001foreign good evening everyone uh I'd like to call to order the school committee meeting of October 12 2022. uh first thing on our agenda is to approve tonight's agenda um and I have a couple of things that will need to be taken off of the agenda one is the approval of minutes that will cut off until next time and the other is the executive session which we will not need tonight are there any other changes or deletions to the agenda anyone no okay and then we will move forward then um so next on our agenda is superintendent's update and I welcome assistant superintendent uh Garth McKinney to take it from here thank you madam chair good evening everybody a couple of updates for the committee and attendees first all the principals agreed that our Milton
002High School community service day was a great success our high school students helped out in classrooms um provided individual and personalized experiences at launch of recess packed stem bags and distributed curriculum materials with thank you to our high school students we also had a great day of sat and PSAT testing more than half of our seniors participated in taking SATs while our sophomores and juniors took the PSATs we want to say thank you to the Copeland Family Foundation for allowing all of our 10th and 11th graders to participate in this exam at no charge in addition to the high school community service day freshmen also had an opportunity to participate in digital citizenship day which reinforced reinforced the importance of appropriate behavior when using social media lastly some important dates that are included in school
003calendars and the superintendent's blog on October 19th there is a seasonal flu clinic at Pierce Middle School October 28th is our next late start day for students that morning will be professional development for teachers so please make sure you can mark your calendars on October 30th the Milton foundation for education is holding the annual Monster Dash at Cunningham Park November 1st there's no school for students that's a PD day for teachers second to last don't forget tickets are on sale for the high school presentation of Beauty on the beast beast on November 10 12 and 13th and lastly um but sincerely October is National principles month I hope you all take a moment to recognize the grade six principles that we have helping our students teachers and families across the district that's the end of
004my report thank you so much great thank you Dr McKinney um the next thing on our agenda is a discussion and vote on interim assistant superintendent and I'd like to just say a few words about um about what that's about um first I'd like to on behalf of the Milton school committee congratulate our Amy Dexter and wish her very well and her new role as the Director of Finance for the town of Milton as you may know Ms Dexter joined Milton public schools in December 2020 as the assistant superintendent for business Affairs after having had a very successful career serving as the town accountant for Milton since joining Milton public schools in 2020 Miss Dexter has played an integral role on our central office team she has was recognized by both school and town officials
005for her detailed and transparent work throughout the budgetary process and has been credited for assisting the district and the town through the covid-19 pandemic by working on federal grants provided through arpa the American Rescue plan act and Esser the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds and Miss Dexter's experience in this area has been invaluable to the the town and the schools so Amy we thank you for everything you have done the school committee looks forward to continuing our partnership with you and your new role with the town and we sent you a little something to thank you and that we hope you will enjoy so thank you thank you so much um and then we are also voting tonight to appoint an interim assistant superintendent for business and that person is Dr Glenn pavlicek
006who has graciously agreed to return to this position for those who may not know um Dr pavlichak has served as the assistant superintendent for business for several years before retiring in December 2020 before Miss Dexter arrived he is a respected member of the Milton Community and is well known for his work a numerous town and school committees throughout his career perhaps most most notably Dr palacek has served as chair of Milton's warrant committee and as chair of the Milton school committee for several years on behalf of the Milton school committee we want to express our gratitude and appreciation to Dr pavlicek for coming back and stepping back into this role as interim assistant superintendent for business Affairs and we look forward to welcoming welcoming him back next week so I'd like to make a motion
007um in that regard to approve the appointment of Dr Glenn pavlichek as assistant superintendent for business you have a second please second I'll second thank you and we'll do a roll call vote uh member White yes Dr Carroll yes member varghese yes Dr Miranda yes remember Russ Denny yes and chair rosemaryas that is unanimous thank you and thank you we'll look forward to welcoming Dr palacek back [Music] agenda um now we also have a strategic metrics team on that uh Dr McKinney do you have something you'd like to share about on that one uh yeah yes Madam chair we also asked me if I if I couldn't if I could just interrupt for one second I just saw um Miss Dexter's hand raised I'm sorry I I missed it before now if we could just
008that's okay I just wanted to um committee and all of the Milton Public School staff for the support over the last two years the opportunity to work at the Milton public schools has been a great opportunity for me and I just want to say thank you to all of you for supporting me that in that role and I look forward to continuing the work of the town and the schools as we move forward so thank you all thank you very much Dr McKinney oh thank you madam chair we do have the Pierce Middle School psych Council presentation would be acceptable that they present and I'm happy to provide a metrics team update after that absolutely that sounds great uh Dr fish turn it over to you and your team is there anybody else from your
009team that we need to to promote to be part of the presentation oh we have every we have everybody and our power uh Adina Schechter Megan Crowley and Joe Clark we are all set okay thank you great thank you good evening everybody um it's good to see you all and thank you for the opportunity to for our site Council to present on behalf not just on the council but on behalf of of Pierce and to provide you with some updates on um our work relative to our school Improvement plan and some other initiatives this year I am going to share my screen if that's okay are you able to see that perfect awesome thank you uh well again I always look forward to having the opportunity to present to the committee and to the community
010at large regarding the work all the good work that we have going on within our school within our school Community I like to begin tonight by recognizing um the members of peer site Council we have been very fortunate to have a high level of Engagement among our parents and Guardians as well as as staff um so Lexi Bergeron's a parent Brendan bond teacher Joe Clark parent ozara Cruz parent Latifah Frank parent Nellis hartran TV special education teacher Dr Patricia Jim Woods Lloyd parent Dr majini John Charles parent Frederick McFadden parent Rene Mendoza math teacher Jake Smith social studies teacher Stacy Solomon parent Dana Turner parent and Candace Wigmore there so we have um really enjoyed not just a tremendous amount of Engagement with our families and staff on site Council over the past couple years
011but we've really benefited from having a solid core group that has welcomed um I've been fortunate to welcome a number of new members um I want to compliment and thank the site Council for their their commitment to this work while it is earlier in the year and we're really just getting up and going with our with our Focus areas and steering our school along through our school Improvement plan in um Improvement processes they've already been engaged quite a bit throughout the fall and I'm grateful for that further we're incredibly lucky to have such wealth and diversity of experiences and perspectives in our members and I have to say in all my years of being a principal over the past two years I've never seen such an Engaged and active site Council well we're here tonight
012realize everything that we will discuss relative to school Improvement the most important thing here is our students so my hope here is it's nice it was nice to be able to have some new pictures to add to to our slide deck this year which included full faces of students and most important students who are engaged and happy and really having a successful transition back to school so I hope that these photos here give a glimpse into life here in Pierce and at Pierce Middle School we are nearly 1 000 fund enthusiastic and unique young people who are admit and exciting and ever-changing time in our development and as a school Community we recognize and celebrate this time of booming physical cognitive and social emotional growth and development physically know we know that this is an
013interesting and tricky time of development for our kids and as a community we are committed to fostering an environment that understands values and empathizes with the many changes that our students are experiencing at this time in their development students reasoning and critical thinking capacities are developing at an extraordinary rate and middle school really presents a unique opportunity to develop students confidence and identities both as Learners and as thinkers finally socially and emotionally this is a time of developing self-awareness and awareness of others at a time of learning to navigate social and interpersonal Dynamics learn to build relationships and developing emotional resilience as a whole school Community from our students to our Educators to our families we've all done a phenomenal job managing all the challenges in the past few years but to offer a special
014acknowledgment to our faculty and staff who have been nothing short of amazing we've been through a lot in the past two years but I'm proud of how our faculty has consistently responded always with our students development learning and well-being at the center of their work so as we move into the presentation I wanted to take the opportunity to recap some early successes in the school year um we have really by many measures had an outstanding start to the new school year it has been nice to say that it has felt normal for the first time in quite some time in our schools to give the committee some insight we really should made some positive changes into how we we open the year uh we began the first few days of school uh with some special
015schedules it focused on building community and connections um teachers and students getting to know each other and setting both school-wide and classroom expectations and the feedback on the first month plus of the school year has been overwhelmingly positive from our students from our staff and from our families and we look forward to building on the momentum throughout the year we also want to highlight here uh you'll hear more about these both of these later in our presentation um two notable successes and the first has been the rollout of our new grade six seminar class the seminar class is a new course for all of our sixth graders that they're all engaged in this year and again feedback from students and families around the new seminar class has been fantastic we look forward to sharing more
016with the committee about the seminar class a little bit further along in the presentation another notable success has been our late start day in the staff professional development the New Year marks A Renewed commitment to authentic professional development well most of the past few years has been focused on problem solving making adjustments and responding to challenges related to the pandemic and otherwise with this new professional development resource that we've been gifted by way of the late start days we're able to engage Educators in high quality professional learning experiences and through the support of superintendent Sheen and Dr McKinney we kicked off the new year with an exemplary professional development session on Universal Design for Learning we've set a strong foundation for our work toward realizing the district's strategic initiatives of personalized learning safe and supportive
017schools and equity and education and the committee will hear more about our work on udl later in the presentation so now we'll take a look at our school profile um when you zoom out and look at our school holistically you see a story of enrollment growth and we will continue to Circle back to this throughout throughout our presentation but for the new school year this school year we are now at 958 students you'll notice the breakdown by grade 366 students in sixth grade until about 287 in seventh grade and 300 in size in the eighth grade um and what we also share here just it's just a little bit of comparison you'll notice that we are up about 30 students overall from the 2021-2020 school year uh and based on straight line projections of the
018current um uh fifth sixth and seventh grade we anticipate being up over a thousand students for next school year uh with 370 366 and 287 students in sixth seventh and eighth grade respectively uh our current and projecting enrollments are going to have to be a substantive part of how we educate our community and our needs in the near future and while the reality of a new skill building project will eventually alleviate space issues throughout the district the reality is that enrollment is outpacing how it's added Staffing and again we'll Circle back to this throughout the presentation so now we'll shift our Focus to bring the committee up to speed on some of the school Improvement efforts uh and initiatives that we've been engaged in throughout the 2022-2023 school year our school Improvement efforts continue to
019be grounded in three tenants or underpinnings um and those are academic achievement social emotional learning and behavior health and diversity equity and inclusion we view these tenants as working together to drive a focus on students and their development as Learners as people these tenants are interdependent we have to view social emotional learning Behavioral Health and diversity Equity inclusion as the foundation of our values and ultimately excellence in education it's important to note that these underpinnings are aligned with the vision of excellence and Equity that our district has constructed which is reflected in the Strategic plan that was recently authored so our site Council created a new school Improvement plan last school year that will guide our priorities over this three-year period each of these priority areas is aligned with the 300 pennings of academic achievement
020SEO and Behavioral Health as well as diversity equity and inclusion in our school Improvement plan has four what we call Priority areas the first is school culture student support and engagement the second is teaching and learning third data culture and fourth facilities Staffing and enrollment and throughout the presentation we'll share with the committee some key actions embedded within those priority priority areas that make up our three-year School Improvement plan foreign area of school culture student support and engagement so in the school Improvement plans priority area of school culture student support and engagement we have a goal to explicitly develop a strong School culture that is anchored in the core values of safety responsibility respect and kindness it is characterized by strong relationships a sense of community student wellness and student sense of belonging related to
021that goal we have a theory of action that says if our school's culture promotes inclusivity respect and achievement the students and educators will be able to excel in front so two illustrative examples of our work toward actualizing this goal are the implementation of the sixth grade seminar class and our work towards disrupting Trends and disproportionate discipline outcomes for students so we'll take a look now and spend spend some time looking at the sixth grade seminar class to provide a little background a little bit of History two years ago the Pierce instructional leadership team engaged in discussions around strategies for supporting students transition from elementary school to Middle School these deliberations were aligned with the related School Improvement efforts at the time simultaneously we find ourselves working with students and families around the transition to middle
022school and in particular some of the challenges that came with the blending of four unique Elementary School communities once they arrived once students arrived at Pierce we decided to replace the sixth grade exploratory writing class that many sixth graders took previously with a seminar class this was a multi-pronged strategy as this shift we viewed as being with better meet students needs in a creative and authentic way so at this time I would like to introduce Aaron power and Megan Crowley two of our teachers of the seminar class to speak about their experiences with class I heard anything back and thank you very much for being here um do you want me to go first Maybe can you hear me yep we can um so I'm Aaron power I teach six seven in eighth grade and
023I will just say this seminar fuss was a real leap of faith in billfish um and it definitely I think has paid off um I I really do think it has been so beneficial it has been a much calmer um start definitely in sixth grade particularly with the large class size that we have um so we really I kind of told the students maybe as corny as it sounds like you go through your day in Middle School you learn math you learn science social studies and this class is really about learning about you about as a learner metacognition thinking about your own thinking setting goals and I just think that the more Mindful and I have to say selfishly as a teacher I think I've been so reflective this year because I'm practicing what I
024preach in the classroom which has you know I'm pretty reflective anyway but I think even outside in my own life about about how much time I'm spending online or kind of now looked I shut my phone off more than I ever have and and the students say that like just the doing the breathing like a student told me she really struggles getting up in the morning and coming to school because she can't sleep at night but she's been practicing the breathing that we do I just sleeping so much better it's a little just little I think the more mindful that we are those just sort of little victories I think have have just been it's really been I don't want to say better than I thought it was but kind of better than I thought
025it was going to be um and so we're doing books on bullying it's just a really it's just a really kind of relaxing mindful class I don't I don't know if I'm expressing it no it's been it's just been a really positive addition to sixth grade Megan do you want to yeah I can I can really just Echo everything that Erin has just said that the students have really taken well to this class and I've even had a student like walking to my class say oh good at seminar this class is so relaxing when like the rest of the day is so full of like you know different types of homeworks and projects and tests and our class is really helping them you know deal with all of that and then also in a you
026know with mindfulness in hand and I'll even say well like Aaron said you know practicing what we preach like I give them me as an example all the time that like even when we introduce mindfulness to them that like I was like just the other day I sat there and I had 20 million different things in my head and I had to take a step back and be mindful of what I was doing and they really liked that I've had a lot of great discussions with the kids about what their days are like what's causing them stresses it's been a great way to really get to know them we've been able to have one-on-one conferences with them already this year just to really get to know what their interests are what they're doing after school
027but also just kind of like check in with them you know what classes are they doing well in what classes do they need help with what can we as teachers help them with this year and I think the students have really really taken to it and I'm excited to see what else we're able to provide for them this year and I'm excited to talk about um do the common book read which really highlights the bullying and what sort of discussions we're able to draw from that because so far I've had some great discussions on like unplugging and digital um digital drama so far so I'm excited to see what other discussions we can have I don't meet every day I'm gonna thank you for for sharing those insights um I'd like to introduce now Jill
028Clark Jill is a member of our site Council and a parent of a sixth grader just to share some perspective through the minds of a sixth grade parent thanks Dr fish and thanks for having me tonight again my name is Jill Clark and I'm the parent of a sixth grader at Pearson talking both with my sixth grader and some other sixth graders hearing a lot of similar things to what the teachers shared I think having that space to have a little bit of a pause in a day that can otherwise be um you know not only very fast-paced and chaotic but very different from at the elementary school experience think kids as they're making that transition having a place to pause a little bit and take a little moment in their day is is really
029helpful for a lot of kids definitely hearing um good things about some of the mindfulness and meditation opportunities but also the flexibility I think that a lot of kids have have seen with that that you know if the deep breathing isn't working for them then they can you know sit quietly or you know and read or Draw or you know just kind of find ways to achieve that mindfulness in ways that are that are working for them um I've also heard from my students that some of the more um concrete study skills have been helpful in sort of you know thinking about how to approach school and um you know as the homework gets more intense and there's a number of classes um being able to um build some specific skills around how to manage
030that and my student seminar teacher which is not one of the two teachers that we have here um shared with us at open house that she most recently taught these this type of class and students at a community college level and and so as a parent the idea that my kid is getting these skills way way earlier you know really when they have the opportunity to sink in and um and benefit her throughout her educational career I think is an incredible opportunity and something that I was really impressed by Joe Aaron Megan thank you very much for for being here and for sharing your perspectives um we are going to transition the presentation away from the seminar class now I'm not sure chair Rosemary if it would be appropriate I don't know if anybody the
031committee has any questions or comments well well Joe and Megan and Aaron are here I don't want to take anything out of order no absolutely any questions I see Dr Miranda uh yes uh so thank you to everyone for the presentation and the information I'm intrigued by the sixth grade seminar and just wondering um in terms of what kind of training or support you know teachers have received to be able to implement sort of the content uh teach the content and then wondering what strategies if any are being applied to make sure that the learning from these seminars get transferred into the other classroom experiences right so how do you take that Beyond just the break that the students are getting during the seminar so that those skills are being reinforced throughout the day good
032question I can I can begin I can answer the first part and then I'll turn I contribute over to Aaron and Back Again uh unfortunately that we did not have a lot of too many opportunities for training ahead of time however we've been able to set up comment planning time during throughout our master's schedule for Aaron and Megan and Kelly Gentilly who is the third staff member who teaches the seminar class so they have common planning time built into the day um which I imagine they would say has been beneficial um in a structure of some of the flexible sketching we've been able to do in the creativity Runner master schedule the one up to the second part I'm sure that Aaron and Megan would put more um put more detail on it but one
033of the goals in collaboration is for the seminar teachers to work with the sixth grade team teachers so as the as the team teachers are um whether they're noticing patterns or Trends among their students or gaps in executive functioning or social or or planning skills that they can work collaboratively with the on-team teachers to do those in you know in the moment adjustments to create content to address those needs I'll just add to that if you want um sorry Aaron if you want to go first you can um I was going to say the like in the moment kind of changing I know I've already done at one point because there was I usually start off class with how are you guys doing and there was one day where a student just raised her hand
034and said I have four quizzes on Friday and I don't know what to do and so in that moment it was like all right we're gonna push aside whatever I was doing and we'll just do that tomorrow and today we're going to talk about time management prioritizing what we need to study and making sure that it makes its way to the classroom and even with those one-on-one check-ins you know we did take a peek at their grades and we talked about you know some of the students are already really great at advocating for themselves and already saw like I'm missing that assignment but I know that I'm going to do it now some of the kids needed more help with advocating for themselves so it's kind of talking them through and be like maybe just
035double check with your teacher can you retake this quiz if you didn't do well on it if you're missing this assignment double check with your teacher can you do this and then just rechecking with them have you talked to their have you talked to your teacher making sure it's a little bit on them first so that they can gain these skills uh before we double check and if we need any more kind of of us in that situation but go ahead Aaron if you want to add anything and pretty much doing the same thing is that you kind of have to Pivot a lot and when doing the one-on-one meetings I had a student assume that was not doing well in most of the classes and it was majority of it was Paul Moore and
036he was uncomfortable reaching out to the teachers so I did I did do it for him and then we kind of met at their planning times with the students can I make the plan for him so that's sort of how we're we're I mean we're close with the sixth grade teachers too and we we can see on the portal what team they're on what class they're not what we can see their grades so it's pretty easy to reach out if we connect with them thank you member Russ Danny first I want to uh commend the members of the site Council and the staff because I remember being on the site Council and hearing concerns about how prepared our sixth graders are to engage and this is such a thoughtful solution that also addresses the issue
037of building a culture in a school of a thousand students it's something that you know private schools are able to do because they're resourced and they're small so I want to say thank you and I do have a couple of follow-up questions just because I want to understand a little more about the program in terms of the topics that you had listed as being what would be addressed in the class how did you come up with that list and is there an opportunity for the 7th and 8th graders or are there any plans for them to have a similar experience because they did not get this in sixth grade but they would definitely benefit from many of these topics but also just the the culture building that this allows um and I I hate to
038do the third question this third question is how do we know I know that you talked about the students or you experienced the students differently how do you know it's working for them and if it is literally you can see a difference in how they function in class that's that's perfectly fine foreign solution because you were on the peer side Council when we were navigating some of these challenges three years ago um and what was interesting is when we were well well Aaron as she mentioned teaching seventh and eighth grade ELA and Megan teaches Latin and she also runs uh Pierce Academy for sixth grade um Kelly Gentilly who's the third teacher was hired for in the majority for assignment is is teaching the seminar class and when we were doing that recruitment any of
039the candidates who with whom we spoke were blown away that this was even a an opportunity for middle school students and that you know that other schools um aren't offering this and whether they were people who were parents who wish that their own children had something like this it just they were there was a lot of excitement that a school would be um thinking so creatively and flexibly about how to solve basically a problem that has that that persists pretty consistently in that transition um in terms of opportunities for seven for seven I shouldn't actually back up the content so like those topics that we laid out sort of loosely calling it curriculum really came from um you know our instructional leadership teams you know collection of feedback from from Cisco teachers and what they
040were seeing over time as as challenges the students were commonly encountering um and that Phyllis grew and involved as we as we talked more uh concretely about the course but that's really it was pretty much a Grassroots um you know leadership team collecting female actual teachers particularly sixth grade teachers which which is where the um the core Concepts and themes and even write down the common book reads that was Aaron Powers idea um where you know knowing that having taught sixth grade having taught the exploratory the Isela and seventh and eighth grade has had um you know brought the idea of doing that common book read of restart which all sixth graders will read so it's um I believe you know I think we view the content as really being iterative and flexible um but
041how that can then transition to seventh and eighth grade is a good question um because right now we the the reality of it is um we don't have enough staff right now to be able to do that um we had to do um we had to be pretty creative with our with the existing staff that we had to be able to to put all sixth graders into this class for every other day um but I agree with you that that 7th and 8th graders have missed um a lot of the foundational explicit teaching of live news foundational skills over the course of the past couple of years in particular um so I don't have a sharper answer for your question but I think I think about them in the same way that you do um
042and then how do we know it works it's working I think that similar to how we did things with like the welcome to Middle School campus survey I think surveying students and collecting collecting um students feedback um formative feedback even to to get insights on how it's working for them and also what where where might there be gaps like how how might we be able to continue to augment the the class to best meet what students need and you know having those moments thank you Dr Carol thank you so much I know you have a lot more to share with us so I'll be quick I just I do want to Echo the appreciation for this um Innovation that you've created and presented here I agree it sounds really great um and you know I'm
043um I mean eager to see sort of how this benefits students not just right now in real time which is of course so important but also how we can track sort of progress over the next couple of years from this class having had this experience so it sounds really great and Dr fish you just answered one of my questions was to learn more about kind of how you developed this curriculum which you answered and I'm so pleased to hear that you did that through having collected that feedback so that you're able to Target um the actual needs that are there and that's that's terrific um my only other question um is is that you had mentioned this was uh coming into a slot that was previously focused on writing and can you just speak to
044um sort of where else the students will continue to access the the skills in writing I completely understand and appreciate that this Foundation of fundamental skills is like important to create first um as they transition into Pierce so you you made a very persuasive case on that and it just makes sense but are they going to be getting those writing supports sort of later in the year or some other time yeah good question Dr Carroll so um the writing explored since we're exploratory writing class was one that many or most I'd say many sixth graders cook as one of their exploratories alongside you know stem or acting or art uh half year of the half years of course that again most most students took but not all um one of the reasons why we felt
045comfortable with moving away from that was that we learned during the ELA curriculum review that we did in the 2019-2020 school year with Dr Noni LaSalle from Harvard um that the exploratory writing class uh wasn't entirely aligned with the ELA curriculum and that the writing standards and skills that would be um writing skills were going to be addressed through our recently implemented Ela curriculum through amplify so the writing the writing standards are being addressed and those skills are being developed within the tier one Ela curriculum that all students are getting in sixth seventh eighth grade that's great thank you remember Russ Danny did you have another question or you just have your hand up still so remember Vargas so I I'm just I'm actually experiencing the seminar class with my sixth grader right now and
046I have to say it as amazing um and I love that you guys um meet every other day because I think that reinforcement sometimes you know with classes if you if you meet once a week and then they kind of forget that like that those check-ins that you mentioned and following you know and having giving the kids the opportunity to come and speak and ask questions and just create that calm and relaxed environment for them to like kind of come to you with their you know problems that they're having or their struggles is really a game changer so thank you so much I am very excited about this and I'm glad to be able to experience it firsthand thank you thank you Dr fish I appreciate that and uh Aaron and Megan and Jill thank
047you so much for for joining us tonight and and for sharing uh a few in December classroom from from both the educator perspective and the future in the parent perspective I appreciate that um so the next aspect of our um School Improvement goal around school culture student support and engagement um we have an action step to disrupt Trends in disproportionate discipline outcomes uh through the use of restorative practices that support students and staff to learn to resolve disagreements take ownership for their behavior and engage in Acts of empathy and forgiveness so what I'd like to do now is introduce a Dana Schechter the district's restorative justice coach and Pierce parent to share some of insights into this key action step in our school Improvement Dina hi everyone it's so great to be here um I
048came on board as the restorative justice coach for the district last January and really hit the ground running at Pierce Pierce is where I spend most of my time and I really have been welcomed there I collaborate with not only um Dr fish and the other assistant principals but also with the guidance counselors adjustment counselors and the staff and my position is Grant funded through the Department of Education between the years of 2017 and then up until 2020 2021 the the department tracked districts and the number of students who are suspended in specific subgroups and so through the the years of 2017 to 2021 and I know this this data has been presented to the school committee before um what was identified is that students who identify as black or African-American are three to four
049times more likely in our district to be suspended from school in addition another subgroup at risk of suspension is students on IEP specifically students who have a Communications disability and so the grant funds my position and it is an approach to working with teachers and staff and counselors both proactively to build a community of inclusivity and belonging which is outlined in the school Improvement plan but it's also using restorative justice practices as a way to respond to harm when it comes up in a community or when kids make mistakes and so there's a very detailed action plan for my work at Pierce and at the high school I mostly work in secondary because that's where this issue is most prevalent but I also do work in elementary schools because I want as I want schools
050in our district to get used to the language around restorative practices so then when things come up we can all have a common language in which to address them so part of the work I'm doing and what's actually just to back up what's really powerful is now that we have a director of Dei Claire Galloway Jones she came on board at the end of last year and so she and I now are collaborating because restorative justice is part of the district's overall Equity pillar and goals and so it's been really great to have someone to be like I'm part of a team and working with her we just presented yesterday at the peer staff meeting and we're going to be leading grade level team meetings in the next within the next week to follow up
051on looking at some of our of the school data specifically and thinking about how we can shift to become a more restorative School so what in in the action plan my work is um to lead professional development so I do I'm very grateful that Dr fish has given me a chance to now take some of the staff meeting time just so I can allow for some big picture kind of goals and language and vision and data sharing and then um I have to say that probably the best PD that I've been able to do is just being in the schools with teachers and coaching them one-on-one when students when conflicts come up with students and I'm there I can really help navigate the situation in a proactive way which really does prevent a punitive response
052I think the majority of the time um and then I also offered an after-school professional development Series last year that I will offer again and start it'll start in November this year it's restorative justice sort of 101 focusing on how to lead proactive restorative justice circles but also have a more restorative mindset when interacting with kids in the moment when struggles come up in your classroom I started as a high school English teacher in 2005 so I I think my experience as a teacher and an instructional coach has been helpful in this role just to work with kids work with staff on anything from classroom management in the moment issues to um things that come up outside of school and now we need to like really figure out a restorative approach so I had so
053there are a few different also I will be doing some co-led PD with Claire Galloway Jones for the school down the road we're going to meet with the instructional leadership team and talk a little bit about culturally relevant teaching practices and that intersection between that work and restorative justice that's really important to see this connection and sort of the larger work we do with teachers on becoming more culturally competent practitioners and then lastly on the slide student Circle so I do work with students directly and I lead circles at Pierce restorative justice circles twice a week it just a quick if you have if you don't know what the restorative justice Circle process looks like the proactive circles I lead are really bringing students who are at risk of being removed because they have been
054historically this year last year or clearly are exhibiting signs that they're in a stressed State at school and they just need more support so I I run proactive circles with those students so I can build a relationship with them get to know them that they understand the process and then if something comes up we use the circle to repair harm and make things right in the community and so I would say I lead you know at least two or three restorative harm circles a week whether they're just little tiny things that happen in the classroom or bigger events in the school that have really caused harm to the school at large in the community so at this point I just appreciate um Dr fish and and the staff appear so much for just creating the
055time and space for this work at the school because it really is becoming an integral part of just how we operate as a school it's been it's been amazing and as a parent it does make me happy that this work is being prioritized too so I can pause there Nina thank you I know Chad Rosemary would be appropriate yes there are questions for Adina before we move on certainly any questions member way um I just wanted to say that um yesterday at policy subcommittee we had a chance to speak with Adina and with Claire and I was so impressed and it was just so exciting to hear about the work that's going on and really um you know it's just so so necessary and it's gonna I think it's gonna make a huge impact in
056our schools and our children's lives and give the skill set that teachers need as well to deal with some of the issues that they they deal with every day as a teacher so thank you very much okay thank you Dr fish Regina thank you very much for being here tonight for sharing with the committee uh all the good work that you you've done and all the coaching that you've done with Austin for me I really appreciate it so thank you thank you uh so now we're gonna uh transition the presentation to one of our other several of our other priority areas and now we'll take a look at teaching and learning so in the school Improvement plans priority area of teaching and learning we have a goal to consistently facilitate rigorous research-based and culturally responsive
057curricula with exemplary instruction to meet the needs of every learner while promoting excellence and preparing students for Success related to the school we have a theory of action that if we engage students in rigorous standards-based curriculum and invest in the professional learning of educators that we support the Learning and Development of all students the two aspects of our work related to this goal include our efforts in around progress monitoring and achievement data as well as our work this year on Universal Design for Learning which is the foundation for personalized learning so we'll walk through several data sets tonight we'll briefly review Lexia rapid and iready both of which were previously presented to the committee back in September so I I won't I won't rush through it but at the same time I won't do laboring
058because I know that these are data with which you are familiar um and we'll also highlight some key takeaways from the data so we'll begin with uh the Lexi wrapper data so the table on the left shows the percentage of grades six seven and eight students who are below grade level on grade level and above grade level for reading comprehension during the 2021 and 2022 school year we see here that the percentage of students on and above grade level was fairly steady throughout 21 22 with the exception of grade 8. um the approximately 10 percent of students in grade 7 and approximately 20 percent of students in grades six and eight below grade level suggest some opportunities to continue to address unfinished learning the table at the on the right shows the progression over the
059past three school years of Lexia rapid Administration um and the the percentages were fairly steady in grade six we see a decline in the percentage of students below grade levels and reading comprehension in grade seven which is good um and there's a trend in grade eight of an increase in the percentage of students below grade level throughout the year in grade 8 which raises some questions questions like are the gaps in the correct are there gaps in the curriculum that we need to address and remediate or are we simply seeing fatigue and testing by by students by late spring after of their eighth grade year if they're sort of um moving on the um the table here shows disaggregated subgroup data for the overall change from the fall to the spring of last school year
060so while the overall percentage was down five percent uh several subgroups including students who identify as African-American or black student to identify as Hispanic or latinx and students with IEPs they all had growth which was which was um a positive takeaway when we look at the disaggregate disaggregated subgroup data so we just look at a few key takeaways from from Ela from from Lexia rapid um at least we noted that students started out the year with higher level of proficiency however students in subgroups experienced higher growth than average growth rate again these data we're sharing as for the takeaways back in back in September with the committee return our attention to the i-Ready screener data for math uh again you've seen this uh you saw this a few weeks ago the table here shows the
061progression of students below at an on-grade level for math from the fall to the spring of the 2021-2022 school year and here we see that the percentage of students either early on grade level or mid on grade level or above uh grade level grew incrementally throughout the 2021-2020 school year however screener data do show that there's a significant proportion of students who were below grade level in that here we see a comparison of the spring 21 day to the spring 22 data so year over year comparison and we we see a small decline in the early on grade level or mid or above grade level in grade six but we also see an increase in early on grade level or mid on grade level or above in seven and eight when we look at the
062year over year and then finally here this table we'll look at this shows I ready data that compares Pierce to the national dish to National distributions and here we see significantly more of our students early on grade level or mid on grade level or above than the national average and we also see significantly less number of our students who are three plus grades below the national average we look at the disaggregated subgroup data um we see an overall increase in the percentage of students who were early on Mid or above grade level across the board all subgroups demonstrated growth students who identify as African-American or black as well as students who identify as low-income demonstrated greater growth than the overall increase than the average when we look at some of these key takeaways from the
063i-Ready screener um we saw that students were the big one the big takeaways the students at all grade levels perform better on i-Ready than the national results we do we do wonder and speculate whether the testing fatigue in June after all the MCAS and all the screeners may have you know have possibly negatively impacted student results in the spring Administration particularly in eighth grade um it's something that I know was shared both I think by Vivo as well as Brian C look that the difference in how I already captures Middle School Learning um you know in light of this will continue to monitor this screener this year to evaluate whether iready is the most effective diagnostic tool for middle school math and already we're looking to just with the amount of time and instructional time
064that's lost to to administering the screeners um I know we're looking at dropping the winter screener and just using the funnel and the Sprint to measure to measure growth over time because look at the growth over time so last thing um and typically this presentation would have a lot of robust MCAS data but since deci only recently released the MCAS scale scores scaled scores for the 2022 spring test Administration um we are limited on what we're able to present at this moment um however now that we do have the full release of data we are working to triangulate that data and we'll perform further analyzes to better understand where we are and where our new Baseline is um post the pandemic disrupture but when we kind of roll up all the data at the end
065of the day what we're really talking about in the conversations that are being had at the curriculum leadership level and in common planning time is you know how are we continuing to address unfinished learning um so if we look first at Ela we just have to say in it and be real about the fact that we know that it will take time to even out these deficits that were likely contributing to um to learn the first two students learn during a pandemic um however what we what we can feel confidence in and feel um feel strengthened is that we do have strong curriculum as well as Educators who have increasing expertise with with the new recently implemented curriculum the resources and the routines um something else that we should feel strongly you know feel positive
066about and feel encouraged about as it relates to addressing unfinished learning is that our recent work around de-leveling paired with our high quality instructional materials really the positions us well to meet the needs of all students in heterogeneous groups and we know that these are two elements I mean two elements that we know from the research improve outcomes for all students further using multiple data points from an Ela with Flexi rapid as well as MCAS once once um that those further analyzes are done in in our internal assessments that we're using the the use of these multiple data points along with the use of instructional approaches that are tailored to the findings from the data analysis are only going to help to personalize learning to meet students where they are and to help to remediate
067any gaps in unfinished learning um really cool example that Lauren Vander course shared with me who is our k-day literacy director that she saw in action uh in in seventh grade ELA class um teachers using writing data from the beginning of year assessments um in using that data to push students to create individualized writing goals to themselves that they could they could set goals and monitor their progress on on the proxy they're making toward achieving those goals so um there are what I would want the committee in our community to understand is whether an Ela or math which we'll address shortly we know that we know that it's going to take time to to even out the deficits we know that students have deficits all kids do right this was an impact of several years
068of disruption however we have the expertise of Educators we have the resources um then we have the leadership through our curriculum leaders to um lead us to better student outcomes based on what we what we have and that's something that I would want um I would want people to feel um confident similarly in math um like amplify for ELA we had the recently implemented Desmos curriculum for math which when we talk about udl later Brian selig our cato-12 Max director will tell you that the Desmos curriculum is created around the udl around udl principles right so um BL as it is the foundation for personalized learning so we we already have by way of curriculum lots of tools and lots of things in the positive column to help us to continue to address our finished
069learning um we know again in math we know that many students have gaps but what we care most about are those gaps that may impede accessing what they are learning when they're learning it if if we're due if a student is solving single variable equations we're not too concerned in that moment if they have if they're if they experience if I already told us that they're having a hard time with parallelograms right we're using the data related to what students are need to access curriculum in that moment and doing having those just-in-time interventions to remediate the gaps that that may that may exist and a lot of this is happening through again the resources that we have through the curriculum um is is teachers having what they need to do this so what we're seeing
070teaching happening in math is is that they're building a road map of standards of what students will need when they need it so that they can they can address any of those um gaps or unfinished learning prior to introducing new Concepts um so that the those interventions can be done in a targeted way uh and finally we we know that um we have we've continued to make adjustments and improvements to our tier two intervention so we have our math investigations class which um it's a it's a regular Ed tier two intervention for students who are identified as as having through i-Ready data but also through historical MCAS data um where this is an additional math intervention that they're receiving during the school day so um again we we know that not just in Milton not
071just the Pierce but but schools and school districts continue to address on transforming um but I would want the committee in our community to have a lot of confidence that um we have the tools and resources to to continue to um meet the students where they are and bring them to where they to where they need to meet grade level standards so another component while under our the focus area of teaching and the priority rather of teaching and learning um you know the component in our teaching and learning school proven play is our work around Universal Design for Learning and within this goal we have a key action step to embed udl principles and planning instructional and assessment practices to maximize our students learning opportunities for all students to spend some time now talking about
072udl and more importantly it's connection to our school Improvement plan priorities and some ongoing professional development so what what is udl uh Universal Design for Learning is a framework that is grounded in the belief that all students are capable of reaching grade level standards it's a mindset and it's a skill set that provides options that students can choose to help them Reach their goal udl is about firm goals and flexible means so what that means is that teachers can set high expectations and standards for students learning and pay for outcomes but provide flexible options for students to meet those goals and udl has three principles and there is multiple means of Engagement multiple means of representation and multiple means of expression so what we mean by multiple means of Engagement is the teacher is promoting
073various ways for students to engage with material that are motivating to that student what we mean by multiple means of representation is that content is presented in various ways to support different learning styles and different learning abilities and what we mean by multiple means of Expressions that students have options to demonstrate their masteries so in addition to udl being a logical entry point to support our work with the districts to teach initiatives these key principles also support our recent shift to developing an Ela and math in grade seven and eight uh in favor of heterogeneous student groupings so you know why focus on udl um we view Universal Design for Learning as being an explicit connection to both our school Improvement priority areas but as well as the district's defined strategic initiatives and when we
074look at the intersection of personalized learning safe and supportive schools and equity and learning we view udl's principles as a natural through line of those three pillars of our strategic initiatives so professional development in in the spring a little bit of background so Pearson's instructional leadership team is an incredibly uh talented group of people I know you've met many of them from when when it was katirosha as the k-day literacy director and Brian selig and Chrissy chappetta and Barbara Wright and AJ Millis and all with all go through the team uh in the spring of last school year our leadership team Pearson's leadership team identified a goal of providing a common professional development experience for educators throughout the new school year this school year regardless of content having a common PD experience um for all
075Educators and the team felt stronger that engaging all Educators and professional development experiences that were anchored in high quality instruction would provide a common focus and theme for professional development sessions for common planning time for department meeting time and for faculty meeting time so since early in this school year we've engaged in a partnership with Novak educational consulting which is an organization that is viewed as an expert in delivering udl professional development to educators uh Novak facilitated our September late star professional day and the feedback from teachers was that it was one if not one of the best professional development experiences they'd ever had um so our goal as a school-based leadership team is to remain engaged with Novak to support our own capacity to grow in our own capacity to support teachers to continue
076to to expand their practices around udl and I just want to say unrelated to udl the those late star professional days have absolutely been a gift for educators to be able to have not just more time but time to um you know Focus time for two hours in the morning as a faculty is something that well I I know is can sometimes be probably be an inconvenience for families especially those with younger students people should know that those are they have they are and have the potential to be high impact professional learning structures that um if they're benefiting educators teaching dentists naturally going to benefit students learning so I just I want to say that what would happen um while having a captive audience so um as we sort of transition in wrapping up our
077presentation the final aspect of our school Improvement plan um the present tonight is around facility Staffing and enrollment and in this school Improvement plans priority area facility staff and enrollment we have a goal to ensure that pierce has sufficient classroom in other space as well as appropriate Staffing for his expanding enrollment and that facilitates facilities rather provide adequate elements necessary for a strong 21st century education in related to this goal we have a theory of action that says that student enrollment continues to expand as projected that peers will have to increase classroom spaces and Staffing in proportion to its growth so two aspects of our work related to meeting this goal include um our uh our look at our experiences with repurposing spaces as well as negotiating growing enrollments seriously for the for over the
078past few years we've repurposed multiple spaces to create classroom in office and most of these changes were highlighted in that project that was done by the school building committee last last winter last spring to illustrate how spaces had been reclaimed around the district's building so we have a few examples here of spaces that you know you could say were lost or you could say we're gate um you know the the what you see on the left is we previously had a Makerspace in our library um which you know for all the reasons that we don't make our spaces can enhance you know students learning from Hands-On to project-based learning um we had we had to repurpose that maker space to be a classroom so now there's a there's a second classroom that is is in
079our library uh not unlike what you see when you walk through the library kind of have a color Cod um in the middle there we have our we have two we had two team areas they were they were built to be common flexible spaces in the middle of the buildings that um teachers could use to provide students with extra help we use it for uh could you use for team meetings we had to take one of those spaces two summers ago to convert to a classic just to make sure we had enough classroom space so you'll see before what the the two team areas where I sort of identical footprint the before show sort of this open space that can be used flexibly that's right in the middle of the of the building heading down
080the seventh grade hallway and the after above um is the same what was the same space immediately above the the team area um which has been now converted to another classroom and that uh that picture on the right is uh that was a closet it was a closet off of our curriculum office which is now an office that is used for um a speech and language pathologist who also delivers services there so in thinking about facilities I know these these aren't new Concepts but it's important to continue to come back to them because those B issues are not going to um we know we know that they're not going to resolve themselves um what I would like to emphasize honestly tonight even more if that facility is is enrollments and Staffing um we look now
081look at our turn our attention to some enrollment data and I know the committee is familiar with these numbers but they're important to illustrate because of the challenges around growing their own they're not going to go away um and again I mentioned it before the reality of a new school building is likely years away that we need to look closely and critically in our enrollments and Staffing to ensure that we're positioning ourselves to meet the school-based and district-wide goals that we've set around students Learning and Development and while our overall enrollment tells a story of growth the sizes of our classes need to create some emergency around advocating for personnel needs so this table shows the number of classes with more than 25 students in the past four years the two years with the highest
082enrollment have put significant pressure on class sizes and that would be the 2019-2020 school year in the 22-23 school years of the current school year and it's broken down you see the overall enrollment you see the number when we say sections we need basically mean classes classes that are over 25 students on team so those are your English math science and social science classes World Language would be French American Spanish and Latin and then the exploratory classes so um two important notes Here the first is that this year we have 14 on-team classes of 26 or more students and nearly all of them are in the sixth grade again probably not a surprise based on the enrollment of occurrences grade however the concern is that the highest number of on-team larger classes are in the
083grade where students are experiencing so many academic and social challenge transitions is during a transition year the other important note which is asterisks there um that comes from when we look at the 2020-2021 school year so this was the year where within the district we had the hybrid and remote Choice options for students learning in that year in order to make both models run we had to hire 4.0 ftes as one-year appointments to ensure that we could we could run our schedule you'll notice that the enrollment in that year was nearly identical to what it is this year 957 students that year 958 this year but the number of classes this year with more than 25 students in it is exponentially greater so you see the impact of what four full ftes can have on
084the number of sections that are over um so when we as we move into the 23-24 budget planning process our site Council and school community have several things that they need to consider the first is looking at recently added staff we did benefit from adding 1.0 Spanish teacher this year but that was really that position had to be added otherwise it wouldn't we would have had class sizes of 40 and 45 and 6th grade Spanish uh it was just it was it was an impossibility uh we did add the 1.0 uh 504 coordinator for grade 6 through 12 which has been great because if you look at so that person um that role is chairing all the 504 um all 504 meetings and cases which has which were previously done by the school counselors so
085now having this role to take the 504 coordination away from the school counselors with the with the sizes of grades that they have is allowing to freeing them up to do some more contemporary School counseling work whether where they're pushing into classes where they're they're help they're they're developing um they're development program they're supporting the the sixth grade seminar class um so we did see it again there so when we're able to add positions we're able to to do a lot uh another consideration that we have to stay on top of is the current size of the current fourth fifth and sixth grade right we know that these are three of if not the three largest um class sizes in the district um and thinking ahead to what that will look like when the current
086fifth and sixth grade or sixth and seventh graders next year or two years down the line when all three of those grades are sixth seventh eighth grade at Pierce so as we as we think about and um you know and our site Council has we got to have some of these preliminary conversations but preliminary staff and considerations for next year and Beyond really need to include a close look at adding team teachers probably in grade six um but also explore to our teachers based on the number of sections that are over 25. um and I just want to come back to when when you compare that the year where we added 4.0 staff and even those for one year the impact on class sizes with adding four staff was significant when you look at the
087number of classes that were that were under under 25 so as um wrapping up here um and again we really appreciate SSI Council as a school Community to have the opportunity to present to the committee um you know we have we have a lot of work that I think we should all be excited enthusiastic about that um and focus areas that are that really um are comprehensive in looking at the whole child from their grounded in academic Excellence but but thinking about developing students as Learners as people um so as we move forward the the continued opportunities for improvement is you know at the center of all this is maintaining a grounded focus on academic Excellence for all of our students um and I and I I want to say that the three pillars of
088the three strategic initiatives in our new strategic plan of personalized learning and safety support of schools and Equity education um are absolutely going to help us to maintain that grounded Focus um but also to continue to evolve as as a school and as a district and that's that's exciting work um we've seen already just with by what happens when we provide that authentic targeted professional development for educators when we give staff what they need um we're gonna I imagine you know we'll continue to see to see gains especially as we get back to being able to focus on um teaching and learning without a lot of the distractions that we've had to encounter over the past couple years uh and the last time in my mind go together family and Community engagement I mean there's
089a lot of in talking about you know hearing us advocate for what we believe the needs are but it's important that our families and Community are knowledgeable of that um but in addition to that family and Community engagement we have a great Dei meeting last night and um you know now that we're able to more easily bring people together being able to um you know I know our Dei committee is going to focus on um providing spaces and opportunities to bring our families back into the building because so much of that has been taken away over the course of the past couple of years because I think if if our families and Community know and understand just how much uh students are getting from their learning or School experiences it will make in order to
090make the case for what we need to the support that we'll need as a as a school and as a district thank you so much Dr fish and and thank you to your whole team for sharing all this going on at Pierce Middle School it's very exciting to hear and and really appreciate all that was shared tonight um are there any other comments or questions from school committee members memorize Danny so I want to start by saying it's exciting to hear the work of personalized learning coming off or getting started and community members that will have the opportunity to learn more about it during the school committee Forum it's just an excellent opportunity for people just to get to learn about what it is and what it means for our students I noticed that um
091in the data that you shared you talked about trying to number one we are well ahead of the national average in terms of academic outcomes for the formative assessments that we're using but I'm wondering um in terms of the tier 2 supports specifically programs like math interventions that have been around for several years what have you noticed in the data in terms of impact so when students who are typically two and three grade levels below engage in math interventions do you see more of them scoring proficiently whether it's on the formative assessments or the MCAS and if there's an analogous course for English language arts I'd love to hear about that too I I will tell you honestly remember Austin I don't have the data on in front of me on the um I think
092we're talking about the impact of the math investigations class or the impact of the tier 2 interventions um I can tell you that that's something that Brian Celica and I are both interested in looking at looking at that over the course of the past couple of years especially because we've made some some adjustments that we thought we believe we believe we believed we're we're Smart Ones but to be able to now that the spring of 22 MCAS data are available um I believe that that would be an opportunity to do some further analysis and the analogous just so you know that they're the analogous or sort of the um the companion tier two intervention on the ELA side is a reading support class so you know we do have Arena we have um our reading
093lab class which students who may have a specific learn disability and reading would take as a special education uh service but separate from that is uh the reading support class which is a general Ed tier two intervention that um I think we could probably do some some similar analysis on it to look at impact of of the intervention thank you Dr Carol thank you so much um I just I two things I really appreciated um how you explained Universal Design for Learning I'm not sure that I've heard anybody in a forum like this explain it quite that effectively before in a way that connects the dots for members of the committee and the community to kind of understand why um it's you know you've chosen to um focus on those principles of udl in relation
094to the Strategic plan and the Improvement plan that you had in place before um I think just it's easy for those of us who live in the education space you consume educational research you know to kind of um take for granted that everyone knows something like udl is based in the science of how people learn and including like cognitive Neuroscience you know how all all different individuals whatever their abilities strengths needs Etc you know we all learn differently and to support teachers with as you were describing it authentic PD that you know allows them to implement on those principles in their teaching I I share your confidence that you know um uh like robust commitment to implementation of this approach will show gains um and and so I appreciated the way you explained that and
095um kind of showed how it's connected into the pillars of the Strategic plan um I also really appreciated your focus on class size um I think that we get caught up a lot um in describing and kind of planning around the space needs and the issues that we feel acutely um with our over enrollment in regards to space and you also obviously showed really unfortunate consequences of that problem that pierce right now um but I think the class size issue is something that we really need to think about as a community um I know that there are folks in the community for example who you know care about our rankings relative to other communities the districts in the in Massachusetts you know class size is literally one of the metrics that is factored in um
096and the lower your class size like the um that reflects positively on your ranking so by not addressing our increase in class sizes we are um really putting ourselves at a disadvantage those of us I'm speaking in the community you know to those of us who see view rankings as like a valuable um way of measuring our our success um so I really encourage us to think as a community about the way that you presented that I again I felt like with udl was very clear and effective for us to consider the choices that we have before us um you know and in the it's in this interim time before the school is going the new school you know if we can come together as a community to make that happen the way we need
097to um in the meantime you know it's unacceptable um to allow the class sizes to creep up the way that that you're and I think to talk about the impact of one full-time educator you know two three and up to four as you said that's really impactful so I'd like to just say I hope we can remember that framing for our budget conversations when we're considering how we can like make things concrete for the community to understand the consequences of of different choices even though they're all hard choices obviously when we have such limited resources um but you know thanks for the whole presentation I think you've given us a lot to think about I really celebrate the progress that you've been able to share um I I am excited for you know um next
098year's presentation where we're able to hopefully you know see some of the um the positive outcomes of many of the things that you've presented here tonight and to just keep up the the good work on these different fronts um really appreciated the presentation thanks Dr Miranda um so um I'm not going to repeat a lot of uh I think what um member Denny and uh Dr Carol just said um but I do uh want to thank you uh Dr fish for the presentation tonight I think it's very uh enlightened there's a lot of positives in the presentation and and I appreciate the the hard work that's being done I am um also a very pragmatic person and I do think that um the community needs to hear it in terms of I think you you
099showed us what you've already done in the school building to transform spaces into classrooms and wondered if you could speak to what other spaces if any are available to um transform into classrooms given the fact that you have presented also a very compelling case for why adding additional fdes instructors will make a difference in terms of class sizes which as we just heard Dr Carol say makes a difference in terms of how we rank overall in the Commonwealth so I think we all want that um but just wondering if you could speak to the constraints you currently have and what is possible um in the near term to be able to address the increased staffing needs and uh this in addressing the size they could be lab in terms of size class sizes thank you
100sure um so we have the Summer where we did those enhancements that I showed you the lot the maker space the team area conversion we also there was another one that I didn't show we previously had a World Language lab um that we converted to a classroom space that was that would have happened anyway because with the onboarding of all the devices with students beneath the lab was obsolete because every student had their own device in their backpack um I would say other than possibly um we have a few larger classroom spaces that were you know again weren't necessarily made to be classrooms but it could possibly be parceled out into you know smaller spaces um we there's not met there's not much room left to uh to subdivide and to and to repurpose however
101if we think about adding staff you know one might ask well if you're asking you know you showed well what happened when you had four more staff but you don't have any more building we still can you know we have a closure here where most teachers have their own classrooms and it is a it's it's beneficial for staff from for many reasons um but not every classroom is utilized every period of the day and even now we have several teachers who who travel most of their day I could think of three off the top of my head who have a home base but not not their own classroom and while that may not be ideal um I guess what I would the most direct way I can answer your question is if we were to
102add say those those four ftes that I mentioned from two school years ago we could absolutely have a classroom space to put to put those teachers thank you remember Vargis hi um thank you so much for the presentation I thought it was beautifully done and a lot of detail and work went into it so I appreciate all the hard work and I Echo the other committee members as sentiments um as well um I just had one question and it was just a follow-up from our September meeting I know we looked at the reading comprehension data and a few of the subgroups had declined it was minor decline but I wanted to know since September has there been any uh progress made in terms of looking at that data and what we could do to kind
103of make sure that all all the groups were increasing and say since September uh particularly if we are you speaking disability about the ELA dyslexia rapid data yeah um so since September so students who would have been in the in the um who would have had we would have an elevated concerns about you know not making the expected progress that is where um for example the reading support class would be as a tier two intervention that we would schedule students into that class during their day and most students who haven't have it every other day for the year uh that's a small small group reading instruction that focuses on reading comprehension influencing um now that the also you know second layer of that back into tier one now that the MCAS data have been released
104and as we you know equip you know we go through as a leadership team and equip Educators with those data um I would expect that we would continue to um use what use what we learn and use what we use what the data should tell us to make you know continued adjustments and enhancements whether that be whether there are students we may have missed who've been used a tier two reading support or whether um I think for teachers using those data to think about how they do small group instruction or you know instructional parent groupings when they're when they're in their classrooms I could tell you that this year I've taken on the role of being the sixth grade grade administrator so I'm like almost like being an assistant principal for the sixth grade and
105doing and doing the team meetings I'm doing the grade level meetings in a lot of these conversations are what are having at those team meetings where whether it be the ELA teacher or the math teacher are noticing um trans you know they're noticing the connection between the I ready data or Alexia rapid data uh and they're elevating those as because they're advocating for more support for those students thank you thank you so much Dr fish and and to your whole team for coming tonight and sharing uh what's going on at Pierce Middle School it was a wonderful presentation wonderful to hear about some of the initiatives that are new and exciting the um the community and connections that are being built through your grade six Seminars the alignment of your work with the Strategic plan
106is is encouraging that that we're on the right track and we're all working in the same direction um and um going first you were our first psych Council presentation this year and thank you for doing that we bumped them up a little bit earlier this year and we appreciate um all it took to to get to where you are and all of the work that's gone into it and and to get here on October 12th and and uh speak to us about it we really appreciate that um and um I I think your story about that you've told about a class sizes growing at peers are exactly you know what we've been seeing and and talking about on school committee that our over enrollment um in in all of our schools is being seen um
107largely with the growth of class sizes at the middle school and the high school whereas in the elementary schools we have carved up those buildings to you know the nth degree with every effort to try to keep class sizes down um and you know at the expense of compromising many spaces libraries um um you know conference rooms staff offices you know classrooms and and um unusual places um but but the the growth of class size um is is is a growing concern and it is something it's it is part of the story that that again speaks to our need for um new space and new Staffing um to address the the needs so thank you for telling that story so well it's it's an important one for for all of us to hear so with
108that I think we will move on and thank you so much for coming uh very good uh so assistant superintendent McKinney um um would you like to address the the last item under superintendent's update uh sure thank you madam chair um the Strategic metrics team has met twice over the last two weeks they've been reviewing some of the data that was included in the presentation I think we're on track to present to the full committee I believe it's on 10 26. and we'll also be sharing a sneak preview if you will to the curriculum subcommittee on 1021 excellent thank you very much thank you um okay so next agenda item is we'll move on to Citizen speak uh we have um up to 15 minutes set aside in this portion of the meeting we invite
109members of the community to come and speak with us um we have three minutes per person and if you are with us tonight and would like to speak if you could raise your hand and you will be promoted to speak will have you give you a chance to tell us what you're thinking uh assistant superintendent Dexter do you see any any hands raised um no there's no hands raised thank you all um so I think with that then we will move on uh to our next agenda item which is finance subcommittee report and alternative over to member White okay um we reviewed the uh Jesse FY 22 end of the year financial report that Amy Dexter had prepared and we have to vote on that this evening um it was sent out to you a
110while back and it's pretty lengthy and detailed I think when I talked to Amy about it at our finance subcommittee meeting she said that the two areas that were different than last year you know the change was that special ed special ed education expenses were up and utility bills were higher um than the year before so does anyone have any questions about that report okay could I have a motion to approve it so moved okay second okay thank you okay I'll take a roll call vote um Dr Carroll yes Miranda yes chair Rosemary yes remember Ross Getty yes and myself yes thank you very much we have two vendor warrants to approve tonight uh vendor number warrant number 11. um which was dated September 29 2022 and vendor number 13 which was it stated um
111for October 13th so vendor number 11 is in the amount of 422 320.89 and vendor number 13 is in the amount of 294 381.62 cents may I have a second on those vendor warrants second thank you and um I'm gonna do a roll call vote for those two warrants um Dr Carroll yes Dr Miranda yes chair Rosemary yes member of our geese yes and remember Ross Denny yes and remember wait yes okay and then the other um thing I want to report on is that the select board um has started their Finance subcommittee meetings with the uh other um other departments and the schools uh we went last week to have our first meeting we did have a discussion about um the timing of the meetings given people's work schedules and family commitments so what
112they're going to do is they're going to do a variety of a combination of some um remote meetings that are going to be at seven in the morning and some in-person meetings so our next meeting is scheduled as a zoom meeting and it's this Friday morning at 7 00 a.m so that's where we'll be meeting again um and they're going to be starting to think about and plan for um the next year's budget um one thing that was uh noted was that from the budget that the town meeting approved um last year during town meeting there's been a there was an increase um from the state from Milton of another 322 thousand dollars is that correct Amy it's close to 388 I believe 388 thank you and um so of course I got all excited
113thinking that that would be a good thing for our needs but one of the things that the Town Administrator talked to us about is that the um contract Milton's the town of Milton's contract for gas is uh has to be renewed currently and the prices have doubled since the last contract so I think there's going to be some discussion on Friday about whether we put that money aside for increased utility costs which are going to impact both you know the entire town including the schools so the next meeting we'll be talking about that and we'll I'll keep you posted but that's pretty much the end of the finance report any questions [Music] great thank you member white um so we go on to the policy subcommittee Dr Carroll store um we can begin by um
114taking up the second readings of the policies that we have listed out and then I can provide just a very brief report um on our meeting that we had yesterday um so the list of policies um let's see eight policies um on our agenda are just to remind the community um these policies are being updated in accordance with recommendations we received from the Massachusetts Association of school committees which supports School committees in districts all over Massachusetts to stay aligned with updated State Statute and um federal guidelines so that is sort of the source for the updates that we are making to these policies um are there any questions from any committee members uh we did a first reading of these policies last time and now we are doing the second reading any comments or questions
115from anybody I have one um comment or question Dr Carroll is on the policy jic student discipline so we'll we'll be approving this tonight but then we'll be bringing this back again with additional changes after the work you yes yes I was planning to kind of explain that um in the report but yes the um what we're doing here is simply approving the um recommendations for updates that keep us in compliance with state law um and uh we will sort of be discussing uh more substantive updates to the jic student discipline policy um over the coming weeks so um yeah I thought it would maybe be simpler if we just sort of do the second reading of these policies um and then I can provide a report um based on our conversation yesterday that member
116white already kind of alluded to and then we can maybe see what questions um we may have about that process but that won't really be on our agenda until November okay again great thank you so I think that we have to so any other comments or questions about these updates okay I think uh I think we have to go one by one um and take a roll call vote on each of these so I let's we'll just try to be efficient with this process and I know it will be a little bit tedious um so I'd like to make a motion to approve the second reading of policy AC non-discrimination including harassment and retaliation thank you uh so roll call vote member of our geese sorry yes uh chair Rosemary yes Dr Miranda yes member
117Ross Denny yes remember White yes and I'm a yes uh motion to approve the second reading of policy ACR non-discrimination including harassment and retaliation so moved okay thank you is there a second I'll send them okay uh member of our geese yes chair Rosemary yes Dr Miranda yes remember Ross Denny yes remember White yes and I'm a yes um I'll make a motion to approve the second reading of policy GB equal employment opportunity is there a second second a roll call vote member of our geese yes chair Rosemary yes Dr Miranda yes remember Ross Denny yes member White yes I am also a yes I'll make a motion to approve the second reading of policy GCF professional staff hiring second thank you um member of our geese yes chair Rosner yes Dr Miranda yes remember
118Ross daddy yes remember White yes and I'm a yes okay halfway um making a motion to approve the second reading of policy JB equal educational opportunities second thank you remember varghese yes chair Rosemary yes Dr Miranda yes remember rosteni yes member White yes I'm a yes as well I will make a motion to approve the second reading of policy jfbb school choice is there a second second thank you member our geese yes chair Rosemary yes Dr Miranda yes a member Ross Denny yes remember White yes I'm also a yes um I will make a motion to approve the second reading of policy jic student discipline is there a second second member of our geese yes uh chair Rosemary yes Dr Miranda yes remember rosstaddy yes remember White yes um yes and um last but not
119least okay I'll make a motion to approve the second reading of policy jica student dress is there a second second okay thank you remember varghese yes chair Rosemary and yes Dr Miranda yes remember rosteni yes uh member White yes okay and I'm a yes on that thank you for your patience um finally to conclude a policy report um so as member white mentioned the policy subcommittee did meet yesterday um with the uh Dr McKinney thank you Dr bikini for that um and as member white mentioned we were joined by um Claire Galloway Jones uh Susan Maselli and Adina Schechter Who provided really helpful insights um into the uh ways that this policy of jic student discipline um intersects with the work that they do um to support uh students in special education um as well
120as um you know generally speaking as we heard Adina speak uh to a pierce her work around restorative practice um and as as we know um we're fortunate to have um director Galloway Jones here uh providing guidance and expertise around um the E.I and so what I wanted to just share from that meeting um was that the policy subcommittee has begun the conversation or I will say recommenced the conversation that actually began last school year um around how we can update more substantially the student discipline policy so that it's aligned with our current practices as a district uh the policy was last updated in 2004 so it is definitely in need of of an update to make sure that um the policy is accurate in terms of you know how the district is um approaching
121student discipline practices um and you know this is in the context of not only Milton but sort of school districts in general and how practices has have evolved um over time so um the the work you heard referenced in the Pierce site Council um to address the disproportionalities that Milton has been cited for by Desi that was part of our conversation yesterday um and you know Dr fish was speaking to that in the presentation this evening um so I feel really optimistic about how we so far are working kind of together as a subcommittee um with the leadership team to be informed by their expertise and their practices to ensure that our policies are supporting um the the priorities and practices that are in place um just for this school committee to know uh kind
122of where we're going next with this so um and I know we'll talk about our next agenda but um the policy subcommittee will not meet again until November 15th that's our next meeting and at that time we expect to um have a redlined version of the policy that kind of delves into these more substantial changes which have all been discussed at this point in time it's now a matter of kind of translating the conversation into particular proposed revisions um that go beyond the technical uh updates we just approved you know per state law to again just like make sure that our policy is relevant to the the needs and the um work that are uh leadership and teachers are doing in Milton um so my hope would be that we are able to bring optimistically
123a first reading of an updated again jic student discipline policy to the November 16th meeting um that would be sort of assuming that our policy subcommittee reaches agreement on revisions that will be proposed at the November policy meeting but um you know we also know that this isn't you know at this point we're not rushing this process we're being thoughtful um because we know that this is really important to get right um but I think we also have a good process underway where we're able to incorporate the um perspectives of folks who are going to be in the position of implementing this policy and who are saying that they need they need more support from a more um a policy that more accurately reflects the stated needs like priorities of the district so that's that's
124kind of the update um does anyone have any questions about that otherwise we will just pick it back up um a few meetings from now thank you okay thank you Dr Carol um and last thing on our agenda is next meeting agenda items um so we know that the metrics advisory team will be coming at our next meeting and we also plan to have the Kali cut site Council attending our next meeting I also have on I hear Capital requests and I don't know if we're going to be ready for that um or not but we'll have to [Music] um and we may need to put that off for another meeting I don't know um assistant superintendent Dexter do you know where we are in that process or or member White terms of capital requests
125I believe they should be ready by then um the town administrator has requested that um they'd be in November 1st was the deadline given so I would think we would have them to finance fairly soon excellent okay all right very good so we'll have that on the October 26th agenda then very good um so if there's nothing else I make a motion to adjourn my second thank you take a roll call vote uh member of our geese yes Dr Carroll yes Dr Miranda yes remember us Denny yes Amber White yes and Sharon Rosemary and yes thank you everyone and have a good night have a good night good night bye