Quincy School Committee: Teaching & Learning Subcommittee Meeting - December 6, 2023

001good evening I'd like to call the uh teaching and learning subcommittee to order and I'm wondering if Mr Ford is in the house Mr Smith is with good evening good evening sure could you check the mics for me to make sure check one two not supposed to tap yeah Mr for and Mr Smith you have the floor thank you uh mayor Koke superintendent Moi members of the school committee members of the superintendent leadership team I want to thank you for taking that time to review our 2023 2024 School Improvement plan assistant principal Ed Smith and I are here to discuss our plan with you this year through clear expectations courageous conversations observations and implementations we will continue to build upon a culture that unites us as one team empowering us to succeed through efficient effective

002and Equitable practices our teaching and learning expectations will remain the same to hold each other accountable create a sense of belonging build upon an outstanding curriculum and reinforce our community better known as ABC squar our students have been challenged as well which is to be great in all that they do and creating a welcoming safe respectful environment we encourage our students to be generous and genuine to be respect respect F and responsible to be encouraging to be ambitious and to be a team player our school Improvement plan has been developed in conjunction with the collaborative conference team's recommendation from the December 2022 Nas visit as well as Quincy High School self-reflection report there were three priority areas identified from the nas visit last December those areas include developing the vision of a graduate curricul planning

003or course alignment as well as a tiered monitoring support system for our students in addition to focusing on those three priority areas as part of this year's School Improvement plan each department developed goals to maximize the full learning potential of our students so they Excel both academically and socially before I speak more about the plan I'm GNA turn it over to our assistant principal Ed Smith to review last year's reflections and give us a kneas update good evening tonight I have the opportunity to share with you the data and goals Reflection from last year starting on page six of our plan a special thanks to Kim Pierce Roger bcer Elliot colum Brendan Palomo Megan Murray and Dr T who make up the qhs data and assessment team along with me our focus last year was

004to identify students and course sections that struggled on the mcast recogn weaknesses and assist teachers adjust their instruction while we did identify and provide support for our lowest performing students we also identified some of our CCP students who met or exceeded expectations and then held student conferences and encourag them to take honors classes in the future this year we're turning our expect turning our attention to the accountability report and plan to present and educate staff and set targets and goals for the future while they remain many areas in which we can improve overall we are pleased with the progress made in the direction quinsey High School is headed a few data points uh to note include the qhs students improved on the 2023 Elam mcast from 5 to 12% of students exceeding expectations on the

005math mcast we decrease the number of students earning not meeting expectations from 9 to 7% and on the biology mcast 50% of our students met or exceeded expectations which is two percentage points higher than 2022 and Three Points higher than this year's State average you will notice we have a robust goal reflection this year which coincides with our mission of ABC squared and being accountable for everything we do at quinsey high school broken into two initiatives we made progress or met eight of our 12 goals as part of our academic initiative within our social emotional and Equity initiative we met or partially met nine of our 14 goals while the most recent vocal data outlines areas in need of growth we're proud of the work that's being done by the qhs staff our culture and

006climate committee and through our new student advisory period this year as we turned to this year's specific goals and action steps we decided to have our departmental goals and action steps be organized parallel to our neas accreditation tasks as Mr Ford shared this round of Nas began in the fall of 2021 with surveys of students families and staff a self-reflection report was written with contributions and approval from all qhs faculty and staff which was submitted to NAS for review prior to the collaborative conf conference in December of 2022 after the visit the nas team and qhs staff together identified the three priority areas of growth and those goals include developing a vision of The Graduate that includes transferable skills and knowledge understandings and dispositions necessary for future success develop a written curriculum in consistent format

007that includes units of study with guiding essential questions Concepts content and skills integrating the school's vision of The Graduate and establishing protocols and procedures for student referrals by developing a uniform process for identifying and supporting students who need interventions and supports the accreditation process will culminate with our decennial visit in December of 2024 with a review of our progress towards these priority areas now turn it back over to Mr Ford who will go over this year's departmental goals thank you Mr Smith starting on page 25 each department developed a measurable goal centered toward student achievement in order to achieve their goal the approach will continue to be data driven with effective professional development velopment and execution collaboration goal setting and meaningful student support we will collect relevant data analyze our findings make appropriate recommendations and

008implement the necessary strategies to increase student engagement and achievement while improving our school's culture many of our department goals focus on one of the three priority areas for niad such as curriculum alignment and teered monitoring intervention systems in addition to need as priority areas and Department goals implementation we also launched a one school one-book reading program this program is designed to create a shared reading experience with our high school community and allows students teachers and families to have conversations about this reading each student in grades 9 through 12 and staff were given a copy of the book on the come up by Angie Thomas to read over the summer each department throughout the first semester will will pick a theme and discuss this book with their students we also had a staff discussion in small

009groups during our staff's opening day meeting this one school one book really sets the stage to have those courageous conversations and a proactive matter rather than be reactive to what's going on in in society in our world and we felt found as though having these discussions right away uh using examples through the book was a great way to continue to build Upon Our Community um overall we also added 45 minute advisory period to our schedule during a half days each month this advisory period is an opportunity for students and teachers to connect and participate in activities that are designed to highlight the richness and diversity of quiny high school our culture and climate committee um who Edie Boon Madison Davis Mercedes Guerrera Stephanie Jones Nina Meltzer Jackie niosi James traing and our team leader Sarah

010LaVine meet weekly to create lesson scripts for our teachers to have with the following topics for the year we started the year with community building we have Hispanic Heritage Month mental health awareness we have a substance awareness uh script ready to go for this month uh study habits Black History Month women History Month Arab American Heritage m month and our Asian-American and Pacific Islander month all to be part of our advisories throughout the year our extended day offerings starting on page 41 are intended for students to connect both academically and socially outside the regular school hours we have over 40 active clubs that our students participate in clubs are are finding ways now to integrate during the school day which is awesome and they also have a a heavy social media presence highlighting that are

011outstanding activities we offer throughout the day for this year some of our new clubs include the chess club the cyber security club the electronics project Club our Muslim Students Association club and our quiny high school step club all started this year on page 44 you will see a family engagement and communic ation is a priority for us it's really essential in in how we operate here at Quincy High School really want to thank the district for um providing us with the s'mores software um it's a messaging all opportunity to send out creative messages to um staff and the community community um I use it a lot and I'm very thankful for that uh the rooll hats weekend is um in our second year of success right now even though it's a little rainy out there

012um on during the weekend um but really trying to really seeing our community come together um in that sense of a pride of Quincy High School again is something that is a a staple of what we're trying to do overall um we're we're thank you for the continuation of having a a Portuguese speaking student and family liaison in the building full-time for us um that's been uh really um another opportunity to communicate with families um and and with our students throughout the day and it's been extremely helpful um having her there um we will continue to have our uh president's community bulletin to really highlight um the awesome things that are happening at quiny high school for members in the community to see on a monthly basis again with our back to school nights and

013parent conferences College nights are opportunities for um for families to to know and understand what exactly is going on in our school um and you know our early college newsletters um that are out there um as we continue to expand early college is another way to communicate with families our school demographics on page 47 um so we know at quiny high school um we have just over, 1450 students um um 56% are are lowincome families 20% special education students and 12.7 % are English Learners we have over 464 that are enrolled in advanced and higher level courses all right and they're also the breakdown of our demographics on that page 47 as well um over the next two to three years our goal is to increase representation of our marginalized students and honors and advanced

014level courses by providing opportunities for mentoring advising and tutoring um and this effort will be in collaboration with other schoolwide academic initiatives on page 50 is our um facilities like Improvement needs we want to first start off by by thinking what has been done over the past year um we're we're happy to say that the lighting and the cafeteria and the hallways um have been uh upgraded with all LED lighting um the all house lighting in the Adams Hall have been replaced which is great uh the interactive sign that's outside our building again another way to communicate with the community what's going on um has been fix and operating um flawlessly at this point and we had several upgrades to our audio system in the cafeteria and the gym so to be able to in

015those large spaces to be able to communicate um to the folks in the gym in the cafeteria has been extremely helpful as far as areas a need um I we definitely need an upgrade in our security camera system overall um in the building that's a huge need for us right now our HVAC continues to run in inconsistently um our allil house lighting in the all Auditorium kind of flickers at times um and that could be a distraction obviously performances like last night T the season um it's something to to worth note um an additional bike rack and right now may not be useful but as the weather gets a little warmer um as a way for our students to communicate uh to have a place where students could put their bikes will be there and

016then there's some um some interior door Replacements that are needed in the gym Auditorium in the president's Cafe this has been a total team effort in developing and implementing this year's School Improvement plan empowering staff and students to help shape the direction of our school Community is our main focus again our goal is to be great in all that we do we have been challenged to be efficient effective and Equitable in our practice and we want to emphasize that we will hold each other accountable create a sense of belonging establish a culturally responsive curriculum and build a positive sense of community and to everyone that's a part of quiny high school commit um Community Ro hats thank you thank you Mr Ford and Mr Smith and before we ask forur any questions I just wanted

017to say that all of the facility requests are going to be moved right into the facility subcommittee meeting so we're not going to really talk about them tonight unless we have some particular concerns but would anybody like to address Mrs kahill um I just have one question um I say that all the time I end up having like five um what's the high school criteria to be placed into an advanced class how do do we base it on um their scores in their placement the year before or um if they were in advanced classes in middle school you know how do we kind of gauge when we put someone in an advanced class they choose to be in it sometimes they can be and sometimes they can't dep you know they might want to so

018how do we do that a lot of it comes from recommendations right so if you're talking about um a middle school student coming to the high school right so the expectation in any grade that um students and teachers are working in conjunction with what one another and have that recommendation to go to a certain level right and so a lot of times where if a student is recommended for a particular level and they feel as though whether they want to be Advanced or they want to drop down to a level we do have a series of steps that we want that student and or family to go through whether it's through the teacher and the department chair um are are involved before a recommendation and the final steps go from there so as far there

019is you know we would say students would need a 90 or above um but depending on the situation with a particular student let's say they have a 85 right you know something like that and they really feel as though I want to be in that advanced level then we have conversations with that student with the department chair to ultimately determine to get there I will say that you know we're really trying to push more and more students to those Advanced levels you know some of some students you know that we feel as though have the skill sets necessary to be at that advanced level um we're really trying to work and support them in getting there some of them are at times may be a little reluctant to go to that advanced level because of

020fear of I don't know if I'm going to do well so we try to um provide those supports and those reassurances that we will support you along the way to get there so we're we're really continue to push actually one of the things that we will Implement um pretty since the grades came out um is really honoring our um honor roll students we have close to 900 students that made the Honor Roll um this per first term and so we want to be able to celebrate them they usually go on to quiny Sun but we also going to have posters of Flyers throughout the the school with their names on that so we can have other students see that a you are being celebrated for Success so you know we want to encourage more and

021more students on that higher level so I guess what um when I see some of the populations that we maybe want to push up and and get them engaged in in some advanced classes because like you said I think a lot of times some of our families they have students have families behind them that are pushing them and supporting them and making sure that they can get into an advanced class and do well um maybe some students don't have that at home at home or that support but the school maybe thinks that you know they can do it um so I'm wondering if there's some students that we can kind of nudge to get up to that next level and and support them where we think that they're not being represented you know correct um

022so that would be something that I think you know be a way to get some of these kids in advanced classes and and the truth be told of that too I think the other element is you know as we're talking about like um not only the ability to do the work but the Comfort level at the higher levels right and so you know some of our you know students students of color marginalized students right because you know there is a misrepresentation at that higher level right just really getting a sense of you know Community feeling the sense of belonging as they're making their way into those higher levels right so the more students that we can encourage to that level right the more our black and brown students that they see there right that that's

023another attraction besides the skills and ability to be there and so that's something really want to highlight and promote that okay it's not you're not in isolation you're not the only one you know getting to this higher level that there are others that also could be there as well and so the more that we have at the higher level the more I see the representation of people that may look like me also in this particular class but as well as far far as them being able to feel more and more comfortable and taking somebody's higher classes so we're taking all of that in consideration um as well as we move forward do you have a lot of students that want to be in advanced classes and that we can't put you know that we can't

024place or do you find you have more students in advanced classes that want to drop down because they because they don't like the rigor or the level of work in comparison to both of them there is more there the students that want to go to to a high uh the the advanced level it isn't because of placement that they not at the the the the advanced level at this point it's not we don't have room you know for those at at that particular level right so we're try to find ways some of them the folks that want the the advanced level um many of them have five six seven eight you know classes like they'll have six or seven AP classes that they're trying to all fit that in and that's the ones that we're

025really in some ways trying to help them balance that out a little bit because it might be too much of an undertaking in one year to take seven AP classes at one time right and so you know but the ones that you know may be in our CCP classes and we try to find okay I'm pretty good at English right and try to nudge them along in English a little bit you know in some ways to be is like okay who who's in there am I with friends and so we try to get away from the friend aspect when we deal with scheduling overall and so when you have students that have been used to a certain level right for a couple of years and kind of know who's in that particular level now we're

026trying to nudge them to go to a higher level and they may be in classes with students they're not particularly used to being in classes with that is the piece that we're still trying to work out a little bit as they're you know trying to advance their skills and and ability thing that's great um and my I think I'm I'll leave it to the rest of my colleagues but um my only other thing is go presidents absolutely that's from Mas I like the roll hats it's a great Community thing but we are the presidents I hear Mr Santoro thank you madam chair um you have a very unique schedule it's a very OD thing to pull off I know especially when we have vocational kids trying to get the requirements for college and making sure

027then we can pull that off but another great thing you add is team time is that still happening yes you were able to pull it off yes we do have team this year thank you and more teachers involved in team this year than we have for the past few years great thank you Mr gutro thank you uh welcome y uh two comments three questions so uh first of all congratulations on the improvements that you made over last year year based on the data that you shared with us um want to say I thought it was a great array of extended day offerings as well as um Community parental engagement you know those were great uh offerings uh three questions so the incident data that you gave was just raw numbers is is there anything that

028you can say relative to the trends of incidents did did the number of incidents go up were there certain C atories have changed quite honestly I think our the number of incidents have are going down right I I think for you know in comparison to things that we had to deal with last year overall um having um the hiring of our our Deans now we have a Full Slate of four Deans that's really have a a good handle of our students um you know our focus when we talk about ABC squared it's not just a slogan you know over overall is like when we talk about accountability of everyone creating that sense of belonging right taking a look at our curriculum in community that's all part of the reason why the from a discipline and

029incident perspective um things have gone down to a certain extent um because staff are are more Vigilant right we we're asking students to holding them accountable a little bit more um you know the biggest thing that having to deal with duties this year we're trying to be very um intentional on where like from a staff perspective as far as bathroom duties and lunch duty um one thing I didn't mention I didn't know if he was going to go there about the schedule a little bit is that we went to four lunches this year uh would M has a Major Impact um as far as what happens between 11: to 1 there are less kids um in the cafeteria during lunch um it just kind of seems calmer and peaceful and and students are able to

030you know get their lunch kind of relaxed during that time we still have have students Li ready to go go to class which is surprising to me I would have took the whole you know time off if I could but um you know for the most part is it's it's great to see um our students kind of feel that safety right and so I know we had some couple of things that happened you know earlier this year um that really from the outside looking in is the questionable okay what's going on at Quincy High School but folks that have been in the building folks that kind of been around yeah the and culture of the building has changed has sifted and mentioning again it was great like as far as we had uh spirit week

031right before Thanksgiving probably the most participated spirit week from students and staff all the way around uh the buzzing of social media like a lot of our clubs um not only run but they have a a huge especially Instagram presence and folks are just really commenting like so whether you're part of that club or sport or not like once you're integrated and seeing what's going on in quiny high school there's a lot of great things that are happening so you know we hear a lot of outside noise of things that people might think is happening in the building but if you come in the building and if you really get a chance to see what we're doing in the building we're we're we're functioning great and the incidents that we do have are manageable they're

032regular high school I'm going to uh a group chat with principles in the Southshore all the Patriot leag principles and things like that and you know stuff that we're dealing with right now every school uh really in the Commonwealth dealing with the same issues right and that's there there is less and less of this is unique to quiny high school more so than okay these are high school issues that we're dealing with across the board and how do we handle those together the the bathroom incidents is that managed better I mean I mean you know I hate to not going to want to bring things up but you know there were certain things that happened in the in the bathrooms a year ago that I had to write several emails to families about that had

033isn't happening this year right and so you know again the I think having more supervision of of the bathroom do things happen in the bathroom it it does right you know and we're really trying to monitor that I think with our um the adoption of a diversion program um has been so students aren't you know if we talk about like vaping and things like that in the bathrooms like that that is still happening um but now you know not only like students are being suspended or whatever else we have a diversion program where they are required to meet with our health interventionists and really go through there's a four-week program that they have to go through um with um what Ted Talks podcasts um resources literature on why you know vaping is an unhealthy Choice

034and then they have to write a refle reflection on that as well so there are additional steps that we're requiring for our students um if and when they make the decision to to Vape on school grounds the um the vocal data there was a lot of things to be encouraged about there but there were two two that I want to talk about which concerned me which was one and four said they preferred to stay home because they felt unsafe and the same percentage Point felt that uh I don't know what the terminology was about sexual harassment I don't know if you have any thoughts or observations about that what was the SEC what was the second students are sexually harassed at my school for example bothered by unwanted touching or incent name calling 24% and

035I've stayed at home or avoided school because I did not feel safe at my school one again one and four so last year again if we call it what is between like right out the gate we had a bomb threat right so we had the bomb threat we had the graffiti that you know not only happened with students but then it talked about the character of the principal as well U during that time we had a couple of fights that took place um that were egregious enough that you know being recorded and things like that last year so if a student's taking a test afterwards and saying you know one of the one of the mcast test happened right after one of the incidents happened so if you ask me a couple of days after

036a major fight that happened if you feel safe or not I'm G say I feel unsafe too right you know during that time um and so we recognize that we recognize the the the local data as a as a whole um you know from one year to the next that it took a little dip in certain areas um but we we're really holding firm on the foundation that we've been laying right and and and believing in what we're doing as far as building a culture right and again we're peeling back the onion a little bit there's things that's being revealed as we're going through this process that is going to take a couple of years to do um but you know the sense of of you know as we did our culture and climate survey

037um last year as well we're going to do that every two years to kind of get more information you know from our students and staff uh that's how the advisory period you know started um that's how really the one school read started right is through um the information that we received if you look at who we hired this year right so there was three main buckets from our culture and climate survey um that both students and staff talked about um number one was um as far as uh diversification of our staff um I'm I'm proud to say that we did that right you're looking at who we hired uh for the past year and we had you know couple quite a few hirings this this year through retiring and everything else but our staff has

038divers Diversified even as recent as a couple weeks ago so we're happy about that the staff um talked about needing more resources right and so we're Contin to provide those resources in our advisory period um overall th they're from our culture and climate committee those are scripted so our staff does not have to um in any way create lessons on those topic areas that I read earlier that information is given to them to go along and we've been doing trying to do community Sur uh circles restorative justice circles for the past three years and that's embedded in ouri advisory period each month now so when we ask students to go in a circle whether it's Community Building or it's from a discipline perspective our students now are able to do that um um in a

039in in a way that they're they're starting to get used to that now right in comparison before so we're we're excited in the direction that we're going it is going to take some time to get there but I think the foundation has laid for us to be successful and then the last question is about uh the annual dropout rate there was some encouraging data in there but there were two uh I think it was students with disabilities and African-American black students it it the language says declined but it looks like they went up uh what page you looking at again sorry uh 55 55 yeah it says reason declin yep so the students with disabilities um and um uh last year so it they had one looks like it went from 1.7 I don't know

040how you do a074 a student but you know so it went from one student to two um as far as that's concerned so did we did decline there where I thought you were going at which we're excited about um is our El and former El students where the the rate was 13 close to 133% um and that Dro down um to 4% and so we know specifically with our El Department we uh brought back up our El intervention um team that we meet each Tuesday and we talk about our you know really trying to find supportive ways with our El students overall um that's something that is is a major focus of of all of ours um for this upcoming year particularly for mine um and really looking help for the district when it comes

041to to our El uh population in supporting them but to say that you know you have close to uh 12% of the E population close to 13 that dropped out of school now we're able to keep them in the building they went from 133% to 4% right that's a major um improve major shift um in a year's time and we still got work to do um you know from there so I definitely hear what you're saying as far as students with disabilities that that one other student you're right you know we don't like anybody to drop out um but on the on the other side to see that major shift in our El population which is in some ways our most needest um uh group of students because of you know the the several challenges

042um that they are coming to us with for us to support overall on that we're excited about the proc the program and the progression that we are with our El students thank you thank you thank you Mr G I just have an observation and possibly a question uh Mr Santoro and I were lucky enough to be able to sit in on the nas visit last year um after the team had been through your building we met with them and um to hear what they really highlighted about that um was amazing about the amaz amazing Technical and academic offerings in the building the schedule was amazing the class size was amazing amazing and the extended day offerings they said were really amazing uh and and I can speak to what you're talking about for students I

043spent some time doing food waste and with the 18 volunteers from the Garden Club and the other people from the community who've been in there there isn't one of them who doesn't love being with the kids they not crazy about some of the other stuff but the kids have never ever ever been a problem with anybody in the building it's amazing I really is amazing so and I I mean I was in high school a long time I thought it was going to be a little worse than it was but the kids TR tremendous but my question is going back to Mr guto's point on page 59 um there is one of the vocal things that I'm concerned about and it's I feel comfortable reaching out to teachers or counselors for emotional support if I

044need it and I think that what you're doing with the student advisory committee and the tiered support is your addressing that or trying to address that yes and that's what it looked like to me because that was a big concern of mine I I mean the other stuff happens but if the kids don't feel they can talk about it so I love that who's actually doing who's uh who's doing the student advisory periods with the kids is it home room teachers or is it it's all Home Room teachers so we we're trying to build that up a little bit more you know home room kind of been like a holding you got the school great now let's go right so we're trying to especially Home Room for four years right you have students that going

045to be with the the same group of students and teacher right so let's find a way to kind of build a relationship um from there overall um and and you know again that's why so excited not only about the advisory but you know when we talk about spirit week when we talk about the roll hats weekend what things of that nature is that students are able to kind of see their teacher outside the realm of teaching that content right um The Advisory period is a great opportunity there are different topics that brought up already where a a a teacher kind of let their hair down a little bit right kind of share a little bit more about who they are um in that in that particular moment right and so the goal would be you

046know as we continue to progress and and and find ways to to get more involvement with our staff with our students in extracurricular stuff or during the school day that students will now see a sense of oh okay yeah I I I I can I have this person now I can go to and kind of go from there so um we're really trying to bridge that Gap and trying to be creative in what we offer overall um I'm I'm happy to see the number of staff that are now involved with you know the clubs and activities yeah it's student kind of LED and driven but each Club needs a advisor and so there's a you know club with the process a student would come to to me say I want a new find a new

047club I said you have to find an adviser first and then how does this how is this club really uh beneficial for the quiny high community and so we kind of have them go through a series of of questions that they have to answer in order for that start the club to start so um and and the teachers kind of being being involved in that whole process being uh being involved in um Club fairs whether it in the building the rooh hats weekend we'll have a club Fair kind of showing up next uh Monday the 11th when our eighth grade open house opens another opportunity to display what we do and and our staff is a part of that right so we're very grateful for that and so my my last thing well two things

048the students the formal student um support interventions I was really excited to read about but I was a little disappointed that the goal is not going to be accomplished until next December but I assume you're putting it in place and not yes it's starting it's okay that's I just wanted to make sure that you weren't just planning for a year correct correct didn't think you were and the uh president's Community bullet it's not on Facebook I looked where is it um so it's it's sent that it should be on the website um and it's also kind of sent out um on a monthly basis to to the the families and commun I'll take look like that yeah thank you very much um motion to approve the plan by Mr Santoro 7ed by Mrs kill you

049guys are all set thank you so much aome thank you very much yep have a good night this this Mar hi everyone you're ready for me we are ready great well can you hear me okay hi everyone good evening um I want to thank you for your time um you'll shift gears now from high school to Elementary um I again I want to thank you for your time I want to thank you for the time that you spent um reviewing the school Improvement plan for Atherton how um any opportunity that I have to talk about Aon how the students the staff the work that we're doing is welcome so I'm glad to be here um for this presentation I wanted to share a few Reflections from last year's School Improvement plan as well as um

050look ahead into the school approvement plan and I'd also like to make sure that there's time for any questions that you have so you probably know I I do like to highlight this you know we're the smallest Elementary School here in quinsey we have 19 classes 12 general education classes K to 5 in seven of the 19 classes are substantially separate programs one transitional kindergarten program and six classes is part of the Citywide language development program I always find it important to acknowledge the breakdown of our our enrollment as it illustrates the amount of special education students at each grade particularly the number of those students participating in District and Statewide assessments our goals and action steps in the act in the school Improvement plan reflect a collaborative effort in planning between general education and

051special education to support our case load of special education students we were able to welcome an additional guidance counselor to our staff this year and I want to thank you school committee members for that budget consideration last year and to the superintendent leadership team for their support and recognizing the changing needs of enrollment in the important role of student support our student support team including our guidance team school psychologist service providers as well as our academic support staff teachers par professionals all work so cohesively together in the Reflections in the school Improvement plan as well as the goals for this year are a direct result of that considerable collaboration and intentional planning of a remarkable staff that come to school each and every day and do all they can to make every student feel welcome

052safe and cherished I know that's my report but I'm so pleased to see that same feedback from our students in the spring vocal survey last year we set academic goals to increase student proficiency as measured by mclass for reading map for reading and Math and Science and mcast for reading math and science I'm happy to report we met part of our schoolwide goal for ELA and math last year as you can read in the goal analysis students in grades 2 through five had a goal to demonstrate positive growth in reading and map as as measured by their map writ score from the fall to the spring all grades two through five met or exceeded their RIT growth goal in addition the number of our K through two students considered at risk decreased as measured by

053the M class this year we continue to use map to measure proficiency however we're excited to be using a new report that map offers the school profile achievement report these are very user friendly they are digital you can drill down in them to see what which students are aware in projected growths for example if you look at page 10 on the first page of the ELA goal you'll see a snapshot of our beginning of the year achievement reports included um I have a copy here I don't know if you have a color copy of the school Improvement plan um I didn't have access to a color printer but I used markers just to give you an idea of what our teachers see and what these data Reports look like um these are very timely students

054take assessment data and within 24 hour these reports are able to be generated it's helpful to see data like this percentage of students on track percentage of students at risk you can look at this by school by grade by class by teacher we use this instruction in so many ways we're using it to set our goals um and daily instruction last year we did add an additional goal of raising proficiency by using the mcast at each tested grade we were looking to increase students earning proficiency by 10% as compared to Spring 2022 I know Miss Libo you had appreciated the rigorous goal and I agreed it was rigorous but with our projected map scores positive signs of recovery throughout the district throughout the state and positive growth we felt it was attainable while we did

055not meet this goal entirely entirely our analysis has really helped us fine-tune continuing to use mcast as a measure for this school year our tested third graders showed a 4% increase in proficiency as compared to 2022 on the ELA mcast and our fifth graders showed a 6% increase in proficiency as compared to 2022 on the math mcast however at each of the other grade levels tested there was not an increase in proficiency we looked really carefully at this there's a lot of great reports that we like looking at that mcast is able to generate um standards reports the greatest disparities between our students with the district and the state seem to actually be in the selected response questions formerly known as multiple choice questions um there really wasn't a standard in math or Ela that

056stood out that was really solidly a strength or an era of concern writing at all grades for ELA was solid and at the district or state level which we were really pleased about but the selected response um was an area of need both for ELA and math so you'll see we've built in some important action steps to increase the percentage of points earned on selected response items for Math and Ela although we did not meet our schoolwide goal for science we actually celebrate our results in science science the loudest we had um indicated time as an area of focus using map and MC's measures our science scores have historically been lower than the district in the state and we had been creating important action steps to create more time such as schoolwide initiatives specific planning

057time for science extended day opportunities highlighting science on the morning announcements both grade four and five set a goal to increase their average map score by seven rip points from Fall to Spring grade five met their goal of seven rip points however grade four missed the goal by 0. one point we were also looking to increase students earning proficiency on the mcast by 5% as compared to the um spring 2022 mcast 52% of our fifth graders earned proficiency as compared to 48% the year before so while we just missed our goal by 1% we are pleased to continue to see this increase in proficiency we also are pleased to see that our proficiency level this past spring was 11% higher than the state's level proficiency we will continue to focus on instructional learning time in

058the area of science to maintain and increase our proficiency levels in this area and continue to aim to be at or above the state proficiency level I'd like to also use a minute if I could to highlight here as well that this is a fifth grade test out of our fifth fifth graders tested 40 they were there were 45 of them 17 of those students were students in our substantially separate classes or 38% of our fifth grade these proficiency levels are a true Testament to the collaboration of teams in the delivery of intentional and meaningful action steps for this year as you can see we will focus on both map and mcast as measures for growth in ela math and in science and we will also use mclass as a measure for the primary grades

059or K to3 in Reading we're committed to our action steps and to work diligently as a dedicated School staff to help each student make progress in all areas below the action steps in the school Improvement plan there are a few pictures for each goal highlighting important action steps that are already well underway in our first term of this school year as you look at the pictures you may be wondering why you see a coffee bean as part of an action step for our fourth goal of increasing the experiences students have that Pro promote their personal go growth in social emotional health and well-being each year as some of you know and maybe remember we identify a schoolwide book to weave into our morning announcements our schoolwide assemblies our grade level Community meetings this year the

060book is John Gordon's the coffee bean for kids it's a great story John Gordon is a really great author um we read The Energy Bus for kids a couple years ago really kind of simple messages that are re really relevant and applicable at all grades we do a lot with the with um his work um so this is just a nice powerful message um to help students see the powerful way they can impact the environment around them deal with challenges and come that come their way and be a positive influence so again I thank you for your time and attention and we'll be happy to answer any questions you have thank you so much Mr Santoro thank you just to let you know all the numbers aside your children love you in your building your

061parents love you they don't want to leave you just to let you know thank you I appreciate that thank you thank you thank you Mr Sor Miss K yeah I don't really have much to say but thank you for the work that you're doing um we appreciate it and as Mr Santoro said so does your whole community so thank you thank you Mr G similar sentiments but um so on the vocal survey a couple of things stood out the um just the numbers where students said they felt safe they were happy at school um they feel respected and then 100% of students said that teachers and students work together to stop bullying which really impressed me you know I mean I I love that number um the the only one on the other side that

062I looked at that says only 45% read books that include people similar to me and you mention the school book I I don't know if you want to talk about that sure yeah and that was actually um kind of on lines from the year before as well and you know we feel like even I I will actually look forward to hopefully similar questions will be on the survey this NE this coming spring um I will look forward to those results because we have put a lot of intentional action action steps last year our Dei team in addition to doing a schoolwide book we had a book each month that we also highlighted our library teacher did lessons where we were very mindful of um just intentionally including books you know that highlighted students of all

063cultures around the world um we read the you know the story where we met met students from all countries um we also are in a our first full year of implementation of the CK program which is so rich with just great authentic literature that brings in um so many great non-fiction stories and books and beautiful um beautiful resources that we feel confident that is going to increase that thank you Mrs Hy thank you Mr gutro actually just spiked a question that I had um when when we talked to the students about um books with um students who look look like them do we ask the students what a student in a book who would look like them would look like so that we have an idea of because there are a lot of students that

064come from homes that are not just one thing that would look like them one aspect yeah so do we we ask them what they're looking for that they would be looking to see it's that's actually a great question um and it even came to my mind a couple of weeks ago we are part of a a little study with um Boston versus bullies they are out of um Boston University and um we've had them in um doing some they there's some guest speakers that come in it's a great program we've had it for a few years and um so we're in a pilot right now to see the effectiveness of their lessons um so we're actually in a control group so we had to have our fifth graders respond to a survey online um at

065the beginning of this school year asked very similar questions like that and I was in there facilitating the survey in one of the fifth graders asked what does that question mean yeah and it made me think like that is a question that they see you know and when they take the vocal survey that's part of um it comes right after an mcast session you know we can't read those we can't talk about that with them so I'm glad you brought that up because I think more work of just even talking to students about when we see questions like that you know um just to be more explicit and we've been more mindful of even just you know it's not even just cultural but you know talking about families that are different you know and um

066we read a story last year we had a March Madness story with um you know books continued on and we had like our final winner you know when it was about a boy who Lo um came from a big hockey family um but this boy and so you know he was getting his skates he was so excited his family wanted to get him on the ice and you know get on the hockey team and they loved it and he wanted to be a figure skater and you know there are many students that were relating to that you know and he was feeling ashamed didn't didn't want to kind of show that this is what he wanted to do and so we talked so much about that as a school that was our big winner you

067know and I think it was wonderful in the houset community you know that that was the winner of the book of the whole March Madness um so different you know families are different um so many things but that intentional kind of instruction about kind of what we're doing and making sure you know that they're feeling like they're represented yeah exactly I would just hate that us to go and buy a whole bunch of books that we felt were what represented and then it wasn't hitting the mark of what made a student feel like they were represented school has so many different um representations in their school too you know thank you which makes me wonder about the question Mrs huley because I could look at it as up is there any other redhead in this

068I'm a red I don't see a redhead there so you don't really know you know I'm kind of chubby I don't see any chubby people on that right you know so it's really a kind of a the question doesn't mean quite as much to me as it used to now that she said that specific so it's really you have to asked me a few weeks ago I thought about the vocal survey I said what a good question you know he didn't really know what he was answering yeah well thank you for pointing that out um your data I'm so glad you were ambitious because your data is very impressive it really is very very impressive and your class size is amazing and as to Mr sanur's point the vocal survey is incredible and the kids

069love you and the community loves you and so I couldn't be any happier than to look at this plan again and see you're continuing I love the fact that you're doing both map and and mcast because there's been some questions so far this year in these plans that like map is saying somebody's high in vocabulary mcast is saying somebody's the same person's low in vocabulary it's it's a little to make sure that there really is some value I'm sure there is but make sure there's Val enough value in doing both because I really prefer a map but um motion to accept by Mr santor seconded by Mrs kahill thank you so much for coming thank you very much have a good night good evening Mr Hennessy evening thank you so much for joining us thank

070you you can good evening with your plan good evening I am Jim Hennessy the proud principal of the wallston elementary school uh this this evening I look forward to reflecting on our 2022 2023 School Improvement plan and I'm very excited to share our 2023 2024 School Improvement Plan before I begin I just want to take this opportunity to thank each of you for your dedication to our students to me to the members of this committee uh mayor K superintendent malvey to assistant superintendent Perkins and to all the members of the SLT on behalf of the wallston school Community I want to take this opportunity to express our sincere appreciation for your constant support and for always putting quiny students first we are appreciative of the many programs resources and Staffing opportunities that you continually provide

071but we are most appreciative for your commitment to maintaining class sizes that promote optimal student learning year after year I I of course also need to thank our teachers and our staff every day I have the chance to witness their dedication to our students their commitment to high standards and their ability to create a positive learning environment for all we so greatly appreciate all of our students and it continues to be an honor to watch them learn and grow each day within the walls of our building we are also so grateful for our parents and Guardians we truly believe that our parents and Guardians are our partners and we are very fortunate to have such a strong partnership with our families and a very supportive PTO last year we conducted a family feedback survey for

072our for our parents we want them to know that their input is welcomed and appreciated the results of the survey are on page six but overall we learned that the vast majority of our families believe that their children are happy they feel safe and are making progress they believe that we communicate effectively and that their identity and culture is respected acknowledged and celebrated we were most proud to learn that 94% of our families feel a sense of belonging at wallon school all the data in our sip is important of course but I think I am most proud of this data the staff and I firmly believe that this is what education is about our students are happy they feel safe and are making progress our families see this and they are part of it and

073I think this is reflected in all of our assessments I'd like to take some time this evening to reflect on those assessments of course on our school year last year and the goals that we set but most importantly I look forward to sharing where we are going during the 2023 2024 school year and the steps we plan to take to get there during the 2223 school year our goal was to ensure that all students demonstrated continuous growth in the areas of English language arts mathematics and science we also wanted our school to continue to be a place that supports and promotes diversity equity and inclusion by providing social emotional learning opportunities for all members of the school Community both during and after the school day we use the mcast and the map assessment to measure

074our success as you can see on page 39 we are very proud to report that all tested grades demon demonstrated growth in the map student growth summary reports from Fall of 22 to the spring of 23 and exceeded the national Norms in all grades and on page 38 I am proud to report that the percentage of wallston school students who met or exceeded expectations in mcast exceeded the state in all areas in grade three in all areas in grade four and in mathematics science and technology engineering and grade five we are also so proud of the results of our vocal survey and our positive learning Comm environment the overall School climate score for fourth and fifth grade students exceeded the state in addition wallison exceeded the state in the area of Engagement safety and environment

075during the 23 24 school year our goal setting reflects our commitment to challenging our students while supporting each individual students social emotional learning needs we again have set goals in the areas of ela math science and social emotional learning Equity diversity and inclusion we will continue to use the map and MK to measure our progress towards these goals I'd just like to share a couple highlights from our action steps during this upcoming school year in ela each of our grade level teams analyzed the assessment data and established areas of focus as you can see on on page 10 this year our kindergarten team will be focusing on pheic awareness and phonics fluency our first grade team will be focusing on phonic skills to write complete sentences and our second grade team will be working on

076enhancing reading fluency to improve reading comprehension our third fourth and fifth grade teams will be focusing on Improvement in written response we are excited to continue to implement the C program but we are looking forward to delving deeper into these units and and trying to bring our families into this exciting curriculum even more some of these ccla family engagements events will include first grade students designing a Flag Day celebration as part of their a new nation unit or creating an art gallery for their early World civilizations knowledge unit we look forward to hosting a read Around the World celebration on February 7th and many publishing parties and all of our grades throughout the year and of course we inviting our parents in in mathematics our teams are also analyzed their data and identified areas of

077focus as you can see on page 17 our kindergarten team will focus on fluently identifying counting and comparing numbers 1 to 20 our first grade team will focus on addition and subtraction fluency 1 to 20 and our second grade will focus on numbers and operation and measurement and data our third fourth and fifth grade teams will also be focusing on measurement data and geometry we obviously look forward to continuing our use of of illustrative math and most greatly appreciate our new district-wide subscription to happy numbers we also look forward to building our math community and appreciate the recent site-based I professional development we look forward to continuing math talks and giving our students more opportunities to use Hands-On manipulatives we want to include more math projects into math instruction like students can look forward to

078building a dreamhouse or creating their own Wild West Town and and our exciting uh weekly geomet jeree which we're starting this year in fourth grade in science we look forward to seeing our fourth and fifth grade students demonstrate an increase of three RIT points from Fall to Spring in the map District summary reports we look forward to an increase in Hands-On learning and increase in engineering projects we want to try to connect our science and writing to support our Ela goal we look forward to our M subscriptions to mystery science engineering is Elementary we're excited for the district kits that were purchased from the Museum of Science for our fourth and fifth grade students our Scholastic magazines uh give our students real world applications of Science and once again just like in ela we want

079to bring our families in um so we're excited for our first grade animals and habitats projects our third grade animal fair our fourth grade Art's natural hazards projects and fifth grad's annual biome fair in the area of social emotional learning diversity equity and inclusion wallston school will continue to be a place that supports and promotes diversity Equity inclusion by providing social emotional learning opportunities for all members of the school Community both during and after the school day some of the action steps in this area will include our s'mores uh newsletter with the countless opportunities of translation in many different languages more picture books with a focus on Equity diversity inclusion uh A continuing our community circles continuing with open parachute we took a a deep dive into open parachute and we looked at all the

080different themes and we talk to the teachers about what themes you think would have the most impact um so we narrowed that down we're going to start focusing on different themes uh just for example kindergarten we'll be focusing on thoughts and feelings self-regulation the first grade will be working on self-regulation second grade understanding feelings third grade growth mindset fourth grade bullying and speaking out and fifth grade we've chosen worries anxiety and resilience our teachers will continue their use of seesaw and class dojo for communication our student support team we're going to continue with social groups lunch groups and check-ins our fifth grade student council is up and running our kindergartens are currently learning about Second Step we're initiating a online program called mightier in grades one and two which is online gaming and interaction with

081our student support team to show them about coping skills and overcoming challenges we've invited Boston vers bullies into our fourth grade our after school programs we looked at it we had a lot of new students this year um we thought it would be a great way to start the year with more social activities so we started a kindness club we ended up having to add um three additional staff members because of the popularity of it uh we had board games clubs which was very great for students who were new to our building and just like a non-academic way to get to know each other and meet other students our PTO continues to bring people together we held a family Meetup in September our fund run was a huge success and focused on kindness we had

082more people ever than ever at our trunk or treat and our family Veno night two weeks ago was a huge hit we look forward to our Winter Wonderland dance in January our movie Nights our paint nights and many more opportunities to bring our community together I thank you for giving this me this opportunity we're excited for the year ahead and the future successes of our students thank you thank you you're all set Mrs Miss kale all set um Mrs H I just want to say um I'm firm believer if you don't feel safe and secure in your school you're not going to learn so first off and I was so happy happy to see that in your survey here the vocal survey 100% of the fourth graders said they were happy to be at school

083and 100% of the fourth graders said they felt safe at school fourth grade is a really tough year that's a really hard grade to feel happy to be in school for a fourth grader that's impressive so thank you so much for all you do that's great thank you Mr G hey Jim um so I I was impressed with the Improvement across the board on chronic absenteeism that was it's a tough year too yeah it was a tough year um on the vocal survey you know I I noticed in so many different categories just High marks for how supportive the teachers are on XY Z so many different areas which was terrific to see you did mention uh commitment of social emotional uh in the vocal data they did say there was one that said only

08430 33% feel safe showing their feelings in school and then there was uh another category where it said less than 60% feel comfortable telling a teacher about something that's troubling them I didn't know if you had any thoughts on that we noticed that um I think we're trying to do more work with our student support team of giving students um Avenues to communicate with teachers and not so much in the whole group setting but just just kind of talking about ways of doing it um where students can connect with another teacher we do this the lunch groups the social groups um I think with when we talked to a couple of students I think it came down to like in a whole group setting are you comfortable which I don't think I would be comfortable

085either so we just want to make sure our students know that they have different Avenues it doesn't have to be a whole class conversation um but it's something that we talked about at school and we are going to work on great thank you thank you Mr guto uh your data is incredible it really is all of it the not just the assessment data but your vocal data and that student the parent survey is amazing it really is amazing I know that every every parent in your building feels welcome and you highlight them on your Facebook page all the time so I know that they're all trying to do more to get to get to get notice but you're just you're doing an incredible job and I we couldn't be any more proud the fact that

086you have 30% Els and 133% Fels in your third grade your fourth grade 72% of them were uh met or exceeded expectations in the laa is 73% it's amazing it really is amazing very proud thank you so congratulations to you and your staff and and your families I think you have a wonderful place there and thank you for coming in motion to accept the plan by Mr sanur seconded by Mrs kahill and thank you so much again thank you very much appreciate it thank you good morning good even good evening thank you so much for coming and we're excited to hear your plan good evening um thank you for having us here tonight uh members of school committee superintendent SLT we're excited at this opportunity to present our school Improvement plan this evening and for

087the opportunity to highlight some of the things that are being done at Monclair um thank you for your ongoing support and thank you to our assistant principal Mary Hurley for joining me this evening mclair is home to over 400 students who speak over 28 different languages and we are exceptionally proud this year and especially excited to share with you that Monclair school was a school of recognition with our mcast accountability status um this is because of our high growth and our high achievement at Monclair school and Monclair was only one out of um one of 66 schools out of over 1,800 schools in the Commonwealth to receive this accountability status this year so to say we're excited about this is a bit of an understatement um being part of a school Community with an outstanding

088staff excellent students and dedicated families is truly an honor we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to our staff their passion dedication and commitment to nurturing our students especially academically and socially emotionally is the foundation of our success MCL students are the heart of our school and the reason we strive for excellence every day their determination and their Spirit are a source of inspiration to all of us and our families play a vital role in Student Success and we are grateful for their support and for trusting us with their children every day what makes this accomplishment truly exceptional is a spirit of unity and collaboration that defines our educational Community it's the partnership between students staff and families that has led to the overall growth and achievement of our students while we are excited

089to celebrate this accomplishment we know there's always work to be done and always areas in which we can improve to help us know better where to meet our students our site-based assessment team got to work at the beginning of the school year and eventually presented mcast map dibles and access data to our staff I would like to highlight some of the data points found beginning on page four in kindergarten last year at the beginning of the 2223 school year only 49% of our students were at or above Benchmark by the end of the school year 89% of our students were at or above this was an increase of 41% on the administration of the access for El students 90% of our students in grades one to five improved on their overall proficiency in just one

090school year 90% of grades students in grades one to five it's remarkable it really really truly is we're very proud of our students on the map assessment students showed at or above the average projected RIT growth in all grades and in all subject areas so when we're looking at multiple measures of Student Success we're seeing that they are successful across many different data points on mcast on page five you will F find the breakdown of results we are pleased to see that in all areas Montclair exceeded the state's average of students at or above percent correct and had fewer students um that were not meeting expectations I'll give you some examples in grade three Ela we had 3% not meeting expectations as compared to 16% at the state level not meeting grade four math we

091had 78% of students meeting or exceeding this is 80 I'm sorry not 80 28% higher than the state of 49 and fifth grade science um we had 17% higher meeting or exceeding expectations in science despite these impressive achievements we did not meet our academic goals as written in last year's School Improvement plan for the past few years we've created goals based on the percent correct which we are finding is not always an accurate representation of students growth because we are comparing different students from one year to the next for that reason we adjusted our Ela and math mcast goals the new goals can be found on page 12 they also include a map goal so we're using map and mcass this year the team also decided to include a Dibbles um goal for ELA so

092that way we're including all students across our um School Improvement plan um goals additionally each grade level team created their own learning goals to help meet and support our overall student goals these goals also fit very nicely into our education uh educator evaluation system so everything is working together so we have our edal goals our grade level team goals our school goals that all support the district level team goals so it's a very nice alignment to all of the goals um at this time Mrs hurle is going to share some highlights in action steps from our third and fourth goals the third goal is our science goal that includes new a new component a Science Expo and the fourth goal addresses our social emotional needs of students how is student feels in school is equally

093important to how how what they are learning and how they are achieving this year we are excited to add a Science Expo to support our science goal science Expos offer students numerous benefits including fostering critical thinking encouraging Hands-On learning promoting creativity and developing problem solving skills they provide a platform for students to explore scientific interests enhance communication skills through presenting findings and cultivate a passion for stem subjects additional benefits include nurturing teamwork boosting confidence preparing students for future academic and professional challenges one component of our social emotional goal is the continued roll out of open parachute this year in a more formal manner Community circles gave students experience in communicating their feel feelings with one another which helped make the transition to open parachute seamless open parachute lessons provide more tailored assistance in a broader

094range of resources we decided to use monthly themes tailored to the needs of our students these monthly themes can be found on page 2 three for example in October we focused on friendship as students transitioned into new grades in classrooms in November we discussed growth mindsets as the pacing and demands of the curriculum picked up and in December the focus is on managing anxiety as the cold dark days of winter are upon us the goal of open parachute is to teach practical mental health skills to students the focuses on prevention giving students an opportunity to practice tools for addressing any current or future challenges that might impact their mental health teachers act as facilitators rather than mental health experts so they can focus on engaging students in the content without the pressure of needing to

095know any specific mental health information on page 24 you'll find these schedule of open parachute lessons thanks to the support of our PE teachers Allison Griffith and Brian Miller we were able to create a schedule where they could support the implementation of open parachute lessons these lessons occur when our gym is being used used as a cafeteria so that did not disrupt the regularly scheduled PE classes this also provides opportunities for our students to build relationships relationships with other trusted adults all members of the administrative team see the value of this important initiative and provide support including our guidance counselor big lamb school psychologist Lisa Chan our nurse kayn OD Mrs malvesti and myself thank you m um in closing we' like to highlight a few additional initiatives and programs that have had a posit

096positive impact on our school Community we are proud of the learning that is happening at monair school but we are equally proud of the social emotional supports we have established for our students We are continuing to care for kids beyond the school bell through extended day offerings and clubs these clubs are a nice balance of academic supports as well as social supports for students a list of offerings can be found on page 31 and include clubs such as the famous gardening club that so many of our students participate in families do as well new this year we have um established a peer tutoring with students from North quinsey High I think we have just as many students coming back from North quinsey High as we have students from Monclair school so it's definitely mutually beneficial

097on both ends they're very excited and as the weeks have gone on it has grown we're into two different class rooms now and we have multiple advisers at our school helping support this initiative as well um we this year new the nifty50 states we started a kindness club and we're continuing our student council that is fourth and fifth grade um all of these Club Fosters a sense of community and positivity in the effects of these clubs can be found as evidenced in the local um the vocal survey results we are also happy to support and be part of District initiatives such as illustrative math and happy numbers CK and open parachute again this year we continue to be grateful for um your support with the s'mores communication tool and um the international translation company to

098communicate with all of our families when I tell you we use this on a very daily very regular basis um it is a GameChanger for us so we're so supportive of that thankful of that and I know our families are also um because at this point our families know they can just call and ask for a translator in a language and it's immediate so we're always able to communicate with our families and now that we have s'more and we're implementing that on a weekly basis um to communicate with families families will actually email us back in their home language and we'll use it to translate so we can communicate a little you know a little bit better so it's it's amazing so thank you for that support um we're lucky to have an extremely supportive

099PTO that provides countless enrichment opportunities um for our students in supports for our staff anything that we need um anything our students need any enrichment opportunities that we go to them with um they are just always happy and willing to support us um so it's a great partnership um and in closing once again we like like to thank our entire School community that understand that our students are so much more than just a score on an assessment it's important but at the end of the day the students are going to remember how we made them feel and our teachers our guidance student support team members school nurse cafeteria staff custodians office staff par professionals and everyone in between we continue to be humbled by and appreciative of their dedication we would like to thank everybody

100here tonight the mayor school committee superintendent and SLT for your continued support we're fortunate to be surrounded by community members that care so greatly for our students of of this wonderful City we thank you for your time and welcome any questions and feedback I think um one of the the things that I saw between the wallon school right now the last two and Monclair um you both have huge diverse populations and great success with your your scores and I wonder like when you go open up the M mcast scores and everything it's like when you get your report card and you're waiting for it to see what the results are and then you you know you chair when they when they come back really well um but I think that we have to understand that

101I think we do understand is that the success that you have at these schools or any of our schools it's a collaboration between everyone right we have a mayor who's super supportive of of um our education system I think the I think the um the school committee you know we're all here to listen to you know Administration the leadership parents teachers to try to give our input our support when we can and and then in just in the individual school you have great leadership um fantastic teachers um the parent engagement it's so important to see and and it works because everyone collaborates together to make sure that the kids are having good success in school and and and you can see in the parent we we mentioned before um the parent engagement and support at

102marlair and wallison is phenomenal and and that's helpful and if they're engaged in that way they I would think that they're engaged with you know what's happening in in the school and their with their students and supporting them you know their their children so um bit just a reflection and thank you because it doesn't happen by accident and it it takes you know a lot of support and collaboration for the success so thank you thank you for what you do thank you um couple of comments and questions um first of all congratulations on the mcast achievement that you mentioned from the outset that's phenomenal and um I was also impressed by the themes of the open parachute you know the mon monthly themes I thought they were spot on and the timing of those themes

103were great um I love to learn every time a principal is in here the number of languages so I appreciate the fact that you said you have 28 languages and so um You probably heard the question that I asked um I don't know if it was the last principle of the principal before but so that makes it a challenge in in seeing yourself in in the readings but you're you still had 65% of fifth graders that said that they read a book with people that look similar to them which is a super challenge when you have 28 languages I think it was 50% for fourth grade and I know that it's just something you continue to manage and find that but um Kudos I have to say thank you to our PTO for helping support

104that initiative so one thing that we've been I'm very fortunate and able to do working with the suggestions from the Citywide EDI team and our PTO um and our library support teacher we actually have monthly themes that we use for that are suggested from the Citywide EDI our PTO funds additional books so every month our library support teacher has a theme so every student is getting in addition to the classroom libraries that we've been able to build over the last few years um so I think that is starting to help students see themselves um in those books that we're reading I feel like we still have work to do um but it certainly has improved um and again it's been a team effort through so many people that's great um and then it looked like

105you made great reduction on chronic absenteeism for disability and lowest performing students those numbers look good but then there were a couple of increases with other populations so it's just something that you continue to manage we've we are meeting monthly with our SST we've noticed that as well um we feel that since we've been back from the pandemic it's been much more difficult um than pre-pandemic um and so it's something that we are meeting monthly with we are actually um you know we we joke about it in the office and we call it the um a pleasant pest Mrs hurle is the pleasant Pest and so before I call and say okay here's the letter you're legally required to get your child to school we have a meeting if we see that as um you

106know um medic the school nurse will reach out and say what can we do to help us support if we don't see that there's any medical documentation Mrs Hurley will call and say or Miss Lam our school guidance Council will call and say you know we really miss your student being in school you know what's going on what can we do to help and support so we're we're doing the the pleasant pest before we go right to the you know the more difficult you know um letters that we need to send out so we're hoping that that positive approach will have an impact on getting students to school I'm sure it will yeah thank you we're hopeful and to that point you're one of the few schools is back to the district's pre-pandemic absenteeism so

107it's I mean it's you might be the lowest in the whole District at 7.2% so congratulations and congratulations on the school of recognition obviously lots of good stuff is happening there your achievement has been phenomenal and and the the information coming from your parents and your students is phenomenal too so I just want to thank you for everything you do and everything your staff does and just keep it up the school of recognition makes us look good good so we thank you for that as well um and Miss kale can I have a motion to accept seconded by Mr Santoro all in favor thank you so much for coming in you have a great holiday season thank you good evening thank you so much for coming in good evening go ahead and present all right

108it is an honor for Justine and I to be here on behalf of the Clifford Marshall Community to share our school Improvement plan with you um when I think about what defines Clifford Marshall I think of a warm compassionate and welcome culture and climate um not including our incoming kindergarten students we've welcomed 75 new students to Clifford Marshall this year this makes a warm welcoming culture an absolute must the overall Spirit of Marshall is one of love care and support this care can be seen in so many ways from a staff that came together this fall to raise over $30,000 for Dana Farber in honor of some of our colleagues to a group of parents that wanted to share their devali celebration with us by providing devali treats for our staff at Clifford Marshall there's

109a collective effort to celebrate student successes even the small ones these successes may be tremendous growth on MTH assessment um excellent achievement on mcast or maybe just the student that finally works up the courage to raise their hand um or a student that's able to stay calm and tolerate losing a board game for the first time using that five fingered breathing Technique we view our students as whole people and we celebrate all of these successes another important part of our strong sense of community is the way we come together for extended day programs and family engagement events we have an active PTO and EDI team with dedicated and diverse group of parents and teachers that are invested and involved in our school we have a number of fun events throughout the school year that bring

110our community together such as Bingo nights um Family dance night we have an amazing Fun Run event that we run with Point Webster Middle School um and we're really excited this year to bring back our International night this event is an amazing opportunity for us to celebrate the beautiful diversity at our school and share our cultures with one another as we presented our school Improvement plan to families this year and gave them opportunity to give us feedback the overall message that we received was how they value our school climate and the community engagement activities starting on page five of our school Improvement plan you'll see our data and goals reflection as we looked at our assessment data we generally see growth in all areas our Dibbles composite benchmark scores demonstrated impressive growth from Fall to

111Spring in the foundational skills for our students in grades K to2 we showed strong growth in all areas on the map assessment though at times we did fall short of our ambitious goals we're proud to report that on Ela mcast we met our growth Target and on third grade mcast we scored above the state average however we note some challenges on mcast performance in ela and fourth grade math in the area of ela We performed best actually in tasks that involved writing such as essays and constructed response we have identified and needed to focus on building vocabulary and working with informational text in math we've identified a need for additional instructional focus on numbers and operations on page nine you'll see the vocal survey that we've been talking a lot about tonight um that's the

112reflection and the full results are on page 31 the results showed that students have very positive feelings about our school and identify a strong positive School climate 97% of students report that their teachers care about them as a person when we looked at that report to find some areas that need Improvement we found that only 67% of our students reported reading books in class that include people who are similar to me which is again has come up a few times tonight um this is an area that we've been working on and as you'll see in our action steps we're going to continue to work on that as we look at our Ela goals we have targeted areas of growth for all of our students grade K to2 Focus heavily on building foundational reading skills like

113any foundation the strength of these skills directly affects future reading success we want to carefully monitor these students and ensure that they build these important skills students in grades K to2 will all get an hour of foundational reading skills every day they also will have a Wind Block this wind block is dedicated to meeting more specific student needs such as filling um gaps in foundational skills or maybe building language and vocabulary skills um it's also an opportunity for to enrich students um by providing access access to more complex and challenging text for those that are ready for that students in grades K and one will all receive the hegerty phic awareness program and we'll continue to build strong vocabulary and background knowledge by using the cka knowledge portion we carefully dedicate this time for all

114students and we believe that providing strong tier one instruction will provide grade level foundational skills as we look at the upper grades we know that we need to continue to build some of these foundational skills while at the same time we build their capacity to read and write more complex text our focus on informational text will allow us to continue to provide strong grade level instruction building knowledge and vocabulary for all we'll read complex texts and build students ability to respond in writing we'll use digal digital resources and small group intervention to provide support for students that need to to continue to fill those gaps in foundational skills while at the same time providing them with the scaffolding that they need to access grade level standards for our math goal we have targeted numbers and

115operations as our instructional Focus we understand that strong number sense is the foundation of students math ability the IM curriculum uses problem-based learning to teach students conceptual understanding of math problem-based learning Embraces students ability to productively struggle meaning that when a problem is challenging students have a toolkit of strategies to solve even the most complex Problems by focusing on strong number sense and the conceptual understanding of math operations teachers can build capacity for student mathematical processing and thinking we will support n sorry we will support students through action steps that include using happy numbers and the first in math program both of which support students foundational skills and fluency we are particularly excited about receiving a Desi Grant Pro providing our fourth grade students with access to stmath program stmath uses puzzles and non-routine practice

116problems to teach students conceptual understandings across all standards this system uses very few words which makes stmath accessible to all student populations especially our El Learners at all grade levels we will continue to use our math interent intervention list for push in pull out and co- teing support these supports will help students to achieve their Highest Potential in areas of numbers and operations in addition to ongoing professional development in the implementation of ccla and I we would like to highlight the important engagement strategy you will see throughout our school Improvement plan we are intentionally focusing on students on increasing students opportunities to respond this simple strategy is impactful in keeping students engaged in learning and can be used across all content areas with any curriculum what does it look like well rather than students raising

117their hands and taking turns answering they all have an opportunity to respond students could be writing on a whiteboard or in a notebook they can use hand signals like giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down or same same when they agree they could be turning and talking to a partner or whisper yelling all the answers At Once by giving students the opportunity to respond they are all practicing a skill not listening to One student who has the turn this strategy is simple yet powerful as we met at a sta staff we talked about the current social tional needs of our students and looked closely at the vocal survey as we identified self-regulation as an area for many of our students we determined that more frequent direct instruction of self-regulation skills would be one impactful

118change that would help students emotionally emotional well-being and their behavior if we can increase students ability to decrease impulsivity manage their feelings and give them strategies for self-control we'll see an overall Improvement in student behavior and self-esteem in addition to our current PBIS program and ongoing use of community circles all students will receive bonly open parachute lessons with a specific focus on teaching and reinforcing M mindfulness and self-regulation strategies I'd like to thank uh take this opportunity to thank students and the staff members as well as our community members for welcoming me to Clifford Marshall it's been a great start to our school Year and thank you all for listening and we'll accept questions now thank you thank you so much Miss g i I think that I mean again your population is so diverse

119right I mean that's it incredible and when we talk about um social emotional and like um managing their emotions and stuff do you find that um if the kids are younger and they're having language barriers that that that probably contributes a lot to their frustrations during the day um I would think right so um I think that that you know we do a lot of work to help the kids with their language skills and help them to to be able to express themselves and do the work um but I also think that we have to look at that as probably a big reason it's not so much that it's a um an emotional thing is more of a frustration you know and do you see that in the classrooms with with your students absolutely that

120can definitely be a challenge for some of our students so you know we try to provide visuals we're often use go relying on our phones for Google translate um our students also often help each other out and we transl for one another um in the moment of course we have translation lines and you know we have had students come in um that we were aware might have some difficult time adjusting and we've been able to rely on our family re Liaisons um we recently had a family re leaon come to Marshall knowing that we had a student starting um to to help with that transition for their first you know few hours even just to have somebody an adult that can walk them through the school welcome them in their first language and um help

121you know to tell them who they can rely on how they can get help if they need it so I mean it is a challenge for those kids and we know that but with visuals and and supports it it does help and you're doing you're doing great work so with with all those challenges you know because even the parents don't have the skills the language skills to be able to support their kids um that's why the Liaisons which you know you've brought on um even prior of me being here been amazing addition for the for the students but um that's good thank you thank you Mr Santo thank you just one question I think excuse me 75 people who have arrived how many knew to the country you know I don't I don't know how

122I mean I would say about half I I would guess about half would be new to the country yeah thank you for accepting that challenge I'm working so hard and welcome thank you where are you from uh I taught in squantum previously quum y okay Mr G thank you uh great presentation so um the principal from Monclair was here and said that they had 28 languages in their school I imagine you probably have the same or more right I think our last count was 34 34 languages yeah and and so that's why I was impressed to see in the vocal data that 67% of the students said that they see themselves in the reading so I think that's a tribute to the folks that are partic ating in in the book selection and and that

123was great to see the um you know I want to say Marshall's a great school great PTO you have great families there uh I had been to the international night so if it's as good as the past it it's going to be absolutely it's it's it's like a Gala event it's like incredible um you go into different rooms and it's different uh cultures and it's really it's really crazy um um two uh additional questions one um while your numbers I think two years ago were were pretty staggering in terms of chronic absenteeism I did notice that across all but one category there was significant decreases uh between like five and 18% which you must feel pretty good about and then there was only one category that there was like a 10% increase and I didn't

124know if you wanted to comment on that you know I think chronic absenteeism has been a challenge I I think as Renee had mentioned especially since um you know covid because there are some extended absences still um in regards to that but our philosophy is at the elementary level especially it's really families we need to work with and try to support um the kids are young and they don't necessarily get to determine that so we do really work um hard to try to make connections with the families and provide support and just find out are there obstacles you know what what are the challenges and is there any way we can support it and um I think I think trust also goes a long way too in trying to build that trust with families um

125so that's an ongoing effort on our yeah and then last question I know Mrs Lio is putting all of the facilities needs in the facility subcommittee so that we could talk about them collectively but I did want to ask why a camera that's the only one that that I I mean I know that there's cam cameras at a few schools but have you had vandalism is that the need for there has been some yes yes there has been some is that recent it it's consistent is it like window breakage is it it's I would say inconsistent tends to go with the weather when the weather gets warmer the vandalism kind of spikes up a little bit I think we have that area in the back of the school that's relatively hidden from the street and

126it's um maybe an opportunity for um kids to hang out and sometimes there's some evidence left behind so at many schools yeah yeah yeah thank you very much thank you Mr vro so I just have a quick quick comment I'm so glad to hear you talk about what that family leaon did I think it's so important for people to understand really that's the the best explanation I've ever heard of why they're necessary when you have a brand new student in a new building and there's an actual adult who speaks their primary language who can walk them through I mean I'm sure we don't have 28 languages yet but we can build I mean you know when we have a large enough population we can do that and it's can you imagine how frightening it would

127be for a kid that didn't have that and the mother bill the parents barely spoke so you know sometimes it's a child translating so I I think it's it's a great it's a great visual for me to always remember that um your your data is amazing it really is I know it was ambitious but you did very very well my interest in your Mobility though that you had 70 kids move in and I think the other challenge for your school is that you'll have on equal number of kids move out because it does have a big churn there mainly because it's apartments and stuff there's a lot of Apartments there so churn issue is it's it's an issue so you can work so hard with a little one and they're gone and you have another

128little one that you're working with so I I just really thank you to your staff all of your staff the family Aon certainly deserve a shout out from all of us your plan is amazing your school is amazing it really is amazing I'm so glad you joined them it's a great place and I'm sure you'll love it there I am thank you yeah so a motion to accept the plan by Mr Santoro secondly by Mrs K Hill thank you so much for coming thank you thank you so much good evening good evening you've been here a long time Mr de quite all right it's nice to hear my colleagues go to and see what's happening in the other schools so I appreciate that just want to start by thanking the school committee and the superintendent's

129leadership team for all the support that they constantly show for the principles the schools and the um staff and students of quiny public schools it's it's really appreciated to work in the system um like this having been in two other systems before so thank you thank you thank you um thanks also for the opportunity to present to you tonight so I can share all the wonderful things happening at bernazani this year and if you don't mind I'd like to start with two stories about kids uh that really speak volumes about the kids of bernazani and what we're doing and and and um what that looks like it was uh indoor morning drop off because it was a a cold day and uh I stand at the door welcome every kid in as they come in

130and we have actually the first time in my career triplets this year uh kindergarten triplets and uh they're small so they use the railing to go up those there four stairs in the back of the school and then a fifth grader was coming in at the same time now we have a uh kindergarten and fifth grade buddies program where they read to each other and it's uh you know it develops friendships in the school instead of the kindergarteners walking by the fifth graders and being afraid it's like high fives and they're with each other all the time uh so he came up and he stumbled a little and he bumped into one the the first girl and then he said oh I'm so sorry and then each triplet his hand on the bag of them

131like well you go in ahead of me and and the triplets dad was standing there watching it and like this is great this is exactly what I want um in my school and then um the other story was just Monday little boy had chipped his tooth so I went down to speak with him and there was a substitute that day I said oh did you tell the substitute so that you know if you need to come talk to me he he said he knows it's okay and he said no I didn't I said do you want me to tell him he said yeah so I told the substitute he's a great guy I said you know he can come see me anytime he's such a great kid and the substitute said he said Peter this

132morning um I wanted to give a Bearpaw we have a reward system for peace Builders uh we're the bear so we give up Bear Paws when the kids are doing the right thing but I didn't have any on me because I'm a substitute and then uh a minute later that boy came in and he said I just went to my locker you can give him one of mine oh my goodness I know right yeah so that he said no way I'll find a Bearpaw you're keeping your Bearpaw um but it's just yeah it's just it's a great school and such a such a pleasure to uh to work there so if we can start on page five I'll walk you through some of the data um so about 5 years ago we began using Edwin

133report 301 is an indicator for our strengths and weaknesses uh this report shows us how many percentage points we are ahead of or behind the state for each standard and on assessment days we we just use that to take a look where we are compared to the state and then that's what we work on for um for our goals and action steps for the Improvement plan if we're lagging behind the state we obviously consider that a weakness and if we're ahead of the state we consider that a strength and then we can improve from there so I've highlighted areas in the plan in which we are well above the state uh for your perusal in the data reflection and some of them are 32 percentage points above the state in the in the 20 percentage

134points above the state and uh we really really celebrate that and then um the the points where we below the state we can we can work on that and we have targeted Improvement based on that uh at this point if you could please turn to page six I'm happy to report that we exceeded all of our goals in ela math and science at each grade level with the singular exception of fourth grade ELA uh we were very close in third and fifth grade ELA and I point that out um that's exactly why we chose to keep the same measure in RIT points it it's it's similar to last year's plan and uh I just want you to know we we looked at that and we're we looked at it over the last couple of years

135since we've had map and those really are the numbers that we think are because we're close or just below in some of them so so that's why we kept that that measure and writ from map our students made progress in fourth grade ELA but did not meet our expectation of growth so they did not meet the target um but we were so pleased to celebrate this as a staff and we know that these smart goals uh really are achievable on page seven you'll find our vocal survey results and I wanted to share our high percentage categories with you tonight we we really are pleased with our results from the vocal survey we're especially pleased about the questions that focused around teachers supporting students and students feeling safe at our school another area of strength that

136came up was the fact that students feel good about teachers protecting them from bullying um I'm going to share three of the uh topics right now teachers accept me for who I am if I tell a teacher my classmate is being bull bullied my teacher will help that person and my teachers help me succeed with my school work when I need help these were the three statements that we received 100% of student votes on and we just love that we're pleased that our students feel this way about their school and those three topics in particular were we loved that they feel cared for as a person they feel protected as a classmate and then supported as a student it's like really the whole piece of school um and to have 100% on those were were

137with a nice celebration it also speaks volumes about the amazing staff at bernazani uh working with those kids some categories that we're also proud of for our student ratings were my teachers care about me as a person my teachers are proud of me when I work hard in school my teachers support me even when my work is not my best I like that one I feel safe at our school and teachers support students who come to class upset um which speaks to the the programs that we're using uh to support uh social emotional learning okay everybody talked about this but once again the results for I read books in class that include people who are similar to me came out as 50% and we had to just stop as a school and take a look

138at that and and it came up in our conversations too that that sentence to an adult we know exactly what they're asking like people who are similar to me but we finally were like we've worked so hard in this the last three years but um because of that we came up with a new plan for for last year because it was an area of weakness last year as well so the equity diversity and inclusion team at bernazani it consists of both parents in PTO and our teaching staff so PTO offered to fund uh one book one school program for the school which we' had done in the past but this year we're changing to each month so what we're going to do is uh we're picking a different topic for EDI for each month we're

139also switching up the books that we're buying so we found when we in the past we did one book one school you pick a book the lower grade teachers read it to the kids the upper grade level teach uh kids read the book but what we did is by topic and then we got um Lexi level for each grade level so so it's one book really per grade per month um not one book one school but it's just more appropriate for the for the students in those grades and then uh they can experience the full range of topics of EDI so that we're starting that this year the books stay in the classroom so they'll have books similar to them um as they move forward um so we're hoping that works and it's a it's

140a much appreciated funding from uh my great PTO I have to say too I really appreciate the support of our fantastic PTO which has remained wonderful through the many changes that I've seen at my long time here at bernazani um uh it is it is interesting because there's a new PTO election every year so you never know what's going to happen but it's just been I've been so blessed my entire time there um and so this one book one School uh initiative is almost the entirety of our uh EDI goal on page nine you'll see the beginning of our goals section uh we made one big change this year and Emily you were talking about this earlier as a staff we love to use the RIT points from map as an indicator because it tells

141us how much growth the students in front of us have made so we have integrated learning teams three times a year we just have manyi ilts just to check in uh this week week and because we can use the map data we can see the kids in front of us improving or declining throughout the year switch up the literacy groups switch up what the teachers are using for groupings in the classrooms and then really use that data more effectively than the one mcast data from the previous year different groups of kids it it just didn't make sense to be measuring that way with that being said we still use mcast data to look at the school Trends but in terms of teaching the students um the RIT points are much much more more helpful uh

142therefore we've excluded mcast goals for our Targets this year we're just going with map um uh next I'd like to speak a little bit about our social emotional goal on page 13 this year we focused our attention on the open parachute program so our teachers feel very comfortable with restorative justice circles we also use elements from PB and we've been doing the peace Builders program almost my entire time there to help our students with their social emotional learning what we need as a staff is a greater dedication to the incredible tool that is open parachute so these lessons will be utilized in two different ways this year at bernazani uh a series of lessons will be chosen each month to review by each grade level in addition as issues arise within the classroom the teachers

143will then use additional lessons when it's appropriate for instance we recently used the what to do when I'm feeling left out lesson to address these feelings that some of our students were experiencing uh these lessons begin with a documentary style video of actual students explaining their experiences and then it's so well received by our students the lesson then shifts into class discussion so that the teachers can enable team building within their classroom and since our teachers are so skilled in restorative justice circles from all the practice uh these class discussions are accomplished with expert practice and um the class really becomes a unit and a team on page 17 we've outlined our professional development plan which focuses mainly on the two new curriculums illustrative math and core knowledge language arts or ckla and we also

144allowed time for continuous training in savis real lives for our science teachers time's also carved out to dedicate to our EDI and social emotional goals next if you could please turn to page 19 I wanted to highlight our extended day offerings uh last year when we spoke we did not have a very large offering of programs before or after school and so we worked on this as a staff and I'm proud to present this um variety of offerings to our students this year our students love these clubs and they're they're so happy to stay an extra hour at their school on page 21 it's my pleasure to bring you through a page that is very close to my heart um I became an elementary school teacher for many many reasons but one important re reason

145is the feeling of community connectedness and pride that small children get from their Elementary School being principal at bernazani and having an amazingly supportive PTO that shares my vision has been a wonderful experience I want to reiterate that sometimes it's difficult as new PTO executive boards are elected each year to keep a cohes cohesive Vision but each iteration of our PTO executive board has been extremely child focused and so far this year we've had a night out for parents to simp simply socialize and get to know one one another at The Brick and beam we had our first ever Haunted Hallway event which was so apptly named because bernazani is literally just one big hallway so Haunted Hallway is easy to set up a book fair family night and next week is our shops at

146Winter Wonderland and that's an opportunity for our students to shop for their family members I truly appreciate the the tireless work that our PTO does for both the students of bernazani and the entire staff at bernazani uh their support and dedication is key to what we do at our school in conclusion I wanted to express my utmost respect and admiration for the staff at bernazani I've always said when I talk to my friends outside of Education that the most important decision I make is who is standing in front of the kids you know who's in there with th with those kiddos and our staff not only has the best interest of each student at heart emotionally but they also plan so carefully each and every day to ensure the academic success of every child who

147comes through our doors and when I say staff I mean everyone including the cafeteria cafeteria staff the custodial staff and um I give a lot of Tours due perspective parents who are thinking about Open Enrollment and whenever I give tours to those prospective families I always include a visit to Carl and Doug in the custodial office um it's just everybody's included there you know and they're so friendly and the parents love that and the school would not enjoy the same reputation and success without everybody who works there so my deepest Thanks goes to my entire staff finally I want to thank our students um being greeted by hugs each morning as I stand outside with the kids is something that not many people get to start their day with at their jobs and it's truly

148appreciated to spend my days with the wonderful children at bernazani uh they make our school great and my final and most important thanks go to them and uh at this point I'd welcome any questions thank you so much Mrs K Hill um I'm just going to say but we'll um celebrate all the good work that you're doing at bernazani love the school you know close to my heart with my kids all went and um you know who's celebrating the most though is the mom of those three triplets who finally are in school and I I know her I know her so um I'm sure that must have been felt like forever but um thank you for everything thank you thank you so much Mr G I too have a bernazani bias as a proud Lum

149many many years ago when it was furnace book um and and you do have an incredible PTO and uh I'm impressed with the family engagement activities they look super cool they look like things that I would totally participate in so um thank you for you know listening last year and and doing that um and then everything you said in the vocal data like you go throughout the vocal data and it says that the teachers are the stars you know what I mean whether whether it's solving problems or emot social emotional issues or preventing bullying and the list goes on um it was it was really impressive um and then you know chronic absenteeism is been still an issue you know that that you got to work on so I didn't know if you had anything

150to add about any of those I've been working more closely with Chrissy Shaw this year our attendance officer um she's such she's so busy but she's influential on that so it's just about getting the letters out ahead of time and communicating with those parents and having them in for meetings um is what we've been focusing on this year and getting it done earlier than usual you're doing a great job thank you so much thank you thank you Mr gutro I have to just reiterate with my colleagues said I'm so great grateful to see that extended day stuff it really looks wonderful and you Mr gutro is right your your family engagement activities the fact that you actually Focus just on the parents a couple of times a year they love that yeah they really do

151they love being that social with each other and getting to know each other so and that brings them back for all of the other stuff that you want them there for you have great kids in a great school your scores are wonderful and uh think your staff is amazing when you see that vocal data that really is a tribute to them so thank them all for us as well and I'll entertain a motion by Mr Santoro to accept your plan seconded by Mrs cill I you all say I and thank you very much Mr thank you all motion to adjourn motion to thanks everybody