School Committee meeting 3/8/2022

001is um [Music] we're gonna begin with the pledge of allegiance of america one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice um so i do hope to gather kobit is over just like everyone else in this room and everyone feels unfortunately we have to keep a really close eye on it still if you check the state's site data is from 217 the thursday before vacation to march 3rd this past thursday and reported two staff and two students being positive within our district when checking the school district's dashboard is unclear that the week um the late state appointment two is from another mom emailed christy and got a clarification that two pieces in toronto and that confirmed none in the elementary schools although no date is next to this bar on the ground in the survey

00256.5 of the parents surveyed wanted an email alerting them if a positive case was identified did this email go after honcho parents if so so they could be high alert to test their own children i'm in the elementary school a lot of people have siblings in toronto and vice versa in elementary schools so this is really important for us to know and to be aware of we no longer have the mass or distancing that 57.3 percent of the survey parents believe contributed to keeping our schools open and in person we need to monitor any cases as the spread will go unchecked by masks and an outbreak could spread like wildfire within our schools and our community 69.3 of the surveyed parents believe the school district should define parameters once removed but also reinstate masking and

003code regulations something that was overlooked by most of the committee worcester county and most of massachusetts is green for the new cdc color coding system this system includes percent hospitalization other coping rates and also hospital debt availability which is really important but it's also important to note that one can no longer just compare rates between worcester boylston and berlin without this percent hospitalizing vet availability cdc raised the cases for a hundred thousand from fifty per hundred thousand as a benchmark for indoor masking to per hundred thousand and this increase is very dramatic if you don't take into consideration the two other factors that then put you into the yellow green and orange categories that they now have decided upon i hope the school committee can educate themselves on the current guidelines stay up to date

004on the rates within our towns and surrounding districts and also keep the dashboard up to date so parents can make themselves aware of current rates within the district and how much they need to be aware of symptoms from their own children so we're moving on to communications um we still have an open seat in berlin uh with no absolutes um the physician is opening a seventh month seven month commitment and all of our seats are up for re-election thank you um in november all the seats will be up for re-election so it's a great opportunity for someone to come in to try to save you to see if they would like to be on the school committee to you know give a small amount of their time to being on the committee it when i

005was appointed i looked at it as dipping my foot in the pool if anyone is interested in applying for this we are going to have an april 5th meeting where we will um interview any and all applicants at that time and we are really like some people to step forward from berlin specifically because it is item number five is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented yes second second discussion all in favor aye and i as well the motion to approve the consent agenda as presented passes [Music] so just in general the way this stuff usually works the school committee should write policy that's what we're going to do is the job of the school committee to write a procedure how that policy is going to be implemented so there's really when

006it comes to this masking in in all of the culverts there's really three possible stages you can be in it can be a recommendation it could be just a guidance it's a suggestion or it could be a mandate if it's a mandate from the state or the federal government that's something we would just have to do there's no arguing something on the wall under the wall um if it's a recommendation or guidance then there's the law options and that's where we would write some protocols and so that's what i wanted to talk about tonight not so again this is not the case of a mandate mandates are totally different we have to abide by state endings that are backed up by mass general law and last quarter regulation so um that's the background on this

007and so the carol and i worked with the superintendent's advisory which just jessica is a member so in glory we have a few other members two and uh sally sally and also and um we decided that we were going to use the latest covet 19 community level guidance this document this is february 25th clearly lays out three different categories [Music] or school level data but it does use three different parameters that are laid out in another document yes so this new guidance relies on three things relies on the covet hospitalization admissions over the past the previous week the percentage of hospitals that's occupied by co-vacations in a new case of pearl 1000 either above 200 or below 200 again just for reference so it's this guide is here and then what we got to do

008is we had an faq to go along so that would sort of be the guided document and guiding two documents and so um this will be a running this will be a running uh faq that we will keep on our website we will send this out as soon as the school committee approves their faith covering guidance we try we had a draft of the policy that's going to be voted out tonight and we try to make the protocols um work in line with the policy which is what we're supposed to do so i'm going to quickly go over these faqs i think does any questions about just one answer that too first question was and so we just generated five questions we basically asked if you're a parent what kind of what would you be

009interested in knowing after you look at this how long does our community have to be in each category before we change our masking guidance and recommendations so we will make that decision after 10 days from the time identified as having moved to the new chattahoochee so you move to the category 10 days from there the reason we did that is because there's a seven day lag so the category is based on what started to happen seven days before that so it's not seven days and then another ten days seven of those will be one full cycle so we essentially will be in a category for two full cycles and then three extra days that we usually need to make the decision get the communication out to the community so um question number two what other

010thing will you consider we're going to consider town and school vaccination rates as well as covert positivity rates um we look at cdc data as really one point although they considered three and again that's one of the things that as uh as an advisor we were still working on some details that have to be worked out with that but this is uh you know this is a living doctrine so we're continuing to work on number three will the masculine guidance be applicable to extracurricular activities um this will this guidance will be applied to indoor activities there's no masking guidelines for outdoors we will file the miaa guidelines also so if the miaa says they have to do a mask outside and then we obviously have to follow them but this guidance when we decide to

011put mask on if we do if we recommend that scrutiny and then they go to do it then it will apply just into us outdoors will still remain unmasked unless we're told to do differently the social distancing and other land layers of mitigation lay the mitigation strategy be considered in addition to masking we're always considering additional mitigation strategies we can continue to provide cleaning and disinfection as well as participation in symptomatic testing and the at-home testing we've removed all the social distancing guidelines that's been since the beginning of the year i know some of the buildings have a little extra space so they move students apart but you know we have to consider that what we're trying to do is we're trying to get back to normal for our students normal pre-covert um other considerations

012would be turning on impact on hand dryers uh in the restrooms and the drinking water access which would shut all those off we have um building stations still on and the um the cool of the five gallon bottles so if available those are those are in place also so again uh i know speakers of theory had asked me i said well we'll keep everything as is for until eighth one and we'll visit that um one will general assemblies regular watch baby again our overarching goal is to normalize the school day as much as possible we've returned to regular lunch periods and assemblies um so those are the those are the five those are the five so far um uh i guess is once we put these out parents will ask additional questions and believe again

013we will just keep adding to this as we go along again i want to stress that if it's a mandate for federal government estate to put mass.com we need to do it if it's a guidance recommendation along those lines we'll make a recommendation based on the data we collect we'll make a recommendation to the school committee and they will have a role so that's new asking these are the protocols go along with the policy that this committee is going to be voting on tonight and so this is incorporated in that policy that's inside it's not a quote it's not incorporated into the two separate things yeah that's why so it's gonna be two votes no you don't vote on protocols i'm just telling you what they are so no we're not going to vote on

014the protocols but so i guess you're proposing here that the school committee votes if we move if the school or the town moves into the color from cdc whatever the color is green orange is it i don't know so if we move into that we wait 17 days right well it would be 10 days right and then does the school committee vote yeah most likely so is that in policy if we voted in then we followed this procedure that's what i'm asking yeah yes that's what i'm asking i had the only reason i wanted first class because i had the same questions yeah so you'll vote on the policy and then yeah these protocols go along once you do this that gives the schools that's what i was trying to understand all right i got

015it now thank you so one vote on your house yeah that makes sense just ask the question everybody says steve see you sitting both first steven asked that was being turned and it's not until you go there yeah that's just a waterfall and hand dries most likely we've turned those off uh earlier [Music] you know again when we i just didn't want to do everything at one time but i feel pretty confident about that one because when those were turned on it was the idea that you would have the virus on your hands and then you know very little evidence anymore that that's that's any kind of an issue so what do they have now paper towels paper towels are there any other questions asking protocol for jeff before you move on to the mlu

016[Music] that the community didn't consider anything from the survey or any making policy i just want to say we did consider everything we were presented with everything that was presented was considered and then a decision yeah and just to follow up on that i will say that when this policy subcommittee met we had already been thinking about these protocols so it was considered the cdc was considered when the policy was written so i mean the public wouldn't have known that the doctor was considered you guys just wrote this policy yeah after we voted yeah we've had police presence in our school were part-time regarding police officers and science law school schools for a while there are two policy exhibits that are currently in the on the books they were from 2008 i believe and they

017were just signed by the school today so they really weren't even hammer used um they were procedural documents and seizure documents again they're usually written by the school so we didn't want to take them out we didn't want any place until we had something else substantial so um tonight we're going to talk about the mou that was developed by the district attorney's office at the temple everybody uses the same name their attorney's vetted i've sent it out to our attorneys who vetted it didn't have a problem basically that everybody uses when you look at it you can see that it slices all of the laws um so this is the one we'll be following two things we want to tell you this is again this is what this is this will replace those policy exhibits

018but the other thing is typically emilu is assigned by the police chief and superintendent about fifty percent of the time or so the school committee also signs off on we don't care i mean either way actually i'd probably like to have the school committee number to sign off on the mou um we don't have any plans to make any amendments or changes to this they're just places we have to kind of flesh it out put out school names in the end with some personnel names but typically what happens is it's a police officer so that a police officer that end is covered by the police department one of the things we've never had is the evaluation of the sro which the superintendent takes place in is provided for here and also training their training courses

019the sros now didn't exist before so that's all covered in here and so what we would do so we just had it in tonight for a discussion and i suppose if you name the time you'll have to have a vote on it next next meeting but um again it would just be a matter of you know putting your stamp on something that already exists and formalized that the relationship cal i know you had some stuff you wanted to kind of talk about yeah we've been working as a crisis team with the two police departments and fire departments for a long time now and when they brought this forward this just really formalizes the parameters for both parties and it gives us some kind of like it gives us flexibility with them to be able to

020utilize them in ways we may not have wanted to do before i mean i think it also speaks to our partnership with them and honors their presence in the schools unlike other districts they're not in our schools some of them have places they stay all day in the schools that's not the case here our resource officers go in and out of the schools but they're very active in terms of speaking in classrooms doing their program they've helped us with outdoor dollars drills doing trainings and as i said we meet with them at least twice a year and other times informally they're just around so i think this was brought forward from the two police officers chiefs um and they're really asking us to create that partnership but in a stronger way with them they feel

021that now is the time the last one is jeff mentioned and we haven't revisited um having this in place also gives us an opportunity to look at this annually with the police chiefs and say you know what kind of job in the sro was doing what else could we want them to be able to do so i think that's going to be um really important also as you read through the document you'll notice there's no financial commitment from the district it all comes from the town for the police department so it's already funded through their overtime pretty much um or anywhere they choose to fund this but um we're asking for your enlistment really and your opportunity to sign along with us um when we signed this initiative with the police chiefs as jeff mentioned

022we were falling back once we talked to you about this tonight and you have a chance to read it we're going to be meeting with them in the month ahead with the two police chiefs sitting down and going over this document more thoroughly making changes to it we felt we're most appropriate to us as a district and with the police department and then we'll move on to the next month's um divorce i don't know if anybody's had a chance to look at it again if you've had any questions there's a lot of flags or questions you have one thing i wanted to point out one of the the questions well first of all the school committees superintendents shouldn't be writing down these should come from it should be a state level document that covers all

023the bases one of the things that's covered in here and i think parents worry about a lot of competitive police presence in school is whether or not they will take on discipline so wonderful funded mass general laws they're not allowed to take part in general do that we have we have good relationships with our police departments and so and we know those thoughts and i know the principles work closely with them so we don't have those issues so i'm admittedly not well informed on this topic however i do know that there are other districts especially some of the larger urban school districts in the state where they've looked at different models for the amount but can you just help us understand your perspective on the role they play within schools and um well the the

024original intent of the sro this goes back to the midnight to build a wall between the police departments and the school district so that when children saw police at least out in the community they didn't look at them as the adversaries and enemies that they saw them differently than that so you know we continue to do that so they still we want them to think they're friendly and we want them when they're out on a you know on a saturday or friday we so you know that was the original goal and it still remains that but it's grown so they do as cow said they do a lot of professional development in the buildings um they they do uh what's the program with uh no not the odds yeah different variations of that i know

025we should have their office so you know it's basically that that that co-op um [Music] focus is really still in my mind what it's about it's having police in the building with safety aspect you know that hasn't changed plus they bring a lot to the table in terms of just stuff we can do in the buildings just you know they walk through the buildings and as you know we put you know safety film on all of these windows that was as a result of uh police liaison saying you know this that's a lot of glass on there those kids can go through it someone can try to come in there's a there's a very very cost effective way to deal with this um so as far as the why other districts have gone in a

026different direction i don't i don't know well the bigger ones are because they have bigger issues and they have you know maybe more criminal activities but i don't i don't i don't i don't know i can't speak to that i would just add to that we're very fortunate to have two wonderful officers who are dedicated to the schools i mean they all are really um but these two in particular dave holding berlin goody uh he's now managed i mean he's just there with the kids from when they're little and he knows them all and um brought barbados in doyle's and these these two men have gone out for trainings above and beyond to understand the laws and how to work with young people i think it speaks to something we talked about the last meeting

027that jake mulatto was here to talk about they want to build the relationships with the children while things are good so that they trust them and that they may think twice before something happens and they know that they can go to them in a safe safe and respectful way so i think that's that's what these gentlemen model um with them and it's i've seen it through the years we stepped up involved over in berlin and they used to keep their dare raised until they usually keep their dare essays and when you used to see them as teenagers sometimes you get in trouble you would that's exactly what you get out of it pull out your essay and read it to them i mean that was the kind of experience that it was and that's who

028they are we just feel very fortunate just that they support us and we support them i think that makes the difference from other districts nations and natural i don't think they're presences seen in the same way that we create and it's a relationship and they think a lot of them they think differently than we do we don't think about they might obviously think about school safety but in a different way they see these little things and they they call you attention to it it's just little tweaks here and there and um those are invaluable as it does between someone walking in the building and somebody not so they really are valuable do the principals want to add anything i mean you you see them all the time if goody was here you'd give you college

029so yeah i think you know i think with our relationship but really as carol and jeff stated it really is about um building relationships and not um so much about the discipline because they'll be the first ones you know to say that we as administrators have more power than police do um with the changes you know with the changes in the laws and they want to you know be partners with us they come in and they speak to students in the health classes work with the with the counseling office whenever we have a you know a crisis or a need you know we just make a quick phone call and they you know they're here um not just to offer guidance and and support some of the larger you know the larger districts they have

030you know very intense security systems um you know the students and staff have to go through daily there are schools that have um actual courts in there you know in their schools um and so it looks very very different than it it looks here and um it really i think it just the way that we are doing it really just adds to the relationship that we um have to over 14 years ago i need to say it one more thing we've talked a lot about the officers in school but i can share at least with goodies in berlin there's also an outside presence there are you know from time to time unfortunately things that happen in the community and cody's been so good with kids about kind of just taking them aside and reassuring them

031because he knows what's happening out there whether it's a medical emergency or or something less well-known um that relationship because it's been established for so long kids looked at him for that and really part what makes that relationship between him and my kids for that now i remember as a building industry i would meet with rsro every monday morning in high school and he would go through all the things that happened to me in all the possible issues that i might see that morning so you could you could attend to that stuff before it became a problem [Music] i think yeah it sounds like it's working out well here uh a couple you mentioned discipline that didn't even cross my mind a question about them involved with discipline but you mentioned specifically this new written

032document helping um build the relationship even what specifically will change in the schools with this will anything i don't feel like we're seeing anything changing i would yeah i really don't see anything that's actually happening kind of on the ground what's happening in the schools right now as far as that but we did if you go back if you compare this all of this to the previous one which it just shows how much they can do and how much they can help the fact that they go for training now if it's written down so just formalizing what you're doing exactly there's some pieces in there that you know even gave us some ideas as we went through it about other things we can do together and then we're building that i think that's something we've

033been building two years with the crisis [Music] well there's an educational component here that was never formalized for them so you know they'll bring that stuff to us you know go to the training program and that's our training program that we really never had and they'll bring those ideas back to us so we'll have a lot of that the superintendent really was there but in the schools would not be building on a formal way to evaluate at least i can bring something back to the table so that's what will be [Music] we are going to um uh mr henry is not here so we're going to um give his presentation he will give it at our next meeting and we're going to watch him thank you i'm just going to step up here for a

034moment so this is our annual mid-year benchmark discussion currently in the in the elementary schools and historically only in sixth grade we have used aims web which is an online program and it's a universal screening program that allows us to progress monitor students in the areas of reading and math and um it really helps us guide instruction but also provides us with on interventions and targeting those students who are in um in need of some sort of intervention where whether it be in math or english language arts so honda students in grades six through eight have completed their mid-year benchmark assessments due to the transition um previous years we had done math testing in grades seven and eight this year however um there was a decision that was made um really i believe it was

035over the summer and really in the early fall to change from map testing to aims web testing in the seventh and eighth grade as well to offer some continuity on between the elementary schools up all the way through the middle school so what you're going to see or what you do see in your report is that we only have mid-year benchmark um data for our seventh and eighth grade because the fall was a time in which we uploaded all of the secondary graders into into ames web as well as our sixth grade teachers trained our seventh and eighth grade teachers as well on the platform and the use and the data analysis so um this report is for sixth grade from fall to winter uh the light blue is our winter scores and the darker

036blue are our fall scores so in math um and reading up above is is the reading um you know as you can see a significant amount of our students are at um average above average or well above average i'm very pleased with um with the growth that we saw on in our average students um because i think that really shows you know obviously with kobe last year i think it really shows the difference sort of that that in-person instruction and the consistency of that in person instruction um can make even if it's just over a short period of time sally do you remember um when the sixth grade team did the fall testing was it in right away yeah september okay um so you know you're talking only you know approximately three months um and

037we're in we're seeing some um some nice growth in reading in math again um very similar i think one of the you know again one of the standouts is here um you know the number of students that you know were well below fewer students in the winter same thing with below average that then it obviously increased the number of students in in the average category in the sixth grade we um the sixth grade team has done an amazing job of developing a program um that's called the quest program um and it is really an intervention block that is fluid and it is really designed you know to make sure that you know whether it be after our aims testing and they're able to sort of target students who need extra support or assistance in certain

038areas or certain parts of the curriculum that they can actually tailor that intervention to those particular students but then they also do it throughout the year in areas of history and science as well um and so it really is and amazing it is a lot of work for them to be able to do this but it has shown amazing um amazing results in the sixth grade so we're very pleased um with these and as i said the result 91 of our students are falling on within the oh it's cut off within the um above average or well above average category this looks so different again because it is just that one it is just that winter um assessment and so this lighter block is a national average just so that we have something to compare

039it to this solid line right here again depending upon the student's um grade level it determined basically for us what our target score median target score would be up for that upper that arrow is um is where we actually score um and you know obviously as you you know as you can see on our seventh grade um in reading um obviously outperformed the the national average but also outperformed our target for the age group so we are very pleased with obviously with the students results seventh grade on math again here is our target which is where the national average is and this is where our our students have scored um they really so the seventh grade um is beginning to adopt some of the same type of program and transition for interventions as the sixth

040grade are as well they're not doing it every day um they are doing it i believe sally how many days is it once every six six days in their cycle the class yeah uh yeah for the summer well yeah yes yes once every six days um and you know again i think that they are seeing the results from that in the seventh grade we also have um math and ela labs in the seventh grade and we were using this aims web data um you know to determine entrance into those labs but also exits out of out of those labs as well in the eighth grade um i mean they they killed the the reading adam's web reading again this is our target this is the national average this is this is where the national average

041was was here um and the eighth grade really did an incredible job um you know with the with the aims web in the reading um again we obviously want to take they take a look at the individual scores and we also want to take a look at you know any of those students that fell um you know in this two students fell within this percentile taking a look at those students um as well and developing interventions and supports for them and in math again this is the this was our target and this is where the eighth grade students performed again in math and just like in seventh grade they have um we have math labs and ela labs um to be able to support the students in the areas that this type of data shows

042that those students need support so what do we use it really what do we use the data for besides these fabulous presentations um really it is to inform next steps in the instructional process for individualized and whole class instruction if the teachers are seeing that there are you know certain parts of the curriculum that students are really having difficulty with um this is going to pull it out much easier for them and really target be able to then give them targeted instruction for on either whole class instruction or to be able to take a small group and really focus on those areas and those skills to inform decisions for future curriculum mapping um so our curriculum database teachers are able to sort of do a curriculum map to determine exactly how much time is spent

043on certain parts of the curriculum and you know using um these results it will allow them you know the next year they'll take a look at you know this year and say you know what i only really plan for two weeks you know for these standards but what we're seeing is that these kids really need um you know to be able to focus on the standard a little bit longer so they're able to you to you know adjust the curriculum mapping so they know for next year we're probably gonna we're probably probably gonna need to spend you know an extra two or three days on this um on this standard also used to determine student eligibility for ela and math labs as well as quest as i just spoke about it's also used to help

044determine iep and 504 eligibility and progress monitoring and so you know when special education teachers are you know looking for you know if students are making effective progress this is just you know one point one data point that they're able to to pull from and one source to pull from um to help in making decisions for students iep and 504 plans and then um it's also one data point to help determine placement for following year whether it be in well in the middle school it would be for math only but um also from eighth grade to ninth grade for ela and leveling whether it be college prep or honors so overall i think you know sally and i are very pleased with um with the students and really the the teachers in you know the

045beginning of the school year seventh and eighth grade team learning a new a new system but also the sixth grade team willing to help obviously their colleagues in the training with this as well any questions yes diane you've shared the national data is this the statewide testing program yeah so can we get comparable in the future that shows that so it really is um district so it's it's you know whatever school district buys aims web they they take all of that information and that's how they get the national averages yeah and the second question you can go back to the sixth grade slide for a second just just to clarify the data so the testing in the fall and the winter are we testing to the same standard or are they testing to a standard

046that assumes they've had three more months of construction they it assumes that they have more three more amounts of instruction yeah staying on the sixth grade reading you mentioned you're happy with the growth of the average scores but and this one looks like you came at the expense of the above average it looks like there's more kids below average now than in the fall because the other graphs look like those scores improved yeah math and everything else but what's going on here you know again it's you know as we just said it is it's dependent upon uh you know they have three additional you know months of instruction so it could be you know again i don't know those students in particular that fell within that range but it could have been the content um

047area specifically um that some of those students did struggle with um it could also um you know some of these things also whether it's in sixth grade seventh grade or eighth grade you know like this incredible growth you know we had students move in from the time from the fall to the winter and you know we could have we could have had students that moved in that were you know very good math students and that pulled you know that whole skewed the graph a little bit you know the opposite could be for um specifically for reading but again they take you know the sixth grade takes a look at you know the individual um scores and again determines through quest what specific skill areas they need assistance yeah because you can see in the math

048i mean you're below average and blood blood yeah definitely right but in reading worse yeah so i mean i think the other thing you have to consider is how few kids will have to take these you know we have a small district so even on things like 10 you know one or two kids that's always the issue with the small small district yes that are potentially around 100 students in sixth grade so every percentage point involves the student right so you can see for instance that's probably one additional student in the winter than the fall that double after training do the parents get an individualized report on this that shows how their child is that part of this sally can can go ahead and answer yeah um yeah there are reports that can grow on

049you okay do they go thank you okay yeah in one i'd have to check with the seventh and eighth grade since they're new doing it nearly but okay if they don't they will so the um there's one more question that i have yes so i know you you said you went to aims over the other what's the difference in the testing um you know to be honest with you one of the biggest differences on is the amount of time that math testing takes on in comparison to um to ames one you know matt took you know approximately three you know two or three days away from instruction to be able to do um you know the assessment where ames web might happen yeah yeah if even half a day so a significant significant um difference

050in that and that's really one of you know one of the reasons why we have done it but also that you know um you know to be able to track students from the elementary school up through up to the middle school what does that difference in time relate to your accuracy and your ability to identify different gaps assessment time from three days down to half a day what are you missing from what are you not being able to identify or what's the change in what you can identify with that drastic reduction i know it gives you more time for instruction but yeah i think one of the uh we we actually when we started doing this it was matt from fourth grade through eighth grade so we got experience in the elementaries as well now

051the depth of the information that gave you was overwhelming it told you like everything and it was counterproductive because you couldn't productively use the information with aimscrap because it is it's literally a way for our kids it's a 45 minute session for man but a 45 minute session for reading and what it warns you about is hey this kid is below where we expect them to be go look further so like when you see that graph where jesus what happened to those kids just split down from above average to just average which is crazy easy because that average range is 25 times a 74 and then above average is like teeny tiny so if you miss like a questionnaire too you slide down but it lets us go geez those kids let's dig deeper into

052that because the other thing with angel is that it will not let me progress monitoring so identifying poor mr thompson here has some struggles with number of sense fluids he's not sure which numbers are which numbers and i'm going to practice with him every day because he's a little slow and every two weeks we're going to check we're going to do a one minute quick test and that goes right into asia so that teachers can build that over time and the other nice thing about youtube now 8 is that these middle school teachers now are going to be able to see how ace did when he was in second right and they'll be able to see what he was trying to straight through so in the long run it gives us more actionable information so

053you're connecting those schools and historically okay that's a good thing that answers it so we started preparing for this report we do we almost do we call each other this is what my first grade did what is your first grade we were pleasantly surprised with some small demon variations a pretty similar place so you know rule of small numbers large numbers it made a lot more sense for us to combine our school's data and they do with medications partly because we are working partially we're working on the same things we've changed for us this year in my building as we go through foreign [Music] uh so you know when you look at our report we're not going [Music] because while our students are doing doing fairly um before we get too far into it before

054i pass the passive it's on i always want to point out that aims with norman this was done that they haven't updated so while we're consistently above the norm we're not necessarily where we typically think you remember these are this is compared to this four years ago so we don't really have a comparison for how we're doing compared to everybody else that talk through this so that's just my little camera then i will let you pick up from with more caveats yeah all right so um the report that we gave you is way too in-depth and way too much information because i was off for a couple of weeks i was bored so please feel free to add us to any questions you have about other stuff you saw in there that's fine i'm going

055to do kindergarten through grade 2 race is going to talk about grades three through five in literacy um because that's i think where our focus has been all here year math is ruthlessly cumulative they'll catch up but there are some things in reading that if you don't get it by second grade there are problems and so we're hyper focused on phonics and forgiving that's what we're going to talk about um in these next few slides this is kindergarten kindergarten this is the what the report looks like that we got it's a skills report you can see we assess it in kindergarten in a lot of different things it's just way better on my screen than it does up here we look at a lot of subsets of information to see where kids are do they

056know how to hold the book do they recognize letters do they recognize do they understand letter sounds and then we get a breakdown kind of like what diane and sally were showing you in terms of above average etc etc um but in kindergarten the two things that we focus on what is letter naming fluency which is here and then let our word sound fluency so do they know what sound s makes can they say the word sat these are quick one minute tests that we give to every child three times a year and you can see that the bottom line here this is the well above average average our percentile scores are in the 40s mr thompson and i have a problem with that because what we like is to always be above the norm

057we want to be the label will be gone in education always above average and we're not there um and you can see on this side they give you an early literacy composite score and our district composite score is 39. um and i don't think either of us were super surprised by it it's been a tough couple of years um and parents have been working with their kids who are home it's not a normal thing i'm confident that they will continue to grow it's an improvement over our fall school which was 24. um and the teachers are working super hard with this we've also implemented some five synthetic awareness programs this year which will help us with this going forward this is first grade and it's the grade that we talk about the most these are

058the kids who last year did not get the kind of instruction that you would want it was hybrid learning they were in two days a week god bless the parents who tried to help their kids or mr tommy you can probably relate [Music] so this is our challenge group but again you see the in first grade there are four tests that they do one is auditory vocabulary which looks at do kids understand words when they don't have to read them nonsense word fluency where the letters are right but they don't make any sense can kids sound out of words where they have no queue i'm going to stop just for a second so we can kind of go into in first grade they really only look at two things oral reading fluency and that makes

059up the composite score or already influences what we're going to talk about from now on because it when kids reach out loud what happens is that they have to combine all those other skills they got to understand the letters and the sound they got to be able to recognize words without sounding it out the more you have to think about what you're reading the slower you're reading and so you can see our moral rating fluency percentile is 46 and that's the same thing as our early composite score and again that's not where we want our kids to be um i think that all things considered again this is an increase over the fall score all things being considered for on the right track but you guys deserve to know kind of what's going on there

060the other thing we start talking about in first grade are lexile scores aims web gives us if we do the role reading fluency test a less style score a left side score it's a number that indicates the complexity of reading material so the higher the number the more complex the reading material is and what some researchers did is they took like a million results from h and they norm so that you could look at a lifestyle score of 200 and you could say for first graders that's at the 50 53 time again we wanted to look at how many kids met or exceeded the winter lexile expectation in the 50th percentile in first grade it's a third one 38 percent sixty percent we're appointment in a year but we've got again this grade the grade

061that we're most concerned about 47 are more than a year behind most of those kids are scoring as beginner readers that's our focus group we're putting a ton of energy into that we're putting a ton of resources into that and it's it continues to improve but this is where we are right now second grade um again you see there are three things all three of these things now forwarding fluency really comprehension of okay where are combined and weighted fashion to give you the right composite score and you can see here i mentioned this in my report second grade brockton you know or we influenced the 60th percent of green comprehension 66 vocabulary 83rd percentile those are great um the overall percentile of 68 and for those of you i'm sure you found my report riveting

062and read everywhere um i commented i'm not really sure why that happened i was talking to some second grade teachers but they pointed out by sharing steve carroll is that this group of kids are second graders in both schools it's the first group of kids to have systematic explicit phonics instructions in both kindergarten and christopher so you look at our lexile results kids have never exceeded that second grade expectation 50th percentile 64 plus two minutes and three and more than you're behind just eight percent which statistically is kind of what you would expect there are some kids who are always gonna struggle kids who need specialized services this is what we want for everybody so that's kindergarten through grade two huh i'll stand in front of it all right this is my good side there

063are good scientists so we pick up the oral reading policy throughout you know and so second grade where we see the greatest strength there you know when we get into third grade they did not have the benefit of fundation's instruction before that we were strictly sticking with wells um with wonders rather so you see where over here this all looks pretty good and i can always brag about our reading comprehension because up until now when we got to the upper grades we really focused on are they understanding what they're reading but as we as we've dived deeper into this we realize that you know as they get into older grades the fluency he's getting is going to catch up yes with the lower grades that we've given them the skills they can compensate if they

064can't read really really quickly um but eventually that's gonna that's gonna become a struggle for them so here you look again where we're converting into a lifestyle score uh and you know we're we're pretty good because i want you to hold on to this number because as we as we go up these numbers change a little bit um but we are looking at 45 or half of when we get to grade four you see influencing keeps coming down a little bit and the students the number of students that are struggling keep rising a little bit um and you can see that reflected in the life sciences um this is not all doom and gloom and i also want you to know that we're doing things for these kids in third fourth and fifth grade we're

065not going back to teaching foundations we have read naturally we have different reading passages that we're doing these are tier two interventions and tier one interventions that we're providing um but the work that we're doing in k-102 the the the work that we do with integrity foundations that's going to impact this in the long run we're not going to need as much intervention um and suddenly in grade 5 this is where i think it's it's highlighted the most where we have the most number of students that are below on the left side so we have those students in our rti process we we're using read naturally and other programs like that we're working on that they're comprehending um but we realize we recognize that this is going to be a problem i think the other

066reason to to bring this up and talk about this now is because you voted on the budget at the last meeting that i came to and one of the things that we were talking about was that a need for a literacy coach they think this is this is an area that you know literacy coach can help strengthen and improve the work that we're already doing we are seeing games from the fall to the winter um but we want to see more because we wanted we weren't just coming up to the hunter to hunter ready reading fluently as well as comprehending everything there and prepared for future success we will take any other questions yes um so you were talking about fundations is that a new program that our district it's new to us uh we

067rolled it out in kindergarten two years ago right just briefly yeah i know what it is because of my kids but i didn't realize that it was new to our district i just thought it was something that everybody was doing no yeah that was pretty good yeah it's great i think it works i mean i think it's great my daughter in preschool already knows all the letters because of foundation it's not because of it but um i didn't realize that it was new and it's already paying dividends when you look at that with that second grade is it something that you can use in fifth or it's it's because it's so basic is there is there like a more advanced part of that concept i don't i don't know that you could apply to like

068those older grades so if we do it right when they're in third grade they have all the skills they you know we do have other you know foundations as part of wilson so we have that as wilson as an intervention so if kids have received three years of it is they're not progressing you know we have that tier two tier three intervention for it um but if we do our job right we might do well and we shouldn't need it if you're in fourth and fifth grade it's just struggling with sounding outwards or other problems it's not a lack of instruction it's it's going to be more of a reading issue yeah you hit on the budget at the end and i guess the question for you did you break this data when you had

069your meetings with towns or do you explain it to them like this like the low scores before can we go back i didn't think i asked i mean but we have the system but we have the coaching budget the coaches in the budget yeah those are but i know there's you know there's some debate back and forth little budget as we were talking um keeps you there you know so there's always a need for someone who's who focuses just on the literacy part of be in the classroom and working with teachers because they lose you know people's focus there's somebody there so whether you're in the 20th percentile here the center one of the challenges with the work that hasn't are doing right now is you know we're nice guys and people like us from

070teachers what teachers look for somebody who has done the work stood in the room they've done the iron stuff because there's that level of respect that you know teaches a corporate child that's one of the essential reasons why joe is so successful he's taught for years i guess i i wonder if there's enough time in the school day to improve the results we've seen as you've shown given other demands on teachers time and other things that children usually are to that point i have two questions do we expect that some of these first graders in particular will be kept back in order to get them caught up a second question is do we offer any after school ela programs to help extend our instructional time so that some of those students would have an option

071of continuing to learn beyond three o'clock good questions uh let me start with the second one um we don't currently have any after school programs my experience with them especially in the lower grades is cancer cause by the end of the day and so it's not necessarily a great use of time what i can say is we've prioritized our literacy blocks of the day so we try to make sure those we maximize those and we try to stay away from those trying not just um schedule assemblies and different special events during that um i think you know john speak with the with the new with the implementation of these programs that we've been doing um i think that's going to go a long way into into addressing and closing that gap um yeah you're right

072part of the challenge is david they have phonics construction is most powerful with our youngest kids who are the quickest to get tired and just to go back to the part of the question retention the results of retention are almost universally awful um and it doesn't really help to we're going to have to with that group of children especially keep redoubling our efforts around instruction but to do the same thing over the social consequences just should we consider opportunities to offer instruction in the summer for some of those children who might benefit from continued ela instructions post june it was a tough sell this year we did the summer work last year and ace is a huge proponent of this and it was hard to get people to come in yeah but if i started

073the score for my kid and saw that they're behind probably gonna have a different reaction because i think we got invited to the summer program with an incoming kindergartner i had no reason to to put him into that and take him out to camp citizen right but if i instead saw that hey he's behind or there's an opportunity here and there's a program i can enroll him in even if i have to pay a fee for that program i think that would be something a lot of families would consider if it was available and certainly one district-wide or remotely probably people that we are considering we can't consider for the summer for those students so in fact we just talked about it recently ace and john other students that they would want to target or

074grade levels in particular so i think the results of the data they're showing to perhaps their target audience is those questions yeah i think their need is clearer now than it was yes yeah that's what's spread anticipated question yes every time you do enjoy testing at the end of your level reports last year we got a grant for the celebration academy and it was for the elementary schools and also we offered for the middle school really to get participants so we put the funding that we have received we got so many students coming into kindergarten not so much for the academics for that to come into to do the academic work for the social emotional piece of it just getting the experience of being from school we end up we had one class set aside

075for kindergarten we ended up with three classrooms of students coming in for them now this is such a short time you know a half day weeks but this is something we can certainly have been actually starting to talk about i think too this is an important piece too removing the mask is huge so i think the kids are going to be you know all right i mean i think this first grade group is the hybrid group um it's very very very difficult those teachers so i think that lasts gone and also the thinking that this has changed over the past few years when we launched march 20 we left school you know the conferences that i attended at the wpa spots assessment organization and then you focus on those areas but that's because it goes

076from march to september as that as we extended into the year and then two years the thinking on how to catch students up this completely changed they're not recommended you're doing it because so many kids have lost so much that the the current thinking on how to catch students up is just what they're doing they do it within the context of the standards they're working on so if it's if if they see a gap and standard they're in fourth grade and they see a gap in the third grade standard they teach it in fourth grade they attack exactly so um and that has changed there's no question the students have lost something but you know we again that's when we decided our focus was before the personnel and not the program because we have them

077um that's that's part of the reason [Music] for you guys do you have any the information how does this year's great one that you focused on i think it was like 63 or from a year more than a year do you have comparisons to the first grades precoc harder to do because there's nothing before first grade you do i mean like like you know how does that get different yeah okay yeah and then kind of to julie's point i mean we got our own individual scores and this was you know months ago like two months ago i've noticed in the past week plus at home reading is like through the roof compared to one of the february so i i agree with you i think it will come around but i don't envy them couldn't

078take some work that could be [Music] um [Music] the athletic director and myself um wanted to bring forward a school broadcast program um and this is nfhs and it is it's powered by a company called play on most of the schools the midwatch facility and really most of the schools across the state have a school broadcasting program it really came to the forefront here at tohonto um during coven when fans were not allowed in games and um he basically had to beg parents and and other volunteers to be able to videotape basketball games um last year so family and friends could could view it um and so matt reached out to um to nfhs um and they have provided us with a um with a contract and you know what this contract basically states is

079that there is no cost to the school the company provides all of the camera they provide the maintenance um they work with our technology department for the wiring et cetera and basically um it is it will be a five-year contract this is why it's been brought forward um to all of you because any contract over three years has to be brought forward to the school committee um and the cost basically is um 10 there's a subscription so parents or grandparents or um you know students other family members you know one can't come to the game but want to watch um they can get a subscription um and ten percent of the uh proceeds of the subscriptions comes back to toronto comes back to the school as well we can also use this service for videotaping

080graduation inside in the gymnasium as well we are in talks um you know but this will be for down the road to try to get cameras out at the softball field hockey fields as well as the the baseball and soccer fields um but you know i think it's you know one thing that copa did is it really opened our eyes um up to you know the technology and the power of you know technology and being able to get um you know these games and you know these broadcasts out to parents and grandparents and you know anybody really any relative across the united states um they would be able to watch their um their loved ones play as well um and so you know i think it would be really beneficial to the school um to

081be able to to go forth i believe um i know you're gonna ask me this i can't think of it off the top of my head i don't know if you remember but i think the cost is it's i think it's like 10 a month it's a pretty it's a pretty minimal cost i mean i think you have to pay five dollars to get into a basketball game for one game so um you know so i think it would be definitely worth um you know it's a honda looking into as well there also is a feature whereas you know uh you know oftentimes we have um somebody videotaping for the coaches uh to do replays with the teams um this would be available to coaches as well um who would just contact uh the company

082and saying hey listen you know we need to take from you know march 8th um can you can they send that to us and they send that information to us um as well and we we've set the contracts while legal constantly and um so he looked at it he got not concerned with just a few questions that i passed on to diane and matt it was just things about you know the schedules have to be to the company within certain modern days things like that and really the only thing we're responsible for is the infrastructure is that we have the technology department sort of rigged up the system in the end of the games but we wouldn't run a dedicated line and it was costly i talked to technology today so that's about a thousand

083bucks but that's it which would come out of technology so that's that's really the only cost for us and and then um uh just sending parents information is there is audio with that right yes yes it's not the video that's the privacy issues it's the regal statute um why is and we've done all that stuff resumed when we started so we got that covered but other than that there wasn't anything in the contract that was going to be a legal issue as far as concerning itself so you've already got the rig set up is this something just the wiring they'll come in and you know they have the components we put something in it temporarily because they were taping games but we would want to run like a dedicated wide it's not like sort of

084makeshift well that's how i was going to ask you what have you been doing so far can we not just do something ourselves so basically it's getting somebody to stand there with a tripod and a camera and do this so that's what they'll come and do oh no these these are actually mounted cameras um that will you know you give them the game schedule um and basically they do all of the filming um for us using the cameras that they had mounted a lot of schools sorry a lot of schools um you know use huddle which is which is a very similar company and they use it for their football is this company you mentioned it's free because we the schools will get a ten percent of whatever this experience is the company allowed to

085do anything with that video do they sell any ads on the video or anything like that so um any ads so we would we could we don't have to but we could sell ads and um you know you know if you you have a company and you want to advertise on during our to hunter basketball games you would you know you would be um required to pay a fee you get a certain percentage of the fee and then the company gets the other percentage they do not put any of their you know any other type of um you know um commercials or anything on um our video games is that mine so these are the [Music] so what if you what if you can't beat the commitments like i'm looking at one of them i

086think it's from legal the school must provide game schedules 60 days prior yeah to the start of the sports seasons uh do you guys i mean i haven't yeah yeah so i mean believe it or not our um fall sports schedules the deadlines for the miaa i mean we have to make those schedules in the spring of the year you know so matt piccardo right now is okay so you do yeah yeah yes it is interesting okay yeah that's good and then so everything else that's on there if we get out of it early it's two thousand five hundred dollars for early termination b huh that's fine um [Music] yeah i mean my only thing would be i i would and if you say you could watch i'll watch youtube schools are doing it if

087it you know is it glitchy does it work you know is it something that's well reviewed with these other schools before you get into a five year contract with them yeah a lot of other schools have had it for for years you know we're one of just a handful of midwestern schools that don't have any form of broadcasting of genes yeah yeah i love the idea of the broadcasting games i think that's great well a lot of people especially that mccover even though we don't have to wear masks we won't come grandparents he just wants to gain from their house now so yeah that's a big advantage no i agree with you jeff i guess you know i just want to make sure that if they're paying for you know foreign no so that's why

088we have to provide the schedules um including the times so you know it turns on and you know in game time when we say it turns on and when you know and when it turns off um so you know that's why they require because they need to make sure that you know they have the manpower to be able to you know provide you know all of the live broadcasting um and so they need to schedule that far in advance to be able to put it into their systems so that you know the cameras are turning on and off can easily they want to review films and turning with their athletes do that yeah so all that they do is they have um you know the athletic director said the athletic director hey you know i

089want a copy of that um you know can we get a copy and he sends the information and they send it is there any uh like play-by-play commentary and are you doing any outdoor sports as well there is no there's no play-by-play commentary it's just basically it was just videos so we right now we're focusing on um indoor you know the um outdoor for the fieldwork in softball and for the the soccer and um baseball and track and field um there would be you know i would think um a larger cost associated with that on because of the internet in [Music] the easier there then up there so the contract just covers the indoors just just covers the um the gymnasium not only the sports but we also you know if we wanted to you

090know again um broadcast graduation you know typically we do it you know joel delay and it's telecom and take graduation and then they you know upload it they do it so it could actually be live so be a relative in california they can watch your graduation yeah that's great school choice recommendations um so the uh the 2022-2023 um school year i am um making a recommendation that um our incoming sixth grade is pretty small it's a small group for um for both berlin and boylston is that right have more the since in the fifth grade then we are slowly but surely overtaking quotes i thought i'm not the only one so because of the small um group and there is you know i clearly can't count i'm off by one but um i'm recommending seven

091um school choice students for the incoming sixth grade um that would be a total of oh sorry an additional eight students um so that would be bring that class size to 76. not making any recommendations for grades seven and eight on incoming ninth grade um recommending five additional school choice students and again this is you know it's always very tricky to tell um with incoming ninth grade we do have you know we have as you know the vocational schools are doing their uh their enrollment quite different on beginning with next year's grade um and so i believe that our school choice slot numbers on for assad are at seven and you know that is significantly lower than historically they've accepted for berlin and boylston in the past and then you add um you know additionally

092currently we have you know approximately um three students who have put forth um you know recommendations for or ask for recommendations for private schools um so we're looking at those numbers so i believe that you know losing about about 10 students is probably what we're gonna um end up seeing but again it really is who knows um and then so with the with the five additional we would look at um an incoming uh grade 9 class of 86 students and then not recommending any other school choice grades 10 11 and 12 next year so eight four grade six and five four grade nine question so i thought i think to budget and some of the um placements that it cost us a lot of money right um when we accept school choice students in the

093district is there a risk that they also then require on the placement of the district that would [Music] when you um when you first do your your school choice um if you find that you know we ask for the records after we have accepted them initially if you find that you do not have the services or the capability to you know provide what that particular student needs you can at that point say you know that we cannot accept them because we don't have you know the program on in place for them however once they come in let's say a year later they need you know out of district placement we we own them can i answer the question so the kids that are coming in in sixth grade i see this that the eight recommended

094do we know if any of those eight are in the collaborative for um like do they so let's say they come from a town that's in the aspen collaborative and then they go off to assabet we're now responsible for paying your tuition correct forward no if they did middle school yeah if they go we're not responsible as a town so so basically if on it's where they reside so let's say that we have and this is happening we have students who are from clinton they're currently in the eighth grade they have applied to assad clinton i believe is not in the collaborative so they it goes by their home district so they would not be they would be put in that second tier of admission i guess the question though is if they could interact

095as a ninth grader are we paying the cost of their asset replacement no the town is their their hometown their top presidents even if they went through six seven and eight after months which makes sense quite honestly right but but aspect in charge how much does god's place in the next what does it cost to play someone that's like 1700 that and we operate people expenditures 16. [Music] i don't really get why school choice is a huge thing and so how do you how are these how do you get these numbers school choice numbers i didn't i don't know i already heard them yes um so we like to keep the numbers um right around 90. okay so that and we always get students who you know move in as well so we always leave

096a little bit of breathing room um you know we had um was it one group that we had like 90 about we started the school year with i think about 90 or 91 and we ended the school year with like 96 or 97 um and that you know can make a significant impact so we leave you know a little breathing room because it really is just meant to fill in you know extra seats how much demand should you expect [Music] so um [Music] you know today we just had two calls i'm not sure what rates they were but we're you know we're getting our applications in um but you know the thing is is that they can um you know they have a certain deadline once we accept them you know to say yes i

097want to go but then two days before school starts they can be like no thank you [Music] well let's hope that we get more jacks right list was not chosen we will contact them and say that there is nobody but you know once school starts in the morning with a month or two and somebody gives me a call [Music] what's the significance of 90 um because in the middle school especially we have four sections um we have four sections of um in each core content area so four classes um so it just keeps the numbers right around 20 anywhere from 20 to 22 in each one in each class so am i understanding correctly then like adam said these are costing us an extra 11 000 per kid yeah because it's a 16 000 expenditure

098we get five in for them jeff just said it cost thousand dollars to educate a child in our district yeah that's the average cost but when you're when you're talking about school choice like that number is it's basically filling an empty seat we're not hiring more teachers to educate these school choice kids we're basically filling a seat and getting five thousand dollars so they lower that probably lowers our per people cost if we take that into consideration if you average yeah average everything out yes but you you know when you take the school choices and you you get the lifestyle the 16 000 sort of baked into teacher salaries and materials and all of that yeah i understand the high school level more than i understand at the elementary school so i think we talked

099about that i'll have some questions but i get the high school sections and the way your those things are all set up that you think are a sense to have balance classes across all the years do we have to do school choice [Music] say historically school choice has added some very nice diversity to our district that hasn't always been there okay so negotiation subcommittee the update on that is that we're meeting on tuesday march 22nd i'm sorry oh i'm sorry i don't think there's anything later on my dad [Music] third grade one and fourth and two of them is how many classes do you have in those fourteen years so uh next year three thirds two fourths and three tests students if you add one in whereas both third and fifth will be in the

100high keys i have problem with that personally when it comes to school choices i get to high school i i get less [Music] especially in the school that is somewhat under club digital distribution perfectly expensive for pbs compared to um i ems to see why we should add that if i helped you one year because of my budget [Music] school where we've been offering problems the last few years i've set the budget we've been spending more out of um school choices especially the last few years [Music] we've had quite a few really wonderful students joining the [Music] you chose those grades because that's where you feel like you at least have some wiggle room yep yeah then the fourth grade was a was a tight half that went up i felt like adding one of

101those i wasn't going to overdo it i tend not to make recommendations bigger than that makes sense [Music] john looking at your third fourth and fifth grade classes which you have how many how many classes [Music] the school berlin memorial is in my room from the tour everything is smaller the town was very determined when they built the building they had they never had big classes so they like the closet is like four feet by six feet the classrooms are smaller than typical um we get above 15 or 16 kids especially older kids kids everything's smaller to the perfect expenditure exactly well because it's fantastical right sometimes but we have fewer kids and we're growing them you know my kindergarten right now is like a 36 that would be big classes for us okay [Music]

102okay the negotiation subcommittee we are meeting on tuesday march 22nd for our first negotiation meeting with the bbpa anything you want to add megan give me an update all right um the election subcommittee do you guys have any updates i think um yeah later this month the paperwork has been sent into the state so they should know that we have some vacancies coming up so it will be the first election for the regional districts ready um thanks for moving on to business items um at this time i would like to entertain a motion to approve this school broadcast program five year contract because i have a motion so a second sorry did you see it i saw it so all in favor aye foreign i'm an eye as well the motion to approve the school

103broadcast program by their contract passes um i'd like to have a motion to appoint a member of the committee to as the coordinator to the marion hoffman awards [Music] as well the motion to appoint julie as the coordinator of the marian hoffman award passes um the 2022-23 calendar we have our first read does anyone have any questions or comments i have one really quick comment this is going to sound insane but for a professional development day and i see why it was done professional development day and then would you would the school ever consider doing a professional development team i'm asking that because i know for the elementary it's probably not a big deal maybe it is i don't know i keep my over here that actually we've been sick a lot today after halloween

104because yeah eating a lot of junk um interesting yeah i don't know i mean i wouldn't oppose it but i don't know if they have this strategically placed somewhere oh you mean instead of like friday or i don't know maybe it's not even this year but some just put it on his store cause i think yeah i think it's a good idea [Music] you sure did yeah [Music] coming out of two years but we already lost so much classroom time i look at this calendar and i see in particular half days of professional development on september 14th which is a random wednesday in the middle of the month after the third and third week of school and the same thing in the middle of january so i look at this and i ask whether we

105can look at this and consider a different approach to the professional development to perhaps limit the number of half days we have on the calendar in order to maximize the number of hours we have in the classroom those two are the ones that stand up to me more than any i also look at the half days for parent-teacher conferences both at the condo and at the elementary schools and i wonder whether or not the half day of sending this kid to school in the morning could instead be professional development but i i did feel that half days are a challenge for parents for students and in particular given that we didn't have it in school at the end of 2020 on the school two days a week in most of 2021 i really have uh

106concerned with continuing to include half days of caffeine and your suggestion we suggest that we combine into a half days and then put it after halloween that would be fine selected because there's professional development available statewide or participating or are we you know this comes from years past of changing these kinds of dates or pd and arranging them in a number of different ways and so we try to do the half days historically because we get to keep count those as teaching days in the calendar for destiny but that's not great for students i get them to create potentially teachers but i think for students i prefer 180 full days in school for example as close to 180 days as we can have of students in school from 8 to 30. right so we can

107we can do that and we can combine those days if it impacts again the teaching data center of teaching days we have in school we can change that i mean if that's something that the school committee is interested in doing we can we can do that but i think we also have a problem i don't know if this affects the negotiations with teachers [Music] training that are taking place on those days it's just a preference that happens through the years of school committees and and teachers i would say more so school committees and then there was a whole group the school committee members that did not want to hack dates even for holidays yeah i think before thanksgiving always made sense is [Music] i i hear what you're saying but i disagree i mean i

108i think i'm all about balance in life and i think kids i remember being a kid looking forward to the half day is you know and again this is a very one-sided view meet up at the playground with a friend go home have lunch and it's just like kind of a fun day and then you know the teachers get to do their pd stuff um also i don't know if this is a thing or not i remember when i was a kid again they would place days on the calendar and try to keep the schools closed at certain times you know okay we're getting a lot of germs in here or we've been going like three or four weeks straight they need something to break it up i don't know if that's what goes into

109this rationale or not i always thought it was but i don't have a problem with them i um but i do see what you're saying how there's probably a huge group of parents that that's just a big inconvenience for um the first two weeks january are there's no full days the first week's january 23 no more weeks i'm sorry yeah but then there's one two three there's four straight weeks with no breaks until february well we also try to enlarge when you plan days you try to plan them so that you do you know besides the kids having fun try to plan them so the teachers do some professional development and then they put it into action and then they come back some sometime later whether it be next month or so and then they

110they kind of revisit that so that's really the whole idea and that's part of the reason why most pd is we try to front load at the beginning of the year and so by having half days you can sort of stretch it out so they always have a day to get back together and talk about what they what they implemented based on what they did at the last pd at least the dairy that's how it goes so you have the pd day you implement it and then you cut back and discuss it so it's just not like a one and done so that's why you try to spread it out like that that's the that's the theory behind it again that's why you try to front load uh professional development so that you know it's

111all at the beginning they can actually use them taking the half day on september 14th in the half day on january 11th in this full professional development day november 1st which would then be acutely hurt in the teachers then you can't do professional development on friday though you can't have one on first and half day on thursday the third and a full day off on friday that would be so you'd have to redo the whole calendar my main point is that i hear what you're saying maximize number of hours students are in school especially what's happening last two years in the data representative tonight the other thing i want to mention to tag on what jeff was just talking about we're also looking at the teachers have asked also to have half days so they

112have to help them more frequently through the different months there are some districts that have a half days once a month or even some districts still have them once a week so you know that so that has all been talked about in the past and i think this was also a way to address giving teachers more professional development time to work together without compromising students in in school during those days and spreading it out so we have leveraged a couple more times for them although it's unfolding for them she still gives them two hours worth of time to work together or on trainings or whatever we're planning to do as it's two months time period but so you're saying these half days count as a full day of teaching for kids yeah so i'd be

113okay having more half days so long as that gets made up somewhere in the construction that's okay that's one right like like to have but that doesn't count as a learning day right so these half day pd days you're getting eight hours eight hours counting towards your instruction but you're only getting four hours of actual instruction that's like you said but by having four updates you're losing i mean that's short changing the kids the short changes the taxpayers is short changing everything sometimes you just you know you just you're just visiting a small topic and then you know it's a half day of work and then you go put into action then it's not it's just wasted time sometimes in a full day too so yeah you know there is a need for happiness there

114is a place for them i would say not an entire calendar but there's a place for half days they do have good use and you know you can't measure everything by the minute you know the quality of what you get sometimes is yeah i don't necessarily know that what we saw tonight means kids need more hours in the classroom i think to julie's point as we start to normalize our schools hopefully that's what kids need more so than just physically being in the classroom more hours can i just bring up one thing um we'll take a look at this because we're still looking at some of the requests from the teachers one of the things that came up from the teachers is good friday that was a day that i believe we just started we

115have off in one of the committees when i was here asked that it would not be the day off um again it gets me up at the end of the day off it gets made up at the end teachers have asked that it'd be a day off again um that's the that's what we get um when is the friday the date yeah seven people i believe that's it right crispy but i know it was changed when i was here it was at a request of the school committee to say and maybe a minute was it ever half day no it was off though was the day it was right it was off and then it was i think it went back and forth i mean honestly it was off then it was on then we

116saw um an issue with attendance and then just back off it was it was it was an off day when i got here and that change was just made within the last few years but the teachers have asked about is that something you'd want to consider having it off again like certain certain religions and is it passover around them too like i don't know bad with that kind of stuff but yeah april 17th though any other comments or questions about the calendar can we vote next week next we're sorry i know it feels like [Music] or questions and that's the policy regarding masking so i guess i'm not seeing where what jeff spoke to earlier is incorporated in this i guess that it would be any decision to require face covering in school buildings or

117investment requires a vote by school committee unless otherwise requirement all right that makes sense um can you guys like explain what you're thinking um a written plan that describes how teaching and learning will be facilitated for those skills or visual expression of the teachers who would have to provide this written plan the very last number two the implementation of any required masking or plan or policy and ddrsd by voting the school committee must include these parameters or written a plan that describes how teaching and learning will be facilitated for those skills or visual expressions of the teacher spaces are necessary or helpful for the student learning do you mean the school committee needs to put together a written plan we would with the schools would you know it would be basically you know what johnny's

118just talking about today you know what they're doing to to help to help students who suffer because of falling behind because they haven't asked so and is that something you feel capable of doing in this fair i'm pretty seriously [Music] any questions comments no more options all right so that's our first three we already did on the first reading of the wilson police department the mou uh the elementary literacy coach coordinator job description that's the first treat as well does any any questions or comments you clearly see you're going to want to you're going to want to have your name on mousse [Music] all right we already did the school choice recommendations well our next dates are april 5th um for our school openings may 2nd if needed and may 24th anybody have any other

119comments before we return all right is there a motion roll call mike yes megan hi adam julie hi i am