001required to have by law uh section 71 sorry chapter 71 section 59 C and we're supposed to look at three things um identifying the educational needs of the students reviewing the budget of the school and formulating a school improvement plan and then also chapter 71 section 37H specific reference for the high school for reviewing the student okay typically we normally have sort of all of them look at it uh at some sort of under kind of the broad umbrella of the educational needs of students. But those are really the things. So you're looking at usually school improvement plans is the key umbrella there. Um and maybe a little bit on some of the budget decisions. So typically beginning of the year, September, November, you want to start by identifying those student educational needs, looking at
002data assessments, disciplinary actions, those types of things that we might have typically from the previous year, right? We just sort of we're getting that accountability data right now in an official format. We might have some beginning of the year data u to kind of look at as a you know another another snapshot of that. Normally over the winter we're going to start looking at our school improvement plan uh for the next year, right? So, and why are we looking at that? Because during that time, we're also going to be kind of building a budget. So we want to make sure that if there's major changes that we think we might need to make at least adding some placeholders to that preliminary budget. So if we identify that, you know, there's a there's an area curriculum
003area that we really need to improve and we think we need to purchase a new curriculum series or something like that, we can get a placeholder in that budget and then we'll kind of finalize those as we go through the budget process as we get into the spring and then we can go through the plans. Hopefully by April a lot of times we might not actually finalize finaliz. So a little bit of our accountability and data overview. Um so overall our accountability rating is is like no not requiring assistance right which is basically you either are requiring it or you're not. This is sort of a snapshot um shows our progress towards improvement targets which is goals that they set for you based on where you are and then your accountability percentile they don't do
004for the district but that's more uh is sort of based more on your uh achievement uh your your uh quantitative rankings right so um Clinton elementary school uh did very well 79% uh% of meeting uh meeting or exceed targets so increase of 11 um percentage points so they were at 68 last year their accountability to 49 was 38 last Okay, middle school took a little dip. High school took a little dip as well in the primary school targets. However, the accountability percentile went up which is actually a little bit of an anomaly you see in a lot of the high schools where um basically last year if everyone can remember MCAST was voted to not be a graduation. So what they saw across the state was a huge dip in 10th grade scores. And they
005kind of are they looked at the data and they said that basically the amount of responses that were either blank or off topic in the essays indicated that it was there was a lot of direct tied to the effort or level of seriousness. So what that shows up is you're not making as much progress towards your goals because that's based off your, you know, improvement from the previous year, but accountability percentile actually went up a little bit when it compares based on this scores to other other schools. And this breaks it down a little bit more. Um, this is the percentage me and is meeting or exceeding expectations. Um, SS scaled score. And then there's growth. Growth looks at students who have your like the same profile as you. So, look at all the kids
006who got like certain score in eighth grade. How did that how did you compare to those same kids statewide in like 10th, seventh grade, eighth grade? Um, so that's just sort of a quick snapshot there. Um, one thing that jumps right off is like our the elementary school uh the number of students who were meeting or achieving uh meeting or exceeding expectations in the LA went up by 17 points scale score at five huge and then actually we were recognized for by the state was our uh math scores now being over our preandemic levels in grades three through eight which is that math scale score up three here down to there but it was very still pretty close to the all that growth is fine. When you look at those growth numbers, um typically 40
007to 60 is considered like normal growth. The way the growth calculation is done, 40 to 60. So unless it's below 40, you know, below 40 would be low growth. Above 60 would be very high growth. So you know, we showed quite a bit of growth. Even though you see the score going down, there was a lot of growth at the high That's what I'm talking about where you know you're kind of looking at how they compared to their peers while across the state the scores went down high school. >> So as a district this is just a snapshot of the official accountability report. Uh so I said our overall classification is not required assistance intervention. Sort of a lot of the same numbers that we had last the last slide progress goals. The way they
008do it is they kind of weight it. So they take your your score for this year is based on what you got 40% of what you got last year, 60% of this year and that's where you are right now your overall. When they talk about those goals and your points, this is what they look at. So they're looking at your achievement in English, math, and science. And you get up to four points in each one for all students. You can also get up to four points for your lowest performing students. Um, and then for the district, it's broken into two kind of columns because this is non high school. This is three to eight test. This is high school. And the reason is the tests are kind of on a different. They're not through. They
009consider the scale kind of interchangeable. 10th grade is not. Then we have the growth which I talked about a little more before. High school completion. applies to the high school. Um, and then the progress towards English science proficiency, which you can see we did well at the high school and well, you know, pretty well at the elementary level. And then the chronic absenteeism. Um, once again, the problem with some of these things is a zero just means it went down, right? So, it might have went down a little and you got a zero. Um, which is not fine. Sometimes you understand that. I think it's always tough because you look at these and you want to compare things sort of like why are we getting better every year. We got to realize like every year
010is a new class, right? Every year is a new group of students. So it's not necessarily as clean as just saying here's where we were this year, here's where we are next year. So that's district snapshot. This is sort of so in your my hope is that at some point in your role as a school council member that the principal will probably show you share with you some of this stuff. Um I didn't print these graphs out for each school on this presentation. This is just for the district, but this kind of shows like um our ELA scores um over time. And okay, so this is shows the state trend line. This shows our trend line. So you can kind of see that while overall the states kind of had this decline and then maybe
011plateau kind of we had similar but slowly kind of staying up um that just kind of snapshot over time this year we took a little bit of a drop state kind of plateauing kind of making up some ground kind a little bit for our math science. So, this breaks it down a little bit by subgroup. Um so I tried to break it down by this is by uh subjects. So the first three columns are ELA, math and then science. And then within each category you can see CHS CMS by school by subject. Uh those reporting categories those are lit I didn't make them up. That's literally the ones that the state that's exactly what the state calls. Okay. And that's the ones that we have data for black or category or the multi race category.
012Anywhere you see a dash, typically what that means is we do not have a significant enough population in terms of numbers to be considered mathematically like confidential. Okay? So if you don't have a certain number of students, they suppress it because otherwise you could almost be considered like giving out individual students, right? So that's why you see those dashes. Um, and so you can kind of just get a sense of our our achievement percentiles. And I think you can see some of them are, you know, while you look at like the high school overall um within the 23rd percentile, you can see that in terms of like English learners though, our English learners in the 48th percentile in terms of their achievement in ELA or 53rd in math 52nd in science. So you can get
013some some things there where you look at it. All right. There are some areas that we're doing things well um like the elementary school you look at math in elementary schools students with disabilities low income high needs all in the 70s 70 something%. Okay. So this is gives it a little bit more of a snapshot where you can kind of get a sense of who's sort of like above or below maybe your school average or or the state average overall. Um so you can kind of figure out what are the areas that we might want to drill down. So this is a link I think Kelly sent you guys. This link will take you right to the screen where I literally screenshots. These ones you can't get to unless you have access because this dashboard
014actually does give you permission to drill. If you have access to this, you can actually student data. So this is something that a administrator might be able to walk your council through. >> All right. So on September 29th, 2025, uh, principal Christian and I went to >> Arlington Arlington. one of their middle schools or something like that. But we were recognized for math and class achievement grade being higher than our preandemic levels. So, we did receive in the mail this certificate of recognition uh from the commissioner. >> And if you look at our Clinton Elementary School um accountability page, the overall classification not required assistance intervention. Like I said, you either are or you aren't. But the reason for the classification part of it is is actually listed as a school of recognition. And so
015the elementary school their scores for recognition. Uh [applause] great, [applause] especially when you consider >> how many years ago was right before we were still considered targeted assistance, right? >> So, >> yeah, went from being in liketh percentile to like the 49th percentile. So, um so there's been a lot of great work down there. It's great to see that continue to improve. So, this is sort of the same type of snapshot, but for the uh this is the elementary schools points for their goals. And you can see this is the same idea breaks down by the achievement growth. Um there's no high school completion and then no advanced course work for them. You get those points based on whether you met your goal, exceeded your goal, made prog. So there's their that's how they got
016to the 82. This is sort of the subgroup percentiles through the years. Um and then you can see how the school percentile overall has gone up 11 points. Um but there's at least growth um from 24 to 25 for every one of the subs including 24% for low income 21%. So um if you're not sure um just in case you haven't heard this before but high needs high needs is pretty much a summary group of any kid any student who would be included in one of these other groups. So basically instead of because the same student might be um you have one student with a disability who was an English learner who's low income and that person's in all those categories but in a high needs category they would talk once you high need student
017and then high school. So as I mentioned you know we look at that you see it's a significant achievement percentile increases by all subgroups great is a school of recommendation no recognition so uh I probably type that sorry math achievement um in our lowest performing students increased areas for improvement um trying to performing students continue to work on writing and access for learners some of the current initiatives continuing um [clears throat] with the tier one curriculum looking at the high quality instructional materials apple seeds with wisdom Eureka map squared and then uh continuing our code teaching model pretty much you know a lot of it is u continuing what we've been doing trying to focus on PD for E learners districtwide initiative this year and then some state programming I will mention the advanced learning
018pilot um we are now shifting we're pulling out of that pulling out of it we weren't we weren't funded for it we're not eligible for it anymore state funding um because you have to be targeted for assistance so we're not part of the state's advanced learning pilot anymore but we are We're going to try to keep doing that same type of work that we started last year program. So for the middle school uh accountability 27 uh same idea no uh classification for uh like needing assistance or anything and moderate progress towards goals. So you can see here uh the points they awarded. So the growth points were fine, right? Growth were were like making were progressing. Um some of the chronic absentism numbers were good. The achievement numbers all were zero. Like I mentioned norally
019that just means there was a decrease. Anytime you have a decrease in something, you're going to get a zero as far as their points, even if it's 1%. These are some of the changes. So, if I was looking, you know, you're looking at this and you might looking at your student looking at a school improvement plan, probably look at some of the things like students with disabilities of those double digit changes. What we looking So some of that, you know, what are areas of strength? Well, we did have typical growth, right? We were in the normal growth range for ELA, we're in normal growth range for math, but areas for improvement. We saw that those groups multilingual learners, right? So that's what are we doing in that area? What do we want to be? which
020coincidentally we're looking at that right so as a district we are doing a lot with our with our monitoring plan and special education >> what are some of the things we have expanding co-eing in grade six uh so sort of a new model last year grade five last Now we've expanded too at the element at the start of middle school. Um so the idea is that should be allowing us to get some uh data as well as provide some intervention support but it's in all subjects. So our our math ELA science and history teachers can all sort of access that as a as a resource. Um we've looked at the grade six instructional time for science and social studies. Um the way that that was kind of being done before it was sort of being
021you're getting sort of like a half dose of that tried to readjust that so it's more of a full class. Um increasing the instructional leadership team um trying to share some best practices during our faculty meetings implementing the weekly planning time. We do also new curriculum uh for grade eight which is the DKP curriculum and I did make a note on here because I realized it wasn't in anything else but there is a civics right so there's an MCAST civics exam that they gave in grade eight um we did get some results on that but the results don't really have any context because the state just sort of gave them gave it last year so really it's more of like baseline numbers uh so in future presentations we'll probably more about how we're doing on
022the civics exam, but this year it was kind of like uh it was just sort of that very preliminary baseline. [cough] >> Steve, [clears throat] what are we doing to benchmark what our old teaching model was in comparison to the adoption of the co-eing model and understanding what we're driving for results in that model change? Is that something that comes about later on? Is that something we look at every 24 48 months? Like what what are our thoughts on that? Because anytime you wholesale change a model like that, I'd be curious to understand what the impact was. >> Yeah. So I think what we're trying to continue to do is sort of u build off of the model we've done at the elementary school where we've seen a lot of those a lot of those
023gains in those subgroups. I think this year that's actually one of the things we'll probably be looking at special education and you were just at what was that >> so with part of that we'll be doing some of the action planning and looking at that data and try to do map that up but I do think it is something that um So, I guess we didn't do a lot of introductions around here. I apologize, but uh Jessica Murphy is our new special ed director. She's here tonight. Um and she and I have already had a lot of conversations. I know right now I'm just trying to kind of get her feet wet and figure out what's what. But I do think that she's seen a lot of what we saw last year when we go
024through the hiring process which I think is we need to kind of better align our programming particular special ed. So we'll be looking at all of that high school. U so same idea. So the 22nd actually was up from the Um kind of break down points you look at that you say okay proficiency was something that was good as well achievement at the high school level. I bet you most high schools saw pretty much zero there because statewide those scores went down. So if you look at the sub percentiles um you know same idea students with disabilities is the one that kind of jumps out to me as far as you know when you see a lot of areas going up roughly saying the same kind of high So, some high school actually has some
025other data um including the AP scores. So, the the column on your your left is the uh number of AP exams taken. So you can see last year in 2025 was sort of the most exams we've ever given uh in the last whatever that is now. Seven years of data, six years of data. Okay. So we are up to 180 uh exams and qualifying scores which is typically a three or better. Um we had the highest number highest number uh two qualifying scores last year. Um the percentage of qualifying score um still pretty good, not as high as last year, but I would say that was one of the main shifts that they sort of started talking about probably six or so years ago when we started working with some of these other groups is
026is not worrying about this percentage as much because the more students you can enroll and get to take the exam and expose them to that type of rigorous course, the better off you're going to be. And that's how you can get up to 102 instead of 38 because you've got more students taking more tests in there and and getting them exposed and getting that experience trying to so the high school I think is uh continuing to expand their AP program and offerings which is great. That's sort of the same information and a little bit of a graphical form there. So we'll get the data high student growth um high growth towards math targets and then increase achievement by the students with disabilities group in achievement overall and increase in dropout rate. So those are sort
027of the takeaways for the high school. Some of the things there's a lot going on at the high school um innovation pathway desication. So in June we were designated to have an advanced manufacturing innovation pathway. Um we have uh just been awarded a grant to look at getting an information technology and two two new ones information technology and a business pathway. Um so that's something we'll be working on this year. Uh we did get our early college designation last year as well. So Fitsburg State are our partners. We have 34 students enrolled in that program. So there are 34 students at Clinton who are taking earning college credits right now. Um two of them are fulltime at Mount Houston at this point and eight more might be going to Mount in the spring. And that's
028a big component that was a component we were missing to get that designation is you have to make sure you at least have that opportunity for students to take courses on the college campus not just courses here. Uh we have the freshman experience class. Um we've made some changes a little bit to the freshman and sophomore experience classes. U but one of them freshman now includes a a short course on it's called spreadsheets docs and AI to start kind of talking a little bit about artificial intelligence some of the pitfalls of that they have an AI working group I was just talking to Magguire this morning about the lesson that same thing sophomore experience we've added financial lit Each each group has their monthly CPT meetings continued. Um AP personal finance probably being added part
029of the business pathway. All right. So you can't get to these well some of these but in uh Edin analytics which is one of the password protected things you want to have access to your administrators would um there's a school and district and school test item analysis. So what's nice is to try to sometimes drill down into this data a little bit more where you can look and say okay well is there specific like okay we didn't do well on that where did we do well what were the questions we didn't do well those types of things and sometimes you might find that it's a you know you trace it back and say well we didn't cover that topic so how do we address that in our curriculum or we might say wow there was
030a common incorrect answer that all our students uh picked what was thatconception How do we better teach that? So, this is a link that will take you to the MCAST digital library. What you can do there is you can look and see what those questions literally were. Um, I will caution you, one of the things that's frustrating about that is we don't release all the questions and we release some of the questions and you know how that goes. Like the ones you're really interested in will never be a release item. But uh but you can at least get an idea when they're talking about a strand or a topic of like standard what the what type of question are they asking about? What does that mean? And then this is open architect that's linked to
031the graphs I showed you before. Same thing. It's also password protected. Those are things you can use as you drill down. All right. [clears throat] So last year we doing a lot of work of uh well that kind of ends my accountability summary. Are there any questions on the accountability? Yes. >> Yeah. >> First of all, what do you think was I think first of They've done a lot of job coaching in all areasurriculation and embedded training model so they're exemplary how people all the time from a lot of support. >> I think one of the big things too when we really started taking a look at it few years ago was realizing that you can't you couldn't just sort of like triage your way out, right? It wasn't one of those things where you
032just looked at like kids who weren't struggling readers and said, "Okay, we need to get these kids all reading." Like that wasn't going to fix the problem. Like what we needed to do is we needed to look at what what is our tier one instruction. What's the instruction we're providing to every student at a young age so that hopefully can bring everybody up to make those interventions now now interventionally targeted on those kids. A lot of work originally was spent on strengthening Yeah, I do think though it get the support that we had in all of the leadership training everybody on the same page I also wanted to know >> students with disabilities is defined by the state. So that's going to be anyone who has an Usually we have to report that there's no
033curve on >> Oh. Uh it would not because they would not be classified as that. So basically we report that to the state we don't do they might get protection but they're not reported. >> So I have a question that kind of follows [clears throat] the one that was just asked. So on the growth percentiles for students with disabilities at the elementary school the number I think was like 76. So that reads that 76% of our students with disabilities showed growth from the year before. >> Is that growth percentile saying if you look at the the average the growth for that group of students it was it exceeded like 76% it was better than 76% of the other schools who were >> okay all right so it doesn't do any comparison to how the students
034with disabilities did last year like you're not looking at the same group of kids from second to third grade let's say you're looking at that subgroup which is a totally different set of children >> right is supposed to try to do that because it's supposed to compare [clears throat] it's supposed to compare you to like if you're a third grader now it's kind of giving you a ranking on who they call your like third of that you're a fourth grader now basically like it would say they're going to look at all the kids who kind of had like the same scores as you in third grade and say now we look at how they did in fourth grade and we're going to rank them all and we're going to see where you landed compared to
035your academic and then obviously I believe they normally use two years of data for that group once they once they >> but that's definitely a strong testament to to how we're servicing our children with the IEPs the fact that they place 76th >> I mean that's a really good >> number are very good data. >> All right. So, last year we went through we revised the mission statement, vision statement and the goals over the last year. So, this is just uh recapping that our core values. We kind of realigned them to match the state's uh sort of um terminology. So we're focusing on academic achievement, understanding value, understanding value others and engaging with family world. We had our overarching goals in academic achievement, social wellness, community engagement, human resources, facilities, technology, funding. Those were our
036key areas. We looked at those action steps last year. for our goals for this year which we presented in the summer kind of formulated over the summer. Um so our first one was talking about effectively utilizing technology to support teaching and learning while minimizing distractions. So we want to focus on the effective use of one to one technology and electronic curricula. We are a one to one district still. We just want to make sure that we are using that. Um we want to increase understanding and appropriate use of artificial intelligence by both staff and students. This is a hot topic. As I mentioned, we did form a working group. Um, so we have I guess eight of us on it, five teachers, two administrators, and me. Um, so we've been going through some of the
037state guidance documents. Today we started sort of drafting our internal document of sort of translating how we did on the state self assessment, what we think we need to do. um and then review and adjust uh and review make adjustments to practices regarding personal electronic devices, cell phones, smartwatches, whatever. Um and a lot of that's going to be there's keeps being rumored of a state law that's going to come out with that. Um they're finding it much more difficult to write a law than I think they originally envisioned because all of a sudden now the list of everyone wants to add another exception to it and it's becoming quite the length of our second goal was based on our English learner outcomes by focusing a rapid English language acquisition and overall programility. Uh so English
038language proficiency benchmark plans are something that the state now kind of requires you to do. It's not as formal or legal as like U for special education, but it is uh it's similar in terms of kind of making a theory of action and a plan for how you're going to help a male student learn acquire language skills. Um and also looking at implementation of sheltered English practices basically how we're supporting our multilingual learners in the classroom uh in the general tier one classroom. So one of the Uh we have been using elevation uh which is a a program um in years with our with our ML teachers to kind of look at some of that data. We're now using that to um create the benchmark plans. We are also have the this year development modules.
039We actually kind of started the year off with sort of a introduction to the elevation professional development modules and started doing some of those work some of the work here. And our third goal is kind of getting back to sort of our multi-tered system of support. Um trying to make sure that we're providing all students access to grade level material, trying to remove barriers, providing individual sports and opportunities and kind of varies a little bit um by grade level and context. So that's kind of set up there. So some some some uh areas we might be talking about access to available material, you know, you're looking at uh you know, like I said, eighth grade history. We're we're just starting a new curriculum this year, right? Some of our others we might be in year
040two or three that same idea across the board. That's pretty much our goals for any questions on that. >> All right. So, looking ahead to 2728. So, uh what year is this? [laughter] So, we're I tell you this is like a this is such a confusing time of year for me. It gets worse for me in like two weeks because what happens is believe it or not, we're still we'll still be putting together our FY25 end of year report which ended in July. We're living in FY26 right now but in like another week I'll be building the budget for FY27. So I do have to say that a lot in conversation what year are we talking about right now? So um but one of the things that we keep trying to ahead to is 2728.
041And what 2728 is going to be is that's when the new schools is scheduled to open. Um, which you know as as it's designed is designed to be a fourth through 8 school which would mean opening that is also going to lead to some grade level configuration reconfiguration. So it's going to have an impact across the district. Uh, and what we want to do is we want to be smart. So as we start looking like what are we going to do for FY27 which is next year we want to have at least an I to 28 right because we don't want to sort of you know make some move next year and that we have to like undo the year after because all a sudden we haven't changed we want to try as best we
042can to make sure that you know if we know there's a position that's going to get added to a new building or or eliminate new building or whatever it might that we're thinking about that as we build next year's budget. So, we have some cont. So, for the actual construction, um I know I don't know how many of you have been over construction site recently or walked up by the res. I think if you walk by the res um I go normally every Tuesday we have a construction meeting over there. A lot of times I end up walking around. So, there's a lot done like underground. So they did all the dirt. They did all the geothermal wells. Those are all dug and interconnected. They have the foundations going around. So about 34 of the
043foundations are done. I'm sure it's more than that. I'll find out exactly where they are tomorrow when I go to my meeting, but it was just about three quarters when I was there last week. Um but the fun part should start in about a week or so because steel is scheduled to arrive. I think it's like November 6th or was it 17? >> 17th. Okay. So, 17. So, and they are now saying that they think they're going to get all the steel up in it's like half the time that was bit. They're thinking they're going to be able to do it quicker. So they're they're saying we probably will have a topping off ceremony like they're thinking it could be that uh like first week in January. Um which is when top the final this
044final ceremonial will be in place. So we could be looking at doing another groundbre but once you have the steel up it won't look like like just kids playing in a sandbox anymore. It'll start to look like a building, right? And then and then we'll be able to kind of see what that'll look like. And then they'll probably usually get some start the envelope going up. U fall 27 is when the new building is scheduled to open. We do try to, you know, people always, like, oh, when's it going to be done? Well, it's probably not going to be done until like the summer of 28 because remember there's like We're chasing everything, right? So, you build a new building on the fields. Once you can get out of the new building, you tear down
045the old building. You build a new parking lot. Once you build a new parking lot, you tear up the old parking lot. You build a new field. So, it's kind of like everything goes around. So, there's some things that you can't It's all the same site. Um, so when in the fall 27, we'll move into that. School will start in the new building. But we'll still be demolishing the old kind of stuff going on. Uh this is the project website. So this is here. Um this is a time lapse camera that they actually have mounted on top of uh it's on top of the current school looking out. So this one was last update was September 30th. We probably do one in a few weeks the end of October and you can just kind of
046get a sense of what they've been doing. I feel like when you watch this in the beginning, it looks like they just kind of move their ear. All right. So, what's what's neat about this view in a way is this is from the like the gym the roof of the gym looking out. This is actually going to be the front of the building right here. So, because the building kind of tucks back faces sideways. So when you see this like this area back here, so all back here where the old baseball field was back where back where I coached a young Chris in freshman baseball >> we only lost one game, right? No, two St. John's and Milford, but we beat Milford the second um the back where that field was. That's where the federal
047wells are. And then this is the entrance back here. This is the first wing they did. This is basically going to be the seventh and eighth grade wing. Then they started. So that if you that's pretty much the foundation's pretty much done here. Come along up here. This is like the cafeteria into the music room. Come across the main entrance. Work your way. This will be the admin offices with sixth grade above it. And then back this back corner back here. The last section I get into the fourth and fifth grade library media center is kind of in the middle. So that's how it's oriented. So it's kind of neat because it's really all taking shape. I tell you the funniest thing is I feel like things look so small out there right now. When
048you walk the site, you'll look at like the footings and they'll be like, "Yeah, these are the classrooms." I'm like, "It can't be the classroom. Those things are tiny." And then you go and you like pace them out and you're like, "Oh, no. It's right. It's just huge. There's no walls. They like lose perspective on what's going on. All right. [snorts] So, that project website what I just showed you that you can visit that anytime you want. Um and and we try to update it. A lot of times it's just getting updated with meeting minutes and that kind of stuff, but that time lapse should get updated at least on like a monthly basis. Um this is draft thoughts about ideas for the new building. Before I talk about all these, I want to say
049preface this for a couple things is what we're doing right now is sort of like I'm literally throwing out things we've been talking about um kind of behind the scenes is what may or may not happen. Part of doing that is to get defense, right? Like it's two years away. So that's kind of you know as we as you have middle school councils or elementary school councils or those types of things providing that type of feedback. That's why I'm sharing with you. Um so one of the things that we've talked about was potential looking at treating it like two schools in one where you almost have the seventh and eighth grade which buildings being designed that way. Building being designed to kind of keep seventh and eighth grade and fourth and fifth grade separated uh
050with sixth grade kind of in the middle, right? So could sort of go either way. Um This will put seventh to eighth grade on the the Clinton High School times. Have them ride on the Clinton High School buses. Basically follow the Clinton High School schedule. Why would we do that? It promotes the ability for CMS students to access high school courses. Also for efficiency for offerings, it allows the potential for shared staffing between buildings. It also easier access to after school programs. Grades four, five, and six. We kind of stay current CMS times. They ride on their own bus. They follow their own unique schedule. Okay. There is a financial factor to that in the sense that high school buses are mostly empty. >> Most upper classmen don't ride a bus. So putting seventh and
051eighth grade on high school buses and then allowing four, five, and six to pretty much all ride the same bus, be on buses or all ride the bus um is going to is going to help with our our uh allocation of resources to the bus. Uh leadership. So if you're going to do something like that, like I' I've actually worked as a assistant principal and I was principal of like a middle high school kind of trying to run that way. Um, I think you'd at least want to have you'd have someone who's the principal and then I think if you're going to do it as two separate schools, you'd at least need to have one assistant principal for sort of the for elementary grades and assistant principal for the junior high grades. We hasn't been
052brought up to sort of double check the seventh eighth grade principal designation. Um, there is sort of a weird loophole where if you kind of make it that technically their principal is the high school principal, then they might be eligible for varsity athletics, which right now graders come up to JV, but they can't come up to varsity. That's something we could look at if it was something that made sense. Grades four and five, I think we probably still kind of stay stay the same uh with like one teacher of math and science, one teacher teaching alien history. uh maybe like a focus special per trimester where they get art, music and STEM which be in the new maker space and wellness the health would be kind of throughout the year on a rotating basis. Grade
053six thinking of grade six as more of like a swing grade even though it might be on the upper elementary time. Try to get to more of a team approach. So you have the potential for a different teacher for each subject. There's a couple weird things. I say potential because given our the nature of it. You'd have to have some teachers who are still teaching multiple subjects, right? So, if I need at least six sections or probably seven sections of say math, one teacher can teach five. So, I'm going have to have someone else pick up two, right? Which isn't enough for a full-time staff member, but we might be able to like or you do four and three or something like that. Um, but trying to make it more of like a middle school
054model. There's also some things we got to look at with licensing and that kind of stuff in there just to make sure that the middle school model matches all the licenses for our current teachers. Looking at something like one trimester of each for our wellness lead away potentially in something like a sixth grade experience type class. Um it could allow for like a rotation of academic support classes and opportunities for enrichment intervention. That's an idea. It's kind of sort of like what freshman and sophomores do, but it's a chance to try to bring in some of those things, not just rotation classes, but also you can do some things with guidance, career exploration, anti-bullying, whatever, artificial intelligence, digital literacy. Seven and eight would be more like a junior high under this kind of idea. Um,
055basically students sign up for their courses, they take their courses. They probably all take uh special rotation that included wellness Spanish and uh techn like shop tech ed class education technology class project lead the way art project lead the way different types of project lead the way and then they have a seven period schedule. So you have a whole a period here that could be used for electives, enrichments, interventions, ensembles. Um we could create sort of a seventh or eighth grade experience if we needed to as sort of where you go if you didn't aren't in something else. Um we could look at that and see how that goes. But that would by doing that it would sort of build in this extra period that either students could sign up for yearong Spanish or student
056needed academic support class or something like that. We can get that. Music, we got to figure out exactly what music would look like. Um, four and five, I think they would keep music classes. Grades four through six, there would be ensembles. Seventh, eighth grade ensembles. Be a matter of like what level of music are we keeping right now? Seventh and eighth grade don't have music. Five and six do. Um, so then this move those two down to four five having music that becomes staffing capacity. >> Steve, I think that's an opportunity too though where we should be looking at like if you're in the band, band's an extracurricular activity. It happens after school just like baseball does and basketball does. I'd like to see us try to at least entertain getting away from pulling kids
057out of math and English and anything else because they're going to play an an instrument. Like I think that has to be like front and center of our of our priorities around our other teachers that teach these subjects because it is an extracurricular activity. And I get that sometimes you have to pull people out. You can't have 30 kids there at once, but you'd never pull a kid out of English for them to go like hit fungos in like field baseballs, right? So I think that we need to figure that out as we do that. I think >> I agree. I think it's something that we want to look at and I know people are going to get passionate about on all sides. So, um, couple transition notes. FY27, um, so FY27 is next school
058year, the 26 27 school year. So, [clears throat] we're probably going to try to end the year as early as possible. So, like this year we have two weeks after Christmas. Last year, two weeks after Christmas, next year Christmas is a Friday. So, coming Christmas Eve, [laughter] but we're probably shorten that break a lot. >> There's no we in that. None of us have anything. [laughter] >> The quicker the quicker done, >> the quicker they can start the transition, right? Because we have to move everything out and then we have to tear the building down, right? So, earlier we get that process started, the better. So, you'll probably see some things when we come out with the draft calendar that will reflect that. Uh, we can probably look at having a full full day PD
059day in May. Typically, have a full day in March. Um, what we're probably going to do is start talking about packing and what that's going to look like and that process and how where things go and probably looking at something like half days for the entire district. If you typically do half days for the high school, giving half days the entire district would allow everyone across the district some time to prepare for the packing and the transition because you got to remember that last week the school high school has half days for exams. PreK and K are done already, right? So you grades one through eight. Well, four, five, six, seven, eight are all going to be in a new building. So they're packing. But then even for grades like one, two, and three, a
060lot of them might be moving around, too. Depending on, you know, we're not just going to vacate like a fourth grade hallway and leave it empty. So there's going to be some different things like that. >> And then the flip side, if we're going to go all the way to the 20 28 we're talking about that'll probably start as late as possible. So then what you might see for that is we might end up frontloading our professional development and really not bringing students back until after Labor Day. And part of that is that gives everyone a few days in the new building to try to like actually unpack, move in, and make it feel like a building. Also gives us time to troubleshoot. So if all of a sudden something pops up that we didn't
061know was, you know, an issue or kind of under the radar and someone realizes, hey, my class doesn't have >> electricity. I don't know, whatever it is, right? We can try to get somebody there. We have a three-day weekend where we can say, hey, >> that doesn't happen. >> So, >> all right. >> Oops. >> All right. A minute over. Sorry, folks. Um, does anyone have any questions? All right. Like I said, none of that stuff I just said is like set in stone, right? That is me. I I like to call it like planting seeds, right? So, planted the seed with all of you. And now I just want to see how it takes and get your feedback and you can share it through your building. You can share it through, you know, whatever.
062You can send me an email, whatever you're comfortable with because we want to start trying to to figure this out now so that while we're doing budget. You got that to yourself. Okay. All right. I appreciate everyone coming out tonight. Thank you for being part of the school council. >> Okay. We're on the front page of the agenda, which means Please allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. Bring to order the school committee meeting for Monday, October 27th, 2025. I will entertain a motion to review approval of the minutes from our October 6th meeting. >> So move >> any discussion. >> Okay. All in favor? >> I >> Great, >>
063Alex. >> And we don't have bills today. That's right. Because And that was out and we took care of that ahead of time. >> I was going to say I felt a little offkilter there for a minute. There wasn't a second motion. >> Try to vote on two of them at the next meeting, but we're okay. >> Y perfect. Uh, is there any public comment this evening? Seeing none, you will close public comment. Do we have a student representative this evening? Not seeing one. Uh, CTA, >> thank you. PTA, what up? >> Always with the handouts with you. I think your name is mentioned twice. >> Oh, it is. >> Oh, never mind. Hand it out. Hand it out. Let's read it. Let's read it. Hold on. Let's read it. >> That was a quick
064response. [laughter] >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you for the chocolate cake. >> Um so, we've completed our book fair for um CES for the fall. Um Dr. and Matt Barac attended and volunteered this year. Thank you so much. Um, on the last day of the book fair, we were able to purchase over $1,400 in books that were directly added to Miss Fr's bookcase and the CES library. Um, thank you Matt Barakus >> for your TED talk during the fair. >> Listen, I I don't even know if that should be public knowledge, but okay. Sure. >> We appreciate your support of the PTA and your insights on how to continue to make a difference in our community. And I just want you to know that even though we told you face to face, >> thank
065you. >> Um, we will be at the Halloween walk on Wednesday in front of Liberty Tax handing out non-candy treats. Um, our fundraising night with the fountain is on November 6th. There's a flyer attached. Watch for that on Facebook. Like it, love it, share it, all kinds of stuff. Help us spread the word. >> And then come to the meeting with your snack, >> which is the same thing. Um, Christmas movie night featuring the Polar Express experience is booked for December 7th at Entertainment Cinemas in Lemonster. The experience is sponsored by The Pink Goose, which is part of a local family here in Clinton. Um, there's some details about what their mission is and what they do there. Um, the Clinton Middle School has their scholastic book fair the first week in December. We are
066currently recruiting volunteers for that. Um, and I know Becky is still working on seeing if we can continue the book fair during the half day and open it up for parents. So, we will continue to let you know about that. Um, still working on budgets and bylaws. We won't mention that our contracts end uh in June and our next meeting is November 6th at the administration building. And that's it. >> Listen, with all Bill's experience in civic duties over the years, I'm sure he can teach you and walk you through how to change your bylaws to stay in [laughter] perpetuity. >> To stay in perpetuity if you choose. I mean, we we'd love to have you stay. I mean, >> just saying. Yeah, >> thank you for that, Matt. [laughter] >> I think I might
067need a little help with it. >> Yeah, we'll call you. Um, yeah, I think we've edited that document quite a bit. Um, >> yeah, it's a matter of >> us. >> All right, that's it. You know where to find us. >> Thanks, guys. >> Thank you. Thank you. I just have to say I I unfortunately wasn't at the last meeting, but this glow run and this when I ever saw that $36,000 I just >> like bravo 37 counts. We are actually able to and I could publicly say this with Miss Mrs. We are able to based on last year's number fully fund CES's spring field trips in full. >> Awesome. So that is >> that is the actual trip itself, the busing, the action where they're going based on all the numbers that I have
068from last year's data with some leeway and wiggle room for inflation because everything goes up um we are able to [snorts] cover it in full. So families will not be paying for the elementary school. >> That's great. working the numbers for the middle school. We might actually be able to cover their the fund request that came from those grades as well. Um a good chunk as well. >> Wonderful. Thank you. >> Keep up the good work. >> Thank you. >> Uh any pack? >> Hi everybody. >> Hi. How are you? >> Good. Um tomorrow we have an APAC meeting. You're welcome to come if you would like to be there. She's one of my mother of the LPAC. It's the first time for her to come in here and for me it's very important that
069they know who you are and what you do for the school. On November 20, we having our e Thanksgiving potluck. It's going to be in CES starting at 6:30. You're also welcome to attend. We're going to have those high schools band and the the dancing and a lot of food there. >> Got it. >> And what time is that at? >> That going to be at 6:30 Thursday, November 20. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Ass. >> Oh, okay. Thank you. >> Off to Meyer, over to you. >> All right. Um, so Annette couldn't be here tonight, but she did uh put together the quarter 1 uh budget report. Um, I'm not going to go through too much of it yet. It's pretty early, but it is just kind of giving you, you know, there's a
070lot of incumbrances in there that we'll keep fine-tuning as we go through the year. Um, you know, as of right now, everything looks fine. Um, but we'll we'll continue to monitor that. Um, the circuit breaker, she did put a little um circuit breaker uh anticipated balance in there. Um and what you can see is that the um we're we budgeted um we budgeted more circuit breaker for this year than we were anticipating to take in. So we were kind of dipping into that reserve. So we're anticipating a budget right now of about 1,132 uh,221 in that circuit breaker account at the end of this year. And then so we'll have to factor that in as we make adjustments to next year's budget. Uh we have to spend that much at least because you have to
071spend it within a year. Um the question will be how much of the reimbursement we're getting this year are we going to allocate for next year's budget. So we'll continue to monitor that. Um and then there's just some school choice enrollment trends. Um and just kind of showing that we're trying to, you know, we are trying to kind of get a little bit trying to be uh in the net positive for the school choice on a year-to-year basis for this year and hopefully next year as well. Uh with an anticipation of wanting to make sure that we have those funds available to us in FY28. Um you know, we there had been sort of a balance in there and we had been kind of overspending and dwindling that balance down. So now we kind of
072made that shift for this year, next year to kind of see if we can get that balance up a little bit more so we can help us once the student opportunity act funding um is over. So that is you know quick overview for the financial update. One other topic I guess I would just throw in because I think it kind of falls under financial. It kind of also falls under I guess just our you know it's almost more human resources maybe. I don't know what you want to call it, but um we do have an insurance advisory commission that meets uh they've met a couple times this year. Um and we just had a meeting Thursday. Um and so we used to be a part of a consortium um with uh Minute Manoba and then
073that folded and then I think the last two years we've been with Blue Cross Blue Shield and so but we've kind of done those on like a yeartoear like you just you're on you're kind of on your own you do you get a rate and you and you renew it. So the IA meets to to kind of discuss what they want to do. Would they want to make plan ch recommend plan changes, recommend different carriers or anything like that. Um right now it's sort of seeming like you know changing making wholesale changes is difficult. So I think on the last meetings one of the consensus was to sort of stay with Blue Cross Blue Shield but then maybe continue to explore uh the GIC which is sort of the state's kind of uh group insurance
074commission. And um but I just know that recently Bluec Cross Bus has been in the news. Um one for having some significant uh deficits last year and one for having a potential contract dispute with um UMass. And if they if Blue Cross Blue is if you're not able to access UMass healthcare providers, that's going to be a major concern for most of our employees because that's that's right around here. So we're hoping that doesn't happen. Um, but it is something that I want to just at least throw out there that's kind of happened because I don't know what financial impact that might have as far as um, you know, what we might have to do for shopping around for insurance or anything like that. So, that's just something like I said, I don't have an
075answer for it. I don't know if it's um, you know, there's nothing I think that's official that makes it that means we have to panic right now, but um, the news whether it's just posturing or not, but the news isn't isn't great right now. So, we'll continue to follow that, but that might require us trying to take some some swifter action than we had thought if Blue Cross and Blue Shield is going to have a significantly limited network in this area. So, all right. Uh that is my financial update with a little insurance bonus. Um the next topic was policies for second reading. We have these three policies. Uh you guys approved them all last time for first reading. I had not received any feedback or questions or concerns from anyone. Um, so unless any
076of you have any comments, I'll be looking for a motion to uh adopt them. >> Second. >> Any questions, discussion? Okay. All >> in favor? >> I thank you. >> Thank you. And the middle school pathway policy is supposed to be uh submitted to the state by November 1st. I'll submit that by later this week um now that it's approved and the graduation constitute determination policy I think is uh due for submission to state by December. All right. Um terms of academic achievement um I've got a uh 50 slide presentation I'm going to run through quickly with you. >> I didn't [laughter] I didn't catch all the details the first time around. I mean if you want to go through it. >> No. Uh so tonight was our if anyone just is just tuning in
077for the meeting. Um tonight was the tri council meeting which was also live streamed um where we talked about the academic achievement. Uh we also rolled right into some planning and potentials uh potential looks for the new uh middle school building project. So um that we did include that in this packet. So I mean it is public information. Um I'm not going to rehash everything with you guys. Um, you know, the short the short part of it is as a district, we're not requiring any assistance or intervention from an accountability standpoint. High school and middle school are also not requiring any assistance or intervention. The elementary school on top of not requiring assistance or intervention is actually a school of recognition, which is great for them. Um, and you know, for the as far as
078the project goes, um, we're just kind of looking forward. So, as we build this year's budget, we keep an eye for two years from now when the new building will open. And we are looking at steel coming in a few weeks and probably a topping off ceremony might be the end of December or early January. My guess is the ceremony won't be till January, but it might be if we can sneak it in. We might try to do the thing where people can like sign the steel beam maybe that week before Christmas or something because that's probably something good to do while it's, you know, that chaotic week anyway. So, >> you have to do it outside though. See, >> and no gloves. [laughter] >> All right. So, I think that's all I have unless
079you guys have any specific questions on anything that uh I know I've you just listened to me talk for like an hour or so. >> Okay. From the um advisory committees, it looks like we have some follow-up meetings coming up with several of the subcommittees. So, that's great. Y >> I think there's other subcommittees that just hasn't been relevant to have a meeting just yet either. So, >> right, >> the big one is safety on Wednesday. Yeah. >> Yep. Safety Wednesday. I got that. >> Um any questions from the committee in regard to subcommittees at all? Any concerns, questions, thoughts? Okay, great. Uh do we have anything under hold business? Anything on a new business? >> Not even a one thing. Not even a one. >> I snuck insurance in with financial update. I could
080have sat on that, but >> I will consider it a >> So moved it to this. Thank you folks.