School Committee Meeting - 6/1/2023

001good evening everyone we're going to call the meeting to order pursuant to the governor's July 16 2022 act relative to extending certain covid-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law Mass General law section 30A paragraph 20. the Holliston school committee will be using remote participation for this meeting the audio of this meeting is being recorded and will be posted to the town's webpage as soon as possible in accordance with keeping the public information informed of actions during the meeting at this time a roll call attendance vote will be taken Mr Alfred Mrs Fitzgerald Miss naborski Miss Bigelow present is listed present Miss Gupta present and is Miss cautioned here not yet not yet okay so the first item on the agenda will be to determine a new

002chair and vice chair for a point of order we have to waive our policy for it because we're supposed to reorganize after graduation and this is before graduation so we just have to waive that aspect of the policy okay do we have the policy number [Music] EGF bgf okay umorski two-way policy BGR I'm sorry oh I'm sorry citing BG off the waiver policy and to waived the policy where we typically reorder um immediately following graduation and just the reason why is as um Dr sivar was no longer here we would have to vote an intern share um and then at the very next meeting we will have to vote for a chair and vote um for the rest of our reorder so at this time where there's a lot of important things to address it's

003probably important to just move up to where we are so for that purpose do we have the actual policy that talks about where we realize yeah it's on the agenda um so so I'm bringing a motion to um wave the BBA policy requirement that has us uh organizing reorganizing after graduation and and move forward with reorganization today so motion by Dawn second and second Cynthia all those in favor [Music] oh right that's wrong Mr Alfred yes Mr Gerald yes Mr daborski yes Miss Bigelow yes Miss Lucas yes and Miss Gupta yes okay so now we can move on to our reorganization for policy BDA I would like to nominate Don naborski as chair of the school committee for the 2023-24 school year second um I am going to reject that nomination that is not something

004that um you know I guess to to quote Catherine I know what the job entails and I I cannot take that on this year I would be willing um to be Vice and that's something that I had expressed interesting um I also have a strong desire to be on a budget and be chair a budget again and you just know in balance that um so I would also like to make a motion and my motion is to nominate Dan Alfred okay so second yeah second for Mr Alfred any other nominations for chair so we have one nomination on the table so I think it will be time for a roll call vote is Gupta yes Mrs sevnik no Mr Bigelow yes Mr borski yes Miss Fitzgerald yes and do you follow Marvin outfits abstaining okay

005so that is a more or one vote so we are moving forward with Mr Alfred as the chair thank you Mr Alfred Alfred's gonna switch seats and I will refer to Mr Alfred and let them read the rest of the meeting thank you for that sure it's fun so at this time I think we're going to take nominations for vice chair I'd like to nominate Don naborski for vice chair second are there any other anonymous nominee um Cynthia yes Amanda yes uh Sarah yes and Minnie and I'm Dan yes Don yes so moved and my computer restarted so I'm gonna print out the agenda oh there's actually even though okay so now we're moving on to the establishment of subcommittees so we'll start um well we'll just do want to start okay we'll start with

006budget then I'll entertain motions for a chair of the budget I nominate Dawn for tariff budget second any other nominations okay we'll proceed to a roll column mini yes Sarah yes Amanda yes Cynthia yes um yes yes okay congratulations the other members so I I think maybe the ideal thing is just talking about who's interested in these positions and then or do you want to just continue on I think we should avoid chairs first okay so then we'll we'll uh move on to policy I nominate Cynthia the subnet for the policy chair second okay any nominations mini yes Sarah yes Amanda yes Cynthia yes Don yes moving on to superintendent evaluation um I nominate many as chair of superintendent evaluation any other nominations okay uh Don yes Cynthia yes Amanda yes Sarah yes Minnie yes

007Ken yes um on occasions I nominate Amanda as chair of communications second okay any other okay mini yes Sarah yes Amanda yes Cynthia yes Don I'm yes I really wish we were done um as a point of order also we don't just because I listed subcommittees like start times in green doesn't mean we have to we can pause those committees or if there's not enough interest in having a committee we don't have to have the committee so I only see that many is interested in doing start times we don't necessarily have to do that Don listed interest in green we also don't have to or it can be like it meets four times a year or something like that yeah I would say we can pause them we have enough on our plates I think

008this year with negotiations and other things sure um as to Green I I would be in favor of pausing maybe until we at least get through until December January but I feel like I don't know that we've had it going for the last two or three years and I just want to make sure it's something we get back to when we visit so if there's anyone else that's interested in part of this with me I would like to see it next year but we can start off slow I'll do it thank you I would also do it what I'm sorry the green committee we want to continue on I'm going to point into a green committee yes so they don't take a nomination for chair of the green committee I nominate Cynthia do you have

009an interest in that sure okay another nominations okay uh mini yes Sarah yeah Amanda yeah yeah yes John yes I mean yes okay so with that um why don't we start and go back to uh to budget and talk about membership um I would just say that I I think that are we doing this or no oh okay yep sorry my mistake um I was looking on the sheet got the green and so anyway um I nominate many to chair start time but are we sure is do we have sufficient interests for other people to join as well I remain on that committee as well okay I know I'm gonna eat Minnie to church and that gives I would nominate Amanda but um Amanda I would also nominate you could we co-chair at Minnie yeah

010I think that that wouldn't be bad first half I do second half okay I I I've read policy I'm not sure if that's going to be a confined with policy but I I don't have a problem with it so you cannot maybe it's not a subcommittee maybe it's just a um well it is a task force it is currently an established committee but we can not have it be a commit subcommittee and make it a task force so then it can have this two numbers on it does that interest you yes okay so I'll second minion Amanda being on a start times task force awesome awesome thank you yeah sorry technically the result first for the nomination for both of them so I'll nominate I'll do both of them and then you can second it

011okay all right Minnie yes Sarah yes Amanda yes Cynthia yes Don yes I mean yes okay now back to budget um I would like to be on budget and I think you know given uh that amended so so nicely uh stepped agreed to step off budget last year to make way for somebody else that I think that uh she would be a good third member I would be glad to do it I also know Cynthia has experience on budget and I would be happy to defer to her um either way you also tempered last year and the year before didn't you yep but that's okay I think it might be a good idea for you to learn the ropes also what do you think I know it's your choice Amanda bye I'm happy to be

012on it or not be on it uh I too am happy to be on it or not be on it but um I would I am interested in learning about the budget I am a mathematician so um if it's okay with everyone else I'd be glad to join that committee I do not have I think my bad um I I mean you have an interest in being on budget I think you should do it I think it's a natural fit for me well I think after 11 years on a finance committee I think and the fact that you've worked with us on working groups um and then Leah's home to school committee that makes sense I would say it's a lot to be chair and be on budget certainly you've been done multiple times so

013fast so I don't think that that's a uh what's on like to make a motion for the two other members of uh of budget I I put in a motion for I'm a motion for Amanda and Dan to be on the budget team yes sir yes Don yes um yes it's a policy and interest for Amanda and Minnie to join policy can I I just want to Sarah hasn't been on a committee yet so can we I think it's a good place for someone new to start so I would like Sarah to be on that and I would like to defer to that so I would like yeah I would also like Sarah Sarah I think that would be a good thing so I would like to step away um I'm already doing Communications and

014budget so I should step away from policy so would it make sense then for many and Sarah to do policy and and Cynthia are you thinking that the policy meetings would typically be um during the school day yep well there during the afternoons usually and it's monthly at a minimum is there some flexibility to have them in the morning as well as the afternoon sure the inflexibility was for me so if I'm not on it there'll actually be more flexibility but Sarah's that's something I noticed this would be your first time on policy and just in terms of when they would meet it's typically in central office during the school day that's perfect yeah so in that case I'll be happy to be on policy I move that mini and Sarah join Cynthia on policy

015second mini yes Sarah yes Amanda yes Cynthia yes Don yes I mean yes superintendent evaluation and he's currently his chair right is that what we um [Music] I'd like to have Cynthia on board for that okay I know you didn't Express an interest in that but I mean I'd be willing to do it um so just look at the spreadsheet it's me and and Don who have Express injuries with many so well I would have put all of them on there but I didn't want to be expressing interest in every single one but I would do anything and I think with Don and um I actually didn't check it but Don and Dan both of you and channel I'll defer to you on it I've been on it before and I think it would be

016um you know it would could be something I didn't know Minnie has been on it as well as Cynthia it's something you would take on yes I'll step away from it so then we're gonna so you think we would have me and Cynthia with many okay I nominated Dan and Cynthia to join me on superintendent eval okay Minnie yes Sarah yes Amanda yes Cynthia yes John yes yes Communications this was the real popular one so I would love to have Lisa because she's so um experienced on Communications with the newsletter and that if that's you know she's not here but if we think I would be okay with her and go after a second yeah and then whoever else is interested I think so too great I nominate or I move that Lisa and Sarah

017join communication second meaning yes Sarah yes Amanda yes Cynthia yes Don yes I'm yes thank you sorry just trying to get Lisa in but I gave her the wrong Linker um Okay so we've got start times and then forgive me did we feel do we fill up green at the same time or do we we didn't okay so we're good so we're moving on to Liaisons now um so the the PTO Liaisons could easily be a two-person sort of job I know in the past there's been separate the different sort of yeah we usually have a primary and a secondary backup so and PTO was supposed to as Sarah said supposed to be just one that's right for putting both columns here but so it looks like Sarah and I could both do it was

018a junior motion do we need a motion for the Liaisons sure I need I know I move that Sarah and Cynthia be the PTA look PTO Liaisons second okay mini yes Sarah yes Amanda yes Cynthia yes Don yes I mean yes we don't need the emotions anything we can speed things along and not not out of the boats I um SNS safe and supportive schools okay is that still active Dr kaska sorry safe and supportive schools is that still an active um Council not really we haven't really had separate meetings okay and now I was going to suggest I think because we don't have anyone hybrid you can't do uh skip the roll call at least it keeps trying to get the emails now okay maybe we can go through all the Liaisons and then

019yeah much easier so so CPAC I was the only one that expressed interest Lisa typically does like to be on CPAC okay so we can do I'm fine with these Elisa being here we can both be it I don't know you could have a primary secondary sure okay I'll do that you express interests okay hmapa uh Cynthia I can be your backup Cynthia okay uh the first hollison Amanda okay so let's do her is it back up to you um so I will flag that is so the flag field that's oh this is this is actual flag this is a like discussion around the flag Courtyard we've been this one was one that we talked about wanting to put on the docket for this past year or this year um so I feel like that's

020something that we need to Liaison with Dr Jordan on es but it's not necessarily a committee at this point it's more of like I was like going to be a task force or a council or I think it might be more of a task force unless you had a vote because the only time we've done it alone is a task force because somebody felt help me with another word man would be disgustingly and potential right yes um so are we looking for two people I mean sure I'm more the merrier if we wanted to to do we want more than two people once you get to there usually so why don't we start with YouTube and then we can we can informal subcommittee or something I think okay uh Youth and Family Services [Music] okay

021uh and then arpa um I put that down but Cynthia if you want to continue well it's like it's a it's you know we're at the end of the cycle of arpa so I just sort of like was continuing for the last two years so okay that's fine and then you someone added Wellness at the end yeah because that was we do have a wellness Council and we need it meets four times a year I think Amanda you were doing so I don't know that's also something Lisa has expressed she's really willing to bring back in the past yeah if she wants to I just feel like Bob leaving her up she's not here but um why don't we put both on yeah we can do that or if we also could you choose [Music]

022I'm sorry are you taking it and Sarah's the backup or do you want Sarah to take it and you'll be there um Sarah could take it and I can be the backup okay sorry about the computer Lisa would you like to be um the liaison to the wellness Council give me a thumbs up yes she is muted can she do we need to unmute her no it's not her it's my computer is muted I'm sorry I'm soft all right the only one I I thought that we didn't have which I thought could be interesting it wouldn't be a traditional um thing for the schools but I think given some of the things happening in the community would be on liaison to the EDC since the school's um have the largest budget in town I nominant

023Dan I was going to volunteer um do you want more than one I'll be your backup sure okay Okay so [Music] I'm sorry Amanda with the backups of Lisa and Sarah okay and um CPAC we have um Lisa put your baby back up for Dan Dan yeah all right so we are not doing the safe and support no there is no separate so I'll take a motion to approve as discussed all the Liaisons move by Amanda second by Dawn okay we'll take a roll call Mini yes Sarah yes Amanda yes Cynthia yes Don yes Lisa yes I'm gonna take that as a yes and I'm a yes I'm glad we can get you in there and Lisa at the end um okay so sorry that took so long everyone but uh yeah okay um [Music]

024[Applause] okay so uh we'll move on to the consent agenda so all items are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussions of these items unless a member of the committee so requests in which event the items will be considered in normal in its normal sequence on the agenda so the only thing I'd like to say about this is that while we don't have Keith here today I do oh it's on Zoom okay he's on here in person so I just want to sort of at some point revisit the um procedure for how we approve the warrants that's my only sort of comment that I'd like to make I'm not going to he's visible right now okay yeah hi Keith hi Dan um the municipal modernization

025act um actually allows for a single signer for the bill warrants um and we took advantage of that then had that was before Colvin Penn Cove had kicked in completely enforce that piece so it's it's something that again we've taken advantage of and the chair signs both the um the payroll warrant and the bill warrant as a single signer for the committee and then reports out that the way that it's done matches law precisely so oh I'm not I'm not at all uh continuing that we're not following law I'm just saying that uh I just like once I once I see the horns for the first time I'd like to just consider uh whether we also distribute them to the whole committee or not uh before we go to them the um it could be

026a lot of heavy lifting just being honest with you the next time you come in to sign the warrants you'll see how many there are and you know you may change your mind okay and I think you're open to that right because I'm not admitted I just don't understand the process a little bit better right as much as we would have liked the finance committee never sign warrants [Music] um so um do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda goodbye Amanda second by Dawn okay Minnie yes Sarah Amanda yes Cynthia yes Don yes I'm yes Lisa is also a yes can we not discuss the executive session minutes it's part of the consent agenda but I feel like we should be explaining that uh well that let's sleep a little late but um

027transparency sake I feel like we should okay meaning we have our May 18th regular session minutes and our May 22nd um regular session minutes and then in addition to that we have our executive sessions I just um do you want to add something in about it and the dates well I just think that we should be explaining that we're approving we've approved them an executive session and we're releasing those minutes right and so and the reason why is if it occurs in the executive session but it's a matter that's still ongoing then we don't release them don't but to the extent of session those are no longer ongoing we are going to be releasing so that should have included all of the actual dates of the executive session minutes let's back up but we can

028get it in there do you happen to have that in front of you I do not okay I'm looking I expected there was going to be a link that was added that I thought that I just printed it out but I'm seeing that there is no link that shows them I can go into the drive and find it I don't know if anything had to be redacted because I don't have a no it's each they should have just each been separate and we should be able to stay there so I have pulled it up do you want it do you have the dates uh June 16th August 25th 2022 September 15 2022 October 27 2022 November 17 2022 December 15 2022 January 5th 2023 January 13 2023 January 19 2023. can we double check that

029because I think are some of those regular session minutes and not executive no this is yeah exclusively executive session because these are this is on a separate document I can share it with you if you want can can we hold off on it I just okay so so I'll take a motion now to reconsider uh accepting and improving the consent agenda moved by Cynthia second by John so I'd like to remove the executive session minutes from sorry no no we just have to we have to tell everybody vote in the reconsideration um and we're now we can actually so so since Lisa's dropped off we're gonna we'll go to sort of a traditional meeting to just people in the room so all in favor of reconsideration okay or sorry yeah reconsideration I should know that

030so I would like to move that we removed the executive session minutes from the consent agenda because we don't have the details available okay does anyone have any um second so we'll take it okay all right so we'll take a motion to remove the executive session minutes from the consent agenda to approve the amended consent agenda move by Dawn seconded all in favor unanimous passes okay so we are now uh seven minutes ahead of schedule but we still have a very uh lengthy um being ahead of us I'm very excited about the the list of presenters that we have in front of us uh I'm excited to hear from them I would just ask that we do have quite a lengthy um meeting tonight and and some stuff afterwards that we need to handle so

031um and I want to make sure we leave time for questions so as you present if you could try to you know hit the highlights and then we can go from there but uh so if the the French Exchange program at least Avenger can come forward that'll be great yeah and if you guys don't mind since we have some folks on Zoom tonight I'm just going to move my computer so the zoom you want to see you guys we'll just start by introducing ourselves that's our parent of Sarah Buckley who is a junior hi everyone I'm Lisa eppinger I'm a 22-year resident of Holliston I have three kids in the Holliston School specifically the French immersion program grades 11 8 and 5. um so I'm here with Regina Savage I have five children my last

032one is Ethan and he participated in the French Exchange program that I'm here to enthusiastically beg you to keep it going um and I've lived here for 20 I think 25 years and I'm excited to be here yeah so I'll I'll start by saying um we think the French immersion program is a wonderful academic and cultural enrichment program for our kids and we think that it's a source of Pride for us in Holliston it's just a it's a differentiation for our schools versus any other town in the area and we we brought some voices because I didn't want you to just hear from one parent or a couple of parents but the students as well about their experience with this Exchange program this year and we want to express our gratitude really for for approving

033the program and for all of the efforts put in by the school administration specifically Mr proten as we know it was an overwhelming amount of work on his behalf to get this thing over the hurdle line to be approved so just in the next couple minutes we've got four students and maybe a few additional parent comments that we thought it was important for you to hear and our hope is to leave you with three takeaways um first we think the program was fantastic all around so hopefully you come away with that as well um it created a positive cultural experience that augmented the French immersion program for our students but not only for the students but the families who were hosting I think it was also for the school the student body who interacted with

034the French students who came here and really the Holliston Community overall the second thing we want you to come away with is the overwhelming feedback that we've received that there's a strong desire for the program to continue and we hope that you feel that from the comments that you're about to hear and finally we want to signal that we are willing to support the continuation of the program So based on our feedback we did multiple surveys for both the parents and the students and so we feel like we could put a Playbook together to make this program even stronger in future years and we would be willing to have many volunteers step forward to help make this make this program even better and cement it into our community and so that is what we're willing

035to do but we also recognize how much work it was on Mr toten's part and a volunteer basis to do this and so we're looking for you to Signal your support for the program going forward by establishing a stipend for this for this effort so with that I want to turn it over to the students so you can hear from them directly about what their experience was yeah so I'm going to talk a little bit about like the language part of the French exchange trip because we were there for a month so I felt that like overall my language proficiency was something that strongly developed throughout the month and it like like it never has before in my entire life in the French immersion program because the immersive experience was overall like very helpful with

036developing vocabulary and speaking more fluently so I felt that it's something that you can't really be taught in school it can only be really learned through an immersive experience that you can have as a French student who was able to speak French with Native French speakers so yeah I thought that was very helpful to me in my studies in French now and will be helpful to me in the future next year when I do AP French yeah and also the overall like cultural experience that not only myself but everybody else experience being able to open our eyes to and to different cultures in the like different ways that people around the world live it was truly an incredible experience not only because we were able to experience such we were able to broaden our Horizons

037in such a way we were also able to make basically friends for life I know I'm still in contact with my exchange student and I know that a lot of other people are still in contact with their exchange students and even some friends that we made in France and you were able to develop connections even with some of the other Americans that came that went along because we all had a shared culture experience that really like strengthened our idea of the world so um I'm in a bit of a unique position with in terms of going to France because I did used to live there but one thing that I had noticed was as great as the immersion program is especially for learning the basis of French and how to write in French the speaking

038aspect the a French person is just so more so much more advanced and I had lost so much of my native like French ability so going to France really really helped me re-elevate just as Taylor had said it it helped sort of restart my French and it it's something that as she said can't be taught and even now I find myself catching myself out I can't say that that's not French properly and also I think it this is also somewhat specific but for any student that would be considering an international option for University or College uh this really helped me I become I'm pretty convinced I would rather go overseas just for the culture as well and I really think it was very beneficial all around for both my French and just my life in

039the future yeah and like for me I think this is like one of the most impactful experiences I've ever had and like them I learned so much more by going to France than I ever did in a classroom um and like I'm probably gonna talk like right about this for my college essay and I'm really excited to like continue learning French at an even greater level like uh when I go to college especially somebody interested in like International Affairs this is really an eye-opening experience to be able to like live in another country at such a young age like I it was amazing it was best four weeks of my life I absolutely loves exploring the whole Grenoble area and going to school in a different school system it was really kind of interesting to

040see the differences between Holliston schools and French schools and uh yeah it's four weeks that I will never forget I agree it was an amazing experience and that was I think everybody absolutely yeah like all 20 people who won yeah anything at least to me was I I thought that travel would be terrible I thought it would be really really hard I thought that going through all the airports and stuff like some of us took two flights to get there then a three-hour drive and all these different things it was really really easy it was smooth and the travel once you were in France uh France has an amazing train System bus system public transport system in general that made it great for students to get around I experienced a type of in Independence I

041never had before especially as a younger student who has not been able to drive it was really it was great yeah I feel like something that isn't really experienced all around is like getting to be exposed to all that all like new types of information and new culture and new ideas that is really really beneficial to have as a young student as a young person so that it can help you grow in the future as a as an individual overall and it's something that really can't be traded for something learned in school it's definitely something you need from experience and to have that experience is very very great yeah I think we would definitely recommend this program to everybody and we really hope it continues in the future yeah thanks guys thank you I can't

042top this as the parents except to say that my son just had so much growth I heard someone mention growth like he was in France and had to buy his own ticket to get to Lyon which is two hours away because in France you're just treated as more like an adult and he had to you know navigate Grenoble but at one particular time he had to buy his ticket to Lyon got to Leon and there was a protest and as my daughter Kira who's been there several times said you haven't been in France until you experience so he just dealt with it and all by himself wasn't calling me frantic it was just he figured out that he had to get a bus ticket and that's what he did um yeah just it was just

043an incredible experience not just from his growth in Independence and self-responsibility and opening his world view but also from what he reported to me at home about how the other students who are not in the French immersion how they were impacted in fact our student became good friends with a person who was not involved in the French immersion um I think that I know that the students themselves here at Halston High School were so excited and so receptive from Ethan's reporting um and also the teachers um our student got very close to one of the teachers a few of them but one in particular and he gave him a gift at the end I would say the larger Community my student got a library card I forgot to mention this at our meeting the other

044night and he was going every day to the library and interacting with the staff there and I know that they were thrilled to have that experience with him in fact Chris at the Superette boarded baguettes so like the whole Community was involved it wasn't just the French immersion children and I'll just finish off by saying that um you know our mission is to encourage Global perspectives in the world languages and we had a book club where we had our students and the parents in France with our fathers it was in mothers it was an incredible experience to be communicating like that like in Holliston little Holliston like having that kind of enriching um just just there was so much to learn from each other and and talk about and discuss the books so I'd like

045to just finish with like I just so hope I hope so much that we can continue um because I know and just a little aside Mr Snyder was at one of our potlucks and he was very interested in having the French students come and visit now that didn't happen this time around but I feel like that is something that could happen in the future that if we do this again this French students can go to the lower grades and encourage their French as well thank you thank you that's great thank you um before we uh continue to Dr Casco would like to I would love to dispel some rumors that I keep hearing and some people reached out to me directly today first of all I'm a huge proponent of bilingual education I wish my

046own children had the opportunity to travel but I did have multiple students come to stay at my house over the years from Taiwan and Japan and it was an amazing experience of my children we're still friends with some of them today I'm often frustrated that the United States does not have everyone do bilingual education because in other countries it's just a natural expectation that they speak a second language or sometimes a third language and we don't have that encouragement in the United States unfortunately however at no time have I ever said that I'm not or that I'm looking at any way to get rid of French immersion or Montessori which is what I'm hearing these are fabulous programs and we're we're such unique offerings to Holliston it makes us such a wonderful Innovative place I

047just want to personally say that that has never been in my mindset these are Community offerings that are wonderful to have so that rumor should be dispelled at least from My Level I had never heard the rumor I've been getting it come to me so I just want to reassure people on that and then um as far as the French Exchange program my understanding right now we had a larger number this year because we haven't had that opportunity in a long time we had about 22 students I believe we believe because of the um we had a larger number this year there'll be a smaller next year so I'm actually working with Miss bottomly and Miss Archibald right now we think we might be able to offer it as an every other year option just

048because it's going to be a smaller number but that would allow students to still have that opportunity while they're in high school so we have a plan in mind it will not involve a stipend position it will allow someone some time in their schedule to have the opportunity to do this work I don't want to share it all yet because we're still working on the details but I want you to know that we've been working avidly behind the scenes to make sure that this program moves forward and continues that's wonderful glad to hear that cool great thank you for uh for discussing that and spilling those rumors so great job anything else any questions comments I have one I just wondered if you have can share this survey in terms of yeah right yes I'm

049particularly curious about how you manage the two-week vacation period when our students were over there because I wanted I just wonder how that worked I think it worked well for some kids but I'm not sure about for everybody so I just keep curious to hear about that timing we distributed two parent surveys and one student survey and we'd be happy to share that we've had responses from everybody sure have a majority yeah um and then we also have a fair amount of feedback from again the students and parents on how they handled both the two-way vacation over there and uh the difference in the middle school schedules too it was it was very it went very well I'd say it's like that two-week thing I was a little nervous myself but they explored Grenoble and

050my son actually got to go to Italy with the family the first week which was an amazing opportunity too and then the second week was just explore Grenoble which the kids probably can't say enough about it and we have a number of suggestions so that when the next group is ready we a number of the parents have already offered to you know offer information sessions or whatever the information to get them prepared um there are certainly things that could be done next time that I think would make the experience even better for the students that'd be fantastic thank you I'll probably have a contact for you soon that you can work with them that would be great yeah congratulations [Applause] moving along to uh project 351 the library audit thanks Alex Sally do you want

051to give them a little a reminder about what the project 351 program is uncomfortable with that thank you um is a non-profit organization do you want to sit down I actually have a little introduction and then I think she's gonna subscribe it um good evening my name is Kelly McDaniel and I am the library media specialist at Houston High and Robert Adams Middle School tonight I can't wait for you to hear from Sally about the project she helped spearhead at ramps this is something with the support of the administration at both Robert Adams and Holliston High that it has been in discussion for some time with Sally's passion input and effort behind this project which she will explain shortly along with some of the wonderful other wonderful things she's accomplished as the project 351 Ambassador

052we finally have started a library the library diversity audit at Rams because of her help we are on our way to improving our library collection to ensure that it continues to reflect our District's Vision as well as continue to build an inclusive School community the hope is to carry on these efforts next year and also begin a similar project at the high school [Music] in the state of Massachusetts where one 8th grader from every school in the 351 towns in districts of Massachusetts is nominated by their teachers guidance counselors and principal I think to represent their town at it's hard to explain so I was chosen very thankfully and I'm very grateful about it and this year so far we have gathered at in Boston to meet for the first time and we spent three

053and a half hours at a non-profit organization called cradles to cram where we sorted donations for the winter for children and adults in need and that was a very humbling experience just to see how much people cared and how much effort is put in to make people's lives better so another thing that is worked on in Project 51 is every Ambassador is what we're called does a spring service project and this is normally a clothing drive for cradles to crayons but because I've been in the halls and School System since grade three I've seen that drives don't really take off very well and Miss McDaniels approached me with the idea to do a diversity audit in the library and I was I dreamed at the idea and it's been okay so far um people don't

054understand the task as much as we were hoping they would but there's definitely I think there's as of today there was like over 230 responses and how it works is we go through all the fiction books in our library we put them in a box and we send them out to each homeroom and they will take a book the students and they will read the back cover the inside jacket skim through it maybe look it up on Goodreads or Amazon and fill out a form and all the responses go into this spreadsheet that we will use to help take some books out and to get new books so we can make sure that our library is up to date and has information on all current events and policies um I think Sally's being quite modest

055about her um input on this project so in order to get this off the ground we had to get the whole staff on board we had to get the students on board and in order to do that Sally spoke to the faculty um which is not an easy task so she spoke to the entire faculty about this idea she spent time in the library filling boxes of books for 31 home rooms we scheduled we created a schedule I'm sorry a spreadsheet with all the books that each homeroom is getting so we are tracking that she also created the form that the students are using to input the information she also created email blasts she's been continuously um making morning announcements the project on with progress on the project so there is no way this would

056have been kicked off without her help and although it has maybe in her eyes been a slow start it's actually going quite well with the help with her help we're gonna get at least over 500 books um by the end of the year through this audit which may seem small to her but it's really an amazing thing that she's helping with and I definitely couldn't have done it without her that's it thank you thank you so it suggested to me to uh that would move up the Celtics Playbook as it has some tangential is that uh connected connected to the line so are you guys okay with moving it up or would you like to I'll try to be louder I'm Sarah cune I'm the technology integration specialist here at the high school and I

057am so pleased to present you with two amazing students Cala gum and Danielle portal who were selected um from a team of Educators in the high school and administration to represent Holliston High School in a trial which we were accepted in there were only six schools accepted throughout the county for the Celtics Playbook so I'm going to let you guys so um like Sally we are a part of project 351 and because of covid and not as many people were chosen as eighth graders so they wanted to give us the opportunity as well to be a part of this wonderful program so they created the Celtics Playbook where um when we signed up we really did not know what we were getting into we just knew that it matched our values and it would be

058a way to help improve our community and they call us in a better place um we attended our first workshop at the Celtics training facility where we learned that we would be um training and hosting workshops with 37th and 8th graders 90 minutes long where we would talk about discrimination race gender equality and how to better improve our community and the like hate throughout Massachusetts um after that Workshop we attended multiple Zoom trainings that were multi-hour where we learned how to best facilitate these hard conversations um and how to be the best support system for these kids and we were we were pretty nervous going into the workshops as we were not Educators we're like we don't have that background but um it was a really great bonding experience with these kids um and so

059going off with Keller said the workshop we did two workshops with the around the same group of kids both times um and so we they gave us like a schedule that we could follow and we mostly followed it for the most part um one of the activities they really enjoyed I Sally was actually there um but it was a great agreed disagreement sure which is where we stated like some something that had to do with race or um ethnicity or just like orientation within people and so they would kind of just go to a section whether they agreed disagreed or were just unsure with the statement and they were very good at um respecting each other's opinions and just listening to each other without interrupting and just seeing what everyone had to say even if

060they didn't necessarily agree with what they were saying um and so we kind of just did those two workshops it was very eye-opening for both Kayla and I because we created a bond with these kids throughout just these two non-unitive workshops and I know we both still keep in touch with some of them and I know they appreciated what we had to offer and I know we appreciate what they had to offer and teach us and show us how much of an impact we could make just on them and those small amount of times and I know we both would love to like continue to do this and make sure it's still something that continues next year and even after we graduate next year get that through a club next year maybe with the eighth

061graders who will be ninth graders or having more workshops or meetings something along the lines to just keep this going um I I would just like to say it was truly amazing um watching these two young women teach for 90 minutes and they did have training but it went off like a veteran educator there was no downtime it was consistent like all the children were engaged and it was just amazing to be a fly on the wall and watch that amazingness happen um we did want to shout out to Michaela Campbell who was a house and graduate who led us in the beginning workshop at the Celtics Arena then the first shot you can see the girls decided to use technology and then they said for the second one we just want a bigger space

062in this stage where we can really get a more intimate feel so it was like really awesome to see them doing adjustments to practice like veteran Educators and I told them they should be really careful because you have a definite career path ahead of you but the students really responded well and it was really interesting to see the bonds that were made in such a short time but really awesome leaders and I just I guess thank you Miss q and I actually applied for the district for this opportunity and I was concerned with only six districts getting this opportunity I do think Michaela helped us on being an ambassador and also working now for project 351 am I grateful to her but you stepped right up to the plate and have done a wonderful job

063supporting Danielle and collar and I've had the opportunity to sit in on some of your offerings with the students and I just I saw you grow throughout the year so thank you for your work and I would love to do anything I can to support it to continue next thanks actually just one quick little update you wanted to give oh sorry yes so um I also am the coordinator for the computer science endorsement program at the high school and um this is my second year in the position and last year we did have four graduates which was really exciting and this year I'm so pleased to announce we have 12 graduates we have a really diverse group um and I'm so very pleased with all of them um they are all receiving well they actually

064already received this certificate and it was just amazing to watch the program grow and hopefully even next year I will have more and more diverse and larger groups of students under the guidance of Miss boddenly who I think is over there she urged me to apply for a position with a program called Pace two that's run with collaboration of MIT and Holliston was accepted into the program so they will have more training to faculty members will be joining me throughout the next two years Mr Levesque and Miss Taylor Who's the guidance leader and we are really excited they will have grants available training available to make sure that our program is diverse and Equitable so we're really looking forward to that thank you thank you [Applause] that's great um so moving on to see the

065uh the DECA program update hi so my name is Dayanara Castro I'm a senior here at Holliston High School and I joined Deca earlier this year and this was my first year competing my only regret is that I am a senior or else I would do Deca for the next three years if I could um and I know a lot of our seniors feel the same way and mostly because we learned so much from the experience we were able to learn not skills only that we can use in business but in our everyday lives and skills that we will take with us as we go on to college such as interpersonal and communication skills we got to learn how to collaborate with others my event was with my partner Libby so we kind of learned

066how to divide and conquer you know I did the things that I was good at the things that she was good at during our competition and in the areas that we struggled we would come together and collaborate and try to work it through together and I think an interesting part of deca is that you learn even when you're not in the competition for example when we went to Orlando I learned how to budget I learned how to organize trust me rooming with three other girls you need to know how to organize or you're going to be like swallowed Alive by all the stuff you have um and we got to meet so many new people and just learn how to communicate with them even though they came from all over the country and I think

067a misconception with tecca is that you need to know a lot about business in order to be part of it and that's not true the only business class that I had taken prior is intro to business and I feel like a lot of my learning came from the actual competition we got to the way that it was set up was first in our case we did regionals then States then the international competition and we got to learn through our mistakes because we had judges guiding us through all of it saying what we did good what we did bad so we got to adjust accordingly to our errors and do better next time and it really lets you like think on the spot because once you're there all that matters is what's in your head it

068doesn't matter where you come from doesn't matter what you've really learned previously it's what you can do in the moment and how you can take your personal skills and succeed using that and I think that's very helpful especially for my life and like my next steps going to college and I know last year I did not know what I wanted to do what I wanted to major in anything like that and my category was marketing and now I'm going to be majoring in advertising and public relations and my partner Libby she's going to be majoring in Communications so we're stealing a little piece of Deco with us for our College Journey as well and another thing that I liked was meeting so many new people I mean at the international competition there were 20 000

069people there so it was a lot and we kind of really just saw how everyone had different experiences different backgrounds but we all came together to do something that we were passionate about and really enough I think with Decca overall teaches you is how to relax and live in the moment you might be saying well how do you do that it's a competition you know stress is high things like that but it teaches you that nothing really matters except what you do in the moment and if you do bad it's okay there's always the next competition I know there were competitions where me and my partner felt more or less confident in and we always said well we'll approach it differently next time and things like that and I mean I love Deca it should

070show you how much I love Deca considering I'm wearing their jacket in 90 degrees weather you know dying over here but I really just want to say thank you to miss playing Miss cune Miss Hale and anyone else who supported us throughout our Journeys and just let us have this amazing experience because I don't think there's anything else like Holliston High School like this that prepares you not only for what you want to do in the future but just lets you travel and meet other people who want to succeed in similar aspects as yourself so thank you for anyone who supported us who helped us with fundraising anything like that thank you so much and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them thank you very much [Applause] hey um sorry so oh

071looks like a report from the student Representatives okay nice to see you as well so I'm excited to introduce our student representatives to the school committee for next year we're trying a new model by ending the seniors back back in May and now bringing the the new Representatives on board heading you know this in the spring so they'll be able to participate right when the school year starts so we have for next year we have um three incredibly Dynamic young people that are very politically active that want to be a part of decision making and and are looking for an expanded role here as the student Representatives on school committee so um you've met Sarah Buckley already from the French program um Saki kalkani and Aditya Gupta um Aditya is also involved in several of

072the state committees for student advisory and he's going to continue that through through next year and um you know it's just gonna I think it's going to be an exciting year for what they want to bring to the table you know hopefully Maybe by next meeting the June 15th meeting we might know who uh the new advisor is going to be to replace me um but for now this is I guess my my last act as student advisory representative it's been great to be able to present kids over it's been about 15 years that I've been doing this and to be able to present fantastic kids every year to serve on the school committee and to help to be a part of of the the school community so um you're going to be very very

073very happy um with the three Representatives that we have going forward for next year and and with that they have some announcements to make about what's going on in Paulson High School of course um so so some things going on uh we have in-school graduation for seniors this Friday um and corresponding academic Awards will be given tomorrow um we will have a senior class trip going on uh we have formal graduation this Sunday the senior step up day for current Juniors is on June 5th and um our robotics Club is going through its uh Battle Cry competition advisory Council has elected its new Regional Representatives there's two sophomores Ramya vimpati and Caroline Harris prom was May 19th at Granite Links Country Club in Quincy the freshman class is doing a calendar raffle throughout the month

074of June abandoned chorus concert has is happening this Friday uh class elections are coming up and art saves lives was a week or two weeks ago and they were able to fundraise and um but are out into the community oh yeah the art saves live part is like all the stuff you see in the hallway so it's really fun to have that up in our floor right now other things um that are happening students have created an anti-hate Council um with the director of racial Justice initiatives and the Middlesex District Attorney's Office uh the next meeting is and for that is June 8th um all spring Sports have done really well and they have qualified for their state tournaments baseball won the tbls for the first time in 32 years and softball won tbls for

075the second year in a row and I'll take a Shameless plug that the girls tennis team made the tournament for the second year in a row unfortunately our season ended today just wanted to say thank you and welcome we appreciate your time we appreciate you coming to talk to us and we look forward to hearing from you next year and I also wanted to say thank you so much Mr Bernstein for all of your years bringing students here and everything you've done in Houston High School thank you thank you they'll still see him around a little bit I think a little bit and definitely reach out if you have any ideas or anything like that so thank you very much we'll be in touch great you feel the school year ends thank you okay um

076we went around moving right along to excuse me individual individual comments I have a few things um I just wanted to do a shout out to Mr grinna at the Rams for the course concert that took place last week yeah um he's been as many of you know he's been doing double duty as the band and Chorus at the Rams this past year and he's been doing a phenomenal job and I really appreciate all his efforts so I'm hoping that he will not have to continue to do double duty in the next year as he searched for replacement for our forest Sports teacher I also wanted to say happy pride month this is June 1st and um I also wanted to just give a quick shout out to the Halston Education Foundation I went to

077the scholarship award last night and the community gave our students a hundred and seventy thousand dollars worth of scholarships last night and it's an incredible support that we have in our community and I just wanted to thank them for that support and our students I'm sure are very grateful and so am I so thank you for that um briefly I wanted to um thank Rams for again having the 8th grade community service day that was last Friday and I guess this evening we've got a lot going on at Miller they had the grade five open house and variety show I know a couple of you tried to shoot over there before this evening's meeting and then the Miller Band concert is coming up next week on Tuesday June 6th the Pops concert is coming up

078on Friday June 9th right there at the football field seven to nine with a rain date of Saturday and then finally not to be forgotten but our Montessori open house and I just I wanted to clarify I thought it was the seventh but the district calendar says the 14th do we know if it's the seventh or the 14th there we have two events going on okay the Montessori Multicultural night which is something that has been going on for many years and it's great that we're finally back in person with all of that because it's a great night but we we do have something new this year which is a separate Multicultural night that is not specific to Montessori I think at this point we've got 12 or 15 countries represented and this is something where

079families from different countries are coming and they will have a table with cultural and information and you know food and stuff like that they won't be serving food but they'll be talking about food and music I think there's a drum performance that it should be a really neat night it's a new new thing organized by family in town and the PT is kind of helping spread the work but it's really um kind of a Grassroots or Affair so it should be really exciting so yeah because there's two separate nights I will also put a plug in there there is um there was the Pre-K kindergarten Carnival today which is one of the sweetest events one of my favorite things so they had a nice day for that little warm but I think that's always fun

080and it gets um a lot of it's a nice way for lots of volunteers to kind of see their kids in action which is great um and then we have enough a number of different field days coming up over the next couple weeks for the Elementary grades so lots of good stuff coming in all right and I just want to add that um to piggyback that I did go to the fifth grade open house tonight and it was amazing so shout out to all the work that the kids did and the teachers and Mr Khan to put that on it was wonderful and then as I was leaving Miller to come here I drove through town and the pride flag has been raised at the Town Hall so um thank you to diverse Halston who

081put on that celebration and um it's a great night for Allison I I attended that it was actually it was a great a little bit Yeah so um anyone else so uh before we go out I just want to make a few comments and I meant to actually do it earlier but uh we were things were getting busy but I wanted to um you know thank you all for for entrusting this this position uh me with this position um you know I want to also thank Ken for never relinquishing the chair of the finance committee um so but uh but anyway um it's really important you know one of the things if you read Robert's Rules of Order it says that the the chair is the the servant and sorry the service of the assembly

082not his master so you know we this is a collaborative effort we all need to work together to to sort of help move this District forward um uh you know I want to thank uh Dr Savard for so aptly you know leading the committee over the last year and she did a phenomenal job and um we all sort of look to the way that she led the committee is definitely a guide for me I'm certainly going to be a different chair but um you know I think she just did a fabulous job so that's a yeah sorry are you done well no but if you talked I just wanted to make sure that I bought it yeah okay um next one I'd like to to address the teachers paraprofessionals and other members of The District

083staff um you know I'm only going to speak for myself right now obviously I want to assure everyone that uh that you were being heard and that I recognize that there are many areas and issues that we need to work on and I'd like to do that together while the community is currently considering a lot of next steps I want to reiterate that we're not going to ignore your certainly I'm not going to um we but going forward we need to find ways to lower the temperature we need to work together to get through the issues and get to the other side because at the end of the day what we're trying to do here is we're trying to educate our kids right like this is that's that's the main goal and I know we're

084all here because we care about the kids and I think we all need to remember that everyone is here to care about the kids this is not everyone is on the same page as far as that could we may disagree on how we get there but we all have good intentions at heart so let's go forward thinking that you know positive intentions of everyone who is participating in this entire process we have an incredible group of teachers and staff in the district they care so much about educating our students we also have extremely dedicated group of building and central office administrators that also care about educating our students and helping educate our students um so again as I said well we're not going to always see eye to eye we need to go on from

085here ensuring that we always treat each other with Grace understanding and respect that we all deserve we have a tough road ahead many incredibly important decisions are going to need to be made over the next year and going out forward from there and I wanted to be able to do that collaboratively my door email inboxes is always open if you have issues please reach out the school committee only has so much of a role but I'm always happy to make sure that to connect you to the right person I'm sure most of the other members of the school committee would be willing to do the same as well finally to the parents and other community members the same is true for you if you have issues please reach out to us or certainly to meet

086against female and myself um you know this is uh this is a really incredibly important time in our district and I want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to move the district forward in a positive and successful path so thank you and how many years I just want to take this opportunity to welcome Jan and Sarah to the committee it's your first meeting and um I hope that all of us can actually work through the incredibly difficult times that we have coming out of covert and going into normal routine it's been difficult for everyone everywhere and I think a lot of the issues that we face today is probably directly relevant to what we have already faced um I also want to welcome our new chair Dan and Don and looking forward

087to work with you guys great thank you anybody else okay so next up we are going to move on to public comment we have two people who are registered for public Commons and so we'll go through versus Puja if you could uh just uh state your name address I'm not going to put an official time limit on this because we only have two but but emotions our timer is 15 minutes per hour for the policy I know thanks my name is Puja Paul I'm a resident of Holliston past six years now I have a third grade student in French immersion program um so yeah um Sorry my address is 105 Overlook Drive Hollister that being said um I'm here to you know just to share my thoughts here today we relocated to Holliston attracted by

088the renowned French immersion program despite not being a french-speaking family we believed that exposing our child to a bilingual curriculum would provide additional development benefits to prepare we enrolled our daughter in a Montessori preschool that included French in its curriculum although we had to enjoy the arduous Lottery process we were fortunate to secure the enrollment in the French immersion program for our daughter however our current concern stems from the recent changes that have been implemented specifically we have become aware that K-12 curriculum for unified Arts Fine Arts and French immersion have been combined under the supervision of a single individual will they continue to receive the same level of rigor and the device range of subjects additionally we are troubled by the news of de-leveling of the curriculum in the areas of Science and Math

089at the middle school level this decision has prompted us to contemplate the potential consequences it may have on our children's future educational opportunities and career prospects coming from a background where educational Equity was unheard of we took it upon ourselves to educate about the concept and benefit it offers while we genuinely appreciate and wholeheartedly support the core principles of equity in education we believe that utilizing Equity as a means to reduce education levels is an overreach that hampers our children's potential we have unwavering confidence in the intelligence of our Holliston students to excel academically and embark on fulfilling professional careers however the restriction on Advanced science and math courses during Middle School prevents them from exploring various educational Avenues we currently stand on the brink of the next technological Revolution and the next few decades

090will be defined by a Proficiency in these fields by D leveling Advanced maths and science curriculum we hinder our children from developing the aptitude necessary for advanced placement admin and admission into reputable universities this is our foremost concern we're not even granting them the opportunity to attempt Advanced coursework and then decide if they can handle the academic record the question arises how can we collectively provide our children with all available tools by upholding the principles of equity we believe it is possible to strike a balance that allows for equal educational opportunities while still providing avenues for academic exploration and advancement it is crucial to find innovative solutions that ensure all students have access to Quality Education Without impeding the progress of those who are Academy inclined we urge the community to come together and seek

091ways to implement policies that promote Equity while also catering to the diverse needs and aspirations of our students by fostering an environment that encourages intellectual growth and supports individual development we can prepare our children for success in an increasingly competitive and Technology driven world it is through this collaborative effort that we can equip our children with the necessary skills and knowledge to shape their Futures and contribute meaningfully to society second is Nicole it was so comfortable last time I wanted to come back again thank you for having me back um all right so it's twofold so hello and thank you for welcoming back um I'm Nicole Dickinson my family and I have resided at 1102 Highland Street since 2003. we have three children a son who is attending ninth grade at school choice in Ashland

092a daughter in seventh grade and the son in second grade I am here this evening to introduce HPS raise a group that formed a little over a week ago as a means of uniting Houston people who share a feeling of care curiosity and concern over the state of our school district we are comprised of Holliston residents and business owners parents Guardians and students as our name suggests we seek to be the common point from which light streams across and throughout our school district to be that objective entity who Rises to support our school committee Administration teachers and staff all in the vested interests in doing best by our students our world's future Generations our mission is grounded by our belief in a whole partnership to accomplish extraordinary outcomes in equity for all across HPS we

093are an action-based group who are invested in our schools it's people in our community as a whole we maintain and uphold that our characters everything to Our Success inclusive intelligent confident communicative supportive positive non-judgmental caring candid honest transparent encouraging open-minded forward-leaning Innovative respectful ethical focused steadfast resourceful and most of all factual we are focused on supporting again students teachers staff and administration and youth the school committee we provide knowledge sharing and a backing from a group of like-minded invested people since its Facebook group formation on May 21st 2023 HPS raise is 356 members and growing strong and we have hosted two 90-minute Zoom meetings where all are welcome to attend to listen share and discuss items of concern thoughts on how to offer Collective support and any other items that can lead us all to

094actively contribute to HPS and we've had some of you attend so you're aware we believe we have identified a gap where our contributions and partnership with all can help us return to the progressive highly regarded District we once maintained we know our commitment will not come without an investment of our time minds and hearts but we all feel that all of you in front of us tonight and within the doors of our buildings are worth our efforts it is our hope that you will welcome us and allow us the honor to link arms with you and move forward in a positive production productive Direction from all of us at HPS raise thank you and China on 01746 so it much echoes what you were saying Dan yeah and it really did come from a place

095of good of like a lot of people just were kind of saying the same things I had an experience and then we met as a group and we said it's time to formalize there's a lot of like onesie twosies this one that one I'm sure your inboxes reflect that but we're all kind of saying the same thing so why not alleviate some of the pressure in your inboxes us come together we can have you know small groups that break off that can then kind of address certain things that are of interest to the group and hopefully it just makes it a little bit more palatable for people to get involved I know I've been hold out of getting involved because it's just overwhelming with everything else we have going on but we can't just sit

096back it's just I think we all just need to again come together so hopefully you'll see us as that middle point between it all and you can reach out to us for barometer checks about what the community might be saying so we can brainstorm different ways and happy to talk further but just wanted to make sure that we introduced ourselves tonight I know um you know normally we don't comment it but I'll just simply say I don't want to get into a discussion about this but having involved parents isn't is critical I know that there's always shortages of people volunteering for PTO events being people coming into the classrooms to help with with the teachers you know just so the more the more parents caregivers you know that we have involved the better one of

097the things that you did put in your letter is some sort of community forum and I know that I think that there's been discussions of that Band-Aid about I think that's a a great idea um I don't know if it's going to be possible before the end of the year it's quite busy as you've heard so but it's certainly something that I think we should we should strive to do to get everyone onto the same page so thank you and that's part two sorry oh dude okay part two to my ACT here no uh we're going to have someone else read it and so I got back to my session so can I do is it okay if I duly comment I want to read them are you going to read the whole letter or

098do you want to just read I'm going to read it for recording purposes okay do you would you it's up to you what's your preference um you just want to hit the highlights that we can sort you know entered into the record I think that would probably be best too yeah just so the Highlight is a letter was drafted it's posted on our Facebook page you can ask access it there at HPS raise um and as a result of posting that letter we posted it with Google form to get signatures of support um and again that was also helpful to you hopefully to gauge kind of interest and support on the nature of this letter um and so there are 79 signees as of um 645 this evening when I when it was printed so

099we have that as well the signees across Holliston and the support of what that letter has documented do you have a means of also posting a letter for those watching on tonight that may not be members of our group I would simply just say that if those who are interested in the letters Facebook group I don't think that we're going to be able to post letters like that on the hvs website but um yeah that's a problem I feel like if if ever if you're going to open up to comment if someone else wants to take it to read it um I'm going to take two minutes to go ahead and read it okay um so dear members of the Holliston school committee we the undersigned residents of Holliston write today to express our Collective

100concern over the state of the house and public schools a review of the hsc's evaluation of superintendent Dr Susan kuska coupled with the published hft vote of no confidence by our house and Educators and Dr Costa find that our district is in an environment that is not conducive to learning for our children we implore the house and school committee to act to improve the educational experience for all of our children and Educators the Holliston school committee by its own enumeration of its powers and duties takes a broad view of its functions and has all power comfort upon it by State law the Massachusetts Department of Education identifies the school board as one that must be responsive to the community it serves HPS raise is an action-based community group of Holliston residence parents and Guardians who

101are invested in our schools we are focused on knowledge sharing to support our teachers administrators and the HSC in its current desire to find the common ground necessary to safely support our students by its own admission HSC has identified that Dr kuska is not always readily transparent or open to feedback over her tenure the HSC noted a gradual breakdown of productive relationships among teachers in the administration this is confirmed by the hft vote of no confidence as time is of the essence we ask that the HSC hosts an educational Forum to include health and residents parents and Guardians along with an agreed upon representation by teachers and administrators by June 21st 2023 the goal of this educational Forum would be positive culture of Change by allowing for open dialogue without intimidation or fear of retaliation

102as we strive to retain our current Educators and hope to attract others it is incumbent upon the HSC to act now to Showcase that our district is one where harmonious and productive relationships flourish two-way communication is valued teamwork is essential and extraordinary outcomes and equity for everyone with an HPS is available and supported in fall parallel to this community effort we ask that the HSC engage a third party to independently explore the years-long circumstances that precipitated the hft vote of no confidence as HSC members opined on their individual observations of the relationship between union leadership and the superintendent in its formal review of Dr kuska we feel an independent party is necessary to successfully identify our path forward for educators to take the extraordinary measure to communicate with the public at large that the trust

103in our buildings is broken and must be the hsc's goal to take all actions within their elective power to repair the culture we look forward to increased communication from your body at the next HSC meeting on June 1st 2023 thank you for your time and consideration of this urgent matter respectfully and with great concern HPS raise so if you guys would like copies of anything that I stated please thank you for your time thank you okay will close the public comment section and move on to presentations with end-of-year goals with Dr kusco and the principals bottom perfect I think we have action after me all right apologize okay so perfect as you know we've kind of revamped our um goals process over the last couple of years and the district and school Improvement plans that

104we presented earlier in the fall are directly aligned to our four arches our last five-year strategic plan and all the initiatives in there as well so you'll see the theme go throughout this and you'll see some repetition because of that because we're really aligning all the work that we're doing together so we did present mid-year as well our progress towards our goals and initiatives and this is our end of the apartment thus far just a reminder of our mission and vision our vision that we love because it's very short sweet to the point embark on your journey personal local and Global with our four arches communication practices social emotional well-being teaching and learning and talent and resources so under Arch one at the district level which is going to be shared out through all of

105the schools as well and the communication practices we've been really working to improve communication trying to use social media as our platform Twitter we're using the website's been revamped you'll see a lot of work there we talked about at mid-year we've done more progress on that as well we now have a staff member designated to work on staff website directories we're trying to get photos of every staff member on there because we really want to show our students before they enter a surgery to be able to see who they're going to have and for parents to kind of recognize that particularly during covid I found with masks on I'm still having trouble trying to remember everybody's name and it's a work in progress but having them on the website will be helpful we're also looking

106at our external life websites and trying to migrate this over a lot of Staff created different websites and that was wonderful but in order to try to get all of our students with different languages to be able to access our information we really need it all in one place because then it can be translated from our final site as well we're using bright Arrow frequently we communicate by Smart Twitter Facebook Instagram you'll see that when we communicate through some more it goes through bright arrow and then that's translatable as well we're working to identify and Implement another two ways Communication System between staff students and Families we talked about a lot about the work with curriculum I know Joni's presented with the team before and we'll be presenting at the end of the year at

107the June 15th meeting as well about our progress on the stage one documents it's gonna be a curriculum night on Monday at 7 00 PM via zoom zoom correct and we also are working we just transitioned a new person as our Central registrar slash assistant office assistant and reader and that person can release Sexton is working to help onboard new families when they enter after the beginning of the school year additionally we had 22 people participate in cyber security training which we know is critical we see constant things trying to get into our website and through our emails and we don't want to let these things in so we're working on that and we just found out recently that we're going to have a Sandy Hook Anonymous Reporting System we've been waiting I think a

108full year it's a non-profit obviously the horrible incident that happened in Sandy Hook has led to this non being developed it's going to be a system where we can use a it will any bullying incidents or potential incidents of safety incidents outside of school or inside of school can be reported anonymously there and there are people that are housing that and looking at it 24 hours a day if it was an emergency on the weekend or after school they'd be able to find a stakeholder such as myself or one of the principals and reach out and then we could initiate support from potentially uh policies and Family Services or our sros to go out and check on Wellness of an individuals if it was outside I'm sorry to interrupt is there any way we can

109be projecting through Zoom sorry I'm sorry right I'll just share my screen thank you yes we just share yes [Laughter] are we doing it on each hand as well okay it's not great when we don't have separate equipment and we were hoping to get that activated for tonight but it's not even all right so may I just asked the Sandy Hook Anonymous Reporting System I thought we had something like that in place at Rams and maybe this is a David Jordan question do we have something like that in place at some of the schools but now it's it's one program and with enhanced benefits like how is it different and um and does that mean we'll still have the programs we have at the school I think like it's almost like an anonymous bullying Reporting

110System yeah we have an anonymous incident report that we use everything we all maintain I speak for myself or is it is it more of a um I think we're hoping that this will replace that but we just got communicated that we're going to be able to move forward with it so I don't have all the information you have it and they haven't even seen it yet because it completely just happened but it's been a year in the waiting to see if they would let us be part of this program because it's a very busy non-profit and they're just they can't keep up with the volume of need there so we'll get back to you on just how it's going to integrate with all of that okay and that's not something we tell our students

111about them too so where to access this whether it's a website or yeah once it's all set to go we'll be going at the beginning of the school year we'll train staff on how to use it we'll get it out on the website we'll have links to it everywhere we'll put it in newsletters and everywhere like we do with kerasalas which is another um Anonymous place you can get information and support for mental Wellness all right under Arch two okay social emotional well-being some of the action steps related to sel and safe and supportive schools I'm not going to go through all of this because we're going to have Mr vernay we'll be presenting with Miss Beatty at our June 15th meeting and they're going to go in much more detail but you'll see we've

112done a ton of work this year we're trying to from a sensitive graduate courses and PD we've had cognitive behavioral techniques for student support professionals psychological first aid responding crisis cultural responsive student working with culturally sponsored teaching the teachers have been trained in multiple schools that they may talk to that as well ongoing we're continuing to build our tier one SEL curriculum K to eight we're hoping to launch this summer and have the materials and resources in place the following year we have three schools that have been doing PBIS academies which is also part of our tier one Intervention Program the high schools participated in year one of our three years in another Desi Academy called social motion behavioral Academy four schools have used the climate and culture surveys that have been developed and they're

113taking that data and looking at stakeholders information and trying to determine next steps from that the Sandy Hook reporting system will help us with that say something and getting information out especially anonymously we hope that will help us maybe be proactive versus reactive to situations and the cultural responsive education Academy is continuing as a three-year program I talked about Communications well but that also applies to social emotional well-being and we're doing a ton of data collection related to the continuums the speed you've been working with or ssas at all four buildings to really see about how we align those Pre-K to 12 plus so again she'll be communicating on that on June 15th and you'll you can have any questions for that night as well by the way okay under Arch three the key steps

114there we talked about already on the website but we've got the curriculum documents thanks to our curriculum team they've got the stage one documents up and running on the website UB teachers but I know I'd also like to thank the teachers for doing the workout so the teacher the curriculum coordinas and Joni work directly with each school and grade level leaders department leaders team leaders and plc's ubd training is continuous happening in curriculum meetings Mill is still working on the CRT cultural responsive teaching we are finalizing our Equity audit so we'll hopefully have some updates we probably won't have it ready to share out for the June 15th meeting but hopefully for the August meeting we'll be able to have the equity audit team come in and present that information to you and share the

115results of that the Pre-K at 12 math curriculum review is in place secondary Ela Ela curriculum review is currently taking place we're working on our finalizing our PD plan for 23-24 there's a ton of work to do still on that but we'll have dates out for that hopefully by the hopefully by the end of the year or into the summer we're training a lot of our staff at placentino Miller in Orton Gillingham and we're also bringing in some additional organ tutors I think at Miller correct Miller has completed Landmark Outreach to build language-based programs the tech integration team participated in education events to better learn to integrate AI we all know there's a lot of controversy with AI right now our Tech team is trying to get ahead of that and be proactive using AI

116because it's a lot of good things so I think the good will outweigh the negative impacts but there's still a lot to be learned about how to integrate into the schools VMS is working on the vision of a graduate in conjunction with the high school work that's been taking place and we're still collecting data collection tools and looking for a data dashboard to we're trying to roll out next year as well under Arch four Talent resources we're continuing to refine our orientation and mentoring programs each year we try to improve on that because that's the first onboarding opportunity for our new teachers parents and some of our administrators as well we did submit the statement of interest for the high school hopefully that will be approved this year we did add some additional information to

117try to really highlight some of the needs of the high school the needs continued to rise and we added some more counter we added some more categories to that again hopeful that we'll hear good news this year we'll continue to make sure that the organizational chart with some of our new positions has been implemented and that everybody understands what those positions will do this year we had the opportunity since covid to return to learning walkthroughs as a district with just the administration team and next year we hope to not only do the full administrative team but also add some teacher leaders and some other people that would like to attend those walkthroughs with us I already mentioned the climate and culture surveys it took place in grades three to twelve and there'll be some summer

118work to follow Miller School is working on the data dialogue model to enhance their practices there and I know you're going to be talking about that as well and the PD council is taking the survey data from all of the PD that we've had this year and they'll continue to use that to plan for next year sure um who was included in that and is that information shared out to the community and if so when who wants to talk about are you going to address soccer [Laughter] how about the new learning walkthrough groups can you just explain a little bit about what a learning walkthrough is sure the full administrative team I want to say in january-ish we met as a full team and we looked through some of the previous practices we did and

119tried to take some templates and created all new templates as a as a administrative team and we were able to attend one at each building this year we were trying to get in a second one but time crunch did not allow it so we're hoping to get at least two in each building next year but again maybe half the first half of the year with our administrative team and hopefully the second half of the year to add some teacher leaders as well that are interested thank you and we're going to start with the Middle School we're going completely out of the phonological order you know what I I'm historically the middle child so uh I never get to go first well I know and you've got to be older the younger here um all right

120so uh to get us started uh we're talking about uh Arch one our communication practices um overarchingly I would look at our communication this year very centered on our tier two Focus um specifically we have ramped our acceptable use practices and policies specifically within securely which is the software that helps us sort through some of the searches and there are many of our families who receive calls in the middle of the night from an administrator letting them know that there are some suicidal ideation and some inappropriate searches that are occurring on school-based technology that that has also led into our second tool which is kerosalis and connecting families to to resources external resources one of the hardest things to do as a I think as a parent on your on your own is seeking Mental

121Health Services it is a challenge and I and I believe strongly in what our councils have been able to do as far as utilizing care Solace to connect families to Mental Health Services um we have or we will be on June 7th uh we have our instructional leadership team uh historically starting in March in the March PD day um we have used that as an opportunity to collect uh start to collect staff data and all of our other data sources and then um begin kind of our conversation process about how do we process that that information so this is kind of the bullet on sharing data with key stakeholders and team leaders to determine actionable next steps so this is processing um all of the information from the school year including the goals and the

122progress that we've made identify subgroups for the summer and next year for making adjustments to practice for the next school year based off of that that is June 7th and we will have parent Representatives Mr Alfred and Mr Cheryl are participating as parents as well in that uh additionally sorry if I skipped ahead uh within kind of communicating our story um we've been we've created a Instagram account and that has about that's 341 followers and we've been Community our sharing photos over the course of this year uh to families uh based on some of the events that have occurred at the middle school and it's been nice to see as far as being able to share that positive message that occurs that oftentimes it's hard to really get that out as much additionally kind of

123leveraging s'more which is providing us a different way for us to communicate our our bi-weekly news so our newsletter and what that looks like to kind of just bring life to the newsletter letter there all right I can move on to the next Arch it's not me this is computer [Music] so uh we are in year two implementation of PBIS um we started off with a strong start I would say that we are we are exploring a reboot for the start of next school year um partially is that a lot of our we've had a lot of turnover in the initial team that we've had and in our counseling staff with that some loss of some historical knowledge within our counseling staff but also those that were kind of the designers of our PBIS process

124um so that's kind of requires some adjustment that we are needing to look at as well similarly the expansion of our tier one SEL lessons this year we we had we have four counselor positions we had five different counselors this school year cycled through a bunch this this school year for sure um within our year two of arpa funded intervention groups we have definitely um continued that with the guidance of Brooke Dory as far as establishing six week cycles for our academic intervention groups and similarly her managing our soap groups somebody who's been able to assist with that process has been Wendy Lussier and several of our paraprofessionals who have served as teachers or instructors of those so groups which are social emotional working groups and our intervention groups which are our academic groups um

125we are within our safe and supportive school lessons uh we had a summer work group that established a really kind of revamped what those lessons were um within the first two lessons we collected student feedback and they didn't like the lessons that we were had crafted um so our peer leadership group who is managed by Sarah Peters took on the initiative of being student-led and student created safe and supportive school lessons and the last three that we had were created by students led by students and they were received a lot better by students they were authentic relevant to the experiences of our Ram students and I think that that's a adjustment to practice in the middle of the year that we will continue with going going forward um the additionally as far as restorative justice

126initiatives we have have partnered with navigate 360. which is a social justice program it is hard in the moment of disciplinary issues to establish like a six-week restorative practice for a student who may be involved in a disciplinary violation navigate 36 360 is a program that allows us to kind of things that they have already created for us to kind of utilize that as a restorative justice program um additionally um we are within um our social emotional learning groups uh we're looking at kind of like a wellness to mindset in viewing this as kind of like our tier two process and re-envisioning what that will look like for next school year all right um actually Dr Jordan I go by David can I ask about well first off I want to do the student-led classes

127what what topics did they pick and just tell me a little bit more about that and then also navigate 360 and the restorative justice because you just kind of explain that to us yeah so our student-led um uh safe and supportive lessons were on our lgbtqia communities and leading into our pride month and then they also LED uh recently finished a few weeks ago ableism and created the lesson for that so those are the two that they're focusing on for this year um Mrs Peters has applied to Summer work through Mr vernay to work with students so part of her summer work is to actually bring in her as the teacher and then the group of peer leadership leaders to create and craft lessons over the summer for implementation on on day one when we

128start to connect the next school year the navigate 360 is it has a series of videos and assignments and restorative practices that students need to kind of engage in and is self-driven and tracks their progress and also how they respond to like situations so if a student for example were to like our past experiences where we've had a student that we've identified has written the inward in the bathroom we have along with school-based consequences assigned restorative practices that they need to engage in these could be multiple hours of modules that they have to engage in reflective essays that they need to write and then services that they need to complete and that tracks that so that we're able to at the end of that duration say whether they've completed that that process or not if

129they if they don't um that that can lead to Future consequences as well navigate 360 also has on a more tier one and tier two level so smaller types of modules everyday violations I would say and how do you kind of teach kindness and care as well that has some capacity within it as well but we're currently using it for a tier three level thank you very much um yeah so uh additionally uh we have um completed our culture and climate survey we have a past practice of kind of analyzing that data we um part of our June 7th um including uh including parents and students that will be participants in it we will share that data at that space it will be just kind of a high level presentation at that point but the

130goal of that group that meets on June 7th is to create who is the kind of culture team and group to look to have a deeper look during the summer and identify what adjustments to practice we should make based off of that that data um within Arch three uh and I and I'll speed through a few of these because I don't want to repeat what um Dr Menard had indicated but we have identified some common classroom expectations uh that we had worked with our consultant any base camp um so common uh instructional practices things that should be on the board things we would expect from from teachers that has been an implementation this school year we had created a professional development based off of our writing and our writing rubric and our literacy initiative that

131we have been utilizing additionally we have continued with star math and reading assessments our year one implementation of our common writing rubric has been across all subjects in our school we are going to make some adjustments based off of the feedback from teachers on how that's gone gone specifically to make it more subject specific and the complexity of the language that's in the actual rubric and identifying what does that actually look like in that subject and looking at pulling some exemplars um there for a year or two um the additionally uh down before collecting feedback from students and families teachers on the implementation impact of possible adjustments to the news schedule um we are part of our June 7th group is to kind of also look at that as well but we did collect feedback

132from teachers and students on our schedule and have made some adjustments to our schedule for for next school year um and then um additionally identify big idea professional development topics this will be a function of our instructional leadership team that meets on June 7th lastly we do have new literature in sixth and seventh grade with diverse audit we went through an audit process to incorporate and bring in and update the literature that we expect from sixth graders and seventh graders to incorporate that more diverse authors and protagonists and have made some purchases based off of that part of that being Grant funded by Hef which was great that our sixth grade teachers applied for as well to do before we go on that I don't want to put you on the spot and if you

133want to sort of talk about this later do we do that or but uh you know there are obviously a lot of sort of things swirling around as far as the leveling of math I'm sure you knew where I was going um if you want to just address that now I don't know maybe I missed it at another meeting or just I'm just any any information you can put out there now it's about sort of your thoughts where things are going yeah if it's being worked on you know just whatever yeah so we um leveling or kind of where the the direction that we've been moving in with leveling started about 2007 um and uh ended with the ELA curriculum review in 2010 which was the removal of ela levels at the middle school that

134then led to the science curriculum review uh and at the science curriculum review in that ended I think in 2012 um that was the recommendation to move away from IPS in 2015 partially because it was not teaching the Massachusetts state Frameworks uh the the recommendation wasn't to necessarily eliminate honors science but we in 2021 based on the 2015 recommendation moved to honor science to teach the Massachusetts Frameworks for that level there isn't an intention to remove honor science but that it was to teach the Massachusetts state Frameworks at the 8th grade level the math conversation started with Sarah Hearn back in 2015 and then we began meeting with the high school the first High School leveling meeting began in 2016 and then that kind of went through different meetings over 2018 future of math which

135was part of portrait of a graduate under Dr Jackson and then we more recently not to go through kind of the history from 18 19 20 on is in there was the first math parent night which was presented to all parents in the community I think we had over a hundred parents that were there at that at that meeting similarly at the same time we presented the school committee and then I had kind of two on twos between myself school committee members and Alicia Mulder who at that time was the um was the curriculum had at that point um we had mapped out or created with the high school a a pathway a multi-year pathway starting with sixth grade starts with started with sixth grade that moved standards from um from eighth grade in a

136few standards from eighth grade into seventh grade and then seventh grade standards into sixth grade and then that was a three-year process we got about one year into that with our sixth graders and then we hit covet I'd say I would say where we are currently right now is we haven't shifted those standards based off of that internal quick and review that we had we had completed back in 2019. but that's that's kind of where we where we are but it was a three-year it was supposed to be a three-year process starting with our sixth grade and then in 2023 leading to our eighth graders with the with um with at the end of seventh grade all students having um the ability to move into algebra and it'd be full Algebra I recognize that right

137now as a result of covid we're in a place that we're teaching more of what was historically in the past and eighth grade accelerated which is preparing students for part two or part uh part yeah part two part a part a um a part yeah part A of algebra is what they would take um in their eighth grade year and then they take the B part um their their first semester or the first their freshman year but the process the outcome is to if covet hadn't interfered with that is to have a completed algebra course at the end of eighth grade and that was the process that was communicated to the school committee so A and B would be in the eighth grade yeah so now we're in currently in a curriculum visited right now

138and so there will be parent information evenings and forms and feedback next year but we have started the math curriculum review this year there will be no further changes for next year we are looking at different items to Pilot at both the elementary school level and secondary level four so the the classes and curriculum this year will be the same next year except we will be piloting some new resources yes in general yes okay thank you that's right um all right on to Arch four um Arch four uh this is our talent resources we um partnered with Indie base camp and looked at um kind of an audit of our structures and processes at the middle school and how we're providing or how we're disseminated information within our school so that our teachers feel they

139know where to go for things and when they're struggling with particular student needs whether it's disciplinary social emotionally or academically those processes are are very clear to them this is also included kind of some adjustments some projected adjustments to the employee handbook and the student handbook as well that we may be presenting at a later point in time to the school committee the identify each position and categorize we've been working with in our team leaders to to create a flow chart for our entire School based off of like our our identified leadership that exists in what what their roles are and what you go to for for them um and additionally again June 7th is the start of our analysis of our Year's worth of data to identify what the professional development needs gold needs

140and adjustments to practice need to be for the 23-24 school year oh also something fun uh sorry no it's fine um Monday memo and Thursday throw down uh thank you to Mr Conant for bringing Thursday Throwdown you need his a little spin on it but this is a teacher and learn teaching and learning and teacher focused communication the Monday memo comes from me which is more like the nuts and bolts and the like have to's Thursday Throwdown is acknowledgments some of the great things that our teachers are doing inside the building but also resources to help support teaching and learning for for our teachers sorry all right hi everyone I was saying to Mrs bottomley I'm I don't feel very confident in going after those high school students um I I definitely know I was

141not that well spoken in high school and I'm still questioning myself a little bit so um so under Arch one communication practices uh something that we've been really thinking about is how do we give a look into our school um so that our families are able to see the amazing things that are happening within our walls and something that we've adopted is called seesaw um and seesaw is a digital learning portfolio that's used in all of our classrooms and we're really working to help teachers use it as a tool for students to use it as a reflective tool so that they can actually there's video components the kids kind of videotape video they don't tape I just aged myself record themselves and are able to reflect upon their reading their speaking some of their different

142presentations so that's something that we've been really working on and thinking about how we can have more uniformity across our school so that's something that we're going to continue to work on next year we did survey our parents on the preferred social media platform um we only had 86 families to respond our survey response data has been a little bit low this year I just don't know if parents are to survey now um but it was overwhelmingly Facebook so we'll be launching Facebook in the fall and we'll be keeping Instagram which is their second choice and [Music] post on both and thanks for bringing up the Pre-K Carnival which prompted me to just post on Instagram so if you want to see some of those awesome pictures um please go ahead the other thing that

143we looked at was what is our registration process what does it feel like for our families so um do they think it's is do they come with ease are they able to hear about it um after their questions answered so again I sent out surveys and I had seven responses which isn't really a big enough data pool but they're all positive um but I think that's something that we're going to continue to kind of look in to see how we can figure out some of the responses um to be able to to change our practice we're necessary so Arch two social emotional well-being I would say that this was probably one of the biggest focuses at placentino and probably in every school across the Commonwealth in the United States I don't believe we can underestimate

144uh the impact of covid on our students our incoming I we were looking at preschool birth dates and we have kids who were born in March in April in May and June of 2020. so some of our babies who are just entering our school in the fall they were born right at the beginning of the pandemic so for those first two years of their lives um often they did not have the same social emotional experiences that my child had when they were one or two are we are seeing more and more underdeveloped skills in our youngest Learners and I think my colleagues would say across um in all ages and this isn't an anomaly to Holliston this is everywhere so something that we really have to think about is some of the things we're seeing

145for instance in our kindergarteners is more typical of what we might see in our three-year-olds but they didn't have those experiences to be able to learn from it to um to be able to that's how kids learn they they make a mistake they learn from it and then they develop so we are really working hard to develop their underdeveloped skills at the same time of showing what's expected and there's a gap between the underdeveloped skills and the expected so when we used to think of tearing out under the mtss model of you know thinking of tier one two and three there's really six tiers now you know we look at that where our tier one kind of has an upper and lower our tier two kids we tear that out in our tier three as

146well so we're really looking at how to respond to students where they are and build those skills and to have appropriate interventions in place to meet them where they're at we're really proud of the PBIS work that we are doing we are also in year two and this is something that precated to had we've developed consistent language concept consistent expectations we have an amazing PBIS team that has created lessons across all our schools so we sit on that school bus and we show them what expected Behavior looks like our students do that as well so that we are consistently reinforcing that we recently had a tiered Fidelity inventory which is a person from the PBS Academy comes into our school and I'm laughing because it was some funny things about this but would walk up

147to someone and say what is the a in care or tell me about an expected Behavior some kids were a little taken back of who is a stranger asking me questions that being said we received an 83 implementation and the goal was 70. so we surpassed that so we're pretty excited about that we also had I believe the largest number of teachers from placentino attend the trauma sensitive schools class and we are really looking forward to next year bringing together those teachers some of them have already taken trauma sensitive schools one and two and um Mr grenay is looking at bringing in trauma sensitive schools three as well there is a real need and a desire of our teachers so looking at how they can be leaders in that work among our other teachers we

148also have been um having Dei lessons each month these were created by our teachers we had a team of teachers who met over the summer they looked over the ADL curriculum but they also reflected on some of the events that have happened at placentino some of the experiences that our students have felt and in those moments we had to take reactionary measures of quickly coming up with the lesson being able to address a class so we reflected on those Trends and patterns and we built lessons around that so at the end of this school year our teachers will come together reflect again and see which of the common themes that we want to carry into lessons for next year but also are there other pieces that we want to address our school council Shanghai is

149here and some of our members are here tonight they're also helping bringing some ideas forward and Dr kuska actually we have is probably the best group of I'm a little biased but pretty awesome students they're our student advisory Council you have to imagine sitting around with a bunch of three four five six and seven-year-olds telling you exactly what they think it's pretty amazing they don't care that she's the superintendent or that I'm the principal and they tell us exactly [Laughter] I want to pull that group back together as well and get their impact their their responses on those lessons of what they thought went well and what other things are happening that we should be able to teach about because student voice really matters for the summer we are looking at having our PBIS committee

150come together again we're going to do some Dei work um we might be biting off a little more than I could chew but I said yes um we are applying for the culturally responsive teaching Academy um Mr Renee I think next week we'll talk a little bit about the SEL curriculum that our teachers um looked into and we're hoping to adopt next year for next school year so that would be a train the trainer model that we're hoping to send eight teachers from placentino this summer to be trained in that so we have a lot of things kind of happening we didn't have a student culture survey they did not create one for under grade three what they talked about in the PBS Academy was that it's really hard to Norm it on younger children

151so we still felt it was really important to survey our younger slanters we did start in kindergarten we have to figure out the Pre-K piece and maybe that would be something that we work on next year Council worked together and we came up with a questionnaire that had six questions and students did it on the computer and it was a thumbs up thumbs to the side thumbs down so sometimes always sometimes never and the questions were we think that we have clear rules at placitino we feel safe at placentino students help each other there's a grown-up to help me that connectiveness and students show care for there are always to sometimes our lowest number was 96 so it was pretty high I want to dig it into the sometimes to be honest with you and

152what that data is showing us and when we look at that type of survey data those numbers are usually clumped together but I do think it's important we always had a higher number of always but it is important to look at this sometimes so I'll be meeting with the school council to talk about that to gain some ideas of what we could do we also did a school climate survey and something that we have been targeting this is the feeling of connectiveness we're a big school and there's a lot of people who work at our school so how do they feel connected to each other we have a lot of new people who Who start at different times of the year so often the comment was I don't know that person walking down the hallway

153so we developed a culture committee that has met monthly to figure out and that's what we're focusing on is Staff connectiveness our family survey is still being filled out there wasn't a Portuguese version of it and we felt that we could not send it out until there was so um we had to recreate it a little bit and then that is in the hands of our family so we'll have that survey and then at the end of the year I'll kind of write a summary of all that data and send it out to families thank you under Arch three teaching and learning so we have been doing a lot of writing the past couple days our teacher evaluations are due tonight at 11 59 59. they're all like stop talking Jamie so we can go

154right and what's pretty amazing they're not okay um it's something that's really amazing when you go through this is you just get to see the amazing work of our Educators and I think about 90 of our staff adopted the same professional learning goal around adopting structured literacy how can we change our practice how can we increase our literacy skills of our students in the amount of changes that have happened in the classrooms it's visible in my walkthroughs it's visible in student learning but when I sit with this Collective data that our teachers put together for me and there's videos of children I'm engaging in different instructional practices it's truly amazing so we've really recommitted I've talked about to phonemic awareness we've reimagined how we teach phonics it's more of a multi-sensory approach that at our

155tier three we're looking at or in Gillingham but there's research-based practices for tiers one and two and by the way this is French this is Montessori this is traditional this is across our entire School we've learned how our teachers and our students are orthographically mapping words so they are looking at words putting them into sound boxes being able to there's this one video of um you know the word was stay and they had to orthographically map it so the ascos the S sound goes into one box the T in the a y goes into a box why is it in the same box because it's one sound when they know how to orthographically map that helps their encoding and their decoding and then later later to their comprehension so I could go on for days

156about that but I want so finally talents and resources a lot of this is an echo of what Dr Cusco was talking about we are continually trying to review our onboarding of our staff that goes to that staff connectedness when we hire someone in the middle of the year or in March or maybe I think we just hired someone in April how do they feel connected to this larger staff and how do we help them kind of bring that background knowledge that has been built all year so that's something we're continually working on any questions for me [Music] great are you sure thank you so good evening everyone I'm just going to go through a couple of highlights because the two really big areas of focus for us this school year were the vision of

157a graduate and a continued development of it as well as the implementation of it within our day-to-day operations and working with students and then the second big piece that we worked on this year was our niask self-study and that was really a collective effort although we had a self-reflection committee that worked on it it really needed to be a collective effort of the entire faculty and I'll talk a little bit about that so those are the two really big areas of focus a lot of the other pieces on the slides I had talked about at the mid-year update and you know we're continuing to make progress we've completed a lot of the different goals and we're continuing to make our way through others I know that when Mr Bernay comes next to school committee meeting

158he's going to go through a lot of the social emotional pieces and in particular at the high school around our team that we've been working on together where the other schools have been doing PBIS we've been working with the social emotional behavioral team so he'll really get into a lot of those details I'll talk a little bit about it when we get to our second Arch so for our first Arch I really want to highlight our monthly newsletters those have been going out it's really fun using smart because you can actually see how many viewers there are and we're averaging very high numbers every month and so that is really rewarding because of all the time and energy we put into the newsletter it's nice to see that families students educators are utilizing those resources

159reading through and getting a better sense of what's happening on a monthly basis at the high school the other big piece in terms of communication has been translation services so as our district continues to evolve and change and the makeup of our our student body continues to change we want to make sure we're meeting the needs of all students and families and so for the last several years we've had sign language translation at our major events times in the past it was at the request of a family or student that we knew how to need at the high school we have now for the last two years that's become our standard operating process so that families don't have to reach out and the feedback that we've heard is that it is so nice for families

160who do need services to not have to ask for them that they're provided so at our major events our eighth grade program of studies evening when we went through all the different courses and and our department leaders were there to meet with incoming families in March we had sign language interpretation there as well the other pieces that we never really know who's going to be in the audience and so we can do our best to try to predict the needs but we want to make sure that there are certain pieces in place so that again we don't have to create an environment where families don't feel like it's accessible we want that to not be an obstacle or a barrier for them to access the services at the high school in addition on our program

161of studies evening we had Portuguese translation and Spanish translators as well so that our families who really needed additional Services had people there that help them and help them navigate some of the conversations with our department leaders it's an overwhelming process to transition from any of the schools right you're learning a new school you're trying to understand coming into the high school learning about all the different courses your students can sign up with can sign up for that's a lot of information there and there's a lot that's shared in that evening in particular so we really wanted to make sure that we increased our our services this year and that will be continuing forward so those are really the big pieces in terms of communication we've also been using a talking points app I was

162shared with the administrators by Ms weinertner who's a phenomenal educator at the high school and that's been really helpful in terms of family communication difficult conversations sometimes come up with our students and our assistant principals need to make sure that we're also providing access to all families and so we've been utilizing that as well Mr cheveo has been using that quite a bit and it's been modeling that with some of the other Educators as well in terms of our Arch 2 which is really our our social emotional well-being that we've been focused on I Echo the sentiments of the other uh principles that you've heard and from Dr koska as well this has been a huge Focus for us throughout the year we've done a lot of work around this we our team that's been

163working together on a monthly basis to really identify so our tier one Services what are services for every single student in the building for example our advisory program we have two phenomenal Educators who Miss Lang and Miss Kuhn both of who were represented this evening who really transformed our advisory program this year with a huge focus on social emotional learning they brought Joy to the school and they brought Joy back to the advisory program they actually have sweatshirts that say Joy spreaders they're fantastic sweatshirts and they enjoy wearing them on advisory days it was really refreshing and it was nice to see the students engage in the different activities you know there are some examples of some of the activities they've been doing around the library but it's been a really nice process to have

164our advisory program grow once again it was one of the the programs that was that was really decimated during the pandemic a ringing endorsement for the advisory program is that we had 80 students who interviewed to be student advisory leaders for next year that's amazing that's our highest number in years even before the pandemic that to me speaks volumes about the experience that our 9th and 10th graders had this year to the point where so many students so many 10th graders wanted to step up to be our Junior student advisory leaders for next year so again you know really proud of the advisory program and you know the feedback from students has been really positive as well I believe it was Dayanara who when she was up here presenting mentioned our social justice Roundtable so

165we partnered with Antonio Thompson who her title is director of racial Justice and activity issues with the Middlesex District Attorney's office they do four sessions on social justice the first two are more educational based where they talk about sort of the history of some of the different events in the United States and really engage students in the curriculum the next two sessions so our third session was actually today we have one more session after this they really work with the students to identify action steps moving forward so they're starting to work on a plan for next year and that really came from a number of students who wanted to have a greater voice based on really some of the situations or incidents that we've had earlier in the year as well as our partnership with

166the ADL we're on track to earn our distinction for year two of the no place for hate and so we were looking at how can we include more student voice in our no place for hate initiative so partnering with the Middlesex District Attorney's office around the social this curriculum was a natural fit and that's been really positive so far it's a small group it's about 12 students that are working together with the hope that Badness goes out to a much larger audience for next year for our third Arch and this is probably the biggest Focus this year around the vision of a graduate and then also the Nia self-reflection study so for vision of graduate you've been hearing me for years talking about vision of a graduate um we're in a really exciting place with

167it we have a really really great vision of a graduate our six categories are really well thought out they're working well together one of our big um one of the big aspects of our professional development for the first half of the year was really looking at the draft we came into for this year and I say draft because I think it's always going to be a draft it's always going to be a work in progress it should be reviewed every year we should look at is there criteria were missing how do we make sure that we're meeting the needs of all learners but we looked at that draft coming into this year and we really worked to um to figure out exactly what it meant so if the criteria said respects others yes and what

168does that mean what does that look like in the classroom what does that look like in extracurricular activities what does that look like in our daily interactions so that faculty worked really hard throughout the year and we were able to Pare down the criteria under each of the six categories to between two or four statements that are observable measurable performance outcomes if we're moving the school forward the vision of a graduate if there's 15 different items under six different categories to focus on it's really hard to move everybody forward so being able to really have intentional conversations about what our belief systems what do we really want to focus on what matters at Holliston High School that was really helpful and so in February we were able to get to a point where um we

169felt like we had a really really good working draft of the vision of a graduate March all Educators in the building either through an activity a lesson a unit something they had created something they adjusted something that they newly developed brought that back to the students and they had explicit conversations with students about the vision of a graduate the activity that students were doing and how it connected to the vision of a graduate and then ask for feedback from students they brought that feedback to our second of the half PD days in March and we put in place a protocol for teams to get together and really look at that feedback look at the vision of a graduate and I think where we've arrived is a really phenomenal place and we're seeing the vision of

170a graduate come alive in so many areas of the school you heard so the first half of my presentation was really done by our amazing students and Educators when they talked about the global citizen endorsement and they talked about the computer science endorsement um really amazing offshoots of division of a graduate and so we're seeing this in really concrete ways come alive and transform teaching and learning throughout the school the other big piece that I wanted to just bring to your attention was the niask self study so niosk is the accreditation body that comes in every 10 years they do a big visit they were here in 2012 2012 2013 and they in the old process would bring a team of you know 18 or 20 people they would be here for four days it

171was a pretty massive undertaking the new 2020 standards and actually they're looking at a 2023 right now but the 2020 standards that we're working under the process has changed significantly and I think it's been much more manageable and much more meaningful for the school will have a team of five visiting committee members in October so the collaborative conference is what they call it that's scheduled for the end of October next year they'll come in and they'll take a look they'll be here for two days they'll take a look at teaching and learning in the school they'll meet with lots of different groups of people they'll get feedback from everyone and they'll look at our self-study report in order to do the self-study report we had a team of individuals come together and they spent from

172December through March really looking at every aspect of our school as it related to the five standards in the 2020 niasis standards those five standards have a ton of different principles and foundational elements and indicators and I can do a whole separate presentation on that but it was a lot to look at and they looked at where are we on these for the foundational elements did we meet it or did we not so one area where we said we did not meet the foundational element was a consistent documented curriculum map or curriculum for every single course throughout right so we have wonderful curriculum throughout our school every single course is not in the same ubd I'm saying ubd 2.0 but the same format across every single class in the school that's okay that's where we

173are now we're making tremendous progress towards that so we said we didn't meet that Foundation Element no big deal we're working towards it here's our plan in other ones it was the principles that we looked at and it was on a Continuum so no evidence to transforming the world it's not it's transforming and so it's a five-point scale where did we work and where did we kind of find ourselves so we went through we had to put together a pretty lengthy document within each of the five standards we also had to talk about what our what we felt our strengths were and our areas of growth for each of the five standards we brought that to the faculty the faculty had a chance to read through the document they had a chance to go through

174all along we had been gaining input from The Faculty so a group that was working on you know particular standard would go back and meet with lots of different groups and different departments and bring feedback back to the self-reflection committee we then needed to have the faculty vote approval of the report he asked likes for a two-third majority vote although they'd love for 80 percent we had a 99 vote from The Faculty which is fantastic than the sort of one percent um a couple of people said that they felt like we should be rated a little higher so you know I felt like that was a really good piece of feedback but 99 of the faculty approved that and so that was a fantastic rating we then also shared with them the areas of growth

175and the areas of strength for all five standards and a big long document with Google doc and they had to then vote on what they thought were the two or three top you know areas of strength two or three top areas of growth and there was tremendous consistency across that as well so the report is just about finalized we've been submitting it to niask so that it's all ready to go that's the first part of it for this year it'll be all finalized there's one little piece that we're finishing and then next year in October the visiting committee will come in and take a look so that's been the big process that's really taken a lot of of time both with you know faculty students feedback you know across the board and we had on

176our our self-reflection steering committee we had two students participate as well which um or so we have students to be part of that committee as well and then the other pieces on here were highlighted by our students who presented our last Arch here around Talent resources I think it's the same that you've heard and I'm sure you'll hear again with Miller the big Focus next year for the high school is really going to be on onboarding there'll be a lot of new faces at the high school and it's really how do we take um you know how to how do new faculty come on board understand the vision of a graduate understand sort of what the history of the high school has been so that they can continue the positive trajectory and then just continue

177to improve and make it better so thank you um I also just uh since this is probably the last time you'll be presenting to us um I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for your 13 years of service to the district 10 as you know principal leading the high school I think that's great and uh I don't know I can't remember if it's been broad but the school coming here or not but also to your principal of the Year award um [Applause] these achievements are worth recognizing so thank you very much and you know good luck in your your next your next adventure I appreciate it thank you thank you ready to go all right uh so under Arch one uh how are we communicating our stories I think we do it

178pretty well um Erica and um Bobby French are on Instagram Facebook Twitter constantly putting up pictures of our story uh at Miller our curriculum coordinators are sharing and I think one came out yesterday um the yeah maybe next week the newsletter what you sent out something yesterday right they will have the newsletter next week but it's coming they had one out already we had Community readers come into school and that is always fun some of you came into the building and we get community readers uh across our community members across the district Dr cuskas been in uh and talked with our student uh and you know what they do have voice one of the things they wanted we had toilets seats that were all for they were 23 years old and they they all crap

179all new toilet seats get stuff done we had athletes participate in the Special Olympics which is always a lot of fun we do uh We join up with Ashland Medway Medfield and Millis and this year was in Ashland and just seeing the joy in the students faces when they're there and just last Wednesday we had an emergent bilingual night where we had over a hundred people there between placentino and Miller it was so much fun thanks to the Lions they came and they cooked burgers and hot dogs and um families potluck suppers so it was a little bit of everything there was so much food but really they were there we had the boot them out the door they were having um and so that goes into you know how are we communicating with our

180families and to see the joy in everybody's and this is um so that um our families can meet each other and and and um uh just uh see who their friends uh there's their child's friends are uh in the building under uh social emotional uh Jamie talked about the trauma course I had four teachers take trauma one and Trauma two I had to take the second one now we want to see where that's going to go how can we bring that back to the school and teach others about what to look for and what they can do our PBIS really ran this year we started rise this year we used to be shine we're now rise and you know Jamie talked about the person coming in doing the tiered Fidelity inventory she said we rocked

181it every you know everybody they asked and and they do they go up to kids in the cafeteria and they sit next to them you know you've got fifth graders going like this looking at me like who are you but we got all mostly fours and some threes um and she said you know we were just doing a great job with that um Jerry I was gonna roll out next week um the SEL uh piece and what we're looking for uh in the school they've been doing a lot of research over the course of the year and we had um one of the things we had a group of 14 doing the culturally responsive education through a depth of x one of the big takeaways is how do you know how do you build relationships

182with your students in your classroom how do you get to know them um as simple as before they even empty your classroom do you know how to say their name you know how do you in and that seems so simple but it's not um they students want to come in knowing that you know them and so getting to know the cultures in the building and so a big part of the course is building the relationships not only with the student but with the community um teaching and learning our big Focus this year was on writing Bill Atwood came in he came in um I think we had him in for two full days and we had him in for two half days where he modeled in the classroom writing we found um through the MCAS

183that it went downhill during covet it just you know students lost the stamina to put anything down on paper so what uh bill you know started with was how do you get kids just to write something down don't make it uh uh this this heavy project where they've got to do a five paragraph just get them writing and putting it down on paper and the steel the the the Steelers [Laughter] yeah [Music] [Laughter] level and she's started to do a scope and sequence and mapping of our writing curriculum not just at each grade level but the teachers were actually looking at it vertically what is being taught in third grade what's being taught in fifth grade if you're a fourth grade teacher so that's been really um a lot of the work that we've done

184curriculum wise in our building our wind blocks in in third grade were a huge success also when what I need I'm really focusing in on some of the the assessments we do at the beginning of the year Dibbles and Maze and the star assessment we were using and how do we break by grade how do we push in services but have the teachers teaching other kids they weren't just teaching their own students we had them switching classrooms this was a huge push in grade three and there were bumps and we're going to revisit how we did it but we've seen huge gains in scores that the students have from where they were Benchmark we are starting our third round of start next week and I'm really excited to see the gains that we had I

185wish we had that for you tonight to be able to present that but we'll we can put that together over the summer when we do that um the other big piece is the math curriculum review I was on the committee loved it we narrowed it down to three that came and presented to us they presented pre-k through grade I think we're doing through grade eight was our presentation um and um part of the things we were looking at and we we looked at you know is it uh teacher friendly is does it get good results what are the assessments like we also because we're Holliston needed to see if it was in French and so have all those qualities so at kindergarten first and second we wouldn't be getting a different resource we could be

186using the resources that everybody else so we're now going to be having getting some kits from them so that we can have teachers pilot I don't want to go into more detail because we're not we're not quite there but it's been a a great experience the last thing I want to do on teaching and learning we are looking at how we can get more science in the classroom and health what we've found is that we were only doing 50 minutes a week in a pull out science so we are working on a plan to get more science in the classroom and you'll hear more about that and help in the unified Arts you'll hear more about that next year um lastly under talent and resources so why I put this here is um we need

187to listen to our staff when we do a climate and culture survey we need to look at you know what are some of the areas that they're concerned about we also need to look at what the students say about that survey so every student took it I would say 98 of the staff took it like Jamie said surveys were a little low on parents only about 46 parents out of 600 token at Miller so can't really use that data but some of the things that we found some of the highest that were on there for students was my school wants me to do well and there is an adult at my school who will help me if I need it um one of the things we also have to realize we were able to compare

188this nationally and our result that everybody's in our same boat you know what's that it's out of fork yes I'm sorry three is not um bad um so the big takeaways we found that that students and staff student behavior in the classroom you know and I we see this as something across the board but we're finding that the PBIS is helping with that and part of pebis is a Swiss reporting system which is system-wide information system where teachers are logging you know if kids are having issues in the classroom that way we can track this over a period of time it's our first year doing it so we will get better at it we'll get better at reading the data that's there the other thing is um safety our teachers took this I think a

189week after the Tennessee shooting and so you know School safety's on their mind one of the big things are locked doors you know key fobs we we've got them installed we we we're we're looking to move forward the teachers still don't wait is it still not a place and not there that and so teachers need to use keys to get into the building so we're working on you know that coming in um and you know Building Maintenance and it comes very timely in this because at the Capitol request that the school committee did were new roofs at Miller and placentino and we were leaking and that was a big thing teachers were talking about the leaks in the building and we are it you know we are going to be working on that because they

190are looking at replacing this so those were the big things our committee is going to be meeting this summer to go into more of those things and um happen to answer any questions the math pilot yep uh is kind of give me a time why not um imagine it would be first part of the next year we would look for we had a grade level representative in each grade um but we still need to roll out you know whether that's going to start right at the beginning of the year or whether that's going to um and there were three programs so which grades would do which programs so that's still up in the air um and so Joni and uh James labass here are running that piece but um excited we're moving forward and when

191do they expect when do you expect to have more information on the timeline so which grades it applies to when it starts what that looks like so what we're doing is actually so we'll start piloting in the fall when it um I'm reporting that later on my report so you want to wait I was going to do okay and Dave can you just again explain the wind walk yeah and the benefits of it in my understanding it's about 30 minutes it's 30 minutes long and it allows so one teacher might be looking at phonemic awareness one teacher might be looking at word study another teacher may take you know kids who have those skills already and to be doing book studies but it's not new learning what it is is working on skills that there

192may be a deficit in and it's and it's maybe eight weeks and then we look at give a mini assessment and see if we're going to switch those groups up and so right now we did it 30 minutes long and so and we had a whole grade doing it at the same time next year what we want to do is split it into maybe four teachers and four teachers so we can really push in the resources instead of spreading it out over four classrooms at that time and it's part of the idea that you're not robbing Peter to pay Paul you need correct a cope is that that is where that's going to happen doesn't always because there might be other skills or groups maybe too large so they may need to get it out

193of it another time but the the hope is that they're not being pulled out of your math class they're not pulled out of your language reading class this is separate from the the classroom instruction and does it allow for like small group differentiated Learners yes so enrichment work is going on yeah group work is going on okay and this hoarding Yep this is the first year with that data first year and we probably put it in in October where teachers were doing it and and you know some teachers are better than others and what's the bird I guess my question so I couldn't find data for you yeah and it's just the beginning of it and I'm sure you're looking at it but I worry about the increased burden yeah on a daily on a

194weekly basis reporting data on all of your kids in a classroom sort of thing so if they're sending somebody to the office or they've got something they're inputting it immediately so it's not going back and doing it later but if they want us to help them solve problems we need to know when it's happening is it happening certain times because it'll log what time it's happening or where it's happening is it in this classroom but not this classroom is it happening at specials um so it's it's supposed to help us in that and our teachers have reported in the beginning when they were just getting used to to it it took longer and now it doesn't it's very it's kind of second nature where Miller did it across their school we piloted this year we're

195going to do it across our school next year the data is really important and it's important in the sense of so there's like Dave I think presented Mr Khan presented in the year some of his data and we're talking about the number of office referrals or the number of like a high number of referrals such a small percentage when you're living it it doesn't feel like a small percentage so that helps with that idea that volume doesn't always equal volume and it helps that wow we're almost like close to 90 percent are not at that piece so it helps kind of reshape that culture too of when you're feeling and seeing some of those unexpected behaviors you think gosh this is happening all the time but when you're actually taking data to look at it

196it's not as much and that's the piece that you know Dave was able to bring back to his staff and actually I used his numbers to bring back to our staff to help reframe some of that piece too so we did ask our teachers about the ease of use and they said it's pretty quick it becomes pretty second nature a lot of our teachers are having to take data anyways we have individual data data sheets for students on different unexpected behaviors and this can take the place of that so and then it tracks it and then we can graph it and we can look at it but what our goal is is to help decrease those behaviors so if we're able to see it and we're able to really pinpoint it then we're able to

197intervene teach underdeveloped skills and then it goes down and then they'll report less right thank you that is it's more real time it's real time yeah just uh quickly on the maintenance this is more just a comment and we can get into it because it's really more for probably Keith but it plan as far as you guys know to do the roots over the summer I I don't know that okay I've told me that when we go through budget later I can put a bit of an update on that and we'll talk more about that but I'm really optimistic it was very timely that we got it so thank you really thankful for the collaboration between groups in town to get that money that money had way back in 2020 but this is a much

198bigger scope yes with with collaboration with the town James I always say the last time okay I'll work on it um they were able to inspect and identify more of the issues and get up there I think the Hope was to address it this summer I thought that was the case we just want to make sure that we're on track because there's also been a I think a three-year plan or something to do the rest of the other marriages right because this is just the shingle portion yes um thank you guys very much um moving on uh there's nothing for palsy uh so central office administers update we've had a lot so hopefully there's not too much I'm gonna table my comments okay great would you like to report people here hang on I have

199nothing thank you that is perfect no all right okay so I just have a quick few updates um just a huge shout out to miss Mills at the high school for doing service learning project um presentations on May 23rd it was incredible to hear all of the varying projects the high schools presented um a huge shout out to placentino and Miller for their emergent bilingual night I was president and uh principal kaim is absolutely right it was a wonderful evening for parents and families on the 31st uh yesterday just yesterday seems like forever ago um Ida Pappas was able to arrange a French immersion visit with Manchester New Hampshire schools looking at house and public schools how we do our French immersion program here and the French educational consulate came to visit us on Monday

200June 5th we will be hosting a virtual teaching and learning informational evening some of the topics that will be covered is all of the resources that we have on our newly revised website reasons for curriculum alignment our district strategic plan our district curriculum review process District review cycle how we map curriculum the curriculum map standards by unit that the teachers have been hard at work on our current Massachusetts Frameworks Desi Center for instructional support holliston's report card from Desi our district curriculum accommodation plan as well as deci family framework guide for families so please come to our evening our curriculum newsletter will be coming out next week and we will have a fourth one coming out before the end of the school year I'd like to welcome our two new school committee members a very

201briefly go since you were not part of the the committee yet I'll very briefly update you on what's been going out with a on with the math curriculum review so it started in September to kind of back up we made a document of the curriculum review cycle based on Desi's guidance and then we started our math quick and review in September James is leaving it I've been president all except one we began with a team of 14 administrators and teachers from all four schools we've added some additional High School teachers to the the review We identified our mission or excuse me our vision of mathematics instruction that's directly aligned to the Strategic strategic plan as well as vision of a graduate and then we created a description of what we want this Vision or looks

202like look like inside the classroom again this is the committee this is not just James and I doing it this is everybody from all four schools we conduct conducted a gap analysis reviewed our current curriculum for a pre from pre-k through 12 plus to identify which standards are covered and which are not adequately adequately covered we identified our strengths and weaknesses of our current Curriculum by analyzing that Gap analysis also using MCAS scores or Star data and the common assessments to judge where we're at we are also looking at local neighboring District information and everything that we are looking at is either Curie or Ed reports rated and that means it's tied directly to Massachusetts state Frameworks so what principal Khan alluded to the elementary school teachers we have narrowed it down to i-Ready classroom

203mathematics and vision 2024 and Eureka Math Rams in the high school have narrowed it down to Envision or Savas reveal math which is McGraw-Hill and illustrative math which is also McGraw-Hill so we already had at the elementary school level demos for all three of those so what is happening is the beginning of fall not right at the beginning but in the fall all three of those will be piloted and then they'll report back to the committee we will use that information to make recommendations to the superintendent which gets moved on up to you at the high school and Rams we are looking at piloting those also in the fall with the same timeline to make recommendations in December so no leveling is going to be change changing at all for next year it will be

204the discussion will continue we will bring parents in we'll bring community members in and continue the conversation yes um in terms of the the demo of the new Mac materials and who who was part of that is the whole curriculum console okay yes well I said 14 but we've added some high school teachers now um uh the beginning it was myself um James Karen Archibald Cassie Carmen Taylor Victoria Roy Jesse Cottage and Dayton Deb Maylene David Keim Carrie Pepperell Colleen bartnett Christine Phipps Nicole Lovell Lindsey St Alban it's uh Meg Nolan Adrian b i yeah Adrian Beaver Christine Mariano Ian canoni has joined Bob tibben is joined and we also had additionally some eighth grade teachers the last time we brought in so it's a wide variety so is it fair to say I okay

205okay yeah yeah but the lower the elementary schools are extremely well represented okay it's going to be determined on how many people are willing to do it okay right so what will happen is we're looking at a whole unit for each curricula in the fall so we'll ask for Teacher volunteer there's teacher volunteers who'll come back to the committee and express what they thought about it and having discussions so we don't want just one person piloting it all of these have been vetted by the Massachusetts teachers already saying that these meet the requirements of the Massachusetts Frameworks so nothing is being considered that has not been vetted and approved by Dusty already so that is the starting point for even the discussion you're welcome thanks and all the future health professor so we had two

206additional stipends that were recommended this year to move forward one of them is HOSA Health Organization for students I'm blanking out on the acronym sorry it's a little bit late finally have one of them is the um the health group for students and then women in science is the second one so we did um negotiate the standards I think Keith might have the factors available so I'll let him that we negotiate about we would like you to approve them so that we can move forward with those two clubs for next year as well Keith are you there the fact it was negotiated for HOSA was a one for time and a 2.8 for responsibility and for women in science it was a one for time and a one for responsibility and just for like kind

207of a process or just explaining for some of the newer members um this is the stipends these two groups were piloted this year right just can we just back up sure yes and we tried to tighten up with the process because last year we had um after the budget season and into the summer we had about 25 20 something thousand dollars worth of stipends that weren't budgeted for brought forward to me that I wasn't aware of and that became complicated which kind of backed up this process a little bit so we really fine-tuned so that it is delineated in the contract at in year one a staff member would propose because students who would usually come forward and recommend they wanted to try something and then they ask a staff member to support them so

208the first year goes as a pilot that it's not a paid opportunity and then at the end of the year the principal would then move it forward if they're going to recommend it and then we would start to negotiate factors and then for the following year we would Implement that club with the stipend and post it so step and we could apply for it as well so we do have a number of clubs that were negotiated this year that I brought to you earlier in the year these ones because they didn't get recommended um until this year will be coming forward for next year okay so are these the descriptions are these in the folder somewhere because I just miss it um I'm not sure if they ended up in the folder uh or not

209if it really isn't the description of the curriculum extracurricular club which is just the factors that we would share with you okay and were these included in the budget that we approved at town meeting as far as additional Keith can you just talk to them they're not these are not expensive to do for for any of this stipends in some of these um it's an annual the stipends because of the experience Factor we never can really lock down on what it's going to be it's kind of an order of magnitude of what our Delta is going to be with it um this year we're probably gonna end up moving some textbooks just because the high school's historically underfunded some or understand textbooks with we really don't have a big thing coming up on the horizon

210so we will move some of the textbook money over um to cover the shortage there so so I can share that um so the budget amount was about Keith and charity about a hundred ten thousand was budgeted for the stipends and that's just for the high school extracurricular and because of these new addition then that were not put into the budget in a timely manner they came out for FY 23 at 100 almost 115 000 so we were five thousand over there um and that was problematic which is why I had to tighten up that process and then um for next year they would come to about 117 000 that high school did look at some of the ones to move and shift and one of them was eliminated that hasn't been really um that

211had not been used by students so that's where Keith is talking about the shifting looking at another line item because again it's hard to budget for them after the fact but the process gets us to this point that we can't negotiate them until like between March and May so [Music] just to add those two because what will happen in the next um in the next reiteration of the collective bargaining agreement we would want to add all the news stipends that were voted on this year and put them in the booklet so that people would see those in there as well so I can make a motion to speechosa future health professionals and the women's science clubs okay so before we do that though I just I would like to do a sort of review of

212our stipends at budget obviously that's not something we do here I do also think that there's more of a holistic look at how it seems to be a lot of sort of multiple factors and maybe there's a way of sort of tightening things up so there's a clear set of expectations and sort of rules regarding I know there are going to be new stipends that could come up that are needed sort of a framework to do themselves but for established ones that are sort of year to year constant things um and the last thing is I've got to be remiss if I didn't ask you know what how much is is this for these two stipends [Music] Keith do you have the actual amount because it was a would you say a one it's not

213much it's um with an experienced factor of one because the first year they're doing it officially it would be 14 29 44 and for women in science again with the fact with an experience factor of one would be eight ninety three forty okay so twenty two hundred dollars or so and change yeah okay great um so we had a second on that motion yes all in favor yes all right yes thank you I was wondering can I ask a question directly from like you know can you speak a little bit about the the unified Arts Fine Arts and French immersion have been combined under the solution of single individuals yeah so one of the things that Joni and I learned a lot last year is it was um it seemed to be a struggle a

214lot of our um stipend but stipended Physicians Department of the high school often were the ones that were also the K-12 positions that you're describing for um world languages was a high school department leader also was the Pre-K to 12 World languages coordinator district-wide then we had a fine and Performing Arts similar it was a high school department leader but was district-wide helping to work on in performing arts and then we also had a wellness person we had two people splitting the stipend for wellness but all of these roles are locked into either full-time teaching schedules and this is an in addition to or they are they have one block of their curricular at the high school eliminated so they don't teach as many blocks as a traditional High School teacher but still they're locked

215into that rotating schedule so how do they get out into all the buildings to do that work that was the challenge we ran into and that's why we kind of we looked at this how do we pre-kate a 12 Align Network and that's when I came forward with those Pre-K to 12 three curriculum coordinated positions last year and those roles now are freed up full time to do this work and they they're literally in every building every week so the the goal and the plan was to have each one of them rotate at least one full day a week through each four of the four buildings and then on the fifth day they work with Joni and catching up on anything else that they need to work on together and that's where you see a

216lot of progress that's been made so yes now we have one person doing those but that one person is in all four buildings whereas we had it was quite a struggle to get the people to get if you're in a high school schedule how do you actually when when the work is needed down at the pre-k2 building how do you leave your building to get there and that's where we found the struggling and not all the positions were filled at the high school before either so some of them were not represented right we didn't have a World Language coordinator for two years since I've been in my first year there was no one that wanted to do that position so there was nobody going to the buildings do that work however we also do have

217grade level and team leaders at the middle and elementary schools so those people do work with their building like we have a Montessori one we have a French immersion one we have simile at the middle school we have different subject areas represented so our full-time coordinators go and work with the grade level leaders Team level leaders and go to plc's as well department leaders we still have department leaders to high school as well yep grade level grade level at the elementary team leaders at the middle school and Department of leaders at the high school thank you okay anything else so do we have any reports from any subcommittees and since we just reformed them I'm not entirely sure that we will but if there's anyone has anything that they want to bring up I'm just

218going to bring up my meeting date our next meeting is June 8th 2 30 to 4 30. for college if Sarah can go oh you're not going to come to the last one oh should I yeah oh okay you don't have to unless I recommends it's 2 30 to 4 30 on June 8th on June 8th which is next Thursday can make it then then Amanda's office it's Sarah in there maybe we could do it morning we've already posted the agenda and everything you can change it and change it to the time you just don't change the agenda and Keith are all in the meeting and Jess is coming along yeah so several people already [Music] I'm gonna work on that offline yeah we can do that until um okay that's fine lots to do

219um so old business school calendar changing PD days let me see if I can pull that oh could I say something about the communication subcommittee oh yeah please sorry um thanks so um I'll speak with you folks after about um creating a meeting time but um as a new chair I just want to say because communication is such a huge issue all around it's what everybody's talking about that I'm really looking forward to having the three of us work with everybody to find more involved ways for communication in addition to the awesome newsletters that we already put out but looking into really expanding the role of the communication subcommittee as far as getting input and involving more communication between us and the staff um as well as other student members great more communication more better

220yep more and more effective okay sorry I didn't mean to cut anyone else in anything else okay so change of beauty days so Joni and I we had heard from um the high school that there's a conflict for the February PD days that we have proposed before so we looked at February again and um the city notes to science MCAS tests for the high schoolers so we initially had proposed it for February 7th and because of the science MCAS we'd like to move that to February 28th we've got the the Valentine's Day we did not think was a good day and we're trying to stick to Wednesdays and Fridays depending on the time of the year so we thought the 28th would work better for that one I think that was the only change I

221think correct well that's a full PD day that's the full yes okay common subjections it's so close to April Bakery I know I mean February vacations the only thing like they go back for two days and leave another day off is there any way we could put in March uh let me just look at March I think the issue with the full day PD is that we do so much work on the full day PD and the teachers want time to then Implement that work it was like a week later is there an MCAS on like March 6th well this year our last PD full day was in January so we're already much later as it is um I know I just feel like going back after fed vacations the other option would be too

222January 31st which would give us a full day and a half day there and avoid February when is the um when is the semester end for the high school no I think that was yeah that's the conflict right what about the um the 9th of February because you had seventh was a Wednesday and you said you're trying to stick to Wednesdays and Fridays you know we could do a Friday if that was something that people would people wanted to do the night could we do that I'm sorry so here's my proposal could you look into that and see if there's any reason why the ninth wouldn't work and then come back to us so we can make that change next next meeting yeah and I I honestly don't know that you have to vote on

223um so if you are if that's what you'd like us to put if the knife works I think we wouldn't have to bring it back we could just give you an update okay okay thank you [Applause] um may I ask just the the half day on the 10th um of January sorry yes I'm going to the screen um the half day on on the 10th um I I know traditionally we almost created like a four day weekend over Martin Luther King or even like a half day and then a four day weekend and it often aligned before exams were going to happen or um what was the thought behind moving it to a Wednesday and earlier in January I'm trying to remember I think an issue that we have had is that we have a

224lot of um on PD days when they fall on a Friday we do have a lot higher incidents of absences and that's why I do worry about having a full day on a Friday night yeah that's hard yeah like the data that we had this year and then we put so much time and energy and trying to do things that everybody needs and if literally 50 60 people are missing it sometimes I mean it was a lot the principals had asked us to try to avoid Fridays as much as possible for that reason because we want them to be more robust um so that was kind of the way that came from well then in that same vein would you not want to do February 9th because I would prefer not to for that reason

225and that's going to be a law that's a full day and that will be uh it will be unfortunate if a lot of people miss it because there's going to be a lot of valuable information make our schedule I mean I think it's important to consider that but I don't think we I don't know that's on the teachers to not miss it I know it just makes implementation of things hard you know like you know that we're trying to add some more science training next year yeah so then if the people that need that training then how do we make it up if that's what that's where it is a challenge I mean the other option is put it on Thursday you know that's what I was gonna say what about doing it on the

226Thursday instead you're doing it on the 15th what time all right just keep it at an eight I don't think we could do in the eighth because that was the makeup wasn't that isn't that awesome I think the seventh and the eighth was the problem so it would be the 15th we can't no we're not going to go back for one day before February vacation I think we keep it the ninth and like it's one Friday most of them are not on Fridays the teachers are getting a week off the following week for February vacation the hardest thing though for from like the the district standpoint is if you have your full day on a Friday and we are moving so much curriculum and training forward and of a large majority were absent like they

227were this year literally a majority are it was a large amount absence why because isn't it they're contractually obligated for those four days of PD right that's we give four full days of PD do we have a policy for like how PD is made up if you are sick it's very hard to recreate all of that you know there's a lot of different presenters and a lot of different outside vendors coming in especially have with new math curriculum it would be outside vendors coming in which we can't financially repeat the same time you know and a lot of vendors will not let you tape it hey we ran into that they will not allow you to tape it even if you're just using it for your internal use I mean I just don't think we

228make these policies based on like high absentee rates from teachers I don't disagree I'm just giving you the feedback that we got right and the problem is that we're going to have to make we're going to have to arrange to make up that work yeah which is a lot of work on our end yep because they're missing out on the professional development and then we have to figure out how are they going to get that which means probably rent a pool amount of class to make that up but that's the reality I mean that's the reality I'm sorry could you do the half day in February on the 9th and then a full day on the 16th in January I don't know no because of the we got feedback we did our full day uh

229in January January 27th we got a lot of feedback from the high school teachers that it was right around when they were shifting classes and they're like please do not have it in January okay what about the first week of March February 28th can we just do it one more week like is it really it's not really too late to implement if it's a week later we have PDS feedback we got so you know I mean Joni attends the PD Council so that's this is where yeah opinions yeah we did hear a lot of the education so why are we not doing it on the 12th it's a Monday the same issue was the night right now you know there's no there's no good day around here at this point they're all this reasons and

230pros and cons so what's our decision I think Mondays are more likely because even people travel they tend to be back on Sunday evenings it is I I don't know I feel that Fridays Mondays would happen I don't know that it matters whether it's a Monday or Friday to be honest it would be the same thing yeah we would have the same issues okay so the PD Council wanted to do the full days on a Wednesday correct um no we that was more of the principles I think agreed to that one week okay yes about it yes because we did talk about absenteeism with the PD console so to the sixth of that so it looks like to me that it has to be either February 9th or March 6th which would be like terrible

231but aren't we trying to push our MCAT States later anyway just so we make sure we get the right so we don't have any say um yeah and sometimes it's the tech integration staff needing the support so we have to okay first choice if there's an MCAS second choice February 9th sure yes yes okay new business meeting scheduled for 23 24. that is in the packet um I can't think of an explanation so so like we can table it if you want but at least you have it yep yeah but I only thought it would be just right now I had some things or shifts and things around I just think that we tried to look at you know one of the things that I was trying to avoid is um we've had people ask

232us why are we having because nights when there's they're going on across the hall and things like that and I think that does create a problem because parents may want to attend a school community meeting but they don't want to miss their students show and I've always in other districts I've been we try to avoid having special events as much as possible I'd like to go to those shows right but I mean it is available other nights but still there are parents that might want to be there for that and they can only you know so there was another one you switched around because there's parent conferences one night yep so we moved to some of these um just today based on Lisa's original proposal just to try to avoid some of them and then

233we found this year we did not have enough meetings right at the beginning of the year we don't know if you remember that but we needed to present more to you at the beginning of the year September is crazy so we added we only had one in October but we put two in October for that reason because I feel like if one school gets open then we've really gotta get into the nitty-gritty gets at our school goals and start presenting that there's gonna be so much going on next year that I think we might want to if not officially plan for them to start thinking about you know the fact that we might need more meetings no thanks no I'm not you know just something to do with you tonight was unusual because of um

234we got backed up in certain presentations we ended up changing some dates for there was some conference that we had which ended up tonight ended up being much more in the one night than normal plus we ended up doing yeah we went to heaven so this was unusually heavy for um having this much on one meeting no no absolutely I'm aware that all right well let's let's think about this over the next two weeks yeah can we table this but can we this is in our packet so that we can all look at our calendars and stuff exactly yeah that's what my goal would be to try to get it on your calendars sooner than later for all of us to lock those in okay so table it for now and we'll come back to

235it next time uh newsletter no news you don't have one because purchase we just rewards right yeah okay it's just on there so yeah I'm sure we have it okay so our next meeting is June 15th and PM I think missing something that uh brings us to the end of our uh our regular um public session nope just executive session okay so uh with that I will entertain a motion to adjourn to Executive session uh for purpose one to discuss the reputation character physical condition or mental health rather than professional competence of an individual or to discuss the discipline or dismissal of or complaints or charges brought against a public officer employee staff member or individual to discuss strategy with respects to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect

236on bargaining or litigating positions of the public body and the chair so it declares and from which we will not return okay that does require a roll call vote to injury executive session many yeah zero Amanda Cynthia yes Don yes Dan yes so with that we are adjourned we will see you in two weeks uh at 10 23 so if you're seven minutes ahead of schedule thank you no idea