School Committee - October 9th, 2024

001[Music] he [Music] good evening everyone welcome to the October 9th meeting all right good evening everyone welcome to the October school committee meeting we're going to get started with the Pledge of Allegiance if everyone can please stand to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all so just so everyone knows um Dr Carol is with us but she's with us on Zoom so I will be facilitating the meeting this evening and with that I'll ask for us to take a look at the agenda and just let me know if there are any changes to the agenda and I think the only one that I've uh noted or I want to note is that for the superintendence report

002we're going to move the school committee student representative welcome to the top to make sure that we can let our students go back and do their thing this evening I imagine they may be working on homework and other stuff so we'll make sure we can um uh get them earlier on the agenda um anything else any changes all right hearing none we'll get going and the first um item actually we're going to get started with public comment and um this is the portion of our meeting when individual community members uh share their perspective with us individuals uh may speak up to 3 minutes a piece and just as a reminder um the school committee members will not directly respond in the meeting to questions or concerns that are raised um people can join uh to

003speak either in person or online uh we just ask that folks introduce themselves uh along with their address for the record is anyone here to participate in public comment in person all right I don't see anyone um now I'm going to ask if there's anyone virtually who would like to participate uh in public comment to please raise your hand anyone [Music] Mark nobody's raised their Okay so so um that ends that portion of the meeting um and now we will move to Super inance report great so before we um get to meet our student Representatives some are returning and some or new um just want to mention a couple things before our other agenda items um so it's been three weeks since we met last and a lot has been happening in schools as you

004can imagine um we finished out all our open houses which was great I was able to go to all of those connect with staff and parents um and it was just kind of like it's always an exciting time of the year where there's a lot to look forward to um a lot of positive spirit it was really um really really nice uh the next thing I I don't know if you all saw my communication last week to the community but we're working on a community engagement event potentially tied to to a building based event that's already scheduled just so we can get more people involved um the idea behind this kind of similar to last year where I did the listening and learning forums wanted to continue that but in a slightly different vein this

005year where we're we're now talking about this is the work we're engaged in give a chance for Community to come in and um both hear from me and from their principal um so it's an opportunity for the principal to also talk about kind of these are the things we're doing here whether it's at Glover or kind and whatever it is these are the things we're doing kind of reflecting on some of the district work we're doing but also kind of personalizing it at the building level um and I think these are the kinds of things that I plan to do year after year I think it's really important to to be out and connect with people um as we're continuing to to move along with our implementation plan so that is coming and information will

006be coming soon on kind of logistics around that um We are continuing with our our kind of recasting of professional learning um we've got our first big professional uh PD day in November we've had we'll have a couple half days before that we had one we have another one coming um you all know because you've arranged child care and things like that so no surprise there um but we're really really excited um in planning for November and feel like you know the the onus is on us to make these opportunities for staff really meaningful um impactful and also work towards building coherence collectively so it's something that um Regina has taken the lead on and is uh meeting with lots and lots of people to help to to bring that together so there'll be more

007to share on that soon um our action teams for our implementation plan are getting off the ground now we kind of didn't try to start them right at the beginning of September because we had so much just kind of getting into the school year that we had to do so um we kind of shared information this week with those teams we'll be starting to to put the work together that you're going to hear tonight from um Jenny and Fa who are going to talk about priority area 2 and they'll be sharing a little bit more and about the structure of what the year is going to look like for their action teams the work they're going to accomplish um or are planning to accomplish and U kind of giving some kind of a vision of

008of what this is going to look [Music] like um Monster Dash is on the 27th mark your calendars and that's that's what I've got here so I if there are no questions move on to our student representatives and B do you do you w to introduce them do you want me to or should we have them introduce themselves let's have them introduce themselves cuz I'm sorry I do not remember everyone's name especially last name maybe they can come up wait time Adam you've got a knack for [Laughter] timing I did get your message I was like I really hope he comes and then just you walked glad to be here so do you all just want to kind of introduce yourselves and maybe talk a little bit about kind of why you're either coming back

009or why you're kind of a first time representative here and then imagine the school committee will have some questions too okay so my name isas Kos and I am the junior representative for our our school committee and um I've come back this is my third year doing in this position and um I think one of our societal and institutional strengths here in Milton and especially here at Milton High School is diversity and and um I've really appreciated all of um my peers and all of the different people from different backgrounds um in cultures and nationalities and religions and um I really sort of um gotten a chance to learn more about their story and um and I love to you know Express their views um when it comes to all the issues we face so

010um I love doing this work um hi my name is Sydney I'm the senior representative this is also my third year doing kind of working as a school committee rep um and so I got involved about three years ago because I was kind of interested in the school committee my mom's a teacher here so I kind of knew what was going on and I was looking to get more involved and over the years I've become really passionate about it and I've realized that it's kind of an extension of my civic responsibility obviously like I can't vote but here is an example of me exercising like my opinions and the opinions of my peers in my community to the best of my ability and so through that I've become really passionate about this and I really

011like this work so yeah hi um I'm Olivia wolson I'm new this year I'm a sophomore rep alongside Adam um I decided to join this year I think because it's always been I've always been taught that if there was anything that I want to like change or have a voice on I should just come to the table where it's being done um I also think as it's been said it's important to have kind of diverse voices in these kind of spaces and I think I bring a new um voice and a new experience to this kind of group so I'm really excited to work with you all and um I think that I can bring a lot to us hi my name's Adam cheers uh it's good to be joining you again for second year

012I was here last year as a freshman rep and continuing as a sophomore rep um with Olivia and I joined because I was really curious about what it would look like for me to take ownership in my education and um being in a group like this I've had opportunities to engage with bigger District questions um and see where you know we can meet the opinions of the students with faculty and with the administration uh so I look forward to doing that this year as well hey thank you um any any questions yeah I think people can ask question yeah any questions that U members have of the student Representatives uh I guess what are you most hoping to accomplish in the the upcoming year um I think last year we really dealt with the issue

013of the calendar and religious holidays and I think if we can take that to a further step um via a subcommittee I think we talked about that you know in the last meeting last year back in the spring um so creating that subcommittee and really engaging on that different level is um The Next Step um and if we could settle that if we could create a plan um the deadline for the 2026 School year is I think November or early December so you know have to finalize the calendar so um I think we could do a lot of work with that um in um the next few months yeah and I think we're also looking to um make some decisions around phone policies that are more districtwide rather than kind of based on the schools

014to make certainly the transitions easier year for students and just also make sure that we're inputting the opinions of students and teachers so like the decisions that we're making are reflecting kind of a greater group of people yeah and then just really quickly obviously like as ellia said like we're we had a really big discussion on the calendar last year and then as Olivia was kind of talking about we're looking to expand like we put in a lot of work into that issue and now we're looking to other issues like cell phone policy I think the budget was brought up so thinking like asking students and parents where their kind of values lie in terms of that but whole situation so yeah just expanding our work on last year uh long story short I think

015we want to um focus on those issues and by extension kind of create a communication between this body and students which hasn't always existed and so I'm thankful um to Dr burrows for opening that uh and energizing students to feel valued in conversations related to cell phones or to um the calendar um and being willing to hear those voices and also to you for having us back great any other I just have so how do you guys decide what areas you want to address do you you all come to the table with them do you have a discussion do you reach out to other students like how do you how did you wind up where you wound up with those priorities we meet uh every month with superintendent burrow and then uh ba uh to

016meet and discuss like the issues pertinent to the school committee and then within that we kind of talk about the issues that we think are pertinent to the student committee so student community so with that we're kind of able to narrow down which issues we think are kind of we should discuss the most um and then it's always changing though always evolving okay and then um the relationship is also mutual and so we're constantly ready to hear maybe what are some of the things that the school committee would want um feedback or opinion on by students and teachers good to great um I don't have a question but I do have a comment it sounds like you have quite a robust list of topics to look at and that is great and I think the

017fact that you're taking the time to make sure that they align with what you're concerned about and you think uh students are also thinking about I think that's going to be uh great I know that just sort of watching you and all the work that you did around the calendar was very helpful as we continue to get be more thoughtful about that and and get more information so I appreciate that um Dr Carol I don't know if you have any comments or questions want to make sure you get an opportunity as well thanks Selena um just hi and welcome back and welcome um to our members and yeah thank you for the work that you're doing and um we you know we do need to move quickly I think around that issue of the calendar

018um and so sorting out sort of the plan for that that's a practical way to continue gaining information I think it's um it is something that we need to sort of figure out um within the coming weeks obviously uh so we're ready to participate in a way that impacts this next year's calendar so I'm looking forward to that conversation thank you all so much and hello from The Windy City and I'll just add that um it it's B I love meeting with all of you um and we also see it as our role because school committee is governing here students are existing here and we need to like I think the two of us have talked about we really need to be the glue that kind of like helps to like figure out how to

019bring like your voices to issues that sometimes are you know like if you want more chocolate milk in the school the school committee might not make that kind of decision but just kind of like fig figuring out how to to make what you all want to see happen actionable so I I think that's something that b and I are really committed to and and supporting you all and having strong voices here so thank you yeah thank you all for volunteering again this year and welcome Olivia this year and we're very excited to work with you and as liy said this calendar um conversation going to happen very fast and we're meeting again in two days so it is pretty fast so um yeah we're looking forward to see what you can bring back to to

020share with us thank you all so much for having us thank you for coming in I think we're looking at the future school committee members all right have a good night right thank you very much so um I'll continue now um into implementation plan quarter 1 report um so as we've talked about previously um this is the first of do you want me to share the screen yeah you might as well yeah um this is the first of you know essentially four reports over the course of the Year quarter one quarter two quarter three and then a final report where we sum up the work and we look at our data and we reflect on that Visa V what we've committed to and talk about kind of what what we're seeing in terms of our

021progress and how we might make changes going into the next year so that's our that's our structure um tonight as um mcast has coincided mcast release has coincided with this report we realized that we could we could couch the mcast data presentation into our academic Excellence priority area one um so we're going to start with with that we're going to then switch we're going to continue rather with um priority area 2 and you're going to be hearing from Dr ref Shavers and Jenny Bello who are going to be walking us through the action teams that you may recall from our um your one action plan it's we talk a lot in like 21 22 23 it's it's kind of an Insider thing that we should probably just call it something else but um they're going

022to be talking about those three different groups 2.1 2.2 2.3 if you recall from our numeration um we also have some folks here that are virtual so we have um Brian C Christy chapeta and Cat do ro who are here and V Vu who is our um our data Guru as well so we've got lots of um folks that have been active in helping to put this together um and who this work too so um they may be jumping in occasionally um as needed throughout the presentation before um Regina kind of jumps into these slides I did want to say relative to mcast that one of the things that we've reflected on kind of from last year to this year is you know our our implementation plan 1.1 is around building an instructional framework um

023what we have realized as the data has come out is we need to have a system where we're really unpacking this data looking at it alongside our other formative summative diagnostic assessments and and and figuring out on an annual basis how we're going to be using that data to make changes midy year like beginning year mid year um end of year as well uh so that is something that we are actually this year um you know we're not kind of waiting to build that framework we are actually working on on putting together a structure to you know essentially kind of interpret the data not just in the central office and then sharing that out but engaging our full leadership team and then talking through how how is this getting to the building level to the

024classroom level U so that we build an understanding both of what is relevant in the in the data maybe things that are not as relevant U and and as I said being able to to use that data to make decisions around what we're doing both at the micro level and the macro [Music] level um so that's kind of where we are um we're excited to to build these structures and then have them kind of in place as we as we move forward so um with that I will pass it off to Dr Watts thanks um good evening everyone um it's really my pleasure to present this information to you um I do have just a little warning to start that the slides are very dense in terms of lots of words and lots of numbers

025and that was intentionally done because we will post these on the website so that they're accessible and there's information explaining them if someone were to open them and hasn't listened to this prep presentation or isn't sitting with someone to answer some questions so there's a lot of information I know school committee members may have had a chance to preview it this afternoon so if we could go to the first slide and mcast is quite an undertaking um it's one of the multiple sources of data as you know that we collect here in in Milton as well as across the state but we firmly believe that it's really only one data point that many other forms of evaluation go into evaluating and supporting your child's learning here in the militon schools you know they include um

026diagnostic screeners formative and summative assessments performance-based assessments I'm sure you hear your children talking about I ready and boost um Dibbles uh we have anal screener which we'll hear more about this evening too and then we have curriculum embedded and unit assessment so all of those are important parts of um your child's learning profile it's hard though when the Boston Globe has it on the front page and you're thinking oh my goodness how is my child doing um we um I just also want to say that here in Milton we gave approximately 2,000 3D through 8th graders the math and the ELA um mcast the science um the science mcast was to fifth grade and 8th grade we had about 650 students taking that and we had um at the high school level approximately 250

027students taking it too so it's it's quite a large um number of students doing that no surprise uh they were released almost actually two weeks ago and a day um so we have just begun the process of digging in and understanding what's happening the district um received the hard copies of individual students re reports they've been distributed to the schools they're being put in envelopes and you will have them by the end of the week they should be coming home in the backpacks so I know that will be a question everyone's interested in about how did my individual student do um tonight we'll look at some Statewide Trends and some Milton Trends all right so all this data today was pulled from the desie website and it is linked on this presentation okay from historical

028perspective in the next slide um just to give you a context and the reason why this is Meaningful is because you'll hear us talking about 2019 2019 was the last year that mcast was administered pre pandemic and the state has put in a lot of effort to examining student um per performance and getting it back to the 2019 level so the big takeaways um from the Statewide perspective is that Ela scores declined across all grade levels very concerning to desie they're putting out a number of Grants and in initiatives to address these literacy um lack of progress in getting back to the 2019 level mascot also declined but not to the same degree and there was some unevenness in the pattern and science scores improved in grades five and 10 but then also they noted

029a decline in eight so it's really clear and you'll even see this is true on the Milton results that it is not a clear linear projection to turn to our um pre pandemic levels um the other piece that the state has spent some uh quite a bit of effort and time talking about was accountability indicators and um one of the strong correlations they have identified and um highlighted for districts to be aware of is that high rates of absenteeism correlate with mcast achievement so they are asking districts and supporting districts to really look at that as a problem we'll talk a little bit later about that issue too and it also relates I mean often when we think about mcast we think about um academic Excellence but it also seal is really clearly related to

030that how a child is feeling how connected they feel to the community is important and we do believe impacts their attendance at school so the accountability indicators just so you know from our perspective there are six of them it's the um achievement and growth on Ela scores achievement and growth on math scores science mcast achievement English language Learners progress on access um the the test that we use to to level students English proficiency chronics appenism and um High School metrics if applicable so obviously we don't count those in the elementary school but in high school graduation rates Dropout rates and advanced coursework um so the major takeaways here in Milton um which are similar to the state takeaways but the first and most important thing that I really would like people to be ground founded

031in is that Milton public school students continue to outperform State averages on All State and across all grade levels you look at our district as a whole we um so that is good news um but we also need to think about areas where we would like to focus our attention and input uh we experienced a decline in ela in most grades and mixed performance and math um the ELA grade four um gained seven points and this is a high point um grade 10 surpassed this is important in the state their 2019 performance as I said we're looking back at that year as an important indicator year um the other thing I want to say is even though our science results declined this year there really back to um they're back it's a looks like a

032decline but in reality they're back to the 2019 level um it's a reminder that sometimes when you have they did so well last year so it looks like they declined in comparison to last year but when you look longitudinally back um it's actually not a decline we are back to the 2019 level for science um so science is only just a reminder is only given in two grades at the element at at the fifth grade and then um ninth grade right I'm sorry blanking on that for a second but it's because there are fewer years you're taking the science actually 8th grade fifth grade eighth grade and um 10th grade so you are um there's a smaller sample on sides here so it looks like it's results so we'll go back and look at that

033when we put up the scores um the next slide talks about uh priority subgroups which are what we are using to look at um measures of accountability and our 10th grade El scores are really bolstering the students in our subg subgroups but when you look down at different subgroups we have identified areas of concern in science the performance of all students in priority subgroups has declined from last year and although students in subgroups are continue to perform better than the state they do not com they do not um perform as well as students uh as our white students or other other groups of students so we're really concerned that students with disabilities English Learners lowincome students Afric African-American black students and Hispanic and Latino students really supporting them um having them feel part of the

034community and looking at their achievement in subgroups here's the overall results this is a lot um but we thought it was important to have it all out there so this Compares last year this year and the state so last year this is Ela results last year is in the light yellow it looks red on here on my paper it looks kind of orangey and then blue is the state I think you can see it in general we would think a minimum of a 2% difference would be might be more than chance so if you don't have more than a two 2% so we're looking at the values that are more than three digits apart from each other as okay is this significant it's a question mark when you have something that is 10 points lower

035than the previous year obviously that would be significant depends upon the sample size and again that impacts particularly the science um results so that so those are the ELA results um you can see the performance differences at different grade levels at different schools and the next phase of the work is really to do a deep dive into the grade level performances and the teachers and being led by the principles and the assistant principles and the curriculum coordinators will be looking at that at dur at grade level planning times the next is the math mcast very similar again you see Milton students outperforming the state which are the blue bars um third grade there's no major concerns fourth grade looks very stable fifth grade some more challenging issues on the math performance um grade six and

036seven look stable eighth grade has the greatest gaps since pre pandemic if you notice um well you'll see that on another slide too on a later slide but the eighth grade is um the year that we really see some changes and 10th grade is fairly consistent and then um the next one is science which looks a little less confusing since we don't have as many grades and um you'll see all are above the state [Music] level okay so word word about um accountability determinant um I I mentioned that there are different indicators that the state looks at to determine these accountability ratings and you'll see them on a chart shortly um we get information about individual schools and some general information about the district but really this is a chance for people to look up

037their individual schools all of our individual School remain highly rated according to des's accountability framework as compared to schools in their same grade span so another words desie Compares all the K to five school elementary schools all the middle schools and all the high schools if you have a k to8 building they're in a different group um and some schools have I don't know in the public maybe Charter Schools K to 12 those are in a different group so these are compared to other elementary schools um I listed there on the bottom just exactly what the accountability measures they look for and just so you know you'll see that initial student SGP that refers to student growth percentile and essent it essentially means um you are looking at an individual students performance compared to a

038group the group of students that they said they scored similar to the year before so if I scored a 50 last year in ela and this year I scored a 75 my student growth potential would be higher if I scored a 25 not so okay so that's what student growth potential is regarding so on the next um slide we have information about all of our schools um Jessie has um listed their accountability determinations overall the district we are meeting or exceeding all of our Targets on those seven accountability factors um and then they break it down for each Elementary [Music] School okay the next piece of this is really about the pace of recovery another very dense slide of information um regarding um how we are doing um so I'm going to call your attention

039to the left portion of the slide where it has Milton Ela result by this is all Ela the the left portion of the slide um is the percent of students meeting seeding last year um the last in the last five years so each column is a five year um reminder the 2021 was the hybrid Year and that was also the year where some students were able to take the test remotely some took it at school and we only administered half of it so there is great caution in looking at those scores um people have raised concerns about it so some some people are saying we shouldn't even be reporting it but we are so it's it's on the chart there for your reference um the 2019 is obviously what the state has chosen to look

040at as our pathway back to recovery um on the path you'll see that you will look at 2019 uh it's not again as I said before it's not a linear path and if you compare on the right side the chart it shows you the percentage meeting or exceeding compared to the state at a given in a given year so the like I don't the fourth from the right shows that 5% of excuse me the state had minus 2% and we are at minus5 in terms of the percent exceeding where they were in 2019 so meaning we are doing we're doing worse than the state in terms of the percent of improvement yes percent of yeah right so we were higher so it's a little it's it's you think about our scores were higher so we're

041not progressing as quickly as this data average yeah I don't know V V did you want to add something to that you do a really beautiful job explaining that I'm not sure that I did as clear a job as you [Music] can sure so um we are in this chart we're basically looking at um how the rate of change of uh progress back to in the first in the first set of columns to the right of the slide we're comparing ourselves back to 2023 as compared to um the state and the change that it made um over the last year so in that grade three Ela how you would read that slide is um we have a five percentage Point decline from last year whereas the state has a 2 percentage points decline okay and

042what Regina is talking about is that um Al scores are usually much higher than the state so and the state obviously is a state average um they have a lot more students in that sample size than we do um so we use the State numbers as kind of a gauge to see where we are as compared to the state average and then the last two columns are comparing our progress back to 2019 um versus the state progress back to 2019 so in these set sub number what you're seeing is we are um for the most part in most grade level um are making uh faster gains back than the state so whereas we only have um for example in grade three Ela we're only nine percentage points off from where we were in 2019 versus

043the state is 14 points off okay um and then if you look down all the way at the 10th grade ELA what you see there is we actually are um higher than where we were back in 2019 so our grade 10 students are making steady progress um and you know accomplishing um even more games than what we had hoped for which is just back to 2019 which is definitely a highlight of the mcast um our 10th grade performance the next chart is very similar it's the math pace of recovery chart so multiple grades are steady grades three 4 5 7 and 10 when you're comparing them to post pandemic post pandemic that would be on the left hand side of this uh slide um but you know we still have some work to do to

044recoup skills when you look at the right hand side of the slide grades 4 through eight grades 4 through eight um the first the the uh 1 through fourth there I'm sorry I'm losing it on this on this this charts I didn't write down enough so um it's just you see that we comparing it to 2019 we still have some work to do in terms of the percentages and science similar on the next slide again this is a smaller sample sample size um but we have similar results we're making progress on recouping but not totally there um subgroup performance is the next piece and we when we compare the subgroup performance of our district subgroups um in the green is where you see we are leading the state by a double digit double digit difference

045in percent percentage of students who are meeting or exceeding so there's lots of good news there but we still cannot Overlook the fact that our subgroup students when you compare them within Milton are lagging behind and we want to support them and continue to develop programs for them clearly a complex picture MH in every subgroup um and every content area of Milton students perform better than the state subgroups um and in many cases as you saw all those green boxes it was a double digit double digit historically the differences still exist um between our subgroups within our schools um the subgroups that we are focusing on our students with disabilities English Learners African-American and black students and Hispanic Latino students um a word about chronic absenteeism as the state has identified that is a critical

046variable um if you want to um the next slide shows a um graph one more one more of our absentee rates there you go this is a graph um the blue line which um is look from the if you're looking at 201819 it looks like it's the fourth one up the thicker blue line is is our average student attendance one thing I call your attention to is on 2018 and 19 the the lines are more closely clustered together um and still even though we've made progress and um students are attending more often there's still pretty large gap in how between our subp groups we want to really um tighten that up for sure so just so you know this is actually the percentage of students with with more than 10 with more than 10 absences

047in a school day in the school year sorry 10% sorry so um more than 18 days out of school so these are students with more than 18 days more than 10% of they've missed more than 10% of school days 18 days is a lot it's a lot of learning MH so if I'm reading it right the Asians are the least likely to take absence from school um yes not surprise okay um so there's a strong correlation between attendance and academic performance um it's good news that our chronic absentee rates have been declining in all of our subgroups with one exception which are the English Learners um whose rate has really not improved others groups while improving are still concerning as I mentioned there's still a gap um greater than we'd like to see we we

048really remain committed um to these priority subgroups and feeling like attendance at school is very important animportant and how to build a sense of connection and culture and support um as well as academic support for these students um you know we we've already developed some plans to do that individually reaching out to students and their families counselors and teachers letting them their know they're important that they should be in school um we are talking we have family resource offic who um supports them um systemwide we um want to address family needs academic programming um as well as um Staffing positions and we've really looked at how to support our English Learners um and what Staffing we need to do that and plan for that in future budgets um okay a slide that everyone always is

049interested in is here District comparisons and um every year desie has comparable districts um based on demographics grade span uh total enrollment as well as the presence of special populations so theyve not they have included Franklin Grafton Holliston noova NAC Needum Sharon a whole host of places Wakefield Welsley and wington um and then we pulled some neighboring towns and put them on the chart in the next so um so I have to say that well our we have a a lower um per pupil spending C per the average lower than the state average Milton is still um uh doing quite well in comparison to these other districts and has the lowest rate of chronic absenteeism and all of that data is on the next chart so you'll see where we are um our Ela math

050and science is stronger than our Geographic neighbors that would be Canton um brancher Dam um but not necessarily true for our Desi comparables and our if you look our per pupil spending is close to brain tree and Walpole and we did better in all three testing domains um and we're most probably when we when a and I really looked at this we're probably most comparable to wall Poole especially the percentage of students with high needs and we are doing better [Music] so just uh wrapping this up I know it was a lot of talking and a lot of data um MPS continues to outperform the state in all tested areas across all grade levels and within priority subgroups grade 10 hooray for grade 10 U they've made steady progress and gains in ela surpassing its

051pre-pandemic level and it's recovered to a prepandemic level in math also um grade three math per surpassed its pre-pandemic level and our chronic absenteeism rate even is declining for most subgroups so all of those things are good news um and we outlined on the next slide a few next steps of things we were thinking about and working on including anal Iz in student and item analysis um with our grade level teams particularly in math that's really one of the first steps we're thinking about refining and implementing a standard tiered instruction in math um reviewing and analyzing our Ela um curriculum and the coordinators who have joined us will speak more specifically about this in terms of answering your questions we also are looking to to strengthen our tier one instruction and prioritize chronic absenteeism and

052the final slide which sort of relates all of this information and hopefully puts the mcast in context is that it's one standardized data point as um Dr burrow said earlier tonight it's used as a benchmark for what students have learned the assessments help us identify areas where students need additional support and it holds school and the district accountable for our programs um and we've really identified challenges within our community that are going to be directly addressed by the work of our action teams as we build systems and processes to work um on academic excellence and culture climate and well-being now we have five different things up here listed that I think directly relate to supporting our students and the action teams will be focusing their work on doing that for students so developing a shared

053instructional framework a multi-tiered system of support um continuous Improvement of professional learning supporting diversity Equity inclusion and belonging and social emotional learning and I think that's a really nice segue to talk a little bit I don't know if we want to do questions at the end or maybe it should entertain questions that's a lot of information in our way yes it's ENT that would be my inclination okay um if there are questions from M our comments oh um I'm I guess I can start um I think this is you know I love that we're highlighting the positives but also Focus you know kind of saying there are areas that we need to work on and get back to um prepandemic levels and I know it's the Journey Back is much more complex and it's not

054as easy as oh okay next year we're going to do this and this and this and improve it um so I really appreciate the thought that has gone into all of this I love that we are really focusing also on absentee you know and that connection that has been made is so important my first question is what exactly are we doing like what are the steps that we're taking to kind of reduce that like is this like are there follow-ups with families and just trying to understand how do we how do we reach out um to kind of yes help with that so if obviously if an individual family has concerns about their student um the first place they start is discussing it with their teachers right as a system we do have a lot

055of systemwide work to do to support and you know we've begun that work in a very systematic way right now the task for us is to dig in to and analyze these results um looking for more patterns looking for Effective strategies that are working refine our curriculum pieces on that um but as I said if you have individual concerns it would be important for you to the first step is to reach out to your teacher um I could talk a little bit to this too um because it's something that you know wasn't related to this these mcast data at all is previous to that last year you know Desi's major platform was chronic absenteeism and that was if you went to any desie um meeting or conference or or anything they were they were always

056talking about chronic ISM so it's something that we were very have been really well aware of um I would say impact overall has been more significant at the high school and I think a lot of work happened at the high school last year um you may have heard some Rumblings around detentions and things like that so there was there was there's definitely been a lot of work um in setting up systems to to to both help students understand why it's important to be here and you know and obviously we're coming out of a time when it was like you were virtual you were here you were you know like I I think our culture like total culture and this is like Statewide and National culture changed around this is not like a mass issue first

057of all chronic absente is a national issue um so so we at at every level um you know principles have worked with staff have have I would say tightened um our processes to make sure that we're conveying to families the importance and sometimes you know something like a detention may be helpful for a student sometimes it's not um depending on what that student needs so it's something that I'm sure Jenny um you know in her role as director of counseling andal um could speak to later too in terms of the work that is done in terms of Family Outreach because a lot of these issues are they're not simple issues where we need to tell a family being at school is important and then it happens we need to we need to go and meet

058families kind of where they are and it's a family thing it's not just a student thing um so so that is something that we have done a lot of work on and continue to I I think that's in some ways that as you see the the decline from our peak in 22 um I think a lot of that is a result of of reaching out to students and families and engaging and helping to understand what the issue is is it a block in terms of the student not not wanting to come to school is the issue Transportation um you know like there are a myriad of things that that that can cause that I think that's great um I noticed I know like even on the reporting at Pierce like when you report you know

059your kid is going to be out there are criteria that are you know seen as excused and unexcused absence which is really helpful to as a parent you know like to understand okay my student my child is not going to be excused if something lik uh if I'm taking them out for travel or whatever it is you know so um I think that helps to give families parameters in terms of what is accepted and what's not so I think that's great I mean it's interesting because it's at a time when like in the professional World everyone's going virtual and like it's I think it's there's like a dissonance in our culture to great thank you can I ask a followup to that yeah or maybe just a um so recognizing that it is layered right

060it's layered it's not one reason for anything to your point it could be Transportation it could be a number of things I think one of the issues is the concern concerns is do we have so the staff to meet that need especially when we look at we have very few counselors um guidance counselors therapists which you know just in in my work I see it like this is a a huge issue across the board and it's not always a simple issue and it's not a oh I just didn't want you know it's it's it's it's nothing not one simple thing but when trying to address that need there are only so many adjustment counselors from therapist so I think that that's a piece that we really will need to figure out to make sure that

061we have the supports there to address it because it is really it is really complex I do there is a part of me that kind of laughs that the headline was chronic absenteeism affects scores it was sort of like was that a surprise I mean it was sort of that big headline and I was like well of course if you're not there you're not learning so I I don't know that's sort of not like a red herring but it just sort of felt like an odd thing when desie came out with it um I did have a question too around looking at some of the so we go through the different scores by dis by school and then when we get into what did you call them because there's so much information yeah the rate

062of progress and then it's more on a um is it that one yeah the it's yeah the subgroup stuff it's it's it's a big at a whole District level and understanding that there are some schools that are smaller that you wouldn't you know it we going to get into the ones and twos and FES so I recognize not having that but are we looking at some of these [Music] um some of these levels these scores at a school level as opposed to right now G and and seeing because you know in some of these looking at it you know you get concerned about you know are there are their schools more impacted than others and just really being able to look at at it at that level and and seeing where that need is to

063address it and um absolutely you know some of the earlier slides do uh present information um per school but the subgroup slides we did not break it down there that information is available this is just so much we thought it was important to have a global understanding of where the district is and each individual School the other thing on these rate of progress a point that did not make really well I was trying to make but didn't express myself very well is um in grades four through eth those were our first through fourth graders um during the pandemic they were at a critical time in their educational life in terms of learning to read and learning early numeracy Concepts that impact later functioning and you'll notice our our rate of progress in in the grades

064now 4 through eight our previous first through fourth graders is not as strong as our 10th graders are doing great but they were they were a little older when the pandemic hit so it's showing us that we really need to look at that subgroup of kids as a whole and supporting them right Dr Carol thank you um thank you for the presentation Dr Watts you're welcome so um one just following up sort of on what you were saying Amanda I mean it seems clear and this is not new um but EV you know Tucker um clearly is um facing different challenges than are other elementary schools or they're being um addressed leading to different results so just want to make sure that you know as As you move forward obviously we've tried things over the

065years Tucker and Pierce obviously I just think it's an important to name that you know we have two of our schools that are um uh where the data is quite a bit more concerning um but on the point of um um like the grade level cohorts piece that you were just talking about Dr Watts I just wanted to clarify one piece and it actually is on this slide that you pulled to um so just you know and I'm always thinking about how members of the community you know are hearing the overview of the data and and um what their level of like understanding might be with how like what this even is captured ing so just looking at Tucker for example on this slide when we have the Tucker grade four like that is last

066year's grade four as compared to this year's or sorry two years ago grade four as compared to last year's grade four right so like the 20 23 so those are not the same cohort of kids like so they're currently Fifth and six foll year so actually just to for my own Clarity like if we're looking at the yel med the 2023 Tucker grade 4 46 but then you look at Tucker grade five 46 that cohort of students actually kind of was flat from one year to the next right y yeah so it's not that that cohort of kids from one year to the next like perform so much worse than they had before but it does raise questions about like as you were just saying I think what is happening for that group of kids

067that might be different from say um the class before and after them which are performing better than them do you see what I'm saying I you I know that um you know you indicated that you're gonna from this point on you'll be going on to do some of that more like fine-tuned analysis but I just think that like those kinds of um taking a step back can help people like think about what is it that I'm actually seeing here like what does it represent um so I just wanted to bring that up but then uh kind of relatedly because the last thing I wanted to just appreciate in what you said was yes that mcass is only one of like so many different kinds of data and I know that Dr Bros you're really focus

068on building new systems to make data informed decisions um I'm wondering or I guess a hoping requesting that you know in one of our future reports quarterly reports you know could we maybe have additional when we're kind of getting updates in this um priority one academic excellence like some some additional data from some of those other sources um that kind of help us gain those additional snapshots of like how we're doing growth-wise for example with I ready data or um you know whatever it might be that helps us in the community then have that like more contextualized picture of like our trends when it comes to this kind of academic performance basically so just put that out there not I guess I'm not asking any questions that I need answers right now but I appreciate

069all the work this represents thanks so much yeah thank you Lizzie um I would Echo I think a lot of what what's been said and I think for me the story is very similar to um last year which is again what's happening at Tucker can we continue to pay close attention um because uh regardless of what you look at it's the school that continues to lag behind and I keep you know saying to myself we are such a small District shame on us we should not be letting any of the of our schools lag behind uh because we're small we're small and we can do something and I and I love the fact that we're building the systems that we need in order to be able to track the data look at it more carefully

070and then be able to intervene accordingly um the other part that I was thinking about and something we might want to consider um and I'm sure you will um but continue to think about the supports we need to put in place for English language Learners I think we know that it's a growing population in the district and we are not necessarily equipped to meet the needs and so and there's going to be a lot of intersection obviously between the English language Learners and the other um the other you know demographics that we look at like is it low income is it you know are the parents not speaking English and if so what do we have in place in The District in order to be able to have conversations with the families Etc it's complex

071and I know it's a lot but I know that that's one area where we don't have the Staffing that we need so something for us to continue to note and pay attention to if we want to see Improvement because that's the one group in tombs of chronic absenteeism that's not necessarily trending in the right direction but thank you and I was going to mention that you know as we lean into FY 26 and budget development you know looking at where do our resources need to go and and moving away from equal to really targeting our resources more um and and having like honest and open conversations about that and I think that's not just at this table but I think it's in the broader Community too to look at you know if if we want

072some of these data points to move and really reach students we have to do something different than status quo right so what does that mean and then what does that mean in the context of of a budget that you know as you looked at that comp comparison across other school districts we are not a high spender right correct so so that's something that I think I I'm excited in in conversations with Celeste she she has a really good eye of kind of what's needed and is is very much focused on on engaging with everybody in terms of what what resources Tucker needs to to move the needle so that's um that's exciting and she's and she's she's actualizing a lot of things right now so this is not like wait for a system to be

073built and then everything's going to be fine this is like what are we doing today and and responding to to you know an understanding of of every class where where things is kind of working really well where more supports need to go in and and then moving on it yeah and I also like to highlight I know things have improved at Pierce but you know it is concerning when you see some of the some of the data points and so you know even giving that school the importance that it needs in terms of like what are the resources they need to really catch up those students you were talking about right like uh from grades 4 to eight that really need the support and you know I know I like 10th grade does great but

074what about like I would love to see those sixth seventh and eighth grade students really you know grow and uh get really positive results and I mean I think just having this information is so helpful too because I think even at the state level to kind of you mentioned I think in your update to us about having funding towards laa programs like this is so important to have and I'm glad they're invesments that are being made because I think we need it you know and I students need it and they they went through a lot in the pandemic and it's phenomenal that we're us looking at this data year over-ear and just kind of you know putting giving it the importance that needs I think you're right to think about Pier yeah because grades it

075was 4 through eight last spring so now it's the fifth through nth graders the ninth grade class it's currently here yeah those were the vulnerable y thank you I have couple questions uh I guess one question I have is uh going back to your point of like the multiple data points in our interm assessments how how aligned were the results we were getting through our inter assessments to this data we're seeing today like how kind of how far off there's a strong correlation okay and um I ready mclass is a little different but I ready um has done a lot of meta analyses to look at mcap pass and Alignment to I ready scores and they're I mean they're not spoton but they're being spot on there's correlation yeah okay so and again I sorry

076I'm forgetting I already is math ma class is and English at the middle school level and English at the middle school level so it's and dibles is Elementary yeah but Dibbles is not a yeah it's a literacy screener not a Ela interim assessment type thing so I guess that'd be my question is like if mclass is not right providing us that because without a good interim assessment we don't know until once a year right like how we are we're getting kind of that oil dip to see kind of where we're at and that's well some is like which one are you focusing on more right like are you giving more weight to in terms of like and this is a conversation we'll have this year as we as we move towards like our our kind

077of kpi lens our key performance indicator lens on a yearly basis is talking about like what is is mcast the target so to speak or like what are we what are we what are we what are we moving towards in terms of saying yes like you know a lot of districts will use third grade reading as like one of the kpis that everyone you know every year you look at reading because it's such an indicator U like the effect size is so large on that data point so I think that's something that we need to talk about in terms of the dipstick that you mentioned like is the is the mclass dipstick more relevant I don't know if cat wants to jump in here at all or not but uh sure um let me just

078make sure I understand the question is it using mclass or just clarifying what mclass is I think my initial question was just do we have the interim Assessments in place right now that provide us the data we feel like we need so that we're not surprised right when the mcast like we we know how to adjust course throughout the year to sport students who based upon an interim assessments are coming as you know concerning not mastering certain standards not being able to kind of do do certain things that we need within in this case Ela um and so yeah I guess that that a broader question of just like is is mclass like doing that for us or not so it's a good question and and ties into this conversation around assessment in general which

079I think is one that we need to keep revisiting as a leadership team as well as this group and informing the the public about what these types of assessments are so Mark I know you're in the field um so you have a different knowledge base but mcast is in certain ways on its own in terms of an assessment and the information we get from that assessment meaning um it's a very high stakes it's very um different for students to take that assessment so there are variables that we don't recreate intentionally in the classroom on an ongoing basis um to your question about interm assessments we do use our curriculum embedded assessments um and as you know in particular and the committee knows because of my presentation last year we are looking to review our tier

080one curriculum and one major component of that is the assessment packages that different curricula have um in order to calibrate and use with Fidelity interm assessments to give us more information that's more predict of this type of a performance assessment or summi of assessment like mcast um we're at a point right now which is typical of an implementation after seven or eight years where teachers are using and availing themselves of curriculum based assessments that are standards aligned but not necessarily curriculum aligned in other words um we're not finding we have what we need at the moment which we already knew based on some data we collected last year and which is why it led us to a curriculum review so it's definitely a major focus and part of the rubric that we'll be using to

081examine current high quality instructional materials um for the reasons you mentioned um and also to make sure that we're supporting teachers with what they need I mean you know an mcast analysis like the one we're having right now is super high level um but it's going to look really different when we use this data for in my case and in Brian and in Christie's like this helps me look at across the district what does tier one instruction need more of at every level um in general for all students and subgroups um and then with a teacher it might be item analysis or looking at student writing symbols which unfortunately Pearson hasn't made that very easy this year um so we're still looking to see how we can use that information with teachers um and then

082again different when we talk about it with families you know how can we help families make sense of what this means and what it does do mean for their students so I think it's a good question I know that I went a little off topic there but I think it's helpful to think about this assessment um the purpose of it how we can use it and what other assessments we can use to really build that student learner profile um in relation to State Standards yeah I appreciate that I mean I mcass as a measure of an individual child right is not should never use that as a measure like does a kid as a kid smart but I think it is a fantastic measure as relates to like how we again from our seat as

083a district are looking at how we are preparing our students to master um grade level standards and so you know from that that is I think Fair push back cut there of just like clarification of that is the lens in which um asking that question I think that's part of the lens of the framing at the beginning of when parents get a report that report is not the be all end all of like your individual child child an individual child is much more complex the district is more complex but it is a helpful standin um I did have some other like Gap comparisons that I was looking at that I just wanted to kind of share if if I could and um like talk through is all right if I share my screen no I

084can but all right so I a couple things so I love charts and I really love all the data I appreciate uh all the patience you'll have um so couple things I looked at was just obviously like the primary metrics here meeting an exceeding percentage uh within the grades SGP and again I appreciate the definition to of SGP I think SGP is a great one because it's not just like hey our kids were high last year they're obviously going to do pretty well this year it's like how much do we grow the students compared to the average and the state average is always 50 so if you're above 50 that means you're growing them more than the average kid in the state um and uh obviously there is no SGP for science because it's it

085jumps so all that's pretty helpful and then State percentile ranks to say you know where do these metrics for us our raw numbers put us within the state as a whole I think is again very helpful and I found this interesting because as you said our Ela performance was not as strong as our math performance on like a meeting and exceeding basis but actually our growth in ela was much stronger than our growth in math as it relates to like how we performed across the state and I think that it's pretty true because the state as a whole again that reported that they had a pretty big fall back in terms of ela performance so overall our kids grew more in ela in 3 through eight than um compared to the the average so I

086think that was pretty interesting uh this is the comparison we were talking about in terms of the schools which again I think is a really important thing I just echoed the sentiment that Lizzy and Selena both made around like and you made about Pierce around like Tucker and Pierce I just would love to hear more about like what are we doing obviously we have longer term things of how we're going to improve instruction across the district that will help lift all boats but like we really need to be doing something in the immediate to say like what are we doing to support those those kids or specific cohorts within Tucker because I think the other thing to name is within your data that you broke out by grade that was helpful because you saw there

087are certain grades in Tucker that are actually outperforming other schools uh and others that that are not so uh obviously again but I I do think kind of overall you know Tucker just remains kind of um not where we want and science was a particular one I don't know if youall have any like thoughts as to why that that might be um because overall science is very strong within the district um except at Tucker so I guess that's that's my first question is if there's you have any like thoughts on that Gap um Christy is online here too so she may want to St on that hi um thank you I I you know I know the Tucker data really stands out to me and I'm honestly I'm pretty surprised by it um I don't

088have a good explanation for why we would see the data that we do have um I do anticipate and this will be a good I guess test of sort of some of the adjustments we've made in elementary science this over the last year or so um we spent a lot of time focusing on fourth grade science both last year and then again we will do that this year where we've really been trying a new model um across the district where all of the fourth grade teachers we we're sort of doing a pairing model where some one teacher is teaching science to more than one maybe one or two classes or two or three depending on the building and then another teacher is teaching social studies or they're doing a bit of a switch so we

089have a little bit more of a science specialist model happening in fourth grade with the hope that strengthening our fourth grade science program will help us um create better results for our fifth graders and I think um I know Tu Tucker being the example the teachers there have been very involved in that work this last year so those what I'm hoping we will see is that those fourth graders are now fifth graders and we should see some significant Improvement um in science It's tricky because science is a three-year grade band also so while the data we see the data in fifth grade it's possible that there are elements of that that are based off of third or fourth grade experiences um so we're sort of slowly working our way back in the grades to try

090to build up our science program but it is an anomaly I think if we were to look at last year's data it definitely was not in that same um at that same level yeah thank you I the other thing I saw just or one of your all thoughts on related to the school achievement is just kic Cott right I think it's important to shout out kot CAU his kind of heads and shoulders you know compared to the other ones right there especially in math achievement percentile meaning exceeding jgp Ela SGP is again equal to Glover so it's not quite as high but their overall achievements in ela is again pretty significantly lar higher in terms of meeting and exceeding and just wondering if there's anything within that in terms of operationally like the the schedule

091or the way in which Holly is utilized your staff or um just anything that y'all youall are seeing or maybe not and it's something yall are still looking to kind of investigate um as relates again just learnings that we can try and take elsewhere yeah I mean that I mean just knowing the structures that are for elementary schools I don't nothing stands out to me as some structure at kot that doesn't exist at our other three schools that we would you know that would intentionally put a kott and then we would move over um so I think it's I mean these things as we've talked about throughout this presentation are multi-layered right um so I think it's it's kind of looking at what in terms of the needs both at at individual buildings and cohorts

092within those buildings um and teacher teams I I think it's there's not like a one-sized fits-all answer to to that um I think historically I know last year kott and Glover were both um schools of Distinction from Desi um so I think there's a a long history there of of very high high performance um and I think our focus is really on on it's not necessarily taking a structure from Kut but it's more looking at at what are the needs in our other schools and and helping to lift them yeah I just didn't know if they had again like more common planning time right more observations that like Holly's able to do for some way within her schedule and get in the classroom to get feedback or uh again I know we try and create

093kind of consistency and systems across but I also know principles have autonomy and right they they're all they're all quite different um so yeah well those are all things we you know as we move forward we're looking at all of our schedules um across again not just at the building L but across all schools so we are the work we are doing to align practice is kind of bringing all those different pieces of our structures into place to have conversations around what's working and not working and um yeah I don't I don't believe that there's a specific like CPT there or you know like a planning time or something that's really different yeah um just another in terms of like just trying to look at given one of our goals from school committee is Right

094focusing on kind of uh historically underperforming groups and so looking at kind of some of the selected populations this is low income versus non- low income so we obviously have a pretty G big gap informance I'll say like all these gaps exist across the state and so um but I again I think it's something that we as a group should be very aware of like what are the existing gaps that exist within and youall showed a lot of this kind of within the table uh which I think is which was fantastic I appreciate that um I think the one in particular in terms of these groups I just want to highlight because again concerns about is the students with disability versus non- students with disability um and then kind of I did the same thing

095here with our raal groups um and obviously again our black students kind of in every category far kind of below our next level LAX students doing a little bit better but still again not not close to where they are uh in terms of the overall average and the other three groups um and so just in thinking about those two the other thing I I wondered was how does this compare with the state because again we know these averages exist across the the state and one thing I want to flag is like our percentile ranks for these things right our district Ela percentile rank that orange is our like overall all students is where we rank across the state so again we're in the top 10% fantastic job um but if we just compare our uh

096black students against black students in every other District we drop we're below the 80% um in the exact numbers over here we're like so we are it's not just that we have a gap internally it's that we are serving our black students at a I don't know worse not a worse rate but like we're we're not serving them as well on average as districts across the state um and that's true for ELA Math and Science and then same thing if we look at students with disabilities again our overall uh percentile rank in terms of how we're performing in these three subjects for students with disabilities if we're just comparing that with districts and their students with disabilities each of these drop and so I I think like I would love to just as we talk

097through kind of improvements and like you know all the work that yall are yall have done and you will continue to do to kind of lay down the instructional growth I think just hearing about how in particular we're thinking about these kind of lowest performing groups um um and working to improve the educational opportunities that they have within our district because again our our black students are performing much poorer that means in order to get them to catch up we need them to actually be doing better than everybody else in the state right we we need their sgps and these are the sgps for the groups we need their sgps to be higher than everybody else because that's the only way we're going to start closing those gaps um and so I just think that's

098a it's important piece to to recognize with this data um and so I I don't it's a very difficult question in terms of how we move this and it's something that I think a lot of districts struggle with so I don't expect you to have an answer on the spot um it's more a just wanted to share my investigation and again bring this to the committee because I think it's again something we've told ourselves we want to to do um and then obviously though if you have any initial thoughts love to hear so yeah I think this is a definitely a larger conversation that we're not going to sort of um you know there's I think great questions being asked I'm wondering too if at a high level sort of the analysis and the way

099you looked at the data would be a good sort of analysis for us to keep in mind and do that analysis of the data um you know next year as we look at it um and in other any other um data that we're looking data points to be able to look at it from that um perspective because they I mean we did see some of it but I think we could go deeper uh in terms of being able to look at that I'm just um conscious of of the time so um I think there's sorry just one more because I I want to end on a positive note of I I think the resource piece is again something we talk about as a group and ask and so again from a scatterplot perspective love love

100a good scatter plot uh how districts are performing this just Ela the same thing for math versus our per pupil tuition so if you're low here that means you're spending we're in the bottom 20% of District spending but we're in the you're you know you want to be further to the right of this graph that means your students are you know more of your students are meeting exing expectations so out of districts that spend as much as we do only one District in the state spends less than we do and has better results for students another one spends just a little bit more than us and has better results but we are and again shout out to hopin and Belmont those are the two districts there um so they're doing great great work uh but

101again I just think this gets back to like the resource piece that we we talk about of like there is a there's a gap here of like you know there is an issue where we are not kind of resourcing our our schools as much as we probably should uh in order to try and reach the the results we want um so again I think within the context within that context I think there are some great results here want to celebrate that but sorry can I ask one other just one other thing when we're looking at it and and I know it's probably um intuitive or obvious because you're just flipping it but it's great to see the growth like meeting in exceeding expectations but there's the other side that's that's partial meeting and partially and

102not meeting and it's you know it's it is such a high stakes unfortunately um test and so I think it would just be important as well to see that side of it to see because I think that does bring some of those challenges to light to then see because if you're not meeting expectations you're you know you're not graduating and so I think it would just be important to track how that those numbers change even though it is just the inverse and you could make that you know you could come to that conclusion but I just think it's important to see that graphically as well to see where those numbers are changing or how that what that looks like from a demographic and a high needs or high priority group standpoint or just be helpful

103yeah right so we're ready for I think so yeah Okay so we've got more guests coming up Margaret do you want to come up too or so Margaret Carol's from the mil Coalition is here as well hi everyone all right I don't think ours is going to be as dense as the you want just to introduce yourselves for people who are watching of course um so my name is um Dr fa Shavers I'm the director of De diversity Equity inclusion and belonging here at the Milton Public Schools hi I'm Jenny Bello I am the director of counseling seal um which is a new position actually this year in the district um and a new position of course for me but I previously sat here um I've been an adjustment counselor here at the high school

104for the last 10 years so I'm definitely excited about this new position all right so today we're presenting our quarterly report specifically on priority area um two and like Peter said 2.1 2.2 2.3 Jenny is um the lead for 2.1 I'm the lead for 2.2 and then we both are leading 2.3 um and as a lot of you I'm sure have seen the implementation plan is on the website um you can go down to slide three um we believe as a district that the academic success of our students is very tied to them feeling confident feeling like they belong um the culture of the school the district and so on and we believe that that's tied to the Deb aspect as well as the aspect and so priority area too um is focused very strongly

105on that um and obviously the whole plan is um from academic excellence in priority area one to three we looking at ass and operations want to make sure that we are being holistic as we think of our students and their success um but today we'll be focused primarily on 2.2 I mean two area two so you start great um so PRI um priority area 2.1 um sustaining an inclusive and collaborative organizational culture that Fosters continuous Improvement in professional learning and practice um so really you know like fa had said this is really focused you know onal on inclusion um and starting off with figureing out what are the data assessments that we're using in the district right now um how are we assessing that what are the surveys that we're using how are we Gathering

106that data and also what are all already the processes that we have in place um so really especially for our first year and we'll go into more specifics of what we're doing the first year but you know for the fiveyear plan it really is gathering that data to start and then in the hope that in five years um we really have all of those processes fully in place we have exactly the data collection tools that we're going to be utilizing we have all the um you know curriculum and systems that we're using and that it's Equitable across all elementary schools and across you know K through 12 um and they build off of each other as we tell controll sorry I thought I was controlling it um so I think it's really important you know

107again as this is a new position for me this year um you know we've had directors of counseling before in the past but thatal has never been added to it um and so I think it's really exciting as a district that we've added that SL component um in a leadership position and really highlighting I think the importance ofal here um so I do just want to highlight you know why isal important um you know high quality programming really does lead to academic performance um it decreases anxiety um and you know behavioral issues within school and so it's important that we really do have goodal curriculum um that's embedded into all the programming so I think just separating the fact and fiction a little bit um you know seal helps students understand different perspectives and shares

108ideas it's not teaching you know a political agenda it's not teaching students how to think it's just teaching them you know different perspectives and how to share those opinions um sale boosts academic performance and deepens engagement with content um it's not a distraction from the academics it's not something that we're adding on to it it's just embedded in the work that we're doing every day with our students um so as far as this first year um so for year one action plan like I said from the beginning really right now um we're starting to do an inventory of the assessments that are utilized so what are the assessments that we're currently using with our students and additionally what are other assessments that we could could be using so really looking at what are those evidence-based

109assessments that are being being utilized in other schools right now at all different age levels and how are they being delivered and how often are they being delivered um you know reporting out on those best practices so what are some of the best practices as far as assessment tools but additionally curriculum um what are the different curriculums that that are being used again talking PRK through2 um and then really coming up with a good system um that we can we can have once we've collected all that data this year um so in priority area 2.2 similar toal we are hoping to have Dei embedded and integrated in everything so when you think of mtss the multi-tiered systems umcl and dib cannot be separated from the academic um achievement of our students um that ties into

110not just what the students are doing but how what the teachers are doing um what department heads are deciding for curriculum what content areas are being covered what books what materials are being used and stuff like that um so similar to um for year one we are conducting a based on analysis of what the district as a whole has what we're doing um what materials we're using and stuff like that um we are creating almost from scratch an assessment tool um to collect that information so that we know where we are so that we know where we um are going forward um we also have um people in place like we have an equity coach we have a restorative justice coach in the department that works on the district level we also have Equity leads

111in schools that work on each School level um middle school has two and the high school has has two and we work very directly with principles and department heads to make sure that um again the voices are being represented of students of teachers and ultimately of community members but that we'll get to that um on the next um in the in the third one 2.3 um to highlight something that we already have that we are using as kind of a jump in of Point um I know in 2021 Claire Galloway Jones completed an equity audit districtwide and there were some findings that she reported um the equity audit is on the dib website for those of you who might be interested in looking through it it's about 80 pages so you know prepare for that

112if you are going to look through it um but some highlights that she found were that um cultural relevance had to be updated in some of our curriculum and on some of our subject areas um in talking to some of the department heads the sier I found that some um progress has been made in some areas and in some areas there still work to be done um there's still a lot of conversation around making sure that every student has access to higher level classes like AP or honors um and then again similar to what Dr Watt shared um the mcast data is one point of proof again that students um in our subgroups like students with disabilities African-American students and so on um are performing on a lower level but then we also know that

113they receive a bit more disciplinary action such as in school and out of school suspensions and so that's something that we'll be looking at to see is that still true a few years later um and then just understanding how what areas we're lacking in in terms of monitoring and culture so some students might feel like they along and feel very strongly like taking ownership of their schools and feeling like they feel known and seen in their classrooms and some students don't um and so a lot of recommendations from the equity audit are already being put in place like increased PD I know at Pierce last year there was um PD done with teachers as well as with students um the anti-hate speech curriculum that kind of got started we're hoping to do that across the

114district um this disrupting disproportionality again just highlighting what are some areas where um things are inequitable and how do we address those things um and then then again just continue to use data to inform the practices and the new policies that we want to put in place so this is just an example of data that we already have in addition to data that we'll be collecting this over this next year to build on um next steps for over the next five years um similarly we're doing um the inventory of practices like I just talked about um we're looking at curriculum we're working very strongly with um department heads to look at what are some curriculum or curricular um areas that department heads feel strongly about they feel like my teachers have a firm grasp on

115this and I feel confident that they can teach it with an equitable lens and what are some areas that they feel like we could come in and support um we have an equity coach Adena Sheek um who works directly with parents so I'm sorry with teachers she's working to help them figure out how to teach with equity in mind and then we have Cyrus Rivers who's meeting on the other end with the students so he's doing more student Le circles um restorative justice proactive Community Building circles and then conflict resolution so we're helping students feel like they belong feel like they have ownership of their education and we're helping teachers on the other hand also feel more confident in their teaching um the assessment tool that we're building is going to be aligned with the

116Desi um culturally responsive look Force it's very closely aligned with um researchers like Geneva gay um Gloria l in billins who created um basically look fors in terms of culturally um responsive pedagogy um and so Desi has kind of used that to create standards um so some of the things include things like um my my I feel known I feel seen by my teacher my culture is relevant in the curriculum and stuff like that and so that's stuff that we'll be using to inform some of the work that we'll be using but again this year we're just building the structures because this is a very heavy work and this is work that will take more than one year to do obviously priority area 2.3 is um where we tie in the the families and the

117community We Believe that students um Thrive and succeed when they feel like there's a close connection between the education and their families um and so um like Peter had mentioned earlier we are working with the action and this is this will come up later with um action teams so members of the action teams for prior year 2.3 specifically also includes community members because we want to make sure that the voices of parents are heard and that students understand that we're working working with families because at the end of the day school and home should not kind of EX exist separately that students understand that your home life and your culture are just as important and um in the same way that when um we think about your feelings your proclivities anything that you feel like

118affects your schoolwork we're working with your families to make sure that you feel um safe at school and you feel like you can be successful um so again we are working on an assessment tool for that for how to get information from parents and families to figure out how parents and caregivers might feel about the school right we don't want to assume that we're everything we're doing is correct and we're operating blind blindly we want to make sure that you also feel good about the things that we're doing um how you feel like you are your voices are being heard that um your feedback has been integrated and so on so again a lot of the first year is just kind of getting that information so that we can um as we proceed we're making

119sure we're proceeding on the right track and then towards the end of the year for priority areas 2.1 2.2 and 2.3 we're going to be presenting what we find to you guys in the annual report um in terms of the action teams for 2.1 we have director of counseling and we also have leads in each school um I believe there two leads in each schools with 12 leads across the district perfect so that's already a big group um in 2.2 there's me as a director of diip the equity coach the restive Justice coach and then the equity lead so another big group in 2.3 we are involving School admin we're involving families or family members um and then we're also involving Comm um department heads that is also a big group um but we will

120be a bit more selective with that just to keep it streamlined so that we can get the work done um but again just collecting as much feedback as possible to make sure that we are aligned and um making sure we're we're on track with the work okay yeah um so moving on to data um so as far as current data so as fa was just talking about she's really building a survey um you know to be going out to students regarding deiv um and what's great is that through performance matters so we already have an Sal survey in performance matters and so what we're actually doing is we're adding the deib survey to that so they can both go out to students at the same time so in the first week of November um all

121students will be taking that assessment so we can kind of get a baseline you know assessment from students regarding you know how connected that they feel as far as seal um you know core competencies areas so I think there's two parts through it one that's going to be great for us to have overall data across the district but what also what's really exciting with performance matters actually being linked into to power school which is you know where we have class schedules and grades is that teachers are then we're going to be doing professional development with teachers that teachers can actually go in and access that data for students that's sitting in their classroom so if a kid is struggling in class or they have behavioral concerns the kids maybe not doing as well that they

122can see some of that data as far as does this kid feel connected do they feel like they have a safe adult in the that they can go to um so there's going to be some of those key pieces too that will just give a bigger picture of some of those students that are sitting in the classroom um there's already been some other data that has been collected that of course the seal leads are going to be using as we're going through all this this year um to inform some of the decisions that we're going to be making and and one of those pieces is the ybs data um so the ybs was um done last April um here at the high school I believe we had about 780 students that did participate in it

123um so we'll go through some of that data right now um so y RBS is the youth risk behavior survey um so Margaret cars here um from the Milton Coalition they are an unbelievable partner with us um we do a lot of great work with them throughout the year um have a lot of students that are really involved um that she works closely with um but they're great as far as us delivering the ybs data to all of our students and then them taking that data and analyzing that data and then bringing the results back to us um so we do have over 60 pages of data there's a lot of information that's really gathered on all different types of topics um so some of the question questions you know regarding topics related to substance

124use so alcohol Vapor Products marijuana prescription drugs um risky behaviors which include driving Under the Influence Suicidal Thoughts behaviors anxiety depression self harm bullying sexual assult violence um and sexual activity furthermore the data can even be further broken down um so in comparison to you know years prior data because we do the ybs every two years um it also compares to State data because this is a state assessment um and then breaks it down to with results by gender um race and ethnicity and then sexual orientation so we're just going to highlight if you can go back on it's okay um we're just going to highlight just a couple points um from the ybs data tonight um so as far as MHS student assets you know a few things that kind of popped out at

125us um rates of alcohol consumption marijuana use vaping and prescription drug um misuse decreased at MHS between 2022 and 2024 um so we have seen rates in all of those areas go down we'll go a little bit further into detail with that too um majority of MHS students have an adult other than their parents in their life that they feel connected to another safe person in this building that they feel like they can talk to and they can come to outside of their family um and also rates of sexual violence have dropped and are significantly lower in Milton than they are Statewide reported um so alcohol use um so we do have a few charts here just to explain so so on all of these red is is going to be MHS data from 2014

126from the ybs um the yellow is MHS 2019 um the middle blue is MHS for 2022 um the pink is 2024 so that was the most recent one from April and then um the state data from 2021 so as you can see for current alcohol use and binge drinking so current alcohol use um is you know having used within the last 30 days um you know it's greatly dropped um so current rates and binge drinking rates have declined since 2019 and are similar to students Statewide um as far as as how students view it in comparison to other substances alcohol um use is definitely viewed as the least risky substance in their eyes though that if they were to use any substance that they feel that alcohol is the least risky of all substances for

127them to use um so marijuana use overall um marijuana use has dropped as well um um as you can see from 2014 to 2024 right now um have a higher percentage of you know males that have reported use within the past month in females um as far as use within their lifetime um black or African-American students and white students reported the highest rates of Lifetime use um as well as current use of marijuana and synthetic marijuana use um so about 17.6 black African-American students have reported that they've used marijuana at some point um and 16.6% of white students have reported using marijuana at some point um again um has dropped though from previous years um as far as nicotine use um so as you can see in 2019 um those rates were very high um

1282018 was also when the Surgeon General had declared um youth um ecigarette ecigarette use as an epidemic so that's really I think when it has spiked um but since then it has started to go down um and we are much lower um you know in comparison to the state rate I'd be curious to see what the state rate is for 2024 again the state rates that we have right now are 2021 so I'd be curious if the state rate is a little bit lower at this point um but across the board to just just another stat was that 11th grade students definitely outpace their peers when it comes to use that the highest amount of use was a was a month a months are 11th graders um when we did this last April uh prescription

129drug and other substance use um so this next one is um that chart is if they've ever took prescription drugs um without a doctor's prescription um so if they were using a using or abusing a prescription drug um and so that had dropped from 2019 to 2024 so only about 3% of students actually said that they took a prescription drug that was not prescribed to them um so then with mental health um so again these numbers we have some one piece is is regarding um students that have considered suicides have had any you know type of suicide ivation um students that have reported depressed symptoms and then students that have um reported symptoms of anxiety um so again the numbers are lower um from what was reported last April not going to lie I was

130actually really surprised by that um um as far as this report I was a little bit surprised that there has been a drop in that and I think it could be for several different reasons I also think that students are accessing more support now um and are reaching out for more counseling support I think that there's not necessarily as much of a stigma at least here at Milton high as far as reaching out to a counselor and talking with someone about it um so in comparison to 2019 um or other years I'm just wondering if there wasn't as much as many students who were maybe feeling that way weren't getting the help that they needed um but that's just kind of thoughts that I've had when I first started looking at some of this data

131um you know rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors are in Decline overall and are definitely lower um here in Milton than they are Statewide um as far as considering Su suicide um Statewide 18.4% of students reported that they had considered suicide at some point um 11.4% of students at MHS in 2022 reported that they had thought thought um or had disclosed some some level of suicidal ideation and in 2024 is 7.1% um which is is lower but it's still High um there's definitely higher rates among female students as well as students who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming or lgbtq um students that did report higher rates of suicidal ideation um as far as self-injurious um behavior um about 14.5% of students reported they had some level of self hiring behavior um in April um

132but I think all of this data again as we're collecting more data throughout the year I think this is you know definitely one of the data points that we can we can use in informing some of the decisions that we're making so the Hope by the end of the year is to have as much data as possible and then make that connection between um feelings of belonging in subgroups such as lgbtqia or um black and brown students or English Learners and so on and see how that's connected to the way they feel about their mental health um if they feel like they can advocate for themselves and so on um and then again just connect that to the academic performance and so that we once again can holistically help all our students and families feel

133like Milton is the place where their students are thriving thank you thank you very much um so at this point we would open it up for comments or question questions I would like to say that I love that you're connecting all aspects of it and tying it back to academic performance I think that's huge uh they've kind of remained separate the last couple of years and I love that you're focused on bringing them together thank you I I I would agree with that and I I think it's um I think it's great that you delve into areas that people don't necessarily always talk about with respect to you know substance use or mental health issues um I think it's important to not have it be a taboo subject to talk about um I did have

134a question about the survey the two surveys that you're doing and saying that they're going to be on power school so when the kids when the when they fill it out is there that um understanding or is there the thing that that they recognize one I assume since it's in power school that they're saying who they are um but two do they recognize how it's going to be used how the how the information will be used and and then can they self- select in or out of doing it yes okay yes to all of that okay um and I will say too that the power school survey it doesn't so the the ybs is anonymous yeah um and that dives really deep right like you are asking very personal questions right um the SEO survey

135asks personal questions but not regarding activities it's more of how you feel so do you feel connected to your peers do you um feel like you have the ability to make responsible decisions it's all self-disclosed in a sense um of how that person's feeling and so our hope is that that's not going to be information that they wouldn't want someone to know or someone to ask or a teacher to be aware of about them and that we can teach them the value of US knowing that information so that we can help and be supportive and better know them as a learner and a student and these surveys will be sent home um with the option for parents to opt opt out of the survey or to have that conversation with your student if you feel

136like the surveys are from second grade through 12th um just for developmental purposes and the parents can decide you know I you read the survey you feel comfortable with it you talk to your student and they take the survey but like Jenny said it is very much um I feel like my teacher knows me or I feel like I'm responsible for my actions those kind of questions so yeah no I think it's helpful I just yeah I do appreciate that you are sharing it with families beforehand and bringing them into into the conversation so they can have those conversations with the students you know and I think um I think more of and you mentioned earlier getting feedback from families you know like hey what are we doing how can we do it better like

137are your you know are you being heard you know and I I think that's so so important to make that connection between home and school you know because there's this whole like a lot of students I remember when I was a kid like my home life was so separate from my my school life and my parents you know like we spoke a different language at home and like there was no connection so I just love that you're kind of bringing it all together and looking at it very holistically and looking at the whole student and everything that makes them who they are so thank you thank you I think the only comment that I would have similarly is the Mental Health Data it is surprising um because uh across the country you're seeing the opposite

138so it it'd be interesting to just know more of you know what is what is here what's represented here U I'm curious about that um because I'm surprised and Lizzie thank you yeah I mean following on what you just said Selena I just wanted to basically celebrate what's encouraging in that data is moving in a positive direction obviously um and I I wanted to um just say how glad I am Jenny that you're now in this role that we've been able to invest in um having you doing this work for the district I think is so important along um with fa and and the continued focus on deib um is Margaret still there yes Margaret I just really would like to thank you and the and the um for the work you've been doing it

139you know if we're seeing this positive movement it's um no doubt really in part driven by the advocacy and awareness raising that you do throughout our community and so I just really want to thank you and all your colleagues and your student leaders for the work that you do um and also just thank you for this yrbs data because you have um you know facilitated us being able to um gain access to this information every two years as it's um you basically uh you know help us with the funding to accomplish this survey as I understand it and um it's so exciting that Jenny you were just able to take us through that presentation of the results I know that two years ago Margaret um you and stormmy were presenting that data to us and

140so I just with that bit of like institutional like historical knowledge I think this is so good this is a sign that um you know the dis the ownership of this data in terms of like how it informs our decisions as a district is is it's become internalized within the district and that takes nothing away from your leadership Margaret and the Coalition um but and it's also I think a great sign of the systemic way that you Dr Rose are like thinking about um driving these improvements and Investments to respond to the the data that we have so um thank you so much Margaret wherever you are Lizzie thank you very much um I think it's just it's really a testament to our collaboration with the schools and our partnership which is incredibly important to

141us and to the work that we do the Coalition is 10 years old this year and um I don't think anyone in this room including me except you you are the only one that has been here since 2014 and seen wow seen the whole history and um the declines that we've seen are dramatic you you started really young so but sometimes it's hard to wrap our heads around that because we see the moment you talk to kids and they're like oh it's terrible oh you know you that that's that's their perception but when you have a chance to look at it over time these decreases have been dramatic and yes there have been decreases around the whole state and the whole country but we were in 2014 50% of our high school students that been

142drinking in the last 30 day 30 days that compared to 36% across the state we had a big problem and there there not a lot of people in in the District that had that institutional knowledge have that historical knowledge of what was going on then um so for now um for us to be exactly pretty much exactly on target with the rest of the state is huge um so thank you thank you thanks to everyone who's been involved um and we're just I really value our our partnership and we were able to do some really interesting and impactful things for our students so Margaret I so appreciate you putting that into context that's 10 years that it has taken to do this work and how much more work we we can continue to do but

143how important it is to keep in mind that it it's not a one year right all always new parents and new students who need to have this information need to have their misperceptions about cannabis or alcohol or any of these drugs um always new drugs coming out there on the street and being available to to Children's always changing so we have to keep on top of that and I'm so glad that the ybs is being folded in folded more into what the schools are doing because the Coalition is federally funded Grant funded we have four years left that's it then the federal money goes away so it's going to be up to the town um to figure out what they want to do with this kind of work because I don't believe it's just the

144responsibility of the schools we're a community we all care about our children and about uh the future of our community so we should all step up and be there my personal take I I do have a question do you have any I know we looked at high school data do you have any data like with Middle School like how Middle School there is a whole um youth Health survey report that um can be made available to you yeah um and our in general our middle School data is fantastic um youth in Milton generally don't start using substances until 8th grade nth grade um so those numbers are really really low um there are some small concerns where you see little upticks but you're going from 1% to 4% or 3% so but I'm sure we'll

145share I'm I don't know if the all the data will go up on the website but we'll get it to you great thank you yeah absolutely um yeah that was one question I had is just is the reports uh going to be posted on the website I did a quick quick search on a new beautiful website yeah we we can we haven't done it yet but um uh just so I'm understanding the graph correctly too the comparison to the state is from 2021 the last 2021 um data from the state is notoriously slow but more recent data is out now and I can get you a link to that okay yeah I think 2023 is out now cool um two other and I think you're hitting in on the end in terms of subgroups does

146the report itself have for the breakdown of kind of differentiation in these areas by different how students identify it does okay that would be really great to see them and then um your the point you made about like State vaping I don't know State as a whole but the CDC came out with a whole report on how vaping has plummeted since again peaked uh back in 2018 um so it's fantastic it's some like 5% of students report vaping um in the last so many days uh question on the survey similar the power school one is this just like an in and I guess maybe this is TBD but is like this a benchmark survey in some way with students we using this uh taking this kind of across the state or across the country is

147this just an internal survey and so okay soal it's just internal and I think the hope for us is that we do it in the spring and or we do it in the fall and in the spring every year gota and then over time we'll be able to assess for the first so we have the data from last year and then this year will be adding in the IB questions and then over the next years um fall and spring we'll collect the dib andal together there and then we'll be able to compare them yeah that's great I think putting that in place so we can see what that will be over time again just as you know we're showing within this data how that slope all the great stuff Through the Wire BS um so

148starting collect them now will be fantastic um only other question I have was on uh the 2.3 um I assume are we like leaning on PTO leader I know it said we talked to pto's but we really leaning on them for like to help lead on this and so I'm working with principles and the principles will be the ones talking to the PTO presidents um but we are reaching out to um specifically um members of the Dei Dei committees and then CPAC um even though I know there's M multiple subgroups again to keep it as contained as possible um those two we felt like were important people to involve and then with the principles involving the PTO presidents and having them be the uh Messengers and you know to get the word out um yeah

149great thank you all for all your great all right well thank you so much and uh we look forward to the continuing the conversation thank you thank you does that wrap up your part that's all right I keep going oh you know why not so now we'll move to uh chair's report which uh Lizzie will be doing from Chicago thanks Selena so this will be quick um the only topic under the chair's report is uh to Circle back on the masc delegate assembly um and that's takes place at the masc Joint conference uh which is what's on our agenda here um so uh this has been mentioned before but we need to make a decision because we have to submit by October 21st the name of our delegate to this joint conference which takes place

150November 6th through the 9th last year as you know I served as our delegate to the conference and to the assembly and I had I had hoped slash not hoped but I had hoped that I was going to be able to do that again this year but I have realized that I'm actually not going to be able to make it to the conference this year um so I wanted to come back and open up to the group uh the question of whether someone else would like to is able to and would like to attend in you know to represent us that would be something we have to vote on tonight um to appoint someone as our delegate I want to just uh the the actual delegate assembly takes place on Friday November 8th um I

151wanted to just frame this as you know when I was there last year my observations were first of all what takes place at this assembly at this meeting it's the annual business meeting of the misc so what our delegate does in attending that meeting is vote on um the appointment of new masc officers for the coming year and then vote kind of carry forward to represent Milton School committee's um recommendations on the 10 resolutions that are before us we have those in our folders those have been shared with us by masc the resolutions are on a variety of topics obviously um and then however the body votes sort of creates recommendations on those different topics uh they're non-binding um resolutions what I observed in the room last year was you know I don't know percentage

152wise what number of school committees in the Commonwealth are sending delegates to the assembly but if we are not able to send someone it's fine I mean a lot of school committees are not represented by a delegate at the conference so I think that is a totally acceptable outcome if with all of our busy schedules we are not able to send a delegate this year and I apologize that I'm unable to do it um so tonight though I'm hoping to deci like does anyone want to do this if so we will nominate you right like now and vote for you to be our delegate on November 8th um does anyone have any questions or are we going to just sort of decide that for 2024 isn't selling sending a delegate um and all that means

153is you know our perspectives will not be weighing in on our electing officers and uh the resolutions by topic if we do appoint a delegate tonight at our next meeting on the 23rd we will um take up the resolutions one by one and vote you know our committee recommendation which is what our delegate would then vote in the room on the November 8th so that's all all right so with that is there someone who is eager and wants to go and represent I think we don't have anyone I thought I saw Mark S I think I did um so I think we have our answer we will not be sending a representative to the conference all good okay thank you anyway and maybe next year we you know we'll get the reports on the resolutions

154obviously that are passed and then we'll be able to stay kind of connected with what masc is doing as we always you know are trying to do anyway but thank you everybody that's it for me yeah thank you so much Lizzie and it's come to my attention that actually we missed one aspect of the superintendence report and that is the Desi end of year report so we're going to go to that now great it over to Katie so I'm not goingon to go into the um specific numbers or details that are contained within the report there is a copy of the report um that you have provided with the meeting materials you can certainly take a look and if there's any specific questions I'm more than happy to address those I did um just want

155to provide some context around what the endof year report is for those that might be listening or for those that may watch um the meeting at a later date so each year the district is required to submit an endof year report to the Department of Elementary and secondary education the endof year report is used by desie for a number of different reasons including the determination of per pupil expenditure and we did talk a little bit about the per pupil expenditure um when we were reviewing the mcast data earlier in the presentation so that ties directly to um the report that we submitted to the state at the end of September um the report is also submitted so that we can ensure a compliance with net School spending and so for those that may not know

156net School spending the Commonwealth School Finance statute Chapter 70 of Mass General law establishes an annual net School spending requirement for each Massachusetts school district so we are required to spend at a certain level within each fiscal year um the end of year year report is a source of a large portion of the comparative financial information that's included on the desie website so um if the community or if anyone was interested in looking at any of the information historical information from milon public schools and you go to the desie website that information and the financial data that's contained there is provided directly from the school um with the except format or Excel file that we submit every year um and in reference to that the end of your report that we submit it's an electronic

157file and it's standard across the Commonwealth so we're not responsible for coming up with um the component pieces that we're reporting to the state the state comes up with the format and sets the requirements of what we're reporting for our accounting information and then we're just responsible for submitting that information by a specific point in the year and that timing for us is um the due date is September 30th so that's the report that you have tonight another Point um that I just wanted to mention briefly is that the numbers are unaudited so we are required to have an outside auditor come in and take a look at that information just to make sure that everything's correct and that process typically happens in December in January and we're required to submit that report by April

158of 2025 and which will we can report back once we get that final um audit information from our outside auditor and so and then of course the state will populate those per pupil expenditure numbers and then at that point we'll be able to do some more of that comparative analysis around how do we compare to the state how do we compare to our comp districts um if we've kind of been able to close that Gap because we know that we are spending below the state average um and then just really taking a look at the numbers and kind of seeing how we're able to um make adjustments in our spending to be able to support the work that we're doing here per people spending every the numbers are all the so essentially everybody's submitting the

159same thing correct and so the numbers are the numbers so it's apples and apples it's not like well somebody over reports this okay it's good that's where it comes from yes okay great that's it thank youor that's okay that's okay want to keep people waiting no very good um so if there are no questions or comments others uh we'll keep going so Finance subcommittee report uh Finance not a whole lot to report on finance subcommittee uh just that we we did have a meeting last week right um where we talked a little bit more about the timeline um Katie continues to uh train us and inform us on the things we need to know uh as school committee members um uh and so was again helpful we talked a bit about this the coordination as

160well with Warren committee and select board and so we've now started to uh nail down a date we have our first meeting with select board on the 25th I believe um and so that will be helpful I know the Peter and kitty are already meeting with um folks of the the town themselves to um talk through kind of finances and planning for next year and they shared that they've been doing some internal work uh or begun internal work for budgeting for FY 26 um which is crazy because we just kicked off the school year but that's the timeline we're in um yeah I think those are it unless there's anything else I miss there okay do we have warrants for approval we do have three warrants uh for approval uh so I will make the

161motion I believe I've shared all these out with y'all maybe not 13 I'll double check um but signed all these I'll make a motion to approve warrant number 11 in the amount of $ 37,6 18021 payable on 926 2024 warrant number 12 in the amount of $4 54,2 19442 payable on 10324 and warrant number 13 in the amount of 22855 and10 payable on 10124 have a second second great we'll do a roll call vote uh Lizzy yes Anna yes Selena yes Al yes Amanda yes and I'm a yes that's it for finance all right uh so now we'll move to uh policy okay all right um sorry uh so for policy we have um you will see um fize um so we did not meet for policy but we have a second reading for um

162section g um we have um the kind of um highle sheet uh that Glenn put together with the notes um for each uh policy within section g they're also in the policy subcommittee folder from um September 18th uh but um he kind of does a high level of all the policies um and the updates that need to be made for each of them uh that's in your folder um and so we will need to uh vote on them to approve them um so um that's really it I can go ahead and make a motion if that works um uh I will make a motion to approve um second reading of Milton school committee policy manual section g do I have a second second okay uh thank you I'll do a roll call vote uh Lizzy

163yes Mark yes Amanda yes B yes uh Selena yes thank you all right um moving right along School building committee report great I think we have a guest here for school building committee report uh the one and only uh chair of the school building committee sha oror good evening you uh uh yeah only got me to sh y okay think you're good all right all right U just for the record for other people Shan to meeting member Precinct chair of the school building committee um School building committee met uh Monday the 30th that was our last meeting uh just want to share with you kind of some updates that are there uh so dive in really quick our our schedule that we've been working for or with our Architects uh basic he has us completing

164schematic design which I'll present to you tonight um right now in October uh essentially with that we're going to try to run another cost estimate to kind of refine uh to see where we're at the two things that cost estiment will play in or revisions to the plans right now but also uh DeLay So further escalation so whatever cost savings we may Realize by furthering the design may get sacrific due to escalation due to a longer time so originally as we were putting the schedule together we were looking at a town meeting in December as we're all well aware there's not going to be a December town meeting uh when that town meeting occurs it will kind of push everything that you're seeing here out um further also you know there's been talk about a

165town boat potentially in the spring for debt exclusion for everything uh similarly for a town meeting in May as everyone knows were any of those things there's prep associated with that and typically the warrant committee for any town meeting uh starts meeting around February to March to listen to Warrant articles and stuff so for us it you know this red line that you see here is US essentially running out of money so after that the architectural consultant away they are complete with schematic design we don't have any additional funding to keep them going so essentially the projects at a pause or halt um we do have funding for our owners project manager we're utilizing them right now as you guys are also aware msba will make a decision to us whether we get accepted or

166not probably by they were saying the end of November beginning in December uh whether we get accepted or not we'll make a kind of decision Point what the owners project manager is going to be working on we talked about our last meeting uh is a cost analysis whether we go with msba or we don't go with msba so one of the things to keep in mind if we decide to go with msba we hit a reset button we go all the way back to the beginning restart over and again experience further delay um will get a reimbursement on that and what we're trying to do is weigh that reimbursement against against that escalation and let it feed into everybody for the decision- making uh the intent what we're hoping for is if we had a

167December town meeting and we could kind of keep the schedule we were trying to still hold that completion date of August 2027 for the school that is not happening anymore so as I said as this you know these points start shifting out uh we're looking 2028 2029 potentially for a school so for this committee one thing you guys need to be aware of is between now and 2028 2029 there's going to be space needs and you'll have to address those very shortly so let's jump into the fun stuff uh the site so as you're all well aware the solid Blue Line you see here is guile Road uh as part of the land swap that was passed and signed by the governor in July uh we would now take this road and move it over

168to the side creating space for the school and what this these diagrams do is basically show you how The Architects came to the kind of geometry of the building building so as they moved it there and set a clearing site they identified the parking lot and kind of a shape of the building once they had the shape of the building they started looking at flows of how students and faculty will come in and out of the building and then essentially as they did that further and the building started to take shape what you see here is essentially their massing of it so trying to put you know take 2D plans move it into it you know use the z-axis and make threedimensional and essentially this was the massing plan they created basically large blobs that

169you guys have seen floor plans floor but started you know just let you know it's starting to take shape the this is the exploded view that I know we've seen previously one of the things to note on here as part of the revisions that we made leading up to August is we had 8 teams we have reduced it down to seven teams now to reduce square footage there was a decision made by uh the um uh the the leadership with the district Dr fish superintendent Burrows and other Representatives so previously most of the floor plans we've shown have been boxes so what you're seeing now is an evolution of the building uh that that just gives a little more depth to it so if we focus in on that entry area that we talked about

170now as you enter into the building the first thing you'll experience is the cafeteria so the cafeteria we'll zoom into that is basically large enough for all all the students to be there and one of the things to note that's not really highlighted here is this wall that'll be here it's basically the intention is to have a partition a quiet space for students that don't want to be in a loud cafeteria um the other one to notice when we get up to the Upper Floor the Upper Floor you know comes over this curved line here and everything to the left of this in this orange space is like a double height space space so it's it would be like a very large atrim now in the building on the first floor in this corner uh

171we'll dive into a couple of the rooms as you can see we have a gymnasium one of the things that we took away from the visioning session is the gymnasium at the Pierce right now doesn't have stands so we wanted to make sure there are stands there so as you have sports games people can sit and they're not standing against the wall like there in the Pierce associated with that we have office space for the gymnasium Walker rooms and everything else also a cardio yoga room uh that's over here so all these are right size based on previous um implementations you've seen now art and music so we do have an auditorium in here I believe it's 350 seats for the auditorium there's a stage drama room associated with that Ensemble chorus and practice space

172along with the piano lb in this Wing one of the things to note is we're looking to have you know this may be used at off times for different things so and we're adding also a restroom in this area for public so when this is used now as we go back through the building and as students would typically enter wrap around here down this hallway you'll see this is basically where we line up all the World Language rooms and this gray area over here actually used to be classrooms but this is one of the biggest updates that we got is we made it into mechanical electrical space and restrooms the reason being is with these were classrooms there was no natural light getting in here because those of you know gal Road Brooks field right

173here there's about a 15 12 to 15 foot elevation difference so students that be sitting in this classroom looking out they' be looking at a wall um so what the Architects did is came up with an idea of infilling this area rather than putting a retaining wall here and utilizing this solid wall of the building as the retaining wall as of cost savings um by doing so it introduces something really unique on the second floor when we get there so you know the other part with cafeteria is the kitchen all the back house space that's here and then similarly as you e exit out over here there's a plaza area that we'll touch on in future slides um the staircase that goes up is essentially meant to be ornamental uh wide open up to the

174Upper Floor and as we transition up you would basically come up the staircase open out and essentially enter uh you know Atrium area here as you go down the hallway we start introducing into the first team of class classrooms so the makeup of each team is three classrooms the science room prep and small group rooms along with planning space for the teachers along with this common space in the middle for learning Commons that basically allows everybody to collaborate in a common space um as we go back down as I mentioned the media or Library area is located here above the cafeteria and this is that Atrium space down to the cfer so there'll be some views from the media space down um additionally art rooms stem Flex everything here now the unique thing about filling

175in that wall that's there now is we're creating a Terrace on the outside of the second floor that directly will be able to connect over to Burks field so that's a unique thing thing um that we were trying to do for for a while and basically The Architects made it happen so I'm very excited about that um and then basically as you get up to the third and fourth floor they're kind of repetitive uh we have groups of teams special ed so essentially three teams per floor on the third and fourth floor now as I mentioned we started engaging the landscape architect and this is kind of the fun stuff uh so as they looked at this that area as you if you the building area right here is essentially where the cafeteria is and

176this is the exterior space that's adjacent to the cafeteria along with preschool space and place space there so as we dive in outside of the preschool space first thing to note there's shaded area down in this corner uh through a typical tarp that you see that that's at a lot of outdoor spaces right now in a play area um again with the height difference that's going on here one of the things there will be a retaining wall along this area and there the opportunity for artwork or murals um the the other part is because we're going to have a height difference where that wall is there there's an opportunity if you look at Item B uh for Terrace seating or some type of special seating for the outdoors um and then if we go over

177to similar item C and D so C Is Right Here Again using that slope space they're looking at kind of a slope play area uh for the children and D again uh a wall space here one of the things to note is there's additional outdoor seating here so students that come out of the cafeteria have the ability to go outside on like 10 um for me right now that's that's about the update on you know floor plans and stuff like that I'm sure other people may have questions there's plenty of other slides I can bring up if there are questions and I'll turn it back over and stuff Shar thank you um so do folks have U questions members have questions or comments the the design looks very exciting and it's just very um how

178do you put it it's very thoughtful um in in a lot of different ways and I I love that the library actually have this bridge that the student can just walk over to Brookville um but I don't see that in the picture like the the picture that you show the last slid that you show it shows the ground floor my understanding is that the the the library is also the ground floor in a way yeah so so what what's it and let me just go back and share again just so we can point to it I apologize just keep it up so one of the things that you seeing it's actually a good catch is this area that you're pointing to right here for that Terrace area uh the the landscape architect had the the

179Terrace area that we talked about go from here on the second floor so it's the second floor that basically walks right out um that area that they're looking at is in works right now the the stuff you're seeing from the landscape architect was done before they could accomplish this so originally it was all open space back there and this that's one of the gray areas between the design that we're working on right now obviously we get more funding be able to finalize it awesome great any any other comments Lizzy cool I just want to make sure I don't miss Lizzie if she has anything oh good all right um so just again Sean thank you I know how much work has gotone into this and thank you for walking us through that timeline as well

180and of where we are given sort of the turn of events and um we're still in waiting mode and uh we need to see what happens but anything else from yeah from the school building committee uh kind of continuation of last we don't language on this do anything other discuss it is there's the two warrant articles that building committee sorry I got it sorry folks uh kind of continuation of last what we talked about last time there's two warn articles the school building committee voted on uh to send to to recommend to select board which was funding for continued design and then full funding the $173 million for the full project as Warren articles go to town again as Sean said the December town meeting which now won't be in December not quite sure when

181it will be exactly um so that is still in front of this group to discuss and weigh in on if we so choose as to whether or not we vote to support those worn articles that's I think what the school building committee uh would ask of us is that we you know um would throw our support behind that um one or both but I think both given they both supported it um to so that both School building committee and school committee could be aligned in asking select board to kind of put those warrants out there and then further was the conversation we started to have last time but we were in the absence of a couple of our members which was related to the discussion of the prek program uh as a potential cost Savings

182of you know we are at the school project it came in obviously more expensive than we wanted to um the only way to cut this is timeline wise which as we talked about last time that's not going in the right direction we're actually going the wrong direction from a timeline perspective because of some delays we're we're running into with um getting out in front and votes um but the other one is cutting square footage and the clearest way to cut square footage uh from my perspective at least would be like the preap program um there so anyways that that was a something kind of I brought up as a point of discussion wanting us and it's been clear on our conversations that the school committee is the entity again that like sets what is the

183programmatic element for the new school building construction so we are the ones whove set the K the 78 and preschool program that the school building committee is working towards fulfilling so we would be the ones who would vote to change that if if that's what we want to do um so again we don't have votes on the agenda for any of those three items but um we could continue to have the conversation today or delay it good yeah so just just to chime in so um I watched the last meeting I saw the presentation for the with the preschool and U also the the you know the potential of having a field there if I can I'm just going to share my screen one more time and something that you know for the land swap

184people may not have remembered so part of the land swap when we did the land swap there was a transfer of conservation land there was also a transfer of parks land so along Randolf EV where the access road is it's kind of skewed a little bit this is going north towards Boston this is going south towards Randolph so the access road that goes up here over the summer I met with the parks department and one of the questions was what can we do with the land that's coming up to us as a park department for the goes through as part of the transfer so what happens is when we looked at that Parks has about 4.5 4.7 Acres as part of the land swap that's there so there's acreage up there as part of this

185land swap that they gave up on gal road that they're getting at the access road right now so one of the things I've been trying to do is work with the consultant to see how much of this land is actually usable from Conservation Commission there were concerns that part of the land may not be usable but for Parks what I tried to do is sketch in a soccer field for what you could fit up there so when I looked at it you could essentially fit two soccer fields up there right now on this space now the other thing that's of note here to keep in mind is the yellow line that's here that bcts these two Parcels that we're looking at is the lease line for Granite Links right the there's potential to you know

186my understanding is at some point that lease line may get changed and then that may open up additional opportunity to gain additional access up here for more Parkland that's at least the Hope um and then so this you know if if the in in installation of a field you know to create a field to cut the prek there's other you know options that are also there too that that are out there I just say it just for you know everyone's knowledge before you make a decision just based on a field the other part is when you look at that too if you delete the prek out you have and you're going to build a field you also have to look at the cost of what it's going to cost to build that field the prek

187is about1 18 million to take off the off the total number what is the cost to build the field the other one too to give a true Apples to Apples comparison if you're going to keep prek at uh Cunningham and Tucker as as they are now there are certain classrooms that are not built for prek that are being used for preet what is it going to cost to renovate those to get them to the same level as what you would get on out Road and as you do that and weigh those numbers out then make your decision um the other part to keep in mind too if you do the straight math the 173 million right now that was posted on the town website the tax impact on the average home is about $1,100 a

188year if you take off 18 million off that it's roughly $100 a year to $1 a year savings just linear math by doing it um so again even though it sounds like you're making a large savings there when you're talking tax impacts there you're talking about $100 per year to cut out this preschool though you know the preschool component of uh classroom conversion of some of your cannibalization is eating up a lot of space it's also eating bathrooms that can't be used by other people there too so you know it it's it's complex it's not as simple as just saying to cut square footage and do that also keep in mind as as I mentioned we went from eight teams to seven teams that was a concession already made there too um so you know

189as this stuff starts coming around I just bring these to light so everybody's kind of on the same page before you make a decision great thank you um I think per the agenda we're not uh prepared to take a vote today uh but definitely can have the conversation and I think Amanda it's you and I who were not at the meeting um so um definitely and for others if there's other uh thoughts that have come up since the last uh meeting um this would be a time to have it and I I think that's the extent of the conversation that we can have today um Lizzie please correct me if I'm wrong no I think that's I think that's right I think you know this these are big decisions and um we should take the

190time to fully consider them along that line and I think it would be good and important for us to um sort of access some additional like concrete information to the points that you were just raising Sean I don't know how we will do that maybe needing to work with um I don't know I guess through the school building committee I'm not sure if it's through facilities to understand what the cost would be of um sort of accommodating the prek continuing to accommodate prek within the existing elementary schools um things like that like Sean you were just saying allow us to like do a cost benefit analysis to make a decision I think the fact that town meeting is not happening in December clearly like we do have some time to consider this before we move

191forward with um a final recommendation from the school committee uh so that's just my current thinking but I'm interested in in this discussion which we'll continue thank you Lizzie um so Amanda I don't know I'd hate to put you on the spot but if you have any sort of initial thoughts and definitely I'm happy to share mine as well um well that was my question around you know the I thought was an interesting idea about the prek but it but it does seem like there are so many other so what does that then look like from a space planning standpoint like things have been designed or planned out in a way that those classrooms are coming out so then if they don't come out what do what are the implications like I just feel like

192there's a lot that I don't understand um about what that would mean if it didn't if there weren't a separate building you know I mean so it's sort of the whole picture right now it's not it's not the same picture just by moving it back in does that make sense so um so that piece is um I I feel like I don't have enough information to really say whether it seems like a feasible solution um I guess one of the questions I do have and when we're talking about the delay delay because the town meeting isn't going to happen until at least the spring um is part of what the work that you guys are doing is there a um as the best you can is there a cost implication of you know the escalation

193costs for the delay as you're looking at things or is there and then similarly it sounds like you said so there's a decision of some sort going to be made in December is that just a next phase decision or a final decision do you know what I mean like is that like okay this next round made it of people made it here or is it okay Milton we are you you get them funding so for for msba would be an invitation so be an invitation into their core program which means we' be eligible for the funding okay um that's kind of external for msba they make that decision you know we've applied four times we haven't been approved right uh fingers are crossed hope we get in um but even if we get in like

194I said it's a decision then to the town to look at it say do we want to hit reset and wait seven years right and you know figure out what the short-term Band-Aids we have to do there what are the costs of those and then what is the additional escalation on this overall project um things to keep in mind is msba cost cost reimbursements get diluted so they advertise it at 45% right now uh there's caps on how much square foot costs they'll pay for so if we have a building that's $800 a square foot they only pay $600 a square foot we have to eat $200 a square foot um there's other things that play in for classroom sizes are bigger for msba compared to what we're doing we actually have smaller classroom sizes

195that we work with with the district uh so potentially the building may get Larter um so it's it for me you know the good thing we have a Consultants right now that are experts on this I'm having them really dive into this to really do that analysis and then honestly present it to us as a third party so we can kind of weigh in on that decision um so you know if we get in in December it's a it's a very tough decision there'll be this committee our committee select board and all that to kind of weigh in you know all weigh in on it it's you know it's very important decision and so the people who do that the the math for that the figuring out the the cost differences those are is that

196the who does that our own is project manager PMA Consultants so they they've they have experience on msba projects and with the program we have now they're running through the kind of laundry list of spaces that we have to understand which ones would be which ones would be reimbursed and which ones wouldn't and try to see the deluded Factor would be to your question on escalation they were within the cost estimate the estimator was holding 5.33% escalation okay per per year well they were only assuming at that point a delay to October 2025 a onee delay um so yeah yeah the way they they they typically base their escalation to we we got into a deep dive with this the other day of this may be too technical but to the bid price of the

197contractor the bid date of the contractor with the anticipation of that that bid date the contractor's already taking into account further escalation as their number and then what they do is they anticipate as a midpoint of the construction duration as their escalation point not the entire duration thanks thank you Sean um anything else um I I think you know I didn't get to weighin last time and I think similar to you Amanda I don't feel like I have enough information um from a programmatic perspective of what the impact would be um to just get rid of the prek um I think it would be important to understand that not only looking at our students now but also thinking about all those other families that we haven't taken into account in our calculations of the housing

198that's coming so I'm very uh cognizant of that um and but really I think mostly wanting to understand the programmatic impact and then um thinking about the other costs as you said Sean that we would have to take into account in order to make adequate spaces in our current buildings uh to house pre in a way that we're proud of uh and not just make do with the spaces that we have but actually do it well um and what that would cost overall so I think there's uh not enough information to be able to arrive at a decision at least I wouldn't be able to arrive at a decision right now um I would lean more towards keeping the project whole on on the note that you just mentioned you mind if I share my

199screen sorry last time not at all go ahead last time no graphs I promise sorry myphs all right so one of the things that came up this is this this is actually something I apologize I should have gave this part of my presentation um when we met with msba the Town Administrator gave a highlight one of the questions that got asked by msba what's going on with new developments in the town that are permitted or under construction um so what what happened was there was a breakdown of projects that are out there for 40b units and other other ones that are there so they were kind of broken down into two groups projects that we know are coming but don't have a spec specific construction date for them projects that are permitted and expected to

200come on fiscal year 2024 uh projects that are permanent and under construction and projects that are completed um so one of the things when NBTA Community zoning came up was student yield for uh spaces so the uh RK rkg or the the consultant that the planning board had uh used certain assumptions for Studio One bedrooms two bedrooms and three bedrooms for student yield so essentially a two-bedroom unit you'd have to have 20 of them before you get one student but if you have a three-bedroom unit it automatically yields one student there so when you you take those numbers that we just had from there you look at the breakdowns of what the units are for the TBD group that are there you're looking at about 60 kids 58 kids uh for the project permitted ected

201you're looking about 25 kids un permanent and under construction you're looking at about 22 kids and then projects completed you're looking at about you know 1.6 students now the this one the Elliot Street one here is is important because this was talked about a number of times on how that type of um uh development doesn't yield a lot of students the reason being is there's no three-bedroom units they're all two-bedroom one-bedroom units so the yield on them is very low but a lot of the newer developments that are coming out there's a lot of three-bedroom units in there so on the horizon as we're talking about for the shortterm thing and you're looking at your enrollment projections we're looking at roughly another 108 kids coming in over the next couple years so again we're already

202at capacity we don't have space so this will be another thing that you guys school committee will start need to figure out yeah so thank you thank you for that I think that's what sits in the back of my mind as we as we look at the plan um other for folks who were here members who are here if there are any additional um thoughts on this um I think it'd be good to continue the conversation sure mhm I I have a question does building the preschool program is able to serve all the kids in the town who are eligible to go to preschool like no right it's only for it's it's a lottery if I remember right it's similar to what we are doing right now we yeah we have a few different programs

203so um it's a special aded program preschool it also has uh half day program that families can Lottery into or sign up for um and then we also have a full day program at at Tucker which is um also a a lottery yeah we often don't have a lottery for the half day the half day is easier to get into the full day is a lot harder to get into yeah so we're saying that the building of this um preschool building is moving all these three different kinds of preschool program into that and free up the spaces in all the elementary schools right now actually just in coming T yes y yeah it's not Universal preschool he along with preschool keep in mind fifth grade is also coming out of all the elementaries too so

204just can can we just clarify one piece about the prek just to so with the the programming we currently have we are able to serve all of the special education students who access Services who have prek starting at age3 plus the peers that are we are required to have in those pre right so we have um a lottery program essentially because the full day program which is not driven by special education that is um that is something that there would be more demand for for room spaces if we had spaces right I just want to Peter can we just clarify like to B's question about what like demand we're we're currently we're complying with what we're required to do for prek from a special education perspective yeah the only additional yeah the only additional are

205doing one program beyond what we are required to do yeah exactly yeah our full Daya Tucker is a one additional nonrequired preschool one class yeah yeah everything else we're required to do and we're doing it yep yeah okay [Music] thanks so I guess a question that comes up would facilities be able to get us sort of those costs of outfitting the current classrooms uh that are being used for prek that are not you know whatever we would have to do um just wondering what other information we could bring to this table that would help us understand I can from a programmatic perspective I I mean I completely agree I think love to hear from that from a cost perspective I mean I think we could ask I I mean part of this depends on like

206what do we want to right so like for a field like what are we talking about like are we talking about a artificial turf field with like an underlayment like we're talking about with lower gu or we talking about a professional grass um you know soccer field or be talking about just a grass lawn uh that we will be used as a field so like there's different levels in terms of what cost and investment we want to put in that you know unfortunately gets a little bit in the weeds there as relates to like how much this pushes up the cost I guess we certainly have again as Sean has mentioned experts like R OPM sorry I wasn't here as a field in lie of those preschool question sorry I mean well that's a whole

207a whole other conversation that I don't think that one that was a suggestion yeah that no it's a great great point it's a whole that's a whole other point of like as a field even what like I don't think the determination on cutting out the preschool should be based on the fact that we can fit a like we want a field and like that's we're going to get rid of preschool because we want a field like I don't in my mind that's not the reason to do it the reason to do is to cut costs and the conver ation of the field I brought up as it relates like we know that is a struggling point for the town I think that would be a thing that would provide additional support for the town and

208for the project itself and ultimately our goal I believe our goal is as we've voted on before is to get a school building project done and so just part of the conversation is like how do we go about doing that and is the best way to do that to keep the project as is is it given the costs to reduce costs in some way and that was The Proposal so that was kind of the the overall framing of the conversation last time uh and yeah the idea of the field was simply like again was simply like here's something we could do but maybe it's not a field maybe it's something else and part of that though is bleeding a little bit in the lines of like what is school building committee's responsibility versus our responsibility

209and I don't necessarily like and then there's the programmatic element of like what would the principal what does the district kind of want to provide those upper middle school students in terms of a an outside experience uh is it a skate park which I'm sure that the neighbors over there would love or you know what like what what is it I don't know it could obviously be a lot of things and those have different cost implications uh in terms of in the current buildings we obviously as we know have pre- in the current buildings so it's a question of like what are we looking to do are we looking to create spaces that have dedicated bathrooms within each and ensure that every prek building classroom has a bathroom which all of do not and so

210if that is the request I think we certainly could figure out like try and get some estimate as to maybe what that would be from a r rough estimate perspective um is it to create larger size prek classrooms because we know at Cunningham some of those are like they're various sizes and there are some that are somewhat small somewhat bigger and so like are we trying the nice thing about the new prek building is like they're all kind of equally large size so the experience for kids uh across space is equivalent uh that's not a current reality of our current spaces so like from what are we trying to create within those spaces um so again that's just the complexity of when we get into those details of like there are cost implications for all

211of those things and so what is the estimate we're trying to provide to the committee gets challenging um to to share with honesty because people might have different expectations what like we mean by creating a prek space within our current buildings so it sounds to me like maybe we might might want to start with digging deeper on the programmatic implications of removing the prek and then from there we can obviously create a wish list of things we would like the existing prek classrooms to have and then give direction so that we can find estimates like it feels like that's something that would be good to have yeah just one thing for I spoke at select board last night because there there's certain agenda items we've been requesting for them for a while um one of

212the things that came back in public comment response is there seems to be or in their their minds confusion from school committee on what the program is going forward so because of that uh confusion as they put it um they're it seems that they're uh holding to do any actions further or anything like that to to move forward so I think the quicker we can yeah address this and get to a resolution on what this committee would like to do and we'll get the project kind of back on track right faster too Lizzy thanks I mean just from my perspective I'd like to sort of respond to that characterization of what we're doing here I I don't think we're confused I don't think there's any confusion I think we're doing due diligence to you know

213um understand all the information and the implications as we continue to try to push this project forward so um it is something that we can definitely continue at our next meeting agree with you Sean hear the need to you know move expeditiously to come to uh like the school committee perspective on those article uh article recommendations that the school building committee put forward but you know I just um don't agree with the characterization of confusion I think we're um pursuing clarity through this process that's what we should be doing in my view yeah I agree with that Liz I I didn't have the chance to see it so I don't want to speak too much given I'm not 100% sure of the characterization but that if that was it that's concerning and certainly I don't

214think the point of this is for me at least speaking of the person who brought it up certainly was not meant to delay any action from any other committee but rather again just a conversation that we want to have around like how do we get those project to the finish line and like is there something else we can do that we should be thinking of and discussing uh to to get it there um so that's disappointing uh Lizzie everybody I guess just name I don't think we have another meeting though for like four weeks because we have our Covance Retreat is that not I might be wrong meeting on October 23rd yeah October 23rd 23rd yeah we have okay October 23rd but governance meeting coming up but it's not on the same day so it's

215the 23rd when we meet again in two weeks I don't have calendar you know what it was we did not receive a calender invite that's for the 23rd yeah you didn't and I have the Govern myself and I have the government has retrieve for the following weekend one on the 6th so that's why that's why I didn't think we had one till the six yes so we do have a meeting on the 23rd right take back we have a retreat next week you said no it's we'll talk about that but yeah no it's h we do have a meeting on the 23rd in two weeks fantastic all right I just want to summarize what I heard from last meeting and this meeting about this new school building project so it seems like the prek building

216is very necessary because we do need to free up the space inside those the two the elementary schools and use them for art classes or music classes for example it seems like these are a music uh the program that's suffering from not having a dedicated location for that um so with that being said like the pre- program seems say it's logically should be built and according to what Sean just shared with us that uh it breakdowns into just1 to $150 difference per month in a tax per year per year in not tax that's like two cups of coffee if you go buy coffees outside I don't want buy coffee outside so um just want to put it into concept of people who are listening uh online or in on the podcast that it does not

217make a huge difference in our daily life by keeping the prek buildings in this project proposal yeah I do I do want to voice so that there are sort of folks that have fixed income so $150 may not seem like a lot but it may sort of definitely you know so for some folks they would feel it differently and I think there um if I understand it correctly there might be ways of mitigating that um so that we can protect sort of our our seniors for instance who live on fixed income so that the impact is not felt in the same way and I may be wrong but I that's what I so shocked yeah sorry if you watch no go ahead yeah if you watch select board meetings they have are working on uh

218senior income restricted tax breaks or some of the stuff in anticipation of you know an operational override coming debt exclusion at some point um so so for for for that group of citizens they are targeting some type of relief for right so I think that's important to note that and and make sure that we we're taking that into account so I think for me I'm I what you shared is great and all the supplemental information that you provided is awesome you know looking at um additional locations for Fields potentially that we could build down the road um is all great I know I think when I look at this like kind of holistically and look at like the earlier part of our meeting when we were looking at you know our data you know and

219the resources needed I I also kind of want to get those numbers to kind of understand because it might be several different asks that we're going to the town for right and that's where I have some concerns in terms of it's a it's a lot we're asking maybe potentially all at once you know and I don't know the timelines of those and I know we're working through that information so and I just want to kind of keep it in perspective I mean Selena you bring up a really good point about our seniors on fixed incomes I was on a call for um the seventh grade Quebec trip last week um and parents are asking how can I get this financial assistance for the $900 that it costs to send their kid on the trip so

220we have to take those families into account too so I just want to make sure even though it's only hundred or $150 or $1,100 annually for the next 30 to 40 years there are families who with students in the schools right now who can't you know who might not be able to participate in a trip that will enhance their learning experience in that particular year that might have to not be able to go and same thing I know with the eth grade DC trip a lot of students want to go to that but uh PTO had to raise a significant amount of money and again we're going back to the same people asking repeatedly to support our students right and support our buildings and support our teachers and our district so we just have to

221be mindful and just kind of keep it into perspective so I think in addition to all of that reconfiguring classro space and all of those additional costs and when I get into into facilities next we'll we'll have more numbers to share so um so again I think there's a lot and I I think for me personally it would be really helpful to kind of have all of this information in addition to the schools I mean the design looks great you know I I love how creative they got with the uh the playground space using kind of kind of um you know kind of um using the curve of the landscape to create that I mean it's beautiful it's very creative you know but I want to make sure that all the effort that's going into

222this it also happens right so I just want to be realistic and uh anyway um I I think there's a lot for us to talk about and I don't know like how quickly will I'll be able to come into you know a decision because there are a lot of moving pieces and parts in so and there are a lot of layers um so I mean I hope we can continue the conversation and and support you as needed and you know and do all of those things but again we just want to make sure that it's a positive outcome right end of the day so just one thing on that too so you know for myself I'm a I'm a single parent single income so well aware of you know the taxing implications and costs associated

223with that I was stunned at 173 million too so um you know our entire committee is aware of that and things the one thing the way I look at this is you know this project you know some people are talking about as an expense for the most part for the town for me it's an investment right it's $173 million investment we're putting in the town this building when it is built will last 50 to 75 years think of the number of children that will go through there put a dollar value to that and that's you know I I just state that because that that's my mindset on the entire oh absolutely you know I mean 100% I absolutely feel that way and and I'm glad you brought that up I think I think it's just

224realistically it's like you know um it's with the cost of things currently and you know cost continuing to rise and just incomes aren't going up at that level so we just have to be mindful that you know we want to make sure that whatever we put out there people do support it because if they don't support it it doesn't happen so just want to be realistic I got to say one of the things I do keep struggling with is like how far down the line are we going to keep kicking us right it's something that we've needed and we've known we needed but we keep pushing it and this is where I think uh it's not a a you know a zero sum game but I do have I do struggle giving up sort of

225the what we through a very careful analysis determined that we needed the space for both right like that's how we got there and so to keep pushing it um it does feel to me like we're just delaying the inevitable and we're just pushing it off to Future Families right like it's not it's something that it's going to be there it's like we find ourselves in the same situation around an operational override we've known we needed but we just oh not this year not this year and so all of a sudden these two things are colliding but that was our own doing so it we we asked for it to come together at the same time we could have taken care of the O uh you know operational override um you soon so it's just and

226why are we asking then our you know the students to suffer longer because we didn't do what we needed to do as adults in the town um so that for me I struggle with that and and um so I feel like I'm at the point where I need to be convinced that we don't need the preschool convince me um because I I am of the mindset that it's worth investing now so we are setting Generations up for a better a better experience but I don't think we're going to resolve that tonight uh I don't know Lizzie if you have anything else otherwise I will so can we just ask then so I'm I guess I'm confused on where um what is needed what is needed from us in order for you to be able to

227move in order for the select board to be able to move forward like is there something that we are I because I I guess I think I'm just going based on I think they're wondering if we're going to cut the program yes we have to whether or not keep the prek or not keep the prek right B Lizzy what we need to do ultimately is take votes here on um recommendations for war articles for the town meeting School building committee already voted those recommendations uh the conversation that was begun at our last meeting has just been continuing is you know are we looking at something other than what the school building committee already recommended which was the full 173 million project as as proposed so that's what we're currently considering um now the timeline of

228um like when we need to actually deliver the recommendation on the warrant articles for the warrant committee's consideration you know I think that's not hard and fast but as you mentioned Sean you know we we do want to weigh in on that sooner rather than later that's um that's what we're currently considering and I think based on this discussion you know I think um I will work with you know you Peter um Anna facilities Mark School building committee and and Selena one of you you know to just see what is it that we're able to collect uh as information that responds to some of the additional questions that have been raised tonight that we will be able to then consider in our next iteration of this discussion at the next me meeting Amanda does that

229make sense so y you know the question of the pr was raised in relation to the um decision that the school committee will take around that 100 recommendation and if we were choosing to change the program you know that is a vote the school committee would have to to undertake that's the school committee's responsibility as of right now what we previously approved was this is a an upper middle school with a pre um on so is that are we Contin you know if we're staying with that recommendation we don't need to vote it to be diff you know to stay the same but if we are going to change it that is something that we would need to do does that answer the question you were raising y it does thank you Sean I do

230have a question um in terms of so you mentioned earlier that we we'll probably find out about msba funding either late November beginning of December timeline um when they you know and if we decide like to go that route or explore that route further um will they have any input into what we decided would be our solution for space needs so we've decided on an upper middle school and a prek if they get involved will they come in and kind of do their own assessment yeah okay great question so when they said you hit the reset button you do you go all the way back to the beginning they'll actually start searching for sites again we all know there's no sites luckily we have a site uh hopefully they'll hold them in but the educational

231programming there they'll do a feasibility study where they'll look through multiple options for example when we started this process five and a half years ago we were thinking about building a new elementary school so they would most likely maybe offer that as an option maybe adopt what we already done and have multiple options there and then through the school building committee they'll get weighed out and you know recommended of which one happens so yeah it's it's a full reset when they do that so it's yeah starting all over again um the other thing too is it was mentioned last night to a select board the the makeup of the school building committee is determined by a certain makeup of the um the way msba does it so I don't think the entire School building committee

232would get replaced but I think it would get augmented with additional members near too like they would add more members yeah there's certain ones I know for procurement I forget the acronyms like M yeah thank you um but there there are certain requirements you have to have a registered architect we do um you know they they like people from Construction Industries myself and some others we've got that but there are certain other ones that they need on there uh specifically and those roles like I said will probably augment what we got out too okay right thank you okay so I think we're gonna close the conversation for now okay um and we're going to move on to um thank you Sean thank you thank you um have this conversation hopefully it's earlier in the night

233so exhausted by the time we like like my brain is fine um to the facilties okay conversation all right so facilities um sent you all an update from our September 16th meeting um and so what we did was have a continuation of that meeting on the the the week after on September 23rd and basically um we had the um architect who was there for that September 16th meeting but then she was joined by Larry Spang who's the partner at AOS Street uh and what they did was kind of um she provided a recap there were a couple of members who weren't there so she uh presented an initial recap of the floor plans that were all shared shared with you um and then she also looked at like potentially um what they talked about um

234was looking at the third floor and fourth floor so basically um uh dividing up the the the third floor into three classrooms full-size classrooms and a smaller teachers um room uh Lounge type thing and so the the change that she looked at was maybe making those all four equal size classrooms so in case a teacher's um room needed to be converted to a classroom you know as space needs increase um that it could it could do that as well so uh that was kind of the big change um so basically um we we discussed things like you know moving moving the prek upstairs to the third floor so when we convert create a whole new space there could we kind of um configure that space we just talked about you know configuring uh spaces in

235our existing buildings to upet for prek uh the main cost would be you know like adding up adding bathrooms which would drive the cost up significantly so that was one of the um discussion points uh one of the other requests we had at our September 16th meeting was for um um to get estimates for each floor individually so um they came back with for the third floor alone it was 1.76 s million and for the fourth floor which was going to be the library a couple of offices and like a technology room uh was going to be 2.2 million and uh obviously there's an equipment lead time for the fourth floor just because they need to order all the uh mechanical electric pling all that material all that stuff that um could take several weeks

236um long you know um and then obviously these costs don't include design ffe or other project related costs so we did some discussions and you know um what we I think the initial budget that we got was about $3.9 million so we had last spring decid you know we had gotten an initial estimate for one floor which was too much ion so technically we're not far off from that but now the scope has kind of doubled so we're looking at I think it was like 14,000 square feet like over the two floors and the stairs and all of that stuff that they need to do um so uh we discussed you know maybe doing the third floor on its own and then doing the fourth floor potentially you ordering some of the stuff in advance

237so kind of just do it in stages or kind of doing it all together um and if we were to do it all together we would you know in a perfect world we would need funding this fall in order to hit our timeline of September 2025 uh but because of the delays and you know the lead times um if we were to do both floors together it would be uh September 2026 so it would be delay the year um and then we talked about you know the obviously the some of the steps that we discussed tonight like we you know like um it would have to get voted out our our committee and then it would have to come here for discussion Capital committee warrant committee select board so on and so forth to town

238meeting so um so I think what we looked at um the the number we kind of like roughly threw out there is about $5.3 million total so we have $2 million so we need another $3.3 million to finish those two floors to create those four classrooms office spaces breakout spaces the library and additional office spaces it have you know um a room for uh uh Community Schools and so on and so forth so it's really just you know we have makeshift classrooms right now um offices and closets like this would be a little bit more better working environment you know for people and like you said you know when we create these spaces like we just want to make it the best we can possibly make it under our limitations so um and so then

239um lastly uh so what we after discussing we made as a committee made a motion to recommend to the full school committee the allocation of funds for the completion of the renovation project for the third and fourth floor of Cunningham and kic CA the full cost with approximate cost of the project determined by nrow Street it's a little wordy but that was what the motion um so it was a unanimous uh vote and so then it comes back here for discussion so that's what I was saying they're lots of ass you know um and uh um I think just my two cents on it I mean we've we have some of the money um I think you know having that fourth floor space there it is a lot of space when you go up there

240it's it's it's a beautiful space and it's it's a shame that we can't fix it to help kind of help that those two schools um and provide some um reprieve um there so um but again I think we as a committee can kind of discuss and figure out like what the best course of action is on that particular project do we you know it has a shorter timeline it's something that we could potentially it's it's a you know I feel like it's more low hanging fruit I know it's still $3.3 million extra but um it could be done sooner um but um but yeah I kind do you want to add do you want to share I can pull up the drawings yeah that would be great thank you okay good question so say best

241case scenario the new school building project got approved is this work that we would do anyway do you know what I mean like the fourth floor I understand but then when you talk about the third floor I guess that's the qu so are we is it yeah I guess that's the question would we still do this the school building were approved or is this I would think so because I mean I I think the even with the new school whether we you know we have to you know reduce the programming or whatever it's like I think just having that extra space that we have in our buildings I think makes for a stronger argument in my opinion for a new school because we've basically used every square inch of that school I think there are

242a lot of people in this town that went to school here as kids and they were up on the fourth floor having going to the cafeteria or art room music room so there is that perception that there is that space that's up there that's unused so there's also that so I think I think um so there's a lot like um but I personally feel like if there is space we will find a way to use it I mean I I think we've done a really good job of doing that so I think that our needs will continue and as learning changes like it evolves I think it's great to have that space you know and programming changes yeah we also you know in terms of how much space we gain by a fifth fifth grade

243moving to peers we gain four probably five classes six classes something like that if we move the current Library which houses two classrooms right now plus a bunch of other spaces and we gave those up and turned it back into a library then we would only be plus like maybe three classrooms or something with with the the new school building the yeah so I mean we I think either way it's money very well spent on the building long term for all sorts of reasons yeah thank you for pulling this up this is the the fourth floor design s of zoom in Orient you this side is stairwell that goes to um cuningham this side is stairwell that goes to kind of the stairwell right between Cunningham and cicott uh bathrooms right here mechanical space for

244the hbac me school's office separate office and a technology space uh so you're gaining three offices up there and then the rest is kind of the open um Library this is plan is not populated with Furniture as you can see the only thing is the desk and this is just because the plan is to reuse the existing circulation desk that's again like a cost-saving measure um and then you have all these little nooks the idea is to kind of use utilize these for reading spaces that's that and then the third floor yes this is the three classroom plan versus they also came up and and uh teacher room versus they also came with a four classroom plan um which I might have so I can pull up but essentially it's a similar idea um with

245again offices along the lower wall uh to orient you if you know in the C classroom like right now this is the classroom we just built the the walls for up here is where the think it's a second grade French classroom or fourth grade French classroom is right there um so anyways this is the layout any questions on layout lizy any questions I want to make sure I see Lizzy um and then the only other thing like here's just kind of some of the back of the napkin um a little bit better than back of the napkin but uh the original cost estimate was it was 3.9 and some change so $4 million uh the delay results in escalation which we're assuming is 5% because the cost of 4 million was assuming uh June 2025

246start uh may or may not be fully possible certainly not all of it could happen at that point um 30% for design construction as we've talked about FL with a full School building project that brings us to kind of 5.4 this is the total number of square footage so the cost per square footage is 500 bucks so a little bit to the against my argument of removing the prek the prek new building is $700 a square foot um so like all all these costs are coming in just higher than we we wanted them to I think that for me was telling of just looking at if we were surprised that the new construction building all the way up was a lot higher and you look at this and you're like oh I know I like

247makes sense it's really surprising right yeah we we we as a committee we were all in sticker shock of the price so I think again um yeah we can continue to discuss this as well um at our next meeting I think the point you make is a good one is just like how are is a committee thinking about all the different things we're going to the town yeah and asking for and I think at some point people are going to get tired of us just like asking for everything and so like you know how do we balance all of those things do a lot of big sales didn't haven't talked today really directly about the operational override though but you know I've only tangentially so there's a lot of stuff that we think our kids

248need and deserve but like how do we get to actually getting it and not just hoping we get it right so are we looking for that conversation to happen right now because we will maybe too late but I am very conscious of where we are yeah I think what what we can do is reach back out to AOS Street we can try and get the refined number because again the committee essentially was like we defer a bit to school committee to determine what is the exact ask that is appropriate to get us the funding that we need but not too much that it turns people like yeah not above it so that is my math but uh we can go back to a street and try and get that more refined number for then a

249motion for the whatever the 21st meeting um to have that on the agenda to vote for within the context of all the school building votes and you know I one of the things I as no good um asked Arrow Street was like are there things that we could potentially like raise money for you know buying certain things for like the library of shares or whatever it is and those are things that you know they would kind they've kind of um you know kind of um put estimates in but that if that's something that we wanted to take on that's you know and like figure out like as like the school Community can work on raising and kind of helping what some of those costs so that we can I mean it might not it won't

250be much but it won't be Millions but like at least at something you know so Lizzie yeah so the process I think will be it makes sense that ideally next meeting we're able to vote on this as a recommendation um that would then be brought forward to the capital um committee for the town and you know the soonest that this would be able to be voted upon would be like this a special town meeting in the winter if not waiting until the spring uh and it will probably it will be in the context of the town's Financial picture obviously as far as free cash and other um sort of status of our our our revenue for the year so um we can if it's possible to have like something more concrete to vote on uh

251next time that's great but I also think we can just also like this would be a case where we could vote to support the facilities ad advisory committee's recommendation also um we can definitely um get refined numbers for our next meeting facilities doesn't meet till the 209th I think um sorry uh the 28th um I believe so um but we can definitely reach out to Arrow Street and get so that we have that yeah and I mean in the meantime if it's not um if we can't well we can we can think about that it you know if we want to wait until November 6 would be our next school committee meeting after that that gives a facilities like advisory committee another chance to refine this if that's something that should happen there and then

252come back you know I don't we can we can just take that offline I guess and I can I I guess my question we did vote it out of the committee so do we don't do we bring it back in if we were to discuss the fourth floor I think the committee is comfortable with the only thing we need to do is actually I think this committee I mean before we go to the town and ask for just like give us a number we need a firm number for the ask so is that number 3 million or 3.3 million so you can bring the refine number to the next we'll bring the refine number school committee meeting weekend so I think we can vote on it soon The Advisory is comfortable for the school committee

253to take here and okay because they basically wrote like number like basically it's whatever the estimate that the a street comes back with okay that sounds good um so can I just say like one thing as far as the larger conversation about I think yeah we we definitely should um talk about this as a committee as we consider these three different um sort of kinds of needs that we are working through Mark you mentioned a finance commit uh Finance subcommittee meeting scheduled with the select board Finance subcommittee on October 25th is that right yes okay so I I do think that um you know we can think about like what is the sequence What would be appropriate for us to discuss here as a full school committee to sort of leading into that meeting that

254you that you'll be having but and then though you know conversely like what would be things that would be helpful for us to wait to dig into until after that meeting has taken place um so I think that's something that like I can kind of we I can try to work on that between now and then um I just want to be sensitive to you know which which conversation should be happening in which order clearly it's an important conversation that you know has already begun because we've already public like we have already public sorry I'm having a hard time hearing you Lizzy I don't know if others are but little bit sorry I think maybe the zoom is exploding because it's so [Laughter] late all right so I think we're ready to keep going okay

255all right so we'll come back to this conversation um um and now we would move to approval of minutes of our last meeting and so I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes of September uh 18th so moved is SAR a second second great um all those in an auction A rad call cuz I forgot we'll start with Lizzy Lizzy yeah yes Mark yes Amanda upand was here B yes and Anna yes and I will abstain I wasn't here and so minutes approved and now it's just looking at uh agenda items for our next meeting which we just added a bunch of them so thank you I think uh I think I saw you typing as we went so it's great um we have the Cunningham School site Council um and then we also

256have uh FY 2628 Capital request that we will be talking about and then subcommittee meetings uh that's what's on the agenda right now so it's policy facilities and school building committee and the oh gosh the brain is now tired um the task force um with Danielle meeting on the 21st oober so so that we would talk about special T thank you thank you okay we also you mentioned your meeting with the student Representatives again this week yes Peter and okay so probably we add that back and and that's our opportunity to continue the calendar discussion yeah can I can bring in a brief update yeah okay we just won't have a facil ities other than just this four floor yeah there will be a meeting so just a conversation to continue okay great um and

257is there a finance meeting before this just not with select board yes there's one next [Music] week that's right so we'll add that too um all right uh with that I'm happy to entertain motion to adjourn the meeting second I'm so moved uh Lizzy yes Mark yes Anna yes Amanda yes B yes and I'm a yes okay great ad jour [Music] for he [Music]