001e e e good evening everybody it is June 12th 2024 this is the meeting of the Ashland school committee we start each meeting by reading our vision statement the Ashland Public School strives to be a model District that creates a culture of inclusivity for our diverse students and staff who feel safe and supported are empowered with the academic and social emotional skills to pursue their chosen path and embrace their roles as positive contributors to local and Global communities this meeting is being recorded by waca cable TV in the order of business this evening we will have our call to order our agenda review and adoption um and then uh with the consensus of the school committee we will do the recognition of the retirees and then we will have time for public comment and the
002administrative items this evening include the field trip proposal The Varsity cross country team Vermont August 30 to September 2 2024 app appointment to the wacka cable access board counseling social emotional learning update paidway School Improvement Plan update mindes School Improvement Plan update student services update Student Activity accounts Bank reconciliations superintendent evaluation assistant superintendence update superintendent update warrant approvals gifts and donations minutes from May 22nd committee reports of activities will include the member updates the action items and then I will move to go into executive session under section 21 A3 to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares and not to return to open session this is regarding the Ashland
003School custodians and maintenance workers and public employees Local Union 1156 so I will take the roll call and ask if you're uh good with the order of business this evening Paul Kendall yes Tina fanes yes Harry and Marcy cver will is absent this evening um so we are going to start the meeting with the recognition of the retirees um we're going to have some a few words from the principles of the different buildings and Jim tells me there are how many hours hundreds of hours 340 years worth of not hours years yeah years hours that's that's like 6 million hours and yeah uh anyhow so we we have a room full of people who have just um really literally made ashin what it is today and we're so excited to honor you tonight with this
004beautiful plate that you get to bring home with your name on it and the amount of years of service that You' had to the district so are we going in order of buildings or yeah I think that's a great way to go okay so we're going to start at the preschool please and first is Trisha Tomaso who where are you Trisha yes I mean you had you had my baby that's started oh there we are no no no you're coming up with me we'll be on TV together um so I just wrote a few things um Trisha Tomaso is our longest member of the ashin preschool community and is retiring after 30 years of service pretty much her entire career has been with us um to say she's seen it all has been an understatement
005she's gone through many um building moves changes hallways uh annexes the Warren school in back um as well as curriculum changes and helped us Implement our inclusive learning mod model as one of our very first special Educators as part of the ashin preschool her family share that she's a great communicator and she's always available to share information and strategies to support kiddos at home the pit crew the pit crew excuse me is grateful for her collaborative team efforts she's always well warm and welcoming to any new paway Community member we wish her all the best in her retirement and thank you for a wonderful career here in Ashland thank you Trisha on behalf of the school committee for everything you've done okay all right next we're heading over to the Warren school and Elise Wilkinson
006where are you another person that we go way back if we raised our kids together 21 years thank you so much we apprciate I don't think you want the hug from me I've been at the grill I've been standing at the grill for the last hour and a half so just I've been very fortunate over the last years to eight years to work with Elise um the other night we had a chance to share this during the retirement party for the Warren staff but one of the things that really strikes me about aise is upon my arrival eight years ago we were not doing a lot of small group instruction and it's really where we've shifted over the last few years and it's really been about making decisions on data and what do kids need
007during the small group instruction Alis has been doing that prior to my arrival at the Warren school and just watching the the progress that her students have made over the years has been truly remarkable um and I've been fortunate to be able to work and learn alongside thank you for everything you've been doing for the district for the 21 years thank you next up Patricia Kane 34 years that's a long time thank you so much for your service that is for you from the district and thank you same uh more of of just having that opportunity to work with Trisha as well so Trisha has been in second grade for the eight years that I've worked alongside her and learned with her one of the things that is just truly remarkable about her as a
008teacher as an educator as a colleague is her ability to make connections and it's not just with adults but what she's able to do is make a community of Learners every year in her classroom each year she gets some very challenging students um that have had history of having difficulty of being part of a class and they end up being isolates when they enter her room um and within a few short weeks they are an equal member of that community and and what's been really interesting is over the years and and one particular child sticks out um who moved to us as a second grader the family commented that he had never connected to a teacher or to other students in any of his schooling um when this child was absent for a day the
009rest of the class was asking where he was and it's because of what Trisha did to make that classroom special to make it so that every child in the room was part of a family and that they all belonged to each other um and for that it's been truly remarkable personally as well I've Loved just having Trisha be someone that I could walk to and say I'm thinking about doing this how do you think it will go over with everyone else uh and she's always given me amazing advice of where she thinks it's a great direction to go one where she'll say you might want to think about that again uh and for that I'm just indebted forever thank you thank you Trisha I smell like a [Applause] girl Jennifer Temple 36 years another Superstar
010of the ash School District thank you so much so many little lives again having the opportunity to work with Jen for eight years has been amazing and Jen served a few roles during these eight years she's been our Ela coordinator um and she has been instrumental in the progress that our school has made and also I would say the district because of her role during our Ela curriculum meetings which is not just the Elementry but through 12th grade uh Jen has been one of our leaders about changing our reading instruction and making sure that it was based on science making sure that it was meeting our students needs working with our colleagues to support their growth as well um the other part that I just love about Jen's classroom is the amount of fun that
011goes in each and every day um you know as I mentioned the other night at at the retirement party whether it's someone needing to give a password to get on the door because they have to read a sign on the door and in first grade that's the coolest um what what is another part that just is about is Jenna is one of the last to leave every single night and after all these years it's still the amount of time that she puts in of planning to make sure every child's getting what they need communicating with their families um we will not be able to replace you you're welcome thank you J and and if I I'd probably be remiss uh you know so Jen and I have more of a connection than a lot of
012the other teachers so uh our families my daughter went through a really tough year that year when she had surgery came to school with a Halo and the job that she did and Mike did as a as administrator there was amazing and we sitting here to talk about Connections out in front of her class every day she's shaking the hands and she's doing what we we talk about here so thank you for all that thank you than you know 36 years and another face that has certainly been here every day that that I have and my kids and hundreds and thousands of kids have seen your beautiful face all these years so thank you for everything that you Sandy goes so far beyond her her role as an administrative assistant in our office um Sandy
013is the lifeblood of our school Sandy is that person that greets everyone when they come in the door with a smile uh she's been doing that forever um from when she was a student at the school uh to now being in the front office for all of these years um families will come in and she'll actually remember uh parents that they were students at the Warren school and again that just supports the community feeling of our school and parents feeling safe about knowing that there's people in our school that truly care for their children as well what Sandy does for our staff um Sandy is one of the matriarchs of our school that takes care of us all uh Mak sure that people are recognized when they're doing amazing work and again we will not
014be able to replace her in everything that she does I'm sure I'll be learning some of the things over the next year that I'll say Sandy just made that happen now I need to figure out how we're going to do that again Sandy I can't thank you enough thank you think we're all set with the Warren school where's Janna Rose 19 years remember how much my girls used to love hang with your office and I'm sure was for thank you so see that smiling face when you walk in the building thank you short and sweet I was so excited for her I jumped out of my seat um we had our retirement party last week and I had the opportunity to say a few words about Rose so I was going to share those here
015um Rose is like a nautical Lighthouse for she plays many roles for seaf fares just as um people do at MES nautical lighthouses are beacons of light providing guidance and hope to people lost at sea Rose is a beacon of light to all who cross her path daily people visit Rose to seek her advice or to ask her a question she always stops what she is doing to connect and provide support to whoever rolls in ligh houses are designed to withstand harsh conditions Rose withstands harsh conditions like upset parents angry students and frustrated staff both Lighthouse and Rose are still standing after a storm I learned that Rose started 19 years ago and I was so fortunate to have the last two years with you there you are the brightest light for people who come
016in you are helpful kind patient and loving and we wish you all the best in your retirement and I will miss you and then miss Carrie Underwood 33 years oh my goodness and I know beyond teaching you also served on the negotiating team and did lots of other things I'm sure thank you your inate congratulations Carrie Carrie's analogy was to a head lifeguard um because if you spent time at our school you know that Carrie takes care of herself and her children and what they need but she's also got an eye out both sides of her head for what her colleagues need and it's been a pleasure to watch her Mentor younger younger teachers newer teachers and to share the wealth of all of that she knows about children her great strength is teaching children
017how to read and working with special education students and just being generally a wonderful fifth grade teacher and advocate for kids so thank you for everything that you've done Carrie thank you I will miss and then Dave djalo I guess you're not going to be a to speech about are you GNA do your own he supped to talk about himself he is no I Dave here he was the history teacher for my oldest son Jake one of his favorite teachers in the building and so you've been here and a lot of different worlds history teacher you were the dean at the high school that's true and now principal of the middle school and so you over years contributed so much to all of us and work withous administrative team and imped lots of lives of
018different all right Michelle Smith I'm gonna start this one you can come up and I'll stay with my microphone because I want everyone to hear this m Michelle I want you to know how much we appreciate you um I've served on the negotiating team with you a couple different times not the most recent one but certainly we have experienced doing that together and um those are private meetings nobody else is in that room but everybody everybody needs to know how much of a fierce Advocate you are for your union and I respect that so very much and you you always were so such a fighter for what your constituents need and want and and at the same time worked with us and with Jim on the outside to make sure that we came up with
019um deals that work for everybody right it's it's not easy and sometimes we're stressed and sometimes we're not happy with each other but you always just carried yourself you know professionally with the utmost respect for who you were representing as well as us and um it's very unusual we hear that all the time when we go to conferences we hear that there are things that happen in Ashland that are just not common in other places we read the papers we see all the fights with unions and the strikes and all the things that have happened and the fact that those things have not happened here you're a huge part of that and you will be missed and I appreciate you and even though you know these things are set up so that we're like at
020a different side of the spectrum uh at the end of the day like there are people that are in this room yourself included have been here for more than 30 years we want it to be a good place to work we want it to be a good place to raise our kids and educate our kids we want to pay everybody as fairly as we can and there's only so much to go around so those things cause tension but um I think we do it well here and thanks to you you're going to be missed [Applause] so congratulations Michelle for 33 years of service uh to talk about roles uh Michelle serves as our general music teacher uh also as the Union president and communication with the Union throughout my years as principal there she is
021the chorus director um recently put on chorus concerts which she did every year since I was there also worked with uh Mendes students providing private lessons so coordinated a lot with Brian coning working with uh not just students at the middle school but students at the Mendes school as well while I was there she also served as the music director worked with many of our drama or theater teachers and assisting in Productions so she's certainly served many roles since since I've been there and long before I know and has had an impact our um General music teacher and unified Arts teachers see every student uh over the course of the year so some teachers I know see a certain amount but if this year we have 680 students within the building Michelle would have taught
022680 students so when you think about the amount of just the amount of um access the amount of impact and the amount of students that she's interacted with over 33 years it's pretty pretty overwhelming so certainly for 33 years I want to sincerely congratulate Michelle and uh wish you all the best in your retirement so thank you everyone thank you Michelle thank [Applause] you so um we're coming to the end of our ceremony and you're free to leave as soon as it's over but I just want to collectively thank you on behalf of all of us up here here and really the entire School District I'm overwhelmed with um the amount of talent in the room and the amount of impact that you collectively have had and I it's almost uh panicking because you know
023when you all leave it's it's a big hole and I know we have a lot of great people still here but there's a lot of longtime amazing all of you people that have done a lot for all of us so wish you the best in your next phase I I hope you find you know something meaningful and enjoy your time and that you come back and visit us so thank you for everything anybody else no so I will let people scoot out if they want to and then I'll move down the agenda you thank you have a good night thanks car I know sliding around tonight thank you for everything all right next up we have is there anyone in the audience who would like to give public comment CC doet hello hi CC duet
024having graduated two daughters from this wonderful School District it was beautiful to see all the commemorations tonight so Bravo to Ashlin um as we know ashin became the first in the na back in 2014 to begin taking precautionary measures with wireless technology and as I was presenting to the select board recently it dawned on me that many in our district have not followed the science that has come through in the last 10 years so I wanted to bring to your attention some of what has gone on uh when I spoke to the select board they said well we don't really see anything in mainstream media there's a good reason for that mainstream media is owned by the w less industry and their parent conglomerations so we're very grateful when well-known groups like the environmental working
025group who puts out the Clean 15 and dirty dozen pesticide list every year when they start taking this issue on and they have put out some really amazing fact sheets of late this one is a study on wireless radiation exposure for children should be hundreds of times lower than current federal limits and I think I've mentioned in the past that the FCC has been sued for ignoring 11,000 pages of evidence of harm and I today received something in my inbox on the published research on the health effects of nonionizing electromagnetic radiation and there's a section here on children's vulnerabilities especially and there are sections on Wifi there are pregnant and prenatal exposure studies brain impacts memory and cognition Behavior behavioral and emot fertility and reproduction DNA damage and genotoxicity cancer and wireless radio frequency radiation
026and it goes on and on headaches electromagnetic sensitivity diabetes obes obesity oxidative stress miscarriage endocrine system immune system and uh it's having a big impact on our flora and FAA as well so the studies are all there they are peer-reviewed and highly regard Ed journals so we have the science and I'm really hoping that we will get back to looking at this issue as we promised we would do a decade ago the school committee under Lor's tutelage there um had said they would stay on top of this issue so I think it's time to bring it back front and center summer is a wonderful time to look at this because there are very simple solutions to be had with regard to reducing exposures and swapping out wireless connections with hardwired connections so Lori the last
027time I gave public comment at the end of May we discussed asking whether we still have our precautionary measures posted in the school so I would appreciate your feedback on that and I requested a meeting so that we can sit down and talk about this and maybe start sketching out some ideas thanks C thank you okay next up is the field trip proposal The Varsity cross country team Vermont August 30 to September 2nd sure please than you be great thanks yes please thank you hi share names um my hat tonight is head coach for the um Ashlin High School cross country team but I also wanted to introduce I'm not sure if all of you know John Briner and EM Emily Riley who have been um coaches um volunteer U for the last four years
028um and as you have seen um our numbers have grown immensely over well over the last four years but especially over the last two years and I think a big part of that is um us creating um a a solid team um kids want to learn to run they want to run they're developing a passion for it so the idea of the camp came out as a team building um activity but I think I want Emily to talk about that a little bit okay so we'll be going up to Vermont um it would be at my parents house um so we'd be camping in their yard but it's on um it's at the end of a dead end dirt road um several hundred acres of woods five miles of trails so we'd basically be running
029swimming hiking bonding um there might be a talent show involved this golf um and it would run from the Friday before Labor Day to the Monday after so it just be Labor Day weekend and they need to swim in the lake because showers will not beable yeah the house is on a well so there's a not unlimited you're going away with a bunch of teenagers with no showers yeah okay you might want to think about that againn yeah and they're running great any questions or do did you have some other info that you wanted to share before I I would just say it's a common thing that high school teams do it's something that some of us have been counselors at my high school team did it all four years it's just a great it's
030one of those things about being a high school athlete specifically being a high school Runner that just it's something that everybody remembers it is that team bonding team camaraderie aspect you go at a camp and and everyone just kind of becomes a team and and really stretches and focuses on their goals for what they want to achieve over that next year um we also wanted to say that it is voluntary so if there are um kids or their parents that are uncomfortable with it um there are um options right and there's no penalty for them absolutely not yeah but I have a bunch so you you can go first you want I was just going to ask you know in terms of how many people are going is there any selection criteria for who gets
031to go and you know kind of the financial component of it is you know how uh what is the cost and how are we making sure that it's it's available and accessible to all the kids that want to come so I guess we don't know exactly how many kids can go because we had to do this step first before we could really put it out to them um we're kind of estimating 20ish we had I think 30 kids on the roster last year so every kid we've talked to has been very enthusiastic about it but I know there's going to be people going away and families that can't go um right now we're looking at about $100 per kid to cover food and we're going to rent 12 passenger vans um to cover that if
032finances are an issue we do have money from our snap raay um we have several thousand dollars from that so um we definitely wouldn't let finances be an issue and anyone can come to incoming freshman you know it's not just a varsity thing or just for certain Runners it's for the the whole team great excellent thank you so this is kind of a a cool but unusual uh kind of trip in that you're going to a private private residence and and there's going to be swimming in a lake and so uh I assume we're going to be coordinating with nurses about any any you know uh what staff members are are going is it just one oh from ashin public staff myself and then three of our coach okay soy yeah so but we're going
033to be working with the nurses on that uh and and I was going to ask if there swimming involved how are we you know what are there going to be a calls there is somebody going to be watching out not just let I know these are high school students but still if there's uh those kind of things we don't want uh on accidents and you know especially you get a group of kids nobody wants to admit they're the one that really can't swim all that well right so uh so do you have have you already thought about that and ensuring that there's rules and someone's going to be you know watching that component of it so another hat that I have worn um throughout my years is um the DC trip um with our eighth
034graders um and I I'm still standing um but there have been sleepless nights making sure that everybody is where they need to be um I do coordinate with the nurses um at the beginning of the Season nurses and and I specifically um talk about food allergies and whatnot so that of course would be part of it and and then uh you know can you make sure that everyone involved involed you've you've identified because this is you know it's unusual and that it's not a uh you know a prepared trip by a professional organization and it's probably you know kind of rural but that you you know where the where the emergency services are everybody knows how to contact them and things like that so you're not you know trying to figure that out at the
035time I mean it is so where we're going to be is kind of the middle of nowhere but it is 10 minutes from Dartmouth College and so there's Dartmouth College medical center Children's Hospital at Dartmouth which is second only to Boston Children's Hospital um for you yeah so just prepare that you know all those things that you know we take for granted on a lot of our trips because they're you know professionally you done and we're just kind of have this the eyes for the trip right so just it's cool and and it but it with that unusual uh unusualness I ask these these type of questions and kind of just to piggy back on the cost stuff just when you're when you're going to the kids and you probably know a lot of the
036kids you probably maybe how get a sense but one of the things we talk about with a lot of trips here is how do we ensure that the financial component isn't preventing anybody from raising their hand saying they want to go right um and this is pretty low is but you know we have lot lots of students where if it's more than 10 bucks it probably they wouldn't wouldn't ask their parents for and they would think not to go so right so we always um not that we've done this before but for other activities let parents know that um if they have any of those financial concerns or other concerns to reach out to me specifically and we can work it out so it's not through everybody needs to know that my child needs some
037assistance yeah so so as long as you're thinking about that how do we get people to raise their hands regardless and um that's something we talk about with a lot of the trips we also have a better little bit of a lens of it because they do have to pay the activity fee to join the team so if there's already that hardship there they're going to self-identify so it makes it a little bit of an easier conversation because we become aware of it they already been through that process and we formally in practice for two weeks and also on the CPR front five of our Runners are actually trained Arc counselors and one is the The Lifeguard for Arc over the summer so we do have additional resources on in our own peer population across
038amongst all the coaches too that's cool and you've obviously thought about it so that's that's good so the only I I have sort of the same types of concerns that um Tina ball voiced I think we did have a trip that was kind of similar in the sense that it was there wasn't an outside organization running I can't baset it was basketball okay um I think one of the questions I think I raised then I just want to ask you now is um since it's on private property it sounds like it's your family residents um and Cory Che obviously you all have done them is there going to be anybody else in the house or on the property that hasn't been Corey checked when you're there it would just be my parents and they could
039come down like if they needed to come here and get a Corey um you know they're obviously do that okay they wouldn't have to come just fill out some paperwork okay but although they do come down they're down here oh if they're here anyway but um but I'm sure that's something right we could do online that they wouldn't have to come here but it's probably a good idea just it's I think it's required by any adult that's going to be around any uh schoolage child from our district has to be C told them that they would probably need to do that yeah they're fine with that so that that would be the only that was my question that was the only other concern I'd have and and I'm certainly if they going to assume going
040to check out or you wouldn't be doing this at all so um and and then the other the concerns just about medical and supervision and you know I think anytime you've got 20 teenagers um you know obviously but you work with them all the time so you know what you're getting into and I was actually going to ask um Amy if um if I could take the first aid bag with theator the a device in it as well just I carry that everywhere in my car anyway so excellent and and I assume that you're requiring everyone to take the these uh the Vans up and not allow for any any private uh or well no students are driving but if parents we'll need some for parents just for amount of gear but no students wouldn't
041would only be in the vans so you're talking about the chaperon because there's going to be the three of us coaches our spring coach will also be a chaperone and then we'll probably have two of our parents that will be there as well because we only need people to just help us cook it's even with 20 kids and four of us running we still probably need two more people that can run to just manage the pack all the way through for sure but it's yeah so we'll put all kids in the Vans and all gear will be in private and we'll get those parents fory checked as well thank you yeah I think so when we when we do vote I think we typically when there's some unknowns and they're still working some stuff out
042we just kind of uh make it conditional on approval by you know kind of like Jim and Chris have you already done that part I mean the have you already done a final approval on this reviewed or you going to sometimes like the packet comes to us since already been signed off on by Jim and Kelly it's been signed off by Kevin it's been signed off by Mike it's been signed off by Kelly okay I always wait for the school committee before I sign it but I'm totally 100% the trip and you know if you need me to stop in at thatford I drive by there four times four times a month yeah right I mean you know the roots I know it well did you not learn anything anything from going to Europe I
043mean uh no but I'm just saying I go home a lot so sah goes home a lot as well so we're field yeah I'll move to approve the field trip for the to I will move to approve the field trip proposal um for farity cross country team to Vermont for August 30th to September 2 um subject to the superintendent's review of final safety concerns second all in favor I I I okay and I just want to thank the three of you too for the incredible effort that you've put into the team my kids are not CrossCountry Runners but they've both benefited from the growth of the programs being a part of winter and spring track and it's a testament to you and all of the work that you guys have put into the team so
044thank you it's a really incredible program you're welcome good job thanks thank you I do I know okay appointment to the wacka cable access board who's doing that uh you are I am no is anybody pres they're they're not um so barberism uh something to note because uh Makita Keegan uh was uh select elected to be on the select board uh she has to give up her position on the uh the cable access board uh so Barbara had called me and there was interest from uh deputy chief Lynn Moran to be on and to fill out the rest of the term for Makita and she's just looking for that approval from the board because we we submit one person to the cable access board what's the remaining term the remaining term is through 202 uh
045she resigned it says through 2026 Mark December 31st 26 got a motion two years I'll move to a point Lin monan deputy chief Moran yep deputy chief manahan to the wacka cable access board as the school committee representative second all in favor favor hi excellent okay an update on the counseling social emotional learning Jen Taylor Jen Taylor I will share the slide deck so give me a second Jen please okay all right so I am just going to do hopefully a short and sweet uh highlights um from our department this year um so my first slide um is talking about cartwheel care which is our um tella Health uh therapy partner um that this was our first year with them um so uh they provide um teleah Health Therapy specifically to school districts and um
046uh the nice thing about them is that we do not have to there are no waiting lists so our students who are referred to them from our um School counseling staff and our um Psych ologists uh have about a s to 10 day wait before they um actually start seeing a therapist um they all their therapists also speak a variety of languages like a wide variety of languages um so that's not a barrier um and then there's obviously no barrier in terms of traveling anywhere because it is virtual um they also take all um uh insurances so it's been a really great partnership um our families have reported um that it's worked extremely well our students are reporting that they really like um this format of therapy we have referred 38 students who have um
047had continuous therapy um this year the top referral reasons are um to develop coping skills um students who are anxious and students who are experiencing stress our highest percentage of referrals have been um 43% from the middle school which I think really makes sense because that is kind of the um area where you know I have heard all along that our biggest social emotional needs are from the middle school and um a lot of our middle school kids do not like to go in person to meet with therapists so I think this has been a really good um uh Avenue for our middle school kids to um get treatment um after we did our uh signs of suicide this year with our eighth graders we had quite uh uh increase in referrals to cartwheel care
048after that um it mostly kids who were just experiencing a lot of um not necessarily suicidal ideation but just a lot of anxiety and stress that they had um endorsed on um and in some depression that they had endorsed on the um uh scale that they fill out and so when we were meeting with them after we said oh we have this would you be interested and um um and then we called their parents and so we that was um when we started to really refer a lot more kids and so um we will be continuing our partnership next year thanks to Karen spa and the um grant that she's continued to earmark for us um and the nice thing is our students can continue to work with um the cartwheel therapist over the summer
049so that does not end we can continue to refer students over the summer so students from the um summer programs with us if um any of the staff notice that um they are in need of therapy we can make referrals um next year they're also adding a family therapy component so students who are in there if um they need that family therapy piece which a lot of times they do they are also doing that and then they're also um adding a school staff um component uh and they're going to make sure that there are different therapists for for the school staff so that you're not seeing a therapist isn't seeing um a School's teacher who would be seeing a student they have in their classroom um so uh I think I'm I'm excited for that
050because I often get calls um for from from principles or from staff who are looking for something quick that they you know rather than waiting for you know six months to see someone something something quicker so I am excited to be able to offer that staff next year before we move on Jen can I just ask you a quick question yes you can um you talked about the cartwheel taking all insurances but also it sounded like with support from Senator spilka's office is there grant funding and and if so what's what's like the net costs to the district even if it's covered by grant funding I just want to get a sense of it yeah so um the yeah so they take insurance but we have to pay them for because they have to we
051have to pay them like a a Fe to for their therapists and um it is I think this year it was about like 20 4,000 okay next year it's it it went up to like about 30 something because we added on the teachers and and things like that okay just I think it's a great program I just wanted to have a sense of sort of what we were what we were contributing to that cost and how it worked yeah thank you I was just going to ask if the grants from that Senator spilka helped um secure cover the full cost of that or the full cost yep yeah that's what I thought just wanted to go can you speak to the the grant it's Karen is sorry Karen has designated this for a number of
052years through her social emotional U Wellness programming that she's really you know such a strong advocate for and uh we've been we've benefited greatly I forget what the amount was this year it was 100,000 this year so so it certainly covers the cost of what we're outlaying great so so J with something with a with a service like cartwheel care uh is there anything that they do to that because they there as they as a service have uh the ability to to see what's going on with the the the overall body of of people that were that are going to us from their from our district do they have any way to then provide us feed generalized feedback of different things we could do that could support our our students and staff differently or better
053yeah so that's actually a big part of it I meet with their program manager once a month um to talk about our students and then um each therapist uh reaches out to the school counselor or psychologist who referred the student um as soon as they start therapy and um the as long as the parent signs released for that and um then they uh usually about every month they communicate with each other or as needed to see you know what's going on at school um our therapists or our counselors or psychologists will say this is going on you know can you talk to them about that would you recommend anything for school and you know vice versa so that's a huge so but if there's patterns or anything like that we can do more holistically that
054could support our students it'd be through those Communications uh that then then we would be able to notice uh notice those patterns and and Implement something or look to do a different strategy internally uh that could potentially you know uh hopefully avoid maybe you know one of these some of these students going have go out for for this right correct and then also like I just got a 504 referral from one of the cartwheel therapists um so we'll get you know things like that and they um part of cartwheel is also they have um psychiatrists so sometimes our um counselors will say you know I'm really concerned about um you know this student and their anxiety um and after the therapist has started seeing the the student for individual therapy for a certain amount of
055time um the they might then make their the psychiatrist referral right within cartwheel care rather than having again to go on children's hospital for a long weight list so that you know eliminates that so there is a lot of that consultation piece which is really great because we don't always get that with um our outside clinicians it's it's a lot harder to do this is built right into this um model so well I actually interpreted your question a little bit differently and and that triggered at least a thought different from mine which is sort of looking at whether you get feedback on some sort of um what's right to sort of um deidentified basis so that you you know for example we're seeing um a lot of students come from an ashon high school that
056are struggling with X or reporting problems at school so that we as a School District or as a building might say you know what what what might be the common cause or what are we doing that could be better supportive of our students sort of outside the counseling realm but either programmatically or With Attitudes or what have you um I mean to me the most like egregious could be if you had students that were all members of the lgbtqi plus Community right um a community that often needs more um support but we're all reporting addess at school because of how staff are responding to them and supporting them that would be important for us to understand so we can address other things he asked my question better okay so I did understand what you're asking
057so sorry I did not so anyway I don't know if they just curious um we we don't have access to that at this point but um I can certainly ask for that because they're really I mean this is their I think second year um as an organization so um I can certainly ask our program manager that that is something that they could collect um and provide to us just like they provide um just like they provide um the information about you know what the referrals you know are like the coping skills the depression anxiety like the top reasons I'm sure of that yeah I mean what we both were asking is they have the ability to you know kind of see what they're seeing and seeing patterns you know de identify things so we're not
058getting anything other than this is what we're seeing and then we can take that back and whether it's a support difference whether it's something structurally within the school or whatever that is that we can instead of just saying hey I keep I have these Band-Aids I'm going to keep on putting these Band-Aids over here we might be able to say I don't need the Band-Aid anymore because we've made an adjustment of some sort right right right yeah yeah I mean I raises my privacy red flags and and think this is kind of private clinical therapy that's we're just providing a connection to private therapy and so there I have a lot of red flags that get raised about the sharing of any of that information but I don't know um the question but it's you
059know it's definitely a tricky it's a tricky it's a tricky mechanism to get feedback from because it is a private service we're just connecting students with it although it seems like and do the majority of the parents sign the release that allows for you know the sharing of at least some information between the so so I would imagine this particular ular situation uh would allow at least sharing of some information if if a fair portion of them are are signing that release but yeah I I think Tina raises a valid question and may very well be they're going to say that's not really what we're in the business of doing we here it right so I think fully understood um it may also be that you know in terms of the overall communication that's coming
060back into the people that are authorized we can be aware of of themes I think that's really the bigger question of however we get it if there's an opportunity need to learn something about ourselves absolutely agree at at a building based level a district based level um or what have you you know let's at least keep our eyes open for those opportunities that's all yep absolutely and I I'll bring that up with our program manager and see what she says Okay um all right so car Solus is another um partnership that we have just begun um so carolus is um similar um but they don't actually provide therapy they connect um families with um therapists this can be in person or or virtual um so uh this is also for our staff our staff's family
061members immediate family members our students and our students immediate family members um so uh and they also have care coordinators in almost every language um they're open you know 365 days a year I can see on the dashboard like when people are calling they are open like 24 hours a day so a care coordinator is always available so I can see that people are calling at like midnight 2 o'clock in the morning because if people are um worri really worried about themselves or a family member they might be doing this in the middle of the night and a lot of times they are um so uh we've only had a few um pleasure we've had a few referrals from our our our whole administrative team has been trained in in this so far so everyone
062can make referrals um of students or families or staff members um and all of our counselors and psychologists can do that as well and they've all been trained um we've had I think four student referrals so far and all of those four are currently in therapy um and uh we've had a few staff referrals as well um with staff referrals we it's completely confidential so I can't see none of us can see who the staff member is but we can just see that there are staff members that are currently taking advantage of this which is what we want um they can uh they can connect people with all different levels of care so not just outpatient individual therapy but inpatient um different levels of hospitalization um not just therapy but also substance substance use Services
063um so it kind of expands what we are able to connect people with um uh which I think is um really great um for us to be able to do that so I'm hoping that um next year we'll be able to really use that uh a lot more um so again this is um about a 12,000 sorry I keep pushing this this is about a 12,000 oh you did okay a $112,000 um service um and again this is from the Karen at ear Mark so um we're really for fortunate to be able to have this and our councilors really excited about it okay um so I wanted to share some data we've just started working from our strategic plan um one of our areas was to ensure that um all of our students have a
064trusted adult so um for our K to five students we really didn't have um uh a way of collecting data for this so this is something that our school counselors um have been working on this year um so I just wanted to show you what this looks like at Mendes and Warren so both schools this year the counselors have created a way to explicitly teach what a trusted adult is and then a way to collect that data so you can see on the left the Warren school um is an example of one of their slides of what a trusted adult does um and then on the bottom you can see um this is what the student stent will fill out at the end of their lesson I can name a trusted adult at school and
065home so you can see the student drew a picture of Mr Regan as their trust adult at school and then Mom and Dad as their trusted adult at home and um the counselors uh great picture provided me with lot of pictures the glasses uh and lots of different um uh teachers and uh Professionals in the school and it was really really great to see that um and um uh what what they did went even further is they created a whole spreadsheet at Warren school and they have listed you know uh so miss Mrs lerys is listed and then all the students in the school that identified her as their trusted adult are under that um and they have it by grade level so they have an entire spreadsheet um identified with each student's trusted adult
066every student in the whole school has a trusted adult so this is our first time we've ever had an actual way of collecting data for that and an explicit way of teaching it um so I was really pleased to see that um at the mindes school they will start collecting this data next year but they have developed their lesson they are choosing to show an actual a video about what a trusted adult is again sort of developmentally appropriate um for that age student have a discussion of what it means to be a trusted um adult and um administer they have a wellness questionnaire that they ad minister with the adult trusted adult question in it and then they will go and find the students who do not have a trusted adult school and make a
067plan as to who can connect with them to develop that one of the things that um the counselors uh at mindes in the Middle School um bring up to me a lot is that um oftentimes it's the students that are meeting with um administrators or counselor on a daily basis that say they don't have a trusted adult um so we are hoping that by explicitly teaching what a trusted adult is who a trusted adult is and what they do that students might be be able to say oh Mrs McGuire is my trusted adult um Mrs L Rena is my trusted adult but we don't know you know and and sometimes students don't like to you know I think as students get older they don't always like to identify who their trusted adult is so um
068we have to think about that as well when we're relying on students to report trusted adults um so this is kind of the beginning of our collection of this data so so Jen with with so this is done uh like during a lesson or something with with the counselors yes um which I think is is great we've always wanted to be able to map that and map that out what what would we how would we identify students because I could see if you're in this lesson and you're asked to do this you're going to write down somebody right you're you're you're not especially if you don't have a trust you're not going to feel comfortable saying I don't have a you're going to be like Mr ran what's my teacher whoever it is because that's
069probably what's expected of you right and so what can we do to try to really identify those I think it works for a large percentage of the student this will 100% be accurate work right but for those other ones that may not they just might be writing down what you know easy answer is Mr rean or my teacher right um but if that if they don't feel that that's true you know how how could we possibly um identify those those students and and and identify that need right than I mean I think that's I I'm asking you probably don't have the answer because it's a hard it's a hard it's a hard hard answer right but yeah I I think that our counselors would probably have a pretty good idea of those of those students
070already um I think that honestly at Warren I think most students really would have a trusted adult um just from from being there meeting the students I I I think that most if not all I mean I look I look at uh Pete's story tonight of I think was Miss Kane right about you know that the parents said that this kid has never felt connected to a single soul at school before right and so that that student right there now you know Miss Kane's class obviously I think the students were really connecting with that student but um but yeah so there there was going to be those students that and it might not be it might be because they they came from somewhere else that you know I've heard other stories of of students that
071transfer in that school was very traumatic for them for lots of really bad reasons um and and so may not be something we're doing but how do we you know whether even it's during the you know something we cognizantly look for why people why kids are filling it out but identifying those ones that may be struggling to fill that out or right or deliberately filling it more more deliberately filling it out because they think they're supposed to right right and I think that our our counselors are really good at identifying that during lessons and sort of knowing the students that might be struggling with that um I also think you know one thing that they could they could do during lessons saying if you don't have a trusted adult right now that's okay we want
072our goal is to make sure that you develop a you find a trusted adult during the year so you know because we don't want kids to feel like you know if you don't have one right now there's something wrong with you you know so I think you know I can I can talk to them and I I bet that a lot of them are already saying that in their lessons but um I can talk to them about that because we're really just developing this because this hasn't really been done on a I think it's great we' always talked about you know uh having that connection M right yeah all right Jim's pushing me along no he's pushing Paul along all right so um we already have trusted adult data at the middle in high school
073level um and what I hope is that by teaching it explicitly at um Warren and mes once they get to middle and high school they'll have that good idea of okay I know this question you've asked it to me every year I know what this means um um so on these charts we're only looking at the first um uh bar graph on the left for for both of them so um you can see this data is um just from this fall um this is from the Metro West adolescent Health survey and it's done um every other year um so this is just from this fall um and so 69% of females at the middle school said that they have a trusted adult at school that they can talk to about a personal Pro problem and
07463% of males this is um consistent with all of those schools in the Metro West um same percentages pretty much um on the second on the green um graph it's broken down by grade level um so it makes a lot of sense that um the longer you're at the middle school by 8th grade um it goes up to 70% so you're 59% um have a trusted adult in sixth grade 68% in 7th and then 70 and e8th grade the longer you're there the more you're developing relationships with people in the building has this been in previous uh studies and are we improving yes so the next um graph is going to show you that can I ask one question on that sorry Jim um the last data point here talk with a parent relative or
075other adult outside of school yeah talk with yeah so like if I read that literally and I'm just trying to understand again what it means that that's sort of my kids coming home and talking to me or not and so there's an as next to it Mark about emotional challenges or problems okay that's Move Along read the fine print it's really fine really fine um all right so this um answers your question um Mr Kendall so um this shows data for our Ashlin students at the middle school from 2006 um till 2023 um so you can see that um 2006 The Trusted adult question for this is for all students female and male 68 um was at 60% we went up in 2012 to 80% and then we started to decline um until we were
076at about 60% in 2021 um that decline in 2021 was right after the pandemic that makes a lot of sense all schools across Metro West were um in that decline um because they they weren't feeling connected because they weren't in school um and uh you know all Metro West schools I was just at this Metro West meeting um last week uh so we were able to see everyone's data have started to go back up I'm really happy to see that we're going back up so we're um about you know 69 70% now um so it's great to see that we're Rising our kids are feeling that they're belonging more and that they have trusted adults so that's exactly what we want to see we want to see it to continue to go up obviously I'd
077love it to go up to 80% again like it was in 2012 but that's where we need to put in more interventions and that's tells us that we need to do that so um that is what we will do um and then this is the high school data um so you can see there's no difference between the male and female um at the high school it's 70% um on the green graph um I again uh the longer that you're in high school um your percentage is going to go up in terms of um you having a trusted adult so it's going up to 77% of students feel they have a trusted Adult School in 12th grade so that's really positive um and then the next graph is going to show you over time again um
078so we didn't have a a big decline um like uh like the Middle School graph um we actually kind of had a a slight increase um um over time to 2018 but we had that same you know same dip again for the pandemic which makes a lot of sense and then we went up um a little bit uh in 2023 so I think students are starting to so just on the question like that Mark was talking about yeah can you describe to me what it means it says I talked to somebody and it says about emotional challenges the percentage of what is it the percentage of students that said that they they talk to somebody about overall or is it I had an issue and I talked to somebody and that you know what I
079mean because there's there's two ways to slice that is like so is going down there a good thing because our kids aren't having the issues or is going down a bad thing because the ones that are having issues aren't talking to people so I didn't really focus on that question because that has nothing to do with a trusted adult so I don't feel like I can really give you an answer about that right now right I can definitely give you said I just see it going down there where everything else is going up and so I'm like trying to understand that question right is going down is going down good or bad I don't know because if it's is it does it mean our students aren't having those issues or is it meaning that they're
080having the issues and not talking to people I don't you certainly can look at the correlation the the actual question yeah I would have to look at the question I don't know what that question exactly says have that right yeah we do it's it's not not it's not important I don't want to real but but dat certainly whether whether what that meant yeah I just wasn't focusing on that right now so I don't I don't want to give you an answer that's not correct yeah I was the only one that didn't go in the same direction as the other ones generally right yeah um and then this is going to be a really short slide um so I just wanted to point out that um we are starting to um train our staff in a
081trauma-informed teaching approach um that really goes along with our responsive classroom um and uh so far um I have trained all the Warren teaching staff and esps um and uh then next year this is tier one approach um and uh it's all about um sort of your your teacher being regulated and co-regulating with students and um and so we're hoping you know we have seen since the pandemic like a increase in student behaviors and students having a very difficult time being regulated throughout the school day so that's why we started at Warren school because we're really really seeing an optick in that and um Mr ran and I wanted to work on that um so um that's why we started there and then um in the fall we'll be working with minda's school and the
082preschool to train their staff as well so I love going in the hallways and seeing the zones of Regulation I always check myself before I figure out where I am before I go into a classroom it's actually great so okay questions for Jen thanks J questions thank you J thanks okay next up is Sarah okay paway School Improvement Plan update hello Jen is this your phone someone that phone up uh oh yes it's I think it's Emily Riley her husband just texted me okay I'm just gonna leave it right there what thank you um thought she had escaped you will be my slide assistant Jim I will I'll be your slide assistant perfect um so we tell me go beep when you want me to move okay um we've had a busy year um our
083school Improvement plan I think I mentioned there's just three of us um small and mighty goes along with our small and mighty preschool staff but we really have um done a lot we picked um I I think we called them indicators right in each of them so we um as a staff spent some time um during uh one of our PD to identify which indicator we wanted to focus on on the new strategic plan so we kind of picked two in each of the sections um they're right there just hitting the four major kind of Milestones or pillars that we are focused on as a district and then if you go to the next slide I'll just kind of hit each one um in equity we really um wanted to focus on um establishing our
084inator reliability you know thinking about data in preschool so much of it is play based assessments you know um a drawing of their self-portrait um you know and how do we calibrate that so we're talking the same about kids in different classrooms you know so what is that measurement some of it is informal some of that is calculated and calibrated together to say okay we're going to look for five defining body parts we're going to look for um sizes of letters when they're learning to write their name in a certain you know number of inches or within a prescribed box or area so we've really worked really hard um to look at our inform formal um measure so that we're scoring or talking about children in their performance the same way our main form of
085assessment is teaching strategies gold um which um is a great tool for us um we don't utilize the full report um we use about 25 indicators that we track three times a year um so our teachers need to participate in about six hours of interor reliability courses uh where they take quizzes to make sure their um calibration is good um we talk about those at our curriculum meetings um Jeanie Bernal has been our curriculum leader this year um and she's been really focused on making sure we're um all talking the same language and vocabulary as we're looking at student performance and growth Our Big Goal this year for me was to kind of align with the Warren and mindes school to find a way to look at data um at the preschool level not just
086for the special education students that have IEP goals and objectives that are so data driven but all of our students um focusing on student growth but also class growth age group and then overall program right um so we are um we had two data teams um it was a little archaic in how we did it because we haven't yet utilized open Architects that's going to come in the fall um so we made our own py graph charts by taking all of the individual data from tsg um and it was really cool to look at the growth between um December March and we did it a little bit early it's normally June but we did it in May so we could have our last curriculum meeting looking at that growth then as a staff we could
087really have good conversations as to where is our instruction need to go if all four girls seem to be a little bit delayed in XY or z um so that's kind of helped us springboard into when we get to curriculum how we've modified and supplemented our curriculum so um next steps for that is we're utilizing open Architects Mark U Mike has us in touch with um finding a way that they can utilize that software has how we've been implementing it and that will go live for the fall so we won't have to make our own Pi um charts for data um and the staff have started to play with it so it' be great to look at other forms of assessment for preschool developmentally appropriate measures um we've been working um a lot on just
088data collection and utilizing all of our staff including our esps um and so that will be a big Focus for us um just across our programming um it'll support the new IEP and our IEP needs as well as just good instruction um and data driven um decisions um we're going to continue to research um different assessments um making sure that we can highlight inclusive learning the differentiation and then the language support um I should have pulled the um percentage but it's more than half of our families are dual language or multilingual um Learners in the home and when you think about three four and five they're learning their home language as well so it's really happening simultaneously and and what kind of curriculum support can we get in that area um so that will definitely
089be something we're looking at Mike's been great at including us in the table for the vertical team meetings um when we're looking at new curriculum and obviously we're going to hope to continue with that um there's not a lot of preschool boxed curriculum so thinking about how we can just make sure that we're aligning as much as possible to provide that exposure to the kids that are then going to have that full-time kindergarten question okay I just keep going I'm sorry you could no you can stop me at any point for questions but um so the social emotional learning pillar we really focused on um increasing our implementation and integrity of all the many aspects of oural um kind of curriculum and life we've got a lot going on at preschool because everything needs to
090be explicitly taught we can't assume that they know what the expected behaviors are what it means to be kind what it means to be the line all of those things so we um continue to utilize our PBIS that's fumbles our be there um for be kind and be safe we also have a few teachers that have been trained in responsive classroom which aligns with the K through 5 model so they've been workshopping that out with us and we've been building some PD in there um Jen two years ago um helped us Implement zones of Regulation and feeling stations um because what's developmentally appropriate at this age is just identifying feelings um in ourselves in stories those sort of things so we have a curriculum that that starts with us in the fall and then we
091also spent probably three years looking at a social emotional curriculum to um kind of upgrade our um Second Step that the district had been using for the past about 15 years so we're using paths which has some great puppets um for talking about different strategies um for coping um participation and just overall social skills um so of our classrooms taught the zones and the feeling stations we're in year one of paths so we'll be um boosting that up and really looking at the data from there for their pre and post kind of not really tests but just assessments of student participation um and then we've added that into our curriculum map scope and sequence um as I said there's not a lot of prek um curriculum so we have a master scope and sequence that
092all classrooms are using and then teachers have their own autonomy to put their own flavor on it but then also differentiate based on the Learners in their room um but that's really helped us with a consistency that I can walk through and know what each classroom is working on each week and then see how they modify it for who's in front of them um the um feeling safe and supportive and a learning environment a big part of that was family involvement and that indicator we focus on bringing back bless you all those things from Co that we weren't able to do all those great family events um so we h two um family events during the school day where we ask family to participate with their child in activities um so that was Fall Fest
093and field day the PTO also had four um scheduled play dates over the weekend in our in our preschool um playground space and we just had let our end of the year picnic where we had over 225 people um Controlled Chaos huge it was on the 31st it was great um so that was a great way to kind of end it we brought um parent coffees back we had three throughout the year with over 20 people participating um in each one on various topics one was about um promoting Independence um at home like with daily living skills and dressing and feeding and all of that good stuff getting out of the house in the morning um one was on our PBIS and um expected behaviors and how to explicitly teach that and then one was
094about the transition to kindergarten we have a lot of families new in Ashland that it's their first kids going over um and really kind of talking about what that Warren Community is um Pete and then Katie the bed coordinator over there came over um and we had a great morning of being able to kind of ask any of their worries put them at ease um and just explain more about the programming over there our next steps is trying to find a way utilizing gen support too of some of thatal data into our um actual data team so it's not just tsg so another measurement um we want to continue to work with Mike on the responsive classroom training for teachers um and professional development for all of our stud staff I think I've said it
095to all of you before two-thirds of our staff are esps so finding really like important and meaningful PD for them is definitely a focus of us or for us um and the staff really want to think about finding ways to implement some social skills and Lunch Bunch groups um to get them ready for kindergarten and have some smaller group instruction not necessarily always having to be from guidance because we don't have that but it could be a Lunch Bunch with me one day and then a Lunch Bunch with a speech pathologist or or another ESP um so there's just that more social um structured but supportive um learning opportunities um in the the meaningful ways of the fun stuff of lunch or pizza day on Thursdays um next one is the curriculum in planning um
096we continue our participation in the vertical teams across the district for the ELA we've worked a lot with the Warren school on just that transition for all students that have come from pway up to Warren um and then based on the data and what I mentioned where we were finding that there were maybe some gaps that our instruction wasn't meeting the needs of all Learners um we created um small group instruction for all four-year-old classrooms um and Ma I mandated it throughout the um building we changed the schedule around we allowed collaborative planning time and we had focused content areas so for two months it was literacy based activities math-based and then a Cooperative game um where they had to share resources build something together negotiate that and there was a staff facilitating all of
097those activities to really kind of be able to um provide some good instructional support during that time um so that was great to see obviously growth showed in um tsg as we looked at the data team across the board we developed a building based PD plan for the year um we have the benefit of having our esps here with us during parent teacher conferences which is great that's an extra nine hours of PD um so we do a lot of Workshop based learning on behavior management deescalation social skills the road shows from all the other directors and administrators um and that really builds the capacity of all of our Educators in the building um so that kids can be supported in any and all um situations or experiences um Mike helped us bring in some
098PD um to do some responsive classroom strategies which is really important for our esps because they're in the classrooms all day and really having an understanding on why these Community meetings are really important and why we want to build the community at this young age so that they feel connected to be able to find their trusted adult um and so on as they get older so next steps is continuing to work with Mike on a multi-year PD plan the big thing for us obviously is the new IEP um improving our data collection to be able to guide our instruction um as we move forward and Resource Management um this year we focused on you know the safety of the uh environment we increased our training and practices with the emergency response drills um with the
099Safety Committee we added some speakers to our PA system we have a pretty old PA system at paway now that we're officially uh the oldest building in uh School building in Ashland so um we obviously need to do some upgrades now that we're going to be there for a little while um or we know we're going to be there for a little while um and we have obtained some supplemental funding for our gross motor curriculum and recess um equipment um so that will allow us to increase inclusive play and access for everyone both inside and outside that's been through support um through our preschool PTO they have their own PTO they've done a lot of fundraising for us a baa Community Grant as well um and one of the fluty communication boards um that Tiffany
100Barry got for the kid spot she also just got for us um at the preschool so that will be displayed soon which will be great for communication and language access um next steps is continuing the building safety assessment we're getting some new doors this summer um through the capital plan and just making sure that um we're keeping up with the general maintenance of an old building but also meeting the needs of all of our Learners we have a lot of Learners um that we just need to make sure are fully inclusive and can access um in a meaningful way our spaces um both in the building and outside we're continuing the Alice training you all know that um as part of the district and soon we're going to campaign for some kind of playground surface
101removal of the big structure um just trying to figure out how we can make that outdoor space um more supportive reasons to celebrate we've had over 85% participation in all of our whole school events from families um whole families grandparents I mean some families came to the picnic with eight or nine family members so it was it was a big event um we've increased access to family communication through the s'mores newsletter the talking points and the parent coffee um a lot of feedback is um parents didn't know that they could be involved in school um for whatever reason it's their first experience so really like spending that time to talk to them to say no we want you involved we want you to come in this week they're doing all the summer birthdays so it's
102like I'm seeing parents multiple times a day coming in for August and July birthday saying I never thought that we would celebrate those things um so it's great to see their involvement I mentioned um the PTO they've been phenomenal for us with enrichment activities um in the end of the year picnic was definitely the Highlight if you drove by it probably looked a little chaotic uh I think Mike was like how many people are you expecting and I was like well the RSVP is quite High um but it worked out um establishing the data teams was a huge huge hurdle for us um to get us thinking about more just about play that it can still be play based learning but we can measure it and we can use it to guide our practice um
103and you know just continuing our collaborative efforts with the district and Community Partners we started bringing back like a dentist during Dental Health week and bringing those things back that we hadn't done um since Co really so that was great Community was very open and welcome welcoming it any questions like talk about it forever sounds amazing do you want the phone yeah okay I was probably gonna forget it too thank you Sarah thank you so much okay next up is the mindes school Improvement Plan update hello Jenna hello I to share this so thank you so much for having me um as I report out on the progress we've made this year I want to just start by saying that the staff at Mendes is positively fantastic and all the work we did this year
104was truly um the work of everybody with all hands on deck so I just want to acknowledge the wonderful place that started all this work um Equity so our goal this year was to develop a shared understanding of equity and culturally responsive teaching and learning which sounds like a big thing to bite off and it really was a bit daunting um but fortunately we were able to work with adaptive X which is um an agency that coaches and works with different districts to help provide coaching around cultur responsive teaching and learning so we had two coaches that worked with us we had a a leadership based team at the school which included uh the school counselor Kate the assistant principal um Christy Arnold and Jen Taylor were able to help and come over and participated
105as well and we had I think four full PD training days for us and we translated that into developing a four-part series for our teachers where we just did a really light exploration of what it means to be culturally responsive so we spent four sessions one talking about identity one talking about um implicit bias and the of a single story and then a jigsaw where people chose what they wanted to learn about the whole coaching point was for me to be constantly modeling the way teachers should be working with children so offering agency and choice differentiation and um different levels of what what was presented and then the final activity was an opportunity for people to work together to synthesize the information and to present a final project and that's what you see up in
106the top Corner um we posted them in the school so people could reflect on the work that everyone had done and a lot of the feedback that I got um anecdotally from the teachers was positive they were invested in the conversations they were broken into small groups to do the work so it it felt really good uh the fourth grade teachers also had a professional goal this year to survey their libraries and to make certain that they had U what we call the windows and the mirrors for them students to see themselves in the literature so they've got a wish list of books that they would like to include um but it was was really exciting that they did that all on their own so that feel like the staff is buying in so for
107next year we're looking to continue our work with adaptive X um we're going to tie in there's a book called being the change we're going to tie in some of the lessons in there into our Community Learning which I'm going to talk about in just a second um and we're going to develop specific lessons and responses to when we have children using inappropriate language in school so they'll have to it'll be sort of like an adult module where they'll have to read a little bit about the history of what it is that they're saying or doing and then take a little online quiz and then we'll share that with the parents at home so everybody understands what's happening and what we're doing to address it um and then we're going to explore disabilities visible disabilities
108and invisib invisible disabilities and the impact that it has on our Learners because often we need to just take a minute and reflect on the whole child and figure out where they're coming from before we can make real progress in the learning so that's the equity piece so social emotional social and emotional learning um so we had our Nature's Classroom trip on Monday with a fifth grade which was really excellent and I was walking with a student uh we were kind of behind the trail and I said to him what is it your favorite thing about mes you're in fifth grade You' have nothing to lose tell me what you like or don't like and he said to me I just like being a mes kid and I paused a little bit and I thought
109well what is what is he saying does he not know how to answer the question I didn't didn't know what he meant and I said what do you mean and he said I just like being a Mendes kid and I said so you just like being a part of the school and being a member of the community and he said yes that's exactly it and I wish I had recorded it because that's exactly what we've been striving for um and it was just great to hear that from a student but we did this year um we do very many Community meetings but we also added something called the Community Learning and the idea was to get a cross-section of children from different grades and keep keeping with the notion that we're going to have multi-age
110learning that goes on at mindes and every month you met with your new class for an hour and we developed a schedule of events that was going to happen and we did a lot of con conversing with the staff to find out what we could improve on as we went through because we had a couple of activities that weren't group activities and that didn't seem as valuable because if we're trying to build community don't do a portrait kind of thing so we have some new ideas for next year going forward and um I think we're going to we're definitely going to continue to do it so that's exciting Qui question for you Jenna yeah well the kids who were together this year like the third and fourth graders will they be still be part of
111the same multi-age Community next like will those kids stay together as they age through that's the plan and it will get trickier with the movement um but they they can do it one thing I've learned about the Mendes students this year is they can they can do anything the Symposium they all went all the places they needed to go so it'll be great and The Trusted adult which is such an interesting theme that seems to be coming across tonight so that was part of our specific goal so this was interesting we asked the adults did they feel the children formed connections so next year we're going to be asking the children so we flipped it um and we do need to think about what about those 6% that we're not sure about there was this
112question like going to each classroom teacher and asking them about the indivual stud the individual students in their classroom and this is the percentage of the individual students that they don't think have or are they just just a general that's a great question this was a General survey and one of the questions was as a result of Community Learning do you think your children made it wasn't there was nothing quantitative okay because it would be interesting to do it we asking students but the INE you have the opportunity to say hey I know these 20 kids do I think that they that you know and be able to say I think Mike has some issues here that he doesn't feel he belongs we I've done it um in the past two where you have a
113picture of each child and the adult writes whether or not they're connected to the kiddo and then you have the cards at the end and you can say these are the children that have no adults on their card so what are we going to do about it so that's another way to flip it and look at it community service at MES this was better than I thought I was really nervous about how this was going to go and what the buying was going to be like um so I got a couple fourth grade volunteer teachers to help me develop this and each classroom had the opportunity I worked with each classroom and we did a mock application for jobs and they all applied and then they got assign their jobs and for some kids that's
114why they came to school that day because they got to be morning greeter um so they really looked forward to it so I'm excited about expanding it next year the fifth grade um with Carolyn bro's guidance they did morning announcements on a video so she used the green screen in the new lab and they made the daily announcements um and they were really really cute and really well done so next year I'm hoping the third grade will become the Garden Club because we have a lot of places where we could be pulling weeds and watering and taking care of our environment put those kids to work take care of that new building y I have them cleaning the floor if I could love it Resource Management so not yes the new building is amazing um
115nothing seems to be too too challenging at the moment we continued with our practice fire drills and our evacuation drills and our active shooter drills all of that those were done for the first time so we were strategic and having police and fire join us and give us feedback and I thank Mike for leading that charge um so that we knew where we had problems and we've been able to rectify them in terms of how we evacuate um we've developed and refined plans for all of our transitions throughout the day and we will continue to work on that for next year and the playground's been amazing just amazing curriculum and programming so our goal for this year was to implement data team meetings and to intro not introduce but to continue to focus on small
116group instruction and um I have got to give this to Kate Alman who organized an implemented 18 data meetings to review Eli progress set goals and monitor progress they were truly um an opportunity for teachers to come together and discuss children's progress and to look at where we needed to improve and from that information they were able to make um small groups and determine how to best go about targeted instruction we had six data team meetings to review math mcast Andals and we had two data team meetings that looked specifically at El progress so uh we were all very excited about that and next year's goals are to implement math and to um Implement ST Math for our curriculum planning so a big year Lots went on thank you big year any questions any questions
117good stuff than you Jenna great thanks Jenna all right student services update the very patient Britney thank you for hanging in there with us all this time we just um came from our unified track and field banquet at uh the cafeteria today uh coach Sanford and myself uh took the lead this year um so it was a really awesome opportunity um I think unfortunately uh the coach from last year um you know respectfully decided to spend some time with their family but I didn't want to see the pro kind of fall away so I was able to convince Josh volun told him to help me and um all of the other coordinators including Sarah um did as much as they could to come and help out um a parent Duo I referred to them as
118coach Mom and Dad Greg and Christine cavy came to every single practice and were incredibly supportive so couldn't ask for a better community in that regard was that enough pause time for you Jim no I'm sorry it's already up gr's file found it yeah well how I mean there no that's just Britney I'm just gonna talk um so the focus of this year's development was the 18 to 22 program which you know for cohort of three students you might think that you know it should be easy but being in a former District where my special education classroom was a grade n to 12 classroom that was the um program that would feed some of the students into the transition program for lack of a better term um I saw not an ineffective development of the
119program but it was like if you have a space it'll be great you'll be fine um so it was great to have that experience and know that so much more needed to go into it to ensure that these three kiddos Young adults are coming into this program with Community connections job placements a curriculum um everything that you could possibly think of in terms of um kitchen materials right so a set of 12 for serving uh where we're going to host parents and families to come in you know once a month and it will be um an event for both staff that maybe we'll invite other you know members of our community to intend the stakeholders that are partnering with us for the businesses um I did a lot of research in terms of and effective
120curriculum to use um some of the research included visiting some of our current out of District placements where our students are to see what their transition age programs we're using from that um the the standout curriculum was the paay curriculum which is a fully um it looks at the entire scope and sequence of any individual life so whether it be relationship building hygiene uh the importance of attendance on a job Internet safety banking um all of those things so um with some of the funding that I requested for you know fiscal 245 um we are going to be purching purchasing that curriculum um during the development of this program I met every six weeks just about I missed a meeting because I forgot to roll it over and thank goodness the moms on on the
121committee were really helpful about reminding me if I made a m step um to get their input what do they think they need what do they think they want their young adult to have to lead a healthy successful life some of those things being Community you know uh relationships at a fitness center or a music program um doing those Leisure skill activities that sometimes can be hard to find those specific connections with and embedded in the curriculum there's actually an entire unit or two on establishing those preferred leisure activities because sometimes as you know everybody knows the technology piece of what we do is just an easy accessible um on demand thing that is entertaining for not just our young adults but our all of us right um so looking at more holistic uh leisure
122activities to get students out and involved in their communities and active um the best part about housing the 18 to 202 program uh on campus is it makes that access to our Unified sports programs that much more accessible for these students while it's always open to our out of District students just like anything right where they can participate in the things that we do they'll be able to do that seamlessly here so it's really exciting um I imagine as students get closer to 22 we might be looking at different capacities right maybe you're a coach maybe you're you're an assistant captain of some kind where you're not necessarily participating on the team any longer because we'll have freshman on the team and a 14 to 22 year old is a little bit different right and
123not something that all students will be necessarily comfortable with but working in a capacity to Foster um you know uh roles of empowerment for our young adults as they transition year to year um we did that's really yeah that's just the I'm gonna do do what I won the first page uh really the next few are really just everything I said about the um the development the steps that we took um really making sure that we were checking in the entire time with all stakeholders community members um and job placements for our students that have been absolutely phenomenal um as I said a little bit earlier we continued with the high school and middle school uh implementation of Unified sports I'd love to see unified track be brought to the Middle School in the next
124hopefully year or two um now living through it as a coach I I mean I did it in my previous District but knowing what it looks like here and some of the logistics makes it a little bit more easier to think about what that looks like at the middle school level um we participated in the five Town Special Olympics day at Millis this year which was hosted outside which um caused a lot of alarm initially I think for everybody um I did a lot of um later evening drive-bys of the space just to make sure that we were fully prepared pred uh for our students and you know Jim Mike and everybody who participated could certainly attest it was a beautiful day perfect weather and there wasn't a single issue that you could really possibly
125have it was just a perfect day they were nervous I talked I was nervous was like oh yeah is that how we said it too okay that's how we said it you know um like I said I visited um you know uh multiple Local 18 to 22 programs that have established Community placements so not housed in any of the the school buildings but off- campus with you know fully self- sustained businesses for our kiddos um thinking about all of the intricacies of that it's not something that will be on the table next year I I don't know how to run a a business um actually I did run a business but I don't know how to develop one in a community in a program so Chris um just kidding no okay maybe maybe maybe Chris
126um so so we also really looked at some of the community kind of training um prerequisites for the students like we purchased two task boxes if you will that are like a box on the go to support um students as we identify job placements I only purchased two because I really feel like we could probably find somebody who has an expertise in a certain area and say what do you need to do this job go purchase all the things and let's put a box together and really train our kiddos with that that way um we continued to oh I skipped one we made well I made a special education process handbook that really outlines all of our procedures I think Sarah and I can attest I I made it I don't know how I just
127kind of put it all together and we haven't formally like thoroughly reviewed it as a group um my goal is to hyperlink all of the forms that we need in our department in that handbook so everything is accessible to everybody One-Stop shop everything that you need especially if you're a new employee in this District where do you where's that form for that well click the handbook and now you have it so I'm excited about that it's just going to be a work in progress um we have continued to translate our documents and you know Sarah I keep talking to you because you know hey it's us um I think that I've found that the turnover is it's immediate right we're not sending the documents to an outside agency and waiting we're providing that Equity that
128everybody's speaking to today and making sure that all of our families are getting the documents on demand and the two years that we've been doing this it's estimated over $180,000 savings just from doing it internally and we haven't had a single family reach out or Express concern with what has been provided in the meetings where they're also being provided with that opportunity to have an interpreter so I would say two years in it's successful I mean you haven't heard anything have you no that's great um uh the summer camp schedule we're going to continue to run with a theme where everybody will be doing the same thematic um you know structure week one through five in summer camp uh Aaron Drake has worked with me to develop grade level curriculum that is accessible to all
129the teachers in part you know we want to ensure we're not um we have the materials to support students not regressing and having access to the content that's continually being provided for them when they return um so having that starting point has been huge especially when you have teachers that we hire even if it's in internally that may not work with grade level three students but work at the middle school so what does that look like so alleviating some of that transition and um that navigation in terms of how do I teach a third grade classroom I'm sure you all know and figure it out but it's nice to have those same materials on demand um we've contracted with Alan Bloom to support us in more um effective goal writing that um hopefully will be
130linked to more datadriven um documentation and approaches to make sure that we find the most supportive ways to progress monitor our students but also can support our staff in that process um so he will be coming on one of the first professional development days for the district and meeting with all of our staff we're very excited to be working with him um I've also looked at the application goal book which from what I've heard is a a very supportive um online data mechanism for this that really helps you look at a profile of a student establish a goal and individually tailor that goal to the student which yes we obviously all do but it looks at the data that you're inputting and it supports the progress monitoring piece which I think is huge marbor Public
131Schools um was shared with me as a district that has used it as close to locally as possible so goldbook is linking me up with their um rep not reps but the the director and the individuals that are using it there so I can spend some time really learning about the nuances and troubles that they've maybe had navigating the application prior to the start of the school year that's really it that's it yeah the rest of I don't you know I was just thinking about it any questions questions comments no one quick shout out to Tina um you've attended every ashack meeting with us we can't thank you enough for having your representation there it's really been great for me to have you um as a co-p person you know and when questions come up
132it's just been really great to have you there and to support that transparency that we're working to establish with that parent group yeah good job that's awesome thank you Tina thank you so maybe one question for you I know we went through not too long ago the budget process you thought about things but now that you you know you spent a lot of time going over and doing the reviews of things and you obviously have a lot of things in mind about is there anything else that we can do either financially or are there support to that you're looking maybe even it's not next year but the year after that we should have our radar for helping support Transportation um I know Kevin and I very briefly talked about um having a larger capacity not
133fullblown yellow school bus available to us but a smaller transport transportation system that could be shared potentially between Athletics and um the program uh currently we'll be using the electric vehicle which will be great um for the cohort that we have in the Lead Teacher um but in the years to come that's not going to work so um with thought knowing I'll have a year to kind of think about that and what it looks like so that'll be on deck for research project for me for next year I don't know how much money that will cost but we'll figure it out anything else it would be interesting to see uh we can't do it at scale but I know like the the federal um uh was that Federal funding that we're going to get the
134rebates uh for part of that is you know busing Electric busing and things like that it would work at scale for us but I wonder whether even something like that would would be an opportunity for uh something on a smaller scale to uh whether that would work or not but yeah there's actually conversation within the superintendent group uh to try to work together to actually get funds for numerous districts uh with regards to fleets electric fleets thank you all so much thank you happy summer dollar free free a bird thank you thank you Student Activity accounts is that you Chris no actually sorry I just didn't get a chance at the beginning of the the meeting we're going to we're going to push that off uh until the summer uh when we have all of
135the activity accounts reconciled and we'll just do it all at once I supposed to bring in a batch now and bring in a batch uh in the summer so we will skip over that section right now awesome save you 38 seconds but it's fine take it ks's like this is the quickest part of it we will take it so we will we'll move that until the summer all right well yeah that's what we do Chris that's his part actually took longer for him to explain why right it's true 100% but I did want to explain all right so we're up to the superintendent's evaluation now that the room has cleared out uh this for the public anybody who might be watching um we do do this every year it's one part of one of our
136three main jobs as school committee members is to evaluate the superintendent and the law requires us to do it publicly um so that's what I about to do we follow a process um same process every year and we set goals in the beginning of the year that get set um the chair and vice chair sit down with the superintendent we come up with some proposals for goals we work it out with the entire entire school committee we settle on some goals we vote on them and then Mr Adams is rated uh on his performance on the goals as well as a rubric that we follow um through the Massachusetts State uh superintendent evaluation so um thank you everybody for getting your evaluations to me everybody completed the evaluation and I'll do as I I do
137every year as I everyone has their copy um Mr Adams has been given his copy and I will uh read the explanation of um the findings as well as this this covers a lot of the comments that were made by the entire committee this is the Consolidated opinion of the committee is how it works everybody submits their um personal recommendation to the evaluation to the chair Mr Adams will have an opportunity to look at those but the uh formal evaluation is the evaluation of the committee and so these comments reflect um what the majority of the committee um decided and hopefully everybody does feel like your comments were represented um but if not we'll have some time for discussion afterwards okay okay are you good you ready it's his favorite part of the year he
138loves this uh superintendent Adams continues to be a talented and dedicated leader of the Ashland School District as a district we are fortunate to have Jim at the helm as he is a compassionate leader has high standards for staff and students and leads with Integrity Mr Adams embodies a professional culture that puts people first and fosters an environment where everyone feels supported and valued this helps to attract and retain talented dedicated people Jim's skilled approach to relationships extends to the unions Town officials the school committee staff and Community Jim has empowered his administrative and operational staff to be a high functioning team committed to maintaining high standards across the school district in particular Jim and his team ex executed a successful opening of a brand new SCH School while the finishing touches were being completed
139a preventative operations maintenance was thought out and put into place to ensure safeguarding of the new asset there have been several key accomplishments this year including the opening of the new mindes school the successful negotiation of four Union contracts the adoption of a new strategic plan the attention and efficiency with our budget several goals were met including the reduction of chronic abs ISM at the high school implementation of the multi-tiered system of support at the Warren school as well as visual math instruction program continued focus on internal special education programs implementation of I diagnostic initiatives in the elementary and middle schools and the completion of multiple capital projects Jim and his team are committed to continuous Improvement by regularly assessing and refining strategies to achieve academic success this past year they partnered with open architect
140text to create dashboards to track and measure student I ready test scores throughout the year using this data inform decision-making and teaching strategies to improve classroom instruction and focus Jim routinely looks at District costs and is consistently monitoring the cost effectiveness of programs and initiatives to maximize value as evidenced by creation of several internal special education programs to bring students back into the district from out placements and reduce the number of students who need Services outside the district Jim is also a thoughtful leader who is open to feedback and realizes that even when we're doing a great job in many areas there is always room for improvement some of the work that school committee members would like to see further developed include continued development of age appropriate community service programs in each building and optimization
141of our communication capabilities by focusing on accomplishing the Strategic goals we identified in this area but have not yet met the school district rolled out a standardized communication plan which uniformly distributes information to the ashin community Jim and his team value Community input and utilize various methods including but not limited to surveys curriculum nights parent conference and school committee meetings to encourage active participation and feedback from the community progress has been made to standardize Communications but the Strategic element of what we have been trying to achieve needs to be adjusted during Jim's tenure in Ashland he has always prioritize the well-being of students staff and administrators he leads by example in this area Jim's leadership during trying times has been steadfast the committee very much appreciates Mr Adams and his leadership and is grateful he
142continues to choose Ashlin he has met the goals we have set and ratings for this year include um there are four standards and the first standard is curriculum I don't know the exact title of it instructional leadership uh and Mr Adams was found to be proficient in instructional leadership management and operations exemplary family and Community engagement proficient and professional culture exemplary um and because there were two proficient ratings overall and two exemplary ratings overall I um just dug a little bit further into the data to come up with um had to decide whether the overall rating was going to be proficient or exemplary because it was just so you all know my process because it was sort of 5050 although you know the majority of the committee their overall rating of the majority was exemplary
143and when I broke down the data with the subcategories um you moved into the exemplary category so we are pleased to present you with that rating we are very grateful um for you Jim um and and not just what you do for Ashan but um I think we all you know have a personal relationship with you that we value um we've we've built a lot of trust together um we work well together um you've assembled uh an administrative team that we really respect and enjoy working with as well and that also do a lot of things for this District um and I just want to thank you and I'm going to open it up to everybody else to either offer something that I may have missed or to add your additional thoughts I I just
144would Echo them you know I I think um thank you seems to be like the best I can come up with at the moment um you know I think everything that Lori has summarized is um spot on you know you're an excellent leader of this district and a leader in this community I think we're very fortunate to have you I'll just say ditto thank you for all that you do I won't elongate it anymore but we appreciate you and are grateful to have you at the helm of our district yeah I think for me this is year eight or nine of done these and so we always you know it's it's a repetitive thing seems to be that you're good at your job and and the uh this reflects it and I think you know
145Tech with them we're all fortunate that you're here uh I think the rubrics allow us to you know grade you in certain ways but I think one of the things that I I you know think you should be most proud of is some of the professional or personal growth you've had this year has been the fact that we mov the district forward as much as we did with with uh you know and you've been able to accomplish all that it's been been something you should be very proud of and so appreciate all your efforts you get to say something if You' like well I don't want to say much for an hour um but no it's I think whenever we have conversations about the things we do well and or the accomplishments we have it's
146really um you know Mike and I have these conversations and Chris it's the team we've assembled right I think that's probably what I'm most proud of um because the the data or the goals that are being accomplished are really being accomplished by the folks who are in the buildings right and the and the directors uh who are um putting forth that daily effort to ensure that the Strategic plan is is being uh followed or as we're trying to meet the goals that we set and the initiatives we set so I I think you know I'm I'm really most proud of that component of what we have Set uh I think there are alling times um working for me and with me uh there's no doubt about it uh I'm really excited about our future uh
147I'm excited for Aon L Chappelle if if you were at graduation and and you just see the the amount of love and um commitment and passion that she has for Ashlin and and the kids and how in the families that's what the middle school is going to be getting and it and to me I look at it and say that is the quintessential Middle School principal and that relationship building in probably the toughest three years of a growth of a child and so those are the things I'm proud of right that we've built internally folks who can move from one building to another uh Britney whether she was special ed coordinator into the role of a the the director of student services right those are things that I think I reflect upon and say hey
148we're we're making progress because of the team we've assembled um and the goals the the the work that's being done is really being done by them my job I've always said this my job is to support them uh and to to relieve any you know stressors that they may have uh so they can do their job um similarly I think as a principal should remove all the stress from a teacher so they can do their job well um and if we follow those sets of of rules uh that's when we're successful um I think publicly I want to State and Lori did this earlier um with Michelle retiring um it's a new opportunity um with with new leadership um but I'm most proud of that too right the connection uh you know Laura you mentioned
149four Union contracts hopefully tonight uh we'll ratify the fifth um but those relationships are again not just the team we've built but I think the relationships that we've been able to forge as an admin team with our unions is what has really driven our district forward um there's a lot of trust and faith in one another and that's pretty important um thank you for your thoughtfulness and uh you know words of kindness but I think I said this last year it's my job so um so I thank you well thank you you're doing a good job yeah you do well and we're lucky to have you so thanks um we're not done though no got a couple things you have an update Mike I I I'll probably give a really nice long update over over
150the summer we Encompass the year you're going to say tonight yeah there are a couple things I wanted to say tonight because you know just to get out there um one of the things in particular that I'm really happy about is that this year we have decided to um move forward with our freshmen uh being allowed to take geometry cp2 as freshmen and I think that's something that we've talked about for a number of years and you know worked worked hard with our math curriculum leadership team and um it's it's one of those things that I think deserves to be said publicly that that we've agreed to take on this Challenge and I'm I'm proud of the high school for being willing to take on this Challenge and I'm proud of the middle school for
151advocating to get there and really really glad to see this change happen I think it's a real POS POS thing for our district and and I look forward to seeing how those students progress I say on that Mike I think it's great news I mean for for all of us who' have gone through that transition with one or more children um whether it affects your own children or others it is a significant point or has been historically a significant point of concern and frustration for many many parents who see their children basically doing the same thing in ninth grade as they had done in eth grade um and when their their kids you know weren't in a position necessarily or weren't ready for the challenge of moving to the honors level geometry it it was
152it felt like a lost year for a lot of people and I think um we're resolving that point to pain moving forward and that's great news well thank you I'm really happy that we're doing it and I it was was one of those things that I set off that goal this year and I'm glad that it happened awesome um you know in in our our principles have touched on so many of these things but the you know the implement the full implementation of I this year has really been a success um looking forward to sort of digging into that data really deep to see the growth that has happened throughout the year now we have our beginning of the year data to our end of the year data and I've already started that uh process
153I had a long conversation already with Kathy FIA today talking about only the Dibbles but the ey radio to see where we are and again I I told you I look forward to being able to sort of dig into that with you this summer um during a longer presentation um obviously Dibbles as well completed that uh we continue to partner with the ash Public Library our lists will be with them for our summer reading um there's a nice relationship there that has continued um and the other course that's going to be happening next year which is exciting is we're going to have a new um English learner beginning beginning English learner uh course um for biology at the high school next year so we're proud of that as well to allow our students to gain
154access in a new way to make sure that they're ready to to to ultimately take the mcast um but to to provide a good opportunity that's going to coll be collaborative between our English learning department and our science staff uh and they're going to be working on that this summer um during the curriculum writing uh the successful implementation of amplify for science at the middle school was something to be proud of and then obviously folks talk today about open Architects you know that we've talked about that throughout the year and even as Sarah was speaking I was pulling up a dashboard to show Jim we've got to set our finger she was talking about the specific data it's there I can pull it up in seconds and it's it's really wonderful to be able to
155know that and finally I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about uh graduation uh what a special moment um to watch my first first graders walk across the stage I was talking with folks that these kids are extra special to me they're the first graders I had them in second grade and then I I met them again along their journey in fifth grade um so next year becomes that first year of students that I sort of followed along the path all the way um but just a a wonderful ceremony the the class day was was wonderful as well we have some really talented young men and women in our in our midst and just so much to be proud of and it was just this sense of I can imagine what I'll feel like in
156a few years when my own child is is is graduating and I can imagine what you two felt watching your own children because I felt like they were mine this year and the sense of Pride to watch those kids walk across the stage was was just really special so indeed yeah I I will say that um in in my house you got R reviews for the the manner in which you presented each of the children the energy with which you did um and your ability to pronounce names of many different languages and and Origins um and you know I share this my my dad my stepmother in particular who were U commenting on it and I said these are kids he knows you know and explain sort of the history just to share it and
157um obviously very special day for a couple of us who had kids walk on the stage um but it's always a special day you know I always I always it's my favorite day of this gig is graduation day and seeing where kids are going next and um that they've grown into like real live people you know right and it brings like why we all do what we do and and to see them having the opport their next opportunity you know I talk about it um with my son it's like this is the part you don't get the control over over you get to pick the next thing and seeing what all these kids who have gone through our schools are able to choose to do right because of of the experiences they've had here they
158have other opportunities to to now become a little bit more of of what they want to be and you know that path goes on for life but it's just um always a special day and uh just thank you for your your role in it too did we actually had the same conversation in my house how it was evident that each one of those kids that you got to announce their names that you knew them you you you had Smiles on your face and just looking at the pictures I mean we were lucky enough to present the diplomas for our own kids so of course I got a thousand pictures and and every one of them the smile on your face was bigger than the smile on my like almost like it was it was pure
159joy and real um you know it it it it f helped really Foster that sense of community which was really nice it was evident you knew all them um too you know like it was it was really nice you know um to to to feel that connection and it's I mean the our our students always impress me but it's just it's so exciting a to hear about what they're doing after high school but to hear all that they accomplished in high school like the the the accolades and the awards and the just the the the conversation about what good people they are I mean it was just really um it was really nice obviously super super heartwarming is apparent but very very made me very proud as a school Committee Member too that's it thankk
160you I guess I'll keep mine to the business aspect of things um give it a real short and sweet too there uh just as we head into the summer months uh we're uh really I think probably 80% of the way done on our hiring uh for next year um at least with the retirements that that have occurred uh we filled just about 90% of those I would say but we have some positions that we approved such as the 18 to 22 year old program Britney was talking about the bright program at the high school um I think we've got the the major components done we have a school adjustment counselor hired as well as a Lead Teacher for the 18 to 22 program so those are two really major roles that we filled were're able
161to fill um we're still working at filling a couple roles uh at the Middle School uh as well as the dean position uh at the high school uh that's the struggle I didn't get a lot of um congratulations from the high school staff when I walked through the building about taking Aaron but uh uh but they were like Jim you made a great choice yeah I know um but graduation as always this was my 15th uh in Ashland um it was great to see I want to let you know I'm thinking of investigating finding a place where we can actually have graduation where there's little more controlled climate um this is the second of the last three years where we've had whether it's at night or during the 10 o'clock in the morning on a
162Sunday uh where it's really oppressive in there uh although we do have the auditorium available to folks they prefer to be there watching it live in person but it does come with some some struggles and as our class size is get into 230 to 240 range uh it's going to be even more challenging um so we are in the process of looking at um are there options for us locally uh where we could potentially have graduation uh in a more climate controlled environment um Andor you know you know what are some potential capital projects that might help us at the high school as well I know John Murray's always looking at um you know cost-effective measures but also um you know programs that are out there in terms of U providing funding to to um
163create climate cooled buildings I mean to looking at that for the gym would make it makes sense from a community perspective 100% that's an asset that you can't really leverage in this summer people are there those things I know Cindy Livingston would really appreciate it on certain days of the year right but but those are things that you know as we move forward we will have those conversations at the summer workshop um just FYI I mean I've asked John to come and and talk about some of the things that he's looking into for us um but again kudos to Kelly and the staff and um and to all the families and and yeah it is it's nice to see you know the wide range of things folks are doing when they leave our school system
164whether it's work military um you know college uh Gap years um it's impressive um and you don't quite notice it until you you know till you sit there and you talk to people and you know you know it's uh the Highlight for me was actually sitting with Nathan I told Mike the story is he and I are sitting there talking and and uh he said Mr Adams just want to ask you one question I said yeah what is it how do you call a snow day he like I've been really wondering how you actually do this so he's that smart and he hasn't figured out yet you know I said This is how we do it yeah he's like yeah yeah and uh it was just pretty funny he's like I just want to know
165I told him the process that was great and he's like okay at least you take a lot of different perspectives yeah so it was great well you haven't been doing the well I don't know yeah you know I'm sort of you know he asked about that too actually one of the it was I was walking down to class day as a junior a couple junior girls uh were right behind me Mr Adams you don't tweet anymore during snow days you know and like we have to go an extra day I said well blame the guy who called the snow day this year you know just blame me go ahead it's okay um but yeah I'm I'm boycotting x a little bit so as they call it fair enough makes sense all right next up um
166Paul you weren't here at the last meeting so we could not do waren approvals do you have them yes I have I have two sets of uh two blurbs I have to read uh so between May 9th 2024 and May 22nd 2024 I Paul Kendall authorized by my signature payables in the amount of 621,000 $361 this includes general fund expenses of $558,500 125 Grant expenses of $3,585 and meals tax expenses of $729 and then between May 23rd 2024 and June 11th 2024 I Paul Kendall authorized by May signatures payables in the amount of 43253 67 this includes general fund expenses of $257,600 91 revolving expenses of 169,170 and Grant fund expenses of $582 34 thank you no idea why I have to always read this what they make us just do as you're told gifts
167and donations uh yeah we have a couple uh Planet Aid uh $337 40 miscellaneous gifts and donations the baa Invitational Ashland Community grant for $2,500 uh gifting for a new preschool playground equipment uh preschool PTO matching the baa Grant of $2,500 as well for the playground equipment and the Doug fluty junr Foundation um $1,150 gifting preschool playground uh communication board for a total of $ 6,487 40 wonderful do you have a motion to accept the gifts and donations moved thank you all in favor I okay um minutes from May 22nd anybody have anything on the minutes does anyone have a motion to accept the minutes so moved all in favor I I and then uh anybody have any member updates want to start Paul I'm sure there's things I should say but uh you don't
168really have to I I I I did notice you know I was going to say earlier when Jim mentioned uh you know congratulations Daron for the new position but I I did notice that you know I think I may may a comment to you is how many genuine Embraces that were occurring not just like you know you know okay I got you know you're here but the the the genuine Embraces the the sheer number of that you know it just speaks volumes to you know her and and and how connected she is to the students so um so all that's really great FZ um work continues they're probably going to you know finish up in the next month or so with most of the contracted work and so they're loaming the field they're seating at
169probably I think on Saturday um they're working on uh the other areas that are you know there there's area outcropping uh by the pond there's the fields there's the Fisk Road access road that I think they just seated that um last week so uh things are things are coming along um you know talk to them about potentially leaving the driven fence up around the fields um as opposed to taking it down and putting up uh you know some less restrictive barriers would be better I think to to protect it more formally so we're looking at that um but yeah things are things are progressing awesome thank you we already talked about graduation and Senior week that was kind of the the you know the update I would have brought um I did go to the
170ashack meeting earlier this week um you know there's not a whole lot to necessarily bring back to the committee Britney always does a great job of updating them on you know hiring and you know different programmatic issues and answering questions but um there was no no big takeaway from the meeting that I was a part of but ashack you know I let them know we're going to be having our Retreat this summer so if there was anything that they wanted to make sure was a part of the conversation to feel free to talk amongst themselves and share so I'll certainly share if anything comes back to me on that only thing other than graduation um well actually one thing related to graduation I should said before can we please have the the diplomas not have
171law referred to as the chairman they should be just chair yes they do I don't even no I I remember mentioned you last year so Lori didn't notice either I've only signed 10,000 of those things over the last 10 years let's let's get with the times here so that that was one I am the man you don't think I'm the man no I don't um so the the only the other thing and I don't know if I talked about this last meeting or not um or two meetings ago we there was the last site council meeting at the high school um Kevin Anderson athletic director came in excuse me God excuse me thank you um Kevin came in and answered questions and there's a lot of um lot of Engagement he probably could have been
172there for a couple more hours um I think he he was probably almost an hour of the agenda um as it turned out um wasn't the plan but um you know one of the things that I think that just was a focus of attention and concern um is the issue that I think has been brought to our attention to some degree in the past around field management and and in particular field condition and access to Fields um concerns about um you know when other an outside group like youth football Youth Baseball what have you um has sort of reserve the field through proper channels and then we need to take them bump other people off um to we talked a lot about the history of that and some of the challenges with that but um
173you know since it it is something that I think has come up in different points in our conversations to share that there you know there continues to be um some concern about that and it was it was a a focal point of some of the conversation so um want to report that back thanks Mark um I do not have anything to add um I'll move right on to member updates that is member just did that I mean action items sorry I the words that came out of my mouth were not the same words that were in my brain but anyhow action items um then you're lucky it was only that b repeating that never happens um the next thing we're going to do as you all know is have our summer Retreat so I'm sure
174Jim you've been keeping track of all the different thing times we say we'll talk about that in the summer um and building a uh a proposed resume but uh agenda jeez see it's 8:15 it's it's past my bedtime let's just go on Executive session don't wor talk anymore I was do we need to take a vote to go past 8 for you or something um if you have a summer topic that you think should be on the agenda um please let us know soon um because Jim I I or mark my only time to sit down and talk about that agenda will be for like the next 10 days and then I'll be away for a bit and you guys will probably have your own vacation plans so we'll have to figure out um a
175good time to talk about it but for the rest of you if you want your topic on there um let us know as soon as you can please um anything else from anybody before I move to go into executive session all right I move to go into executive session under 21 A3 to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the barain in or litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares I so declare and not to return to open session and this is regarding the Ashland School custodians and the maintenance workers public employees Local Union 1156 so I will take the rooll call Paul Kendall hi Tina hi Mark second and I oh sorry thank you and I um so
176good night everybody thank you and we will see you soon in executive session the rest of you e