Milton School Committee - February 2nd, 2022

001all right good evening everyone and welcome to the Milton school committee meeting of Wednesday February 2nd happy Lunar New Year to all of you who celebrate and happy February um our first order of business is to um approve the agenda does anyone have any adjustments changes additions or subtractions they'd like to make Dr Craighead um I would like to strike 6A please Okay so I'm actually going to oh yes Dr Carol can we please promote Cora Redmond yeah she's already promoted okay good thank you everyone was playing no no I saw that too I was just gonna call this order and then start um I am going to make oh yes um superintendent Dexter so I just I can't see anybody from the public that's on so I'm I don't think I have the ability

002to promote anybody I have it okay great all right I am going to make a change to the agenda I am going to move the chairs report to uh towards the end of the meeting so we're going to have the superintendent's report the school building committee report we'll make time for citizen speak then we're going to have Finance subcommittee then curriculum instruction then health and wellness then policy then the chairs report then the approval of minutes and then that'll be the end of the meeting so with those changes I would like a motion to approve the agenda so moved all right anyone all right second all right we're going to take a roll call vote this will be a way for us to take attendance as well member Ross Denny yes um Dr Carol yes

003Dr Craighead yes member Rosemary yes number one yes and me Margaret about yes okay great with no further Ado superintendent jet your arm thank you chair upper heart I'm gonna start first with a quick switch um we're gonna do the MPS targeted review very quickly it's about maybe six slides that's it uh we have with us today Laura Kane of the office of District review and monitoring is part of uh Jesse Department of Elementary secondary education as I mentioned earlier in the fall uh the town of Milton or Milton Public Schools I should say was randomly selected by Desi for a targeted review um knowing that we went through a quality review last spring I did reach out to Laura a couple of times unfortunately uh I don't want to say unfortunately I still think

004it's a good thing this is something that they do all the time but I will Elevate Laura uh to present and Laura would you like me to share and control the slides or your do you have access to share your screen um let's see I do have access so I'm happy to do it if that works for you yep that's fine thank you great thank you um first let me say hello before I before I share good evening everyone um thank you very much for having me it's good to be with you even though it's virtual um so as superintendent Jessa my name is Laura rashane I manage the office of District reviews uh at the department of Elementary and secondary education which was refer to as Jessie and a few slides we just want

005some basic information about the district review process and then once I go through those I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone has all this um does can everyone see that okay yes we could okay thumbs up wonderful um so just a little bit of background again our office is um the office of District reviews and monitoring we're referred to as odrm we've been part of Desi since 2008 um and so we've been conducting reviews every year since that time um and I believe this is the first time we've ever reviewed Milton so um I will speak a little bit to the process so at a very high level what our goals are with the district review process our first of all to bring uh an outside perspective to the work of the school district

006um we basically send Consultants who are experienced Educators and or educational researchers and our goal is really to have them learn as much as possible about what the school district is doing with the focus on District systems uh and practices that might be either supporting or hindering teaching and learning so we're really interested in that aspect of the district's work and our goal is also to contribute to districts school districts Improvement efforts and so our work is really based on the assumption that every school district no matter what the performance level no matter what the particular context in that District that every district is always on an improvement path and no matter what's going well we can always get better and so our goal is to provide information from this review that can help every

007District to continue to move forward in their Improvement Journey and we also want to identify relevant Desi resources that might be helpful for each district and so um once we can come in and learn more about each district that allows us to identify whether there are particular initiatives or grants or programs that that we offer that might be particularly useful given each District's unique unique situation and context so that's just sort of a very big picture of kind of what our goals are with this process and I'll speak more to sort of what it actually looks like um but I wanted to just start with that so people often ask me how how are districts selected for this process um and basically as I said we've been doing this for for many years and the

008process looks slightly different each year but essentially here's here's what it looks like so we first put together a list of all districts that are eligible in Massachusetts by eligible I mean a couple of things first of all they're public school districts that are not Charter or virtual schools those are reviewed by a different deck the office and then eligibility also frankly simply just depends on what other comprehensive reviews a district might be getting so for example there's a different office at deci called the public school monitoring office and every three years they conduct a comprehensive review which is a much different process and looking at much different things than ours um but they conduct many reviews across the state each year and we are not eligible they're basically any District that's getting a comprehensive

009review from that office cannot also get a review from us so any District that's receiving one of those reviews for example is removed from the list so it's really more of a scheduling issue that removes many districts we also typically do not return to a district within five years of reviewing them so again because we review multiple districts a year that actually take several off the list as well so any District that we might have reviewed last year or two years ago or three years ago they come off the list so basically we sort of narrow it down to a shorter and shorter list um Massachusetts general laws actually do are that's basically our offices they do call for district reviews part of Desi's work and the criteria that they that those laws establish actually

010um they're pretty Broad and so they stipulate the a district has to either be low performing or high performing or randomly selected um and so Milton Public Schools was randomly selected from that list of eligible districts so there was not a particular data point or point of concern um and the same goes for the other districts that were selected this year okay so key elements that um might be helpful to know about the process so first of all we use a framework that's entirely based on a document from Desi called the District standards and indicators and I'll speak in more detail to those but basically that's just sort of the the major buckets that we look at when we're going into a district um things like curriculum and instruction leadership and governance um the process

011is very evidence-based and so we gather a great deal of data first of all before the review we look at a number of different documents from the district and we look at um a range of data that Desi collects on all districts um all publicly available our team then does an on-site visit during which they speak with as many people as possible throughout the district and we're actually already working with the district to provide some guidance about sort of how to put those groups together but we have focus groups and interviews with a range of stakeholders students students families teachers administrators District leaders school committee members and others um so a lot of interviews and focus groups again just in an attempt to sort of learn about how the district operates we also conduct classroom

012observations and again it's a real District level Focus so we are not evaluating teachers we are not assessing schools we are actually just trying to get a sense of what does instruction look like across the district and what might be some strengths in areas of growth that we could provide information on the process emphasizes Equity including racial equity and so we're very interested in looking at again sort of how District systems and practices are either supporting or hindering potentially um opportunity access and achievement for all students and the process culminates in a report which will be publicly available once it's complete but it's it's quite a process to get it to that point and that report will include a few things that will include again publicly available data about the district so that a reader

013can get a sense of things like MCAS performance and a few other indicators and then the report will really primarily be based on findings and those findings will be areas of strength where the team feels the district is really excelling as well as areas for growth where we're providing suggestions and we'll actually have specific recommendations linked to those um areas of growth uh where we suggest that the district might continue to move forward um and I will say too just as an aside that we uh those recommendations are in no way binding it's really just our best effort to to make suggestions and that's also actually where we provide some some suggested resources as well um but it's really up to each district uh whether or not they choose to implement those recommendations um the

014reviews are conducted by our partner in educational research firm called American institutes for research or air so we went through an extensive RFQ process and we selected air to basically project manage and to implement those reviews there are two types of District reviews that we conduct um all of the district reviews are again based on the standards and indicators that I mentioned comprehensive reviews address all six of the district standards targeted reviews address only three all types of reviews and do include instructional observations but so basically what that means is that for Milton which will receive a targeted review we don't know yet which three standards we'll be looking at but it'll basically be sort of a subset of that full of that full set okay so the district standards that I mentioned these are

015the six standards so we um we'll be looking at three of these again um in Milton uh so leadership and governance curriculum instruction assessment student support Human Resources including professional development and financial at asset management and each of these again these These are sort of the major sort of categories that we look at and then for each of these standard there are indicators and sub-indicators so there's a lot more sort of behind each of these headings but these are the general areas that will be focused on and so the way the process works as I mentioned the team will basically learn as much as they can about the district before the on-site um they'll be reviewing District documents uh they'll probably go to the district website just to see what they can learn they we

016have a data analyst on staff who will compile Desi data um so that they can get a sense of that as well and then as I said once they're on site they'll be conducting interviews and focus groups and conducting classroom observations in all schools in the district and then after the the visit they will uh work to develop a draft report which they then submit to my office um and I have an editing staff that will review that um we'll work with ar for a while to get that draft to where it needs to be um we then always send a draft to the superintendent to review for factual accuracy so it's it's less about sort of getting their opinion about the findings and it's more about you know did we did we get the

017name of a school wrong or are we explaining a particular program and accurately things like so the superintendent has a has an opportunity to review that and then once we get that feedback we will um publish the report on our website so that's pretty much the process in a nutshell I apologize if I spoke too quickly but I wanted to just sort of give you a quick a quick summary um and then as I mentioned I'm more than happy to answer any questions that anyone has hey thank you so much Laura for that um very brief but very good presentation superintendent judge you wanna you want me to call on people do you want to call on people how would you like to proceed I could call on people of uh well I'm starting to

018see the hands up yeah and I didn't see whose hand went up first so I'm just going I saw Dr Carol Beverly and then Dr crackhead okay perfect so hi Laura thank you so much for joining us this evening and sharing the um the update and information I have two quick questions and um one is directly for you and the other one I'll just put out there and I'm not sure whether you'll probably be able to answer it but maybe we can follow up on it another time um my first question is just can you explain how the three standards are selected for a targeted review yep yep that's a great question and so we um basically do a few things so we look at a number of District documents and we look at District

019data um to basically identify you know it's a little bit tricky because all of these standards are obviously very interrelated um but basically what we're looking for is you know is it are there particular standards where we think the district might benefit from having someone come in and look and do a deeper analysis um and so there are basically two sets so we either will do a what we call a student-centered review um and that is the curriculum instruction assessment and student support standards or we'll do what we call a governance and administrative systems review and that looks at the leadership and governance standard uh the HR and PD professional development standard and financial and asset management um and as I mentioned both of those will include classroom observations um but it'll be one of

020those sets and again it'll be sort of looking at data and documents to figure out whether one of those sets might benefit more from having from having a perspective of the team okay okay thank you um for the next question Laura I'm just going to ask you if you kind of stopped sharing your screen if we're doing questions I just had I just had one other question um which which was about our um you may know that Milton underwent a school quality review process last year that the districts proactively chose to to engage in and so um from that lengthy report you know we have a number of recommendations and suggestions so I guess I'm just I'm assuming um but maybe you could confirm or clarify the time frame of when this report with recommendations

021is delivered is that the end of this Academic Year yeah so it's um it's a great question so I'm not able to give a specific date I will say our goal is to get a report to a district within about three months after okay and on-site um we aim for quicker than that but it depends on a lot of factors including how many other districts reports we're working on at the time um but yeah our our goal is to turn it around as quickly as possible so that you know again we really want this to be something that's actually useful for the district and so we know the longer we wait the less relevant the information is okay great and yeah that just connects to the last sort of thing I just put out there

022I'm sure we all are thinking about this that we will want to figure out how we can synthesize you know the recommendations from both of the reports because we're still very early on in responding to the recommendations from the school quality review and so um it depending I suppose on which of the standards end up being targeted for this you know there will either way be things in the other report that are not covered by what you all will be doing so I just put out there that will be a job for us to kind of figure out how we incorporate both sets of recommendations in terms of you know how we're moving forward um but I'm I'm excited for this process and thank you great thank you remember Ross Denny good evening Lauren thank

023you for joining us I would like to know if there will be any resources allocated um to correspond with any recommendations you may have so that's a great question um we don't typically it's um that's a great question so we don't it's not part of our typical process um so it's not necessarily the case that we have particular resources and then the funding just follows immediately however there are situations that have been pretty regularly where there might be a grant opportunity that's still a competitive Grant but it might be something where we're able to say hey since we've seen this particular thing that this district is working on we can connect you to someone to learn more about this grant opportunity for example um but there's not a direct link between the recommendations and funding

024thank you you're welcome member Rosemary yeah another quick question thank you Laura for coming um it is there some place that we can access the Desi standards and indicators so we can just know what the things absolutely yes it's actually on our website and so um in fact I can put it in the chat once um once we're done with this segment helpful terrific thank you thank you thank you again so Laura just a few logistical questions I have for you um so we had some um concern and input from the community last year about um people coming into classrooms to do observations about surveys for students um so I would like to quell some of those concerns before we get this process rolling so could you tell us a little bit about the people

025from the American Institute for research who come into the classrooms to do observations how do you vet these people do they undergo a background record check are they quarried are they fingerprinted and just to assure that you share that information with the district yes absolutely thank you that's a great question so so AAR actually uses a class of observation tool called class um and this is yeah yeah this is actually used nationally and so their observers are very experienced in using this and they actually go through a certification process which is pretty rigorous to make sure that they all have a very clear understanding of what each item what they're looking for um are all quarried they are all they meet all background check requirements that we have here in Massachusetts they will all be

026masked they have a vaccine mandate as well we do it Desi and they do in their company so everyone will be vaccinated and masked and again they're very they're very experienced in doing this and they are um that includes really being as unobtrusive as possible so they are not going to come in and be the center of attention I mean they really know how to kind of come in the classroom get a sense of what's happening and head out um and they also I will say too you know again hopefully this is clear but you know it's really we try to reassure everyone this is not about evaluating any teachers they're not writing down their names it's really about identifying Trends across the district they won't be speaking to any administrators about anything that they

027see uh it's really just about sort of trying to get a sense and a feel of what instruction is like and I know that you'll have focus groups that you indicated you'll be speaking to teachers administrators perhaps some school committee members um will there be focus groups that involve students will there be any additional surveying of students and could you share that information with the community yes that's a great question so we are really interested in getting including student voice in this process and so we will have at least one probably two student focus groups um and uh we basically our policy is to provide guidance to each district as to how to put these together so we will not reach out to students directly but the district will do that and we will collect

028um parental consent for all of those students that are that are invited to do that um that's that's a requirement that we have as well um we also use we don't have a survey that we use specifically but we do look closely at a survey called vocal that um Desi does in conjunction with the MCAS so that's an optional survey that students have the opportunity to take if they'd like to when they complete the MCAS and so um that that also gives us a sense of students perspective about things like School climate thank you so much thank you very much so uh on behalf of the district Laura and I know and I really appreciate you you're very you committed very early on to coming to the evening to help us explain this to the

029district so I appreciate um your time uh your communication I look forward to the ongoing uh communication throughout this process and please extend my appreciation to uh Emily Ackman who's the representative from here who will be working with the district so thank you very much thank you very much for the invitation it was great to speak with all of you should I put that um website in the chat or should I just send it to you superintendent Jet and have you distributed or you know either way whatever works for you if not you can send it to me and I'll send the school committee everything that you send me okay why don't I do that and that way I can um move on let you get on to your next your next item okay thank

030you all very much have a wonderful evening you too take care um and without further Ado and I do want to thank the high school uh Milton High School site Council for their patients um uh but at this time I'll turn it over to principal Cahill and her team for the introductions and uh let them share with you their site Council presentation thank you uh thank you superintendent Jack good evening school committee members um community members thank you for having us this evening um I'd like to introduce to you some of our site council members I have assistant principal Ben Kelly um School librarian Jay Troy if everyone can just wave so people can see you uh School adjustment counselor Jenny beliveau and two student reps Kara Glazer who's a junior on the site Council

031and baron Clancy who is a senior on the site Council so tonight you'll hear from all of us in regards to different aspects of Milton high school so again thank you for having us this evening I do appreciate the opportunity to share our school Improvement plan with you what we've been doing as a high school and steps that we're taking um to implement our school Improvement plan so I am going to share my screen and I'm going to give this a shot so please bear with me for a second if you watched me at our faculty meeting today it did not go well so can everyone see the screen yes we can great so I'm going to go back to the beginning then I'm sorry don't look ahead so um the school the School site

032Council also has a few more members we have Jenny Lowe from the class of 2025 she couldn't attend this evening she is celebrating the Lunar New Year with her family and Tucker Gorman sophomore and Alliance one of our current members and Kathy Huntington who's been a Community member for a few years now so I just want to give everyone recognition where it is due um we meet monthly on Thursdays before school and I would just like to start so um earlier this year there was a presentation on school data and I just want to do a little reflection so you know where we're at and how we're using the school data and the steps that we're taking um last fall the 20th the fall of 2020 we had a visit from niask and in the

033spring or when we presented our school Improvement plan last January we we presented those initial findings with you October 2022 they are coming back for the official visit for Milton high school so when they did the initial collaborative visit they made recommendations to us that we need to have in our school Improvement plan that actually complement the school districts to teach the school and the district strategic plan so using that information um you have in front of you this evening the school Improvement plan which I'll get to in a moment but actually the presentation this evening which is about our school Improvement plan and and the steps that we're taking here so to start with all of this um over the past few meetings you have seen the data of MCAS AP and sat um

034Vivo the data analyst for the district has presented that information and the question always is what are we doing with that data how are we interpreting that data what are we doing to support the students and and the staff and analyzing that data and implementing supports so um what you're going to see this evening we're going to touch upon the data briefly and what I learned today and and I didn't realize it when vivu did her presentation but it was sent to you that when you actually take a PowerPoint presentation and put it into Google it loses some of the labels so um this information that we're looking at right here is the grade 10 English MCAS subgroups and if you're looking at the information um from left to right and I and we do

035have all of the subgroup information listed on a further slide but let's list all of our subgroup students with disabilities economically disadvantaged um African-American and black Asian Hispanic multi-race white all students and state students so you do we do have that information but I will show you that to you but I I find it important to share that MCAS data with you as we go through this to show the growth that we've made the growth that we still have to make so this is the ELA and then we have the math subgroups and we all can recognize when we look at the math subgroups that we do see the games that we've made overall with grade 10 Ela but the work that we still have to do for grade 10 math and so again as

036I've as I've already said we are going to touch upon some of the supports we've put into place for the unfinished learning and for um supporting students in the classroom when it comes to the MCAS data we've made these observations not just as a school but as a district and going over not just from MCAS but the SAT data again this has been to talk spoken about Ben Kelly spoke about it at one of the last meetings along with Milton high school department heads you know we see that decrease in the class of 2021 and taking the SAT exam but keep in mind that that particular class that senior class did not have access to that exam so what we did last for that class of 2021 we offered two fall tests two school-based administrations

037for us seniors to take the s.a.t so they have that access even though colleges were going test optional and they continued to do that and they continue to reflect on College um and career Readiness and what do we need in order to see what students are attending college um we do notice that that 73 is significantly lower than the participation rate in other years we are going to continue to offer that school day sat testing we feel that is an important thing to do as it's more accessible for all of our students and it is that way it is any student can come into the building and this is purely for Milton high students we do it on the same day that we administer the PSA testing to our 10th and 11th graders so it's

038just a day of testing for everybody except for our ninth graders where we do a digital citizenship day on getting them acclimated to the high school what skills do they need to be successful at the high school and how can we make sure that they know all the services that exist so while this number is 73 for the class of 2021 we will have data at the end of this year on how many students have actually participated in sat for the class of 2022. the College Board releases that at the end of every year so I'm happy to present that at a later time once we have all of that data available um we also have administered the SATs over the past three years and again um very happy to say for this coming May

039we've ordered over 800 AP exams that will be administered in May and while it's different this year it's we're going back to those traditional tests um last year in the previous year that AP data was very different than it had in previous experiences usually that experience is a paper-based test you sit in a three to four hour exam sometimes four and a half hours past two years some of it's been online some of it has not been online so it's also students adapting to these constantly changing testing conditions so that is something we are very aware of in our classroom and how the teachers are administering these exams these practice exams for our students as well um our takeaway also from AP is also that how can we also as a high school be sure

040that all of our students know that these classes are accessible for all of them and today what we during our staff meeting we did talk about briefly the course selection process that's coming up for next year and how we go into class we will be going into classes our councils will be going into all of the classes and teachers will be having conversations with their students and just saying these are the courses that are available to you um one thing that Milton High School does allow is while we our teachers make those recommendations to students which they feel is in their best interest students and families are allowed to have those conversations and say well this is what I'm thinking of taking this is why I want to take that course so we listen to

041those conversations and we encourage students to take what they feel is um in their best interest while not overwhelming them you know to stress them out as they also are involved in all of these extracurricular activities holding jobs helping out families so we ask we always think for students find that balance the courses that meet you are going to challenge you help you prepare for what are you doing after you graduate from high school but again finding that balance in your life as well so all of this data and these are just parts of the data presentation I know there are a lot more slides to to go over but we say okay we have this data and what are we doing with it so while we call we're calling that satellite data now we

042try to get closer to home you know we look at Milton high school and what are the experiences that we're taking away from this data and implementing every day in the classroom so what I mean by that is we have these these meetings and this information is going to help us inform our teachers and work with our teachers to figure out the ways that we can support our students academic skills in conjunction with the data to support their own personal growth and their understanding and with this qualitative data and this quantitative data we can move forward to make sure all of the students are having the best experiences possible so as we go on I'm going to be speaking Ms Bella is going to be speaking um Jay Troy Mr Kelly and the students just

043about what what are these experiences looking like so in the school Improvement plan there are four points in our school Improvement plan that me ask has asked us to focus on and it also complements some of the the goals in the district strategic plan and we have to keep in mind those knee asked goals as they're coming back in the fall and they're going to make sure that we are implementing these things so we stay accredited um the first one is as a high school our first priority goal is making sure we have a mission statement and a vision of a graduate what do we want our students to learn while they're at Milton high school and what skills do we want them to leave with and then the second priority area in our school

044Improvement plan is curriculum and instruction how about we improving our curriculum and instruction how are we delivering it how are we using this data to make sure that we're making the best informed decisions when we do our curriculum reviews and most you know you think about what's happened over the past two years it's made us think more about our student engagement are our students engaged the way they should be are we allowing them to access the curriculum the way they can and how are we supporting them and how are we getting them engaged and then finally the ongoing conversation not just at Milton high school but in the district um facilities do we do we have the actual structure and the space to support the students and the teachers um um and do all of

045the great things that we want to day in and day out so those are the four primary areas of the school Improvement plan as I go through this presentation we're going to focus on we're going to start with priority area number one and you're going to see that those are the are what we ex what we see for a vision of a graduate and then you're also going to see how priority area two and three are intertwined in with our vision of any student who goes through Milton High School through the lens of a graduate this is how we work on curriculum and instruction This Is How We Do student engagement and support so hopefully you'll be able to see that through the conversations that we're having this evening um to support our students so

046as I said priority area one we're connecting everything that we do at Milton High School to the vision of a graduate and this picture is just one we this is our first um for this year our vision Award winners and we started this last year and if you watch school committee probably a year ago and we were talking about um our vision Awards and that's something we started um first term last year for our remote and hybrid students and the students and the staff voted on those students who we feel really live up to our point of a vision of a high school a Milton high school graduate and this year site council members we had a meeting were like how can we improve upon this what can we do more of and we incorporated

047staff members who also live up to the expectation of the vision of a Milton high school graduate or a person and so what you see here in this picture are students across every discipline along with food service um lead person at the high school Elaine Moore and Chrissy Martinelli who was one of our special ed teachers and we see all of the other students we see um all of the students who are also nominated by their peers or teachers um for our first term Vision Awards we're going to be doing it again over the next few weeks for term two and you'll and you'll be seeing that I just think this is very reflective of um our student body and again everything that we do here at the high school not just the vision Awards

048but the student handbook and the policies that we have in place and the curriculum that we we talk about in the curriculum review that is happening across the across the create the curriculum we we're we are thinking about everything for the high school and and with who our students are at any point in time if you have questions please feel free to jump in um but if not we'll just keep talking um the mission statement from from Milton high school we want to cultivate a supportive environment that graduates students who are equipped to reach their potential and contribute to the global Community by engaging them in a rigorous enriching educational program that emphasizes respect achievement and citizenship it's something that we we say to our students it's in the handbook it's on our web page

049and it's in in everything that we do the first slide that we're going to be talking about is going to be the first step the vision of a graduate what's the first thing we're asking students to do we're asking them to effectively apply critical thinking skills and make connections and solve problems so as we say that what we would like to show you are some of the things that we're doing in the classroom outside the classroom to make sure we're meeting all of these needs and I'm going to be asking um Ben Kelly to step up and talk about this piece sure thank you um so as principal Cahill mentioned there's there's plenty of crossover between the school Improvement plan priorities and our our new year old now vision of The Graduate um our priority

050area number two in the school Improvement plan on curriculum instruction connects really explicitly to the first three tenets of the vision of The Graduate um so so here we want to show you what what this looks like how it's being lived at Milton high school and our students are living this first tenet of the vision of the graduate in two ways in the curriculum between 7 50 and 219 and the culture building and extracurricular activities that we have um throughout the rest of the day that we offer all of our students some examples of how our students at Moulton high are applying critical thinking skills and making connections to their world and solving problems are some of the steps that our curriculum leaders and teachers are taking to make sure we're moving further up Bloom's

051taxonomy if you will or making sure we're analyzing creating and evaluating in our work one example recently instead of our students coming in and summarizing a text a reason in the Sun for example a recent writing prompts asks students to research demographics and the housing market in Boston and make connections to the text to apply their learning and make it relevant make it recent and make it something that's close to home um in mathematics our students aren't just learning formulas and calculating percent errors on paper but you may have seen in one of the recent blog posts our students are out there safely driving in their cars appropriate speeds but measuring percent error in odometer readings and speedometer readings by taking measurements of actual vehicles and calculating that out on the fly on the sidewalks

052to see what sort of factory errors are involved with uh when car manufacturers put cars on the road so they're doing these these calculations to really connect to solve problems that are out there and make connections to their actual World project-based Learning like these examples are happening across our curriculum those are just a couple outside of the school day we have clubs and activities that our students are going to talk about in just a minute that are that are requiring our students to think critically um and and literally solve problems in our world and then another program that are just recently implementing as my lights go out sorry another program that was just recently implemented is a pilot internship program that we hope to have bigger and better in future years putting students in the

053workforce solving with their Hands-On experiences um and to take all that they've learned and apply it in a new way um and I think we have a couple students who are going to speak a little bit to some of the extracurriculars how they help to embody this first pillar of the vision of The Graduate so Kiera do you want to talk about the model debate and model you want and then Baron um the biotechnology uh yeah sounds good so I'm on both the debate model un teams or clubs and most recently the model un team had the opportunity to go to a conference that was hosted by Harvard and that was last weekend we spent the weekend we stayed over and we spent four days over 20 hours in committee focusing on discussing different topics

054different issues around the world and trying to come up with our own resolutions so a lot of that we did a lot of research beforehand from topics I was talking about Global Security we had someone talking about women in climate change or climate change and trade with Baron's topic so we took a lot of these real world problems spent hours upon hours researching them coming up with our own ideas trying to apply the information we had learned and then in committee we focused on giving speeches having productive debate and then finally working with kids from around the world I met people from Venezuela Brazil Kurdistan and even someone from Quincy so we had the opportunities to work with a whole lot of people on these major issues and to use our research to come up

055with our own Solutions as a way to help improve our own learning outside of school and debate similar you do a lot of research you work on writing a paper you compare a lot of you write for both sides you look at both sides of issue and you compare and then we usually do a day or two of just debates on for some local tournament so that's another way that we're able to both benefit our own research skills and work on our own public speaking um this past semester I had the privilege to take on the biotech course at the high school it really embodies uh this idea of curriculum embedded um and problem solving of course itself is really is around Labs rather than just learning uh learning like stuff on slides as many

056other science courses on which has really helped us Focus are learning around doing rather than just sitting there and listening to pictures um so for example rather than learning about um some method or the way a cell does something we actually test it might break open a bacteria an untested CNA to determine whether we've inserted a plasmid or something like that um as we're doing this we're kind of going through how how this works within the organism and stuff and it really provides a really engaging opportunity to because you aren't necessarily zoning off in class you go through slides rather you're actively doing what the scientists would do and as you're doing what the scientists are doing you're kind of learning why you do it and what it's all about um and personally since I

057want to go into biology I think it's going for me a really good foundation um just in the field and stuff like that yeah thank you Baron thank you um so this is as we said some of these are oh Betty School Committee Member White that's okay um I was just wondering if the students could comment a little bit and John you already did but just just ask about this experiences that you just had how that impacts your thinking about you know your future in terms of your educational choices and career paths I can [Music] I can I've been doing model UNS starting to debate freshman year and overall I found that I really enjoy the topics that we've discussed and I'm now even considering like a major in international relations and it's been a

058really great opportunity for me to discover my own interests outside of a school environment while still being productive in my own learning so I'll pass it after Baron yeah sure I mean I also do model un so on a similar note you know I would say I did come into High School thinking I was going to be only below um you know just go into science but having these other opportunities to kind of expand my thinking skills both in and and out of the classroom you know I took AP University last year which is um it's kind of expanded my world World Cup past the science path there's all that kind of stuff um and now during majoring in public health which is kind of more the intersection of biology and current affairs so you

059know yeah thank you Baron thank you Kiera um as we move on the as I had said the school Improvement plan is intertwined into into these steps of a vision of a graduate so the next point of a vision of a graduate is all Milton high school students will utilize technology to engage explore and evaluate our community nation and world and as we look at this particular um point in our vision I'm going to ask Jay Troy our school librarian to talk about some of the points in this slide absolutely so similarly this is broken down um curriculum and extracurricular as well um and in collaboration with classroom teachers students come up to the library to work on research projects across all disciplines by having a certified School librarian the state actually grants us access

060to over 50 databases which provides access to thousands of articles that students and staff have access to so over the course of a student's High School career they will learn effective search strategies how to evaluate information and through different class projects have the opportunity to synthesize and share information through a variety of mediums this is the first year that we transitioned from a BYOD program to a one-to-one program for our ninth graders so what that means is instead of students bringing their own devices in the first day of their ninth grade year they were issued a school device and that provided some ease of transition from Pierce into the high school allowing students to have something familiar with them and it also provided access to a similar set of resources for each student last year

061we were able to hire a part-time instructional technology coach who works between both Pierce and the high school and this person provides professional development Works one-on-one with teachers and provides additional support in the classroom for technology related projects so this allows students and staff to move from using technology as a substitute for traditional tools tours are using technology in transformative ways and some examples of this across the the curriculum and across disciplines are using podcasting units in English 3D printing and science classes and using the green screen to create different videos and history classes this year as principal Cahill mentioned earlier during the SAT PSAT day we have offered our ninth grade digital citizenship day which is a half day interactive sessions for our ninth graders and those workshops range from how to organize life

062within Google and use all those tools to spotting misinformation online cyber bullying and self-care and then beyond those experiences that all of our students have within the classroom for folks that are interested in pursuing technology a bit further whether that's during electives or extracurricular there are plenty of opportunities one that I would like to highlight because it happens in the library is the student technology assistance team which is an internship that students can participate in the staff members we call them are the first point of contact for everything Chromebook related so whether it is loaning out devices troubleshooting issues repairing devices from across the entire district elementary schools and middle schools is a great opportunity for students who are interested in technology those who enjoy problem solving working with their hands and learning new things

063and so in addition to all of those electives and opportunities there's also the 3D printing Club the performance tech club and the robotics club and so now we'll turn it back to principle thank you Jay as we as we continue on the the third step for a vision of a graduate um that everyone will be original and Innovative in in individual and collaborative work um here I I like to point out a few weeks ago we the district it was computers science week and our students at the high school who were part of the computer science classes at the high school they actually uh visited virtually visited the elementary schools and this is something that they've done over the years and if you walked around Milton High School you would be able to see uh

064sheets of paper outside people's rooms written in code what your name is what the office is and they do that every year and I in and for those there were people that were visiting the high school had never been there before they're really impressed by those types of things um we have the engineering projects that we've touched upon as well the engineering class is still you know a few years a few years in the making and we're still trying to encourage more students to be exposed to that to that particular elective at the high school um we have the project-based learning across the curriculum and I'm going to get a little bit more into that is further down in some of the other slides as we talk about our grading for equity and and the

065work that we've been doing there when you look at the pictures on this page right across everywhere when you walk around Milton High School the students are working together the students are taking initiative the students are taking the lead in a lot of the conversations that are happening um they want to have their voice being heard and and we do listen um I had a last Friday I did a breakfast with Mrs Cahill I emailed the entire student body and with the support of students who are on my Dei committee we sat with students in the cafeteria before school and just listened what are your concerns what do you what are we doing well at what do we need to improve upon and there was some some great feedback from the students that attended and

066um so those are the types of things where we're listening and students being creative and working with one another and with the teachers um to really make sure they are involved in their education not just passively sitting there listening they are actively involved in their education um the fourth step in a vision of a graduate is all Milton high school students will practice good citizenship personal responsibility and character through individual and Collective actions and this is a big step for a lot for for all of our students and staff and and at this time uh Jenny balabo is going to be speaking about this slide and Kiera and baron are also going to be speaking about the slide and the things that we're doing for professional development for our staff what student government is doing

067what they're getting out of sessions with their counselors so uh Jenny bellabo go ahead of course thank you so much principal Cahill I really appreciate it um hello everyone so I'm really excited to talk about um the trauma sensitive school program um that we just started this year um so actually this past summer we were awarded a three-year Grant um it was provided to us from Beth Israel um Hospital Milton to support building trauma-sensitive schools um so just to give you a little information on what a trauma sensitive school is um it's one in which all aspects of the educational environment so from you know Workforce training to engagement with students and families to procedures and policies um they're all grounded in an understanding of trauma and an understanding that of what trauma the impact

068they can have on people um and it's designed to promote resilience for all so the first step in this process um with this grant was to train all Milton Public School staff in understanding trauma and its impact um so this training actually happened during professional development in November so all staff across the district um were able to sit in on this training um following this all staff training Educators then completed a survey um to assess their individual school's Readiness to change um so the data from this survey is actually going to be evaluated this month by working groups that are in the process of being developed at each of the schools um so these trauma working group you know the goal for them for the rest of the school year is to evaluate the data

069come up with action plans that are going to be specific towards um specific to their schools that will help work towards creating trauma-sensitive schools um and then we're going to collaborate as a district um you know to all the working groups will get together and collaborate as far as what are some district-wide goals um of what we need to implement over the next two years so we're really excited about this opportunity um and really excited to do the work to make sure that Milton public schools are trauma-sensitive to school um now I'd love to hand it over to Baron and Kira to talk a little bit about group guidance um so basically at Milton High School um there's this program of group guidance where uh every so often and talk to the students uh in

070the freshmans more just to get them acclimated to high school um but it's actually really important in your senior year um because you start talking about colleges and future plans whether you're going to college to a career or into the military or armed armed services so I don't know where you want to start talking about how they start about that in junior year sure so as of right now we've already had it first we started with the basics of where we would want to go to college what's in our price range and kind of what we would maybe want to focus on to kind of start talking about what we were thinking in terms of college and then we also had a discussion about what our academic transcripts mean where you might need to look

071at academically to figure out where what colleges might be a good fit for you as well as discussing other options outside of college uh four-year College such as tears Community College or even going into a trade in the military like Aaron said so we've had that opportunity and I was also lucky enough to be able to go Milton High School hosted a college night with I believe it was six different lectures that you could go to that cover different aspects of the college search we went to one that was about what was considered in the admissions process that was done by two admissions officers from different colleges and that was just a great way to kind of this is my family's first time going through the college process so there's a lot that we have

072to figure out and considering it's my junior year we're kind of at the time where we need to start getting more information so that session was really helpful and I've even had the opportunity to meet with my guidance counselor one-on-one to talk about college and get that process started so overall I've had a lot of opportunities to be able to start thinking about college and getting into that mindset of applications before we actually have to start applying senior um even in junior year last year during the pandemic when there really wasn't as much time to meet as a group of group guidance um I found a classroom the Google Classroom that they created to post all the documents we need to be really helpful for I also met uh one-on-one multiple times my guidance counselor

073to discuss options and I thought the guidance Department internal them high is very good in um emphasizing safeties and targets but also really encouraging you to apply here because you know I've heard so many stories from other schools counselors telling their students hey you're not going to get in here don't even bother applying and it's definitely not the case here um they're very very supportive of students dreams um and then once you get into senior year um I noticed basically we started getting at depth in nitty-gritty um talking about transcripts sending everything that we need to be sent and then filling out this really long survey um that guidance counselors use to uh write their kind of small letters of Rex for you um but also for the scholarship evaluations in the future um and

074I thought it was actually really good that they that they kind of sent out the survey on for us because even before the good way to kind of get thoughts organized but then of course it's going to go to the scholarship selection committee guidance counselors in writing kind of our letters of Rec um so you know I put effort into it um and I think I got a deep amount of return from it which was really helpful I think that's about all I have to say thank you Baron thank you Kara um so the guidance department does work with the students as far as the college the college process and as they said it looks different for every student but they they do the one-on-one meetings they do the group guidance meetings they've created Google

075classrooms where all of this information is readily available um and just to finish up this particular slide if if you read the new The Weekly Newsletter we're always giving shout outs to different organizations and clubs at the high school that are doing um Outreach for within the community or Outreach with outside the community um and and again it's the students that are running these events it's not the teachers that are asking for these events to happen well the teachers supervise these groups of students coming and saying we want to do this fundraiser what do you think can we do this and and the students are working so well with the staff and the feedback from the community has just been great so thank you Jenny um Baron and Kiara um the last point of a

076vision of a graduate is all Milton high school students will demonstrate understanding and respect for themselves in the diversity of ideas cultures abilities and lifestyle in school and Beyond and there's just a few things on here that I'd like to touch upon you are going to be discussing the program of studies later on but I think it's important to talk about the English electives here proposed for grade 12 because in order to get to this process what was involved was not just conversation with the staff Allison McHugh who's the head of the English Department had conversations with the English Department and with the students and and saying what what can we do differently what do we see missing in our current English curriculum what do students and what do staff want to see in the

077books that we're reading um do you feel represented in what we're doing so there was a lot of conversation and you have that information from the program of studies you know the research that they had done but it's it's making sure that it and I've said it before making sure our students and our staff see themselves in this in the curriculum that we Implement at the high school not just in English but in you know in the history classes and across the curriculum we have those conversations you know the current events and sometimes they are hard topics to have in class but when we know those topics are going to happen we we let the counselors know and we let the teachers know that the Department hands are available and administration is available and you

078know if we we know a student might be triggered by a hard conversation we make sure that we have those supports available in place for those students um what I also want to point out is I don't know if anyone had an opportunity I know School Committee Member Ross Daddy was there Friday night the Asian Culture Club hosted an event in the library and it was for the entire district and I believe when all was said and done about 200 people showed up for this event and I was there early on and the students I was talking to Jay Troy and and Jay had said students who were running the event came up Friday after school they set the event up and it was just awesome and everything from the implementation and the thought process

079to the event in and of itself Joyce White is their advisor and she was there and it was such an amazing event and it wasn't just the Asian Culture Club but so many other groups from the high school the French Club was there the Hispanic Club was there there were so many different clubs there that were represented and some parents in the community from students at the elementary level in the Middle School level reached out and just said you know I just want to let you know I was at that event with my family you guys did a great job and my response back was it wasn't me it wasn't you know it was the students and I forwarded that email to the students who were running it because I really was so impressed um

080by the amount of time and effort and in a school Committee Member Ross Danny I don't know if you were just as impressed with the event as I was but I just feel it was I was completely overwhelmed with how great it was so that was just one of the experiences um when we when we talk about making sure our students see themselves in in everything that we do and the last point on here is grading for equity and I am I I do want to talk about this um this is something that we started this conversation last spring you know we look at the students and we think about how our students have handled the past two years and for some students there hasn't been a break in in how in their education and

081they've just continued to do what they do and some students thrived with remote learning and some students Thrive with the hybrid but there were also students who really struggled we all know that and and how did we work with our students and you know as a staff we have those conversations of what does our grading look need to look like how can we support our students what practices do we have in place that we need to reflect upon as a department or as a school as individuals to make sure our all of our students mastering showing Mastery of content in any class that they're in and so I'm going to tell you in a little bit what we did um the conversation that we had today in our in our staff meeting as as we

082talk about that um but just to close out the school Improvement plan uh Ben Kelly is going to talk once again he did this last year too um about the facilities and where we're at with our facilities right now sure thank you so our final School Improvement plan priority area doesn't fit nicely into the lens of the vision of The Graduate um but it's more about making sure we have both sufficient and adequate space in our building to deliver the exemplary curriculum that we want to deliver and as many members on the school committee know from our facilities meetings and and uh Mr O'Rourke I think is on here as I'm excited to hear the school building update later um but Milton High School is not immune to the growing numbers in Milton we are

083actively planning for each year we look at the nesbeck projections with great anticipation and um in our current enrollments to make sure that we're utilizing every available space in our building from former closets and labs to create new classroom spaces and flexible spaces in our building and part of this priority area too is also making sure that we are outfitting the space that we do have with the appropriate materials Furniture supplies to deliver an appropriate 21st century education we are starting to look at ways to get away from having every classroom be desks and rows and have more collaborative workspaces of course covid has helped us with some of the spacing requirements we've gone through for a couple years but we hope to get back on track as we order new furniture or update classrooms

084to look at the sort of work environments our students are going into the college environments are going into and make sure that Milton high schools is a mirror to those those places as well um so again it doesn't fit nicely into the vision of the graduate but but equally important to make sure we have the appropriate facilities and plants that to educate our students um so I go back to the braiding for equity and I and I want to continue what we started at the beginning of the slide you know we've talked about the data we've seen the data we've we've discussed how how can our instruction be improved from the data that we have so today was an early release day at the high school or in the district and that conversation I said

085we started last spring we Contin we've continued to have the high school leadership team is has been working on uh professional development within within the department and for the high school on the conversation of you know how do we look at Homework how do we look at assessments how do we look at personalized learning and those those topics of can we diversify the way that students can demonstrate that content knowledge and what I won't click on on all of these buttons but the information that we have I ask each of the department heads to share what are you doing within your departments you know to to show us that you are addressing the unfinished learning and how are we improving those student outcomes and it's from having structured lessons using the socratic Socratic dialogue and

086talking about reflecting in those project-based learning activities that are happening in science class to the group work that is happening in World Language when they reflect on the different cultures and experience that are happening within the classroom and for a school-wide initiative or district-wide initiative we're also looking at those restorative justice practices myself and vice principal Brian Mackinaw have had the all three tiers of training and Ben Kelly is starting the training and the staff is meeting with the Dina schechner schechtner tomorrow after school to talk about the restorative justice and how that will help teachers within the classroom and and looking at how we can do classroom management and Empower students to be part of more conversations so these are things that we're doing these are initiatives that we're taking at the high school

087to diversify how students can learn how we change what's happening in the classroom and all of this that we continue to do and we'll continue to do and we'll continue to improve upon and constantly reflect allow us then to have some great results and I just want to backtrack for one second um I forgot about this one slide the intervention strategies as well for the past two years we've really reflected on how we can support our students and we have improved upon some of the methods that we've done to support our students and there's things that we're still reflecting on case coordination Jenny bellavo oversees the case coordination for the counselors the nurse and School administration on students that we feel are at risk we have the SST process student support team process where Caroline

088Manion who's behavioralist at the high school works with teachers to say okay this is what the student needs in order to find success in the classroom we have a bright program which we had started last year for students who have been out of school for extended periods time due to medical reasons or hospitalizations or School anxiety and the compass program which is a special ed program that was put into place this year similar profile from a bright student but really socially emotionally documented IEPs at who need that additional support we have mass support in place to really focus on those students who if you think back to the beginning of the presentation need that additional support for that unfinished learning or they need that additional support in that course one math class as they prepare

089to do MCAS again in 10th grade in the biology support for freshman students who again struggled being identified from eighth to ninth grade we're taking the biology I'm cast at the end of this year for their ninth grade experience so those are things that we're putting into place and I think at the next school committee meeting we'll also be discussing the youth risk behavior survey which is something also that Jesse asks school districts to do which allows us to reflect upon how students are telling us they're feeling it's an anonymous survey where students will be giving us feedback on how they're doing and what they need from us in order to really be successful and then at the end of the day some really great news that I like to share with everybody our current

090class of 2022 the information I'm sharing here I have to say no student is committing to a school until May 1st so this is I'm talking about acceptances right now I'm not talking about where students are going to so as I say this to date we have sent almost 2 200 transcripts to colleges so think about we have 279 seniors we have 226 seniors who have already applied to college 53 seniors are still they're doing the regular admission process which is February which is March which is rolling so they haven't done that yet but almost 2 200 transcripts have been sent to schools and I just thought this information would be would be interesting to look at the top three schools at this time that Milton high school students have applied to UMass Amherst Northeastern

091and bu the top three acceptances to date again I don't mean that they're committing to going there but for Milton high school students UMass Amherst Bridgewater State and Loyola Chicago so those are the top numbers when we're able to run reports in in what we call Naviance which is the tool that we use other acceptances to date um we have Amherst Barnard Bentley we have you Catholic University Columbia Hampton Providence film and URI and I'm actually going to ask Baron Clancy if he's comfortable enough and I'm putting him on the spot and he didn't know I was doing this but as a senior Baron Clinton do you want to share with everybody where you're going to school do you know yet say it one more time you went in and out uh Brown University so

092Darren Clancy is the reason I put Brown on the screen and I just want to give him a shout out um well-rounded student very involved in his academics very involved in extracurricular um we have a very strong senior class and I think the students not just the students in our senior class but our students have truly taken advantage of everything that Milton high school has to offer and when we look at the vision of a graduate the five steps that we've gone through this evening I truly believe the students have that opportunity to academically find what's interesting to them and be invested and find those extracurriculars whether it's sports or theater or the clubs that are interesting to them and be invested in what they want to do and if we don't have it I

093think this year maybe we've had three or four more suggestions of clubs um you know that students like hey I don't see this can we get this up and running and that's what we're doing because it's what the students want and the staff has just been phenomenal in supporting these initiatives that the students are doing because you need staff in order to run these um and just to close it out we've had four seniors commit to division one schools for cross-country baseball and crew so um this is this is these are the great things that are happening at Milton high school and you know as I said at the beginning it is all reflective of our school Improvement plan and when you look at the school Improvement plan which I also know you have in

094front of you there are items that are highlighted in pink and those ones are action steps that we have made significant progress towards we're not done we're constantly reflecting on them but there are things that in the school Improvement plan we are making progress towards other things we are we are still working on um but I appreciate the time you've afforded us this evening to present to you and if you have any questions we're happy to answer them but I'm going to get out of the sharing screen and and go back if that's okay with everyone so thank you for your time any questions for any of the members of the Milton High School uh psych council member Ross steady nine and sharing the wonderful work that's happening at the high school I have a

095sophomore and he has immensely benefited from some of you individually as well as the clubs and activities that have been made available to him as well as his friends I have two questions essentially one is around the interventions as you mentioned unfinished learning is something that is is plaguing everyone across the state and you talked about a series of interventions and I'd love to hear a couple of them in in terms of specific examples and how we're assessing whether or not kids are growing or learning from these interventions ultimately the impact sure um so Brian celig recently um has implemented i-Ready I know we've talked about that in some other schools in the in the district and the i-Ready we're using it in the math curriculum for students just to see where those gaps in

096learning are and then we're taking that information and using it in the math Support classes and some of the math classes as well to make sure we're filling in that time with the students when we're recommending students for for I'm going to say the math support of the biology support we're not just putting a student into the class we're having that conversation with home and with the students prior to making that schedule change so they know why we're making those schedule changes it's not just we're going to do this um the students and the families need to be part of that conversation um and some of the other intervention strategies that I was mentioning also I want to talk about the academic strategies so the academic strategies is a course that it is not a

097special ed course but it was something we did this year also um in conjunction with our bright program so for students who have been identified as struggling and I'm talking about just over you know over just the past two years there are students who are struggling just to stay organized because it's just too much lately so the students in this program are given checklists and organizational as simple for some of us that might sound you know they're they're someone is checking in with them at the beginning of the day during advisory and throughout the day to make sure they're following their schedule and they're able to log into the Google classroom and that the teacher for academic strategies is communicating with the six other teachers that that student has just to make sure the work

098is getting done or if that student's having a hard time how will we supporting that student do they need to go see you know to the take five room for a little while that you know was in the just adjustment council's office so do we need to look at the work that they're doing and say okay let's let's see how we can modify some of that work to make sure that we're not overwhelming them right now so those are those are two of the strategies that we we have been using I don't know if that's helpful or not no it's immensely helpful because it's it's interesting a few years back as part of parent University um there was a consultant that was brought in around executive function and how much um challenge you can mitigate

099just by helping students develop those skills um and my second second-ish question was related to something that assistant principal Kelly had presented when we had the student data we were talking about how do we get um African-American and Hispanic students more in enrolled in AP classes and you know you just mentioned the guidance counselors are going in is is that the specific um way that we want to try to encourage greater enrollment um I recognize there's this there's this tension between what are students comfortable with and how do you push them beyond their comfort zone with supports so I'd love to hear about that as well as I noticed in the new program of studies the SAT course is back so I just want to make sure um you know have you been able to

100identify a resource to to teach that because that was one of the challenges that assistant principal Kelly had shared so um let me focus on the first part of your question the AP Power part of it so after PSATs are given to 10th and 11th graders the College Board provides us information called AP potential and so that information will be shared with the teachers as well so it might say Beverly Ross Denny took the PSATs um if I can use your name and you know these are the types of AP courses that Beverly Ross might find real a lot of success in so the teachers will be provided that information as well um so while the guidance counsel is going into those I'm saying the history classes and talking about the overall courses that are

101offered now myself as the history teacher I'm going to be talking about you know a push which is you know this AP U.S history or I'm talking about AP European History or you know those types of classes and if I see you and I'm going to say okay but look you know those PSAT scores really show that you're somebody who can definitely benefit from doing Wellness class I really want you to take that class so those are the conversations that are happening also um so those are some of the skills that were those are some of the things that we'll be doing the teachers will be having the conversations councils will be having the conversations those recommendations will be going home as they do every year and then part of that is also students can

102also follow up with teachers families can follow up and say you know why did you make this recommendation this is what we're thinking and open up that conversation because it's when those conversations happen that we're really seeing what the students interests are Beyond of just what they're saying this is what I want to do um in the SAT prep course I did note that that is pending funding that we get more teachers um so we're hoping but again that is something that is really dependent on on on funding because that is a course that we have run during the school day or on weekends which is a separate a separate um way that it was run but that is dependent on additional Staffing so thank you so much no problem remember White um thank you

103for this really excellent presentation and I loved hearing from the students especially and I like the incorporation of student voice in their education and the breakfast with the principal was I know you started that last Friday um thank you for all that you do for our students and I'm just wondering Karen if you could speak to how you are supporting your staff during these last um tough years with the demands on all of the staff at the Milton high school as well as the other schools too um staff is the staff is amazing at Milton High School I feel like they're supporting me more than I feel that I can support them I really do um what I I try to make a few laps of the building every day to be honest with you

104pop into classrooms when I can um listening to what the staff have to say I think for the staff the PTO has been fantastic in providing um uh treats a few different times this year they most recently did one in this ice this might sound silly but it was um snacks in the teacher's room and their old school snacks so for all of the adults on this call you know you look at some of those snacks and he just brings back those childhood memories those yodels and those Hostess CupCakes so um it was really great you know that the PTO has been really supportive and awesome um and for me it's more about little recognitions here and there you know you can say thank you all you want but it's in the actions I think

105so for me it's walking around the building and at the holiday time I did a little fundraiser with all of the staff and probably three quarters of the staff got involved and it was just a simple task of guessing how many Hershey kisses were in a container and um we made I made some donations to some local charities on students on teachers behalf on who made the best guess and you know I think Steph you know staff was really pulled into that and those are the team building things are the things that I think really make a difference for the staff and just recognizing with the staff that you know sometimes they just they need that time off and um we just have to be mindful of that and if anybody's on this call right

106now and and you want to be a building sub please you know there are days that are just hard and and we recognize that um I hope people recognize our staff really they are doing an amazing job day in and day out in these past two years of just um put more on their plate and and they really are phenomenal people so thank you uh Dr Carol if you would uh yield your time for one second and let a high school student Cora uh Cora would you you could go ahead okay thank you um so I just have one question and I know you were talking about like social emotional learning and I know from personal experience that the social and emotional part really does tie into the academic part um and so I know

107also from personal experience that like anxiety around covid can also really tie into that um and so I'm just wondering how you're like systematically dealing with that and supporting students or that was that that's a great question you know I think over the past year and a half we've said it one if we haven't said it once we've said it many times if a student doesn't feel safe and supported then that learning isn't going to happen right so you know the students that were remote they were remote for a reason and they stayed remote for a reason and and you know I we held principal hours last year and I went to some students houses to check in on them as did Jenny beloved and our other counselors just to touch base with students and

108um we have to continue to be reflective and listen to what the students are saying and that's one of the reasons why I started this you know I did the breakfast it was recommended that the next one I do is a lunch and maybe get pizza so I said okay but it's really important to listen to the students and and that's why as members of my Dei committee the students on the Dei have said Mrs kale we really need to incorporate more student voice into what we're doing and so that's why we're we're going to hopefully once a month or one to term do these times to really listen to what students have to say and for me um their our students core that have come by my office and said Mrs kale I'm really

109just feeling unsettled today I don't feel like I can go to class and so we we say what can we do to support you you know do you need to stay in my office and and just get some work done or go to the take five room who can I connect you with who do you feel safe with talking in this building and and those are the connections we make sure that the students have in the building and for some students that's still something we have to work on um but I'm hoping you know as the year goes on everybody's able to identify somebody um and and know that they always have someone in that building to go to so thank you Cora yes thank you Corey Dr Carroll thank you Mrs K Helen thank

110you all so much for the presentation and everything you're doing um and thank you Cora for that question um you act it prompted you Mrs Cahill to actually speak to one of the questions I wanted to ask which sort of like about the kinds of things you're hearing from students when you have these opportunities to hear their voices so thank you for sharing some of those things um I have um just I guess a question and then an observation so maybe I'll just make the observation first and then ask the question and I'm glad to see the um the action step in this school Improvement plan around establishing the building-based professional development committee um that seems like a really important and great step especially considering the proposal for additional professional development time for next year

111to make sure that that feels planned out in the way that will best meet the needs that you've identified and that your faculty is identifying um that they have so I just wanted to kind of highlight that out of what I all of the things that you've been able to share with us um and then one other thing I just noticed was right above that reduce class size and you had spoken to this when you pointed out that the SAT prep classes budget dependent and just noting that that um goal of reducing class size and increasing elective offerings to create conditions for personalized learning that that does hinge on our staffing and what we've proposed to the budget I know we'll be hearing more about that later but just for community members watching to like

112really understand that those are um connections and consequences of the budget actually um sort of create or remove opportunities for our students um and then sorry that's Julia um the question I had because I I have younger kids I I'm still learning about the high school um I was wondering if you could just provide me and anyone else who doesn't know Julia I'll be right with you I'm sorry um a little bit of background on the mission and vision of a graduate and how was that formulated um like when was that put into place and how what was the process for kind of um coming up with those particular the language that identifies the the mission of Milton high school that vision of a graduate I see the um the action step of you know

113aligning to that and you shared in detail many of the things you're doing um and that you're sharing you know promoting and sharing that in the community but I'm just curious about kind of how that was um came to be we got there right sure um no problem Julia you can ask you can talk two moments okay so so I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation uh our meask accreditation visit and that is something that when I was first in the guidance office when I had first come up to the high school we were actually in the middle of an accreditation review and at that point in time we had had we wrote at that point in time um the mission statement from Milton high school and um steps that we all we expect

114all students to achieve before they graduate from high school so with that most recent visit when we knew that they were coming in the fall there's a reflection time there's a collaborative time at the bit the the building works together and okay what are we going to show the this this the accreditation committee that the work that we're doing here and what do we expect our students to know so we took those things that we thought students needed to learn so I'm talking about several years ago and we we made them into five steps of what do we think every student needs before they graduate from high school and it had to incorporate for us being a good citizen and incorporating technology and understanding the curriculum that they are taking right that that makes work

115for them and then as nias came in and worked with us and and me asked again last fall they visited some classrooms they interviewed students they interviewed staff members myself um central office department heads and they work with us to make sure that our five key steps of a vision of a graduate are in line with with the state accreditation is looking for when a student graduates from high school and when you look at the new I don't believe it's been approved yet but the district strategic plan and what their goal is you'll see that our vision of a graduate really ties in with the Strategic plan that we're just making sure our students are our students who are capable to succeed in a post-secondary plan After High School in a manner and we're giving

116them the skills whether that is you know a four-year college or a two-year college or or whatever their plan is that they have the skills to find that success in a path that we have provided and worked with them to get on um and and that they also recognize when they leave Milton because there is a life beyond Milton that they're able to find that success whether it's in Milton or Massachusetts or somewhere in Europe because that's that's what our students do the stories when students come back and they tell us about their life experiences I have to say um I feel our students are very much more exposed to a lot of great experiences here and those five steps in a vision of a graduate allow them to do that and they are so

117much more prepared I truly feel than so many other students um that I when they come back and they talk to me about their experiences so I hope that helps answer your question foreign yes thank you thank you all so much for this wonderful presentation and congratulations to Mr Clancy and his acceptance at Brown it's very exciting and and it's it's an exciting year for for all our seniors and um we we watch watch with great hope and um excitement for them in the future um it's exciting to hear from from my perch um the alignment of the high school's plans with the Strategic plan um and that's one of the goals of of the strategic planning committee is is to have our our goals aligned um with with efforts throughout the district and as

118you know as you mentioned the Strategic plan is is evolving and will be revised soon actually um will be doing a presentation at our next school committee meeting but I really appreciate your efforts to to align what you're doing at the high school with that and that being said one of the goals that that you're talking about that Mr Kelly addressed around facilities that is another area that that I'm involved with and um that that clearly the the our growth of an enrollment is made its way up to the high school and you're feeling the pinch there um in in the same way or similar to what we're seeing at our other um Elementary and and middle schools and and um you know I I you know we want to be able to support you

119in your efforts to identify spaces that might need to be moved around or converted to become useful for classroom space or however you decide but keep keep us in mind as as the next year comes in terms of budgetary needs that you might have for a space space conversions every year we have some money that goes into our Capital request for doing um conversions and we've been doing Fair number of those over over the years um so and um yes stay tuned to our our next presentation with the school building committee because we will be talking a little bit about the high school there too so thank you thank you yes thank you superintendent Jen and thank you principal Cahill and the high school team and students for an excellent presentation um I really wish

120that I had your presentation last week when we went to the Warren committee they asked us a lot of questions about tying our quest to outcomes and about whether or not we were inspiring our students to be excellent citizens and lifelong Learners and thinkers and your presentation tonight captured perfectly all the things they questioned and quizzed us about last week so I want to thank you so much we will be sure to share this presentation with the Warren committee so they can understand how we tie outcomes to our budget and that we have the most inspired most fantastic most wonderful students families and Educators that a community could ask for so thank you for inspiring us all and for coming tonight and showing the community as a whole that we are indeed an excellent top-notch

121wonderful School District thank you very much thank you thank you chair upper heart um at this point in time if there's no more questions I'm just going to ask uh principal Cahill if she'll stay on as just in the event if you guys have any questions regarding the Milton high school program of studies which I believe you guys need to take a vote this evening but if you have any questions maybe the high school team could stay on for a couple of minutes otherwise if there's no questions I would strongly suggest urge and encourage you guys to make a vote we have to um deal with the um articulation agreement before we do that okay thank you then uh High School is that okay to move on then Dr Craig I would say that's up

122to the chair but I just wanted to wait wait wait you lost me I'm so sorry doctor no that's okay um didn't we have to vote on the articulation agreement with Quincy College before yes yes we have to invoke enrollment yes yes yes so before we approve the program of study that's the first thing we have to do yes that's correct I'm sorry to interrupt could I ask Kiara and John if they can be is can they be dismissed because they might have homework to do yes Jenny Balboa and Jay Troy like thank you so much everyone for joining this evening I'll stay on thank you kids have a great night good luck with your homework all right yeah so uh superintendent Jet and school committee before we approve the Milton high school program of

123studies we do need to approve the Milton High School's participation in the dual enrollment program at Quincy College if you recall we've had two or three presentations on that um and um we decided that we were going to make a vote this evening on that so Dr credicard um I just have a few things um to say about that and I will try not to take up um too much time um I've done a lot of thinking about this um I recognize the potential benefits for students in Milton Public Schools um but I also um recognize at least one major drawback um according to the um Patriot Ledger and an article written last year quote from several rumor wrecked presidencies to questionable spending practices the collapse of its nursing program and dramatic fluctuations in enrollment

124the road has been incredibly Rocky for unquote uh Quincy Quincy College so um in the two to three years following the uh loss of accreditation for its nursing program in 2018 a new president was appointed in 2019 and another new president was appointed last year Queens College has also experiencing a huge dip in enrollment so I want to start there that's not something that's just uh um particular to Quincy College it's particular to lots of schools across the Commonwealth and across the country um uh but specifically to uh community colleges they're experiencing a deeper dive in enrollment than in other colleges um the articulate articulation agreement with Milton Public Schools would benefit Quincy college at least a couple of ways one is that it would add to its ftes for students that is full-time equivalency

125so that for every student who was taking a three credit course or the statistics class we're talking about um if you add four of those up and there's a full-time equivalency for the school secondly it would serve as a potential recruitment tool for Quincy college for any Milton Public Schools student who might want to attend the school on post-graduation in fact the president of Quincy college has said that stopping the decline in enrollment is a top priority um financially it certainly benefits uh Quincy College in that um each semester uh Quincy College will receive if the class of Statistics hits let's say 25 students that would be 7 500 that semester for Quincy College uh and this would go on semester after semester potentially year after year unless we stop the articulation agreement um our

126teachers Milton Public School teachers are the ones who will be doing the instructing um Milton Public Schools would be paying those teachers we'll be paying for their benefits um we will be footing the bill for the facilities for the technology for the utilities costs all of the overhead um what we get from Quincy College it seems to me is a syllabus maybe it's some training and not a whole lot more than that with um Milton Public Schools is my third point with Milton public schools on their list of schools with whom Quincy college has articulation agreements that helps with their rebranding it helps with any future articulation agreement prospects that they might have to have Milton Public School schools on their list um I want to make sure that I've covered oh um the only

127Community College in the state that operates outside of the Massachusetts Association of community colleges is Quincy College it doesn't belong to that 15 College Consortium although it could join um so it's not a part of the same initiatives or guidelines handed down by the state and I think that's important to keep in mind as well so though it's very clear to me that Quincy college would benefit in quite a number of ways having this articulation agreement with Milton Public Schools it will not agree to fund even one scholarship for one Milton public school student who is in need and cannot afford the tuition so for me um I cannot in good conscience uh vote in favor of the agreement and that's all I have to say thank you Dr Craighead for sharing your thoughts and

128opinions I think um we would need to make a motion um to approve the dual enrollment and then continue on with the discussion or second it or not I don't know where we are at the rest I don't know if someone else wanted to share their thoughts or had a response to what Dr Craig had just said member rostini is there so the good thing is Quincy College isn't the only College in the in the Commonwealth that offers this is it possible to include dual enrollment as an option without naming the college um Dr Cricket do you have something to add to that or Dr Carol I can speak to this simply because I'm on the other side of it dual enrollment is an option and free for community colleges dual enrollment is an option

129for anyone attending High School in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for one of those 15 community colleges I just named that are in that Consortium there are some guidelines one is that you have to have a minimum of a 2.5 GPA but you get to take the course for free um you do have to apply but it's it's free the the drawback and I'll admit this frankly is that you don't get to take it in a classroom during your high school day um with the rest of your classmates that's the benefit of this is that it's just a normal Port but you would get um you know High School Credit and college could at the same time during your school day so my previous employer Fitchburg State was our supplier of college credit and our instructors

130delivered the instruction that's why I was mentioning over the summer that I'd seen contracts like this before so it it is possible to do it outside of the classroom I just don't know if it applies to high school students because one of the things that Brian said that I appreciated was you know it'd be great if we had this opportunity for fall 2022 but I wouldn't want the the potential baggage associated with specifying one um one partner one college partner to prohibit us from adding this to the course of studies and then buying us time to get into an agreement it doesn't it doesn't take that long to negotiate these types of agreements because most of these schools to your point at least Fitchburg State had a standard agreement um it was something that you

131could tweak but there was some sort of standard agreement but I I don't if we can avoid delaying the Fall start by including it in the course of the program of studies without naming a college is where I'm hoping we could go that's why I asked if you if you know that Elaine I mean Dr crackhead it'd be great to know Hey Joe the answer to that question whether we could just put that in in that language is Karen or I mean principal Cahill or assistant principal Kelly it is okay to say you don't know because I actually don't I don't know I I thought you would have to have an agreement with an institution I'm not aware of it any other way well I think it's worth put it this way until someone tells

132us otherwise which I'm sure someone will it might be worth voting on a program of studies without naming site because I think it's worth putting it in I don't want to delay the vote on the program studies because I understand the downstream impact on your timeline for getting students enrolled and that I know um Brian selig is very busy for those who don't know he's the math director if he's willing to identify another partner maybe one of the other colleges and universities that Dr Craig had mentioned there may be an opportunity in the next you know several months to secure an alternative agreement um I saw Dr Carroll's hand and member Rose marinson um so one question about one of the points that you raised Dr Craighead um involving the tuition and the fact this

133has been raised several times that I guess wishing that there would be some flexibility or opportunity for scholarship for students but I recall that in our last discussion of this even though we weren't getting that Assurance from Quincy College we had decided um I'm asking if my recollection is correct that we had to sort of determine together that if we moved forward with this even if um it wouldn't be from Quincy college that we would find a way I recall you saying something to this effect principal Cahill that a student would not miss out on the opportunity to gain the credits for lack of financial resources that we would figure out a way to make sure they had the opportunity to gain the credits I remember you know that topic of MSE had come up

134but we hadn't I don't know if we had pursued actually learning if there were so I guess um I'm I'm just wondering where that stands is that still a sort of General commitment that we feel we could make even if we don't have the specifics worked out necessarily where that funding I know you had done the research to learn that actually the majority of the students who had said they would want to take the class would be able to pay for the credits that you had pulled to the students but is that um am I am I remembering that correctly that we sort of committed that we would make sure we could find those resources for students at least for next year yes you are remembering correctly that's the way that the students qualify for

135financial aid in the district um in other ways for um courses or as AP exams and that we would use those parameters in order to determine that um that support and we would be covered we would have we had the data from the um the the work that the um that Brian Mr slug had done I know by the way though that doesn't address your concern Dr Craig had about the lack of like um reciprocity from Quincy College which you were persuasive in raising that but thank you for clarifying member Rosemary um well this is an interesting moment um you know I I kind of came into the meeting thinking that I would support um this dual enrollment program if we did it um and considered it as a pilot to see how it worked

136um um however Dr craighead's comments are compelling um and give me pause um for that just in terms of the the ability of Quincy College to follow through um but um the other thing I'm I'm wondering about just you know in terms of this option of of just listing in our program of studies a dual enrollment course that with an institution still to be named I don't I mean you're looking to open this up for students to enroll in courses very soon right that you need you need definites for kids to decide to sign up for I I don't know that having a um an unknown opportunity available is going to generate um uh interest enough for for students to to sign up um so I guess I I'm I'm wondering whether we we need

137to go back to the drawing board and look at at our other options remember rosteni thank you member well I think the SAT course is in the program of studies right now at least from the version that I looked at maybe last week and there's not a resource identified for that as a matter of fact it's funding contingent so at least from uh from the perspective of including it you know as a freshman there were lots of courses my son couldn't take because of covid but um the staff at Milton high school was able to they they Place kids in other classes and at the high school information night they say you know you may not even get the elective you requested because it might be oversubscribed so it's it's I don't think it's it's

138not for lack of Precedence to include something that may not ultimately be offered but I think to Dr craighead's point and from my professional experience there really are other colleges in the Commonwealth that offer this and um the pricing is is is very inexpensive it's just a matter of you know what is our capacity to do that Outreach now given all the other responsibilities that these the staff at Milton High School are juggling yeah I mean I'd like to share a few thoughts you know we've had this conversation multiple times and I want to thank you all for sharing your thoughts and Dr Craighead for sharing her perspective particularly since this is the field in which she works as a professor an educator a couple of things I'm thinking about the fact that um the

139students when they were surveyed and were asked about this and while I recognize that students don't think the way we think um we're very much disappointed that didn't have the opportunity to have this opportunity this year um and they were looking forward to perhaps students having that opportunity in the future um I recognize that um Quincy has had some challenges as Dr Greg had just shared with us um and so perhaps their goal is is to become to improve their enrollment and to prove their Community engagement I don't know I haven't had those conversations with them um I also think we've talked a lot about equity in terms of all opportunities for all students right across the board and this is an opportunity to do that for all students right to engage in college work

140while they're still in high school an opportunity to do so while they're they don't have to go anywhere and they're they can do it in their own place in their own time so um from my perspective I don't know principal Cahill perhaps you can remind me for how long the agreement would be for it would be something we were renew or review every year were you a reviewer yeah okay um and I do think that it provides an opportunity I don't know I think that preventable Cahill had also mentioned another College when she came to us the first time but students would be expected to go there um and so I don't know what other opportunities we had um or if we do this for one year and we um and we review it at

141another year um I think we've had lots of discussions about this we can make a motion to approve the um Milton High School's partnership with Quincy college for dual enrollment program if someone would second it and we can take a vote and if it goes down then it goes down superintendent jet yes I I did wanted to just re-emphasize it is year to year there's no Financial commitment on a part of any individual until March of 2023 I think that uh I shared that with you folks in the email um and I do believe that there was some some conversation about curry in addition to going to Curry if I'm not mistaken I think the price was a little bit higher than what Quincy uh College had offered and I only share that um to

142make sure that it's uh elevated uh perhaps you making a vote and however you devote uh however you uh vote we fully understand it and uh Dr Craig had raised some uh great questions or concerns so um I will leave that up to the school committee members at this point in time to yes remember rostany please this is my last question and I I get it's an up or down vote just to just make it past this point if we vote Yes are we is there still an opportunity for us to identify other colleges in the meantime it doesn't it doesn't have to be exclusive and as I said I I have hundreds of college credits delivered with not one person stepping foot on Fitchburg State's campus so I know what's possible okay great good

143to know I mean are we would we consider looking is essentially the question to um principal Cahill or superintendent jet is the door closed for now it I I feel at this point we are going into the course selection process for for next year so for this year we I think we have to stick with what we know and then we can do research further on the other institutions and any feedback that you you can provide us for other institutions would be very helpful so we can possibly build upon a dual enrollment program you know for years to come um but in order to go ahead with scheduling for next year is as crazy as it seems we we have to start the process sooner than later so students can review the program Studies have

144those conversations with teachers you know we do the review so for now we just need to work on Curry I'm sorry on Quincy whether it's a yes or no and then we can always do more um reflection and visit other options for the following year I guess that's how we have to look at it right now so you're thinking for um school year not the fall of 2022 but the fall of 2023. just so we would see what's available in other schools and the accessibility that students would have to those institutions as well because some of them are visiting going to campus so how are students going to get there so that's research we'd like to do with our students to see what's accessible for them great yes great um anyone else want to weigh

145in here on the we haven't even made a motion we're still having a conversation are you are you all not comfortable even making a vote on this conversation this evening I do think we have to make a vote so that we can or cannot put it in the program of study well I think we have a motion on the floor and I would say yeah it hasn't been seconded though yeah I would second it okay thank you member Roseanne so any further discussion about that just um one clarifying question Following on um member raw studies last question or point if we vote to approve the um agreement this evening with Quincy College then we are in that we are in that agreement right so we um we haven't signed anything yet I'm just right but

146but if we vote to do that tonight then that means we're signing that agreement is that is that what that means for this year for for this coming school year okay anyone else want to weigh in no okay all right well I mean I can start with myself uh for a vote if that makes everyone feel comfortable and I say yes uh member Rosemary I'm gonna say yes on number White yes remember Ross Denny yes Dr Craighead yeah and Dr Carroll you can always I have reservations but um it's gonna vote Yes okay all right so I think that was five one all right thank you I would like to follow up with um principal Cahill and superintendent jet on member Ross Denny's comments about Fitchburg I I too have taken courses from them as

147a grown-up um and I do think that's uh um that's important thing to think about thank you Dr crackhead and everyone for your um conversation center is very helpful all right so that moves us to the oh sorry superintendent this is your report yeah so so very quickly I want to give you guys a quick update on uh covet as we all know wait superintendent yet we have to vote the program of study sorry oh sorry I oh okay I just didn't want to take over your report all right we do have the mo there is some motion on the table to approve the Milton high school program my studies for the 2022-2023 school year second and now we can have a discussion okay anyone have any questions about the new courses that were um

148provided in the program is study um anything at all at this moment okay all right so the motion has been made in a second and this will be a roll call vote remember Ross Denny yes um Dr Craighead I'm going to abstain okay I've seen um Dr Carroll yes okay um remember Rosemary yes uh member white yes and member of a heart yeah so that would be five zero one do I have that right time for the rain okay great all right thank you thank you to the high school team for your presentation this evening appreciate it very much thank you all for your time and consideration and and school Committee Member Dr Craighead I very much hear your concerns a little bit be very very close attention to what's happening with Quincy college and

149would like to form relationships with other colleges as well so thank you truly everyone for your time and consideration thank you principal Kaya thank you yeah so looking at the time I try to be as quick as possible I just wanted to give a full update on a new testing program as many of you know we had the deadline of uh January 24th to submit an application for the New Testament option provided by the state as of last week we had 305 300 faculty and staff that received there at home rapid antigen tests and today probably because of the uh the snowstorm this weekend the mail probably didn't get out on Monday we just received the student test kits today which we were hoping to have them yesterday to distribute them uh today but we

150don't Kim Coughlin some of the nurses the custodian staff work counted out separated it all nurses have the information and they're delivered to the school so uh our students will be bringing home those test kits and we have about 1400 students uh in Milton public schools that would be carrying on their test kits in in their backpacks or on their person when I just say publicly we're asking students to make sure that they do take these home and don't open them and they administer these uh tests in the presence of a parent or a guardian so I wanted to share that the other thing I wanted to share is that our numbers have gone down gradually even though they seem high compared to last year uh this week we reported earlier today uh for the

151last week um nine staff members uh positive and 58 students um and then if you look back to last year that was a significant these numbers today are significantly higher but I am very optimistic with more people who are vaccinated boosted still wearing masks but also you're seeing a rapid decline not only in the town of Milton but you're seeing it in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the nation as a whole uh we're getting closer and closer to whether you know we could call it an endemic or we're getting closer and closer to her Unity whatever you want to call it but we're looking for it I do want to let the school committee know I did submit a a waiver you could submit a waiver to for Mass optional but it doesn't necessarily mean

152that you implement it but we wanted to get it in and I'll tell you why because the deadline is uh for the mass mandate is uh the 28th of this month um and we want to be prepared in the event that when we walk away from vacation we may get an announcement on that Friday during the vacation and we just wanted to make sure that we have everything and if things continue to go in the right direction we will have a conversation with the school committee members because it is a school committee mandate as well so I just wanted to let you know many districts have applied for it I I believe that you guys indirectly heard this many districts applied for it but have not enacted it because of the high numbers or they

153did in some reverted back because of high numbers in their District so we always have that option but I just wanted to give you that quick update and then finally the mobile vaccine unit um we will have the mobile vaccine unit on uh March 5th as it stands right now with a follow-up date of March 26th um one session the first session on March 5th right now as it stands right now we'll be at Milton high school and then on the 26th the follow-up would be at the PS middle school hopefully we're still trying to work out those locations because of rentals and uh the van but that's that's how quickly we could get that so that is a quick report on uh covet and I wanted to see if you guys have any questions

154I think Dr Carroll has a question superintendent thank you um Mr Jett can you just um confirm which school or schools did you apply for a waiver and can you just confirm the updated vaccination rates at those schools yeah so the updated vaccination first of all I applied for it for middle and high school um I don't think you've seen too many elementary schools that are at that level the threshold and that is because we have been I think I reported it to the last two school meetings that were well over 80 percent at the high school and the middle school and we're over 96 close to 97 maybe even 98 now with our faculty and staff at the uh district-wide but in particular at the middle school and high school were well over 80

155percent I did not get the numbers and I think people could understand why we have the nurses that are already taxed they were learning a new system calculating all that stuff and they have to go into the system to try to identify those students who identified uh our nursing staff have not done that yet however Kim is now with this test new testing option already in motion uh she has assured me that I would have that information by the next school career meeting at the elementary level so I do not have that right now because some parents have submitted it some parents have said it but we need proof that there's a vaccination and so now it's really about the checks and balance particularly at the elementary level foreign thank you superintendent I Chad um

156I know parents are anxious for us um to return um to the world that we used to live in in 2019 and some parents have reached out to us and asked us about the masks and the and the and the waiver so thank you for updating on on us that this evening and um we're moving in the right direction so we're hopeful for the for our for the time to come thank you Mentor Rosner and you're so sorry thank you um we're coming back with this school building committee uh report and update and I'd like to welcome Sean O'Rourke who is the chair of the school building committee to make a brief presentation good evening um this is now my third time in front of you guys and you know I want to thank you

157for the audience tonight so if I may I'm just going to share my screen treatments and just let me know if it came through okay it did excellent um so as as most of you are aware you know our committee is made up of nine nine members uh member Rosemary and member white from your committee are appointed by you guys to the school building committee uh Mike zulis and Glenn Hoffman were appointed by the select board and the remaining five of us at the top are a mixture of Engineers and construction management uh people that were appointed by the town moderator and you know we were formed in 2019 and you we've essentially been trying to bring you up to speed kind of uh as we're making goals or Milestones along the path so the

158thing that we wanted to kind of touch on or get some input or feedback from your committee tonight is is a follow-on from a previous presentation so as everyone's aware this is the current uh grade configurations of the district and prior to last summer our our committee was looking at building a fifth Elementary School that would house Pre-K to fifth grade um you know as we studied that you know we're looking at implications mainly of redistricting and then further um the kind of propagation of the larger class sizes at elementary school getting up to the Middle School um so with this option when we looked at it it really wasn't addressing the Middle School so the option that we presented uh at my last meeting was the construction of essentially a second Middle School at

159at a site that's uh campus environment as I'm calling it at the high school that new Middle School Upper Middle School would house the seventh and eighth grades along with the Pre-K and essentially what we'll be doing is um the Pierce Middle School get reused we would be stripping one grade out of that and moving the fifth grade up from the elementary schools so what this does is by removing the Pre-K out of the elementary schools and also the fifth grade we free up existing space at the schools we don't need to redistrict and then it essentially solves the problem at the elementary level and then also at the middle school level when we looked at it and you know compared both of them uh both options addressed the long-term needs of the district and

160this slide that you're looking at here is actually copied uh from the 2019 study the the uh your committee hired dra Architects uh to look at and they came up with basically a shortage of roughly 20 26 rooms uh mainly 16 classrooms so what we're trying to do is you know lay out what the what the differences are between them so you know we have our current uh configuration of the classes or the district on the left uh option one as we're calling it is essentially that new Elementary School it would basically add a new building uh at the elementary level that would have 26 classrooms and pre Pre-K uh two Pre-K rooms uh there'll be no changes at the middle school no changes at the high school option two which was the one I

161just discussed too would leave the elementary schools civil four schools but change the grade configurations of that by moving the pre-K in the fifth grade out at the middle school level for infrastructure facilities you you'd see a new school which is the one I'll touch on in a minute um also at that new school we'll be adding the Pre-K on to there and kind of reconfiguring the grade level at the existing middle school or Pierce so as everyone is probably aware hopefully we are by this point you know the parcel land right we're looking for uh is the area where guile Road touches down to Blue Hills Parkway um the map shown here is a little different than what you might normally see but using uh Brooks field in the upper right it kind of

162gives a a landmark as you're looking at this um currently over the past six months we've been working with the town attorney or Town Council uh to rectify the land and our previous intent was to swap the parcel that's shown in yellow with a portion of the partial parcel that was shown in red through further study both Parcels are are covered under article 97 so there's no possible way to actually do a swap between them uh but we are working with the town to do a swap of additional Parcels outside of what's shown here on the map so our intent is to still build the school on the parcel shown here in yellow that parcel is approximately 6.8 Acres so this is kind of the meat of the presentation what we want to give you

163is you know since our last meeting we've uh teamed up with dra architecture uh to take that parcel that we just talked about and start putting pencil to paper and develop some options uh just so we can start seeing what potentials would look like when they did that you know to do this exercise there are certain metrics that go into it that drive uh the space planning on those sites uh so what you see now the two options and the metrics that we provided to dra which kind of represent the previous options that was showing in the table um the educational program that were we provided them for option one was the two Pre-K classrooms and the additional 24 classrooms which again mimics the study that they did before uh special ed small group rooms

164and all the other ancillary spaces that go along with an elementary school for the middle school and preschool it's a little bit bigger of of a of a facility mainly due to the size of you know what would be moving up there and then the site requirements so the derivative of all that stuff is basically what has to happen at the site so obviously Bus drop off powering card drop-offs are the same parking spaces are a little bit more at the middle and preschool again mainly due to the size and then outdoor play areas typically you wouldn't have that at a middle school but because we'd have the Pre-K there they do have it so the conceptual design of option one or the elementary school so as an engineer these These are kind of the

165fun fun things we get into at the beginning you know you get a big empty site and how do you carve it up so initially what happens with dra does is they go through and just kind of you know look at a macro level very high level how where they would build things and how how things would flow so as you're seeing here there's kind of areas for the Bus drop off parking areas where they want to put the building and then Associated play areas and grass fields so as they start doing that you know they fine tune a little bit more uh this is the pen to paper exercise that I was discussing and they started developing you know more and more program as they're going through and as we zoom in you'll see

166there's a little more fine uh fine-tuning of the floor plans so what you see here is the elementary school option uh in the upper portion of see if my mouse works without yep in the upper portion here is the circulation for a bus drop off kind of similar to what you see at the collie coch honey ham uh and then additionally on the side of it is a parking area for uh faculty and staff a play area in front of it and then essentially a common area where you walk in with you know uh classrooms this option provides a two-level structure so the first level is shown here the second level is shown there um with this the keynote to to look at and I'll go back to the other site is the adjacent uh

167a Butters at home inc uh basically on the bottom part of the page so with the intent of this design was is to keep kind of all the play areas or noisy areas away from home inc and keep a uh for like a better word a two a two level solid wall on the back side yeah the Middle School concept with the preschool Wing which is essentially option two had you know a similar look and feel as they were carving it up it's it's an oddly shaped site that we're dealing with so there's some similarities between them this one this option is a little bit different uh there's you know parking on the uh western side for faculty and staff and the Bus drop off and pickup is on the opposite side um that you

168see here the the layout of the building is also a little bit different uh mainly because it's rep it was representing in middle school and then we had them uh altered you know at a at a an updated stage to include the preschool so what they looked at is for the preschool we could take over the first floor and for this option it's a it's a three-story structure the second and third floors the second floor is on the right here again mainly classrooms with Center rooms for maker Spaces Project areas and stuff like that and what we would do is to create additional spaces kind of build it out on that second floor in the paper area you know that's uh digitally enhanced here uh the third floor again is a repetition of the classrooms

169you can see here so for us you know we've got you know two options with schematic design at it right now um what we're looking to do is gather further public engagement from there from the site selection and what type of school we want to build um we're also peering this with an overcrowding video we've gone through the schools and take taken video interviewed all the principles and we're developing a kind of a video that we will utilize with this uh with these presentations um the other part that we need from you know your committee and that's kind of why we're giving the update tonight is you know decision on what grade configuration we should be looking at and then that those type of things will feed into our next item three which is our

170studies and the main one we're looking at now is cost um there's because there are two different size facilities the costs of them are different um in addition we're also knowing traffic is always an issue in the town uh we're we're looking to bring on a traffic consultant early on to kind of look at the two options and give some pros and cons on them also and then finally you know our final step we're working towards uh hopefully this may town meeting is to get an article in to kind of finalize the land swap so that we can for lack a better word own that parcel that we originally talked to uh and at this point they'll turn it over to uh member Rosemary for a few more comments there we go thank you Sean

171um if you could stop sharing your screen Sean um I could there we go thank you um yeah I just wanted to um build a little bit about of um uh what Sean was saying about our community outreach and what we're planning um in that regard and and this was something that I had wanted to discuss at our last meeting but it got to be almost 10 30 and we just decided to put it off until this meeting um but um we have tentatively planned um uh forums with two key stakeholder groups one being Milton Public Schools staff and faculty and the other being parents in the community and um and what we'd like to do is do a brief presentation similar to what Sean has done and then hear from both groups their thoughts

172and questions about about the process and that will help we will be able to bring that data back to the school committee um and we're we're hoping to come back to the school committee on March 16th to have a further discussion I'm also doing some more research into just the literature about grade configurations and um I'll tell you right now it's very mixed but we we I'll tell you what what we've learned we discuss it at our last school building committee meeting and and we'll bring to you that information as well well as feedback that we hear from our forums and and then we hope that school committee will because school committee is responsible for determining the educational program for whatever we build um I'm hoping that we'll be able to come to agreement on

173that and and to take a vote it may not be at the March 16th meeting we may need to wait till uh the next meeting after that but but that's that's our our thinking um much our update and since anyone has a member Rosemary are you still going ahead with those dates for the community forums that we had already discussed yes yes that's that's the um that is our plan let me let me pull those up um we're talking about doing a forum with staff and faculty um on February 10th at seven in the morning um and we're just putting together the posting for that that will hopefully be out by the end of this week and then the following we're going to do two uh forums for families and community members um one on

174March 3rd at 7 30 pm and one on March 10th at 4 pm and the superintendent jet will be able to be at two out of those out of those three I don't remember exactly which ones um right off but his schedule is so jam-packed for the month of March with all of the the um screening committees and hiring work that needs to be done and and is very busy superintendent so we were grabbing what we can of his time and um um so that is our our plan at this point and we'll bring back everything we find out um to you in mid-march okay and your plan is to have these forms interactive where people can submit questions or ask questions Sean on in the moment and um you're just taking maybe taking feedback

175obviously you won't have a decision so you'll be presenting perhaps those two options and even you're still doing research about other considerations right um well doing doing well that's a good question the the well a few responses in terms of the during the the forums themselves um Sean has uh turned turned us on to uh an application called slido um I don't know if any of you participated in that but it gives it's an interactive um application where people can write their questions into that app and then others can like those questions and it raises those questions that get the most likes up to the top and and we go through them and and we found in the other forums that we did um in the fall that it it helped us get through a

176lot more questions more quickly using that app I don't know Sean if you want to add any think more about that foreign the Q a portion using slido just organizes it a lot better um and it repeats repetitive questions and it allows people that sometimes don't have a voice that are nervous to like ask a question if they see one that they like all they have to do is like it um to get it higher on there um also there's interactive ways of using polling through it uh so we'll be working to come up with some ideas on some you know discrete questions to gauge feedback you know further than outside of just q a does anyone else have any questions from Amber Rose Marin thank you for that presentation Sean it was terrific and

177for this drawings and present schematics it's very it's very exciting to think about the future thank you all thank you Sean all right now we'll have an opportunity in our meeting for citizen speak if there's anyone here who would like to address the committee we set aside 15 minutes for citizen speak we asked people to raise their hand if they'd like to address the committee we ask you to limit your comments to three minutes state your name and your address when you speak we will not be responding to your comments as we do not respond to Citizen speak and we ask that you address policies um questions and comments you have about the meeting but not anything particular pertaining to people thank you you can raise your hand if you'd like to address the committee

178the first person I have that I'm elevating I believe is uh is it Christian it is hi thank you so much for the opportunity to speak um this is Christine cosiel 17 Standish Road um so I am just here to address the covid policies in this school um and I did want to update what I have written down just to thank you Mr Jett um for taking the time to apply for the waiver um to make masks optional in the middle in the high school um and that's really important so I'm here to speak tonight in um support of an urgency of normal campaign for an urgent return to pre-pandemic Norms in our school I urge that any other precautions beyond what is required by the state be abandoned such as silent lunch um having

179children mask up when they speak Mass be encouraged outsides basing the children out while in the classrooms now that contact tracing has been eliminated kids should be able to choose who they sit with at lunch we need to stop promoting a Culture of Fear surrounding covid it is unavoidable that our child children will be able to avoid this virus forever and now that the cadc shows the Pediatric mortality is similar to flu we need to return to pre-pandemic Norms in our schools there is a rise in Mental Health crisis in our children suicide attempts drug overdoses Eating Disorders they need a return to normal this pandemic has been incredibly difficult on individuals of all ages but children still have to live with mitigation measures that are harsher than most adults are subjected to even than

180I am when I work in my Hospital parents are heartbroken over what they're seeing in their homes because we feel powerless to help our children please listen to us when we say the kids are not all right in eliminating all coveted practices other than what is mandated by the state is so important to support their mental health I'm going to share some quotes that aren't from children in Milton but just to understand what kids are going through sometimes my mass comes down a little and I get yelled at and I tighten it up and I can't breathe we're not allowed to stand and sing a music class because they told us standing spreads the virus more than sitting so we sit to sing the mass make my glasses fog up and I can't see they

181keep the windows open all the time and it's cold I don't like school anymore it's like a prison foreign deserve a real answer it now impossible to ignore that we were not exaggerating about our concerns last year that not all children thrived with remote remote learning parents again are sharing similar concerns that their children really need a return to normal this includes de-escalating the fear around Covenant schools applying for a mask waiver middle and high school thank you Mr Jack that should include both vaccinated and unvaccinated children and letting parents know the plan we're entering our third year of this and we really deserve an answer to when our children will return to normal I hope um the news tonight about middle and high school means that when Desi lifts the mass mandate that Milton

182will allow parents to decide if they want to their child to wear a mask 860 medical professionals have now signed the urgency of normal statement advocating for a return to pre-pandemic conditions in the schools I encourage you to visit the urgency of normal website to understand how important it is that we start creating a less fearful School environment now and understand the data that shows why it is safe to do so it is especially important to take advantage of the gift that Omicron and vaccines have given us with allowing a safe off-ramp for covert precautions in our school especially because we don't know what covet has for in store for us in the future thank you so much for your time tonight Christopher coming appreciate it I believe the next person that I just elevated

183is Aaron Bradley welcome Erin sorry I was muted thank you so much superintendent Chad and uh school committee members I just wanted to touch briefly on the school building report which thank you so much member Rosemary for that I um was in the school system many years ago it ends with a zero on my reunion that's coming up and it's not the first or second um so um I just wanted to say I went to kind of an unconditional schematic of how we did our grades I went through K through five in an elementary school six and seven in a middle school eight and nine in a junior high and then 10 11 12 in a high school I wanted to just say really quickly and briefly that I applaud this second option I really

184thought that the transitions going through my my school years made it easier for me to get closer to a cohort of friends so that we were kind of encapsulated it made it easier as we transitioned through all the schools and not harder and I I know that that's odd to think of but if you think of 8th and ninth graders hanging out together it's a much easier thing than ninth graders and 12th graders I will say that by the time I was a senior in high school they moved the ninth grade up to the high school and so we now that the town I grew up in has the exact same schematics as what that option two says so I just wanted to to say it's a great thing the one piece that I I

185thought was missing and and this probably speaks to you know the 1970s um is the fact that there is still no pool in any of our Public Schools um one of the things that we had to do even mortified as we all were was in junior high we had to go through swim lessons and everybody that graduated from our school district knew how to swim with all of the the kids that um are in our town and Nick Turner's Pond and all you know all over the place swimming I just wanted to say it might be something I know we can't afford it I know I'm on the warrant committee I understand that but it's something that might be an option in one of those floors of the buildings um if we could think about

186it because it might be a benefit not only for our swim team which I was also on in high school um but uh it might be something that all of our kids can benefit from especially starting in preschool so um that is it I I thank you all for being here uh this week and I hope you have a good weekend foreign thank you Aaron Bradley if anyone else has any comments you could raise your hand at this time uh I do not see any hands raised thank you superintendent Chet um and thank you to our citizens who came tonight and shared their thoughts um and comments superintendent should I know you had asked me a question I know we had received some emails about mitigation strategies as well and I had asked you to

187address them at the meeting and you addressed them through your comments about the um uh The Mask exemption thing but perhaps we can um create some sort of document that we can share eventually within with the community that um that outlines what mitigation strategies are still in effect and which ones are not and how we will be moving forward if you'd like to just briefly address that for a moment I'm going to address it in my blog because I think there's uh some misinformation out there about what we're doing or not doing in the Milton Public Schools I want folks to know that kids are going to lunch with their homeroom class which is very similar to what they did pre-pandemic we're not having silent lunches what we're asking students to do and we did

188that only in the month of January when Copic cases were high and people people may not remember we had 700 and around 45 students a day out in the first week of January uh with covet and we had an average of 75 teachers out daily in that first week what we ask students to do while eating um you can take your mask off we ask you to eat and then when you're done eating your mask goes back on never wasn't silent students are still having lunch with their cohort their class as they would normally do in a given year we we do still have resets in some cases obviously a stifled a little bit by the amount of snow that we have on some of the on some of the school campuses and then also

189when the weather's not favorable in class there is group work in class um it may be smaller group work but it's group work in class um and so I think and I will address this in the blog tomorrow um but I think it's very important and because this is a public meeting and I appreciate uh Kristen cosio's comments but I do want to elevate the fact that she was using quotes that she said were from other students it may not be in the Milton Public Schools so I think it's important to highlight that um but our students you know prior to the pen prior uh to January at activities everything was in place the only real restriction was the must and so I think that's important for folks to know we did have some limited

190uh space issues at the Tucker um that was the only school that really divided uh some of the students at that point in time until January when those cases got extremely high and and that wasn't isolated to the town of Milton that was in the Commonwealth and I do agree Omicron doesn't seem to be as contagious but I do want to caution some folks because we do have folks in the district who is dealing with some very severe fallouts or issues or side effects with the covid-19 or Omicron so I do want to say that and I want to be sensitive to those folks in any time that we applied for the waiver for the remainder a year if granted and we decide to Pivot um mass will be optional for those folks who remain

191unvaccinated because of medical reasons or just choice for students that is or for those people that just feel a little more comfortable it will be optional um so I do want to clarify that and I would definitely uh try to elevate that conversation in a blog tomorrow as well thank you superintendent Chad I think that we are all looking forward to an exit ramp to um to a life that is still going to involve some mitigation strategies for whenever this evolves in different ways but I think as we move away from contact tracing as we move to the testing at home program as we move to having the waivers we will see a return to things that feel more familiar to us as a community and I do want to thank the students for their

192continued support um and the parents as well all right thank you all right um um chair Dr Elaine Cricket you are up for finance just sort of randomly I know we don't address um randomly I will say someone who signs the vendor warrant um we spend a good deal of money renting um space for the swim team that's money that we could save going forward and you can also rent out a pool to bring money in so just saying um okay um more particularly going back to the actual agenda for the evening um Community Schools has made a proposal which has been voted on by Finance to recommend approval by the school committee and I'll go through what that is um The Proposal is to um offer paid leave to employees of community schools and

193this would involve one full-time Administrative Assistant who works year round four supervisors of before school and after school programs who work 10 months contracts and staff who work under 20 hours a week who work for 10 months this does not affect high school counselors seasonal staff or volunteers but it does affect that staff who work under 20 hours a week nurses assistant supervisors group leaders and support staff so um the policy that's being proposed by Milton Community Schools basically mirrors uh existing Milton Public Schools paid leave formulas for Unit D um and for those of you who are not highly familiar with Unit D I'll go over some of the particulars what's being proposed is that the administrative assistant who works year-round would get sick leave holidays bereavement personal days and uh paid vacation it's

194being proposed that the supervisors get sick leave holidays bereavement and personal days and that the less than 20 hours a week staff get sick personal and bereavement so what Unit D specifies is that for sick leave in your first year you get five days or the equivalent of one work week um two to five years you get 10 days and over five years six plus you get 12 days some details to add to that or you can carry as many as 110 sick days um but if you pass those out their retirement or death you can only um you can only earn ten dollars a day for 30 of those days right so let's say you have 96 sick leave days left you can cash 30 of those in but it's at ten dollars a

195day so that would be you know the most is about 330 dollars to cash out um bereavement is five days for immediate family um I think that just includes mother fathers spouse kids and then three days for all other family it's very specific it includes in-laws um grandparents but but not not extended like cousins um personal days would be three days one you can take without any reason given and two of the three days you have to give a reason and it's approved by the superintendent um and uh that's uh re that's it the holidays are obviously the the holidays that all um Regular Milton Public School Employees would get eight paid holidays I think it's eight maybe it's nine now um but the additional piece that doesn't mirror Unit D um is the vacation

196leave and the vacation leave would be added only for that full-time Administrative Assistant for Community about Community Schools um and it would be according to the non-unit personnel um vacation leave policy and that would be for um uh for one to five years you get two weeks and I believe that's what that person is in that category right now for five to ten years three weeks 10 to 20 years four weeks and so forth um this proposal for paid leave would allow for uh more flexibility for the employees of Community Schools certainly more financial stability right now they don't have any paid leave so if they take leave they don't get paid for it um and many of these employees work solely for Community Schools it's not necessarily just an extra on top of a

197full-time job I would like to say to all of you on screen who do not uh we're not aware of this but more importantly I think you all do know this but more importantly for anyone viewing this Milton uh uh Community Schools is a self-sustaining program the money that they take in is all from uh monies received for fees for students attending before and after school programs and they have their own uh revolving fund we do not it's not part of our operating budget okay so um this wouldn't affect the budget proposal that we've made for FY 23 it doesn't affect our budget uh for this year um if we approve it tonight it is effective immediately and retroactive to August 30th 2021. um so first of all before I make any sort of motion

198does anybody oh uh assistant superintendent Dexter yeah if um you don't mind me just adding a couple comments um the re the proposal does not include a buyback upon termination so that's one difference from some of the other unit policies um for anyone that's not working full-time that's eligible for these benefits that would be prorated so if they work a five hour day one day is only five hours um and to your point I just want to also highlight even though you already did that it's only going back roughly to August of 2021 which means a lot of these employees have been there long term so we're considering that August 31st of 2021 as being the first date so the um for example the administrative assistant would be considered in year one of the policy

199change so they wouldn't even if that person's been here 20 years you wouldn't automatically go up to that higher level so um those are just a couple points that I thought might help clarify things no those are important points thanks very much uh George Carroll I do I do have one question um which I'll preface to say I support paid leave and I I wish I could vote for pavely for every worker in America um but I do have a question about the the financial implications even if they're not directly for our budget um because I do recall last spring when we voted to raise the fees um that were being charged to families so is that the proposal we received doesn't include any numbers um would it be necessary to to somehow like staff

200substitutes or something like that in the event that um employees do take days off or leave is that built into the proposal I guess and would it be um it is would we anticipate that that because it's a self-sustaining program would result in higher fees um we asked for both of those questions um she is the director of Community Schools Martha Sandoval no plan to raise fees at this point um she raised them recently secondly she said that anytime somebody needs to miss they already do this and they will continue to do this is that they just all um work to cover for that person without bringing in a sub um to raise the costs assistant superintendent Dexter I'm good you and okay apparently about that right okay great um yeah does that answer your

201question Dr Carol okay um any other questions I just want to say that math has specifically said this is not going to impact tuitions yeah she didn't plan to raise any tuitions and that I think the total cost Elaine if I remember was around twelve thousand dollars for all of the um all of the paid and the paids leave yeah and that reminds me we also asked or I specifically asked for um uh to look at where her funds were right now just to make sure of all these things we're talking about and the is to have a very healthy balance uh in Community Schools so there's really no concern on that front um assistant superintendent X yeah so um to to member White's um point the the cost relates to in the event that

202these employees were sick um or had to take time off they just went without pay um they're the only employees under Milton Public Schools or the town of Mount Milton that were not treated similarly and just for a little history I believe that goes back to the days when Milton Community Schools did not fall under Milton Public Schools it was a separate entity and somewhere long before my time it got rolled into under the Milton Public Schools umbrella and we're just trying to address this and make it consistent with what everybody else that works from the Milton Public Schools gets and and to um Dr Carol's point you know sick leave and paid leave so that they can tend to their health and their families health and whatnot is really really important and um you

203know I applaud Martha for you know advocating for these people and getting this to move forward so [Music] yeah I agree and one thing that um she shared with us was that recently one of the Community Schools Employees suffered a bereavement and had to take um time off without getting paid for it unlike every other member of Milton Public Schools so um okay um any other comments or questions uh I had a question um all right so I'm going to make a motion to um uh proof the had the actual language somewhere to approve the Community Schools proposal as outlined in the documentation that we all received a second okay um this will be a roll call vote um member rosteni yes uh chair Eberhart yes member white yes member Rosemary yes Dr Carol yes

204and I'm a yes so that's a 6-0 I think that's our first time this evening excellent excellent presentation Dr Cricket on that thank you for bringing that forward to us and superintendent Dexter yeah yeah I appreciate the help of help with that I just want to call you Amy it's so much easier than yeah you can learn all those words especially I don't like formality but I'm supposed to behave that way especially as we're creeping up at on 10 o'clock okay so um the last thing I have to do is Bend rewards and I have to do them separately tonight yeah so I'd like to make a motion to approve vendor warrant number 31 payable on January 27 2022 in the amount of 809.64 cents do I have a second seven okay um let's see

205member of Denny yes chair Everhart yes remember white yes remember Rosemary yes and Dr Carol yes I'm a yes so that's six zero um two in a row all right and I'd also like to make a motion to approve vendor wart number 32 payable on February 3rd 2022 in the amount of 709.48 cents I'm just going to say second yes okay thank you um so I'm gonna take a roll I'll vote uh member Ross Denny yes chair everhard yes remember Rosemary yes Dr Carol yes um member white I've stayed an abstention and I'm a yes so that's a five zero one and so ends my report thank you very much I'm Dr Cricket mayor oh sorry oh assistant superintendent Dexter well um Tara Eberhart you might you might have maybe gonna say what I was

206gonna say about the budget well no actually oh I wasn't going to bring up that but we can um I forgot to say I was just going to ask a question about have we voted fees that we need to vote for people to operate for summer programs to pay their staff for preschool will we be doing that shortly yes okay I just it it came up in a in a different capacity for myself today okay and it certainly occurred to me that perhaps we needed to think about that ourselves and I forgot to say in my report I meant to say this but I was so focused on trying to get all the particulars of the Community Schools thing um in place I forgot to say that we presented the budget to the warrant committee

207on uh January 24th that evening um and um that's where we are right now have I have a question not for me but for someone on screen um have we been told who these School committees subcommittee is going to be from the Lord committee can we please share that uh with viewers thank you James is that oh superintendent Jetta is that okay if I foreign I do know Susan Haggerty Scott Johnson um I'm forgetting the other uh Mohammed Mohammed and the gentleman Steve he's new yeah thank you okay great baby did you have something else to add yeah I just want to say just for clarification for anybody watching that on the agenda it did say that we would be taking a vote on the budget that was because we were um told that we

208may need to take something off of our Capital request and roll it into the operating budget and I received word that that's not necessary at this point from the finance director um Karen praval she said as um that she believes we can leave it where it is in capital therefore we don't need to take another vote on that that was for the Chromebooks and that's also why arpa's listed because there was some confusion as to where it belonged in the school's budget request but she did tell me it she felt it was um in the appropriate place for this year anyways in capital but we could talk about where to put it next year right yeah so there's no hope fully yeah so there's no vote on on the on 6a that's why I had

209it struck because we didn't need to vote on it or even discuss it because it's just going to stay as it was when we originally presented it uh Dr Carol yeah can um maybe assistant superintendent Dexter or or anybody the meeting we have Friday morning um what is that can can can someone just remind me or explain what that actually is assistant superintendent Extra Care so it's my understanding from um select board I believe he's the chair of their sub Finance Mike zulis from discussions at last week's meeting that they just want an opportunity to ask questions about the school budget request that I asked if the expectation was that we would be doing some kind of slideshow presentation like we did to the Warren committee he preferred we don't do that that we just

210make ourselves available for questions and that's my understanding of what the purpose of that meeting is I would think that we could do something if school committee felt it was appropriate but um that was somewhat tone of um what the expectation was is this a meeting of the finance subcommittee and the finance subcommittee of the select board correct but it's posted I believe as a full school committee is it not it is so anyone can attend and it's bright and early at 7 A.M on Friday all right thank you very much yeah I believe garpa might be listed too but um I asked Charlene to just put that on because they had it on theirs just in case they had anything to ask the schools about the requests that we have in so far do

211we have members of the finance subcommittee who will be able to attend that meeting I will but I will attend I will be there thank you as always Dr Craig the budget maybe that'll be your bench next to mine and Sheila's all about the money um okay curriculum and instruction um advisory committee would you like have an update remember yes yes we had a meeting on January 13th with um member white um Dr Carroll assistant superintendent Sheehan as well as Amy Kaplan who is the elementary social studies director we had two topics essentially on the agenda the first being giving update on the restorative justice and anti-racist curriculum work um and any Associated professional development and one of the topics one of the sub topics was a status update on the anti-racism and sexual harassment

212reporting system which did go live soon after that meeting and essentially was described as a modification to the current bullying Reporting System but we added categories related categories that were shared from the anti-definition league and at that time the district was working on a communication plan to make sure that all of the populations that had the opportunity to respond were aware of the system's availability and we were also informed that there was a grade level review on what is being thought related to anti-hate and anti-racism and it's now being put into a report format so we can share that hopefully at the next school committee meeting or the first one in March and in terms of the anti-racist curriculum review as you know both the social studies and Elementary social studies Department as well the

213math department we're both conducting curriculum reviews and the social studies department is using inquire Ed as the rubric for evaluating the curriculum and the math department was using a tool that was developed by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and secondary education we were given an update on the professional development associated with restorative justice we were told that the principals and assistive principals would be completing the restorative justice training at Suffolk University by the summer and that some of the adjustment counselors and teachers have engaged in professional development on their own so independent of what the district sponsored so we're very pleased to know that there are more people that are engaging in this work and and then we entered into a discussion about the social studies curriculum review and as I mentioned Kim Kaplan who's

214the elementary social studies coordinator gave a very thorough overview of the process to date it the people participating was a composition of 11 teachers um representing all four elementary schools at various grade levels one Elementary School principal um one Elementary School assistant principal as well as the ELA curriculum coordinator right now the district is piling three different curriculums for evaluation and they're using the name right um inquire ad rubric which um thanks to Dr Carroll she was able to report is a very um effective and robust review tool and the three curriculums that are being evaluated include Pearson and McGraw-Hill and their curriculums are aligned with the new Massachusetts Bessie standards for social studies and those providers were all present as the standards are being Rewritten so a lot of the work aligns with what

215Desi expects but through the review process it's it's a very um organized effort to get both feedback on common um like they're piloting several lessons from all three providers so that the teachers can debrief together and make an assessment comparing Apples to Apples whether or not they believe that the curriculum that's being offered by these three vendors meet and or exceed our expectations and [Music] that's that's but I want to thank everyone who participated in the meeting it's been very helpful to have these conversations because we can have more detailed information and just thanks to everybody does anyone have any questions about what I share Dr cricket you're on mute I am um I'm just curious about the restorative justice program so you said that the training would be basically completed by the summer is

216the hope to have a fully fleshed out program in place for fall or it's a really good question so the training that that was shared was just read the principals and assistant principles I will ask assistant superintendent Sheehan to answer that question thank you so I think that um the uh the goal is for us to continue to train the leadership team members so we have started with the principles and then we will move on to other members of our leadership team and that would be our our next steps for training okay I will just add that we uh partnered with uh the vector solution and they have in the interim they have the various models uh modules on diversity equity and inclusion and supports for our faculty and staff that we are still exploring

217and engaging and hopefully we can get that started so in addition to the restorative justice we're trying to also do the uh other trainings through modules in the interim uh potentially with but back to Solutions thank you superintendent chip teachers will be able to access professional development on diversity equity and inclusion on their own so this this is this is online PD and we're very excited about about this this program um thank you um superintendent and remember Ross Denny and the curriculum advisory committee I just have a quick question so to Dr prickett's point it probably would be um it would probably be helpful to sort of outline what what the rollout of the of the program and its implementation with students is going to look like next year and and so I'd like to

218have sort of that kind of plan as you work through the different trainings for educators but then really what is it going to look like in in real time Hands-On learning with students and then the other thing I just wanted to say that I have received some emails and an inquiries from the community about anti-Semitism and how that is being addressed in the reviews of curriculums and and elevated in conversations as we think about a social studies review curriculum so um just something to really think about given the times that we live in and the ongoing um anti-semitic um you know things that people are experiencing how are we talking about that what is that going to look like in our review of the curriculum in addition to the other things that we've been addressing

219so I don't know I haven't looked at the standards recently but maybe that's something we can share or um have maybe have building levels even with principals having conversations with families as we think about the social studies review and the curriculum that's going to be rolled out yeah I can add that to the next meeting agenda Kim Kaplan as I mentioned is using in fire red which Dr Carol had mentioned is considered very high quality rubric and I can't and I can't imagine it would not include that but until we asked we actually don't know so very good question yeah I think you're just being more like intentional in thinking about how we incorporate those conversations into the ongoing education for students around anti-seminism foreign sorry I was just going to add on that point

220um that it connects also into the 6 through 12 social studies and history curriculum review which hasn't gotten underway yet as far as I know um but also I think in with uh Dei work as well um that seemed to be what you were saying but um yeah I I agree that that's important yeah I just think that sometimes that specific intentionality of the um the um the wording and the teaching of it I just think um be more for more um conscious of that as you talk about those things great thank you so much I'm very excited for this work um I look forward to hearing more yes um thank you I did want to let you know that the um the uh grades 6 through 12 curriculum review has begun and we can

221provide an update on that um at a future meeting or um we can also put that on the agenda um member Ross Denny for our next curriculum and instruction meeting they have begun some of the work on that great thank you thank you so much for all your work on that um we're lucky to have you here assistant superintendent and she and to help us this year as we do this thank you very much it's wonderful to be here yeah thank you so much um all right health and wellness remember white okay we met last Friday and the um the goal of last Friday's meeting was to review [Music] um all of our all of our committee had broken into subgroups to review certain um categories for a wellness um assessment that we are doing

222um next month we are meeting with adessi um member who's a who's a consultant and um Jackie had gotten a um grant for her to come and help us review you know our Straits and areas that we need to improve around our um Wellness um in school some of the categories include nutrition education in the district standards for Child Nutrition programs and School meals um standards for physical education and physical activity wellness and promotion and marketing so those are all the categories that we met in and discussed everyone had to sort of do a self-evaluation so um the Desi consultant is coming to our next meeting which is February 18th I believe and she's going to help us look at where we are and we will be making hopefully um I'm going to invite Jackie

223to come to a meeting possibly in March a school committee meeting just to take a look at um you know what areas we need to improve what areas we're doing well in one of the interesting thing is some of the categories that we had been doing really well in previously have been majorly impacted by the pandemic so to give you an example one of the things that we um they had been wanting to work on and had improved greatly was high school participation in The Breakfast program and because they had breakfast breakfast after the Bell and the kids could grab a bag and go into their classroom when there was morning announcements and have some something to eat we they haven't been able to do that since covid so that um that participation has dropped

224off but now that kids can eat in the cafeteria it's getting a little bit better but it still needs you know to um look at different ways to improve it so we're looking forward to having her come and um help us see what we're where we need to make some improvements and we expect that there'll be areas where we need to improve um other issues that were discussed um was that the Council on the Health Board gave an update on covid and that our numbers in Milton were decreasing which is good news and then the Milton Coalition um spoke about um they provided some money um for the Milton public schools to do an evaluation of our um how Health curriculum this year and one of the things that um the director of the Milton

225Coalition would like to include is to think about working to develop a sex education curriculum into our health curriculum and Kim Coughlin who is the director of nurses is working with the Milton coalition to look at the entire Health curriculum for the Milton Public Schools so our next meeting is going to be February 18th when the consultant will be joining us that's it thank you member white um I was hoping that Jackie wasn't listening one principal kahoe was talking about the yodels and the I had the same thought I said oh should kill us that was like what I was thinking so maybe she wasn't listening I don't know thank you a policy subcommittee Dr Carol yoodles or I'll I'll be as concise as possible we're in the last thing before the minutes um we

226met as a policy subcommittee on January 24th uh we had three topics on our agenda um the first thing has already been discussed a bit tonight that was our face covering policy uh which as everyone knows we've been revisiting at least every other month um we have last Revisited it in November so um what we discussed at the meeting was uh looking ahead understanding that Desi's um Statewide Mass mandate currently is until February 28th has already been discussed tonight and the development of superintendent jet applying for the waivers for Milton high school and um in the Pierce Middle School um has happened since since that meeting took place so I know that those are things we'll be able to discuss in you know over the coming weeks as we see how things continue to unfold

227um so that that was more or less the discussion on face coverings that um we were optimistic thankful that the numbers are moving in the right direction and looking to pick that conversation back up um as we understood more where Desi was going to be going um as we get closer to the current exploration of the Mandate so um that was that was kind of where that got left off I I assume at this point in time that we next meet as a um as a subcommittee on on February 28th and so um I I know that we will surely talk about this at that meeting um we also had discussed the um opportunity of um nurse Coughlin having requested the vaccine clinic so I'm really excited to hear the update that that's now been

228scheduled that's terrific news um that was what we discussed around the face covering policy the the thing we spent the most time discussing was our calendar policy I see um this is a policy that does relate to the academic calendar document that we've been discussing um and that we had approved the tentative draft for it our last full school committee meeting the calendar policy itself we um noted you know is a policy dating back to 1975 that was last reviewed with minor revisions 15 years ago so it's good to be returning to this policy and bringing the lens of equity and inclusion and the diversity of our community to the conversation so we had a wonderful opportunity to have further discussion with Dr Mona abozaina The Scholar Community member and parent um who shared perspectives

229at citizen speak not long ago and who's been in contact with a member Rosemary to share perspectives um from some of our Milton Muslim neighbors and it was a great discussion that went well beyond um the inclusion of Muslim holidays on on the calendar um and we discussed things like um as Dr abuzana brought up the politics of the day off and we kind of agreed that these are larger conversations that we will have as a school committee and as a community um in terms of which cultural and religious holidays do we celebrate with a day off versus which ones do we just acknowledge and Honor on our calendar um and in the meanwhile uh have a robust policy in place that mirrors the practices that we know from superintendent Jet and other members of

230our leadership team we've had long-standing practices in Milton Public Schools about accommodating students um to make sure that if they're celebrating a cultural or religious holiday that's not a day off from school that they are not penalized for that that it doesn't compromise their ability to participate academically or um in important extracurricular opportunities the issue is that our policy just has not actually guaranteed that protection for students so that's our work ahead is to make sure that our policy actually is updated to reflect the inclusive practices that have been in place and to kind of push us to um you know think about how we want our policy to be we have uh Dr albosena shared Resources with us from Desi to support us in thinking about language and wording we know that there are

231many other local districts that have taken steps to revise their calendar policies that we can look at as examples and our next step for that is that at the February meeting we'll be considering a red line um draft revision of of our calendar policy that reflects this discussion that I just tried to summarize for you um but it was I think a rich discussion and we um we do recognize the need to update our policy and then to also embark on this kind of perhaps longer term um discussion with Community input as we consider you know how we kind of um honor and celebrate the cultural and religious holidays that are important to our community going forward um so that was the um the calendar policy conversation um which we will be revisiting next month

232and then the final update is that once again we did have the masc recommended revisions to our fiscal policies section D um so the Massachusetts Association of school committees periodically shares recommendations for updates or revisions to policies and they do that kind of section by section and they have given us this very lengthy series of updates recommended to our fiscal policies and that's um section we agreed we recognize that it's budget season and that we do need to have this discussion with super assistant superintendent Dexter kind of at the table to get your input on um you know what makes sense for us to adopt of the masc recommended changes um and we agreed that uh we would and I need to follow up with you on this so I will do that um assistant

233superintendo Dexter that we would just sort of learn when you might have availability to participate in that discussion um and we recognize that it is something we need to attend to this year but it's not Ultra urgent and budget season happening right now is the top priority um and so this is something that we will bring back to the full school committee but probably not imminently um but it remains on our plate any questions or remember Rosemary or Dr Craighead things you want to add it sounds like you had a great meeting in 1975 that's a long time ago um along with the 15 years so um yeah yeah I mean it was very timely I had heard a report um another school committee made the news that they were having a conversation about revising

234their calendar I can't remember what um District it was in but I thought oh that's interesting that other districts are um are having those same conversations so thank you for all your hard work on that um to the policy subcommittee and we look forward to the next updates at the next meeting we're cycling down to our last agenda items um under the chairs report I had an update I sent you all last night a folder that has information in it about a mid-cycle review for the district um that that conversation warrants more than a few minutes at 10 15 on the evening of um February 2nd so if you would all just have an opportunity to look that all over and Dr Carol sent me a question tonight that was really helpful um and then

235I can address those um we will we will discuss this at our next meeting one thing that I would like to say is that we'd have these with the the review happens at school Community meetings in public open means you can email me with questions or comments or thoughts you want to have or superintendent chat or whatever but um not we're not having any conversations um with each other separate from ones that we would have at a meeting um just so you're aware just because you know emails and stuff try really hard to be conscious of that sort of so hard in this world that we live in that's how I communicate at work so much um but she's please look that all over and um we will discuss that at our next meeting all

236right approval of minutes from the January 5th and January 19th it's called Kimani meetings I believe you all receive those in the packet so um I will make a motion to approve the minutes of January 5th 2022. second second um Dr Carol do you have some questions I'm sorry I have a minor change to propose thank you but please I love that when you do that thank you sorry so I love it on um it I was I was just talking about Dr Abu zaina and um I know that um it's on page nine of the January 5th minutes um I think there was just a question of the spelling of her name yep so I was just gonna you know for the record have her correct spelling of her name that'd be great her

237last name uh um capital a b o hyphen capital z e n a wonderful I'll make sure that change gets made should I say my one for the next minutes yet or not yet yeah we can approve so we can approve these minutes with the change of spelling and then we'll do the next one is that okay does that make sense okay all right so the motion on the table is to prove the minutes of January 5th 2022 do I have a second with the exchange um to the correct spelling this name and we'll make sure that happens um was it spelled correctly everywhere else was it just the one spot like because it's in the next meeting minutes right nope okay and I'm I'm referring to in that meeting it was it was her

238citizen speak right um I didn't see her named in the next month okay all right this would be a roll call vote then um member Rosemary yes all right um Dr Carol yes sorry yes okay remember Russ Denny yes uh member white yes and um Dr Craighead yeah and Margaret at Bart yes okay wonderful all right I'll make a motion to approve the minutes of January 19 2022. second um Corrections comments deletions yes remember Rosemary um a couple of couple of Corrections um under strategic planning uh there was mention um that it will be a robust plan and um the new plan and it should have been but the current plan is a robust plan um and it's it it's just the wording of that we can we can maybe we will all right so

239maybe that's a little bit more of a correction okay and then there's another another one where I'm talking about the people who are leading the strategic planning work and it just had um susma Sally but I wanted to add the Karen McDavid was also interested in that okay so maybe we'll maybe we'll hold off on improving that and do it the next time if we have to make some actual corrections to what said there is that what you're saying about the the current plan versus yeah and it's a simple change so a simple change okay are you comfortable with making those suggestions and approving them yeah okay anyone else yes Dr Carol um on page nine um just a quick correction so I had um questioned the possibility of spreading out this is the cost

240of the new yes curriculum spreading out the one-time cost of the new curriculum over more than the one fiscal year so basically over two fiscal years or more um but and because uh then the answer was that yes stretching it out would lead to a delay okay so the correction is just more than one more than one fiscal year yeah okay all right thank you all right thank you all right so the motion on the table is to prove the Menace I think it was seconded yes with the corrections on the um warding around the Strategic plan who's leading the Strategic plan and then spreading out the course costs for more than one fiscal year all right this will be a real Culvert vote number Ross Denny yes um Dr Cricket yes Dr Carol yes

241number white yes member Rosemary yes member yes six zero okay thank you all very much okay at our next meeting which will be on February 16th we do have the Strategic plan coming we also have the Kali Cod people coming because we couldn't reschedule that so we can figure that out are we having a prioritized budget vote not until we're told to okay okay um we've already voted I mean when we voted the budget the top 10 priority okay yeah I just it's on here so I don't know if that was just a long time ago thing um what other committees would we'd like to have an update from this will be the same we talked about getting an update on how the reporting system who is reviewing the reporting system data and how it

242will be um you are applied or how will they be addressing whatever is reported wonderful okay anything else let me share all right all right this was a very busy meeting thank you all for hanging in there I appreciate it I mean we could add more meetings because these good memes go really long I'm sorry no we'll fire you you fired I think the long meetings are required I just don't need four of them a month I know you all do a lot of subcommittee work and though and I just I know that it's a lot so I really really appreciate it's really important work and I think tonight's meeting sort of reflects the importance of the conversation and the depth of the conversations that we have even though they take a long time and

243I really appreciate that from everybody I really really do so this is motion on the table to adjourn they will be seconded by Dr Cricket this will be a road call vote that's Cricket yes remember Ross Denny yes remember white yes remember Rosemary yes Dr Carol yes and Margaret Eberhart yes thank you all so so much for your work tonight really well done meeting and everybody happy everything see you soon stay well everyone