Milton School Committee - April 6th, 2022

001good evening everyone and welcome it is um Wednesday April 6 2022. we are call going to call to order our open public budget hearing meeting this meeting is required under the law um and it is required that we have a quorum of school committee members present for our open budget hearing so I'm going to just ask for a roll call vote to put on to the record that we have a quorum so member Ross Denny yes remember White yes um Dr Craighead yes member Rosen Aaron yes member Eberhart yes and um Dr Carol has not yet joined us but I'm sure she'll be joining us shortly um all right so welcome everyone this will be an opportunity for the public um to um ask questions or make comments or um wonderings about the budget I

002know that assistant superintendent Dexter has a budget presentation ready to share um and I'm not really sure members of the committee and assistant superintendent Dexter if we should or and superintendent jet should we just open it up to start with questions and then show the budget as we go along or do you want to go through some of the slides first to give people a quick update tell me your thoughts yes um superintendent Dexter so I think it would be helpful if I just briefly um showed what the ask was or what the request was what the current recommendation by the select board school committee warrant committee joint consensus is okay and then we can open it up to questions without going into a lot of detail unless you want to go through the positions

003no no I think it's important to have enough time or as much time as necessary to ask people to ask questions since this is a hearing but I do think some preliminary pre you know um presentation probably helpful for the public okay James are you okay with me just sharing the screen and going right into it or do you want to see yours absolutely you want to maximize the time so I'm going to share my screen great thank you let me know if we can see it okay yeah so I might be looking like I'm looking to my left because I have dual screens my cameras on this one my presentations on the other one so I just wanted to clarify that so it doesn't seem like I'm being rude um Okay so first off

004just quickly the uh Milton public school department requested a total of 60 million five hundred and two thousand seven hundred and forty six that's a needs based budget what that consists of is the FY 22 budget plus contractual wage adjustments and obligations um combined with needs based asks like additional funding for new positions or initiatives the what we refer to as a rollover budget which is just the FY 22 budget with the contractual wage adjustments is 58 million 54 115. an important thing I want to point out is approximately 82 percent of the budget is salary and wages the rest are non-salary also within the needs-based budget is a request for one-time monies for social studies curriculum and math curriculum so this is the slide that I think is important I know it's kind of

005busy there's a lot of numbers but basically um this does two things it rolls rolls forward the budget from what the school department has for fiscal 22 to what our ask for the rollover ask is and then forward to what's the needs base ask and then the second important piece of this is I broke it down between what the current recommendation of the select board and the warrant committee looks like it will be it was voted on Monday by warrant committee select board a week or two ago so basically of the um 60 million 502 746 ask the recommendation is a total of 59 million 363 109 leaving a million one of the needs-based asks unfunded but the funding sources for the recommendation is approximately 57.8 from the um operations of the town the revenues

006of town like the real estate taxes and local receipts um the current recommendation is to full to fund the full ask for the um new curriculum and social studies and math for a total of approximately 590 000 that recommendation is to use free cash which is a one-time source of funds in order to purchase and Implement that curriculum so the total recommendation that will be seen in the town meeting warrant will be 58 million 365 423 but there's also an additional um Avenue that we're going to for funding um and that's the American Rescue plan act funds through the treasury and through the county and there are approximately 998 000 that are going we're going to submit to arpa arpa is one-time funding we do predict that these positions will be needed more than one

007year so we predict We'll be asking for them for FY 24 and Beyond but in order to balance the budget and get the school department um needs funded that's an Avenue that there was a consensus to go down that route to seek funding that way I just want to point out of that 278 500 is um being funded by arpa but it was part of our rollover request so those are mainly special education positions that are legally mandated but can be tied to the pandemic because the arpa money is things that um were unforeseen or a product of the effects of the pandemic so most of those positions are special education teachers and aides due to the increased number in kids requiring service related to The Unfinished learning and the rest is just detail of

008what the positions that are being funded with arpa are as and then a list of ones that are being unfunded so we can show that or we can open it up to questions and then we can refer to that if you prefer thank you super assistant superintendent Dexter that was fun that was very helpful and I think it summarized it very concisely with a nice visual for that support so I think that we can open it up to questions from the community about the budget um I'm not sure I'm superintendent Chad or Milton Access TV who's gonna I can tell the community members to raise their hand and they can be raised to the panelists and then to State their name and address for the record um but I'm not sure who will be doing

009that that's a really good question I would take care of that if anyone wants to raise a hand can I ask a question do you want me to continue to share no that's fine you can you can stop sharing and I guess if the need becomes to look at that again because it's sort of nice to be able to see people I mean to see each other well welcome back to Carol we're going to add Dr Carol to the attendance list there we go oh if anyone has any questions uh you can raise your hand identify yourself I will promote you to speak [Music] um thanks foreign but I I do so so um I I would like to just remind everyone that we I see that people sometimes use the chat to use the

010chat as a violation of the open meeting law because not everyone can see it and it can raise questions that would not be accessible to everyone so if you have something um would you just please raise your hand and state it out loud so that um we can all hear that at the same time I'm sorry that I didn't ask for the chat to be shut down that um that's something important to keep in mind whenever we're having a zoom type meeting so uh the first person is raising their hands I see is Joe Clark and if um if Milton access is there I don't know why I'm not getting the the elevation to a panelists there she is okay yeah and superintendo you can share the screen again that's fine someone asked for that

011it's fine someone asked thank you can you hear me okay yes great Joe Clark 26 Harold Street um are there any major changes in Staffing proposed um compared to last year in fy23 I guess the question if I heard you correctly would be a staff and proposals we did ask for additional Staffing um I believe that was up on the screen the math interventionists reading Specialists and supports I'm not sure if you meaning switching or or Joe Clark are you there yes I am so here's the list of the staff into being asked for um some of these staff if you see at the top I think uh assistant superintendent Dexter mentioned it some of the contractual Services you'll see sped to talk to sped teachers uh Then followed by special education um AIDS those

012are contractual Services then if you look at the next tier with this prior priorities one through ten you'll see the math intervention this reading specialist Pierce Middle School guidance counselor slash coordinator and then um you'll see 2.4 K AIDS um those technically are not new positions those are just elevating people who are part-time which is a 0.8 uh elevated to uh a 1.0 and then you see two adjustment councilors that are on that list um and then if you go down to the next tier excuse me in a math High School teacher and then if you go down to the next year uh early childhood education coordinator um for those who've been uh paying attention to some of the meetings that we've had uh a pre-k program has grown significantly uh Jonathan Redding is doing

013to a dual role in some cases uh supporting the pre-k program along with being a principal of the Cunningham school and then we talked about the part-time nurses I think we elevated that conversation over the course of the last two years with the challenges we had in terms of the student to nurse ratio of each of the buildings um so those are the new proposals right there and everything else was pretty much a rollover in terms of positions really helpful and are all the staff changes being proposed increases or are there any staff positions that will be eliminated staff positions being eliminated I wouldn't necessarily say eliminated um I'll give you an example where currently uh and you hear this at the the school committee meeting we had the backfield two positions assistant superintendent in

014a Dei coordinator or director I should say um and then depending on the movements in terms of people retiring or possibly moving on and taking leaves it's not really a change or elimination it is potentially um just fact-filling you know thank you I just add something I can't raise my hands um when I'm sharing my screen so um to superintendent Jets point the rollover um the rollover budget there are no Cuts being made everything that we asked for and the rollover budget all the positions are being funded they're were these top five in the list that um some of those are currently on staff now that um because they're legal mandates that will roll into FY 23 um and then the other ones are all new positions they are things that we asked for um

015the funds aren't available in the operating budget to fund those for FY 23 so we're seeking the arpa um we do have a list of ones items that are unfunded and that's this list here so there are some teachers on there there's some general expenses on here as well and some like support staff positions next question is from uh Colleen McCarthy I believe I hope it just takes a little bit of time for them to be elevated wonderful so James I did the last one I clicked on allowed to talk but I can't see that now that I'm sharing my screen yeah if you can stop sharing your screen I thought it was I did it hitting the chat I don't have that key I don't know why it just says chat and I press

016it so hi hi everyone Thanks for uh thanks for having me um just a quick question and I'm certainly not a math expert um but would you mind showing the screen again whoever has um I guess two questions the eligible rollover um the bottom line item in red can you clarify what that means the arpa and I can't see the screen right now I might I'm sorry oh sorry hold on why she's doing that uh Colleen arpa Opera is the American Rescue plan act right okay okay the slide or did you mean the other the other one this one yes eligible needs above rollover so is that the bottom the 719 is that budget that we have or is that so can you explain that a little bit Yeah so um what we consider to

017be the rollover budget is if we took every staff person and every initiative that we have in place today funded in the FY 22 budget and we just rolled it Forward adding no new positions just um adding contractual obligations and like steps and wage increases that are also contractual in the collective bargaining agreements that's what would be considered the rollover and the only caveat to that is if there's any legally mandated positions in the special education area we would also consider that being a rollover meaning it's not discretionary it's something we have to do um because we're contractually or illegally obligated to do it the other needs above rollover are the things that the school committee the administration and the leadership team has identified as we really need these things but they're not currently in

018place so they're considered needs based or above the rollover I'm not sure if that makes sense no that's actually that's very helpful and then um if I may have one more question so you know I think given that we're coming out of you know a two-year you know really two and a half year learning loss um and you know I think I know personally I speak for myself you know I have two children of my three that are in um a special education and on an IEP how was it identified that um one interventionist because I think we have zero right now right in the district and one reading specialist so how did we come up with that number for the district so can I show another slide superintendent yet so we have some other

019sources of funding that are um have already been approved by the select board the select board is the body that um recommends the funding through the arpa funds we also have something called Esser funds and those are other federal grants both of these programs relate to the pandemic and needs of the district or the town for that matter that are related to the effects of the pandemic so anytime we say it's arpa eligible it's positions that we believe are eligible because positions or items that are eligible because the need is there because of the effects of the pandemic so the big piece of that is the unfinished learning the social emotional aspect of the effects of the pandemic on the students or the unfinished learning on the students I did have a slide in my

020other presentation that it looks like I didn't bring forward that I can pull up I just would have to find it first but um I have it in front of me so I can tell you in those arpa funds and asset funds there's some interventionists in there so for example um there were three sources of Esther funds sr12 and three it's just the in the different programs that came out and then the sr3 grant program which is the most recent one um that needs to be spent by September 30th of 24. um we have an elementary math interventionist and an elementary Reading Specialists that are being funded through that grant for FY 23 and fy24 that's already been approved um and if they are not on staff yet we are still in the process of

021trying to fill those positions there's also a high school special education teacher in that Grant and a pre-k through 12 behavioral health specialist to address the social emotional learning aspects and then in arpa Project one which has already been approved by the select board and is currently with the Norfolk County for consideration and approval there's an additional pre-k through 12 Behavioral Health Specialists as well as a guidance adjustment counselor for the middle school and another school nurse and that's also far that has actually gone through the process okay and no I appreciate that and just one more point because I was I do try and do some self um research when I clicked on this link earlier online just an FYI these links do not work or at least they didn't work for me and

022I'm not sure if they work for anyone else just wanted to call that out yeah I appreciate that I think it might be I might have lost the link when I converted to PDF so I apologize to that I can look into that tomorrow nope totally understood thank you for the explanation and I think um superintendent Jennifer I might for a minute who's the questions that Ms McCarthy um just asked are so important because the budget the budget that we're talking about tonight is the one that will be voted on by a town meeting um in May um but the positions that are that are part of have been approved of and are not part of that this budget um are not here obviously so I think that there are additional positions that were funded

023through Esser that are not reflected here um that will need to be discussed by Future School committees and um next in a year or two about what that funding looks like and what positions will remain and what positions might not be so those are really excellent questions and important to keep in mind for the community as well at this point in time I do not see any additional hands folks if you have a question we still have a few minutes left uh please uh raise your hand and assistant superintendent Dexter will Elevate you know I do not um see any hands at this point in time I do see Colleen McCarthy's hand back up I'm not sure if she just didn't put it down oh there you go uh I do sorry I do have

024a follow-up question and I apologize it's a conversation here with me here um so just a follow-up and share thank you for for clarifying I you know those other positions so I just want to make sure that I understand appropriately so what we're saying is that this grant money we are using to fund one math intervention interventionist and then one additional reading specialist for the district and forgive me for but does the other the remaining budget that we voted on does that include additional positions in those areas and if so how many sorry thank you yes I think in the budget that we presented was one math interventionist and one reading specialist to complement that uh and I and I think to go to chair Abba Huts um statement and I would extend it a

025little further which you talked about future school committee stuff to talk about this these are positions that we desperately need that we utilizing funding from additional Grant uh funding but they also need it without the Grant and I I think I need to elevate that these are positions that we need our enrollments growing uh we have certain academic goals that we're going to be working we're working on that we need the adequate Staffing to support the students to achieve those goals those uh achievement outcomes student outcomes so yes there's one Matthew so superintendent Jet and system superintendent Dexter I think that I had emailed superintendent Dexter a question myself the other day so I think the the clarif the clarifying question here is how many positions so there's is a math and a reading specialist

026in the budget that we will vote at town meeting but from the other money the Esser money there are people working in those positions or soon to be working in these positions so what are is that total number that will be available to students Dr Carroll or assistant superintendent Sheehan so that's more clear for people that would be I think what we're trying to get out here in this in this moment maybe just to add on to that for the clarification those positions those additional beyond the one math one reading would be currently reflected in a rollover budget okay right because these are people I think but that's what I would yeah I think that what people are trying to understand is the number of people working in those positions so next year when you

027come back to school in September of 2022 how many math interventionalist reading Specialists will there be working in the district to support students that's the question that people I if I'm understanding Ms McCarthy's question I think that's what yeah yes thank you okay so so it sounds like it's not it's not an either or scenario right so if if we don't hire with this grant money it doesn't mean that we're not going to hire with the budget correct so if we don't now let me out if we don't allocate the grant money arpa maybe I'm not understanding it appropriately does it mean that we're not using the remaining budget or the vote of rope voted upon budget to higher those positions like it's not in either or scenarios when I'm asking so there's potential for

028us to have two math interventionists and two reading Specialists okay it took me a while to get there me too yeah anyone else yeah assistant superintendent chian Dexter and then Ross Denny go ahead the three of you can sort of wrangle that out from Deanna you have to unmute so under our guest of funds we have already hired um we've already hired a illiteracy specialist who's working in the primary grades supporting students and uh so that that position has been in place we have hired an adjustment counselor and we have actually hired we we have a couple of other positions that are funded through of a grant so we have um another adjustment counselor who's being funded by a social emotional learning Grant um so that's what that's what I'm recalling right now but certainly

029we could put together a list of positions that have been filled into grant money um and uh the difference between those positions and the additional positions going forward yeah and if I could thank you I appreciate it and if I guess just add some color I think you know I think I certainly can't speak for the community but I have a lot of um friends that are concerned about learning loss especially as we come out of the pandemic and I think you know those of us that our parents all have that concern um in getting our kids caught up and as we look to the Future and preparing budget for special education the more work we do now to support our students the better off we'll be so I appreciate um your your time spent

030in that area thank you uh remember rustenian assistant superintendent Dexter anything you can add to for those two conversations would be great yeah so I want to reassure Miss McCarthy that when the school district or the the data Department presented the MCAS data from the spring of 2021 one of the only groups to consistently show gains was in special education so the magnitude of the learning loss was least impacted by that population um but with that said the important point was something that chair Everhart said about the budget town meeting has to approve what you just saw and one of the challenges we had last year with in under the anticipation of learning loss was a budget that included such Specialists and it wasn't approved so if you want these resources secured for your child

031and the other children in the Milton Public Schools we need your support to make sure that we get the funding we need to do the work well otherwise it's really difficult to have conversations about accountability or you know how do we do things different or better whatever it is if you don't have the resources to do the work then it's much harder to have that conversation but I do think that given your interest and the quality of your questions I hope that you'd be an advocate out in the community to support the schools and the budget that we're proposing for next school year a superintendent Dexter sorry so yeah so I just wanted to add um two more points um I'm going through my budget book quickly but just quick look I do see there

032isn't reading interventionist already in addition to the the two the one in the operating requests the one in um the Esther funds there's a third one that's in the rollover budget and then what was my second Point um oh I also want to point out that within some of the arpa positions is a program that we're referring to beyond the bell and that's additional support for students after school or um during school vacation summer um to assist Identify some students that need some additional help I don't know if um superintendent jet wanted to elaborate on that or yeah explain that okay you explained it very well but to just close it out uh faculty and staff have been meeting curriculum coordinators been meaning identifying students who may need additional support based on assessment data that's

033been uh happening during this Academic Year and so we're going to have targeted support Focus support for those students throughout the uh summer months that happen during February vacation we have another Camp coming up April and then we have a program during the summer months as well great well I'm I had superintendent what were you going to say Dr Craighead Hassan uh oh I can't I'm so sorry I didn't see see your hand raise go ahead it's fine it's fine um I just want to follow up a little bit on what member Ross Denny said and that is to um say that though this budget that we presented to you tonight has been backed supported by the select board um the vote that was taken on Monday night uh with the Warren committee was in

034favor of it but the vote was not unanimous and the three people who voted against it are actually the three people who were assigned uh as the school committee subcommittee of the warrant committee um and um um there is some discussion um perhaps of them revisiting that so I would urge um all of you who support this budget which is a good one for Milton public schools to reach out to your town meeting members and to tell them how important it is that they support this budget for Milton Public Schools thank you thank you Dr pickhead and thank you um assistant superintendents Sheen and Dexter and superintendent Chet um for um helping us with this open budget hearing tonight we're going to call adjourn um are we going to adjourn to our regular school committee

035so I'm going to call the open public budget hearing to a close I want to thank the committee uh the town Town members who came to speak this evening and I'm going to welcome everyone to the April 6 2022 Milton school committee meeting um our first order of business is to um review the agenda and to make any changes additions or subtractions yes Dr Carol sorry I'm on my husband's um PC and I don't know how to work it um I uh can you please Elevate Cora Redmond to a panelist somebody thank you representative [Music] thank you all right so welcome everyone welcome um we have a busy agenda this evening shocking I know in the order of business for these last couple of meetings um but is there any changes additions um subtractions Etc

036to the agenda this evening yes Dr Carol um yes I'd like to postpone the policy report um we are still waiting for feedback from our legal counsel who needs to weigh in and provide some perspective on those policies that are um going to be coming forward for first readings at a later date so well that can at least shorten our meeting a little bit great thank you so much anyone else all right can I have a second to approve the agenda with the um removal of our policy subcommittee report second second we'll take a roll call vote for a purpose of attendance as well um member Ross Denny yes um Dr Carroll yes Dr fairgood yes remember Rosemary yes remember wait yes and remember yes okay wonderful all right um superintendent jet you have the

037floor thank you chair Al bahad um first up under the superintendent's report I'm going to call or Elevate uh principal uh Dr Bill fish along with his Pierce Middle School site Council if Dr fish is on thank you superintendent good evening everyone just give me a minute I'll uh share my screens we can get our presentation shared with you can you see that good all right well thank you I appreciate the opportunity uh to present tonight along with our site Council um we have been uh really fortunate to have such a committed and um driven Council we have I've enjoyed we've enjoyed a lot of consistency in our membership over the course of the past couple years um we have seen a number of members stay with our site Council over the course the past

038two or three years we've also been able to welcome several members each of the past few years and I just want a compliment the fantasy Council for their time for Faithfully attending our meetings for volunteering for subcommittees and in my 11 or so years as a principal I've never seen such an active and engaged Council we are um my name is share some photos with you tonight to give you a glimpse into student life here at Pierce um we are at Pierce nearly 1 000 um fun enthusiastic and unique students who are Amid and exciting and ever-changing time in our development and as a school Community we recognize and celebrate this time of booming physical cognitive and social emotional growth and development and we know that physically uh it's interesting and sometimes tricky time developmentally

039for our students but as a school Community we're committed to fostering an environment that understands values and empathizes with the many changes that our students are experiencing cognitively as students grow and age and mature through the early teen years their reasoning and critical thinking capacities continue to develop and middle school is really a unique opportunity to develop students confidence both as in their identities both as Learners and as thinkers and then socially and emotionally this is a time of developing self-awareness and awareness of others and learning to navigate social and interpersonal Dynamics learn to build and sustain relationships and to develop emotional resilience and I'm really proud of our whole school Community from our students and Educators and families that we've just they've done a phenomenal job over the course of the past couple years

040they've been many challenges that we've all encountered and I'd like to off especially offer a note of acknowledgment to our faculty and staff who have been amazing we've been through a lot in the past couple years but I'm proud of how our faculty has responded you know always with our students development learning and well-being at the center of their work next we'll we'll zoom out and take a quick look at our school profile um when you when you do this you see uh take a holistic well if you see a story of enrollment growth uh we are currently at just under 930 students at Pierce um sixth and seventh grade or 321 students each uh in grade eight is at when we look ahead though at the the next couple years we start to see

041significant growth you know based on those straight line projections of enrollment looking in our current fifth grade which would be next year sixth grade we're looking at over a hundred student enrollment growth from this year to next year and the same holds true for for the following year for 23.24 so these conversations about not just enrollment but it's space which we've been actively engaged in over the course of the past few months uh even years with the school building committee but also the only thing about the the budget that was recently presented these are things that we're going to need to be really thoughtful about uh in order to continue to deliver the high quality learning experiences that our students have enjoyed historically we will now shift our Focus to um bring the committee up

042to speed on some of the school Improvement efforts and initiatives that we've been engaged in throughout the 2021 2022 school year um our school Improvement efforts have been grounded in three tenants or underpinnings uh and those are academic achievement social emotional learning and Behavioral Health and diversity Equity inclusion and we see these three tenants is really working together to drive focus on students and their development as Learners as well as people and we need to look at these tenants as being interdependent we have to view social emotional learning uh Behavioral Health and diversity Equity inclusion as the foundations of our values and ultimately the foundation of students academic achievement it's important to note that these underpinnings are aligned with the vision of excellence and Equity that our district has constructed which has been reflected in

043the Strategic plan that we've recently been engaged in refining so our site Council um this year authored a new school Improvement plan that will guide our priorities over the course of the next few years each of these priority areas is aligned with the three underpinnings of academic achievement social emotional learning Behavioral Health and diversity accurate inclusion and the school Improvement plan has four priority areas the first is school culture student support engagement the second is teaching and learning the third is data creating a data culture and sustaining a data culture and the fourth is facilities Staffing and enrollment enrollment so in the school Improvement plans priority of teaching and learning we have a goal to consistently facilitate rigorous research-based and cultural responsive curricula with exemplary instructions to meet the needs of every learner while promoting

044excellence in preparing students for success and related to this goal and related to each of their goals we have a theory of action and the theory of action around this priority area is that if we engage students in rigorous standards-based curricula and invest in the professional learning of our Educators then we'll support the Learning and Development of all students so at this time I'm going to introduce proudly cater Roche arcade literacy director as well as Brian selig our K-8 math director to take you into a glimpse of the curriculum both in ela and math and to talk a little bit about um some of the curricular changes that have taken place over the past few years as well as a student in Chief by way of MCAS and also the Diagnostics that we've implemented through

045both Alexia and I ready great thank you Dr fish um hello everyone it's good to see you again um you will hear um some repeated information from the last couple years in particular with regards to the changes in curriculum because it is sort of a new shift um so some of this will be review um but Brian and I are going to kind of toggle back and forth as we went into this process really trying to find the best and most efficient way to present it to you we found there were many parallels to what we both wanted to share so um we hopefully won't stumble over one another to too much but um Brian I'll let you introduce yourself thanks Kat um Brian selig math director for the district great to uh be here

046thank you um and as Kat said our goal over the next few slides here is to um kind of bounce back and forth between the two of us talking about um curriculum and data at Pierce since someone uh to avoid stumbling over each other I'll go ahead and jump into um a refresher about our math curriculum at Pierce uh you may recall uh last year that we were piloting the Desmos uh curriculum in grade seven and eight because uh it wasn't yet available in grade six at that time um since then uh starting in this past fall of 2021 we now have a consistent use of the Desmos curriculum across all three grade levels at Pierce I've included some links in here I encourage uh you to peruse with uh some information about the Desmos

047curriculum it is a digitally enhanced version of the illustrative Mathematics Curriculum which is um generally considered to be the highest rated best aligned most rigorous math curriculum available at the secondary level in particular what makes Desmos I think even better than illustrative mathematics uh is that it offers uh unique experiences for students through the technology enhancements so while the illustrative math curriculum is paper-based and doesn't allow for the immediate feedback or the depth of Discovery thanks to the technology embedded in Desmos it's possible through the course of activities in lessons for students to really explore and get immediate feedback that informs their understanding of the concept so with that let me pause and allow cat to um speak about the ELA amplify curriculum sure so as should sound familiar we are in our second year

048of implementation in grades six seven and eight with the amplify curricular resource with our students and staff and we'll go into a little bit more of the conditions of what the last year and a half has presented to us in the world of education but in general we are finding this year to be a more uh more true uh reflection of what um pacing and content is looking like in the classrooms and the ability to utilize both the online digital platform as well as the analog resources within the curriculum and so to recap the process really the shift towards a thematically based curriculum is what the research and evidence tells us is best for students um and that is what amplify is able to provide um we we meet as departments um every seven days

049um more or less to go over the opportunities and challenges that are presenting themselves and that's an ongoing reflective process and so we have found that the high ceilings in in low entry points for students um does give them the ability to access a range of um the Adaptive features of the curriculum though we we recognize nothing is perfect so we are working through what specific needs students in Milton have or opportunities that that might be required to provide for them so um as we do with any curriculum we are meeting regularly to to talk through those um again similar to what Brian had said about Desmos um providing high quality uh evidence-based and standards-based curriculum is is truly the definition of of an equitable educational experience and that is is what we are what

050we seek to provide and what we're finding is true of this as well and so there are links here um the first link will go over the curriculum program guide that will will give anyone who is interested on the overview and pedagogy and the thought process behind the development of the curriculum there is a caretaker and family site that amplify provides and then the third link will bring you to the Pierce Middle School Ela curriculum site where grade level scope and sequence is specific foreign not as well cat oh I think you're better now yeah can you hear me now perfect okay I got a little alert um so I think with that we can now um move on to to talk through you know thinking about which data to present um we decided and

051landed on you know the 2021 MCAS data as well as the internal consistent i-Ready diagnostic as well as the Lexia rapid screener to be able to talk through some of um you know what we've noticed and how we're seeing students present at this point so first up um in this slide you'll see in this slide may look familiar um the wonderful vivu is is the data extraordinaire provided us with this information the first section does go over the ELA MCAS from 2021 um again this is the same data this is not new um and you'll see that while in ela in particular there was a dip we we sort of mostly went back to our 2018 achievement um performance levels Brian I don't know if you want to go through math and then we can

052sort of talk about the context as a whole because that makes sense I'll do a little bit of both um yeah so uh the the um sort of historical Trend in uh the mathmcast data from 2017 through 2021 excluding obviously 2020 when the MCAS was not given is in the middle of your screen um and uh as I know has been discussed already by the committee prior to today we saw a significant dip in student performance as measured by MCAS last spring we are very optimistic about seeing a rebound from that this year um I think it's really important when we're talking about any of the subject areas to keep in mind that um last year uh was extremely disruptive to instruction we had a hybrid model or remote model in place all the way

053up through just about this time last year uh where students were essentially having um less than half of the amount of face-to-face instructional time with their teachers as they were used to um and not really a very um obvious way to overcome that that shortfall um the MCAS itself was administered in a different fashion than um we're used to there was one session instead of two um and given that we were finally just back to school not that uh and I want to acknowledge that there were still students who are fully remote at this time but that we had not returned to in-person um more than four to six weeks prior there was a concerted and intentional effort um on the part of certainly our math department to try to capitalize on every moment of

054instruction that we could get and because of that did not set aside what we normally would which is sort of some intentional preparation and review for students leading into the MCAS and so this slide just is meant to kind of um remind us of this uh circumstances in which our students took MCAS last year um you know I think that um at this point it feels like a long time ago um and in some ways it was and in some ways I guess it's reasonable to include it in our presentation certainly for you but um as far as I'm concerned I think that last slide shows what is at this point now um fair to say is uh outdated data right I would only you know add that while it's important to still collect data

055in in the way that I'm picturing in the next few years we'll be able to see that Trend analysis that will be that will be interesting but for the reasons that Brian mentioned it's a hard data point to hang a lot of stock or to put a lot of stock into due to this idea of the truncated curriculum pacing um similarly for ELA we you know most recently in our department meetings have been talking about how much further along we are in in reflecting on what it was like returning to sort of that full day model in April of last year um and how much more content curriculum and just in general like um learning is happening this year and so I think that that warrants mentioning as we discuss this so more uh sort

056of moving away from that performance-based task of of MCAS and looking in particular at this screener um and again this idea of reflecting and digging into Data not only um as it relates to student growth and achievement but also examining defining and and triangulating data for different purposes so um in other words this screener we don't look at in the same way as we would in MCAS both are very important but they do very different things and so this screener and I know a lot of the people on the screen are in education um but this screener really gives us an idea of where students are in a moment in time and so again similar to MCAS we do not put all of our stock into this assessment though we do use it to pay

057attention to the trends we're seeing among students so we ask ourselves we are students in this moment are there students who are not sort of on our proverbial radar that that need to be and are there things we need to address in a tier one fashion that that may may come as a trending pattern so um as you see we are we are looking right here at the fall and winter spring of course has not been administered um blue representing above grade level green on grade level and gray below grade level um so there there's you know there's some growth there again we're not seeing staggering growth I think um and I think that also plays into this idea of um the less than half of time in class last year and we're going to

058I'm I'm very optimistic that we're going to see this this move forward this this mirror is a national Trend um and it's not something that it's something to certainly pay attention to and really think and talk about ways that we're going to meet students where they are and move them along though not to to react in a way that um is unreasonable and then on the right here we see um a similar comparison between the fall and the winter administration of the math i-Ready diagnostic which is a holistic adaptive diagnostic assessment that questions adjust in difficulty based on student responses um and this was something that we introduced uh in the middle of last year uh in recognition that we wanted to collect some data on our students across the elementary and and Middle School

059level in particular um to and not sort of have to rely and wait for MCAS data to kind of see how our students were doing um and I think what we see here in this data is we see students um we see growth we see students in each grade level um and just to to make sure the key is clear so so blue uh there's slightly different um I get uh categories for iready then for Lexi rapid but the blue is mid or on great mid part of me mid on or above grade level the green early grade level both of those sort of combined even in the winter time would be students that we would say have um sort of uh are ready to access on grade level content um the yellow being one

060grade level below um in terms of overall placement and again the yellow at the beginning of the year um is not of concern by the time we get to Winter with those uh in that range come onto our radar and then the combination of orange and red being two or more grade levels below are obviously at least by this instrument students that we are seriously concerned about and have um strategies that we're putting in place to try to narrow and address those gaps so we see I think movement in the right direction for many of our students um the the easiest interpretation I have from this is that a good chunk of students in the green moved to the blue between fall and winter another good chunk from the yellow to the green from fall

061to winter and so overall an upward Trend when you dig a little bit deeper into the growth data over the course of this year I've found that we have a large number of students that showed significant growth from fall to winter sort of the amount of growth that we would anticipate over the course of the entire school year not half of it and then another large comparable chunk of students that showed minimal to no growth um and so we're sort of perplexed a little bit by that talking about ways to maximize the benefit and accuracy of the i-Ready data that we collect and looking forward to seeing what the trend shows when we administer one more time um next month after MCAS and at the end of May thank you Okay so this sort of

062summarizes um what Brian and I just articulated in that the reflexia rapid does show a somewhat of a plateau of skill demonstration but that does remain consistent with national Trends in fact there's been some some grants recently through the department of Ed that we did not qualify for due to our um achievement as compared to other districts in the Commonwealth so good news double-edged sword of course but um we will continue to um utilize the structures and systems we have in place while also reflecting on whether those systems and structures are indeed what will make the biggest impact um so in ela that happens to be our reading support class that we have for students in all sixth seventh and eighth grade um we use Lexia rapid data as well as MCAS data and curriculum

063embedded data to ensure that we're um kind of catching those students who are are most at in need of that support um on the other end of that Spectrum um or on actually it's not on the other end of that Spectrum it's open to all students which is a great shift our intensive study classes um that's an elective class open to all students in grades seven and eight um that really has been focusing on reading writing and thinking uh this has looked very different in each class it's a it's really creative it's really Innovative and responsive to student interest where students are creating podcasts or Ted Talks or writing papers or Reflections and and really digging into English language arts in a variety of ways with like-minded students in their class so that um that

064is also something where we're looking into as we move into a new school year and if I may just elevate a couple of um thoughts as far as uh how this pertains to math um you know one thing that I want to make uh the committee and the community aware of is that um thanks to um some uh support um from Dr fish and the other building administrators we've been able to meet as grade level curriculum teams every cycle which has um really bolstered uh the implementation of the curriculum this year it's allowed us to ensure that we have um consistent common curriculum embedded Assessments in place that were um following the same pacing guide but also making the best instructional decisions for student learning um and I credit the teachers who I work with

065at Pierce in the math department for their commitment in those areas and the and the time and effort and that they invest in that work with me um we're also um continuing to evaluate supplemental resources uh to address those uh gaps in skills and knowledge from um prior grade levels that we recognize to be particularly critical to address in math so that the on grade level content can be accessed successfully and we've utilized a a new model of our math investigations classes across all three grades this year with that exact purpose in mind so every math teacher at Pierce has their standard for math classes and then one section of math investigations for students who have been identified or recommended as needing a second dose or additional support that those teachers have and it's just

066a subset of their own students from the other four math classes that they teach so they have the the familiar already with the student the student has a familiarity with them and we're continuing as we look ahead to next year to decide how best to support the supplemental instruction in that class and then as far as the Intensive study electives for math goes very similar to cat in that it's an opportunity for students to explore mathematical Concepts in Greater depth um to engage in low floor and high ceiling tasks to collaborate with each other and I give Mr moon in seventh grade and Miss Shapiro in eighth grade a lot of credit for getting that off the ground and running this year when even though we've sort of had the classes in the past they've

067been completely revamped credit to them for that and I would be remiss if I didn't mention Aaron power who has taken the Intensive study sort of reimagining very personally and very creative and has made it a class that many students just Rave about so thanks to her okay thank you um for sharing those insights I want to acknowledge for the for for everyone who's on especially the committee just how much gratitude and appreciate appreciation I have for both Kat and Brian for their work for the Relentless commitment to to students in their learning and their growth in their unwavering support and commitment to the teachers with whom they they work closely with um and continue to push to do as best they can by our students and to develop their own their own Crafters educator

068so Brian and Kat thank you for um for being here on on all of our behalf um what I like to do now is shift that we talked about those three underpinnings of school Improvement and I like to shift our Focus now to social emotional learning and Behavioral Health so if we hearken back to our school Improvement plan uh that the school Improvement plan has a priority area of school culture student support and engagement uh in within that goal we have a goal rather to explicitly develop a strong School culture that is anchored in the core values to safety responsibility respect and kindness in a school culture that's characterized by strong relationships a sense of community student wellness and student-centered belongings and within that goal we have a theory of action that says if our

069school's culture promotes inclusivity respect and achievement then students and educators will be able to Excel and to thrive so there are several aspects of this priority that we'd like to share with you tonight and the first is the work of our culture and behavior committee so Pierce's culture and behavior committee is a group of Educators focused on creating a school-wide system with common expectations that help to continue to build a positive School culture and support student social emotional learning and Behavioral Health in safe and supportive School environments so we viewed the safest supportive School environments as being Guided by those four values safety responsibility respect and kindness and we bring this work to life through some ongoing initiatives as well as some opportunities for student recognition this the work of this group has evolved over

070time and up and um began with developing these school-wide values and expectations it turned into developing and planning for lessons for students and staff which we'll talk about a little bit shortly um but one of the one of uh my favorite aspects of this work has that's become embedded in our school culture is our monthly recognition of students who exemplify those four values um so through this initiative each grade students in each grade rather are recognized monthly for demonstrating one if or more of these values um you'll see here that that poster the Pierce Middle School positive Community member poster is is throughout our building reminding our students and staff of our core values and with that you'll see students at Blue votes from the months of February students who are recognized by their teachers

071and by our our CBC for big models of embodying those values I also um I would be remiss to talk about the cultural Behavior committee without um specifically naming two of our incredible Educators Michaela Dixon and Melissa Augustine who have been really teacher leaders in this process in bringing this group's Vision to reality the student-led Culture Club is was really born out of the work of the faculty culture and behavior committee um and for the past two years our student like Culture Club has developed and implemented a variety of school-wide activities and events that have contributed to a fun and positive School culture so examples of these events and activities have included things like theme Spirit weeks and spirit days color Wars where each of the grades stress in a certain color to compete against

072each other and really develops a lot of class Spirit school spirit and our culture student Culture Club has also contributed to some of our connection time lessons and activities and we'll touch on some of those in a moment um the evolution of the Culture Club has given students some leadership opportunities that have provided them with more ways to have ownership for building a strong sense of community and culture and connection in their school another structure that we've highlighted as a strategy to continue to grow School culture student support and engagement is what we call connection time and the purpose of connection time is to provide students with regular opportunities to engage with a small group of students and a staff member to develop their sense of connection with one another to their teacher to their

073school and the idea is that through these small connection time communities students will feel safe and connected to a group of peers have a connection with their teacher and feel safe and comfortable in the building connection time takes place uh once every seven days in our cycle for 29 minutes uh and on that that seventh day in the cycle connection time replaces uh that structure that we call Flex time the students have the other six days in the cycle and during connection time Educators who are leading their small groups have a variety of options for engaging with their with their group uh sometimes their themes activities and lessons that are developed either by our CBC uh or our Culture Club sometimes they are just a community building and Get to Know You activities they can

074be group discussions student check-ins some teachers like to play games with students many will use mindfulness activities in some cases they just use it as Flex time and give sentence some time to on their own some of the examples of of lessons and activities that take place during connection time uh are those community building and Getting to Know You activities goal setting activities and most recently during February we had several lessons and activities that were celebrated Black History Month which allows students the opportunity to reduce research historical figures and to develop um different artifacts that demonstrated their their learning in their in their growth and understanding uh and most recently in March for women's History Month through connection time uh we did uh door decorating contests in which students in each of the connection time

075activities uh created uh decorated their their connection time doors there's a couple pictures there to show you and again it's a really a nice opportunity to bring pause during the day to bring a small group of students together to bond with each other and with their teacher um to do it in a way that um that really livens the building up whether it's you know the door decorating on some of the posters or just some of the different activities to do uh it really engenders the sense of humidity another element of our work in SEO and Behavioral Health is our pilot of the com classroom daily mindfulness program some people some may be aware of what com classroom is but if you're not calm classroom is a simple sustainable mindfulness training that relies on the

076belief that anyone can practice and teaching mindfulness and we know that mindfulness is widely viewed as a Cornerstone of mental health inlays the foundation for the development of core SEL conferences such as self-awareness and stuff and the the program is built on these three-minute scripted breathing stretching focus and relaxation strategies and practices that can be led by teachers and students and that are suitable for all learning styles and intrinsically enjoys so we were very fortunate through a partnership with South Shore Health this year to have a pilot group of 20 Educators trained in using the mindfulness practices for their classroom um there's you know over the past couple years the research on the benefits of mindfulness in schools is uh is widely out there and that sometimes that includes things like improved SEO some of

077the social emotional resilience um increase compassion improve attention uh improved emotional regulation and and reduce feelings of stress and anxiety and through the luster Institute which is the organization that puts outcome classroom we were able to collect some data from the pilot of 20 teachers that have been implementing the program and it's been really favorable um 100 of the teachers who responded in the uh in the survey rated classrooms overall effectiveness as being very effective or effective um 100 of teachers in the pilot who responded said that students seem calmer and more peaceful after practice income classroom over 90 percent of teachers in the pilot who responded said the students are more ready to learn after the practice com classroom uh 83 84 of teachers in the pilot responded that students are better able to

078regulate their emotions since beginning the comp classroom program in 100 of the teachers in the pilots said that students enjoy practicing comp classroom so if this was a pilot it was limited to 20 to 20 staff who were able to be trained uh and our vision really is to train the entire staff to be able to implement another uh of the key actions in our school Improvement plan under this priority is to disrupt Trends in disproportionate discipline outcomes to the use of restorative practices those practices that support students and staff to learn to resolve disagreements take ownership for their behavior and engage in Acts of empathy and forgiveness so the onboarding um of Athena Schechter the district's restorative practices coach has been very successful in a really short period of time Adina has quickly become

079a valuable resource to our administrators to our guidance counselors our adjustment counselors and our teachers um ways that ways that this has come to be or come to come to fruition uh really true is one um through staff professional development sessions uh back in February shortly after Dina started she provided an intro to restorative practices to our entire faculty during one of our early release days I believe that she has since done that for the other five schools it was really well received by our faculty and staff I think it helped that helped everyone here to develop an understanding of what restorative practices are and what they're not and it really I think helped to demystify some of the common misunderstandings about restorative practices um Adina is also offering a PD series and there's about

08050 MPS stash four involved in that PD series and I'm proud to say that about half of them are our peers educator so this shift in thinking about and thinking about how we build community how we respond when harm happens through the use of restorative practices uh is really promising and really exciting and I want to acknowledge Dina thank her for her leadership and her support in bringing this to their um other ways that we've begun to implement some restorative practices or through the the use of circles um we've began to we've begun rather um using two different types of circles on a really small scale um first through the through repairing harm you know Edina has modeled for administrators and for counselors and for teachers um engaging in those restorative conversations and I would

081say those restorative conversations are things that have been happening in an ongoing way uh all along but there's a different Focus through that restorative practices lens so those conversations uh and also those conflict circles are used to repair harm that can arise between students and sometimes students and teachers um another type of circles that type of circles that we've begun using our community circles so we have a a small pilot group of eighth grade students who were identified as being at risk for being negatively impacted by traditional disciplinary consequences um and this in this group this community Circle that Adena facilitates it's a group of eighth graders along with two uh High School seniors who come down from Milton High um once a week and they they engage in this community Circle um yes that

082again is this led by this model by Athena and through her modeling and through um her pushing into conversations that we're often having about the community and responding to harm and also you know and thinking about discipline in the context of all this she's really helping us to build to to build a more restorative mindset in our our third underpinning of school Improvement is through diversity Equity inclusion and uh it's important here to Circle back to that priority area of school culture student support and engagement and the goal that ex to explicitly develop a strong School culture that's anchored in those core values of safety responsibility respect and kindness um in the in the as well as that that related fear of action that states that uh school school of culture promotes um inclusivity respect

083and achievement that students and educators will be able to Excel and thrive yeah I think it's important here to say out loud that the the racially charged incidents from earlier in the school year um both in our school in community have underscored the need to guard against being reactive to situations that may arise and in favor of an approach that's more proactive and strategic and um through a partnership with our site Council and diversity Equity inclusion committee um we've we've been engaged since December in some really promising and exciting work um so following the the racial charge incidents that took place back in December um our Dei committee met and we invited some students to attend our December meeting um to provide them with another space to share more about those ideas and experiences and

084through that those that discourse there were several themes that emerged that really signaled further opportunities to focus our work in private so at this time I'd like to introduce Stacy Solomon who is um a faithful member of both our site Council and diversity Equity inclusion committee uh to talk about the partnership between our site console and DCI committee hi thanks I'm going to just apologize up front it's very possible my dogs might start going into a barking frenzy because I walk in from soccer practice and that will just make them go crazy so I want to apologize up front um so yes um so as um Dr fish said um we thought it was really important to make sure we're hearing basically the voices of all of our stakeholders so we made sure so we

085combined efforts between our diversity Equity inclusion committee as well as our site Council and also including um student voices from a variety of perspectives so it allowed us to really make sure that we had families community members students staff members administrators as many different stakeholders and voices as part of this to help us really guide our work which helped us create these Focus areas so um the first Focus area is one that was already existing as many of you know in the district um was this idea of establishing an incident reporting system so that work sort of started as a district and now um exists so for peers um what's really important for for us is to really think about how do we sort of keep track of um what incidences are happening are there

086themes to those incidences how are we responding to them what's the timeliness of them so sort of keeping track so for Pierce um we want to make sure we're using the process and keeping it in a um you know structured diligent way and then determining if there are trait uh themes and Trends because that will really inform the work of some of our other Focus areas so for um focus area two um in connection and this is really related so um Dr fish when he started sort of said how these are all kind of like interrelated it's kind of hard to talk about any of them in in isolation so um those restorative practices those ideas for how to develop a protocol for how leaders and teachers are required to respond which is also connected

087to the incident reporting right we need the report we need to know what's happening if if it isn't something that we've seen directly and then have a way for how to rest Spa then those restorative practices are one of the ways that um that will help us have a protocol and a process for how to do that and there they are um so if it's too distracting let me know um but also what Dr fish said is we want to make sure we have sort of a reactive approach as well as a proactive approach so the reactive approach is making sure now that we have a very structured way for how to respond to these proactive is this idea of really figuring out ways to um educate our staff and our families and our students

088on um the importance of building inclusivity and racial literacy and affirming um each other and things like that so we have kind of this reactive and proactive approach um which then sort of leads into three and four so three and four are kind of about how we make how we support and educate and um uh help our staff and four is very you know is also how we support our students right so we want to make sure that there's professional development um ongoing um and you know professional development it meaning and I know like cat and and Brian talked about this professional development not just on Race equity and inclusion but when we talk about our Ela instruction when we talk about our mathematics instruction when we talk about our science instruction our social studies

089destruction our art instruction our music instruction it should be kind of embedded within the fiber of of who we are um and how do we really help our staff see that and do that um and um trying to figure out some metrics which has been an interesting conversation to to assess to make sure that this is really becoming part of the fiber of the school um and then with that is the focus area four which is the idea of um how do we how do we help our students understand um what we're talking about recognizing um bias um both implicit and explicit um how to do anti-racism work um how to be in groups and collaborate with students who are different from you um and then also looking at the curriculum and making sure that

090we are um we are addressing all the needs that exist based on who the population is and so what we've done for these bottom three Focus areas areas two three and four with the combined efforts of our subcommittees uh with the corners of our diversity Equity inclusion and our school side Council as well as the students that participated we've created subcommittees to sort of address each one of them because it's impossible for us all to do all of it um and one of the things that I think was really a fast uh really amazing that was done is that for each of those subcommittees that exist um the the facilitators of those committees there's co-facilitating one of whom is a staff member of um Pierce and then one of whom is a family or Community

091member so you really can make sure that it's a collaborative effort I think that's pretty much the four Focus areas Stacy thank you I appreciate it uh and as we wrap up our time with the communitariance to form a part of the presentation it's important to highlight some of those ongoing and continued opportunities for improvement the school Improvement plan that the our site Council has authored um we're in year one of of a three-year plan and um you know it's comprehensive and and it spans many domains and disciplines but as we think about prioritizing that work some of those philosophers have really come to the surface uh are laid out here uh one is the grade six transition this is something that we've been working diligently on for the past couple years um a tremendous

092amount of credit goes to our sixth grade team of teachers who have done some incredible work really rethinking the transition and some of this was a function of having to due to the last couple years and the disruptions from the school closure in 2020 to reopening with uh uh multiple models of learning to this year thinking about the impact of all that um on the the development of students that sixth grade transition needs to remain front and center in in our ongoing strategies for improvement uh Brian and cat talked about yeah in great details the uh you know as we build and our our data culture to um using that data that we that we collect and talk about and and reflect on to um really Target and differentiate our instruction for all students so

093we can meet students where they are uh in in regardless of of grade level content area to be able to bring students along um across the board um you know related to the recent implementation of two curricula and Ela and math and more that will be coming in different content areas identifying those supplemental resources and ongoing professional learning needs for our educators will continue to be a priority uh and then um sort of going to where we begin to wrap up our presentation continue to develop our capacity from the implementation of restorative practices and then the work that Stacy spoke to the ongoing efforts between in the joint efforts that have been Guided by our side council at the EI um Committee in those those second third and fourth Focus areas so um again I

094want to express my gratitude again to Kat and Brian and Stacy for being here tonight and presenting on behalf of our of our school community and behalf of our site Council uh obviously at this point we're here to answer any questions foreign [Music] thank you pierce team for this really great presentation so much information to digest um you know I wanted to make two comments one was that I'm familiar with the com classroom and I used it myself when I worked at the Denton Public Schools and I think that it not only gives the students some really important tools and strategies to deal with um strong emotions and regulating their emotions but it also is very helpful for teachers to have because as you are doing it with your students you're doing it for yourself

095so it kind of refreshes teaching staff and and uh as well as so helpful for the students and then the other thing I wanted to ask about was math um so um when Brian and Kat were talking about the um intensive study so elective um I remember last year when you changed the way you decided to teach math you know many parents were concerned about that change and what that meant so I'm just wondering um when you think about the fact that we have to teach all students math whatever level of math they're on does the Intensive study elective challenge all levels does it challenge the kids who excel in math and really need something special or unique to continue their math skills or and does it also challenge challenge all levels of learning thanks

096thanks for the question remember white yeah I appreciate your um so I I think the way that we've intentionally designed the is math classes this year um is to and I use the phrase earlier low floor high ceiling and basically what that means is that there are multiple entry points for students to gain access and engage in the task um the commitment that we've made is to provide through the tasks that are used in the is math classes opportunities for students to be challenged based upon what their level of Mastery and understanding of the concept is we've tried very much to select tasks that connect to the content that they're learning in their regular math class so it's not um designed to push students into more conceptually advanced math or accelerate them into content that

097they wouldn't otherwise learn as a seventh or an eighth grader but to just engage in things that we in our regular curriculum don't have space for um and it's a lot of Hands-On activities um it's a lot of um you know Discovery based activities um and so I would I would wrap up my response by saying that the class is intended for any student who wants to spend more time doing math and has an interest in it and is not um does not exclude a student on the basis of what their achievement or performance level in math is okay thanks remember Ross Debbie so I want to thank you all for this wonderful presentation is Bill and some of the other members of the site Council can tell you I really enjoyed my time on

098site Council and it was really hard to leave I had to finally kick myself off because I should have been um but I do want to acknowledge the significant difference in the conversations we're having about Pierce and I would love to give much credit to bill the leadership team between the parents and the faculty and the administrators all working together recognizing that pierce can be more could have a very pleasant School culture and it can be created and it's not just a place where kids come in learn and go home um whether it's um work the academic gains that have been made in terms of the new curriculum your work on the culture the Dei work which is outstanding and the sixth grade transition all in the right direction I just have a few questions

099since I'm no longer in the site Council this is my only opportunity to ask um specifically in terms of the Mosaic club like how is that going in terms of being a component of your your work around Dei and how are kids progressing and I just have a couple of other questions so if all of my school committee members would be patient with me I would appreciate it the Mosaic Club continues to um function under the leadership of one of our adjustment houses near Frank core we have in our school Improvement plan goal that talks about developing more opportunities for student leadership development that is one of our student groups that we really have in mind um for for um with that that Focus area um we have seen for for whatever reason a small

100the decline in the number of students who are participating in the Mosaic Club regularly um but one of the things that I can tell you is that um the work that the Mosaic Club did last year around um the the mentoring project with the fifth graders to support their transition to pierce is being um it will be will be offered again this year um I know that Miriam has been working closely with Trancy and we the people to know the training for uh our students the Mosaic Club to so that we can eventually pair them partner them with our Rising sixth graders later this spring into the summer that's great to hear then my second question has to do with the new Reporting System um it based on the description it sounds like at the

101school level you're analyzing the data and looking for Trends does that data roll up centrally does anybody know if there's a holistic view on what's being reported across campuses that may not be just you Bill it could be James or Janet I think when I spoke it's sort of that's kind of one of the subcommittee's goals of things that we're gonna We want to start to do um I don't believe it's been done in full capacity yet um I think it's um uh not in its most structured form it's something that the subcommittees have talked about and want to do I don't know if Bill wants to elaborate on that oh yeah no so if you're right and currently Beverly and everyone the the instant reporting that when an incident is reported it goes directly

102to the school um so the school leaders get that report um you know I imagine that there could be a way to to think about how we accumulate those data across the district but um you know I don't think we I don't speak for anybody else but we've had that at least I haven't been involved in that conversation yet I think it's it's a new principle tape if I if I could just add on that Brad spindle met with the elementary principals who with this uh form is being reported in some of the to streamline some of the incidents so it's common language between all six of the Milton Public Schools so just so you know uh district-wide Brad spindle is the person who pulls the data discipline data and reports it to uh Desi

103and so I know he met with the principals he did a training with some of our administrative assistants as well to try to make sure that we have the key features the key language consistent language not only with the reporting system but how it's also calculated in what we call administrators plus as well so it is conversation on how to align it uh we just had a leadership meeting probably about a month ago talking about where we are in terms of uh discipline uh in some of those categories and giving an update there but that is still ongoing but the reporting system from outside makes it very easy for um principles to be able to stream like that one of the things that I ask all principals to do including Dr fish was if a

104report comes to you verbally or via email that too gets recorded in the system so it's done in a consistent way so when it goes when it's time to pull the data we're having the consistent way of pulling it so that is still in progress because the elementaries folks one they don't have some of the issues or challenges or behavioral challenges that we have particularly at the middle and high school and two trying to make it a way in which it's consistent so uh that is still so who is who's Brad spindle and is there is he the person who's looking at the data across campuses they myself and administrators will be looking at it across districts that would be a central office uh but Brad spindle is a person that works in uh he

105does the data reporting to the state he does the data reporting to the state of Massachusetts he does a civil rights report he's he's down in the office with our register register he helps with that process as well okay and I promise this is my last question it's for Kat and Brian um you both of your reports you have about 17 students that are in the underperforming category for ELA it's below grade level and for math it's two to three grade levels below um do you have a profile or is there any sort of consistency that you could describe who are these students and why you know what are your theories around why they're struggling like is it you know are they is it a special population or is it across the board like I

106would love to hear from both of you about that the 17 which is about the same interestingly enough it is about the same percent from both of you foreign yeah that's a good question um it's something that Brian and I and some other administrators at Pierce have begin began discussing looking towards next year and thinking about how to effectively or more efficiently get tier two or even tier 3 supports to students that are in that for lack of a better phrase at the moment bucket of of achievement um and seeing how we can best pair them with um what what's going to be necessary to to hopefully move them along um it it varies but yes they are members of various subgroups that we acknowledge and and are always working towards um moving out of

107that below grade level um some you know belong to the special education population some are students that you know have been on a consistent consistently uh requiring tier two so maybe have always been in that reading support class or in Title One or reading support so um it is it isn't I don't know that it would look any different like pre-covet I think we have always seen uh you know a subgroup of students um but that's certainly where a lot of our conversation is spent in terms of where to allocate um resources going forward Brian I don't know if you want to say anymore uh yeah sure I'll chime in uh thank you Beverly for the question um as Kat said uh demographically we're talking about a disproportionate percentage of students who are on IEPs

108and a disproportionate percentage of students of color and um what is the cause or reason behind that um I would Echo what Kat said we spend a great deal of time trying to diagnose and figure out what that is and more importantly how to address it um I think as far as specific to special education um we're looking closely at our um model for instruction um to service students on IEPs is there something we could be doing in our uh delivery of instruction to better service those students and what can uh what can we um do to make sure that we're making maximum use of the um services that their IEPs call for um so there's not easy answers to these questions um it's not um unique to pierce um but it remains um a

109it cost me sleep um and I'm not alone in that and and Kat would tell you the same thing as what other people um and on the administrative team at Pierce and across the district um I don't think it's specific to the pandemic although we know that um some of the students in these subgroups were more adversely affected by the pandemic and to the point you made earlier in the budget presentation um we actually saw more growth in our special education population at least in terms of MCAS data than in other areas but um there's Trends here that are disturbing and not easy to resolve thank you both thank you all for answering my questions just I believe we had trying to scroll up against the top I believe uh Dr Carrollton or Ada Rose

110member Rosemary remember Rosemary thank you for the signal sorry it's hard to see it could only see a couple of you on my screen at the time thank you um thank you also for this this great presentation it's wonderful to hear about all the good work that's happening at Pierce um two um highlights that that um jumped out at me are the efforts of your restorative practices coach and and the work with with our peer students and also the um the collaborative efforts between staff and family on the joint Dei and and site Council work I think that's really a a wonderful um sort of co-leadership model that that is is uh great great practice um two quick questions one is uh in regard to the restorative practices coach Adina Schechter who we've all heard

111wonderful things about I'm trying to remember what the is funding her position is that something that we need to keep an eye on [Music] go ahead it's okay um her position is funded through a grant that's guided under Sue Maselli in the Office of Pupil Personnel it was allocated in a response to our sort of being flagged for disproportionality of discipline when students identified as African-American Sue sorry I see that you just popped up I don't mean to speak for you no I you were doing fine yes this is our comprehension coordinated early intervening Services money through our idea Grant because of the disproportionalities we are required to allocate 15 of that Grant to address the disproportionalities in communication and at risk for discipline Adidas Schecter is the restorative coach who is doing the work

112under the lens of that Grant through the idea program okay wonderful well thank you and and um moving forward um if if we no longer need to set aside the special ed funds for that position for that particular purpose um I hope that we'll be able to find funding for that position um as we move ahead um and my my second question is in regard to the screeners um for both the math and the reading I'm just wondering if we've used them long enough um to have a sense of is it predictive of our MCAS scores for kids so I can speak to speak to Rapid um you know V Vu and I have had this conversation um and I think you know my point earlier and it probably was uh ill-timed in that it

113wasn't the time to start going on and on about various types of Assessments but I just can't help myself sometimes but um it relates to this in the way that [Music] um screeners are really not correlated as a structural assessment so in other words we're not asking questions in the same way manner or even with the intended outcome as say an MCAS um it does however uh claim and I say claim because we I don't have any experience with this in particular but there's a rating on there called the RSP the reading success probability rate and they put it right at the top which I wish that they wouldn't because because it's a national screener um it's not related to MCAS in any way they correlate or try to predict the success rate of students

114in the Stanford 10 which we do not participate in and though you could argue it is another performance-based standards-based assessment I I still don't I don't know it it doesn't relate to students in Milton um I think there are ways we use the screener to uh triangulate other data to make sure that we are addressing the needs of students in a way that will come out in an MCAS um we have not perfected this clearly I think somebody would be a billionaire by now if we did but um we do use it in conjunction with other data to make sure that you know from a skills and strategies perspective which is what the screener does um to a diagnostic assessment which more looks at standards grade level standards so um probably a longer answer than

115you were looking for but um the short answer is no we don't use it as a predictor but we can see some correlation um in in certain you know in certain Pockets Brian all throw it to you yes to make a long answer longer um so a similar response for i-Ready uh remember Rosemary and there is um some correlation uh there's efficacy uh studies that uh curriculum Associates who who um the company behind iready puts forward to show and to incentivized districts like ours in Massachusetts to utilize it as a as a way to predict or anticipate how students will perform on MCAS um as for how relevant those are for us in Milton and particularly at Pierce um to the first part of your question um it certainly hasn't been long enough to know

116uh whether um the i-Ready diagnostic tool um can serve that purpose for us at Pierce uh this is this in this past uh winter was just our fourth Administration which is you know only one full calendar year um and I think um it takes significantly longer than that to establish it as a routine and as a uh experience for all students to produce valid data across the board um that said um we have we did see a correlation to last year's MCAS and the iready data that we collected uh last uh June um you know I think that they're very different assessments and that's I think the the big takeaway that I would want the K the committee members to understand the MCAS is questions that only align to material that's been taught during that

117grade level year and the I ready and it's all the same questions every sixth grade student across Massachusetts gets the same MCAS uh questions for math as they do for Eli um and in the iready diagnostic experience um students get all different questions and those questions um vary in grade level depending on the level of Mastery that they're able to show and so I think one thing that does happen with iready as students sort of um continue to answer items incorrectly it pushes them down into content where you start to really lose validity in the data that you're collecting um in terms of its pinpoint accuracy and then that has a little bit of a snowball effect on the next time they take it because they're starting with questions um and so one of the

118concerns that I've raised and expressed about iready is you know does it come from the assumption that a student that has one Gap in grade three is therefore unable as a seventh grader to access some seventh grade math concept that is completely disconnected from The Gap that showed up in their i-Ready diagnostic experience and I think we have a lot of reason to believe that it doesn't so I mentioned earlier kind of continuing to evaluate and weighing out the pros and cons of how we utilize this tool moving forward at Pierce in particular so I definitely I think went over cat's response time even in that question forgive me thank you so I see one more hand raised up but out of respect for the time in other people on here Dr Carroll I'll take

119your questions and if folks have any additional questions or Pierce please feel free to email me and then maybe we could uh get you those questions if that is okay I'm just a little concerned about Christmas thanks superintendent Judd I was thinking the same thing I I can share my questions as sort of lingering questions if they would be appropriate to follow up with me and the committee um later on um just things that jumped out and I do also Echo thanks appreciation for this thorough presentation and all the work you do that um that it represents um the first thing which really I think was a lingering question is about what you mentioned Ada the um the model of co-facilitating between staff and parents and community members I'm really interested to learn more about

120that I'm curious about that as a potential model to sort of build on um Beyond Pierce and thinking about ways we try to raise awareness in the community at large um you know about some of these thing big topics and issues that um that we're working with in in the district and I know we're going to talk later about forums that's like one method but I'm curious to learn more about that thank you for sharing and innovating in that way um sounds really promising um and I'm interested in that um the other two quick things I was going to ask about and again don't feel the need to respond now but um one of them is I kept hearing and this is really I think implicit in so much of what you were sharing about

121the um thoughtful way that you're working with your data especially your formative assessment data and supporting students I appreciated your question and point Betty around how also are the high achieving students being supported to be challenged and to have those enrichment opportunities at the same time as we're obviously paying attention to our students who are below grade level and needing extra support I'm I'm um I know that we're going to hear what the Strategic plan we already know that personalized learning is one of the core pillars of that I didn't hear the phrase personalized learning very much through your presentation so I just feel like I'm interested in ways that the community Community can understand concretely like what does personalized learning look like in the context of like teachers taking that you know iready or

122Lexia data and turning that around into like whatever the opportunity is with students um I don't know I just feel like that's maybe a thing we could work towards because I think that that could help parents understand when they hear personalized learning well if you're not an educator you don't necessarily even know what that is um in beyond the abstract concept of it but I know it's happening you all are leading in that at Pierce and just interested in sort of some detail around that going forward and the last thing I was going to ask about I know that in our school quality review and some of the findings things data we've had and anecdotal and otherwise um have revealed the need um that again I think was also implicit in some of what you

123shared but which pertains to the need for safety and a sense of belonging for lgbtq plus students um especially at in our secondary grades and including at Pierce and so I'm interested to learn I know you're um I appreciated Dr fish that you kind of named and and spoke to some of the ways you responded following the December incidents um with the racist hate speech at Pierce um in addition to that you know I'm interested more in the future to understand like what are the interventions in place to support um our gender diverse students um and different students who identify as lgbtq plus so um thank you for all the work that you're doing um and I'm interested to stay in conversation and um thank you again um superintendent jet before we sign off with

124Pierce I just want to take a moment to just say thank you so much for myself to all of you for the presentation and I wanted to say one thing about something that Brian said that keeps him up at night about um the the stubbornness that we're having about the subgroups and particularly about the students and IEPs and students who identify as black and brown and um that keeps me up at night too actually I think about the six years that I spend on this committee and how we like we're get we we get there and then we we don't and we get there and we don't and I just want to thank you all though because I do feel like the conversations are moving in different directions and I do think that with all

125the training that you're doing with all the anti-bias with the anti-racism with the restorative justice with all of that training that's going to impact learning down the road if you are Relentless and I mean Relentless in your attention to that right into thinking about the metrics and how it gets measured and to not lose sight of that piece um and to keep holding ourselves accountable um for that and I really just can't thank you enough I think this conversation tonight was was so rich and different than than many that I've been a part of over the years and um and I just I really appreciate all the effort and to all the Educators and the teachers and the parents um Bravo to all of you and be relentless that's what Dr Calise warnham taught me

126you must be relentless in the pursuit of equity and figuring it out and I know that we're going to get there and I'm going to keep watching School Community meetings and I'm going to see the change over time I absolutely believe that so thank you all from the bottom of my heart I thank you for all your work thank you so I actually would like to thank the uh PS team and Dr Carroll thank you for your questions and hopefully we can follow up and get you the answers um and I do apologize for my statements beforehand I just wanted to make sure that we would uh being cognizant of the time I know we have a full agenda so I just wanted to make sure we're on that so thank you Miss uh team

127and Dr fish I'm not sure if you want to stay on for a second because up next is the preliminary uh approval of the Pierce Middle School field trip to Canopy Lake um I know that the school committee uh members received a copy of The Proposal um so I think it's a matter of any questions you may have if not uh could we make a vote I think it was clearly articulated this was a trip that the pspto has every uh has all the uh desires to make sure it's free for every student leaving 9 A.M coming back 6 p.m it will be supervised I think there was a ratio of 12 to 1 student so um it's very structured um and hopefully it's a culminating activity to provide some excitement for the students at

128peers and I will say I I 100 support it they've been impacted at the Pierce Middle School every single year of the experience at Pierce through this pandemic and it'd be a nice way to end that I leave it up to you guys to make a vote you need someone to make a motion yeah so [Laughter] yeah it's been so long since we Dr Craig it's been so long since we've had a field trip to think about I know it's amazing um so I'd like to make a motion to approve the um field trip to canopy is called Canby Lake Canby Park um as presented uh to the school committee I second that we can open it up for any conversations or questions about the field none okay we can take a roll call vote

129just because that's what we have to do it in in in in Zoom times um Dr crackhead okay so this is a motion tool yeah okay Dr Craig um and I say yes if Dr fish is going to be one of the chaperones that was a joke remember Rosemary uh yes I just have a quick question about promoting because in the in the agenda it says preliminary approval and is there going to be more coming to us than this or is this it believe that's it so and I vote Yes to them [Music] remember Rossini yes uh member White yes Dr Carol yes the member Everhart yes all right wonderful I hope you have the most best time at the sun shines the whole day it's it's one of the best things to do so

130I hope it goes well thank you appreciate it thank you Dr fish next on the agenda is uh Personnel update and I just wanted to update the uh school committee on the first position with the assistant superintendent of curriculum and Human Resources as many people know in the community a timeline was sent out we embarked upon this process back on February 15th uh we had a screening committee that started off with 15 people um that actually uh went down to 14. we had a member that had a loss in the family and couldn't commit to those two days uh and we respectfully accepted that that person moved on but we have 14 people we did our first meeting on uh first I would say meeting to do the screen and reviewing the applications on February

1311st and identifying uh questions or characteristics that we wanted to do then uh we conducted uh interviews on the 7th and the 8th I would say out of the 30 plus 35 Plus applicants we uh selected 12 people that we invited in for interviews audited 12 11 came in for interviews we went from approximately five o'clock on Monday and Tuesday until about 10 15 to 10 30 on uh in the evening on both of those nights and then we reconvene on uh the ninth um after value after a survey and we do a little it down to five semi-finalists uh semi-finalists were notified on uh Friday the 11th February uh out of that out of the five three people came in and we interviewed um and we pushed forward to two individuals as a semi

132as again semi-finalists and um that was the public forum that we did out of that I am pleased to say that uh after discussion with our team uh in the Milton Public Schools we're recommending to the school committee uh doc McKinney Dr goth McKinney Uh current interim uh superintendent in his second year of uh Nashua Public Schools in New Hampshire um and I put forward that information to you guys as a vote I could talk a little bit about Mr McKinney if you feel free if if you want to have that but I would like your approval to move forward and discuss with doc Dr goth McKinney about possibly being the next assistant superintendent of the Milton public schools for curriculum and resource thank you superintendent Jeff so the mom the motion on the floor

133would be to approve the appointment of Dr Garth McKinney as the next assistant superintendent of um curriculum and Human Resources may I have a second seconds one second okay great I don't know if you wanted to ask superintendent any questions to further any more information about Dr McKinney for the McKinney for the community or um this is really just a formality for us for a vote would you vote obviously if uh it moves forward it all works out uh notice we'll be going home to all Milton Public Schools families uh with a descriptor and a little bio of uh Dr McKinney um oh yes remember Ross standings yeah yeah my question has to do with what the trans assuming that we vote Yes what the transition experience would be like well um assistant superintendent Sheehan

134be allowed to overlap with um Dr McKinney to help him adjust to the new role with without question um in a spirit of full disclosure before I come to you guys as a recommendation I want to make sure that number one that that individual is serious about coming to the Milton public schools that individual has already exchanged cell phone numbers with already reached out to her already stopped by the Milton Public Schools they have a conversation Jenny and I had this conversation this person would start on July 1st but there will be uh days in which that individual uh would come into the Milton Public Schools do some transition work and as people may or may not know Janet Sheehan uh is was retired came out of retirement but it's still a phone call away

135to be a support uh for goth McKinney I'll just add I will do everything I can to ensure a smooth transition thank you anyone else have any questions for superintendent chat no all right then this will be a roll call vote I'm going to start with you member White yes uh member Rosemary yes Dr Craighead abstain okay remember rosteni yes and number Carol yes and remember Eberhart yes okay so help me that 501 am I correct okay wonderful congratulations to um Dr McKinney and we look forward to um meeting him at a future date and welcoming him to the Milton Public Schools so thank you very much and just a quick update on the Dei the director of diversity Equity inclusion uh once again uh that was a very uh interesting process to say the

136least with this position we had 25 candidates to apply uh that who quickly dwindled down to about five candidates however because of the time frame uh we had one candidate that pulled out and then we had another candidate um from the Ukraine and for obviously obvious reasons we have not been able to get in touch with that individual but it was three people that we did interview we had a committee of eight people three parents one student a department head a principal and then assistant superintendent she and it myself uh we interviewed those three candidates on uh I believe it was March 28th yes March 28th uh that entire screening committee so very strongly about a candidate it Rose above and beyond the other two candidates because of her experience so much so that the

137committee asked if we could move forward with that um I said no we have to do a second interview we did a second interview uh with a smaller screening committee that consisted of Janet she and myself Amy Dexter assistant superintendent Dexter uh Karen Cahill and Dr John Redding the principle of uh the cunning Cunningham Elementary School once again unanimous on that individual that individual is Claire uh Galloway Jones she was formerly in Bedford public schools and she's currently employed in Sharon Public Schools uh both medical director and there prior to that she was in Boston Public Schools under many different roles for several years she comes to us highly recommended by multiple superintendents along with former administrators that she worked with in her current uh folks um she is very interested in her job we

138are now embarking upon some conversations about uh potential uh transition and start date but obviously with any of these positions uh contracts in in negotiations on salary needs to be needs to happen so so uh very excited about coming to the Milton public schools and we hope that that works I don't think this one is necessarily a vote it's just primarily me giving you a quick update I do want to I do want to address one issue uh because we did have a concern about the timeline in us not uh following the timeline when we talked about it these timelines are set up not knowing how many candidates that we're going to get folks if folks if I go back to the assistant superintendent of curriculum because we had a large pool of candidates that

139the screening committee wanted to see although we didn't change the timeline in dates we definitely changed the timelines in time and we went longer on two nights to do that we follow that in this one where we had a smaller pool of candidates coupled with uh someone emerging as top candidate we we move quickly uh without violating any policies or protocols but we move quickly to secure people especially if they applying to other places and so I know that there was a concern about that but I think if you talk to anyone on the screening committee out of their parents out of this faculty and staff unanimously those individuals wanted uh this candidate [Music] thank you superintendent jet um for the information about Miss Galloway Jones um and we I'm sure the committee looks forward

140to receiving her information and meeting um if if she goes by she I I'm assuming I apologize for doing that um then I'll I'm sure that um Miss Gallery Jones will come to a school community meeting in the near future to meet the committee I don't know if the committee has any questions or comments I I mean I do think that um uh superintendent jet that it would be really important moving forward to really clarify and make those processes around different hirings um as clear as we can to the committee to the community I mean because we've been changing some things around different positions and parents have been more involved in fun things and community members more involved in committees and searching and I just um so when people raised concerns about it I think

141it's just really important for us to move forward be really clear so that um it's understood what role we all play in in the different processes and that we do follow the policies that we have so had any comments but we we congratulate and welcome Claire Galloway Jones to the Milton Public Schools if she accepts the position mm-hmm anyone know all right thank you that that concludes my report to receiving thank you all right next up on our agenda is citizen speak we have set aside 15 minutes um for citizens to address the committee if you would like to address the committee for a citizen speak you can raise your hand and you will be promoted you will be asked to um state your name and your address and you have up to three minutes

142to address the committee I ask you to address something on the agenda or our policies or procedures that the committee is responsible for doing thank you so much first one that I elevated I elevated uh Kristen Bagley Jones hi everybody um I brought back many memories for me of these long meetings but it was a wonderful presentation um I was glad I'm kidding but it was a great presentation and I really special to my heart was all the SEL and the restorative practices so I'm really glad to hear that that's all working at Pierce but the reason I came here and first I do want to say um thank you to superintendent Jet and super assistant superintendent Sheehan who once again came back and helped us out and Amy I don't I never worked with

143you but I hear really good things about you but I want to really say something to the three of you of acknowledging what a tough couple of years that it's been and I give you a lot of credit um that's not the reason I came on tonight though but I did want to say that um I cannot imagine being on the school committee these days um the whole world I mean in the last three years the racial um pandemic covid the wear masks don't wear a mask return to school don't return to school you guys have really in Milton public schools have worn the brunt of all of that you know you've listened to people you've been there for people you've responded to emails you've responded to a lot of anger and from my perspective

144there's been times where I've been very disappointed in some of my fellow miltonites in terms of how they have treated some of you or all of you so I just need to say I've tried to have your back but it's not always possible um in social media and all that but I really want to acknowledge what you all have been through and what you have continued to do for like I always like to say for a volunteer position where you do not get paid for the countless hours you put in to this so from the bottom of my heart thank you all for that but the real reason I came here tonight is two of my favorite people are leaving the school committee my understanding is tonight's last night right um how many minutes are

145left Elaine and Margaret like I don't know you counting um so I really just wanted to acknowledge the work that you guys have done I had it was it was joyous to work with both of you I really appreciated all the work that you've done Elaine I don't think I ever saw you flustered um I don't think I ever saw you lose your cool I often did I don't think I ever saw you do that and you loaned your expertise to us you gave you our you gave us your expertise and it was very much appreciated um so I wanted to say that I also want to say that Margaret I think I owe you an apology and a thank you Margaret I really I'm not going to use the word bully but I really

146pushed her to run for school committee I was very selfish in that I had worked with Margaret on several volunteer activities in town and I knew she was a hard worker I knew her work ethic I knew her politics I knew what she knew about education and by the way our dogs are best friends because we got them at the same time so I'm just saying you know we got a lot of connections there but Margaret is someone who I has tremendous respect for is one of the hardest work I'm going to cry is one of the hardest volunteers I've ever worked with um and I just told her up to a gold standard um I really and I really do feel badly there were many times these last couple years where I was like

147oh my God what did I get Margaret in for how is she handling all this how are any of you handling all of this so Margaret I'm not really sorry I'm really glad that you've been on the school committee um so all of you keep showing up you know and that's really admirable and I don't think you always hear that you know from the community and I think every single one of you deserves a lot of credit for showing up and continuing to show up um and I just really appreciate it um so I just really want to applaud all of you and I want to say Margaret and Elaine I think we should just meet up sometime now that you're going to have all this free time and you're not going to know what

148to do with yourselves that's that's it just a big thank you to all of you and particularly to Elaine and Margaret that's it thanks thank you thank you next I'm going to elevate uh Dr Kevin Donahue it just takes a few seconds I believe there you go I believe I did oh there he is hello yes Uh Kevin Donahue 203 School Street uh Margaret Elaine well um today well not quite the exact finale concludes in many ways six years of dedicated service to the town of Milton so I wanted to take a minute a little closer to three and say thank you Elaine for five years well I served with you in the committee you were our financial Guru and budgetary backbone you immersed yourself in the minutia of the budget including pouring over the

149budget warrants so in hard pointed questions were asked we could turn to you and say Elaine and we've had the capable assistance of two tremendous assistant superintendents it was you at the Joint Finance meetings with the select board at the capital Improvement planning committee fighting for the funding that we needed to keep our staff and our school buildings top-notch watching you tackle a problem is is a spectacle to behold uh you have this way of succinctly parsing out the extraneous details and and honing in on the Crux of the matter so it can be explored and solved you display this talent in our meetings our subcommittee meetings in our negotiation sessions and often when prepping for a meeting I would have to plan specifically in anticipation of your appointed questions I imagine you're a phenomenal

150professor and your students are lucky your family is also lucky you're a great person kind thoughtful diligent and now your family gets you back full time not just your nights and weekends but also your mental bandwidth so you can be mentally present more often as well and perhaps more importantly with so many fewer meetings you'll be one less person to compete with for that Prime Zoom location in your house I've missed working with you and I look forward to seeing you in a social context and in the cheap seats at the back of town meeting Margaret I also had the pleasure of serving with you for five years and in that time you were the social and emotional heart of our committee and not just in the sense of the work that we did as

151a committee although that is emphatically true but also in our relationships with one another when our discussions became intense or personalities emerged and threatened to fracture the committee you were there with thoughtful caring insightful comments that moved us back on track but then also moved us along that track thank you I wonder if we really are all that dissimilar from the preschoolers that you teach on a daily basis thank you also for the hard work that you have done this year chairing this committee is a great deal of work some of it logistical some political some personal and all mentally and at times physically exhaustingly you have presented the community with a productive engaged school committee this year while tackling heart issues that for many families in town are important in that intimate and personal

152way that other Municipal functions are not all the while simultaneously managing the planning of a politically and logistically complex building project your time with gavel in hand will be remembered well Bravo but it's also in the past six years that I've had the opportunity to learn from you as a parent who successfully raised wonderful strong individual children thank you on a personal level for all of your advice and insight Margaret and Elaine welcome almost to Meredith's status I'm sure the past six years have had their ups and downs and in particular the crises of the last two years may have caused you to wonder what you're doing this all for well you did it for me and my family first is a colleague Dennis Milton Public School parent but more importantly you did it for

153our town we were a better Community for your service thank you to you and to your families Thank You From A Grateful town and a friend and former colleague take care at this time I do not see any hands raised okay give another minute okay all right go hands raise all right to the citizenship you can't speak and if you have any questions or comments that you'd like to share with us and you weren't able to speak or attend this evening please send us an email and we'll do our best to get back to you all right the next item on our agenda is the chairs report the chairs report has two items under it it has the mid-cycle review of the superintendent in the district and then a discussion of school committee Forum dates

154and ideas so I want to thank everyone for um for helping and I want to especially thank superintendent Jeff for sending us the um the evidence to um to help us think about the mid-cycle review um for the um for the community at large the one of the main roles of the school committee besides policy and finance is to work with the superintendent to um to support the superintendent in the work of the district be as being the educational leader and some of that responsibility is to evaluate assassin supervised superintendent I will tell you that um there are many things about being on the school committee that feels awkward to me as a human being but this is the most awkward piece of it so I'm as someone who does this for a living like

155you know you work with teachers and you it you know you just do that in a quiet room or you go to you know go and have a cup of coffee somewhere but this isn't in a public forum because that's not required by law so I want to thank everyone for submitting their comments on your thoughts we put them together in a document that we shared with superintendent Jen and we don't we don't expect any you know feedback or anything because they only sent it to him today um from him at this moment but it's really just a guiding document for the district to think about our goals and um our strategic plan as we move forward um and so I'm going to turn the floor over to the school committee if they want to

156talk at all about the things that we noted in the um in the formative assessment and an assessment is just that it's an assessment it's not an evaluation but I did want to start out by saying that um we started out the mid-cycle assessment by just really come commencing the district for the work that they've done in the full to return to school full-time in person for everyone the first half of the Year from September to March was marked by a lot of continued covid-19 challenges um constant changing with the the rules and the mandates from Desi with the test and stay program with the vaccines with the masking and I would just really like to commence to print in a jet and all of the administrators for leading the district through that with a

157lot of Grace and kindness for supporting the school committee and getting a vaccine mandate for the Milton Public School staff and just really leading us through that with a lot of patience and kindness it is really much appreciated I don't really think we can ever truly assess what the pandemic has done to education but just the calm and steady way that you manage that as we move through the first class of the year is much appreciated by by all of us and really much so um so I don't know would anyone like to just some jump in share some thoughts about the assessment and and some of the things I think actually the presentation from Pierce tonight sort of was a nice sort of bounced off of the of the assessment because one of the

158themes that I tried to sort of put throughout the assessment is the idea that the district is moving forward with a lot of initiatives um with trainings and with um curriculum and with different tools to measure learning and how all of that translates into practice and outcomes from students is I think the long-term work of the district right so like how does restorative justice and how do those practices result in less disciplinary action and just and getting rid of the disproportionality that we see for different subgroups so I think that the conversations we had with the peer sort of sort of dovetail nicely with some of the themes and the um mid-cycle review but I opened the floor to all of you raise your hands yes remember Rosemary and then yes thank you um yeah

159I want to Echo uh chair eberhard's comments about about um superintendent Jets um guiding us through this pandemic um you were this was a trial by fire you know coming in as a brand new superintendent in the midst of of this you know most difficult um time in educational history as far as as any of us have had certainly experienced um and um I I think you you led us with Grace and with um strength and a positive attitude and and you you brought your staff along with you and um you know I'm proud that um our our teaching staff were so um willing to come along with every phase of of the work that we had to do that we asked of them um in terms of remote hybrid vaccinations all of the all

160of those various things that that was truly important um and and to the except success that we had during that really challenging time um but I also want to um thank you and and comment on your communication um um around uh the the developing strategic plan and I think that your involvement and work with the leadership team and developing this new plan that will be coming forward tonight um has been excellent and I'm very excited about seeing that plan really implemented and I want to thank you for that that's it for me thank you member Rosemary sorry about that I was mute um member Rossini I do want to start by first echoing some of the sentiments that have already been shared I think many people in the public don't realize how difficult it is

161to be a central office administrator especially a superintendent they're 12-hour days there are weekends and just in a regular school year without a pandemic it's a difficult job so I really appreciate the fact that you stood up in year one to become our superintendent on short notice with no training or practice beyond what you initiated on your own through superintendent prep programs and just your leadership as an administrator and I think the second year was a little better than your first but equally challenging and I do expect that in the out years you will be at a steady state and but it will still be 12 hours and it will still be hard I will say that I am very pleased to see a transition in the way that administrators in central office and at

162the schools have been given the autonomy to solve or address even to think about some of the greatest challenges we've faced you know in the last two years we now have district-wide formative assessments we have common planning time district-wide we now have a reporting system but I think one of the key elements to that and I want the public to hear this too is the superintendent cannot do everything it cannot be everywhere but if you leverage what your team brings and I can say having worked with administrators all over the country for the size of your team you're very fortunate to have very strong leaders and providing a space for them to look at research-based practices to solve some of those things that keep them up at night and taking that reporting data that you

163have and having those discussions in central office I think will ultimately be the key to your long-term success you cannot do this work alone the job is too big and when I think about the goals that you set for yourself and you know some of the things on here reflect what was anticipated at the end of year one but there's still work to do especially around subgroups especially around the hairiest challenges that we face that if we bring the right people together um with realistic timelines because they most of these people have a day job so any projects that whether it's around closing achievement Gap addressing the issues of or the needs of lbgqt plus students or the students with special needs and the turnover in that faculty this is all work that I really

164believe you have one of the best teams I've ever seen to address these and as I said if they're staggered appropriately and you bring the right people to the table there's no question in my mind that your staff is capable of doing the work if anything the question is we need to make sure that that's initiated and expected from you and I know you are capable of doing it because I've seen when you've asked for things of your staff in the last two years they have respect and admiration for you and they stand up and they get the job done and they make you look good now give them the chance to continue in whether it's implementing the Strategic plan or continuing work they've already started given the autonomy to get this work done because

165I definitely believe Milton is a it's not a story of a broken District it's a very much a good to great story and I'm very confident under your leadership that we will see all the wonderful work that these people have started whether at the school off school level or at central office we're going to see great gains for our students thank you thank you member rosteni um member Wade and then Dr Carroll okay well James I go back to what I call opening day if you will when you stepped in to a very difficult challenging time in our history with no hesitation that I could see and with great enthusiasm to take this position on um and you have worked tirelessly to um work with your staff to reach out to parents to work with

166Town officials and I think that we've had such a successful budget season this year with uh additional funding for the positions that we need because people have appreciated your hard work and the way that you reach out to to people who work cooperatively and I think that one of the reasons I'm so relieved about this year's budget um situation is because I think of a lot of your hard work and despite what you know coming into this pandemic and with all the challenges um I've seen your staff just step up to support you and help you and work so hard I mean Janet I think one of the reasons you were willing to come back into an interim position is because of your respect for James and Amy coming into this position was because of

167you know coming up to the schools to work with James it was a probably a major factor in your um thinking and on top of everything else I think you took on some of the loftiest goals I have ever seen any superintendent take on and um you know I just want to say that the work is very much appreciated and you've made some terrific progress on some of the initiatives and the goals and you know I'm sure you've had to have some very tough conversations with your staff but I think people really admire you and feel you're very approachable and so I've been very um happy to see the progress that our our district has made under your leadership and I thank you thank you I'll be brief um I I do feel it can't

168be overstated um the magnitude of challenge that you've faced the past two years and I want to just underscore uh what you were saying Bev you know um as someone who is trained to be a superintendent of schools and who's spent time weren't watching and learning from superintendents I I do know um that being a superintendent um the best of years the best of circumstances is a tremendously hard job to be a new superintendent is even harder and to do that over these past two unprecedented challenging years I feel um it's just a huge accomplishment um I I don't want to um be redundant because I know we do have so much to get through but I did just want to offer you know I know that the um the feedback and comments that were

169shared with you is intended to just be kind of touch points on the way to the official evaluation which is customary for um for superintendents um in Massachusetts I just wanted to say that you know I hope we as a school committee can support you as you look through the comments questions and whatever is there um because I think speaking for myself but I feel probably I think for the whole school committee like um we want to we celebrate the success that you already have clearly there's a lot of it and we are invested in helping you be successful on also these other pieces that are still developing and so um just for myself like if you are looking for any clarification support or anything else around the feedback that you received please don't hesitate

170to follow up so that you know when we go through the formal process in June um you know we're um going to be able to have a great conversation with that um and just thank you for all of your work thank you Dr Carol and thank you um Dr Caribbean yeah um James I just uh want to sort of add my voice to the chorus here but certainly to sort of take a slightly different tag um when we um selected you uh for the position in the midst of a lot of things going on it was sort of The Perfect Storm um there was um unanimous um relief and gratitude that you stepped up and wanted to take the job under such difficult circumstances so first of all I thank you for that secondly um

171I've talked to a lot of other school committee members in other districts and about about their superintendents in the relationship that they have with their superintendents and and so forth and I have to say that that I um I think you are relatively unique in the fact that you have the the support and the trust of so many um different stakeholders um in the milk community and in Milton Public Schools I mean the teachers know that you have their back that you believe in them um that you trust them to do their jobs the uh and that you respect them and and what they do and that goes a long way um toward being able to um you know maintain such a high level of um of of quality uh in Milton public school education

172the staff um you know support you love you um the parents who are really happy that you were took over and um certainly you have the support of this um school committee that has just voiced uh that support as well so um you know given that this is my last official regular school committee meeting although I have other smaller meetings between now and my sell-by date um I I just want to say publicly um that I wish you um all the best and that I know you're going to do um even more great things for Milton Public Schools so thank you very much would you like to say something or I know it's such a strange and awkward thing and um you know I want the community to know that obviously the document is public

173and will be available on the website and um as Dr Carol said there's a lot of really good questions and comments and and things about your evidence and how to move how to keep moving along so please share your thoughts or ideas or anything that you'd like to share with us please first and foremost I thank all of you for your uh positive feedback and your comments I will uh Echo the sentiment of member Ross Denny and Dr Carol and all of you um I would be remiss if I didn't give credit to uh Janet Amy Charlene roach Laurie Dunn in the office day two we're right there in that office right now at the center of everything but you guys hit the nail on the head I think we have a tremendous faculty and

174staff uh that goes to the custodial Style Food Service all over all the way across to the teachers and administrators we have a very talented administrative team and in everyone has talked about whether it's in interviews on these meetings and you guys saw it showcase a little bit this evening in part with some of our department heads and curriculum coordinators so I thank you all for your comments I look forward to addressing some of the feedback it is very I already took a glance at it so it is very uh good feedback it would take and hopefully uh continue to build off of it but I just want to thank you guys and then finally I want to thank the families and I know we talk about uh the voices that we hear when there's

175a concern a problem or or or or frustration about a situation but there's a silent majority out there that believes in the Milton Public Schools I want to thank them and for those who have questions who have been in opposition on anything that we've done I welcome the opportunity to have a conversation because when everything is said and done I know we're talking about me this evening and evaluate it's really not about me it's about the students so when we're talking about the budget we're talking about initiatives our primary goal is elevating Student Success outcomes and making sure everybody that walks through the threshold of any of the schools in Milton feels values seen in uh heard so again thank you guys for your comments and and I guess I will turn it back over

176to you and I look forward to uh the work ahead thank you thank you superintendent ninja so that oh so um the last thing on my chairs report is a discussion of school committee Forum dates we've received some um emails and as we reviewed our own goals and we um thought about the fact that we really wanted to have more forums for topics and and dates for those so I think that we should think a little bit about maybe choosing a few more dates one or two more dates this coming spring into June to have some foreign so that we can have back and forth with the community and they don't feel and they feel more heard and more and more part of the dialogue so I don't know if you want to have a

177real quick conversation right now about any of the the topics I know Dr Carol mentioned one earlier that might be good to Target I see remember Ross Denny's hand is up and then if there's some ideas or dates that we might think about so I just open it up and you guys can go back and forth with what you're thinking remember Ross Denny I know Dr Carol might tell my videos I don't know um I know I know that ADA Rosemary has been on 752 forums since the beginning of the year but um the last month so a member Ross Denny and Dr Carol please go ahead so I think that there's a there's three topics that I think the public would find interesting and it's based on some feedback we've received in email um

178one I know that our curriculum coordinators have done a lot of work around unfinished learning and um I think the public doesn't not everyone attends our school committee meetings but the public doesn't understand how much effort has been put in place and how the work of personalized learning has also played a role so if there's the opportunity to talk about unfinished learning and personalized learning whether it's separate or together I think it will alleviate a lot of concern the public has around academic Excellence there's a perception that our teachers and our curriculum coordinators are not looking at our data and making um and making decisions based on our data and I can I've told people personally three years ago four years ago we could not have the conversations about data and and teaching and learning

179that we can now and I think it'd be very helpful for the public I also think for the mem the families that organized in the summer of 2020 around um the issues of race and Equity the district has made significant strides whether it's in Susan Miceli's office or the work we've just learned about it's happening at the pierce it can be worthwhile to actually give people a big picture of what's been done and any data that supports it so that they can see that progress has been made are we perfect not by any not by any means but we have gotten better and I think the public deserves to have the opportunity to hear from the people who are actually working on it about what they're doing in the progress that's been made thank you

180I'm Dr Carroll um thanks chair ever hurt thank you for bringing this back up and you know I know that it's we were just talking about the um the superintendent's evaluation and it was one of his goals to have Community forums it was also one of our school committee goals to work on this in the space of community engagement and I feel like we've made some progress but I acknowledge that you know we've definitely not um done as much as I wish we would have done um but that's not a reason to like just sit back and feel bad um I think we can make plans um to to do more um I think in the short term the the if you know if we were planning one forum for May I think that's the

181first one that um you mentioned Bev around helping sort of share with the community all the work that has happened around responding to intervening and unfinished learning including the I agree like helping connect those dots of personalized learning and interventions to unfinished finish learning I think that's really important um and then to hear what questions parents and community members have in response to the information not the lack or of information or the misinformation but what is actually shared about what has been going on I think that would be really really important and I'd love to prioritize making that happen in May I think it's important to do like we did in the um like we did in the fall uh you know couple of options of times I think it's also probably important to offer

182both a virtual and an in-person Community Forum um on the same topic if if we feel that it's so important to make that inclusive and accessible to people who are coming from different schedules family setups and whatnot um so I'd just like to commit to working on that and making it happen I'd also like to just acknowledge that there have you alluded to this Bev but the work of the school building committee there have been a lot of public forums um that is not the school committee that's a different committee but it's obviously very closely related to the work that we do and so I hope that families have felt I just I'm inspired by that model that you all Ada and Elaine um have put have had there and I just you know I

183hope that families have felt heard and included on that very important topic because you all have had a number of forums and we'll continue to do that um so so that to me has been is a plus that we can't take credit for but I appreciate it um and then I also just wanted to say on the community engagement piece related to forums and one thing I had committed to doing was um sort of researching the role of the ombuds person in districts um that was something on the community engagement goal that we laid out I've I have sort of informally done some of that um but I've not I'm just not sure what the space would be uh to kind of open bring that and have a conversation about that I mean we're not

184going to have that in our district next year because it's we're not budgeting for it um but I think that it is connected to this conversation of community forums beyond the technical sort of event of a community forum and just the creation of community forums more broadly um where our community members feel heard and responded to um and so I I I don't know when or how that makes sense um as a potential sort of follow-up eventually around um around that but um I think if the rest of the committee agrees uh at least the four of us who will still be here in May um I I'd love to kind of look at with your team Mr jet um scheduling that unfinished learning for him that'd be great as a starting place and I

185think it's a great place to start encouraging community members to continue being in touch with us about additional topics they would like to see because that one is has risen to the top for me as Bev mentioned uh because people have been reaching out with questions and sorry one last thing I wanted to mention is that um people also know that we have public meetings for the different subcommittees and the curriculum and instruction subcommittee um has generated a lot of really rich information that's been presented and shared thanks to assistant superintendent Sheehan um and member Ross Denny who chairs that advisory committee um so I also think there's a lot of fodder there for future forums as well since obviously at those subcommittee meetings any community members who may attend are are not able to

186engage in in the conversation but that's another place that I would look to additional Topics in addition to the other one you mentioned um Bev to kind of follow up on an important conversations about race and Equity so it's getting late I'm a little all over the place thank you member wait well I was just going to suggest that we think about doing a survey for the parents to ask for some ideas for what kinds of forums they would like to have on what topics and you know I know it's April but with all the activities that happen in May and June with our students and families and concerts and award ceremonies and town meeting I wonder whether we should focus on thinking about doing a survey for this coming year in the fall for

187some forums that parents might be interested in doing so I wondered if we could put together a survey and then ask people for their input so that was just going to be my suggestion yeah I think that's a good idea I do think having a forum this spring even with all the stuff that goes on is important because we're still going to be moving the budget forward the school building committee is still going to be moving the the building forward and I think that informing families about the good work that we've been hearing about at school Community meetings in a more in a broader sort of community form where they could have a back and forth which is what I think is the thing they're craving the most um I think would be really helpful

188but I agree with you 100 Betty that a survey would be a great idea and I know superintendent jet was going to have that as part of his plan as well remember Rosemary um yeah thanks I I just in terms of timing um I think um I would prefer to see whatever we do come after town meeting um because we have a lot riding on on um our school building campaign and our our article that will hopefully succeed there for our land Swap and I really would would like us all to stay focused on that um before we get to town meeting and then afterwards I agree with my colleagues about the important topics that have been suggested but I think I also agree that unfinished learning would be the top of my list as

189well thank you member Fran so we have some tasks to take away from here so thank you all okay so I know that on the next section was comments from school committee we're going to skip that to go to strategic planning because it is 9 20 and um we have to do this important work and we can say something nice at the end and if Dr Cricket has to go I I would um I know she has to get up at like four in the morning to go to teach but if we could do the Strategic plan I think that'd be super helpful to move on to that and you know if that's okay with you member Rosemary it's fine especially since I told people we'd probably go on about an hour ago hey sorry

190you know this will be the last time you have to put up for my bedtime oh dear and it's very bad timing it's just my yeah yeah um we have some folks who are who are um not as um panelists right now and I don't know uh Karen mcdabbin's here I just elevated uh Vivo and I Elevate Steve paxia excellent yeah but just I don't know why it takes so long for them to come through but once you see them let me know hopefully they're awake when you turn the camera it's gonna be uh you're good James here was AJ to be elevated AJ yeah oh Elevate AJ thank you for your patience thank you very much foreign [Music] welcome everyone and uh we our apologies to you all for for extending this an hour

191past um midnight to to have this conversation but I'm really glad you're all here um this is these are our members of our strategic planning advisory committee and I welcome you all uh for this important conversation I just want to provide a little bit of background on our strategic plan for the public who um may still be watching um the our current strategic plan is one that's been in place since June 2018 and expires uh in June of this year 2022 foreign our strategic planning advisory committee is a mix of school committee Milton Public Schools leadership and staff and community members many of our strategic planning committee members have served as Liaisons to task forces related to each of the six goals that were in our former strategic plan and we have met quarterly since

1922018 But as time has gone on it became clear that feedback was that the that process of was became somewhat redundant and that there were people who were sitting on various task forces and there wasn't enough overlap and um in the work and people were going to too many meetings to address similar work and so we it became clear that it was time to re refine our plan and then of course we have a new superintendent um who's who has joined us um recently as we just talked about and the impact of course of the the covid-19 pandemic so it was time for us to update and focus on a new plan and I am very proud of what we're bringing forward I'd like to pass this along to a co-chair of the strategic planning

193advisory committee Steve paxia for just a few words and then we'll pass it on to the rest of the team Steve thank you Ada um you know this is my 13th year of working with Milton Public Schools as a volunteer in many capacities and I first want to say just how thankful I've been to be associated with all the smart people who are really working to make our schools a wonderful place for our kids you know we chose Public Schools knowing that there would be imperfections and we haven't been disappointed there have been imperfections but there have been imperfections with our son with us as parents with our society and there will be with their careers as they go forward and a good education I think prepares students to cope with and overcome the imperfections

194and take ownership of their Destiny and their lives and I think Milton public schools has done just a fabulous job for our son Alex you know I still remember the first day that we went into Tucker elementary school and we're greeted with the joy love and enthusiasm of that community and seeing those little kids flocking around the playground and dropping them off every day and now I still take Alex to school every day but at Milton high school and I see those same kids who are now adults and and I can say as a as a parent of a senior that I speak for a lot of the seniors parents who just say thank you you know it's been a really tough couple years and we could have all just given up we could have

195said oh this is terrible you know we're not going to be able to succeed we could have given up but we didn't you know the first few months were torture to be honest but when we came back in September the change was remarkable the work that AJ and his team had done in technology that all the curriculum coordinators it was outstanding work and you know did did it create some issues did it create some setbacks yes it did but we didn't give up we kept pushing you know I think in doing so we taught the students something maybe even more important than what they learned in their chemistry class and that is that sometimes there's going to be something that's just going to disrupt your life like crazy that you can get through it and

196you can succeed and you can reach your goals and I know that the senior parents that I talk to are so excited about the choices that their students have about colleges about careers and we thank all of you for your courageous efforts for your heroic efforts I can't you know I have to Echo what was said about Mr Jett tonight and even add one thing the people some of the people who like Mr Jett the most are the students and in my experience the students are the hardest people to fool you know they know who's real and the students love Mr jet and so so do the parents so um so anyway I thank all of the staff all of you and and just want to say you know we've done a lot but you

197know we don't expect Perfection but we do want to get better and I think the Strategic plan is a great blueprint for getting better it's not a bookmark it's not a doorstep plan it's not 200 and some pages that some consultant wrote and we look at it and go gee that's great and we put it and we use it to keep the principles or the superintendent's door open this is a planning process a process that's involved in parents students faculty leadership team and it's used throughout the year throughout the cycle and the goals that we're striving for I think are worthy goals and goals that will produce will help us promote excellence the the individual or personalized and structure instruction thing is so exciting to me that's the one I work most closely on with

198AJ and Kat and I just want to say a lot of the things that we talked about tonight that has tremendous potential to help with that so you know what are the next steps so tonight you're seeing the three strategic objectives which have been developed through numerous conversations lots of wisdom under the leadership of Susan Maselli and Karen mcdavit terrific work and from there there already in the process of developing their action plans behind that and they'll be presented to you in a subsequent meeting and then you know over the course of the summer and I I want to say that Mr jet when he came in said a couple things we want you to do we want you to simplify the Strategic plan we want you to make it actionable to be able to

199set time frames and achievement goals and we want it to be measured and so Mr Jett has asked that we set up a metrics team to really look at what has happened with MV who is brilliant in gathering data to to take a look at what's happened with the data through the pandemic and then to build a base from which we can measure our progress going forward through metrics that really mean excellence so I have been privileged to be on this and I told Ada that if you'll have me um even with Alex graduating I'd be glad to continue to help out but I just want to say that 13 years of volunteer work for the school system has been some of the best days of my life so thank you so uh thank you

200uh member Rosemary and thank you Steve paxia for your kind words and your support in your many years of service as we talked about this new strategic plan and an effort to develop it uh updated goals would develop with a consideration of a number of different factors obviously a comprehensive review of The District data in the trends program reviews and Audits and historical considerations we also looked at the impact the covid-19 pandemic not only on unfinished learning but on Equity concerns and SEL as well then we had the new leadership and it's not just me in this role it's a new leadership with uh Amy dex's assistant superintendent and as we talked about a little bit earlier we're going to have a new assistant superintendent of curriculum and Human Resources coming in starting July 1st

201uh and then also take into consideration developments in the field of Education this will be a live document some referred to as the Evergreen that will be reviewed and updated quarterly my annual goals along with the goals of the school committee will be part in aligned with uh this strategic plan in some of our individual schools School Improvement plans phase one is what we're talking about a little bit the goals strategic initiatives in the bench box page two will be the action plan for each of the goals which will be finalized and completed action plans will provide details such as who is responsible for the task when the task will be completed and what resources might be needed to accomplish those goals phase three would be the target outcomes the metric uh recommended recommendation from

202the metrics team that I will assemble and work very closely with our leadership team as well um together these three phases will become the Evergreen District strategic plan uh process for the next five years we'll continue to be monitored by the strategic planning committee and the school committee um many members just mentioned that about uh ongoing information and and through uh public forums um and so we would continue to do that at this point in time I would like to elevate and thank all of the leadership members who work in collaboration with this strategic planning committee um and now we're going to turn it over to Susan Maselli and Cameron McDavid to walk you through the three different pillars that we talked about as part of our strategic plan so thank you guys thank you

203superintendent Jeff um James would you like us to review the overview document as well as the plan I know you spoke too much of that are we still on track to do both I just wanted to double check can I just go with the oh Ada says give the thumb up that's perfectly fine yeah I just wanted to know what I was sharing can everybody see that are we good yes we're good Sue yes thank you so Karen and I have been blessed with the opportunity to try and support this work unfolding in the last few months under the direction of ADA and Steve and we're really appreciative of everyone's efforts the amount of people who had their hand in this work is I could not possibly account for everyone many of you are here

204and I welcome you Karen and I welcome you to jump in um we wanted to give school committee two documents to look at tonight this first one is an overview of how we got to the Strategic plan and the second one is some of the key components from the Strategic plan itself so just for folks that might not be aware what is a strategic plan it's a process that allows us to identify common goals and outcomes for students that are valued by the district and it usually includes a five-year trajectory of how we're going to accomplish that goal our strategic plan includes um looking at our district mission and vision looking at how we want to impact student outcomes looking at our strategic initiatives which we're going to talk about in great detail in a

205few minutes looking at our process benchmarks to achieve those goals and then finally developing a robust action plan that allows us to realize all of those initiatives superintendent jet alluded a moment ago to this four-part process so what Karen and I were able to do was collect all the historical data from all the stakeholders and generate a historical overview of things that have happened in the past related to program views related to program audits related to the previous strategic plan and all the work the strategic planning committee had done to date and synthesized that information the next piece we were able to support district-wide through a variety of forums leadership meetings curriculum meetings engaging stakeholders across the district through different departments and really look at developing our initiatives and building on the work that had

206already been started by so many key players in the district that allowed us to come up with our three initiatives it is the vision that if we can initiate these three Vision these three initiatives that we will be able to pursue excellence in education and we have our three targeted bullet points of what we're trying to achieve an experience that's robust and academically strong making sure that we'll have high quality tests high stakes testing outcomes that are that are showing post-secondary achievement and really making sure that we're reducing the opportunity or learning gaps in our subgroups the final stage the final two stages of the strategic planning is something that we need your support with school committee we are hoping that you will be able to vote this action plan as excuse me vote the

207Strategic plan as in place so that we can finalize the action plans and the Matrix goals for measuring our growth so I spoke a little bit about this so I'm just going to move past it but these are those first two pieces again just to give you a sense of how we got to our process benchmarks for each initiative we identified three Karen will go over those in detail in a moment we identified how we were going to do that and then how we're going to monitor those goals as we finalize our action plans the work that we want to do with these three pillars is looking at what are the variables that will make the work challenging what is the timeline what resources do we need how will we roll out supports and then

208how will we measure V would you like to talk a little bit about the outcome metrics sure um good evening everyone so I'm just here to give a very quick overview of what we're thinking about in terms of the the metrics uh to measure the outcomes for students and other Equity outcomes that the Strategic plan is aiming to accomplish in the next five years so there is going to be a link when you get the the text of the Strategic plan that will link you to a document that basically lay out all the potential metrics that our team has consider has come up with and there are a variety of metrics but they basically fall into four major uh categories next slide please so we're really thinking so one of the the first category is

209thinking about post-secondary outcomes for students so what is the culmination of all this education once a student has gone through Milton public schools and we're really trying to look at the rate of college Persistence of six-year college graduation these are all new metrics that we haven't really tracked in the district before but that is something that we want to start looking at to really gauge um the success of our educational experience here in Milton by the time they leave Milton are they set up for college success as well as non-college success so if if our students go on to to Career or other tracks then how are we thinking about measuring that kind of um a success in those other tracks um another bucket that we are looking at with metrics is for students to

210be ready for college and career and that means looking at um you know seniors who will have exposure to college level AP classes or dual program enrollment experience or through a career experience through a senior spring internship so that is also a new metric that we will be implementing contingent on the implementation of dual college enrollment program and the senior spring internship program so those are really exciting venues that we hope will enrich the experience of our students in the Milton Public School we're going to be looking at some of the traditional college readiness measure as well looking at SATs and APS and aiming to really address some of the participation and achievement gaps for our African-American black students in these college readiness measures next slide um and then of course you know looking at

211MCAS achievement for all about grade levels across all the different uh content area um looking to increase uh achievement of our subgroup students and looking towards uh closing the achievement gaps for particular subgroups um and one thing that I would say about MCAS is you know we have had um when you look into the document of the Strategic plan itself and the outcomes documents I've put in there the historical data for the last three year 2019 2020 were applicable for some of these metrics and 2021 and all these three years um the way that we've collected the data the context for the data has been all different you know and I think we've heard a lot through the meetings tonight um that the context affects how students are able to learn in in the school

212environment so this really uh this year this current school year is really the first year where all about students are back in school full-time uh five days a week in person and we are really hoping to see um data from the spring round of MCAS uh assessments as well as AP and sat that are more reflective of what students are able to do when they are back in the school environment full-time so we're really looking forward to that data in order to set the Baseline for how to you know determine some of our goals for the next five years and then lastly uh you know looking at metrics that are promoting safety belonging and Equity so some of these metrics here are new we want to be looking at school climate survey and the vocal

213survey is something that the state has piloted and administered and that means that we can get data not only for our district but potentially comparative data to other districts in the state so that is something that we'll be exploring and looking at we have new SEL competency screener in the district that we just started last spring and that is ongoing work as well to make sure that we tighten up the measures especially for the elementary cohort um which hasn't had not had this Greener before so that is something that we're working on diversity in High School athletics teacher diversity there is also a new commitment from from from the state really to increase the percentage of teachers of color in the state to 26 percent by 2030 so they are pumping resources into this area

214to help promote a track license new teachers and new teachers of color and that is something that Milton will mirror and parallel and hope to do work in that area as well and then last but not least like looking at the disproportionality in special education and I know that it's been alluded to several times during this meeting but looking at discipline removals communication disproportionality and we'll be tracking all of these metrics setting the goals you know really looking to the spring to collect the data some of the data won't be coming out until end of summer really early fall next year so we won't have um the the final year-end data to to really work with at this point but I think that it's really important for us when we're setting goals for the next

215couple of years to get the data that is most reflective and most accurate of a true Baseline going forward and that is something that hopefully the metrics team will be able to bring forth to the school committee next fall to consider foreign so as we um move into hopefully your approval and support of the plan we will begin our implementation so to give you an overview of the steps we um are hoping tonight to seek approval for this plan um preliminarily Karen mcdavitt and I were able to provide a very brief overview to All District employees during our professional development day last month the district my next trip team is already underway to establish those targets that we spoke about we are going to be working collaboratively with superintendent jet to continue to have Community

216engagement opportunities so that community members understand and can have all their questions answered regarding the Strategic initiatives we will be finalizing the action plans so that we can jump into the work and be ready to go and over the summer of 22 and into the fall finalizing the professional development plans that will support the work being implemented by Fall our goal will be to implement to start those year one benchmarks which we're going to show you in our actual strategic plan document so I'm going to switch over really quickly just give me one moment because at this late in the day I'm a little slower on my computer and I'm going to show you our new epic plan Karen is it up yes it is great all right so welcome to your new strategic plan

217Milton Public Schools this plan will cover us from 22 to 27 and um Karen's going to go through with you the three pillars I'm just going to orient you to the document um you've had a chance to look at this this is our this District Mission vision statement and um this is something that the district has had in place and then we have our strategic goal which is that all students will have a highly personalized developmentally appropriate emotionally safe and equitably balanced learning experience to make sure that everyone becomes a contributing and productive member of society and can achieve their post-secondary goals and we will be using the district data cycle that we spoke about to really measure that making sure we're meeting that strategic goal if we are able to accomplish this we believe

218as I spoke about earlier that this will be the way we will assess our achievement in this if we realize these three initiatives students will have a robust and academically Rich experience the district will show growth in high takes high stakes testing and we will show performance outcomes that are reducing and eliminating opportunity gaps so I'm going to just let you know that every one of these Blue Links is hyperlinked to a district document that you can find all of the information and I'm going to pass it over to Karen thanks Sue so very briefly um Steve Ada myself and a lot of the people on this call have been a part of the strategic planning cycle for for many years um and for many years um I believe despite our best efforts it became

219a cumbersome document that collected dust on bookshelves and probably didn't make its way all the way into the classroom as much as we would have loved for it to have um been able to do and I think that when you think about a strategic plan the keys are accessibility and agency we need this document to be accessible to all stakeholders to students to families to staff to community members everyone needs to understand what we are talking about what we are driving towards and what our ultimate goal is an agency everyone needs to feel like they have a part in it that they have a responsibility to it and that they play a critical role in its 6 and so we really started the work by saying how do we make it accessible and how do

220we give everyone agency um we took what was a six or seven uh pillar strategic plan again lengthy and we said how do we make it manageable and we really were able to boil it down to the three pillars is what we are calling it um and I I like to think of it sort of as a pyramid um in the idea that the safe and supportive schools and the equity in learning are sitting at the bottom you'll notice our our branded logo thank you AJ um our vision is that that is posted in every classroom that is in every school and that every kid every staff member and every family member when they say what's the Milton Public Schools about the Milton Public Schools is about creating safe supportive and Equitable learning environments so

221that students can achieve the best to their fullest potential through personalized learning opportunities so we intentionally put safe and supportive and Equity down at the bottom because we really do believe as a district that students cannot learn if they do not feel safe supported seen valued heard and included um so we we boiled it down to those three and the wonderful thing is we already have amazing teams at work on all three of these pillars so you can see on the call tonight AJ and Kat are here they lead our work in the personalized learning department and they have an amazing team supporting them Elaine has led our cultural competency committee for years and they lead our work in terms of equity alongside the steering committee and alongside our hopefully newly appointed um director of

222educational equity and we have an SEL advisory team and um Jenny beliveau a high school adjustment counselor and I co-chair that team and so we have the amazing uh Personnel in place to to to guide this work to lead this work and so with that structure in place we were able to identify um the focus areas that we want to make sure our priorities moving forward our hope is that all of our PD is structured around one two or all three of these pillars every time we every time we bring the staff together it should be a thoughtful um rigorous robust uh professional development that targets um ideally more than one of these because there's so much intersectionality between all of these what we're doing to make safe and supportive environments absolutely is grounded in

223in principles of equity and if we do that we are absolutely personalizing the experience for our students so they really do all talk to each other um pretty well so we've worked to Define each of those um our steering committee worked hard to Define what equity he means and and they engaged all stakeholders in that process safe and supportive schools that comes directly from the Department of Elementary and secondary education and personalized learning was developed by the personalized learning team again kudos to all of the individuals who have come together to create this this this framework um Susan if you scroll down just to just to very briefly further Orient if you keep going down um you'll see that there are there are the three pillars and um underneath um you will see our our

224priorities for each of those strategic initiatives and what we have developed as as our Five-Year Plan for how we can achieve the goals that we have outlined and at the bottom you'll see professional development we are getting there with our professional development um we're definitely um still developing that part um but really what we wanted to do tonight was to orient you to those three pillars to introduce you to what we think collectively um is is is is the best direction to take the district in terms of creating accessible and um meaningful uh initiatives that all staff students families and community members can Embrace so it's really it for my end wonderful thank you so much Susan and Karen and V for for presenting um can we stop sharing the screen and then you can

225see each other there we go um uh I'd like to open open this up to see if anyone any of our school committee colleagues have any questions comments uh member White so I just had a question about the metrics chain that you're proposing to start up in the fall who makes up the metrics chain like what kind of folks will serve on a metrics team so it wouldn't start up in the fall we'll try to get that underway at the end of this year and start having conversations obviously uh without question it would be uh data specialists at part of that it could be some of our leadership team particularly in this tested subject areas and it would be obviously members a member of the school committee possibly uh depending on the the involvement and

226also maybe a parent or two volunteer we had a parent uh who is very uh involved in doing this work has a lot of experience in data that has been helping us out I believe he worked very closely with me in a lot of cases given us a lot of feedback I would like to have that person on there I would like to keep it you know manageable reasonable and manageable so we could get work done and moving forward but yes uh but given the fact that this is a public meeting I don't want to be presumptuous and put that out there right now I want to be able to have that conversation with those individuals and move forward but thank you for that question thanks thank you Dr Carol thank you all very much

227for the presentation and just all the work you've done to get to this point um I I definitely agree that um how you presented the three pillars the priorities underneath the um you know the way you streamlined this integrated the various elements of it um it's detailed yet concise I mean I think it's evident that you've just improved this tremendously um from the last iteration and I really do appreciate that um I I want to be honest and say that um you know I was disappointed initially to see that metrics are not included within sort of the Strategic plan as presented um and you know I think for that so even as I definitely understand the reasons I think bu were very clear in explaining tonight sort of why it makes sense to um build

228those out over the coming months um and I I really do believe this is a Five-Year Plan um you know we're at um sort of important Crossroads and on some of these different streams of work so to get it right is very important um and I do understand that can take more time so I just I guess wanted to say that from my perspective um I support I what you said Karen about you know this is the best direction to take the district and I understand that um the staff needs to sort of be confident in the direction in order to continue building that out I think how I think of this as a plan I can support is really as like three phases of of one plan and that you know the phase we're

229here approving tonight is is really about this big picture the direction um and the priorities therein um that I definitely support I really sort of am excited to anticipate uh what will come in that second phase of the action plans and that third phase of the data um you know normally I would feel I think hesitant to approve a plan where I didn't see right now like how are we measuring what what it is we're laying out um for ourselves to do um but I I think I do understand the nuances and the reasons for this approach of the three phases and you know that's really how I'm thinking about this um and you know how I feel like I could I can support a plan that's being presented tonight even though um you know

230as a full plan it's incomplete which is why we're sort of going to be able to continue these discussions over the the rest of the summer into the fall um so thank you okay um remember Ross Danny I want to Echo um Dr Carol's sentiments this is a significant sign of progress in MPS James's goals followed by having the Strategic plan in place gives people a road map as to where we're going and I think it will be very meaningful to the public and it's something that we can take and discuss and share in a way that people can access and they'd be proud to say they live in this District um I do think that in my experience the Strategic plan typically does have the metrics in it but as this is probably this

231is Milton's first iteration of a plan of this magnitude I do think that it is a phased um it's the first phase as Dr Carol mentioned and I think it's the first step in the right direction and I'm happy to support the phased approach of this work the good thing is a lot of this work has already started the work around personalized learning disproportionality almost SEL everything on here the vast majority of things on here are already started so I don't think that the phased approach will slow down our progress if anything I just commend you all for putting it in a format that the public can understand what we're doing so thank you to all of you thank you memorize Danny yeah I I I've certainly been happy to see some of our site

232Council on school reports that have come to us over the last few months as as this strategic plan has evolved you know it sort of shaped around the goals and the Strategic plan of like oh my God it's working so I I that that to me is is really what this is all about is if we all become familiar with these goals so that we're all working along the same lines um I think we're much more likely to make the progress that we want to make and I also think that it's going to make our school committee goals for next year be easier because we'll have a strategic plan to align with as well as superintendent Jets annual goals should be aligned with that and and finally I think our school committee agendas should be

233aligned with the Strategic plan as well and and I'm not exactly sure how we'll do that but I think we should make an effort to address um these the goals of this plan throughout the year on a regular basis uh chair Everhart yeah yes Ada and I just want to thank you and Steve um paxia and the entire strategic planning committee um for the work you've done um you have moved mountains really um and Steve has been working on this for a really long time and um to see this come together in this way is really heartening and I do think Ada that we as a school committee this year have really managed to make our meetings more about the work of the district and really focus every side counts person that came to us

234every presentation that came to us you know um I'm looking at the people on the screen here they've come multiple times and every single time it's been intentional informational targeted material that we can use to inform the work that we do and I think that to your point now making the Strategic plan part of that will be essential for that relentlessness that we need to have so that's the piece that we just have to keep at the center that we are going to be relentless in our pursuit of those four pillars um and we're going to just keep going at it and going at it is the only way that we are going to be able to achieve what we wish to achieve to be a safe supported Equitable inclusive district for all students so

235I I commend all of you for your work it's so impressive and I'm very grateful for that have had an opportunity to work with all of you um and I'm sure that um Dr Craighead feels the same to see it come to this fruition this evening is a very heartening thing moving forward for the district yeah I I quite agree and I spent a short time on the strategic planning committee um and the document was huge and so detailed that I never quite felt like I had a a complete grasp of it and it was there were just so many parts to it this is so accessible this is so um easily transferred to students to parents to faculty to you know it's it's uh it's really amazing how in a relatively short time um

236you all um kind of boiled it down to these three main um pillars as you put it um and um and I really I applaud you I think it's great yeah I I had the same question not exactly like um Dr Carroll and member Ross Denny phrased it but you know I was looking at things from my perspective like um college graduation rates in six years how are you going to track that because I mean we have the the problem on in higher ed with job placement rates um six months out you're depending on surveys of students to you know to sort of check back in after they've moved on and it's um it's difficult that kind of data is difficult to um you know to get a handle on so you know stuff like

237that I think will be challenging moving forward but um but I I certainly appreciate the um the effort the direction um looks great I thank you all I know this is such hard work um it takes a lot of time it's very labor intensive so I I appreciate it and um just as a you know on a personal note um I'm glad to be able to see so many people that um that we've worked with so closely um for the last six years on the screen tonight you know I I sing the Praises of of vivu all the time and AJ and Cad and and so forth it's just it's it's great to um see you all here so thank you very much for your work and and the great Karen McDavid too thanks absolutely

238and rosemary do you have a motion for the school committee I do it's a motion uh to approve the 2022 to 2027 Milton Public Schools strategic plan motion I thought it was it's the plan it's phase right it's not as long as we're clear okay yeah the emotion the motion was worded as it just but but right but for phase one yeah be fine member um have a motion to approve the phase one um Dr Carol I'm I'm interrupting Ada no no it's fine do I have to do a roll call vote I don't know if there's any discussion before we move ahead yeah did I hear another voice wasn't sure yeah okay I'll do a roll call vote then um uh Dr Carol yes member White yes member Rose Danny yes Dr Craig again

239yes chair Eberhard yes member Rose Marin yes congratulations thank you all so much for all your work Bravo thank you Dr Eberhart and she I chair Everhart and Dad we are going to miss you very much and just know that the entire district is incredibly grateful for all that you have done for us we know how hard it is we see it every minute of every day so I'm speaking for all of us all the staff all the administrators all the families and students we are so grateful for all that you have given to us thank you I'll be over to be volunteering don't you worry about it now that I have lots of free time thank you all and and you should all go to bed quickly yes all right keep this thing on

240so late all right the next policy we struck policy so there's Finance information to go by friends well we we skipped we skipped our um comments yes I realized but if we don't vote it is 1009 do you understand that Elaine is going to like they'll be yeah you can say we can we just vote the does it what do we have to do for finance just we have to vote some uh we have to vote some warrants and Elaine has to do one of them for me because of uh um so I'm gonna do that first and then just talk about Opera for a minute go so Elaine can you um yeah make the motion for tomorrow 39 yeah uh so I'd like to make a motion this is nice I get to do

241this on my last night so it's good I'd like to make a motion to approve vendor warrant number 30 39 dated March 24th 2022 in the amount of 328.76 do I have a second second thank you um remember Ross Denny yes Dr Carroll yes remember Rosemary yes chair eberhardt yes um and remember White of State okay so oh and I mean yes so five zero one thank you right and I'm gonna make a motion to approve two warrants together number 40 and 41 in the amount of 341 710.98 and an amount of that was the first one was on 331 and on four seven the amount of 129 826.99 can I have a second second okay and um I'll take a roll call vote Dr Carroll yes remember Rosemary yes chair Everhart yes remember Denny

242Ross Denny yes okay Dr Craighead yes okay and me yes so that's unanimous um we just we do not need to vote um the budget again we already did that and we just have to basically make a motion to send to the select board a request for Opera um funding for the rollover positions which are 278 500 and the uh needs based budget for 719 um we need to send that so that the selectman can then send that along to Norfolk County um for approval okay and if Amy wants to explain anything if people have any questions Amy's on Deck to explain that it's the it was it's what's in the budget correct okay but it's just it's specifically it's specifically the Opera money that's going to the select board now okay so let's so

243I make that motion yes second okay all right so we'll take a roll call vote uh Dr Carol yes can I just make one tiny little correction which I know is immaterial but it's 7 19 186 just to make sure the exact number yep for a total uh thank you so much yeah all right 997 686 is the total okay okay that's important thanks Amy okay so I'm going to start that again um member Dodge carrolls so thank you yes okay okay remember Rosemary yes chair Everhart yes remember Ross Danny yes Dr Craighead yes and myself yes so that's unanimous and that's it for finance wonderful all right all right so we do have curriculum instruction on here and we have Health and Wellness still left on our agenda and comments um I it's almost

24410 years I promise so fast okay you basically received formative assessment data for the second um Administration the spring administration of the I ready and the um Lexia rapid and essentially I'm not going to cover the Middle School part because that's what Kat and Brian did today but on the elementary level the difference between the number of student or the percent of students that were at grade level or above all have improved across every grade level it's a shame that the audience actually didn't get to hear that because it's huge um and people have asked for that data and I was very happy to share that good news and that's all I'm going to say about that um in terms of the um intellispark survey I am so pleased we had data to share um

245I had the slides up to just give the there were three categories for which we've seen significant Improvement at the middle and the high school level and since I don't have the document open anymore I'm going to skip those three but they're in my notes but at the end of the day we've seen significant Improvement in belonging at the middle and high school level and the work at the elementary school level because they're in the pilot phase of the new assessment they're not they're not relying on it heavily in terms of indicators but um there are three categories for growth areas and they are self-management self-awareness and connection the three areas were 70 percent of this or the students scored High 70 or higher were in Social awareness belonging and engagement so there are areas

246to celebrate and there's areas for growth and the scl advisory committee has raised Grant funds this was last school year in order to stipend to I think at least two members of the MPS faculty to come up with how do we respond to the data that we have um next we talked about the French immersion program and whether or not students with special needs could participate and we had a really good response which is students on an IEP or 504 plan of course can participate in French immersion and as long as one of those students in is in those classrooms it's considered an inclusion setting code talk classes include regular education students whose families have opted out of French so to make those classes a French co-taught class would be essentially dismissing the requests of

247the families who specifically chose the stem pathway but one of the key points is that if parents are choosing to place their kids in Friendship merge and they need to consider the child's learning need and the example that Janet was so kind to give me was for example if a child has a severe auditory processing need it would not be an ideal setting to put that child in French so those types of decisions should be made with a family member and an educator or preferably the child's teacher there are tiered supports in French immersion there are three reading Specialists for tier two supports and MPS piloted tier three supports I'm starting during the pandemic it required one-to-ones but the pilot needs to be resumed we had a question about the delft test which is the

248diploma in French language I'm not going to pronounce it in French the point is Milton used to host the exam on site they no longer could do so because the size of the program has grown dramatically we don't have the capacity in terms of teachers or space to administer that test the Assumption was that students would be able to go to the French Cultural Center in order to take that test they're under construction right now so students are right so that is where the that's the Crux of the challenge right now but there's not much that MPS can do you can't add that capacity in such a short term because the French cultural society is shut down for construction it is what it is we had a high school social studies curriculum update they have

249been um in a three-phase curriculum review process um they're in the third year they surveyed 100 Massachusetts districts to kind of understand what they're doing in terms of curriculum content they received 40 responses and based on the feedback um I guess the summation of the head of the high school's social studies Department Barbara Wright we're right in place in terms of content we do need to do some work around the new standards related to civics um there's a Capstone product that's been replaced that's replaced the service learning project and MPS is moving in that direction but we still have some work to do and that's it there's more detail on the notes but in the interest of time I think we should be done that's a lot of good stuff yes the sense of belonging

250is very encouraging since that is a key indicator for success for students so that's really great deal all right and um do you have anything for health and wellness Mr member white or would you just like to um just quickly we got we are we've made great progress in rewriting our um goals and policies it's been reviewed by the entire committee and their subcommittees as well as our coach and um it's going forward now to um policy subcommittee and I think it's scheduled for the end of May and then it will come before the full school committee in June and then Jackie shared an article with me that I'm going to forward to all of you that talks about um the social emotional and well-being and sense of belonging that Beverly just spoke about for

251the breakfast in the classroom breakfast before the Bell program and when we can get that back into um you know into our our day as the pandemic winds down I hope um how important that that starting your day in that way is so I'll share that article with you all tomorrow that's it thank you all right so members right Dr Craighead needs to go he has to get up and drive to um I just have um one one brief comment that I need to make and and um I I what I recommend is that all of our my school committee colleagues put in writing your comments and and appreciation for um the contributions of Dr Craighead and and chair everhard for their years of service this it feels like a an odd way to say

252goodbye at the end of a very long meeting but I I am and myself enormously grateful for your contributions and we have joined together rather to thank you both for all you have done for the Milton public schools and the students and families of Milton and we have uh for Dr Craighead as a token of our appreciation your school committee colleagues have made a donation in your honor to the welcoming schools a bullying prevention program that Embraces family diversity and we hope you find this meaningful and will further that important work here in the Milton Public Schools and to member Craighead we've uh pardon me to remember Everhart thank you very much it's getting late um youth we thank you also for all you've done for Milton public schools and the students and families of

253Milton and as a token of our appreciation your school committee colleagues will be planting a Rose of Sharon shrub in honor of your Devotion to the Glover School Outdoor Classroom and we hope you find this meaningful so thank you both and we wish you well we're we're not letting you go of you completely full committee meeting we're going to have a few more subcommittee meetings before we're done with you but thank you thank you both so much and um to say anything before you sign off here um I will also send you my comments I I wrote something out but I I can't really do justice to it basically all of you bring amazing and different gifts and skill sets to this job um you're a great team to work with I thank you for

254the copious amounts of time that you spend doing this um and we'll continue to do this while I am in a barcode lounger uh we are binge watching Netflix um and I I sincerely also thank you for the graciousness respectfulness Civility and professionalism that you display all of you every day in the face of the opposite so thank you for that I'm going to miss all of you I really am I'm not going to miss these late meetings where I can barely function Margaret said she's going to be watching these meetings I might catch the first half hour but um but but I really will miss working with all of you it's it's um it's been a privilege and an honor and and I'd be remiss if I didn't say that I had also mentioned

255um the two people that in my remarks that I was going to give the two people that I have spent Five Years on the school committee with Dr Kevin Donahue and and Sheila Varela who also brought oh wonderful thanks to the school committee it I I don't know what else to say thank you um you couldn't have chosen a better gift for me by the way I've worked with welcoming schools before was introduced to them years ago they are top-notch organization and do great great things in the Commonwealth so thank you it was well chosen well thank you yeah yeah yeah I don't really I don't I think this is the perfect way to end right because basically feel free to hang up while I speak but I I personally want to thank you guys

256for your your courage Your Time six years of service and probably the last two years would probably felt like six years uh but you guys stayed in there uh I agree with Dr Craig had your professionalism in the face of adversity um the negativity in some cases but you guys stuck in it uh for the Milton public schools and I I personally want to thank you guys for the support that you guys have given me the guidance the wisdom and the historical perspective uh as many folks talked about it was very little transition when I stepped in this and having you guys there along with Adair in uh Sheila and Kevin at the time of my appointment I couldn't thank you guys enough you guys are Troopers um and you showed that and you displayed

257and I think it's only fitting that things started to get better open up and you guys are going off on a positive note so thank you guys very much for all of your contributions to the Milton public school and the community in the community yeah I I think that um this was the perfect way to end late at night because that's what I've been doing this whole year so I'm very sorry I hope that whoever gets it like to share next next time does a better job than I've done um I don't know Dr Craighead if you know the poem reluctance by Robert Frost um it's one of my favorite poems and my AP English teacher Mrs Henderson gave it to me when I graduated from high school I I encourage you to look it

258up it's a beautiful poem about reluctance about endings and beginnings and uh and um having to say goodbye so I've had the best time the worst of time sometimes been an honor and a privilege to serve on the school committee and um yeah I will look for that bush in the garden and I thank you all for your for your for your your willingness to do the hard work there is nothing thing and I mean nothing more important than education nothing and um I wouldn't do rather do nothing more than spend all my time talking about education and learning and I just encourage the community to be kind and keep the students at the center and remember that the educators are doing the best they can as are the volunteers working with them and even

259if it's not perfect SD paxia said nothing is but we're getting really close to being um the the district that we aim to be so I thank you all for that privilege um to work with all of you and it was an honor Miss Selene crackhead to um to work with you as well um yeah so I know that um the next meeting agenda I know that we didn't approve the minutes I will just tell Charlene you can approve them the next time um the next meeting agenda items will be a reorganization meeting on April 27th I believe is the date it will be the day after the school commit uh the election where you will meet to reorganize an electric chair and a vice chair and to welcome the new school committee members so

260um those will be their next meeting agenda items we will um so can I have a motion to adjourn the meeting Miss Dr s Elaine Craighead motion to adjourn now the second second all right this is a roll call vote remember Ross remember Rosemary yes remember Rossini yes Dr Carol yes number White yes Dr cricket yes and I remember her yes thank you everyone so much have a peaceful day tomorrow fight on thank you bye