Worcester School Committee - July 22, 2021

001okay oh senator good thank you my cycles good afternoon everyone welcome to the worcester school committee meeting and uh we're going to start with the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem is oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] was [Music] [Applause] for [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh here mrs clancy here mr foley here miss mccullough mr manfredo here mr kananovic here and mayor petty here okay the first time as you can see the approved amends the school committee meeting on thursday june 17th and june 30th collectively approve on the roll call miss biancaria yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes miss mccullough mr manfredo yes ms okananovic yes and mayor petty yes next item is uh reporter superintendent before we do that i know sean sweeney is on the uh is he on the line i

002guess so maybe motions to spend the rules to go to uh response from the legal councils to request the report on the authority to mandate over 19 vaccinations for 21 22 year has provided under state law for public school employees and school students so uh motions suspend the rules roll call to splendor roles mr biancaria yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes ms mccullough mr monfido yes ms o'connell nova yes and mayor petty yes okay um so so we're on that item on 1-137.1 does anybody have any questions on the ms novik that was your item thank you mr chair i i don't as it happens i have any questions on it um as i remarked um to both of our legal counsels who responded um offline that i appreciated the thoroughness of their responses

003um obviously this is an active conversation as i suspect some of my colleagues saw the national school boards association also came out with further guidance um yesterday what i did note though mr chair is that the authority of the school committee first of all is fairly extensive under um both mass general law and under the case law that was cited but that the authority is both strengthened and somewhat held jointly with the board of health now we in the city honestly because we're so well served by the medical community have had limited interactions with our board of health but it is quite explicitly the board of health that has the legal authority locally looking at the case law looking at what was presented both by attorney tobin and by attorney sweeney and so my proposal

004mr chair is that we as a school committee sometime in the next two weeks i know that there's probably going to need to be another meeting that we'll have to have before we talk about next back to school i would propose mr chair that before we have that meeting that the school committee meet jointly with the board of health to have exactly this conversation and quite possibly also have a conversation around masking as it may be something that is a local authority question as well so my motion mr chair is for the school committee in the next two weeks to meet jointly with the board of health prior to whatever meeting the superintendent needs us to have um for us to discuss back-to-school measures you want us to we can just have the board of

005health come into a meeting yeah well we would i we would want to arrange for a joint meeting i mean they're a public board as well and it would want to we'd want to make sure it was just to come in then i beg your pardon didn't this have stalked the hersh no that's actually the point if you let if you read the legal counsel very carefully we've been relying on dr hirsch and i have no objection to that but it's the board of health that actually holds legal authority under the decisions that have been made in the past regarding things like vaccinations and other health measures so again this is not in any way to denigrate both the department of public health or any of the doctors that work there it simply is that

006the legal case law makes it clear that it's actually the board of health that holds authority that's correct so that would be that that is why i make the proposal that i do so i'm going to try to schedule a meeting schedule a meeting prior to whatever meeting that i'm sure the administration will need for us to talk about back-to-school measures yes oh people ready to vote this i don't know but uh yes we can have i mean we need we would need a quorum of us and a quorum of them that's actually not that many people i think probably we can manage particularly given the ongoing powers to meet remotely if necessary can we get a written opinion from them and just to have them come back with something for them i think we

007probably should deliberate with both bodies i think that that probably we may we probably want to share the the information that we have with them to make sure that they're as informed as we are i guess is everybody wants a meeting or miss being carrier i certainly appreciate anyone who has done any research in reference to this but we are in july we are looking at three or four weeks we have some major decision to make as far as mask wearing as far as six feet three feet two feet i would appreciate um sean giving us the information legal opinion certainly also a legal opinion on what we need to make a decision on and what is being decided for us i would like in a legal opinion as far as that's concerned as far

008as having any additional meetings um i'm sure we can work around people's schedules and so on whether they're zooming or coming in person um but i would like to get uh weekly updates on this process due to the fact that summer goes by very quickly and we all have extremely busy schedules however i feel as though the legal opinion is absolutely necessary to move forward with this okay thank you so we'll get the opinion and we'll get the uh yeah guys you can schedule those meetings we have the legal opinion yeah do we so can we schedule the meetings then then okay mr foley thank you mr chair i i support the idea i i'm getting more and more concerned as we see what's happening across our country with the the spread of the delta

009variant and um having a conversation with the board of health and and i'd love to see dr parish and dr castille be present as well to give us their feedback and i think i think we're looking at issues relative to vaccinations looking at issues relative to mask wearing and some of the distancing and i i think it's an ever-changing unfortunately never changing time right now as the the variant is growing so i think we would we would benefit and i'll just let the public know it wouldn't surprise me if we're making a decision sometime mid-august or even third week of august about something in the school year than maybe at the last minute because of what's changing in the country still thank you have the cork figure out how she's going to schedule those meetings

010and contact everybody on the dates okay oh i'm sorry ma'am superintendent um through the chair um also jesse is uh supposed to also give us guidance uh the timeline is sometime between the first two weeks in august for them also to issue that guidance regarding mandatory you know vaccinations mass wearing and social distancing my my only concern about the mandatory vaccinations is where it's been very clear from the commissioner there is no remote learning next year if we exclude students because of vaccinations then how do they get their education i guess that will be part of that conversation we will have uh when these two groups get together okay maybe we can try to schedule probably i know it'd be a little cramped for time but after the test he comes up with recommendations about

011the same time would be helpful if we can yeah mr chair i first of all i saw the same information that the superintendent did and was crossing my fingers and then of course the governor was asked today if there was a plan for further guidance and he said no um which i think there may be a little bit of inter-departmental tussling going on um maybe but um we probably don't want to schedule around deci um given what we know okay which high schools are those meetings okay with jesse or without well uh let's see what i figured would you say the second first the second week of august so maybe try to do the second week of august okay okay okay so we can file that uh what's that yeah i think we're all set

012so i think paige and sean we don't need them any longer until executive session okay okay so we'll file that those in favor oppose so ordered um miss being here yes thank you um i guess i have to admit dwight make that an emotion form that i would like a legal opinion prior to making any meetings or making any decisions on what we need to do yep okay so that would be a motion that i would make to make sure that we have all the legal opinions prior to walking in the door this is a more that we had yeah okay thank you okay okay that's in favor oh so reported okay we have the superintendent's reformative uh report based on her goals mid-cycle ma'am superintendent you see all right okay um very pleased to

013present the mid-cycle goal review before i start i do want to share that this has been quite a year for everybody and we only got through the year because of the training and the collaboration with the principals in the schools some of them are are here tonight so i want to make sure that we recognize and thank all the principals as well as the teachers in every school that they worked endlessly to work with remote learning something that none of us had had any experience with and i want to thank the parents many of them joined the classrooms and were part of the instruction also and i wanted to thank my team they really were working some days 12 hours a day putting together a remote school so building it's like building a regular school

014with brick and mortar but doing it virtually and there were skills that all of us i needed to learn to do that and what really did come out of that is a very collaborative structure uh both for the principals and the district office and also between parents and their students and the teachers so uh with that i'm proud to present to you our mid-cycle goal review so as you know the cycle for the superintendent's goal review is a cycle that is put together by deci we started at self-assessment in the fall of last year the analysis goal setting and plan development we then implemented the plan we're at the mid-cycle review and the summative uh would be sometime in december so in the standards and indicators for effective administrative leadership these are different way than

015what we have done it before in the past we had to address all the indicators and the standards and with the new superintendent's evaluation you're allowed to pick one or two indicators uh in the standards and they have to be aligned to your goals so there are four standards very similar to what is in the principles evaluation and similar in some areas with instruction family community engagement and professional culture in the teachers evaluation process so under instructional leadership uh the two areas that i connected to my goals are 1b instruction and one e data informed decision making from management operations 2b hr management development and 2e fiscal systems and under family and community engagement the whole part about engagement 3a and 3c on communication and then also on professional culture cultural proficiency which is 4b

016and 4d continuous learning so i'll be addressing how those were done in my goals so in the human resource management and development as you can read what that means i rated myself proficient and in the fiscal systems i rated myself proficient and management operations the overall rating are proficient do we skip some let's see here okay now these are the um goals that we had approved on december 3rd the first is the student learning goal as you can see the focus indicators are in there the goal was fifty percent of students in grades four five and six that participated in the fall star baseline math assessment will achieve a sgp of 40 or higher by june 2021 that goal we did not meet uh we met it only for grade six and we did not

017meet it for grades four and five so mid-year we are still progressing on that goal the professional practice goal and again you can see the indicators in there through the 2021 school year create a school and district community environment that promotes two-way communication with families and provides resources for effective student learning and performance we exceeded that and i'll give you the evidence later on in this conversation the district improvement goal 1 increased diversity of new hires to 17 by june 2021 and continue to improve both the recruitment and retention rate of diverse staff we met beckle the district improvement goal two to develop an initial sorry in an annual budget that is lined with a strategic plan we did do that i participated in a lot of budget meetings and exceeded that on district goal

018three lower the out of school suspension rate by five percent for special education group c students with emotional disabilities using evidence-based targeted interventions and resources by june 2021 and exceeded that the indicator for instruction you can all read what that requires proficient in that the indicator for data informed decision making also proficient some of the overall rating for standard one instructional leadership proficient the goals on engagement is also proficient and communication exceeded so the overall rating for standard three family and community engagement proficient cultural proficiency proficient continuous learning proficient overall rating for professional culture proficient and now i'm going to go to the link to the evidence to show the evidence of all of those goals [Applause] okay so the first professional goal again is create a school in district community environment that promotes two-way

019communication with families provides resources for effective student learning and performance the benchmarks that we agreed on were listed in the middle column expand family support for remote learning technology literacy and access by providing multilingual print and video tutorials of digital learning tools conducting live multilingual technology demonstrations and webinars offering webinars on curriculum tools and resources providing digital drop-in and calling hours for families and hosting on-site technology drop-ins collaborating with community groups and holding technology training sessions for community caregivers continue to revise and add to caregivers tech academy website and monitor connectivity and device access so if you click on the data link okay this is the goal so here is the data 22 support videos were created 11 videos were translated into 11 languages seven videos did not need audio this was all available for

020support through our caregivers academy online 5020 hot spots were available to homes and shelters 2323 pre-k which was 794 in the pre-k in kindergarten in 1529 students were given one-to-one ipads by their school of enrollment and supported 21 663 students in grades 1 through 12 which included transition and new citizen young adult were one-to-one chromebooks were distributed by their school or their program of enrollment and they were supported staff were in contact with families also to support technology access issues on the multilingual virtual sessions for caregivers uh 209 unique forums and webinars were developed offered to support families and caregivers in 12 months so that started july 2020 it went to june 21. we held four public forums with the school committee also and we had interpretation available july 2020 through april 2021 66 additional

021district level public forums with interpretations available were held addressing transitions special needs and technology support we held four worcester public school district spanish forums 135 plus building based virtual information systems were offered at 45 worcester public school buildings and programs family engagement events 225 plus unique family engagement opportunities we offered in 10 months from september to june examples where our site councils our parent teacher groups our elpac our special ed pac student recognition school-based celebrations and community building events family and community questions were placed on the website we answered them daily and responded to by appropriate staff 97 staff questions were submitted online and we also responded to them 202 medical forum reopening questions was submitted and we also answered those the superintendent myself organized and participated in 461 plus meetings with the community and

022agencies to share information and coordinate support for our students and families in the city this is i'm just going to show you a few links to the video so you can see examples i know people watching may not have seen this information so this is example of our caregivers technology academy site videos here are all the videos and then here's all the languages that we translated in so that our caregivers which could have been parents grandparents anyone that was taking care of our students had access to how to teach their child how to know how to use chromebooks how to know how to use the internet how to how to use our app such as seesaw how to get technology support and also video conferencing we had several caregivers technology webinars as an example we

023had drop-in sessions we had recorded webinars i give you some examples of those here uh so if you uh wanted to go look at them there's a curriculum overview series there's a gender for students there's a math curriculum overview we're also training our caregivers and our staff if you wanted to know how to use the google calendar there are a lot of training resources that were developed uh our teachers really liked our training resources and this is the quick links um you can see um there is site by language we taught people how to use clever how to use the google classroom how to use ipads how to use seesaw how to use meat we did it in all languages we also have a translate translation line and we also use the youtube channel i

024i think it's important for me to also share that none of this was developed when when we closed school on march 12 2020. everything i'm showing you did not not exist and it's what this development of this with everybody working together and everyone learning together and really pushing uh that as we have to learn this as what got us through this last year so here's some data points for you so the total number of sessions uh we're 55 uh total number of webinars eight so this shows us this you know the site um how often did somebody hit the site uh so we were able to tell are people using this site is this valuable so total number of attendees for example at this time was 283 and we also had chats so we monitored

025the data to make sure that the you know the sites were being useful and that if there was something else that we needed to do to improve that we also nellie mae grant we wrote the nellie mae grant and we received it for expansion of languages we continue to add resources and creating school toolkit as an aside yesterday we had a phone call from nelly may to check to see what we were doing with the grant and they told us they were impressed with the work that worcester has done regarding expansion of languages and the use of technology so there's some family engagement data now still on the same goal that i'd like to share with you so this list that i'm showing you here make it a little bigger is what we did for

026all schools and programs and then what we did in just secondary schools and also what we did in the elementary school so i'll leave um this up for you to look at uh first for a second i can make it a little larger if you need to see that um the work regarding family engagement uh was we i already thought we did you know a great job with family engagement and now with with the pandemic and having to reach everybody virtually uh we really ramped up that work so this is um for the all schools and then all secondary schools and then all elementary also i know the school committee is always interesting in our psych council's meeting in our schools what is being done inside councils so i also included here a list of

027all the site councils in all our schools how many unique visits their website had what was the information that they talked about and you can see that we have all our schools here added here as to what happened with engaging and connecting with our families during this most difficult year so also we the answers on the parent community online there were 2420 online questions with the translation function that were asked for us and we answered them i'm going to give you a sample what the parent spanish parent forums look like so there was one on 811 1028 and 222. here is a copy of the brochure that was developed we distributed it it was also distributed by our community partners and of course we had translations at each of those forums it was important that

028we also translate you know mckinley vento family letter even though we were virtual remote most of the time it was really important that we made sure that our families you know had connections to information about homelessness information about scattered sites information about being doubled up information about where they could get food and so this is a letter that went out from mar mahoney's office and this was translated also into the eight languages carl melendez did a lot of work with the on the lpac it actually launched in the 18-19 school year by the office of english language programs and this is just an example of the work that was done by the elpac there were community partner quarterly meetings there was virtual information sessions that were held and we used an asset based approach to

029build relationships with our families so that we would know their strengths we'd know their stories we were creating a welcoming environment and this we also did this for for all families and this is an example of our spring flier that we did this spring uh this is translated into english spanish vietnamese tweet arabic albanian portuguese and um nepali let's see if i can get it well that is this is uh english learner parent advisory council elpac uh they meet the second tuesday of each month uh these are the dates they met and we want to we want to expand their leadership skills also online so training modules were also developed for our families and then you could register to attend and that was all held virtually we also supported our families uh in the virtual

030world so this is the multilingual family engagement strategies that we used so we use as i already spoke to about the caregivers technology academy we had drop-in sessions they were in person and online we had community partner training and feedback we provided training to paypal to ymca and ywca we also developed kia kiva's caregivers school-based toolkits we provided assistance we did purchase google voice so that our teachers could speak to their families and to their parents as you know we had a hot spot program and we also thanks for working with the city manager and the mayor were able to get spectrum free internet program for those families also very unique is that we also created an orientation video for claremont academy it is on here if you are interested in looking at it at

031some other time we also did an overview video on go to matrix we have very multilingual video tutorials and information and we made sure that they were organized by quick links and also we developed that parent portal so that parents were able to get access to bus changes scheduling changes as you know we did many schedule changes due to changing from remote to hybrid to finally uh in person now our special education families we wanted to make sure that we did extra outreach to them so this is an example of our special education department we held information sessions on dyslexia and language based disabilities on february 12th on april 14th and on also on january 12. we also uh held a virtual celebration of our kids in jerry roach's program on the transition program and

032we also so we celebrated special education success in their story and we did that also virtually it was some we sent newsletters home to parents uh the l newsletter is called voices uh you can see that it's right here it's this is the first one we sent november the subject is which voices will be heard we gave information about wida the e-summit we did a book study called breaking down the wall that was very well attended by elle teachers and also district staff we gave some information about pick the parent information system and the center and how that works and then we talked about imagine learning which as the school committee knows we purchased this year and it has been wonderful to have that imagine learning and we talked about the bilingual programs what's coming

033up cross linguistic connections data analysis so the newsletters were full of really important information so we also draft a framework for working with multilingual families so this is a worcester family engagement self-assessment that we did we want to have a number one focus for us was building positive relationships and this is our plan for self self-assessment first on um building uh positive relationships this was on uh promoting family well-being self-assessment on that and also on promoting pathways for partnership with families and this is the rubric that we used for that we talked about supporting child and youth development learning health and also well-being so that's our template of of engaging with families and self-assessing ourselves on where we were with that several organizations partner with the worcester public schools so what we gave you here

034for academic support is these are all the agencies that we partnered with this year how many students are involved what grade they were uh what schools um or demographics that we needed to know to work with what was the time of support most of it was after school the type of support also the highlights of supporting remote learning and challenges with supporting remote learning so that's our community organization academic support my trip you can all see that but it was working with ace cultural exchange through soccer worcester alliance for refugee ministry uh southeast asian coalition rap p-pal the worcester family partnership luck mentoring program latino institute at worcester state with kathy oringo and worcester public library we also there were monthly community meetings that were attended um this was for ells so there's also attendance

035this is the agenda for the monthly meetings that we did with the community so they started august 31st 2020 and they go all the way down to june 7th met every single month on those and there's a list of the registration list the agenda and the number of organizations are in attendance so i think it's important that people listening in the community realize that anywhere from 11 to 16 organizations were present at these meetings so community partnership spreadsheet is a another community engagement spreadsheet that we used we took all the managers and we listed additional organizations that we all partnered with so some additional ones that i didn't already read to you was seven hills foundation uh essentia anna maria college art reach assumption college berkeley school music black families together boston college boys and

036girls club broadmeadow brook and then we also included this um the chief diversity office's work and networking and then the many things we did in partner with the city of worcester we did many connected messages to the community to the point that when we had graduation uh parents asked me please don't call me during the summer because we called them so much they said please don't call me so um and they laughed but you know we we were constantly informing parents who connected um so this is some i gave you an example of messages that we did uh connected superintendents updates that also were posted on the website and also i was the public school app that went out from there this is uh again we i don't know if you know because it just

037happened recently but we have our own bilingual radio station now um it's going extremely well i'm a guest at it uh this is our bilingual radio station um it we bring different topics and people call in and speak to us and it's on wcw 31.3 on fm and we're on every wednesday four to five so as the school committee knows we had many community forums we had the educational model response on on august 10th february 12th march 15th march 29th we had learning model response about remote or in-person learning survey april 3rd may 4th and then may 17 start date we also had online question submissions for community forums at where that they would put the questions first and then we would do the presentation and then answer their questions and we also had the

038middle school caregiver interest survey for the remote academy you were all school committee was all here when we presented this this was also on our website this is just an example of what the district transitioned to hybrid learning but we had this document for every single transmission transition that we did we also had meetings on budget um which also does we'll be talking about that in another goal but that is another communication that we use to talk to parents and community members regarding the worcester public school budget we've had a lot of the doherty building hearings also planning and updates i participated as a member of the doherty high building committee i've had a lot of meetings on the new south high that will soon be opened i'm a committee member and i'm also on

039the district oversight group we also had sam uh community forums uh with special ed parents um during this time so i included with you for you uh the first one we had which was february 10th on parents rights the iep process and it was all put on by the office of special education we also had other forums that were in spanish for children with disabilities family that have children with disabilities when we were looking at becoming when we were equity detectives working with doctors with dr irvin scott from harvard university we discovered that there was some concern about at sixth grade how the decisions be made for students going into the seventh grade that does not prevent them from getting into advanced placement courses when they get to high school so we held four family

040scheduling forums uh with one for each of the middle schools with interpreters to explain scheduling to suggest to parents that they try to get their children in honors classes and that work will can continue i regarding scheduling and looking to see how at grade six are we setting the course for a student's life by the decisions that we make uh we also had a south high family meeting a remote return for south high because they had to go back to remote uh so that they could demolition the current school and this is an example as you all know you also attended scheduling forums so we had scheduling forums and these were the schedulings that we did in the scheduling forum so that we could explain the schedule to parents so their children would be well

041informed we also had special education advisory pac meetings and this is an example of the pac meeting the sessions i gave you the agenda the times and all these are in the community resources that were given to the families special education also had family-based trainings partnered with community quincy community college and there was a pac meeting we talked about transitioning from high school to college this was the worcester public schools special ed pac and qqcc student accessibility services and we had that on march 25th from 4 30 to 5 30. that's it let me get to the next one we also offered a parent workshop on social emotional well-being during the continued pandemic and that was a sped sel leadership team they provided an agenda you know it was about reinforcement how you can use

042it your home also about token economies behavioral contracts home learning schedules about anxiety and how do you deal anxiety during the pandemic what are the coping strategies that you can use with your entire family and communion with the public school resources and then we explained all of those things i gave you a copy of that work we did for special ed parents we updated the parent portal and we wanted to take this is data on the parent portal this tells you how many people were involved how many accounts were created how many students were claimed the access to the parent portal uh as you know we're still in summer school right now uh we really wanted to get the information out to parents about summer school communication again these are all the registration forms that

043are done in all the languages also information about summer school so i thought you would find it very interesting because again this goal was about communicating in as many ways you can to families and in the western public schools you have to communicate through uh translation and documents so between 9 19 2019 and 312 2020 uh we translated uh 3533 documents which is 25 365 pages uh 2255 in person or on video 3250 phone interpretations in 50 different language for a total of 28 703 minutes between 3 13 20 20 and 6 30 20 20 we translated 2 393 documents a hundred in person or video interpretations five 5 600 phone interpretations in 58 different languages for a total of 54 399. and then uh from 7-1 2020 to the to this june we translated

0447 366 documents or 50 380 pages 3143 in person or video interpretations and 14 990 phone interpretations in 74 language of a total 144 346 minutes so i think that you know this and then this is just a chart showing you what we did interpret again we are communicating with our families interpreting in their language and making them feel welcome in the worcester public schools so that is the end of goal one on to goal two student learning goal fifty percent of students in grades four five and six participated in the fall star baseline math assessment will achieve a sgp of 40 or higher by june 2021 so this is the goal again that i told you we are still working on so let's look at the data on on this goal so the chat

045summarize uh the student growth from fall of 20. let me put it a little bigger thank you guys so you can see it the people that have been here how's that uh from the fall of 2020 to spring of 2021 now remember we're only doing uh for this presentation grades four from six because that was the goal um we divide them into two categories uh low growth is if you're less than 40 and typical and high growth is if you're more than 40 and then divided by remote or in school so as you can see the green shows you that we did make that goal for grade six at 53 percent um in grade four sixty percent of the students had low growth in grade four forty percent had high growth in grade 5 54

046had low growth 46 had high growth grade 6 47 had low growth 53 had high so 50 if we add them all together four through six uh 54 percent had low growth and 46 had high growth now if we go over to the far right uh it's not a surprise that on all testing that we did uh students did better if they were in school then they were remote and there can be a lot of factors for that um it's hard to test students when they're in remote and it's a much more controlled setting when they're in school so remote students 57 percent of students at remote showed low growth and math 43 showed high growth in remote in school 52 showed low growth and 48 showed high growth now if we want to go

047to the number of students here so in grade four 954 students showed low growth 627 showed high grade 5 low growth was 813 students and 689 had high grade six 767 had low growth and 879 had high growth again looking over here again at who was remote who was in school 908 students remote showed low growth and 1626 show low growth that were in school high growth remote 686 in school 1509 now we wanted to look at them by grade and look at remote and in school so in grade four 64 percent of the kids in remote had low growth 36 percent of the kids remote had high in school 59 percent had low growth and 41 percent had high grade 5 remote 57 had low growth 43 had high growth in school 53 had

048low growth and 47 head high grade six remote 50 percent had low growth and 50 percent had high and in school uh 45 had a low growth and 55 had high so in in looking at that uh you know that the question would be what are we going to do next year because we're showing that our current um before before june grade four and five students have concerning amount of low growth so you know the first part of that is we have to assess um exactly what that gap is and uh we're working on i'm sure you may have seen that jesse has a called a sell acceleration roadmap uh for uh students and what that basically means is that you don't tell a third a fourth grade teacher they're going to teach third grade

049work um it's a whole way of the fourth grade teacher incorporating the skills that kids need to learn that they may have a gap for into grade four so the next question is how do the subgroups do here interesting enough uh statistically uh low growth for male or female was about the same 54 and 53. high growth 46 and 47. so there wasn't a large difference between whether you were male or female there was a large group a gap not surprisingly but there was a very large gap between not low income and low income so as you can see um not low income met the goal of 55 percent low income was 43 high 57 low growth also our two subgroups that we are always looking uh at with data and looking for ways to

050increase their knowledge and decrease the gap our our l population and our students with disabilities so for our l population not for our l population 65 percent had low growth and 35 percent had high non l 50 percent had low growth and 50 had high growth we're going to go with our special ed population now uh non-special ed i was pretty close 51 low growth and 49 high and our students with disabilities 66 pretty close to the l of 65 percent had low growth and 34 percent had high and now we want to know okay what race groups are struggling because that's always a very important part of what we're looking at so if you look at this we can see where where the green is that who had high growth so our white population

051had high growth our asian population met the goal multi-race non-hispanic met the goal in our native american met the goal who did not make the goal so our hispanic latino population had 59 low growth and 41 percent high and our afro-american population had 53 percent low growth and for only 47 high growth so what are some of the um assessments date of the math assessment data that we looked at and this is what resources could we use and did we use so we this is a principles training and uh this was on assessments in star training that principals received training on the schedule what the assessment schedule was included in this i also gave you the parent guardian report that was provided to parents and guardians the administration for family home administration of the star

052as well as a teacher guide for them giving the star data we provided a lot the office of ocpl to provide other supports you're looking now at the common assessment data that through the envisions program the quarters are not related in that there's different standards that are taught in quite a one quarter two quarter three quantum four um understanding that you know if you can't if you're learning for example to add and subtract and quite a one with single digit numbers and when you go to quarter two you're learning to add and subtract with double digit numbers there is some carryover in skills but the skills are are different so in quantum one 57 percent of the of the students met the benchmarks in grade three and as you can look across 45 percent and

053quite a two 56 percent and quite a three and 49 and quite a four again those are not look you can't compare those uh each of them are separate quarters and i put the participation rate in there so you can see how many students were included in this which is a large sample quarter four i mean a grade four uh quarter one is 62 percent quarter 249 quarter three thirty nine and quarter four fifty two percent met the benchmarks uh the same thing for as you can see grade 5 46 38 35 54 and grade 6 53 40 46 and 48 now this is the alex data it wasn't something that you asked for however um i thought this was interesting you would find because it's math these are students in grades 7 through 12.

054so students using alex it tells you the number of hours they used it and then it tells you where they were for the beginning and where they are with their ending and what tasks they have been successful at um so in the the beginning from for middle school math uh they started 53 and went up to 82 there was a gain of 29 points algebra 1 there was a gain of 14 points geometry gain of 14 points in algebra ii a gain of nine points st math is one of my favorite programs uh it's expensive program when i first became superintendent i really wanted to get that in the west public schools were able to get only one in one school but it was union hill and that set uh for us the uh confidence

055of the st math group and we can say we now we're very proud we have it in every elementary school so how that works is there's puzzles there's problem solving there's informative feedback that students get um let's make this a little bigger for you to see so this shows you the harder easier questions the patterns and you can see that students made great progress we actually received a lot of congratulations from st math as being a model program that they are totally in through the state of wooster public schools and the use of st math so you can see that you are seeing that there is progress there kids went from 54 to 65 69 to 75 so there all the way down there is progress that students made on the st math so on

056this st math uh you can see that 861 students were doing the puzzles um you can see how many 16 million puzzles were completed 100 100 111 000 objectives were cons were conquered and you can see the number of minutes that were played so an average of 57 minutes per week and our students were solving an average of 33 puzzles per week and then this is a list of all the professional development activities that were all given in the area of math and then the next thing still on the same goal uh is our effort to continue to observe teacher practice in math so this is the characteristics of high quality instructional practices we are working all principals are involved in a network leadership group we work with brett lane from instill and giselle martin

057kemp from lci as an instructional walkthrough tool it was used virtually this year so the walkthrough tool looks like this it's a google sheet everybody during the year when we were in person we have it on our phones you go into a classroom you look at certain targeted skills for example dimension one is academic goals and skills you rate what you see one through four it we have lit look for so you know what you're looking for it tells you in the rubric one two three and four is we also look for effective use of time [Music] and we also look for dok which is student cognition and depth of knowledge we also do dimension four which is use of formative or in-class assessments so besides teachers learning how to use technology communicating with families

058checking every day to see if everybody emotionally was well taking training on literacy and math we also uh made sure sure that we did classroom walk throughs and this is something that i want to share with you that i'm very excited about and so is carmen melendez i'm very excited about so we wanted to see what would the outcomes of math intervention in spanish be so we wanted to teach children that spoke spanish math and spanish so this was this happened at two schools jan the magnet in woodland this tells you the number of students um i think it's important to see the attendance of of the students because i want to show you what happened so these were tutors that uh they were college professors they speak spanish fluently uh and i want to

059tell you that they developed assessments they gave pre-test and post-tests so this is not evidence-based but this the power of this is something that we're going to continue to explore so in grade 3 there was a pretest and 18.2 of the class passed at midpoint 100 passed and 100 passed at the post test so it went from 80 i mean 37.3 to 87.8 average to 84.5 in grade four it went from 33.7 where only 6.7 passed to 100 passing again at the midpoint and at the test and in grades five and six from only 16.7 passing to 80 passing so this is something that you know we want to continue to explore with our our students who are native speakers we also we also are very involved with udl options for universal design learning so

060this is an example make it a little bit larger for options for udl so universal design learning is what we're doing in the western public schools we're working with a group called cast we are all the administrators are actually reading a book on racial equity in ugl the combination of working with the udl model to address issues of equity and anti-racism and so this is the framework for udl in the elementary i'll give you a couple of seconds let me just roll it up a little bit so you can see it um it this you know udl universal design learning is about access engagement access representation action and expression building engagement persistence about what about language and symbols about expression and communication how do we internalize engagement how do we self-regulate how do we internalize

061action expression and how do we internalize representation so that ends the evidence that is first uh the student learning goal the district improvement goal one which is increasing the diversity of new hires is by june 2021 uh like to share with you the diversity data this was put together for a variety of sources so the goal is there uh 25.5 of new hires in 21 were people of color that's a 3.1 point increase from the 22.4 which was taken at in the school year 2018. now this is from the internal worcester public school hr data system uh we have 3.4 percent more staff in 21 than in 18 we have an increase of 160 staff worcester public school has 105 more staff of color in 21 than we had in 18. and i put this

062in bold so 20.3 of staff percent of staff in this 21 year were of color compared to 18.8 in in school year 18. the percentage of staff of color increased by 1.5 percentage points there were 34 33 more teachers of color which is 11.2 increase uh this is two percentage point higher than the increase in white teachers during the same time period um but despite the increase in teachers of color uh their proportion in our workforce only increased from 12.8 to 13 percent i'm proud to say that there were 12 more administrative staff in 21. uh the majority of the staff were white in 18 82.0 and 84.1 in 21. but there's a 2.1 percentage point increase in white administrative staff in a three-year period the increase in diversity of new hires to 17 uh

063this is 25. of new hires in 21 were people of color that's a 3.1 point increase from the 22.4 and 18. so there's an overall increase in the percentage of the workforce that has five or few years experience from 18 to 21 so 44.8 to 49.6 respectively we will begin our 21-22 school year with 12 principals of color which is 25 leading our schools and it's interesting uh that we're looking at the state data and worcester public schools has a more racially diverse workforce compared to the state since at least uh school year 16. so in 21 16.2 of the worcester public school staff were non-white and the state is at 11.9 i'm showing you now the um what's the public school's office of diversity baseline data so uh the goal one as is the

064one that we just explained to you uh we are committed to increasing the number of qualified teachers of color in the district uh who represent the cultures of our student population um and then you can read that's a summary of what i already said these were uh ivonne and i sat down and this is the district goals that we set for this year um and also the strategies for meeting the goals so we really wanted to increase the number of staff at cover and professional ranks we established drop-in hours for virtual or in person with the chief diversity officer to support the retention of staff of color work closely with hr to cultivate a diverse candidate candidate pool that is more available to school and district leaders when openings arrive we are supporting uh we

065initiated and supporting the current instructional assistants of color to pursue teaching as a profession in partnership with the jet program we are also providing mtel support uh we are also paying for the mentor of each of the instructional assistants but by a retired mister public school uh teacher or administrator we are continuing to focus on collaborative pathways for our current teachers of color to enter leadership positions either through coaching assistant principal or by being a principal we are received a grant working on a grant actually right now to increase the number of teachers of color to lead advanced placement courses for the worcester public school high schools and we have increased the number of students involved in worcester future teacher clubs and we're going to be piloting it in the middle schools so the chief

066diversity officer meets monthly with the city chief diversity offices which is the worcester police department the fire department and the city of worcester they share conversation about diversity inclusion and retention strategies yvonne also works with the deci network meetings and also collaborates with the office of english learners and special ed to expand our equity work diversity and inclusion in those areas we have done a lot of training this year on equity diversity inclusion and retention so we continue to promote training in those areas we are she has attended virtual and in-person job fairs so we could expand the recruitment of applicants of color working with local colleges again try to recruit teacher candidates we only used to use one school spring in order to recruit candidates and through yvonne's networking we now are using additional

067ways of recruiting so we're using handshake she's reached out to historical black colleges and universities uh attended virtual recruitment fees uh we also working to strengthen our network on the state and uh we're working we share on how do we increase our retention strategies and our recruitment strategies uh this year uh through the work with real talk there was more people that got involved with the affinity groups and we are working to create an equity plan with my superintendent's advisory council and also the worcester public school legal team we have a superintendent's diversity committee uh this is uh the dates that we met february 3rd march 3rd march 31st april 21st may 5th and may 19th we presented um our information um yvonne did actually to the lyon which is a group that is funded

068through united way to work on promoting diversity in the western public schools we had christina kerrios and kathy knowles did work on panorama [Music] brett and giselle talked about culture responsive learn ascended practices uh this is all our training that we have done for our staff this year we're continuing to do next year we're doing equity work with dr irvin leon scott from the harvard school of education we are doing collaborative problem solvings they'll be in five western public schools full faculty next year and then in the spring another five schools that is dr stewart album and this is the people who are on our superintendent's advisory committee committee they represent um all groups in our community and they also were present on invited to go to all of them and different groups of them

069attended on all job interviews for district positions uh and they also attended all the pr meetings for new principals so here's our new recruitment outreach we we do handshake uh nem net now uh we did it through maybe matt salt we got a local colleges uh we went to the merck fair on april 22nd um we did the teachers lounge april virtual hiring fair and then um this is that we attend all the desi diversity network meetings for outreach and recruitment yvonne is part of the diversity network who's on the diversity network is boston lowell everett worcester akron ohio and there were two dates that those groups met we also are really happy this year that we were able to recruit two bilingual educators from spain so uh they are both working in our dual

070language program in our traditional bilingual education program we ran two esl mtel course prep courses for free 48 educators participated in the esl mtel prep sessions during this year we developed a promotional flyer i'll show you what it looks like again communicating uh we are in need of esl teachers so this flyer went out are you looking to become uh to get esl license what do you need to pass this the objectives for the course the course requirement the book please sign up in teach point and these are the topics in the schedule due to funding the esl masters program was not funded last year however it is going to begin this fall of 2021. we also have 26 with the public school educators that participate in the bilingual endorsement certificate through bc and this

071is a informational flyer on the bilingual certificate program uh it was free to eligible worcester and milford educators so it was worth around 3 200 it was all taught by boston college professors and it was online and there were hybrid courses also and the face-to-face sessions were held in worcester the this is still on the same goal about hiring so we have a worcester public schools worcester state university administrative cohort uh we have 12 participants in it three are candidates of color they will be interns this fall in in their schools of choice and we also have the jeff program right now five or sixteen are candidates of color we are uh embracing multilingualism by also um having a conference so we ran our first uh multilingualism con conference it was run by carmen melendez

072and her staff uh was uh uh last year um august 20th the 21st and it's all about our our commitment to embracing multilingualism and this uh shows you the event i was the guest speaker just for the welcome and the opening and then the subjects that were talking about social cultural confidence talking about equity and social justice and we are running that conference again this year so it's going to be at north high school and more information will be coming there was 69 people that attended i really like the affinity meetings that are happening there was 67 participants that went to these meetings and the escape there's a steering committee of worcester public school teachers and administrators of color uh here's an example uh dr ervin scott also went and spoke to them this was

073the brochure again communicating to everybody you can see our issue [Music] part of the planning committee on uh and also attending the affinity groups so there is a planning committee they meet with yvonne and carmen and they developed the whole agenda for example there was a culturally responsive education conversation on this there was a conversation about family engagement brainstorming on activities and ideas for worcester so that our our allies and our teachers administrators of color can feel comfortable feel they have a voice that is listening to them and have part in any type of structural change that ends uh the evidence for improvement goal one and we now we are in improvement goal two which is develop at annual budget that is alive with the strategic plan so as we know this is um this

074was the goal um this is the budget linked to the strategic plan when we went through the strategic plan and i'm just showing you what um what is connected directly to the strategic plan the culture of invasion in innovation and exactly those budget items that school committee is very familiar with from doing the budget sessions also have to um acknowledge um the work of both uh brian allen and sarah consalvo um also and that whole finance team on also putting on this budget together and as we know it is another award-winning budget that many college people use as their textbook for their class so uh welcoming schools you know we have our school adjustment counselors as you can see i'll just scroll through so you can see how the strategic plan and the budget matches

075these for highlights for investing in educators and highlights for technology and operations and i know you've already seen the budget book i'm not sure if everybody knows what i know the principles in the background you know but the allocation meeting so this is it just an example of the schedule so every year in january we put out this schedule and principals meet with their school council they meet with their leadership team and they come i'll show you the form they come with and they then present what do they need from the budget so that their schools can meet the needs of the students in their schools i know there's always a question asked by a school committee did did your school council actually go through and actually see all this so in here are the

076school council agendas uh who was present and also how they what they voted on to bring to the budget meeting here's what the form looks like so this is the allocation form that they receive uh their fy20 number of current staff is filled out they fill out the fy21 the change from their current year and they present why they are requesting those things in the budget we also join the school committee for the legislative meeting to talk to our government officials to ask them to lobby for equitable funding beginning in december 2020 and then these are the community forums that we have that's the evidence on goal two and uh this is our district improvement goal three lower the out of school suspension rate by five percent for special education group c students with emotional

077disabilities using evidence-based targeted interventions and resources so this is our data so there were 1125 group c students in the 2021. 743 of those students returned to school on march 15. two percent of the group c students which is 15 students that returned to school in march had an out of school suspension let me make this a little larger for you so there were three females and there were 12 males a total of 15 students students with disabilities there were 15 they could be students disabilities in ls so you see six there they also could be students with disability b l and low income so you say 13 here there were eight hispanics four afro-americans two whites zero asians and one multi-race non-hispanic the second column shows the district enrollment for each of those groups

078and then the discipline rate of how many what is the discipline rate on the number of students compared to the district enrollment and what was their discipline rate now there were only 15 students however out of those 15 students which is a very small number who were the ones that got suspended the most they were males they were l students low-income hispanic and afro-american black students those under-representative were white and asian students now this slide here so 592. so you have to when you're doing data compare apples with apples right not with apples and oranges so there were 592 group group c students returned to school in march 21 that were also enrolled in 2019. so went back to 2019 14 of those group c students were suspended at least once in 2019 which was

07980 students all right so again these are the students that were in school all right group c in 2019 and in school with us now uh in group c special ed none were suspended in 2021. so what are we doing about discipline so we're continuing our work with collaborative problem solving what you know what is collaborative collaborative problem solving so this is basically there was a pre-survey that was sent out to all staff in 12 schools and we wanted to gather baseline data now collaborative problem solving is from a group called think kids think kids is an affiliate of massachusetts general hospital and it's co-authored by again dr stewart album so what is that what what is think kids so this is a video here anybody wants to see it uh in the future but

080basically it says at think kids we recognize that kids with challenging behavior don't lack the will to behave well they lack the skill so this approach is to reduce challenging behaviors teach kids the skill they lack and build relationship with the adults in their lives it says anyone can learn cloud problem solving and they're here to help us so this information and one of their statements that i love is that kids do well if they can and so it's a very simple as they say but a very powerful philosophy you know it focuses on building skills like flexibility what do you do when you're frustrating uh you know what if you have a low tolerance how does children learn to problem solve rather than motivating kids to behave by you know if you do this

081you get this reward because what happens oftentimes is that eventually when the reward is taken away the student's behavior regresses and i think this is very important to know that mass general hospital is the number one ranked department of psychiatry in the united states so we we are very excited uh that we're working with them uh that they want to work with us for a whole district approach um to working with our kids so uh their data is uh 73 reduction in oppositional behavior during school parents report improvements in their parent child interactions and there are 71 fewer self-inflicted injuries so this training um we started we've already started this training as you can see that their training was june 15 16 17 18 that was at tier 1 2020 we were not able to

082continue during the pandemic because as you teach your skills you have to practice it on children and you can't practice it on children remote so we start our training in august again and again we're very excited to do that uh so what else are we doing that's helping us to lower our suspension rate so we're doing culture response and pedagogy uh we have a network leadership documents training for our staff coaches this these are the dates of all the strategy sect uh sessions the tag grant sessions tag grant is what the state gives those schools that are in danger of being underperforming um and it gives you funding so that you're able to close the gap and work on whatever your school needs to improve for your students so this is a list of the

083schools that are involved in that i included also the agendas for the elementary the middle of the high school the turnaround agendas for elementary middle and high and also middle school so this is uh we really wanted to integrate culture responsive learn ascended practices into the curriculum and the culture of our schools so this is a worcester public school document we have a working definition there for you to read that learn ascended culture responsive education simultaneously upholds high standards for academic excellence and cultural competence it honors the strengths cultures lives and experience of all students provides them with meaningful and authentic learning experiences so in our work that we have been working diligently through this year there are three key tenants one is academic excellence cultural competency and critical consciousness so the work of culture

084responsive practices occurs through academic excellence so it's not taught separately it's through the work and the practices that culture responsive work is done and there's uh principles for a theory of accent action it really is talking about the west public schools adopting an equity-oriented framework and that way of thinking is very crucial as we move forward it is using data sharing it and this year we spent some time exposing inequities we also spent some time looking at the impacts of structure and things that we really never thought were happening we exposed and had conversation about it and are working every day to try to improve those things we also 13 worcester public school avid elementary schools four avid middle schools and nine elementary teachers registered for two virtual literacy workshops um also as part of

085kids books and anti-racism series at leslie in march and april so each of our participants received two related author books each attendee was responsible for bringing the information back to their school sharon leary who coordinates our avid program and stephanie wong who's from leslie university um they had a google meet with all our avid site administrators to answer questions and um the workshops are really uh here for you and it was about kids books and anti-racism series also two additional staff of color did receive a scholarship to attend the multi-day summer series so this is an example of the workshops we had a lot of book reads this year um one of the workshops was breathing new life into book clubs uh they've been very popular with our staff and also our administrators we had

086leadership trainings to inform work with staff on meeting the needs of english language learners another on meeting the needs of students with special needs we started with dr erwin scott on october 13th and it was training for our staff on leading for access and equity we had done part one in the summer and we now have met with dr irvin scott six times and we are um continue we met him in august training october training january training february training march and mayo seven times um and you know one thing i have to say about the professional development that we were able to offer is that because we had fridays off for so long uh without students we were able to get some of the best professional development for our staff that we never would have

087been able to get if we didn't didn't have that time one person i wanna talk about is dr miriam jernigan noessie uh she was uh we connected to us through dr heather forkey who is our partner at umass medical school on trauma training and we received the most amazing training on racial trauma she is seen as an expert uh in that area and it was racial trauma and education uh that was all paid for the series was paid for by the university of massachusetts medical school so i want to make sure i thank them for that we received we received materials and a really amazing lecture and she's interested in working with us again we also had staff meetings to work with building level staff and students so i um listed these for you just

088to tell you a few of them uh we talked about trauma support in september 4th october 9 strategies to reduce anxiety with students december 18th dr heather forkey on isolation that uh and loneliness that was an amazing training for us because as you know uh on by december 18th we were still home and we were still in remote and not only were students failing isolation and lonely but so were staff um on january 24th we had sandy hook promise protecting children from gun violence and prevention and also second step and then on may 19 engagement strategies for students right here i have also for you a list of all the worcester public school udl overview work that we did universal design learning there were five sessions there are videos including in this there were coaches

089session there were district administration team sessions with the public school udl there's a hundred 101 course was established and often in the spring of summer 2021 we have 50 participants today and we're going to be continuing that with 21 22. i'm here i think this is so timely i know the school committee had a presentation by kathy knowles about panorama we're using panorama in grades 7 through 12. part of the piano era is that students answer their own answer survey so panorama believes you cannot support the whole child until you know what the whole child looks like so they talk about your data has to be actionable you have to have insight about the whole child that includes social emotional learning so uh we did sel questions for the students and this is the student

090competency we did in the fall and then also about student supports in the environment and this tells you about their social awareness 58 percent um had social awareness 51 growth mindset emotional regulation 45 and self-efficacy 37. sense of belonging belonging kids felt like they belonged was for only 40 percent and engagement was 30. now again that was in the fall of 2020. this also uh tells us who's on track for college and career readiness on track for graduation who's at risk and who is critical so a teacher can see all their students and by these colors they can tell who is at risk and and who isn't and uh so this is an example of the work that we did green means that for example this is south high all students uh green academics uh

091yellow was attendance behavior green again sel some kids may need some additional work on that so the key findings were encouraging for us with the panorama um so so in fall growth mindset 51 favorability and spring we kept it the social awareness went up by one percent uh emotional regulation being able to regulate your emotions went up by three percent self-efficacy went from to 41 uh sense of belonging went up one percent engagement stayed at 30. we also did the equity survey with our staff and the students did the one in the winter on equity and the faculty also did it and diversity and inclusion 79 of the students felt that diversity inclusion was recognized and valued and that there was cultural awareness and action by 65 percent the staff their schools was 68 percent

092um just our students culturally aware and uh adult adults 64 and educating all students at 75 percent so we felt as though those were good starting places uh also uh we wanted to do state uh strength-based leadership training with our principals so uh everybody did a survey um and uh that strength base is about building your team and empowering the individual and you it's part of the gaelic strength-based assessment uh we did the meetings on the clifton strength on october 5 and october 6th and then principals were consider them uh look at their team in their building look at that clifton trench assessment and be able to identify what leadership they have in their building that will help to make the most improvement for the students in the building i gave you some more information

093on that what is strength-based leadership for the l department and how do we leverage leverage these strengths uh the special ed department developed a new fba evaluation template um uh functional behavioral assessment with what fda stands for and also there was a behavior assessment also by the office of social emotional learning we increased the number of functional behavior assessments so what does that mean that means if a student is experiencing some difficulty in the behavioral area do an assessment and then he would know what kind of interventions that you need to have so behavioral assessments 8 20 and also we did a lot of special ed school-based training on remote engagement for special ed students we did crisis intervention and then in the spring we did return to in-person preparation we knew that our students

094were going to be anxious coming back so we did a training on skill building to reduce anxiety and challenging behaviors in students during challenging times it was a nine two ninety minute sessions and by two experts in the area every faculty member in the worcester public schools saw those two films uh there's a facilitator's guide that was developed and there was a participant note taker and um then we had a spring newsletter on uh behavioral services so um that is the end of the evidence and the presentation um on the goals again i just want to say that we i met or exceeded every goal halfway through the year it's only by mid-year and we are still working on math progress for grades 4 and 5. thank you okay you want some more frodo wow

095what an outstanding uh mid-cycle report they may congratulate the superintendent and her team and the principles for the many accomplishments as we saw here tonight now as we know uh superintendent benedict has done an outstanding job in moving our system forward and has stepped up with her team to deal with the pandemic crisis and which we're still concerned about she has been an important team played with the mayor and the city manager in meeting the needs of the community during this crisis helping with supplies in the city providing much needed resources to our children and families the idea of the city working together to provide the best education for our children has been ongoing during this during the tenure of superintendent beninda and as we heard tonight her commitment to education and the community has

096been ongoing she has continued to be a strong and committed leader and has moved that system to the next level her qualities as we well know of commitment especially passion empathy honest honesty and integrity certainly make up her character she's a leader who motivates others it's a good listener and a skillful communicator the time commitment certainly has been exemplary 24 7 for mrs bennenda tonight's report certainly shows the continued progress that has taken place with much professional development in training and that has assisted our students in their academic achievement there's been a great deal of two-way communication with families as we heard tonight and we've heard the message from that in the community about what is taking place i hear it all the time as shown the communication is ongoing we have had an increase

097in a diverse and diversity hires and they've been well qualified individuals the system stepped up with future plans with recruitment from within our schools to encourage more students of color to consider teaching as a profession we have continued with our plans to turn ias into teachers as we work with worcester state university we've continued to work on suspension reductions with more staff training working with mass general hospital working with parents more outreach for students and yes the work must continue we have seen a new school emerge as we start a dual language school coming this fall this will be a comfortable atmosphere for our students as they can practice their language skills from recess time to lunch time to riding on the bus going home most impressive the hundreds of evidence-based links that we noticed

098in this report and i'm sure anyone who's read the report spent a great deal of time going through it uh has been certainly exemplary and again keep in mind this was only for 12 um 12 month period over 209 unique forums and webinars were held to support the efforts of families 66 additional district level public forums with interpretation interpretation help was also available four district spanish forums in over 135 building base meetings were offered across the district in addition the superintendent organized and participated as she mentioned here tonight over 461 meetings with community agencies to share information and coordinate support from students and families in the city again as i mentioned all in a 12 month period unbelievable just to name a few other links that impressed me were the success stories of the children

099from school to school the many community organizations that assisted our district in academic support in the family engagement data with so many agencies within our city willing to help out also there have been other districts that have reached out to worcester including webster springfield boston who have asked and have been there for ideas support and quote in collaboration so needless to say we have shown certainly urban leadership one can say that the superintendent was here when she was hired was not going to be an average person you're here because you were awesome and you and i'm showing it here tonight again congratulations superintendent benendra and making a difference in this community and in our schools let's hope that you'll consider staying on after your contract expires thank you for all that you've done and for

100your great career as an educator anybody else i do want okay go ahead i just want to say thank you of all the administrators and the principals and the teachers focus working so hard during cover 19 and it was a challenging time and everybody seemed to work cooperatively together and so behalf of the city just want to thank everybody some things we can focus on i think is the strategic plan working with the governance committee over the next uh um couple months and figure where we are going as a city uh in the future but uh thank you again for all the hard work that uh superintendent everybody did over the last year much appreciated jack thank you mr chair and i you you took some of my words right in my mouth yeah i

101was going to thank the superintendent the administration the principals the staff the teachers and the families for um what was a challenging year and i think we cannot under state what a difficult year it was for everybody in trying to determine how to educate students i think we did a great job looking at covert protocols in our schools and putting things into place and addressed remote learning effectively and really were i heard good reports from a lot of families about remote learning i think that was very positive and i think the communication the forums were really effective as well i think that they were they were helpful they were long but i think they really did provide a lot of information for the families and for the community um i make the point that in

102community engagement and communication this is going to be a very different year we all hope and the the communication will be much more in person we have to work as hard as we can to make sure our schools are welcoming for families and make sure that parents and community groups are partners with us in educating our students and we should be really thinking creatively about the lessons learned through technology and how do we keep some of that technology and use that to our advantage so it helps our communication families that have challenges trying to get to the schools with transportation issues or child care coverages having these zoom meetings as much as we don't like them they did work to our advantage in many cases so we should look to blend as much as we

103can just a couple quick questions mr sharon some points on i i that the one data points then here about achievement i think the superintendent mentioned that we're still struggling with our math achievement and i i guess it's clear it's continuously it's with the students with disabilities it's the english language learners the students and low-income backgrounds and latino students who are struggling i guess are the strategic approaches that we're looking to put into place this fall to really address those concerns because they were very evident here in the data that we have here so through the chair of the superintendent now the superintendent yes through the chair and i'd just like to share that last week was the superintendent's conference at the cape and uh jesse held a special training for all superintendents uh and

104actually the area of math came up as a concern across the state uh and the whole the way of teaching math so first of all we have to assess we're not sure um when we're looking at those students that took the remote testing whether or not those are really where they're at and so the first thing we have to do is test and find out where are they the second is find out what skills they're missing and then provide a way for them to gain those skills at the same time that they're learning the skills for their current grade so this state has developed they call it the roadway to acceleration and that's what we'll be training our principals in and that's what we'll be training our staff in before the school year starts i

105mean i i just really it's the numbers that he that we saw tonight reflect what's really including the student opportunity act it's the students who are not meeting those achievement levels we have to get to address those issues and bring them up to a higher level of academic achievement i my other question you just kind of preempted a little bit here are are there you know what are our plans for student assessment for august and september and then the remediation work i assume that's the acceleration you talked about so through the chair so we will be doing bench work benchmark assessments plus we are going to do the star again and you know our concern about the fourth graders you know as we had conversation about that is that they really missed from march till

106june of their third grade year and uh third grade is really essential to basic skills for math and then their fourth grade year uh for most of the time we were remote so uh though that particular group of students are students that we really want to give additional focus on uh once of course uh we verify if indeed the the gaps occur but we are sure that they probably did because they they missed that second half of the of third grade so for all students not just math each school will assess what they need from us in order to provide after school tutoring or tutoring during the school day for our students and that's why we saved that money in the budget this year so that we can provide individual attention uh to each school

107based on the needs of their students okay and then finally mr chair on the area of diversity and hiring i and we will have a topic an item tonight with the mayor's report coming out as well tonight and i'll stress that we have to be as intentional as we can about diversifying our workforce and it's i think the the the 12 principles of color is the most important data point that is there and the leadership in the school and trying to be as intentional there and i'm glad to see that number there i will blame i will also wonder about our own decision making where the diversity goal was 17 when in school year 18 we'd hired 22 percent so we gave you a goal that was actually lower than the previous years that were

108achieved but i'm glad to see us making movement making progress there and i encourage us to be as intentional as we can through the chair so that goal came right from the strategic plan so the goal for this year was the 17 and that that's why that there came right from there but um we exceeded that you know to continue to exceed that goal we weren't sticking at 17 percent uh we're you know actually um the other day we were uh discussing uh which we'll discuss the school committee uh in the future of actually hiring a recruiter that's their main job uh we have been working uh having a lot of conversations in with boston and um how do they recruit they seem to be the most successful and recruit recruiting uh people of color

109in many positions and they do it actually through a recruiter process a person that is a recruiter and they keep a dashboard that was very interesting to us that actually tracks who applies for a job uh who gets interviewed for a job who receives the job how long have they been how long do they stay and we're very interested in in also thinking about that position great thank you thank you mr chair thank you i'm miss novik followed by mrs clancy thank you mr chair um i think first of all it's important for us as a committee to remember that this is a mid-cycle review um it's not a year it's six months we adopted these goals on the 17th of december the data that we're being given um is supposed to only reflect um

110things that have happened since december um they don't entirely um and i think that it's important for us to remember i honestly am uncomfortable with our calendar on evaluation i think it doesn't really reflect the school year um my assumption it wasn't on the committee when this decision was made um is that this was intended so that we could somehow tie it to mcas scores coming back i think this past year we've had a good reflection on how important that particularly was um but it leaves us in a very awkward position which is that as i'm sure my colleagues have noted um every single one of these goals is actually now timed out and we're we're in the middle of the evaluation cycle i also want to note from my colleagues i know mrs clancy

111has been through um superintendent evaluation training i i don't think that most of my colleagues have the mid-cycle review is actually um here i'll read it right from deci's document part way through the evaluation cycle somewhere near the halfway point there should be a formative assessment a check-in on progress this is not intended to be a written assessment but rather a chance to discuss accomplishments to that point in time we're not supposed to have an hour and 45 minute presentation by the superintendent this is supposed to be this is the data that you're supposed to have this is the data that where we're at that's what we're supposed to get the reason that i asked dr freil to send us the backup is that we didn't actually have the data that showed whether or not

112we'd met the goals in the actual presentation we had to follow you to decide which link you were supposed to find and then follow it um that's not what we're supposed to be getting here and i'm very concerned that we're not steeping ourselves in the goals of the district the way that we're supposed to here i i have some comments on in particular the the standards um in terms of meeting the goals the first thing i will say mr chair is that we're going to need to redraft them so i would suggest that we send this report probably to governance because we don't have any goals at this point all of these expired as of june um probably something we should have thought about at the time but nonetheless we need to do that in

113terms of the diversity information i'm uncomfortable with the fact that all i've received um in terms of changes is percentages um there's also a discrepancy incidentally between the number of the change net from 19 to 21 between the information that's given here and the information we have in the budget pretty significantly actually but i'd like to know how many hires have we had what are the actual positions that they're in and so forth rather than just sort of be getting percentage points it's honestly less informative and the thing that i keep coming back to on this as well as on really the rest of what we're talking about here is we know that it's not just about hiring it's also about retention there wasn't there's a there's a note about retention in the goal there

114wasn't any information given about retention and frankly recruitment's great but if what we do is cycle people through speaking as someone who's cycled through a school district because of the culture of the district then we're not actually achieving what we need to i will also say i agree entirely with you the strategic plan badly needs an update um i think that the evidence given to demonstrate that the strategic plan um or rather that the budget supports the strategic plan actually demonstrates that we don't start with a strategic plan when we build the budget um our budget went up by 48.8 million dollars over last year the evidence that we got to about five million dollars of that that's not that's saying we don't really start from there um and that's a problem because if we're

115if we say that we do that and then we don't um that's a problem and then also what are we actually spending our money on if we're not spending it on the strategic plan as it happens i think the strategic plan needs to be fixed first the the other thing there that i would note is that the evidence the superintendent gave us in terms of the site councils which yes absolutely has been an ongoing concern of mine demonstrates that the principals are meeting with their site councils after they've had their meetings with central administration the site councils are supposed to be meeting with the principals to inform their argument to administration when they actually do their their um their meetings with central administration so we're doing that backwards which was my concern i appreciate having

116the information um but before those principals are meeting with the superintendent and the cfo and everyone else downtown they need to be having the meeting with their teachers and their parents and their students to say what is it that we actually need this year that's actually going to among other things strengthen the hand of the principals i will also say and i appreciate mrs clancy checking my memory on this the comparison on the district goal 3 was actually not the one that we requested when we talked about this in governance what we asked for was that we recreate group c in 2019 data not look at the actual students that we had that were group c now that we had had in yes that would be the apples to apples comparison we know that things

117like student discipline changes over time in terms of how many grades kids are with us that would actually be the meaning chemical comparison i also do feel just in you know all honesty because this is actually something that's out there in the universe the chart that backs this up that talks about the comparison of group c discipline that claims that it's 100 reduction it's a 14 disciplinary rate in 2019 it's a 2 disciplinary rate in 2021 that's not a 100 reduction yes none of those same kids were were um suspended but we did have kids who were suspended so let's i i first of all don't like the chart anyway because it doesn't actually have an x and y and access it doesn't have any data on it but secondly let's not claim 100 reduction

118when we don't have one to go into the standards um i agree with what mr foley said in terms of i've been very uncomfortable with what we're doing in terms of summer time and what i see with us coming up for next year this information should be informing but honestly it should have already informed what we were doing for summer time those were the students that we should have gone and directly recruited for summer programs that's something that other districts did that isn't something that we did and that concerns me because i think we're losing an opportunity here and i do expect us to hear updates about what resources we're devoting to closing those gaps in terms of standard two and human resources management and development my understanding is that we have a number of

119contracts that are not updated um through the chair to administration would we have any idea how many contracts there are that currently are in advance with individuals not with collective bargaining units um what kind of contracts contracts with individuals who work for us like administrators with principals or principals central administrators so um we are working on the contracts i i'd have to i want to say we'll have to ask oh there she is jennifer bouley to answer that through the chair to connell novak i'm happy that we have approximately 15 people who do need updated written contracts but we would have zero that are expired our principal contracts as you probably know from your work in the industry principals have an automatic one-year extension if the district does not notify them in writing in a

120very specific timely manner that they will not be renewed and we have not notified any principals so they all did get the additional rollover the principals who are are waiting for updated documents to reflect that we have been in contact with them and we were awaiting the resolution of the budget because we did want to make sure that the documents that we shared with them were accurate in terms of salary so there are zero principals and administrators who are not currently under contract but there are some who are awaiting updated documents thank you my understanding is that when you start including those beyond principles it gets up to more like over which considering how many people we have that have direct contracts with the superintendent um is fairly significant um i will note that i

121mean a quick glance at our own agenda demonstrates the level of commitment the school committee has to ensuring that our contracts are up to date um i think that leaving people hanging particularly when we have people who effectively are at will employees is not professional i also will note by the way that at at-will employees are particularly vulnerable to coercive action and that demonstrations of their opinions thus are subject to being tampered with and i will take that in light both of tonight and other times several of us in terms of fiscal systems raised concerns at our final meeting about the budget around grant management and i want to remind my colleagues that we had a report fairly early on in this term that we're returning or at least we had our history over the

122past five years of returning 200 000 or more to the state um in terms of grants that weren't actually expended in the timely fashion um i first would ask that we receive an update of that report that was up through fy 19 i would ask that we receive an updated grants report on the grant grant amounts received expended and the amount returned for both fy20 and fy21 um the superintendent indicated at our budget meeting um that she did not intend to make any changes in fiscal in grant management and i just want to express my concern again at a time when we're receiving 120 million dollars from the federal government that we need to make sure that we actually among other things actually spend it all um the final point i'll make mr chair is

123this that we there's an extensive list here and it is a list around communication but the goal is actually culturally competent two-way communication i continue to have concerns about cultural competency but in particular the thing that i want to note is that the number of things here that were two-way communication where people could talk to us and we had to listen we're pretty much limited as mr foley noted um to the parental forums where people talk to us we admit a lot we send a lot we talk a lot but if that's most or just about all you ever do you effectively are talking at people and the state's standard quite deliberately is intended to be about two-way communication and i'll know mr chair that the family engagement portion of this actually reads all families

124are welcome members of the classroom and school community and can contribute to the effectiveness of the classroom school district and community i don't know that that's actually the mission and vision of the worcester public schools at this point it is however supposed to be what we're doing and i know that i've received and i know i'm not alone continued community concern about the resistance of this administration about community engagement and continued family concern about the resistance of this administration to families being meaningful engaged in their children's education so um i appreciate the update um i assume we'll have work ahead of us in governance to come up with a new set of goals um i would um flag those things as being of concern thank you okay thank you mrs clancy thank you um miss

125novik actually hit on a couple of things but i will so i might be a little redundant but there are some things that i would like to express um again administration principals teachers i can't thank you enough the year that you had it was an incredible year we made it through but now we have to start focusing on our next school year which i think is going to be just as complicated as the one that we just finished um so my one i do like miss novik just said regarding the professional practice goal again there's a lot of communication that we put out we put out but i want to make sure that it's effective and that's my my concern is that families are getting effective communication because it seemed every time we held a

126forum or you know phone calls were put out i would get five phone calls or five emails back and i just want to make sure that and we i mean we made a little joke about it that you know the connected calls but sometimes i think we sent so many out that so many just got ignored um so effective communication is more important to me than how much we are sending out communication to the families so that's one thing that i would like to you know see done and i also think that the public forums the two-way communication and the first couple of ones that we had the answering of the questions is definitely something that we're going to need to continue um going forward the other thing as you know miss novik you know

127stated and i have some concerns around is regarding our diversity highers um it seems that we did 33 teachers 12 staff and administration and that's wonderful i think our goal you know for our district is to have people of color in front of our students so there's 60 positions new hires that i would like to see breakdown of and to see what positions that they're in because we want to make sure you know that we have people in front of our students um so that's just the other thing i had and so if i could just get a breakdown of the you know this the 60 positions that are still that aren't listed on that form you know like i said other than that i think you know it's it's good there is some still

128some work to be done and i look forward to the share and seeing where we're going forward thank you thank you miss being here thank you ma'am uh let's see first i would like to say congratulations to everyone our staff at worcester public schools administration teachers custodians lunch people and nurses people who work in our school on safety are accounting everybody i.t department outstanding unbelievable and um we have been through with the rest of the world not just the country but the rest of the world an amazing year but we were able to educate we were able to provide training we were able to have many developed avenues that were beneficial we need to learn some lessons from those and combine them so when we look forward to the challenging year that we're moving into

129we haven't arrived there yet we're moving into um we have the best education possible for our kids and i say our kids because that's our community i had the honor of attending as many graduations as i possibly could and i asked for the number tonight and it's on the sheet here and they were graduates i think that was the only number that wasn't in our report and yes there's a lot of pages and yes i think we're all pretty much working technical pieces of this and we were able to look at the data and be able to research it and take a look at what the papers had to say what our administration had to tell us and do we have some challenges absolutely do we have things that need to be uh tweaked sure

130if we didn't we wouldn't be running one of the largest districts that is successful because we not only are educating our kids but we are helping our homeless students we also provided clothing when necessary we helped people with housing we fed our community we did a great deal so our commitment of not only working with our city council is our mayor our city manager our superintendent and the staff so graciously that are here for some of them if they're here this evening we're able to not only see the progress of what it is to be on a team that has their engine on the right track but also looking at what we need to do and what the value of our success stories so yes there was a tremendous amount of reading for our mid-cycle

131but pardon the expression we all had one hell of a year we all had one hell of the last six months whether you want to count it as 12 months or six months is irrelevant to me due to the fact that when i look at the goals what the strategic plan was established what we had anticipated as school committee members and as a community to ensure that we had budget accountability safety advances in chapter 74 and that that was accomplished using remote engagement we translated and every year i'd be the first to say step up and say that i've asked about translation in the budget why it costs million two million four hundred thousand well now we know why because we got to talk to a lot of people a lot of people who live

132in our great city and the only way we can keep our city great is by working together as a team looking at what the strategies need to be to overcome the challenges that we can anticipate but also we're going to have challenges as we stated this evening we may be in a different situation in september we may be looking at our schools in a different situation so we have to be ready and prepared so yes we do have to combine what our lessons were learned over the last six months but when i look at one thousand six hundred and sixty students that cross the stage at polar park to get their diploma they were not only educated they looked happy they looked happy at the fact that they were moving forward and that's what we

133did we did not stay still we did not step backwards we moved forward under challenges that i don't think anyone not only in this room but anyone who was listening all watching could have predicted 18 months ago so when we look at our collaborative effort we also have to look at one of the pieces that was mentioned tonight collaborative problem solving so as we move forward let's look for our solutions let's look to make sure we continue to discuss what our challenges are going to be that we keep communication that we look for the accountability that we keep our schools safe and we have the engagement that includes everyone because we're going to have a budget that is going to be very unusual that's all we hear is we're going to be getting additional money

134we're going to be getting additional money it was in the paper on what the city planned on doing and so on and so forth as far as how we're going to be monitoring it so i think we have a lot of team members that are very experienced well-educated well-versed and they value their positions and i know that craig bonds who works in the grants department when you call him and ask him a question he's right there to give you an answer he doesn't hesitate he doesn't turn around and forget to call you back he gets back to you he answers the questions many years ago i worked in the grants department was involved in that it's an experience it provides not only numbers and funding but activities and again it also makes you sit down

135and develop how a team is going to accomplish what needs to be done to ensure that we continue again on the right track we have the right values and we have endless opportunities we have a great city we have a school system that always will have challenges we have a city that will always have challenges but when we look at the last couple of weeks in june and kids got their diplomas and they're going on to the numerous listing of colleges they're going on to careers to support their family going in to serve our country they looked proud and we should be proud of what we did we should be very very proud we had one hell of a year we had one hell of a six months so as we move forward i look

136forward to the accountability the budgeting the safety in our schools the engagement chapter 74 in the professional development needs to continue the engagement needs to be there and we can get it done we have a radio show i think that's kind of comical i'm sorry because i didn't know anybody listen to the radio anymore everybody has all different mechanics in tech work but that's okay i think that's a great idea good luck to you there are many acronyms that we use tonight that i made notes of i'm going to be looking up a few of them but as far as an overview let me just say this again thank you to everyone teachers custodians all the staff that have worked the it department everybody um there have been many challenges we looked at all of

137this we look at our kids but um i'm very proud of our city i'm very very proud of what we've accomplished um and it's definitely an honor to stand here tonight and take a look at a mid-cycle that provided education and engagement for our community thank you thank you so we will send that report to uh governance and um and also we should probably look at that i think the superintendent would agree i know miss norfolk brought up maybe changing the dates of the how the valuation works or this year and is it better to do in june or did that do the mid-year mid-cycle in uh the way we're doing it now it seems to be off that uh we're always behind i know we talked about it before i think uh through the

138pandemic we got off cycle you know even before that i think the year before right here the mid-year wasn't not the year before the mid-year was in december in the final in june so that we could inform the district goals of the principles uh also for their evaluation and for the teachers we share that discussion a way to get back on um target that would be great okay because and also the reports are asked for all those in favor opposed so ordered we're going to personnel we're going to file personnel uh what's that what's that sure that's your name and see your residence uh meghan marslick i am a worcester resident i could speak right to the microphones okay my name is megan marslack and like superintendent benenda i'm born and raised in worcester i

139still live in the city with my husband who's a worcester firefighter and our two children both of whom are worcester public schools students um so my son is entering fourth grade he loves st math by the way which i know because i'm more engaged in what he's actually doing in school now than i ever was and my daughter will be attending preschool at the new south high in the fall so when i heard there was a mid-year review today i just wanted to come down and provide a parent perspective to kind of go along with all the procedure and data that you guys have been talking about so thank you for allowing me time to express how impressed i've been with superintendent benenda's leadership over the past couple of years particularly during the pandemic i've

140greatly appreciated mrs bernandez transparency through these uncertain times she was able to engage parents and members of the community in new ways to keep us informed and answer our questions as we've heard a lot tonight any parent of a worcester public school student can tell you about the connect ed messages lots of us found them annoying but they really were critical in easing my worries and i'm sure a lot of other parents do worries not just regarding educational models but also accessing critical community resources such as where to pick up free food in meals that fed our families from my vantage point no stone went unturned in making sure our students had the resources they needed to receive a quality education through the pandemic superintendent and her administration facilitated the distribution of computers and enhanced

141internet connectivity to communities most in need that not only had a positive impact on student learning but expanded connectivity will continue to have exponential impact on our communities well into the future last summer i was pleased to see the committee praised superintendent beninda for her job well done leading the district through the crisis as many of you did again tonight as we all know the crisis is not over and after a year and a half of so much uncertainty our teachers principals staff and students deserve the steady leadership of superintendent beneda and likewise superintendent beneda deserves the opportunity to continue these impressive results and progress that she's made i'll wrap up with one final thought yeah it's a simple one but i think it really makes all the difference superintendent menendez loves this city her

142deep love of place for worcester and the district students is evident the statistics presented tonight really prove that that type of genuine care and passion for the work is not easy to come by and we're really truly fortunate to have superintendent beninda leading our district so thank you for your time okay um you want to say something yes but go ahead it's a couple minutes not long at all not long at all thank you very much uh may petty superintendent bernanda dr freel members of the school committee um as you know i'm roger nugent president of the education association of worcester i am here tonight on behalf of every eaw member to voice our frustration with the delays in settling a fair contract a previous contract expired more than a year ago and since then

143you've seen our public school educators perform outstanding work during the most challenging times that most of us have ever seen our schools form the backbone of this city that was on display throughout the pandemic educators made every effort to meet the needs of students navigating new practices to ensure that children stay connected to school while we all work together to protect the health and safety of our families rising to the challenge is what members of the education association of worcester do the pandemic has taught us how important it is to have a skilled and committed workforce in our public schools the lack of a contract the slow pace of settling a new contract and the lackluster proposals that the district is bringing to the table all threaten to undermine the quality of our public schools

144districts across the state are bracing for shortages of teachers and school staff just as businesses and other professions are experiencing work worker shortages because of the pandemic the federal government has provided more than 120 million dollars to worcester and its schools to address the impacts of the pandemic the state is on track to fully fund the student opportunity act and increase the funding given to our schools we must use these investments to the benefit of our students and there is no greater resource for our students than an excellent teaching force the eaw is seeking a fair contract that acknowledges the experience and the dedication of the educators currently working in the district and that will continue to attract highly skilled educators we need a contract that not only addresses the current conditions in our schools

145but one that also anticipates near-term and long-term needs daw is prepared to bargain and settle a contract that would justif justly reflect our members commitment to the worcester public schools and that will ensure that worcester can provide the best possible education to every student attending our schools today and in the future thank you very much thank you okay okay we are going back to the agenda we're going to personnel mems file personal items 2-20 those in favor post so ordered uh we did 1-137.1 we area on response administration to request to hold c in d for discussion for the july 22nd 2021 meeting and this is the reports on the bus drivers and the federal grants i know mr foe is going to have a meeting on buses i think august 18th mr foley is

146that right on the uh on the buses are you going to have a meeting on a finance committee meeting that'd be a great reference thank you you have a meeting scheduled already for august 17th i think dr phil but again we can check it and announce it anyways okay because we have to just start thinking yeah we're gonna have to take a vote probably uh probably sometime in september i would think but in august on the buses and miss novik uh thank you mr chair i appreciate the referral that was what i was going to ask for um i i didn't know but being anticipated on referrals no is not a problem um i did wonder if there was any update uh through the chair to administration in terms of the um the holes that

147we had in terms of bus drivers through durham yes uh through the chair um so one good thing uh what maybe it's not a good thing but is that we're no longer going to be transporting the charter school so there were 10 buses that we used to transport the charter schools granted that because they've got another bus company that they've gone with um so those 10 buses did transport also some of our other students in the tiers however that's going to offer us additional flexibility so prior to knowing that they were my conversation yesterday with doram is that they were six to eight bus drivers shot however now we'll have to look at the flexibility of those routes now that we're no longer doing the charter school so right now they have seven to ten

148licensed drivers that will be ready to drive in three weeks uh right now they're looking to hire 26 additional drivers they are now giving sign-on bonuses they have offered competitive um salaries to other vendors and they're you know willing to uh work with us um to continue to uh recruit um so that's it so we're you know this six maybe six two eight would i say six to eight short but i looked talked to mr hennessey yesterday and asked if that we could look to just in case the six state drivers we don't they're not able to get them uh if we're able to combine some roots especially now that we don't have the chatter school uh thank you mr chair so i mean learning for that i just want to make sure that i've

149got my terminology right learning first which was seven hills would have had what i believe we refer to as trips as you say they're buses that already would have been transporting our students in other tiers so that possibly frees up that although i'm wondering exactly how many students that was i know how big the school is if we're short six to eight if oh actually sorry let me back up a step that's what durham is short through the chair of the administration is there any update necessary in terms of where the worcester public schools transportation is are we short any drivers your microphones online maury mr allen your microphone mr allen through the chair um we are uh experienced a couple of retirements over the summer and we're in the process of pulling civil service

150lists and hiring uh to backfill those positions in time before the start of the school year okay and through the chair of the administration my understanding is that we've been able to pull off the civil service list without that actually being leaving us with gaps is that the case mr i'm sorry can you see that we don't anticipate this being something where we say that we're going to pull off the civil service list but still end up with a gap is that an accurate plan would be the yes the plan would be to fill all of our positions through uh the civil service process okay thank you so um by my math if durham is six to eight drivers short um if each of our dr if each of our buses runs three tiers in

151the morning and three tiers in the afternoon that's at least 18 trips that were short we know that some buses are full and some buses are not full so let's not assume that each bus is going to have 60 kids on it but i'm getting up over 100 pretty quickly here mr chair in terms of the number of families that are impacted and i don't think that that's going to be picked up by the 10 trips that were short so i appreciate that mr foley is going to have a meeting i would ask that that meeting please address transportation for this year but transportation after this year as well and then also and and this is i think my particular concern right now plans to get through this year um while making plans for the

152future in other words if there are adjustments that we need to be making frankly even in august to fill whatever gaps there are i would like us to be giving our transportation the ability to do that i'd also make a request while i know that mrs clancy and i both have seen it if we could again have the backup that the prior committee received regarding um in district transportation i would appreciate it and i would appreciate i just make a motion asking if we could get an update reflecting what would happen to those projections um if as was in the budget response we actually moved ahead with using sr funds to purchase buses i know that that would have a financial impact on those out years and i'd be interested in what that looked like

153and incidentally mr chair i just want to note that yesterday the city of brockton took delivery of something like 60 buses because they've moved to in-district transportation thank you mr chair um ma'am that's true about brockton but they're also now involved in a lawsuit with the company that does their current transportation so um also we did meet we did have a conversation about this mr allen and our leadership team regarding that the way we have the budget done there is no available funding available for participants at this time based on the budget that we have proceeded out and the guidelines set on the buses are are really uh pretty clear um there are certain conditions you have to meet in in order to use uh s or money for for buses so i i do

154think that we need to be careful with that we know that this is federal money and that we are going to be accountable at a much higher level for every spending that we make on that yeah mr chair through the chair to the superintendent i'm well aware of that which is why i'm concerned about our grant allocation and oversight um we only allocated 40 million dollars of 120 million dollars in sr funding we still have at least 80 million dollars to go and actually we didn't do line item detail even of the 40 million so no we've got plenty of money left um also um in the backup that your administration was kind enough to give us during the budget deliberation we actually received all of the information about the delineation around what it would

155require in order to do that and one of the main concerns that both the federal and the state government have are time on learning and equity both of which are directly impacted when our kids can't get to school which has been the main reason that i keep bringing up transportation thank you mr chair thank you okay so we'll send that to uh this these reports the finance are those in favor opposed so audit let's see response administration requests to provide a number of 2021 high school graduates to include the colleges that's the students plan to attend that's from the administration miss being carrier jack we can combine that with um gb117 sir one right below it response administration to request to provide the number of seniors by site who receive certificates of attainment thank you

156those two items certainly go hand in hand we had 1 660 students three of which received a certificate of attainment the rest received their diplomas and the question would be the kids that received the certificate of attainment are we still working with them so perhaps they can receive their diploma through the chief administration superintendent oh what's going on okay uh through the chair so uh depending upon i don't know what schools those are from looking at that i'll have to look that up but sure um basically um how it usually works is the uh principals uh work with whether it's the special ed person to work with the students to help them pass the you know mcas if uh that's what the issue was for their certificate of attainment uh provide uh during the summer

157we have a lot of students that are coming in and working uh to try to complete the work that they need to do and then of course if it's an mcas we'll have to wait uh until the next mcas and see where where we're at with that well i certainly wish those graduates all the graduates much success and hope some of them stick around in worcester thank you great thank you ms bianca and uh we need a motion dr phil i think to file uh 1-169.1 and 1-170.1 all in favor approves of voted next item 1-171.1 from uh lesbian carrier ms mccullough mr montreal miss novik it's the response of the administration to the request to provide the number of students enrolled in the freshman class at worcester technical high school and include both the

158number that applied and those on the waiting list ms biancharia you for this information um continue and we'll always continue to highlight uh chapter 74 schools what we have to offer um and when i look at worcester technical high school right now we have 464 students on a waiting list and someone may look at this like this is you know terrific we have so many kids that are interested i look at this is we're shot on letting our kids know we have chapter 74 in other schools we need to get that out there more and more not only with the students but with the parents we also need to work on how we can increase the number of students now we spoke of this a couple years ago where we were going to increase each

159class by a number of students what not so it's not just a bulk in one area if we could review that superintendent to the superintendent through the cheer so uh the total number uh for worcester tech we would we had small number cl students last year because some students chose not to go because it was going to be a remote year but each year if we accept this number that we accepted this year then that would be full our obligation in building the tech school would be complete to continue every single year accepting that number of students see the challenge right now is that you cannot enter in your sophomore junior or senior year right so we have some numbers uh simply because people chose last year not to attend the other piece of this

160is always keep in mind when a student for whatever reason is asked to exit with the technical high school um we don't have that ability in our comprehensive high schools to ask a student to exit our high school but however they are brought back and there are times that students at western technical high school are then told that they have to go back to the comprehensive high school when there is an opening of that and a student does exit in that manner do we fill that position or do we leave it empty superintendent so through the chair uh you can't fill that position because the students have missed their hours in their trade so uh but however that practice has stopped uh for about three years now uh we no longer if there's a student

161that might have to exit the only place they would go to the joe creamer center maybe to take some academic classes but they're still able to access their trade so we that doesn't occur as much as it did in past years where students for example that had large discipline issues may no longer be able to stay at worcester tech that doesn't happen anymore so the only students that may exit would be seniors who are maybe have failed too many classes and not unable to get that high school diploma and they would go to the gerald kramer center and we would never replace uh put a person in as a senior as we look for the next stages of how we're looking at chapter 74 and what we have to offer and just make a motion

162that we once again receive an updated list of the chapter 74 courses that are offered in all of our schools labeling the school and then the specific chapter 74. now we're going into south high school in september we have a new high school can we review once again please what is going to be offered under chapter 74 into the new south high community school superintendent through the chair uh so auto diesel uh is one of the very unique programs that's not offered anywhere in this area rhode island does have a diesel program uh actually and i think maybe fall river also does those two but there's not any diesel program around this area so that's one culinary arts and i just have to say that i went to see that kitchen last week and it

163is superb it is better than any kitchen i've seen in a restaurant it has everything you can imagine in that culinary kitchen there and then early childhood which is connected um also to the infant toddler program and the two preschools so you're going to be able to get your certificate in infant toddler as well as in you know preschool so it's a great opportunity the other place that that preschool one is taught in culinary only at this point is worcester tech so when we look at our chapter 74 courses that are coming up these students 464 students that are on a waiting list they're throughout the city so they are looking at hearing so they're listening tonight they say you know what i would like to go to that culinary at south high what is

164their opportunity superintendent and what is their process the superintendent through the chair uh so they would just have to um contact the principal jeff kramer of south high and uh apply there's a application to apply for chapter 74 programs uh both the ones at north daurodi and south and another important component that is very successful and we actually just had uh kelsey lamrow from mass higher come on with us which was a great a great hire is the innovative pathway program so our innovative pathway program is an opportunity for kids to go to their comprehensive high school and in the afternoons go to worcester tech and get those certifications that's a very strong program more students should take advantage of in the number of students that can take advantage of that particular avenue so each

165high school uh it's really not limited each high school can send students to that program right now i think we started i think we're over 200 students in that program now and looking to expand it uh when we look at professional development for our counselors and our schools and our guidance counselors um and our teachers is there any information in reference to the chapter 74's courses that are available not just at worcester tech but at our other sites that is brought to their attention yep through the chair so um we are reimagining our high schools right now and i work with the bar foundation so part of that work is the portrait of a graduate so what can we expect from elementary to middle to high school that work has been done in the middle

166in the high schools now and part of that work is the key role of the guidance counselor and the mask model in helping prepare our students and with families also about the many opportunities that we offer so we are continuing to work in that area because as we know part of the application and part of the reason some of these kids are on the waiting list is when their counselor fills out their application and fills out their form they're rated their numbers that didn't meet what a 95 or 96 they may be down in 85 and when that makes a difference on who gets accepted at what's the technical high school so as we move forward i would like to think that um we are not only educating our kids and our parents but our

167staff so they this is a selling point for all of our students for all of our sites to then be able to say that you can make your application at worcester tech however if you're on the waiting list in you are number then you have an opportunity to perhaps go to another school it doesn't necessarily mean that you test to be in your neighborhood but you have that opportunity or you have to an opportunity to go after school to find what you may like up at worcester tech and be able to get your certification and get some hands-on experiences through that so what when i look at this particular item i certainly appreciate the fact that they have a number of students through the halls it was the technical high school but again my concern

168was the 464 kids that are looking to attend worcester technical high school and i'm hoping that at some point we can come up with a process where if they are on a waiting list they receive some type of um letter brochure that shows them and explains to them what our other schools are so that'll be at a later date that i'll put something on the agenda for that because i think the kids that are on that waiting list i hear from many of them because of their interest and i try to express um the the idea that we have other opportunities um for these kids and it's certainly i i feel very very important thank you through the um cheer can i also also bring back the item to the school committee regarding the change

169of the acceptance policy for worcester tech which we will be presenting to this committee for approval so some of the concerns of parents regarding so only the kids with the 95s get in certainly will be addressed and as far as the form that the guidance counselor fills out the rule this year and last year what was a little more difficult this year because some kids were still remote is that it has to be done as a team so the student and the team teaches because all middle schools are teamed in the guidance counselor fill that out together so instead of a trained guidance counselor that knows how to check the right boxes and say what needs to be said it has to be a team approach now for that for the guidance form that does

170come in however there's changes now in the area discipline attendance uh in grades also for the new attendance policy i look forward to seeing that thank you that was actually exactly what i was going to ask about so thank you madam superintendent um what i that item is actually in my subcommittee i don't know how we want to take that um the reason that that i stand to address this item is i would be interested in what the demographics of the data is that we just received data r that we just received um because that of course has been the entire sort of state conversation has been not only what the student body looks like but also what happens in every step of the way what does the student body look like that could be

171applying who then applies who then is admitted and who then chooses to chooses to matriculate the state has been tracking the demographics of each of those groups and coming to some interesting conclusions in terms of what happens over time i realized to your point i'm superintendent that obviously this is a non-representative year as we are going to continue to say from henceforth and forward nonetheless i would be interested in what that looks like in terms of how that breaks out um i will also say just to sort of put a card on the table already that i was interested in some of the proposals that were being made by some of the other public bodies in terms of what the state ought to have been doing rather than what the state actually did because the

172state opens the door to being even more inclusive in terms of how your admission looks like and i think that we have a responsibility as the school committee that runs that has oversight of a technical high school that also is in a district were unusual in that alone with only boston and springfield i believe and i think that that gives us an extra measure of making sure that worcester tech meets the needs of the city of worcester whereas the regional votecs i think can more think of themselves in terms of just their one one little school so look forward to that report happy to take it wherever it's necessary but i do think that one of the things we need to be careful about is really looking through that tracking of the demographic data thank

173you ma'am superintendent here um so in the development of our plan to change the acceptance policy for worcester state uh we uh were able to run the data from all the past years and check to see how many l's were accepted um was it discipline uh that you know we would able to take each item and see what was it that prevented say um all students from getting in or what was that area that that helped students get in so we are in the process of running this year's acceptances and we find that data fascinating from looking at last year's and the new way of doing it that we have developed actually did increase non-traditional i i would say students from going to worcester tech but also on the include inclusion of more l students

174uh getting accepted to worcester tech sorry i couldn't understand what you were asking about okay thank you so we will uh we can file that or okay we want that is that yeah should that come to school and student performance so that we can have the discussion where where do you anticipate the referral going for the change in after the chair that would be fine with me as long as then it could go out to committee and get a vote so that we can submit it to the state right i just i was figuring that whatever we were doing in terms of admissions policy we'd send a subcommittee anyway okay absolutely thank you committee all those in favor opposed so ordered uh requests at the school committee considered cancelling the meeting on thursday november 4th

1752021 miss being carrier considering the fact that a number of us will be going to a conference down at cape cod on that starting that wednesday on november 3rd i'm asking that we either reschedule it if um that's to be a problem if or uh straight out cancel the meeting okay we let's cancel the meaning if we have to add one we will at that time okay sounds good okay it's novak people don't want to keep up my tradition of going down and back it's what i've always done um thank you i appreciate that that will make my life easier too um the one thing i did want to call to my colleagues attention though was um september 16th when we have a meeting scheduled is yom kippur and is it yes it is so

176we i think in term while we're looking at our calendar i don't have that opinion we can move it wherever people would like to but i think we probably should understand that it's a important holiday for many yeah we'll have this clerk look at that and make a recommendation great thank you whether we uh reschedule it or just cancel it probably reschedule it i would guess depending on i'm not sure we meet august 28th how many meetings in september that we have just we'll just see if we can reschedule that one okay we'll send that to the cork all those in favor opposed so audit we have september 2nd september 16th oh we have one in the second we have the second okay and you have the 16th request at the administration provide a report

177in august on the summer school programs to include academic progress attendance community involvement number of elo students number of grades one through uh one in two students mr uh manfredo and thank you mr mayor uh this this year uh some schools have been certainly been a challenge for both staff and students um actually looking for a break from the pandemics so i do appreciate the results coming next month on the report however let's stop and evaluate the items as listed in the agenda and look for ways to expand summer school opportunities research for decades has confirmed that summer loss especially among our low-income students does take place if they are not engaged in summer learning thus they are likely to start school behind and face ongoing struggle to catch up uh and again this is

178where the achievement gap widens uh come next year as a school system and as a community let's continue to look for additional ways for us to expand summer learning summer school uh can't be an afterthought and i know that we need to look for assistance from the community we need to consider and require and request now and give additional summer school expansions with the community uh due consideration so i would appreciate it if this item uh come august that we come up with a tentative plan of how we can improve summer learning for next year thank you thank you those in favor move throughout the administration those in favor opposed so ordered said today director knight students from the western technical high school who received the gold medals uh in career pathways health uh services

179the 2021 skills usa national leadership and skills conference stuff by miss mccullough so set the date for thursday september 16th or if it's subject to change 2021 all those in favor opposed so ordered i requested that the administration provide the number of consultants or advisors that are under capital expenses grants other funding this being carrier is it reads me all those on fate referred that to the administration all those in favor opposed so audited because that administration adopts smart 911 program for all wps uh building sites miss being carrier this has to do with safety of our schools our students and our staff so i look forward to hearing from administration on this i think it's a program that comes highly recommended it's going to administration and when it comes back i i assume that

180it'll be a full package of not only the information but if there is what the cost would be for two or three years is that how we're going to through the chair to the administration does that sound as though it's something you would put together um who would that be yeah through the chair we can do that the answer's yes okay thank you uh ms novak could i consider that could i suggest that we recast the item because what the item says is request the administration adopt if what we're looking for is a report could we instead say that we're asking for a report please so okay so let's being here wait to get the reports people like to know what we're voting on i guess i i am looking to for us to adopt

181the program but i certainly don't have a problem with having it reviewed by administration prior to adopting that word school committee would like to review it um mr bizzella you know because we don't some people don't know what this is so thank you thank you mayor uh the smart 9-1-1 program is a program that the city manager deceived was to have uh started to adopt it is a program that uh where a lot of information is being stored into software a software program where in the event dispatch gets contacted by a particular individual in a certain building and they will be able to know for instance where a number of things are in the in that building that's crucial to respond to the event an aed the location of the aed where's the shutoff in

182the building and things like that where public safety can act very uh quickly and respond accordingly so we were asked by the city manager if we could go into a presentation with the company's name is rave and they are the ones who are spearheading this smart 911 program so from emergency management with the city management city manager we did have one meeting so far and we are becoming acquainted with the smart 9-1-1 program and based on what i can tell you right now i will probably be referring to the superintendent and recommending that we do adopt it as well okay so can we we can get a report back on that absolutely i think if you would give us the timeline being by mid-september that would be very reasonable for us to give a report

183okay sounds good miss novik thank you mr chair if it would be possible for um to have included in the report what if that information we already effectively are either legally or by regulation required to share with emergency services um i know that there's a number of requirements that the state puts on us already in terms of what our buildings need to share with things like the fire department so i'd appreciate effectively knowing what we already do alongside what the proposal is thank you okay we'll consult with the city manager through the city solicitor's office for that information report back then would you say it's september correct okay all those in favor post so ordered to prove the job description for the special ed special uh emotional warning specialist for the applied behavior and analysis

184analyst um aba approve on the roll call mrs biancaria yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes miss mccullough mr manfredo yes ms okanovic yes yes to approval the job description for the system-wide bilingual evaluator teacher of moderate special needs rokoff mrs biancaria yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yeah miss mccullough mr manfredo yes miss o'cononova yes and mayor petty yes okay requests at the administration work with the mayor city council and others of all parties to address concerns related to the homeless population area lincoln street school we're going to refer that to the administration it's miss noble is i can't tell okay so we'll send that to the uh i know uh mr mccullough had concerns with the school in that area and uh okay miss being carrier thank you um what we were looking

185for is um a report back in a friday letter prior to august 11th with what action has already been taken regarding the situation and plans for the upcoming school year and also the ways the school committee can work with the city to assist that information can be shared with the school the families and the neighbors so okay so i know the city city manager's working on this and uh right which is an update on this prior to august eleventh yeah yeah through the chair um i did receive and i think the mayor may have two an email today uh asking that we attend the community meeting at church across from lincoln street school in august right right and that's why excuse me yeah that's why the request is prior to august 11th in a friday

186letter okay so we could have the information prior to the neighborhood meeting through the chair most of the things that are happening have nothing to do with lincoln street school right it has to all do with oriole drive and what's happening there and then people coming on to the school grounds with needles right it really has very little to do with what the school could do has you know i think it's a joint thing we have to discuss with the city right in the again that's why we're asking so we have a team working on this and some discussion and perhaps some solutions okay so we'll send that thank you we'll send out the administration all those in favor opposed so what approved the job description for the grant contract specialist i'm probably doing so

187much novik thank you mr chair no no um concerns over the the position itself but we are approving a number of positions that came through in the budget um and related to our sort of ongoing conversation around the federal funding when can we expect to see the jobs description for the esser program coordinator which was an ad that came through in the in one of the rounds of the um updates that we've gotten through this year um i guess i'll look through this one so i just want to introduce to you marco andrade he's our new accountability and research manager and we've had several meetings uh so he might want to tell you a little bit about the new positions including that we're putting an rfp for a company to actually do the monitoring of

188of the essa uh grant funding so um let me introduce marco to you and you can explain to you uh what is the new positions in his office and what we're doing about monitoring nasa funds good evening welcome members of the board um i'm dr marco andrade um as uh superintendent has mentioned i just started a few weeks ago with the azer funds we're looking to create an rfp to put out a bid to get a consulting firm to come in and evaluate the services and the services and excuse me um well some of the work that will be happening through esser funding to be able to report back to the fed and to um you know make sure that uh the services are meeting whatever deliverables we set so thank you um and welcome

189and i've been meeting to send you an email because you're actually the administrator for my subcommittee um the my unders and that sounds fine my understanding though that part of what we were concerned about was literally the coordination of the programs that we're going to be running through esser and ensuring that that had oversight that it wasn't only about the evaluation of um whether or not those programs were particularly achieving particular kinds of goals that sounds honestly a little bit more like what we probably should be doing through soa so can someone explain to me what the change has what what what triggered the change in terms of the idea here and that may be a question for you or it may be a question for someone else in the administration dr amber yeah i'm

190not sure about the i'm sorry i'm not sure about the coordinator i know we've discussed the uh the position of trying to put out the bid uh the evaluation of the services that will be provided so so we are increasing some so this is an accountability issue so we are increasing the positions uh in the office of research and accountability uh well they'll you know there will be a testing specialist an evaluation specialist there is also a position for the grant contract specialist in all of this because this essa is a coordination between finance grants and accountability and so uh we can actually address that if you want as a report at the next meeting well really thank you really all i was looking for was was what triggered the change because we had effectively

191a list of positions that we were looking to have added um and i'm relieved to hear that this office is being rebuilt because that's adding back positions they used to have um in this particular concern my my concern though honestly and this is why i co-sponsored mrs b on kerry's item um just prior here is um we are a big enough system where it frequently makes more sense for us to hire people than to contract services out um and this is a big enough issue that having that monitoring and oversight in-house struck me as being wise that's why i didn't question that decision at the budget time um so that's why i'm asking about that sort of change from it no longer being a position to now it being a contracted service so in terms

192of the valuation yeah um in a circumstance like this it's time limited we have three years to work with the asset funds um for i think a number of reasons it makes a lot of sense to try to work with a an agency or institution that's just very familiar and has capacity to do a lot of research and evaluation work you know we can work through them to set some deliverables be crystal clear about what we want to see happening what we expect to get back and we can manage that uh also it just provides a little bit of support for us if the fed happens to come back and say uh you know how did you spend the funds what did you do you know uh in these areas uh how do we know

193that things worked and um you know folks who will be coming in again with that expertise and uh not having to deal with some of the day-to-day work that would pop up that we'd have to be responding to inside the office uh is just more beneficial for making sure that we we hit the targets we have to hit um okay thank you i suspect that you you may potentially be defending a decision that you didn't make um nonetheless um i'm gonna reserve my my um judgment on this one i think that that the earlier proposal probably was better um but i certainly will support this position okay so we will do on our roll call roll call yeah yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes miss mccullough mr manfredo yes mr o'cononova yes yes to

194accept the cvte uh student support impact and recovery grant in the amount of sixty thousand dollars that was the technical high school effective from july first 21 to june 30 2022 roll call miss biancaria yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes mccullough mr manfredo yes yes yes to accept the massachusetts life sciences center stem equipment and professional development program grant an amount of 188 548 and two cents which includes the funding for equipment and professional development effective july 1st 2021 and june 30th 2022 roll call mr chair yeah just very briefly um i did want to just note this is elementary school hands-on labs which is one of the giant holes that i think that we have so this is fantastic really glad to see this thank you okay rocco it's biancaria yes mrs clancy

195yes mr foley yes miss mccullough mr manfredo yes mr kononovic yes it may have been yes uh next is a consider what's the uh teacher pipeline recommendations for diversifying retained teachers for uh of color a comprehensive uh proposal i just want to thank uh the reason i put this on here so the school commitment is going to have a chance to look at it and i know you probably could i think we sent it to you anyways but uh and uh but i just want to thank barry maloney and ray lewis from mrs state university and all the volunteers and in the replay with all the people involved all the colleges were involved with the state clock assumption holy cross consignment and uh hilda ramirez it was probably her idea running back uh a few

196years ago to get this done the ferry member right so i think hilda ramirez also and uh you know it does talk about diversifying the workforce which we talked earlier tonight about and we just need to figure that out every city and i think in the country is probably facing the same issue and uh just want to thank the superintendent and her staff who participated i know she's supportive of this and uh and also doesn't help with diversifying about how about retention some point to the report talks about and also talks about residency uh mentors and uh making sure that as as children as especially the young people who go through the system get them into it's a good career teaching i think and uh um and and it's hard it's not easy that's for

197sure but uh but i think it's a rewarding career and uh so i think this is important report so i just asked the administration the form of emotion as to maybe where i were you in this report you know what you need to do and some of it it's going to take this this is years in the making so it's going to take some time to get there so maybe one strategically how we move forward and how we can answer some of the issues get a detailed report uh addressing this and i think we'll send this i think the governance is that yeah what's that i was going to say it seems like it should go to a subcommittee yeah so that we can keep an eye on it i mean it's it's hiring which

198is sort of governance it's data so it's sort of student i mean it's operation so arguments of no i mean it could be any of those okay um mr alfredo thank you mr may i certainly uh uh enjoy the reading the reported and something that that we have discussed in the past and i discussed it with uh dr lewis dr ray lewis at worcester state university um on page 54 of the report it talks about what we're doing as a as a system with our future teachers club and with our ias becoming god teachers it was good to see see that was a part of the report in the recommendations for uh future uh future growth certainly was well done i'd like to add that uh we need to uh and add as a what's

199the state i'm sorry as as we do at worcester public schools add that we actively need to recruit students by talking to them one-on-one with their parents about the merits of teaching as a profession and also how we're going to be helping them helping their students in expanding the summer future program as was suggested in the report so in a motion i'd like a report to recommend that we get a report back next july as where we are with uh with the program thank you okay thank you mr martin fredo so we'll send that to governance in my motion too i'm sorry mr emotion yeah yeah motion was that uh we get to report back next july as where we are with the program okay and uh maybe also my request too we get a

200report back how we're going to address all the issues i think the you work so hard on it and uh that i think the whole committee was number it had to be 30 people 40 people that they'd probably like to see who were taking this seriously and where we're going yeah what's great yep all those in favor opposed so ordered okay to prove uh privacy a payment in the total amount of one thousand eight hundred and sixteen dollars and thirty eight cents to give to caregivers for transportation roll call miss biancaria yes yes mr foley yes mccullough mr manfredo yes mr kananovic yes yes to approve a prior fiscal year payment amount of one thousand four hundred nine dollars and sixty cents to fw web company inc rocco mr yes mrs clancy yes mr foley

201yes ms mccullough mr manfredo yes ms o'kananovic yes and mayor petty yes approve a five fiscal year payment in the amount of one thousand four hundred fifteen dollars and twenty five cents to another security agency inc roll call biancaria yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes ms mccullough mr montreal yes ms o'kananovic yes and mayor petty yes mr chair did you miss just making sure you get uh 1-191 i missed that okay oh yes i did to accept the career technical initiative planning grant in the amount of ten thousand dollars effective june 15 2021 to august 31st 2021 roll call ms bianca yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes mccullough mr manfredo yes yes yes okay to approve it private it's going to pay me the amount of 1 415.25 cents to our security agency

202inc roll call miss biancaria yes this is clancy yes mr pulley miss mccullough mr manfredo yes miss o'connell nova a payment amount of two thousand one hundred ninety nine dollars and fifty three cents to pearson inc uh roll call miss biancaria yes mrs clancy yes mr polly yes miss mccullough mr manfredo yes ms o'connell yes and mayor petty yes to prove uh following donations with cammy from the boys um boys of education and also for woodland county from trinity church of north borough to be used for uniforms and also those to public schools from uh blackbaud giving fund on behalf of abvs roll call miss biancaria yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes mccullough mr manfredo yes yes and mayor petty yes uh to consider a prior fiscal year payment in the amount of eight

203dollars and 108 cents for the mileage reimbursement of to a staff for the english war in a program or roll call miss pancaria excuse me yes clancy yes mr foley yes mccullough mr manfredo yes yes and mayor petty yes uh to consider naming the du language school at the former st stephen school um mrs menendez i want to talk about that i'm going to send that to committee anyways but go ahead committee yeah so the only problem is that until we give a school a name we cannot get a designation from jesse so there it's holding up our designation as a school assignment of data until the school has it has a name um so if it could come in and out of committee quickly i'm just wondering if people are comfortable doing that i

204might just set committee on here so so we can vote that tonight is there any problem with it though mr marfrado would uh school committee and administration consider naming the school the worcester dual language academy and name the school auditorium after emanuel fedema auditorium or whatever is in that school with a write-up about this fallen hero and how he represents the vision of our dual language school and how he pursued his education career and personal life and his role uh as a model uh in this community just a thought and we can send that to the administration but i think the school's gonna be called la familia which represents family which is a familiar family correct exactly it's about either i mean either way i was just giving another suggestion a recommendation of the advisory

205board that i was working on it was la familia dual language school meeting the family at the center so it's not just for in honor of the police officer but it's the for all families and then if we wanted to have a plaque inside certainly um that would be nice to have there's not an auditorium in saint stephen's but um inside the main door or something would be great to have any of the office store yeah yes okay i'm sorry that okay so we're going to pass this tonight a roll call miss biancaria yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes miss mccullough mr manfredo yes ms ocalanova yes yes approve a private fiscal year payment amount of 771.84 cents to zendesk inc roll call beyond carrier yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes miss mccullough

206mr montreato yes mr kananovic yes it may have had it yes okay next is this guy okay we're gonna the motion is going to executive session we will not be returning to open session um after a couple contracts okay we might be okay we're going to say we'll return the open session we have a couple contracts that might have to be signed off on tonight so uh to discuss strategy respect to crypto bargaining and to conduct collective bargaining regarding grievance 2221-11 uh discuss strategy respect to collect the bonding if an open mean may have a detrimental effect on the falling items on the bogness position of the public body and the chair so declared so i so so declare all the following items uh successor contract negotiations massachusetts laborers district uh council for on behalf

207of worcester public services employees local 272 and laborers uh international union of north america afl-cio custodians massachusetts laborers district council four on behalf of the worcester public schools employees local union 272 and the laborers international union of north america afl-cio educational secretary of massachusetts waivers district council 4 on behalf of the worcester public schools employees local union 272 in the ray business international union of north america afl-cio unity computer technicians to discuss strategy with respect to collective buying if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect and on discussion contract negotiations international union of public employees plummets steam fitters local 125 international union of public employees tradesmen local 135 and also successful contract negotiations education association of worcester units a and b teachers administrators in success of contract negotiations education association worcester instructional assistance unit

208and education and also education association of western what's the school committee american uh arbitration association case number zero one twenty o dash elimination of extra time at the level for school at level 4 schools education association of worcester and the worcester school committee grievance 20-21-0 class action grievance not being paid while in quarantine through the covet to discuss strategy with respect to litigation if an open me may have a detrimental effect on the public party on behalf of the western public on the massachusetts labor district council and for the half of behalf of the western public schools and police vocal union 272 the labors international union of north america afl-cio custodian was the school committee grievance payment or regarding payment of employees during quarantine period okay and successful contract negotiation education association of worcester was

209the public schools apparent liaison association and also to conduct strategy session in preparation for negotiation with non-union personnel to conduct collective bargaining uh sessions or contract negotiations with non-union personnel superintendent schools so the motion is going to executive session we'll return to open session sean sweeney's been pretty busy i guess so um roll call mrs clancy yes mr foley yes miss mccullough mr manfredo yes miss okananovic yes and mayor petty yes okay okay welcome back to the western school committee uh roll call recording in progress mra here mrs clancy here mr foley here ms mccullough mr manfredo here ms o'connor here and mayor petty here so with two actions in executive session presumed to actually take an executive session it was moved to ratify the memorial agreement between the worcester school committee and the massachusetts

210laborers district council for in behalf of the west of public services employees local union 272 of the laborers international union of north america afl-cio unit d computer technicians and this would be effective for the uh between the periods of july 1st 2020 through june 30th of 2021 roll call must be on carrier yes mrs clancy yes mr foley yes miss mccullough mr manfredo yes mr kananovic yes and mayor petty yes second one is pursuant to action taking executive session it was moved to verify the memorandum agreement between the worcester school committee and the massachusetts web district council for behalf of the swiss public services employees local union 272 the waivers international union of north america afl-cio custodians effective for the periods between july 1st 2020 and june 30th 2021 roll call miss biancaria yes mrs

211clancy yes mr foley yes mccullough mr manfredo yes mr kananovic yes yes so is that it that's it yes thank you can you do a motion to adjourn uh well always i think you do a roll call or call yes okay judy thank you i appreciate it yeah but i have to pick them up