Holliston School Committee - October 24, 2024 7:00pm

001All right, good evening and uh welcome to the October 24th, 2024 uh meeting of the halls of school committee. Uh we have a quorum one more join us later, but we will get started. Um so I would we'll call the meeting to order and we'll go to our consent agenda. I did put uh into the folder uh one additional set of minutes that uh that Joe was nice enough to prepare for us. If you want to um amend the consent agenda, just add them. They're just the uh the minutes from our pre-T town meeting. So, they are fairly um basic. Does anyone want a second to look at them or are we good at adding them? Okay. All right. So, I'll uh accept a motion to amend the consent consent agenda to add the October

00224 21st. So, move second. Okay. All in favor? Okay. Now I will accept the motion to approve the consent agenda uh including the uh gifts. Uh is everyone just thank you. All right. Second. All right. All there. Thank you. That passes. All right. We now have a report from mer reps. Welcome. So the PSATs happened last week and they went smoothly. Um, field hockey senior night was on Monday and the youth program came and supported and then tonight is the boys soccer senior night. Hopefully that's going well. Um, the class of 2025 has two fundraisers on November 5th. Um, they're doing one with the cris with crispy cream and then the flag football fundraiser which went really well last year, so hopefully it'll do well again. Um, the class of 2027 is doing a cookie

003dough fundraiser on October 28th. Um, and then Deca just had a field trip um to Bentley College. Um, last Sunday the class of 2025 had a dumpster day. I heard it went pretty well. Um, HOSA and Wise Club. They're both having a bake sale outside of the gym before the election. The term ends on the 31st and that is as well as the last day of the French exchange students being at the school. Um, student council is doing a voter registration drive tomorrow for the students that don't know how to register, how to vote. Um, Monday, November 4th is the mock election and it's run by the students from the elections class and NHS has a canned good drive October 29th. Great. Thank you very much. Uh, school committee comment. Let's go down the line.

004Yeah, one call out. Town meeting. We uh got the approval for capital budgeting through the Rams. Oh, sorry. The uh Rams roof got approved. So, thank you, town meeting. That's going to well, part of it, good part of it. Um, so that's that's all from my side. Okay, Joel. No additional comments for me. I wanted to thank CPAC for all their efforts in playing a successful trunk or treat last week and their upcoming unified basketball game. a lot of fun, inclusive activities for the community. No comment. Uh I just want to thank everyone for attending town meeting and for uh helping get through it in one night. Everyone thought it was going to be two nights, but so that was that was excellent. Um the uh the Rams one acts for this weekend. So that

005so make sure to have take an opportunity if you can to show up. Um but other than that, uh I am good. So uh we'll now move on to public comment. We have three public houses on the Zoom. Okay. Um so, uh we'll start with Michelle. Just take it right there. Just move the Yeah, just move the Um I have copies of Do I need to do anything? Just Michelle Hastings. Oh, 142 Handler Road. Figured that, but I've never done this before. Um I have copies of what I'm saying. I don't have copies for everybody, but I'll leave them here so that if anybody wants to grab them that they can. Um, I'd like to take a moment to revisit the statement that I read at our school start time committee meeting this past Tuesday.

006Um, I believe it's important enough to share again. And additionally, I've been told by several people and I noticed it myself that the Zoom recordings of our meetings are very difficult for others to follow and understand. So, I I feel like it's important I want to say this again. Um, I joined this committee to put the I'm sorry, I joined this committee to put students first and ensure we take care of our faculty. Unfortunately, at this point, I feel like we are failing to do either. We surveyed the staff and the responses are truly alarming with many indicating they may need to leave the district due to the proposed later end times. Extending the school day beyond 3 pm would make it nearly impossible for a large portion of our staff to continue working in

007our district because many have children, second jobs, are taking required courses that enrich our practice and have other commitments just to name a few. A leader dismissal would severely impact staff ultimately affecting our students. The following information is based on a survey of 170 staff members focusing on school end times and their impact on the staff. Um 2:30 p.m. has minimal impact. 3 p.m. 67 staff members report a moderate impact while 25 staff members face a significant impact. At 3:30 p.m. more than 70 staff members experience a moderate impact and approximately 75 report a significant impact. There is a jump um from 25 to 75 members facing severe impact from those two times. 3:45 p.m. the impact becomes more severe with 118 staff members reporting a significant impact along with an additional 40 staff members

008facing a moderate impact. 4 p.m. over 126 staff members experience a significant significant impact and 34 more face a moderate impact. I understand the desire for a later start time for our older students at the middle and high school, but the logistics of only having two different start times make it impossible without effectively at le I'm I'm sorry, make it impossible without affecting at least one of these schools. I also believe the community and most of the staff didn't fully understand the implications of adding 10 to 15 minutes to the school day. Many families thought that supporting the override meant a pay increase for teachers, not an extended school day, and staff thought it would result in at most a 10 to 15 minute extension of their current end time. It's important to note that

009there's no way staff will be able to leave the parking lot at the same time as buses and families. This will extend the staff's stay by at least an additional 10 to 15 minutes. I've spoken to several staff members who would actually rather give back their pay increase than have some of these changes. I want to note that that's from conversations and not data that was collected. The only data that was collected was from above. This is off what I'm reading right now. But all for me, this is not the union. It's not any This is me um representing the teachers. Uh staff didn't realize this change would disrupt bus schedules and significantly alter their workday. While shortening the gap between Miller and Plastantina was a major concern for parents, the proposed changes only reduce

010the time gap gap slightly from 1 hour and 20 minutes to approximately an hour. The quality of our students education will suffer if we lose experienced teachers due to these changes. A later end time would also affect coaches and staff involved in after school activities, many of whom have said they would no longer be able to participate. I believe we need more time to carefully evaluate this decision. Rushing such an important choice that affects so many members of our school community doesn't seem right. A pause would allow us to consider all factors more thoroughly, especially since this impacts students, faculty, after school activities, second jobs, and appointments. I realize that more time to evaluate this isn't realistic, but we can't have later start times, an additional 15 minutes, and teacher retention. Something will be lost.

011And if sleep is our priority, we will have well-rested students with no seasoned educators to teach them. What's our priority in Hollist? Later start times for high school and Rams. Are they both a priority? Only two bus routes, teacher staff retention, the additional 15 minutes. I feel as though we've proven that we can't have it all. This is what I've written after Tuesday. This that was my statement. At the start of t I'm sorry. At the start of Tuesday's meeting, no school committee members were present when I read my statement. Later during our discussion, a committee member made comments that felt unprofessional and critical of teachers. As a volunteer on this committee, this experience discouraged me from participating in future meetings and sharing my voice. It highlights some of the concerns that teachers have expressed

012about the challenges with the climate and culture in our district. Teachers always put students first. That's the nature of our job, and we're constantly trying to balance work with our personal lives while investing significant personal time and money into our profession. At the same time, we manage family responsibilities and financial obligations, which for some includes seeking additional employment. All of this affects how we handle potential changes to the end of our school time and impacts our staff. I honestly don't think anyone whether it's the school committee administration or even the union fully understood the logistical challenge challenges of adding an extra 15 minutes 10 to 15 minutes to the school day. Adjusting the start times and prioritizing sleep for our oldest students when decisions were made about the overriding contracts. The fact that our committee

013still can't reach a solution underscores this as a new as new issues continue to arise. To make an informed decision, we need more concrete data specifically regarding the various bus routes scenarios. We've requested more information about the bus routes, but have been told it's too difficult to determine until decisions are made about which school groups are going together and the timing. And these decisions are closely linked and it's impossible to make an informed choice without having all the necessary information. At this time, I believe it's in the best interest of everyone in our school community to avoid rushing this decision. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. And I also want to say I very strongly support the students and how this impacts you. I would like love I I I just it's

014this is my teacher based portion of this, but I have many hats and I'm a parent. I grew up in this town, a parent of four children that have been in this district. We've run I've done all four buildings for many years. I don't anymore, but I walk the walk. Like I I really feel this passionately. I feel it passionately for this the faculty and for how it affects you guys. I do. Thank you. I'll leave those there. So, thank you, Michelle. Hold on one second. Uh if you would um do you So, the survey you're talking about, do you have can can we can we get a copy of that? I can find out if you can get I would think you probably could get a copy of it. I I'm not in I

015don't have it's I didn't that portion was sent out from our union. So, who who was part of the survey? The people that are within the union. And it was sent to all the members of our union. But every school, every school, absolutely every school. And staff is teachers, paras, everybody who's part of the union. This was sent to when was it conducted? This past weekend. So we had time to have it before um the meeting that was on Tuesday. So we had some information. I mean, I think I do think we need to clarify a little bit though because um we were very clear going through this entire process about what this meant. On May 28th, we did a presentation to the select board in which we said that uh upon passage of the

016override, the Halls of School Committee would commence a process, which is what this which is what this committee is, uh to reduce bus runs from 3 to two. Mhm. We said that Miller would be starting later. We also said that we would be working earlier and and there do seem to be some issues with with with that. Um that presentation was sent out to the entire community including all staff on May 29th. on May on June 7th, uh we sent more communication again reiterating that we were going to be moving to from three we're working to move from three to two buses. Um we were we were very clear we were so clear in fact that it was part of the contract that this decision had to be made by January 1st. That is that

017that date is driving this entire decision and part of the the reason behind that is to give people time to adjust to change. Now that being said, I I understand that some of the change may that is being discussed, right? No decisions have been made, but some of the some of the potential changes that are being discussed are are quite significant and we're going to take that into effect into account. But I think that we we owe it to everybody to keep an open mind about this because as much as it is impacting teacher, staff, and everyone, it is also increasing uh families. Um I know, you know, I listened to to the meeting. I could hear it actually. Sometimes you have to turn up a little bit because Keith is kind of loud. But

018um uh but but um you know, you said that it was only about 20 minutes to close the gap, right? From from an hour and 20. It's actually an hour and 25 right now down to 60 minutes at least to start. But that 25 minutes is actually doubled, right? So it's actually 50 minutes. And so what we have right now is a very tight gap that we're trying to widen because you've got a lot of working parents, stay-at-home parents that that 50 minutes a day maybe the the time to get them to and from an errand that they need to run and then back so then they have some time to to do some things around the house or get to their job and and get back. We're we're, you know, we're we're trying to

019balance everything and and and and I hear you and and I appreciate that. Um, but I think it's it's it's it's it's frustrating to hear some of the things that you're saying because we spent um 3 months fighting for this contract, fighting for the for the teachers to try to get this passed. The community showed up in in overwhelming numbers. 66% of the community voted for this override. And they weren't just voting. I mean, they were voting to support the teachers. They were voting for these pay increases, but they were also voting for the things that we talked about, fixing the start times, which I think over time has real, we've realized that was not optimal. And one of the reasons it wasn't optimal is at the time that the decision was made, we didn't

020have the money. So, we included $200,000 in that override for these additional buses. They were voting for the extra instructional time that we were going to they were trying that we're working to provide to to students. So, um, you know, I I appreciate this and and teacher voices are very important and are obviously going to be to be weighed heavily, but but so are all those that are impacted by the decision, you know, parents, guardians, and things like that. So, I I it's it's um we're not negotiating the contract, though. The contract's done. And I understand that this is just me sharing really truly my feelings other than that one section in regards to um the the data that we collected in regards to that. And then the other things are part of it is

021from conversations that I've had with people. I had a conversation with a parent just today about the fact that they didn't realize all the ripple effect implications that and maybe you guys did. I don't I don't know. I I can be totally wrong. I I just assume there's so much involved with this and and in our committee, it's it's mindboggling to me all the different variables that that are there in us trying to to figure out the best way to proceed with this. And we're not going to make everybody happy and I know that that's impossible and you're a committee. You obviously know that. Um but I I do want the teachers voice to be important. I understand the parent voice and all that stuff, but I also as a parent can say that, you

022know, I dealt with those three years of this bad start time or the inconvenience and then it's you move on to the next thing and you're now, you know, you're dealing with the other start time that's now there. But I'm also looking at this from a teacher's perspective like this is like they have after school jobs and they have other things that they're doing and they're trying to get to their families as well. I just want it all to be considered when all this is is is part of the conversation. And I'm not I'm a parent. I I'm I'm looking at it from all aspects is really what I'm just trying to to say. Well, and again that I mean that those are important voices. And that's why when we when we were discussing this

023during the overview, we said we don't have the final decision because we want to go through the process. We want to have teacher involvement. We want to have parent involvement, have administrator involvement, we've got a select board member on the committee as well. you know, we we are hearing from all the voices. You guys are going to make some recommendation hopefully. Um and then we will we decisions are hard. Um and then we're going to have to start doing some work and that may, you know, include some some additional uh discussion, surveys or something like that. But um it it is important and I and I hope that the committee is able to come with at least some recommendation um even if it's two recommendations with different pros and cons um that we can that

024we can look at and and uh you know try to do what's best for the community because we we are listening we are hearing because because you also made that comment in the meeting that you don't feel heard. What I'm saying is I mean I I we we are hearing and I've had some conversations with with Keith since then about different things to look at, but we also are dealing with a compressed schedule and it's unfortunate that we have to do it in this time, but it's also been something that we I mean I you know when I joined the committee two years ago, Keith was already was was still thinking about different ways of of doing the start times. I mean it's not it's not something that ever really stopped being thought of. So

025it's not like it's a new thing to wrestle with. It's just that the, you know, the the nitty-gritty and I urge everyone at home to watch the or to listen to those meetings because it it is incredibly incredibly complex. So anyway, thank you. Does anyone else this isn't our I just want to be clear this is on our agenda. So I I view it as, you know, fair to have a conversation about this. Um there's anything we're learning in this committee, right? I mean I don't know. I I I certainly didn't come in thinking we'd have three decision, you know, three options and we'd pick one. Um, I think we're digging into I mean that's the difficulty of this committee. I mean I agree we likely need more time but more information too. I think

026it's very hard. There's so many ifs. It's like if if this if this if this. The only thing I agree uh however I think sometimes there's analysis paralysis right and I think sometime we we need to go with what is the most most ideal but not perfect. I think some of the conversations we've been having is like it's perfect for me so I want this or it's perfect for this group so we want this. I don't think any solution is going to have a perfect for anyone. Totally. So, we have to look at that. Um, but I think the principles we have are still solid. Like, we need to look at two bus runs. We spent two meetings on three bus runs and that's how we got to a 4:00 uh exit for one of

027the schools at least. I just think it's important. The 4:00 is not an option. Yeah, exactly. As far as I I totally I mean the survey tells us 3:30 we're teetering. I just think that you know I mean we have to talk about it because you know there are a lot of other macro factors that are going on. There's the bridge that may or may not be open. I mean there's so you have to kind of look at it but that that's not you know I just the community that 4:00 time is is so that's why two bus rooms though is necessary. So now it comes down to okay what groups can go together. I do think out of everything that happened this Tuesday at the end there was some productiveness of could we get

028through some of these challenges that block us from proceeding with an optimal more optimal solution not perfect again I hope so it's frustrating because we don't know that we can have the two best ones we don't know that we're going to get that bid so it's very that's it's just those all those variables make this extraordinarily challenging um because it's just there's so much information we don't have and so to I guess that's where the frustration lies and everyone that's sitting in that committee. It's very challenging. Definitely agree. Thank you for everything you guys do. I appreciate it. Thank you. Hello, I'm Barbara Ryan, 14 Irving Place. Um kind of a three-pronged um sharing. First, I just want to thank the administration and our building leadership, our principles, um, and Dr. Kusco especially. It's it's

029I think you're in your fifth year, I heard you say earlier, and not always been an easy ride, but I think the steady hand of leadership has been there, and all of you really have helped us through not only COVID, but to get us to somewhere better. And I just want to publicly say that. Uh thank you as a parent um with now a first year in college and a first year in the high school which is no small feat as parents or caregivers. Um and certainly all of you thank you for helping to shepherd my children to better um about themselves and their education. Um in my PTO hat, I'm the current PTO president of the executive board. I just want to thank the school committee for what you do and for always accepting

030the donations. I know that's kind of something we're all getting used to this process which protects not only our school system, but it helps us to create that good in the community with the generosity of materials and time and money. Everything from supporting breakfasts to um the invitation to now revitalize a little bit these inner courtyards for our students here in the high school uh to take advantage of. and we've gotten a great community response um for a very large job. But um with your with your help and with the leadership again in our schools, we've been able to do some really positive things from the PTO. So, thank you for that. Um now on to a little bit of the homework I've done and um I have been going to the start time and

031the and the bus um meetings um as a curious um Jane public as I've named myself lately. I'm going to lots of meetings, but I'm just trying to stay involved um for many reasons. It's partly who I am, but I feel it's my responsibility as a taxpayer and as a parent and as a community member. Um I think to look at a holistic approach or a whole of district approach first, I looked at the sixth September um information on school committee and our spend per student is the lowest in the region at about $15,000 or so. and every district surrounding goes up the spend per student. So, I think that's really curious. Um, we're about in the middle for tax base. Um, we don't pay as much as maybe Welsley, but we don't pay as

032little as some other towns. So, I think that's really interesting that we are even below uh the national average is $15,98 per student. So, I think we're in that $15,000 pocket. So when we look at trying to make changes, what are we spending per student and how do we do that and how do we match surrounding communities? Um learning I'm really encouraged by what I'm hearing um for everything from what you're doing to the administration to make those threads from preK through 12 plus. We have a new math curriculum which that's been a real struggle and if you look at normative data um we haven't been doing so well. Do numbers matter? Yes, your rankings matter to some, not to me. It's it's I look at my individual child. So, I'm encouraged by this these

033curriculum changes, our literacy focus, our STEM is very important, but how do we write? How do we read? And then I know there's a focus on AI and how do we encourage that and the most healthful way. So, that's the learning is is incredible to me. Um, keeping great teachers. I I can't say much more than what Miss Hastings has said. um that data that's presented in um September, it is alarming, but the trend is going back up to keeping good people. So, that's a tough nut um that all of you have to help us figure out as community members and taxpayers um and and um to keep our great teachers. And lastly, start times. When I looked at the the why, it said the HPS request is almost entirely to fund the teacher contract

034as well as for additional buses um that are needed to fix the school t start times and increased instructional time that is part of the contract. So that to me is what we voted for. Um right I mean that's the crux of it. There were a lot of things that were being touted, but that's the crux, the the teacher contract, um, buses and maybe additional funding, $200,000 or so. And then looking at the start times, my pediatric nurse practitioner hat. I've been in these meetings. I've been able to speak. Um, there needs to be a holistic approach. It's not just the late start time. It's how are we helping parents and caregivers understand devices need to be put away at a certain time. We're all learning to live with tech 10, you know, 15 years

035down the road. So, how do we help help with that? Um, can't do can't tell me what to do in my house, but yet later start times do relate to mental health and do relate for the teens and tween especially um performance, discipline, etc. Um, I think this plus 15 minutes still feels very nebulous to me. Where is that going? What instruction? How does it apply to four very different buildings with different um developmental levels of learners? Right? Where does that go? How do we do that? And that really this 15 minutes has created a domino effect. So, I'm um I've said a lot of things, a lot of thank yous, and then um there's a really a lot of work to do, and I'm not so sure if in two weeks we're going to

036have the answers from this the school bus and start time committee um contracts have to be negotiated and put out for buses. So, there's a lot to figure out. And so I'd respectfully request that either consideration would be given to have more dialogue to make in make decisions that we have to make right now for buses and busing. Um but there are a lot of things to consider. So uh thank you for doing the hard work and thank you for letting me speak. [Music] My name is Denise Irving. Can you hear me? Yeah. 38 Taylor Road, Hollist. I've been teaching in this town since 1999. I've been living in this town since 1996. Um, I'm not going to read all of what I wrote because it's a lot of red just supporting what um, my

037colleague Michelle said and um, what um, sorry, what was your first Barbara what Barbara said. I just kind of I'm thinking the same thing like we're in education and um like I just feel like we should pause and be more thoughtful about the decision and like really come up what is with the best solution for teachers and students and how that's going to play out. Um it's okay like I'm a teacher I do this all the time. It's okay to say like you made we made a mistake. We didn't understand the full ramifications. We didn't understand the ripple effects. We didn't realize the implications of this decision and how it would impact and how they're all these moving parts. Um, I just at least for me thinking about the time like the 15 minutes and

038and I know you just said Dian that we have to four wouldn't be a time but like for Miller at least that's like a 120 minute difference. I mean nobody thought oh we we we're ending our day at 2 now we're going to have to come at 4. Like that's a huge thing to ask. Like my husband's a firefighter and he starts at 8:00. Imagine they just say, "Okay, next year you're going to start at 10:00." I mean, it's a big difference. Um, and I do totally appreciate when I went down to the tent when you guys were there and you were there and you've been doing a ton to support the teachers and the parents were all there and it's really great like how this community rallies. This community Hollison's like that with everything,

039right? They support things, they help people, they do things. I just really feel like it needs to be more time. I feel like things are are just rushed and just like for example I don't feel like there's a lot of forward thinking and this doesn't have anything specifically to do with the start times but like for example has anyone thought of like when one of those houses goes on sale on Woodland Street like purchasing one of them like one just went for sale and then bringing in another way to get into the Miller Placentino complex and like solving the problem for the future. so that it's not one way in and one way out like maybe there's a teacher entrance like all the other schools around us have solar panels and um like when I

040mentioned that several years ago everyone says oh it's not like you know the cost benefit or whatever but it's a public school it's not going to go anywhere like over time we're going to reap the benefits of that so I just feel like a lot of the things we do and I'm just using those examples it's like really shortm term thinking. It's not long-term thinking. Like there was a 40 acre lot for sale across the street from um the park and wreck and I emailed the school committee and said, "Hey, why don't we look into buying that? That would be perfect. It could be like Hopkins. You could put the high school up there. You could put the middle school up there. Maybe you can't do it for 15 years, but that's okay. Like let's

041think long term instead of short short term." So that's kind of what I'm thinking. like let's really do stuff the right way. Let's really think forward long term and not just rush and and do stuff. And all the 25 years I've been here, I could obviously come up with a ton more examples, but I just feel like being more thoughtful about stuff and really processing it and really putting everything into play would help us come up with better decisions for our schools. Thanks. you know, I'm just going to reiterate um you know, as far as pausing goes, I mean, we have an agreement that was negotiated with the HFT that these decisions need to be made by January 1. This was something that we agreed to. It's it's in an MOA. Um so, we're we're

042dealing with the the facts that we that we have before us, the agreement that we have before us. Okay. So, I mean, I'm just I voted no, but that was me. I I just want to clarify too. I mean four o'clocks been brought up a lot in the committee. We talked about all the options, right? Part of it was to see what is the art of the possible and that's where 4:00 did come up when we look at three bus runs. I from my knowledge and where we're going as committee. I think we've ruled out 4:00 was a scare t like scare factor. We're not going with three bus runs. We can't with the 15 minutes otherwise the school will get out at four. So, I I just want to make sure those at home

043don't feel like we're settling on the four. Um, as Dan said, we're not going with like we can't end at four logistically, but the concern is that if we don't get we, you know, we don't have the busing to do the two bus runs, then we would have to go back to the three restaurants. And I think that's very scary and frightening um to think that the four:00 time could be a possibility. So, I think that we're again all those factors that we don't know, it is a possibility. And then I also went to mentioned that you know if you don't get the two best runs would we then try and ask for the two best runs the following year thereafter and everyone said yes and I just feel like changing teacher schedules student schedules

044parent schedules year after year is is it's just I don't know I I I'm it's very frustrating to I'm sorry I it's not supposed to speak right now anyway so I'll stop understood anyone else we'll obser Yeah, you want to move on public comment. So, all right. Um, thank you everyone and thank you to our administrators for uh being patient with us there. But, uh, we will we will move on to the district and school improvement plan. Right. So, we have our amazing building principles here tonight. Um, and we're here to talk about our school and district goals for 202425. And I'm going to just do a very quick brief overview because you've heard multiple presentations since August from all of our central office leaders. So I want to dedicate most of the time to

045the school, but I'll just run through kind of the the process that we've done um the last few years in particular since we did this new strategic plan three years ago. So as always, we're tying all of our work to our mission and vision. Vision is very simple and part of your journey, personal, local, global. Core values are listed here. We share them. Uh they're embedded out throughout all of our buildings. We have posters. Our four archers of our strategic objectives. Arch one, communication practices. Arch two, social emotional well-being. Three is teaching and learning. And arch four is talent and resources. And as you've heard me, for those of you who have had to listen for multiple presentations throughout the years, we really are aligning and embedding all of this work in everything we do

046with our budget cycle. we align try to do a multi-year look through and try to align to all of our archer when we request priority needs which is people will hear us talk about in January and then we also um every PD day we embed these arches and talk about this the work that we're doing today is related to arch one or two or whatever that is and literally the conversations have been happening in all buildings and we're so well aligned right now and that's that happens because we've made such a concerted effort to do so so if you look on the slide that we did in we did insert um on everyone's oops voice too um I should have probably not tried to leave but if you take if you go to the link

047you'll see that we've also inserted on every one of these our um we have all of our action steps related to our four archers and all of our strategic initiatives. So we embedded those for you to look at. They're very long, so we're not going to be sharing those tonight. But what we will do is make sure that you have access to those and we're just going to do a snapshot of some of that work. Right now, under arch one communication, we're looking at some key takeaways for the upcoming year, expanding our s'more footprint. We've been doing a ton of work getting S'more out there. I put in the corner, that was our welcome back message. And I don't like being videotaped, but I thought for parents that don't know me, in fact, I've had

048some parent coffee hours this week and some of them had not met me before. So, I thought, okay, before your kids come, you at least know who I am. And we got we're still getting views from our welcome back messages from 7,274 people. So, I'm sure that doesn't mean they're reading every single detail, but just that people are coming back to it and hitting on it. And our principles are using that as well, and they're getting this very large number of hits as well, which is a good thing. We are making sure that we have devices to translate for students. We've been piloting some um devices right now and we're looking at all types of different options particularly for our EL ELLL students that are at level one that really come in having no English

049acquisition and now we're expecting them to have them being thrust into classroom. So to have translation devices that are in real time so they connect with teachers and students. Cyber security as you know is a huge thing that we have to focus on. We we have um received a grant and we're working with the town and we're going to have updated training on cyber security again this year and all of our teachers I think will be getting trained in January, but we're waiting to get that um for sure, but I think it's going to be our January PD date. Um you know, we already talked at length about school bus start time, so I won't belabor that. And then we're looking at web services, web resources for the the family hub under student services and

050multilingual homeschooling title one. Under Arch two, social and emotional well-being. As you know, our director of Bessie and Equity has done an immense amount of work and also works with chest speed to enhance mental health supports. He's working districtwide and developing partnerships throughout the community. We've had PD um in multiple areas on trauma sensitive practices and social emotional learning. Continuing to foster safe and supportive school climate. We're doing culture and climate surveys, having culture and climate um teachers are working in culture climate groups at the school levels and that work continues districtwide. And then looking at data, you heard us talk August 29th, we had our data presentation and we talked about the data dashboard that we're using and we'll be sharing much more of that tonight and then in future conversations as well. under

051teaching and learning and the data dashboard for interventions and curriculum. We've talked at length about the multiple curriculum reviews we've been doing from year to year. Um and that's how we were able to purchase the math resources by identifying an immense need for curricular resources districtwide had not been purchased since 2015. And then health responsive teaching PD is happening in all buildings and throughout the district. As you know, we've uh presented already that we're going to be working on the math study group and we'll be bringing recommendations to you soon, and Dr. Menard and I have met a couple of times with that math study group already. And it looks like we may be able to get a recommendation to you sooner than the date that we proposed in February. So, I'm not promising yet,

052but we're hoping to get you something sooner because the teachers are really anxious to know what's happening for next year so that they can plan accordingly as we move to algebra one for grading in particular. some start times um and launching of the new IP have been really important and then alignment of special education services continues and supports under arch for talent and resources we're still trying so hard to attract retrain recruit do anything we can to support people coming to the district but then what do they do when they get here how do we retain especially some of that we've been able to hire some wonderful people looking for endorse candidates and and we need to tailor some of the things that we're doing so that they feel supported in a district that is

053primarily white in our teaching staff and how do we bring people in and then make them feel welcome here. It's still a challenge. Um so that's an area we continue to work on and I think we still need to keep revisiting our mentoring programs, new staff orientation. While we're doing a great job with that, we still struggle with some of our diverse candidates. Obviously coming in to the district is challenging just because we don't get many applicants but also once they're here what more can we do to support them for the state but overall our retention rate has improved we were at 89% retention rate last year for our teaching which is about it's about where it was pre-COVID and in addition to that we are looking to look for ways to navigate the staff

054portal that really has a lot of information for staff to access easily because our previous staff portal was very challenging As you know, with the contract negotiations, we really have increased our salaries quite competitively, and I'm hoping that that will continue to have our staff um wanting not only to come here, but to stay here long term. Our our highest teacher salary at the end of this contract will be at um about 125,000, which is quite competitive in the area. And then, as you know, um we did apply again for MSBA for both our roof project and the high school um statement of interest project as well. we'll be hearing shortly and hopefully get get the funding for or at least get the go-ahad for both projects in continuing our staff newsletters to get information

055out related to talent resources and using our organizational charts to make sure um I think I shared a new chart that we had done this year because we had the new roles at all buildings of curriculum interventionist specialists were new at some buildings so we had to redo the org chart that year for that reason and then you'll see links here As I mentioned before, um the reason I'm going very quickly through um the district overarching goals is because we did do a data and assessment presentation August 29th. The district curriculum team presented at our October 10th meeting student services and social emotional and equity updates were prior to that. So I will be sharing out these links in our community newsletter on Monday or Tuesday and people can access those those on the website

056as well. But I figured that would be um we won't be labor since we've had a lot of information on that. When we come back mid year, we'll be doing, you know, around January or February, we'll do our midyear updates and we'll bring that board to editor with you at that time as well. Great. Uh would you like to hold questions to the end or how would you like to do that? That's five presentations. Can we ask questions in between? Do you want to just ask one at each government? I mean question in between that we asking I mean it's really sort of up to the committee is that yeah I don't know what others think but it's just it's five that's a lot it is a lot sorry you guys break up does anyone

057have good questions right now for for central office I have only one um sorry I'll just jump in um so I'm wondering uh how are you tracking progress toward the goals throughout the year so not just kind of looking at are we completing our action steps but Are those having the desired impact at different points throughout the year? Yeah. And a lot of that, it depends on which goal we're talking about, but a lot of that's where we're excited about the data dashboard because a lot of that the goals that we're trying to establish in and the changes we need to make to have a better education experience for student is driven by the data we have in front of us. So, what you're going to hear tonight when the principles each speak is they're

058going to really they're going to show you some of the data that help them decide what their goals are for these specific buildings and it's going to be pretty much a common theme districtwide. So, as we come back in both midyear and end of year, we'll bring back the data and we'll have a lot more at that time, too, because we're just kind of tipping the iceberg with this new platform and it hasn't even completely been built yet. So, I feel like once you see um some of the results of that, I think you'll see a lot of progress in mid year and they're going to talk tonight about the work that we've done already in the past few years on structured literacy and math and we're already reaping some of the improvements that we

059expected to see. It's um I mentioned earlier to the parent c our parents that were here. This is year three of our strategic plan and it takes three to five years of making changes before you do see progress and we are actually seeing that progress right now in live time and the data that they're going to share tonight will show you that some of that has already been moving but it's also going to show some areas where we still continue to need to move and that we are concerned about and you'll hear each principal address that good. Thank you. You're welcome. And similarly, um the high school link here is for their action steps for the entire strategic initiatives, but they're going to hit on some various areas for each of our takeaways. Mr. List.

060All right. Thank you. Um so, as Dr. Kus said, we these are snapshots. Um if you go into the document itself, you'd see a lot more um with under each of these arches. Um but really in speaking for the high school, what you'll see is um started last year um with the information um that we got from our our NEASK visit and uh from the equity audit and and the work that needed to be done. Um and so we're continuing a lot of that work. Um and you'll see some some through lines here. And what that what ends up being is that our access to data um and the ease of sort of starting to be able to pull that data and understand what it means. Um and so under um arch one uh Dr.

061Kosu the next slide has the sort of pictures I guess. Um so what what you see there is um the the Panther Pulse. Um that's just our newsletter, but what we're really working on there is how do we communicate about what's happening in the school across the board to the community. Um how do we share more about what students are doing in the classrooms, what projects they're working on? Um getting in getting in contact with the eighth graders earlier. Um I got a chance to present at uh open house. Um, we'll be sending out the first contacts to eighth graders uh in the next week or so, which is months earlier than we did last year. Um, and we know from, you know, speaking to families that they just, you know, there's some nervousness about

062high school and so wanting to know what it's about, what's happening. Uh, so we're trying to find different avenues and different ways to reach out to the community, uh, and to help understand what's going on, whether it be through social media or emails or or any way we can to let the community know what's happening. um especially with their their support of the the vote recently. I think they they deserve to know the cool stuff that's going on at the high school. Um what you also see here is is the is letters. So this is a letter if they happen to be from EXL um which I'll talk about in a minute, but the uh the chart to the right comes from Open Architects and that talks that's sort of that's our attendance data snapshot

063um as of a couple of weeks ago. Um and that just lets us know about our chronic absenteeism, our attendance rate. But what we're doing is sending out uh monthly letters to families um about their own students absenteeism because we know that we we had a problem at the high school level um and across the board with chronic absenteeism. And so we want to have the families more involved in understanding what's going on. And so um this dashboard is really helpful not just in helping us understand um that we need to communicate but who we communicate to and because it goes down to that deeper level. Um and so we're uh trying really hard to communicate all of the information out. We had a coffee hour earlier and the the a parent asked a what

064seems like a simple question but is very deep like how do I know how my kid is doing like generally like what's happening and so we're trying really hard to find more ways to communicate to families about grades about attendance about what's happening in their classes and make it easier to understand because high school understanding what's happening in high school is is really hard if unless you're living in it. Um, and again, we'll keep up with um my principal coffee hours, even though I only get like, you know, two or three parents, but you know, keep them going. Um, what Sarah? Yes. Yes. Sarah always there. Yeah. Everyone to show up to your You get three people to show up to your coffee hour. I do love the dance. That's like 50% better than So,

065yeah. Yeah. But I Sarah's always there, which is nice. Uh, yeah. So, I I just want to have ways to welcome parents in and to have them be a part of the the school because I always I say this every year is that like parents have hit high school and it's like drop them off and see you later. Uh but we really do want them involved in what's happening here. Uh and so the the communication piece is really important to make that happen and again for the thinking about the younger students and and connecting what's happening uh for them to be excited about uh coming to Austin High School. And then in arch 2, we talk about social emotional well-being. Um, you know, Hollison High School does a great job of building relationships in the

066classrooms between teachers and students. Uh, what we need to do is be able again to understand um where we're missing the mark and again that data piece is really helpful in starting to build tiered supports for students. Uh, we'll have mood check back. Um, we'll have challenge day back again. Um and new this year we'll be working with the Northeastern University Center for Study of Sport and society um because we recognize that the the sports field um is an area where we don't do a lot of support for our coaches um and how to support their athletes um and making it a safe space to honestly a safe space to struggle, right? Like it doesn't seem like it's not a good space for athletes if they're if they have anxiety, if they are feeling bad

067about their performance. And how do coaches recognize that? because not all of our coaches are teachers. Um and so we're partnering um with Nor Eastern University and um the first week in December um we'll be offering training to all of our coaches. So all seasons of coaches um and we're going to then pilot um a for our winter athletes. We're going to pilot um a session um with them as well uh to be able again to to understand what what it means to uh be social emotionally healthy um as an athlete. um because it is very different than what we see in the classroom. Um so we'll be doing a lot of work there. Um we're we've again been setting up processes to um to understand why students are absent, what's going on. Again, that

068tends to be a larger issue than just they aren't coming to school. Um and so we want to understand how do we reach those students? What can we do to support those students? Um and um building in um the like uh the uh open architects has a a model where we can actually track our interventions throughout um Freddy the student companion. Thank you. That camera came to me. I was killing time there till I remembered. Uh so but uh it's called the student companion where we can start to look at a whole snapshot of a student um and really understand bigger picture and it's all in one space which is I like I I you know Desi's website is fun and all but like it's it's impossible to find stuff sometimes. It's all there. It's

069just hard to find. Um, and so this is really nice to have that snapshot of students and being able to hopefully um, engage in interventions earlier. Um, and having the curriculum interventionists are a huge piece of that in building those supports, identifying and then supporting those students in various ways. All right. So, we wanted to give you a picture of some of the data and how we're using it and and and what it means when we're looking at it. Um this is just an an overall snapshot, but I'll go into some of what we learned at a deeper level. This is MCCAST from the past year. And what you're seeing here um are our students um are non- high need students and our high need students. High need students are those who have are have

070a disability uh lowinccome or our EL students. Um that's their group together as high needs. Um and so what you can see here is uh honestly a a massive discrepancy. um in in achievement. Nothing else is just right there for us to see. Um you know, but I mean what we can see though is for a number of our students like in the math, we do have that SGP um the SGP growth is great, but we still have a lot of work to do. Um what the open architects platform lets us do though is dive a little bit deeper. Um, and what I did learn from my deep dive into that is no matter what content area you're looking at here, literacy is a piece that is a a struggle throughout. Um, when you look

071at open response questions, uh, you look at essay questions, uh, doesn't m whether it's science or math or or ELA, doesn't matter. That's where the struggle is. Um, and so it's been really eye opening for me. It's kind of a, to be honest, a gut punch to me when I saw what what this is in front of me. Um, but I needed that because uh and I didn't you get this on, as I said, the Desi website, but it's it's not pleasing to the eye, I guess, and it doesn't really it's it's hard to to to dig into. Um, and so here we were able to do that. And so, um, what that does is it gives us obviously we have, which is, um, you know, a nice support for students who are struggling. Um,

072we have the new math curriculum coming in. Um but what this did allow us to do is to really look at and the understand the need for literacy support across all content areas. And so that's going to be a focus moving forward. Um and even in my conversations, I was saying this in my parent coffee hour earlier w with a with an AP science teacher who said that the students biggest struggle is reading the question. Like what's the question asking? They have no they don't know. So these are students you think oh they got it but that's where the struggle is. So, um, so we're going to be doing a lot of work in in literacy, um, which, you know, I I know happens is a lot of the conversation at the lower grade levels,

073but really needs to find its way up in into the high school as well. Um, again, in order to do this, you want to go to the next slide. Um, just to give another sort of snapshot, this is the the DESIE slide right here, just to to give you an idea. And it's it's it's it's some scary numbers there, right? Like if you look at the left side, that's all the the left pair, the left columns are all all students. So that's all 200 students that took the exam that year. Um, and then the right are the lowest performing students. So that's no longer a high needs designation. That's just the lowest cortile. It's the lowest 25%. So it could be could have a disability, they could not. Could be EL, could not be. So

074that's 50 of our 150 students. And you can see that we're not making what is determined by the state as effective progress in in any area. Um so far as a zero in science achievement. Um and as you go down look at the bottom there you can see that um our our total towards target is only 55%. So we have a lot of work to do um in getting there. Um and a lot of that has to do with where do we build in supports for kids. And so that's a lot of our our schedule work that we're doing. um in looking at a new schedule, where do we build in the supports for all students? Where do we get access to challenging courses? Where do we get access to to the arts? Where do

075we build in the multi-tered system of supports? That all has to come with um whatever schedule um that we land on uh in order to support student learning. Um we're also looking at um as I said the the math curriculum looking that holistically uh working with um Karen at the at the middle school to understand you know how we can support students who are coming up um and looking at math not just it's not just like you go through like middle school math and then you hit like algebra like we have to look at it like prek 12 plus it really is a it's got to be a holistic approach um because otherwise it just becomes uh too messy when you as you get up to the high school level and and you know parents

076call in every day for this math or this math but we need to have ways to understand where students are, how to support them, how to help them grow and and even to excel beyond where they are. If you look at something like those supports that are built in, you're able to support students who are struggling certain areas and you're also able to have them move forward if they want to go beyond where they are in their classroom. Um which is really nice. Um the just a couple of other components of looking at Arch 3 and teaching and learning is that we also want to engage students um in in what they love and what they're doing. And so um we got through phase one, step one of the innovation pathways grant um and received

077approval to sort of move on to phase two of asking for for more approval. Um and those pathways just engage students in areas that that they want to have a focus on. Um we'll be um bringing in a financial literacy fair this year for students in 11th and 12th grade. Um we will have uh all students this year we'll be getting the state we'll be doing the statemandated civics engagement projects. Um and we will be also rolling out our vision of the graduate rubric. um which are those pieces beyond the academic numbers which will help us understand how students are progressing um in the the other skills um that was in a previous slide but go there um and then next slide. Can I just pause for a second comment? We tried to use some

078of the same data in each building so you're going to see some of the same things but there are some notable things with the high school and part of what our concerns are as you know the limitations of schedule. We have been able to build in the intervention model at Constantino Miller and Rams for a number of years and we've actually expanded the model. We've added more tutors and we've added more we went from having two reading and two and one math. Now we have two math at um one at each building. So we've expanded our model and you're going to see that the targets have are starting to grow in these other buildings. So really the limitations of getting interventions to the kids because of the schedule that we have is really challenging and

079I think that's why you're going to see that the model we put in place does work but we have to have the places to put give the model to the kids as well. And then finally in arch for um what we're doing as an admin team um to calibrate our work and feedback um in the classroom is uh working doing um uh full admin team learning walks going into classrooms. Um we're spending a lot of time looking at again we're spending a lot of time looking at the data and how to support teachers in the classrooms um engaging them with the curriculum interventionists to support students in the classroom and support that work. Um and we will be um rolling out um a opportunity for staff to provide feedback on climate and culture surveys. Um

080and then finally on on the schedule piece again um looking at what's best for kids. um to spending time uh working with our scheduling committee uh to really focus on areas overall that will support the teachers um in what they're doing and and most importantly u doing what's best for kids in this and making sure um that they all have the opportunities that they deserve uh uh throughout their time at the high school. Great. Thank you. And uh we'll get to this schedule update after all this, but um are there questions now? Can I ask that? Yes. Um so we just heard from Dr. Kusca that we were awarded or this was awarded a innovation career pathways grant um today of $15,000. I'm assuming that's to do something new. Yes. So it's a it's a

081three-step process. Okay. Um the $15,000 um allows us to it's called the planning grant for it. Um and so what that basically allows us to do is start work on um making connections to um organizations. So we when you do an innovation pathway you're you're basically saying that you can provide uh substantial internships like over 100 hours of internship hours to u for students in in a specific area. So we targeted businesses. We have a very successful DECA program after school. We have we have the business classes. Um we also have access to um it it's it'll help us um if we can pull off a part like finalize a partnership with like UMass Dartmouth where they will offer up college courses to our students at $540 each for three credits. Um where we could

082then use some of that money for scholarships. Like there's there's lots of opportunities. We have to create those partnerships. Um, we use that then for you can use that money to then market out to students and what it takes to do the class. You can use it for um starting to buy like look at curriculum resources. Um so that that planning grant's there. We just submitted um part A of the application and we'll find out at the end of November if we can submit part B of the application which is part A is our sort of philosophy around the work and then part B is more specific to uh the finances what we need to support it and they're they're substantial grants um and each pathway uh is is a substantial amount of money um

083to to support each one you kind of apply for like one at a time. Right. So just for the public like a p that innovation pathway is like a school within a school. Yeah. I mean yes you would take like you would come in in your freshman year and you I mean you don't have to enter your freshman year but you come in you could take like an intro to business class and you could just move on. You could go take a marketing class, you could take uh a data science or a statistics class. Um and part of it which is really nice is that it um really the goal is to create um opportunities for not just learning about a career but advanced coursework. So, one of the beauties of this is that you

084have to take advanced coursework as a part of this, but by partnering with some place like UMass Dartmouth, we're able to offer all of our students um advanced coursework versus having to take an AP class. Um and and that um and just for state data information like that counts as an advanced course advanced coursework um just like an AP would when you're looking at what our students how many students take advanced coursework. So, it actually provides more access to advanced coursework um without necessarily having to say you have to take an AP class. Thank you. I have a question. Uh going back to arch number two, you you said you'd be implementing uh mood check and challenge day. What exactly are those and how would they be implemented? So, challenge happened last year. Um I

085I don't know how to explain it. Um did any of y'all get it? I don't know how to Yeah. You want to take it? I I it's it is a it what I mean the the the easiest way to say it is that it is a a mix of hundred different students in the building and um you can do it as many times as you want but it's a hundred students in the building and you understand that we all have our stuff going on and it's important to understand that we all have our stuff going on especially in high school level um and that um that doesn't even do it justice you has like vulnerability pulls on on strings and and and helps first of all try to create a a a space where you

086can share you know sort of things that are going on and and know that you're not alone that in fact you may think that you're going through something that is unique to yourself but in fact you know half of your classmates are are experiencing the same thing. M um it was kind of it was I mean it was for someone who doesn't think of themselves as very sort of you know emotional um it was it was pretty cool. So so actually we had a few people that were there so I was there Dan was there Barbara who's in the crowd was there um as well uh but it is meant to kind of break down barriers, break down biases, understand kind of like how everybody's differences are. Um it's meant to be a very closed

087setting to provide an opportunity for vulnerability. um during that time and for those that are there um you know students uh students and staff and fam and parents that are there um begin to kind of show their vulnerability and know that we're all humans um and despite our differences uh we can get together and it's you know a very highly recognized award uh winning program um you can YouTube it you can see kind of some of their like standard program activities that they do within it and it's quite powerful David recommended it last year and it was awesome. We'll be doing it this year. Yeah, this year. Yeah. Yeah. There's more dancing than I cared for, but uh we got fantastic. We're going different kids took it different, you know, seriously, different levels of seriousness,

088but there were definitely some kids who had a lot going on and you could sort of just see them sort of break down and sort of release that that sort of uh you know, um I say to kids, just trust me, just do it. Which is really hard to do like right, but it's it's um Joe, you should definitely do it. I know. Just do the rest. Yeah. Just make sure if we do do it again, make sure Joe gets a get. So, we did not have we did not have we did not have um parents or um outside other than teachers at the high school, but the middle school. Yeah. Um and then Muek um is partnership now with uh Dr. Dr. Tracy Gladstone in Brown University um where um they come in, meet

089with our students and um assess um social emotional wellness um risk assessment um with uh anxiety, depression, you know, um and will uh if students um based on their conversations with students, if they show up as being if they're concerned about one of students, they then provide them um with access to outside resources. When does that happen? During DSB class time? It hap it happens like throughout the day over a couple of weeks because you go through every kid. It's a uh it's the protocols they go through with each kid um with with their support person and and one of the ideas behind it is that you know a lot of times parents kids don't necessarily want share stuff with schools um but if they share something with these outside individuals which believe it or

090not kids do share like we look at Metro West like it they they they want to share um uh and then they work with them those families to support them with the outside resources and then they'll keep in touch with them to, you know, uh, engage them. So, it's a nice program that we're able to to engage with. It it's a really incredible program and and it and it does catch kids who are, you know, definitely on the edge of of of real real problem. I remember there were a number of years when we get a grant for it. Um, and then that grant stopped and school committee which is always asking the finance committee for more money, but you know, that was, you know, high up on the list and I thought that that

091was something that I was glad they prioritized because I think it's quite literally saved kids lives. No, no, no. I'm just saying I'm just saying it was I just remember the sort of the fear when when the grant went away, you know. Absolutely. It was palpable. For sure. It's not it's not expensive, but it's not cheap. No. Can we look at slide 10 again? I had a question. Um, so this one no slide 10 the overall goals. Oh, so there's a lot there and I know that's kind of the nature of schooling, but if you could distill this down to like what is the one primary instructional focus for the high school for this year? So, in terms of instructional focus, um it's really about tier one supports in the classroom and that's where we're

092going to be focusing our our work. Um narrow further like what what's the thing that you're really focused on? Well, so I mean ju just from the data that I've been digging over the past like month, it's we have to focus on literacy. Like we have to actually look at that across the board. How do we get students more contact with writing? Um how do we get students more contact with the skill sets around writing and literacy, close reading skills, note-taking skills, like all like we have to really build those back up. Um, and again this is from like again we're able to access sort of in open open architects like I get access to like AP data, SAT data like all of that those pieces. Like even when you see good scores, you can

093still see discrepancies in certain areas. And where you start to see those discrepancies really is is in, you know, if you want them to recall like what like the parts of a cell, they got that. Uh if you want them to explain, you know, something, that's where the struggles. You start to see those discrepy there. So really, it it it boils down to a focus on on literacy and the skills that come with that. That's helpful. Thank you. Um sorry, I have one more question. Yeah. Um so looking at slide 13. Um so it's really exciting to see the trajectory of the high school this year. Lots of fours that you shared on the other slide where we're you were exceeding the targets in many areas and some really good outcomes for our students in

094different content areas. Um and I know you're very transparent about looking at the high need students. And for anybody who's not familiar with that, that's a single count of our students with disabilities, our multilingual learners, and our low-income students. And when we drill down deeper into that, it's mostly the students with disabilities that we're seeing the biggest gaps and multi-year gaps. So, we're really seeing them pulling away from their um peers. So, I was wondering, you're clearly using this data. How is this data, especially your students with disabilities, driving your um school improvement plan and the implementation for this year? So working with the um the the the new positions the curriculum interventionists um working with them to really again as Dr. T said like they've had some of these structures built at the other

095schools and we haven't had them at the high school um and so we really need to have something that not just identifies but then starts to track and build the the tiered support systems in there and so that's that's the start of the process there. Um, and then really looking at all the data and as you said like digging down deeper into those students to see what areas of need and what's happening with those students and what the like you know when we look is it it is it a schedule thing? Is it a the level of the classes they're in? Is it because they're in homogeneous groupings and not heterogeneous groupings and so they're tracked all the way through? Is that so we need to understand more? Um you said this just I think

096we finally got this all pretty recently. We just got, you know, this all this pretty recently. And so, um, but I think step one for us is really I'm working with, uh, Joel Steambridge and Leah Barton to really identify how we can start building a structure within the high school to support students. But again, the the the schedule that we have is very limited in being able to um, offer supports for for any student. I think one of the things we've heard since I've been here and continue to hear is so many things happen during DSP. It's like a catch all. We do music, we do sports, we do band, we do all kind of things. And then for our students that have um need academic support, that's often during DSP. And then if they

097want to do leadership opportunities, so we're asking kids to choose all the time. And so sometimes our special ed students don't go to their academic support because they want to do something. And so that's obviously violation of their IEP. They do have to attend that, but we're making them make difficult choices. And I think that's part of why the limitations that um Mr. List describes are really challenging and that's why I think you're seeing because we have wind blocks and different things in place in the other buildings, we have more opportunities to get these interventions to kids and get the right kids in the groups and we've we've been struggling with that and that's that's why we need to do something. And I would also say in terms of the data, what else I looked

098at when I started to look at the the the if you go to the next slide, the like the the um the lowest performing students that gap um if you start if you pull out students with disabilities and all that, the students who don't have any any like any any labels, let's say the the gap is just as wide for them and the struggle is there too. And so it's it's yes students with disabilities but we're also missing that like like as you see like goodness says like oh 85% of kids are meeting and exceeding and then you when you that but that's that's that's 150 kids. So it's 85% of 150 kids. Um and then you look at the rest of students. So you're really talking about a quarter of our building. that's 200

099students that are struggling um that that we need to that we have work to do um and to f figure out um curricularly again this goes back to looking at a pre-K12 plus as they're coming as they're coming to us like how are we having those conversations of support like there there are a lot of uh structural components of the high school that we need to look at uh to support those students. I have one quick sorry fairly quick uh slide. Yeah. Um what are your thoughts around advanced works for completed zero to four points? So you have to Yeah, because this is like we had a it basically counts certain classes. There's like a list of classes at Desi that count as advanced coursework. Um and when you look at the data from the

100previous year, it didn't go up um in terms of access. We also found which we found a little late but at the end of last year um so it didn't make it into our uh we didn't find until the summer sorry so it didn't make it into our data collection is that every course has a number that's course that you have to choose from the state that corresponds to it. So some of our advanced courses were not actually labeled correctly. Um and so I I don't necessarily agree that that should be a zero. Um but I mean we do need to do a better job. But again, that's where looking at like if we can partner with UMass Dartmouth, you then open up a whole avenue of advanced coursework that's available to any student does.

101It's it's not AP contingent. It's it's it's any student. The more of those that we can offer, then um we we can grow that piece. But then we have other classes that like we have high level classes that don't count towards advanced course work because like like we're offering organic chemistry this year, but that won't count towards like towards that. And knowing it's 10% I think I'm most concerned one zero to four for science and however November 5th happens for the MCAST is going to drastically likely change that. Yeah. Okay. I mean the MCAST graduation piece the thing is the MCAST exist. I'm not saying well it could sorry but but it's going to exist even if that passes like the MCAST will still exist. Um, and so right now, and I've said this to

102my to the teachers, like that's a major data point that we have at the high school, whereas like when you look at the the elementary school and middle schools, like they have a lot of lot of data points that they have throughout um their time with the students, but at the high school, it's like we have MCS. Yeah. Like that's it. And so we have to find other ways to collect the data on. Hi. Um, so I'm going to talk about um, RAMs and similar to um, what David said, we have our and what Susan said, we have our um, you know, if you click on the link, you'll see all of our action steps and then this is sort of like the the highlight reel. Um, and I just I hope that I can

103do justice to explain what is going on in the the place where I get to work. Um, because there are so many things um that are going well. And so I I trust if you have a question, you'll ask. It seems like you're asking all the right questions. And also, you'll look at our um our larger action steps and and reach out if you have questions. Um but if we're starting kind of with Arch one, that's our communication practices at Rams. Um we are looking at sort of like year two in our behavior support system and that was put into place last year. It's something called kickboard. Um it is a a way for us to communicate with um students and uh families and teachers with each other like in and among that's that sort

104of encompasses more of what the whole child kind of goes through and I have a um a slide coming up that you'll see and then we have sort of our leadership um at RAMS that's like how we're messaging that out, how we're getting that across to families. how we're getting that across to students, how students are buying into that PBIS, that positive behavior intervention system that we have. Um, and for community engagement, we we're using S'more. Um, we're using our newsletter. We have some other ways that we're reaching out in the community. And then again, we're using the data dashboard with all of our um data monitoring systems. Um, do we want to go to the next slide to talk about those? Thank you. So, if you look sort of to the left, that's like

105our family and community outreach, and you can see we're using the same s'more format um newsletter. It is bi-weekly. Um it it is uh I I sort of put a new one up at the top there and then I put an older one where you can see how many hits we're getting. So, we're getting anywhere between like 2500 and 4,500 hits on newsletters and and people going back to things. Um, so it's it's quite a mix of what you'll see um in in those newsletters. So we do some community things. We do um things that we have going on with other schools. We do things going on with our own school and uh we do get a lot of a lot of people checking that out. Um, and then weekly I send out a Monday

106memo to all teachers and staff and that's just communicating smaller things. Um, you know, to avoid lots and lots of emails. Um, it does often, you know, bring up questions and kind of create some communication between like administration and staff and and teachers. So, that's um that is helpful. We also do use bright arrow for messaging and um those might be letters that go home to families about or maybe something happening with the buses. So any kind of that communication and that does have um a feature where we can click and say this translate to translates to the family's native language. Um, and we are also working on practicing with our new translation tools and our new eel teacher, making sure we reach out to families um that may not have English as their first

107language. Um, and then to the right of the screen, you can see just a snapshot of what is going on kind of in our PBS PBIS kickboard uh arena. And that's been a huge success over the last um two years. So last year we didn't start it until October. Um and it's a way for us to kind of put in comments for families when we're recognizing students are doing something fantastic or whether they're doing something that may be a minor corrective behavior. Um and last year the buyin was extraordinary with over 30,000 comments going in for our um almost 700 students and um we have a team of PBIS people leadership that work on that. Uh, and they have instituted things like our Amazon store where the kids can cash in their points and kind

108of earn things or or um like items or privileges, but they really like looking at what their teachers are saying like, "Hey, I really saw you doing this this great thing or your group really was making progress here or I saw you standing up for this person." Um so last year was really our like launch for that and there was huge buyin and you can see um it's very very small and I'm happy to share more data but we have um you know already thousands of comments entered this year for students and so that continues to show like the buyin. Um, it also shows like we did get some data back that said there's, you know, 20% of our students are not feeling like there's enough respect and 20% of our students are not feeling

109like their peers would stand up for them. And we can use that data with this platform to kind of say like let's really recognize those behaviors like as a team, like as a school. So, we can not only use this to communicate with families where there is that drop off when you get to middle school of communication, um, but we can also use it within our school culture to kind of build and um, and it's it's awesome. So, I think that's it. And and next we have our social emotional well-being slide. So, we do collect data. Um, we do the Metro West Health Survey and the MOK. Um, and those are both pieces of information that are aligned with um larger uh forces, I guess, and give us information about our kids and their social

110social emotional health. So, it could be anxiety, it could be depression, it could be some risk behaviors that they're taking. Um, and we're able to use that data and really provide some supports for kids like as they go through middle school with our counseling staff. So we can provide some tier one supports in the classroom. We can also provide tier 2 supports with like counseling and the the service providers that we have within the school. Um and we have we've been able to take that intervention and u monitoring to our like organizational chart here that you see. And there's a piece in there that that really speaks to this like social emotional well-being. So, when we have our intervention meetings with teams um and with our intervention staff, there's the ability for teachers to bring

111a student of concern um that may not be identified through a mood check or through a parent or through a teacher um already and kind of like bring that student to the forefront and then directly to the right point person. Um and then underneath that you'll see sort of our um attendance data that goes kind of hand inhand with um what we're looking at as like maybe a concerning behavior for students. So you'll see where our sixth grade, our seventh grade, and our eighth grade are um most recently with their attendance. and we are kind of up where you know we would we would still like to see some improvement. Um but we are looking better than we did last year at this time and we are consistently monitoring that with um you'll see that

112as a throughine you know going through all the schools that that attendance piece is really big. Um you know some kids are not coming to school because they are not feeling safe or they're not feeling supported and so we really reach out and address those students. We talk to those families. We create supports for them to come back into the building. It might be something that is easy to fix or it might be something that's more of a step-in program and we have um classrooms and support staff in place to help kids get back into the building. Whether it be just from a school refusal standpoint or maybe they were like um receiving like care outside of our facility for a while. Um maybe it was an injury. So all kinds of of reasons why

113we would need to help kids get back into the building. Um we're also trying to increase um opportunities for students. So we do have um we're using the mood meter which creates an opportunity in the classrooms at the tier one level. That's just at the the classroom level where all kids can kind of um get that benefit where we're having that common language using ruler. So that's like that's the tool we're using right now. But regardless of the tool we use, I think we've established as an administrative team that we want to have a common language that kids are learning in the elementary schools and then we're moving up to high school so they can identify feelings and we can really help them um you know figure out how to best get to the bottom

114of getting the best education and experience while they're in our Hollist schools. Um we have a massive increase in our peer leadership program this year. We have 82 peer leaders and I want to tie that directly back to challenge day which we kind of talked about. Um we did start that last year and um you've already heard the brief explanation about it. Um but it was a culture shifter and that's why we want to continue it. It changed the culture at our building because it made kids see like each other as humans and adolescent development has them just like in the circle around their feet and that's appropriate. that this really gave them a broader lens in seventh grade. Then you see the outcome in other places like peer leadership. We have 82 peer leaders

115this year. That's huge. That's almost double what we had the year before. If every kid wanted to be a peer leader, every kid could be a peer leader. Um and and the experiences, you know, they teach us safe and supportive lessons. They they work with staff, the leadership staff on like what data and what things are important to kids. they go into classes and they teach those lessons to younger kids and that peer-to-peer interaction. If you go back to Jarielle's um his sort of like social emotional, you know, entire presentation, you'll see the most important thing and we know it. It's 87% of our kids feel that peer-to-peer relationship is like the most important thing to them. So, hearing from their older peers is it's um like it's it's amazing. It's an astronomical thing. and

116having 82 peer leaders go into classrooms and be able to do that is awesome. But we're also able to expand based on the data and based on our student needs and with the the help of the the leadership team what we give opportunities for those peer leaders to do. For example, we have students that want a quieter space for lunch. So, we're working with CPAC on, you know, getting some social pragmatics stuff into a group where there are some peer leaders that go in there and just kind of hang out with with kids who might want a quieter lunch and maybe get to be part of a of a peer group. Um, we have some, you know, lost train of thought. We have some um we have crisis and counseling meetings that that maybe take

117um some of the stuff we get from our challenge day or get from our mood meter or get from our data and we're able to support those kids through some deeper um experiences with smaller groups. Um so it's it's really hard for me to say. I hope you can like feel my excitement, but there's so many things going on in the social emotional well-being of our kids. Um but I probably said enough about that and we can answer questions later. Uh and yes we did uh we do uh we are showing the same data points for MCCAST um and the same data points for our low um performing students. So what we focused on here was um directly from the DESIE website but hopefully in a more like snapshot version so that you can see

118what's really happening. Um, and if you look over on the left, that's all of our non- high need students. So, for science, um, ELA, and math, you can see that the the kids in that group are having a lot of success, and that is the majority of our kids in our building. However, um if you look at the discrepancy between our um non- high need science and our high need science, our non- high need DLA and our high need DLA, you're seeing and the math you're seeing like a 50 point discrepancy and that is um that is a huge concern to us. That's one of the reasons why we are doing the interventions that we're doing at the level we're doing, tier one, tier 2, and tier three. And that just means ways we're supporting

119kids. um because that's not okay with us. Um and again, that high needs group is represented by students who may have more than one, you know, low-income special um services or multilingual learners. So, for example, our multilingual learners, um I think over 50% of them also are on IEPs. So we're talking about kids that are impacted a lot of times in more than one way. So um it would really like it matters to look at the subgroups in that group, but it also really matters for us to look at that group as a whole and how we're identifying um what we're doing for those kids. And you will see that in the way that we structured our interventions this year from the meetings to identifying students through data, identifying students from qualitative pieces from teachers

120and then also how and where we provide those services for kids and at what level two um or level three interventions that happens during our RAMs blocks. Um it happens in small groups. We are um we have resources and tools like a new math program and likel, but those are resources and tools that go behind the people and the children that are doing that work and we're already seeing um growth in our students and we just started this new model this year. So I feel really hopeful that we'll see some some um some growth in this area for next. Um and then the next slide again this is from the the data and accountability from the state and you know they give us a score right they give us a score based on some factors.

121Um the factors are spelled out here. If you do click over all the way to the right you'll see a lot more data and a lot more things spelled out. But for our purposes and like to keep this pretty short, what I want you to pay attention to is um sort of on the in the center as you go down, you'll see that number for our kind of non high needs students. Um and then that is compared to our lowest performing students. You'll see a discrepancy in that number. A lot of those students are the same students who are struggling with their MCCAST scores. We're able to pull out individual students now with this data that we had before. We're not necessarily able to do that without really combing through and spending hours and hours

122and making spreadsheets. But with our data dashboard and with our intervention people in place, we can put that all into one place. we can spend less time identifying kids who are struggling and more time getting to the kids that are struggling with the interventions that we can provide. So yes, this is important to look at, but I think it's more important to know that we have a data dashboard that puts this all together for us, which is super helpful in delivering the services that we need to in helping students. Um, and then in our next slide, still under arch 3 with teaching and learning, I wanted to give you just a um, you know, you can you can take a look at this on your own. The numbers are are teeny tiny, but it gives

123you an idea of how many minutes, how much buyin there is um from teachers and students spending time not only in school but at home using which can be teacherdriven, it can be intervention driven, it can be independent. Kids um can have a lead on this. They can do this as a whole class. They can play games. They can watch videos. But what they do is they make progress. So, are students using at RAMS? That's what the left picture kind of identifies. Yes, they are using it at RAMS and they're using it at home. They're spending tons of minutes um getting proficient in skills in literacy and in math. Um and then are they making progress? You know, are they getting something out of this out of this? And you can see that is um

124that is clear on the right. And again we will track this from year to year and it will be more powerful from year to year. Um probably our interventions will shift from year to year when we see more growth. Um but this is just sort of where we are now. Um so I wanted to kind of point this out to you and um I guess like anecdotically the these you know if you look at the e just the eighth grade the amount I didn't ask you anything. Uh if you look at just the eighth grade and and just the amount of time they're spending on this and you remember that these are adolescents, right? These are kids that, you know, they're they're trying to um make potions at lunch with as many different drinks as

125they can and they're they're having a contest like, you know, they're 6'2 and they're they're getting in a line when we go outside for lunch and go, "We're going to have a heel clicking contest. Can you tell us who's the best?" yet they're going home and they're like working on literacy and math skills in this program. So like yes, it is something that um you know maybe they don't all love it, but they're buying into it. Like adolescence are buying into it and um I just feel really I just feel really proud of them. So I wanted to show this slide to you guys. Um and then here we are at at at arch 4 and over to the right. I'll start with that because we did get the approval for the roof. Um, but

126there was some some I have more parts of the roof. Not the whole roof, but the parts of the roof parts important. Yes. And the important parts of the roof, as you probably know, were identified in the stuff where they're goring. Yeah. There's a moisture survey. Um, and and these are some of the infrared pictures of the moisture survey. Um, and then we have some internal pictures where we have um kind of water mini waterfalls. Nothing like the high school had, but um some mini waterfalls and um some uh some roof tiles that that need replacing. And then we have just sort of the picture. I didn't put the whole, you know, picture up there where the problems are, but we are super excited about getting parts of a new roof. Um and then another

127focus is our learning walks. Um learning walks are happening in our building so that we're getting into classrooms more because ultimately what we want to achieve is having teachers get into teachers classrooms and really feeling more comfortable doing that with each other. Um and so we're doing some building school-based walkthroughs where we're just like walking through noticing things and then sharing that with teachers, providing coaching opportunities. we might work with our interventionists at that point because they're pushing in a lot instead of pulling kids out a lot and that really is an effective way that we're kind of incorporating our learning walks and our inter intervention strategies. Um, and then we're doing that at the district level as well. And then our through line is that we're trying to um calibrate our thinking, which we

128realize we we can't do, but it might give us a lens to kind of like how we're sharing and how we're providing feedback to teachers and maybe um kind of switching that up so teachers get a lot of different feedback and coaching opportunities from different um people in their in their lives. Um and I think that's it. I I want to close with that. I know we got the blue ribbon award and we're super excited about that. But I want you to know how serious I am about how much I care about the place where I'm currently working and like how much work we do need to do and how much I really am passionate about moving that work and how much I love middle school kids and families. Any questions? Um, I have one

129and and this is more to clarify because I think you talked about this, but I want to make sure that I I understood it correctly. So, um, I know we looked at the high needs data and you talked about, um, the needs of the students with disabilities. That's definitely like a through line we're seeing from the middle school to high school. Very similar data, great scores for our students, but students with disabilities is an area of focus for the district. Um, and I heard you talk about tiered interventions, pull out services, RAMs, block supplements like Il, but what about the uh, can you just talk more about what's the tier one instruction? How are we supporting their needs in the classroom with the day-to-day tier one content? One of the biggest things we did this

130year at Rams is we created a languagebased um, like teams. So kids with language-based disabilities, they're they're not just receiving those services in elementary schools, now they're going to receive them at RAMs. And so the teachers that are in those language based programs um are, you know, getting trained in like OG and um you know, the the things that they really need to help those kids. So instead of those kids going out to receive those kinds of services, they're getting them in the classroom. We're also working with um Landmark and we're working with ALN. And those are just two outside groups that are going to come in and assist teachers in like we're still facing not only gaps in achievement um because of students with maybe disabilities or um other things going on with them,

131right? But also COVID, right? We're still seeing gaps from that. So we're trying as educators to figure out ways to best help those kids. So we bring in a group like all learners network. It's ALN. what they're focusing on is giving kids menus, right? Um giving kids choices in their classroom so it's truly differentiated while they're in there and they're able to say like I'm working on this high lever skill at this level. I'm working on this high lever skill, same skill, maybe at a deeper level and then that can continue. Um so they're really broadening our ability to do that as a school. Um and Landmark is really helping us with our literacy services. Um, and I think you know what I said about the curriculum specialist pushing into classes, that's huge because they're

132going in as additional people who actually have lots of data on which students to target and bring along in those skills. So when we talk about tier one, we're really talking about what's happening in the classroom and ways we beef that up. And one more thing I think that's um we didn't mention is that the last year I rewrote the job descriptions for curriculum intervention roles and then had that model so that we have two at each building STEM and humanities and and a big part of their role is to help support teachers with curriculum development but also to go in and coach teachers. And so we're trying to get them more training as well. Joan's been working with them and to provide those opportunities so that they can teachers are struggling with their kids.

133not only am I going to help intervene with the kids, but I'm going to come in and try to give you strategies and supports along with all earnest networks. So, I think that's another piece of the model that we're hoping will prove um helpful as we go. And and I do want to say like the teachers are awesome. If you if you walk down the halls like you'll be smiling. You'll be seeing kids working. You'll be seeing kids smiling. You'll be seeing group. You'll be seeing all the things that hardworking teachers do. But for some reason, if we're not making the progress we need to make, we all want to do something different together. So, it's not to say that that anyone isn't grinding and like doing their job. It's just to say like we're

134trying to make a really impactful shift. And I think that um I think we have the people to do that. I think we are seeing that we are closing the gap on the student growth percentile. It doesn't mean we're, you know, everything's perfect, but that's I think part of the reason we are, we have seen some of the successes with the national group for example. Thank you. Any more questions? When you talk about the menus, is that is that all on like software that they're doing on their Chromebooks? what are the like what they're choosing to do. So a menu is just like say you have like a lesson plan or a learning plan or teach whatever you call it as a teacher. You can call it anything and then you um when the kids

135come in you have say a standard right or an objective or like this is what I want you to know and be able to do when I when you leave right or when we finish this unit or this week or whatever kids you take that skill and then there's choices. So it's like when you go into a restaurant. So it could be any sort of like could be a worksheet, it could be read something, it could be Yeah. But there's all different levels. So like you have different maybe reading levels, you have different um like skill levels, you have different like depth that you get into. But the beauty of it is like kids are fluid that same Yes. that same high leverage skill. Yeah. And that's an all learners network kind of that's what

136they're coming in and working with our teachers on. Yeah. So, one of the things I hope that you're hearing is a couple weeks ago we had Jerry and Jess here. Uh, last week or a couple weeks ago, you had a curriculum specialist here. Uh, and they kind of gave an overview of kind of what they were doing. Uh, and we're trying to, you know, go a little bit deeper and show you some of that data. So, I hope you're able to see, uh, some of the connections. you know, we're presenting tonight, but there's teams behind us that are putting this work together for us. We've got our literacy people in the building. We've got our assistant principles, our SSAs. You know, we don't do this on our own. Um, but we're up here presenting uh

137the information to you. We've got teachers uh that are on committees that are doing a lot of the work uh that are on here. So at Miller uh again you can click on that that goes to that lengthy doc with all the stuff in it. Uh but we did a a highlighted one. Um today when I'm doing my slides I'm going to the big focus is going to be on two and three. Um we I will um chime in with some of the communication uh that we're doing throughout because I think the communication with families all families uh making sure it's interpret interpreted translated for all families uh is a goal as a district that we're trying to do. Ruler's a big focus uh on uh the three schools. Uh and our a big initiative

138that we have is a uh a uh climate and culture calendar that I'm going to show you that we're we're building uh throughout the year. We've gone through two. We had a group working on November's today. Uh but this comes out of kind of uh if you go into the next slide, you know, where did this all come from? It came from staff surveys. It came from parent surveys. It came from student surveys. Two years ago, we did a survey of the staff and this started our climate and culture kind of committee. Um, and it was kind of there. We weren't, you know, getting a lot of uh feet on the ground. Uh, and then we did our student service survey and parent survey. We only had like 50 parents out of 600 participate in

139that first year. So we we went about it uh and and last year we had a lot more. Obviously all of our students did it, but we had uh 233 family responses that time and again we had all of our staff. One of the thing that drives it is, you know, it's out of a four-point scale and anything under three, um, you know, we wanted to take a look at and one of them was I don't feel comfortable at school was under three. And so, how do you make everyone in your building feel like they want to be at your school? How do you have um if you're under three on a family that doesn't feel like they're welcome and it falls in, you know, one of your um different racial categories, you know, how

140do we make everybody feel comfortable uh in our schools? If you go to the next slide. So this year um co we had this summer we had a uh climate and culture committee get together and take a look at how we can tie all of our different initiatives together. How can we um really focus on making uh Miller a welcoming place? So we've got uh on the left side some some school events and celebrations. Uh then we go into ruler. What are we focusing in on rule of that month? Next, PBIS, what are we focusing in on there? We're trying to tie in health because health wasn't taught at Miller, only at grade 5 uh because we put uh science into the classroom. And then how are we tying uh the UA uh into all

141of this? Our first um month our theme was welcome in because our new theme for the school is welcome in expect greatness. Uh so this month was expect greatness. Our first month um we took a look at creating charters uh in the in the classroom uh classroom charters with ruler. Uh and this month we are looking at uh teachers uh teaching the the mood meter and what that looks like. And I know you know uh I think it was when Jerry was speaking there was a question. How do you know what's going on? Um and I'll show that on the on the next uh can we go to the next slide? On the next slide you can see it around our building. Um we've got a mood a live mood meter uh in our front

142hallway. Um, and we actually have uh teacher pictures uh depicting some moods. So, you've got some that are sad or s, you know, some that are happy, elated. Um, and again, these are teachers driving this mood meter and and uh putting this up in in the hallway, you've got a couple examples of classroom charters. So, you go to the classroom and there's your charter. How does students want to feel uh in the building? We are trying to do celebrations uh whatever they may be. We had Spanish heritage last month. Uh each day over the announcement we were giving um you know uh examples of some uh famous Spanish people in in our um in our country. This month was disability uh awareness. Uh and so there's different topics um that we're trying to do. We

143had World Smile Day uh where we had uh taking pictures of kids smiling uh teachers dressed in uh something that had a smile on them. Um and again a big push uh this month uh was our mood meter. So if you walk around the school, you are going to see it alive. Uh with the different things that we are trying to help students want to come to school because they feel safe in school. Uh and we're trying to address their social emotional needs. Uh while we're doing that, one of the big pushes, Can you go to the next one? Um was attendance. And I know um you I'm going to get to the slide that everybody else did, but I wanted to walk you through, you know, what the state tries to do and it

144they they give you a point. So last year we were at 11.5. Okay? They give you a target. They want you to get to 10.2. And so that's your target. And if you make that target, you know, you you get a three. But if you exceed that target, which we did, um, we got four points, and I'll show that later. And that ties into all those academic pieces, too. They give you a score, they want you to make it here, and if you get to that score, then it's like a three, but if you advance beyond that, you can get a four. If you don't make it up to there, you might get a two. And if you drop, you may get a one or a zero. But this is kind of how that point

145system works. Uh on that chart that I'm going to show later, the one thing that's a little discouraging in this one, if you look at our L's or former L's, you know, we declined uh there. So that means that our L's weren't attending as much as we wanted them to. So we've got to dive into that. We've got to figure that out and you know how can we do better um with that subgroup you want to go. So people showed the data dashboard. Uh what we're trying to do go back to the communication piece. We're trying to communicate this with staff every week. You know here's where where we are this week. Here's how our kids are doing. We have a student support team that we meet and talk about the students that we see

146are above where we want them to be or chronically. Um, we have our guidance counselor talk to our school nurse. Is there were they out because they were sick? Has anybody contacted them? And if they haven't, we contact them to find out what's going on. Are they is it an anxiety piece? Is it something? But it just so families know that we're trying to, you know, work with them to make sure that their childs come to school. We're communicating this process. We did it at our back to school nights how we were going to be addressing attendance this year. It goes out in um monthly. Uh we communicate, but it's also we're sending out that individual report as you've heard to every family once a month. They'll probably I believe they're getting another one on

147day 45 which is right around the corner. Uh and so parents will get a regular reminder about how their kids are doing. Your kid may be doing great. Um but you may also not know that your child has been out. Uh and two times a month over the course of the year ends up a child being chronically uh absent uh for the year. Uh, and so parents need to realize that if they're going on vacation, if they're doing anything else, but we want to make this aware to the whole district because the state is holding us accountable uh to this uh data. Uh, and up until now, you can see we, you know, we're at 7% which is above, you know, better than we were 8.4 at the end of last year. And 77% of

148our students have improved attendance. uh this year which is good and our data dashboard can give us this information but also remember we haven't even uh scraped the surface of what we're going to I mean we don't know everything the data dashboard can give us uh right now it's at the admin level taking a look at that we're working on uh getting it into the teachers hands but we're not there yet um sort of thing next slide This may look familiar to you. Um, uh, I'm going to point out our zero, uh, points in the ELA, uh, goes to our tier one instruction. Um, and you know, what are we doing, uh, to try and focus on that? Well, I think we heard Ilsa talk uh, a couple weeks ago. Um, she was uh, looking

149at looking over the summer. They worked on the sentence level and and getting kids to write in in in reading. We need to look at um a more structured uh literacy approach. Uh at Miller, I know we've got all learners. No, we have Landmark uh who has been working with our special ed teacher. We have landmark coming in for Placentino and Miller teachers for all teachers uh to look at what that looks like uh in their classroom to focus on that tier one uh instruction because as you can see we had zero. Um and the year before I believe we were at let me pull that up. The year before we were at two. So we still weren't making the progress we wanted. Um but we were at least at a two. Our number 76

150down at the bottom there. The year before we were at 57. So we have improved uh in that area. The big piece and I think you saw it at at middle two the fours under the lowest performing students. That's showing us our lowest performing students are exceeding what the state is asking us to. So, what that's telling me is our tier three instruction, so our special ed instruction, our um specially designed instruction is working. Our tier 2 instruction is working. Um we're we've got our wind block that we use at the Miller school. Um, and now with I Ready, we're able to monitor uh three times a year, but we're able to use my path um to focus on some of the skill areas that they're weak in. Um, so that's a bonus. The other

151thing is under the science, we were a zero under science. uh last year under the the lowest performing we didn't have a big enough cohort because that is only taught that is only um fifth grade data. Uh so that's why there's no uh data under the the science achievement there. under all of them we are making uh we are on target on growth uh on ELA math uh and in our lowest performing and under the chronic absenteeism we were a one the year before and um it got worked up to a four. So we are seeing gains but we do know that in ELA we've got to really look at that tier one instruction. So, here is our data. Very similar to the other schools. Ours is set up differently because I needed to see

152it side to side, not up and down. Uh, and so, um, you're going to So, that's the way my eyes went. So, uh, the non- high needs is on the left. The high needs is on on the the right, and you can see the comparison, uh, and how much, um, better our non high needs kids did, um, than our high needs kids. The one thing in mathematics that I, you know, even though they're at 36, there was growth. there was a 57.3% growth which is is good but again the achievement level is still uh down in that area. Um and here's some other data that we're able to get from I Ready. So on the right is I Ready and so if you look at the green uh the green is uh grade level uh

153students are at grade level. If you look at the yellow um this is they are below grade level but when this assessment is given at the beginning of the year these are third grade um um these are grade level um skills that they haven't been taught yet. So anything in yellow is green is okay. It's the red you really want to focus on. Uh and so those students have already been identified. They're already on our list. those students are already getting uh interventions uh and so promise in in ELA so that top piece and it it is uh I believe it's um phmic awareness it's all green it is not actually uh on the assessment in grade three and so it's all green anyways and so Jamie was telling me it's all green um but

154if we look at the phonics uh the the green that goes across there that is showing us that the students coming up from Placentino um they are um getting that phonics piece that was weak for a very long time and so I'm encouraged uh to see that coming across. The data on the left is Dibbles data and I I I don't know I'm going to have to read to you what some of the the the Dibble stuff is. said Dibbles looks at nonsense word fluency. It looks at word reading fluency. It looks at oral reading fluency uh as always to and and all those are given in an assessment and and scored and so um you can see what what the data is and that's real time data beginning of the year data. So we

155do look again at the red. This is another data point for us to see how it fits in uh with the I Ready data uh and how you know if it's grade four or five how it might fit in with MCCAST but it's a totally different assessment because MCCAST is usually more comprehension and writing than it is um more you know that fluency piece or that reading piece. And our last piece is here too. So what I Ready can do for us and we actually have a PD day in November on this half day and this is going to be explained in more details uh to the teachers but um Ashley Buchard and Ilsa O'Brien have gone in and and explained this uh to the teachers but it will give us can dos what students

156can do but it also will give them focus areas that they need to work on with each student. And in the bottom right hand corner, this is an actual class. Uh we kind of bubbled it out so you wouldn't see the names. It can um it can create educational groupings of students who all need the same strategies. So you've got your reading groups or you've got your math groups in in different areas. But this is what the I Ready tool can do for us. And so, um, that's kind of my data for today. Okay. Um, I have a couple. Sure. I'm going to ask about students disabilities. Again, not to be redundant, but just because when I look at the Desi heat map, school and district profiles, our education to career, Desi dashboard, all of

157it points to students with disabilities as a focus for the whole district. Um, so looking at your culture and climate data, because I see that's a real big focus for Miller, um, when I look at your vocal data, grade four and five, um, not on all items, but there are a lot of items where students with disabilities rated themselves significantly lower than their peers um, in looking at environment, safety, and engagement. So, I'm wondering with your climate culture focus, how are you thinking about supporting the needs of those learners um, with your initiatives? So did I want to go back. Were you looking at the vocal data? Gotcha. Um that we actually found the vocal data more um telling or more informative uh than than the survey that we gave out last year. Uh we

158found that the questions on it were more uh just better uh for us. Um we have not taken a total dive into all of that data in the vocal um um in what was provided to us. But what we when we did our initial dive into it, we wanted to make a local vocal um survey because it it was uh more accurate I think for us. The one thing in this is note one thing I don't like about the vocal data is it comes at the tail end of four days of testing that nobody wants to do and so a lot of kids are just rushing through the data. Um but at the same time it is something that we've got to take a deeper dive into. Um and I have another question about your

159data too. So, um, it's clear you're looking at a a range of data to identify student needs and target some supports and looking at your your MCCAST data. So, in 2021, 63% of students were meeting or exceeding expectations. This year, it looks like 47% in ELA. So, as you're working with Landmark, I'm wondering about how you're looking at the MCCAST data, your I Ready data, your Dibbles data to really drill down and like what's the focus with Landmark to move students toward more students to mastery of ELA standards? Well, one of the things um we know it's an area we need to focus on. I mean, it it it is and it it's pretty telling. um and from and I Ready is new to us. So, it's a it's a new tool for us and

160it it's um um the information it gives us in the areas that um students need to focus on um is better data than we've ever had before in in at the classroom level. you know, we may have had it where special ed teachers may have had it or our reading tutors may have had it, but not all of our classroom teachers are reading specialists who can dive into that. So, our hope is that we can build on the information that Landmark is giving us and the skills and strategies that uh they're putting forward. Um the other thing that at the end of last year and again Landmark's going to help with this the the my pathway uh Karen showed it in the uh where kids go on and they do it 10 minutes a day

161or 50 minutes a day. when we saw the data that the students who participated in that pilot last year made significant gains over the students who just took STAR and didn't have that specific um instruction instructional path. Uh so my hope is with the I Ready piece and and the the the pieces that we're getting from Landmark and and all learners networks and and you know we're all of our special ed teachers in the last se several years have been trained in multi-entury approach to reading and so specific but don't want to go into specific it's more multi-entury and so our hope is that we will see um that go into the classroom. [Music] Everyone still with us? Okay. So, I'm probably going to be brief on a lot of arches because um I feel

162like my colleagues really talked about it. So, I'm going to touch upon it, but my brevity shouldn't um I hope it doesn't communicate that we're not working as hard at Placentino as the rest of the schools. I just don't want to be redundant of some of the things that we're doing. Um so, if you go to the next slide, this is our overarching pieces we're doing. Um if you look at the document, it's it's much deeper than this, but what I wanted to do is pull out some of the high leverage pieces that we're working on. So when we look at um arch one, we really are enhancing our communication practices, not only with our families, but with our teachers as well. Um I'm going to talk a little bit about how we're supporting student

163attendance. Um as we get into some of the other arches when we look at arch 4, um my colleagues talked about the work that we're doing around learning walks. Um my colleagues talked about all the work that we're doing in each of our schools around building um a stronger school climate. And um I believe Dr. Costa talked a lot about us launching our staff portal which is really also ties to arch one around the communication practices. So tonight I'm really going to focus on arch 2 and arch three. Um when we think about arch 2, my colleagues talked a lot about ruler. We're doing all of those foundational pieces to build emotional intelligence with our youngest learners. Starting with our babies, our three-year-olds learning those emotional um vocabulary words. And I'm going to talk a

164little bit um soon about our approach there. We're also part of year two of the culturally responsive education academy and um that is going to be weaved in into some of the things I'm going to talk about. Um so why don't we go to the next slide. So thinking about our approach to social emotional learning I feel like that at Plastantina we've taken on a lot. So we've have PBIS, we have lots of acronyms, right? PBIS, we have ruler, we have our DEI initiatives and it was kind of information overload for our teachers and you know when you try to take on a lot sometimes you don't do anything well. So one of our focus was how do we tie all this together underneath the umbrella of social emotional learning and wellness for our students.

165So we had a committee this summer come together and much like Mr. K talked about his calendar, we kind of developed a um Cheryl Corduro, our assistant principal, led this initiative around developing a scope and sequence for our teachers that tied it together. So it wasn't just here's a PBIS lesson, here's a ruler lesson. It was built under themes and really tried to integrate it together so that our teachers understood what they were doing so then our students, our youngest students could be that um enduser and be able to um have the biggest impact on it. So we're really proud of that. Next slide, please. As you saw um across we've been addressing absenteeism. I do not have accountability slide. I'm sorry you don't get to see that again but at Plasantino we do not

166have MCCAST. So I do not have an accountability slide. So I feel that it's important that um in full disclosure we talk about what's going on at Placentino and our absenteeism. So if you looked at our absenteeism across the district prek to 12 plus actually Plastentino has the highest level of chronic absenteeism for our youngest learners. So, diving into that, why what's happening? Well, um I think it's easier and um in our minds sometimes of our families to think about that keeping our youngest learners home might not have the big as big of an impact as our older learners. When we look at our chronic absentee data, this is from about last week. Um when I we we have a team as well that meets weekly to look at this, we broke down all of

167our students who are already chronically absent. half of them has been because of vacations um that are more than five days. So, it's an impact that we're trying to um we want a balance of family life, but also we know that we can't educate students if they're not in school. And we know that it might not feel like a lot for a kindergarten to be absent 10 to 18 days, but that begins habits and that gets compounded over time. and as they get older, they're missing more and more school um collectively throughout. Another part that we are struggling with at Plastentino is our tardies. Up to about last week when I pulled this data from our data dashboard, we already had 303 tardies. Um you know, talking to Mr. Budet and Dr. Jordan about this,

168some of this is impacted by our late arrival of our buses. Um we have two lines into our building. I have my kids coming off the buses who do not get marked as tardy and I have kids coming out of cars who are being marked as tardy. As a parent, that might not feel great. You know that I have other kids walking in. It's hard for um our parents to maybe even know when school starts if it looks like it's a rolling start. Um, many of our tardies are 5 to 10 minutes and it's something that I'm hoping to fix when we adjust our um, our bus schedules to be honest with you. So that we have our students that we who we're transporting students are actually getting there on time. Don't interrupt. Does this

169include the late buses or No, no, no, no, No, it doesn't. But it is a problem. You can see I have a row of cars and I have people seeing kids getting out of buses. They think that their students are on time. Grade two seems out of control. What you say? The grade two is like I mean obviously all of these are not great but yeah it's a lot. Um next slide. So I'd like to celebrate some of our success. We have been working for the past three years to really shift our literacy approach. Um as Mr. time talked about in our current third graders when they were kindergarteners, we implemented a phenemic awareness curriculum called Hegardy and really shifted our approach um in that area. When our current third graders were first graders, we

170started structured literacy and for the past two years really been implementing that. When I um I did peek into your Dibbles data today and I focused on um looking at what we call correct letter sound, which is the decoding of words. That's when we have all those sounds and we break them apart. 78% of our third graders were at or above. Um that is a huge achievement and I'm really proud of our teachers um especially led by Jenny man to do that. So this is our success of what we've been doing. Next slide. When we look at I wanted to point out some pieces. Um I wanted to show our current second graders. So our current second graders compared to their um so MOI is middle of year, NOI is end of year. So phone

171segmentation um that's the ability to hear a word, breaking up into sounds, putting it back together, that is a foundational piece for learning how to read. When I look at our current second graders compared to the middle of the year, um, Dibble says beginning of the year data for kindergarteners is not as reliable as middle of the year because we they don't have the same experiences coming into kindergarten. So the most reliable data for this is middle of the year. Um, we if you compare from these the same students from middle of the year kindergarten to end of the year first grade, we decreased our intensive supports by 26%. We increased our students who scored above the core by 26%. And we increased our students who scored at core or above by 41%. These are

172the same students. Next slide, please. When we're looking at their ability to decode that correct letter sound, these are the same students. Um for this, we were able to this is the same data. Um um we were able to look at decreasing intensive by 26%. Increasing by 26% and again that 41% of students who are now in um an increase of 41% for kids who are in core above core the instruction's working our shift in practices are working. And what I'm hoping is that you're hearing Mr. Liss talk about the struggles in literacy. I'm hoping that our foundational work um of being having kids breaking that code, that's what we call that, being able to decode, break the code, so then they can focus on that higher level thinking of comprehension and synthesizing and analyzing

173instead of struggling with just learning how to read. Next slide. So where is our area of focus this year? Um our area of focus is in math, specifically in number sense. So what is number sense? Um a number sense is just that foundational piece of math much like I talk about in reading for where phonics and phmic awareness is. It's their ability to be able to understand numbers and their relationships not just memorizing procedures. When students are able to compose and decompose numbers to understand their meaning to each other to be able to perform mental math. So, what you automatically do when you go to the grocery store and you're trying to estimate something in your mind, that's that mental math. Um, having a confidence in reading. Um, something that is my probably biggest pet

174peeve is when people say, "I'm not good at math." You would never hear science someone just proudly say, "I I can't read." Um, I I believe firmly that we need to build strong, confident mathematicians, and this has been an area of weakness in our district. It's part of the reason that we chose a new math curriculum. Eureka squared math really lays a foundation for um number sense. Next slide please. So this is our current data. This is our why when we look at um that is that it thanks. So um as Mr. Khan said this is our IA I Ready data. So what we did was we took that yellow and we broke it up into into two different categories. So as Mr. K described, yellow is students who are approaching um that grade level.

175We looked at our data and our numbers and felt that there was such a range in the yellow that it wasn't really accurate to keep them in the same category. So what we did was we looked at the range and broke them up into half. So we looked at students who are in that light yellow is approaching in orange who were really at the beginning of the previous school year. So those are the students that the students in the orange and in the red that we really need to be focusing on be beyond the tier one changes that we're making. So in kindergarten we have 23% at or above 73% who are approaching. first grade 22% at or above 34 approaching 33 who we feel are at the one grade level behind and 11% who

176are two grade levels behind grade 28% at or above 36 approaching 23% one grade below 14% two grades below this is our why this is where we need to be focusing next slide please so what's our plan of action so we're implementing Eureka math squared um with all students this year, preK through um grade 5. The program itself relies heavy on those visual models that are shown in the bottom, which helps foster and build their number sense. It also uses a coherent um progression so that every unit they're on, it cycles back and they're continuously building their number sense. And it elicits student discourse. So, what is that? You haven't seen anything until you see three-year-olds discussing numbers. And that's how they build their number sense through conversations. Next slide, please. We're going to be

177continuing to use our data to analyze and guide our instruction um conduct small not only the data that we're doing here but our um our STEM um curriculum coordinator Kristen Marino um will be doing helping teachers with number talks and number um interviews with students to be able to have a a founder a bigger understanding of what their thinking is. We'll be doing targeted math interventions um and as Mr. kind talked about using I Ready in its learning path. So, and not just let's get on the learning path, but what is there's a there's a composite number in math that shows where students are. Um, you have to dig beyond that composite number like what is their their piece. So, if it's number sense, making sure that they're doing targeted work in number sense. If

178it's geometry, making sure they're doing that and having our teachers really understand how to manipulate that and change it. Next slide, please. And then finally doing targeted teacher professional development. With this, we're partnering again with all learners network at Placentino. Um not only are we um have we had some full day professional developments, but we're also doing some additional optional professional development. Um that is in small groups, grade levels for our teachers so that they can work on building student number sense, looking at student work together, increasing their discourse around number sense with each other um through a facilitator. And then next, um, this is our schoolwide goal. I would say that I have 90% of our classroom teachers who signed on to this goal as their student learning goal. Um, and as their professional

179learning goal, they're um, utilizing a number sense goal as well. So, I never feel good about saying 80% will meet me or exceed. I always think about that 20%. That being said, I think this is a pretty rigorous goal. considering where we currently are, but we're committed to 100% of our students making measurable growth. That's where we are. Questions, come on. I was nervous talking about math in front of you. You answered a lot of my questions. No, but I I appreciate the way you laid that out. It's like this is our specific domain we're going to target. This is why. This is how we're going to do it. this is the support for teachers and this is what we're going to look at and this is data we're going to use um through like

180middle of the year end of the year to monitor that. So that was really clear. Um, which is why I don't have I only have one question. Okay. But, um, I wanted to go just go back to the literacy piece. And I'm sorry if you said this and I didn't and catch it, but um, your data, Miller's data looks really strong with like the foundations of reading. Um, the phmic awareness, the phonics, the decoding piece. And when I look across the two schools, I my wonder is about reading comprehension like you mentioned. That's really that next step for us. Um you know I think that we really needed to focus on at the same time all along we've been working on comprehension for our teachers. So you know they've been doing their readalouds. We've been

181doing shared reading. We're building common vocabulary. That piece when we think of structured literacy it does include comprehension. I think there's a misnomer that people think that there isn't but there is. in Landmark coming in. What they're going to do is the success that we've had with our tier three in OG training and other multiensory approaches. They're going to be helping bringing that into our classroom and Jess is working really closely with them and we want to work on strategies for comprehension as well. Thanks. Any [Music] this is really important stuff. I I do think maybe in the future we want to consider maybe splitting it over two nights because I I think this what he said. I think this is no because this is really really important but I think that when you do

182it over an hour and a half I'm not entirely sure that we're able to give the sort of the attention and and and detail that that I think it deserves. Yeah. And I think as you know we've um increased how we're looking at data. When I first started, we had kind of shifted and I we've been trying to get that balance back. So, of course, when you start integrating and they could have put a lot more, but I helpful take some out. But I think what would be helpful to us is this is a first time. I mean, we usually share our goals. We're not throwing in the data on top of it. So, if there's data you like, data you didn't like, if if something was more informative than others, you know, now that

183we have the data and we're we're starting, let us know what um or give Susan feedback on what um because we were not sure what to bring forward. And I think when we do um the midyear goals, we could probably just do the data. Do you know what I mean? We don't have to talk about where the data has grown or not. Some of the links were were not working when I was trying to link to you want to take a deeper dive. Look at this. And I was like, I can't. But if you are you in um are you in slideshow mode? Yeah. If you're in slideshow mode, you should be able to. But maybe not. If you can't open one, let me know. Yeah, there was just some that weren't I want to

184see what that little thing is. [Laughter] Thank you all very [Music] He's still on the agenda. Wait, we still have Don't we still have Dan? Should we go? Should we wrap up his pieces? Thank you everyone. [Music] Sorry that that happens every Oh, sorry. No, no, no. You can still It's still public meeting just not open for this session. No, just everyone's left. Um, I was like, "Hang on." No, Mr. List is on the house. Um, okay. So, uh, I guess we're not quite ready to do the international trip tonight. No, I just honestly I just didn't print it out, so I didn't have it to give to y'all. So, so we'll add that to to the next night. Um, but then I guess you you have we put on here update from the uh

185high school schedule committee and the work that you're doing. Yeah. Um so uh we've meeting the schedule committee. Um where we are right now is as I said sorry so as I said before we we've identified and I talked about in my presentation um the the needs um that we need to meet in the schedule. Those those are obvious. I've talked about those for over a a year now. Um and so moving forward now we have to sort of put that into play with actual kind of numbers and powers school and what works and so um what uh we're working on right now is getting a consultant from power school in um to be able to tell us um based on sort of our needs based on what we have based on all of the

186things that we want to keep and not keep um within our with within our um courses our schedules our credits all of those components that make up a schedule um what can actually um kind of work um within that um using the multitudes of structures that Power School has access to because of the the thousands of schools that they work with. Um and so hopefully um that meeting will happen um in in the next uh week or so. Um Dan Mloud's pulling that together for us uh as the leazison through P school. Um and so that we'll have we'll have that meeting um and then go go from there um with what structures kind of can fit within our our parameters. Okay. Um I mean I think it's it's been pretty clear from discussions you

187know that we we've had uh when you when you've come before us that you know we have some significant inequities uh in our schedule. Um you know one one concern that I've had too is is the length of the of the the uh the blocks that we have now. Um, and I certainly don't think I could could see, you know, supporting lengthening that block. Uh, that, you know, so, um, hopefully we're looking at things. I think I looked up, you know, the average sort of recommendation is, you know, 50 to 60 minutes. Um, so I don't know where where you where you are. Maybe you're not ready to to share that, but I just want to I don't know where the other committee members are, but um, just thought I'd share that as you continue

188on with your with your work. Yeah, I mean, we're looking at lot I mean, sort of looking at at everything. But I mean that is what mo the most recent you know data would tell us is that you know between 50 and 60 minutes is about the attention span of students. Um I'm not ready to like pull out. We're looking at 62 and a half minutes. Uh you know as we're looking at really what it is now is like there are with within a schedule there are are so many variables. Um and so we really have to look at what actually works within what our what our requirements are. Um and then you know be able to present that out to the the staff um with what's best for for students. And then obviously just

189for the committee, I'm sure you know this, but uh we are also dealing with a January 1 deadline that we agreed to within the MOA for for for this work for for the your committee to come to a consensus and then we have I think till April 1st or April 30th some something like that something in April to rat some to to ratify but you know because then there's going to be time once a a change or what status quo is is decided that we that we'll then need to you know seek you know, just feedback and and sort of get that out there into the community. The the working with P school will be uh will be kind of the um guide that we need that really helps us with the the minutes, the

190credits, the courses, the that that piece there. So, that will sort of uh hopefully um be the thing that can can move us forward rather quickly to meet that timeline. and and so you'd expect another update on at the November 14th meeting then. Okay, that's my next question. I like coming to you know um any other questions? I have uh my only advice for the schedule committee like we're learning from the school bus time start times start with guiding principles like what you're trying to achieve because there's going to be so many variables that are not going to make everyone happy but if you if we agree on the guiding principles then ducks start falling and I do think we're there um in terms of because I mean we last year I presented a lot

191NEAS gave us a lot of feedback on the inequities with the equity audit gave us a lot of feedback um on was there just looking at um again our our student achievement data um looking at um our student access to different programs um different courses uh those were sort of those were like staring us in the face like we we those are there I think at this point it it becomes um if you ever want to watch the Bill Gates documentary they actually had him when he was in high school build his high school schedule because of how complicated um it was cuz he he talked about it that like it ends up like it's an infinite amount of variables because you're talking about 800 kids with 800 different schedules and different needs and and

192all of that. So, um I I love the puzzle of it, but I think you know the the the principles there. I think at this point it's it's looking at um what what we can actually do with those principles because if we want every kid to have access to the arts if we want our our our um students who have learning supports to access electives if we you know all of those pieces that we want that we have to figure out what works to build that. Yeah. There's definitely some barriers that need to be removed and that's still right. Absolutely. I guess the other thing I'd like to see so there's the there's the like this is our current schedule and this is where we're going. In the meantime, there's kids, we've got kids who

193are currently will be in like almost like a hybrid mode where they've been in, you know, they've had the block scheduling for however one, two, or three years and then they're going to switch to. So, what is the transition plan for some of those things where they had the, you know, they were trying to get to calculus and how they how did they get there now and now it's your last? So, we've been Yeah. So, we've been talking a lot about that. Um um that's not really the scheduling committee is focused on the structures like on the other side of it just to give you an idea of what that looks like is there's conversations with uh the math math department chair and I have had conversations about that you know if if you know

194what we have to have versions of math classes for a one-year stint um to make sure the kids get what they need in that time. um you know any schedule that we look at that um is not the block schedule plus that extra 15 minutes in the day really increases the amount of time on learning so allows us to access more within the time we have so we're looking at all of those pieces all the way through and I would say that in in 99% of cases it's a math question right versus the the other content areas great thank you all right um now you you're all Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your evenings. You too. You can stay if you want. No, only Barbara. All right. We'll uh get back to uh the

195policy and the second reading of Ike. Correct. Can Can we wave the actual reading? No, we have to read it a second time. I thought we could wave the second third. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. Come on. Uh, I'll just read it. It is short. Promotion and retention of students code IKED. The Holl School Committee is dedicated to the best total and continuous development of each student enrolled at Hollston public schools HPS. Professional staff is expected to place students at the grade level best suited to them academically, socially, and emotionally. In evaluating student achievement, each teacher will make use of all available information, including results of teacher generated tests and other measures of skill and content mastery. standardized test results and teacher observation of student performance. The principal will direct and aid teachers

196in their evaluations and review grade assignments in order to ensure uniformity of evaluation standards. Students will normally progress annually from grade to grade. Exceptions may be made when in the judgment of the professional staff such expectations are in the best educational interest. What such exceptions? Sorry, what did I say? Expectations. Sorry. Exceptions are in the best educational interest of the students involved. Exceptions will only be made after prior notification and explanation to each students parents guardians, but the final decision will rest with the building principal. May see anyone have any thoughts, comments, concerns, questions? Okay. I would we could recommend that we wave the third reading and adopt the policy as presented. I'll accept that motion. Second. Second. All those in favor? Okay. I in the motion moving on. All right. The uh central office

197update. Just a couple quick things. Um we did I mentioned earlier, but we did the two parent coffee hours, one on Monday and one tonight. And um I think Mondays was a little more um represented, but I also think it's worth continuing and we probably will offer another one the next time we were thinking of doing it by Zoom later in the day or night. So I think we can just try different ways but continue. I'm trying to reach out to parents as much as possible. And then um I did have my first I mentioned the Miller round table I think already yesterday. Um, but I just wanted to point out some of the things that the kids um I I think it's just a testament to the work that's being done that they talked

198about tonight. I asked the kids to talk about their hopes for the year. I will say two of them talked about a later start time. Um they hope that everyone's included looking for composting that everyone knows each other's names, making school lunch better, everyone understands other people's feelings. they'll work on their rise um cards and the the new playground like Placentina which I'm not sure but their playground looks pretty good too so I'm not really sure about that one and then they talked to me about what can they do to bring uh more equity inclusion in schools I mean this is stuff that they gave me I I asked questions but they were generating it and what that means and talking about how kids are sitting alone bring them into you know invite them to

199come and play with them and things like that um and I also just they talked about charity work and and high school students and middle school students which I'll go back to our middle school and high school teach our principles about having them come in and do some charity work with them at the most school as well. So I think it really is showing that the work that we've been doing around that culture and climate and that social emotional well-being is carrying over because I'm seeing the maturity in the kids and this is third graders too that just came over. It's a it was a large group. I posted a picture of that group and uh they all knew the what they wanted to focus on. So I just think that's really telling that the

200work is is moving the needle for social emotional learning and equity. That's all I have for today. Okay. Great. And then you need a vote from us to appoint you to the board of directors of the tech collaborative. Yes. Okay. Uh so I'll entertain a motion to appoint Dr. Kusco to the board of directors as representative from Hollist for the tech collaborative. Moved by Don. Second. All in favor and just note that Cynthia's uh absence or extension and then the accept quarterly update is in the folder. If you had any questions, you can reach out to me separately, but it's just um a quarterly update that the executive director produces for the board members and we're supposed to share at each of with each of you. We will accept the accept report. I'm very clever.

201Um all right. Uh Dr. Mard. Yes. I just wanted to share some wonderful news. There's a team from Hollist that's been accepted to the 2425 Dyslexia Institute and they're going to have professional development on enhancing their learning and action planning to support students diagnosed or at risk for dyslexia. And the staff that will be attending this is Jess Speedy, Jenny Man, Dr. Slaney, Lisa Robinson, Elsa O'Brien, and Nicole Marshant. So, congratulations to all and look forward to hearing their work. Um, I'll get out of the way first. Um, contained in your packets is the updated list of clubs. There were no changes at the high school level. Um, Miller uh had the fifth grade leadership that was added. These, the reason they were missed before is just the cycle for the posting. It wasn't on

202the cycle of the posting. So, and then um Chew at Rams, the Dungeon Dragons Club, and the uh student council. Okay. If I can get an affirmative vote on that list without reading every item. So, nothing got taken off from the high school. Nothing got taken off. Okay. And was there anything that that they tried to add because it's been run for a number of years that was denied? So the way the pilots work, they they're supposed to tell me last year if they're piloting something and then at the end of last year they're supposed to let me know if they were bringing it forward. Okay? So nothing was brought forward from the high school for the pilots. Okay? And this doesn't contain any casual clubs where five kids may get together, may include a

203teacher, but again, they haven't gone down the path of of trying to become an authorized club. So something that that you may know about or your children may participate in may not be on this list because it's not in school for the authorized club. Are you good? Yeah. Okay. So, I will entertain a motion to um accept the list of clubs that's presented in our packet and presented by Mr. Budet for the second. Okay. Do you want to wait for She's getting a book. Cynthia, do you want to vote on the list of clubs? Are you talking to me? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I did have a sideburn. GSA club is not GSA dream. They don't go by that. No, we don't. It's the gender and sexuality alliance. Yeah. We can you please make that amendment?

204I think um David Jordan had mentioned that it should just be to say GSA for that reason because it's changed at different times. Gender it's I think yeah I mean it's they don't they called it what he called it GSA um middle school it is but the middle school's got a GSA I think it's just as far as listening in the contract that's why the way I would recommend as a straight GSA. So for the high school right now says gay straight alliance GSA dream but it's called the gender and they were calling it the gay straight alliance and at the high school it's the gender and sexuality that that is that so that's um the high school the way I believe it's listed is like what needed to be updated was it was listed

205as gay straight alliance which is no longer current. Correct. Um middle school is listed as GSA. Okay. And I I would recommend listing both as GSA. Uh we can list we or we can list them both as the um Gender Sexuality Alliance. Um it should be whatever's in the contract. I'm just going to say it has to contract. Yeah, because they technically have to vote. No, I think it does. I think it should be with it. So let let's just vote. We we have a motion. We can amend the motion to basically approve this list um and just give you know the administration the um the ability to make sure that everything matches what's in the contract or matches what students are calling it. No, I I mean I think in this case we actually

206should be following the the contract and then we can make a change to the to the contract to the next. Okay. They can then call it sort of whatever they want, but the official sort of title is is what's in the contract. So if it just says GSA, but this one says GSA Dream, right? So we can we can So the amendment GSA would just be to call that GSA. Okay. All right. I don't need to have a big B in my bonnet about it, but I do. No, no, no. It's fine. Just to be accurate, that's all. All right. So, do we have a second to amend that? Second by all in favor of the amended motion. All right, that passes. Sounds nothing. Okay. Thank you. Um I'd just like to add that I'm

207I'm really excited about the ramp roof. Um having lived under that roof for over a decade. Um I am very excited uh by it. I don't get to experience that. Uh, but I'll have to make those walkthroughs uh through that. Um, Karen's been great. Uh, Sean Kee, who is our maintenance person, has been uh instrumental in kind of like helping with some of the photos that we we've needed uh there. And so, um, I know the staff at Rams are going to be uh very excited uh to to address this well overdue um need. um you know the playgrounds as far as working with the towns the town uh and uh Robert Walker with uh DPW as far as making sure the BMS are in there and kind of wrapping up what's needed from the

208playgrounds or making uh where we're where we need to be. Um Wall seems to here at the high school seems to be holding up well. Um, uh, Miller, uh, the, uh, the trees warden had come out and trimmed the trees along the side of, uh, by the basketball goals, uh, so that, you know, our small uh, critters couldn't crawl up the tree, use the branches to get on the roof and make their way to the courtyard and lose their way in the courtyard and find a way back. Um, so that's been addressed and then we'll finish kind of addressing kind of some of the cleanup that needs to be done in the the Miller courtyard. Uh, specifically we have some just kind of like um updates to some of our alarm panels uh that we're

209in the in the process of um more on that, but that's just kind of uh something that we're working on as well. um as well as uh similar to what had been done at the at the middle school is kind of moving our uh heating system as far as temperature system uh to the computers that we have there to be able to kind of track that u more remotely. Um and then uh the auction uh the auctioneer came out um this week has taken uh photos of all of our surplus items. Um we've moved those items and made space for them. uh and that so that process should be starting here soon. Um and we'll learn more on that. Um and then I had well I think that's uh let's see yeah that's what I've

210got. Thank you. Okay. I look forward to the auction quote coming in to to fund the whole year of uh of the schools. It's going to be like $200 and we're going to spend the other cash close to free cash. All right. Well, I'll put it in a note to Travis to tell him it's ours. Um, all right. Um, thank you guys. Um, moving on. So, we're we are creating a a stipen in position for the fifth grade uh variety show, right? And I don't usually bring you um stipens to vote on this early in the year. This one falls off schedule because what's supposed to happen is clubs start in October as a pilot and then the the contract language that we had um memorialized was also that by March then that the principles

211would have to let me know if they're going to move it forward and then I would bring it to the school committee. They would vote on it and then I meet with the union to get negotiate the factors. So because this one was recommended for pilot last year, but the pilot couldn't start till May because the stip the activity doesn't begin until May. There was no way to fall in that timeline. So that's why I'm bringing you to vote on now as far as if you agree to approve this as a stipen and then I meet with the union. U this one's going to be pretty easy and I we could probably do it electronically to come up with the factors on it. So, we're just basically approving the position and then they'll be negotiating

212and then we'll have to approve that after you come to an agreement, right? Don't No, because the fact is once we I don't think you have had to vote on the actual factors. You're supposed to just vote on fact we we voted on the numbers before. I know. I think it's because we were doing it a little off before, but I'll double check. We'll look at the language again. I I'm not sure. Okay, we'll figure it out. But for right now, um does anyone any questions? Yeah, I do. Um, so I was under the impression that we already had this position. So they've been doing it. Again, it's sort of like what what Don was saying. There there are clubs and activities that people do, but until they want to move it forward as a

213type of activity, then it has to go to the My daughter was doing this the variety show like way back when. So many many years ago, people were doing it, but nobody ever asked to formalize it. So that's, you know, we go from Mr. Time. All right. I just assume that it was just part of it. Okay. My bad then, I guess. Any other questions? Second time today. All right. With that, I'll entertain a motion to uh approve the creation of the grade five variety show stipen. Moved by John, seconded by Cynthia. All in favor. I thank you. That carries unanimously. Um moving on to reports from the subcommittee communications. Um, so I did um put together a quick um newsletter for October. Yeah, I emailed it to all of you just Y. Okay. Um,

214so just added some stuff. You see what I was I saw that those I don't know if that's necessary, but I just The only thing is we don't we were told that, you know, a significant majority, but we don't have any any details numbers. That's what we were told. So I just figured include it a reported sure just a significant majority significant I just get based on some of the feedback that we were receiving in that group I felt like it was important for us to reiterate not only the mission the assignment that they've been given but also that this was ratified by a significant majority of I don't want to disagree I I'm just saying it again. I know you're not disagreeing with me cuz then that would be a third thing and I

215don't can't have that. Okay. So, so rabbi by both a reported significant majority. Yes. Sure. I mean reporting at that. No. No. Okay. Fine. Fine. It's terrible. Alleged. All right. Alleged. [Music] Oh, it's almost dead. Okay. I mean that's what we were told or having a majority you know [Music] um and then unanimously by the by the school that is absolutely true. Let's just say a majority then we'll take my significant out. Thank you. Let's next the October 24th is our next meeting at at the bottom. Oh because we're here. Yeah. Sorry. It's um the 14th. Oh yeah. Do we want to do an office hour there? No, she she has a section. We will be holding office hours via Zoom on Thursday, November 7th. That literally just So there's always Halloween. We should probably

216the start times. Well, I guess November I think I think May maybe after the meeting on the 14th because hopefully we'll have some I mean I can hold off on that and we can broadcast that, right? But we're we're planning to hold an office hours to you know, I'll just something in the near future. I don't know that we're going to be ready to do that this fall. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we Okay. We will be scheduling office hours in November and we'll update or just take it out. Just Yeah. I'll just take it out. Okay. Office hours at 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Halloween. Bring the candy. Okay. Um, any other um, thank you for for putting this together, Sarah? Um, thank you, Sarah. This is good. Yeah. Something else? No, no. I just

217was checking our our dates because originally there was like it said we were we had a meeting on December 20th, whatever it was. It was like on Christmas day or something like that. It's not. I took this from the um Yeah. No, no, it's they she fixed it. The master list that has the presentations list itself. As long as that's updated, then just there's a add timestamp for YouTube. So, just don't forget to add the time stamp for the YouTube and link to the YouTube video for tonight's meeting for for Mr. Liss's uh update on the Sure. Yep. Yeah. So, uh with that, I'll entertain a motion to approve the uh newsletter and we can get that out tomorrow. Moved by Don. Accept my as as amended. Just accepted them. So, now they're in there.

218So, moved by Don, second, seconded by Cynthia. All those in favor unanimously. Thank you very much, sir. Send that to Dan. Yeah. Okay. And I'll just So I just need to add the YouTube. Yes. Great. All right. Policy. Um our next meeting is November Wednesday, November 20th at 4:15 central office. Okay. Budget. We have not had a meeting um since our last school committee meeting, but we will have a meeting before the November 14th um next school meeting. I'll talk to you about available. Great. And emergency bell. Um I am trying to Susan and I have been really trying to figure out a date. I did just send you back an email Susan um for us to have our preliminary discussion about this is a formative year. Last year was our summitive year. Um and

219to review over last year's evaluation as part of that. and then we'll forward we'll get a meeting to discuss the overall goals and then bring them to the school committee. Okay. So, I don't have a date certainly yet after that. Okay. But I put them up. I threw them out there. They're in the universe. In the universe. Mhm. All right. Uh so, we've done the high school pieces. Um and we we don't need a I don't think we need anything on the October town meeting. Um I that just in case something had come up but we we do uh have on here an update from the bus start times advisory committee. We have talked about it a decent amount but uh is there any more any other update any more of an update? I I

220think that you know again we have meetings scheduled for next week for next Tuesday. And we're hoping with optimistly hoping that we'll be able to either come to bring this to some sort of conclusion with regards to a recommendation of which schools together and which go first and which go second or if we can't come to that what the what the criteria is um or the or the constraints is probably better word constraints are that we would say that you know in in a decision-m process like nothing before 7:30 or nothing after 4 things like just on the things we could agree on. Yeah, I kind of for example like Ben Sparrow was there as well and and Cynthia and Frank and what was a kind of agreed or there's come understand like we can't

221reach like a a firm conclusion at least a list of what like we agrees are very important considerations for the school committee to make. Uh and a lot of those considerations may not be possible. Uh but at least they it captures for like the public and for the various committees that might be able to make decisions that a firm understanding of what are like what are the important things. Okay. And did you hear Ben agree to give our buses uh clickers to get through the lights? Yes. So and and you you agreed to that. So it's contract like he was talking about like some infrastructure changes. So that's what I heard. I mentioned this to the lieutenant today in a meeting as well. Rotary raised raised raised bus, you know, ramps basically just but I

222will say that um some of his contributions was to say that he absolutely wants us to move forward with bringing something to the select board to talk about how we can make some of these pieces work. Um Mr. Gudet was mentioning things like, you know, is there a road that we could open up? Is there like a, you know, something we could make into a oneway? is there like what can they do to help support that sidewalk. So like I know that they have a sidewalk plan but maybe there's some things that we can do to kind of shift that because we if we can allow more kids to walk have safe places to safe routes to school then you know that can kind of offload some of our burden with the buses. I I

223would like to see some information and data on on different potential sidewalk routes and how how utilized they might be from from parents. Yeah. Well, I think not ever not all roads have to lead to the rail. As much as I love the rail trail. I mean, not all roads have to lead to to it. So, you don't really love the rail? Well, you know, I wanted a commuter rail. So, we're not walking up the wrong tree over here. Like, I was like mad moving into town saying, "Oh, we voted down a commuter rail." Right. Great. But anyway, so but now it's lovely. So I'd say if conversation were to you here with the school committee around like different policy changes or things that might need to consider as far as parameters around like who

224gets picked up and what have you. you know, sidewalks will aid in like the walking to school that might be needed because we are going to have to discuss from a policy perspective, you know, who we're allowing to bus because right now and I think right I think there's going to be a lot of discussion around that and then so we'll end up starting off with with two start times that are some distance apart and then hopefully we'll be able to walk them closer and it may take you know a couple years to to do that but minor not you know we're not looking at huge I but 5 minutes here and 10 minutes it can be significant but also if you're like picking up a student that literally is you know right right so

225there's some things we can do immediately and then some things that might um yeah so it's a huge district these are all the challenges that we faced when we were coming up with this plan and that's why we ended up going with that flipped model because it it is well and this is why I think that this committee has been good because just listening to it you you hear all of the the different um issues that this is not just a very easy sort of like let's just pick some It's been very effective for folks to see how it's all made and and and I do hope that people listen to those meetings. Um you do have to toggle up and down the volume as Keith talks and as other people talk, but uh but

226you can't you you can hear you can hear everything if you if you if you do that. There's I think 99.5% I'd say because it's off of Keith's computer. So when he speaks it's um and and it's just it's logistically it's it's it's too difficult to to get uh everybody on the on the picture. But one thing I did want to throw out there and this is going to be unpopular. Um but since we're on the topic of unpopular and might as well go for it. So we have November 14th as a meeting and then we don't meet again until December. Mhm. We have a lot of work to be done and a lot of deadlines and stuff to be made. So assuming that this committee can come to a decision next week or or

227the I know you sort of set yourself a next week uh deadline, but let's leave yourself a little grace. You can't meet you can't meet on the 5th because of uh because that's the election and the polls are open. So sixth and seventh, but you could meet on the sixth and the seventh, but I also don't know if we want to do all of this work during a regular meeting with everything else that we have to do. So, so my unpopular So, my unpopular idea is do we want to look at potentially scheduling another meeting to just talk about the turkey? Yeah. No, Turkey. Agree with that. Wanted to keep us focused on that and yes, I think it's important enough and I honestly [Music] are we looking at Well, I I will send out

228a group of dates and we'll see. I mean this will be mainly obviously a school committee working group but we'll need you know some some administrator guide. I think your challenge may be though with regards to the amount of input members of whether it be the the public public or the teaching public that are going to want to have a contribution to this. So to push it much further out I don't think you've got a ton of time. No no I don't want to push I want to do this before the 14th. I I don't No, it's not. No, no, no, no. We're not not to make a decision. Okay. But to start to start having a conversation. You mean 14th? Between the 14th and the 12th. That's Halloween or the Okay. You want to

229do it that way? No. Like the 21st. What about the 21st? My my thing is we might need to do some sort of survey of the community based upon what it depends on what we get. But but I want to be thoughtful like I don't want to throw a survey out there. So, we need to be thoughtful of what we're putting in that survey. Otherwise, it's maybe that we need two meetings and to be really unpopular. I I think it just depends on whether we're going to actually have something to present. So, first we have to kind of as Keith had already instructed that we need to figure out which schools and which ones go first and which ones go second. Then after we do that, that's when you can do things like modeling, but

230that might take some time to do. But Cynthia, I don't think we're going to get there next week. Every time we try to get there, we're going to get there. That's it. Well, we're going to have parameters. Well, I think I think what's going to happen at Tuesday's meeting is a bunch of recommendations of what we need to go do next as a school committee. Like, they're not going to decide on groupings and and times because there's so many factors that are going to come up in like yes, we agree on something. It's like, oh, did you think about this? Well, now that needs to change. I think the the challenge which is also the challenge in the high school scheduling committee that isn't as like um public is like a lot of time has

231to be explain explain spent explaining complexities of like a schedule um in order to even open the the minds to considering um a change and that's that's a hard that's a hard process to do in in that and so I I'm in agreement with Frank on that. So, I I just there's just a lot of decisions we're going to need to make if we're going to make changes to who we're going to offer blessing to and and those decisions then feed into what the times that we're going to be looking at and deciding are. Right. [Music] As I say constantly during that meeting, it's about structure. Mhm. You you you have to have your structure in place. the times are going to feed themselves more or less. You're going to have a start time, you're

232going to have a run time, you're going to have an end time. They're going to feed themselves. So, you know, with regards to that, the structure is going to be the most important thing. Which schools together and which schools first and which schools second. We have three weeks before our November 14th meeting. Is there any reason why, and I know the committee is scheduled to meet again on October 29th, right? 29th. the 29th. Is there any reason? And and to Dan's point, no, you can't meet on election day, November 5th, but is there any reason? And and I think we even saw this in negotiations. We thought we needed X number of meetings and then we needed more. We to sometimes when you start this project, it it takes a little longer than you think

233it will. Is there any reason why the committee, the subcommittee wouldn't be open to having one or two additional meetings before we get back to the 14th? I I'm sure they would. They they as if those who've listened to the um recordings they do like to talk and and I mean because they no but I'm saying that issues it hasn't been a silent group. No I mean it's we end meetings because it's time to end it not because we've exhausted you know discussion right so from that um you know if we say there's going to be two more meetings people will come and people will talk. I I don't know how much further we're going to be able to kind of move down that path. I don't know how many things are going to change

234at this point. I think we need to see progress next week. And if we get to a point like in negotiations where we're getting close, we say, "Let's schedule another one." If we say we're going to schedule two more, we're going to regress in my opinion in some ways. We need to keep moving it forward. And if we at the end of next Tuesday's meeting, we feel like, okay, we're closer, but we're not done yet. Let's schedule another meeting. I mean it it'll come down to that you know whether or not we think there is a recommendation coming as opposed to you know challenges you know desires etc etc the strategy though has been we've talked every single scenario like I was hoping one would be like aha that's it I think we've talked about

235every scenario twice at least and there's always something we need to see what you what you guys come up with but then I mean I'm just saying if we if we do decide we want survey the community on something if we want to have a forum or some sort of public hearing if you will about this. I'm just it we're you know we the 14th then Thanksgiving then then you know I still think whatever we land on there needs to be what are the guiding principles why are we doing it the way this is just because there there's so many scenarios like we're saying not to four o'clock well if we do three bus runs we're going to four o'clock some school is that's just the nature we're not going to four o'clock I know

236we're not but but I see the I think the as as a school committ you're going to have to accept the fact that there's going to be a angered constituency, whichever one it was. You had one that potentially doesn't want their their times to change from first thing in the morning that showed up tonight. There's going to be people who are going to be dissatisfied with whatever the solution is. So, you kind of have to figure out what But I want to hear the input before the decision. No, I understand that. No, no, I understand. I'm not saying to hear it. I'm just saying you're hearing the input's not going to give you the perfect answer because there's no perfect answer in this. No, there's no perfect answer. But that but again I don't also

237don't want to be voting on this on December 31st. Understood. I'm not going to be here on December 31st. Well then you'll none of us are going to be as far as I know. Right. We're just worried about the time period. Um I get it. I I cannot just given by the discussion I cannot guarantee that this that subcommittee is going to want to recommend. I mean at this juncture I will we get there maybe. But I don't know. there's a lot of chatter that they don't want to recommend uh anything. They'll just give us the parameters the way Mr. Dr. Jordan was saying. So, what we'll do, I'll I'll wait until after your next meeting, see what happens, and then I can throw out an email. We can we can schedule via email that

238is allowed mail. So, um we will not that the 29th is arbitrary, but I do if we're making progress next week and I know 6:00 we do have the coalition against hate and bias at 6. Unfortunately, not unfortunately for me, but the timing like we have to close. We consider potentially adding another meeting. But if it I mean I'd be okay with if if the other I was going if the other meeting is getting us to a resolution. Sure. If the other meeting just more discussion agree it's not worth it. That's what I'm saying. But if we leave and say, "Hey, Keith and and Dr. Jordan, we need to look at these things and then we we feel like we can come to a decision." I'd say it's definitely warranted a subsequent meeting if we

239keep doing what we're doing. Totally agree. We're going to be in the same spot. If the energy is good and we're moving in a positive direction, I don't I don't think it's its us to have another need to keep that energy to go because if we can reach Y a good place with this group. Yep. You know, I think that that that benefits you all in kind of how how it would be ideal to have a recommendation or at least two options or some some something to sort of at least get us started even though we can go another direction. Even if we can't give a firm recommendation, right, the options are going to be ultimately this is why we get paid the big bucks. Yeah. Right. I got 100% raised last year. I don't

240know about you guys. Um All right. Anything else on this? All right. Uh, so that does bring us to the end of our uh of our meeting. We don't journ. Sorry. Did I Did you have something else? Our next meeting, our next scheduled meeting is November 14th. Stay tuned to see that quick because that's my anniversary. Just so you know. Okay. All right. Um, and um, I know you don't care. So, uh, now I want a motion to adjurnn. Cynthia really wants to make that motion. I did. So, I'll second it. All right. All those in favor we stand a journ. Thank you very much.