I've also I also was on the um other stuff. So, I'm happy on on Super 10. So, if you're truly wanted, but don't feel like you have to take it on. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> And if something happens, we can always switch up. >> Okay. We could do use a backup. Okay. >> So, I'll make a motion to appoint Hillary as the school committee member with Tom backup to the

201uh director of teaching and learning uh search. So, >> all in favor? >> Sounds great. >> Okay. >> Um do we approve who's going to be on the committee? What is that? >> Oh yeah. Were there any concerns or questions about just a point of review? >> This isn't our search. >> Right. Right. >> So I think you appoint our member and and the rest is done by >> Okay. Anything else then on this? >> Great. Okay. Um so the last thing I think is um going back to the 2627 school calendar. Um I did Tracy had some more suggestions there. There's a shortcut there for the version that has proposed changes. >> Um I >> it says it's H it's not linked to the agenda. It's in the folder. It says HPS school calendar

2022627 proposed changes. Um, so I think the one that we've talked the most about is probably alternatives three with doing the first and second day is full day PDS for the staff >> and then trying to do with um a full day for students on their first day. Um I keep going I I honestly hate that start but I did look I was looking forward and this is you know for the next five six years this is not an issue. So even though starting two weeks before Labor Day and having less than two months because if we start if we end on the 25th and we're starting on the 24th that's seems like a very very short summer for um everybody but it is a smaller period of time and I like I like alternative

203one those of you looking at it that looks a little bit more at the religious holidays as PD days. Um, so I do like that we've started that conversation with this year's calendar um because I think um that will open up a little bit more for us. There's been a lot of feedback from the community on relooking at that. Um so I don't know. I mean alternative 3 gets us out earlier starting with those two full PD to start and then even playing around with some half day PDs a little bit more particularly toward the end of the year. I think gives a lot more time on learning for our students. get those 180 days in better. Um, >> so just I mean the first day for students this year was was August 26th. I

204understand the weird Labor Day thing, but it's not like we're starting if we started on the 26th of August. It's not like we would be starting earlier than we did this year. >> Correct. But still >> um I I recognize that we have touched or we we touching a PD on on on a holiday uh for for this year. But I think that I still to me that's more of an emergency type of situation to ensure we we don't have school on the 29th and I really I you know talked about it for a little while and I know we've been really busy but I really do think we need to sort of do some more work and study through some sort of committee and you know we I know we've done a lot of

205surveys but I haven't seen a real holistic survey. We surveyed the community a while ago uh or last two years ago I think about February break and you know breaking that up and people hated well I wouldn't say hated but 65% or so people did not >> like that idea but we didn't really look at it in a holistic manner having people weigh certain how late they get out versus how many holiday you know versus religious holidays versus you know getting rid of or or shortening February break you know we didn't sort of try to get people to sort of make a choice where they line. I think that there's a lot of work that we can do, especially if we're getting out on the 15th for next year, >> at least as an original

206date. >> Yeah. >> Um, and that's what we sort of had said too, that this was kind of a a good year to do it because we don't have that late start date. I really don't want to get into, you know, and I recognize that this is only I think pure alternative two, but I I don't really don't want to get into a, you know, a 22nd end date because again, if we had four uh snow days and we were getting out on the 22nd, we would be in the 28th, 29th, um that last week of of June next year and then we'd be scrambling again. Um, >> sorry. Oh, I just I also want to note that um the proposals in each one just part of this is because when holidays fall in March

207next year, um we have three March weeks of 4 days, which would be hard for our um administrators and students maybe as well. um and planning for MCCAST and some of the other academic activities that go on in March. I mean, if we're looking at that March, I mean, I know you familiar with tellers, but that full PD that's currently scheduled for the second. If we're looking at half day, do the January PD a half day, the March PD a half day, then we have two in August is full, one um there was currently one scheduled for the Veterans Day, the November uh not Veterans Day, um November 3rd election day. Um, but then that puts a lot of stress on the month of November. Whereas October, if we've moved it up a week, then

208we have October with a a break. That day doesn't have to be off. >> The Tuesdays obviously I think a lot of not off the PD date because I think a lot of surrounding districts do that and because voting is here up here at the high school and those tend to tend to be well this is going to be, you know, a congressional election year. So it will be the second most um second busiest election there is. Um >> yeah, keeping that a full day. So that would be three full day, two half day. >> March 2nd, I do see that as I have noticed that before, but yeah, March is a duty. >> So that I don't know what to do about that half day >> because you move it to early February, you're

209got you're getting kind of close to the other one on the 15th, you move it into April doesn't really do you any good because you're still kind of just disrupting three or four different weeks. >> But I like that. um moving one of the PD days to before school starts so there's less there's one fewer just um shorten week in September >> and students are getting out a little one day earlier >> one push towards the November date just because if you don't have that you've eliminated Hollist providing PD for all the UA teachers across the state for our teachers and other districts >> on on the on election day. Yeah, >> I'm not I don't think we're looking the election day. >> Okay. >> It wasn't on there. I'm sorry. >> It's not on

210the calendar, so that's why. >> Okay. >> I'm confused. So >> So is it just missing it though? Is that going to push the dates out? >> Yeah, it's fine. I just switched it from the 29th to the >> Oh, it's the current proposal has us out the 15th. If we move the PD from the 11th of September to the 25th of August, that should not change anything about the last day of school, which should still be the 15th. >> Yeah, I just wanted to check that though because I was getting the 16th when I was counting up days. So, I just I did get >> the first time was 16th, but then it was 15. So, I don't know. So I I think I had talked to you that the teachers contract is 185

211and the student contract is the student desi expectations 180 but when we added half days it went from three full day and one um colloquial day that was four. We still have to do 185. So the compromise was that the agreement was that the students would have 181 days so that they wouldn't be missing that time on learning. So you still have to hit if you do half days, you still have to hit 185 for staff and 181 for students in that model. >> No, we're looking just sort of the original schedule with the full PDS. No half days. >> Oh, okay. Sorry. >> I I Let's just recount. We don't have to vote on the the 15th or 16th. Either one is at least give some buffer before Junth holiday. Um, that being said,

212I think that we probably need to if if I think if people are sort of leaning towards moving the 11th to the 25th, we probably should have some more conversations with the HFT before we do move anything. >> We do need to um follow up with them and and we're starting that process, but we don't have a team at this point, but hopefully by next meeting, I think we should be Yes. >> So, I have one other question about um athletics, which I know is only a small portion of our students. Do we have any flexibility with helping our sports team? I mean, we have 11 teams in four different I think it's four different sports fighting for one field. Um are do we have any ability to help them get other space to hold

213triyouts? >> The earlier start is that going to impact the start of sports? So typically girls soccer and boys soccer are given space at Marshall to hold triyouts there. So >> but that's during the day if we're now making them all have triyouts at night because they're starting school on Wednesday and a lot of our coaches are on Monday >> for soccer this year. It was just the week it was like it was the week of the 17th, >> right? They can't start. >> Yeah. So that it's going to be around the same time. So it's all >> No, but if we have all these teams and they all everyone can only start on so Monday, Tuesday if their coaches aren't working in the district, they could potentially have triyouts then, but then Wednesday, Thursday,

214Friday, our students are all in school, so everyone's going to want the field starting at 3:00. >> Practices can start on the 24th tryyous. >> Tryyous happen before that. I don't I think they're limited to two two weeks before from what my conversation >> this year is the teacher started on the 25th. So it's it's >> so they're limited before. Yeah. Two weeks before Labor Day. >> No. >> Force >> for practices, but not for >> the whole try out situation. >> David, what about can't they run captain's practices? >> That's That's I mean, we don't we know nothing about them. >> Yeah, we don't. >> I don't know what those are, Jenny. >> Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. >> Sorry. >> Don't know. I think they do boats. Something new boats. Um uh yeah.

215So they so the the MIA tells us when they can start. I have to ask Matt what it is this year. It it can shift based on the the like the calendar um and the school year starting because schools start at different times. >> Um I know that Matt has used other fields in the past when necessary to to do certain tryyouts. Um >> but the majority of our teams make it work. They just stack the tri, you know, they they stack up and as they need to and use the the fields because what's I just want to understand. So what is your So thinking about the start date, what's the concern? >> So if everyone MIA I'm pretty sure said that coaches can't coaches can't be there until the 24th with their kids. >>

216So usually a lot of our teams Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are still having triyouts, right? >> But now instead of being able I mean I know some of the the triyouts start at 7:00 a.m. Now our triyouts for all of our teams can't start until the earliest 3. >> So I believe so. Okay, that's what you're saying. Sorry. So I believe what you can do in this situation again because calendars are all different I believe is you you get a waiver from the MIAA based on when we have availability in time. That's how most things work. I have to ask Matt >> okay >> what that is but usually usually what the MIA does in those situations is you apply for a waiver um because and you're basically saying it's not an unfair advantage like we're

217we're acknowledging it's not an unfair advantage. It has to do with our access to fields and calendars and that. So I'd ask ask Matt on that piece. But either way, the kids have they they the kids are practicing, they're doing their their whatever they're doing, and then they would start and do. But most of the tryyouts are right before, right? Those those early days. Yeah. >> That week. >> And I think is it on MAA um that they make begin on the second Monday preceding Labor Day for the fall 2026. It's Monday, August 24th. So they'd have Monday and Tuesday as full days. And then there's certain exceptions for some sports like football and also golf that are >> on touring. >> You also we also would be like our calendar doesn't change based on

218our school day starting like when like the start of the sports season. >> So you would still have the days not the mornings but you still have the afternoons, >> right? That's what I'm saying. Field space we have one. So that do we have the ability to help them rent other spaces? usually. Yeah. I mean, we have other spaces that we use when we need to, but with a lot of those sports, like even if like talking about like girls soccer or boys soccer, like the triyouts, 90% of the time it's like you have a whole massive group of them and it they can make it happen pretty quickly and they do a good job and um we haven't run into it, but it's it's something that I can talk with Matt about to see.

219But I do know we have used other fields in the past to when when necessary. says Marshall, but >> Mar Yeah, >> but I'll I'll check in with that. I have to I'll see him tomorrow. So, I'll check in with him and >> be driving to Burlington for boys basketball during rush hour. Should be great. Uh >> proposals, right? >> What? >> Make sure those >> gladly on the, you know, drive over because you >> I'll talk to him about that and the dates and I'll let you know what he says about those. I mean August August 24th is the MIA official start >> date for tryyouts. Um the on that >> we can get an exemption. >> I mean I it's but we also use other fields. So there's other space that we've used

220before. Um >> yeah, one or the other. And then they they're pretty efficient with their triyouts too. Like it's >> cuz I mean we do it like in the spring we're talking about like all the lacrosse and then the track is going up at the same time. So like I mean they're they're able to pull it off, you know, with baseball and softball and all of >> Yeah, those are >> No, I get what you're saying. No, I get what you're saying. I'll ask any high school ripped up all the fields. >> But Tracy, I'll I'll ask Matt what we can do and make sure that we have all the what we need. Okay. >> But if you're doing a um 24th and 25th just two days for staff, it kind of puts us exactly

221where we were this year and he made it work. So maybe find out how we try out started the week before. >> They started the year before that. Yeah. Because that's that's the difference because of the >> timing. So yeah. >> So we're sticking with the start date of the 24th. That's the only thing we've decided >> pending the further conversations with >> further conversations >> but we're hoping to do a two day full day PD >> full day start for students on Wednesday >> full day or >> it's not two full PD days first day is not the same PD but >> yes two two teacher only days >> two teacher only days >> then then students share >> right so we have to continue till next time. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> I

222know it was more comfortable. We should put a date in which we want to lock and load this though cuz it will go into >> March 12th. >> Yeah. March. Hopefully the next >> I got it. >> I promised. I remember my promise. Dr. Dorian, we would not go into May talking about next year's count. It's already March. >> We're getting close. >> Double check everything. Is it the third one that we're >> Yeah. >> having over. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Okay. >> I think we are done. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Moved by Don. >> Roll call vote. >> Did we do a roll call? >> No. >> Okay. Oh, we're not going. Okay. Yes. All right. Good night, Hollist. >> Thank you.