Milton School Committee - February 1st 2023

001very good all right good evening everyone I'd like to call to order uh this Milton school committee meeting on February 1st 2023. um I have first item on the agenda is to approve this evening's agenda does anyone have any changes or deletions to this evening's agenda okay seeing none we will move on to the superintendent's update I'll turn it over to assistant superintendent palacek yeah so first want to apologize uh superintendent Sheehan is not able to be here tonight to do a last-minute issue so she has sent over her happenings report um so let me just say um reading her report um speaking as Janet although with grayer hair um I want to begin by thanking the school committee for your continued support over the past months I've been so fortunate to serve with each

002and every one of you and have admired your dedication and advocacy for excellence in education I'm grateful to have had another opportunity to serve the students and family of the Milton Public Schools it's been a pleasure to work alongside Dr Garth McKinney Dr Glenn pavlichek Amy Dexter central office staff and our amazing leadership team of principals department heads and curriculum coordinators as Dr mckitty steps into his new role as interim superintendent I am confident that the district is in very good hands and I wish him all the best as you know Dr Burrows will become the next superintendent of the Milton Public Schools effect July 1st it was wonderful to have him visiting us for the last few days he's had the opportunity to work on the transition with central office administration meet several employees

003through his travels and even do some reading at calicot as part of world read aloud day Dr Burrows also had the opportunity to visit the Cunningham Tucker and Glover schools during his visit where many exciting World read-aloud activities were taking place to celebrate literacy I'm pleased to report that all six of our schools have just completed crisis team training with Maria trotsi author and nationally renowned founder of the good grief program at Boston Medical Center we have in place crisis plans and protocols that will better prepare us to support students staff and families as emergency situations arise in preschool updates the preschool pre-registration has been underway since January 12th an electronic random Lottery was held for programs where interest exceeded seats available on January 27th 112 families have completed the pre-registration by the deadline of

004January 26th will be notified of the lottery results tomorrow at noon preschool registration will take 30 days February 8th through the 22nd for those families who are awarded a slot kindergarten updates thank you to all the families who are able to attend the kindergarten information night last Thursday as of today we've had 303 families complete the pre-registration form online registration will take place March 1st through March 15th All Families have completed the pre-registration will receive an email from our family Outreach liaison Mario kief McKenna February 28th with all the details and steps to complete the registration we're excited to welcome the class of 2036. oh my gosh a few other notes uh tomorrow night at 6 30 is the CPAC presentation on tiered review process on Friday uh 7 PM the Milton High School theater

005presentation is in the Milton High School auditorium next Wednesday is the annual open budget uh hearing for the school system scheduled as a hybrid meeting at the Council on Aging and Via Zoom at 7 pm uh Monday the 13th is of course a special town meeting and our next school committee meeting is February 15th so those are the announcements from superintendent Sheehan at this point I'd like to turn it over to Dr McKinney who has an update following some questions last time on discipline uh thank you um Charlene roach sent you an email with two attachments included there is an example of one of the incident reporting forms from calicot school you can see these online on our website so I included a sample for the committee and then the other attachment is a spreadsheet

006of an overview of the incident and Reporting data as you can see the first part gives a breakdown of the types of reports we received then by school that at what point during the 22 year and then whether or not happened on school grounds this will be the first part of our update to the committee now we're going to have another update at the next committee meeting this shows a window into the reporting side after using this form for a year we're in a good place to evaluate the data as well as the process and we have some refinements that we're going to recommend I've been working with the director of Analytics and the director of equity diversity equity and inclusion um so some of the challenges we've run into we've noticed so far is

007that since the reporting is anonymous they may not be filling in everything in the form so we may not be capturing all the information uh we're looking for a remedy for that and if people are already making an effort to fill out this form we want to capture as much information as possible so we can better determine what steps the schools or districts should take moving forward and we've also banned some revisions to The Forum we've looked at some other forms from some other districts and done some compare and contrast so we'll be looking for some recommendations uh going forward with this information um we certainly want to increase the accessibility to this form for students and staff we're considering printing QR codes or other opportunities to direct them to the online form instead of

008trying to capture both on paper and the online reporting forums we have one Central collection and we're also refining the follow-up process to sure that we're capturing data in a timely fashion after each alleged incident with the building principles so more a consistent procedure across the six schools that we can monitor going forward um so with that this is kind of our first phase of the report our next report will give you a window into what the principles do after receiving these reports and what some of the outcomes are and the findings in terms of the level of discipline and some of the follow-up that happens there but we're reaching out to those six principles and having them give us that information um and the other thing we're also looking into is obviously with the

009move to PowerSchool is there an opportunity to put some sort of reporting form that's in the student information management system that may be conducive to um all our internal Partners or students parents teachers but the public facing part is a challenge so we don't want to have two different types of reports so we're trying to remedy that as well so again I've been working with them for the past month and over the next couple weeks I'll Circle back with a further update but I'm happy to uh entertain any questions or recommendations thank you thank you Dr McKinney uh member White um so um Dr McKinney I just had a couple of questions um you know you said that the reporting was Anonymous and it's online and I'm just wondering particularly when I look at the

010elementary reports I'm thinking are parents filling this form out with their child um or um you know and I'm I'm kind of wondering you know how that happens you may not know yet given the fact that it's Anonymous and then the other question I had was um are we also getting reports where a parent might be calling into the principal directly and saying my child this incident happened with my child and I would like you to follow up with that or something like that so I'll take the second one first um I do believe there could be um uh instances where parents or guardians or community members call the school directly and the principals handle it quickly as possible and it may not be captured in this data so that would be part of the

011procedure going forward to make sure we're all uh the same data in the same place at the same time and following up in a timely manner and in accordance to policy and procedure and all the good things that our principals do uh the first part is a little more challenging in that um yes there are instances where uh folks are identifying themselves let's say but there are also opportunities within the report where they remain anonymous so we may not be able to track where their report came from but it's our due diligence to follow up to each and every report and make sure our students are feeling safe and responsive and communicating the good steps we've taken to do investigations and report back to our parents and community members thank you um uh Dr Carol

012thank you um thank you Dr McKinney it's I appreciate your presenting this in response to the request and the questions that came up recently um and doing a quick turnaround to share this with us and to frame it as you know something that you're actively still looking at and will keep kind of keep updating us on um I think member white asked one of the questions I was curious about so thank you for um keeping on you know looking at how we can make sure that there's other ways that things get reported are also being tracked um of course you know looking at this preliminary data in the context of what was shared by the Coalition with those surveys it's a mismatch right so uh this data is a drastic under Under reporting of what

013those survey represented so of course we're always like trying to triangulate across multiple sources of data but um that you know I think um the assumption that I am making is that you know those higher numbers are more accurate than these lower numbers that we're seeing here because that was an anonymous survey that was much more widely distributed um and so I appreciate that we're going to continue sort of digging into this um to understand the the full picture um I am noticing an interesting kind of disparity in where the reports seem to be coming from and especially across the elementary schools um and so that leads me to wonder you know a couple different things uh if these are shared anonymously I suppose I guess I'm assuming it's not possible to know whether multiple

014reports are coming from the same people but that's a question I'm wondering um you know at a school where you see more reports is more than one of those reports coming from the same family or the same maybe for different incidents so I'm just wondering whether there would ever be a way to track or like understand if that's the case maybe not um but another question I I then have is sort of and I guess this would be more in the recommendations or just wonderings for going forward like how is the existence of this form this resource being communicated to families um and you know what are the expectations that have been shared with our leadership team for you know how frequently and where and when and you know the ways that we're letting people

015know this exists I know it's on the website and that's good um but kind of beyond beyond that so that's a question that I'm interested in kind of looking at further and then really of course just at the middle school and high school like looking for there to be additional um I guess like awareness building that this exists um because it seems to me that there are probably definitely incidents occurring that are not being reported through this form at this point in time um based on the numbers that we saw in those surveys so again just interested to learn more about that um and I think that really goes for both the um the basis of race uh which clearly came up in the data we saw as well as sexual orientation which was also

016really flagged but is really uh barely being represented here at all um so uh thanks a lot for helping us keep this conversation going thank you Dr McKinney no thank you for that feedback Dr Carol on one hand yes this if this work is fluid right we work in elementary middle schools and kids report things and then we want to intervene right away and handle it but we got to find a way to capture those instances so we get closer to marrying external data with internal data so I agree with that part and also the second part in terms of uh kind of systematic and being consistent and structured I've done work like this and other oh everybody know what it is and what the guidelines are and then going through little reviews every X

017number of months as opposed to an annual review and say this is where we are here are the areas of strength and here's some areas we need to work on so uh I do believe we can get there a lot of confidence in being clear as we kind of refine this process going forward and then work with our building leaders great thank you um memorized Danny well thank you so much for sharing this and being able to pull it together in such short order and I just want to Echo much of what Dr Carroll said in terms of the opportunity to reflect on this as well as some of the wonderings that I have the only Nuance that I would add is that at the secondary level I believe there's a high likelihood that the

018students are self-reporting and that's why we're getting such higher incidence reports on the survey versus what's coming through the system and it may be to our benefit to find a way to communicate directly to the students instead of their families I know my high school as all of you have heard I don't get much for my high school age children I don't want this to be a fishing Expedition but I do want to give the district an opportunity to better understand the experiences of the students that Anonymous survey that was organized by the Milton Coalition was very helpful and very directional but then it leaves this wondering how do we unpack this and what do we do about it in terms of next steps I don't expect that especially in your interim role and we

019will be slightly understaffed until June but I'd love to hear what our plans will ultimately be for responding to what we saw in those surveys as well as some of the recommendations that will come out of the process review that you just shared so thank you for taking the lead on this and sharing it with us I don't like to add things to people's plates because I know what my day is like but I appreciate the fact that you took the time to share this and you were very candid about what the outcomes have been and uh if I could just add two more things um I do think we're looking at a mixed method approach of not only looking at the reporting data but relying on some student surveys and then Claire and Adina

020have done some really important work with focus groups with kids so is there a way to capture that and triangulate all this information so I like where uh this group is going but we have a little bit of work to do so we will keep the committee apprised of our work going forward excellent thank you Dr McKinney uh member of our geese thank you so much Dr McKinney I want to Echo some of the comments that have already been made and a few of my questions have already been answered and I appreciate all the work that you have put towards pulling this together in such a short time um I did have I mean obviously there is you know the data shows different numbers uh from what we saw in the coalition's report but um

021and I am glad that we're looking at different data sets to kind of get more of a complete picture and I appreciate that we're kind of taking this feedback I did notice on the form is the form Anonymous as well and um sorry I just I do have a couple of questions so uh my first question is I wanted to know if the form was anonymous because it does go into a little bit of detail and does that deter people from filling it out and then my next question I just kind of want to piggyback on something Dr Carroll said if are there like how do you track like if it's the same parents making um you know the incident reports or if it's the same students like how are you tracking those and and

022I would love to know like and I do want to like not deter parents from making reports because I do want to take make sure that our families are taken very seriously and we do take every incident seriously so I don't want to deter people from doing that so um so I want you know I'm not saying like hey report everything like you know but I I think if there is something serious and I'm glad this you know if there is something serious and the parents are calling into the school and the principals are handling it I think that's phenomenal terminal but I also I mean I also saw the discrepancy at the elementary level and I do would love to see follow-up on what's being done and what could potentially be leading to those

023numbers thank you um yeah so to your first question I believe it's um excuse me part of question mine it does say it's optional for all other reporters except our faculty so we are looking into that in terms of anonymous reporting where people feel safe and comfortable reporting things without fear of Retribution or reprisal the second piece just to be clear the principles are working on following up with this incident data in terms of was there an investigation done by the principal and what was the subsequent follow-up and give us information on that and other comments and the good news is I believe our administrators and teachers all know our kids really well and even though it can be anonymous sometimes there are patterns and themes that go through here where students and others are

024in conflict or in Challenge and we don't want to read too much into the data but a lot of our policy does talk about a safety plan or an intervention plan that's putting in place to remedy the situation and to monitor it going forward okay um sorry I had one more question was just um there was a part uh when I was looking at the numbers somewhere like not categorized is it like should we be adding more categories is it something that didn't fit into those or do you think they just kind of left it blank um to provide some context these are email me forms and the sample form if you were to fill it out at school the school would designate where that form goes to by email so we go to the

025principal the assistant principal maybe a guidance counselor an adjustment counselor or maybe the classroom teacher so we're looking at ways to strengthen that piece when there is a report filed so we can do follow-up and it's currently hard to identify some of the reports that are in there without knowing what the investigation was and the follow-up because the reporting is just uh a little inherent and vague and it's happened over the course this year so we don't have all the specifics around when that incident happened where it happened it was involved so I think further conversation with the principals and the aps they know this work really well and can give us a better window into um where to label those sort of incidents in what bucket going for great thank you so much thank

026you Dr Miranda um yes thank you Dr McKinney for for giving us this information I think it's very helpful I've just had some questions around and I you know I wasn't around in terms of when this was designed Etc but wondering if you've looked sort of at the survey design and if it it's a drop down menu right that folks are not able to sort of go on to the next thing like you're actually asking them to categorize to some extent sort of what they're reporting so that we get better data and also wondering if we've considered actually adding um demographics in terms of are you a student are you a parent I saw just very quick glance at the survey that there is none of that even if it's an anonymous survey you can

027still at least say I am the student or I am the parent or I am you know the parent of somebody else who knows right but just in something so that we can actually sort of have some answers I think to the questions that have been posed that are great questions um but I do think it's a great start to being able to collect some more of this in front information and I do hope that we just sort of look at it and obviously you're starting to see patterns in some some of the schools have more incidents and I don't know if it's a matter of like more parents and or more students in that school know about this reporting form and others don't but um it does raise a lot of questions for us

028to contemplate and think about making changes both to the form and then thinking about what we can do in the uh as a community to address some of these issues that we're seeing not only here with this data but also obviously with the survey that that the high school and middle schoolers took um yes thank you the very short answer to all of your questions is yes uh we are looking at both the um nature of the questions the workflow if you will of the incident reporting as well as the platform this is an email me uh we're looking at Google forums as well as maybe something in PowerSchool we do want to get these reports at the school level quickly and timely and show our follow-up so um Claire has reached out to her

029colleagues across Massachusetts and B has done some analysis on the workflow so I do think we'll get to a a better refined version of this uh when we Circle back in a few weeks great well thank you very much Dr McKinney for sharing this information with us and it really does indeed sound like a work in progress that um you know a commitment to doing that work and and thank you and and your team for um doing that and we look forward to hearing more as as the work goes on thank you very much um does that do it for our superintendent's report yes it does okay very good uh so next we go on to Citizen speak um this we have 15 minutes set aside for anyone from Community who would like to um

030share their thoughts with us tonight and you can just raise your hand in the um online function and we will recognize you and promote you so that we can hear your thoughts give people a moment to raise hands I do not see any hands raised at this time so I think we will move move along on our agenda next item on the agenda is a chairs report and I just would like to take this opportunity to share some thoughts that that I've had about Janet Shan who is is leaving us at the end of this week stepping back into retirement and with her family and just really the feeling of gratitude that that I think we all feel and Janet's willingness to come out of her retirement to step in as our interim superintendent during

031this challenging time in our in our schools we're thankful for Janet's commitment to the Milton public schools to the families the students the staff faculty for Janet's graciousness kindness and good humor and her interactions with all of us um and we we wish her um very well very well and um her retirement and um that that she will keep in touch with us um we are all very very thankful for for Janet uh time and in this interim role we're also very appreciative for Garth McKinney's willingness to step into this role as our interim superintendent during this transition period between uh Janet Sheehan and Peter Burroughs and thank my thank very thankful for garth's um kindness and Good Humor during a challenging period um since he began in Milton Public Schools but very grateful for

032his willingness to step up and and lead us during this period um and we also are very thankful for uh Glenn pavlichek's willingness to come out of his retirement I mean we really are all very fortunate to have uh this wonderful leadership team that has has um doing been doing so much to guide the district during this time and um uh Glenn pavlichek's deep knowledge of how the town and state government function is warm relationships that he's developed with Town leaders over the years has has certainly helped us during this time as well and um and it was also very nice to have Dr Peter Burroughs um here with us for the last couple of days uh to for a visit and to join us at the Warren committee meeting last night to discuss our

033annual budget and very thankful for Peter's enthusia for coming to lead Milton public schools and his experience and commitment to the work ahead to make Milton public schools great so we are all very grateful for these four leaders and we look forward to the future the future looks very bright indeed and on that note I would like to make a motion to appoint Dr Garth McKinney as the interim superintendent of the Milton Public Schools do we hear a second second that second thank you I'll take a roll call vote uh Dr Miranda yes member varghese yes member White yes Dr Carol yes remember us Danny yes and chair Rosemary and yes that is unanimous okay congratulations Dr McKinney and we look forward to working with you in this new role uh let's just take a

034look here and find the agenda again um okay next on our agenda is policy subcommittee turn it over to Dr Carroll thank you so uh we tonight we'll just be conducting a second reading of um jic uh student discipline policy um does anyone have any questions or comments that you wanted to raise from last time on this policy okay in that case I'll make a motion let me get it um a make a motion to approve the second reading of policy jic student discipline is there a second second thank you I'll do a roll call about Dr Miranda yes member of our geese yes chair Rosemary yes member White yes member Ross Denny yes and I am also yes thank you very much good thank you thank you yeah concludes policy for tonight thank you

035wonderful thank you for all your work on bringing that policy uh for us and it's uh just excellent excellent work uh next on our agenda is finance subcommittee uh okay what um so I want to thank everybody uh the entire leadership team uh as well as the entire school committee attended the Warren committee meeting last night and I thought it was a really uh great team effort I appreciate everyone's participation and the discussion and response to the questions um we'll see we probably will hear from them again and maybe have to go back either with their subcommittee onto the schools or the entire committee as we get closer to the budget um season um culmination and uh so we will um I have two warrants uh vendor warrants to get approved tonight um vendor warrant

036number 28 in the amount of 385 233 dollars and sixteen cents and vendor warrant number 29 in the amount of two hundred thousand dollars 486.62. can I have a second on those vendor warrants second okay thank you Dr Miranda so I'll take a roll call um chair Rosemary yes Dr Carroll yes remember varghese yes remember Ross Jenny yes Dr Miranda yes and myself as a yes and that concludes Finance for this evening very good thank you uh next on our agenda is Health and Wellness advisory committee report thank you so on the health and wellness advisory committee met last week um just a reminder member of our geese and I serve on this committee this year and it is comprised of several um teachers School leaders central office leaders we also have members of the

037Board of Health from the town and the Coalition including student members and we had a really good discussion this past week that was primarily [Music] um that we spent most of our time exploring updates to the health curriculum and um the pilot which is underway this year um So currently in Milton we're piloting something called the Michigan model which is a nationally recognized comprehensive evidence-based Pre-K 12 curriculum which is built around skills-based instruction um we learned uh so this this curriculum has been piloted at the middle and high school levels this year just recently has begun to be piloted at the elementary level across our third grades I'm using a 10 lesson unit so we heard about that from Principal concannon who shared sort of some of how that implementation is going at the Calicut

038um but the the just to give you an uh sort of feel for um some of what this new curriculum includes um the the three Focus areas are social emotional health um so that um really supports our pillar around safe and supportive schools it includes creating positive friendships um and identifying positive role models topics like that um the next portion of lessons focuses on nutrition and physical activity um so beginning to teach students about um kinds of physical activity and how to not be tricked by advertising when it comes to different kinds of foods things like that and the for the final part of the elementary curriculum being piloted addresses personal health and wellness around sort of hygiene um and you know saying goodbye to germs and keeping the lead so um those are some

039of the topics that are currently being um rolled out um they're being taught by a gym teacher who's teaching these lessons at all of the elementary schools um so the feedback that we got so far on that um was mixed I think one thing that's been noticed is some overlap with the second step program um and that's because currently the the lessons being taught are in that social emotional health portion of the curriculum which of course is related to um what happens with PBIS and and second step so I think that's something that was shared they're looking at because of course we all know there's limited time um in the day to do Health curriculum and and making sure that um to the extent it's repeating things that that's helpful and necessary for students to

040learn the information rather than unnecessary or somehow so that's something that they're looking at um and they're going to continue to collect feedback and information um from the teachers as they kind of begin continue exploring the curriculum um at the at the high school so at this meeting we didn't have representation from the Pierce Middle School so we were less clear on how exactly this curriculum pilot is going at that level um we'll hopefully get updates on that at our next meeting but we did hear a little bit about how it's been going at the high school where there seems to be a little bit less of a kind of consistent push to implement this new curriculum so there are still some lessons in health curriculum being used from the old curriculum and the new

041um Michigan model lessons are being less consistently implemented so that's another piece of the role um pilot that they're going to continue to kind of look at um to understand you know the um benefits and drawbacks of this new curriculum um you know as we're deciding whether and how to implement moment it more widely it was really valuable to get the students perspectives who were able to share you know their experiences with some of the content um and really appreciated their voices their um through the Coalition um it was also um discussed and this is an important point for us to kind of have on our radar I think it was discussed that we need some better vertical alignment in general around our health curriculum in the district because as we're hearing reports of repetition

042across different grade levels but yet also some like missing pieces where certain important information is not necessarily getting through it would you know be better if we could just understand more comprehensively like what's being taught where when and and why two issues that were raised one is the missed learning during covid over these past few years we have cohorts of students that just did not have health class when you know during hybrid and whatnot it was uh you know understandably less of a of a focus so there's a need to catch up um students who missed out on important information that's something that's being worked on um but really importantly uh it was raised to us that um there's a desire to look back at the role of a district-wide health director we do not

043currently have a person who oversees the health curriculum across the district but there was a person in that role who that position was eliminated a few years ago and I think what we heard from a wide range of folks including the Coalition as well as our our Educators and administrators at Elementary and high school is uh that it's challenging right now where the people who are leading this work have like other full-time jobs as teachers adjustment counselors and you know it's there's nobody really able to focus on the big picture um and so I think that's obviously something we're not looking at for next year um but I do think that as Dr Burrows enters the district it would be it would make sense for him to kind of take a look at that as

044far as our needs and this reminds me of our conversation with the warrant committee last night like what do we really need um not trying to do our bare minimum and like get by and sort of stretch with um what little we have um but but really like what would allow us to do the best we can for students and I think taking a closer look at this would be wise um so that's something we'll continue talking about next few months at this advisory committee but um that's that's going to be important please close the door I'm in the middle of the report sorry Julius okay so yeah I'll I'll try to wrap up but um that was what we spent most of our time talking about um just to say the Coalition does um

045have the ability to secure funds to help us evaluate our health curriculum that was something that we opted not to do a couple of years ago apparently when that was offered um but I think we should probably keep that in mind and see if we want to um work with them to you know look at um the rollout of this however with inconsistent rollout and are fairly limited pilot at this point we also want to of course be mindful that like um you know we're not we need to think about how we would collect data and what what that data would be um the other updates we heard again about the SEL advisory committee um so Jenny beliveau serves on the um health and wellness advisory committee and you know she shared more about the

046calm classroom professional development which we've heard about um at our safe and supportive schools Forum um but uh now all the teachers um I understand is all the teachers have now been trained in that program and um she is working with each school and how they're going to do their rollout um I think the Middle School rollout started this week um communication is going out to families at different schools as they roll out this um this unique program and actually I visited when I visited Glover the other week it was cool because I I told maybe told some people um I got to be in a classroom that was doing classroom randomly um it was in French it was so cool I really could see the benefits of it it like the whole feel of

047the room just I I I appreciate it I was like oh wow I feel calm like it was great um and it was like two minutes it was really cool um so that's that's good progress um the mental health first aid training um has all is also happening um for five staff from each school that includes teachers counselors and paraprofessionals so that's underway um the last piece is obviously um we all know the Coalition presented the findings from the yrbs and yhs reports to us um we had a snippet of that of course at the equity Forum um but April 27th is going to be when the Coalition will present that to the entire Community another important event coming up is February 10th on the Coalition is offering a training for youth Mental Health First

048Aid as well um so those are some opportunities a lot of people already signed up for that um and then finally on the board of the health department is continuing to work on its Community Health assessment um so that's another thing that's in process they are um conducting focus groups and interviews and um they communicated that they continue to appreciate the Partnerships they have with schools and I know that's mutual as well so um sorry to sort of go on it was a really rich discussion um member of our geese did do you want to add anything um I just want to say I know we had to postpone that meeting several times and I really appreciate the effort that everybody put into it and especially showing up so early in the morning on a

049Friday I know it's many many groups um and it was really good to like hear the feedback on the Michigan health model um because I thought that was very helpful just to get the student perspective like there's a teacher perspective on the rollout but then also hearing from the students I thought that was really good so it was nice to have all the voices at the table you know and it really just gave us really good perspective and I think you did a phenomenal job recapping that whole meeting thank you yeah so any questions from anybody okay we will keep you posted thank you thank you Dr Carroll and and just comment that I'm really glad to hear we've got students on that committee now and it's a very important element to to the work

050and it's wonderful glad to hear they're they're there um participating um next on our agenda we have curriculum and instruction advisory committee yes so I had the last meeting was scheduled last Tuesday and we had the pleasure of welcoming K-12 math director Brian Selleck as well as the world languages director Xena Hamada and Dr Garth McKinney who is our liaison and central office also attended so um director selik was completing the update that he gave us when we met last fall and he shared that in terms of the into math Elementary curriculum that was implemented this school year he's currently in the process of collecting feedback from all of the elementary grade levels across the Four elementary schools he shared that he anticipates that he's going to get good and high quality feedback because he

051made the questions open-ended but he also um advised that you know going through a lesson for the first time for an entire school year is going to be tough especially given that you have a pacing guide that you're anticipated to complete but it's much more difficult when it's your first time around and he believes that in year two it will be a lot smoother he also had the opportunity to share with us what is happening at the secondary level last school year they piloted the integrated mathematics curriculum in ninth grade and this school year they've expanded the implementation to include grades 9 10 and 11. he explained that they're still figuring out the pacing guide but they are identifying proactively opportunities to make more efficient use of the time so they can make it through

052the entire curriculum he explained that this is more robust and comprehensive and rigorous than the previous curriculum we were implementing for those who are new to illustrative mathematics it's considered one of the most rigorous and in terms of covering the standards one of the best math curriculums that you can implement he said it's very unique from the perspective that it integrates math from more than one grade level so instead of teaching discrete topics it Blends some of them and he said that the content areas that are covered over those three years include Algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2. he also explained that for course three honors math Milton will be piloting the AP pre-calculus course in its stead um the the 11 honors course that it's teaching this year the AP pre-calculus course is brand

053new to college board and he believes that it's well aligned with what we've been teaching before except for the fact that our students will now be eligible for college credit he also explained that he recognizes that there needs to be more college-bearing opportunities for students who are on the college prep path and that ultimately he's going to pursue dual enrollment opportunities similar to what we improved last school year for AP statistics and what else oh we also talked about the breadth of AP classes that are available to our students specifically in math so in addition to the AP pre-calculus course as I mentioned um during our form last week There's AP Calculus a b AP Calculus BC AP Computer Science and AP Statistics so when you think about all the opportunities to engage in college

054bearing coursework Milton has a wide array more than most schools have and by adding the dual enrollment component students who are in the college prep path will also have the opportunity to earn college credit before leaving the district after director Stalag left zaina Hamada was kind enough to give us an overview in an update essentially on what's happening in French immersion we've received several questions from the community specifically around the continuation of the program the enrollment of the program and some questions around special education so starting with enrollment and the concerns that some families had that the French immersion program might be going away it is not Milton has made a significant investment whether it's in teaching staff materials professional development and we are not going to an abandon a program that's been this successful

055she explained that there are families for whom their school may not have enough space and all those families are offered the opportunity to bust their child to one of the other elementary schools some take the district up on that offer and some have declined in order to stay at their home school there's no guarantee that you'll always have a seat at your home school but you will for the most part always have an opportunity if you are to participate in French immersion if you're willing to look at the other schools as the as the location for that instruction um we also know that there's a space issue she explained that traditionally there's been a single strand of French for those of you who may not know what it means is there's only per grade level

056there's only one French class there is one school for which there's a significant number of students so they have two strands but it's almost like a bubble that's the best analogy I can give and at each school year this teacher has been moving up with that group of students it's not an ideal scenario because essentially that teacher every year is learning that new level but it's been successful so far and that teacher will continue until that class moves on but as I mentioned the goal is not to turn away students who want to participate in the program she also shared that we have been piloting oh no we're past piloting a program where if a student is on an IEP and is enrolled in French immersion that there are French teachers that are serving as

057reading specialists at the secondary level who are actually supporting the elementary level grades and it's been doing well and those students that are on IEPs their IEPs are tracked the services that are being received in French for from the reading Specialists are also involved but no student who's in the on with an IEP that's enrolled in French immersion loses their services in many cases they are delivered in English but they will all continue to receive their services and I think I think that's it and with that are there any questions about what I shared all right well thank you very good thank you thank you member Russ Denny okay next on our agenda is approval of minutes and we have quite a few sets of minutes um to approve this evening and um what I'd

058like to do is is combine most of them into one motion I went through to see if we were all at all of these meetings and it looks like um just the December 7th meeting it showed Dr Miranda was not at that meeting um so I think we'll we'll vote on those minutes uh first and then the rest of them since we were all there we can vote with them vote on all those together if if that's okay um so let's start with a December 7th minutes I'd like to make a motion to approve the minutes from December 7th Milton school committee meeting we have a second please second second thank you okay do a roll call vote um member Vargis yes remember Wade yes Dr Carol yes remember Russ Danny yes Dr Miranda abstain

059right yes I was not at that meeting that's right it just was confirming that I was not of that meeting yeah yeah and and chair Rosemary yes so that's five five zero one um and then we have the remaining sets of minutes um make a motion to approve the minutes from uh the December 21st January 6th January 11th and January 18th Milton school committee meetings do I hear a second thank you yes yes Dr Carol there is I did notice one typo of the meeting minutes that technically could change the meaning of something so okay if I just say that one yeah yeah go ahead just um January 6th January 6th okay um page to it's says look um look level one to level three I believe but it should say took or I think

060the meaning is took level one to level three level three to level one um yeah got it it would just be a changing look to took right sorry very good very good um any other comments or changes before we take a vote okay uh hearing none uh we'll move ahead motion is on the floor um do a roll call vote Dr Miranda yes a member of our gays yes remember White yes Dr Carroll yes remember Russ Danny yes and chair Rosemary and yes very good those are all approved um next on our agenda we have next meeting agenda items um next week we meet again for our fourth uh public forum on our budget so that will take place at the Council on Aging it will be a hybrid meeting and it's my understanding from

061Milton access that they have taken care of the problem that we were experiencing the last time we were there and and hopefully that should go smoothly this time they're ready to go um February 13th we have a town meeting and then our next meeting after that school committee meeting after that is February 15th and we have the program of studies on that agenda and we just received the program of studies in our email um this week so if we could take a look at that prior to that meeting that would be great um so um and I think that that takes care of it up remember what so um I had reached out to um Bill Ritchie and asked him about coming to a school committee meeting he thinks that the 15th would be too

062soon because he wants to have more information about the Capital Improvements that are going to be approved and one of those are related to the schools so he asked if um he could attend the March meeting instead great okay um do you remember what which date in March that was I could just I think it was March 22nd was that yeah yep terrific that'd be great and we'll put him on the agenda for that thank you for for uh looking into that remember White um very good so I will make a motion to adjourn you'll hear a second please second thank you uh and do a roll call vote remember White yes member of our gays yes remember us Danny yes Dr Carol yes Dr Miranda yes Jeremy is wearing yes very good have a

063good night everybody thank you thank you bye bye