School Committee - November 5th, 2025

001one. >> Uh, good evening. I'm called to order the November 5th meeting of the Milton School Committee. Um I would like to make a motion to adjourn from open session to enter executive session for the purpose of conducting strategy session for contract negotiations with non-union personnel the superintendent and to return to open session. >> Do I have great all in favor? >> Oh, sorry. Nathan, >> yes. >> Lizzy, >> yes. >> Mark, >> yes. >> Hannah, >> yes. Bow. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> So, we will adjourn to executive session and then come back to open session at the close of that meeting. Welcome. We are back in open session. Um I think I'll stand for you. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one

002nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. public comment every 15 minutes for public comment. Um if you are in the audience and you would like to speak let us know if you're here for public comment. >> Should we say that again? >> All right. Take two. Um every meeting we allow 15 minutes for public comment. Um, if there are is anybody in the audience who is here for public comment, if they could come forward. If there is anybody online who is here for public comment, if they could raise their hand. All right. I don't see anyone here. I don't see any hands. No. All right. There's no one here for public comment. So, we will move on to um the superintendent report. >> Thank you very much. Um, Chair Serio, first of

003all, I'd like to introduce uh two of our student reps that are working with us for Milton High School. Uh, I'd like to bring to the table Angela Trang. Angela is an excited senior who is serving her first term as a student representative to the school committee. She loves to be involved at Milton High School and is president of the Youth and Government Club, Asian Culture Club, Red Cross Club, and the MHS orchestra. And back for his second meeting, okay, is Spencer Futrell. Spencer is a high school freshman who is happy to serve as the school committee representative for his first year. Spencer plays football at MHS and is planning on trying out with the basketball team. In his free time, Spencer enjoys volunteering, food drives, and supporting the community. So, welcome Angela and welcome

004Spencer. >> Hi. Hello. Uh, I'm Spencer Futrell. I'm in ninth grade as many of y'all might know and we are here today to share some things with you. So, fall sports are in swing at Milton High. Boys soccer won in overtime earlier this week and girls soccer play tomorrow. And uh and the football team has their first playoff game on Friday. Also, Milton High Theater are performing Frozen November 21st to 23rd if y'all want to if y'all interested in going. Also, Thanksgiving break is coming up November 26th and 28th. Also, last but not least for me, uh, MHS winter concert December 9th. >> Thank you, Spencer. My name is Angela Trong. I'm um a senior now and I'd like to report back that student government is busy planning for a pep rally. um one of

005the most exciting schoolwide events this year. Um we typically have spirit week leading up to it. For example, pajama day, nationality day, or any sorts of those type of days to create excitement throughout the school. And there are many different performances uh happening during pep rally such as the marching band performing, cheer happening, and chorus singing. Um, we might also possibly have the step team this year as well. Um, in our separate meetings, we are continuing to find a topic to focus on and we hope to focus on something relevant um to the school committee as well as the student body. We have a meeting scheduled next week, so we should have more uh to share at the next school committee meeting. >> Uh, will there be any questions today? Good luck to all of

006our teams in the playoffs. >> Thank you. Have an amazing day. >> Thank you. Okay. >> Uh to follow that, but I will go give my own superintendent update. Uh the um Milton public schools faculty and staff had a wonderful full day of professional development um which was yesterday, November 4th. Um, I want to thank Hala Koser, our assistant superintendent for curriculum and learning for planning and um, leading the team of principles and uh, curriculum leaders on this really productive day. Uh, as you might think, the day surrounded our five priorities that we were focusing on this year. Uh both Kyler and I started the session uh with all of our elementary staff at the Pierce Middle School where we did a 45minute session on rigor, tier one instruction, supporting our learners, active steps towards

007supporting students not meeting at grade level. Um and also our uh culture and our rigor topics. Um, it was very very helpful for Kyler and I to get in front of all the staff because if you remember in August, we did not get in front of everybody because we gave that time back to the building principles and the teachers. So, it was refreshing to address the entire elementary staff at the Pierce and then we drove up here and addressed the full Pierce and high school staff up here at the high school. Throughout the day, um, we had, uh, all of our fellow educators present sessions on things like Project Lead the Way, increasing student achievement and student engagement, engagement, executive functioning, UDL, planning guides, engaging all learners with rigorous tasks, uh, vertical alignment in our

0086 through 12 ELA, and tier one instruction support. So, there are two heavy cataloges of courses that every single teacher could have taken. I think we offered up to >> about 45 >> 45 sessions for our staff uh that were led by our principles, our curriculum directors, and our educators across the district. So, um we're getting some really nice feedback about folks feeling uh like they had good choice, uh an agency to choose what they wanted their professional development in, that they felt really connected to the five priorities that we've been working on since August. Um and that they also had time to do some work amongst themselves in the afternoon. Uh after having some what we called a um a well selfare self self-care and action break uh we had a very great uh

009hour of ballroom dancing instruction for some of our uh staff who took advantage of it in uh a baking contest as well as a walking club and a variety of things. So a very good day of professional development on the core subjects of our five priorities and other issues that impact our our educators. a little bit of professional development around personnel relationship building and culture and climate at the district level which we think is super important. And uh as always Ker and I were trying to model our five priorities uh throughout that day. If we were asking staff to present sessions and we presented one ourselves so uh good day I many thanks to Ker and her team. I want to give the folks uh of the community a transportation update. Uh we promised folks

010at the end of September that we would have a two-phase approach to bringing up to 70 students off the weight list. Uh we did a phase one um uh at midpoint in October uh where we put back about 54 students from the weight list onto buses to to the schools. We continued to do data counts for the last two weeks at the middle school and we went back to our weight list of about 22 additional students and um just this past Monday we were able to place those 22 students uh on a bus. Uh and that will conclude our fully exhausting the list to zero. So we have placed over 70 students getting everybody who applied on time for a bus pass off the wait list and on a bus. Uh this was done without

011adding any resources but uh increasing the capacity uh on every bus and also looking at the routes a little differently and adding some stops within the bus routes that we had. We are sending out communications to those 22 people letting them know that they're off the wait list and what the new stops are. We're also sending a communication out to all bus student families to let them know that the buses will be filled with more students. Um, and that we want to proactively let folks know that we anticipate ridership to to move to capacity more in the winter months than they are right now in the fall and that we should be ready to uh be prepared to have students sit three to a seat where needed in order to make the capacity uh match

012up our need. Uh the number of students we have on each bus does not exceed the legal capacity. So we feel very comfortable in that. But we just wanted to make sure that we're explosive, but not only the folks that we put on the bus to and took off the weight list, but everybody who's riding as well because they could be impacted later on in the year when some of the seats get get tight. Uh that's a good news story. That problem has been solved. That does not address the students that were on the wait list that did not put their uh bus pass application in on time. So that will be part of the factoring that we do when we start looking at next year. keeping in mind that anybody who lives a mile

013and a half from school, actually a mile or farther from school is on a bus for Pierce in the high school. Um, so that's a good news story. Want to remind folks that there was no school in November 11, which is Veterans Day. And I want to thank our band at the high school in advance for performing at the parade, the Veterans Parade in the ceremony at Town Hall on Tuesday the 11th. Uh, we also have an early dismissal day on November 19th. Uh a reminder as uh we were let known by our student rep that Frozen will be performed at the high school on November 21, 22, and 23. It's an amazing production. So get your tickets and uh they'll sell out quickly. So we advise you to call the high school. And uh

014as we look forward to November um we look forward to November 27th being uh Thanksgiving, which means there's no school on the 26th uh and no school on the 28th, the two days surrounding Thanksgiving. And that is my update. Great. >> Now we'll do the um MCAST overview. >> So I'd like to bring up uh V who is our data specialist in in the Milton public schools. Uh Kyler and I are new to uh uh the Milton public schools and are so thankful to have the services uh of a data specialist with the qualifications that be presents and uh works with us in every single meeting that we go to. Um when B and I met in August, I asked her what her goals were for the year and how she could help. And she

015asked, "Can I just start coming to principles and coordinators meetings and I want to share the data? I want to use the data and I want to make sure that the uh the people who need access to the data have it. So I want to thank her for being not only at every meeting that we have for our secondary and elementary principal coordinators meetings but our leadership meetings and also meeting with principles at schools uh to go over their data specifically whether it's grade level data uh or uh school-based data. Uh tonight we're presenting basically our initial presentation on MCCAST. There will be several other student achievement meetings that we will have. There's a lot that we want to share. There's lots of things that we need to explore and there's lots of things that

016we want to make sure our community knows that we're working on in order to improve our student outcomes as that is our continuous cycle of improvement that we want to exhibit. Um so we would like to if we could put the um uh slides on the screen uh Mark so thank you very much for being the slide person uh tonight. So, uh, the first slide, um, first of all, we want to, um, note that there are multiple data sources that we always look at, uh, in the Milton public schools. Uh, some of which are part of how we do MCCAST, which is an annual look at what happened in the year prior. Uh but also as uh V points out in this slide and throughout the set of slides in um really articulated in our

017principal leadership meeting today uh our principles wanted to make sure we knew that we also had other data points that we used as a formative way of looking at student achievement. our dibbles, our I Ready. Um all of which helps us teachers and our administrators pivot um in our common assessments during the school year uh to see if we can increase the student growth of all of our students. Uh it's important to remember that the standardized assessment which is MCCAST is useful measure for what students have learned uh and they're on track to meet the rigor of their next grade level. Um, we do firmly believe that MCCAST really lets us know what we need to work on as adults. This is an adult informative exercise more so than what students get because we believe

018that what what students need uh in terms of um shifts in our teaching strategies is the formative data that we use week to week and monthtomonth during the school year. All of this data is important and all of it helps shape our work towards reducing the amount of students not at grade level and enhancing student achievement across all parts of our student body and we'll see some of that uh information tonight. So B, thank you very much for being here. And I think our format will be that we'll let V go through the whole presentation and um if there's any technical pieces to the uh presentation you'd like to ask, I think V might be the person for the technical pieces and then teaching and learning and data questions would be for Ko and I.

019>> Okay. Well, thank you for having me here tonight. So like uh superintendent said, we're here to give you really a big overview of how our district did on the MCAST testing really on the accountability framework in the state. So I'll go a little bit into that. Um but here's our agenda for today. just some key to take away and like I said we're going to cover kind of state accountability determination via the lens of the MCCAST looking at different student groups performance and then um also touching on absenteeism and then we'll end up by looking at some peer district comparison just to see where we are um against our peers. Next slide. Okay. So for the 20 the the previous three years 242.5 MPS continues to outperform the state average in all subjects across

020all grade levels within all student groups. Um this is something that continues to be the trend. Should I just speak louder? Okay, I'll try I'll try speaking a little louder. Okay. So, this continues to be the trend for us in the district here. Um, in terms of our ELA and math scores, in grades 3 to 8, the scores improve slightly. In grades 10, we did see a decline. And this is across the state. We see the same um in terms of state performance. So, it's it's nothing that is uh singular to Milton here. Um science however uh significantly improved this year in all our tested grade area and that is one area where um we are actually pulling ahead of the states. Um so we're very proud of that. um civics this is the first

021year that the state has given the the eighth grade civics exam and this is simply how we score 56 about percent of our students score meeting or exceeding expectations um and then lastly our priority student groups so that is students with disabilities English learners low-income students African-American black students Hispanic and a Latino students are performing significantly better than their their peers statewide. So that's comparing to the same group statewide. However, they are still lagging behind the counterparts here in Milton. And that is some of um the challenges that we continue to address as a district. Next slide. Um so as I said um we are going to be looking at our data through the lens of the DESIE accountability framework and through this framework our individual schools continue to be rated highly as compared to

022other schools in the same grade span. Okay. And the accountability framework takes into account these factor ELA performance, math performance, science performance on the MCAST along with SGP which is the student growth percentile. And for those who uh are new to the education lingo, SGP basically compares your rate of growth um against other students who have the same scores as you from the previous year. So, it's it's telling you how far ahead you've gone in comparison to someone who scored the same as you. Yeah. Um the accountability framework also takes a look at English learners and their scores on the access test. Um it considers abs chronic absenteeism. So that's missing 10% or more of school. and then other high school metrics um as applicable to high schools. So, graduation rate, dropout rate, and advanced

023coursework completion. Okay. And that takes all of these individual components and aggregate them together into an overall results and and then it gives us two ratings. Next slide, please. So the two ratings given are progress towards improvement targets and this number this percentage basically gives you a sense of how much progress has been made towards the school's targets which DESIE examines um based on the school's individual performance. So several years of histories of how the school has performed and then Desi comes up with these several targets in ELA, math, science, SGP and then they all Desessie totals everything up and gives you the overall score of how much progress you've made towards those targets that set for you. Okay. And then the second rating that's given is the accountability percentile which um compares so desi

024totals everything all the performance on all the indicators up and then it compares schools in the same bucket together. So high schools are compare against each other non- high schools compare against each other and then there's a third bucket with mixed grades. So any district that has or any schools rather that has one um tested non- high school grade and one high school grade is in that mixed bucket. And it gives you um the percentile of how you rank um compared to all these other schools in that same bucket that you are in. So essentially our elementary and our middle schools are counted in the same bucket. Okay. And how we use these ratings and indicators is really to dig deeper into the data and identify where our strengths and weaknesses might be and to

025work on them. Next slide. Um and so this chart gives you basically um the results of the two ratings for each of our schools in the district. and the accountability percentile that's given to schools only. So it doesn't um Desi doesn't do that for districts. So here I mean clearly we see that um our schools are on um the higher percentage um accountability percentage and there are really two uh two places where we're looking at and we're exploring the data with the the principles and the teachers to understand more how we can make improvements. Next one. Okay. So, in the next set of slides, I'm going to pull up um some historical performance in different tested uh MCCAST areas. Next slide. So, in this one slide, we're looking at um the history of our ELA

026MCCAST for grades 3 through 8. Um, and 2017 is actually going back to the first year that the state um turned over to the next generation MCCAST. So, we kind of see the historical progression of how we've done as a district um up until 2025, which is the column on the far right. And you can see there's an obvious dip um between 2019 and 2022. And we know that that's the impact of the pandemic. Um and after that you see that our scores our ELA scores are moving in the right direction increasing in trend. Next slide. Okay. So this slide is looking at our math MCAT scores grade 3 to 8. And you see that same dip in 2022 and our data is um the the blue bars are definitely increasing and so we're we're

027happy about that. Uh we wish that you know the the red bar would would decrease. Um and you can kind of see the the red bar is more than um the red portions on these columns are more than what they were pre- pandemic. And that's definitely um something that our curriculum directors and teachers um are very aware of. Um and I closing that too. Next slide. Um so this is looking at our district science scores for grade five and grade eight combined. And we're looking at a really good news stories in in science. Okay. And in 2025, we're seeing that the percentage of students who are meeting and exceeding expectations are the highest that we've seen since we've uh switch over to this uh new science and past. Next slide. Okay. So, this is showing

028the results of our ELA MC pass for grade 10. Um, and we see that this year there is definitely a noticeable dip. Um, and that's reflective of what's happening at the state level as well. There's chatter about, you know, the impact of the law of the law change on this and we'll we'll keep watching this and this is definitely something that we'll be paying attention to. Next slide. This is math MCCAST for grade 10. And as you can see, performance has been pretty even um for the last 5 years. Next, and the grade 10 science MCAT. So, similar to the science MCAT scores that we saw for grade five and grade eight, grade 10 there's a huge bump in 2025 scores as well. Next slide. Okay, so there's a lot of numbers on this chart

029um but this is basically trying to show the performance trends in ELA for each grade level and we find that sometime um when we disagregate the data then you can see better where uh spots where we need to pay particular attention to. Okay. So just taking the example of grade three ELA uh you see what the percentage uh of students meeting and exceeding expectation for each years are. And then in the right on the four rightmost columns you see that that's those numbers the red number the the number in red are indicating a decline and the number in green are indicating improvement. Okay. And numbers in black are where there are not as much um change. So um that's there and the the two columns um on the right the rightmost two column are indicating

030our performance as compared to 2019. So in in grade three ELA compared to 2019, we're 16 percentage points down from where we started. And over that same time span, the state is experiencing a 14 percentage points down from where where it started. Okay. So if you look at um just all the numbers um down the column for each grade level, you see that grade three and grade six ELA are where we've experienced uh the the biggest uh decline in our scores over the years. And that's something that we'll be looking at closely. Next slide. So this is uh for the performance trends for math in each of the grade levels. So the chart is uh presented in the same way and you see some of the highlighted areas where um the district numbers are lower

031than that of the state. we have more more room to to get back to where we were in 2019 as compared to where the state was. Next slide. Um, and this is the trend for science. And on this slide, you see a lot of green. And that is the good news story for really for this MCCAST administration. Next slide. Okay. So in the next couple of slides we're going to be looking at um the performance of various student groups in the district. um in every student group in every content area, Milton's students perform better than the state and in many cases it's a double digit difference. So that's a significant difference. Okay. um historical differences still exist between the performance of our student group within the district though and so we remain focused on improving

032the outcomes of these students with students with disabilities English learners low-income students African-American black and Hispanic Latino students next slide Okay, again a lot of numbers on this chart. Um, but the it's basically giving you the percentage of students who are meeting and exceeding expectations in each of the the tested content. So in grade 3 to 8 ELA, um the green boxes are where we highlighted um where our student group is performing not only higher than the states um student group but more a double digit difference basically. So where our in in grade 3 to 8 ELA our EL English learners and formal English learners 33% of them are meeting and exceeding expectations versus only 19% of EL students at the state is meeting or exceeding expectation. Okay. Um and as you can see there

033are a lot of green on the chart and we're we're happy that um our students are doing well as compared to their peers at the state level. However, if you look at the all student category at the bottom, um that is basically the average of how our our students are doing. And we see that, you know, some of the the other student groups are not doing as well as the all student group, which is the average. Next. So, we're going to talk a little bit about sonic absenteeism. Next slide, please. Um, and the reason that we talk about it is because there is a strong correlation between attendance and academic performance and our chronic absenteeism rate in 2025 was actually the ninth lowest in the entire state. So that's telling us that all students are

034coming to schools. Our families are supporting our students to come to school. Everyone is invested in being here and invested in the su success of our students. Um, our chronic absenteeism rates have been declining since uh the 2122 school year and there's still some differences between the all student group and our um priority student groups. So, and you'll see this in the chart in the next slide. So here um the red line there that's the all student groups and then you can see the the different uh the different student groups being represented by the other colors. And the important thing that we want to share on this graph is that all the lines are trending downward, which is what we want to continue seeing. Next slide. Just right now. Okay. Next slide. Um so just

035to kind of get a gauge of how we're doing in comparison to some of our peers, we pull a list of um desi comparable districts. So DESIE generate this list every year based on similar demographics such as grades span, total enrollment and special populations. And we have a bunch of names here which are on our desk comparable list. And we also added in some neighboring districts so that we kind of get some geographic comparison as well. And you can see what the comparison looks like on the next slide. So this is uh giving us uh some key categories for comparison on the leftmost hand side. So percentage of students with high need per pupil expenditure percentage of chronically absent students along with um the MCAT scores for all these districts and a lot of numbers

036on here but um I wanted to highlight the per pupil expenditure for expenditure for Milton which is build the lowest um of any of the groups uh here on the chart and also our chronic absenteeism rate. Um and in terms of our MCAT scores, you see that we are solidly in the middle of the pack. Um we're not the highest. uh but we're also not doing badly compared to our other peers who are spending more on student expenditure than we are as a district. >> So, do you mind if I pause here for a moment? This is the last data slide. So, first I want to thank you for providing this data and we left it in the same format as last year so we could have somewhat of an applesto apples comparison. We did

037take some slides out, but I do want to pause here because I think that um we we always want to make sure that we're comparing ourselves to the state against that generic bar, but this last side really lets us compare ourselves to the Desi comparables and our neighbors, which is a different standard, and we should hold ourselves to a different standard. So, uh, first of all, it's it's nice to see that we're having more kids come to school, uh, in the in the chronic absentee rate is is down. And as V pointed out, the good news is for all students, it's down to roughly 4.9. But interestingly, for our demographics that we separate a little bit, they're still higher. So, we really have work to do to make sure that all students are coming back

038and attending school uh, at a higher rate. So, we're glad that that's better than our comparables. And again, this is not a state comparable. It's who the state says we should compare ourselves to and then our towns. And we've been using these towns historically. So, we have an apples to apples comparison. Um, when we look at the towns around us, the geographic towns, I think we uh I went through and checked every box that we were doing better than across the the matrix of scores. So from that box of geographic neighbors, I think we've solid solidly performed or outperformed those districts in the majority of those uh data comparisons where we struggle um is when we start to compare ourselves to the desi communities of needm Sharon and Welssley and uh we we're here to

039say very clearly that our scores need to improve that our scores have been flat for a period of time that we have pockets of success. The most recent one being a really good pop in science, which was intentional because our science educators and our science director uh did some wonderful work in hiring and using data to inform instruction and to work collaboratively and really at the elementary, middle school, and high school level. Really looked at curriculum uh especially at the elementary level where um our science is um uh not taught every day. and then they really get into everyday science in in middle school. So, we're learning in what we're doing well and want to replicate that. Um, but we acknowledge that, you know, when we go back to looking at the 2017 18 scores,

040uh, we need to get at least back to prepandemic scores. And I think we need to do better than our preandemic scores. And and one of the reasons when we go into um the slides that we all looked at, not only do we need rigor for the 20 to 25% of students who are not meeting benchmark, we also need rigor for the 13% of students who are exceeding who have stayed flat as well. Everybody needs rigor. Everybody needs rigor in order to increase their learning outcomes. And we met yesterday with every single staff member and emphasize rigor tier one instruction, actively pursuing strategies to bring students not at benchmark up to benchmark. Uh those five priorities that we're looking at, you can you can see them in each set of number comparisons that we either

041did well in or we did not do well in. But the the community should know that sadly the state is not to where it should be and a lot of our comparable districts are probably working as hard as we are to try to lift their scores to prepandemic scores. And to be v's point if you look at that per pupil expenditure that is an applesto apples number across all those communities if you take our desi comparable communities need sharon welsley which pay or spend 23,000 20 and 27. So we take the average of 23,000 per student of those three communities. That's roughly $4,000 more per student. If you multiply that by 4,300 students, that's $12 million. There's 12 million more dollars in those three communities than there are in Milton to solve these issues, to

042attack these problems, to make sure our students have what they need. So money is not everything because there are communities that we do better in that spend more than we do. >> There are communities up there that spend um $26,000 per student. And I believe that district uh we have outperformed in every category. So it's not all about money but that is a significant factor that there's a gap in funding that prohibits certain things to be done in ways that we'd like it to be done. Uh and I do believe that we have adequate staffing um right now if we realign it and direct it in a way that's you know full of clear intent and um directed in the right way and guided in the right way that we can increase these scores. Would

043more money help? Of course it would. But do we have what we need right now to do better? We do. And we we plan on exercising all of those muscles this year. uh coming back to you with a little deeper analysis, coming back to you with how we're going with our uh literacy curriculum that you've already seen and identified this year. How we're using our learning walks to inform our professional development to assess all the different ways that our five priorities being used in the classroom and in school buildings every day. uh talking about our principal analysis um and how they're going through their uh own grade bygrade level analysis at each school. Um and we've asked them to do so and they'll be presenting to you in the future meetings and how our principles

044and coordinator meetings every other week are really trying to tie together the building leadership and also the curriculum leadership in order for us to all row in the same direction for this common improvement of of our student outcomes. Um and obviously we already talked about how our evaluation goals this year uh that we've already offered for staff to take advantage of are focused on those five priorities. So in the short term um we I think we have a good framework to move the district this year um and the following year. Um and we also really have to look at this being uh uh an assessment of one data point that I think matters. Uh and also our principles wanted to make sure that we were saying out loud that they see real they see real

045incremental formative data changes during the year with their students that they serve. And I think a lot of our elementary principles working with the Dibbles in the the I Ready data to make shifts in their student groupings and how they can shift students from one grade level to the next in terms of their reading and literacy scores. Um I think is important work that's happening every day. So this data um reminds us that our five priority areas I think are going to be very helpful to focus on and anchor our work to and we're also anchoring our budgeting um um and our resources to those five as well. Um there's work to do. There's absolutely work to do. Um, but I think that people are working hard and what we did yesterday with our entire

046staff, we asked them what they needed. So, how often does the superintendent, the assistant superintendent ask 500 people, what do you need, especially through the lens of shifting? What do you need for um instructional tools in order to reduce the achievement gap? That was the question. Was that correct? We looked at each priority and did a little dipstick with uh folks of where do they sit? What knowledge do you need? What skills do you need for your tool toolbox? Um and um teachers were terrific in terms of saying I need more. >> I need a little more help. I need more tools for this. I need more understanding of how to use data. All of the priorities uh we kind of went through with each each of them and um did you know 500 answers.

047It was great um to understand where the needs are. And so now we plan, >> right? >> And we figure out how to attack it. >> And the way that we got that data is that they were voting with their phones. So it was anonymous. So we said, "Here's four categories. What do you need in order to uh get better at tier one instruction? What do you need in order to be more prepared for rigor in the classroom? What do you need?" >> Um, and it was pretty stark that the uh we need more tools in order to feel confident in addressing the academic gaps that we feel our students have. That's our job. If we ask that question, we need to follow through with unpacking what that means. So, the next survey that goes

048out is, "Please tell me what you mean by tools." >> Um, is it instructional um materials? Is it professional development? Is it supervision? Is it collaborative support with your peers? Let's unpack that, quantify it, and go out and find how we can budget and make it work. the teachers, our teachers are at high levels of willingness to do the work. And I believe that they're at high willingness of skill to do the work, but if they're asking for certain things in order to get that work done in a way that makes impact on students and they're saying it's instructional strategies and instructional tools, then we need to get that for them. So, yesterday was a really interesting day of feedback for us. >> Uh, and and it was really helpful to hear directly from them

049all in one day. uh in the mirror of what the elementary folks asked for and what the middle school and high school folks asked for was striking. So now we have new marching orders. We know uh something different as of yesterday. That's an interesting data point for us that we will now pursue along with the other work around um the literacy work the PD that we're doing and we'll shape the PD from that um and we'll set evaluation goals around that that work. Um, and I'm really really excited that our educators are using the ready to go eval uh objectives because now all of this plugs into those things. It's either rigor or supporting students who aren't meeting grade mark or it's increasing culture and climate in their classrooms. So I think that we're rowing

050in the same direction. Um, and the other exercise we actually went through was realigning the definitions of those five priorities. We all talk about it, but do we all understand it in the same way? >> We all see those terms differently. So, we really wanted to realign that with our leadership team. >> And then we actually did an interactive exercise with all 500 staff yesterday. What do these mean? What do these terms mean to you? What does it look like in your classroom? And we did a thumbs up, got more feedback. Is this definition what you think it should be? Should it be edited? Um, and uh we compared that data to what the leadership team provided to us two weeks earlier. So, we're honing in on what we believe we're doing well, what we

051believe we need to to support our teachers in doing better or provide them the tools to do better work with students. And uh you know, we're not waiting until next year to get the budget straight for what they need next year. We had a meeting today to talk about what we can do for all schools this year. We have three quarters of the year left. There's work to be done this year in classrooms with teachers and students. um they're telling us what they need and we need to move on. Um an example of that is our first school that went and provided us a work plan that they want to institute and implement uh this week. We brought that plan to the finance subcommittee this morning. Uh it was a modest amount of money that

052we're moving over to the Tucker School in order to support the leadership there in uh a lot of different ways. Many of the adjustments that were made were nonfinancially based. it was just realigning the current resources that we have and we're asking all of our principles to look at their buildings in that way and we'll all be reporting back on that information moving forward. So, we are actively pursuing uh rigor. We're actively pursuing high levels of tier one instruction uh and we're actively pursuing what teachers need for us to give them in order for them to fulfill what we're asking them to do every day. And I can tell you very clearly that the willingness to do the work uh and the energy in the room yesterday in both the middle school, high school audience

053and the the elementary audience was high. Everybody's ready to work and we're very thankful for that approach, professionalism and um and effort that the staff is giving every day. >> So we if we had this information when we went to the war committee and they said what do you need? We could have said, "Well, if you want us to be like Denim, we could use another >> 12 million >> $12 million." But, you know, we know that that's not feasible. But, uh, and we did have a good conversation with the Warren Committee. And I think that for the folks that were there, they were asking for this kind of information. How are you connecting the resources that we give you to a priority or vision? And how does it impacting the classroom? And how is

054it impacting what you thought would work with kids and teachers? And if it's not working, how do we know what do we want to do differently and how do we want to pivot? Um, so you know, in math, I think we introduced our new math curriculum about 4 years ago. Might be a nice time to revisit that, take a look at what's working, what's not for our ELA and literacy curriculum. We're very excited to introduce that to the community in a pilot this spring and then fully in the fall. Uh obviously our science has been working hard to identify uh the areas uh of success that they felt they needed to address which they did. Um and so uh there's work being done. We want to support that work, facilitate the work for the professionals

055in Milton. And in our time here, uh we're saying out loud very clearly, what do you want us to help move, facilitate, and lead? But they're giving us the information that we need so we can support them in that work. Um, and we're we're excited to do it with them. Uh, and I feel very um thankful to be a part of a team that's working so hard, but there's work to do. >> Question. >> I just um first of all, I thank you so much. This is great, very informative, and thank you for taking the time to put this together. Um, I did have a couple of questions and some comments. Um, John, I appreciate the honest explained that last slide to us. I think I've seen various it over the years in different formats.

056And um, you know, I appreciate you saying like we although our per pupil is lower than a lot of our neighboring districts or uh, uh, desi comparisons, I do appreciate that we're trying to work with what we have, right? and that sometimes it's not about money and that we can do a lot more with what we have. And I think that's an important message I think to send out to the community, especially on the tail end of the override that we just had. And you know, I know a lot of times when we see those numbers and we're we're like, "Wow, that's really, you know, their per people spending is so much higher, like $12 million more." And sometimes it's great, sometimes you don't see the results, but I really appreciate like what can we

057do better like here and then show that improvement and then continue to get that support. I think that's so important when people do see change um that it's it's much easier to continue to support something. So, I really appreciate the efforts that you all are putting in to to showing results and being committed to that and the entire staff. Um I do wanted to like ask I know we've kind of looked at like ELA and math scores um the last couple years and we've seen it kind of go up down sometimes you know like those changes and I know we've kind of monitor it but have you just just looking at it over the past couple years like can you kind of pinpoint what's causing that or is it you know you mentioned the change

058in the law for the ELA like you know and some of those so like have you been able to kind of like pinpoint like what could be causing that >> um for the ELA curriculum? I think that would be hard for me to say. >> No, no, no. Just in terms of the data like you were talking about the reduction in score like >> for grade 10 are you asking? Uh yeah, I think it was sorry. Uh yeah, the one on slide 15 like um and same thing with um slide 16 for the math and ELA like you know like what has kind of causing those in certain grades to be lower and then it kind of picks back up and so on and so forth. Is there anything that's like is it is it

059the curriculum per se or is it something else? Is it just like kind of, you know, we're just still dealing with, you know, the aftermath of CO and just trying to catch up kids? Like >> I think it'd be hard to pinpoint because, you know, there's just so many factors that go into it. And so what we're doing, John and I are uncovering with the leadership team and now with the faculty is um >> what could be missing. >> Okay. >> How can we address it? We're we're learning what what faculty is asking for. So it's hard to pinpoint. I mean, we can talk about the pandemic. We can talk about grade 10, you know, the law changing. We could there's lots of things we could talk about that's changing for students. Um, just being

060online is different. I mean, all there's all kinds of things that are impacting student uh progress. So, for us, we have to concentrate with what I we said to faculty yesterday. What can we control? Okay? >> You know, and let's zoom in on that and do some work on what we can control as educators in the six and a half hours a day we have students. So, um, so that's kind of what we're going to be thinking about. don't really doesn't really answer the question totally because I can't really tell you >> but I appreciate that. Thank you. >> One of the things I think we should um remind folks of is that our our principles in the curriculum folks are doing item analysis. So >> when they start looking at the questions that folks

061that maybe a majority of students didn't get correct or the majority that they did, we actually go through every question or they go through every question and start to look at where did our students do well in our little, you know, in our ELA curriculum. where did where did they historically or you know in the aggregate not do well why not how much time do we spend on that so that kind of you know item analysis I think is super important for for the educators to do because that should inform curriculum and pacing guides >> so the the example I always give is if we >> if we didn't do well on mixed numbers in sixth grade math then we should look back and look at the scope and sequence and find out how long

062did we actually spend on mixed numbers >> and what was some of that work that we did and maybe we need to dig deeper and maybe give more time for that part of the curriculum to be uh taught, examined and assessed and mastered. Um so that kind of that kind of down in deeper level of analysis is at the kind of the teacher and uh director and department level. Um but a good news story is that you know we were in a science class in grade six. I think we talked about this last weekend the week before, but we had a teacher who had a anchoring chart in their room that that that defined mastery for every single student. This is what mastery is, and we're not leaving until we're mastering this concept. And at

063the end of the lesson, not only were they rotating the room to assess a certain uh they were looking at land and soil and what was deeper, etc. Uh, and then they had to do an exit ticket on their Chromebooks and let them know what they felt comfortable that they mastered and why and how come and that teacher had all that data to inform her next day of instruction. When we talk about using data to inform instruction, there's no better example than that science class in grade six appears where >> they weren't moving until they mastered. >> They were collectively going to go back and look and find out what they needed to do individually. Students had individual time to go back and master that task. um in the class would go back if it

064was more of a group task and and they were trying to you know in trying very well to make sure that they weren't covering the curriculum that students were actually mastering the curriculum and the students were self assessing >> and then when they had student time with their teacher I'm not sure what the term is called and peers they'd go back and they'd get extra help and they'd take that exam again and they'd take that quiz again in order to show mastery. So the these are these are the types of pockets of good news that we need to model uh scale up to the other departments let teachers share that that great practices can be done. um we have to get back to mastering the concepts that are based in standards uh that are put

065forward by Desi and make sure that you know I think Kyler asked a question uh the issue the question was something to the effect of the staff um about a task being rigorous but maybe not connect >> engaging right yeah can something be engaging but not rigorous >> and can something be engaging and rigorous but not connected to the standard >> you know like we really have to ask ourselves all those questions cuz we can work really hard. >> Mhm. >> But don't mistake um what's the saying? Don't mistake activity for productivity. >> Mhm. >> Right. We want to make sure that we're we're aiming all of our arrows in the right direction. So there's definitely deeper analysis to do. Some of that's happening in the classroom and grade level settings in the building settings.

066Um and we need to look at our directionality around student growth. Uh I think that I was on a call this morning with other superintendents and you know student growth is where we want to focus. We want students to be growing wherever they are. They need to be one step better or two steps better every half year, every year. Uh and then the the overall MCAST scores will take care of themselves if we have individual students growing uh in their growth percentiles going up. So that's an area of review that we should be doing as well. >> Thank you. And I would also say that now that we have performance matters online teachers, a lot of teachers are plugged into that now and they can see better um you know access at their fingertips the

067the scoring um range for all of the students that they have in their classroom. whereas before they're kind of working, you know, with with without um ready knowledge at hand. And if they want to know if someone's really struggling, then they can go and look at their assessment on this platform and whatnot. And it takes them a while to find things and put things together. But now that we have the performance a matter platform and all the data is right there for teachers and is so easily accessible, >> they can go on and they can see like with a click of a button how many of their students are in the red on a certain exam on a certain assessments and then they can use that to group their students for the next day or

068think about intervention groups. think about what it is that maybe the highf flyers need if if so many of your students are already meeting the standards in the class like what else can you do next? >> So that that's some of the little tweaks and changes that we're actively building together as a a a system so that everyone has access to it. Um and hopefully that will help to push along, you know, um improving the tier one instruction just for everybody across the board. >> It's a great tool. That's great. >> And I also just want to comment on the absenteeism. I think we've done a lot of work as a district to really bring those numbers down. So, thank you so much for all the efforts. And uh yeah, thanks. >> Um I'll sure

069I have a question and a comment. Um I was actually going to ask a question about the absenteeism. Um just looking at the chart on slide 23, there's you know like uh the chronic absenteeism rate is about three times higher for a number of subgroups compared to all students. >> Are we able to look at are you able to look at student performance >> by subgroup based on chronic absenteeism? And do we have a theory around I don't know what we're doing as a district to drive down chronic absenteeism within subgroups, but uh is there a connection between absenteeism and student performance? Do we know what that is? And do we think interventions could the first intervention is getting them in school? >> Yeah. >> And when we see chronic absenteeism for the majority of

070our students, that means it's not just work with the student, it's actually the parent. So, when a third grader is not coming to school on time or or is chronically absent, that is not the third grader's fault. That's the that's the parents job. That's the guardian's job to make sure that they're in school and on time. And so, uh I think that you may see some families that may call me and say, "I'm really not happy that I was called three times this week to make sure my child was on time." And I say, "If you want to come in and talk about it, we can come in and talk about that." We we are asking folks to be in school. We are supporting folks to get into school. We've made transfers from one school

071to another in order to have people access school at a time that works for them. So, we we're reaching out to make sure that those things are in place, but we're also holding folks accountable. Being in school is the best thing to to do school. You got you have to be here in order to get the work done. So, we don't have a technical I don't have a technical correlation right now, but I have several anecdotes that we're working actively with right now where we're asking and having meetings with families and when they say this is my struggle, it might be before school care. It might be, you know, needing to transfer to get a different start time because their job changed. Uh we will make whatever accommodation we can in order to help that

072situation out. But in the end, you need to bring your child to school and there's an expectation for that cuz uh being in school helps. No doubt about it. >> Yeah. The um comment I have is back to the funding discussion we were having and I agree that we have to have high expectations for students even within the resource envelope that we have. I I just I've been doing a little math sitting over here. Um and the the per pupil difference between our desi comparables and Milton the gap is $4,900 per student. We have a little over 4,300 students. That's actually $21 million gap. Um, which is almost 30% of our annual operating budget. And I guess, um, you know, we have the budget we have for this year, we have the budget we have

073for several years going forward. I think I would just ask the residents of Milton, would a 30% increase in your earnings dramatically affect your cost of your your standard of living? The answer is yes. And I think a 30% increase in our expenditures for students, would that dramatically impact our standard of learning? The answer is yes. And I I want people in this town to see these expenditures as an investments in our human capital and investments in the future of our town. Um and not not a cost center where we're trying to drive down expenses. Um, so anyway, I just want to get on my soap box and say that I I think I think $21 million is a um is a significant amount of money and our educators are working under lean circumstances and

074making the most of it. you know these I think I don't I don't think money is everything but I think results like this compared to our peers who are working with 30% more than we are um is um there there's something there there's work to be done and there's something here to be really proud of too >> I um had a question and you said something I was looking at the um performance of student the student groups performance um and the percentage that's on slide 20. Um and I think this this story is one that's uh been recurring. I think this this gap the for students with disabilities, ELLL, low-income, African-American, black students that the difference between the MCCAST scores with the meeting and exceeding expectations is it's a pretty big there's a big gap.

075And I think as long as I've been in the district and my kids have been in the district, that gap has been there. And I guess one of the questions that I have and to your point earlier, Carla, it's you can't point to one thing, right? I know it's a very it's a difficult um it's a difficult pack it's a difficult story to unfold like how what's the genesis of that that gap but something was said before which was are we covering is are we covering it or covering versus mastery right and I think that's one of the things that I would be curious about and maybe more so with the students with disabilities and and and and other groups. I think there's that sense of like assume competence, right? Assume that I can. And

076I just want to make sure that that is the way that we are approaching all of our students with that assumption of competence because that then becomes the difference between I am going to assume you can master something versus I'm just going to cover it because I have to. And I don't mean that as a a slight to teachers or anybody, but you know, especially for classes, if you have kids who in some of those cases are multiple grades >> and then they're being taught curriculum that will supposed that they're going to have to pass the 8th grade or the, you know, MCCAST, but they have multiple grade levels. How are we ensuring that there is mastery of that content for all of those kids? So, I think there's so much to unpack, but I

077I don't know if we start with that basic premise with all kids of all of our students and enter it with that idea of assuming competence and that they can master this content and then look at it from there. I think that that would be important because I there's just it just seems like there's something else and I know that all many districts struggle with this discrepancy, but I just I think we've been trying to figure it out for so long. So, you know, it likely is a combination of things that you've talked about. The curriculum, is it the I don't know, but I wonder, are there other ways to approach um I don't know, just other ways to approach it? And is there I don't know, is there a mindset shift or or or

078something else to to begin to address that? cuz I I just it's just we we can't have students who are you know almost in some cases a third of a p you know 21% versus 60 8% in that meeting or exceeding expectations based on different different groups. So I don't know I just think >> it will be great if we have more conversations around that and really try and begin to like truly unpack that and figure out how to begin to bridge that gap. So we actually had that conversation yesterday with 500 educators 250 at a time. >> Uh we talked about the definitions of tier one instruction and rigor specific to this >> as well as it connected to meeting the need you know being uh action steps towards meeting the needs of students

079who were not meeting with grade level. And it starts with the definition of everybody needs to be in front of grade level content. >> Right? >> It starts with grade level content. You can't have you can't expect a child to perform on an assessment that is blue when you've only taught them red. >> Everybody needs to see blue. Everybody needs to be brought up to blue. Everybody needs to be engaged in blue. Everybody needs to be uh quizzed and uh retested and hopefully mastering blue. And so so that's the first part. There has to be a standard and we have to know that all kids can reach that standard. The second thing is the rigor part of that is how do you how do you move students? Uh and it's not through coverage, it's through

080being a warm demander. There were some great we actually this was a um a menty meter uh menty >> menty meter >> a menty meter that we did. So we have 300 people putting their comments on what does rigor look like in your classroom. >> We had hundreds of comments of how they introduce rigor with children. What does that look like in their room? and we're all watching it populate the screen. So, we are we just had that conversation. First of all, grade level content and then how do we be patient enough and vigilant enough in um in in in in our efforts to make sure that students take we take the time with them to master the content. And that grade six science lesson is one of the ones that I remember for a

081long time that was happening in in in at a super high level in at the Pierce Middle School. So that's the dialogue that we had and there was a lot of other terms that folks used besides warm demander. There was a real lot of good thinking and descriptions of what that looked like in the room and that's for every child >> right >> and that might mean something different too. So when we get to ch children, I think I spoke to this the at the yesterday's we were in a co-taught math class at the high school and there was a young student in that co-taught class who was from a subs separate class that was the most active hand raiser >> and participant in that lesson. He was accessing grade level curriculum with the support

082of a administ uh the teacher par profofessional and an educator at a high level. And so great >> these those things are happening in pockets that that are really when when accessible to students it's happening. >> But then for that general also the big general population all students need to be >> engaged with grade level curriculum. If we want them to learn X they all need to see X and um and so you know that was part of the definition that we put forward. That was the agreement that we had from everybody that that would be how we would describe it. Um but that's an important part of it and not giving up on kids. Okay. They're all coming to school. The majority, high high majority of our students come to school ready to learn

083with breakfast in their stomach or they can get it at school uh and from a house that's, you know, excited about them being in school. And I think our attendance shows that they want to come back. They're also happy, right? So, you have to be happy, feel safe, feel valued. And then when you have that, that's the first stage. That's warming the plate. And then you serve the meal. And the meal is high engagement, high expectation, grade level curriculum. and and really taking the time to master. So, um, and that, you know, teachers do that every day. Like, I don't know about Kyler, but we had two 50 minute or 60-minute sessions with the staff yesterday. I was exhausted. That's like going to teaching two periods. If I had to teach three more periods of

084that, I would I would had to take a nap at 3:00. So, uh, but our educators are working hard on that. And that's a real part of it. >> Being a warm demander, have an expectation, high support, high expectations, all those things matter. And we have a lot of head nodding. I think we have high high um a high willingness of our staff to be able to buy into that. And I think they do it every day. >> Okay. >> But the scores need to be improved. >> Yeah. I was going to say and it's complex >> and they want more tools. >> Right. Correct. There's a we need to get I'll be very curious to see what you get as feedback around the tools like what that means. I'm just Yeah. >> Thank you.

085>> Yeah. Um, I I would just like to thank um thank you V for always showing up with such clarity and just thoughtfulness to help us have context, but um you know to really identify for us what those highlights are. um highlights to celebrate as well as highlights to pay attention to for um the work that we that we need to be doing. Um I feel like I'm used to by now you bringing that level of clarity and command over the data to share with us. But I would like to sort of acknowledge that to me the conversation happening here around what we're learning from this data in terms of informing what we are actually doing in real time. >> This conversation to me is connecting dots in a way that has not happened since

086co in Milton public schools at a leadership level. Um, and I just appreciate that because what you're talking about is what we can learn from the data specifically. Um, how we are then using it to plan and carry out professional development both sort of writ large as well as with individuals at grade level teams. etc. You're talking about curriculum and the way that ties in. You're talking about budget priorities and how to best align the resources we have in real time as well as how to have that conversation sort of bigger picture with the community. Um, and John, I just want to sort of compliment you for what is so clearly your um, instructional leadership and ability to like participate in, let alone lead the conversation about it. Um, I think it's like you're bringing

087a level of rigor to that that then raises the bar, you know, for the way in which all of our leaders, I think, can understand the urgency. Um, but also like the practicality of what's needing to be happening. And I feel with all that said, um, like I sure would love to, you know, um, sit here one time, you know, before I'm not on school committee anymore and and see some of these like persistent areas moving, shifting. Um, but I feel like that was was never going to happen until what you start what you started doing started happening, you know. Um, and so I just feel I feel excited about it. Um, and like grateful that for the team that's in place here to push it. Um, and I like the opportunity to like do

088a both and, you know, to really push that while all those green like the color coding in the boxes is important because it is important for us to like do that especially the science >> like I mean that's that's amazing. That is such great work. Um, and I I really appreciate that we're not getting that letting that get lost either >> in the need to be very firm um around what the expectations are for how we're um changing our practices to be able to expect improvements in especially for our sub um some of our subgroups that you know deserve they just deserve better. Um, and until they're getting that, they're not going to perform better. Um, so I I I like the balance of that. Um, and I just Nathan appreciate your helping us like

089stay in the context of um, and I feel like this was a big part of the conversation around our budget last year as well. It's just like our per people pupil spending is one thing, our performance data is another thing, but to triangulate that to understand like the return on investment that we are getting for Milton residents, that's important, you know, because in that sense, it's it is actually a better news story than it might appear. Um and and it's only getting better because what you're talking about is like realigning what we what we already have in the meantime, you know, while this is what we have >> and and I just think the practical approach to that um with no time to waste. Like I just I really appreciate that. Um so thank you

090very much. >> You're welcome. We we appreciate and we say it all the time Kyler and I that um this is the teachers in the principal's district. >> Uh it's the community's district. Uh we're here to facilitate. So we're really happy to uh be a like learning walks are amazing. We we're seeing a lot of evidence everywhere we go. But I I really think that um uh motivating the staff to stick with it and and ask them what they need and then provide it and follow through and really double down on supporting our educators will will pay dividends. And to uh Anna's point, uh when we begin to show those good results and begin to show where the resources were to help those results come to bear and increase, then we're going back and saying

091if we if we can get a little bit more, we can do a little bit more. we we need we need a really good bump not just in science but in other areas in order to demonstrate that and so that's the goal and uh and I'm really thankful to be a part of a really great group of people we had a great time yesterday with people who are all willing to do the work so uh but it's work and we need to give them what they need and we need to >> uh expect it and inspect it and work with them and um and but it's a good place there's a lot of good work happening out there >> asking them what they need >> just asking it's like That's very important to do >>

092and I think a lot >> Glad that you did that so they can tell you what they need so you can then >> get them what they need within what's possible. >> Um what they do >> those basic steps >> if they've been happening >> they've not been discussed like >> the way you've you're sharing that here and now. So I I think um it seems like such a very basic but also um sometimes that like getting you know keeping it simple in order to stay focused and the last thing I just want to call out is the the five priorities and I'm even thinking about like how can we keep putting those in front of the community as well. Um I know you presented them first in early September and they were there on

093the last slide um tonight, but I'm not sure if that was shared or not on this >> it will be shared but people should be seeing it cuz I feel like I I would almost as much as it's clear those are being internalized by the leadership team, you know, the educators in the building like everybody should know you walk in like these are the five priorities like school community members we all know these are our five priorities this year and like those communities should be socialized to those too >> um so that then we're able to track our progress you know to those um so thank you >> we'll provide you the updated definitions that was actually one of the big exercises we did was re realigning aligning all of our thinking on uh each

094of those area. So we made sure that we had a common definition, common language >> uh and that was part of what we did over the last two weeks as well. So we can bring that to the group as well. Great >> Mark I have obviously a number of things again really appreciate um you appreciate all the work appreciate all the discussion um committee members I like shared out slides which I'm you know not not presenting myself but I I love love data dove into it as soon as it was public um my schools and for for Milton uh and I agree with a lot of the things that have kind of been said here I think just a a maybe not a few that would be a lie. But like some things I I

095really think are important just to make sure what you're talking about is like our performance when you look at it as a high level like looks pretty good, right? Like we're in the 90th percentile for ELA, we're in the 85th percentile for math consolidated. We're like in the 89th percentile. Like you said, we're in the hey, we're in the top 10% of all districts in the state. like that sounds sounds pretty good. Um, and so like I think at a high level that's true, but I think again looking at kind of where we've been historically, where we've been over the last 5 years, I I agree with all the points I think you all have been making, just echoing like there's just there's so much improvement we can and should be making and we have

096not been seeing it. I think from my standpoint, I think a lot of it is like teaching is hard. It is very complex. Moving kids across all kind of different abilities across multiple grades and the multiple subjects is so challenging and I think the biggest thing in my perspective that really has hindered that in Milton is that we have no coherence uh across kind of instructional practices to like carry that across schools and across grades and across classrooms and share expertise and name what our instructional vision like at least I have not heard that at this table from leaders over the last two years. I think that is what I've heard from y'all work y'all are doing. Your instructional walks are helping to do that, name that for teachers and to try and create that

097vision and collaboration across schools. And so like I am certainly hopeful that will that will help and that will be a a piece not the only piece but a piece to kind of drive us forward. Uh but yeah, it's very disappointing kind of how flat we have been and I think we have to we have to name that like we we are just not doing well especially in certain metrics. I think one metric I wanted to flag well a couple things like the state is doing poorly too that's 100% got to say like Milton is not unique to that. I do think to a point you named like we just got to hold ourselves to a higher expectation though than the state obviously like we whatever the state is doing. We know we want better

098for our kids in this town and that's where we look to. So I think the state is sometimes useful sometimes not so useful cuz like it looks like hey we're getting better but that's just cuz the state's getting worse uh and we're really just staying flat. I think the other one we didn't really talk about within your presentation is SGP which is student growth percentile and that is a metric for how much are our kids growing compared to kids who performed similarly to them on prior MCCAST. So, kids who got a uh you know 455 on the prior MCCAST and ELA, we compare those to other kids who got a 455 across the state and say, "Okay, where did they end up this year?" And if you perform better than those kids, your SGP is

099higher. If you perform worse, your SGP is lower. If you perform average, you're at a 50. So, like SGP is a very helpful benchmark to see kind of where we're at. RS like of how you are moving kids as a district, how you're growing them. Our SGPs are are not very good. They're like, you know, our percentile ranks for SGP are 75th for ELA, 58th for math. Like that is, you know, I don't think we want to be 58th percentile in the state in any metric. And I think we expect more of what our kids can do, what our teachers can do, all of that. So like that is that is something that as I look through the data is concerning. I think the other part about like the coherence piece and not having kind

100of consistency within leadership to help push through. I think you see that when you look at the grade by grade level kind of breakdown in the change over time like again I I provided this chart slide nine but uh for ELA but it it's just up and down like it is kind of dips and and falls. Um, generally as I look at like meeting and exceeding a rigorous benchmark for that is like 70%. You can get more more than 70% of your kids to meet and exceeding within a grade level like that's good. That's a strong benchmark. Obviously, we want 100%. But like where we are is 70. When we look at preandemic, Milton was there like pretty much half of the grades were above 70, you know, some of them were above 75. Uh,

101a couple of the grades were just south of 70. We only have one grade, 8th grade in ELA that like was never ever really close to 70. Now, everybody's below that line. We got like one grade that's kind of close. Uh, a couple grades are are improving. This past year, we did see growth across a few grades, but we're just we're again not really close to kind of where where we were. And again, it's been very herkyjerky. uh you look at like SGP for ELA across the grades for that what I think of as like a rigorous benchmark is 60 right that is your again 50 is average 60 is you're growing much faster than average kids and so if you can maintain 60% SGP across all grades over multiple years now you're really humming

102you're really you're really moving kids at a faster rate than uh that your comparison districts and once again if you look kind of prior to co we had some times where we were doing that where we are now. We We're not there and we really haven't gotten there across almost any any of the grades exception of kind of fourth grade. Fourth grade is kind of getting pretty close. They're doing they they had a good jump this year. They're doing had some good positive kind of momentum uh and really pretty good SGPs. They're at 59. Um so like you know when you look at math it's actually a little bit worse. That was honestly something I was surprised by because I know we've talked a lot about ELA here. Our math performance is actually not as

103good as our ELA performance. Um we are kind of even further below the 70% meeting and exceeding benchmarks across multiple grade. No, no one only one grade is somewhat close. Again, that's fourth. Everybody else is pretty far down. And again, SGP also is further down. Fourth grade being the only one to kind of surpass that. They got 63% SGP. So again, fourth grade I think is a is a highlight. um as I've kind of looked looked through the data uh and again then we look at school by school that was another piece that we just like didn't talk about yet. I think again we talk a bit about in the context of the Tucker which again really appreciate the presentation John did this morning the work that he and um a principal are doing on

104trying to address learning gaps you know that they are still we we saw a decline in Tucker's performance last year Pierce we saw a bit of a jump but still below kind of the other schools and I think when I looked at the data going back to 2017 which is to point the first um year of incast 2.0 know in the nextG testing like this is a re fairly recent phenomenon like Tucker and Pierce were not the bottom of the district. Tucker was outperforming a couple other K5 schools in math and kind of right there in ELA. Pierce was like right there kind of with them. They're still, you know, in some places kind of towards the bottom end, but the gap was not as significant as is. That is a real post-pandemic experience that

105is just I think we all agree like just wildly concerning that we haven't been able to turn that tide around. And I think that's been because of obviously we've had some leadership instability at Tucker. We've had leadership ability at the district to marshall resources in the way you all are talking about doing to try and like >> give them support and turn that around. But I just >> I think my expectation was like this was a historic long-standing kind of issue within the town. And if you look at the data, that's not that's not really true. They've they've been kind of right there. Um and so this is a more recent phenomenon that I think we need to be moving with urgently. And I appreciate John the work you're doing to move urgently on that.

106Um the last point I just want to share is the piece on the selected populations. I know the the presentation was around like, hey, we're doing better than the state average. I I think that's a little bit that's not quite it the way I I typically look at it. What I like to look at it is like okay we know how our students overall compared to the state, right? We know their percentile rank. If you take our students with disabilities and compare them just with all other students with disabilities across the state, what is their percentile rank? And if we are teaching them at a level compared to our peers compared to everybody else in the state, those two numbers should align. Right? If we're 90th percentile in ELA for all students, that means our

107students with disabilities should be 90th percentile among students with disabilities. And if we're doing better, then that that number should go up. And if we're doing worse, that number would go down. That number goes down kind of across all the the three selected populations I see. Again, students with disabilities, then down by about like 5 to 10%, uh lowincome students by about 10 to 15%. and our black students 20 to 30%. Um, so we are not teaching our black students well. The state as a whole doesn't teach our black students well and yet we are doing I think worse than what the state is. And so those are just like data points that I think to the point of John like the urgency. >> I think regardless of what what the dollar amount is like

108that that matters. I've spoken about it before. It it is what it is for this year. It's going to be what it's going to be for the next couple years. we it just is. So, I I don't think it's worth kind of talking about it too much until like we get closer to a place where we can get an override and try and tell that story. Our kids just they need to move quickly. Um and I think there's there's so much opportunity within Milton to do better than we've done as again you all have said and you've talked about a lot. Um but I just I want to highlight as I was looking at at those things like some some of those urgencies. I I do think there are really good highlights. I think science

109is one you all mentioned before like that growth. We're still technically doing better in ELA than in science percentile rankwise, but science has made huge improvements. Um, and that's really impressive. Kyleott, I think, continues to be a real highlight. It it stays at the top for both ELA and math almost every single year since the pandemic. Um, so I think that's a highlight and figuring out what Kolicott is doing so well and like how we can pull that structure to Tucker, but also Glover and Cunningham. I think fourth and seventh grade both fourth have made like improvements the past two years. Seventh grade was our lowest performing grade two years ago and now it is it's not our highest but it has made significant strides upwards as opposed to some of the other middle school

110grades which have struggled. So I think that's fantastic and stuff we should look at. Um so I don't mean to be too much of a of a downer here because I I do think like if you just look at it broadly like it's like oh Milton's doing good like Melan's Milton's doing well. But I think uh to quote one of my mentors um somebody I work with I think very highly of it's like we're not here to be good. We're here to be we can be great. And I think that's like what we want out of Milton is like we want it to be great for our kids. And so again really appreciate the work John that you are doing uh and Carla that you were doing that you all brought and those coherence and

111like I would love to continue to have these conversations. I think like so to Lizzie to your point just more we can be putting student performance conversations in front of >> of families and making sure that it is like highlighting and we can be clear about what resources we are lacking if there are opportunities grant-wise asking the town wide whatever it is like if I think you've raised it before like what is the thing like if there's the thing we need I will shout and advocate to the rooftops as I think is my role from school committee to try and get you that thing >> but I think a lot it is like the coherence, having the buy in, having the structures, putting in the time to be in classrooms and see what's going on.

112Um, so I appreciate the work that you're doing in that. >> Yeah. And I do want to also say that like what you're doing and what you've kind of presented that you plan on doing this year and next year is like setting us up for success, you know, so that next time we look at this, we're hoping to see different results which will I think energize our community as well, you know, to continue supporting. I think that's the biggest thing that we struggle with. not you know even us just looking at this data and a lot of the points Mark that you brought up just looking at this data year after year and not seeing a lot of change overall it looks great but like you know when you start digging in deep there you

113know I know many members brought up areas that are concerning and we haven't really seen a lot of movement and so I really am excited about what you are presenting and I'm excited for it because I think I think it would really help like build broader support for our schools and I, you know, and I think that's something that we're all really passionate about. So, thank you so much. This has been really great and uh I'm I'm really excited. I so look forward to the next uh Yeah. and more conversations like this. I think it's so so important for all of us to kind of push that message out into the community >> and and uh and I think another word for coherence uh Mark is all like systems >> we we need consistent systems

114uh initially that was around finances right so now we're we're working on the systems for finance but we we need to reestablish the systems for uh curriculum and instruction and evaluation and supports and meeting and talking and uh and they're happening and we need to support them and codify them and uh really really make that part of the foundation of what we do and um and support the people who are doing it. And so uh we're we're we're happy to be doing the work. Really happy to be doing the work, >> which actually might make the next thing on the agenda something that the the school committee will be happy with. So um >> thank you. Are we ready to pivot? B, thank you so much. I appreciate >> you. >> Yes. >> So, under

115my report on number letter C, um, in light of the conversation about the, um, uh, program of studies, uh, my my thinking of trying to figure out a way to, uh, create vehicles for school committee members to be a part of the work we do with curriculum. uh in advance of some of the work that we do with curriculum, right, that gets presented at this table. uh uh my experience of having a curriculum and instruction subcommittee of the school committee to meet when needed uh to go over whatever work is happening um in the area of curriculum or program of studies which is basically curriculum parallel and in advance to when we make these presentations to the school committee. So I would I would make it akin to policy subcommittee where uh the players who

116are working in the area or whatever the policy is come to the policy subcommittee and say we think we need a policy on this we want to bring it forward to you. You asked the question, how did it originate? What what do we what do we used to do? What are we doing now? Uh from a curriculum standpoint, what that would have looked like last year would be uh we'll go back to Kat D. Rosha's um presentation. you would have been in the room with us as we talked to her about what we were doing, why she was doing it, what she's got, what the timeline is, what's the impact of her work, um, and been part of maybe one, two, or three meetings where we did that together as a subcommittee. So when it

117got to the table, at least half of the school committee was part of the process in the presentation in the work, uh whether it be literacy or whether it be um the program of studies or whether it be a review of the math curriculum that we might want to think about doing or a discussion about what happened in science that works so well. So when we're changing or revamping or adjusting any curriculum work, we would want to call the curriculum subcommittee to be part of that work. um uh at a at a earlier point in time so the feedback and the discussion can be inclusive of the voice of this table that reflects the representative uh group of our community in that conversation. Um, and that way when things come to the table, they're they

118have uh community voice through school committee voice. They have a vetting of that work that's done prior to coming to the full table in a way that I think the full committee can can be assured that there's been voice and input and feedback and discussion uh with this group as part of it. And so we're not getting something that you just have to put salt on and eat it. You're actually helping us cook the meal and you're being a part of the process as we do it. So, I would propose that we uh create a a curriculum subcommittee of the Milton Public School Committee um in order to preview um and work through issues that are curriculum based uh that will be coming forward to the school committee for whatever reason over the over time.

119So, I I I was trying to channel uh the goal of of giving the school committee more time to preview and be part of >> before things are fully decided. And I hope that meets the the need that we were kind of wrestling with at our last meeting that we were talking about with with the uh with these program of studies. >> I would just like to say I I am very much in favor of this idea. I love it. I think it's great. I uh we had a curriculum and instruction um I think it was formerly called an advisory committee slashs subcommittee a few years ago. Um former member Beverly Ross Denny sort of um originated that as an something identified it as a need and helped to set it up. And um I

120think that what we lacked at that time was a system to plug into for that work to feel you know meaningful connected and helpful you know in the way you just described. >> So I'm all for this. I think this seems like coming full circle in that sense because when we took the step as a committee two years ago to sort of sunset that previous version, I think it was because it had not yet gained traction or sort of plugged into the system. Um, and so I think at that point it made sense to just sort of pause it. Um, and I'm really glad we're you're in a pos you're you're with the work you're leading now in a position to see the the value of it. And I do believe it will be helpful

121for school committee members um to have that visibility and opportunity to participate. Um, so thank you for for bringing that to us. >> My recollection was a little bit different on why we censored I thought Peter was suggesting we get rid of it just to bring the conversations to like that that was a those are conversations we should be having at the full school committee involving everybody. I don't think we ever did that. >> We never had them. That's the right. >> Yeah. I'm not saying we shouldn't do this. I was just naming that as like that I think was the logic that as I remember it of why we sunset it is like hey curriculum instruction is the driving force of the school district. We should be talking everybody should be involved in those

122conversations. should be talking about that here. Again, I think if the the the department is um saying that they think this will be a helpful mechanism in order to streamline communication and help move the work forward more quickly than >> but what that didn't accomplish the sort of absorbing it into the full school committee didn't accomplish the timeline piece that you've identified which is the need to work sort of ahead of time. >> Mhm. Yeah. ahead of the full school committee's deadlines to approve various things which we didn't see uh you know I I I don't Anyway so I just think that makes sense you know cuz it's almost like the that's what a subcommittee is for ultimately is to kind of um accomplish like the the time the effort the work that needs to

123get done that's just beyond the scope of what's possible to do in these twice a month full meetings Um, so yeah, that's a it's a good point, Mark, that the intent behind the sun setting, I don't think was to like close it off or sort of sideline the important work of school committee members involvement in teaching and learning, strategy, investments, and whatnot. But in practical terms, it that is kind of what happened >> on some level. So I feel like this is a good it it to me it's yet another dot being connected to the former the previous discussion >> um that we were having >> comments what would be the pro the timeline well if other I'll stop I'm this is my last comment I'm sorry but like if others agree that this is

124a good idea what is the vision for like a time frame for this and a process I guess for identifying like who will serve on this and when you would like to see it. >> So I I would leave the makeup of the committee to the folks at the table. I would say the the the opportunities for this to be available uh and productive would be leading up to our conversations about the uh program of studies which could happen in November, December, January for February review. Uh we have a second presentation of our early literacy that's in February. So then that committee could meet again related to literacy and have the CA cat's team come and present to that small group and talk about the process and dig deeper into the discussion about what was

125working, what they did. >> Uh so when the presentation is here, it's at might be at a little higher level, but at least two or three of the members will have a very deeper understanding of what that means and can speak to it. Um and then whatever other curriculum work we start to move through uh this year I think would be part of uh putting on the agenda for that group. This similar to how we do policy, oh we have to get this done. We gather the group. This will probably be more like two or three meetings per thing instead of maybe just one. Uh but um so right now if we get it together before uh the um Thanksgiving break then we would have a couple of meetings regarding program studies. What is the

126high school thinking? What is their goals? What are their shifts? Um and have that you know begin begin that would be the first um curriculum subcommittee agenda item for us to explore together. Great. >> No, I think this is great. So maybe if people are interested maybe either like think because I know it's it's new in discussion if you want to send like maybe send an email and say if you're interested and I think if we thought if it was two to three members is that a number that you're thinking to >> yeah usually two so if there are people that are interested and want to send and then because it's a subcommittee would we have to do a vote Excuse >> a vote. >> Vote. So we would have to vote members on the

127subcommittee. So we could look at getting if people wanted to express your interest between now and the next meeting, we could put it on the November 19th meeting as a vote. Does that sound good? >> Mhm. Okay. >> Great. Thanks, John. >> You're welcome. Um the next item on the superintendent while we're >> we're not meeting John two hours here tonight. This is uh >> we blew it. >> Um we have submitted the uh October 1 uh enrollment numbers to uh desi like we do each year. Uh the submission on that date was um 4351. Uh you can see from the document that we put in your file uh we had a total of uh 321 kindergarteners at that time which is the new number to the district. Uh the number that left the district

128would have been last year's seniors, right? You talk about what the grade is coming in. Then you first thing you do is you pull out the grade that graduated. So we we vacated last year's seniors were 265. Um so that's a stronger number. I mean that's that was a strong number for high school but obviously a lesser number. Um our grade uh enrollment changes weekly and monthly. Uh but right now our official number that we put into desi was 4351. This was also the same document that uh we submitted to to the uh Massachusetts School Building Authority for our official enrollment that then they take and they do their examination of our enrollments over the past 5 years to to create their own enrollment uh figures that we are actually actively discussing with MSBA right

129now. And um so uh I'm not sure what this presentation looked like in the past. So, I'm just providing the document that we provided to Desi. In some districts, there's a deeper analysis of who's moving at what grades and uh what does that mean for our projections and trending for enrollment going up and going down. Uh if there's interest in a similar type of analysis, I can actually do that over the next few weeks and bring back some sort of a presentation of the analysis of our of our data um of our enrollment data. Not knowing what the expectation was, I just provided the document. >> Never I've never gotten this document before. So, >> okay. >> When it gets close to the website, >> for context, this was it's a little bit apples to

130oranges because all the other years are the end of year enrollment, but this will be the fifth largest um enrollment. Last year was second, largest was SY20. >> The seven largest enrollments were all the last seven years, but this is this is the fifth largest Milton's ever had. >> And it's interesting that uh people would consider Milton a small town, which we are, but 4,300 students puts us on the above average enrollment in terms of district size across the state, which just goes to show you how many smaller districts there are out there. There's a handful of urban districts that have the 8,000s and the 12,000s, but the majority of folks sit in that 3500 range. So, we're on the higher side than average uh in Milton. And um and and I' I'd like to

131uh I'll be happy if our enrollment continues to increase. One of the things about enrollment for me is that I want every single family to send their child to the public schools. And it's our job to not only from a budgetary lens by doing good things so we can get support, but doing the things that we need to do to connect the dots between our work and student achievement to get every single child to come to school in Milton. And that's our goal. So, uh, keeping an eye on enrollment, I think, is important for a lot of reasons, but, uh, we always want to see as many students come to our schools as possible. >> Do you have at your fingertips what the enrollment was in 2020? >> Yep. I'm just so this is the

132fifth largest. I'm wondering >> SY20 was 4431 last year was 4367. So we're we're 16 less than we were last year. 4320 and SY 24321 and SY23. So yeah, >> can I ask a question to follow up on what you just said? Do we do any analysis of students coming back to the district from I know that you like I know that there are the years where students typically leave if they're going to go to private school. Do we have any data on kids that come back or the like trends and >> Yeah, we we do see a trend. Our high school numbers have continued to go up. >> So what we're seeing is students come back in 9th to 10th grade >> whether they leave in seven or eight and come back in 9

133or they leave in nine and come back at 9. Yeah. >> Uh we do see that trend uh where the high schools numbers are increasing at the entry points of 9th and 10th. >> Any other questions? >> All right. You can go. >> Okay. That was it for you. That was it for me until we get down to the uh discussion around student. >> Okay. Um All right. I will jump into the chair report. So, first off, just briefly, we went into executive session and um that was a discussion about the superintendent's contract. So, that's an ongoing discussion and we will be continuing to talk about that over the next few meetings. Um so, that was a good discussion. The second update is um we had a um a conversation a couple of meetings ago

134about communication and and how we can what are ways in which we can you know better communicate with the community. Um one of the areas that we had talked about was having a um either a blog or a section within the newsletters that go out to the community that that is from the um the school committee. So I reached out to Stephanie O'Keefe because John had volunteered her services to us. And um she and I spoke and and talked about what that might look like. And so what we thought about was having a section in having a blurb written um that we would submit to Stephanie on the Wednesday following our school committee meeting. And so what that would be is the idea of keeping it really brief and sort of a um like a

135what why ne you know what's next. So like what did we discuss? You know why did we discuss it? It was a vote. We had something coming up. That sort of thing. And then what's next? So we'll either discuss it further. Um it doesn't go anymore. We'll we'll have a vote on it in the future. That sort of thing. Um, the other thing that we could have in there is since um, John and Lizzie and I meet Wednesday mornings that we could also say we could also talk about the upcoming agenda items for the next meeting. So your next meeting will be talking about MCCAST data enrollment etc. Um, and then it would also have a link to the meeting and then if there were any documents say that you know say this was um,

136on the website or there was information around MCCAST there would be a link to that as well. Um, we also discussed that a way to keep it simple was almost have like a Google doc for it. So, it literally is and we can figure out the exact wording, but if it was like what, why, what's next? And then it just keeps it really factual. So, it's not like this, you know, very um, you know, not not like this verbose paragraph, but it's really just an update on what we did. And so, um, two things. one, we could see if anybody wants to volunteer to do it. But knowing that we're having a meeting tonight and we talked about it that I could I could tackle it this week with Stephanie working on that Google doc

137because it's short, you know, I think it would be fairly easy for everybody to just sort of take a look at and maybe it would be this if we don't hear from you by Friday. we're gonna assume nobody has issues with it and then it will go to Stephanie. And then if we find that it's something fairly easy to do, we could either rotate it or if there's somebody who wanted to take it on or we can just see, you know, that could maybe be a little bit more iterative. Um, but if everybody likes the way that sounds and we want to start with that, we could look at doing that based on this meeting, sending it to Stephanie for next meeting. So she on Wednesday she would take it on the first one would

138go to the all staff newsletter and then she would send it to all of the principles and it would go out into all of the principal newsletters on those varying days cuz they go out through the week through the weekend and the following Monday. So if everybody's okay with that or if anybody has suggestions on anything different or anything else you want to improve but it could be a good test and then if we think we want to tweak it, we can go from there. So, I I'll be happy to handle it the first week and then happily pass it off or continue to do it, but we'll just see how it goes. >> Good. >> All right. >> Can um can Stephanie track or can you track how many people like click into the

139document and read it? >> They track how many people open each newsletter. That's why we send things out with the principal and then we send things out from the district separate. I'm not sure if they can track the clicking of each section of that, but I can ask her. >> Okay. Yeah, >> you might be able to track. >> They use like constant contact that gives you that like analytics, but I don't know what >> I don't know how much they break it down. Yeah, >> but she'll make that section look better, too, so it doesn't look like just a a blur. But I can we can ask directly people. >> Great. Sounds great. Good. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Welcome. Short and sweet. That's all I have. Um, so finance subcommittee report. >> Oh

140yeah, sorry. Um, >> we have two of we have that as a vote. We have two things as that's not we're not voting. >> We don't need to vote on the vendor warrants. So we did confirm with Katie uh that for our policy because we voted to appoint me to sign the vendor warrants. We don't need to vote on them. I do need to read them out. She suggests I like read them. So, I'm still going to do that reading where I say the vendor warrants and the numbers. Yeah, that'll still forward you the vendor warrants. I assigned vendor warrant 18 today. I've not forwarded that to y'all, I don't think. Um, but the other ones I think I have. Uh, but yeah, anyways, we won't we won't take a a vote anymore, but I'll

141still call it out. And obviously, if anybody has questions, concerns that all that still applies, you know, let me know. You can go look at any vendor vendor warrant you want as well. We don't need to vote. um uh finance subcommittee. We met uh last week and this week. I'm going to start with this week uh and then pull up my notes from last week to try and remember what we talked about because we're meeting we're meeting quite a lot. Uh today we uh talked about two things which John referenced earlier. Uh first was kind of some plans the district's looking to do around some slight reallocation of some financial resources to address needs over at Tucker. some um instructional improvements uh or instructional um improvements to instructional um resource implementation to help give uh

142more kids what they need over there. And so really appreciate John sharing that. I don't know if you want to share more now or if that's going to be the future. >> So I I I'll I'll do a teaser because we're going to ask principal uh Hoek to come to um come to a meeting. uh the uh Tucker leadership has identified different shifts in existing resources that they would like to make in order to uh really have clear intent in the work that they're doing with staff and students. And um that involves the directors having consistent time uh to do a consistent protocol around uh what we're looking for in classrooms, how we can support teachers, and how that's going to affect student outcomes. uh that rearranging the existing resources and human capital I think

143has gone a long way in creating a consistent approach to uh our student achievement work uh around uh all grade level uh students but especially those not making benchmark. Um there was a request uh for revenue uh to support um our grade level facilitators instead of meeting once every other week for a small stipen that they get to meet every week and be part of a instructional leadership team with the principal and the vice principal and the unit members that support the Tucker. That that money ask is uh going from $600 to a,000 which is $400 time 6 which is only $2,400. So, we're not talking a lot of money, but the the small amount of money uh expands the amount of time and flexibility and includes teacher voice in that instructional leadership team at

144Tucker, which is super important. Um the other revenue um need was we have a 6 team chair uh at the Tucker. Uh we'd like to increase that to 8, which means instead of working three days a week, that employee would work four. On that fourth day, they would be acting more of a special education uh consultant, advisory and um uh coach in terms of going into classrooms looking at that classroom through the lens of the special education students that she actually serves and uh understands fully because she writes the IEP plans. She works directly with all the service providers and also becomes part of this team of um instructional team leaders within the Tucker. So the goal is to establish uh an instructional leadership team with the existing resources adding some people to be able

145to attend through uh increasing the stipen uh and to create a team of people that are looking at weekly what's going on in classrooms, what the supports needed are of the teachers, how we're looking at certain students in a way that we can support them further using data to inform instruction and actually creating a protocol that they'll all use when they meet weekly to go through every single child and and and work with staff. So, um the uh principal did an amazing job of creating a very reasonable package of shifts that have no cost to the district and some that have very little. This is in total $14,000 uh of a $72 million budget uh which we feel was uh very worthy of uh supporting advocating for and funding. Um and this work with the

146grade level facilitators that we'll work out with the Milton Educators Association uh will create an MOA that they're entertaining uh could be a pilot for what we would want to do for all across all schools. So, we're going to use this as a pilot and if it works at Tucker this uh fall, winter and spring, then we are negotiating this year and we can put it on the table as a potential tool that all the schools can take advantage of uh when we learn how it works and what what works about it and what may not work about it. So, uh really really excited to support the active work of this year. We met with principles today. We had three quarters of the year left. There's a lot of learning to do. There's a lot

147of work to do. there's a lot of outcomes to shift in an upward direction and uh we've also asked this five other principles to start to give us that information about what are they working on what have they been their last two years of targeted instructional work um what are they working on this year and is there anything similar that we can do in their schools uh in order to make that you know uh get any initiative that they're doing right now over the hump a little bit the flexibility of having the grade level facilitators as an example just unlocks the door more time and more teacher voice into this work which is a big deal. So something small can go a long way. So we'll be doing that with the other five schools as

148well. And uh again we're we're getting into classrooms every week at the district level and the superintendent level and we're asking people what they need and we want to deliver on that so we can support them in making impact this year. So, uh, Chucker was the first to go through the process, and I appreciate everybody's support at today's financial subcommittee meeting, and I'm doing a learning walk there tomorrow. So, we'll be presenting good news when we get there in the building at 10:00 a.m. Um, so we had that discussion uh for about the first half. Second half we talked through um capital requests uh both um some facility capital requests through Tom McCarthy um talked through that uh and then also the technology capital requests come back to that in a sec because we're going

149to vote on the technology ones but that was our meeting today uh meeting last week was um spent most of the time reviewing slides that we put together for the warrant committee the thanks assistant Superintendent Katy Blake for kind of creating that agenda, putting together slides. We talked through it, made made some slight tweaks to it, talked through the presentation. Um, got very little into kind of the revol revolving accounts policies, which is something we told y'all we're trying to work on. That's on the agenda for our next meeting. Um, but yeah, mostly mostly talk through that presentation. We did have the presentation to Warren Committee this past Monday. You appreciate John and Katie being there. John's had a lot of a lot of late ones this week. Um, and uh felt like that presentation

150went well. Really appreciate the Warren Committee's uh engagement uh participation in that. It was, as you all know, mostly just like a a 101 generally uh about the budget. Obviously, no information on our projected SY FY27 budget, but just how does the budget process work at the schools and answer kind of general questions of how the schools operate through the warrant committee to kind of get them all up to speed. Um, and then talking through the timeline overall, the timeline that we have shared previously with y'all. And so, you know, was really really positive. Um, so that's that covers kind of what we've discussed the last two meetings on this. >> Yep. >> Okay. Um, I'm going to just go ahead and read the warrants if that's all right. First, just to get those out

151of the way. Um, so I did sign a couple warrants here on our behalf. uh assigned warrant 17 in the amount of $257,65.50 and warrant 18 in the amount of $22,83165. So again, no need to vote on that, but did did sign both those and I'll forward you the 18 momentarily. Uh any questions on any of the warrants or any of that update before we jump to the technology capital requests? Okay, so the technology capital requests I can actually pull it up. Uh here it is. Uh so here's the technology capital requests that were submitted to us that we talked about briefly. Um it's not too complicated. You can see kind of what was listed as um being asked for. The 391 is the same amount that we asked and got funded in the current

152year uh for end user devices. Um what I appreciate about this is that he included the um list of capital requests from last year that they submitted. Green was what was funded. Uh red was what was not funded. So you see kind of the smartboard replacements, the high school, the network hardware for Pierce and Kikott Cunningham were not funded. And then so when you go up to SY26 and look at what they're asking for funding for, it is those three things that were not funded last year. >> Those are deferred uh capital costs from the technology side um that um we are looking to fund. >> Any other? >> Yes. So I met with uh Bob Patterson, our technology director. He also provided a narrative uh as well and it was a strategic um decision

153to include uh and we will every year what was funded the previous year and what wasn't because what we want to make sure we're aware of that we go into our capital meetings with our eyes wide open that when something fails and we have to maybe in that awful case where we have to go and ask for money from the warrant committee to fix a server or do something and they can say well you know did you plan for this and we can say yes we've always we've been trying to you know get this work done over the last few years and so we always want to make sure that we have that codified somewhere and it's visible that we're really looking at so in the following year we will have FY26 FY27 and we'll

154have our FY28 request um that goes out through the 5-year period as well just to keep everything on the table for everybody to see and have visibility into. So, I appreciate Bob's um uh work on this and also uh there have been several grants that Bob has achieved over the last few years that have provided supplemental income to some of these uh purchases and things that we've been able to do in the schools. So, I appreciate his advocacy and taking the time to to draft those grants uh in order to get some of the funds and technology in the district as well. >> Can I ask a clarifying question? the last year's request and this year's request. It implies that the for the things that were not funded last year, but the number of items

155and the cost of those items are the same as 12 months ago. Like is that is that true? >> There's probably an escalation of a certain percentage. >> Okay. >> That's not built in. >> Should it be before we vote on it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we could we could have them escalate these prices by a certain percentage point uh if that would be helpful to the to the committee. For sure. >> I mean, I'd defer to other people. It just seems like these things are things that would increase in cost over the course of >> Yeah, I think it's a a decent point. I'm just not sure what what that number is. Again, as we talked about, there are other funding sources that that do help with network infrastructure that come from uh federal

156grants like ERATE is a federal funding grant for schools for network infrastructure. Uh that is used to help offset um costs for things like this. Exactly. Things like this. So, it could be that he's incorporating some of that within this. Although, again, it's the same same cost as last year. Um I don't know how quickly Bob needs this voted on and approved when the next capital meeting is. And so if this is something that can wait or if we need to vote on it and if it needs to be adjusted it comes back defer a bit to >> I guess you two. >> I think generally he keeps things generic enough that if the sum of money is there uh that he he is expending it in the best way he can in order to

157get the best deal to bring as many devices or whatever it is. >> Uh the switches is something that's very specific. I would worry about that to be a specific number for sure. Um, so I can ask Pop to turn around and escalate it by a certain number if you want to bring it back to the group at the next meeting or you can vote the number. Uh, either one of the those alternatives can go either way. >> Lizzie, do you know when y'all are >> um meeting? >> We're meeting next Thursday the 13th at 7:30 in the morning. Um but I don't anticipate that we'll be beginning to review um proposals at that time. Certainly not. I don't believe so. I mean and and the voting to approve the actual um requests takes place

158like a little bit in the future. So I think there would be um I think it could go either way. you know, we could vote to approve this. It's it's titled draft, right? Um, so that provides like an approval of the kind of concept as presented and then before it would be formally presented to capital, those updates could be um included, I would think. I do have just a question regarding the phone system which um I appreciate the information he has included. I mean to me that's a very that's a very good anecdotal example of the leanness or frugality we're working with here that we're needing to buy a used part off eBay to keep our phone system for the whole district operational. But I I am also noting that, you know, it's not um

159proposed to be replaced for a couple more years. >> Um and of course that can always change. And so he that's what he's doing, John. That's what you're saying is we're putting things out. They're on our radar. So if they need to get pushed up, they can be pushed up. But >> um I'm just wondering whether if we aren't including it for 27, you know, okay, but um it's just sort of something I'm wondering about whether we would want to look at that sooner, but maybe that's not actually, you know, I don't think that's necessary to get an answer on for this >> preliminary approval, but I do just that jumped out at me. >> Um, Liz, you could ask a question from a capital committee standpoint. At the meetings that you hold as a

160capital committee, would Bob and I go and answer those questions um on behalf of this document as part of the process? Has that been part of the process? Because we can do that and give, you know, give a, you know, the narrative is helpful, >> but to to have the opportunity for capital committee members to ask questions. Yeah, absolutely. >> We make ourselves available >> typically there um sort of there's like different departments come one by one >> and present their request give some information about it and then yeah answer like kind of clarifying questions from the members. Um and those meetings, you know, stretch out over a number of weeks since it's all the town departments that need to come before the capital um committee. So yes, but that would probably for the schools

161that would I mean that would be both the consolidated facilities one and the technology one. >> Okay. Do you all vote on dollar amounts or do you approve individual do you vote on individual things? >> Yes, individual line item requests >> um and that you know every year it it happens that um certain requests are not funded for a given department, you know, and >> um hence the ones that need to be brought back. But you know there are also uh certain departments in town that really have gone like years um with very deferred capital requests that um are not able to be prioritized. So I think it is looking at overall like what hasn't been funded and trying to bring those pieces in. um at the same time as every department is doing that

162for itself to put its requests forward. But yeah, the committee has not met yet at all. So I think uh next week is just the the beginning of the process. >> And just as an FYI, um Nick and Nick Milano and Amy Dexter at town hall did ask for a draft just to get a ballpark. So we did provide them these documents in the draft. Okay. just so they could have the scope of what we're looking at. >> Makes sense. >> Um, so that is in their hands at this time. >> I'd suggest given it's a it's a draft and given Bob's put this together, we assume Bob, you know, knows what the numbers mean and that this is going to fit the school department's needs, I'd be comfortable moving forward with a vote. So,

163I will make a motion to approve the FY27 uh capital requests presented by the technology department. >> Second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Believe that is the end of the finance update. >> Thank you. Um and policy. >> So um at our last meeting we um talked about um John was going to give an update on the um student assignment discussion. So he was um going to just explain it more in detail um for us. >> So Mark, if you could take that document on the screen, that would be super helpful. Um one of the the discussion that we had at the policy subcommittee subcommittee meeting was when we're assigning students to uh the Milton public schools um who are new to us, how do we do that? uh and you're going to see

164a document that provides that on the right hand side and how does that correspond in uh connect to the unique assignment that we have in Milton for the assignments of kindergarten and then for grade one assignment. And then there was some discussion uh last year about timing that up for folks who are not kindergarten students currently in the system but feel like they want to be involved sooner in the grade one placement. So that was the genesis of this discussion. The policy itself after reviewing it we did not see any changes needed in the policy. What we thought was most helpful was to be very clear um with how we would operationalize that policy and we made some changes in the the timing of that that operational document. So going to ask folks to look

165at the screen um and I wish I had a laser pointer so the folks at home could know what I was talking about. But what we're starting with is on the on the left hand side you have the month of the year and this would be any given year. This is not specific to this year, but every January uh we do certain things and every March, April, and May. The second column is our current Milton public school families and students and how these decisions about placement impact them. and then timing that up with how we uh welcome our new Milton public school families and students to the Milton public schools, not just in relation to grade one, but in general, how do we do that assignment in a very predictable, clear, and um transparent way.

166So, as you look at uh January of every year, and this will happen this year, we'll have one pre kindergarten night where we talk about what pre kindergarten looks like, and that is open to our current families and obviously our new families to Milton public schools. In March, I'm sorry, we in January, we have a prek night and an a K information night. So, those are two separate nights and our staff get up and discuss what does prek look like? If you're interested in pre-k and your child's coming to Milton public schools as a 3 or 4 year old, this is what it looks like. This is how it works. And we do the same for kindergarten. In March, and I'm going to pause, all of our new families that come to us for kindergarten

167will be at that. We'll give them all the information and prepare them for the for the packets they have to fill out, what they need to provide for medical records, uh, and and we'll start the orientation for that. So, that's the first big night for them. In March, we have our grade one information night that is also open not only to current Milton public school families, but is open to non-Milton public school families. That's where we discuss the unique transition from kindergarten to grade 1 due to our programs uh that we offer at the elementary level, the French immersion in our in our pathway classes that we take in science uh on the English side of our curriculum at the elementary level. In April uh of any school year, the first round of students in

168our current kindergartens of that year will be placed like we do for all students in every grade. We begin the planning process for the next year uh in middle school and in high school and in elementary school and in first grade and talk about how many classes of uh will we have how many what what's the student will be what school will they go to what grade will they go to what where they'll be placed so all grade one students will be assigned to their first grade class by May 1st again that is similar to how we have to organize our approach for advancing everybody's grade from one grade to the to the next K to 12. So that's done at the elementary schools, the middle school, and the high school. It's really important to

169our kindergarten parents cuz this is all about the program choices they make that we have to to uh determine through how many students sign up for French and how many students sign up for the English science pathway in May. Uh and on the right hand side of that, our Milton public school families that are new to us will start to fill out in April the registration documents needed to become a Milton public school student for the following year. Our non or new families to Milton will do that in April and in May while we are assigning all of our current students to their next grade classes. So in May, the assignment will be be determined and communicated by May 1st of each year for our school kindergarteners who go to Milton and they'll know their

170first grade program in their first grade building at that time. On the other side of the of the ledger, our new students will continue to enroll in the second round of assignment for all students to all grades inclusive of grade 1 will be made at the end of June. And there's two things that I want to make sure that people understand that we're doing here. We're creating a very clear pathway for when folks apply to go to Milton Public Schools, put their packet in, when they will be communicated with with what their school assignment is. If you're a non Milton public school parent, you will know by June 30th for if you get your documents in in June and in April, May, and June, you'll know by June 30 before the summer starts what your

171child's school assignment is. If you are a non Milton public school family who move in during the month of July, we batch all those up and we let everybody know what their school assignment is. We don't do those family by family. We let them build up so we can assure that we assign families to new schools in new grades and new classrooms to keep our grade our class size balanced. I think I spent some time in this in June where we you can look at your student you can look at the enrollment chopper elementary and notice that our class sizes across grades and schools are fairly well balanced. We start with what school district they live in and then what's the best class size and we go from there. Where this connects with the grade

172one is that our grade one assignment for Milton public school existing families and for new families to Milton public schools for grade 1 will be the same time will be June 30th. In previous years there was a time where Milton public school current kindergarteners were assigned but we didn't assign non Milton public school families until the third round. So, we're basically extending that deadline and making that a similar deadline for non-public school families who are coming to us for grade 1. Uh, in our existing public school families who will be going into grade one, the continued blocks that you see on the right hand side for July and August just described that we will be transparently collecting more information, collecting packets. Those who have full packets will be placed in their schools by July 31st

173and the next round by August 15th. And then anything after August 15th is done week by week because we're starting to open school. So if I'm a new family moving to the town of Milton to go to the public schools, I can go to the prek night and the in the K information night. I'll go to the grade 1 night. I'm thinking about being a family for starting in September of the of the next year. Here is the timeline of how you can do that. Whether that's a kindergarten enrollment, preschool 1 2 3 4 5. This is the this is the scope and sequence for that. And the only thing that we're doing different is after hearing feedback from community members about wanting to be included earlier in the grade one assignment, we pulled down

174the round two and we made it the same time that we had introduced non-milers for parents in order to access uh the grade one choice of either French or English. And hopefully this resolves some of the challenges that we've heard from families about having to do I take my kindergartener out on June 1st from their private kindergarten just to be a considered a Milton student to be assigned in the second round. We don't want to make our families who live in Milton who are taxpayers jump through hoops to be able to access the program in that second round time. However, we're not doing it in the first round because it's May and we have to we have to place our own students not only in grade one but across all of our grades and update

175our system and get it ready for the next school year. So, this to me is is a an adaptation of what we're already doing in favor of our students who are new to the the system for grade 1 that that will be involved in the second round of uh assignment for grade one. And it also clarifies very clearly if I'm new to the district, no matter what grade my child is in, when I apply and have my packet approved, I'll know exactly what my school will be assigned. And this will be an annual document. That's why there's no years on it. It's only month. This will be a rolling uh operational uh protocol for us to follow. >> Thank you. Just want to say I appreciate your work on creating clarity on this and this

176being something that can be easily shared and the logic I think >> makes makes sense of again grade one is just one of 13 grades 14 grades that we have >> here. And so for all of those grades you move your current students up a level and then you take new students and figure out where how to plug those in. Um, so I appreciate that, but also the accommodation to try and bring that um, bringing those new families for first grade a little earlier in the process than they've been in the past to, as you've said, avoid those perverse incentives and hard hard decisions that families sometimes made. So I think it's a well-reasoned u process and I appreciate you sharing it. Um yeah, facilities. Um we have the FY capital requests 27 capital requests

177uh document in our folder um that Tom had put together. Um we did we did talk about this very briefly at our last facilities um advisory committee but we did not go into like a lot of detail and kind of whittle down what we can cuz it is a pretty number um um the request for the next year. Um, so I don't know John if you were or had any conversations with Tom since our last meeting to kind of update. >> Sure. >> Okay. >> So Tom presented at the finance committee today. Okay. >> Um, I was there for half of that discussion. I did have to leave the meeting for another meeting. So I would defer to uh Amanda and uh Nathan and Mark. Uh I believe uh Tom's methodology was to make sure

178that he represented every uh thing that was needed similar to how we approached technology to make sure that people were aware of the needs >> uh and not to not put something down. So uh because you don't want to ask for too much knowing that the $3.1 million is a lot for one year. Um uh Tom also talked about his strategy around making some of the requests uh not specifically building based but district based or school u you know elementary based. So those funds because capital funds have to be spent on exactly the thing that was uh voted. By having it be more generic, it would allow him to have more flexibility. if a water heater went, which it just did at the Cunningham, or if the elevator went, which it just did at the

179Tucker, that when those dollars are more universally labeled, u that they could be expended a little bit more flexibly from a capital perspective. >> Um, and I'm sure he'll be explaining that when he meets with the capital committee, >> uh, and his rationale for that. >> Um, and I'm not sure exactly what else was talked about after I left, but that was the general strategy from my understanding. And >> Tom is actually a member of the capital. um committee. So that's helpful because he's going to be at the table inherent automatically during the discussion of prioritizing um you know among the requests too >> both for the schools and the town. So >> I I I like support the idea of putting it all out there. >> Yeah, >> totally support that. No, I think

180that makes that, you know, after you explaining it, I think that makes sense. >> Yeah, he did call out I mean, we're asking about certain, you know, certain items. I think fair to say top of one that is on the top of his list would be the um lighting replacement um at Brooksfield. I mean that I can't say that that was higher than anything else, but that was definitely one that seems like the amount of money that they're, you know, one from an energy efficiency standpoint, the other from just a keeping it working standpoint. It's just sort of keep putting money towards it where that's something um that um just has a huge impact for both the people using the field as well as um budget- wise from the standpoint of the energy efficiency. But

181yeah, he I think you know, we just looked at were there other ways to group things together, but there was no other discussion about really prior prioritizing things differently. >> Yeah, I'll say I I expressed I think to your hesitation of like, oh, we're going to submit a $3 million request. I think again to the point that's been made, I agree with >> Tom's logic after he shared it of put it all out there and then if they don't fund it, at least we're clear that this was a need. So if something fails, we've been clear that we were concerned it would fail. Um uh similar to kind of what the conversations with the technologies of like just sharing what the past requests have been and being kind of clear on that. So that was

182persuasive to me. I the only other thing I'd say is it not necessarily funding in the current year exactly, but there you can see multiple things here related to Brooks Field, the track, the turf replacement, the bleachers, >> uh and the lights. And so there's there's a lot of needs over at that um Brooks field it appears. And so one conversation we did have was potentially adjusting or adjusting this um to maybe push out the bleachers and add add some type of fee for >> um or funding for consultants to look at that more holistically kind of given all the needs and make sure given that's a larger project similar to what we do with Cunningham bring somebody in to look and give good cost estimates associated with what what it would take >> to

183bring those all those spaces up to par. um have that be a bit more of a robust um backing behind whatever the request is. So, I would feel confident in that. >> No, that's great. >> And I do also want to stress that field does get used by a lot of town sports too, not just the high school. So, >> um a lot of our kids use it from, you know, kindergarten on uh words. So it is I mean obviously making sure that we have good playable fields is huge. Um so it does get a lot of use. Um so yeah and but I I like your point about bringing in someone to kind of >> just look at it. >> Katie's idea. >> Yeah. >> So are do we vote on it today? It's

184I know there's a motion in there to approve not vote. It is vote. >> That is sorry. So I will make a motion to approve the FY27 capital requests presented by the facilities department. Second. All in favor? Great. Grace. >> Thanks Anna. um negotiation subcommittee report. >> Yeah, great. So, um the negotiation subcommittee um met yesterday with um Milton Educators Association unit a um representatives negotiation bargaining team. Um, and the purpose of that meeting was to uh kick off our negotiations for the new three-year contract. We um did introductions across the two teams and we established the ground rules collaboratively sort of work together to agree upon ground rules that will guide the process throughout this year of negotiations. Um it was a really great meeting. I think everything got off to a very positive

185start and um we're definitely excited to move it forward. Now, um sort of what to expect in general terms is that we did in addition to introductions and establishing ground rules, we were also able to kind of look at calendars and um map out when meetings will be taking place for negotiations. um we'll be exchanging proposals um between the teams uh in December into the early part of January. Um and so then actual negotiation sessions will begin in January and and carry on from there. So, uh, was very positive start to the process and, um, yeah, we'll keep everybody informed as it moves forward. Anything you'd want to add? >> I I I that was a very productive first meeting, not only with ground rules, but also with dates. So, uh, that was a very

186positive good first step. >> Yeah, >> for sure. >> Great. We'll be spending a lot of quality time together over the months to come. >> Thought they're all good folks. >> Looking forward to it. >> Thanks, Lizzy. Um, MF >> Okay. Um, so the MF's first meeting was on October 21st, a couple weeks ago, and the first meeting is basically like introducing each other to get to know each other cuz I'm the new member to that group right now, representing this group right here. Um so MF stand for Mutton Foundation for Educator for Education. >> Education. >> Yeah. Um so um Wendy New was the the chairperson of this group. Um they the meeting was mainly discussing about the monster dash because it was right before the monster dash and it was a great success.

187I saw Mark and Nathan and also Lizz's families there as well. So there's a lot of people come out and support this event um including a lot of the educators in the district. Um so um I I think it it was a great and successful event and we hope that in the future um more family can um come out and support this. And I was told that they have more than almost 500 artworks sent in for the the for the t-shirt design. >> Yeah. >> And um the winner was a fifth grader at Tucker. >> Yeah. >> So it was great. Um they they are in need of they're looking for volunteers who would like to join the group especially people who have experience um being a treasurer. So, just want to put a plug

188out here for people who are listening or watching. If you are interested, um, please feel free to join the next meeting which is on November 19th and they usually start meeting at 7:30 uh at the High School Library. Um, unfortunately I have a school committee meeting that day that night at the same time. So, I will not be able to go. But I will update you guys with any other important stuff. >> Great. That's my report. Thank you. Um, budget coordination committee. >> Can we take that one? >> Yeah. >> Um, well, the Monster Dash was great. It was my daughter Alex's first 5K. We did it in 45 minutes. Um, so her fastest, my slowest. um budget coordination committee. So substantive portion of this meeting really focused on the sort of work that the

189committee will do around policies. Uh there's going to be a couple of work groups that will try to tackle three principal policies that we're looking at for that will kind of guide long-term planning. So, um, there's a there's a policy related to debt management, policy related to financial reserves, and one related to capital reserves, >> I think. So, >> yeah, sounds like >> um, so I believe there's two work groups that are going to focus on this, and Mark, correct me if I'm getting any anything wrong here. Um, and then we spent some time, the chair of the warrant committee had some analysis and ideas related to the what those policies should entail or some portion of them. I actually had to leave sort of partway through his presentation. Um, so I'm not sure I'm

190not sure that that we got very far into that. But so that that's where the work of this of this group is going is to sort of finalize those policies which will guide you know multi-year planning. >> Great. >> Just just flag that those are select board those would become select board policies. So they're not policies under the purview of us. most the select board town administrator drafted them and >> um they ultimately the approved needs by the select board but they're getting our that group's input as they're developing them >> and as a starting point I mean they you know the Nick did a great job drafting those initial it's not like we're starting with a blank page and kind of wondering where to go like it's a >> a quick quick question as

191this um budget coordination committee sort of continues into budget season. Um I understand starting and thinking through those policies, but is there also the plan that this committee will be functioning similar to how like the joint finance committee meetings used to happen between select board and school committee in which like information is being shared around the budget requests themselves as they're coming together or is that separate and if that's not I can that could be a parking lot question. I guess I'm just interested as we round this bend toward you know towards December like what role will this committee be playing in the budget process. I think the goal right now focus on the policies in hopes that those policies are are established for the budget season so that there is they can inform what

192then the select board and the town administrator is doing in the FY27 budget connected to those new policies. So that's that. But then from there I mean some of the information sharing has already happened. I wasn't at the meeting but um Nathan was where the town administrator gave the same presentation he gave to us at finance subcommittee but gave it to the whole group on expected revenue and expenses for the town for next year. Um and so that's obviously the first part and then when we start getting into budget >> okay >> requests yeah I definitely foresee a future meeting in which we share kind of draft budget once once we have that and start sharing that I think we'll also obviously John has developed a good strong relationship with the town administrator even outside

193of that so I think there'll be ongoing communication but in terms of us and the select board especially and us being able to like say what we need directly to the select board uh and vice versa the select board can come and say like this is the constraints in the town and this is why we need this. Um I that is a part of the charge of the committee and I think there'll be more opportunity to do that when we kind of hit that budget season either >> December or January once they have >> we have again draft budgets and our focus is we as we've said before we want to make sure it comes through this group first and y'all get a look at it first but then once we feel good about the

194direction of that budget definitely want to bring it to them to get their feedback as we do with the warrant committee and we talked about with the warrant committee. >> Okay. Anything else? No. >> All right. U next is approving the minutes from the um October 22nd meeting if everybody had a chance to look at them. Okay. And so I am going to make a motion to approve the minutes of the October 22nd, 2025 Milton School Committee meeting. A second. Second. Mark. Okay. All in favor? I'm going to abstain because I missed a good part of the first >> part of it. All right. And then the last thing, sorry, is just looking um uh the draft agenda items for next week. So, we have a report out from the MASC meeting. So, I'm going

195um for one day of that. Uh we also have the 202425 annual report will be given to this uh school committee and then um subcommittee reports. So will we be facilities will be meeting um and >> and um policy >> policy will meet. >> Okay. And finance will was he and you said capital. >> Mhm. >> Okay. >> Can I'd like to add that I'd like to welcome the um the Tucker playground committee to uh present the group. Uh if that's okay. Yeah. >> Uh they've been doing a great job of uh reaching out to different folks and I think we would would love to give them some visibility at the school meeting for their work. >> Um >> will they be coming to facilities before then cuz it's the day before if they wanted

196to. >> Yeah, actually that's a great idea. Okay. They don't um I don't really know if facilities um I'm not sure they're at the stage of needing to come to facilities now that I think of banana because this is just their fundraising getting the word out of what they like what they like to do and what they're hoping to raise money for >> to give them some facetime with the community. I think they'll probably go in front of the uh facilities committee when they when they have the money raised and they're ready to bring plans to the facilities. Yeah, maybe we just have him come and just give him the opportunity to talk. >> And I didn't know if we wanted to have the Tucker principal come and talk about our planning work. >> So,

197okay, perfect. >> And we have curriculum subcommittee uh >> and the curriculum vote. >> Y curriculum subcommittee vote. >> Anything else? >> That's it. Then I'll take a motion to adjurnn. So move right meeting a journey. >> Thank you.