Milton School Committee - March 17th, 2022

001good evening everyone and Welcome to our school community meeting on Wednesday March 17 2022 happy St Patrick's Day to all of you out there we celebrate um thank you all for accommodating the change in the date um our first order of business is to approve the agenda do I have any changes additions or subtractions to the agenda no okay great so I may have a motion to approve the agenda so mood okay second second all right this will be a roll call vote for attendance um member Rosemary yes number Ross Denny yes Dr Craighead yes Dr Carol yes and Margaret Everhart yes okay welcome wonderful we have a wonderful guests and a full agenda this evening so I will turn it over to superintendent Chad thank you chair um we're very pleased tonight to have

002with us our esteemed administrator of pupil Personnel for the Milton Public Schools Susan Marcelli and she's here to do a presentation and give an update on the special the status of the special education in the Milton public schools and I'll just jump right into it and turn it over to uh Mrs um misselli thank you sir thank you superintendent jet good evening chairperson Everhart and chair members of the board it's nice to be with you this evening I'm just going to try and share my screen and hopefully that will go smoothly for us this evening could everybody see me okay on the yep is this a good view I I can't really tell from my screen can you see it clearly or do you need me because it looks great it looks great everybody so

003welcome to our annual presentation from The Office of Pupil Personnel Services on behalf of myself and my assistant Mr Mark Harrison we want to thank families for all the support they've given us this year it's been a really rewarding and fun year in our office and this year we wanted to highlight for you some of the things that we've been working on and we also wanted to bring some data to you you that we know that you've been asking about and hopefully this will be helpful so for families that might be wondering the office of people Personnel Services support special education preschool through age 22 across the whole District we collaborate with guidance on the provision of 504 accommodation plans for our families who are experiencing educational instability we work with them on stability when

004they have educational impacts such as families who are experiencing homelessness or families who are experiencing foster care or families who are in the military we support those families as well for educational stability we support the special education transportation for students in special ed who ride on our vans um our office also oversees Homebound and Home Hospital education for students who are either Hospital bound or homebound Under The Physician their Physician's care and we collaborate with CPAC the special ed parent advisory Council on irrelevant issues related to special ed in the community of Milton our Continuum of services for preschool preschool through age 22 support kids in all of our buildings most of the students in special education in Milton receive their support through our Learning Center or academic support model and that is commonly referred

005to as push-in or pull out Services we also have a very robust strand of co-taught classes where there is a general and special ed teacher present in the classroom some of our students receive support in one of our specialized program strands here you can see that we have four specialized strands they're housed in different buildings across the district and they can support preschool all the way to high school and post-grad years like to highlight that in the fall of 2022 we'll be we will be adding to our kotot strand at the Glover Elementary School we currently have a classroom there for kids who have specific learning disabilities in a co-taught model we'll be adding a small self-contained grades two through five language-based program to that building as well um when I've come to you in

006the last few years I provided you with some historical Trends in enrollment we again are providing you with that information we'll note that this year's numbers are based on just year to date as of March 1st special education enrollment changes throughout the year children are found eligible every day every other day all throughout the year and children are found no longer in need of our services throughout the year so this number moves what's noteworthy for us is the number of percentage of students in special education is increasing in Milton we can attribute that to a few specific things first of all um my assistant and I have looked historically at the data and we do wonder about how those numbers were calculated before we arrived and we think they may have been exclusionary of parents

007who have chosen private school education at private expense so that number may be a little bit low we talked about that a little bit last year when we came and we also know that there have been some issues that have impacted our increase presently we know that coveted related challenges have increased our numbers we've also had quite a few number of families move to Milton who have current IEPs from other communities and that is impacting our total percentage but we know we're not far out of out of balance from the rest of the state there is a range across the Commonwealth of you know 14 to 20 depending on the community that you're in and a given year so we know that we are within that range of other other communities as well we wanted

008to give you a little bit further breakdown and let you know what we what our numbers look like across each building um the preschool is the environment that has the most growth across the year because students are picked up and found eligible when they turn three so that number continues to evolve this number is also year to date so we expect these numbers to be different by the end of the year but you can see over the last couple of years how the trends are changing across each building growing steadily pretty consistently across all environments we're breaking the numbers down for you a little bit of a different way in this slide here you can see the total number of students in each category as expected our largest category is specific learning disability that's very

009typical that's our students that are categorized as dyslexic dysgraphic dyscalcula the slds the specific learning disabilities and you can see that our Trends in other numbers are varied depends on the students we have in front of us every year um and it and it is definitely um an area that we're continually watching we're going to talk a little bit about the disproportionality data in a little while and I'll show you some of that when we get to that slide I know that there will be questions about that as well here's the same information from the last slide but just broken down into percentages to give you a little bit of a visual about what our categories look like as we look at these numbers we wanted to give you a comparison and here's where you

010see um changes this third column is the change from 2021 to 2122 so for example in the category of autism you see an increase of 16 students in that category in the category of communication you see a decrease of 13. that's attributable to the work we've been doing related to disproportionality um and you can see each track each each group continues to evolve the developmental delay category is the category that is used to support our youngsters who are three to nine it encompasses many of our preschoolers and as our preschool enrollment needs have grown especially covid related we do see this number continuing to grow you can see that our other numbers have a modest or very mild increase over the year and that's very expected one of the things that I know you are

011asking a little bit about um and we wanted to provide you this information is the number of referrals so this this First Column represents the number of referrals to date per per building and then the middle you see the number of students who qualified and then in the right you see the number that didn't qualify now for example if you look at the first row for preschool 67 referrals for preschool-aged children 30 qualified and seven didn't so you can infer that 30 students are either in process or have not completed the evaluation process yet so that gives you a general sense of how the referral process is Flowing across each building these numbers um our daily snapshot we've continued to re receive referrals in the last couple of weeks and we will take and evaluate

012students all the way until the last day of the school year so these numbers will continue to grow I wanted to capture for you information that I've talked about the last couple of years which is the number of students that move into the district who have what the department of Ed would identify as a high level of need these are students that might come with an IEP from another community that has a one-to-one paraprofessional or a certified nursing assistant written into it it would also include students that come from another community on an IEP who have a self-contained IEP or a program IEP or out of District IEP you can see that we have welcomed happily many families this year to the Milton Community who have IEPs and these are the kinds of high need

013students that might have a fiscal impact for the district so when I might come to you and say that we need additional support it might be in response to us to a family that's moved here throughout the year um I wanted to oh oh goodness I'm so sorry hold on backing up sorry about that our out of District program are the students in special education who will have a need that warns that their services be provided in a special education program outside of the district there are three types of those there are day programs there are residential programs and there are collaboratives this year we transitioned out of district one student to the preschool level seven from the elementary level one at the middle school five at the high school or post-grad level those are

014students that are between the ages of 18 and 22. and two related to discipline removals we also successfully transitioned three students back into Milton from out of District placements at the beginning of the year and this year we have eight students who will leave us leave special education and graduate as 22 year olds or as 12th graders having us earned a diploma so we've had quite a bit of movement in our students that we support out of District again this is something that moves and changes throughout the year Mr Harrison did a great job running our esy program last year and he wanted to capture some of the information that you might find helpful in terms of the number of participants who participated in our esy program and the number of students who are eligible

015on our percentage of participation rates so here you can see about 75 percent of the families that were eligible took advantage of summer school Services last year and that ranges you know from the 56th to the 79th percentile across each level we're excited when families can take advantage of these services and they're recommended based on a level of need so we hope that we'll have 100 participation this summer for all of our families who qualify shifting gears a little bit to give you some more information related to 504 accommodation plans you can see the three-year Trends across levels these plans are written at the K-5 level they're supported by our 504 team coordinator position at middle school and high school they are supported by the guidance counselors you can see that over the last couple

016of years we've had a slow steady increase of the number of students who are receiving 504 accommodations in the district I did want to take one moment and refresh your memory of this slide from vivu's data presentation and just do a shout out and thank you to the special education teachers who work tirelessly through the entire covet pandemic we are excited to be able to celebrate that our students showed growth when many other subgroups did not have that success and I attribute that to that we were back in school on July 6th and then we had a full summer of programming and then as the school year continued our students were in person and back in person on November for a full day so we're excited about these Trends and growth and I just want

017to celebrate that on behalf of the students and the teachers that made that data possible our student support teams are run by our two inclusion specialists at the elementary level that's Maureen Butler at the middle and high school level it's Carolyn Manion these two ladies manage and run the SST the student support team this is a team that all teachers can access when they're worried about a student's performance in the classroom to receive supports and assistance and try to help that student get back on track you can see that the number of referrals over the last couple of years is really been realized at this point in the year at some of these levels are exceeded so what we know is that a lot of teachers are reaching out and acts asking for support because

018we have a lot of students who are continuing to struggle some of these struggles are related to covid some of them are School attendants some of them are learning some of them are social emotional or behavioral some are mental health we have a full range these teams meet with teachers and try to develop intervention plans so that kids can have access to supports in general education and then they also act as a networking a way to communicate data of what's been tried when a student is referred for an evaluation in special education or 504 this year we've seen a significant increase in the number of students who have been medically excused by their doctors and unable to attend school here you see the the totals for the 1920 and 2021 school year and to date

019for this year and you can see that at the high school level especially we're showing an increase to be at March and already have 16 removals for kids related to Medical excusal is a lot these are kids that whose Physicians have determined that they're unable to attend school either due to being homebound or Hospital bound and we provide tutoring to these students we're seeing an increase in these numbers we want to just bring it to your attention because we know that these are students that are struggling either with um physiological and health conditions or psychological and mental health conditions we're supporting those kids as well Equitable or proportional share is the program where we use some of our federal funding to support children who attend Milton private school at private choice and the schools that

020we're currently supporting are Saint Mary's Saint Agatha's fun Bond stature and the center school so presently our proportional share teacher supports 14 residents and 17 non-resident students in these five buildings she floats around and provides Ela and math executive functioning and work completion support this is a federal program where we diver where we identify some of our federal funds to provide the support we're excited that we can partner with these five schools we have a great relationship with them we talk regularly and they are happy to have Milton resources in their building on a regular basis to support kids I wanted to shift gears a little bit and talk about some of the disproportionality work I know that I gave you an update in November so this adds a little bit to that so again

021we are addressing disproportionality for our students who identify as black or African-American who have been labeled communication disability and we are at risk for identification of the same subgroup related to school discipline so we have a robust action plan for our students in the communication subgroup and I'm excited to share some of that preliminary data with you and we've introduced restorative justice professional development plan including a coach for our at-risk category I'm going to give you some details on each of those so our communication disproportionality is currently supported by one and a half teachers in the district these are the grant funded positions And they support students in preschool and kindergarten and then targeted students in first and second grade these two individuals have been doing Baseline data on looking at the prerequisite skills that

022we identified in our root cause analysis we're providing some barriers to accessing the curriculum for these students they introduced the hegarty method for phonological development which is a specific curriculum really targeting those skills that we think kids were not accessing through early inter Early Childhood experiences and they have been able to take a look at this group and provide some explicit instruction the five areas that they have been targeting through hegarty include phoneme identification blending syllables final phoneme identification segmenting and onset rhyme and I'm just going to show you these five graphs it's pretty amazing to see the change in data since from December to March so what you see is at each graph the left-hand band is not demonstrating beginning to demonstrate or demonstrating at Mastery each one of these skills and as you

023compare the left-hand graph to the right hand graphs you can see that students are showing less red and more green that's what we're looking for growth in all five areas of literacy support based on intervention provided mid-December until early March so what we know is that this is great preliminary data and telling us that these kindergartners are acquiring these early phonological skills here are our current trends in our communication data so you can see um the number of students in the district again this is taken from March 1 data you can see the number of students in each of these subgroups and then the number of students that have an IEP from that subgroup so we have a very small decrease we were at five percent when we started this work in September we are

024at four percent now that number will continue to fluctuate but what we do know is that we're aware and are making sure that youngsters in this category are appropriately identified and receiving the support they need and we're able to show that we have a slight change in data so that tells me that there's awareness of really looking at the kids and their needs and being responsive so this is exciting beginning work for this risk disproportionality is really looking at the restorative justice work that we started we've hired a coach she came on board um in January she has been working K-12 she's already offered an introductory professional development to all buildings and all staff last week she started a 10-hour Strand and has had 50 staff members join for her professional development she's providing insip

025to PD for teachers district-wide she is integrating restorative philosophy into discipline removals using this these seven core assumptions about about restorative justice she is coaching teachers and students directly and co-leading and modeling five to seven proactive Community circles a week for at-risk students everyone has received her very well and she has really started to dive into this work so it's exciting and finally she's providing one-to-one coaching to administrators and teachers and counselors and looking at how can we integrate restorative practices into our disciplinary process and that's her next step is developing a group Richter checklist that will be integrated into the current practices it's very exciting when we take a look at our discipline removals for this year this is the high school data to date you can see that there are some areas we're

026going to be continuing to address students and with IEPs are um removed at 58 that's very high um and you can see the other subgroups are here the black and African-American group is still at the 22nd percentile the white group is at the 72nd percent 70 72nd percentile this is a high school and you can see that there is internal which is an in-school suspension and external which is an out of school suspension rates um and I'm going to show you the middle school and then we can talk a little bit about the impact of that here's the Middle School what's noteworthy is that um more students have been able to receive a discipline removal in the school versus out of the school that's great it keeps kids connected to content and instruction and doesn't

027provide a reward for their behavior of being out of school so this has been a nice shift so I'm really appreciative of that as we look at the disproportionality data at Hall and in whole we will learn from the Department of Ed as we look at this data whether we remain at risk or whether we are disproportional this is work that we need to continue to do there are three basic reasons that students are removed out of school those are related to chapter 37 age and a half which is possession of drugs weapons or or you know fighting and those are three things that superintendent Jett and I have been talking about in terms of the district needing to develop diversion type programs and experiences for kids so that they have an opportunity to seek

028recovery from Youth and get back to school as soon as possible staff development has been a focus this past year I mean most of what we did last year was coveted related professional development this year we've continued our work on IEP development and goal writing we as I talked about we've been working on our restorative practices our Middle School and High School inclusion specialist has done some positive behavior intervention training for teachers we have offered 504 training district-wide and continuing to offer PD on use of assistive technology tools this year we launched our assistive Tech website for the district from the assistive Tech team which talks about tools you can use to support your kids in the classroom using assistive technology I wanted to tell you a little bit about State and initiatives that are

029coming up first of all Milton meets requirements under special ed determination with Part B of idea which is a federal reg that guides our work and you get a a rating for your proficiency we are under proficiency of meets requirements that's the range we look and hope to achieve that is based on data that looks at the last five years of graduation rates our annual dropout rate being low our Public School monitoring and compliance so how well we follow the rules of special education and how well and how robustly they're implemented problem resolution and complaint resolution um how well we respond to challenges or or things that are not working well when parents are upset and make a complaint how how well we resolve those concerns our special ed Improvement plan performance plan excuse me

030and that is the commitment from the principals and District administrators to follow the rules of special education and then our state indicators last year we finished Tuesday indicators one for preschool outcomes for students ages three to five and one for outcomes for post-secondary planning for students who transitioned out of high school and how well they achieved their post-secondary goals and finally we will be entering our tier Focus monitoring self um self-assessment this June this will be two areas uh the office of special ed will be looking at special ed tiered focus and the um central office will be looking at civil rights and we will be entering tiered Focus monitoring that used to be called the coordinated program review it will begin with a self-assessment this summer and then the department of Ed will be

031on site in the fall sometime we don't have those dates and there will be an opportunity for family involvement in that process that is something that the department of Ed sends out directly to families when they complete their focus monitoring plan Milton CPAC um wasn't able to be with us tonight but I wanted to share some of their amazing accomplishments this year the board has worked tirelessly to connect with principals and me across the district and really has had a robust and exciting year you can see that they've increased their board members and building reps and here is their website Milton cpac.org they are engaging more student reps and having more conversations internally at the building level this year they introduced meeting with principals once monthly it's gone really well it's very exciting they have

032been then participating in weekly District updates through superintendent blogs superintendent Jets blogs and um they are working tirelessly on making sure that we communicate staff changes with them and they're feeling successful about staff changes in the district especially with all the changes we've had this year this year my office and CPAC co-hosted a Tourette Syndrome Workshop that was a high success we were really excited to partner with them and offer professional development we had over 40 staff from across the district participate it was an exciting night we are excited to have a liaison member Ross Danny thank you again for your participation at CPAC meetings I know they have found that very valuable CPAC is work tirelessly to update their website and really make sure they could provide families with current and and updated information

033related to special ed rights they are planning a spring get-together they will continue to have a presence at school committee they were excited that they were able to be part of their first round for the new hiring for the new assistant superintendent and they are really focusing on these areas here at the bottom building relationships while focusing on staff issues professional development curriculum communication and inclusion across the district and they're a great organization to pair with very fortunate to have them working on behalf of our students and with that I will open it up to questions and comments from the committee thank you for your attention thank you what a thank you so much Susan wonderful presentation so much information such wonderful news and exciting progress for students and just really reflects the hard work

034and dedication of the educators of Milton and your staff so fire away friends and staff members oh welcome Betty nice to see you thank you so I always have a question for Susan but um I'm sorry I missed most of the presentation but um one of the things I wondered about is the the um the the children on IEPs that were were being removed either with it in the school outside of school how many of those IEPs might have to do with like social emotional and or mental health issues it might be a factor in um why that's happening at that kind of a rate that's a little bit on the high side so when the removal is related to the disability the Special Education team gets together and talks about that and looks at

035that piece a lot of these removals are related to um drug use um we do not have weapons use but that would fall into this category and fighting um when a removal is more related to an argument or dispute between students that's when you would see it as um an in-school type response we don't want kids to be away from instruction for those types of situations so you're really looking at the the one the the infractions that align with Mass General law 37 and a half which is related to those three big issues which do require a bigger response I'm superintendent yet and then member Rosemary yes and I just wanted to elaborate on that because sometimes if we just say drug use people might think it's something a lot basically what's happening uh across

036the country is these uh cannabis oils in these Vape cartridges and events and so we understand it many of our youth particularly at the high school level here that marijuana is no longer illegal in some cases in in some of our students are using them whenever a student is caught in a building Under the Influence uh or we suspect that they're under the influence it then becomes a safety issue especially at the high school level if they're driving we do have to call a parent we do have to make sure we don't always have marijuana test kits or anything like that but from a restorative just Justice practice I've reached out um brought it up at the health and wellness committee meeting a while ago reached out to Norfolk County DA's office also reached out

037to Desi knowing that this is a huge issue is there a diversion uh program that we can kind of work with students to put them in so they could understand the potential harm in ingesting some of these chemicals and some of these things are refillable people and we're trying to encourage and educate students that you don't want to go to a street corner chemist or a street corner of pharmacist and you can't assume that these things are in good good condition and you don't know the ingredients that are being put in these things sometimes so that is something that we're working on to try to do the education behind it but I did want to do that clip make that clarification for some of the people out there uh uh wondering what what do you

038mean by drugs and those are non-negotiables it is an educational institution and our goal is with the work of the teachers uh restorative justice coaching guidance Council coach hopefully we could do the mediation before it gets into physical altercations uh but sometimes that spills over into school from some social media interactions uh and then students meet up in school so we're working on it but I just wanted to share that for clarification remember Rosemary and then Dr Carol okay yes thank you thank you Miss Ellie for this great presentation and a couple of couple of things one is I I want to thank you and commend you and your staff for the results that we were seeing that vivu shared with us before you got here um about how well our special ed students did

039um on on the the testing and um what a impressive uh showing that was in the midst of a pandemic and and uh to thank you again and and your team for bringing our special ed kids back in the midst of the pandemic you you were the first ones back in and um it was it was a courageous act in in many ways that that um was a challenge but um you all Rose to that and and it it showed and and the impacts on our students so thank you all for for that commitment and and and all that work um my my one question for you is about out of District placements um we have been talking about um uh the possibility of building a new school which is later on our on our

040agenda and one of the things that we've talked about is the possibility if we were to free up some space that is not available now for um a special education programs that might allow us to bring some of those students back to Milton for services I'm just wondering from your perspective if there's a certain category of need that you think that we might be able to address if we had this space or age group or I don't know exactly how you would Define that but I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that thank you member Rosemary for your kind words to the staff I know they appreciate that there are three areas where I believe we will continue to want to be talking about program development um the first one I know will ring

041true to you and member Everhart which is you know building more preschool Universal preschool for the district um the second thing is superintendent jet spoke a little bit about this a diversion program for our high schoolers and that could support our kids who might have um the need to do recovery work but it also could be you know a program that would support some of our students with a higher level of mental health need that end up at a district it could be a combination of those things we did start Compass this year um but we would benefit as a district from a more robust program as time goes on as we look at especially as we look at the needs of the pandemic long term for a lot of our students you saw the

042hospital data a lot of that is mental health related and the third area is really right now the students are in Upper Elementary to lower middle school students with more neurodiverse population profile neurological neurological combined with language-based needs that population is currently students that were supporting and out of District placements that would be an area to continue to do some program development wonderful thank you so much um Susan thank you so much um I had some questions and then I will a few slides later you would answer the questions um because they're so thorough um so thanks and I especially appreciate being able to see the which I know is another thing resulting from a lot of hard work the declines in those referrals um around communication is great to see and I'm um you

043know I was impressed to understand like some of what's details as far as what's going into that and looking forward to seeing how the data continues to unfold with all your ongoing efforts there um I just had um really one question like two things that feel connected to me to um most recently the discussion we've had with the warrant committee about budget and questions that have been asked um I was wondering if you could just underscore what you said to slide 18 um to make sure I'm understanding what I think you explained about the Equitable proportional share as far as um the federal funding that supports those students and that that funding is only available to families for that specific purpose so it's not something that we as a district have discretion over right or

044could you just like clarify that piece sure so um every District in Massachusetts has an idea Grant and that is a Federal Grant and we are required to use a proportion of that grant money because it's Federal for students who might attend school at parent choice in a private school within our community so right now we're supporting those five schools and we have students that are Milton residents and non-residents but they're in our town going to school and they have an IEP and they're able to access Services it's not as robust as their IEP it is determined through a very comprehensive needs assessments with all the schools and it and it includes components of their IEP it doesn't prevent a family from still accessing all of those supports in their neighborhood school but it is

045a way for families who choose a private school for example a Catholic School experience or a Jewish Day School experience it gives them an opportunity to access some of their special ed services and not be disadvantaged by being in private school if you're a Milton family and you attend school in a private school in Boston or Randolph you have the same opportunity if you have an IEP to access proportional Services through that community so it's Equitable across every town and it's Federal money so we don't have um the ability to be flexible on its use it must be used for these things thank you so much for clarifying that um the last quick question I had um the other night we went over in the budget book in the budget presentation um some data which

046is a couple of years old but was um really demonstrating how Milton's proportion uh or I guess percentage of students um in special education was tracking right with the state average um and so to the questions about sort of well you know where does Milton fall um and when people hear about the increases in referrals to special education I know that we don't yet have data from these couple of years um but just to sort of confirm for for the whatever audience watching this meeting um in case people were wondering that kind of where we are in Milton in relation to sort of other districts would that still be fair to say that um the increase we're seeing in Milton is a trend that other districts like ours are seeing as well yes I mean

047every District right now is seeing an increase and there are several reasons first of all during covet many schools were closed or slowing down in the evaluation process we ourselves experienced a lag and evaluation and we're able to catch up last summer um and so students were you know were picked up during that time period every every every town in the Commonwealth has had to struggle with return to school and the impact of return to school and lost learning and especially the mental health related issues we're also seeing increases in our Early Childhood Program students that have been home basically home for two years have lacked social exposure and experience they've lacked robust Early Childhood experiences so every every town is seeing an increase in special ed we meet with the director of special ed

048for the state on a monthly basis we're talking about that as Statewide directors and everyone is experiencing that increase yes okay thank you so much anyone else one two to ask Susan missile any questions no I'm good yeah Susan I I really want to thank you again for the presentation tonight and something that you said um really resonated with me when you said that um you're seeing an increase in awareness and responsiveness on the behalf of Educators um and that's that's really the the key um to the to the um the Improvement for students and the supporting Educators and you know special education is a very complex highly regulated part of education and sometimes when we talk with the community and we talked with others it's really hard to explain because it's so complicated with

049so many layers so we really appreciate that you're able to present in this way that is understandable and and really helps us to be able to communicate with the community so thank you very much and to everyone who works in the district on behalf of students and Families thank you appreciate it and I Echo dad thinks uh especially knowing that this was a pivot midweek uh the change in the schedule so for Susan to be able to come I appreciate it and at the same time as we move on to the next agenda item uh with principal Holly Quinn canning in her Psy council members I thank them as well in advance of their presentation for their flexibility so I'll turn it over to you Holly concannon principal of hollycott elementary school for site Council

050presentation thank you so much James um I just want to clarify one thing um the last time we presented to you uh Milton cable access ran our presentation do we need to share the screen or will Milton cable be doing that if you could share it sure so Ellen will share our presentation if that's okay Ellen um and I also want to thank and recognize not the people on our School site Council but also I feel overwhelmed by the amount of support I see from the panelists at school committee tonight many of our colleague teachers just left the building about 6 30 after parent-teacher conferences and they've tuned in to support us so I want to recognize them and thank them for all of the really good work it means the world to me so

051um we're Super Lucky and um I actually want to recognize we have an amazing suicide Council we have a committee that meets Faithfully monthly and oftentimes in between our our committee is strong and many of them plan to present last night um however we had to Pivot in a moment's notice and many had plans tonight and could not attend but I want to recognize the really hard work of our committee and um also wish them many of them a happy St Patrick's Day and a happy Purim many are celebrating now um and and rightfully so so um we are going to present on behalf of the committee and all of their hard work so um Ellen are you able to share I'm so sorry we are such a Google meets district and my computer is

052not allowing me with my security to share my zoom but I'm trying to get around that um if any second I'll try to pull it up thank you superintendent Jeff sorry about no you do that I'll just recognize our committee if that's okay I'll just begin and um we'll jump in when we can we we would love a presentation but we can pivot without it if we have to um so myself Alan Lohan our assistant principal who's on right now also Allison McGrath our adjustment counselor many of our community members know Allison as our previous team chair Allison applied for the team chair position years ago with the um adjustment counselor position in her heart and has recently assumed that position at collie Clark school and um has been a a pivotal part of our

053team moving forward supporting social emotional health of our students we have grade one French teacher Fatima brass alzine grade one teacher Amy Gale who's with us tonight Amy Gail and Allison insisted on coming with Ellen and I tonight we we were ready to do it on our own especially after a very long day but they insisted on being here so again thank you Catherine Peralta our kindergarten teacher Elizabeth Fitz grade four teacher Erin O'Brien grade five Margo tanzi our amazing Community representative who I believe is watching from Florida today thank you Marco uh Christine Morrow is our PTO co-president and also a parent who is and Lindsey Hudgins is a parent Kelly Kyler parent Nora Wilkins parent and Amanda dear parent so thank you to all of their contributions we know and thank you James

054for sharing we can go right to the Quality Cop Mission which is on slide three at the Quality school there is a clear commitment to academic excellence and high standards for administrators for teachers and for students we have a dedicated and creative qualicott staff who are committed to maximizing the individual potential of each child through a wide variety of challenging activities and experiences we strive to provide a strong academic foundation and a love for learning in a secure safe and stimuli stimulating environment that values individual differences so this was something we crafted as a team and something that we tried to live by each and every day this slide I'm going to ask to just pause on this for just a minute because I think it speaks to the work that Susan masselli started to

055present earlier and I think it speaks to the material we'll see later with the school building project coming so if you want to just take a look at the bar graph on the left you'll see that this is a count of students per grade level K to 5. you'll notice that some grades are larger than others because we are able to have more at certain grade levels depending on the year so as you have heard Mr jet say many times the buildings are built for about 500 students each so if we're thinking about 500 students from K to five that should range anywhere between 80 to 90 students per grade you can see that our lowest grade in grade 2 has 86 children in it in our largest grade in grade 5 has 124 students

056this the number of classes per grade fluctuates depending on the space in the building not year for example this year we have five fifth grades so when we graduate five fifth grades it frees up a classroom to the following year so they share a four kindergartens next year we hope to host five kindergartens because we'll graduate one class of of five classrooms so again built for about 500 children we now host 614 we have 30 classrooms so those classrooms are spread out K to five and then we also have three self-contained classrooms for specialized instruction we house students who have significant needs and are offered ABA support through our partner and neck program so again 614 total children in a school built for about 500 and what's really interesting this year is that we've had

05726 students new to collie Cuts since the school year started so if you think about 26 students new to school year over the school year that's a new class something else that's different this year is that in fifth grade we've received five brand new students and that's not something that typically happens um but they keep coming and we keep welcoming them so it's it's been pretty exciting so quality students and staff we strive to be respectful responsible and hard working that's our code we start Every Morning by sharing our code and sharing morning announcements and superintendent jet will give this a try and hopefully the video is able to share it's just a quick video kind of summarizing the way we start our day at college superintendent Jeff you could unmute okay I think we're

058going to skip the video um we weren't able to hear it but we're we're on to the next slide I want to give it a try again superintendent jet okay I think we'll skip the video if we can't hear it but it's definitely something that we'll share um basically it it is a preview of how we start our day at the Cali cot we we do video morning announcements we share our code and we share our goals for the day um and our Ferry down to kindergarten teacher Catherine Pearl put that together for us and you'll see a few different staff members starting the day in a few different languages and sharing um some of the goals that we hope to work on in the week so I would like to share with you and

059introduce the focus on school Improvement that we have come up uh we've put together as a group so we have three main goals for our school Improvement plan and we try to align with District goals as much as possible and just put the the flavor of Kali Cod into it so number one of course is academic and social and emotional growth it's something that we are committed to and again including our morning announcements every single day in our family newsletters and also in our staff newsletters we share common language consistently the second goal is to arrive at Mastery through personalized learning you'll hear a little bit more about that in a bit and then third engagement of students families and staff as well as the community with the focus on equity good evening as Mrs

060concannon shared I'm Allison McGrath I am the Kali Cod School adjustment counselor and so happy to say that this is a new role for me I have spent the last eight years connecting with families and supporting students as a team chair um I'm also the parent of a holly kindergartner and Miss peralt's class and it truly is my absolute pleasure to be here um and thank you so much for the opportunity so I will talk with you tonight about goal one which is that Calicut staff will work to provide instruction intervention and programming to support academic and social emotional growth with increased opportunities for inclusion and as a result increased participation in school-based programs which will result in increased academic achievement and growth so I would love just to talk with you um about a

061few of the opportunities um and that that we have here at Cali cotton that you'll see listed below it's hard just to pick a few um but I will try and be short and sweet so we have a breakfast program so that's a great start to anyone's day we open the doors here at 7 50 and it really is a great way to connect with friends eat a healthy meal and start the day off right anyone is welcome my own child has has joined breakfast many many mornings and it definitely makes the morning easier for me we also have grade 5 student council so this year we have eight incredibly hard working and responsible fifth graders who meet twice a month with myself and Miss Lohan it truly is a highlight of my week and

062this year we have met with Jackie Morgan director of Food Services we've helped plan events for kindness we've promoted activities throughout the school at most recently we met with Adina Schechter who um Miss Miceli has was talking about earlier she's our new restorative justice coach so we're really doing some great things and it is my pleasure to work with the student council we also last month the month of February had our kindness month so every week students were exposed to various books and videos and challenges um all month long so if you asked one of your children about one act of kindness that they participated in last month my guess is um their answers are going to inspire you like they like they have for all of us we also have Cardinal of the week

063which I'm sure many families have heard about so this is based on the principles of PBIS and students receive Cardinal compliments for following our code um and each week a student is then randomly selected for each grade and then presented with a certificate and a shout out in our Weekly Newsletter and in the morning announcements um we've even adopted this at home as a reinforcement system for my own children and it really has great success um so social emotional lessons um I definitely want to spend a minute talking about this this is one that's super um special and important to me so I'm lucky enough to spend time in almost all classes K to five on a rotating basis um and we address all different topics that are important to students and teachers related to

064social emotional learning most recently we have discussed kindness in the lower grades to go along with um our kindness month theme and then in the upper grades we are teaching lessons on Gossip um and it's been really amazing to get to know students many students in that way and teachers we also have our SST which is our student support team which is run by Maureen Butler one of the district inclusion Specialists and this team meets weekly on Mondays with a variety of Staff really to support any concerns that a teacher may have about one of their students and then additionally we have Behavioral Health which meets also weekly to best support any social emotional concerns that a teacher may have so so there definitely is a lot going on to support goal one um and

065if you want to advance to the next slide so I wanted to just take a minute and take off my school counselor hat and and be Allison McGrath as a mom of a kindergartner um and I wanted to share with you a family testimonial that one of our families of a fifth grade student has shared so I I shared with you that we have done um the Cardinal compliments but we also had an opportunity during kindness month to give compliments to staff um and I can tell you I was on the receiving end of a few of the compliments and they really did go a long way so thank you to all those families who submitted compliments so I'm going to share this um see our teachers go above and beyond for their students including

066supporting their after-school activities both teachers came to one of my sons CYO basketball games last month and their free time to support him and some current and alumni Calicut kids they were so happy to see their teacher there and I think the support and effort is unbelievable they are such excellent and supportive teachers in the classroom and for them to take time out of their personal lives to support their students is truly above and beyond my son is lucky to have them as teachers um and I as I said as a as a parent of a colleague kindergartner we we have been Overjoyed with our son and in Miss peralt's class um I moved here because I was able to have an inside look at at what the schools are like and what Cali cot

067specifically is like um and we have truly been so happy um it is my pleasure to come to work each day and have my son be educated here so thank you so much foreign good evening everybody I'm Amy Gale and um I have the best job in the world I am a first grade teacher at calicot and um I am also a proud parent of a colleague Alum Uh current Pierce Middle School seventh grader um and I can absolutely Echo Allison's sentiments that colleague has set my child off on the right path in her learning and I will forever be grateful to Mrs concannon and the staff at collie cup for really supporting my child and knowing my child so uh thank you and Allison that goes for you too um because you had her

068as well so um goal number two Calicut students will demonstrate Mastery of grade level expectations and Beyond through personalized learning experiences and the result that we hope to see from this is that students will engage in educational experiences that take into account the specific strengths interests and needs of this students and we've highlighted some things below um including both District purchased curriculum as well as some things that are unique to calicot that have really helped to hone in on making children become engaged with their own learning and excited about their own learning so you'll see at the beginning of the list we have uh our clever single sign-on application that we use for even our youngest students to access apps online using their Google passwords like Lexia we have La Lilo in the French program

069we have iready for Math and IXL and these are great programs because they give us targeted data that we can look at as the school year um progresses and a few slides in the future we'll be looking at some of that data and we can really speak to how the work in the classrooms has contributed to that um and you will then notice that there are a number of things like the Kali Cardinal connection which is our fifth grade newspaper that is really encouraged many Young Writers um and I know lots of children my own included have looked forward to becoming a fifth grader so that they could be a part of the college Cardinal connection um we have a toy project in fifth grade as well where children get to design a toy based

070on the stem principles that they've learned in class as well some of the math principles that they've learned and it also brings in many of the literacy skills as they present these um to an entire population in our gym it's pretty exciting um we have art exhibits we have an amazing art program at the calicot school and all you you have to do is walk our hallways to see the beautiful work hanging on the walls we have an amazing music program and a word on the street is that concerts will be back in Action this spring um but I have to give our our music and art teachers props for throughout the pandemic really going above and beyond to meet the needs of of many of our students because knowing that art and music are

071the highlight of these children's days and they they were able to somehow do what they do through the screen and it was it was amazing to watch um we also participate in things like the Scripps National Spelling Bee Continental math we have a very robust science fair that is well attended from our kindergarten students all the way through grade five and what's wonderful to see is middle and high school students coming back to that science fair to provide feedback for our students and to share some of the science and stem work that they are doing in the middle and high school so I think a lot of what we're doing at Carly Kat is planting the seed for uh becoming a lifelong learner and really becoming engaged based on these personalized learning experiences and if

072we can flip to the next slide um you will see here another family testimonial um again I think it speaks to the fact that what's happening in the school buildings is making it home to school kids aren't just coming home and saying I went to recess today they're coming home and sharing what they've learned with their families um and you'll see in the pictures down on the bottom we have first graders in these pictures um and uh Mrs concannon said the other day when we looked at it uh she's like they look like college students the child on the right you can see him reading and writing about what he is reading you can see the child on the left he's working in a Reader's Notebook to respond also to what he's reading and the

073children in the middle are really using a multi-sensory approach to learning their sight words so all of the activities are so mindfully and thoughtfully planned by our teachers to ensure that not only are they building the skills that children need but they're also engaging and multi-sensory and this family recognized our daughter's exceptional teachers have given her The Ultimate Gift the confidence and skills to read learn and discover independently from small group readings with friends and classmates to Calicut Library visits where she explores the animal kingdom to our family all year book club inspired by her kindergarten teacher at Calicut kalikot continues to support our daughter's individual learning needs with her best interests at heart and I think from the previous slide and we talked about all of those wonderful opportunities at Calicut those are lasting

074traditions in our building and I think they have served our past students and will continue to serve our students as we move forward thanks good evening my name is Ellen Lohan and I am the assistant principal and curriculum coordinator here at the Calicut school and I have the honor of presenting to you about goal three so our goal three is that colleague staff will maximize opportunities to engage students and families staff and community members with a focus on equity and as a result students families and community members will feel more connected and have more opportunities to engage and participate in school events and right now it's a great time to be presenting to the community as we're at a bit of a Crossroads where we have many Traditions that are returning to us as Mrs

075Gale referenced we have music concerts that are going to be returning we were able to host an in-person science fair we are beginning to see different assemblies returning in person however we've learned so much during the pandemic that we wanted to hold true to some of the things that we found at that time that worked for example this week I have seen mystery Raiders entering into the classroom in person in kindergarten classes but also some that came through the screen that I would say were equally as effective and were also very respectful and mindful of a working parent schedule that was able to zoom in for a few minutes but maybe wouldn't have been able to participate if they had to take the entire day off from work we have many meetings with community members

076and with schools and families and it's great that we are able to offer the flexibility of either virtual or family conferences as Mrs concannon let us know it's been a long day for our staff and so we're extra grateful for all of you who are logged on or presenting with us as we had family conferences teachers were able to be flexible and provide a virtual or in-person con conference at the preference of the family so we're able to meet the needs of different families I have been especially proud this year of the partnership with the deic committee our diversity equity and inclusion committee this is a group that has been meeting Faithfully for years however I think during this time of the pandemic and the time following it's really taken on an increased sense of

077rigor and excitement with the committee this year we're proud to say that we were able to as an idea that came from our deic hosts an entire family series online which we had Dr Kimberly or naraine who shared her book with us and it sparked some really great conversation so as we are excited that field trips are returning to the calicot school this spring we are so excited to visit places we haven't seen in a while such as the tour of Milton the aquarium the Museum of Science Plymouth Plantation we're excited to get back to those things but it's been very exciting that we've been able to continue to start with some of the things we started during the pandemic I can say that from a school and a classroom level communication has never been

078stronger with families many teachers who are doing monthly newsletters have switched over to weekly newsletters so we are communicating more and we are using the s'more platform which automatically translates newsletters so they're accessible to All Families so I think that we are doing some great work and I've been here too long because the lights just went off behind me um so I had to turn those back on but um we're really proud of the work that we're doing and if we can advance to the next slide we can see some examples and some testimonials from families um so this is a family testimonial that says kalikot's diversity of events and celebrations has given our daughters so many different ways to engage with her school Community one of our favorite college events is the annual science

079fair we love that it is student driven and gives kids a chance to Showcase their work to the school community and that was submitted by the family of a third grade student and here you can see we're engaging with the community in different ways we have a student in grade one presenting her science fair project we had our parent speaker series for the cycle of a dream with Dr Kimberly narain which was sponsored by all of the ptos in the Milton public schools at the elementary level however it was an idea that came out of the kalikat deic so we're really proud of that and as Mrs McGrath talked a lot about kindness month you can see here that we filled a minivan twice over with soup that was donated to the Milton food pantry

080and then actually other neighboring pantries because we donated so much soup so so these are some fifth graders who are really excited to load up that car with everything Kali cod had donated so lots of good news to share with this goal thanks Ellen it's my pleasure to introduce the data portion of our presentation we know you've had a chance to look at other data from other schools and some of the MCAS data that we'll share with you now feels a bit aged but we will share some district-wide data as well that maybe you haven't had a chance to see from other schools just based on the timing of the presentation so um when we think about qualicott MCAS performance there are a few things that I just want to remind everybody these scores are

081based on um students who last year in grades three and four took the MCAS for the first time ever so it's different usually by the time you get to grade five you will have taken MCAS uh three times it would be your third time that wasn't the case for these students it was also a shortened test for students so typically there are a couple of sessions for each content area and last year grade um last year that there was only one session for Math and one session for ELA so it's just different than the testing environment we've provided in the past um again that was all based on the pandemic the amount of time we were in school and determinations made by the state so when we look at qualicott MCAS performance this visual shows

082on the left Ela MCAS the percentage of students performing at each level so the ELA is in the left the math is in the middle and the science is all the way to the right when you look at the blue and the green these students who are exceeding or meeting expectations if they are in the yellow they are partially meaning and the red would mean not meeting and you can see that this is data over a few years so um we can what I'll tell you and I've summarized it on the next slide if you'd like to go to that is that we're seeing um in ela we're seeing that in 2021 82 percent of our students were meeting or exceeding compared to 75 the previous year so we are seeing progress in ela um

083and in science in science you'll see that we went from 2019 57 of our students who were meeting our exceeding went to 69 percent of our students meeting are exceeding with three percent not meeting in math we didn't see the gains that we had hoped to see in in fact we did see a little bit of a decrease which seems to be a trend um but um one that we'll address and we're working on so we did see a little bit of a dip and we saw that six percent of our students were not meeting at all but we did see uh strides in ela and Science and we've been thinking deeply about why that may be um and you know in the amount of time uh when we were in the hybrid model in

084the half day model when students were coming to school in small groups there was very specific targeted instruction that worked and um when we look at the science data specifically you have to think about what happened there how do we go from 57 to 69 meeting or exceeding and we're still working through that and trying to understand how that um good news came to be and in reflecting with the teachers and the planning it was very specific targeted instruction great non-fiction work and committed time to science so um this data will lead us to make decisions about scheduling about time on task and definitely thinking about very targeted areas um in regard to math so luckily as a district we have fabulous tools to support students in school but also tools for students to access

085at home whether assigned by a teacher or for independent practice so you're going to hear a little bit about and you already heard a little bit about Lexia and I ready and lalila but we'll we'll take a look more at district-wide assessments because that's newer data for us and it shows progress of our students from the beginning of the year until now so we have work to do but we definitely have some things to celebrate and we've got a plan in place to do both of those things and go to the next slide so next we're going to look at our I ready so I ready is our personalized learning platform for mathematics this is a program that students have access to through their clever account as amygal told us about when we talked about

086personalized learning um however in order for students to have access to these personalized lessons they all must complete a diagnostic we started with using grades one through five for the diagnostic and that was in our first round and actually with reflection on the kindergarten team they decided they wanted to join in so they're on a slightly different cycle than us in terms of the data but they are participating and using the platform as well you might be noticing in terms of the percentages that there are five categories but you might only see three colors on the screen and you can see that in the green as well as in the red there's a second category with the green with the lines through it as well as the red through the lines with it it's hard

087to see on the screen but what I wanted to point out is if we see the green with the lines through it that is students that are above grade level one level or more and we do have quite a bit of that and you'll notice that when we see fall on the top we have some green with the lines but when we get to Winter that percentage is growing the red with the lines we actually don't see very much of here it's very minimal at most grade levels it's at zero percent at some grade levels it might be one percent those are students who are two grade levels below so we don't have very much of that at collie cop but I did want to acknowledge the confusion where we have five percentage categories and

088three colors so that's what accounts for that so what we can see is that throughout the year which is exactly what we want to see is the percentage of green is growing and the percentage of the yellows and reds are shrinking we are seeing a lot of growth in mathematics and actually this data is some of the data that's used that we use to Target small group instruction in classrooms it's also some of the day data that is used for us to Target some district-wide supports including our beyond the bell program so this is the diagnostic data and it actually also in addition to the teachers using this data thoughtfully this is what sets students up in terms of their personalized platform on i-Ready so all of the lessons that students access when they are

089at home or working in a small group or doing centers is based on these assessments so it really helps us to get to know the student in various domains of math including numbers and operation geometry we also have algebraic thinking so we have different domains that we look at and we get a really clear picture of where the student is as a mathematician after they take this so we are so thrilled to see students just learning more throughout the year and those percentages of green increasing as we go on and I'm excited to see where we are in the spring as we will administer this one more time this school year so as promised I'm back to talk a little bit more about the Lexia data um the uses of Lexia is the use of

090Lexia is twofold one it can be used as a rapid assessment that we use as a screener to really try to um flag any students who we think may need some additional support and also we use it as an opportunity to identify specific strengths and challenges that some students may have there is also an accompanying program called Lexia Core5 which not unlike i-Ready provides a personalized learning platform for children and this serves as a really wonderful tool for children to utilize in centers as Miss Lohan just said um also as morning work it's a nice calm way for them to come in and it's something that we know children can always access independently um they are put into a level based on their rapid data and what we have on the left side of the

091screen is we have our fall Lexia rapid data for kindergarten through grade two and you will see the various subtests from phonological awareness down to following directions and our youngest students come to us with a variety of reading experiences and we find the first time they take this very often in kindergarten which they did this year they're just really working on that phonological awareness learning letter sounds um and then when we look at the winter you'll see an enormous jump in terms of their phonological awareness letter sound work is coming they're beginning to read words more readily in kindergarten through second grade um working on their spelling which they only do in the second grade um vocabulary and also following directions so this is a good news story we really see that wherever the children

092came to us in the fall um we were able to provide targeted instruction and then see some really nice growth um come winter and what's been wonderful that supported this I think has been a lot of the targeted work um with our uh reading Specialists uh with our classroom teachers also with a literacy coach in the uh kindergarten and we have also been able to really capitalize on the use of kindergarten AIDS who have been trained by the reading specialist to support the assessment um so it's really nice and I think children are seeing the educational aides not as people who really just pass out papers or make photocopies but they are truly an educational partner that has really spoken to the this beautiful growth that we've seen that there are sort of all hands

093on deck in terms of supporting students so it's really nice to see this growth and I know looking at my own class you know you have to attribute much of it to the child um as you know in these early grades they are really putting quite a bit of work into learning to read and it's a really exciting time for them and when they start to see that pay off um you know we can look at at this data but when they start to read books and they start to go home and read to their parents and they're writing stories and spelling words it's really amazing to watch happen and I think this gives us a nice little lens into some of the building blocks that go into that work now if we can go

094to the next slide we can talk a little bit about three to five keep going back there James there we go one more back there we go three to five it looks the same so again on the left side you see where they were when they came to us in September and then again we see some really nice growth um to the winter um one of the things that I noticed in looking at this data was that the reading comprehension seems to maybe be lagging a little bit behind some of the other subtests and I think part of that is this sort of shift from foundational knowledge to application as you get into grades three four and five the students are really being asked to do much more with what they are reading it's no

095longer just a focus on reading the words but really uh doing something with those words and um I think this actually gives us some nice work to do around reading comprehension and it also validates the work that we've been doing in terms of building that foundational for them so again a good news story in grades three to five and teachers are using this data daily the Lexus website also gives us an opportunity to pull specific um worksheets that we can Target to small group instruction or put in centers and again you can assign specific lessons to students as needed within the program so um I think we've definitely been able to use this and I think the growth that the students are showing is is remarkable um next slide James if we can thanks so

096this is just another way to look at our winter data um you'll notice that the blue that's our above grade level readers um and our red would speak to our below grade level readers as we move through the grades um from kindergarten all the way to grade five the amount of blue is increasing so the trend of the above level readers is increasing and the number of below level readers is decreasing now one of the things I wanted to point out is you will notice that in kindergarten for phonological awareness um we only have about 11 of the students in the red kids are coming to us really having an understanding um of letters and how they work and how they sound um and then when you see in grade one we move we jump

097from that to word reading and we see 30 of the children in the red at the beginning of first grade students are really coming with some of their letter sounds they're coming with some of those pre-literacy skills but first grade is really the year that they start to put all those pieces together which is why we might see a larger number there work for word reading but you'll notice by the time they're in fifth grade word reading that has really decreased um to only 19 of um kids in the red for word reading and having looked at some of the words that are on that assessment it's really asking a lot of them um I said to a group earlier my favorite word on the first grade assessment is triage so it gets pretty intense

098pretty quickly on those so again I think the overall trend here that we are seeing um an increased uh a blue category where children are reading above grade level and we're seeing a decrease in the red is fantastic and I do think that is um the targeted instruction from our reading Specialists our literacy coach um our uh assistance in the kindergarten and really targeted instruction in the classroom every single day so huge kudos to the teachers for really making this data um come alive for our students and we would be remiss if we did not mention our very robust French immersion program that has its own set of data and what I think is interesting to point out is that although it's in a different language you can see that in the French immersion program

099they really are targeting the exact same skills that we're targeting in the English Innovation pathway you can see that students are working on decoding and comprehension and they use a variety of different assessments to collect this data at the beginning of the year in grade one they do not use the standard assessment of the GB plus which is used in the upper grades for French immersion however they do constantly take data in terms of Running Records one-to-one assessments and this is done with Fidelity in both programs and as we've spoke on Lexia in the um English Innovation pathway it's important to note that in grades one through in grades three through five it's used by students in both programs in the English Innovation pathway and and the French immersion as in the French immersion goes

100to a 50 model in grades three and four and a seventy percent and thirty percent model in grade five so students in the French immersion program in three through five are using Lexia at home they have access through clever and during the school day however they also have access to another tool called lolilo and similar to Lexia lolito is an interactive digital platform that's available through clever so it's adaptive in the sense that students are getting exactly what they need and they can practice on the computer both at home or in small groups at school so we are continuing um to see great growth in our French immersion program and one of the things that we can also attribute that to is our reading specialist that works with students that using this data that you

101can see in front of you for French we don't have our winter data calibrated beautifully yet but you can see this fall data as a starting point and based on this data students who are approaching or below Benchmark so those are the students in the yellow and gray categories can be picked up for reading support So for some students they might be picked up for decoding skills and some students may be picked up for a group to practice comprehension and some students might be in both groups or some might only be in one group depending on what they're working on so very similar to our English Innovation pathway our teachers are looking at data they're using platforms that are personalized learning they are looking at students who would benefit from working with a reading specialist

102and that is helping us to make the progress we need to have such a great data set to share with you so we've talked a lot about this as we've been going around but just as a high level summary we can see that for iready the number of students that are on and above grade level has increased and in all grade levels the amount of students below has decreased um and we can see for their Lexia as Amy Gail talked about we have significant growth in all domains for students in K to two with all of the supports in place that she outlined and we can really see that phonological awareness had the highest level of growth and I think that is a new Focus through some of the grant money that Susan macelli spoke

103to us about at the beginning which was able to fund our early literacy coach in Mrs Lauren vanacore who we're thrilled to have join us in a district position after her great career at the Glover school um and for Lexia and grades three through five we do see growth in all domains and we do have a specific continued focus on reading comprehension in all grades and this is something that could be targeted across the curriculum and after Consulting with my French immersion colleagues we can say that the data does not show much difference in comparison to what we've seen in pre-pandemic time with supports in place and lililo is an additional support that we've only had since 2020 and we can say that that's really helping students to make growth as well and again students

104that are below the Benchmark in either reading or comprehension in grades one and two are offered targeted support so thank you for that and I think I see a question in the chat and was that French data for all grades one through five combined and no so superintendent Jed if you could go back to the previous slide for me if you don't mind um I'm so sorry with the way the screen is shared um Dr Carol it's cut off but actually the first decoding that you see all the way to the left is grade one and it goes one through five um in each domain we'll share this presentation with you but the way that it's sharing the grade levels at the bottom are cut off but this is just calicot's specific data um and

105it's for grades one through five teased out and we can share that presentation so it's easier for you to see all the parts of it that's a great question I think we're ready to move on to the next slide superintendent Jeff thank you Ellen so we have absolutely um probably learned more in the last two years than we've learned in all of our training to become Educators and we've learned um that there's nothing that we really can't handle and again I want to credit the collie Cloud staff for being willing and open and if if everybody could just take some time to reflect on how far we have come because of this pandemic I don't think we ever would have learned as much as we have if we didn't absolutely have to um because we

106would have had to create time to take classes and time to explore technology but this happened to us and I will say the quality staff handled it with race we tried to handle it with humor at times although there were tears at time times as well but you all were determined you were courageous and I believe you did great work and you continue to do great work so we know that necessity has taught us to serve others in a more competent and efficient way and as many of our routines are returning and they are returning it feels almost like normal times these days but we will continue to use strategies that we developed during the pandemic to support students and families so we have moved from using our PA system for morning announcements to videoing

107them so we filmed them the day ahead of time and we share the link with teachers so they're able to share those with their students at a time that works for them so it doesn't interrupt instruction or interrupt our neighbors who used to hear about our these students they don't hear that anymore I think they're grateful we continue to share our newsletters using this more platform which is accessible in any language with the click of a button in the old days I would push out our newsletter in the three languages determined by our home language survey now I saved my time because I put it out in English with the opportunity to go to any language that the family prefers we continue to offer virtual or in-person family meetings not just tonight for conferences but

108on a regular basis most of our IEP and 504 meetings are still happening virtually because it's convenient for a working parent we have joined with the district to do a diverse reads book club using the technology we have we're able to access some really cool district-wide assemblies which is not only time efficient but also cost effective we will continue our virtual DIC meetings we've noticed great participation by offering them virtually um and at a nighttime setting and we will increase and use uh technology for personalized learning uh in the old days two or three years ago we would have families in to support technology in first and second grade because students would need support in logging on and things like that we don't need that anymore these kindergarten and first grade children are very well

109versed in logging on and accessing the platforms that we shared with you today as well as many other amazing things we'll continue to offer volunteer opportunities both in person and virtually as Ellen spoke about um we that just this week in kindergarten we saw mystery readers in person and through the screen again opening opportunities to people we also celebrated digital citizen citizenship day at College School in every single grade level we had content that was appropriate for students in every grade level and we had families come join us for a few hours or for just 30 minutes from a workplace in the virtual assemblies are allowing children to access material um that maybe would have been much more expensive in the old days with in-person assemblies but we're accessing a grade level content from the

110Museum of Science and again saving time in the classroom we don't have to travel anywhere so again time and money is being saved with our virtual opportunities we still have some work to do and we have some next steps we will continue to provide additional interventions um called beyond the bell in addition to February and April vacations um polycod offers an amazing cast program that's the Cali Cod after school sessions we offer anything from yoga to nail painting to Diamond painting to kickball and bowling Rubik's Cube again these have been driven by student choice and again student choice is based on student voice if we know what you need and what you want we've offered a class for that so um you know there were some very specially designed classes to meet the needs of

111student interest and just a whole lot of fun for kids to extend their school day without having to commit five days to the after school we will continue to provide consistent practice in all content areas very rigorous instruction is being planned by our teachers and families at home remember that you have the opportunity to use the platforms we discussed tonight at any time time 10 minutes a day whatever you choose is is right for your child please continue to access those platforms the district has invested in because time on task will make a difference in a student performance we will continue to meet students where they are offer them what they need we are trying to be as personalized as possible we want to know students we want to offer them the opportunity to receive

112an intervention but also enrichment so we will continue to use the teams that we talked about student support and Behavioral Health we'll continue to maximize the benefit of our specialty staff having an inclusion specialist having directors of math science Ela restorative justice and reading specialist is a gift and we appreciate that and we will maximize their impact by including all of our educational assistance and professional development as much as possible we will continue to pursue professional development for all including the Educational Systems and we are returning to some really great historical enrichment practices that we've done at calicot which include math League field trips family volunteers for math games and Specialty classes that's on our list of things to get done before the end of the school year we've just started meet the artist again

113in the last couple of weeks families are coming in we are excited to say that we do have art shows in our calendar and we have potential dates for grade level concerts provided by our music teachers just today and again we're going to maximize petition participation in the platforms that we have to continue to support student growth so we have a lot to celebrate but we have clear areas to improve and with your support from the school committee and also from central office and our amazingly generous PTO and the MFE we have what we need to do great things so we hope to continue to do that with your help so thank you for listening to us I know it's been a little longer than expected and to all the school committee members I know

114you have this link in your email somewhere but I hope you get a chance to watch the video because it really prices nicely the way we start our day in the culture that we hope to set at so thank you uh thank you Hollywood Canon uh I see member Ross Denny and then uh member White good evening and I want to thank everyone from the Kali cat team who hung in there for a second night and was able to attend I was it's a nice thing to see on a Thursday after it's felt like a very long week um I'm very grateful that you started with what good things came out of the pandemic and giving families ways to participate virtually as a working parent anything that allows me to still feel like I'm being

115a good mom is a wonderful thing so having those virtual parent meetings as well as the diverse reads and volunteer opportunities mean a lot um I'm also very pleased that you I think you're the final Elementary School presentation and what I've seen in the formative assessment data defies reason um I know a lot of people came in to this school year thinking about unfinished learning and whether or not the teachers could get the students to catch up and learn what they didn't learn and it felt like a Gamble and it paid off you should be very proud of what you've been able to accomplish in several months of of back to school um it's phenomenal um and seeing so few red bars that decline in red means a lot to me I do have two

116follow-up questions about the red and I know it's very small so let's start with that caveat um what do you know about those students um who are they and maybe any sort of profile and then the second question related to those students is what do you think it will take to make it even smaller is it just a matter of time have you learned anything this school year that might cause you to change the interventions for just for those kids to see if something different will work for them I can speak a little bit to the students in the red that you've noted um specifically are you referencing the students with the two lines the smaller that very small group yeah I think it was the math group and I know it was a different

117color for Lexia but the same premise sure still there it's it's a much smaller number in it I will be the first one to concede that but is I'm sure there's something we can all learn um from that data absolutely and I'm glad that you asked that question because it is something that we talk about in common planning at student support team and in a lot of our different groups one thing you may have noticed in our first school goal is that inclusion is an increased goal for our school and we are lucky enough to house three sub-separate programs here at the Calicut school one that is a direct partnership with the New England Center for Children and then two classrooms that are Milton teachers that focus on a very specific population because we have

118these personalized learning Platforms in order to access the content on these platforms it's often necessary to take a diagnostic assessment and some of these students are students who are not their IEP does not dictate working on grade level standards in an inclusion classroom every single day however when families reach out to us and say what is a great program for them to use we know the district has spent considerable money and research looking into Lexia and I ready and that they're excellent programs so we want the students to have that so some students are taking they don't spend much of their day in say a typical third grade classroom they'll be working in a sub separate space but in order for them to use say I ready at home they do need to complete the

119diagnostic and sometimes that might bring them to be a couple grade levels behind but we think that we will you know chunk those assessments out in really manageable ways so the student can take it over a time that's appropriate for their attention span and developmental rate and with the assistance of a one-to-one at times but we do think that this data is powerful and as students are using these platforms more at home and at school we are seeing growth so that does speak to some of the students that you would see and for other students that may have be on an IEP for something else some of this data isn't surprising and what is and we know that they are working with their classroom teacher many of the students who are behind were invited to

120our February vacation beyond the bell and they'll be continued to be targeted for school interventions and summer interventions so we have a great pulse on who those students are and the teachers know but the majority of the students are students who are in sub-separate classrooms but we're thrilled that they have all of the same tools through clever as their grade level peers thank you that was a great answer if I could just add a little on to that um I was so proud uh just a few days ago this week there's been a lot this week just putting that just putting that up during our learning walk on Tuesday when um superintendent James Jett and assistant superintendent Janet Chien came to see our classes um we didn't really have a schedule or any designated spaces

121to go we said we'll just walk in and wherever we land is where we land and during that time we ended up talking about specific students and what's happening and it was great to say out loud um how much our inclusion opportunity has increased with the student population that Alan just described so every school has a specialty and at Cali cot it is our partnership with the New England Center for Children which is a program that is growing and growing and growing and keeping our children Milton in Milton rather than getting on a van and going um to Southborough so it's it's amazing but what was especially great about our learning walk is that we were able to see some graduates of that program in the upper grades because of really great intervention in the

122primary and early Elementary grades we are seeing some students come out of the program in fourth and fifth grade with support but on top of that it's important to say that we have more students included on the traditional MCAS test than we've ever had before so when it comes time to take the MCAS you have a choice well not a choice but you have a designation to take a traditional MCAS or an alternative and more and more of our students are being pushed to participate in the traditional MCAS test and it doesn't always you know show glowing results but it shows excellent participation and an experience that prepares them for the next time to participate so the increased inclusion may show data that is not blue or green we may have some more Red Data

123but in some cases The increased participation is more of a celebration remember white sorry okay that's okay um thank you for this really wonderful and thorough presentation it really gives you a feel for what your school is like you know and um it seems like a really wonderful place to learn and I think that looking at the data that you shared it's both very encouraging and exciting to see the growth that the students have made through all the different grade levels but I have to tell you that I'm not terribly surprised by that given the fact that the foundation of which you focus your schools on with the social and emotional learning and um you know the slides on kindness and the classroom lessons that Allison spoke about um it really is the fabric of

124your school you can you can feel it that the kids walk into that building every morning whether they started breakfast or whether they just go right to the classroom they feel cared about they feel connected they feel part of your your school and that is the foundation for their success so because of that Foundation I'm not surprised that the kids are doing so well and have had such great success given all that we have been through with all the pandemic issues so Kudos done a great job and you know what a wonderful staff you have to work with Holly you must be here you're one of the best jobs in the world I think thank you um Betty and I think it was great to hear Allison and Amy say that they have the best

125jobs in the world because both of them have followed their hearts at calicot and transitioned to the job of their dreams and um I think because we have a committed and and happy staff we're able to do great things every day so thank you Dr craiger um I I wanted to say um a couple of things one is that to thank you all for the um very thorough and data Rich presentation I wanted to thank Susan Maselli for her very thorough presentation as well but things were going on at my house at the time so um thank you Susan if you're still uh on there um I was especially heartened um by the slide that Amy Gale presented on K to two gains in Lexia rapid from Fall 21 to Winter 22. is that it

126yes um because that grade level is what has you know sort of kept me up at night during this whole pandemic and worried about learning loss with reading at that level and how foundational it is to being able to learn uh anything really so um that was really encouraging to me um I just had one uh question and that is um your three goals the third one was uh develop paraphrasing developing a sense of community um your presentation had tons of examples which I just love um and thank you for not taking them through every single us through every single one of them because um we're going to be here until after 10 anyway so um you know thanks um I need the sleep this is definitely as uh who said oh Bev it has

127been a long week already um uh oh question was how are you developing that sense of stronger sense of community or making people feel more welcome how are you going to measure that given the your emphasis on data in the other areas um I'd like to hear a little more about that thanks so it's a great question um it is something that's hard to measure with a specific number but if I were to measure it in the way I felt this morning with the level of Engagement of families outside of our building um to greet our bagpiper this morning it's a Kali cot tradition we have a huge Irish Community and one that we continue to celebrate and the amount of families who came to attend today to just start the day with us was

128amazing um we the amount of parent volunteers I've seen in the building this week for meet the artist for Math League um athletes on Friday so last week but also the amount of people we had in for our celebrating our differences in fourth grade we are starting to see people and not everybody can come and attend or has the confidence to do so but when we talk about um the colleague week and when we put it out for the staff the amount of response we got and I'm sure Ellen you know the exact number of how many Cardinal compliments we got for staff it was amazing so people are engaging with us we also are able to see how many people read our Weekly Newsletter for families and so the statistics on who is reading

129our newsletter is very high I love that that feature of s'more people are paying attention I try my best only to communicate to them on Sundays at all Sunday evenings is for the families so they know to expect that my email is going to come Sunday and hopefully everything they need for the week is in that email that's how I communicate so I'm able to measure that with true statistics but um I guess trying to measure our goal for number three is something that we really need to consider it's hard to quantify um attendance at meetings we always look at we try to offer meetings in the morning and in the evenings virtual and um in person and we haven't I can't really nail it down yet the perfect time to have it but I

130do know a deic the virtual piece at night after dinner is the best um I know PTO is very well attended when I have a coffee in the morning so it's really hard to commit to one thing so we're going to continue to offer varied ideas but the true measurement of that is something that will as a team have to figure out how to quantify better you just gave me something to add to our Next Step list thanks thank you remember Rosemary okay thank you I'll I'll try to make this quick but one thing that we have the advantage of seeing over the course of the school year is as as each of our schools comes in and and does these presentations we've really gotten to see this wave of opening up as the pandemic

131is subsiding and and just that that feeling of opening and and things happening again is just it it's heartwarming um and we're so happy to to see that um and and I'm sure that you all are as well and I think that we're we're coming back to a new normal and I'm pleased to see that that you know you've Incorporated recognized and Incorporated many things that you've learned in the pandemic and and um you know the virtual opportunities for families to participate and and I don't know whether I was wondering about when you're talking about data for um for that goal of yours that you know has participation changed in any way by offering remote virtual opportunities for families to participate in parent-teacher conferences I don't know if you've um today it was it was

132funny we had all the teachers share their schedules with us and the schedules came with virtual links as well as in person so we could see teachers going in and out of both and the spring conferences are typically optional however I can tell you kindergarten first and second grade I think every parent was in attendance today so I definitely think people who may not have been able to participate in the past because of leaving work for the day or things like that definitely had the opportunity to participate um I also just as we were thinking we do have some forms of measurement for goal number three on the student side for example we have have you know an SEL screen or we're using telespark and we have data on that we have very specific questions

133for students right now that we can look at would like to continue to maximize that resource and perfect it we're just really getting to know that but we also have um you know in some of our grades especially in fifth grade we use an SEL form weekly for students to check in with their teachers and and that is also a way to measure the student piece of that but I think that we need to continue to think about how we assess the family um piece of that goal wonderful thank you thank you superintendent Chad and thank you um team colicott for this incredible presentation so just a few things I think there's a book out there lessons from the pandemic somebody needs to like educate or needs to write that book and like you know

134donate the money to some fabulous cause for um for students and families because um all all of the psych councils have really really reflected on that and and that's really heartwarming and Holly when you talked about the fact that everyone was sort of pushed into this and we would have had to make time and we would have had to find classes and we would have had to like figure it out well guess what we had to figure it out and move at the same time and that that really that you spoke to that was just I was really reflective and I think you all the teachers should get a big hug as we say in preschool and a pat on the back for for for that and the families too right because we all had

135to move and learn at the same time you guys did a really excellent job in helping people understand personalized learning I think it's sometimes hard to explain personalized learning to people but the way that you presented it tonight in your presentation really captured what that means what it means when you say personalized learning and how that is reflected to students and how you can understand that um as a community member um understand when we talk about that is an important piece of the district's goals moving forward um I loved what you said when whoever said that was happening at home what's happening at school was making its way back home because I really think that that speaks to the students experience and that connection those connections are building and that is the important piece of

136measuring you you can see that through those notes you've got right that that engagement is increasing through the connections that you're making and you really almost brought me to tears when you talked about the red growing because of inclusion um because that is like powerful words and um yeah just keep up that work because we all know that inclusion for all students is what makes a difference in the long term especially for students with identified needs um and February March has many days to Mark different disabilities and different learning neurodiversity and and days to celebrate that and I just really wanted to thank you for pointing that out and for for really making that part of your presentation really did almost bring me to tears because that's my daily work um and I believe in

137that with every piece of who I am and just thank you all I really I just can't thank everyone enough in the district you know sometimes we hear a lot when we go to other meetings about what kind of District we are but these kinds of presentations reflect that we are an incredibly dedicated District of Educators community members students families across the board yeah thank you uh Dr Carol sorry I just don't want to miss the chance to chime in with my sincere thanks as well and just appreciation for everything that what you presented represents stay in your day out um and also just noticing the connections between the of course I just started talking which is why Julia has to walk in my background is blurred today um so just pointing out the connections

138between that personalized learning piece um which is how students achieve Excellence on their own terms but it's connected to the safe and supportive learning environment and your goals are all interconnected and the testimonials that you shared I thought demonstrated like how those connections are so nuanced and important and students feel safe and supported when they receive that personalized learning and I'm just so um really grateful and excited that these platforms are paying off in these ways and so it just I think speaks to what wise Investments these have been um and thank you for making such good use of them foreign so I would close but I would be remiss if I didn't give Holly an opportunity to uh to brag for maybe 30 seconds about your FBS uh and the accomplishment they had how

139are you going to go through this presentation and not uh give us a highlight on that future business I can't well it's breaking it's it's breaking news so we actually finished the presentation before we got this but we have a grade five teacher Anna Curry who actually is in attendance tonight I think you're still here anna hi Anna Anna's a grade five teacher who works 70 of the day which means that she has a little time to do something extra and so she coaches our future problem solving team and she also coaches the team kind of he's done this for um a few years and has great experience with that and future problem solving is content that is introduced to all fourth graders and then at the end of fourth grade they have the chance

140to apply to be on a team and they give up to work on problem solving skills and the quality team three students uh Z Cleary Ben nass and Luke Powers congratulations to these three they've made it to the qualifying round so they will move on and compete with other teams across the state yes it's like really exciting they're really great kids who work very hard under the leadership of Anna so thanks for bringing that up and since you give me a chance to speak I have to say um I really want to commend the teachers who didn't throw in the towel and give up when times were really hard I know that we had a few teachers and we had some veteran teachers who were toying with the idea of maybe you know taking some

141time off while we work through this really difficult time in our world and they didn't and not only did they not give up but they've learned more again in the past two years and they are killing it with technology with links with student engagement and family engagement and I think in some ways we could look at the opportunities that we've had um to go through a pandemic as a gift because they really have maximized so many um of their ability so I just really want to commend those teachers who didn't give up and and thank them for their hard work so thank you Holly Eamon Allen Allison and my favorite uh someone but I just want to thank you guys for your uh uh presentation and uh keep up the great work and that that

142call that uh sentiment extends the entire colleague thank you all okay you guys are more than welcome to stay on if you want if not enjoy your night uh very quickly um under the superintendent's report I know you heard a lot about the data and things like that and I think what's building the culture and restoring that uh School feel that climate is restoring back to some of the activities with concerts senior trivia night last night in the in the cafeteria at the high school we talked about future problem solvers we had the Tucker championship basketball game uh last week that was a lot of excitement for the taco community so things are coming alive and and we're moving forward uh and we're looking for a great end of the year uh and really use

143this year as a springboard to do bigger and better things next year so I mean I'm not going to go where we're about nine o'clock right now and I know we got a couple other presentations but I'd be happy to uh update people on more things that are happening in public schools be on the lookout I know there's been a lot of conversations about what schools and colleges the students are talking to last night I just bumped into four students going to the trivial uh senior trivial night and out of the four students the colleges that I heard American University Colombia Brown in Tufts four students that I just ran into and then we had young ladies going to BU and you know so there are great things happening and they said you know what

144Mr jet it has been a good thing teachers have done some great jobs and we have a good class and I think I shared this with Dr Carol early I said no here's exceptional class because your sophomore year ended fully remote your junior year was hybrid and your senior year started out a little uncertain as well and here we are uh you're going off to some of the most prestigious colleges in the in the uh country so I just wanted to share that with people because when everything's said and done it's about to accept success that students experience all throughout the Milton Public Schools uh for those K through 12 and those and for those who are moving in at various uh points in their educational career and they're finishing off very strong at Milton

145High School um so it's a it's a culmination of all the work of all of the teachers and and support staff and I extend that to our food service Personnel custodial staff Librarians adjustment counselors guidance counselors and administrative assistants everyone across the board because we all have a hand in it and I just I can't thank thank them enough in the sentiment that Holly said specifically about a building I think it extends to all of them and then my final Thanks goes to the families who really were patients supported frustrating at times just like it was for all of us but you stuck with us and hopefully now uh we have mass optional we're not in a hybrid we're in school hopefully as a community we could stop looking at coming together despite our differences

146and opinions and really focus on what is best for our students and their experience so I just want to I yield my time to that and I just want to thank everybody who's been involved in you as well as school committee members because as volunteers uh I know a lot of a lot of uh frustration was aimed at you guys as well um but you guys hung in in I greatly appreciate that so kudos to everyone involved thank you and I would yield my time at this point yeah well said Thank You superintendent and thank you sumacelli we are indeed a lucky Community to have such dedicated Educators and families and staff um all right School building committee we know you have been waiting for your time thank you to you guys sorry you know

147I only have one more meeting and I promise the next person needs to be library early if y'all can think about what you want to do for your meetings in the future they can be shorter sorry eight I've sorted over to you ah thank you Margaret um um my connection is a little funky so I hope I will be able to stay with you I hope you can hear me um but I I'm pleased to return and bring um back uh with me uh the chair of the school building committee Sean O'Rourke to speak with you tonight as well as principal concannon from Calicut school and principal fish from the Pierce Middle School to join us to talk about the school building project and the possible grade configuration for our new school it's been three

148years now the school building committee has been working and there's been a lot of work done and it feels like things are starting to come together in a way that things things are moving quickly um and it's exciting to bring to you an update and um I won't without further Ado I'll pass it the ball to Sean O'Rourke and alfouco thank you all right perfect thank you Ada um you know in light of time I'll jump right into the presentation [Music] foreign just let me know if that came through perfect thank you so you know quick agenda for kind of what we wanted to cover tonight uh you know brief introductions uh mainly for the audience that's on the phone they might not be familiar with us um then we're going to cut over to

149kind of our overcrowding video that some of you may have seen and if not we'd like to play that for you uh jump into a presentation to kind of recap some of the material we presented to you previously and also update um some of our community and staff engagement and some of the outputs from that and then jump into whatever question and answers you may have um for those of you who are not aware or are makeup of our committee is made up of nine members uh the five of us at the top were appointed by the town moderator uh we're a mix of design and construction professionals um at the bottom left are members of your committee uh aider and Betty member Rose remember white and on the bottom right are members of the

150select board or appointees by the select board with Mike zulis being one of the members um so now you know I'll cut over to our overcrowding video we we ate air myself and the rest of the committee had worked on this tirelessly to kind of give people a view of what's going on Behind the Walls uh a lot of people look at the schools as everybody know they look great from the outside uh however the interior of the schools we know there's a different different story going on there so if I may I'll try to switch and there and a note for Holly when you I found with zoom when you're sharing video there's a tab at the top that you have to share the audio with it too so I believe it's under the

151more portions if you just give me one second share a sound and if you give me a thumbs up once well it's interesting because you know you guys are here to film The Pinch one of the biggest challenges I see is the over the overcrowding in an ideal situation particularly at your Elementary levels you would like to keep class sizes no more than 18. sorry so videos yeah the video is not playing sorry but we can hear the audio that sound but no we just see the um slide that says overcrowding video so maybe you need to reshare your screen or something uh correct I think it was like a different tab perfect sorry about that learning something new each time you share yeah correct I was just sharing the uh the PowerPoint slide here

152we go sorry about that perfect well it's interesting because you know you guys are here to film The Pinch one of the biggest challenges I see is the over the overcrowding in an ideal situation particularly at your Elementary levels you would like to keep class sizes no more than 18 to allow for our teachers to give individualized attention you can definitely see that there are spaces that are smaller there are spaces that are gone so if you want examples if you think of the library we have um a classroom of second graders which actually happens to our biggest second grade classroom in a space in the corner of the library where there used to be extra shelving for books art room but the music room allowing for some space to sing really was just too

153small so as you'll see we've actually now converted our gym we've split it down the middle with the curtain and half of the gym is being used for music three days a week and the other uh three days a week is being used for um up in our library what had been our maker space which is a big space of our library it's now being used as uh as a digital classroom for for our fuse and Technology classes which um you know we've on one hand we've been fortunate to have a little bit of space to create another classroom but um that kind of came with the loss of of the maker space too so our Music Room uh was we were able to preserve it up until this year but this year we had

154to transform our stage in the cafeteria into a music room we had to take all of the instruments that are usually stored in on display for children to access and we had to put them in a closet and that does create a ball neck that does take up time which means the teachers leave earlier to make sure that they have enough time to eat which Cuts away from you know core academic time and they sort of no way around it because you're cutting something and you want to make sure once they get in the cafeteria those lines you know they have enough time to actually eat before they go to recess so you can't um fault the teacher for leaving earlier they get them in there because all of that takes more time because more

155classrooms and more students are going into those spaces we often hear from students or families in some of the most stressful times of the day was lunchtime you know the students have about 20 minutes to find their way find a seat get their lunch eat it um in in a in what was a borderline sort of hysterical uh environment where you choreographed their day in such a way that we are sort of smoothly moving a lot of children through very cramped and tight spaces I mean as far as our teachers it's cramping their space it's very difficult to break up into small groups when you have 28 29 students in the class we've given up a lot to provide great services for our children so it feels great to be able to do that what

156we sacrifice is quality of planning time and locations for our staff the opportunity to find a quiet place for planning planning with colleagues is sometimes not so easy it's not easy to find that space But we're working together we're figuring it out we're very grateful to be in beautiful buildings but I'll if I'm being honest I have teachers sometimes taking meetings from their car and when you look at the current enrollments in the fourth and fifth grade now that are nearing 400 um you know ballooning the size of teams to 125 130 140 uh what your class sizes are going to be uh enormous you're going to be talking about you 28 to 30 students in most on team classes so math imagine classrooms of math in English and science and social studies with pushing

15730 students in there we are continuing to grow like just as a point of note when I started at Tucker I believe we were at 350 students and we're about 470. I mean and that's just within you know our eight or nine year time span so it's it's we've grown you know pretty dramatically and I don't think people realize that I have an issue that we have to confront in terms of our enrollment and um status quo of of you know both from school building physical plant as well as you know personnel and programming are going to have to evolve with um with the with our enrollments and with the complex the complexities that come with that if we're going to be able to continue to offer our kids and families the same high quality

158education that um students have have enjoyed jump back to my presentation if you just confirm you've seen the presentation again perfect thank you um so you know the video there kind of highlights a lot of stuff that we've talked about graphically so um just to kind of recap some of the graphs we've seen previously the enrollment since the schools were reconstructed or rebuilt back in 2008 as you can see has grown dramatically what you're seeing here is Pre-K to 12. um the projections even further long term have them for like a better word to steady state or leveling off but a lot of that takes into account as we mentioned before projections from NASDAQ that we found to be very conservative they also don't account for any of the future construction projects that aren't permitted

159as we're well aware from you know the past couple nights of town meeting there's a lot of stuff that's going to be coming down the line um this graph basically takes the data for pre-k to fifth grade and um I I use as an engineer I try to look at things differently so what I did here is kind of flip the graph around when I was working with all these and drive my other committee members nuts um and here you see the great enrollment on the vertical axis so from 2007 to 2008 on the base up to the present day and then across the x-axis is the enrollment population for the students and as you can see it grows you know every year is about a two percent increase uh um the vertical yellow line

160there is the capacity of the school buildings uh you're at Holly mentioned earlier was about 500 for hers um so as we added up all the buildings that's what we had the the district architecture is as you're well aware uh consists of Four elementary schools uh that feed up to a single middle school and feed up to the high school so initially uh from the output from the dra study that looked at it uh talked about the um construction of a new elementary school and initially as as a committee you know we we focused on this we developed an SOI and submitted it um that SOI was not accepted by the mass School building authority last year nor this year um and it kind of gave us some pause to look at things a little

161differently and say you know are we doing the right thing are we going to create a fifth Middle School that feeds up to a single Middle School uh and then also create a brand new elementary school and have to redo the other four existing schools kind of bring it up to the same parody and then the the biggest issue that came up is you know we were discussing is you know redistrict things so um as you're aware from previous presentations uh We've looked at a option here that specifically came in once we started identifying the site uh of creating an upper middle school at the high school campus and we'll talk about the land a little bit later what it would do is reconfigure the elementary schools by stripping out the fifth grade and the

162preschool and re removing them up so the fifth grade would move up to the pierce the Pierce would now go from housing three grade levels to two grade levels basically providing space there the new middle school will be sized appropriately to handle the 7th and eighth grade along with the preschool Wing uh and then some of the space that we free up at the middle school the existing Pierce Middle School we could use some of the district offices of the high school and relocate them there further providing additional capacity at the high school at the elementary schools by stripping those two two grade levels out as you'll see in the coming slides we kind of addressed the space there so this one option addresses space capacity on all levels of the district so graphically from

163the one that I presented before you know we looked at it and said if we took the fifth grade and preschool and stripped them out what would it look like uh and as you saw before it basically drops us below the building capacities and essentially provides breathing room when we looked at that was graphically we physically looked at the students on what what they're occupying in the buildings right now so if this year we were to do this we'd free up 16 classrooms that are currently occupied by the fifth grade and eight preschool classrooms so when we weighed that against the shortfalls that were done as part of the dra study back in 2019 which was a space study conducted by your committee um we check all the boxes basically every shortfall that was identified

164there we addressed with this option and at this point I'd like to turn it over to Ada to kind of touch on a little bit about grade configurations foreign one of the first things that that we did was to look at what what does the research tell us about grade configurations and read um quite a bit of research and um the basically the research is mixed on it um but of what we have here are three of sort of the key points um one is that there is not a particular sequence of grade spans that's perfect or it self-guarantees student achievement and social adjustment but the second being that um addressing the transitions that students go through when they move from one school to another and that that with with those transitions there comes a

165risk of relationships and learning being disrupted so that anytime we have a transition in students participation at one school to the next we have to really be thoughtful about how we're going to support that transition being a smooth one and and for both students and their families and their families participation and the third is that there is little Empirical research supporting a certain grade range or configuration and many schools are are left doing what what they can or or try to do with with configuration so there's there's basically not a rule of thumb around what what to do um next slide please there we go um the next thing that we looked at is um what's happening in in other public schools around Massachusetts and um there are varying grade configurations as as you well

166know um but just to give you a sense of how many schools around the state are using what types of um grade levels and and grade configurations and as you can see the the most common configurations are the ones that we have right now the Pre-K to grade five and the six through eight for the Middle School um and then the the other grade levels that that we looked at are the K to four Pre-K to four and there are a fewer number but but still 132 of those schools with a grades just five and six there are only four other schools of those in the state however ever um you know it means we're we wouldn't be alone in doing this but it's it's a unique option for for um us to consider um

167and then going down to uh grades seven and eight there are fewer of those as well than the six to eight but still dozens and then the grades uh schools with grades seven to twelve which is essentially what we would be accomplishing by housing this new Middle School up by the high school campus that we would have uh coordination and connections between our upper middle school students and the high school next slide please uh so um this is a slide that we've shared in our uh numerous Town forums that we've done Community forums uh basically comparing the two options that have been on the table um and I'll just walk you through these quickly they're pros and cons for the the one on the left being for the new elementary school and the one on

168the right for the new 7th and eighth grade uh school with the preschool uh Wing So for the on the left side the the pros for the elementary school is it does provide a 26 new classrooms that are needed that were identified by our dra space needs study three years ago it continues with our current configuration it does provide one less transition that will be required for students than our other option and it enables us to restore those art music gym and other rooms that have been converted to to classrooms in in our current situation the cons are that this doesn't really address overcrowding that we're experiencing with the enrollment as it's moved up at either the middle or the high school as Sean mentioned it it requires that we would have to redistrict all

169of our elementary schools um and and it would require funds to upgrade the remaining four schools to achieve parity among all of our elementary schools um and then on the for the Middle School option the pros are um again that it provide would provide between 24 and 26 new classrooms so it would meet our space needs in that uh in that way this address is overcrowding at all of our grade levels without redistricting it brings together the students from across town one year earlier which we see as a positive so that the the diversity that that exists in our community will all come together one one year younger and and have the opportunity to be together um in the fifth and sixth grade the sort of lower middle school and then up into the upper

170middle school for four years as as they get to be together it has the potential for expanded opportunities for eighth graders who both either academically and or or athletically May participate be able to participate in high school programs and opportunities and it also provides an increased opportunity for our Milton High School child study students to come down to the preschool classrooms and participate and we we know how much we love that program that's been Hiatus during the pandemic but we're excited about the opportunities there for for our child study students in our child study program [Music] where the additional transition for our students and it would be something that we would need to think about and plan for and address and there's concern as another possibility that we might have negative impact on parent involvement

171and that again would be something that we would need to address next slide please and then last is is just some questions that have come up um for us to think about about you know will a grade configuration increase or decrease parent involvement and how might we address that how will the presence or absence of older student students affect younger students being together what are the opportunities for interaction between age groups what Equity opportunities might be offered with either configuration how would education programming for fifth graders best be handled how will families manage the an additional transition and how can we support families with that and what we what might we be able to learn from other districts who've reorganized their grade configurations perfect um so so what you you know what we presented so

172far has been you know previously presented you know to to you guys as a committee um part of what we wanted to update you to tonight is kind of our community and staff engagement that we've been doing uh the dates back to the fall uh let's see there we go so initially once we identified the land um and we had these kind of conceptual options that were there uh we wanted to meet with the neighbors of uh Blue Hills Parkway Pine Tree Brook and Home Inc uh so we met with them early on in September and October um to get some feedback from them and we'll share that in a minute um we followed on in February with a staff form presenting these options also and going over the floor plans that you've seen before

173and then more recently we've done Community forums kind of spread out across the entire Community to get feedback from them so the the initial meeting that we had with um with uh the neighborhood associations that are near the school um you can see that Pine Tree Brook Blue Hills Parkway were all pretty well represented uh Home Inc wasn't but we've been doing kind of one-on-one meetings with them because they're direct to Butters um and then the the second image that you see there is essentially a word cloud we utilized an application called slido which some of you might be familiar with it's a polling application online uh so what I allowed as we were meeting with people to get real-time feedback of what they were doing um the question we asked consistently to everybody is

174given that we want the best for the students what attribute would you like to see integrated into new educational facility um and as people populated these word clouds they could like different words that would make them go larger so as you can see here diversity was was the big one along with a slew of others the second meeting of of the same uh group of people as you can see Pine Tree Brook Blue Hills Parkway and others that were there uh similar word cloud for the the um same question flexibility outdoor space technology um the community forums that we've done uh that we reached out a little bit further we hadn't developed the the options for the school yet so we didn't we didn't present that third question that you're seeing here uh to The

175Neighbors at that time it was just more of an informational session for them um so as we did these recent Community forums we the first question we asked them in the upper left is do you have kids in the schools trying to understand what our audience was uh we then repeated the same second question that you'll see there for the word cloud uh and then finally as we close the meeting after all the Q a that we did uh in all of these meetings we had we stayed on as long as we could answer every question and there were hundreds of questions that we've gone through and responded to live you know so it was interesting at the end of the conclusion of all the Q a we have we presented them with the options

176of you know a new Middle School a new Elementary School option three is other we've I've offered my email to talk to people directly if they have other ideas or do nothing um so at this poll as you can see it was 88 percent the second Community Forum same thing I believe it's 88 it's kind of hidden behind the um the poll of people that are up on my screen um and then finally you know as I mentioned we did we did one specifically for the staff we had 109 participants in the polling participants again I can't see it because it's behind my uh the screen of foot or your folks on the zoom um but you can see we were all represented from the elementary school the middle school and high school um and

177the major player for them was smaller class sides so you know up to this point we have done a lot of community engagement we've talked with staff I've been meeting one-on-one with folks of the neighborhoods to kind of go through um so the the part we're at now the critical part we're at now we've we've got an article for town meeting to go over the site um as you may be aware previously like we we looked for sites around the town we did an RFP for land we had zero responses uh we dove into the available Parcels of land that were out there and 72 percent of them were below four acres and then essentially the remaining 30 Parcels did just wasn't there the schools take up part of them the parks take up part

178of them and the remaining were Town Hall Police Headquarters and that kind of left us with conservation land um our initial you know we're spitballing ideas three years ago when we first started as a committee we're trying to figure out where we wanted to put this and our the one that Rose to the top was Saint Mary's of the hills it was an existing school that operates as a school the traffic you know it kind of worked well uh but yeah chiasis wasn't open to us taking it over doing a brown lease so you know we moved on we looked across the street to Kelly field and said you know can we take a portion of Kelly field and do it but um I think the appetite within the town to convert an act of

179recreation field to uh school probably when we received well so we moved on from that one uh we did talk with the Archdiocese about a potential a lot of land that's next to Saint Pius um the problem with that one was only about three and a half acres and as you'll see from our uh initial Concepts that set we're working with seven acres three and a half was just too small of a parcel um the last one that we looked at was the biggest parcel was up off access road and where you'll actually hear about this a little bit more in our land swab um but this parcel didn't really work for us that well uh mainly due to topography the um some vernal pools that we found out afterwards as they were up there

180and then also some ancient artifacts that would have caused construction on the site to be troublesome so that's kind of how we came around to the Apostle of land that we found at guile Road um the parcel exists right now as it expands across Kyle Road and goes up along the brook of what we call the hockey stick parcel um the part so we're looking to swap out or uh claim is possible in yellow and it's roughly about 6.8 Acres we've done a boundary survey right now would be a c group as part of another project with the town uh to get the exact boundaries or the coordinates of what that land would be so we're working with that so that's leading us to you know our proposed article for the land Swap and kind

181of the past meetings I've had um the article that you see here and I won't bother you reading it but essentially it composes of three parts the first part is taking that yellow parasol that we just looked at previously out of conservation land and transferring three other Parcels into conservation land so those are the two parts the third portion of this article is allowing this uh our town to petition the state to execute that swab so as I talked about that hockey stick portion of of the area or the existing parcel that we have is going to remain conservation land we would just be swapping out the yellow portion or the southern portion uh by that gal Road what we've identified by working with the town are two adjacent Parcels on Herrick drive that would

182be offered up that are currently non-conservation land and would be converted to conservation land uh the parcel I talked about that we looked at for the school originally uh uh by the access road in Randolph Ave essentially across the street from the carriage house is about a 30 acre parcel uh two-thirds of which right now is already conservation land um so the the middle portion that we'd be offering up there uh would get converted to conservation land and essentially unify the entire parcel um for a land swap you know the way it's working with the uh executive office of energy and environmental Affairs I'm finally getting that acronym or that name of that agency down um for every they have a ratio basically every acre we take of conservation land we have to give up

183more so um well some people might talk about this this proposal as we're taking conservationally we're actually not we're swapping it out and we're giving back more than we're actually taking so that's a key component that we're looking at the the land that we're utilizing had deed restrictions that were apparently part of that before uh but working with Town Council there were a 30-year limitation for those under Mass General law that have expired as of 2008 uh so apparently there are no deed restrictions on there uh we met with Conservation Commission the other night we're doing a sidewalk a week from this Saturday and our hope is to kind of get their blessing uh for this overall parcel trade and with that I'll open it up to question the answers so Ada um thank you

184Sean um this is like a full-time job for you um something something according to that it's almost over though once we get going um we really can't thank you and you enough as a community as a committee for so we really appreciate the particularly the amount of time you're putting in to engage the community so Ada I don't know if you want to take questions how do you want to proceed from this moment this is your the floor is yours right now well what what I um what I'm looking for tonight is is um as you can see things are happening with this project they're we're really starting to move forward and and we're hopefully we'll be able to acquire this parcel of land uh to build upon which was the number one question that

185everybody wanted to know when we talked about building a new school in the first place so if we are to solve that you know answer that question we are in good shape um the second question is that we often get is how much will it cost and um that's something that we need to to really look at and be able to evaluate and to be able to bring that forward to the town and one of the factors in that is knowing what kind of school we're building and so um because of that you know what what I'm hoping school committee will able be able to do tonight is to make a vote or take a vote on a just make a decision about the grade configuration for this school whether we'll go with option one

186which is the elementary school which is what the school committee voted on three years ago early on in this project or what has evolved and come out of the last three years of of work the the Middle School New Middle School option of the grade 7th and eighth grade and the preschool classrooms in in that building I have a motion that that we could consider I could put that forward and then we could have discussion on that if you'd like me to start that way uh chair Everhart sure that's fine I see that Dr Carroll has her hand up I don't know if we want to see what um Dr Carol has to say first and then we can put the motion before thanks um I just I have a question and you tell me

187if this is something that should happen after we approve the motion um also Sean thank you for uh all the time you patiently spend attending our meetings before you actually get to present which always seems like two hours every time so um I guess my question is with Holly and Bill here I was just curious um sort of what their perspectives are on the question of the transition um and so for them um for the fifth sixth grade school model and I don't know if we should ask them to participate in the next part of the discussion or if I should ask that question now but just curious what their thoughts are on that piece I think in order to like follow proper protocol and procedure we should put the motion on the floor and

188open it for discussion and then ask for the opinions of our experts here on the back so that'd be great that's exactly why we asked them to join us and stay with us for being here um so I'd like to make a motion and move that the school committee recommend to the school building committee that the construction of a freestanding grade seven to eight school which will include a pre-K school Wing is the preferred educational objective of the Milton school committee and I'd like to second that all right thank you all right we will open the floor for discussion then remember Rosemary do you want to coordinate the discussion or you want me to work sure I I um like to pass pass um Dr Carroll's question on to principal fish or principal come can

189and if you can address that that question of transition that would be wonderful sure it's a question that came up during several of the forums and the way that I responded to that that is similar to how I respond now we have a um you know a problem a dilemma that we need to address with regard to our overcrowding and there's no perfect solution to how we do that um what while the um the proposal on the table does introduce an additional transition the time that we have to plan for that I believe is is an asset for us um and being able to leverage um the expertise of our Upper Elementary Educators and our Middle School Educators as well as our families in figuring out um what makes the most sense for our children

190and for our families is something that I think can allow us to really be on the Leading Edge of a change like this and we to in the slide you know that was showing the presentation there are a handful of schools in the comment that have made this transition I think that we also have an opportunity to learn from from some of those um some of which I think are relatively close by um but the the transition is certainly something Dr Carroll that um has has garnered a great deal of conversation as it deserves um but I think that um the primary challenge that we're dealing with right now is is the overcrowding and believe that this proposal has to alleviate that and then the work begins around um with a student facing and family-facing

191portion of sort of what snacks in terms of of making a change in our great configuration thank you Holly do you have anything you'd like to add um I think Bill and I are definitely on the same page but as an elementary principal when this uh first when this idea was first brought to light I it actually hurt a little bit the idea of me losing the fifth grade um is something that's hard to accept it's a very special year in the elementary school and all the special events that come with the fifth grade and just watching them grow in that year is a gift so at first it was one that I wasn't ready to entertain but the more I think about it grade five is a transitional Year anyway at in the elementary

192school this is a year that our fifth graders come together they integrate French and English for 70 of the day if we um we provide opportunities for them to have at least two teachers to change classrooms to go to their locker all in a concerted effort to get them ready for Middle School the idea so it essentially is a transitional Year anyway it's just within our building um the idea of fifth and sixth graders together um actually really maximizes expertise in that field especially around social emotional health I don't think it's very easy being a fifth or a sixth grader um and to put all of that expertise in one place to support those students and give them space to learn and grow together as middle school students is is pretty powerful I think I

193would Envision a lot of time using our fifth and sixth grade teachers as well as our curriculum coordinators to design a model that would be efficient and also developmentally appropriate to support their needs um this is the time we really need to focus on Executive functioning skills and um emotional health physical health and to put all of that expertise in one building I think would be a great support to students so um I don't I think a lot of thought has to go into it but I do believe that we have the current staff employed by us we just need to rethink um where exactly um the perfect staff needs to go in the perfect building so I think although it's one more transition as a physical space I think all the support around this

194transition would maximize it and now it's been how I appreciate bringing up but when you talk about narrowing the grade span to five and six and really putting those experts there I think that is a huge opportunity and I also think around the question around transitioning one of the big concerns for families is their their fifth graders getting ready for sixth grade is you know they're going into a bigger school now with students who are a lot older and a lot bigger and there's that component to it that by by narrowing um the ages of the children attending that school I think that that is uh put it you're putting students who are more developmentally similar uh in the same building across the board versus having this wider span yeah okay thank you and I

195just add one more thing with our specific model when you think about the transition to Middle from eighth grade to high school that's a big deal but to have students closer to that campus and being able to come in and out of different athletic fields um in other spaces would absolutely ease the transition from eighth to ninth as well um and just maximizing you know the child study program and like we need teachers we need like we need to be growing our teachers in high school and we need to provide that experience for them while they're here with us so um getting that opportunity back in the hands of our high school students and the idea of walking to and from those campuses getting to know the physical space and the staff is is half

196the battle with the transition and I think this type of model offers more frequent opportunities before the before the big day thank you uh member White I was just going to say that you know I worked in an elementary school that was one through five for 20 years and yes they were fifth graders that were anxious about the transition to middle school but more than the kids the parents were very anxious about it I think I spent more time soothing parents nerves than I did even the kids nerves but I I kind of think that the idea of a fifth and sixth grade together would be less intimidating for parents even to think about because it's a smaller it's a smaller cohort of students together um it's less intimidating to have two grades in the

197building rather than you know three grades in the building so I actually think in many ways it might be an easier transition um with the way that we're we're thinking about it in this way so I just wanted to throw that out there one other thing I I had hoped to mention but I forgot to mention is in our district specifically it takes going to Pierce Middle School to get that truly Rich diverse experience that our town has to offer for many people sixth grade is the first time they're in a very diverse experience so to be able to offer that a year earlier um feels like an important opportunity to name yeah excellent thank you member Russ Danny well Betty I was one of those nervous parents I grew up fifth and sixth grade

198was a traditional Elementary setting with one teacher so the idea of having a sixth grader go through an entire day was very nerve-wracking for me is our assumption that the fifth grade experience at this Middle School setting will be similar to what it is now or will they go class to class if you've mentioned it earlier I apologize if I missed it I think that's something that we would need to figure out I think we have the expertise already employed by us but I would really want to rely on our directors of curriculum to help us make decisions and plan like that we have um you know there's a different certification involved in elementary and in middle school and so we would really need to look at the qualifications of the staff that we have

199and the expertise that we have many of our teachers are dually certified or are certified straight up through grade eight K-8 um some certified K to six so I think we really we have the ability to make a situation like this happen with our current staff but we would really I would want to look at the talents of this current staff we have and use the expertise we have in the district by way of curriculum coordinators to help us design a model that would maximize student instructional time earlier tonight I talked about our jump in Science grades and it was a clear dedication to time on task and specific teachers teaching specific content all of that would be brought into light when making decisions like this so I don't think it's a decision I don't

200think I could respond right now and say exactly what it should be but I think um we could definitely do it with the staff we have yeah I mean how I think you're right it's hard to commit right now to exactly what that be but Beverly that's something that I I know I've thought about is it does it make sense for it to be would fifth grade be a the traditional fifth grade model with one or two you know depending on the The Strand or the the um whether it's a student in English Innovations pathway or French immersion but or does it look like a traditional sixth seventh eighth grade model where it's the 14 teachers or is it somewhere in between you know is it is it an Ela or French uh in in

201social studies like you know there's a two-person teams where it's a Humanities person and I'm in a math and science person I think that um it's an exciting opportunity to to just to think about how we we might further um smoothen that transition but um there's also something to be said for considering the traditional T model where you're bringing in like to Holly's point the expertise you know having subject level expertise and increasing um instructional time and time on learning across the board especially in social studies and science which um you do see that uptick in in sixth grade and the amount of instruction students are getting there so um I think it's impossible to say definitive what is best right now but I think that we do have Tyler's point the personality to figure

202it out but also the responsibility to our community to work with with our families to make um you know a thoughtful and conscious decision about what makes makes the most sense for our kids thank you yes thank you it was a great question Beverly it's one that's been on a lot of our minds um and I wonder whether a superintendent Jed or superintendent assistant superintendent she and might have any thoughts on this that you want to share from your own perspectives of having been involved at both of these all of these grade levels for free so the first thing I was going to say and I put my hand down because Holly uh concannon touched upon it is the certification it does have implications because years ago middle school students that had the general Edge

203certification of the grade six had to get certified in specific content areas in order to move forward to teach so it does have a certification implications um you uh remember Rosemary you know where I stand when we talked about the seven eight being close to the high school campus it affords us an opportunity to alleviate pressure in all buildings um eighth grade uh being close to the high school from we have waivers for athletics we have opportunities for transitions exposing students to that college level experience a little bit earlier um we talked about the pre-k program people may not know this a few years ago we had a pre-k program but it only supported about 15 students at the high school with 15 younger students in the class can you imagine 15 high school students

204in with 15 Pre-K students is a lot having that Pre-K campus affords us the opportunity to expose more high school students uh to the pre-k program being a support but also alleviating some of the pressure because now they can walk down the street to that new facility I agree with Dr fish in terms of developmentally as a former middle school vice principal and principal it was we did a lot of work to help with the transitioning of Middle School to I mean elementary to uh the Middle School by developing that welcome to Middle School Camp to give them that exposure and it is a big transition um I don't want to speak for the sixth graders now I remember being there and you're being a hallway and it looked like a a tornado would go

205had gone to the hallway because they're so anxious to carry everything and that's where you get the complaints about the book bags because the students will carry everything that they need um but extracting one grade and keeping it close in age makes for a better or could possibly make for a better experience and then the final piece about the exposure to the diversifying the schools at one a little bit more at uh one grade lower I think is I think it's a benefit everybody that they get that exposure and have a niche model versus a standalone Elementary School I think our families who have students in pre-k who may have to make a vote on this will benefit from that and it's a benefit for everybody who gets to experience the new facility uh if

206that is something that's online in four to six years so I think there's so many benefits but I do think there are a lot of uh uh details that will have to be worked out um but the downside is we have enough time to work it out because we need these buildings sooner rather than later but the good news is we have some time to work it out assistant well I would just like to add that the initial proposal for a five you know for the five six configuration was a concern like like that of others and um but around the transitions but I think that the way this has been presented from the research to the pros and cons um I think that addressing all of the other issues especially space issues for each

207of the schools really um really limits the the concerns now and alleviates the concerns for those transitions I think that there are just other issues that are to be addressed um I do agree that um there are some implications for certification and um as um uh principal concannon mentioned we we probably we probably have the staff but there is time to plan for um updating those certifications I think that that's something that that can be addressed but I think that the presentation was was very clear um really um was very helpful um to uh to help help others understand the implications for this configuration thank you uh Sean yeah I just I just want to touch on one thing quickly too I mean the work we've done over the past three years just to identify

208a site and find land has been a lot of work and we have to get this project right uh you know after this project I don't know where you're going to find additional land so that's why you know the amount of time and effort our committees put into this to really study it and look at it knowing that this land is very precious um that's why we want to make sure we get it right on this project so it was just one point I wanted to make thank you thank you Dr Carroll thanks um just in terms of sort of sharing what I'm thinking with my fellow school committee members since this is our only chance to really talk about it together um I think my response to the presentation and I've known I mean

209I've been aware of the obviously this alternative model has been an idea for some time so we've been able to kind of process it um but I think sort of building on what you were just seeing Sean to me it really doesn't make sense to go through the investing in building a new building after all the work this has taken to still have overcrowding at the middle school like ice in the video you know there that is a problem at Pierce so I recognize it's a less acute problem at the high school but when the presentation kind of shows um the way that simply building the new school for seventh and eighth would relieve pressure all over the place like to me that really then makes it hard to justify investing our limited resources um

210at the as a new elementary school um I just that no longer makes any sense to me um I understand that it's been a journey to get to this place and I recognize why it started with that idea um and this is you know I guess why the Silver Lining and having been denied uh by by the state um you know because it allowed you to re go back to the drawing board and like think outside the box and I'm really glad you did because uh the last thing we would need is to have another conversation like soon about now what are we gonna do with the Pierce so I'm just thankful to you for thinking outside the box um and given that the research which to me seems most important in the questions or

211cons potential cons category the research around the transitions given that that's mixed um then I sort of take that off the table because it's not telling me anything one way or the other about what makes sense and so when that comes off the table to me it's like everything else you know make sense with this new proposal and the parent engagement piece I get that that you know sure it will complicate things for parents who you know maybe before they only had children in two buildings at a time and now I have three buildings at a time you know my colleague Beverly Ross daddy manages that uh every day right now so it's possible to do you know um people do do it and I think we have time to be thoughtful about scheduling things

212you know scheduling drop off pick up time like how can that all be maximized to allow efficiency for families um I think that there's no reason we couldn't be proactive and make that like as seamless with Community input obviously parents to share what their concerns are to be able to take them into account the planning so that's that's what I think yeah I will I'm supporting the motion on the table I guess is what I'm trying to say yeah I mean uh a member Rosemary and I think um to I think that um what Dr Carol just said and what Holly concannon said earlier about that um the lessons from the pandemic afforded us opportunities to think outside the box in different ways we might not have thought of before sort of that's what sort

213of happened with the school building project right and um while we're while we're thinking about the overcrowding and the space needs it's affording us an opportunity to rethink our instructional methodology as a district and really providing opportunities to be Innovative and creative so it will be the task of future School committees to look at what that's going to look like because you know School committees are a part of our you know they are like they set the direction for the district along with the superintendent so that's going to be a really important conversation for future School committees to have with the superintendent and the leadership in the district to think about what does this look like educationally for students in five six seven eight nine ten so I think it's a real opportunity for the

214district I look forward to seeing how it evolves and being a part of that conversation in a different way so I think if if I remember was around I think if if everyone has had a chance to say what they wanted to say the motion has been made and seconded you could um take a roll call vote as a chair of this committee and um put that onto the record okay well the motion has been made and seconded uh and we'll take a roll call vote I'll just go according to where I see you on the screen uh Dr Carol yes member Russ Danny yes chair eberhardt yes member White yes Dr Craighead yes remember Rosemary yes well congratulations to the building school school building committee and thanks for all your work yay fight on

215thank you thank you Sean thanks Sean all right my dear members of the school committee it is now 10 o'clock oh Dr Carol would you like to say something can we just mention and put in a plug that um it will also now of course be very important heading into the town meeting it's for everybody to understand what this land swap is about the facts you shared Sean about this the town actually gains more conservation land than it's not losing any and I just want to encourage all of us to especially having seen you know things unfolding recently in town I think we need there's so many issues that people are focused on and it's all important but we need to make sure people understand the facts about this article you know just put that

216out there absolutely thank you so much Dr Carol we we have scheduled three forums for town meeting members and town meeting member candidates um that will be sent out there uh three different times that um people can join forums um that will be sent out um from the town clerk's office to all town meeting members and candidates and we look forward to having the opportunity to discuss this this project uh with with all of them and to hopefully build support for our article and and hopefully ultimately acquire this parcel for a new school yeah thank you Dr Carol for bringing that up to our attention I know that is the next big important step so we all need to be supportive and get uh get out there in the community and educate people about the

217facts and what this means for the for the town and for the districts thank you for reminding us yeah all right so now my dear School community members it is now 1005. we are we are at three hours in our meeting we still have things on our agenda and I would like to talk to all of you um you know we have a policy actually about how long School Community meetings are supposed to go um I think it's like 9 30 like you're not supposed to take any new business after a certain amount of time Dr Carol can review those policies um in the upcoming times so I'm wondering how you want to proceed what we have left is opportunity for citizen speaking I don't know where's there I wanted to briefly touch on the

218mid-cycle review I know we have to vote the vendor warrants we have to vote a policy yes Dr Carroll if it's just the second reading so if people don't have questions that should take no more than two minutes and I think last time was pretty okay there's only four people in attendance as possible participants at that well we could certainly put it out there if there was anyone who is currently still in attendance who would like to say anything at this moment you could raise your hand and we could we could raise you up we could uh what do you call it like move you up into panelists and you could have three minutes to speak or address the committee around a policy or issue that was concerning to you I don't know if anyone's

219out there who has hung on this long and wanted to say something I would not want to deny you that opportunity so there's four people on if anyone wishes to uh raise their hand and make a comment I'll be happy to elevate you to speak this is why are you thinking about pressing the button I give it about 30 more seconds thank you superintendent although I said 30 seconds there's no one raising any hands okay I appreciate it okay so the next thing on the report is just a brief check-in on the mid-cycle review you should never use me as an example of how to conduct this process I'm doing a very buy to Holly by Dr fish thank you so much for coming um but I know that superintendent judge submitted a document answering

220some of the questions that we um asked the last time I would ask you all to review the document and to begin to write a summary of your thoughts about where the district is based on that uh all the documents that are in the folder that I sent you and then submit that to me to try to compile I'm just going to try to find my calendar um by maybe March [Music] like maybe with a week of by um the 30th so that I could have time to compile things and then share them with the superintendent before we discuss them at the school community meeting on the sixth we have to discuss that though with me so um I'm happy to check in with like two of you at a time about that so as

221I said before do not use me as an example um but please review the document and then put together a document with your thoughts about where we are I've been trying to do a little bit that myself and thinking about the whole year in addition to the things we ask for all right so that's all I have to say Dr Carol we would love to hear about this sure this will be very quick because um the policy subcommittee has not met since our last school oh school committee meeting so I have nothing new to report on uh we are just comp um looking for a second reading of policy I see um going to pull up my motions sorry I have too many windows um so I'd like to make a motion then we can

222see if there's any discussion but the motion would be to approve the second reading of policy I see the school year school school year calendar policy is there a second second okay thank you um so you all have the attachment did anybody have any questions or comments since we've read this at the last meeting two weeks ago okay then I'll just take a roll call vote to approve this motion and the revisions to policy I see member Rosemary yes chair Eberhart yes remember Ross Denny yes remember White yes and Dr Craig had dropped off and she had to leave yes if I'm a yes so she would be an abstention um and thank you all very much thank you that concludes policy for tonight great number wait you were up with the finance subcommittee report

223for approval of vendor warrants sure um just want to say that last week we met with the Warren committee subcommittee on schools um three members submitted questions and one member of the subcommittee did not but um Amy Dexter worked hard and did a wonderful job answering 44 questions from three members um the rest of this the rest of the um Warren committee did not submit questions and typically because I've served in the Warren committee twice the past practice was always that everybody would give their questions to the school subcommittee and then then we would have time to prepare the answers and respond that wasn't the way they did it this time so I know that we have been invited to another meeting with the warrant committee um next week on Wednesday evening so um you

224know we'll see how that goes and um you know we'll see how that goes there's two warrants um that are um that we're going to vote on tonight the first one we can do them together is warrant number 37 payable on 310 2022 in the amount of 507 195.21 and warrant number 38 which is payable 317 2022 in the amount of 471 601.62 cents can I have a second for those second okay so this will be a roll call vote um remember Rosemary yes cheer Everhart yes remember Beverly Ross Jenny yeah okay remember Dr Carroll yes okay I'm a yes and we'll have Elaine Craig and Dr Craig at being abstain right um number white when do you when is the next meeting of the when has the school committee been invited to go to

225the Warren committee next Wednesday what is next Wednesday I apologize for not knowing the dates if you know the date let me look it up hold on next Wednesday is the 23rd 23rd yeah and that will be people can zoom in to watch that if it's it's available in the televised meeting yes okay wonderful okay um Amy did you want to speak a little bit about there was one um issue that came up when the with the war committee questions that you made a correction on I thought it would be helpful to speak on that tonight if it's okay um sure I assume you're talking about the salary question yes thank you yeah and I just also want to mention that um I didn't have an opportunity to answer all of the questions on one

226of the lists that um from my standpoint weren't financial and I couldn't answer so I think there's some confusion behind why those weren't answered um so I just wanted to mention that but the item that um member white is speaking about was there was a question regarding the superintendents salary increase from what was budgeted for fiscal 22 and what happened was when superintendent jet was named intram it was late August was the date of the contract and the contract amount was for a salary equivalent to 10 months of the year when the budget was put together in the fall of 2020 right after that happened um the budgeted amount in the spreadsheet was entered at the 10-month salary amount and not the annualized 12-month amount so when you compare 22 to 23 it appears as

227if that position was given an extremely large wage adjustment or salary increase of somewhere around 24 percent um there's been some discussion about that outside of that meeting and the public that I've answered some questions to that is not the case um so I just wanted to put that out there the wage adjustment for the superintendent's contract from count on from fiscal 22 to 23 is 2.5 percent not 25 percent okay thank you Amy you're welcome okay can I just ask a quick clarification about that um so just to make just to make sure it's totally clear was that just like a clerical error essentially on the part of the person who entered that in yes because they weren't aware it was it was a change from Mr jett's previous contract that was a 10

228months no no so so in when Amy do you mind if I explain yeah go ahead I just want to make sure it's like on the record as totally yeah it was a clerical error that's like that explains that yeah if you look at every leadership position they typically have more than your typical 180 384 days that I teach is them my contract as a principal started July 1st 2020 so I worked for two months under that under my principles contract I assume the position for the interim superintendent on August 27th uh 20120. so that's where the the 10 months went from August 27th until June 30th uh and if I could elaborate a little bit more about some of the speculation about possible positions going to that salary um that was not 100 accurate

229if folks remember my uh appointment for full-time superintendent came in uh January uh 22nd if I'm not mistaken 2021 my pre my contract negotiating and signed on March 31st 2021. so um that that just sums it up but I think if people if people took that the initial contract divided it by the 10 months see what that is and then multiply that divided amount by 12 months you would say that it's not a 24 25 27 or whatever it was percentage increase yeah I think thank you yeah Amy I'm sorry buddy go ahead give me a muted just wanted to also want add one thing as a follow-up to that if someone were to compare the budget for fiscal 21 to fiscal 22 they would have seen a very large decrease in the superintendent's salary

230and that wasn't noticed by well wasn't brought up as a discussion Point um in that year so if somebody wanted to go back they'd see that the salary that superintendent jet is at is consistent with that type of position would be compensated at it's not out of the ordinary at all that's true yeah all right thank you for explaining that and thank you James for uh speaking about that as well okay thank you that's it for finance for us for answering 44 questions that we have all that that that um we've discussed multiple times at school committee meetings and are in the budget book and um and we've we've and particularly to this question like I I know for a fact that about the salary because we talked about it with the lawyer and he

231all explained it to us when we were negotiating in the contract in the 10 months and the 12 months and you know it's something that we were very much aware of and I I I'm grateful to everyone anyone who pointed out and noticed that that discrepancy so that we could clarify that that was helpful right now we know that was a clerical era and we appreciate that um that but I really can't thank you enough it's like you're doing the work three times over um when when we have really had so many Rich conversations at school committee around all of this so anyway all right thank you so much yes one more one more comment about something that was discussed um that I just want to um also clarify is about our strategic plan [Music]

232um and we have had a strategic plan in place for at least three years three and a half years I believe um that has guided the direction of the district and has has set goals and the goals for um uh our annual goals as well as District um specific plans have been Guided by that strategic plan that plan um went through uh um a process this past year for um revising it and focusing it under new leadership of superintendent Jet and we will be bringing that updated plan to our April 6 meeting for discussion and presentation and and hopefully a vote by the school committee but as you can see there's been a quite amount quite a bit of involvement in the development of that plan by the district leadership team and we've already seen

233two of our school presentations including the one tonight by principal concannon that are thoroughly aligned with the new strategic plan so I I just want to be perfectly clear that we do know about strategic planning and we have an exciting new updated one coming in April the old one will be retired at that point thank you superintendent chat yes very quickly that that for the the current one before the new one is approved was from 2017 and it expires at the end of this year but anytime you do any planning uh we arguably uh encountered the biggest disruption in educational history or at least to my educational experience that re uh required us to really be reflective and go back in and recalibrate and say what are the biggest points right now and so the

234new plan is going to be one of which is Consolidated concise and more focused to to address some of the things that we've seen prior to the pandemic during the pandemic and more importantly what do we do need to do after the pandemic so I just share that as well yeah yeah I think that multiple to your point yeah multiple psych councils have reflected the new strategic plan so yep it's all out there for you to all right remember Rossini I would love to hear about curriculum and instruction from you and Dr um Michigan and Dr Carol this will be really fast because you've heard a lot of the content uh so this meeting was in February February 17th and the three agenda items were a follow-up on a question about Judaism in our curriculum

235um an overview of the new elementary math curriculum as well as a question we received during the school committee meeting on uh the restorative justice work we learned and feel free Janet if any one of these things is said incorrectly please stop me um Judaism is present in the elementary curriculum when covering cultural holidays like Kwanzaa and um Hanukkah it also appears in the Middle School in terms of referencing the Holocaust but we don't have a discrete topic on organized religions that you would see in a college a comparative religion that you'd see in a college or university um and if anything I think as we are going to meet next Thursday with the high school social studies program director it's getting late so if I say anything wrong and forgive me and at that

236point we can revisit and her plans for updating the curriculum whether or not that's present uh second the math curriculum update the good thing is between Brian selig and some of the information that Dr Carol and I added um he basically he basically covered what was shared in the meeting but he had more in-depth conversation with us which was a smaller group because you know he started two years ago they did utilize Ed reports in curry to identify research-based curriculums uh they have they're in the process of actively vetting several curriculum and they're using a rubric they're using actually two rubrics to help evaluate amongst a team of teachers that are actually vetting the new math curriculum and the third topic which was restorative justice the question was you know where is this work going

237where did it come from that that type of question which was um what we learned after Susan baselli's presentation and a lot of it you mentioned earlier today was that the restorative justice work was initiated and response to just the identifying African-American and black students at risk for disproportionality for school disciplinary removals um it just so happens to be the same subgroup that has been flagged for disproportionality in special education or for communication so she has been able to use very specific federal aid to address this and the goal is to dramatically reduce or eliminate the disproportionality of African-American students that are identified for disciplinary removals uh so people Personnel Services created a comprehensive plan using the deci planning for success model in response um to the discipline work and restorative justice is one of

238the primary strategies that they're using to achieve this goal that work includes the restorative justice coach um I'm going to say her name Adina Schechter who've been visiting who've already visited all the elementary schools and she's actively planning workshops to introduce the introduce the topic to each one of those School communities she's also been funding the professional development for restorative practices for all MPS School administrators she explained that um I want to say that the few faculty that have not completed the training yet is because there has been turnover in the role but she anticipates they all would have at least started it by the summer and one of her goals with the restorative justice coaches to establish relationships amongst the faculty so that they feel comfortable implementing authoritative practices independently um so I'm trying

239to think is there anything else worthy mentioning I think she covered some of the details that I would have shared early in her presentation so I'll stop there but if there are any questions you know feel free to ask and Janet if there's anything assistant superintendent Shane if there's anything you want to add do so that's great thank you for the update I I really we're getting a lot of really um Rich updates from the work on the curriculum and advisory committee and we did have a question from a Community member about the MCAS and I think I forwarded all of you and maybe I'll Circle I'll Circle back with you guys at the chat she asked sort of interesting questions about about MCAS and its measurement in the district and how schools are rated

240and curriculum and I just sort of think that there's a lot of you know MCAS has changed its you know the way it looks and how it's administrated administered and what you know and I just think maybe having some conversations around that in the community helped them understand that and and how Milton is rated based on that or whatever would probably be helpful I don't know oh she did okay perfect that's good and but I do think the point they're making um are very relevant and yes I think many people may not be aware of formative versus summative assessments right so all this wonderful work that MPS has done on unfinished learning although it's it might actually be an opportunity for a community Forum to educate the public because I think there's their group of

241people who actually don't realize the gains that have been made this year and I would hate for us to end the school year with people not recognizing the significant and successful work that our teachers have engaged in to catch all these students up and it's it's well worth a um a community form of some type to to give them information I thought that would be really great especially that I thought her question was it was interesting her question and I thought it really made me think about like people focusing too much on just not no not too much focusing on that because that's what the that's what's in the media and that's what's presented to them to absorb and understand but there's just so much else we can talk about so okay great thank you

242so much all right our last item on the agenda is to approve the minutes of our February 16 2022 meeting and our minutes of February March 2nd 2022. does everyone have a chance to read them over did anyone have any uh changes or additions they would like to have to those minutes yes Ada I just wanted to make a comment I wanted to thank Maureen Kennedy for her thorough um really thorough uh minutes on our meetings and and I think our process um between Maureen and Charlene roach um being able to give us a chance to review the minutes make any edits um before they come to the meeting for approval I think that's a good process and that now that I understand that um I'll I'll look forward to that moving forward I I

243can't thank them enough either it's a lot of work it's much appreciated and it's a very important record to have because you go back and reference someone people have questions so all right so there's a motion on the table to approve the minutes of February 16th and March 2nd 2022 may I have a second second okay I'll take a rule Culvert vote member White yes I've never rust any yes Dr Carroll yes remember Rosemary yes and member ever yes and Dr Carroll is a um I mean Dr Craig has left so that's an application all right our next meeting our agenda items will be a presentation from the strategic planning committee and we will have our open budget meeting our open budget hearing I believe that'll be like a half hour before the meeting but

244I'll definitely talk to Doug to superintendent Jet and Charlene and everyone else and Amy about what that's going to look like superintendent Dexter um is there anything else that we need to think about in the Pierce height Middle School is supposed to come I don't know I'll talk to Charlene about that I don't know didn't they already come no they didn't come this one we heard from them no okay well if you have think of any agenda items or things you'd like to add please let me know entertain a motion to return the meeting all right uh member of Ross Denny yes member of Rosemary yes please Roger Carroll yes please yes member white yes yes thank you all I'm so sorry 10 30 but a lot of really great work tonight thank you thank

245you thank you good night everyone good night take care