001welcome ladies and gentlemen uh to the school committee meeting of March 20th 2025 at this time I'll call to order and we'll begin with ask everyone to rise with for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all next will be the introduction of members I'll start with you Matt Matt calano milville Chuck dunon Blackstone Tara scobby Blackstone Tara Lin milville ad Dan Keith Blackstone Erin vako mville joose spagner Director of Finance and operations Jill pill gallerani assistant superintendent director of student services Maya G student council president and Jason DeFalco superintendent welcome all and we'll go next to the student Representatives report so as we speak the annual mystery
002BMR event is happening at the high school got a ton of great acts planned as I was walking out of school yesterday I saw a barbell with two teddy bears on either ends of it so I wonder what's going to go on with that this past Thursday our national arm Society had their empty bowl dinner which from what I've heard is the biggest that it's been in a few years and raised over $2,000 for the Blackstone food pants at Divine Mercy parish our student council had 10 student Representatives attend the masc state conference and hyenas two weeks ago and I'm extremely grateful and honored to say that I did win the position of Secretary of the Massachusetts Association of student councils and I'm very grateful to be able to open up more doors for our
003school and to make change in the state I like the way you think thank you very much thank you very much thank you and spring Sports started this Tuesday so we've got softball we've got track we've got a lacrosse co-op with nitm we've got tennis got all of that going on and games and meets are starting next week in fact softball I just came from there right now we've got our first game this coming Wednesday away at Millis our Junior and senior prom is April 11th in Kirk bre Country Club in Lincoln Rhode Island and the last day to buy tickets is tomorrow M the sophomore class hosted the underclassman Spring Fling on March 7th which had 8th 9th and 10th graders and that was definitely a success senior fourth quarter internship applications are going
004to be due on March 28th so if you're senior and you want to do fourth Court intership make sure to get that in and students are starting to meet with their counselors to choose their courses for next year so we're starting with upcoming seniors then Juniors then sophomores and we have a lot of new course offerings and pathway programs for next year we have AP Government on the table we've also got environmental and life science Pathways along with zoology watercolor too and human child growth and development so that is it for BMR right now well congratulations and thank you very much for that job thank you very much thank you thank you have a lovely rest of your day too too if there's no objection we're going to take out of order uh under item
005a under the superintendent report is the middle of the Year student performance data thank you excellent uh good evening everybody um we are really excited tonight to be presenting to our school committee and to our community our uh an update on our student performance uh as the committee knows we spend a lot of our time looking at our student uh student work uh not just assessments but the day-to-day work and looking at different ways we can kind of quarter turn or adjust things to make sure that we're meeting their we're meeting their needs and tonight we're going to check in on that and hear a little bit about the progress we're making this school year but this year we're doing things a little bit different um we have invited some very important guests that we're
006going to invite to come forward in just a quick minute to actually talk a little bit about the work that's happening in their classroom so tonight we're going to hear from two of our schools uh fam milville ele and then from the Middle School uh and we have two of our uh finest students from from milville who have joined us in person that are going to share some of the a little bit about their story with the school committee in the community after Mrs Schaefer and and I think Mrs vau and I'm not sure if anyone else is going to join us with a in our data discussion uh from the staff um and um in front of you you have the uh slide deck that they'll be talking through and then from there we're
007going to hear from the middle school and our students from the Middle School couldn't make it uh due to Athletics and some other commitments but they did make a video uh the students a video for the school committee in the community to hear directly from them but uh we'll get to that in a moment welcome to Josie and Elijah who are going to be sharing a little bit about their Journeys at milville this year and uh thank you uh Miss Schaefer and Miss Von uh for putting this together and of course the parents for bringing your children here I don't think they could drive here on their own yet so so do you guys want to tell them what great dur I'm in third grade I'm in second grade so Elijah has come to our
008district data meetings would we say this is three or four that you've come to when when we come present all the principles I think this the last one we just did this week was his third right Tuesday was my third today is my fourth and Josie's first time we're getting her ready to take over and leading the third grade next year when she gets into third grade for her data presentation so so um oh do we have the oh I got I got it right here any all right so um as you know we've spent a lot of work on early literacy the last this is year three I believe um with the past two years we got a grant from the Department of Education in this year um we are working with the same
009consultant that we worked with last two years um you can see our star early literacy and reading data um on the screen we've had some nice growth in both of those areas we still have things to do now you can see each one is by grade um so it's the boy is the beginning of year and the middle of year is the second column so we have um out of 270 27 kids 149 are currently at or above grade level in grade um in the school and then reading you can see that as well we've made um 17 of our kiddos from the um not meeting in meeting have moved up and you can see the big jump from meeting from 29 to 56 now Dibbles is another area that um we're working on um
010so a little bit about Dibbles it's more of a fluency so students have to do things in one minute Stars untimed so they get as long as they want dibles is um time so the goal of it is to work on fluency of letters and um phrases and and um nonsense words kind of like madeup Words um and we've got some work to do in this area but um we have made some growth um we've moved 10 kids out of the well below um and we've got some moving into the below and then we've got some we've nine moved up to at and then we have 64 kids above grade level um for that so again the whole school this is measuring how many words the students can read in a minute and then there's
011a particular number of words that they're expected to hit each time we measure that so if you look at go ahead so when you get so kindergarten starts with letters and they work on letters and letter sounds can they identify what sounds they make and then it kind of builds up in skill and then um as Dr DeFalco was saying it builds up as um and they have a minute so each like Boi is this goal they have to get to Moi is this goal they have to get to and they have all subtests so each of those subtests have a goal inside of it so yeah it's a little bit it's nice it's like five or six minutes to administer to all the kids um but it gives you a lot of information which
012is really nice and then our two friends up here are going to talk a little bit about um what strategies they've kind of learned in the last couple years for literacy so either reading reading and writing who wants to go first you do okay goad in Reading we are learning for m M cast that you need to read the text at least twice to the first time you read it you get a gist of it but when you read it the second time you get like a main idea in your head and um my teacher says it's you're you can read it twice or more because um she can't read it to you on the mcast so basically what she's saying is read it to yourself more so that way you get more details what
013in writing what strategies have you like to share in writing oh in writing I learned how to do WPS restate answer prove it and sum it up um when I do raps it it feels like I'm like a really good author aesome Jo you want to talk about what you strategy leared reading and writing and um read eting one example that helps me out is our adjective poster in the back of the room and the starter words post are also in the back of the room we also have a green book if we don't know a word the teacher will write it in our green book and and we build the word bank to go back and look if we need to in Reading I have learned strategies to try to sound out their words
014if we do not know them we can try and sound them out or break them up also we can look for words when we read like Clues when we when we read about a certain story and you're writing about the story you can look for the clues and add facts about the story and we're they have math stuff that they' share about too but Mrs Bon's going to talk a little bit about the math data so this year we decided to try something new with our math data we use the hmh endof year assessment and we're going to do it three times a year so administered it um at the beginning of the year and what the teachers thought was either a the students were clicking through very quickly if they did it online and
015not really thinking about what was being asked or B um they had they had they had they just chose an answer so they weren't thinking about it so after we did our data and we looked at it we said do they really know what they know is it an educated guest or do they know how to do it so all the grade levels went ahead and redid the test taken out as many of the multiple choice options as possible so our second test our middle of the year really wasn't comparing Apples to Apples because they saw the question and they had a fill in it um so it surprised a lot of our students um so we're hoping um so the data is um in kindergarten we had um 51 students above and 26 on
016level and we have 20 still that are below level so they still did fairly well um for what we're doing um probably tell the the bands oh the below was up to 59% of the questions correct the um 60 to 79 60 to 79 and then 80 or above per of the questions correct and just for clarification so you're giving the endof year test yes three times so that we would we would assume the kids would should not know it probably in the beginning of the year right but it's also a good way to like a diagnostic see what they do have and see what they do understand already so you can use that as well as a formative piece to help you kind of figure out where to go next right so in the
017middle of the year we knew they had taught explicitly about half of the units so about half the questions were topics they've already covered and the other half they're still going to go through to the end of the year um first grade we had 11 moved to above and 26 um were on level we still have 62 that we're working towards getting out from to get up into the 60 and above um second grade we had 27 for Middle um fori for above 23 for on level and we have about half 50% that still need that work and then in third grade we um this was probably our biggest disappointment and I think it was our biggest upset to our kids not seeing multiple choice answers they were very upset because they remembered and they
018um they also took it online the first time so this time they had paper so they were it was a a very big change for them let's just say only three were above 18 were on level and we still have 64 that um we're working towards one three had no multiple choice in it it was all the short answer very minim and one things we did find during our discussion actually with all the groups is that ST Math so some of the skills had not been taught yet but ST Math um has given the kids some little like exposure to it so playing the games that they're doing on the has exposed them to some of the topics and one of them was um adding up to 10 for kindergarten for example they the teacher
019like oh I saw the kid doing the kids doing that on G and they had to put all the boots in the little 10 frame and so the kids are getting exposed to items and they actually there was a couple questions that did really well with the exposure from the beginning of the year too and it it kind of makes sense with kindergarten doing so well because four out of the five classrooms have already hit 100% of puzzle completion so they're moving forward with it at a a more rapid Pace than one two and three so they had more exposure so it looked like that worked for them with this test can I just ask a quick question yes what do you plan for the end of year the the taking out of the multiple
020choice or oh yeah yes you're going to keep it the way it was Moi okay yes they they they were saying what does this mean we didn't have to do this before we're like well you do now productive struggle was a less learned we'll have to at least have a comparison but yes yes it will be Apples to Apples from mid to end because the other piece that made us change it was that when the teachers was were seeing on the original assessment to what they were seeing in class were not even close to each other and they also talked about the level of complexity of the questions some of them asked more in-depth things that's kind of why we changed it to make them think more and push them beyond that so good catch
021do you want to share a little bit what you learned in math guys um I think it's helpful to do repeat of subtraction because when you do repeated subtraction it's like you can subtract and subtract when you're doing Division and you can count like when you're missing a fact a um a factor and um you can um subtract how many times it takes you to get from the number you're um subtracting from to zero um and then you like count how many times you subtracted and then it like then you find the factor you're doing and then um they added much more to their notes when we had the um kids who like math in my class like me learn new things and my teacher likes to do like these funny um funny things where
022like we she said um when we were doing perimeter she said well my my um she had we had like an open shape and it was like this and she said my horses are getting out of there so um um then when she did like those funny examples a lot of kids in my class like turn looked up and started to pay attention and Josie how about you so some things that helped me in math are number GS and drawings that and also cubes are strategies that I learned to help me solve math problems I use number GS to count up and countown and also add and subtract and sometimes when you're in like your math book and the teacher wants you to do it on your own she wants you to do it on
023your own to see what you have learned and then she when she checks it off you see if you made a mistake or not and then you could practice doing that the thing that she circled and work on it thank you guys thank you so these are some of our next steps that we've come up with um the ST Math one of the things one of the grades was talking about is reassigning some of the skills so things that the kids were taught about at the beginning of the year they were re reassigning them now to see how they do an st math with those right I'm also starting from un certain number versus starting from one and counting up because they have that rot memorization counting from one but if you start at a
024different number they have to think of where they're going to next so we're talking about that and um we're talking also about reading the problems carefully before you make like read twice like you had said so that know what's being asked um before they just go ahead and start trying to solve a problem this is a glimpse of our special education data um for early literacy and reading and this one of the things and actually for both early um for special education and English language Learners um we have actually started ensuring that our special education teachers and our English language teachers um they are attending our literacy training as well to make sure that they're getting the same training and same experience that our classroom teachers are getting so and the skill and the students
025are being exposed to the same things we're modifying what we're doing for both of the groups um but we are um they've actually had specific planning time just um reading intervention special education in English language um learner teachers to actually plan for the students they're working with so we've actually set that up so that they have that specific coaching and how to use materials with the different population of students that may need a little bit more modification for and we also want to take an opportunity to have those teachers also go into our classrooms and observe our classroom teachers and what they're doing so they could see best practices and be able maybe to bring that back into their classrooms and we do have some staff that have been doing this work for um the
026literacy work that we've been doing for several years so really getting them into it and then this is um the math and the devils and it's a similar picture in this and Christina on these um and Mary on these numbers some of these kiddos are the same and some of them may be different yes because of students entering and exiting espe with our L population we've had a lot going out and a lot coming in and the kids that are coming in are all lower so it's kind of hard to do apples to apples with this we do have a lot of newcomers who are just learning language so we can see that so even though the numbers are similar it may not necessarily mean the same stud same exactly this is our English language
027learner population and the Reason by the way you're only seeing um for example star early lit is technically only for K1 but some students cannot access the early the reading assessment in grades two and three so they do take it at the early literacy and in um third grade because they are unable to access um and then second and third grade does the star reading and again our Dibbles in our math while we have made growth it hasn't been the growth we wanted so those are some things that we are still working on and one of the things we did put in place this year was Kindergarten tutoring um and at the preliminary data look um I actually was just showing them um our I have our um Dibbles and um I went through and
028actually did all the for the star early lit the students started the year um we had for students that were below grade level so either the not meeting or the um partially meeting we had 61% of our tutoring population the group that we're working right now before school tutoring um to 57% and 43% students are now at the on um or um on uh just about on or above level so we've had some from 38% so we've had some growth some nice growth in the look awesome because we're think this is you trying to see it from here but so there's a lot of colors on these are the two that we're looking at so from 38% on level to 47% on level yeah on that subgroup of before just that small small kindergarten the
029before school tutoring per and some of them have made as much as almost 150 um 140 Point growth from beginning of year to middle of year with the tutoring it's three times a week Tuesday Wednesday Thursday for 45 and we started that nice and early in this we did so I'm excited to see what the end of the year looks like with that group of students to the goal was to try to to prevent that huge gap right that starts in frankly before kindergarten based on the preschool exposure kids have so it's nice to see that we're able to move it sounds like almost 10% of the kids that that's good and that started about October so and this was January February so you're looking at like three months of of just work and they've
030made that much growth so I'm excited to see what six seven months of of work with that does and for the for the early our youngest learner sometimes it's just more time on learning like the kids just haven't had the exposure particularly you know five years old five and six years old if they haven't had the preschool or they were in daycare or something they just need the time with the material and the teacher so they're doing a lot of Hands-On also with it um really focusing on building those CHS and then we talked about a lot of the next steps as we were kind of going through Focus area for practicing allowing them to go in any questions Christina your headlines around next steps are writing and fluency is that yes so as you
031saw a lot of our flu the Dibble scores um those are things that we have to work on the kids can do it untimed but we want to be more fluent because when you're taking you know an hour and this is exaggeration to read a passage if you can take it less time it's going to be a lot it's a lot less taxing on you you're not as exhausted to read something so they're comprehending it we just need to get the speed up and the fluency up the accuracy is there when we were looking actually at the individual subtest the accuracy is there the speed is not so that's what we need to work on so that's when we had our professional development on Friday on the 14th we one of the things we worked
032on was the literacy consultant had come in and she worked with like K1 and then 2 three and they practiced breaking using the dibles data and breaking up their students into small groups and practice doing some of those drills for 15 minutes they had a small group for 15 minutes and they practiced a whole bunch of different fluency activities to kind of keep it going so any other questions oh yes Josie wants to say something so if you're taking a phonics test in our classroom we might have things we've learned they might be on the test so the things we learned or the things we went over are on the phonics wall and you can go up and look at the at the walls and the things we went over she has them on the
033as cards and she puts them on the walls so it's easy to see it and that is what helps me on the phonics test what's the big thing you said to me in the about using your what in the classroom using your classroom re I use the big word but you said all yeah the posters and resources that the teachers use and visuals they put in the classroom you guys right so I have a question for Josie I had one for Elijah but Josie I was going to ask you just brought up that phonics wall I'm in the classroom so I know what it is but I'm not quite sure how well how many of our school committee members have been in the classroom so what kind of things are on that phonics wall so
034if they walked in what would they see so when you walk in you would if when you look at the phonics wall you would see like phonic stuff on a certain wall like cks and diagraphs and vbls and like oi and oi and teams and yeah Val teams and E A's and things that go with e A's and y's and O's and I have a question for Elijah so you were talking about and I did I did not learn how to divide like this so you mentioned subtracting so I want to make sure I get this right so if I had 20 / 5 I would subtract five and if there's more left I would subtract five again right and if I had more left I'd subtract five again right yeah and if I subtracted
035the last time and there was nothing left I would say oh I subtracted four times right so I would say 20 divided 5 is four yeah okay got it and that's the method you like sounds so much I never learned that I just want to make sure I got that right thank you for sharing that Josie have you learned that yet in second grade the repeated sub not yet it's coming repated addition I bet you guys start to get ready for multiplication it's like repeat sub um it's like repeat um addition but it's like subtraction just so both of you know we are looking for a Middle School reading interventionist M interventionist and I think we may have found the two individuals to be tutoring our middle schoolers all right dynamic duo yes you guys
036very much thanks a wonderful job I just learned something myself The Divide yes how how is that e that easy when they call it you'll hear parents saying that new math yeah uh we're going to shift gears and uh I'm going to ask uh Dr Rema and team to come forward and if uh Tim wouldn't mind firing up the student video first Dr REM is out you want to start with the student video no presentation sorry do the presentation first Tim if that's okay that make sense sorry about [Music] that okay so um at the midy year we gave the star reading and uh writing assessment as well as a grow measure so unlike milville we doing it a little bit differently um we wanted to do grow measure and grow measure you want to
037explain what that is yeah so the growth measure um aligns to the hmh curriculum so like mville said um we were able to see what they actually learned and have questions about that straight from the curriculum along with the same topics so it was like surprises in it so the kids have seen those same question types and then we were able to see how they were doing from the beginning to the middle and then now to the end and the teacher look at the data so say for example the midyear so they'll look at okay from beginning of the year to midy year we taught these skills and where you know where some of the skills that we identified the skills students still struggling so are we using a RTI block to reinforce that or
038do we need to ret for the whole class really depend on the the data so um The Grow measure gives us like a clearer um measure based on the instruction so we look at our star um the Boi is the first uh first row and then eoi for fourth grade um even though our exceeding went down two students the parentheses is number of students um because you know um they actually went to the uh uh met category but what I like to highlight is the red one which is below um not meeting we actually cut it in half from 21 student to 11 percentage is very deceiving sometimes so we wanted to give you the exact number um and fifth grade um we had also went down for exceeding but if you look at the
039um not meeting in paral met we not meeting we actually went down um we not saying everything is glorious our fifth grade we have some work to do so I want to be clear about that and in terms of our math um uh there are five category the first one is above and the red I mean uh green is on level and then yellow is approaching and that what they call that color salmon no must color orang is um is up uh below and then the red is far below um although a far below maintain the same number but our uh below is actually went from 26 kids to 7 so our meeting and exceeding exceeding is I mean above level is actually went from 14 kids to 42 um same thing with fifth grade
04019 to 51 for exce uh for above level and the way know far below it went from 10 to six kids I don't want to read all the numbers to you because you can see it well sixth grade um very similar to four and five sixth and seventh grade um I with the star for not meeting we went down from 19 Kids to 12 and most of the kids actually went to partial met and two meeting and seventh grade we have uh not meeting went down to one kid um not meet uh paral met went up so that that data actually tells us that we get some work to do with certainly we did have a shift in teaching you teacher that we shift like um in no November um so we have some work
041to do with our seventh grade teachers um in terms of math grow measure um they did really well we went from above level from 12 students to 22 for sixth grade and seventh grade from 5 to 9 we did cut from not far below from 8 to 12 I went up to 8 to 12 but with um I keep forgetting the category below from 21 to 14 and same thing with seventh grade as you can see the numbers um so I'm going to talk a little bit about writing I should have introduced myself I'm um Megan marray I teach fourth grade special ed um so um fourth grade is the first one so we focused um in the middle of year on our writing on the response to reading it's more of that expository writing
042because we noticed when we looked at mcast responses um in past years and then looking at the beginning of the year um response to reading the kids really want to tell a story and like write with their voice and like the narrative aspect so we really focus this year on like constructing a well-written paragra graph and then in turn turning into an essay because something else we noticed was that on mcast when they're given just like the short responses they're just writing and writing and writing and keep going which in the end can hurt them um so we really focused on that so you can see I won't again read all the numbers but the beginning of the year is below the middle of the year so don't get confused by that I was um
043we went from 75% in developing to 34% in developing um and then progressing again we went from um 21 at beginning which those kids from Red moved up and now it's 43 and then exceeding we went from only one student out of 118 to 10 that are now strong um then we go to grade five and similarly um we notice kind of same Trends in fourth and fifth grade with the response to reading that's kind of the focus but they also did um more of the narrative essay writing um at the middle of the year so you can see those numbers again the beginning of the year went from 49 to 33 and 50 to 24 and then the exceeding it or the strong I should say on the writing rubric um stayed the same
044or went up a little bit from 8% to 14% And 5% to 14% keep going um sixth grade writing so at the beginning of the year they focus just like fourth and fifth on the response to reading which is again constructing those expository paragraphs um then they broke it down by teacher as well well in classes so you can see that um they're developing at the beginning of the year was 41 of the students and now it's down to seven so that's a big jump um and in seventh grade writing they also out of 121 student went from 29 in developing to 35 in developing now so there is work to do in seventh grade on writing but you can see they increased in the strong from 5 to 21 so basically Grace seven both
045reading and writing we have some work to do sure like I said I'm the special teacher so I can talk a lot about fourth grade special EDS so um I heard them talking earlier we these numbers are kind of hard to compare from boy to eii because we have students coming in and exiting throughout the year so the numbers do change um but I did post the SGP which was 60 for our end of the year which is awesome um we still and at least in fourth grade there's no kids exceeding on Star reading but we went from 14 in the not meeting category to 20 to just six so that's huge growth um and then in growth measure at the beginning of the year there was 10 at the far below and now we're
046down to eight um but importantly we went from eight kids in the below um to just two at the middle so you can kind of see those numbers shifting up and increasing um fifth grade um we sort of talked about this before again the numbers are changing throughout so you'll see they don't match but they went from the beginning of the year eight kids were not um meeting on the star the expectations and it's down to seven and then it's increasing the two students that on U meeting category went down and we so we wanted like understand why so we identified to two students and both students uh went through some you know social emotional um crisis however that's not an excuse for us because we as Educators should we move those obst obstacles so
047they can access and they can perform so we are we have a plan for both of them and we want to make sure like that you know kind of we moove that obstacle and support them in a way that they need to preform um but math I um they did pretty well they went down from not um below far below and went up to um even though the above B level maintained the same but the meeting category went up and also uh approaching also went up so again this is grade six star now um for the reading they went from 11 kids not meeting um almost cut in half down to six um and then you can see that they had an increase in both meeting and exceeding mhm um for their growth measure as
048well they had cut down the far below grade level from 10 to six and then increasing through and maintaining those kids that are exceeding which is a good thing as well because the expectations get and Jenny I know you mentioned I just wanted to mention that although we see kids and say they're in that orange and red you have plans for them but you also still have plans and expectations for the kiddos who are in the the blue the green or the yellow so it's not just focusing on group it's so doing RTI block we actually destinate a teacher to work with students that are actually in that meeting and exceeding category because in the past we noticed kids in that category we weren't worry about them because they are meeting or exceeding but they
049need that challenge they need that push so we have a teacher designate for that group can I say something just I appreciate you I identifying that you're identifying the numers going down and you're knowing what students you need to work with I appreciate you informing us thank you um and then seventh grade as well the numbers are being cut in the red category and then increasing through in both reading and math I think something to celebrate is that L students um if you look at the left side that's um those numbers for for you know it gives you the average it was 1.9 on the left side bottom um column and if you look at the right side which is the midye we just got that um data we went from 1.9 to 2.8 and
050that is huge um I always ask teachers you know how did you get that number right I observations observation I see them a few times and learning W yes I see them but what are they really doing in the classroom so I ask a lot of questions she she actually said to me I challenge my Advanced kids I challenge the kids who are actually level one and I challenge them to the next level she identified every kid on that weer um descriptor and she's looking at the next level she wasn't looking at that level this is what they can do and this is where I'm saying it she's look at what what I can do to challenge them so this is a score we can Jenny mentioned the weda descriptive so all of our staff
051we have kiddos who take the weda which is a little bit different than the academic test what it is is language development in those areas Reading Writing oral language and listening and the score she showed I don't if you can go back but it may only look like one point up but it's really a whole chunk that goes up so that's pretty that's very significant growth for these kiddos and if you remember when we got our um accountability bag we exceeded expectations with our kiddos and this is a combination we have a phenomenal ESL teacher in the building but it's also you know the work that the teachers are doing to comination I don't want to read through the strength and opportunities um but we do notice our kid kiddos what we focus on this
052year is responding to the reading from the amcast we notice our kids can write they can compose an essay but they not they weren't able to identify evidence for grade 4 to7 they're very good at copying copying Pace but they're not able to paraphrase understanding the P passage identified evidence to answer questions so we really focus on that and we see tremendous growth um our math we see even more growth um one thing we noticed and actually Jason point that out in the past many years we always have concerned with fractions um students struggle with fractions so this year I we see a lot of growth um and you know when Jason asked that question I say geeez what are we doing differently and I went back and interviewed teachers I think it's a lot
053of them mentioned about increasing opportunities for practicing reinforcement but most importantly help them connect those fractions to real life applications because learning fractions common denominator you know uh we need and and multiplication of fractions what does that mean so they use a lot of visual models showing that um that is really helping the kids to connect those fraction and we did a lot of number sense and stmath has been helpful I know um nille also mentioned that but we're I kind of championing right now the stmath program here so um we're focusing on assigning the objectives as we are teaching them with hmh so they can see the connection and we've started to do more puzzle talks um across the classrooms where we're showing them before we do the module opener so they can connect
054stmath to what we're learning because I feel like that was the big disconnect between the programs so now they're able to see how they align so same with seventh grade um so this is what we're very excited to share with you um ilt kind of we did so mid year we have to submit a desertation to Jason about our mid year reflection so I as an iot we work together we look at the data we reflect on our practice and also we reflect on our school movment plan so we actually wrote a reflection together and then we send it to our whole staff and look at it and give us feedback um so it's like a collaborative reflection because that's important we want buying right so based on that we thought okay we're doing a
055lot of right things but what's next we don't want anything new for teachers because we just don't want to add in none thing for two teachers so um there's two things um there are two books that I actually came across one is building thinking classrooms the BTC and the writing rope so it's not entirely new initiatives um actually we want to mix we want to recognize them as enhance enhanc to what we already doing uh those are the tools that we find and strengthen our instructional practices so the building thinking classroom is really increasing student engagement and problem solving so last Friday doing our PD day we actually gave the first module training to our teachers we put them to the test we gave them Tas and I purposely picked these two pictures the first
056one you see uh social seventh grade social study teacher science teacher and our sub- separate teacher the bottom picture we have a physical education teacher our math teacher and our music teachers so what we call is the medical uh medical vertical math um but we don't want to call vertical math we want to call vertical learning because that whole thinking classroom can apply to any subject um and then the writing rope is we've been doing a lot of focusing on writing but we really want to push for writing across time content um there's some part of the writing piece should be responsible by all content teachers not just EA so those are the two things that we want to focus on we have a plan before the summer before the teachers leave for the summer
057we want to make sure that they have time to go through the mod modules and time to plan um we want to give them time in the summer kind of think about the learning um I don't want to come back in September and say we're going to do this let's train the teachers no no no no because the kids going to come in we need to make sure we deliver that right um so some of our teacher is really you know excited so they already kind of sto the thinking classroom but I leave that with our in uh leadership team the building class building thinking classroom is really a approach to to solve a problem to solve but it's not a Dan for you to master what that mean is every teacher should make it
058work for themselves because what sit sitting in front of them are different kids they need to make it work for their classroom so our kids are excited they can't be here because of for of spring uh sports but they all fighting to be on the radio so I can only Pi four I'm sorry Matt your son didn't get pick so so uh we want to kind of Play that video what does that mean right we heard from us but we want to you to hear from the kids of I think it's great for everyone to learn and how has it helped your math skills it's helped my math skills a lot because I feel like when you teach us normally like in the it's like not really making us like have errors and fix them
059but when there's un thinking classroom you can fix the awesome so overall how do you feel about thinking classroom I love it ands what I think classroom I say it kind of helps me a lot to be honest I'm usually Qui in class sometimes because I don't know the answer but since I've been working with people I have improved with talking um with the marker um when I can't speak I make Faces Sometimes I don't [Music] understand connect a l to them a lot as well and how do you think thinking classrooms is affecting your abilties in B to be honest with you volume what we have done today test I thought I was I was going to be doing good on the test actually did really good on the test I awesome anything else
060before just think is a really good technique for kids to learn more aome thank you I thinks are good because it helps us not just listen to other kids and what they're saying we can actually figure out on what we're supposed to do and has thinking classrooms improved your math ability at all uh yeah they have a lot a lot do you feel more confident yeah yeah that's awesome anything else you want to share about thinking classrooms I feel we should have done agreed me too all right thank you so now that we've started building thinking classrooms and math how do you feel about it I think it will help a lot of kids because I don't talk when we do math books and now that we're a group I talk and I do out
061the problems and it's helping and do you think that it's helping your mouth skills yeah yeah do you feel more confident MH yeah do you get an opportunity to talk every time you work in a group yeah did you usually do that before no no anything else you want to say about it so two thumbs up or what two thumbs up um classroom helps me learn I got more progress in my learning I got more questions right the first time and it helped me learn more I was able to work with people so if I got something wrong they would help me and we would learn and grow and also um all my friends have improved and they have also done really well with their learning um I think is we don't want the kids
062to hide so when they're at their desk they can hide it's only so much the teacher can see right so we don't want them to hide we want them to really work on that vertical learning so the teacher can see and we also don't want the kids to mimic CU if they mimic they're not going to remember what they learn we want them to apply their skills what one of the girls said that I make faces cuz when I'm holding a mocker people are telling me what to write that mean they not supposed to talk so the person who hold the market only can write but what that person can do when the marker is passed to the next person that person can say well I like to revisit the last problem so we're encouraging
063kids to go back um they feel more confidence they're not afraid to make mistake because they're going raise it just Ras it so um what um the teacher actually recorded it told me she just gave a math test yesterday and every single kid pass she had never had like every kid pass the test so this is not magic is a journey that it's going to take a long time but we're excited any questions that last student really had one more point to make I know we C him now we're our suspense here I want to know and he had one more thing to say so any question Jason saw a couple of lessons today it was great yeah yeah it was great yeah we we're always asking kids to explain their thinking and they just
064stare and then they put their heads down but this is making them explain to someone else not just the teacher so they have to do it I do have one question the thinking classroom it's not a graded thing it's just a tool you're using correct yeah so actually I'm glad you asked that so we're not it's not a curriculum Yeah we actually use our curriculum but the teachers have to actually take the unit and look at it and cut them apart so one kid said I'm so glad we're not using the textbook the teacher say that is from the textbook no clue he had no clue and the teachers can make decisions is some of these problem not challenging enough so they have what they call it a spicy questions Mile and what is it
065Jason you remember it was mile spicy uh medium and mild and and yeah so all the kids want to do the spicy questions but are they ready so they say that today you know I asked them are you ready for the questions no so they say on the medium or the mile um they I I we are seeing the engagement like trip and I know you saw it here on the video but I know when they presented live to us and we always like hearing from our teachers but it's awesome to hear from the kids when we do it live when they come here but um they could really explain it wasn't just I use the strategy of like they got into it they explained what they do they got up like they were showing
066with the you know up you know in the air we break the markers and we have to be quiet like they're able to do that you can see they're enjoying it which is so the video actually suggested by one of the students you know when I said can you come no I can't I have sports so he said but you can record us I'm like oh that's a great idea so one of the things I noticed Jenny when we were visiting uh classrooms I think it was fourth grade we were in it we went to a few but the fourth grade math class really stuck out the kids were using these kind of these white chart uh laminate paper uh poster paper things and they were doing the math right on it and their backs
067were all to the center of the room because there were like three or four of them working on this you know each there was probably I don't know five or six of these hanging around the room like chart paper and um it was really interesting to see usually that like the kids will engage with us when we come in the room they kind of talk to us and I said to a group of three students there were three young ladies that were working in the front of the room I'm like oh hey I'm just letting you know I'm behind you I don't want to you know startle you and they all they just turned around and gave me the snarkiest look like you're distracting us they were trying to work through this problem it was
068pretty complex and they're like yeah no you're fine you're fine like and they were going back to what they were doing I mention that only because they didn't want the distraction like they were really engaged in and I was trying to help one group and I get stopped and he's said you're not supposed to help us you have the marker or whatever the yeah that's and I asked one question to go that's not an open-ended question okay and I think we went into one classroom they had already done that and then they looking at different questions and they put them in category mild uh medium and spicy and I say oh I at first I'm like why is why is she doing that like the teacher now you know when we saw the Kids In
069Action I understood because they actually have to solve the problem and figured out is that a spicy question yeah and then defend it like why was this question harder than the other really like some analytical thinking that kids had to explain to each other why they put the questions in each category hence why it looked like a job interview that we're talking about kids are really in Partnerships doing it was really it was really interesting to watch yeah to watch the thinking like out loud and listen to them talk about why they were categorizing questions as harder than other questions they could really articulate it y it was pretty cool yeah you're welcome to come and visit any questions okay thank you thank you Carrie are you on with us Carrie god dad joined us
070we were having some tech issues we were trying to get her on earlier yes I'm now perfect and so let the record reflect Ted joined us as well and Carrie is after a about with technical difficulties is now with this okay back to consent agenda a I'll take a motion to approve the warrant so move a motion made by Aaron second seconded by Chuck save the terrist for later any further questions or discussion hearing none all those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed the eyes have it uh next up public forum anyone like to come and speak in front of the school committee please come right up to the table I have two issues um my my my name's Teresa Carpenter my daughter attends Middle School here and my son's in the
071elementary school my first issue I I was hoping the school committee could help um foral getting a playground built here at the middle school when we were moving our young children forced to move our young children into the middle school that was a sticking point for a lot of parents and um we were Mrs RKA had talked about how she built one1 socket and that it could be built over a summer and a lot of parents even volunteered to help build and so far nothing's been constructed I've reached out a couple times and I'm just hoping maybe the school committee can help board that along well if you don't mind if I interrupt you we have it's a warrant article in front of both towns for the town meeting for a playground out here okay
072great yeah so then that can happen sooner than rather than later uh so it get it has to get approved by the town Blackstone and milville it's and and and then it will I I can't I don't see that not being approved I don't want to jinx it but I think and then as soon as that's complete that the we couldn't start anything before July 1st uh because it's the funding that's when the funding becomes available that's what the funny we will put it on the top of the radar so that's when we'll be looking for the parents after July 1 absolutely volunteers will be very helpful yes yep we will be there um my second issue is um the large turn of teachers in the elementary school like uh we've lost a lot of
073really good teachers there just wondering what's being done to um Foster a better environment in the elementary school for our teachers so that we don't lose good teachers the last several uh Paris teachers specialists in just the last couple of years and it's concerning they're very very good teachers we've lost and I'm just wondering what's being done in that school to foster a better environment I guess want to speak to that well my response to that would be those concerns if you would address directly through an email to the superintendent okay yeah I met with him um about a year and a half ago regarding the turnover in just the Specialists area but I did touch on teacher turnover it wasn't really met with um it was met with more like a blank stare and
074um well our students are our main concern which I agree our students are our main concern but Happy Teachers equal happy students and the large turnover is still very concerning and he promised to do something and you know asked me to give him some time and it's been you a year and a half or two years almost and it's not getting any better if anything's getting worse so I'm just wondering if there's been any Improvement I guess on your end Mr DeFalco for that can't have this conversation in public form yeah it's not it's not how public form is set up I'd be happy to meet with you again I and and have a followup conversation if you'd like okay so well when I met with you before nothing happened so that's why I'm just
075that's your opinion was that a year and a half was a year and a half ago about a year and a half ago so I'd encourage communication directly as a school committee two things the engagement on the playground was a real easy one because we've we've done that publicly just here where where it gets into personnel and things like that that's something that the administration would deal directly if there was an issue then report back to the school committee okay so if I meet with them again and still nothing happens do I come back to you you the these are public meetings you are always welcome to come back to us but I would just recommend that process to follow up on that absolutely then I'm sure some of us will ask the same questions
076after okay yeah I will follow up then and come back Tom more because if nothing happens but I appreciate you hearing me out okay thank you thank you very much all right uh anyone else for uh public phone all right moving on to school committee uh vote to approve the Fredick uh Frederick Harnet Middle School New York field trip Mr superintend yeah um I don't know if Jenny wants to speak at all to that since she's here the New York trip think you forgot about it that's for good since you were still here Dr Rema you want to give a quick overview so we've been thinking a lot about us seventh grade because the whole thing when we were merging two School parents were worry about the six and 7 losing that Middle School experience
077and we don't want that and we we don't want the elementary kids losing that Elementary either so we've been talking a lot about and because eighth grade is no longer here so they are actually going to Washington you know at the high school we want to do something for our seventh grade so we decided to take them to New York they're not going to want to hear it I'm going to so they actually excited um so we're taking student to New York um we're going to visit the museum and then we're going to spend some time in uh Central Park um we have a lot of volunteer we actually turn down a lot a lot of Staff want to go with them so the I believe the fee is uh the trip is $95 um
078include all transportations and also the ticket to go into a museum and we figured want just to get a few more dollars so we can actually buy snack for the kids on on the bus so we'll be leaving here around 6:00 a.m. we'll be back around 10: don't worry it won't come is that a Friday this no we tried to do Friday but I we could not get Transportation so it'll be a week dat and no visit to Yankee Stadium though right huh no visit to Yankee Stadium I know I try she's not driving the bus right so they're very excited um we are and since we at the school committee if anyone listening would like to sponsor a child please let me know um we have about so far about 10 to 12 students
079asking for a sponsorship that was going to be my next question for you are there students that came afford you said $95 yeah I will sponsor thank you I sponsor a child but that Jenny can huh sell just give give you all our money J giving me that look yes how many students are in the seventh grade uh 128 um we would like all of them to go and I think if we get 100 we'll be happy yeah and we did make sure that they know money is not an issue if you have any you need any help just let us so I'll make a motion to approve the New York City trip for our seventh grade on June 9th second presented what's that you a motion made by Aaron second uh by Tara lockin
080any further discussion I will just say I do know your shouldn't stay after dark at the um Museum of Natural History in New York I watched a movie about that one time it's not a good thing do they have enough um chaperon that's a lot of maybe that's why he's stuck on the the chaperon thing was that movie no Chon's good even even an officer in there I see that's great all right any any other discussion of the children it's all all that matters I agree all those in favor signify by saying I I any oppose it's unanimous oh I'm sry no thank you Jenny contact me and Aaron yes yes I'll I appreciate it thank you I have I'll bring you cash thanks Dr remka uh next is a u to approve a BMR
081senior trip to matus Vineyard yes this is their annual senior trip um and I know it's um not out of state but it is over the water and we thought it'd be important for the school committee to be well aware we always bring the senior trips in front of the school committee anyhow so we're looking for approval for our seniors this year to go to back to the Martha's Vine Room it's been a couple years since we it has been a couple years yeah make a motion to approve motion B made by tus Kobe second second by Ted um I'm going to have to follow up if there's going to be appropriate number of Life check and boats they'll be taking the fer they should be fine okay thank you Mr superintendent any further discussion
082all those in favor signify by saying I I I any oppose it's unanimous I got the evil ey from Mr Catalano on that one vote to approve revised 2526 school calendar yes there was one error on the last calendar U accidentally the Friday before Labor Day was counted as an instructional day it should not have been uh so the actual last day uh like this year the last day of school will end on a Monday um but that actually works in our advantage because we typically have a snow day or two and we're already into the next week anyhow so instead of having a snow day and then ending on the Monday we would if we had a snow day next year we would end on the Tuesday Etc so um just an error on
083the accounting side of uh on the accounting side of things on that August 29th date so it is now correct and that I'll take a motion to approve the revised 2526 school calendar so Move Motion made by Tara scobby second seconded by Ted any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I any oppose it's unanimous msba update Tara um I don't really think we have much but Jason or anything that you yeah not much not in the past couple weeks we finished the ADV visioning work and we're going to go over those final reports next Wednesday at our school building committee and I think that's really it for now right we haven't had an actual meeting since other than the workshops that and we do have an enrollment conversation with msba
084uh at the beginning of next week to see if because our enrollment continues to increase um as a school district so looking at you know what wiggle room do we have with msba to look at those student enrollment numbers again um to you know to account for the increase enrollment that we're seeing with students both staying in the district and families moving to our district which is a great sign of the good work that everybody's doing very good um Ms uh sorry Mees water update so I I got a most recent update at 414 this afternoon um I have been uh working with um or keeping community communication with um Peter and the Town Administrator and Jen Gil the chairwoman of the board of selectman in milville and um as we probably many of us
085may know they've already guaranteed to provide P bottled water throughout the uh School uh the next school year they have funded um their water operation there was some discrepancy going into last year's town meeting but the most recent update is from this afternoon and I'll just share it um we sent the grant earlier this year and we were asked to make a few changes to it this shows us that the team did in fact look at the application we made our adjustments and resubmitted and received an email on March 11th 2025 which stated in part and this is from the mass D the mass D DPW has forwarded the information uh you have submitted to the EPA to confirm the Project's grant funding they are currently in review by the EPA once your project is
086confirmed the mass D DWP will formally notify you of the grant award the contract documents will be sent to you for your completion uh Peter and I have reached out to Mary Jude pigsley uh the director of mass D central region to see if there is any update we have also asked Mary Jude if there is any changes to the current Grant in the administration will impact the grant she confirmed that the 1 million has already been allocated by the the EPA for the milville uh Water Project best regards Jennifer Gil so that's the latest update I have hesitated to ask them to come in and present anything because that's all there is until they've um actually received the grant so that's the only update I have on that are they still um hoping expecting
087us to be back in September or is that something we're going to revisit something we'll probably revisit I was hoping um and and working with them to see I would bring it back for consideration so they've assured us they've assured me and and to J and to superintendent that there would be no exposure they would provide all the water to Lim to that there would be no exposure to the students I my personal end of it is once the the approval of the grant comes through and there's a construction schedule with that then I I feel much more confident this my opinion my opinion on that and that's potentially could and so we we can do that essentially up in you'd want to give this District time to we have it budgeted for the move
088back yep if we but we would want to do that yeah a deadline but we'd want to we we can go right up to through the summer but you would want to make that that decision of course in a timely manner so we're hoping that they they're expecting that information any any day now the approval yes I I appreciate that Mary Jude is the money is allocated and it's just a matter of the paperwork but' be great if they got that paperwork signed off yeah they need the approval yeah that's where I stand individually I I don't know about the rest of the committee so but I would prefer to have that a more robust discussion with them here mhm so thanks good enough update for now all right great do you have any um
089of the most recent water testing I can I I will TR the last one I saw did not pass tread lightly on that because um it's public shared frustration Jen and Peter shared frustrations that essentially the current water operator is what is part of the pro the proposed project uh with the EPA funding so they're not um they're not treating the water with as much DET the current water with as much detail as they should be in their opinion and I and I I I hate to speak for them any further on that but that's the sentiment they expressed with me essentially the water operat were not passing is that I don't want to be inaccurate yeah and they were right out front with that like it's they're not it's post it's a public right
090document I just couldn't remember if it was it is okay and I think that I think the the idea is that the operator is really focused on the new filter system and is putting a lot of effort and energy into the design of that versus the maintenance I think of yeah he's there's no sense of continuing to treat this water that essentially the no one in the building really using it drinking it now and and so focusing on the the the part of the the big part of the application sitp process is that operator and the new piece that Mary Jude said would have to be approved right okay it's all the whole D application thing is a whole project in itself know and if I spoke out of school on any of this I'm
091sure that I will be corrected in the very near future I think I summed it up pretty good thank you for the update thank you moving on we'll continue with the uh report of the superintendent um and to Item B revised District improvment strategy thank you uh I'm gonna ask uh Mary colino to join us up front um and just as Mary's making her way down um just as a reminder to our community and friends that are tuning in from home and of course to our school committee um we look at our school district Improvement strategy a bit different here uh a lot of school systems will develop a five or six-year plan um and we actually as you know we don't develop a plan of that duration it's it's very long instead we uh
092we have tightened up that timeline for us and BMR to keep it to three years um and believe it or not we are at the end of the last year of our current third year uh blueprint or our strategic plan um I mentioned that only as a reminder because um one of the benefits of having a shorter tighter plan and you see these goals and objective show up in the school Improvement plans because all of our school Improvement plans are tethered back to our district Improvement strategy so actually we heard about that tonight from our two schools that presented and we'll hear from the high school at our April 10th meeting uh they're going to present their data uh at April 10th they didn't join us tonight A just to kind of spread it out
093a little bit but B Mr BMR was tonight and I didn't want to anybody away from that um and we know that's a really important Community um Feelgood event for our for our staff and students over there so um but Mary's going to talk uh a little bit about really just kind of some quarter turns or adjustments to the Improvement uh strategy moving forward and I want to be really clear that this is a draft um once the school committee uh reviews it tonight we're actually going to take it out into the community and um recently we went to a I think it was a um it was called a main a business business of Main Street in Blackstone kind of an event and and had a bunch of the local uh business owners um
094and various organizations within town uh got together um and we're actually going to take our strategy once the school committee reviews it tonight and bring it out into the community and get feedback from our Community Partners from our governance boards um and in also the town side uh and then bring it back to the school committee um we hope some time in May I think Mary for one final vote but wanted to bring it forward as more of an introduction but you'll see that there's really just a quarter turn of our current strategy because we just continue to go deeper into the good work that's happening across all our schools um so Tim I don't know if you want to put up the uh graphic of our Improvement strategy and and um to our school
095committee you have it in your packet yes sir yep thanks Tim so so we began this um in November with um with our um our instructional uh leadership team for the district and we reviewed the current blueprint that we have now and considered um whether any goals goal changes were necessary and it pretty was it was pretty much unanimous that we keep the same goals that we have so the curriculum instruction whole child and Community those are still the same goals but like Jason said we've decided to um explore those we decided to explore those in a greater depth so we did that for um for our first few meetings and then the principles and the coaches brought what we had done to the their ilt meetings um in their schools and so they gave
096us feedback as well and then they they also went to the uh parent school councils so we've gotten feedback from from teachers from parents and from the district ilt and um so right now our final draft in in implementation this is like what Jason had said our three-year blueprint and it is aligned with our portrait of graduate and embedded in the school Improvement plan and um then we will be presenting this and um in the in the in uh the summer in August we'll get together um with our our district Leadership Retreat and then we'll start working on the action steps so Mary behind each one of these four areas will be a set of action steps that will put in place for next school year yes and you see those action steps come through
097in the school Improvement plans right any questions looking forward to August thank you it's always a pleasure yeah thank you and you'll notice it when you look at the um our current strategy you'll see the goals have just shifted a bit the same topics are there um and frankly we've had this conversation I know here quite a bit we've had it with our leadership team we've had it with our school-based instructional leadership teams and we've had it with our students as well we have student instruction leadership teams in all of our schools as you know we heard from some tonight um you know in the in the mantra that we kind of hear across all the groups is the same like if we're not working on these things then what are we doing and you
098know that in my goals we have other issues that we focus on you know like you know capacity building of our staff and supporting staff retention and really focusing in on um you know adding whatever additional supports we need to put in place for students and for the adults those show up in here um through various through the various goals and focus areas but this is definitely uh at least after working with the the kind of the core of the um parents and the uh leaders in across our district that are responsible for this work they all landed in the same place which is really just quar turning some of the language so we'll be back once we take this out to the community to have some discussions and see if this feels right to
099them as well all righty oh this is your is that okay yeah good hry on um I'm going ask our athletic director to join us and do an overview this evening uh of all things Athletics we're going to take a reflection back and all the great work that happened in the winter uh and share some of our highlights um from our winter season and then talk a little bit about where we are as we just teed off I think spring so thanks Darlene for being here okay um so overall we had a successful winter season we had 106 students registered for winter sports we offered basketball at all three levels for both boys and girls with Middle School JB and varsity we had an indoor track team which we're still building uh roster size for
100we had chair teams a swim Co-op and an ice hockey Co-op um we had five students named DVC Allstars which means they were top performing athletes in our league uh those athletes were Jackson Dutton named for first team for boys basketball Carson canoer named second team for boys basketball Natalia maras named second team for girls basketball Marin Barry named first team for girlss basketball and Camille weatherell named second team for indor track in the high jump this I just want to point out how much of a big deal that is yes we've gone years without so great job for all those all those athletes and to their parents and very proud uh our winter athletes of the week were Adriana Gerard Layla Haynes Seth Cades Natalia maras and Camille weel um all these athletes were
101nominated by their coaches um and then when we get multiple I decide out of those options which ones um receive the nomination these are just a few pictures of our winter teams um as I mentioned we had a successful winter season um both basketball teams were very successful girls basketball and boys basketball competed in the clerk tournament um which requires a certain record in order to make um certain power ranking and then they also made it into the playoffs we had one division five indoor qualifier for indoor track we had three qualifiers for swim sectionals in the Grafton Co-op um one thing that we're still waiting for for winter season is survey responses from both parents and students this is really important both for continuing Improvement of the Athletics program but also coaches really want
102that feedback to know how they can improve um the team experience so I'll send that link out again to all the registered athletes from Winter um there's a separate survey for parents and a separate survey for students and it's completely anonymous now on to our spring season so as of now we have 191 students registered for spring Sports out of those 33 are registered for baseball 30 for softball uh 10 for girls tennis we have one in the lacrosse Co-op and 117 students for track with the middle school and high school combined um and in that track number it's about a 50/50 split there's 10 more boys than girls in the track team so um in addition to that we have open strength and conditioning sessions still continuing throughout the spring season uh that's offered
103by a few of our football coaches that's offered Monday Wednesday and Friday from 2: to 4:30 it's open to all athletes it is not set just for football and if any um coach has any recommendations on what strength workouts to do for their athletes they can send it to the football coach and he can work with them on that specific routine uh our spring Sports offered are baseball both JV and Varsity Softball JV and Varsity middle school outdoor track High School outdoor track uh we just have girls tennis we haven't had any boys sign up for tennis um if any boys end up signing up in the next week usually they join the girls team and do exhibition matches when another team has has a boy on their team and then we also have a
104co-op lacrosse team with nmuk um so for track eighth graders have the option like we did in the fall eighth graders have the option of being on the middle school team or the high school team um just the main point is that they can't flip-flop between the two so if they compete with middle schoolers they have to follow through with that for the remainder of the season um our first games start next week with baseball and softball scrimmages and then after that track will be starting their first meet with like an inter squad meet here are our spring coaches um our head Varsity track coach is Patrick Rosendale our head Middle School track coach is Marsha Harvey and we have assistant coaches Jessica Leonard and Becky Boule that work with both schools our Head tennis
105coach is Molly Breen our Varsity softball coaches they're both new are Russell wise and Larry given our JV softball coach uh coaches are Jarett Nyland and Katie McKinley our varsity baseball coach is Chris manguso and we have a new JV baseball coach Chris hus we had our first meet the coaches night um this past monday it seemed to be a decent turnout um and I'm hoping we can continue that meet the coaches night event through all the seasons we also had a virtual parent information session a couple weeks ago here are our practice locations for our spring Sports so JB baseball and softball will practice at Roosevelt Park uh varsity baseball and softball will practice at the lower fields at the high school outdoor track will practice at the high school track um and Tennis
106will practice at the tennis courts at the high school we also have a rain day schedule plan for any indoor use so tennis softball and baseball have a schedule in place in case it's raining um that includes the gym at the middle school and the gym at the high school uh so this is just a screenshot of our Athletics website I really want to encourage all parents to use this as like a main resource for athletics any Flyers that I distribute on social media also get posted on here um and then I just have important links like a link to sports VI it's not in the screenshot but has been updated to that uh the VMR Charger Store for any gear that you want to uh wear for athletics the registration link a link to
107unipay for sports fees and then I have links for every specific team for spring and if you click on those it will bring you to like their specific schedule um we have media day on Monday and I hope once we get those photos we can also post like roster pictures and names on all those sport sites as well um so athletic schedules I know a lot of parents use Arbiter live and that's originally what I had on the um Athletics website that isn't as Dependable just because it's what athletic directors use to kind of draft the schedule so unless both athletic directors accept it it won't show up on Arbiter live including if a game gets canceled for a rain rain day um if both athletic athletic directors don't accept that it's cancelled it will
108also not show up as cancelled um so I'm trying to make it more streamlined for parents so I'll have updated schedules on all the team specific pages on the Athletics website and then also on Sports you if you go to the either the general Athletics page or the sports teams on Sports you and click on calendar it will have their practices and um games listed um I'm also really want to encourage parents and students to join Sports U we are trying to start tracking attendance on Sports U as well in order for that to be accurate though we need all the students names to show up on the sports U team so um we're going to be sending that sending that out to everyone registered just to remind them to um join Sports View if
109you join Sports you as a parent you can be listed as a parent so there can be multiple members of the family um joining the same team and I think that's it there any questions any questions pleas I have a question on the Arbiter so if you're going to use the website for the schedule is that just for families it's my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong that you're assigner for officials use Arbiter yes okay yeah and officials will see so assigners will see it before it's accepted so it just won't show up on Arbiter live but assigners use like the ad access to Arbiter if that makes sense so is that different from what we see on Arbiter yeah yeah I got a question how many of our uh coaches are um emsd
110staff members uh Jarrett Nyland is a staff member I believe he's a permanent long-term sub um Molly Breen is a teacher at the high school Becky Boule works at the Middle School uh and Patrick Rosendale works at the middle school so four four of the coaches it's good to know and how are the kids getting over to uh Roosevelt are we busing them yes yeah so we have an athletic shuttle leaving from the middle school and the high school right now myself and uh two of the track coaches are supervising the middle school kids until they get on the bus um and then once the high school buses finish their route they come back to the high school and drive any eighth or nth graders right now it's only for baseball so any eighth or
111nth graders that are on JV they get sent to Roosevelt one more quick question are are we close to full complete schedules for each season yes I know that's um it's been auss for parents uh right now we have 17 games scheduled for Varsity um still 10 for JV that usually is decided this week when they make final decisions on teams and what size their rosters are um I just added today two games with Mount St Charles I got confirmation from the Mia that any Rhode Island opponent still counts towards the win loss record and Power Rankings so that's who I'm reaching out to now to get the final three games for baseball softball schedule is complete uh track schedule is complete tennis schedule is complete but we may um switch two games I can
112see it counting toward a win loss but how are they going to do that for power rankings if they're not part of the Massachusetts system so as long as they're part part of Rhode Island inter Scholastic League I don't know how the math Works behind it but they said as long as they're part of the Rhode Island inter Scholastic League it will still impact both which is important because we want every game to be meaningful for playoffs I'm just curious how they're going to do strength the schedule and be able to do it's it's a it's a semi comprehensive system yes so how they're going to do teams that aren't playing against other teams in Massachusetts that doesn't seem but the the game's towards trying to get to your your ultimate goal of getting to
11310 I can see that yeah the other part I don't see how that's going to work but if the Mi told you that then that's good yeah so I think um this might be facilities but it might not I think Carrie had mentioned um a concern on the tennis court at our meeting the cracks and is it but you said we are there so I was just rning that it's been looked at Scott you correct me if I'm wrong we just talked about this today the company that we usually have come into to patch the the tennis court has refused to do the patch again this year because he feels that it's just not what needs to be done he's recommending a completely rebuilt tort but at the same time Scott's looking to see if
114we have other Alternatives somebody else can come in and take a look at this he's Foundation issue right yeah because the ground is constantly shifting the frost and across the planet by the way so I'm I'm sorry the ground is Shifting across the planet we have gone through this tennis court I know all right so now they're refusing to like didn't they do a coding or whatever and guarantee this thing yeah they did the coding like four years ago three three yeah listen was Matt was here this was a like a running J guarantee did they excavate the whole thing and put a new subbase Under when we build a new high school but it is usable it ISS of even so nobody's tripping over them never be fix what the company did last year
115was they came and they ripped up the patches that were lifting and people could have tripped on um I only saw one patch like that this time but it's in between the tennis courts it's not on the plane Sur if it's itself I'd love to see that agreement that we went through with this cuz I they they were guaranteeing this that's why they came back they gave us every excuse Under the Sun MH not to do it in a timely manner three or four years ago it's raining it's this it's that Matt was here it's wet yeah every excuse under the temperature had to be above 55 then they told us it was going to be this is it this is going to it's like going to be like noon and then it cracked the
116next year and you know and a crack the next year so they made now of course they don't want to come back cuz they didn't do job right to begin with I think they're talking just paint though they're not I mean that they put a coating this was a coating but a coating can't guarantee on resurfaced yeah they were guarant they they were they were actually cutting out the cracks they were you know they fill in the Cs some new age epoxy nonsense that they they can't stand behind it was two years ago cuz it was every week we're laughing about yeah well Matt was actually Matt was gone to his new job and we were still and it still was I think we said at one point we can give Matt a report that
117the tennis court is finally finally fixed Rob MCN molti was the athletic director at the time who hired the company that was before I started this position and I've been in this position for four years can leave it right there that's exactly why they didn't excavate wide enough deep enough well they didn't do it cap and Islands did it 20 years ago and planing surface has only been resurfaced just painted actually going to say it was like 14 years ago it when we did the track we did the tennis court right yes and that was so that was 14 I was grounds Keeper at the time and I just come over to this building in 2003 so I I'd love to see that contract that because we paid good money to have that that well
118the good news is with a new High School hopefully we'll come new fields and relocate it to a better the metime it is it is built on a hill so that ground is still sliding down that would be a need I wish I had all these excuses if I had an error on one of my jobs that the customers would be giving this type of excuse we had a contract with someone they provided a service they were guaranteeing a service and they came back and repeat it the year after and admitted fault M and now two years later they're saying they're not answering the phone so I'm listen before I get too engaged in accusing them I'd like to see what that contract was and we paid good money for that and they should Stand
119By and they should stand by it uh one way or another so okay I'll I'll bring that I'm glad to hear that it's being used because two years ago when we were waiting for that to if we were not using our ten that's right and so at least we're on thee yeah the middle core is definitely the best one but like the crack like you said the cracks are evenly dispersed so it's not like one side is worse than the other um it's not like slanted or anything it's still flat l so you're not tripping over them yeah it's just crack so if the ball ends up hitting into the crack it may bounce a different way um so not ideal but still playable still better than hope Dales which they said is unusable completely
120right now so mhm and in the meantime to your point the best case scenario if is a new high school that that tennis court would be five or six years out anyway and that crack would be tremendously bigger by that point so I just want to hold the people accountable that promis us they were going to fix it correctly so and the only thing I have to add and this is kind of unrelated but related um I happen to be on the parade Committee in in Blackstone so Roosevelt Park on five 23 it's a Friday so um you generally you guys practice till 6 or if you have a game you pretty much done six is more for when we have games usually I I emailed Parks and Rec I forget which I told her
121but I think I told her like 4:30 or 5 six is more just one weam we we we were going to tell the Thursday the 22nd um if the carnival was to come in we told them after 6 okay but Friday it will be I don't know if you have anything Friday the 23rd then there may Carnival can check figured while you were here I would clean that one up as well uh we have an away for JV softball and no JV baseball I can at least make a note if we do schedule one that make sure it's away and that's just the big the bab Ruth field they won't be using like if you have a softball game in the the smaller field okay um that's fine while Dan's bringing up dates do we
122have dates for your um Tob determined games for baseball um let's see I thought there was something mentioned so only Cathedral Cathedral I'm not like banking on they said they want to do two cames but they're waiting on roster size those I don't have dates um I have a call with hold on let me bring up the actual do we think we're going to he to hit our goal of 20 the goal the max that MIAA allows is 20 yes so we want to try to hit that goal to give a fighting chance for each team that's why basketball was successful yeah we want them to have just as many chances as any other teams to make playoffs so the goal is 100% for Varsity to have 20 games um West Boston right now we
123only have one game schedule with them I have a call with her tomorrow so I'm hoping to get a second game with her um how many are you looking at total that are confirmed for varsity baseball 17 right now yeah so we need three more you do any double headers not right now we don't have any double headers scheduled Sugg is that is that allowed in miiaa oh no lights yeah we have to do a Saturday game so I did hear something about the 26th that is Memorial Day just in case anybody wanted to know is it that really yeah yeah and I only know that because it's my son's birthday and it sometimes lands on Memorial Day so so that's that's what spoil and that's when I have a call with tomorrow so if
124that's usually conflict with parents I can see if there's another date that works and it would have to be a away because again well no no if it's at school it's Roosevelt yeah that's high school yeah yeah Roosevelt will only be and um I just got a pox and Rex I I kind of let you guys know before I let pox and Rex now so I might I might be in trouble with them too right now I'm not saying saying it's a holiday week and I don't know if everyone's around just knowing that's you know it's my thing I would and and you were brand new into the system so you had enough going on I'm sure your head was probably spinning but these schedules all done in the fall in baseball yeah I mean
125my schedule was done before I even got to Thanksgiving yeah and that's that's kind of where all started is when I started in July there wasn't a fall schedule so I had to do the fall schedule and then there wasn't a winter schedule so I do the so it's all like a backlog where right now I have a more complete fall schedule than I do for baseball just because how it started so the goal is by summer everything's back to the correct cycle so we're not catching up the whole year and I don't know who you let do your scheduling but I don't know if you let your coaches do it because cuz they're the ones that know who they want to go play yeah I know what kind of team they're going to have
126yeah definitely and they don't want to go against the iron if they have a new team or they don't want to play a week schedule if they have a bunch of veterans coming back they're going to want the power rankings they're going to want to get after it yes I'd let the coaches do their non- league schedule collaborate yeah so that they can they can because they also Network and coaches no coaches yes yeah and I've been using uh Coach man guso a lot to try and reach out to the coaches who maybe the ads are more resistant to take the game based on our power rankings but if they talk to the coach and the coach says Hey I want this game that's how we got the mainard game is coach manguso talked to
127the other coach directly um in terms of choosing games for the next schedule at the postseason meeting with all my coaches I have them give me a list of teams they want to play and teams they would like to avoid at all cost um and then if any other team approaches me that's not on the list we usually discuss like hey do you want this game do you want to avoid this game but yeah definitely the coaches are more experienced in knowing their opponents than I would especially as a new ad in the school so you're starting that for next for the next school year yes yep the fall schedule's almost done we looked at it yeah we have about like 15 games for most sports um and then hopefully I use the ad Conference
128next week to try and connect and finish the schedule with people in person yeah so Ted to your point and terara to yours hopefully that's done before yeah very should be done soon yeah cuz you have a deadline to hit too for April yeah April 4th is our deadline for spring because the coaches can can stop working it right away they can I mean I'm sure I know I know my league games are always on Monday and uh Wednesdays and I can schedule my non- league games on Fridays yeah so I know that right across the board so I just thought hammering away before I even yeah and it falls right into place and my goal for especially baseball season that has been the toughest to get people to agree to games is try and
129get at least verbal commitments in season say verbal commitment that we're going to have another matchup next year um that's what I've seen other athletic directors do for the schedule for fall so it seems to be working at least get a verbal commitment so we know who to reach out to I just wanted to add that the uh batting cage was installed today The netting was put up thank you you're welcome um next to do is the girls Outfield so we'll get that done this week I've heard the baseball field looks great so my my ti my cap to you guys thank you um it is still kind of Muddy but we did drag it I brought my atvv in once again so your own BRS could drag it um our mower is still at
130state line Power Equipment waiting for a new tire tube to be installed nothing's growing yet anyways you're all right yeah so the girls softball field looks great that's been dragged home awesome the boys infield looks okay it's still got some work to be done the Bas just nice to come around the corner and not see weeds in the infield looks great thanks I checked Roosevelt today too it looked in pretty good condition So yeah thank you uh okay so that con if there's no more questions for Scott or or the athletic director uh that will that will conclude the Athletics update as well as the facilities report thank you very much you're welcome thanks Scott thank you darling okay my last item uh is to uh discuss the revised Health curriculum uh Mary is going
131to rejoin us and few I'm just GNA uh there's a few things that um I just want to run through with the committee and the community before Mary starts um in your packets you received um an updated uh slide deck that looks like uh a very familiar deck that we've been looking at all along we've been using the same material set of materials intentionally U but you see the new date March 20th um and all of the Cross outs and the red lines all of that is uh on purpose so that the community and our school committee can see all the changes that have been made um and before Mary walks through those changes we've spent a lot of time uh trying to find a way um to kind of balance the feedback that we're
132getting from our community around this particular issue uh we've done um a few parent meetings uh we've had quite a few oneon-one parent meetings from uh parents that did not necessarily want to meet with a group of parents but still wanted their voices heard uh we also received uh some emails from families kind of weighing in on all kinds of angles um and so after a lot of a lot of listening a lot of conversation um I think we have landed in a place that would be a good balance uh for our community in terms of uh What uh needs to be taught as it relates to our health our updated Health Frameworks and um what would be comfortable for our community if I could kind of say it that way uh and so I
133really appreciate this process um as challenging it has been and as timec consuming it has been as it has been um I think it's been a good one to show a few things uh mainly that uh there is not a parent or a group of parents that we cannot work with uh we have worked with everybody uh across the Continuum um on this particular issue um and and I think that's important for our families to hear uh because you know our parents may not always love the answer that they have or always love the response but it is important that they know that we really are trying we're listening we're doing what we can do to respond uh in a really appropriate way um but also understanding that you know sometimes we all get kind
134of half a loaf so to speak or or a piece of that uh and that's what consensus is that's what's coming together and working as a community um that we all you know kind of take a step back and say okay it's not exactly what I was hoping for but I think we can make this work I think it's something we can you know we can uh live with as we move forward so I just want to thank all of our families who have been involved in that process um whether it was one-on-one conversation in the over the phone in person emails the group of you know groups of parents that we've met with uh we've met with a few um definitely grateful uh for everybody's time effort and energy um it shows I think
135and I'm gonna I'm gonna take a a really kind of Hardline position on this because I think it's important it shows that people that have a really different perspective on things can actually come together as a group and make it work yeah and so there may be other higher much higher levels of organizations that could learn a lot from us as far as how we're able to do this on a local level and bringing people together I'm not going just saying you know no I agree with you everything is starts locally politics is local they should all take a lesson from local not all the time by the way not at my best moments locally but I I just not to interrupt pleas like I was able to sit in on these meetings um with
136the different groups of parents and the parents are not that far off and the majority of them in their in their their concerns were um pretty equal across the board and and it was a learning experience for me and but it was a positive thing because everybody came together and and AED their concerns and I think we've the end the final solution was a pretty pretty decent compromise um but there was one common interest from all parents and is interested in the students their interest was with the their children and the students and and I think the district had that same interest as well yeah I'm glad you said that because I think that's the that's the tie that binds we might disagree on a lot of things people might demonize other people which is
137which is unfair and untrue uh and I and I would argue that you know once once we actually once you sit down and you realize like we really are here for our kids that's the only reason we're here it's the only reason any of us are here we just look at it from a different perspective U but once you try to understand that perspective like we did through this process you see that like you know we actually can make this work um and so with that Mary if you want to kind of walk us through what's here here and then what the school committee received uh in their packets I know they got two packets so you'll explain that too I'm sure I yeah I guess maybe we should start there so so you the
138first packet that you got um was there was there was a mistake that with the high school piece that was printed it was the older it was the one that we had already said that we would change so then I I get you got one last night that's the one that is going to be um used not the first one that you got it was just the high school that was just the high school everything else was fine can you elaborate on the change the difference between the two for the folks at home so I I actually will do that when I when I go through so the um if you look at we this is the new one that it says on you got to move this it's not connected to your computer it's
139on the screen up there so you want to use theer that's all right time you forget I have to look all right so we we started to modify this this was the one this was the the same one that we started um in O last October this is so we came together like Jason said with different um different family families and different groups and we came we decide this is what everybody decided on so we modified this in February um and we updated the framework goals that was like that was what we had to do by desie and these are the changes that we started to make in the in um grade two so we we were never teaching that piece anyway um of the accurate names that's what we took out and um this
140is what we added we changed the wording um and we also um made it a little bit more kid-friendly so we um we wrote that we we actually rewrote that standard um and that was approved we could we could do that we get that approval by desie so these are the uh the standards that we took out and we just moved them so it's not that they're not going to be taught but they're not going to be taught in the second grade we changed some of the wording in um this is some of the wording that we changed in the standards so to discuss the importance of loving and respect self and others and then um instead of different we replace that with all family structures and family traditions in fifth grade we also took
141out we I shouldn't say take out we moved them so we still will be addressing them but we moved them to to the eighth grade and Mary I just so I can Define the moved them so people know what the them is right so the yeah so the one that is um crossed out is the is the standard that we that we moved to the e8th grade uh to explain the differences between assigned sex at Birth and gender identity that's no longer a standard in the fifth grade so all the gender identity materials all of it we moved toade we just moved it up to so it is it's still being taught but it's being taught in the older gr right so grade two and grade five it's not there did that require approval by
142desie I had a conversation with their health and phett office and made actually spoke with their director and they were very understanding of the changes and I actually have it in writing so that if there's an audit when there's an audit they can't have a finding for us to say that we're not teaching what we're supposed that is that is the concern we really don't have to accept the framework from desie as they I mean it's more about when they come in and audit us we want a good audit rating but if you know a school district does not need to accept this just because desie says it's the framework right what what they would do to your point Matt they'll come in and audit and they'll say oh we have a civil rights issue
143in BMR you're not teaching any of the the sexual identity standards and then we say no no no yes we are which we're teaching them in eighth grade we're not we're not doing them in second or third we're doing them in eth grade so that we won't have that end writing right so we have writing from the from the director so that will not be an issue these are the these are the standards that are in the fifth grade does anybody have any questions about those before I move to the next slide this is what we took out what we had just explained so there's nothing about gender identity in the fifth grade so fifth grade is mainly the puberty and body changes and things it's not the sexual sex identity yes all of that
144again was moved to grade eight gender expression all of that yes so eighth grade these are the key outcomes that they will have that they will know by the end of grade eight this didn't change can I a question I'm sorry it might be a silly question I don't know by moving these from the grades to the high school did it impact the high school curriculum no that's a good question so eighth grade already had gender identity in it anyway so we just um and it was already in their curriculum they had everything so it no I was just like oh no did we just overwhelm those there was no significant changes it was already there so the idea initially when this was developed was to do these kind of um they call it spiraling
145curriculum so you keep coming back to it and hitting those standards gotcha so we just are going to teach it for the first time in eth grade thank you that's a great question yeah so again none of the eighth grade standards are are different there's a lot of them and actually none of the nine the grade nine standards 9 to 10 none of those those standards changed either again the topics were already there right right they were already there so these so to your point Matt this is where this is so we took out um the so the issue with the with the high school was um the types of videos that we were using where they were from so we took all of the videos out and we only have one video which I
146replaced the video on the puberty video so they're all from a different um a different a different organization so we have um replaced all the videos uh the gender this is what we the the recommended changes that everybody agreed on the gender identity content is in grade eight we did some curriculum um revision so we we took out anything that had to do with advocates for youth anything that had to do with Planned Parenthood and we um we changed that uh grade standard the grade two standards again um we we changed the the the wording in that and then the modifications and the state again like that Jason had said the this um this the curriculum office has approved of this when we say we any questions yeah when we say we took out the
147advocates for Youth and Planned Parenthood reference to them or the material I and I apologize I said this to Jason I I didn't see the new packet until so I reviewed the do you want to see it I have it at home okay so did we remove the the material or did we remove the reference to so when we were in the meeting with the with the people that wanted she the people that the people that were in the meeting actually said they didn't mind the material it was the logo was the reference of the organization so any references to those organizations we've removed I would still argue that the district purchas you know we purchased this no we did not purchase it it's free it's all free material yeah so in but in some
148way they're I'm they're not doing it for free right advocates for Youth and Planned Parenthood doesn't put this curriculum together for free I couldn't imagine it guess is probably was a federal Grant or something they got not funded by us no not funded by us not buying this curriculum no it was free so only the only thing that they had used was a was a few uh a few PowerPoints few and that's about it so and like I said we took about all of the videos the have gone any further discussion any I'll just Express I'm still disappointed with the fact that it is Planned Parenthood it's just not you know it's still the Crux of it is still and this isn't a BMR District well actually we didn't take anything from Planned Parenthood the
149only thing that we had from Planned Parenthood was a reference that took that we took off but none of the materials that we used yes advocates for Youth too yes corre so I I guess I'm I'm misunderstanding a little but um that's fine well I would I I would Sor I do appreciate the the immense amount of work that was done in you know understanding the concerns on both sides uh me personally I have friends on both sides I you know who you know I care about and you know work with their children um so you know it was really tough for me to to understand both sides and I'm glad we did I'm glad that we we've all had these discussions and we're able to come up with this so thank you Dro thank
150you Mary for you know understanding that and putting all of this together it took a lot of time um so it was worth it I can't say thank you enough so thank you how far behind are we on delivering um were there kids that missed the curriculum in the high school because of the way the PE Health well so when I when I met with the high school teachers that they will get it so the way that because they like because it's a semester type of a thing whatever they didn't get they'll get it in the next grade that's how they do it so no they won't miss anything and fifth grade wasn't going to start their this part of the curriculum until after April vacation okay okay and there's still the opt-in and opt
151out so even for our parents still the op they'll be they'll be reissued the opt-in and opt out yes yep the parent letters are there and the alter the alternative lessons are in there as well do our families at home understand they still can do that yeah they can actually they'll have to or or the kid will be opted out they don't often well I'll also add I appreciate the the hard work that went into this with you and and and the superintendent and and the team it wasn't you know and and and all the teachers that's right and and what is this pause was put on February 11th it's March 20th like the turnaround to meet with all the parents take the different sessions the groups and there was some very robust debate in
152those meetings and and and concerns so to turn it around with in in a short period of time and and getting that those groups of people in agreement because essentially this was presented but to to the groups changes Y and and the consensus was with these with the different groups was in the agreement with the second and fifth was two concerning and eighth was you know was okay yeah was okay so and essentially personally that's where I had stood at the beginning of this with some other my you know concerns that were addressed but it was a it was a Monumental effort you you guys put a lot of work into it and and and the results speak for themselves so with that I'll take a motion to approve the uh amended Health revised Health
153curriculum so moved motion by Ted second seconded by Aaron any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I I any oppose nay nay all right stand by one two three four five let the record reflect it's 5-2 approved thanks again for all your work thank you that concludes my report all righty moving on to the business office thank you Mary Joe yes you're in your packet you have the budget journal entries that have been made to date since our last meeting just a second we go it's all the way at the bottom all of the highlighted items except for one are related to our preparation of building our inventories preparing for the FY 26 budget with supplies so all that is is taking money from projected Surplus Lines Moving them into
154the supply lines that we're making those purchase from those purchases from looks like this Mt looking okay there's a lot of paper here uh the one the uh um Journal uh budget journal entry 139 that is not related to that is just a setup of a new IEP Grant um to set the budget up for that Grant so you'll see that's different and there are two items that are not highlighted one is to it's it's within the same function code but we're had to move some funding to the correct line to do pay for the licensing for the backet software at Mees that had expired so that should be hopefully when they come out it'll be up and running and the other one was again to we had a budget amendment for one of our
155grants it was just an entry to go ahead and put that Amendment into the system and that is it for that my glasses just broke those are the ones not that there's two that I highlighted there's budg the first one 136 and uh I think it's on page two Bud uh journal entry 140 I only highlight the ones that have an effect of um the the function codee okay because those are the more important you know moving within the function code isn't is as as big of an issue all right any other uh questions as far as the budget journal entries I'll take a motion to approve budget General injuries as uh presented by by Joe motion by Tara scobby second second by Ted any further discussion all those in favor sign by saying I
156any oppose the eyes have it and we're back to the EV Chargers I am pleased to announce though that we've we've met with East Coast renewable energy that was the referral we got from uh from Blackstone that's who they use for their Chargers and they came out and did a tour of the distri uh a review of the district and we're able to put in it's basically two Port two two Port level two Chargers here at the middle school and one of at the complex if the cost of that is the each four $ 49,8 77 which is 100% covered by incentives and grants that are in place so there is zero cost to the district uh you have a copy of the actual proposal we have a way of charging for that electric use
157say it again we're going to charge for the electric y that's what I'll when we get this we have two options here we we can have complete ownership um and it comes with three-year warranty and three-year licensing we have complete ownership we do whatever we want we can charge whatever we want however we want to set that up um and maybe we'll do it by time whatever the school committee feels is necessary I recommend that we at least charge for enough to cover the electric electric cost if we want to discount it or whatever we'll get to that uh the other option is they the company can maintain ownership and they'll do a profit sharing with us the downside to that as far as I'm concerned is we lose control of what's being charged how
158it's being charged and how it's being managed [Applause] so while this is doing with that no cost to us I'm just looking for approval to sign the proposal and start to move on the installation at these two locations they are going to come back out and take a look at Mees uh and the high school again a little bit more complicated they don't we're not sure because of the trenching that's involved and the work that's involved if they can do it underneath that $50,000 threshold but at least we can start with the ones that we know will be free with the work that's propose for the high school why would we put a new charging stations there it it is movable the equipment's movable so if we were to relocate it with the building of
159the new building is the most expensive part and cost us anything anything that's one thing it may be that we maybe we don't do it it depends on what they even come back with or do it now while it's covered five years with a new building it might not be a yeah we don't know what is there any contract that goes along with the purchase again is there a contract that goes along with the purchase I guess I mean like I think I asked this before a contract for if it needs to be fixed or something needs to be done is there a contract that goes with the purchase that will cost the district um I'll have to once I do the proposal I can find out what I mean besides this three-year warranty if
160we need maintenance is there like a contract for maintenance repair replacement movement so that's the the two sides of it right so if we own it we own it we can charge for what we want and and when it comes to repairs after three years we own it that's I'm wondering we're at profit sharing they own it we they maintain it they but they charge and then we get a share of that profit it's like solar panels it's the same idea if you want to own your solar panels at home or you want to you know share it C share it and I and I guess my question with I think to follow up with with you is now so we're approving the installation is tonight is that just what you're asking us yes we're
161improving to move forward and so they'll inst all it even without uh whether or not they're knowing they're going to own it or is that a separate totally up to us they said we can make that decision anytime we want and we can change at the end of three years I did ask them what is that licensing what happens to the licensing now well the licensing expires in three years what do we do from there and there are two options at that point too we can we can offer them to just take 10% of whatever Revenue come in and they keep it up to date or we can pay for it outright which is about $500 a year right now is the license for it's it's the licensing for operating I guess there's some communication
162that happens you've got you've got the uh app that you can set your pricing your scheduling for there's there's some technology I can't answer to exactly what it is so that doesn't come with this this is just installation of the product it comes with three years of the licensing so if we were to just if we were to approve this there's other cost that may possibly incur once these are installed am I correct in three years after 3 years but if if we don't how do I say this if we don't work with them on the fees and we own it to do the fees then how does the app work do we have to pay for that app maintain that yeah which would be included in the cost of charging your vehicle you know
163how it works in at Town Hall yeah you charging I think it's option no we're in control of the the town's in control the town owns them so the same thing it's been there for a few years I was just going to ask that the installer gets so they put it in for free because they're getting the credits they getting paid to right they're getting the credits for it and and the town um the town will have a fee you put your Deb whatever I don't have an electric is the to char my debit card Charing right now I have to sweat my debit card at town hall and then right and so whatever that is for kill water what the minutes or however that works but the town the town is charging so is
164the town making no we we didn't do it to make money we'll have a u a discount rate for employees or I only wondered if it was going to be like we're charging and then that money that we're charging will go into a fund that will go for repairs and whatnot I guess that's what I'm saying said that because I was going to recommend that when we start if we if we approve this and we move forward any Revenue should go into its own special Revenue fund for maintaining this and then we can decide in three years when we see what the revenue stream looks like do we want to just buy the licensing every year outright with that revenue or do we want to do a 10% back to the company and never have
165to worry about the licensing again I mean those are all things we I don't think we even have to worry about until the three-year Mark for what they're telling at 10% do they set the rates no if we own it we set the rates well I'm talking the where uh the 10% of the profit or we still still set the rate for that yeah so to give you a sense when I use the Blackstone which is what I'm doing right now yeah I tap my card and plug it in about just about half a charge it's usually about 16 to bucks so and that's about half a Char St I use the one we do and I don't have the discount you want it you don't share the profit I guess is what I'm going
166to say or you don't so you guys determine the rate the town determines the rate okay that's what I was wondering cuz now I'm wondering does the rate go up if they're determining it you know what I'm saying and we have the from what I understand it's versatile enough where you can set a rate for a period of time maybe during the day for our employees and visitors and you can actually change the rate for after hours for just general public or we just keep it the same I mean whatever but we have that flexibility do we have any idea how many uh staff members actually drive electric vehicles that might be able to take advantage of this going to be enough at each or one too many two one two dual ports I don't
167I know of two they must have 100 charges zero trucks charging yeah so you I got to say like for there's like two gas pumps right but they're two with four pump two two two nobody can park in but those electric cars incentive locate them remotely so I like noost us I'll make a motion that we approve closer that way I second it proposal all right motion made by Erin seconded by Ted to approve the um uh EV charges for the complex and the Middle School yes um any further discussion I I'll just add that there was a a comment or a question on how much the ones were used in Blackstone last time we discussed this and so maybe it was you chu but so I followed up so on on so out of
168the when the question was asked as out of the last 90 days it was used 60 of those last of those 90 days so the town 60 60 so a lot of times it's overnight and and but I also look at this as opening up you know we always have an issue with TR like transportation from here to the high school this side the grant state have right out out right now for and I think I sent you the information Joe for these for Transit vans in the state of Massachusetts they're tremendous like the electric vehicles fully electric from bouncing from school to school I mean I wouldn't take it on a road trip to Martha's Vineyard but bouncing for school to school is ideal so I mean would cut down on the on the
169fuel costs and everything else it's an option so that's uh that's why I grants for that oh yeah yeah grant that I read right now is 50% of the cost for the electric a fully electric vehicle 5 5 Z and it comes with the charger but I get you we got to apply I got to get some information together and try to we can see if that'll work for us on the Staffing side there's about six people okay there about I'm and eyeballing because you know when you pull in you know what's electric and what isn't so there's probably about six people so there's what on this proposal there's two Port like there's two Chargers two dual pedestals at each of the locations so four four four per school or not the high school though
170not yet they're going to come back out and re-evaluate what what if that's possible because again if it's going to cost money I said I don't even want to talk to you about it so that feels right for what we have for originally the high school if I recall was going to be in the staff parking lot and it was going to have to be carried up and over yeah we're not going to down it's it all comes down to that trenching and that's the biggest cost I guess these incentives and rebates won't be available forever right is that my understanding they're not like it's not okay and the feasibility of the other two schools is no cost to the town right when they come back to the the high school and the they'll put
171a proposal together and we'll see what that it's free is that that proposal oh yes yes yes okay so there's a motion and a second on the floor any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I any oppose the eyes have it's unanimous thank you uh we have to officially so Joe Joe this is your I keep jumping on everybody's agenda items uh computer donations I don't that was from the LA Eric presented to us last meeting the committee just has to approve that just accept approve I don't have the list of what those donated items were but he presented a list to us Eric discuss it at the last me yeah I'll take a motion to approve the uh I move to accept the computer donations from Erica it's t all over
172it motion by Ted second second Matt was that you second by Matt any further discussion just it was all sorts of different it was computers it was keyboards whole and it was a lot of that's been scoffed up already even the easel like even which kind of felt random CU you brought all this technology and the gone the 13 easel are gone oh oh like just like well yeah but the teacher I mean it's gone the people have already scooped up the material the easels were faster than yeah if we don't so we really appreciate really appreciate him doing that okay motion second on the floor um all those in favor signify by saying I any oppose the eyes have it I thank Eric heand he's a uh a member of our uh the town
173of blackstones um Conservation Commission well with your with your brother your Uncle Matt uh Mike who's running for select Matt's giving me the evil eye tonight I'm giving him a hard time that's my school committee form I'm gonna get payback on this one or paid back um uh vote to approve fy2 Student Activity funds um so as you know the new policy was put into place for the Student Activity funds it's been restructured everything's set up all the activi is now running through our warrant process in the system the bank accounts in place uh in the policy it says we would come to the school committee at the beginning of every year to approve the Student Activity funds that are set up for that fiscal year uh I'm just asking to do this now mid
174year because now that it's set up we have a definite list and there's three three accounts at milville elementary seven at the middle school and 15 at the high school and I'm just looking I'm just asking for approval to continue to utilize those funds those accounts for Student Activities for the remainder of this fiscal year and then I'll come back at the beginning of next year again oh thank you Joe I move to approve the fiscal year 25 Student Activity funds second motion by Ted seconded by Tara lockin uh any further discussion all those in favor signified by saying I I oppose unanimously eyes have it uh school committee forum anyone I do know that there has been some confusion out there with the signs around town um I don't live in Blackstone I can't
175run for Blackstone Selectmen um so just to clear up any sort of confusion I am not up for a re-election this year um till next year to kick me out so just wanted to make that abundantly clear is not me well that's unfortunate because we would have loved to have you can't handle me I want to say something Tara Ted will miss you I had that on all of your than I'll say uh if I can have a quick 30 seconds I just want to say um it's been honor and a privilege to work with everybody in this room uh I'm very proud of this District I've really enjoyed being a member of it I believe in this District this District educated my three children um my oldest this is where this is not about
176her this is about the district and the and the people that are part of this District graduated last year Kum Li from college she's now a registered nurse and a cardiac unit in the hospital the second one um my second child is uh is a President's List every semester at college right now and is going to be graduating next year not this year and the following year and my youngest will be graduating so um I believe in this district and and I'm very proud to be a part of it and I just want to say thank you to everybody on this port for for allowing me to work beside you and you came to us in a time of need where the ballot had gone empty so thank you for stepping up and adding us
177to your busy schedule thank you very much appreciate it thank you any other good and Ware uh Ted yes uh you stepped you answered the call you answered the call it's been a pleasure getting to know you thank you this uh on this forum and uh out on the links a time or two good times and uh I value your uh your opinion and and friend that we made over this period of time and it's been a pleasure to serve with you uh I'd also like to thank um our student rep I always don't call when we go through the roll call I I um Maya Maya I always assume that she's gonna announce herself so that's why I always kind of skip over our student presenters that we had in front of us tonight
178did a wonderful job yes they did um in in person and virtually uh was was wonderful although I still was curious what that last student's final point the rest of that video find out and um and yes again I'll close out again with Ted uh it's been a real pleasure so thank you for your contribution to your community and your District uh we will be uh going into executive session um to conduct strategy and preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel and to bargain a session of contract negotiations with non-union Personnel we will we will we will not come back out we will adjourn out of that and one final um message is our next school committee is April 10th 2025 with that I'll take a motion to enter into executive session motion by by Ty
179lock seconded by Ty Str quick roll call vote Matt yes uh Chuck yes yes Tara scobby Tara lockin yes t yes and yes and I'm a yes