Milton School Committee - January 19th, 2022

001words that start with e one all right good evening welcome everyone to the Milton school committee meeting of January 19 2022. it's great to see you all this evening um our first item of business is to approve the agenda are there any addition subtractions or changes I know we want one change yes member Rosemary yeah I just um would like to ask to have a a brief update from the strategic planning committee prior to the budget discussion okay so we're going to move six to five and five to six does that make sense any other changes or additions well all right so I may have a motion to approve the agenda so moved all right all right second all right so I'm actually going to do a roll calls because occurred to me like if

002you can't see people voting you need to hear them I was thinking about this the other day so um Dr cricket yes all right um Dr Carol yes member Ross Denny yes member at Rosemary yes member white yes remember Eberhart yes wonderful all right well why might as well get started because we have a very busy agenda sorry guys um we're gonna start with the superintendent's report welcome superintendent Jet and thank you and good evening to all um uh first item on the agenda is going to be the presentation by The Glover site Council I would turn it over to principal uh Karen mcdavit to introduce her team and then they will go through their site Council presentation yes thank you superintendent Jett and thank you to the school committee and to anybody watching thank

003you for giving us this opportunity to uh share a little bit about what is so wonderful about Glover and what is wonderful about Glover is what is wonderful about the Milton Public Schools um we're one of six and uh together we are an amazing School District so I'm gonna share my screen hopefully and um I'm thrilled to have um members of my site council with me um if one of them Miss Craven can you just uh unmute and tell me if I'm good here you are good we can see it okay so we are here and we're so excited to share with you um some data highlights and some some really good work that we are doing at Glover school um and I am joined tonight by some members of our site Council um Melissa

004Craven our assistant principal and curriculum coordinator Rachel Spitz grade four teacher Lauren vanacore who started the year as our second grade teacher and is now our early literacy and learning coach she will be on later to introduce herself and tell you a little bit about her new role as part of the grant that Susan Maselli um obtained for the district so that's really exciting um and I'm also joined by two amazing and supportive family members Kevin Fleming who is a veteran site council member he's been with me for a long time and Ali Petrie who joined us this year so those are our friends who are here Dr dakak and Kelly Sia and Nicole Grant Hill took a buy this year um just in the interest of moving us along so that I know you

005have a jam-packed agenda um I know you all like to see how we are in terms of our student population you will see the cot abbreviation that stands for cotat um Glover school does house both the kotot program and the step program co-taught is um evolving into more of a um a program that supports students with specific learning disabilities in the area of reading and dyslexia and language-based learning disabilities so that's been really exciting to see that Evolution and our special Educators have been trained and are ready to support our students Rachel who is here tonight is a co-taught general educator so if you have any questions about that you're welcome to ask her um she's amazing but as you can see our population is um big uh we for the first time in my

006career here in Milton have strands that are bigger than we've ever had we're at 630 students which is the most we've ever had here at Glover and as you can see we have five kindergartens five seconds Five Thirds and five-fourths and if you'll let me say just I know I'm preaching to the choir here but um that additional classroom that we assumed this year made uh it impossible for us to have a music classroom so if you look at Glover school any space that is big enough for a classroom is a classroom with the exception of the library and the gymnasium and the cafeteria everything else is a space that would not be big enough for a classroom so again we all know we are we are busting at the seams um but we are

007we are growing and we love all of our friends but um we're running out of space as as you all know um so our our school Improvement plan goals are um you know really based on our belief that with a safe and supportive learning environment with diversity equity and inclusion at the Forefront we can maximize our students um academic achievement so we sort of see the pink and the yellow as the uh Foundation upon which we can build the blue uh without a safe and supportive learning environment and without an environment that makes sure that every student and every family member and every staff member feels safe and valued and heard and supported and included we can't maximize every student's academic potential so Glover school has always operated since since I've been there on this

008premise that we need to create a culture and a climate in an environment where every student feels that they are able to succeed in order to maximize their talents so we're going to start with the academic achievement portion and Miss Craven has some amazing data to share with you it's really exciting data and I think that overall as a district we've really moved in a very data driven Direction I'm hearing more than I've ever heard about a teacher sitting down with Lexia and I ready data and really breaking down the domains that the students are struggling with and thinking about interventions targeted interventions and supports so we're very fortunate to have evolved over the last few years when I got here a long time ago it was uh fountas and Pennell and that was it

009that's all we had right and everybody talked about the FNP and we knew what letter everybody was we have so much more information now we know so much more about our kids um because of the really uh personalized learning uh platforms and adaptive assessments and things that we have so we'll start with academic achievement and Melissa will share a little bit about the things that we're really proud of at Glover we will then go into just briefly um my wheelhouse which is the uh the social emotional Behavioral Health making sure every child is learning in a safe and supportive environment and our efforts in that area and then we will touch upon our third goal which is to um to promote and faster an environment that is affirming and celebratory of diversity equity and inclusion

010so with that I'm going to turn it over to miss Craven who is going to um begin talking about our academic achievement thank you for that introduction and I also wanted to thank school committee and superintendent Judd and assistant superintendent um she and and Dexter for having us um so as Karen said I'm going to be focusing on goal one which is our academic achievement goal um and I'm going to talk us through how we use some of our Lexia and I ready data to drive our instruction and to remediate some of the um tier three supports that might be necessary for some of our students so here is just a quick little glimpse of the curricula that we use in the Milton Public Schools we have reach for reading which we are on year

011five of implementing um we have Everyday Math but we are currently in a curriculum review for math um I am on the grade 5 team so it's been really great um to work across the district by grade levels um led by Brian selig our math director to look and kind of investigate different math curriculums um the same is happening with our social studies curriculum led by Kim Kaplan um and then we continue to use Foss and gaffy in our French immersion program next slide please thank you all right so I am going to quickly go over our um MCAS data from last year but I do think it's important to keep in mind that the data comparing the data from last year to previous years um most recently 2019 um is a little bit trickier

012than in years past because there's many variables that can come into play um there was only one day of MCAS implementation for both Ela and math um as well as it just coming off of a pandemic year and um with a hybrid model so we will go through our MCAS data but it is a little tricky to kind of compare from years past so looking at our district-wide Ela MCAS data the yellow circles are Glover's data um and you'll see those green lines with the number above it that's the Milton Public Schools meeting or exceeding line um the red bars are Milton Public Schools meeting exceeding for each school as well as a district compared to the Statewide meeting and exceeding so again although for example our grade four in our grade five we are

013above the um meeting in exceeding line from 2019 we are looking at our grade three which are our current grade four students and to see how we can help remediate some of those skills um using data to focus in on individual need here we can see that our car our current fourth graders were actually exactly um at the same level for meeting exceeding in 2019 our current fifth graders um we're right at the meeting exceeding line in our current sixth graders we're just below so again using our I already data which we'll get more into because it's our current data that actually is so current that some grades are still actually taking it right now on the window for iready and Lexia for our winter implementation is happening currently we have a lot of great

014data but there are a couple of areas where we'll talk through um we're not quite done yet but it is our most current up-to-date data um here is our uh grade five which is our current um sixth graders who are at peers right now they're science MCAS scores um and across the district they did pretty great um for their science MCAS which was really um wonderful to see next please um and then this is a little um a visual to compare from previous years so you'll see we have our 2017-2018-2019 data as well as our 2021 so there is less um green and blue area which is our meeting and exceeding um compared to 2018 2019 um but again keeping in mind those different variables from years past all right so getting into our iready

015data which is our individualized um platform that we use for math it's a really great online tool um that gives specific skills for each individual student so every kid their profile on i-Ready is very different it depends on how they place in their um during while they complete the different um sorry the fall and winter and spring assessments and then it um gives us really great data to then use to remediate specific skills next slide please so here is a quick overall um of our fall and winter data so just to keep in mind for our winter data um kindergarten uh just completed their fall placement data beginning of December and they'll take it again in the beginning of March end of February so we have our fall kindergarten data but they will not complete

016their winter data for another month or so um and then for just today as of today we have our first second third and fifth grade winter data complete we do not have our fourth grade data complete however so just keeping that in mind as we do go through um but as an overall you'll see that in the fall we had 40 of our students who placed either on grade level or above whereas right now we're seeing 61 of our students from in the winter who are either on or above grade level which is really tremendous world to see just within a few months um so keeping that in mind though again that we um this does not include kindergarten fourth grade for our winter um so this just gets a little bit more specific by

017domain so we have number and operations algebra and algebraic thinking measurement and data and geometry and again just keep being a good eye on those green bars because you'll see that in each domain we have um seen tremendous growth in each specific domain from the fall to the winter um here is a summary by grade level so we just kind of over on this side you'll see different percentages and the first one is either end of the year above grade level um the the second one in is on grade level the middle is um below grade level the second to last section is one grade level below and the last one is three or um three or more grade levels below so you'll see that in each grade grade one grade two grade three grade

018five again looking at the way that the green bar is increasing for our winter data so we are able to use this specific data to help um Drive instructions so that's both within individual classrooms for each individual student and we're also using this data to think district-wide for programmings like beyond the bell which is going to be a district-wide effort this year which will be super exciting too um talk more about as we have more details in the next few weeks our attention grade one data where you can see that we have completely eliminated any students who are more than one grade level below since the fall so we look at data like this and we see what is it that we're doing well and what is it that we need to continue to do

019but in addition to looking at that green we are also excited to watch that red section shrink as the Gap closes um do you want us to stop in and ask questions do you want us to keep going I see member Russ Denny has her hand up I don't want to I don't know what the format is oh sure that's fine you want to take some questions to live information so remember Ross any would you like to ask a question please I'd like to thank you so much for being so transparent about the data I have two questions for the students especially for example the first grade you mentioned where you've seen significant gains could you speak to some of the strategies you've employed and for the kids who are still struggling um what are

020what are you seeing like there is there a profile or a trend whether it's in what they're learning or their experience in school or anything that can help us give help us have an insight as to who is still um struggling so that those are great questions so to your for your first question um one really great um feature of iready is that once you get your student profile um it kind of breaks it down by specific skills so for example if a student was showing that they needed more um support in a certain area you could go back and assign them specific review content um targeted just for them so you can individualize their actual I ready um profile by using the data to then give them specific skills to practice um for any

021other trends that we're seeing we haven't really dug that deep and yet of maybe considering which students might have been in the full hybrid model which students might have been remote however as we think of some of the students who might need more tier three supports that's where would use this data to help with like beyond the bell programmings to then give that necessary support um so we will use this winter and fall data to just kind of see any Trends if we've noticed any I'll be working with the other three curriculum coordinators as well as the elementary level um curriculum coordinators in the next few weeks leading up to our view on the Bell program programming and really using our elementary level um coordinators Brian selig Cactus Roche um to help um drive that

022instruction and to see who needs those tier three supports and if I can just add on I think that this this data is so helpful because it allows teachers to have really informed conversations about each of their students and about each profile and what we're able to do that we hadn't been able to do previously is then take that information and take take the three kids who are struggling with this particular concept and and and I see teachers every day who are saying to me all right this week I am all over these three kids on this particular operation because I see that they're just not progressing in this area so our flexible grouping our differentiation is informed by data in ways that it never has been before because of this this this actually this

023platform and Lexia um which which are adaptive and Diagnostic and really you know um really effective in helping the teachers to easily access data and um and use it to inform so maybe we'll get into the Lexia data right Miss Craven that's good alrighty so just like I already um Lexia is another online platform for literacy that um individualizes um student profiles so we have our fall and winter data and um for the most part we have um almost all of our students have completed the winter data um there might be a few missing here and there but for the most part we're looking pretty good with our completion of our winter um Lexia data so on the left our first circle graph um you'll see that we have our um green light gray and

024dark gray um different areas and that just shows our reading success probability so that means that um what percent of students 70 or higher are right now slated to meet grade level benchmarks by the end of the year so for our fall data for we had 31 of our students who had an RSP of 70 or higher now looking over at our winter data the growth to see 48 um it was kind of neat to see how our 48 um of reading success probability was 30 or lower and then it kind of flipped to our winter data to see that that was 48 um of our students for Assembly Center higher so that's just a little glimpse of um just the whole school profile and again down at the bottom you can see that fall

025to winter um and and you can see those green bars in every grade um growing and our gray bars shrinking which is what we are looking for in um kindergarten terms so here is our school profile for our um grades catered to um again side by side fall the winter and these are our specific domains um so you'll see that in kindergarten they are tested on phonological awareness letter sounds vocab pairs whereas in first grade you'll they'll do word reading um vocab pairs in following directions and then the same for second grade they have word reading spelling vocab Pairs and following directions and again just focusing in on that growth those bars that are just keep keep on moving more to the right which is what we'd like to see this is our school profile

026three to five um we see our fall in our winter data um grades three to five they focus on word recognition vocab knowledge syntactic knowledge and reading comp and again we're seeing growth in all domains and I get I do have to highlight the fact that really this goes to show just how hard our Glover staff is working um they really hit the ground running from day one and this is not just it's the teachers in every staff in this building that really all together um work to see this growth thank you Miss Craven so so one thing that is new at Glover school and across the district is the addition of an early literacy and learning coach so we do have reading Specialists we're so fortunate to have reading specialist support um in our

027primary grades but what we have identified is that we need additional support specifically in preschool and kindergarten so I I I had to play nice in the sandbox and share my second grade teacher with the district but I'm a good sharer um and so miss vanacore who actually has been with me even prior to Milton right Lauren um is is an amazing educator and she has taken on the role of early literacy and learning coach and we thought this is a really good opportunity to highlight this new position and the work that she's doing to continue like like Miss Craven said to move to move those bars is a collective effort and it's all of us it's every single one of us on this call it's every educator it's every remember it's every student so

028Lauren would you like to share a little about your position sure thank you Karen I'm very excited to be taking on this new role in The District as Karen said I'm the early literacy and learning coach for preschool and kindergarten across the district um and my position was created as you might know as part of the action plan that Susan Maselli developed in response to the disproportionate number of children who identifies black or African-American who are being identified as communication disabled so I am now a extra layer of support that can be offered to some of our students in at Glover in kindergarten and I can work with students I provide support to the staff and also for families so one of the jobs that I've been doing is I gave students in kindergarten a

029phonological awareness screener that gave us some information about specific phonological awareness skills that students might have a little bit of a deficit in and we've looked at that data along with our Lexia data and that's helping us to identify students who are in the subgroup who might be at risk for um some struggles with reading acquisition and so we've been able to identify students and start putting interventions in place that give support with phonological awareness and also give some support with helping students to build their General content knowledge and vocabulary through um different literature and trying to be a little bit more culturally responsive with our instruction um so I'm really excited to be taking on this role and excited to see where it can go and the kind of supports we can be adding

030into place thank you Lauren so that's just one of one of the supports that we have district-wide that is really helping us move those bars um now into my wheelhouse I promise I won't go too deep but um this is this is where where I live um and this is what I live for um so I am a firm believer as is the rest of Glover school that that if we create a safe and supportive environment our students will succeed to their fullest potential because they know we believe in them every single one of them we know them they're always shocked that I know every kid's name and they like to quiz me on it but that's what's important to me right I may not I may not uh get all of my emails answered

031and I may not get all of my boxes checked every day but I'll see kids every day um and I'll work with kids and I'll laugh with kids and I'll play with kids and that's what that's what elementary school is all about in my opinion so we have this this Glover kid thing that we've had for a long time now it's sort of a part of their fiber of their being um every kid knows it every kid lives it every kid breathes it and when they forget they remind each other other of what it means to be a part of this community and how special and privileged we all are to be a part of it so it is rooted in our in our principles of PBIS um so we continue to work uh to

032improve student outcomes to reduce disciplinary action and um to to Really remind students and teach students of positive and expected behavior in addition oh and down there is a Glover class of the week that's a new addition this year um the kids love getting the Glover class of the week they get a big sign on their door and they take their picture and uh it's very special so um they earn their little duck feet on the pond because of course we have to have the ducks in there um but uh it's really special and I'm happy to to share more about it anytime but um in the interest of time just know that our PBIS work continues to thrive at Glover in addition we were fortunate to learn from adjustment and counselor extraordinaire Jenny beliveau

033who's also the co-chair of the SEL advisory team with me and we are at the beginning stages of really making sure all of our Educators across the district are using instructional practices that are rooted in trauma-informed care so we've engaged in some professional development and continue to engage in it and then also out of the SEL advisory team Glover as well as Tucker Cunningham and calicutt um and and actually all the schools participated in the intellispark SEL assessment platform and that's really exciting we're getting the data from that shortly I don't know how much you guys know about the intellispark work that we've been doing but the district has partnered because there really wasn't an elementary survey so we had done the middle and high last year and gotten great data and results but they

034didn't have an elementary version they wanted one we wanted one so we said how can we work together uh we brought on a researcher and gem we are we sort of are in a big pilot there's a couple other districts across the country who are also doing it we're getting that data in and we're calibrating that data to hopefully be able to help us understand we're looking at things like belonging decision making relationships self-management well-being connection engagement relationship skills self-awareness and social awareness of course all of the elementary kids think they're pretty perfect in a lot of those things so it's fun to look at that data and compare it with what we know about our kids and I think my favorite my favorite thing to do in Lauren and Rachel can attest to uh

035what sometimes becomes open mic night for Mrs mcdavitt um and it started in the pandemic and it started when we were in full School closure and I needed my Glover kids to know I was thinking about them and I was there with them every step of the way so I started recording daily morning announcements um and they were such a hit that when we went into the hybrid remote model um because so many of our kiddos were remote I wanted to make sure they felt connected every day to the school it's so important and now we're all back which is wonderful but the teachers seem to enjoy having this to kick off their day every day and actually Rachel touched on this briefly in terms of of the intentionality Behind These announcements so we are

036tied to um all sorts of things that are happening in the world around us to help teach our kids right now we're in advocacy month um in honor of Dr Martin Luther King we're talking about the power of advocacy and um we have a fourth grader coming on tomorrow to talk about the reason why we cut the strings on our masks before we throw them out did you know that I didn't know that but Blake taught us that so um she does the morning announcements and I do them and everybody does them and they're wonderful so um I just want to highlight that as part of our school culture it's it's become a big big deal um and then just for a little giggle because our kids are just so cute uh at the elementary

037level we do an anti-bullying week um and we really focus we have we have we have amazing lessons that uh adjustment counselor Brian Powers has created uh we all take the uh kids against bullying pledge uh we watch videos we do activities we do simulations but at the end of all of it we ask all of our kids do you have a trusted adult here at Glover school and we find out that every kid does and if they don't we know who they are and we find them someone because it is so critically important that every child feel that they have some champion and somebody who believes in them and somebody who they can talk to so I took directly at all misspellings and all just some highlights so I thought Mrs Mrs mablanc that's

038nurse LeBlanc um but I I just thought I should highlight some of the things we've got custodial staff we've got teachers we've got support staff we've got administrators we've got parents we've got guardians we've got siblings my favorite is mama papa and Mrs McDavid that's my personal favorite so just just thought we should share some of what we do to um to to celebrate our kids and to help them feel connected and engaged we have amazing student leaders who help us in all different ways we have school spirit team and a newspaper and our fourth and fifth graders were a read with our our first and second graders we have kids who stand every single day at the door and you would think that a fifth grader doesn't want to stand at the door with

039a a yellow smiley face hanging off his or her neck that says how can I help but the truth is they love doing it and they stand there every day and they greet every kid that comes in um and it's the little things that aren't so little after all so those are just some highlights of our work to build a culture and climate where every kid wants to skip across that bridge and walk into that school and be the best that they can be because we know that they can and we believe in them um and then just briefly to highlight our work on our third goal around diversity equity and inclusion um oh member member white sorry I just saw your hand go up that's okay um I'm gonna go back a little bit

040and just ask you for the reading specialist because we're certainly we're going to be looking at the budget or later on this evening how do you decide who gets to see the reading specialist and how they decide how a referral gets made or how their time is used that's a brilliant question I think a lot of it is rooted in the data but uh Melissa or Lauren do either of you want to chime in with an answer for member White sure so were you um thinking specifically of Lauren vandicore's early literacy um position um yes awesome so Lauren do you want to speak to that one then sure thing um so my position really targets students who identify as black graphic and American so that's kind of the high priority area that we look at

041and so when we take all of our data first we looked at students who identifies black or African-American and we looked at the data and said all right in the subgroup who based on the data and then also based on some teacher input from what they see all day from their students who might be at risk for um some learning struggles when it comes to reading acquisition and then those are the students that we decide to prioritize for intervention does that answer the question yes it does thank you all right so uh Miss Spitz fourth grade teacher do you want to highlight some of our our work in Dei I would love to um hi everyone my name is Rachel Spitz um I teach fourth grade um and this is our third goal which focuses

042on diversity equity and inclusion um so just to summarize um in alignment with District E I work Glover continues to focus on making sure that every student staff member and family member feels seen valued supported and heard um and one way we're doing that is by the diversity reads book club um we've been lucky to have a lot of authors come and speak to our students or Zoom with our students um the kids love it and the ones that I've attended um the students ask really great questions um and it Sparks a really good conversation about different cultures and students are able to see themselves represented in literature um a few authors we've had this year are um Kim Baker she's a bicultural latinx author and she met with students in grades three to five

043to talk about her novel The Water bears in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month in September um we also had Don Quigley she met with our students in grades three to five across the district um Don is a citizen of the turtle Mountain band of Ojibwe North Dakota and we met with her as part of indigenous people's month in October and she also presented to all K-2 students across the district and read aloud from her book Jojo mccoons and so you can see some of those pictures on the next slide um from when those authors presented to students and we're looking forward to potentially having Antoine Edie um the author of Nigel in the moon and Andrea Williams and she's the author of We Are Family written with LeBron James um and baseball's Leading Lady and

044that's a story about FM Manley the first woman in the Baseball Hall of Fame and also a Negro Leagues team owner and um like Karen was talking about um this is one of my favorite parts of the day is Story Time with Mrs mcdavitt um and just her morning announcements each day um she comes on and talks about different topics and books that support students understanding of different backgrounds cultures beliefs um she's made videos about Hispanic Heritage Month holidays celebrated around the world indigenous people's month and um this month to celebrate Martin Luther King she explained advocacy and ways that kids can become advocates for something they believe in and so we've had staff members students families they were all invited to share ways that they advocate in the community and students were challenged to

045become Advocates themselves and one really cool story that we heard um it's in the upper left corner that's paraprofessional Deb Mullins and she spoke about meeting Martin Luther King Jr's son um so she was in Atlanta and she was driving by the church where um Martin Luther King was a preacher at and she saw someone that looked a lot like him standing outside of the church so her and her mother got out and they approached him and it was Martin Luther King Jr's son so she shared that story with Glover and it was really cool and she talked about how Advocates are just people like you and I and they have a mission um and Martin Luther King Jr is a really good example of that an advocate who brought I've changed so that is

046what we're doing at Glover for our third goal um Karen I think we're turning it over to Ali and Kevin yeah so thank you so just to wrap up I hope you'll indulge us for a moment um Ali Petrie is an amazing Glover parent um and she was going to share a little bit about uh another thing we we really believe here at Glover which is that um gratitude is really important and gratitude spreads positivity and um we can have days where we're pretty mired in in what is not going right in all the things that need to be done better but ultimately at the end of the day um little moments where people share gratitude for the really great work that all of us do make a big difference so Ali did you want

047to share a little bit about about this last slide before we before you indulge us one more time sure yes and I think Karen it makes it was such a good point talking about how being a Glover kid is being safe responsible respectful and kind and the kids are so grateful for that environment that they have and so as parents we of course are so thankful to all the families that are exist in the Glover community um the administration school committee and of course the teachers and the students at the school so being grateful I think is something that is at the core of being a Glover kid thank you Allie so you don't have to read all these things right now but it means the world to us and I tell the families all

048the time and the teachers do too a little shout out every once in a while makes a big difference so before we sign off and we're happy to answer any questions um every once in a while a superintendent jet needs a little kid fix and he'll stop by Glover and we will walk around Glover and he comes out with the greatest stories and so many belly laughs um and so before we leave you um from a place of gratitude the school committee and central office administrators at the risk of sounding like I'm uh kissing up and not um you know we sometimes miss the opportunity to express our gratitude and so this is Glover's opportunity to share some joy and to show you how happy we are and how much we are learning um and

049I think it's important to remember why we do what we do and we do this because of our kids and so it will be quick I promise you but miss Craven has worked her magic and I just we want to leave you with a smile because a smile is what's so important to us every day at Glover school so we're just gonna share a little bit with you to end end our presentation [Music] oh my God I want love [Music] foreign [Applause] a little Glover love with all of you and um I hope that made you smile and I hope that reminds you of why we do what we do and why we are here night after night and remember Ross Denny you got to eat dinner tonight so thank you but I know there's

050many nights you don't get to eat dinner so it's our opportunity to to just share some love some Glover love and let you know that we're thriving and we're doing great and uh it's thanks to everybody so we're happy to answer any questions you guys might have and um number white did you have your hand up you had your hand on well I don't have a question but I have a uh a compliment and I'll tell you for a minute I forgot about covid and all the stress of the year and a half that we've been through and you know and it just looking at the kids faces and looking at all the hard work everyone's doing this makes you think you know I want to thank you all the staff of Glover for all

051all the work that you do and how lucky the kids are to be surrounded by all that you know caring and concerned adults in their lives so thank you so much thank you Betty and I was thinking about your reading specialist question and um I know Lauren mentioned specifically with her position but with all of our positions I think that's why we started with the data um I wanted to add in that you know all of our work that we do with all of our students is grounded in what we find and what we see in the data and the needs that come out um so I had been thinking more about your questions so thank you Betty for those kind words remember rosteni um similar to to member white I've been a big fan

052of Terence for many years because I saw the change in the culture at Glover that took place after she joined the community whether it was amongst the faculty or the students you've done an amazing job inspiring your teachers to do great work I especially want to thank you for your focus on being reflective on the data that you have and your partnership with Sue Maselli because I know from my experience with Lauren she never taught my kids but I remember her from the Glover site Council and what an amazing teacher she was so for you to um give her the opportunity to work district-wide to help and support more students means a lot because it shows that the district is growing in a positive way that reflects Equity um just the simple fact that Lauren

053is capable of supporting the students that need it most to address our needs around disproportionality means that we're just being more thoughtful about the work we do and that is the type of of staff that we're very fortunate to have here that I think for for those who don't work in education you don't realize that you know with any profession you have your top five and top 10 people that just do an amazing job and Milton has a disproportionate number of those folks and I would count Karen and Lauren on that list and I thank you for what you do and I look forward to um hearing at the end of the school year before we see the MCAS in the fall the types of games and and what you've learned from the data because

054what I'm hoping is going to happen um centrally is that what has been working will be disseminated I think um actually it was Janet chin who shared with me that you know all of our teachers are now using iready and Lexia to reflect on student work and the more conversations that teachers have together to learn from one another about how to support students are struggling we will see gaps narrow for every group but in every subgroup so thank you for what you've done and have a wonderful rest your school year in spite of cobit um member I'm Rosemary yes thank you thank you thank you for for this wonderful presentation and for all the the wonderful work that the whole Glover school team is doing with our kids and um it's been quite a couple

055of years um that we've all been through um and the fall data to see where kids were when they came back full time and to see the huge gains that we've made in in the short time that they've been there between fall and winter is really dramatic and and it's so encouraging that that we we can meet the goals that we're setting and um you're showing that and and the personalized learning that's happening um that's um with the help of the wonderful teachers and the um Lexi and I ready programs that are providing all kinds of information about our students is just uh is is coming together it feels like it's all coming together at just the right time that the kids really need you and um so thank you thank you so much um

056and and thank you for sharing Lauren and we I I also look forward to seeing where we are at the end of the year and um after after having everyone back together and and um thank you Dr Craig what's up [Music] um you wouldn't think I'd still be doing that um I want to Echo a little bit of what member Ross Denny said and a little bit of what member Rose Marin said um first of all karen um uh I have been affiliated with Glover since before you got there and um the leadership there before you you arrived was uh to put it nicely inconsistent and the change that you brought um you know I was at your um interview and the energy you brought was tremendous I felt almost Blown Away by it um

057you were so energetic that night and um you've really proven um to be an amazingly um thoughtful um force uh for Change and compassion and just all good things at Glover and it's in such good hands and I wanted I've said things like this to you before but I wanted to make sure that I said it again publicly because my time on the school committee is nearly at an end so um uh and I believe what you said which is we all need to hear um from other people sometimes the good that we're doing you clearly also have an amazing team um working with you here and even though I've never had the pleasure of uh working with any of these individuals um it's clear in the results um that they're doing a great job

058uh like member Rose Marin I'm encouraged really encouraged by the um growth that you've been a that your teachers your staff the administration have been able to make um in a very short period of time I will also say though as chair of finance and I'll get a chance to say this a little later in the meeting I'm always looking at where we we need um help and we clearly still do right those losses are completely made up we're not even back to where we were in 2019 and so it's amazing that Ms vanacore is doing the work she's doing but she's one person for across is it across four schools Lauren okay so across four schools that's not enough to make up for the kinds of um uh losses and the kinds of remediation

059the kind of interventions that we need um and so um I guess I want I want to say this is great and I hope we have more of it and that we're able to see more of it because we get you and all the schools more help in those areas so I miss the Ducks I miss Turner Pond I miss you Miss mcdavitt and um uh godspeed you're doing great Dr Carol thank you um thank you all so much for an excellent presentation um I just wanted to highlight a couple of things that do connect to other comments but that really stood out to me um in terms of how what I learned from your presentation sort of connections I make to the bigger picture of things we're talking about as a district and the

060first thing was around your three goals and the way that you presented them so I know you talked about these as three distinct goals a safe and supportive learning environment the Dei and then number one academic achievement I really appreciated even more than like the presentation of those as three different goals the way you Mrs mcdavitt talked about that as like the SEL piece and the Dei piece are the foundation for the academic achievement piece and like without focusing on those um so so important elements like we will not achieve the academic achievement um and that is a mindset shift that I feel like is underway in Milton in our broader community and sort of our understanding that we're not compromising rigor by investing in safe and supportive learning environments in making Equitable inclusive spaces

061for our diverse learners but these pieces are all intertwined and that um I was so pleased to see you showcase that at your school level because that is the conversation we need to have as a district and we're having it um but you know there's so much more work for us to do to really integrate those pieces and I think you know many of us see that as really the Mandate for the next assistant superintendent of curriculum to be the person who can um kind of help us synthesize that work and um it just felt clear the way that was presented the other piece I really wanted to appreciate is how you combined your data which you presented in a very accessible way um with detail but it still felt very easy to follow um

062you combined that with the joy piece and again as a district this is really important it's not like either or either we're data driven or we are joyful as a community like and in fact what I appreciated was how you so palpably are taking joy in the data like in your progress um and I really look forward to the time when we as a community can take joy in our data we had a district-wide data presentation before winter break that was not not very joyful I mean it was for me personally the opposite of Joyful okay um I I believe that we can come to a place as a district where we celebrate our progress and our data as a district um and so thank you for modeling that that's where we are trying to

063go and it's possible and it's already happening um and and that was I think really um really great and then finally connected to that as you shared about um I ready and Lexia like those were Investments that we chose to make as a community and this comes back to what you were saying Dr Craighead like those platforms are not inexpensive um obviously though they've been worth that investment uh because as you articulated they are now allowing us to have such a richer understanding of our students where they are what their needs are so that teachers can respond in real time which is never possible to do before so I just want to make sure we're all recognizing that it like but for the investments in those platforms um we wouldn't have that progress um and

064we are as you've said Dr Craig getting ready to propose next year's budget we're talking about investing in different ways and new resources and different tools um but it's you know hoping for similar results in terms of impact um and so those were just some of the things that jumped out at me but really thank you very much for um starting off our I'm sure lengthy evening uh with such a exciting presentation you're right I I thank my and I thank my um very um eloquent thoughtful um colleagues on the school committee because the only thing I can think about is like as I watch the presentation is that um for me it's that connection over time to learning for children and families and I think for myself when I watch the joy and I

065you know sometimes we hear from families who desperately want things to be the way they were you know before the pandemic started and when I have presentation when we have presentations from Psych councils we see that there's still lots of Joy um in the learning for students um and also that I'm hopeful for families that the the things they thought of before will come back again and for me I think about what you said on Mrs mcdavitt that you know all the kids and like Dr Craighead I was involved in in some of the interview processes when you were applying for Glover and I remember saying to then superintendent womanly well look um she'll go she'll know every kid and all their names and she'll go home to the parents and the kids will say

066the principal knows me and that will make everybody happy um and it's true right that piece where you invest in a human and you have a trusted adult in school you can you can't measure that truly in data but the long-term impact of that is measurable over time and that you had the lantern parade in there and and and ended with that piece um um just really touched my heart that's a thread for me when I think about lovers so thank you to all of you for your hard work and your dedication and your commitment to children and dealing with the pandemic and bringing joy every day to your work because it's that's what lingers for children long after they're no longer part of the Glover School thank you very much for for these amazing

067comments and um Dr Carol I appreciate your your thinking around my thinking uh about the foundation upon which academic achievement and success is built and I think Ada may be previewing later today I saw her smiling but um Susan macelli and I partnered together um with with other amazing leaders across the district to sort of rethink uh and reimagine the district-wide Strategic plan and I imagine you might see some similarities between what I just presented and what you will hear from Ada um because I'm not alone in the belief and understanding that we have to build the environments that are right and and the and the the situations that are um that allow our kids all of our kids to succeed beyond their fullest potential so um when you hear a little bit about the

068Strategic plan you might have some Deja and that might be because I had a little I had a little hand in it thank you guys for giving us this opportunity and um I'm glad we made you smile that's that that was our goal tonight so thank you thank you to all the parents and thank you everyone for coming tonight foreign next next on the agenda or excuse me are there any last minute questions or anything for Cameron McDavid or a team so I want to thank all of them for coming um before we get to the uh Milton High School uh program of studies because it is moving pretty uh we're moving a little later did we anticipate that I want to give the opportunity for members of this uh steering committee uh I will

069introduce Meg Matthews and Meg if you would take the lead uh in terms of uh introducing the folks that are with you this evening and uh I'll turn it over to you and we can do the program of studies following this presentation thank you superintendent Jeff hi Meg hey hi everyone I'm Meg Matthews um I am thank you superintendent jet um hello everyone I'm I'm Meg Matthews and along with Shelly Sturdivant and Monique de Barros we are here tonight as representatives from the the Milton Public Schools Equity steering committee um that has been meeting since um the summer of 2021. we are members of the family and Community engagement subcommittee um and we want to talk a little bit about a survey that's going to be going out soon um and uh to to gain

070some Community buy-in to some of the efforts that we've been taking um and want to move forward so I'm going to let Shelly take it from here we do have a PowerPoint to kind of help um guide our conversation and um Shelley's gonna delete off with that um do we have somebody who's going to be I know we is the power do we have somebody who's going to be presenting that our PowerPoint we had sent it to Ms Roche if you want me to share it I'll share it um okay hold on one second give me a second so it might not look the same when I share it just to let you guys know uh it may be smaller and you guys let me know if you can see my screen yep uh okay

071all right all right just as I'm sorry just as Meg said um on behalf of the all members of the steering committee we just want to thank the school committee for inviting us um to present to you today again my name is Shelly Sturdivant my spouse and I have 14 year old twins um our children attended glubber they attended since the first grade when we moved to Milton my son attended Pierce and he's now a ninth grader at Milton high and his twin sister has attended uh an out of districts Western education School since the sixth grade in fact she was a product of the Glover coach classrooms and again we are here today to introduce ourselves to the school committee and the Milton Community our presentation will provide a short background as to the

072committee's work since being formed in July of 2021 and our primary focus on the steering committee's definition of equity as you know a major finding and recommendation from the quality review was that the district developed the common understanding and definition of equity if we could go on to slide two sorry it's not letting me do that hold on one second give me a second let me just stop sharing you can go ahead and talk and then what I'll do is uh if you have a copy of this slide in front of you it might allow you to do it I just can't right now I don't know why I can't do both get over here and see if I can do it right there you go there we go all right and um you know

073who are we um the steering committee is a group of volunteers and we currently have eight members we have two uh we have three teachers four parents or caregivers and we have one high school student with the resignation of the director of equity Equity Equity we are now led by superintendent Jen until that position is billed we're looking to add um actually add a few more members especially middle and high school students having their input having the input of students has really been and continues to be critical to our work and could you go on to slide three and just a brief um history of how we got started the steering committee um I'm sorry the brief history it has been charged with guiding the development and implib implementation of Milton Public Schools Equity audit

074and the action planning process we are to analyze the equity audit results identify root causes of equity challenges and identify goals and objectives for Equity planning as you can tell there's one word that continues to be heard and that is equity one major finding in the equity audit was for the district to develop a common understanding and definition of equity and hold on just so and then slide four um for a brief history um in the spring of 2021 the quality review with an equity lens or as we call it the equity audit was conducted by Cambridge education the selection process for the steering committee took place in late spring of 2021 and then in July of 2021 we had our first meetings together which took place over a two-day orientation and then our monthly

075meetings began in the fall of 2021 and during those meetings we developed a mission statement analyzed each domain of the equity report and we also collaborated and developed a definition of equity in whole we have conducted about 20 hours of work together and now we're reaching out to the Milton Community for input on our definition of equity Meg hi again um thanks Shelly um so so again I'm Meg my husband Scott and I we have two girls in the public schools we have a fourth grader Hannah who is by my side right now at the Tucker and um we're having it's bedtime um and we have a sixth grader at the Pierce so um let me tell you a little bit about our mission statement Shelley mentioned that one of our tasks is fall is

076developed to develop a mission statement um and so that we could have um you know the statement was intended to ground the work and guide um this direction and as you can see our mission statement is really in two parts right so the the first part highlights Our intention to be collaborative with key stakeholders in exploring district-wide data and experiences we do not intend right to act in isolation from any of the other important Equity work happening in Milton but rather we want to work in Partnership we want to hear from and be informed by the voices of students and Educators administrators and community members the other part of our mission statement speaks to Our intention to promote constructive discourse in the community Equity as everyone knows is a community issue that affects all of

077us and really cannot move forward we cannot move this work forward without community members engaging in authentic dialogue with one another and sharing their lived experiences their ideas and their visions so you'll note that our mission statement speaks to achieving Equitable experiences for all learners we're concerned about the education and well-being as a district of all Learners not just some practices may look different for different groups because of their needs or experiences or current inequities but the vision is an equitable education for all if that's what we bring as a committee forward um so why invest in equity we wanted to in our presentation just pause for a second um to remind ourselves why we're investing in equity why is this work so important um so Milton is investing valuable resources to ensure an equitable

078education for all and attending to equity is not it's not a one-off it's not Divergent from The District's Mission but is very much in line with our values and priorities investing in equity is also about being responsive to community concerns parents and Community groups have been working as you know in the district for years on issues of equity particularly related to students of color and students with disabilities there was a significant mobilization as everyone knows of parents and community members in the summer of 2020. advocating for the district to elevate anti-racism and Equity work that would result in measurable outcomes for students this was really a pivotal year um in this work and and for Milton public schools and as a result of that mobilization that activism and that engagement then superintendent Gormley committed to

079conducting the independent Equity audit which we now know as the quality review and as Shelly mentioned earlier the quality review with an equity lens was conducted in the spring of 2021 the findings from that review confirmed what many parents and other community members knew from their lived experience that there were disproportionalities and inequities in many areas of students educational experiences we've highlighted a few examples here right that were um that were reported in the the quality review so we know that students identifying as the African-American or black they're out of school suspension rate was four times the rate of white students we learned from the review that 30 36 of lgbtq identifying students reported being bullied versus 14 of students who don't identify as lgbtq so a difference of 25 percent and the data showed

080um that only 19 of students with disabilities met or exceeded expectations on the mcaf so um so we learned something right and we know that and want these inequities to be addressed in more Equitable outcomes for all students to be achieved and we really think about the the quality review as kind of the what of the process of moving Equity forward in the district the review highlighted and Quantified what the problems are um in terms of the inequities in students experiences but moving forward we need to determine the why and the how right and so that's kind of what we're charged with why do these inequities exist what are the root causes and how do we address them how do we work together to ensure a more Equitable experiences for all of our learners um

081and so we just you know pulled a few quotes here to remind us that we need to continue to to ask the hard questions the why that uncover the inequities and their causes and we really we can't ensure equity for all students unless we are asking these questions I'm going to turn it over to Monique to um to cover the next slide thank you Megan thank you Shelly and thank you to the school committee for this platform an opportunity to share uh some of our work my name is Monique and I am the proud mother of two current Glover students and World um as Meg and Shelly have already highlighted our work has been grounded in and studying some of the recommendations placed as a charge to the district and um has been mentioned in

082just a highlight one more time one of the first step is just the need for the formation of a common understanding and definition of equity therefore when we're talking about it in different Arenas we are all kind of grounded in one aligned understanding and so um we have been as a committee working on this phase one um and and doing some deep work both within the um the district um if package this through multiple lenses so including looking at what is current what is passed uh reviewing the data that has been made available to us looking at some of the current studies both originally and nationally on the topic and from all of that um working as a collective group to forge together definition that we want to bring forth to the public and use

083within our district and our community and again with the goal of having that common alignment that language and understanding um and in having that Foundation being able to strengthen the current work and the future work across the town and so we can move to the next slide um and within that you will see the definition I'll just pause for two seconds just so everyone can kind of process it and then I'll also just read it aloud um so Equity means creating conditions in which Learners of all identities have the resources and support they need to reach their full potential in order to thrive um and so this is what we are asking everyone all stakeholders to participate in giving us feedback on um we have a few ways that we are collecting that feedback um

084the most active is is via a feedback form that has been distributed through multiple channels we've leveraged um superintendents Jets uh weekly update we've asked the principals to support we've reached out to the ptos we've reached out to different um stakeholders within the community so that our Community Partners can be included uh clergy um as well as our community organizing groups we're very excited that um again our efforts have been to get as many voices on on this as possible to have in the most recent week feedback from our student populations as well as our teacher um and looking forward in our next Steering group to help to review some of that data and uh we are here this evening to make sure that the voices of our caregivers our parents our school committee and

085the Greater Community um are also included and so we asked in that and to look out for those updates so again we're just here as a portion of our steering committee um just to call us to action we thank everyone we know this work did not start with the steering committee we know we have a lot of work to do and being a support to the district um so we thank thank those who have been leading this charge and asked for um others to join us in helping to participate so that we truly can be a district that has Rich discourse we make efforts to reach out to all students and put our hands together to kind of really help to revolutionize how we are looking at data and how we're looking at Solutions so

086that all are included so on behalf of um the stand committee we thank you for these minutes to help to share where we are but more importantly where we want to go with you thanks so thank you guys you know uh uh member white um thank you for this presentation this was very uh interesting one of the things I'm just sort of curious about is as we look at the data that talks about um The Bullying information um the students MCAS performance who are students with disabilities and the discipline referrals um how do we look at that data given confidentiality I was just sort of curious about that how does that get shared how does that get analyzed I could I could answer that initially typically we don't on that data that we got that

087information back they don't give us specific names of who those students are they've remembered uh the the survey was Anonymous it went to the third party which was Cambridge education and what they do is they regurgitate that into Aggregate and just give it to us as a piece but what it does is it elevated a concern or areas of growth or Improvement that we need to make in certain areas to make sure that it goes back to uh Karen mcdavid's uh presentation in terms of Fortune positive relationships so if there's a child or a student that's having issues with bullying or feeling discriminated against that they feel comfortable with at least one person in the building and then to speak to if not that they could use that incident reporting form online and remain anonymous

088as long as they give greater detail and we'll talk a little bit about that at a later school committee meeting but then and I know the principles are the email those forms home to everyone and I put it in the blog as well uh showing where to access the link so that's how it gets looked at uh we don't see the individual's name now adjustment counselor guidance counsel school nurse or School administrator might have specific names overall because if it's brought to our attention obviously you have to deal with it um and that is a way of getting those names and keeping and setting up safety plans for individuals like that but uh as far as the steering committee members who are parents unless of course they're a parent or guardian of a child themselves

089who had some challenges they would not know who those students are Dr Carol thanks um and thank you Shelly Megan Monique for for joining us tonight and sharing the presentation and also just for volunteering your time um to this committee and all the work that you've done over the past several months now um I think what I wanted to share well two things I mean first of all I will just go on the record to say that I accept your call to action and I think for anybody who follows me and what I speak about on school committee that shouldn't hopefully come as a surprise I'm I really am committed to doing whatever I can to keep this moving in the right direction and um thanks for what you're contributing to it I the main

090thing I wanted to just voice is not um it's not a direct response to what you shared but it's really just as as I see it sort of part of holding ourselves as a team all of us um as a community accountable for this work um and just to note that I do share and understand that um kind of reasoning behind being deliberate and intentional and seeking buy-in from the community and I understand that takes time and um it makes complete sense that coming to that common definition of equity first and foremost is like as you've laid it out phase one um I think even within the high level recommendation that you've um kind of highlighted here um you know it it even goes beyond building that common understanding and definition to think about what

091does it look like in MPS um so even within this one high level recommendation like we have a lot still to do um to kind of build out this phase one action step and getting to see your presentation earlier today sort of gave me a I guess a welcome invitation for myself to go back and look back at the the report um and there's on page 10 of the report we have like a full page of the high level recommendations so I I want to appreciate the work that you've done and brought to share with us and also just um sort of help us as a community see this in context which is we're halfway through the year um and we are halfway through this first high-level recommendation of many okay um so I share

092the commitment to you know and the understanding that we have so much work to do um and I I'm really eager to understand sort of the concrete steps um and the the kind of the plan um for responding to um you know the not necessarily taking um these one by one where it's possible to sort of um sort of take things together I don't know that doesn't that's not well stated but uh there are some pieces of this that it's necessary to go in sequential like order and build a strong Foundation what step by step other pieces though I think we probably are already doing work that addresses these different high-level recommendations but as a community we aren't yet sort of talking in a kind of like uh very strategic way about how these different

093pieces of work that are underway and that are planned like how they fit together um and so that's what I'm looking forward to kind of supporting however I can participating however I can um and recognizing that it's not easy and you know that um we have a lot of people who have demonstrated their willingness to participate in this um and I'm just that I guess that brings me back to just appreciating you all that's so none of that is a I apologize for just putting that out as like a lingering question slash wonder I guess um and not a direct question or expecting you to respond um either you committee members or you superintendent jet um or my fellow school committee members but really just to say like this type of work is the kind

094of thing that you know would be great if we are touching on it at every school committee meeting you know like every couple of weeks what are we doing that like what's happened this month what's happened you know um and so it would be great to have you back to you know when the definition is um when you've been able to receive the feedback from the community and sort of come to that common final definition that you could maybe come back and share that again here um and then you know begin building out what it looks like Etc with the other pieces here um I'm I'm eager to stay in close contact with the work that you're doing and I'm just thank you again for it steady no echoing um Dr Carol I want to

095thank you all for volunteering your time I know that this was a significant commitment up front between the interview process and the professional development you order you participated in so thank you um and I also want to thank you for including your mission statement the the understanding that the work around Equity is to support all Learners and providing some definitions around the type of students that we need to be concerned about because there is a very much been a misperception that it was this work was targeting one particular student instead of just all learners so I have a question um and it echoes some of the things that Dr Carroll shared with her around when we do have this common definition where do we think our next step is to see this work through fruition

096I know that this is a journey it's not a destination but being able to understand what you think might be next or things that you may have discussed as a committee already if you um have that I would love to to hear it and I also would like to to know whether or not we can incorporate this work into the Strategic plan if it's not already there that's well that's actually why we're doing this now because this definition needs to be you know um everyone needs to be on the same kind of page going forward for the district and it will be part of just the Strategic plan and it's actually something where we're actually meeting tomorrow to kind of um work on the prioritizing the the you know we've also been part of our

097Mains have been analyzing the domains there's been a certain process of analyzing the domains so we go through that process as a group um so tomorrow we actually are meeting we have our monthly meeting and we'll be working on our you know the basically the top three goals and that is supposed to be part of the Strategic plan as well and I think we do have some some recalibrating to do I mean just to say out loud and to acknowledge you know there's been a shift right in the leadership of this group so so now today with Somali Park Martin's last day she was kind of the um that the chair of our our committee and so we've we're kind of in a I think a recalibration we're excited to have superintendent jet working with

098us um you know to move this forward but this is a huge job right and so um we're eager to you know figure out the next step in in filling that position and having somebody um you know who's committed full-time uh to do this and work with us and kind of help help lead this um group of volunteers I don't know if that answered your question remember Denny you did thank you any other questions I think Ada has her hands on okay sorry I didn't see that either I only see a couple of people on my screen thank you thank you all for coming and it's it's awfully nice to see you um and meet who's um involved in this as Equity steering committee because we've been hearing about you for a while but we

099haven't yet gotten to see you um present and and I love to meet the rest of the committee at some point as well um I just wanted to um affirm Shelley's comment that yes in fact the definition of equity is it going to be an important part of the Strategic plan that and thank you for for the work that you're doing on on being sure that it's one that um is Meaningful for our community and engaging so many voices in um being sure that the the definition is clear and um addresses what it is we're trying to do um and um Equity is and I'm going to be updating the school committee on this uh soon and another agenda item um very briefly um because we're not ready to present the Strategic plan yet but

100it's in in draft at this point but Equity is one of our three goals and so your work is is critical to being sure that that goal um sets us uh the districts on the right on the right course in terms of how we're going to address this important work over the next three to five years um so beginning with the definition is is a critical step and um I I share my colleagues um enthusiasm for continuing this work and the one question that I have is how does how did these different groups relate and I don't know you know again terms that I've been hearing about the anti-racist action team for instance I don't know if that was ever formed I don't know if that's a group that's actually um happening and then there's

101a cultural competency committee that had been working on the Strategic plan um for the last several years and so I just don't know how we're pulling all those pieces together because I think that it it's important to have have us all working in the same direction and I don't know if you have any insights or comments on that I could make a comment on that very quickly and I can get you uh you recognize this I think prior to my appointment I think that you know we had a very robust uh strategic planet and we were trying to streamline it just as much as we have a very robust strategic plan we have a lot of uh subcommittees that people are holding on to near and there and I think I think we talked a

102lot about this some of the work that we're doing is intertwining should be woven and shouldn't be functioning in silos it should be bringing them together this is what it conversation we have so it's not that we're eliminating one over the other but at some point in time we need to talk about how do we uh consolidate a little bit to make sure that we're all working on the same page everybody's saying the same thing at the same time and moving forward because quite frankly when you spread it and then you're losing faculty or you're losing staff to the spirit heading ease and then it's like you're spreading people thinning you might try to do too many things too many meetings too uh too often where you're not really uh connecting the dots and that

103is our goal to have those conversations I will be having that conversation tomorrow night uh with the staring committee not not talking about abolishing but how do we make those uh better connections with these groups so Dr Craig you might be on mute um I just wanted to Echo my colleagues thanks This was um a presentation that um I really needed to see to give me a sense of where where things were and I really appreciate I know that you all are not just doing this in terms of your volunteer time I know how much you're involved in other things and so I really do appreciate your time I also appreciate the fact that you're reaching out all across the community for feedback on a definition because that's the way to help to inculcate um

104the definition right that everyone has a hand in it and to be perfectly honest I don't think a couple of years ago that's the way we would have done things um I think maybe a team of you know parents and teachers and whatever would come together create a definition and that's what we would work with but this huge Outreach I know it's going to be even more work and it's going to feel unwieldy at times because I hope you get that kind of feedback that it's going to feel um unwieldy but um but I think this is definitely the way to go and and I really appreciate your effort so thank you very much um can I just add before we move on I just want to say um thank you again for for the

105feedback thank you also for the questions I think uh many of them I'm like oh I had that question I had that question and so it's good to see that our compasses although that we haven't had much uh overlap in conversation are are in the right direction and want to just say that um even in in the midst of kind of transitioning volunteers that are there committed to this work and that is very encouraging to me um we also um to a point raised earlier know that the definition is kind of the ground and we need to see where to go up we understand it's multifaceted and I think some of the beauty of the the group is that we're a mixed group so as we're talking about these things we have a student telling

106us the real experience I'm there as a parent and I understand to make versus a four-year change as it relates to my son and daughter and so I think we are very personally invested I also think we have a collective group of people that hopefully um in our conversation with superintendent tomorrow we can really um start to break some rocks and and I really appreciate this group's um uh reaching out to say a continued collaboration because I do think given how so many groups are doing it individually we do need some anchors to kind of bring the work together and and look forward to the opportunity again uh whether in this space or another space and inviting you guys to our meetings we can kind of dive a little deeper um to understanding the whys

107and the whats as we we mentioned um to build the solution so thank you yes thank you so much thank you superintendent yeah oh sorry Meg go ahead sure if I could just circle back to something that Dr Carol had said earlier and just to I guess um underscore the importance of accountability right and I think in moving this work forward and holding all of all of us accountable um and so I I think I speak for the group to say like we welcome the opportunity to continue to to um come back and report in on our in our work um and I think I love the idea of looking at how do we build this into the agenda of the school committee because it's not just you know it's us but it's also like

108what are the boots on the ground doing too right and so how do we all kind of work together um to hold ourselves accountable um for for this work um and we share your sense of urgency just to um you know it has been um slow and important and deliberate and we're eager to continue to um to move this forward um Ed as quickly as we can move because because our our kids need it right it's the real people we're talking about experiences yeah so thank you thank you so much for inviting this during committee tonight um I love the start of the definition and I think it's the missing piece that will bring us more people into the conversation and get us moving as a community forward so I'm very excited about that piece

109I really think um you know director Pratt Martin's talked often about the fact that we needed to have that common language and common understanding and we sort of jumped in with all of us being at different pieces of that journey and I think that your work is really going to ground that piece now moving forward and I'm very excited to see where that goes um and to have everyone moving along in that in the same direction so thank you so much for the for your presentation tonight it was really fantastic really really and as Meg just said these are real people and as Dr Carol said the urgency you can't even really speak to it so thank you so much for for the work Shelly and Monique thank you so much thanks for having us

110and I want to thank all of them and those who are working with them and mag and Shelly and them uh you know you guys are the ones present in this evening but I know that you guys are representing a larger group so thank you and I hope you guys have a good night thank you very much thank you uh I'm gonna jump in very quickly to uh the district update um I just want to quickly uh share with you guys that we reported to the state in terms of our numbers 127 students that were positive from last Wednesday this Wednesday and only three staff and when I say only three staff I I don't mean that in a condescending way I just say that we're trending in the right direction where because two weeks

111ago we were looking at some average of 75 staff out that first week Monday through Thursday um so we're trending in the right direction um by now I think many folks uh may have heard that the state made an announcement uh Desi uh Department of Elementary secondary education in conjunction with the uh with dph in the governor a new testing initiative it's now on a horizon um uh I'm sharing this with the school committee um very briefly and I would ask for your your blessing to participate in that new testing opt that optional uh testing program and I'll tell you a little bit about it um and I do apologize it seems like it's rushed but the deadline is Friday to sign up it was just announced yesterday early morning we probably had I think

112I should with the school committee members of 52 second meeting with the commissioner and then it was follow up by your email uh for us to interpret and then it was uh followed up with a webinar that took place this afternoon that uh head nurse at the Milton Public Schools Kim Coughlin and myself was on so basically what it is is we have the deadline of the 21st I try to send a survey to faculty and staff this afternoon who would opt in uh there's no consent needed because there's no third party uh information being there's no information student data being shared with students so you just have to opt in we're able to opt-in be as a district because we were doing Simple dramatic testing this was for districts who did symptomatic testing or

113uh pool testing we have not done group testing but we do qualify under that but they also given the uh the latitude for other districts to join in if we sign up by uh Friday which I hope that you guys will give me that blessing they will ship the the uh Eye Health testing kits that we passed out I don't know if you guys could see it the Eye Health testing kits they're shipped that starting Monday so we'll probably get them on Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday at the latest and what each every two weeks uh a staff member and or student will get one of these tests so you could do one one week and one of next week and then we'll re-up and give them out the next week uh the second week the

114students will not start until uh the week of the 31st and so they're going to phase in Staff first then students because obviously we need to get the consent from parents not the consent the opt-in uh waiver from parents the reason what's good about this uh the state reported Statewide 98 of the students that participate in this uh testing State program we're negative so now they're looking to shift and this is an initiative to go from the 24th all the way up until uh the week before excuse me the week of the vacation April vacation and then Destiny and dph will collaborate to see if this is something that they will extend or something that they will suspend so we won't know that until that uh until about April vacation um the antigen test which

115is a good test and we were told that you don't need to require a second test a PCR test the antigen test uh is really set highly sensitive for a vast majority of the virus in in your uh system so once you take this test if you're positive you assume positive you don't have to take the PCR the PCR is a little more sensitive and that is why uh you hit a statement if you test positive with a piece if you get tested with a PCR test because it's so sensitive it can get this it depends X small amount of virus in your body that's why you could test positive up to uh potentially 90 days with the PCR test because it's so sensitive so this test the Eye Health test that we administer or

116hand out to faculty staff and students um is something that we look forward to doing I had this lengthy conversation we're not by doing this you don't have to do as much contact tracing which alleviates the burden on the nurses that allow us to do this we're spending a lot of time on the testing State and with a 98 negative rate you know we're we need to shift that and start doing some more surveillance tests and they catch those who could be symptomatic so that's pretty much the gist I will be sending more information about this and I'll take questions because I know there's a lot because I had a lot but um we had a webinar they sent us the follow-up webinar uh slide deck uh this afternoon after that um webinar but we

117didn't get food she has to process it but I could tell you I've already reached out to colleagues in a quick uh email asking them how many people would uh kind of enrolling in this and I would say a vast majority of the districts surrounding the Milton area from Stoughton Canton Mansfield Easton uh some of the closed districts here Sharon they're all going to be participating in this and I think it's a great move moving forward especially knowing that we're starting to see a trend in the positive uh Direction um I guess I'll take questions because I noticed probably a few questions about the test and stay they also offered a mobile vaccination clinic um we could sign up for that but that could take anywhere according to the webinar today it could take anywhere

118two weeks to to uh four weeks uh to get that on board um so that is something that we would look to probably access it as well but more than likely they'll probably go to your more larger cities or larger communities first to help maintain or support those districts with higher numbers we have been very blessed that we have been able to navigate this with some challenges without question with some challenges but we have been able to stay in school the entire time uh and and I'm very proud of that I'm proud of the work that our nurses I think we talked about that the last meeting uh but we're looking to engage into this new uh State Testing option questions I know it's kind of uh I don't have a slide deck to show

119you right now uh but I'd be more than willing to give an updated um updated presentation more specific about this and I plan on having a write-up in the blog that goes home tomorrow to explains it a little bit more uh in Greater detail um so um superintendent member Rosemary and member Ross Denny um so okay sorry I can't I don't know that's okay I'm happy to I'm happy to facilitate thank you a member Rosemary yes thank you thank you superintendent jet um uh I gotta think this must um this opportunity must come as quite a relief for our nursing staff um the the number of um tests that they've had to give I was wondering if if do we even know how many um tests we've administered for the test and stay program just

120to give a sense of the scale do you know that number offhand superintendent I know we have that number and I would say maybe about a month ago when I reported it we were up to about 200 and something um but since then I know that's grown especially after the vacation when we had that week with all the folks but uh unfortunately I'm not prepared with that exact number right now but I do know it rules significantly in the last uh three weeks and that's without a doubt I mean we all experienced it as a not only in the town of Milton but in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts absolutely so so a couple couple questions I have about the implementation of this is so um once students and staff get these tests is there a

121specific day that of the week that people will be asked to do the test how will that work so morning like so there's a lot of logistics that need to be worked out but more than likely it'll be a Wednesday um we have a lot of holidays on Mondays we have half days and things like that so we're going through the calendar and trying to figure out the logistics do we do it in one central location and have designated times for various schools or do we do it by classroom and handing it out to students and students are responsible for bringing it home again this is hot off the press the first we heard about it is superintendents was yesterday morning at 8 30. uh we didn't even know that this was going to be

122something that was even being considered or explored um but without a doubt we would definitely like to jump on that so there are a lot of logistics to come in and then it also depends on how quickly we get the test and I don't mean this in a negative way if you think about it the testing stay they will already before the school year started and then there were some delays over the vacation they told us that they had all of these testing he has fallen faculty and staff and then it was a delay so it all they said that they will ship it on a Monday so depending on the shipment when it comes in so I don't want to give a specific name then people are waiting saying why did you send home

123the test once we have the kits in our hand enough to support those who are in and remember there's a difference between opt-in and consent and regardless of your vaccination status whether your child is vaccinated or not you could still get these tests there's there's no and there's no penalty if someone decides not to do it it's not like I can say you can't come to school but we hope that everyone would do it for not only the safety of your child and and people in your household but the safety of other people within the classroom in the in their households as well it has to be a collaborative effort to do this to make sure that we're we're catching anybody uh that may be symptomatic or have the virus in this system and maybe

124asymptomatic as well I have I have one more question I'm sorry then I'll stop but I I just am one wondering about how do we um deal with the the um families students whose families do not opt in um you know I know with the test and stay program it was very clear if you don't do test and stay then you'll need to quarantine if you're a close contact but um I don't know if if that was made clear by the commissioner today or in their guidance but it's yes I just mentioned that there's no there's no penalty and I can't force students to participate in it if we do do this program I have to with your blessing I have to give Carolyn consella the Board of Health a call to make sure that

125she understands that we're pivoting to this that was one of the directives second of all and I think this is very important to know if you're a close contact in school there's a certain guidance that we followed it you could take the test and if you're still negative you could stay in school however if you're in close contact outside of school there then it goes with the state guidelines when people outside of the school in the rationale behind that we have a more controlled environment within the side of the school where it's a less controlled environment outside of school and I and I say that with all due respect to folks who even may be a little tighter on their bubble but some people may not be as tight uh and students might have a

126little more freedom but they will have to follow the state guidance if they're close contact outside of school and if you're not vaccinated um then you have to follow those guidelines as well you know the the isolation days according to uh State guidance um so superintendent can I interject you for a second sure so Ada if I if I'm understanding this new system of testing so the so a nurse or a healthcare professional in the district would notify you that there was a positive case there will be no more close contact speaking there will be no more notifying of people that you are a close contact all of that will go away you will be notified and that was one of the questions that Kim Coughlin was asking and asked what a question we have

127because if we have a classroom if for whatever reason we see an uptick in cases within that classroom that we can reinstitute that close contact tracing I mean that contact tracing for that particular classroom or their surroundings and so that that they still it's a caveat and a little guidance down at the bottom bullet number three that you could use your professional discretion to continue contact race and and so superintendent jet helped me understand you're not asking people on every Wednesday at home to take the test and report it this is a volunteer thing parents opt in they have the test but they don't have to take it every Wednesday or every Tuesday or every Thursday like it's an option to monitor yourself and your if you've been exposed and or if you have symptoms

128right it's different right right and one of the things that they tell us we hope that parents are honest up front with us it notify us if their child's a positive and when they're sending it to us it doesn't get recorded in the maven system or dph right we just recorded at the school the way that it would get in the maven system or dph to calculate in the State numbers if if my hope is if someone's child is covet positive and they have symptoms that they reach out to their pediatrician and then if that goes to the pediatrician that's where it gets logged into the maven system but you're absolutely right contact tracing will be very minimal to non-existent as we move forward so it's it's ready it's super different than before superintendent Jet

129and all the staff who showed up these last three weeks when it was very scary to be in schools um there's a lot of sacrifices made and I recognize that this new proposed program which I don't know in detail will relieve burdens from the school system of becoming we've become a healthcare provider we're testing we're doing reporting this is not what um schools are made to do but a lot of some a lot of things you shared makes me want to proceed with caution um more than likely the data that the state collected to show that 98 of these students were testing negative was before Omicron there's no question about I have tons of friends whose kids have allergies and Asthma and every little symptom caused them to participate in test and stay and many

130parents were like I just want to send the school I know they're fine but Omicron Kings became and the simple fact that when the tests were supposed to arrive for our faculty on that Saturday and remember the emails you sent keeping us well prepared they didn't show up and you know when you really think about the reliability of getting costs to every single District in the Commonwealth every single week through April let's pause for a minute and think about the likelihood of that's going to happen smoothly I would love to believe that is the case and I would love to relieve the burden from the schools because this is not a health care institution I just want us to think through if the state falls through what is our contingency as a district so we're

131not left flat-footed and um I I want to apologize by making that request because it pulls you back into the health care field and it is not fair and I'm very Frank when I say that I think the expectations we've put on schools are very unrealistic but what um member Everhart shared was that at the end of the day we will be Flying Blind if someone is sick in that class you will never know you will go home thinking I'm great and the reason why this is a pandemic is because of asymptomatic spread right if everyone who was sick had a fever and coughed it'd be really easy to isolate but that's not the case and I I have a feeling that if there's one more there's anything that happens between now and April when

132when the virus tends to to go down like whatever the next Greek Alphabet letter is where does that leave them um and with that said I will I will stop but I I this all gives me pause when I think about more than likely the data was pre-omicon and the likelihood of us getting the supplies from the state on a regular basis and the quantities that are needed very low I I I will share I will share this in terms of the last week or so there wasn't many excuse me the week of the third when we returned to school it wasn't many students they got it they stayed out of school because they were positive which was a good thing for us we will stay in the test and stay in symptomatic testing until

133those kits come in if those kids and it will be every other week because one box has two tests so they want you to test one once a week so they're saying the shipment would come in uh they got 20 million they said they have 20 million test kit 26 million test kits so now until I see them in in the Milton public schools and we count them and we make sure that we have enough for our students we will remain in the test and state model uh and we will remain in the symptomatic testing and again I want to put emphasis on symptomatic testing to clarify and I'll try to say this as much as I can in every form um symptomatic is not when your kid wakes up symptomatic you send them to

134school symptomatic testing is when your kid is in school and we get to 11 30 12 o'clock and they're not feeling well they go to the nurse and then they will get the they will get tested if they're positive they would have to be isolated until someone picks them up if they're negative then they could definitely go back to class but that's what or they still might go home because they're not feeling well and that's what we've done on a normal year but I don't want people to think okay well you've been sick all night you get up for convenience purposes you could go to school take the bus or whatever and get tested we don't want that but we'll wait to see what happens with uh these test kits Dr Carol big superintendent Jet

135and um thanks for reassuring around your um sort of plan to transition um based on the delivery of the test kits um I agree that you know the rollout of some new initiatives um has been Bomb b from the state so it's logical to sort of be conservative in you know making sure that those get delivered I I do support moving into the you know joining this new program um I mainly wanted to also voice my um hope that will take Governor Baker up on the offer for the vaccine mobile vaccine clinic at one of our elementary schools I know that we have continued to lag somewhat in our vaccination rate for 5 to 11 year olds and um so I think you know making that as easy as it can possibly be for parents

136to choose to vaccinate those kids or to just get them their second shot if they've already gotten their first shot um I think that could be a really important benefit and um even if it were to take two or four weeks you know I understand if they're going to bigger towns first but um I hope we can kind of get in the queue for that opportunity but thanks for the updates and for just staying on top of this fast-moving situation and I look forward to learning more about it as we go forward yeah and I was I would say on this call if anyone because the last time we tried to get the vaccination clinic at the school uh and this is something that I explored with Minette Community Health Center particularly for those who

137are five to eleven because of the age of the group The youngster you needed to what are the things they wanted more medical staff on hand they needed a pediatrician or Family Doctor on the hand which we could not do the second thing I will say the last vaccination clinic we did for I think it was a little more than three hours or so there was about maybe only 28 people that came through that was back a while ago however anyone is having problems getting the vaccine the vaccine the first shot second shot with a booster if you want uh you could just reach out and we try to provide different opportunities and schedules where you could go and get it in the interim and then we explore what it is that uh Governor Baker

138and I just want to say this to you guys and I hate to say this to be a pessimist it goes back to what member Ross then he said but if you remember last year when we started out the school in the summer they boasted about the mobile uh testing unit and that was in the summer and we had our breakout at the Pierce October 3rd when we called we didn't have access to that and we had to work with uh Fallon ambulatory Services the kind of contract and Kim Coughlin did that and I'm not saying anything negative I do think it's a very lofty goal and we got to make sure that the distribution is there and so we'll wait to see if that comes in but all it is is a matter of

139us opting in and if it doesn't come we just stayed a current course and if it does come then we'll figure out all the other logistics um if you remember the last hit we got we had to even for our staff we had to open them up separate you know and make copies of the directions because it wasn't enough to give to people so it was that's the piece that you know you will always have to work on so I mean I should pretend you I like like everyone I think it's a great step forward I you know to remember Ross Jenny's point I do think that during these three weeks from just for my own experience with the test and stay what the testing today has shown is that it's not spreading in school

140right so like if you have a close contact and you're in school like you've been a teacher that or a student the test and stay has shown through that that it's not spreading in school among students and so I think um having an option I think that's a really good point remember I'll say having a backup plan so that in case they don't show up because the ma everything has been a little bit challenging I think is a great idea and and I and I it's a hopeful sign um you know that um that we're going to be moving in a different direction I hope but always having a plan is a good idea yeah thank you yeah all right so let us know I think it's really important to superintendent yet so like just

141lay it out in very Sim so that people understand I just think it's important people understand what is the difference in them do you need a vote on this James I don't think so no I don't think you need a voters but I didn't want to move forward without your blessing and if you do want to take a vote um it's totally up to you but they said you know some districts have to go to the school committee who said that the school committee asks them to go so I'm just asking you guys but with such a quick turnaround I'm just very blessed that we have a school committee meeting this evening because they just announced it yesterday some people don't have this school committee meeting until next week so they're going to be a

142little bit behind that and if we opt in on the 21st and they'll ship our stuff on the weekend to 24 hours all right keep us updated and um thank you guys remember Austin he said we really can't thank all of you enough for the last couple of weeks which have been harrowing to say the least um and um sometimes it doesn't even feel like school right just feels like you know a lot of conversation about medical stuff but it's um it's an encouraging sign hopefully for the future absolutely I'm superintendent Jet and members of the school committee we do have um um Charlene did send us the program of study but I think the goal is for all of us to read the program of study and we're going to discuss and vote on

143it at the next meeting is that correct absolutely that is correct that is because the high school is going to come if we have questions the high school will come to our next meeting Dr Craighead yes the the high school yeah I just had a question because one of the things that's included in the program of study is the the dual enrollment but we haven't voted to approve that have we we have not and um one before the other is all I'm saying okay right so the only thing that you guys wanted to follow-up report on with the dual enrollment was whether or not uh Quincy college would come back with a A reduced rate in um and I'm sorry the Name Escapes me right now but uh the contact at Quincy College said at

144this point in time they cannot go any lower than what has already been a discounted rate however um we are committed as a district to try to find it in you know different resources to try to support any student that may need it so that was the lingering concern a question as far as I could recall about that um unless of course anybody else has any uh additional comments but I did uh email uh okay thank you yeah so I think Dr Craig had to your point so that at our school committee meeting on the 2nd of February we would have to first vote to approve the um dual enrollment at Quincy college and then vote vote the program of studies I'm understanding the the correspondence correctly right from that from okay okay I'm just

145making sure that I'm not missing something tonight that is if we approve it then it can go into the handbook right you can't go before I mean the program of studies but yeah and they and they're not going to give out the program of studies until after we vote on the second okay okay thank you superintendent Jeff for that really informative um update we're gonna have an opportunity for a citizen speak right now if anyone is here for citizen speak this evening they can raise their hand and you will be promoted to um speak to the school committee um the the parameters of Citizen speak is that you have three minutes to speak it would last no longer than 15 minutes in total um you would state your name and where you live um you

146will address the committee but the committee will not respond to any of your questions or comments and we ask that you um speak to our policies and our and our budget and but not to people in the district so if you would like to speak assistant speak and address anything on the agenda this evening please raise your hand and someone will raise you foreign that somebody can do that right I don't see any hands up at the moment I'm giving him yup no hands at the moment well if someone has any after you see the mean this evening or you have a chance to watch it afterwards if you have any questions or comments please feel free to email us and then um and we can try to address your um questions or concerns so

147email or at another school committee meeting all right the only item on my chairs report is to vote a revised draft calendar so to review what we are doing is we are voting a draft calendar which means we are voting just basically the start of school dates um and the uh current holidays as they are presented we know that we are going to add change or um address some other holidays that we would like to um but we need to approve a draft calendar so that we can set the start of school for next year that makes sense everybody so that we have so okay so um the motion on the table is to approve the draft 2022 2023 school year account thank you okay any discussion you can see that superintendent jet added the

148early release days on in November December I'm sorry the late starts oh I apologize where are the delayed start these it's the very last one I think it's light blue if I'm not mistaken in the little grid to the side there hmm did I print the wrong one again no it's there it's in light blue on the document in order to be for teacher's late start yeah oh yeah I apologize thank you so much thank you no that's okay no no I of course it's not really in color so I had to look for the code it's my own fault I don't like to waste ink and I know I shouldn't be printing it but I'm an old person I can't help myself um does anyone have any questions about the draft calendar yes remember

149Rosemary um yeah and thank you superintendent Jeff for adding in those late start um dates I think I I fully support um working in some additional opportunities for professional development for our staff I was just wondering what what kind of uh timing would that be for a late start would that be the same start time no what it couldn't be the same start time across the district right how would that work school was started a two-hour delay it would be a two hour delay for each thought okay yeah no I I think that's great and again I want to thank Charlene roach for all of her work and reformatting this calendar and and um it's hard um to make it all fit but if we can figure out how to get it to all fit

150on one page that would be she's probably going to kill me for saying that but I think I think it's just the way that it came out I think yeah it'll be really small font right you have to read the calendar with the magnifying glass really people like me have to have a magnifying glass exactly anyone else have any questions about the draft calendar okay so the motion on the table is to accept the draft counter it's in seconded we're going to take a roll call vote okay remember Ross Denny yes remember Rosemary yes member white yes Dr Craighead yes Dr Carol yes and member yes okay wonderful six zero all right we are going to um remember Rosemary wanted to give us a quick update on the strategic planning before we vote on the

151before we talk about the budget is that right remember Rosemary you're on mute yeah yep let me get off of mute um yes I just wanted to give you a quick update on the Strategic plan um and where we stand um because the um budget presentation that you're about to see has some references to it and I just wanted to jump the gun a little bit um and and let you all know what's going on um so as you know the strategic planning advisory committee has taken on the challenge to update and streamline and revise the Milton Public Schools strategic plan as superintendent jet uh generously calls a robust plan um it's you know had been in place for three and a half years has six goals and 59 pages and um it was it

152was a little overwhelming for for some and and with the with our new superintendent and with all this happened um in the last couple of years we felt like it really was the right time to revisit and streamline the plan to put um the Milton Public Schools goals at front and center for all of our staff families and and students so the strategic planning committee met on October 19th and talked about this work and we identified a team of volunteers among the staff who would do some of the groundwork and putting this new draft together and we were very fortunate to have Susan Maselli and Carol mcdavitt agree to lead that group work and I am very grateful to that team I mean they have a sort of a All-Star list of people who are

153who are on the committee and I um what I um what we plan to do is um the the plan is in draft form right now but it needs to be vetted by a number of internal teams that have a role in it um um various aspects of the plan and we want to have the opportunity to do that um before we bring the final draft to the school committee and So the plan is to do that additional internal vetting and then bring it back to a school committee on March February 16th for a presentation and possibly a vote at that meeting if we we feel ready to do that and if not we'll take a vote at the subsequent meeting but just to give you the the heads up that that you've probably already

154seen in our budget presentations the three goals very much aligned with the the goals that you heard about in The Glover School presentation um the equity safe and supportive schools and personalized learning and those those are the three primary goals and that all will work together to help hopefully move the district forward and the um the goal being that it will be something that will help to drive all of the work for the district over the next three to five years and that it will be something that everyone will understand and feel invested in and a part of and um so I just wanted to give you that heads up um and that you'll hear a more full report will bring the team in and they'll tell you more about the work that they've been

155doing and report in um with a final draft in mid-February so any questions thank you to hearing from the Strategic plan looks sounds exciting all right we are Dr Craighead superintendent Dexter Jeff's machine here we go okay it's an early 917 as we begin um the budget presentation sorry Minor Detail um so okay so in all seriousness um I'd like to open this um by saying that this is um the culmination of months of work um assistant superintendent Dexter um has certainly gone through the budget process before on the town side but this is the first time that she has done it from you know Soup To Nuts um on the school side and has done um really a stellar job putting this together and spent many many hours working with superintendent Jett him working

156with the leadership team the leadership team you know certainly talking to the communities at all the different schools and making sure that we had a comprehensive idea of what we needed in the budget I would also like to thank all of my colleagues on the school committee um certainly especially the the the the two individuals who serve on finance members white and uh Ross Denny but also um I want to let the community know that that um that there were other members of the school committee who were constant presences at the at the finance meetings even though they were not members and we're very involved with it um as well um with what you're about to see which superintendent assistant superintendent Dexter is going to take us through and um superintendent Jett um as well

157some items are listed as arpa possibilities to the far right arpa stands for the American Rescue plan Act and it'll it'll say arpa P3 or P4 that's project three project four whatever it might be um those are still included in our budget because they have been neither vetted nor discussed nor approved by the select board which is where all arpa um requests have to go through and if they're approved by the select board then they move forward um to the state we have no way of knowing whether those things will be funded so they have to be part of our budget and many of them are in our top 10 uh priorities all of them are crucial needs due to the pandemic um I'd like also to say um that we all recognize that money

158is tight and [Music] that there are needs across the town of Milton you know the police the fire the libraries Council aging you know everybody needs needs more money it's just the truth but it is also our duty as school committee members to not only advocate for the schools but to demonstrate to the community what our needs are what they are now what they are likely to be going forward and give you a sense of what our needs are um regardless of how much money uh there is to be had um the District of course needs to regain and ultimately move forward but just regain the high level of success and student performance that we saw previously to the pandemic and I spoke about this a little bit earlier um with the fact that we

159need to address learning issues learning losses um social emotional needs that are caused by the pandemic um and it's really not so much a question of moving forward at this time as I said as just trying to work toward regaining that previous level of success and then you know ultimately we could move on from there but but we're not where we need to be we're just not and it's going to take resources to get us even back to where we were before the pandemic um we are presenting our rollover budget plus our top 10 priorities for FY 23 but we are also include including all of our needs after that the priorities 11 through 17 and then more priorities we are also in the interest of um full disclosure and transparency um trying to show

160you the depth of the needs of the Milton public schools at this time we've included separate sections on needs that could be paid for with one-time funds um and we've as I said before included things that could be covered by arpa but again we have no way of knowing that at this point after the presentation a school committee discussion and vote will follow we will also be presenting this budget to the warrant committee on Monday night it's posted as a full school committee so um any school committee members who wish to attend may do so there's no limit because of Quorum issues um and so that ends my introduction um I'm going to hand it over to assistant superintendent Dexter to take us through uh the nitty-gritty with the numbers thanks can you see my

161screen yes we can yes I I can't see it over there so if it um if it looks like I'm looking to my left I have two screens and you guys are on my right and my presentations on my left so I might look like I'm talking into nowhere but first i'm going to um hand it to superintendent Jeff who may want to just say a couple words before we start so thank you Amy and I was going to make the some of the comments that uh Dr Craig had made about us recognizing that that we're in tough Economic Times and challenges out there however there is some money that is being funneled in on the town side to operate money some things like that and we're hoping we're hoping to illustrate to you the

162depth of the needs that we have in the Milton Public Schools um in terms of enrollment and we get into a lot of that as we go through the presentation and I will also state that we plan to do a more robust presentation for the community to afford community members to ask questions this budget right now is full of the school committee to give us the blessing to move forward um so I do want to let people know this is not a one and done and we also have uh I believe a schedule meeting next uh Monday at the Warren committee potentially so thank you no I I thought Dr craighead's opening statements kind of um pretty much conveyed the message that I was going to share but thank you okay so um I'll get

163started then um first uh first of all the first slide we're presenting the um top level summary of the fiscal year 2023 operating budget for the Milton Public Schools throughout the slides you'll hear me refer to a rollover budget so first and force foremost I just want to explain what that is a rollover budget is basically taking the fiscal year 2022 current operating budget rolling that forward for any contractual obligations as far as salary and wage contractual obligations that would be steps Lanes wage adjustments other contractual allegations such as legal electricity utilities things that like that that are not controllable as well as a a big item is special education costs which we are legally mandated to provide and we are experiencing an increase in the number of students requiring services and there is a

164significant impact on that line item of the budget in the role of our budget itself um so this first slide is presenting not only the rollover budget but also what I will refer to as the needs based budget which takes into consideration all of those other asks that are mostly positions that we need in order to operate the district as well as some professional development and and other needs that you'll see in curriculum too um that you'll see in some later slides so the current rollover budget for FY 2023 is 58 million 54 115 and the total needs based budget is 60 million 502 746. the next slide is just taking those numbers um the the previous slide in this slide those categories are categories that we report to um Desi the department of Elementary

165and secondary education and this slide is taking the previous slide and just breaking it down into a pie chart so that you can see that um the instruction class alone account for 45.7 percent of the um schools operating budget the next largest item is special education which accounts for 27.7 and then um instructional leadership seven percent um and as you can see from here things like policy and admin facilities and Technology are very small percentage of the overall operating budget for the schools um and another way to summarize that request would be of the rollover budget of 58 million almost 48 million or 82 percent of that is salary and wages very small percent is um contractual non-salary which includes special education costs as well as other things like utilities um and things like that

166which is 15 and then the discretionary amount that is more like controllable like supplies and things like that is only 2.7 so we don't have a lot of wiggle room to um to change this without eliminating positions which we we can't afford to do with our increasing enrollment and increasing in our special education needs um and again this pie chart just breaks it down by those categories you can see salaries 82 percent um this slide here is I wanted to try to represent how we get from fiscal 22 to the not only the rollover budget but as well as the needs-based budget so our fiscal year 22 budget is 54.8 million we have 3.2 million of rollover costs of which 2.4 million are salary contractual obligations as well as an additional 804 000 which is

167um non-salary of which almost 600 000 is special education the other items um are minimal compared to the salary increase and then to get to the 60 million 1.7 are other Personnel salary needs and 000 are other needs of which the biggest part is new curriculum in our math and social studies areas one of the things that um was mentioned at town meeting last year was the total cost per student or total cost per pupil of the operating budget at the Melton public schools and um there were some questions regarding that so this slide presents Milton's total expenditure per pupil um for the last five years that is available on the Desi website so that's only through 2019-20 because the um last fiscal year 2021 hasn't been posted yet but Milton out of um 401

168districts reported Milton ranks 315 with number one being the highest total expenditure per pupil Milton is 315. we're approximately fifteen thousand five hundred and eight dollars per student um in the 1920 year compared to other local districts that um we tend to compare ourselves for so that's we're significantly lower than some communities that we consider are comparable like Brookline and Wellesley that are closer to 21 000 per pupil the state average is 17 575 so we're also well below the state average of cost per pupil I just want to clarify that total expenditure per pupil is not just the operating budget of Milton Public Schools it's all expenditures of Milton Public Schools whether it's operating budget grants um revolving funds gifts as well as indirect costs on the town side departments that can be allocated

169to the schools such as like medical insurance or costs for um salaries of the Personnel at Town Hall that support the schools this chart here just shows that same information in a bar chart form so you can see Milton is the third to the last on this graph or the third lowest out of the communities that that um we are comparing ourselves to at this time I'm going to turn it back to superintendent jet where he's going to go through some of our goals and strategic items so thank you uh Mrs Dexter uh and with all due respect uh member Rose Marion stole a little bit of the Thunder talking about the three major pillars that we're trying to identify in not trying to make it a strong push to narrow down the Strategic plan

170but these are the three pillars which is personalized learning the safe and supportive schools in equity and learning and uh so the budget that we will be presenting to the warrant Committee in addition to our roommate and student needs is tied to some of the goals and initiatives of the Milton public schools and as you can see below it talks about the Strategic goal of the local public schools that provides students with a highly personalized developmentally developmentally appropriate emotionally safe and Equitable balance daily learning experience is designed to ensure each becomes a productive caring and contributing members of society very long very winded but very powerful and very important in terms of that first sentence it is the goal of the Milton public schools to ensure that students can achieve is for their post-secondary outcomes

171and goals as measured by the analysis of the information obtained via the district data cycle if you saw the presentation right before the uh the break the and we did a follow-up presentation on the fifth uh we spent a lot of time delving into the data that data deck slide is on the website um and we will be talking about that as we continue to do some of these budget presentations for the community to give you that afford you the opportunity to ask questions if you if you have any next slide uh strategic initiatives personalized learning to give it a definition all Educators learn about the use of them and monitor personalized teaching and learning and instructional practices this is really just identifying and understanding the strengths of the students in your class their culture

172identity their their race identity their strengths and weaknesses um we also talked about the social emotional learning Behavioral Health all you have to do is turn on the news that's under the safe and supportive schools we have a lot of students that are struggling to see an uptick in behavior all across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in terms of student behavior and needs uh 20 something months over student isolation social distance and in Mass being out of school making those connections with students this is huge for us to make sure and I think Karen McDavid elevated the uh the the importance of this in her presentation earlier and I think it was echoed by Dr Carroll saying you got to make sure that you support students social emotional well-being in order to achieve uh at a

173higher level and then the equity all educators will have the opportunity to build their capacity practice and progress monitoring uh and iterate the Equitable Equitable and inclusive educational practice uh to leverage some of the students you need to learn learning identities ensuring that all students are making progress academically socially emotionally behaviorally and cognitively and culturally next slide uh I put in the presentation some of the goals of the district and superintendent as we know going all the way back to September October where those would discussed school committee members had school committee had their goals uh superintendent have my goals and we talked about it we want to make sure that all of our students cater eight uh demonstrate grade level Proficiency in ela I thought Ada uh Rosemary elevated that at the last school committee

174meeting talking about the 25 35 percent of the students on Ela not making or meeting a grade level proficiency uh at the third grade this is something we want to hope to funnel in you heard Karen mcdavitt earlier talk about the work of the reading specialist and how important that was and you're seeing some of those scores rise and now that we're back in school um in June 2023 uh looking at the disproportionality and grade level proficiency uh K-8 and hopefully eliminate or substantially reduce the proficiency gap between African-American students and students of color in their white counterparts by September 23 MPS will evaluate evaluate all the intervention supports and programs to assess the effectiveness of each and look for opportunities to implement other research-based interventions and programs I think member Ross Denny talked about

175this quite a bit you don't have to reinvent the will you look at districts that are making significant gains and what is it that they're doing or look in-house and look at the work Karen McDavid is doing and replicate that across all four elementary schools and hopefully they're doing some great things that she could replicate and re-elevate the student achievement across the board we're going to continue with our uh training we have 24 faculty and staff member they're going to be continuing with the trauma informed to be uh peer uh teachers and supports for the Milton Public Schools faculty and staff we continue to incorporate the intellispot strainer I think that they talked about getting that data and using that data to identify uh initiatives and supports for our students that may uh that we

176may need to kind of support them and I just talked about the 24 folks that would continue to do the research and identify evidence-based initiatives in response to student self-reported assessments and their social emotional and behavioral health concerns um we're going to continue with that work next slide Amy but one of the biggest things that we wanted to elevate is our immediate immediate uh concerns and that our future concerns the immediate concerns is our growing enrollment many of you know that we have made some uh converted certain spaces in all of our schools to accommodate our growing enrollment increasing class space office space uh by cutting places in half by utilizing the libraries in the colleague Cunningham uh we're looking right now Bill Richie went over to the Glover school um we might have to

177use utilize a little bit of the Glover school to accommodate some of the and growing enrollment we had a lot of students that moved in um over the course of the last couple of months well I should say since October 1st when we we report our enrollment data uh without question we have some unfinished learning that was made evident by the data presentation the two different data presentations uh that we had coupled with the fact that we knew some of our students that were fully remote for March 13th all the way up until this year September 1st um so we want to make sure that we have uh programs supports uh multi-tier supports in in those classes and offering to our students without any without question enhancing the student achievement for all students in particular

178our marginalized uh students and those who are identified as African-American Latino special education supporting them even though some of our data shows that our special ed students our students on IEPs did make a little bit of an increase whereas some of the other subgroups had dipped a little bit um we're going to continue to focus on our social emotional learning and behavior health and then we need the professional development I think we talked a little bit about it in the calendar we have a limited number of professional development days uh where we can have all staff come together looking at the data and working and talking and having that discourse about the data initiative student learning teaching um so we hope to do it and this is Summer and this is some of the uh

179uh some of the different uh professional develops that we have in the appendices you'll see them described a little bit more in detail but for the sake of this presentation but just highlighting them we have a growing pre-k program we're looking we have to add uh some of that because of swelling right now at the elementary level we might have to add a class in the coming month or two to lower that a sub separate class because students are being evaluated and needing the additional support by identifying as needing additional support and then also the curriculum review and enhancements we talked about it the math and social studies social studies at the elementary level slide uh and Janet Sheen is going to talk a little bit about this uh we all been working with Brian

180Sealy in uh Kim Kaplan on a curriculum review that their their departments are undergoing and when I say the Departments is kind of some of the same teachers because at the elementary level the elementary teachers teach all of the content areas so it's it's kind of unique doing two curriculum reviews at the same simultaneously but it's being done uh Janet Shannon are you on I can't see what this slides yes yes I am Mr thank you well just to add what what uh Mr jet just shared um we are conducting a comprehensive curriculum review in both of these content areas in math and social studies and again led by our director of mathematics I'm Brian C league and our social studies curriculum coordinator um Kim Kaplan they have formed representative um committees that are engaging

181in um the use of very specific protocols for curriculum review and uh they're they're looking to of course select high quality instructional materials that are challenging and that are also differentiated so that they will meet the needs of all students in math we're further along in the process um but both of our committees have been able to provide an estimate of costs um these are indicated here as one-time costs there may be um opportunities also to spread payments out over a few years something that we also could consider if this is a great challenge for us um we um I think that uh we are going to be bringing um Kimberly Kaplan um before the school committee at a future meeting to share more specifics of the process um the committee is very excited about

182piloting some of the instructional materials that they're looking at and they have received a multitude of materials from Publishers um what is very um I think what is really interesting about this curriculum review is that teachers are going to have an opportunity to actually teach lessons using each of the programs that they're reviewing so I think it's going to be a very exciting process and we look forward to sharing more and as I said math is further along and we'll keep you posted on that if I could just add something um we are pursuing um all possibilities of trying to find some grant funding that may pay for a portion of some of these costs as well as their in some instances we're looking into if there's the possibility of trying to spread it out

183over more than one fiscal year because we do acknowledge that this is a large sum or a large ask thank you Mr Sheehan uh Mr the next slide so as Dr uh Craighead alluded to uh earlier at the start of this presentation we kind of prioritized some of our staff and needs but quite frankly all of the things that are listed on in this presentation are a need but if we had to prioritize this is what we uh came up with uh as a group of Administrators in curriculum coordinators so math interventionists um on numbers uh uh test scores have dipped not only in a town of Milton but across the state in our math we need to bolster up our support for our students and catch them early on in their educational experience we

184all know Mac is a cumulative subject so you need those built-in blocks to make sure that you're up to par in moving forward in the right direction the reading specialist we talked about two of them um in uh number two excuse me the second the second one on the list Karen McDavid talked a little bit about it and you had a reading specialist as part of her presence station and the great work that they do both stirring up the supports needed for some of the students PS middle school high school guidance counseling 504 coordinator for those that don't know if you look at the guidance staff at the middle school you only have three for approximately on average 315-18 students per grade 321 321 and grade 6 and grade seven and slightly lower in grade

185eight at two I think it's 80 something at the at the moment or last I check so we want to make sure that we have the supports necessary for them is not just students on IEPs but students with 504s they could be medical 504s they can be short-term uh 504s and then it could be students who have challenges around state of focus attention deficit disorder social emotional disability temporary or long term but we need to make sure that we support those students um kindergarten AIDS we already have 12 of them and we're talking about increasing them from a 0.8 to a 1.0 and just for a full-time FTE full-time employee and for those that don't know these AIDS support us in terms of the supervision of our students in the cafeteria and at recess and

186as it stands right now on average we can have anywhere from one adult to uh 60 UH 60 students that becomes concerned about safety we're very fortunate that we're strategizing and trying to support the maintain that safety and supervision but that is definitely needed so again I want to it's not an ad in staff it's just an increase to their day um then we talked about the student adjustment counseling the support our students socially emotionally um that is without a doubt a given is just as important as on nurses our Special Education team chair this is something that needs this is a person that helps facilitate meetings evaluations coordinating with outside agencies outside medical professionals or therapists who are writing reports um this is desperately needed to support our teachers so they can execute their

187craft within the classroom and they handle a lot of the meetings and setting up the schedules and collaborating with administrators teachers in adjustment councils and even the nurse in some cases uh lunch recess AIDS uh the five part time for the very same reason that I talked about the kindergarten AIDS making sure that was supporting folks the kindergarten AIDS in within the classroom as well uh but sometimes we need to utilize or extract people for extra support and supervision throughout the day um the World Language teacher at the middle school um this is very important without growing numbers and our students take a World Language a small number come out of a World Language if they're on an IEP and that's when we have to provide that service but right now if you look at

188the middle school there's a total of 26 uh 26 classes with 25 students or more at the middle school level five of those in the world language Department in full out of the fiber in the Spanish section so we need that support for those who don't know that's what helps us balance the class sizes the four course subjects math science English in history slash social studies but um and then they also to have their fifth core class is is a World Language and then finally the high school math teacher right now is a desperate need when you look at it all Milton high school students are required to take four years of math some of our students as electives are doubling up due to the pandemic there's a significant Demand on greater supports in reduced

189class sizes within the math department and if you look across the three tested areas compared to the other tested subjects uh the math department has 1.4 so a full-time teacher in point four of the second teacher less than Ela and a 0.4 less than the science department so again just similar to the elementary level high school numbers are growing as well and we have senior privileges this year where students if they completed all of their credits or their online it could be complete all of their credits they might have a late start early release to help us with that uh that growing enrollment at the high school level some some campus might have what you call an open campus we're not calling an open campus because we don't want to open campus right now but

190that's what we're doing to try to alleviate some of the pressure that we have so all three levels of swelling in terms of our enrollment uh next slide um now this is getting into positions 11 through 17. um I will highlight the science one and I'll bring it to your attention if people recall last year in uh December at the special town meeting we were awarded six positions one was the science position um and because we were unable to fill that position um with a a new hire full time we did make it up with our uh vice principal Ben Kelly taught the science class karaoke the biology teacher talked taught an extra class and Amy Tom the science department head ended up teaching the class to make up for that position that we were

191not able to fill we put the second mileage on here is equally as important as the first but we were trying to prioritize and spread the wealth because their needs in all of the levels um so math teacher is needed for the same reasons I just explained the exploratory teacher at the middle school that could be Civics education that could be more technology but that's needed when kids go off team if you're in grade eight all grade eight students may go off team in similar time but it allows us to balance out those exploratory classes when I talked about uh 26 of the classes um uh being 25 or more students 21 of those classes are your exploratory classes then we'll talk about early childhood education coordinator for those who don't know that is John

192Redding right now in his duties as a Elementary principal he's also serving as the elementary I mean a Pre-K a coordinator for his building and also uh Dr McNeil gamai's building in terms of their pre-k program trying to collaborate uh Pre-K numbers are growing um as well and there's a lot of work that's done on that and many many years ago uh current school committee member at Ada Rosemary and Sir desert liaison or or or or a support for us at That level many many years ago but it is a it is a need there's a lot of responsibilities um and we need this we need to provide that support and make sure that we're doing everything that we can to put our Pre-K students in the in a successful position getting out of the

193blocks and a right foot is going to help Shore up grades kindergarten one two and three and so we're looking for that we talk about a career technology teacher um and that that runs the gamut in terms of Technology courses so I just want folks to know that is exploratory class us at the high school level once again when students are not in math English and science they have six period they have seven periods for six periods a day they're on a rotating schedule and then without a doubt and we've been in this in this as well before covet but part-time school nurse needs to be a floater to support the uh to be uh floaters to support the the health department in the Milton public schools and we've talked about the recommendation at the

194elementary level it's uh one nurse the 500 students in the in an ideal situation all of our schools will be up above that with the exception of Tucker and at the secondary level the middle and high school is 750 students to one nurse and we are obviously above that uh by almost a couple of hundred at each of the different levels if not a little bit more next slide so I won't go through all of this but we talked about you know uh the professional development or the goals that we have folks can read through this we have the special uh we have the um professional development description in in the appendices but for the sake of time I just go through a couple of these uh the equity operating expense Equity Department operating expenses

195that may change with new leadership in that department we talked about professional development beyond the bell which is a program support in our elementary students paraprofessionals as we know as the elementary levels grown particularly in our Pre-K and kindergartens as those numbers grow the supports that we need uh within those classes is going to grow also the number of students that are moving in it might come with an IEP that requires a paraprofessional that's beyond our control but that's not only a contract with the Milton Public Schools it's a contract with the state um High School uh French teacher numbers are growing in all of those departments in the world language I should have said there's a total of 71 classes at the high school level that has 28 students or more 71 different classes

196and if you add in the music classes that will rise up to 76 and I didn't count the music classes initially because typically your chorus your band and your strings Ensemble they are they do run rather large but think about the 71 courses that we offer to 28 students or more so the Naviance license at the high school that allows students from their freshman year and we were talking about the possibility extending that down to um the middle school but this is all of your information that you keep track of moving as you matriculate through the grades ninth grade all the way up to 12th grade it's a it's a hub for all of your information uh career inventory study habits keeping track and community service hours your your recommendations your transcripts all of that

197stuff is and then it's a communication system as well where the guidance Department can communicate directly to the students um and so that's the list and you could see that that comes out to about 675 000 um but these are some of the needs that we have that where we're going to be going to the Warren committee and we're presenting to the community and hopefully there's an appetite to support these initiatives and I I share that because oftentimes we're compared to these other districts and uh as you can see in one of the slides in the appendices when we talk about the math intervention is there's a slide in there that shows Milton compared to other districts Milton has six schools with not one math interventionist and then you look at it in comparison to

198some of the other schools they might have three four and in some cases five um so that concludes this slide and we'll talk about it in Greater detail but for in the spirit of time I I just next slide in me or that goes into the yeah so as you can see there's there's supplemental uh schedules and data that folks could uh kind of go through that kind of presents a lot of the stuff that we're talking about um and it gives you greater detail but for this evening that concludes that uh budget presentation this this will be on the website at some point as well but like I said we hope to be presenting to the warrant committee and then to the community Milton Community as a whole okay thank you very much um

199I can the only person I see with the hand up is Dr Carroll um but uh and I think we need to keep the presentation up so I can follow the hands for you too Dr Craig oh okay great so Dr Carol and then um remember white thank you remember Ross standing too go ahead okay I'll be quick um thank you so much I I just want to um express my appreciation because each time I see this presentation it's clearer more detailed but also more streamlined than thank you for all the work you've done in between each of the versions I've seen which I know are only some of the many more versions Finance subcommittee has seen so um thanks a lot a quick question I have is um you mentioned the possibility of spreading

200out the one-time costs for the um new curriculum over more than one fiscal year would that delay the implementation of Implement uh bringing out or sorry there's a couple of issues that work here and then I'll let um super assistant superintendent Dexter jump in if there's something I'm leaving out if we want to have them paid for um one-time costs with free cash they can't be paid out over a number of years unless we put them in our operating budget so there's an incentive to have them paid as one-time costs if um by stretching them out assistant superintendent Dexter was alluding to the fact that maybe social studies would be delayed for instance and that math would be implemented or something along those lines then we could still pay for it with one time as

201a one-time cost not bringing it into our operating budget but we would have to delay as you alluded to we'd have to delay the implementation and so that depends on how much free cash is available correct which we do not yet I don't know free cash has not been certified as far as I know okay um so I have no idea what's available or even I have no idea what amount is there or what would be available to us out of okay so I just want to make sure that as we float the possibility of spreading it out um that we like keep in mind the consequence to the students of the delay of implementation in messaging that to Warrant committee and so forth but thank you for clearing that up um remember white you

202were next or at least I saw your hand next um I just was gonna mention a couple of things Amy I think this is excellent and the work you did um is really impressive um when I'm thinking about the fact that we meet with the warrant committee maybe next week and then thinking about our audience of town meeting I would suggest that your first slide which breaks down the different uh categories for the budget which go like policy and administration instructional leadership instruction instructional Services Special Ed I think you may need to understand who your audience is and elaborate on what all those are because I think people may be in education might know what policy Administration might mean when instructional leadership might mean but I think a lot of folks don't really know what

203that means so I think a couple of sentences just say this category includes the superintendent's office this category includes this group of people this group of Educators I think that would be very helpful um because I think you'll get some questions about that and then I think that in general when we talk about salaries people always stand up at town meeting and and sort of talk about steps and lanes and how much the raises really are I think you've got to be prepared to talk about that this is how things are done in Education around the way that um staff get compensated for you know continuing their education for working on their Master's Degree for you know for basically for becoming better teachers so I think rather than be defensive about that I think it

204might be very helpful to be um you know forthcoming about that as a way that um our salaries are developed and then I was also thinking that if Sue Miceli could join us for the Warren committee meeting next week um you know she did she did yeoman's work at one meeting that we sat at um that I thought was she really helps people understand the complexities of and I mean the whole department the whole educational this whole budget is very complex you know that um we all know that but I think that um Sue really speaks to the complexities within her specific Department very very well and very forcefully so I would hope that she could be invited next week or whatever and whatever night we end up meeting with the Warren committee yeah I've

205already asked for Sue Miceli to be there if she can thank you member rosteni I want to thank the members of the school committee as well as the administration for putting together this budget and more importantly aligning our goals with our needs I think there's a lack of awareness sometimes that we have very high expectations for the performance of our schools but our budget doesn't always align with that and if we could go to slide six where it shows how chronically underspect Milton is relative to our peer districts and if we want to have the high school ranking and the high achievement that we we aspire to gain that we need to fund a school district that can actually achieve those and I think that what has been presented in this budget reflects the our

206capacity to actually meet those expectations and I also want to commend the faculty and the staff in our schools who have been able to maintain our ranking in spite of a decline in spending between school years 2019 and 2020. it speaks to their dedication and their willingness to roll up their sleeves and do things that are above and beyond what's expected and I'm going to use one simple example of our nursing staff given our ratios pre-pandemic we were understaffed and then we overloaded our nurses with the additional burden of having to do contact tracing have to administer having to administer testing stay and I think this is a great opportunity to highlight for our community the needs that we have and the fact that we've asked we've had unrealistic expectations of many people for a

207long period of time and whether or not we are able to achieve the financial support that we need to to manage the district for the next school year I would like to consider this the beginning of a very long conversation across the planning board the select board about how we can use a mix of Revenue to meet our needs so the schools aren't inadequately funded our fire department our Police Department all the Departments of the Town deserve the resources they need to function adequately to meet the expectations of our citizens so thank you all for your hard work on this um Dr Carol I see your hand is there anybody else before I circle before I go back to Dr Carroll is there anybody else who would like to speak for the first time nope

208okay Dr Carol you're up sorry just uh one more question based on what something member white mentioned um and it connects to what you were just saying remember Ross Denny um if in anticipation of questions on steps and lanes and that large majority of the budget taken up by salaries I'm wondering if we could be prepared um not with a slide added into the presentation but just to have on the side if the questions come um you know what are comps for teacher salaries starting salaries in these comparable local school districts including which is not included as a comparable but it's relevant as a neighboring District Boston Public Schools what is a Milton public school teacher coming in at verse um at steps and Lanes versus um you know Needham Boston um I think that

209would potentially also help and you know make that case that um you know we we actually are not um paying our teachers more than any of these other places we're actually paying them uh lower amounts and I just wanted to make that additional suggestion yeah Dr Carol that is a good point uh the the teacher's contract is a public document in the steps and Lanes already near in terms of the salary page and we could look at this year's obviously next year this is a negotiation year so we have to see but you put it in but it varies and when and that's a good point and we should have said that when you look at the 75 000 that are on some of those uh full-time uh employees that is a plug number that's

210like an average because depending on who we hire like your math and your science teachers usually come in a little bit different because your English and your history teachers are the ones that are probably remaining their position a lot it's harder to get science teachers um particularly at the high school level because they have to be certified in a specific content area like chemistry biology have the physics and things like that so it depends on the year years of experience year the education in terms of the number of degrees you have and how many credits beyond that degree it's a little more complicated but you are absolutely right in comparison to some of the districts Milton is either on par in some cases probably a little bit lower if you go just by the years

211of service we might be able to get that but it's it might not be as easy to do that by Monday or within next week because you're asking people to send out their contract pages and then doing a comparison but we definitely can take that contract page and and even put that in the slide possibly uh member White I was just going to say I think it might be helpful even for town meeting if we you think about asking like maybe some of our like Canton and need them Randolph and Stoughton like just say pick out full quickly what is a starting salary for a new teacher who's just like coming for the first time to teach How would how does Milton compare to that and then what does Milton look like five years in

212and ten years in so it's just to kind of look at the fact that sometimes you do hire an experienced teacher who's coming in on step five or step six or whatever so I think that would be a good comparison because I don't think I mean historically I know I used to look at this all the time when I worked in Denham I think Milton had a um higher starting salary than other districts but not so much as time went on but that may have changed over the years because I haven't looked at it probably in about four or five years since you know since your new contract other comments okay um seeing none um I am going to um find my motion page oh this was easy I'd like to make a motion to

213approve the fyt FY 23 budget as presented as the um the figures maybe not all the slides right but um the figures uh as presented tonight uh to take to the warrant committee to present on Monday the 24th do I have a second I'll second okay um this will be a roll call vote and I can't see everybody Margaret can you see everybody I can so um okay member white yes there you go okay oh uh member white yes right um member Ross daddy yes uh Dr Carol yes remember Rosemary yes chair Everhart yes and I'm a yes okay thank you all very much well I want to thank you to this uh to you to remember us any member white I know to member Rosemary and Dr Carroll who attended many meetings this was

214and and superintendents Dexter Sheen and Chad this is an amazing budget really crafts some of the things we've really been talking about over the last year or so and captures are the goals that we talked about and keeps the students at the center um and that's that's the key so we're going out there and we're going to Advocate and fight for the budget and and and support the rest of the town at the same time as member Ross and he said to be the best quality that we can okay um so I have a few other things it's a longer than usual um next I uh have good news to report um that the Copeland Family Foundation um donated to a 63 974 dollars towards the purchase of two Minotaur drw o51 Ms if you're

215into these the model the exact model um School transportation uh Vans we were able to were we had to sell the two bands that we had previously because we weren't allowed to the way that they were fitted or not fitted actually uh we were not allowed to transport students in those um bus those vans but so uh between the the trade-in costs uh of the trade-in value of the two um vans that we had um we were able to with this money from the Copelands we're able to purchase two bands those two Vans um and this is just excellent news going forward I like a gift that keeps on giving so those two Vans are if we use them an average of four to six times a week um for athletic just just Athletics during

216the 10-week season um and we could also use them for clubs and other activities we use them for smaller teams for athletics we can save in one year between forty five thousand and about sixty eight thousand dollars every year so that's an amazing oh thank you superintendent jet um is that what they look like really um that's kind of amazing um so we will save um you know in signing these vendor words um for all these years the the costs for extra buses for athletics clubs you know special events all that stuff is astronomical and can range anywhere from maybe 300 for a short something to hundreds of dollars depending on the length of the trip and the amount of time the bus driver has to be there so we're going to save um a

217lot of money we'll save that every year and given that seventy thousand dollars is the cost about the cost of a regular school bus for an entire year we could approach that amount so this is a great gift and thank you to the Copelands um but we have to vote to accept it I can't imagine that anyone wants to say no but we have to formally um accept it so I need my motion page again um and I'd like to make a motion to approve the donation by the Copeland Family Foundation in the amount of 63 974 dollars to be put towards the purchase of two Minotaur School transportation bands do I have a second second okay this is also a roll call vote remember white yes remember Ross Danny yes Dr Carol yes member

218Rosemary yes chair Everhart yes and I'm also yes again unanimous thank you um I also have another uh piece or two pieces of good news to add to that and that is that our state Senator Senator Walter Timothy um has secured for Milton Milton Public School um from arpa funds um he is earmarked uh for us fifty thousand dollars for um the HVAC uh improvements and given how much our systems have been running during the pandemic like they're running three times or at least twice as long as they ordinarily have been running constantly 24 7. um so we have fifty thousand dollars to go toward improvements for the HVAC system and um he's earmarked for us um fifty thousand dollars for um the Improvement of Brooke's field is that correct it doesn't say it on

219the piece of paper oh yes it does Brooks field okay so that's a hundred thousand dollars we don't have to vote on that but I just wanted to pass along that that good news for our facilities and can I just give the piece of clarification on that I got a call from his chief of staff uh to today uh the the fifty thousand dollars it was the earmarked for the eight batch HVAC system they sent out another signature page that went to the town apparently that had that had to be approved by the strong Town Administrator so it went to him Mike Dennehy and he did sign it so I'm just letting you know but it is for the hvacs okay great that's that's excellent um so thank you to Senator Senator Timothy um for

220that and I'm sure Bill Ritchie is you know doing a a little dance of Joy about getting that extra money so it's really nice and finally um the usual I'd like to make a motion to approve vendor warrant number 29 payable January 13th 2022 in the amount of 286 769.28 wait a second second okay um roll call vote remember white yes member Ross Denny yes Dr Carol yes remember Rosemary yes chair everhard yes and I'm a yes as well and I have to drop off the meeting um because I have another Capital Improvement meeting uh very early thank you for all your work on the budget and Dr and superintendent Dexter thank you thank you thank you superintendent and assistant superintendents um it's great all right okay so now it is 10 18. we are

221now breaking our own policy if we uh look at new things after a certain time um so I have a question for you member Ross Rosemary what would you what was your update on the school building committee or do you want to postpone that to another time uh let's postpone it to another okay um I would like to approve the minutes if there are any questions or because we we're supposed to approve minutes within a certain time frame right so we have minutes on this agenda from the 15th of December and from the 5th of just of January we could do just the 15th if people haven't had opportunities to read them and do the fifth the next time if that works for all of you does that work for all of you you feel

222comfortable with that okay so I can make a motion to improve the minutes of our December 15 2021 school committee meeting is there a second for that motion okay does anyone have any changes or concerns about those minutes okay so this will be a roll call vote then member Ross Denny yes uh member White yes Dr Carroll yes remember Rosemary yes and myself yes five zero and one um Dr Craig has um adjourned from the meeting so January 5th we can vote at our February 2nd meeting and that will still be within the time frame that we can approve them right we don't have any old business that I'm aware of um we are going to at our next school community meeting which will be on February 2nd we are going to have the Milton

223High School site Council come and we will approve hopefully the program of study we will have a curriculum and instruction advisory committee update we will have a policy committee update we will most likely talk about Finance because we will have already been at the warrant committee um is there any other subcommittee oh we will have a school building committee update since we adjourned that um health and wellness okay um and we will at some point so I will email um superintendent Chet and then we can discuss at the next um school committee meeting we will need to look at looking at a formative assessment for the district as we move into mid-year of the first year of the of um of this year for superintendent jet so we can discuss that it's not a lengthy

224process I but we have to figure that piece out for probably the beginning of March um but that's all that I have I don't think I'm missing anything from our next meeting strategic plan will be on the 16th that's correct right yeah yeah and I know you want to move polycon I will talk to you yeah I think having those both yeah one meeting would be an awful lot okay and I do have one follow-up so thank you to Super superintendent jet and the administrators that worked with him to get the reporting system updated oh yes I would love to get an update on um in terms of the procedure implications of having this new system okay just looking at the data and how are they responding just so that the community is aware sure

225thank you thanks for reminding us that and then superintendent yet you can update us at the next school committee meeting on the open positions in the district of assistant superintendent and director Martens we can discuss that I I get we should extend our thanks to director Prague Martin since today was our last day on the job and thank her for her work on equity and and and the um committees that she formed and the work she did with the community and wish her well in our next phase of her career so thank you and I will be doing that but I was hoping to be able to post the assistant superintendent with the in Timeline it was going to be obviously yesterday in the blog tomorrow with the entire community so they would know and

226then we would stop the process of recruiting uh at least four I think it's four or five uh community members with that but I would be happy to discuss that at any time yeah just like just some updates I think particularly oh member Ross saying did you have a question about that sorry I would like to understand whether or not our intent is to utilize a search firm you support us in identifying a pool of candidates for the assistant superintendent role so I I would be more than happy to share that with you I actually pulled some of the superintendents and out of all of his superintendents that responded which I think was about uh over 50 of them and I'll be happy to share that data with you only one use a consultant firm

227to kind of search for assistant superintendent of the curriculum in human resource or assistant superintendent of business um doesn't mean that we can't do it I just I I believe I shared that in an email I just don't know where that money is coming from and we know we have to onboard a teacher at this point in time in the one firm that they will not affirm the one outside organization that they used was masc um and they do that work along with NASDAQ did they do that work as well helping to do that but uh no we haven't uh determined to go in that direction of using an outside consulting firm um this week figure out where that moving in that position um but it's important I think to update the community the community

228where we are and I think particularly um if we can outline the um the process for um the director of equity positions I didn't know that we'll we just did the hiring policy and we'll have a committee and things like that so be good to update everyone all right all right I will make the motion to adjourn this meeting I thank you all this was a very long meeting just like I know that you all be very glad when I'm no longer in charge and there's not too many more money um I don't know what to do except to add more meetings I I'm sorry I I know it's really late but it was such an excellent meeting with so many so much good information um so thank you to everyone for the for the

229length and the lateness and the time I know everyone gets up really early to go to work so anyway I'm making a motion to adjourn this meeting anyone want to Second it all right all right this is a roll call vote remember Rosemary yes a member of Ross Denny yes Dr Carroll yes member white yes member at Bart yes all right thank you all very much be safe out there and enjoy the days see you soon everybody good night