001how do you know how to all right hello hollison welcome to the uh February 8th 2024 uh meeting the H of school committee uh we will call the meeting to order at 710 apologies uh for for being it tad late um and uh to start the meeting I will accept a motion to accept the consent agenda move by John I requ I require a second second second Sarah all in favor right okay the record that carries 5 to zero um we will now move right along to a uh report from our student reps so for some sports updates the girls indoor track were the tvl at large Champions and the tvl overall Champions um and then yes very congratulations to them and then boys indoor track um Place third in TBL uh gymnastics were also
002the tvl Champs and Holliston Medway swim and dive are the second in their tvl and then the student directed 1X um occurred over the weekend and they were very entertaining um so with the start of the new semester we always have an open house where parents can come and meet their as kids new teachers um so the second semester open house is this coming Thursday and that's going to be helped run by the Juniors who are currently in um NHS um with clubs Science Olympiad was invited to the Harvard undergraduate Invitational Science Olympiad and they had two top 20 placements which is really exciting and then academ Academic Decathlon had 25 top five placements in their most recent competition and then the senior class Gala is March 23rd um at Hopkinson Country Club and all
003proceeds go to support the class of 2024's postgrad Celebration okay uh School committe [Music] comments Sarah I just wanted to give a shout out to sixth grade um they did a they had presentations and fundraising ideas they had all the sixth grade kids come up with fundraising ideas and I made a good contest so we got to judge presentations and don't know if they the the winner yet but they had some really cute great fundraising ideas and they are raising money they've read um a long L to water was the the novel that the sixth grade has read and um they are raising money for an organization I believe that's called water for S so um there was it was great the kids did a really good job so thank you to miss clipton Miss
004Bick and Mrs ditto I think all organized that and it was was very [Music] good um I just have one thing I um after after our presentation from Parks and wre regarding the flag property last meeting I met with um Mark Frank and Shannon Cornwell to just kind of discuss their proposal and their ideas around that space um that is under the care and custody of the school committee and we just talked about how we want to continue this conversation about how we can best use that space for the benefit of the ram students and the Greater Community um reflecting you know all the work that the students have put in in terms of their recommendations of what what they would like to speak for their space as a you know an outdoor space an
005outdoor learning space as well um so I'm hoping to you know catch up and meet with them more as we move forward and want to move forward and I know that that presentation looked like a finished product to my kind of undrained ey but it by no means is um is what they assured me and um because I expressed some concerns about some of the things that I think that we could see more than others um and it also is part of a larger plan that they're discussing around other field space and other um proposals for the town for example tennis courts more Tennis Courts at Goodwill that would allow for our teams to be able to have you know to host for like the first time ever which would be awesome so um anyway
006the hope is that we would continue this conversation in the hopes of having a capital request for town meeting to go for architectural plans things like that and then at that point we'd be able to have you know something to choose from about you know that which the community can weigh in on as well so did you have something to yeah can I just I think I brought it up when they because I didn't know they would coming with the presentation either but yeah the concern that I brought to them when we met last spring and the feedback I gave was wanting to make sure that during the day and I told the students this too this would be a school space set off from the public and then after always becomes a community I
007I do still worry that well we want to have Aesthetics but safety is a concern and not blocking off it at all also makes me right like I talked about how I really felt that we needed to have a fence along Lynden street because that's a you know that's a that's going to become a corridor so we need to have you know so there's more conversation needs to happen but I think we're all moving in the same direction with our Community Partners and I think that that's the direction that we need to go in at this point um and that's the hope and obviously I'll be bringing back updates as we continue to discuss it so with David Jordan and everybody else so so who the idea at Goodwill Park of expanding the tennis courts
008are they expanding them into the existing basketball cour I don't I'm I'm guessing yes but I didn't get into the that part that piece of it but it was more of a broader discussion around how they see that space being becoming a space that we can use and then you know the reason why the basketball courts that they were looking at but again everything nothing is set in stone we're all still talking about what the needs are but also respecting all the work that's gone in from the admin team to the students who also had a lot of input into what they're looking to see in that space so anyway hopefully to move that forward because it's been a long time I mean I think the kids that actually did their projects were last year's
009graduating class is that right David Jordan yeah yeah Jonah Feldman's class yes yes it Jonah was one of the people that presented yes yeah that's what I remember yes okay so I'm you know so it's way overdue is what I would say so anyway that's my long and short um just very briefly I attended a masc seminar um I wasn't able to ATT turn do the live one but we the recordings become available to us um and it was on proposition 2 and a half overrides and Sarah is that you did as well um so the Massachusetts school committee Association put this on and they had advertised it as more and more districts are finding themselves in very tight budget Seasons this year so they did a special presentation on um prop two and a
010half overrides uh successes failures uh next steps all of that information was very informative um in addition I had reached out and spoken with um Tracy novic uh about coming in and potentially doing an masc presentation for us on school finance and Chapter 70 you know distribution formulas all that so be in touch about potential days it's amazing the problems the budgets have when you have 3 to 4% inflation in a two and a half World um two things don't don't J uh I don't have any individual comment at this time um so now we have an opportunity for the public to uh address us and I realize that you were all here for other reasons but if you'd like an extra opportunity uh you know to to prolong the meeting um so seeing seeing
011none uh we will move on to our presentations and uh the first one will be the midyear goals that that is the principles right y mid year goals update from Central admin and principles bu you m here thank you down were you coming over next to me oh but you could though Keith camera still reaches right there yes we M let me just get it up on the screen suan yes can you ping me good evening everyone hello long time now to see yeah and then what you 12 hours exactly yeah [Music] almost so you bring me I can't do it while I'm I do it after I do the [Music] presentation I don't think I [Music] am okay all right so let me just tell you a little bit about what we put together
012today you'll see a very much the same ver and as we presented in the fall with our four archers archers for the district and then and um four arches for each of the buildings so we took the same format but we put the midyear updates in the slides differently we also um if you look at the first slide for the district and then there's the first slide for Miller and each school we Linked In the document that you should have in your folders as well but those documents have the actual um work that they've done in each column so you have the them more detail in there so we'll walk you through that and I think it might be best if I can go through the four slides for the goals for the district level
013and then have questions after that section and then maybe for each administrator as they go through their four is slides right does that work okay however you like to do it okay all right so you always have our links to the Mission Vision and our Global I mean our objectives and core values so this is the link that I mentioned if you want to pull up the detail in the presentation but you should have that separately so at the district Level under arch1 communication practices these are some of the things that we've accomplished already this year or increased our capacity with we have really ramped up using dible star and our ready data to make sure we're um communicating in families you'll see the principls talk specifically about how they've done that at each building
014level but as a district we've really been trying to communicate out how the assessment data is helping to move and plan initiatives into year one two and [Music] three the tech department has taken the program of studies and moved in we had a lot of external sites and the problem with those external sites is when you went to those they weren't translatable so we've really made a concertive effort the last couple of years to move everything over that was external and thank you to the tech department for all the work on that so this was a huge migration to the website and hopefully that means now every language will be able to translate very easily through final site Health office has also done their own communication platform to try to expand work you know that
015social emotional wellbeing as well as physical wellness is so important so they've really done an expansion on communication through the website as well the staff portal was also external if I'm not mistaken Dean when um up until recently so we've taken the staff portal as well and moved that into our our final site website and now the staff can go in and get every PD agenda so if they have to renew their license you have to show what PD you've taken over the years so they can pull up all the old agendas for the last couple years it's just a nice place to access everything because we all are supposed to be keeping our logs related to lure but it's a lot easier if you forget to be able to go in there as well
016power school all of our families have now access pre- 12 to um student Platforms in power school and then also the new special programs I know Jess can speak to that further if you have questions for her but it's been an a lot of work to get all of that transferred over from IEPs but also the ell students the biggest part I think for us is having that not only the accessibility but to be able to Doc you sign in the program it was a huge undertaking to try to get people to sign off on IEPs and get communication and this helps us immensely with that so moving forward it's really going to be more efficient the next area we've talked about a lot and Joan's not here tonight unfortunately she's sick but I know
017we're going to be doing a curriculum update later um probably at next meeting or the one after but we took all of the stage one documents are all on the website and we continue to add to those and then when we get into the stage two some of them are already done some of them are going into stage three as they update those that will not be on the website it's just the stage one that you'll see for parents but the staff will have access to all of it then I earlier in the fall there was a digital safety presentation created and then inperson sessions were offered on all buildings this again is our our technology department doing an immense effort to try to get all of this information up to staff we see so
018much with cyber security threats we continue to try to be um proactive in those [Music] areas social emotional well-being I walked you through I think it was the end of last year the website and all the changes that Jerelle and others have put on our safe and supportive schools and you'll see some of those links will take you to other parts of the website as well we have you linked up in multiple places we're continuing with Metro West survey so this year at the middle school and the high school um and then in the spring we'll take that information and get a report out to you I'm sure um Jarelle will be communicating a lot of that work and what our next steps are ruler has been launched K to8 and again if you have
019specific questions we have talked a little bit about ruler before but if you had specific questions it's been a lot of work with all the building so far and the implementation I think staff are excited about it and I know that J could go into more in-depth information about that process as well but I I do think in general the staff are pretty excited about moving in that direction so PD is happening at all of those levels we've talked a number of times and communicated out to families and staff about the Sandy Hook Anonymous Reporting System we've already had some um reportings that allow us to investigate whether it's on the weekend after hours um we actually had something this weekend came out and it actually went to Mr list and it was something that
020should have gone to the police it turned out not to be a a serious threat but the process for it was still tweaking that process so that the right people get that communication but we've never had a system like this implemented before so just have another system that's available 24 hours with someone answering a phone call or an email in an emergency and be able to send them off to the right place and determine whether it's an immediate threat that needs to be investigated or if it's something that the counselors or the principal could deal with in the morning and they they'll get that out to us so it's the kids have been very responsive to it I feel like the Middle School level and the high school level when I've talked to them just
021like that there's one more place to put information if you want to be anonymous in reporting things data dashboard we talked about this during the rankings discussion how one of the things that we're lacking is to have a data dashboard because when I showed you those slides that we we put together with Dan myself U Jody Renee and and Joanie it took us a ton of times we just don't have a system that can really synthesize that and put it together in a meaningful manner so while we got it for you to be able to get those reports done in real time and get information out to people and then use that to make our intervention and progress monitoring would be much more helpful so we've already looked at I think now our fourth third
022or fourth program so we're getting close to choosing a data dashboard for next year money is always an issue so we're trying to find Grant funds to do so so I'm hopeful if you stay tuned we'll have updates on a program that we're going to be able to bring in with Grant funds because I think that's really a way that we can take all the things that we're trying to accomplish and assess them in real time and move the district forward care Solace um you again you see that in all of our Communications our council is send out you'll see it in our our s a email that care Solace program I get monthly updates from them as well about all of the calls that they get again real time people looking at these things
023and getting it to the right person and making sure that while it's still hard to get mental health care they are much more streamlined than we are able to do on our own so this is this program has been very successful for us and I'd say much more successful than the one that we had prior to this as well Leslie University again this is I have to give kudos to jerielle again he's brought in these um trauma courses through Leslie University I mean the cost is amazing we're able to provide this for our district and have 25% of our educators are signing up for these courses and again this is something darl can tell you the exact courses if you have specific questions about but the fact that 68 staff members have gone through these
024trauma trainings and can bring this into their classroom it's not on top of what they're doing they're embedding it into the work that they're already doing in class but just to have these other tools and skills for our general Educators and our support staff [Music] amazing we're working with students again this is from the work that Jerel and specifically has been doing with some of the the staff at the count the counseling staff trying to find as many peer leadership opportunities throughout the district and I think David can talk about some of that at the high school as well when he talks through his slides and as you know um we recently gave an update on the equity steering committee and that work is ongoing Jerel had a very successful meeting actually had the second
025meeting just recently so you can probably give us a a little a little hint about that but the group that he's put together is amazing and I'm excited to get some recommendations from that group that we could move forward with as always I'm going very fast so please slow me down if you have something but if we can do the questions after Arch FL that'd be great so I know we've updated this um in conversation the past meetings as well we've done the prek to2 math and secondary Ela curriculum reviews are ongoing this year year two for Math and year one for ELA at secondary we're also doing the Science World Language and primary Ela Crick moves just beginning um it's a lot of work and we've talked about this before we're trying to play
026catchup since we haven't done a lot of this work since 20112 um so we are behind so the fact that we've been able to do this much in the in the short amount of time of the last year or two is amazing but sometimes we say you have to go slow to go far and I don't want us to be going too fast that we can't keep up the volume as well so we keep tweaking and thinking about is this something we can slow down a little bit so that we don't push too far and then lose the progress that we're trying to establish the curriculum reviews every time they meet are talking about vertical and state alignment and they're also trying to bring in bias Equity inclusive inclusivity and diversity you heard the presentations
027on the equity audit in October I still think we need to have some more conversations I know that the steering commit is going to be giving us recommendations about what they are going to suggest to us to focus on but I think there's going to be some other areas that we've already talked about that also connect with the nas report that we'll be looking into as well course offerings this is something that we've talked about leveling and and different courses that we should be having and my recommendation at I think two meetings ago was that I really think if we want to do this well we really need to get that data dashboard in place and be looking at the long-term data because what we don't have is a way of looking back and forward
028and trying to progress from where we are um I know that one of the things that the equity report had suggested was that we actually Del at the middle school and I don't think we should make any changes right now I think we really should stick with what we have and use next year to kind of kick off from where the equity audit gets us and the recommendations there and then determine if we're going to either add or take away levels next year would be a perfect time to try to ease into that and make sure the staff have the training to adjust one way or the together where else am I okay course offerings quick review um Miller is using the landmark model and I'm going to let Mr K speak to that a
029little bit when you get to that slide would you like to I'll let Jess talk to it because she's been working with a special ed staff I just didn't know if you already had another I didn't want to bring it up again if you already have another slide on it no and then whon Gillingham um that was in our priority needs discussion Jess has done a great job and Kelly Camp before her we've got so many staff trained on ort Gillingham and continuing to get that up to grade eight that's where I think we're putting our um our most emphasis but when we've had some turnover making sure that as new staff come in we continue to bring in Orton Gilling here for those new staff as well so that all students have access to
030that multisensory reading approach Mr McLoud has been working with the AI steering committee and I know he's doing a quick update tonight on the progress that they've made I think the the problem with the work that they're doing they're very excited and want to push forward with all this these initiatives and it's great but again we have to be mindful of what we can take on right now so he's going to give you some things in meaningful meaningful chunks that we probably can take on either this year or going into next year but his enthusiasm was very we talk about it he's very enthusiastic with the team but look at all the other things we're doing too so we really have to take these in in bits and pieces however the things that AI can
031do for us if we can focus on on the positive versus the you know the negative and make sure we're implementing things with Fidelity and training people about how they should be using them and then not be using them I think it's worth getting ahead of it than staying behind the curve on AI and then vision of a graduate we've been working on that for a few years but we've struggled to get that as a prek to2 mindset last year we did do some training um and it had the high school administration go out to the other buildings but I think we need to sort of embrace that and embed it in the work that we're already doing and it's not an add-on but the high school is not where a vision of a graduate
032starts it starts in preschool all the way up and making sure that kids understand that and teachers understand that as well as important and I mentioned already the dashboards in the previous [Music] slide where are we with our talent and resources we do have a lot of um absences either during just normal school days with illnesses but PD days as well um um you know it's something I want to work on and try to make sure that we're if we have PD and staff aren't able to make it that we're trying to record things and put it on the website and share it out and also when new staff come in if it's a training we've done in the past to have it available for them is very important it's when can they watch it
033you know unfortunately right now they'd have to watch it on their own time we just don't have enough time built in as we're doing new PD but things that we're doing well we want to continue to share out with staff the building liais on J be's been meeting regularly with the building liaison that we implemented this end of the summer going into the fall when we kept seeing our par professional struggles of hiring the number of par professionals we needed it's not the be all and end all but it definitely has served a useful purpose so that when new people are coming in they have a person to go to and we continue to grow their capacity at each building so that they also then reach out to off in just Bey if they have
034questions and then they can steer the team so at least is another presence in the building if the principles are unavailable or the assistant principal to have someone that's a peer is is I think a really helpful um partial solution to that [Music] problem Capital updates um we work very closely with the Town Administrator as you know and our budget sub to work on getting our Capital updates coordinated through the Town Administrator um we're probably getting close to the time when we want to invite him to one of our budget sub meetings to talk about that further um as you know we'll be moving forward um at the next meeting with hopefully budget um recommendation I'd like some more input before we do that because I think there's just a lot going on right now
035we did talk about priority needs that are both capital and um Regular budgetary needs that I really would like your support or guidance as to which ones you'd like us to try to move forward with because we know that we did have some challenges financially at the Town level this year going at fy2 we are voting tonight on the msba SOI application or at least I think we will be voting I've shared the language for you you and then I would be sending that over to a vote for the select board as well and getting the application updated with any one of the things that we sent to msba in this past round was the facilities report that was done um through James ke at the town so they had that as part of our
036application process but it wasn't uploaded into the system so anything that wasn't already uploaded will be uploaded as part of this process and if there's anything else we can think of to add to the application we certainly will but I think we had a very strong application last go round and unfortunately it just wasn't our time financially with the competing towns that put in for um SOI applications under teaching and learning the curriculum team has really done a nice job doing um I think they're doing them bonly newsletters going out because what we were finding is at the district level um the central office team does our um quarterly newsletters we're doing them by season and then we were sending so much out again we're trying to communicate so much and and they look lovely
037but then I worry about people's capacity to take it all in so now we're trying to do uh some smaller bits along the way cuz on top of what I'm sending out and what the curriculum coordinators and and Joanie manard are sending out principal are sending out daily if not um weekly if not daily Communications so there's a lot going on and if there's more efficiencies we can develop with communication um I think for me it's about trying to maybe put headers on different sections and then people might select the parts that they can take in and if it doesn't interest they'll ignore that but there's a lot happening um on a regular basis and it's hard to keep up with the the news coming up ready work um both Jarel and I have been
038attending as a team the racial Equity diversity and inclusion work through Mass superintendence it's been a really useful group that we've been attending I'm trying to think we did a a full day in the fall Jerel help me with that and then we're doing um five monthly meetings with them we're meeting with there are seven or eight eight districts and it's our we jael's role is director ofal in equity but many districts have Dei directors so the superintendents and their team are coming together because what we hear more and more and what's so important is that one person can't own the diversity and Equity work that we're doing in the communities that we are working in so sometimes it's the superintendent voice that needs to be the loudest voice and making sure that I'm getting
039enough information from Jerel and can help support him in that work cuz he can certainly not do this alone and we all own that responsibility and that's the message that we keep getting when we attend these um state level meetings so I did that in about 10 minutes something like that no a little more um so I'm going to pause there before we go on to the high school and feel free to ask questions since I've ran through that at who's the um Sam or who's the one that road runner like the Road Runner any [Music] questions let's move on so if you talk fast they don't have questions that's the lesson okay holding holding holding fire no it makes sense CU they're going to hit the same topics as we go through as well
040all right I'm going to move on to the high school and their document is also linked up with more details uh so um as I said when I started seven months ago the think second har was communication from the high school and an understanding of what's Happening um how things are happening what's going on with the students and so we've really worked hard to um make sure that we're communicating thoroughly about everything that's happening through School counseling um and just just the events that are happening at the high school um very thankful to Sarah and Dan for their work on moving the program of studies over to the website we're working on revamping um the entire uh sort of high school space online to try to make it easily accessible um it's very confusing right
041now um and along with that um looking at the uh working with the admin team to really uh review the whole 8 to9 transition as well and communicating that piece out so we're starting it a little later than we'd like to but we're trying to sort of recreate everything so that it's it's an understandable process um what the school offers what's going to be happening at the high school for students um we've created uh a group for new students uh and new families uh Leslie dandis is running an Advisory Group for new students uh to support them through their transitions because in speaking with families and students coming in that that was a difficulty sort of transitioning to what does it mean to be Holliston High School student uh coming into a small community um
042and trying to offer as many opportunities for parents to come in and I'll say it here like every time I send one out please come in um don't get as many as I'd like to but it's uh it's it's great when folks are joining us we're averaging about a dozen people at the cost CES but um love to have more folks come in and share um and the equity audit and the neas report which I shared earlier also talked a lot about um our communication practices and making especially um in the uh with School counseling um and making sure that uh folks feel comfortable with what's happening in the high school and their in their student [Music] experience um social emotional um well-being uh we we uh are working on year two of the uh
043partnership with the EDC um working with uh teachers to really get some data about student experience at the high school um we're doing a lot of work around relationship mapping which is understanding um teacher connections to students um and seeing where we're missing the boat um asking teachers to reflect on uh each of the students in their class um and in different activities clubs Sports uh and trying to understand if there are students that are falling through the cracks uh that we that we aren't engaging with um and so we're trying to pull together all of that data um work to reimagine The Advisory program um today um we had um Dr elizza Tusan in um to do some leadership training with the Sals um working uh thankfully HD partnered with us to bring her
044in um it was it was a really great experience uh Jerel was able to join us um uh at the training as well um and so we're trying to do as many of those opportunities as possible um also uh revamping um the we have a community service class but we also will have um the the the state requirement um for the Civic engagement project and looking that through some social emotional connections for students there as well um getting that into um the the high school program um we are also reimagine inter the intervention that's the when the student is identified by a teacher um what supports do we have for them trying to to figure those pieces out um and we will be um piloting um theel program that's more teaching and learning but also
045is a a a support that we can provide to students and we'll be piloting that um we originally going to start uh next year but this happening in the eth it's happening in Middle School um and so students will come up having that experience working with us we want to continue that um in through the high school um we'll bringing again partnering with hdac uh doing some work with an organization called think fast um uh for students uh that are uh more to do with substance abuse um working trying to bring in hidden in plain sight um which is another group for that works with students in in in with parents and students in substance abuse as well um and also challenge day uh as a program and as um Susan said the Metro West
046Health survey um and mood check um with Dr Tracy Gladstone which has been going on here for at hon high school for a while um I will say that also Sandy Hook promise has been um a great tool for us um you know we had to deal with Sunday night but you know we're learning as Susan said but um we've we've gotten to be we've been able to support some students who who I don't think otherwise would have gotten support because it's really is an anonymous Reporting System um that was able to identify students and I don't think it's been as invasive as we were afraid you know just when it did we're tapping our administrators after hours we we try to minimize that as much as possible so we want to make sure the
047calls aren't getting to the right place they don't want to be here every night well they do but yeah I'd rather be at the basketball game than answer on those BS SM you guys be PR a little B more [Laughter] so the the teaching the teaching and learning we are um really going through curriculum reviews across the board um um The Wellness department is up there because they have completely brand new standards for the state so they're revamping the entire Wellness curriculum they're working on that um the counselors are going to be starting small group workshops um with students um one of the challenges of our schedule obviously is finding time to do that in there uh but they're going to make it work um time to work with Junior on preparing for you know
048college uh you know just some time with them the college process some freshmen on some uh thinking about their their Journey Through the high school so they're going to start those in small groups with their counselors so they'll get some face ensure students get FaceTime with their counselors um throughout the year um again um with star doing uml um working on that to support students there um we've been working a lot to sort of align course expectations and what's happening in courses and really parent communication um so that they can understand what's happening within teaching and learning um looking at the vision of a graduate um the curriculum coordinators are are um aligning those with the units of study um and at our PD on half day on Monday um we're going to be creating
049the rubric uh that teachers can use uh to actually say here's how they've engaged in this part of the vision of the graduate in this unit um to then be able to at the end the goal is at the end by the time senior year rolls around that a student would have a portfolio basically of of areas how they've achieved um each of the I can statements with the individ of a graduate so um that work will start on Monday and and hopefully be able to implement next year um for students when they when they finish not only when they finish a unit but when they finish a course you would get your grade obviously but also um a parent and a student would be able to see where they where they fall in in
050being proficient in the the skills and the the statements Within div vision of a graduate DAV can I interrupt you for just one second within that discussion is there a part of that about you know allowing for more voice and choice for kids in the program of studies to the extent possible what do you in terms of the vision of a graduate and allowing for more voice for students course offerings or course offering yeah I mean I think that yeah I mean this I mean we have tons of different courses that are offered but I think that's a piece of of anything that we build has to be student voice um and choice in there um but I I would say that we have a lot of student choice now I think there as we've
051talked about before there are a lot of um because of the schedule and what students take there are some sort of struggles with that but um I think we offer it the schedule May not allow it right now but it exists I say like does that make sense it exists but it's not accessible necessarily at all right that that's yeah okay so I get it okay so that's yeah um but the other part of that is that we're also partnering with organizations like Project Lead the Way um to um bring in sort of Pathways curriculums for students so that they can really if they're interested in a certain area they can go after as a biomedical business um engineering um really working with pltw do that um and then we'll be applying for the Innovation
052Pathways grants where the state supports these type of Pathways um with with with generous grants if we get them to be able to um all the the supply materials necessary to to Really develop them and as a part of those are Capstone projects uh 500 hour internship like we have internships but these are more expansive um internships that students would get access to um through the program and more and for students who may not be interested in going to college more access to um work programs um and our counselors just went through a training which is called mycap um which it's uh it is basically an all-inclusive program for social learning for um uh career inventories um and it's run through the state so it's a state program that's that's offered to all schools so
053um there are three training days that are a part of it they'll be going to all three but they just went through their first now um it's also uh piece of uh when we think about equity in terms of folks who might not be able to afford like a college counselor um this gives a lot of those same resources um for for those folks as well and when would that be accessible to students like how and when is that next it be next year they're going through the training now um and then the other piece this in order to get the Innovation Pathways Grant you have to implemented myap um so is that like an email like you can make an appointment with someone or is that a club after school no so it's a
054no it's a it's a program it's a program on the computer that people folks have access to it's in multiple languages it is it's really I mean we're going to have to do trainings for parents it's extensive I mean it really it was um originally created um as something for uh really the urban schools um and when you see the value in it when you see how expansive it is um then you realize that really all students should have access to it so um we already have score which is the the program um for students to sort of create their portfolios that you send to colleges and then um they have they'll have myap as well so and and parents have access to both of those they will next year and that would be all
055for all four grades would have access yes so students start using it in nth grade um and they sort of build build it up as they go along okay following move on I did want to point out because I sat in one of your Wellness meetings and we're also um he's done a nice job connecting Zoe maroe from hdap with the teachers and trying to really support with the community and um and Poli needs and Family Services trying to align the work that we're doing has been really helpful [Music] too um the the talent and resource is Arch 4 um working a lot with Dan to look at the technology resources we have in the building where where we need some updates um and uh looking at different different Labs different looking think about student
056choice and voice is is really enhancing our our music program through some music technology and and our and our graphic design and cinematography programs um looking at um we have a lot of you know new new teachers and so looking at how we support them coming in so we've been getting a lot of feedback from them on to how we can help them to uh sort of hit the ground running here um and and even though they have the new teacher program how do we do that within the high school because they they sort of look at the overarching piece of the the district and those ideas but how do you help them uh to engage with the school itself uh so I'm spending a lot of time there on boarding staff and I have
057learned a lot in my first year about what that taste um and and what's necessary there because I know how much I've had to learn and how how many uh sort of stumbles I've had just trying to sort of get information so um I think that's going to be a big piece for the high school here is to to heat the same culture but also to help this new staff um you know we have a lot of Staff who are you know really under you know five or six years and so making sure that that that they get the support they need sorry so so David I know last time you were in we were talking about the nas report um and we had we had a discussion about the the schedule um and I
058just I've been I think that was 3 weeks ago or something today I've been spending a lot of time thinking about that and it's sort of stayed on on my mind because there are a lot of inequities in the schedule especially for for students that need IEPs um or are on I sorry and have pull out Services uh students in our you know Bandon course and arts type programs as I just wonder we don't necessarily need a a vote on this but is there a way to sort of within the confines of everything that we have and the sort of the structures that we have um maybe not like even a change the schedule but a way we uh look at the delivering courses are there different options that maybe you could put together and
059show us what it things might look like and what the pros and cons of some of these different near-term solutions as you as you do your greater work uh to come up with that sort that long-term solution are there ways that maybe we can solve some of these inequities within a shorter time frame so I think I think you're sort of saying like taking the existing schedule and trying to tweak what we already have to make some of the temporary right not changing the schedule not drastically changing there way to do it in modification and then take maybe next year to do a full analysis right um yeah I mean I can bring uh I one of the things that I am I sent out to staff and I met with Stef on was looking
060at looking at those challenges I could send out to I think I also need to reach out to families like this week I can send that in my my you know in the newsletter this week um asking about those challenges I don't want to make assumptions that I know all of the challenges that that are faced in the schedule and um want to get some feedback there so from students I would need some time to get some feedback from students and parents just to hear what those challenges are um and then I then I could give some idea of of how we might address those um those specific challenges yeah I think that we again I don't want to get away from even looking into what the what the the impacts of of even those
061smaller tweaks might be we still going to be um have have some rigor behind that how that would impact uh you know teachers how that would impact families students um but I think I don't I mean it is a pretty large percentage of students who are on either IEPs and getting Services out you know that are not able to Avail themselves of dsb or at least some dsb the the chorus and and band that you know meet during dsv you know are there ways that you know to almost sort of strengthen even dsv or at least the usage of it because you're you're not getting all those kids who have a greater access to it yeah I mean I think that if there was a way to modify what we currently have without making any
062drastic changes to try to address some inequities right now knowing that we need to do them much more thorough analysis I think that's something we could talk about and see come up with cool I'll up for high school okay for now we reserve the rights all right Dr Jordan uh hi everyone um uh excited here I think this is what this is like my seventh or eighth year doing this so I um I can go with Arch one uh this I I I probably will spend the predominance of the time um talking about uh some of our efforts with PBIS and kickboard in Arch 2 actually uh but what I did want to acknowledge in Arch one as far as communication um recently in our Rams news that went out um is that we opened
063up and it was communicated through their uh kickboard which is our PBIS monitoring tool but also is like positive and kind of our our consequence-based monitoring monit uh monitoring system uh opened up to parents on February 1 um it was a little bit of a kind of a soft roll out uh cuz we were going to hit parents with a significant amount of data on their children um and um so we wanted to kind of make sure that they're they we're going to get a lot of questions about it uh make sure that we can kind of handle that flow of questions but our our hope is to kind of like ramp up our publicity and marketing with families to get in there um I guess as far as that any of the school committee
064members who have have children in the Middle School uh and then anybody who is uh listening and I'd highly encourage you to get in there I think you're going to see some really fun um and cool feedback um on your children in there um it is uh right now we're at a 13 to1 ratio on average for our kids so you're going to get there and see um likely probably 60 or 70 or 80 comments uh from each of your your students teachers that are positive about different particular situations that they've done in their classroom so um we're usually as families we we get the kind of report card or we get the you know anxious every once in a while email that might be negative um I think there's a lot of positive there
065um and I think there's a lot of opportunity to drive the car conversations with your children at the middle school level that are in there about some of the things they've done in their classrooms you say they parents can't quite access yet they can no they can access it now yeah we uh the basically the students uh took home uh directions on how parents can fill it out uh but also in the Rams news we're giving communicate parents were giving communication on how like if if the child if that piece of paper does not make its way home um which often it doesn't um how what they could do to get another piece of paper and log in um so uh we're teaching executive functioning by seeing if that paper can make it from point
066A to point B but uh it doesn't often so true all right uh Arch two um so this is kind of our I would I would say that like um where we've centered the promet are Focus this year there are only so many spinning plates you can kind of keep going and this is the one I'm actively spinning um right now uh we talked about uh kickboard kickboard is um it is kind of replaces our care points uh system but it it also not just tracks where we were handing cards out it also tracks like the actual comments on about the actual situation um and then calculates the ratio and then we can run data um off of that as well for example we have over 16,000 points um have been given out um in
067the short period of time that we've piloted uh kickboard that equals which we talked about a 13:1 ratio um research is anywhere from like a 7:1 5:1 ratio of kind of positive praise um to more of a consequence um action or negative behavior um that they would have um that ratio uh with our partnership um with an outside consultant with PBIS uh that we've been working with Jerel through is they've been able to run some additional data for us on uh subgroups um is that that ratio is similar for students on I AP and students of color um and our high need students uh as well so we're uh we're balancing and making sure that we don't have any discrepancies uh in there as well as well 100% of our students um are receiving uh
068positive positive praise for there so there isn't we're also kind of monitoring uh volume um and where are kind of our students that are maybe not hearing from their parents or hearing from uh their teachers and our teachers in their different data groups have been analyzing that to understand to make sure that everybody is making a contact point or has a contact Point uh in our building this is already yielding to date uh whether you know whether it's causal or whether it's correlational that's one thing but we are at a 70 70% decrease of suspensions from the prior year uh and we're at a multi- uh multi-year downward Trend uh in suspensions of the to dat uh point at this point and we're at a 52 uh 52% decrease in major infractions these would be
069things that might yield like an after school detention or other kind of bigger uh office-based um consequences um uh if you walk into our ban building you may see like three 300 banners kind of all over the place so we're trying to really get the kind of message and communication out um and that's kind of really following the lead of the elementary schools and the works that work that they've uh done there um within seal uh kind of moving to that piece and thinking about like our our mtss and our our um areas that we've been working on we've done um three lessons to date that our our counselor LED that's our intro toal um school pride contributing to common good and then benefits of practicing mindfulness um we also have our ADL uh peer
070leadership group um they've done they've created when partnership with ADL uh facilitators um from outside have been working with the students to um have them put together lessons that they lead in the classroom and to date they've LED um three uh three lessons um that they have led um which are did you bully this burger um here I this is Middle School um here I stand and personal dominoes um and that's um that is with kind of like the support uh of the ADL and as Jerry jerryl and I have talked is you know we're deeply saddened that ADL is is no longer going to have that arm um of them is that peer leadership and uh he's been working to kind of see if we can identify some um outside Partnerships to again have
071a leader while we feel like we've developed the capacity um as a middle school to do that work um things deviate over time and it's good to continually have an outside person to kind of Drive uh and be that expert expert uh in US um similarly we have our Sandy Hook uh peer leadership group um they have been doing um what they've LED they've they have uh start with hello is they is a um a lesson that they have led student LED affirmation station and I am unique finger printing um and then we have our in Rel uh partnership with the high school is our project 351 Celtics Playbook um and this is about 30 students at the middle school involved with that uh and this is what they've done is leading difficult conversations um
072on Race bias and gender so basically training um our students one uh our students um acknowledging and learning about their own bias but also teaching them to drive difficult convers ations with their peers um as well um lastly and something that um has far exceeded what um I could have ever imagined is our Wellness 2 uh which is a tier 2 wellness andal support that's uh built into student schedules um we have over 171 students enrolled uh in this tier 2 program that's that's a a a significant number of students that are receiving social emotional support that is open to all um so anybody can take that and and we put uh several students who may need that into that space uh but this is a space for students who um may need some additional
073social emotional support learn about uh different different Wellness practices that they can benefit executive functioning um that they me may need extra physical activity um they they'll do yoga mindfulness activities um they'll learn about how to access uh their stay uh better um and we're using um navigate 360 which is outside seal resource to kind of help buffer that as we uh transition over to ruler um what's awesome about that is uh that class is the best attendance in our school um and uh it is also um Francine bue who leads it uh we did our Sandy Hook uh ARS survey of students as far as who your trusted adults were um Francine was the most trusted adult teacher uh in our building um after a very short period of time I want to say
074that survey was done in like November um or something or December and um in that very short period of time was identified as our most trusted teacher um I will say the the the top award went to uh was kind of a tie for um Kayla uh Kaya Smith and um Angel Gavin who are two counselor grade level counselors who um were our our our kind of top uh most trusted adults um in our building and then on to our next one um teaching and learning uml is our major pilot that we're immersed in um and and based off of our teacher feedback uh that we've provided to Dan is that we this is something that we do want to move forward with uh and that we do want it to replace star ultimately um
075but uh we've been very very happy with what it uh has been uh uh brought to us um several three years ago when we started the star process what start what appealed to me with star um was the arm that they had which was Freckle uh but within star um the initial pitch with star was that they had um some of the tier 2 tier three academic supports um and even kind of um things that once you had the data you had something you could go do with it um and we struggle with the things that were built into star to be able to do that so we then piloted Freckle uh the prior uh last year and we found that that um was not what we needed it to be uh but that not
076been the case withl ISL has been everything we had hoped it would be could perceive that it could be um as kind of creating a customized path for all students uh whether you're an exceptional learner uh or whether you're a student with gaps um it is filling that need uh and uh pushing our students in their individual learning path um as I'm maybe Dave is going to get into and I know Susan just spoke to is kind of our our literacy Pathways or our lit literacy work that we're aligning as a whole District um I'm I'm really excited about kind of our entry level work that we've done with uh with Landmark um the St teachers that we have that are getting training trained in Orton Gillingham um the our kind of unified our uniform
077um writing rub that we have that's more of a tier one across all of our subjects uh lined in with uml which is kind of supporting the individual Learners um I think is already yielding some literacy results in this last year uh in that we are the highest performing SGP uh Middle School um in the area um so the that has yielded some results I know that there many of the fluent communities based off the Boston Globe um article that went out on literacy in high highly fluent communities um specifically Winchester but also Lexington and some of those communities as well as those that while they had high performance um in as a as a whole they had huge gaps in SGP uh in um in sub different subgroups we are not that uh that
078school uh and middle school is not we are not that and we're demonstrating um significant strength and literacy across all subgroups um uh lastly with that um very excited and about our SAT Pro program our Student Assistance team um uh the academic intervention that we have in place our culturally responsive education Academy partnership with the Department of Ed um has been strong as well uh talents uh and resources um we last year had we final or we completed our um relationship with any base camp uh now outside consultant who did an audit for us um which helped us um with some aspects of our new schedule um a leadership reorganization about how uh efficiencies and communication where things um fall uh and where different redundancies might happen and where people can go for information how
079things flow um help with that which we um which has been you know very productive um this year thanks um I want to start off by um you know beginning of the year I did not have an admin team so in the building um so thanking the teachers and the guidance department and the office staff everybody that got us through uh until Brenda Morrow and Emily Lori came on board um you know when you look at the work that we have in here really falls on you know Brenda and Emily and our our curriculum people in the building we've got ilsa O'Brien our literacy and social studies we've got Ashley buard uh who is uh prek through grade five um math and then Ally Curley who's my integration specialist so a lot of the work
080that you see us getting done is spearheaded by those guys uh and then I also have to thank our teachers because they did make that science social studies switch and it is working you know uh we are struggling with the time and we knew we were going to do that uh but they are doing it and and they are making it work uh as as we go through um so I wanted to thank uh them for that on this communication practices the one thing um we uh started a um building wide student leadership team uh and that student leadership train team we are training right now to be ambassadors uh for our new students as they come in uh and so picture eight-year-olds trying to figure out what questions where in the building you want
081to show I know they have this in place at middle school already uh but I this is something that is long overdue uh when we've got new families that come to our district um so we can jump over to social emotional so um some big things here we are uh in our third year of the PBIS Academy second year of Rise uh we are tweaking it to make it more kidfriendly um in uh November we had our first schoolwide rise assembly where we had all uh the students together uh and we we looked at empathy and we asked teachers to you know give us some examples of students so we were calling up students who um showed us empathy we are going to have at the end of February our second schoolwide assembly the one
082thing about having schools as big as we are is those assemblies can be a little crazy but it works and so we're going to try our second one and we're going to be focusing in on we asked our teachers to have the students at the beginning of the year make resolutions and so um we're going to be we're going to be celebrating those students who may have accomplished uh their Rise ution um a big thing that we are focusing in on this year is attendance uh if in every week we talk about attendance in um our guidance meetings and focus on who are those students who are missing school we found in our accountability data that we weren't making the gains that we should be uh in in that um more so in some of
083the subgroups um so right now we are at um at a peak we are at 96.3 and at our lowest we were at 93.9 but this is far above where we've been uh in some of the future years Co didn't help anybody you know when when somebody's sick their home social emotional they're staying home but every week we're trying to focus on who's not coming in why aren't they coming in we're talking to the school nurse are they sick we're talking to the guidance counselors there's something going on we're talking to the classroom teachers we are putting this in the staff newsletter every week so the teachers can be on board and so they know who's there but we are seeing an increase in our attendance we just sent out our second wave of letters
084to families whose students may not have met the certain goals that they should be on day 90 um but it is a focus because social emotionally some kids just aren't coming to school and families can't get them to come to school uh and this is one way uh that we can uh focus on that uh next one teaching and learning uh we've got a lot going on um the land Mark um I wasn't going to talk but it really has been useful um our language-based teachers we've got one in grade four and five uh they've been going through this training for the last two years and all of our special education teachers uh have been trained in Orton Gillingham we are seeing the gains sometimes it's slow and teachers get frustrated but we just did
085a data dive into our midyear assessments and I had uh you know a special ed teacher at my my t table and she looked and she's like they made gains it may not have been as much as some of the other students but everybody is making those gains uh in in the school um Wind Block is um you know we've been talking about when what I need and so half an hour in every classroom we've got two reading tutors that help with some of the two tier 2 interventions they see about six students um they are reassessing students every month uh they are redling to see where the kids are many times students won't come off of a reading tier two because there's a next level of reading that they need to get to so
086for instance they might Master phonics but then you got to get into fluency they might Master fluency but then they got to get into comprehension so a lot of times you may see kids stay in longer in some of that tier 2 but it is helping and we are looking at where those gains are across the year in math we've only got one tutor so we're only seeing about 35 students but we just graduated about half of them out of that with this new round of Assessments what we see in this is a lot of this is skill-based and then they can go on and they can Contin you know they can start getting into some of the grade level math um when we did our assess Ms we we found that 85% of the
087students in our last ass assessments were meeting or above in math and in in Reading we were 78% reading and above and reading is is much harder but that data dive showed teachers what else do I need to do in the classroom to get some of those students to improve and they had the we did a jam board and a jam board is a digital way like sticky notes on the computer so they can anonymously put in what do I want to look at next so uh in either next week or the week after vacation we're going into the the the grade level plc's and talking about what else can we be doing uh with our individual students okay besides um you know somebody taking your child outside of the classroom what can we do
088with our tier one instruction that might strengthen um the the the what the students are getting in in the classroom another big thing on here is um we we the elementary schools have picked uh a math program that we would like to move forward with um we had enVision Math that we've been using for a while we looked at I ready math and we looked at Eureka math squared and Eureka math squared came out on top in um what our teacher thought would be the next best thing for our students where that comes from is it offers a lot more scaffolding for students um in in the lesson plans whereas in some of the others it didn't go into like it might teach to the like all student to not get into the nitty-gritty or
089give them um a pathway to um understand what those concepts are um like David said about Dr Jordan said about ISL um we are uh pretty clear that we would like to go with I ready diagnostics for that tool as well and I think um Dan proposed that when we were doing our our budget initiatives a while back to take the place of star and take the place of some of our other technology tools it would do what we needed it to so we did a pilot with the I ready diagnostic only uh in two fifth grade classes because they're fifth grade teams a fourth grade class and a third grade class and they started this probably October so they take the original assessment and they took the star assessment they they didn't take the
090I ready assessment but with that actually no they took the I ready assessment sorry and from there they were given Pathways for each one of their students to reach their goals those four classrooms made the biggest gains out of all the classrooms because of the individualized um Pathways that that it had so I know it's only four classrooms but it does give us you know kind of what we are looking for uh in this and then um there's another thing that I wanted to say about that uh highest classrooms and I don't know I'll come back to it if I get to it um and then I want to put a huge plug in for um math paloa math night is coming back who remembers math night we are coming back uh and so we're
091calling it math paloa it's going to be on Pi Day who can tell me what Pi Day is tap K's birthday that's what it is 314 314 is Pi Day um and so putting in a big big plug uh for that and then go on to the last one um one thing um Dr Kusa has been having us do at our monthly admin meetings we are taking a look at some of our writeups and and taking a look at how they coordinate across the the different buildings and so we are trying to um become more consistent across the buildings and how we're giv feedback to the teachers in December we did a building walkth through of um Adam's m Middle School uh and then uh next week we will be doing a building walkth through
092at uh the Miller School uh where we pop into about um each group pops into about five different classrooms and we have four different groups that go around the building so that's what we're doing at Miller question thank you I feel like you need a movement break but okay okay um so I think my colleagues really talked about a lot of our initiatives so I'm just going to talk to different things that are more unique to placentino for communication I really want to talk about seesaw um Winnie Cary our digital um integration specialist she's a I think she's a seesaw Ambassador I think that's her um big title and she I think there's about a quarter of our staff who's chosen as a professional learning goal to be able to really bring seesaw into their
093classrooms and while it's a digital portfolio while um it's used for families that they can um see a glimps into the classroom they can comment on their students work they can like their students work so the students can go in and see that their families um have commented on it they can build different activities in it seesaw has a huge library of activities that are already there for teachers that can enhance the learning um that's there but what I've noticed especially when I was reading through different teachers formative evidence we just did that um is that they're using it as a tool to monitor learning so students are creating stories and sharing their writing through it they're reading their writing or they're reading to their teachers so it's another opportunity for their teacher to you
094know have an informal snapshot of how their students are doing in a very fun and engaging way so we're really proud of that I think I'm going to be talking about communication throughout all the different arches so I'm going to move on to social emotional wellbeing um I think Dave and David both talked about ruler a little bit at placentino we've been really diving in our staff has completed the first 2hour course called an emotional mindset um we've been using staff meetings to kind of dive a little bit more into it it's all around being able to recognize and label and understand your own emotions and we as adults aren't that great at about it um we were kind of joking around that you know when someone asks you how are you feeling pushing yourself
095beyond the word fine so we have this Rule now at placentino you can't say fine um it's really difficult to label your emotions but if we as adults can't do it and we can't model it for our students how do we expect our students to be able to label and understand their own emotions so we're really kind of digging into that as well um as Dave and David also talked about we are also um on year three officially I guess of PBIS Academy um but what I'm really proud about is that we have a team of teachers who are taking the leadership role for PBIS and looking at how we can strengthen it across bantino um last week we just had a challenge where um we had special care cards that they earned they were
096purple snowflakes and each class earned 100 they're now voting on um I I hope it's a whole school dance party but I don't know it might be something else so we'll see what the students um do for that I'm probably going to spend the bulk of our time talking about teaching and learning I feel like um at placentino when the new dyslexia law came out we really it's what we believe in anyways so it was an opportunity for us to kind of dive into that next step um yes um Mrs Bey and I along with um our other leadership at placentino have really looked at how we can support our teachers understanding of reading that may not kind of Follow That typical trajectory not saying that all students following this trajectory might have a disability
097but how do we help struggling readers how do we identify it how do we look at it as it's happening not in a hindsight glance um at classentino we've done um some pretty in-depth professional development around dyslexia demystifying it talking about what it is helping our teachers understand it you have to understand when teachers went even recently our teaching prep programs have not caught up with best practices to be honest with you so um they're learning with us and doing some unlearning as well um we also had a parent evening um through CPAC where where we um at placentino along with Mrs Bey we had a a good crew who came in of parents and we really talked about what is dyslexia what um are the laws what does that process look like and we're
098having another evening in February 28th about what does instruction look like so we're looking forward to that as well um we have been we have about three4 of our teachers who've chose either professional Andor student learning goals themselves around this so really looking at their data um moving from just administering a test to having it be really part of their their their instruction having them look at it having them help them guide um something that is a little different this year is we are actively doing progress monitoring for any student who is not meeting Benchmark um a little shift to what has happened in the past is not just students who are getting reading support students who have been quote unquote and kind of watch and our teachers are actually the ones who are administering
099the devil's assessment so that's um while it might not seem like a big switch being receiving data and actually administering the assessment yourself it becomes um I've had teachers say it's eye opening and they're owning that data a little bit more we've really been diving into Landmark six teaching principles um how you know we can look at all of our instruction and saying does that match it so is it multi-sensory are we microing um different aspects do we have student voice in Partnership how many opportunities so a typical child needs between Zer and 40 to be able to get a concept A struggling reader or a student with a learning disability needs between 400 and 200 opportunities to be able to get that skill so when we have um teachers bring students to our our
100Student Assistance team we ask them to reflect how many opportunities do you think they have and how can you change their day or their instruction so they're getting more because that's what research tells us that we have to do tomorrow we'll all be mailing our um middle of the Year assessments and at placentino because we're unique because we have French um we had to look at it a little differently our our Dibbles assess um because our French students are not instructed in English it other than phon segmentation um we can't give them that assessment because it's not an accurate measure for them because they're not being instructed in it so we had to look at something different so we looked at what the indicators were for dyslexia and one of it is rapid naming so
101what we did with all of our French students um in the past month is we gave them the rapid um rapid naming assessment um so that in what that looks like it's beyond them needing to know letters its colors its shapes it's multiple stimuli together and what that is an indicator of is what a student's able to do um with their reading fluency so um all that will be shared with families we're sending that home tomorrow um I want to like that could not happen Jenny man has been absolutely incredible she's our literacy specialist um I just left Winnie Cary and Cheryl car Cheryl um Cordo and Lisa Robinson stuffing letters in the office right now they've been absolutely incredible in our partnership with Jess like looking at how we can bring in more resources
102to support our teachers finally around um talent in resources um I think what I really want to um highlight is around culture and climate we've been having monthly meetings with a very large membership of our school again this is become teacher-led I think it's important to think about especially culture and climate if that's led by me that says something about the culture and climate of our building when it's shifted towards being more staff um teachers par professionals and other members and we just kind of just did something recently for our power professionals outside of any you know national day um just like a thank you that we put into their mailboxes which was all teacher ideas around how we can just recognize their hard work cuz they really are um the backbone of our school
103and finally I just want to shout out to all of our school counselors It's school counselor week um we could not do anything without our counselors they are um the support of our students are that who have the hardest time walking in the door every day and um we just want to thank them so that's classa thank you pointing out about the shifting that needs to happen for culture and climate cuz I really think people people always say what can you do superintendent and what can you do principal to to change the culture and climate and we've learned so much that it has to come from within so it's really about what can we do to help Foster right and help our staff feel safe to promote it because it the peer-to-peer interactions really make
104the difference thank you questions for anyone including our Central team that's sitting in the audience could be happy to come up here if need [Laughter] excited I have a comment two comments um really quick the um I just wanted to thank all of the coffees were where there I know there was a district one with principles and then I've been to a bunch the the high school with Mr list um it's great to have an opport and actually the PTO meetings um at the middle school sorry I don't have a elementary kids anymore so I don't get yes no you are like any of the opportunities where parents can drop in and have a more informal conversation especially if they there is a specific concern I think it's really valuable and I appreciate the time
105to to do that so I want to thank you all for making those things happen and then the other thing when you talked about a vision of a graduate um and I know it's been more of a high school thing I would love it to I need to be re-educated as a parent about what that's all about and I would love um if it does kind of get transmitted down to the lower grades um to help families understand that part of the education so that in addition to the math and the science and all um some of those real real life skills that poison is preparing the kids for I think are really great for families to understand um just the whole picture so anyway I think it's a lot of good stuff we did
106a original or we did one at each one of the buildings um but we do need to do more but we did bring it to the staff and and talked about it on one of the PD days yeah and I think if there's a way to somehow embed that in the communications about what we're doing that relates to that vision of graduate connect those dots sh for at least for for it's different from when I was at school and so I don't always recognize all of that part part of you know sometimes when I see my kids are doing a presentation and they have to practice it like I'm like oh that's great you're going to need to know how to do that um and it's just really valuable for families to understand that you're
107you're doing all of that too in addition to exactly so thank you thank you point on the Coffey hours cuz um we weren't sure how that first preamp was something new I wanted to try with us this year and we weren't sure if people would come and we actually had a pretty good turnout and um I was talking with the parent the other day about they were very pleased with that too so we are going to schedule a follow-up one and then if we feel like we might we also talked about I think trying to maybe do a nighttime by Zoom because we know that people can't get there so we're going to try to plan one when we can be available as a panel at night too they didn't know that no I'm kidding
108they talked about we [Music] didn't great well thanks but feel free to stay uh moving on with uh Dr Bernard uh unfortunately unable to join us uh we will uh postpone her presentation and move on to the uh AI steering committee Mr McLoud I know is very excited to talk about this topic and I keep sending him articles that I'm receiving and um you know we're hearing so much more about this on a daily basis so can I join the zoom oh s sure sure can thank you and then I will make you a co-host in a second I find this entire should be I've said I'm G to try to yeah Dan's helping usol I'll just say Dan's been helping us as administrators to try to get more comfortable so we are all testing
109the waters in Little Bits And I think if you just take things in little chunks and apply it in one small area I then you kind of find out it's not as bad as you think it's actually this the pros are out it's just scary right it's that Uncharted Territory and we don't know how far it's going to go and I know teachers are nervous because how do you ensure that students are not plagiarizing and things like that I will say I read an article I'll see if I can find it for you that came out the other day that the research is showing I don't I didn't read the whole details but the research is showing that they're not seeing AI in plagiarism situations um happening as they thought they would so I don't
110know how they've assessed that but I I thought that was an interesting article that I read the other day well hopefully one day they canl [Laughter] school well good even good evening everyone um so happy to share where we are with AI in hollist so I wanted to take you on a sort of a a track of where we started uh chat GPT was the big one that came out November 2022 we kind of like you know waiting to see what went on with that and then we we started pick it up last spring the tech integration folks and and me we started to to attend conferences workshops trying to get a feel for what people were doing that evolved into summer curriculum opportunities so thanks thank you to Dr Kusa we had a teacher
111here at the high school Bob Tian he's the math department chair he he's uh really supercharged with AI and and the topic so he took it on and created this awesome spreadsheet um I'll just give you a glimpse of it it has a ton of AI links and resources and what's really cool with AI now is you can actually put a link and it'll summarize like three or four bullets what the article is about so he used a little bit of that to help summarize um yes go figure So Meta uh then we formed the steering committee I think it was uh the the first newsletter Dr kusy we sent out I I put a Google form for people to join um and that formed in the fall late fall November December we had 21
112participants and I'll talk about them in a few minutes the steering Comm committee met four times over four Tuesdays for hour and a half we cut probably could have met four more but um you know I figured I had to cut it off at some point uh but this is what they came up with and this is published on our website it's not it's not um finalized it's simply a recommendations from this committee a lot of it has to come through school committee the policy subcommittee senior leadership but we wanted to share what they had developed so we have Vision executive summary and those align with the vision of a graduate and then I'm not going to read all these but I just want to highlight some of the recommendations which primarily are professional development
113no surprise there the committee feels strongly that uh professional development of teachers and actually administrators too is super important in implementing Ai and then Innovation pathway at the high schools mentioned and you heard Mr list talked about that earlier so we think maybe somewhere in that pathway there's going to be be some form of AI embedded hopefully don't know what that looks like but that's what the hope is and the committee shares that same hope and was there any discussion about any um courses being developed on AI and making that part of the computer science and great question we actually are hearing Rumblings that there's going to be a computer science requirement so um don't have an answer for that okay but um we feel like again it's all coming pretty fast so and then
114uh 2425 they they wanted recommendations on the agenda for folks to review and those include a keynote speaker for example that's where I got super excited um but we'll see how that plays out uh AI Scholars this is interesting they want the committee thought um let's build like a a Cadre of students who are really interested in Ai and enhance them and make them AI Scholars and perhaps they could assist teachers they could be like Frontline in the classroom assisting teachers with AI implementation so that was one of the recommendations that came and then again staff development is a huge theme throughout all of this and we actually uh implemented which I'll share shortly some staff development already in a variety of forms and then finally this is a committee that I was part of
115um the acceptable use policy and then plagiar and cheating is a Hot Topic with AI and so this committee wrestled with all of that um and actually the students were no surprise here right the students gave the most enlightening comments like they're actually concerned about other students cheating with AI um and it's it's probably you know there's certainly students that use chat we believe but there's also students that care a lot about doing it the right way so these students there was four students on the committee but it was great to hear their perspectives throughout so anyway um Cynthia uh and the policy subcommittee have looked at our revisions and we're going to take them to other stakeholders for further review and then eventually I'm sure it'll come before the entire committee yes and then
116uh so that's those are the recommendations sorry the 21 people who are they so down the bottom left corner again this is on our website you'll see the four students and the Committees they're part of we had six staff members which is awesome they gave up their time Tuesday nights to come and volunteer and then uh 10 really passionate parents a lot of these folks U use AI in their jobs and their high level either Tech directors or whatever like me using AI but they it was interesting they were all wrestling in in their organizations with AI as well uh no one had answers when we met really so we were all like learning from each other so that's the committee and the recommendations uh we did have staff training and admin training winter like
117just in the past couple weeks we had admin Council training and then January 31st we trained our staff and I wanted to do a quick demo of that um and actually I'm not going to show the entire thing but here's what we showed our staff it's a product called defit so the way it would work is the teachers could go and pick a standard from desie this is a fifth grade math standard for example and they plug it into this AI program called defit for teachers hopefully it's still here and it generates basically an entire lesson and adaptive reading passage a summary key vocabulary words questions with answers and then one of the Student Activities which is really powerful is they can export this right to Google forms this quiz and this matches closely with
118what Chromebooks and Google classroom and everything we do and so literally this was three clicks and as a teacher I've got this assessment dialed up and ready and I did this in about 30 seconds so I went from a standard to a passage lesson with answers and then a Google form things that would have taken you know possibly hours right done in I wouldn't maybe not seconds but you know a minute or two as long as we as long as you put in the prompts properly this is what you end up with so what were the prompts well the prompt was actually this I just picked a standard okay this is a closely standard from Des that one right there okay and that was I think a fifth grade standard I believe yeah fifth grade
119language arts and then what did you do I took that I copied and paste that I put it into defit and I I would show the process but it takes about 30 seconds to generate it so I didn't want to waste time okay but this is what it generated and then I can take this lesson so to speak and I can turn it into a Google form or I could just print it out there's also some powerful translation features so I can translate this to any language wow of students in my classroom so again and AI is really super powerful translations so awesome there's a lot of promise with the whole uh AI Done Right wow yes it's not meant to repl I think this is where we're not expecting a teacher to just take
120this at face value then to to analyze it see there things that I want to add to it take from it or parts of it you know my my daughter's a teacher at a high school and she had AI training in the fall and I remember her coming home excited CU she said Mom I had done my lesson but then differentiating that lesson for multiple you know levels in the classroom she was able to plug in and get different levels for her vocabul lesson in modifying and things like that so even just for that piece be able to take it and modify a lesson down you're doing the initial work and then you the good teaching analyzes What's um relevant and not relevant as well great Point all of this is editable so if I
121didn't like one of these questions I could easily edit it and it is like a lot of people call it an 8020 tool yeah yeah it'll do 80% of your you leg work and then you have to spend the last 20 with your own creativity that's cool but this is what we showed teachers on January 31st uh we're going to continue to try to infuse AI into all of our professional development and that's one of the huge recommendations from the committee I'll give an example of something I saw saw teachers using just the day the same day that um in the afternoon after this training took place we had some high school teachers that I visited in the room and they were actually taking and going using AI to help them come up with sample
122rubrics and then they had multiple versions that they would getting from all these different places and then being able to say which pieces of this one do I want but just they were so excited about again minimizing the amount of time but they're still making it authentic to what they need for their classes it's not just they spinning it out and taking it it is you know basically they're taking the idea and getting that's how I see I think a lot of um our teachers that really are ready to kind of take on the challenges that they would be getting multiple ideas and then taking those and bringing into one thing one lesson or whatever it is just a couple tidbits uh if you're curious Massachusetts guidance has been uh a little bit slow coming
123out there's one Council here linked up I'm not going to spend some time on there but it's it's a council of 15 people that are just discussing AI at the state level and then the national guidance there's there's a lot of national guidance out there and some states have actually like K to2 systems they've given guidance to the K to2 districts in that state like California Oregon a couple others come to mind Massachusetts has not yet done that so that's why a lot of school districts like us are starting to just take it uh we know it's here and try to create policy and um guidance for [Music] it questions thoughts all you're thinking I did want to add because danan doesn't know this yet but um I know that um Barbara Ryan wanteded to
124meet with us to talk a little bit more about some of the and I was going to bring this up when we were talking um earlier with the principles um working with hdac and substance abuse and bringing in some training for students so M share is going to be doing some work with the middle school and high school and then I asked if maybe mind Sher could help partner with us to see if they can help us provide an AI type keynote speaker for the fall so um because again we don't we're trying to keep our budget down but if we can partner with some of the community groups and I think there's some willingness there so we should be able to do something like that this fall but I also talked about whether if
125we do something for staff can we do a family engagement piece after you know after the as well think that next piece in showing parents in the work that we're doing in that respect yeah great the these are just ideas the committee came up with um you know that it could be just as valuable to have you know teachers collaborating for 90 minutes on AI um and all the tools so again we were just sharing the ideas and I want to publicly thank those 21 individuals for uh spending their Tuesday nights with me right before Christmas um it was really valuable and actually a lot of fun and some people commented they enjoyed coming to those events uh just to collaborate so and we're going to meet again they they know this we're going to
126keep meeting because this is all just you know happening a million miles an hour so Dan is that resource spreadsheet that put together is that on the website um great question I don't think it is so I'll make sure it's up there yeah just so people know how to access that it's probably embedded in one of the agendas but it's not it's not easy to find so I'll put it up there thank you and Bob and the tech integrationist are really like the leaders uh and Jesse Conan I should comment on him he's taking the lead with the responsible use policy for students we're trying to take the mass of acceptable use and try to make it student friendly if we can that's great thank you d one quick thing D we have you um
127could we maybe open back up the community email distribution I think we talked about January but uh just the yes definitely we'll do communicate that out any other questions for Dan or thank you very much thank you thank you we uh do you have a policy I do it's um second reading but there's no um changes from that I got received from the committee from the first reading so I can read the whole thing all over again or we can wave the second reading I I think we should wait the second reading by okay wait vo is this a motion to wait it or Mo to just adopt it we're going to adopt it I didn't know if we had to wave it first we we have to vote to wave the second I'll waving
128the second waving the second reading for imga all right thank you and then five nothing okay and then to adopt imga service animals and schools as that mot presented motion by Dawn second all in favor I okay that carries nothing um just before I head off that so Dan did a lot of work on the acceptable use policy this is something that has been like a bear that we've been sitting on I don't know I don't even think AI was even a thing when we first kind of punted it over to you guys to start talking about and so at this point you know it's very comprehensive but after some discussion with our the subcomittee we were like let's let send it back to the the principal teachers for their their feedback to make sure
129that it's something that you know everyone's good with and then after that I still think it needs to go to the hurdle of Andy W likely um and then come back and it's something that we would then Implement for the fall because has to go into the handbooks so that's why the timing is such that it is so my My Hope Is that we'll be presenting it back in no later than June for us to actually um approve that that revision and then it would be put into the handbooks for over the summer does that make sense yeah any guidance from masc yeah no no okay not a lot um I shouldn't have laughed like that but I will um and then what was the other thing oh and then the other thing I just
130wanted to update you David list isn't here anymore but um we had talked about the early graduation part policy and there's a number of other policies that we need to resend unfortunately Jess and some others were not able to make our last meeting so we couldn't really go through that list of policies that are kind of defunct at this point um one of them that we have is on early graduation there is no masc policy around this um it is typically a process that is done at the high school with the administration with some parameters around like you can appeal to but there's not a process where they would come to us for it so I will be coming forward with a recommendation for us to resend our policy but I wanted to make sure
131that there was a process that David List already had in place to present to us for us to see um before we did that so I hope that I'll have that the whole thing or just put in place David list or the principal has this and then the appeal to the school committee yeah but it won't be a it won't be a school committee policy because there is is a day school committee policy around this through MC they don't have one yeah it's a procedure it's not but I just it'll be on the it'll be in the handbook but it's not like one of our policies cuz it's not a school committee policy CU it's not an masc policy our policy most schools don't have this it's something that is handled at the no no
132I don't disagree with it I just want to make sure that we have a process that's why I'm saying like I didn't want to resend this until there was a process that David List had in place for us to you know approve essentially is there handb is there any other um item that can be appealed to us but we don't have a policy on it because I feel like we've had students come regarding um like a curriculum or or waving a class or trying to I thought there was still a policy even though it was we the procedure when we had the student in trying to do the college credit I believe that was under a procedure proced yeah but it's still in a policy though there's a policy attached to the procedure so that's
133why we're just we're not going to have it because it doesn't even exist anymore that whole thing about dual en rollan like it's the masc has rescinded any of those policies a you know a while ago we've for some reason we still have that policy for whatever reason so um so and like you would vote on when it's entered into this handbook as procedural change you would vote on the handbook and how that is Implement so I just want and that would be in place you know whenever we decide there would be place would be now but you know it could be in the next you know this next meeting but it won't go in the handbook until um you know officially it's that Mak sense I just didn't want I didn't want anything to
134be coming forward right now in the in the sense that we would be resending this policy but I wanted you to have a process to see that there is a process that happens before we just rescinded it does that make sense yeah is everybody following me okay I think so okay um Dan is not but John is so we're good yeah one of us has got it so that's good okay so we'll uh I hope to have that he sent it to me like tonight but I I wasn't in time for me to put it on the agenda obviously so it'll be on the next agenda okay okay is that what you got yep that's what I got okay so we'll move on to central office updates and I I'd invite Mr mday back to
135the to the uh I think Mr mday should join to to the table oh now the boss has said it so it's got to be I think he was way too comfortable back there he was I told him to come sit next I tend to try to be mindful of your time and that's why I rush through things a lot but I also don't think I always take the time to highlight some of the things that I do get to see and involve in and enjoy as my role because I'm trying to get through the nitty-gritty and also leave time for others to talk but I did take a couple minutes tonight to pop up a couple of pictures CU I think pictures paint a thousand words so I wanted to just share a couple
136of slides with you that I put together today um just because I think you can see um the fun parts of my job that I don't always get to um share oh so let me just pop this up so I put together a few slides as part of my update for some things that I was have been able to enjoy when I've been visiting the buildings and I know that Miss Dr Jordan talked about the Celtics Playbook um work if you recall last year I applied for that for the district and I engaged Sarah cun and um kagum and Danielle I'm I'm blanking on Danielle's last name last year were our first um high school students to take on this work as Juniors and they created they they did an immense amount of training last
137year at the um what's the um the aach the red hour Center correct and the Celtics fund all of this work but these students get trained at the state level and the the amount of growth I've seen because this is now College second year Danielle was not able to do it this year but Jay Patel has joined caller in these lessons so she's our expert but they've expanded as Dr Jordan said and I think he said 30 students and I happen to go visit to see them doing their first lesson this year the kids were so engaged and the speaking skills that I see the this the high school students develop but this is where I think our biggest bang for a buck is going to happen with moving the needle around bias and hate
138and student voice related to speaking up and not being a bystander so I'm really excited exced that this work is continuing and we'll these students cuz now we're having sixth seventh and eighth graders so they're going to continue through our system and hopefully have more kids understanding how to speak up when they see wrongs and want to write it in the schools and then another thing that I was I just happened to be um on this past Tuesday I one of the things I started this year two things that I started differently around communication one is that um bi-weekly I'm meeting with the four principles and myself we've always had very ious meetings with central office and principls and the full admin team but this is the first year that I've had the four principls
139and myself by weekly meet and we rotate to different buildings so I happened to be meeting with them at placentino this Tuesday when the little ones were coming in and it was 100th day um if you all know what that's like for the young ones get so excited they were all dressed up in their older gear um but what was funny as I was sitting waiting for the meeting to start cuz it was at arrival um I Heard singing out in the office and I walked out to see what was going on and it was four of our wonderful Educators at placentino were practicing and playing the ukulele and they were getting ready to do a song about the 100th day for all students over the intercom and asked if I wanted to join them
140and I said you don't want me to sing with you but of course I did video them if you if you if you look at our website on the main page I hope people will see my tweets more cuz I do tweet all these things so look for those but you'll see the video there that they actually um say and then we had a nice picture together but it was my little highlight for the morning and then also um this week I actually attended three staff meetings I was at the high school staff meeting on Monday and S sat in on part of Miller and Rams both both on Tuesday so I did about half of each of those but this was at the ram staff meeting um if you see at the front there
141um Carla Brady our speech with knowledge at the high school and James Reed a science teacher at the High School happened to do this presentation last year that I caught at the high school but Dr Jordan had asked them to come present at the middle school so they took their time after school to talk about NE neurodiversity and autism spectrum and a lot of um misconceptions that we all have even as educated some of the bias around that so I was really appreciative and and reached out to thank Carla and James for doing that presentation and I think it's something that we proba we will do at the other buildings as well but just um these are the things that I really enjoy and don't get to do enough but I want to highlight some
142of that um another couple things I wanted to mention I I shared out with you that I was in um Atlanta recently for leading now training with a number of other superintendents I think there were nine of us from Massachusetts but some were from California Oklahoma North Carolina all over the place and a lot of the political things that we're dealing with as superintendents and and leaders in school communities are consistent throughout the country so it's nice to hear that we're not alone in this work it was also it's a nonprofit so it didn't cost the district anything my meals U most of my meals and um the training hotel and everything was provided for which is one of the reasons I wanted to Avail myself of this opportunity um I also want to share
143Dean I mentioned to you that the on March 28th is going to be a legislative breakfast that I'm hosting through my role as the co-president of Tri County Roundtable and Tech um the tech executive director is going to um work with me on that as well so I will get the invit out cuz I really think we going have school committee members there I'm going to reach out directly to Senator spilka because I would like to see if she might come speak at that event but stay tuned for that and let's see what else round tables uh I've continued my round tables this year and I was actually at a a round table discussion today at the middle school and I they were very excited asking me for an update of flag field so I
144was able to give them a brief update on that so they're waiting to hear more about that I also the value of these roundtables is really means a lot to me but I think even for some of the kids that I've had repeatedly there's some students that I've had two or three years in a row now and a particular student in the district was looking for a recommendation to an outside setting that the family felds will better meet their needs moving forward and because of my relationship at the round table the student actually sent um for me to write a recommendation for them and at first I was surprised cuz I'm not at the building level but it just showed me that there you know this work is is Meaningful and this student um when
145they saw me in the building I was thank me for doing that but um again I think those connections happen is Dr Jordan said sometimes it's you don't know who's going to be the adult that connects with the student so we all bear responsibility there mentioned the coffee hours the only other thing I wanted to mention actually was the um actually two things sorry I another group that I've been working with this year differently just trying to think of other ways I can connect and support our leaders so I started a monthly meeting earlier this year that I'm meeting with the ssas and assistant principles because they're always confined to the building so I pull out the principles in central office we meet weekly and I meet monthly as the full admin team but this
146has been something new I tried this year especially with a lot of new um assistant principles and ssas so today we had um a meeting and we were reflecting on what would what would you do differently had you known this at the beginning of the year when you either coming into holl stone or even just if you're you've been in the district things that changed this year so we did a lot of reflecting and that was great but I've also invited each month a different theme so one month Keith came and talked about the budget process in holl thingss I think that's where we're getting our silos and and getting that communication consistently um just be is going to come next month and help support them on the investigatory process Jerelle came and we did
147a presentation on the social emotional learning Pre K to2 so it's something new I'm trying and it's hard to get them out of the building but once I get them together for that hour a month I think it's been really useful and meaningful and I'm going to continue that practice and then lastly because Joan's not here I'll do her a quick P PD update that she would have done for you and I'll be very brief I stuck it in the um packet with you if you want to look in there for all the details there's a lot that happened on January 31st but I'll highlight just a couple of things there was a special um training for all of our K to2 World language teachers because they're a small group sometimes they don't get the
148intense training that we can get with other departments so Joanie scheduled they work with me linguistic um Training Day on on uh the 31st and then in the morning all teachers and all P professionals got a presentation with Landon Callahan who's come in um through desie before last year so he did a presentation on promoting resilience and healthy outcomes for lgbtq students and then um actually I par professionals were able to attend that one as well and then Jess presented or had a training for par professionals because they stayed with us through noon that day and they did a workshop to um learn how to be proactive with an airity of settings working with diverse Learners and setting up a system of clear communication and so on and so on but she brought in a
149trainer from Martin's educational Consulting to work with them and I think they were really appreciative of that as you know um from some of the conversations we've had I've really been trying to make sure that we're streamlining and having the best PD we can have and it's always a moving Target to try to improve that and then the only other one that I did want because there's a lot you can see in the packet if you want to look in more detail in the morning our teachers also all had a presentation um and this is where the our team is so amazing we had a cancellation last minute of a training that we were bringing into the district so Dan um McLoud Jess Bey jarielle um Renee and some of our Tech integration team worked
150together and they presented Tech inclusivity navigating the future of learning with tools for diverse minds and I know that Vian talked a little bit about that but it was well received um and then we were able to in the afternoon give all of our almost all of our staff were either doing curriculum reviews or or they were doing um curriculum work on stage one two or three depending on where they are so those are the highlights and I thought it was a really positive day overall and we look at the feedback to plan for next [Music] time great Keith Mr V waiting to be called upon um it's and I do want to just just jump on Susan things for a second there the the it was fun to actually not that I don't see
151them all the time but and meeting with them in a different venue the assistant principles and the ssas and and and doing my short version of of Municipal finance and how you know chapter 7 formula works and how the levy works it just it you know while I had to do the real abbreviated version it's still the there was some conversation there some good questions it it it it is a I think it's been a great idea of hers to do this and um I think it gives them an opportunity to see how the other half lives sometimes so I do think it's good um uh just a couple short things one thing is um yesterday myself Susan and Joanie not yesterday day before yesterday where was it yesterday they're all blending together um we
152we we met with the uh with with leaders not the leaders with leaders of the uh three large um parent groups the PTO um Hef and uh uh CPAC um to talk about uh about donations things have been running a little um unfettered um and so we're we're going to be working on uh putting together a mechanism for them to get us information more regularly so that we can present it to you more regularly and go from there they're basically what they're going to do is present what they want to award um to Susan or I and then we can bring that forward to turn it around quickly for them so it's not to put a a a roadblock in the way it's more of just to make sure that we're meeting the the the
153requirements of both um your policy which actually follows law now so unfortunately we did have to rewrite the policy last uh I think it was January but we have not necessarily gotten that communication out as effectively as we could so we want to make that process more meaningful and easier and it really does come down more of a formality of you accepting those I don't foresee you not accepting but it is under your prview because it relates to the budget so we want to do a better job of getting that to you what kind of requests are grants for they considering that so it really would be almost anything it's it's everything for my this box of pencils to you know Culture Connection you know what I mean it's got we're not going to have
154if a parents send in Kleenex we're not going to have you approve in Kleenex but that's different that's that's not NE a gift that's as opposed to that's like I found exactly which we're not counting on that but no when they make a when there when there's a request from a from a teacher or principal or someone in the schools um in their part of their grand period if they were making an award as small as it is or as large it is um as large it could be um we just need to report that to you um get your get your approval forward um it's going to be literally like three lines um possibly you know we can embed it in in the consent agenda exactly so it's that's envisioned said something will add
155to the agenda for the February 29th meeting and then there we have have do do we have anything at this point not since we met with them this week no we're creating a form we're going to try to streamline it for them so that they can submit it through Google and part of what we were finding is there was some miscommunications around what types of things PTO or um half or CPAC should be providing right because we are we should be providing curricular things they they're providing more enrichment opportunities or unique situations but we also want to make sure that Equity is happening so making sure that we're not just kind of throwing something out there that then creates an inequity for other classes so having some discussions about that and I think that they're
156still going to be doing most of what doing just it's just it was it was a real it was actually good discussion um in the afternoon Tuesday afternoon it was Tuesday um on you know in general about all the fundraising needs that are out there right now and the amount of hole that's happening to parents on it so again we just want to be able to partner with them on this they're very you know very valuable organizations for us providing resources and and truthfully you know having their ear to the ground on a lot of issues that we don't and I think what what they were hearing too that they're feeling bad because they have to say no cuz they're getting so many requests and then we're able to help them say well that probably
157shouldn't be coming to you anyhow so that can let it off their plate and focus on the things that they can do because they're getting tapped quite a bit and then they're feeling bad if they can't be they curriculum requests I think there was some miscommunication and um recently member that was a misunderstanding that we were putting a freeze on materials so somehow that got translated up and people were asking for things that should be curricular wise um purchase at the building level we didn't have a freeze but there was a misunderstanding we were talking about not having any purchases that can wait to we further along the budget process but not things that we need right now we are not putting any kind of stop on is it an opportunity to communicate again about
158the fact that they're about what you can ask for and that there isn't an across the board freeze that's out said that out to principal and then principal sends something out to the staff as well I don't think we haven't heard anything since that one um time and then that's when PTO and I think CPAC reached out directly and then we were able to just support them with that so I don't think this I think it's all straightened out I haven't heard of them want but the request the PTO came with was this week though right they haven't given us any new yeah right we we know nothing they wanted we wanted to have a talk with them so that they they could move forward and not have this pressure on them and how we
159can support each other so that's what came to a good meaning of the minds with that and make it a little more efficient to get that information up to you but they can give under $50 a year to each teacher right or is a gift yes that's a gift to the teacher not to the schools correct if they give a gift to the school not a gift well they give a gift to the schools regardless of what it is um it has to go through the school committee with the understanding also that the gift they're giving is to the schools not to the teacher correct you know we've had that issue over time way back when with you know things like computers or or um you know video cameras we've had issues with literary teachers
160thinking when they left you and they got to walk out with them so and the other piece too I mean we talked about technology because that's been and this is not just Hollis and this happened everywhere of gone when people were trying to get creative and getting more technology into the student hands sometimes people will reach out to a group like a PTO can I get this in my classroom and it's not that we're unwilling to accept that it's more about then it falls on the responsibility of the tech department to manage that so we have to make sure it's compatible that it meets all our you know compliance things so it doesn't always help us to get those it has to kind of go through the tech department and and be streamline that way
161so that we're not adding devices and gadgets that don't fit um our needs and then who's going to fix them when they break because they're not our property anymore they they become our property but we didn't buy them so it gets tricky and just to you would said you're concerned because maybe one or two teachers may ask for something for Equity purposes and not it's not available to everyone is this though an opportunity with that type of funding to run things on a trial basis right if one or two teachers has a great idea and asks for something let them pilot it especially if it's through a PTO Grant and then they can always come back and we can we can p a good example of something that they've been asked for is to purchase
162the clickers for Behavior like you know that when you walk by a student there a clicking device that they can make a click and it just kind of snaps the child to attention it's nothing invasive but it's a little system that helps with behavior management in classes to keep kids on task apparently they received a lot of request for that if that's something that is a if that's something that's becoming a true need I know um they use that for other training do on the student side I'm not I don't understand so some when I when I was a classroom teacher we had token systems like the students might have a few tokens on their desk and if it was a student that had impulsivity let's say and would speak out a turn they might
163get three tokens and then they had to learn that they had to budget those tokens so it was just a system to help them be mindful of um that they they had to really think about decisions they were making this is a similar thing if a child is distracted something they might just it's a little I I don't have one this is what PTO is telling us and I've heard of them before and it just makes us like clicking noise so that the student kind of um might Focus back in it's a very quiet non invasive tool but point point being a number of teachers were asking for that so if that is a tool that is useful that many teachers want then maybe we should be knowing that so that we could then figure
164out if it's something that the special Department should be buying or somebody else the other thing was that I think they were just reinforcing that they have to go through their building principal you know they have to do that in order to go to the process for the PTO like they can't just usurp that so that was just kind of re educating around that so but just to to be clear though on on the spending we don't have spending free but we are sort of tightening things up a little bit so we're not just spending everything right what does that mean though Pur just for people to understand what that I me I mean what it truthfully means is that if it's not something that you don't need now whether that be curricular or a
165box of paper um we want you just to pause just for us to be able to again kind of gather our acorns because again at some point we we know the budget next budget year is going to be challenging we know that upfront and we want to make sure that we're making smart purchases as we go out for the you know last four or five months of this school year before we get into the next one that's all and we're having issues this year we're snug this year yeah so I mean but just to be clear if a if a science teacher let's say has a lab planned as part of their curriculum that should go through and they should be able to purchase those those supplies we do not want teachers purchase that out
166of their own Pockets we know that happens already and which isn't the purpose of it I mean I mean I I don't want to make it sound like we just purchase things Willy and Nelly but we're taking an extra level of scrutiny now is what's happening okay and and and you're confident now that that the the correct message and and the correct things are getting approved and if so if a teacher takes it up through the chain in the building and they think it's y an incorrect decision I'm getting I'm getting more I'm getting more explanations as as purchas conc through so okay but there also can appeal to to central office if they think that I was just wondering if if they think it it's been incorrectly sort of interpreted if the if the
167principal doesn't support a procurement it ends there but if principal had a question they'll they'll bring the question up before they would say no like correct are you okay with us purching I'm saying I I I'm getting more questions and more explanations you know I'm more rationale behind each procurement now okay which makes sense okay good and then also that that's the short one by the way but apparently that didn't happen um we've had a number of I don't know if anybody's driven by we've had a number of vehicles here um doing work um we lost our um we lost our walk-in freezer um in the cafeteria uh we jumped on it quickly we've had a portable freezer outside um for about a week now um on an emergency procurement basis we got the company
168that Services it normally to come in and replace a whole bunch of stuff um it's going to going to be supported by the lunch program financially for that repair but that being said if you happen to see a truck there um the the the project on the auditorium walls of of screwing the gck to the cinder block has commenced um they expect it to be this week weather seems like it's going to be okay and and cooperate so they've made good progress it's going to be I shouldn't say this week be this week into next week but it's they seem like they're on schedule so far this week they've made good progress um the four trees were taken down um I didn't go anywhere near there just in case A tree came near me I
169didn't want to be involved with that so and those are the the trees that the high school track so those four the dead trees yes yeah vertically challenged trees well now they certainly exactly more there stumps now do we have an update on the the out forbid for actually fixing the auditor exor that's coming in gosh was it this Friday or next Friday D this Friday or next Friday okay James and I met yesterday I think I could remember something from yesterday but it's not going to happen right now um I think it's next Friday though which is why I don't think he said tomorrow and then the review of that when do we think we would be able we turn it around right away okay we're actually hopeful that the the the we with
170the person who's tying the two walls together told us that he was going to bid on it um his equipment would be here so it' be a much quicker turnaround so if he's if he's the successful better it' be wonderful to stop the rain in that hallway in those classrooms before the it sure would okay um okay is that have you concluded two things y okay wonderful shorter was longer longer was shorter moving on to reports from the subcommittees communication uh we don't have a Manda tonight uh policy I'm guessing discussed I I don't have a meeting scheduled yet I will budget and budget we' hit a lot of it y we uh Keith just went over the update on the the auditorium wall and the trees that have been removed um facilities usage rentals
171I think we have this on the agenda a little further down so I'm not going to jump into that and we will have another budget meeting before um the February 29th next school committee meeting at least one what's that at least one at least one yes but we're still working on dates okay superintendent evaluation you have a lot of update on that so uh we were supposed to meet on Monday uh but due to a technical glitch we had to cancel the meeting because the zoom um password went out wrong to the public so unfortunately at the last moment we had to cancel it but we could make some good use of it because we ended up I ended up meeting with Susan so anyway um now we have we met today at 6:30 to
172go over the final goals and uh like we now have the document to present so can someone pull it up please so that we can share with the committee and then we should probably give uh Sarah and Don a few minutes to yes read it if they want so I was thinking we can pull it up and we can read all together no sure we can go through it um I know yeah I mean I think all of you should have it but it's in there yeah but I don't know if it it is the updated one right it's in the folder it's under revised it's under R so yeah so just go through you might want to think about um this one says there's two that say revised yeah there two that say yeah
173that's why yeah which one um I'm not sure which one is one yellow I took the yellow it says two6 26 24 2 they're both the same they're both I they got to be the same okay go to the uh Susan why don't you go to that expand and promote line you will know which one is the current one because that should that should be the one put there is that yeah it looks like it's linked twice like I'm seeing exactly the same thing it's not moving and did you as a subcommittee vote on me yes we did [Music] mhm yeah [Music] for [Music] there's a couple little typos but that's because we were cutting and Pie and and moving things around a little bit Yeah the see the [Music] typ [Music] there [Music] is
174[Music] sorry [Music] you did we not put in that uh middle school and high school thing we didn't because we felt that it was not this year like next year okay [Music] okay May and you've done a tremendous amount of work on this so um of collaborative work on it meetings and I I understand the product of all of that but where it says under number three utilize recommendations from the equity audit Equity audit steering committee me ask and Community feedback to improve teaching and learning for students would you consider also adding in curriculum review committees and I know in some ways it's touched upon it by by putting up on the top on the top um working with the assistant superintendent principal curriculum coordinators and staff to establish benchmarks but would you consider including
175um curriculum Review Committee under that utilized recommendation which is the 24681 Down Under steps in Arch [Music] 3 yes just add in um curriculum review process so curriculum Review Committee I feel like they make they make recommendations right I just want to make sure they feel like their voice is part of um improving teaching and learning for students right yes mostly they're going to recommend resources but yes that would come up to Capital thank you [Music] sure [Music] for [Music] let me know when people are done okay you good any other comments or should we uh okay I will then entertain a motion to approve and adopt the revised 2023 2024 uh Summit of year goals for uh superintendent Dr CCO move by Cynthia second all in favor all right that carries five to nothing
176oh thank you yes thank you all right um High School on Old business and High School auditorium rental well it's bundled into C do you want to put that as one I mean do you want to which do you want to do first let's do it all and then if you have like an update on the specific sort of all is all right so go right ahead um you can click on either a or C um the uh um as we were working as I was working through all these issues with potentially renting to the auditorium I did a much deeper dive on all facil on all facilities within the three school districts that I chose that were the most um comparable to ours and um of course I can't even click on the right
177thing um so I looked at Ashland Medway and hopon just because they're the most similar to our communities the facilities are the most similar um and noticed something which was not um which I when I thought about and and did more research on I realize yeah it has been 15 years since we looked at this so um we haven't raised our rates in was 14 years actually but um so there was a great disparity basically our market rate for what we were paying and then when you dig a little deeper and think harder about it we're paying just under $30 an hour for coverage um you know we're barely covering that in some of our rentals so um basically I put together a new rental schedule so on page two my assumptions are on page
178one of the memo on page two of the memo um I I I grade out the the basically what the proposals are um and uh so if you can see in the second section I'm going to get up just cuz I just want to sze identify what I'm I'm talking about so in this section right here which is basically mostly Youth Sports um uh you can see that we're charging $30 an hour for a gym on weekends when $30 is what I'm paying for my help to come in so at that point we're we're not covering cost of electricity of wear and tear Etc so um and again the rates in this scenario were actually higher um I lowered them down a little just because again to make a more significant jump this quickly would
179obviously negatively impact those organizations um you know it' be obviously for next year too they've already had their rentals for this year um so the the what I want to do in the first section again this is I've actually run this through budget subcommittee just so you know that um what I want to do in this first section here is just add an entry just so that if we right now there was nothing stating that if we brought in staff on a weekend if one of the organizations that fit in that top section they would literally be getting free free rental with free coverage and the the the appropriation shouldn't be absorbing costs it shouldn't be a negative to the to the school district for some using our building so if they come in when
180there is nothing else going on in the building um so no they're the only party in there I'm going to have to I want to be able to charge them the cost for um you know for the staff to come in um the second group you can see the difference in rates it's a slight increase in most of the are well slight increase all the areas are increased mostly was slight increase and then I want to remove the computer lab just because we don't really have computer labs per se anymore I mean we do have a couple but they're very specified and they're not ones we would want to rent out um and everybody has a computer this was put in place when people were actually coming in and either teaching lessons doing things and
181in a more it just it's not appropriate any longer it's just it's not the market um this third category is want to eliminate the whole category because there's virtually no groups that ever qualify for it so it's it's a category we may use once a year it's just again to simplify the the schedule itself and then the fourth category is where the biggest jump is and in some cases 100% jump just because we were so far res skew from the market and it's one of the reasons truthfully created issues with us trying to rent out because it's we're going to be going through all these hoops and and bending over backwards and it's not necessarily benefiting uh the district so um what I'm looking for tonight is we to approve on this revised schedule um
182again that that it's gone through and and was vetted uh through the budget subcommittee and I received unanimous support from them on this so I just have one question yep so when you say uh classroom fire hallway yep so uh typically fires or hallways are not charged yes they are so not hallways yes they are which hallways are charged they hallway out the hallway outside of the Fieldhouse we have people who have rented that the field house oh so when you say hallway where what it's not it's not it's not the hallway to walk through as if you were setting up stand there and renting that space yeah that's that's what I thought because it's very confusing setting up tables in a lar because I mean if you if you go go to the bathroom
183you would have to cross the hallway that's correct all right I just wanted to make sure yeah no you can't go out there yeah you can't go out there no bathrooms can I ask a question so you were talking about um building capacity for these uh nonprofit groups that use does that mean that you potentially have like a step increase of because you were saying it was so out of line that you didn't want to like they've already planned their budgets for the next year so are you planning this as a step to get where you want to be or is this yes yes I I would expect I would expect that we would look at this again possibly as early again as next year for another $5 or $2 or something like that this
184is not a One-Stop move and we're just going to have to get used to a more frequent review of these right okay so and another question is the custodial coverage just $29.75 per hour are you suggesting to increase that or keep it there that's by contract that's by contract because that that is charged almost double by almost all districts mhm I'm I'm aware that that people many districts not to say most but many districts have their um they they have custodial staff that's on staff for them that makes tyly they make time and a half or double depending on the contracts for weekend work um we don't have that we have we have contractor cleaners that again we have a negotiated rate with them for coverage I see so you know that it's um I
185don't want to necessarily make money on that or that's why I'm proposing to do um I mean and if you guys say go higher I'll go higher I you know when I was putting this together it took me a little while to get comfortable with the numbers I was putting in because in some cases it was such a big jump that being said you know if if and the other reason I don't necessarily want to raise raise a custodial rate is because sometimes we have multiple groups in with one custodian right and so I can't I if I start putting a higher rate I'm almost going to feel either obligated to not have multiple groups in or to try to divide up that custodial rate right so it's it's kind of like for the custodial
186add-on for weekend coverages I I almost treat it like like a blended rate kind of so if if you know as opposed to charging 45 bucks an hour instead of 30 um you know you say that on average if we have two events if we have one event excuse me it's like we have one and a half people renting it type of thing MH I'm doing quick math in my head okay at 9:00 at night 9:34 have my glasses on move to accept the fee schedule for use of facilities as presented by Mr bu this evening second all in favor or is there any all in favor I um 4 five sorry 5 Z I was like who what oh no we lost another one you are messing up the numbers I mess up the
187numbers more than I'll admit um okay and then what about the high school a ring update there um this would be the schedule she's been informed that we were going to uh discuss the schedule tonight and I'll be we'll be we'll be working on the math okay perfect um so moving on to the school calendar 2024 2025 can I just say we're 35 minutes behind we're missing two members can we minimize the vote on this yeah no I well I think there's a lot of work going on in some of the details because of just where things lay but but I do think that it's important that we set the the first date can we vote the end date at the 14th no aspirational we we can preliminarily set the end date to be the
18818th of of of June and we can revisit and we can revisit it um but you can always revote too I mean that's what nobody even commented on my dream proposal well that's because I would be the deliberation via email which is uh to the no nobody even responded back like thanks sin checking it out nothing I checked it out it's not Facebook where you just like you know I wasn't looking for you do anything with um reaching out to families at the moment we're going to just no I thought we we I think we still want to have something okay I wasn't sure given but I think importantly I think it's also teachers May first or not teachers Staff first so you would like me to still seek feedback seek feedback on on the
189February break and and and and we put it back on on February 29th but it least supposed to look hot that it couldn't even just so to be on here so people could look at right now there's all this ether like the Facebook says this that's not what it saids we don't want made any different decisions no we haven't I just wanted somebody to look I wanted folks to look at then they will and now survey they will fine um but I think but but as people plan their their Summers uh I think it's important that we at least set the first day of of school for students um and what's that date the the August 27th and the uh you know preliminary final 180th day or June 18 June 18th by da Sarah all
190in favor I carries five nothing five even raise my no I'm voting okay sorry I apologize yes you're good okay five nothing just give me a second December break 24 is pretty impressive it's very long yeah this this year was really short you kind we kind of make up for it but yeah it's it's yeah because it's like thday Friday and it's hard because we'd be you know opening up for first off it's like one we can have we can have a conversation about that but it is have a follow up if you we going but but it is I just would worry about people not showing because I that it's it's it's a tricky it is tricky okay moving on to new business there is no uh newsletter uh so let's talk about the
191the letters to our EXA can we do the SOI first please why just because cu I want add so we can just check it off well we'll get there um so look as if anyone's still watching at home or they're going to watch the replay um obviously we got the Chapter 70 numbers from the state they were pretty uh uh rough at that .9% about $80,000 um you know that's lower than what we have been uh receiving um and it's also significantly lower than prop two and a half and so that's quite disappointing and I just so I put together some some letters to send to our our state representative uh James AR D Roa our state senator Karen Spa as well as the governor um this is the governor's budget by the way that
192is 0 n basically advocating that you know to try to put it out there that that's uh you know pretty low and that we we we would like a a reasonable number um I don't think that um our state representatives and our state representative and our Senator you know have done a lot for us this is not sort of pointed at at them but it is more of a just a fact that they should know the numbers they should should understand you know what we're growing at what um the town has been able to to provide for us and how the state is just not matching and it's putting more and more of of a burden on our residents and and yes you know hollon does have a high residential tax base and therefore the
193burden is even more than some other communities um but that should almost be something that is factored in and and we should you know maybe put be part of the calculation or more so part of the calculation so um I if anyone has any um changes they'd like to suggest or if we just want to vote on it it's up to I I wanted to say I wanted to thank you for the work you put into it I I appreciate the um information here like that um Chapter 70 has only grown at a 2.2% annual rate over the past two decades and at a 2.3% annual rate in the past 10 years this has resulted in a greater burden placed upon our residents as these increases are below even proposition 2 and a half I
194think it's important and it's also something we've done in the past I I really appreciate that we're doing this early on as we as we go into the budget season and we have and we're aware of um deficiencies and I know we did something similar last year on March 2nd we had voted on a resolution ution um supporting an increase in special ed circuit breaker funding um and so I don't think it's I I don't find this to be something that we haven't done in the past and I appreciate the work into this and I I like that it's targeted too in terms of going right to the representatives I know that often we'll kind of CopyCat resolutions done by other school committees um like the one we did last year on the um circuit
195breaker funding and in that one we had um talked about how that it was insufficient reimbursement it's undermining our ability of hon and other districts across the state to provide for all students so I I do appreciate this and and the language in it yeah I just think sometimes you know people will put together a budget and they'll have numbers in there and they won't necessarily know understand the impact or sort of what it represents as far as a percentage of bases or you know percentage of the town's you know spending or what so it's it's good to just sort of you know sort of educate almost the our Representatives as well I would almost prefer that it be put in a format more of a resolution because this one comes off as a little
196bit more accusatory than it is about the state of I think it's important for us to explain the state of where we are in Holliston and the impacts that it had but I also am very cognizant of the support that we have gotten from our representatives and that we will continue to request from them so I just think wording I just I don't I don't necessarily support some of the wording around it so I may the governor one was a little more pointed but this one is more like hey can can you help us the governor's budget was was awful you know like throw help us for people to understand in terms of the chapter 78 kind of roughly what what's the decrease what do you mean um we see the 78 is up .9%
197right great which is below the 2.3% that has in the last 10 years i' also point out that I went back looked and our enrollment is only down 1.9% total over the past 10 years or about 2% a year so if you're say well you numbers are also our enrollment is down that really you know it maybe you'd add a little bit to sort of you know perform them but it's it's not going to get us to the 3.2% of the town has been contributing uh to to the school's budget and it's you know not going to be meeting inflation but I think real also just having real numbers are a little more impactful for them to understand that percentages are significant but understanding what that means in real dollars I think is I don't
198know $80,000 I mean would so you just used a lot of percentages throughout the entire document without saying this represents a a million dollars deficit whatever you didn't actually say that part so I mean defit I'm just like a decrease a decrease in a significant amount yes so your suggestion is to add the decreased dollar amount to it yes to dollar amounts and I like I said I think that this these kind of letters do better in a more resolution standpoint from the coming from a school committee so I'm torn on it Cynthia I hear what you're saying but I also think it's important to stake our position and be specific about it and be specific to people who can actually affect change and what I I feel like in I mean how many of
199these resolutions have we voted on that are somewhat more they're more generic we'll often cop you know we're doing a similar resolution to other school committees um so there's power and numbers that way but at the same time specific to our numbers in terms of what how the actual impact is to our district right but even the fact that masc was putting together a prop two and a half you know teach and learn because many districts had asked for it and we're in this type of precarious budget situation there could be resolutions in the future we might even start one but I think it's important enough and different from what I've seen in budget seasons in the past few years that I'd like like to put out a targeted letter to people who can actually
200impact change not just a generic resolution about it and hope that other committees are doing the same because of the timing too I think the timing is important we've got to get the word out and have these conversations um you know I'm open to maybe instead of deep disappointment disappointment but we I I am I'm disappointed that the numbers are going to um but also the disappointment is in the governor's budget it's not what their representatives have done our representative hasn't done anything yet they haven't so we're just getting trying to get ahead of the curve and say Hey you know this is this is a tough number I mean if you if you want another number what I can say is if if the uh state had grown Chapter 70 at the same rate
201the town has grown our appropriation we'd have $800,000 more of Chapter 70 today over 10 years I would like something specific like that in maybe we need to do a little more work on this get this out if you want to make some suggestions and I can yeah this one like know I think the letters to Jame like you know representative James and um Senator spilka is different from Governors for the first paragraph because in this right yeah you yeah if I click on spoke it says Governor but um in your proposed budget yeah I must have say I must have saved those uh that's I those oh you know what I I I uh I saved that down before I change Senator is basically the same as James's as representative won't get a positive
202response no I'll make sure Senator Spas is is is almost exactly the same I basically just change the the one word which is house to Senate you know yeah so yeah you bed the yeah yeah say well I'm not prepared to vote for it in its current state as a comp and and and I don't think it's good practice for the school committee to vote for things every time the first time they see something it's just not I'm worried though cyia if we drag this out three what is dragging it out it's just the next meeting because they need to act now if anything's going to change they are happening and they'll happening all the way through June 30 I sent this out to the committee on Monday specifically because I knew you were going
203to have an objection to a short you know reading cycle you've you've had three days you I I did read it and I actually gave you and I gave you my feedback on it as well and so so you are feel free to to to vote against and I just said that so I was saying I'm not comfortable voting or I will vote no that's fine but I don't want my letter attach my name attached to it because I'm not voting for it I'm voting no I feel strongly on budget that I'd like to do something now to help to help with this situation as we're you know we're running out of time right so I want to get something out to the representatives I could see a compromised position being agreeing to the letters
204to both representatives and then working on a resolution um regarding you know more specific to the governor um and having that prepared by the 29th and at the same time consider reaching out to other school committees so they could join on a resolution as well but I think it's very important for us to be reaching out to our state reps we could hold the Govern I mean it's not going to do I mean that that's the least impactful one okay anyway so I'm going to move um um I'm going to make a motion that we approve the letters to James darina and Karen spela but the spela has to be is so as amended to it's going to be the same email uh as as going to to repa re Roa just with Senate in
205it so is there a second I second okay any more debate all in favor all opposed that carries 4 to one um just record it is going to go out from the committee because it is an action of the committee so your name will be on the the letterhead but um you you stand in the record and we'll be in the the minutes as as opposing it um does anyone want a spearhead writing the resolution and reaching out to or or finding out if there's a similar resolution out there no okay um I I can do it or you can do it what we talk about it in budget we can ask see if the Manda wants to try for part Communications yeah okay not to volunteer her for it but also volunteering her for
206it um okay great see where's my agenda okay now now we're going to go on to the hollon high school so SOI uh vote um and then sort of followed right there by the acceler roof repair vote which I think is also in the language is called an so SOI write or something but it this one I access yeah it's block now but I could access it earlier today want um I can still get to it yeah you're [Music] all I think it's just the the resolution the header uh is the the old header is it in Google Drive but not Linked In the agenda just when I clicked on it I I know I looked at this before but I think I looked at and now it's up I just took the old one
207all right [Music] um I want to vote on this now today and then uh you know send it to the uh to the select board for their vote but I would also like to just put it on the agenda for the 29th again just to see if we have seven of us here just so we we can sort of hopefully get a get a 70 vote I don't want to slow the process up but obviously it would be uh ideal if we had all members um voting but I mean with uh everything going on and illnesses and stuff that may not be possible for many months to orever but uh um so having convened in an open meeting on on we have to change a lot of the L here like yeah can do we
208have editing [Music] yeah dated when's the date I haven't done it yet so all right so you just want us to sort of what what what do you need from us tonight then to to solidify this and get it moving if you can read the um resolution in the priority areas okay and then um April 14th was I think it was April 15th it was due last year but my goal would be to get it out sooner than later I just don't know for sure what date we'll get them do we have to say that it's dated yeah actually I think you do they want to see in they want to see in the minutes um that this was voted that's why they're so that's why they're so specific in their language what date should
209we put in there are we reting the spefic well you know what if you want to wait until after the February 29th you can put like March 1st or something no we can do the February 29th no the select board was asking for us to have this in February okay but then voted for it that's not I mean I no I know but like we have other stuff coming on the Pike that we have to deal with the only issue is the select board's not meeting next week they're not meeting next week they have a meeting on Saturday Joy yes all day they're I'm on their agenda for for the uh why they to that too oh and that's March 1st so I can't they're making people come in on a Saturday are you doing
210February 19th February 26 26 February 19th President's Day yes and at point I have to get on the agenda meeting that week they're off that whole next week they're meeting this Saturday and that's the next the next meeting not meeting at all correct and the meeting no it's not this Saturday it's next Saturday it's 17th no this Saturday they're meeting the 10th oh they move they're meeting the 10th they're not meeting then off they're taking that whole next week off meeting after uh vacation that's February 26 so can I date this February 26th is that what we're doing no you they have their own separate vote you make a vote they make a vote our date is you want the second date today hold on I'm trying to find out just put in today's date
211no no you have to you have to put date your the date that the form oh submitting it yes and I haven't April 1 yeah D I would I would pick a date in April just to be safe what they want it sooner no okay the submission is not the issue it's the submission date is the issue okay so it has to be by can we say it has to be dated or does it have to be Sav form I would have to date it whatever date you give me okay whatever date you well if we know it's getting voted on by the select board on February 26th and we're convening again on February 29th why can't we say March 15th or March 14th okay it doesn't matter what day long as it's in before
212April whatever is 12th 14th 17th whatever the hell is Pi Day all right yeah March 14th or we do the Ides pie hi sounds good okay Mr K's birthday yeah okay right so uh we just you want me to read it quickly so resolved having convenient an open meeting on February 8th 2024 prior to thei submission closing date the school committee of the town of hollon in accordance with the charter bylaws and an ordinances have voted to authorize the superintendent of schools to submit to the mass School building authority the statement of Interest form dated March 14th 2024 for hollison High School located at 370 holl 370 holl Street hollon Mass 01746 which describes and explains the following deficiencies and priority categories for which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts school building authority
213in the future prior priority area number one building jeopardizes student health poor health and learning environment priority area number four prevention of severe overcrowding expected to result from increased enrollment priority five replacement renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs Windows boilers Heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related costs in school facilities priority area 7 replacement or of or or addition to obsolete buildings in order to provide a full range of programs consistent with State and approved local requirements and hereby further specifically acknowledges that by submitting this statement of Interest form the massachus school billing Authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from the massachusett school billing Authority or commit or commits
214the town of Holliston to filing an application for funding with the massachusett school building authority so does someone move that uh move by Cynthia second by Don so if we change the warning to say that we expect them to we that they have to accept it does that mean you can say whatever you want but that's what the trash is for all in favor I that carries five to nothing um I just want to say that um as for our last meeting I did reach out to Senator Senator President spilka's office um um uh to ask for another letter in in favor of our SOI and I heard back from her District director um Susan Nell um within like an hour of emailing her and then she was able to provide us with a with
215a letter um however there was no date on it and I didn't see that until this morning so she's just revamping it and then she'll have that sent out to us but it'll be here obviously in time for our submission but she was very enthusiastic and you know wants to help us to move forward with this process so my my thanks to Senate President spilka's office for um jumping on this for us I really appreciate it thank you I will I'll upload that one yes yeah great so we're we're going forward let's let's keep going so onto the uh School roof um Rapid Repair program this is also technically going to look be called an SOI submission but just to be clear we are not asking for a a new uh Middle School uh Keith
216you decided to go forward with just one building rather than I spoke I spoke with msba directly um and they while they said we could one of their criteria the woman told me one of their criteria is and I actually one of their criteria is the age of the roof MH and I said well we do have documentation St one move is is you know better than the other and they said well age is one of our criteria so I took that to mean that if we put in both they may go to the wrong building um as well as I asked her specifically um because you apply by school not by building so um I asked her would you do I have to do two applications then because it's two schools in one building
217or said we can't be the only place that has two you know just I say she's never run across that so she was looking that up and I haven't heard back on that yet but at this point um the town wouldn't be funding the whole shebang anyway and she fully expects this to be a very robust period since they took last year off they have so they have like two years worth of inventory to move through so I'm not saying she says you can apply both if you want and I just there was not a heavy endorsement I'm not I'm not trying to talk you out of it it's like I yes you are but so so that was that piece um just for a little other other information the vote will be in October
218of 24 for this so again it's it's not this I don't know if this something that well this will be a budget subcommittee discussion as well whether we want to put forward a number for for for spring town meeting or fall town meeting for this the only we'd have 90 days after the um after we would get accepted into this to uh uh to set aside money or to get a vote from the town for doing a um for doing a schematic design for this so that's the window you have to so you know this is this is like two 2 years out anyway you know well no we would we could just we could put we could have money set aside the fall town meeting for schematic designer for the whole kitten Kaboodle I
219mean we don't have to access not know and if we don't know we we just return the money back to the town anyway or we put in I mean this is a further discussion on whether we want to wait from we may not get accepted anyway so do is this something we want to wait from msba or do we want to keep careening forward on our own we'll start asking the teachers to send them all those pictures that won't help okay uh does anyone uh have questions or concerns about voting for this now for the Robert Adams Middle School does it is it going to cause problems for our no I asked that question they're on two separate tracks so all the accelerator pair ones go in one bucket all the core program ones go
220in another um you know and it's they're just separate tracks do they tell you about how many they have backed up in the last two years but they don't because they didn't accept any last year so they don't know but how many appli to they didn't apply they were allowed to so we're all going to be we're going to be in the same category as everyone even the on might have applied and our and our roof is probably not as old as others just in all honesty just you know again our roof has only been eligible for the last four years now so okay all right so years we need to read this too yes work are we submitting how many different places leak like like as part of the application are we able to
221leaks are leaks are Dynamic I know leaks are Dynamic but they they have in multile places that we can we will be adding reports that we have um have already done to the process so and some of the reports are actually very helpful with regards I have to give like information on square footage of the roof and I you know materials things like that there's a whole bunch of details that I have to put into this um into their form um to submit this so it's so lots of specificity like leaking in 16 different places no there's no specificity on that the roof is no different that the application for the roof is no different than Windows then no different than boilers okay can you email out the the submission before you submit it to
222the I know we won't be able to meet on it because we're not meeting to the no we might because it's getting submitted February 29th right right so we don't mean until February 29th so but I still pass it out budget okay budget yeah we can talk about a budget okay so resolved having convened in an open meeting on February 8th 2024 prior to the SOI submission closing date the school committee of the town of hollison in accordance with its Charter bylaws and ordinances has voted to authorized the superintendent to submit to the massachusett school bilding Authority the statement of Interest formed dated February 29th 2024 for the Robert H Adams Middle School located at 323 Woodland Street hollison Mass 01746 which describes and explains the following efficiencies and priority categories for which the application
223may be submitted for the massachusett school building authority in the future priority area number five replacement renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs Windows boilers Heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related cost in a school facility specifically restoration of the Robert H Adams Middle School roof and hereby further specifically acknowledges that by submitting the statement of Interest form the mass School building authority in no way guarant the acceptance or the approval of an application the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from the massachusett school building authority or commits the town of Holliston to fulfilling uh an application for funding with the Massachusetts school billing Authority move by Cynthia thank you second second all those in favor I um that carries five to nothing all
224right the last item on our agenda is um The Outdoor Learning Alliance has a proposal for some Courtyard work and while uh we probably might need a little bit more conversation about the the larger picture right now what they want is a um essentially a vote to accept the donation of pruning work and the money from them to do the pruning work um from from Simpkins uh to uh uh prun some there's like there's two different pieces so is blocking the school's name in the front of the building and then some stump grinding there and then pruning and maintenance um it's an email in your folder yeah I have and the reason this is coming before you tonight too this part of it is that um they're hoping to do this work over February vacation
225or on a weekend of February there's additional proposals from them and I know people may have questions about the additional proposals so I think think the probably the most prudent thing would be to go ahead and vote on this piece tonight and then you know we can talk to them and get more information on on the next pieces but yeah the other thing that I just wanted to say was that I know that they had money that they had gotten from arpa for the placentino or I think it was generally Courtyard whatever space Outdoor Learning Alliance space so I'm thinking that there is still some funds that are I know that there are still some funds in that in that U piece um but you I'm happy to vote for the tree removal and new
226trees this I can't even make sense of the the the drawing I'm like where are where are they I don't I followed up with some questions again we weren't even sure where on the proper that's what I'm saying I'm like where is this prop piece of where is this what I would say is hold on that we can at least tell you the TR the tree is in the front and where is happening and the rest of this I think we wait and and decide I was thinking they were meeting like from where the lunchroom is and goes outside that's what I thought they were meaning because if they're talking about the same spot that the parks and wck was doing a whole thing on I ran some of those questions to ground it's not
227the same spot but let's wait on that and I I'm going to do a motion by dawn to approve for the the pruning and pruning and then NE the only thing I would like to say I mean I think that well I think we should approve this and have it go forward make sure it gets done in February we do have a DPW that might be able to do some of this and then save the the PTO money where clearly it seems like they they have have uh a lot of needs from from teachers in town so more coordination on the next well we appreciate the donation yeah you know I'm just I'm just you know just make before we we go and do the work maybe just run run down and see if there's
228anything else that we can get just to but I think that it's very generous it looks like the the uh s IND Street service is going to discount it by about 50% so that is always nice so so motion by Dawn was there a second yes second okay all in favor it carries five it's nothing I know Mr budet isn't a big fan of taking down healthy trees but in this particular case it blocking it was blocking this the front of the sign for R Robert Adam middle school or buy a new one I mean for the cost you spend on taking a tree down you could buy a new one but you know that's fun you would mean rather move the tree no you doesn't want to they're they're Health well you know they're
229healthy trees so we don't really like to take down healthy trees if we we have accepted the donation I just saying we've not approved I mean that's still sort of in your perview as assistant superintendent for and operations I'll accept that so we have approved it if you would like to make it work with the PTO thees to figure out a different way I I am in favor of of looking into that did you make that proposal about moving the sign to them um I spoke with barara this week okay oh and were they receptive to the proposal to move the sign Barbara describes herself as a tree hugger so um so is there an idea that you could prune the tree and move the sign we can I'm certainly we can have a chat
230at we what we can do about with the garage tree to be C these are your buildings your ground so you I mean if you don't want these trees cut down figure figure out something else we've just accepted the gift that that's the best way that that is to go forward well appreciate it okay I I don't you know I was going to say I think that you know yeah I don't know that Mr George would agree I think he wants the trees gone from that spot for whatever reason I I'm not is but you whatever you guys figure out and and Dr Kus I'm sure are capable of of of of figuring it out at 108 some issue and I don't remember what it is anymore but you guys were the gift is accepted
231the work can be done pending at the very least there needs to be pring needs to be pring can I just one second go back to the SOI submission yes did you make who made yeah I made the motion and Dan you second okay CL I confirmed that we get all that all figure out okay so that does bring us to the end of our uh of our regular session our next meeting will be February 29th it is a leap here everyone so just remember that um so pretend like it doesn't exist I I I I will now accept a motion to adjourn from Open Session into executive session uh from which we will not return for the purposes of discussing strategy with respect to Collective bargain in uh if an open meeting may have
232a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and chair the chair so declares and this is related to strategy related to collective bargaining with the hft additionally pursu mgl um 30A 21 A3 to discuss strategy uh with respect to threatened litigation against the district by District employee sorry there thank you so I have a second second on this does require a roll call vote uh Minnie yes uh Sarah yes Cynthia yes Don yes and yes we stand adjourned thank you very much everyone for