Dartmouth School Committee Meeting, January 27, 2024

001[Music] good evening everyone I'd like to call this meeting of the Dartmouth school committee to order for a Monday January 27th 2025 would you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the republ for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all please be seated well good evening everyone i' like to welcome you all to Dartmouth High School and the the uh Dartmouth school committee meeting just a reminder to please silence your cell phones uh if you have any electronic devices as well as also a reminder that this meeting is being videotaped by our wonderful uh high school media dep Department man under the direction of Mr Robert parate the uh meeting will be rebroadcast it will

002be recorded and re rebroadcast on DCTV channels 9 on the following days Wednesday and Thursday at 5:00 pm Friday at 6:00 a.m. Saturday at 800 a.m and Sunday at 2 pm. the meeting will also be rebroadcast on DCT CH TV channels 18 on the following days Monday and Saturday at 12:00 p.m. and Thursday at 300 p.m. and as always you can catch it on the Dartmouth High School media YouTube channel and we always thank our friends over at DCTV as well as Miss parate and his students that are helping out uh could we have a roll call please miss gther Kathleen ameral here John Nunes hello Mary beckworth here best Coughlin here Chris Oliver here uh thank you very much uh first item on tonight's agenda is the public hearing for school choice uh it

003is uh set for 605 I'm not sure what the committee's pleasure is at 603 we have a couple minutes you want to take the minutes first perfect at this time chair will entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes so of January 6 2025 so moved second uh motion by Mrs Amaral second by Miss Beckwith on the motion any further discussion Jay Haring none all in favor I I opposed abstentions I'll abstain Mr chairman motion passes 4 to Zer with one abstention thank you everyone chair will entertain a motion to approve the executive session minutes for uh January 6 2025 so moved Mr chairman with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were intended is complete second we have a motion by Mr Nunes a second by Miss Coughlin

004on the motion any further discussion Jay Herring none all in favor I I opposed abstentions I'll abstain Mr chairman passes four to zero with one abstention did we miss public comment we're going to get to that okay yep we'll do that right after our um school choice hearing oh okay thank you though uh it is approaching uh 605 uh so at this time I will open up uh the public hearing for the 2025 2026 uh school choice the hearing uh was advertised in the standard times on January 12th 2024 so we'll open up the hearing now for anyone wishing to approach the microphone we ask you to do so state your name and if you could keep your comments brief anything regarding uh school choice here uh in the town of Dartmouth I'll just remind

005everyone that school choice is a program that allows uh districts to accept students from outside of the uh Dartmouth Community limits um other nearby District actually any District in the Commonwealth and uh we typically um take them in at the high school level so anyone else chairman make a motion we close the school choice hearing second got a motion by Mr Nunes to close the school choice hearing second by Mrs Amaral on the motion any further discussion chair in none all in favor I opposed motion carries unanimously thank you everyone for that thank you for bearing with us uh next up on tonight's agenda we have public comment anyone wishing to speak on any of tonight's agenda items if you would like to approach the podium uh we we typically all Lot 10 minutes for

006anyone wishing to speak on any of the agenda items on tonight's agenda I just ask you to approach the podium keep your approach the microphone keep your comments around three minutes and uh state your name uh hi I'm Nathan Silva I'll try to keep the three minutes feel free to give me the uh wor I'm running over I just want to speak on the budget a little bit I know you guys are hot and heavy into the budgeting season um I appreciate all the work that you guys are doing in that um and all I really want to point out is just one thing is that uh there was a lot of excitement in town at fall town meeting that the town had generated record free cash right $8 million of free cash uh was

007generated um but in my mind that I think that's a loss really because in the same year in which we had to in which we generated record free cash we also had to lose n and a half positions from the school department um and we also had to dip into one-time funds in order to fund our ongoing operating expenses uh in violation of the town's own Financial policies um so the direct and tangible results of those cuts are that my daughter's class size increased by 33% between last year and this year between second grade and third grade um so what we did was we leveraged the quality of our children's education in order to generate at that free cash and I think that's a shame um so I think that um it's not that the

008town didn't have the money to preserve those positions and and to preserve truly level services in town is that they didn't prioritize properly in order to do so um so I think I think uh we we need to they need to sharpen their pencil a little bit in terms of what we generate what we're projecting for revenues cuz in order to to underestimate our revenues by $8 million in a year in which we significantly reducing the quality of our kids education um is a shame and and I think my my ask of you all is that I'm hoping hoping that the next Town Administrator has a little bit of a different uh philosophy than our previous Town Administrator uh but until then I I would ask of you all that that only approve a budget

009that truly meets level services for the schools right uh and that that uh fully funds the the Strategic plan that was that was put together um and then if there's a difference between what the town is willing to offer and what you guys see as is necessary in order to preserve level Services let the select board take a vote as to where they want to prioritize money let the finance committee take their vote as to where they want to prioritize money but ultimately let town meeting have that debate as to where we think the the the funds ought to be prioritized um so I know I'm preaching to the choir I know you are all on the same page and I appreciate all all that You' do but again that's just uh something I wanted

010to mention as we head into budgeting season so thank you thank you very much Mr anyone else wishing to speak turn public comment all right seeing there's no takers we're moving on to our next agenda item which is our student representative report and I'll turn it over to I'm sorry Jordan Jordan good evening thank you for having me uh I wanted to start with we're heading into February and just started semester 2 so report cards will be coming out this week our debate team recently has had a successful meet in Boston Our member Audrey kard took one gold and two bronze Awards home and will Jordan took two bronze our winter sports teams continue to do well with only a few weeks left track will be holding their senior night this Thursday and we have

011also have a number of athletes that qualified for States our robotics team also had their first competition yesterday and they've been working diligently to prepare for it the National Honor Society has put together a carnation fundraiser where students can buy carnations and Valentine cards to surprise others on Valentine's Day our Dartmouth High School theater company will be putting together High School Musical for the spring show and tickets are on sale now for the show debuting May 1st through May 3rd and there are currently two student council fundraisers our first fundraiser will be selling flower bulbs where you can purchase online tickets online flower bulbs and the second fundraiser will be at Chipotle on February 3rd where some of the funds will go to our student council and all funds that the student council receives will

012go to activities and a leadership conference thank you for taking the time to recognize us this evening and we hope you have a good evening thank you thank you so much for your report Jordan any questions Mr noon to quick and I the two fundraisers that you're having what are they um so they're run by the student council and one of them is a flower bulb fundraiser so we have a QR code that's in the hallway of the school where we'll be selling them online and the other is a fundraiser taking place at Chipotle on February 3rd do you need a flyer for chipotes uh we don't have one currently on our board but I think we'll be putting one up soon you make sure get it to Mr Shay so it gets to us

013if I don't have to shop cook or clean I'm golden so thank you thank thank you Mr chairman thank you Jordan anything else as always you're welcome to stay what we understand probably have some other things to do so thank you very much the highlight of the night are most of our school committee meetings when we get to see students uh so Spotlight on kids uh George H Potter Elementary School turn it over to Dr sa I see Mr Porter is making his way to the podium um Mr gashaw said a minute ago that there was a buzz here tonight and there is so we as Mr Oliver just said love it when our students are here to talk to us hopefully what you heard from our high school student just now remind you of

014why we start this kind of work and give our students these kind of opportunities really early on and so we're really excited to have Mr Porter and crew talk to us about something that we started this year that we think is going to be very or is very exciting I agree so good evening and thank you for inviting us to Spotlight Potter School this year we are very excited to tell you about a project that our grade five students recently completed with our instructional technology specialist Sandra chicka and with the TV Production Studio here at Dartmouth High School in fact I think behind some of these windows behind the control panel there there are two Dartmouth High seniors who were instrumental in helping our fifth graders produce what they're going to show you tonight so

015we just want to say a very special thank you to Brady Jackson who's a junior here at Dartmouth High and Michael Burke who is a senior they were a big big help but this is not about me this is about them so miss chicka come on up and tell us a little bit more about this this exciting project thank you Mr reporter um good evening school committee members and thank you for having us here to present tonight um this project started out as just a thought um I wanted to somehow get the fifth graders involved in making announcements either over the intercom or doing video announcements monthly or weekly um just to kind of Spotlight what we were doing at parter just within parter um but when I brought the idea Mr Porter and Mrs

016McKenry Mr Porter suggested I reach out to Mr parate for some tips and some best practices Mr parate quickly responded have the kids write a script and they can come down to our studio and we'll record we'll have a newscast recording at the studio which was great I didn't think we'd get a lot of kids signed up but we had 25 students involved in the entire project which was great Mr parate accommodated them in the studio that day um the studio the students impressed me with their creativity and I'm very proud of the work that they put into the project I'm grateful for the opportunity to work with such a terrific group of students we have six of them here tonight to help us present Franchesca yany Sylvia vadun Madison Gardner Abigail mandaville Edward Casey

017and Rachel Hall and first up we have Franchesca um back in September Mrs CH asked all of the fifth graders if they wanted to be part of putting together newscast cast Mrs cha called it the wghp and the name suck we we were all invited to fill out an application and be part of a short interview next we brain brainstormed ideas for segments that would that we that would tell people about Potter since we were all eager to choose our segments we used the random name picker to decide the order we picked our segments in once we received once we received our segments we wrote out the questions we would be asking the staff we also had to set up times to interview the staff we asked the staff questions like what what was the

018weirdest Christmas gift you have you had ever received after we finished the interviews we had to write scripts Mrs cha helped us edit and revise them to be the best that they could be everyone had a job to do so even if you weren't going going to be on camera you still had to do just as much work as everyone else did by coming up with segments writing scripts and filming some of the videos we learned about using external micro microphones with iPads we learned louder as better while some of us were interviewing others were recording the interviews in the hallway or asking staff what's the funniest things student has ever said to you or asking students what would you do if you were principal a day we had a lot we had to do

019a lot of work it was very hard it took a lot of time and it was a big commitment you syby once the scripts were done we started rehearsing first we started with table reads that is when you just sit and everyone goes through their part in order making sure it sounds correct and practicing voice changes then we started Rec recording our rehearsals we don't have a teleprompter so we used the panel and in our room as the teleprompter so we could get used to reading off a screen we recorded the rehearsal so we could watch ourselves and decide what we needed to change we rehearsed right up to before we left for Dartmouth High School once we arrived at the high school Mr parate wanted to catch our first look as we walked in

020the studio it was a spacious room f with filled with cameras there were cameras everywhere and a lot of computers there was a big TV with a fireplace crackling on it besides that there was a large monitor that showed what every camera could see there were five cameras they all sh different angles it was shocking to find out that each camera cost around $25,000 Mr parate and some students from the high school explained the equipment to us but the best part was the high school students had our wghp all over the room those of us that did not have a segment were able to work a camera or go into the control room and work there the camera people were giving a headset so they could communicate with the control room each camera had a

021number so we knew which camera had to move they they would give a direction like coming in on camera too the camera looks heavy but they're they were actually light bringing on Maddie as we filmed the newscast there were students working at the cameras at the desk being recorded sitting in the comfy Lounge waiting for their turn or in the control room there were four different jobs in the control room one person was the director they controlled when the camera switched they could speak through the headset to the camera people or they could speak directly into the studio and say things things like we have to do a final we have to do another take or we can hear background noise in that take even though the final video has all the different parts we

022actually recorded the host Parts first so they had to pretend they were going to the next segment even though they were just stopping when we got to the Anchor desk to do our segment we had to put on microphones and sit on high chairs as as we sat at the desk we were facing a monitor that we could see ourselves in and the teleprompter the teleprompter was actually controlled by someone in the control room each time a new person sat at the desk they had to run a mic check because we speak at different levels that was another control room job that person just adjusted the volume and turned mics on and off if you watch the newscast you will also notice the background change for each segment which is which was also controlled by

023one of us in the control room that person had to make sure the background ran the entire length of the segment Mr parate let us do most of the work of course he helped us with the control room because there was a lot of expensive equipment in there but other than that he let us do a lot and that was great here's Abby everybody worked together and did such a great job I wanted to thank Miss chcka for organizing this event members of the school staff for their interviews Mr Pate for welcoming us and allowing us to film at Dartmouth High School our home room teachers Mrs Goodman miss suvin Mr Dua and our ESP Mrs bragga who were all flexible Miss McKenry and Mr Porter for letting us participate the staff at dhsv media

024for helping us record and edit the newscast this was not only fun but also such a great learning experience that we will not forget our news class is 23 minutes long and you can see it on dhsv media's YouTube channel but we do have a short staff spot late today hello and welcome to dhnn Potter School holiday edition we have a lot to talk Miss Stevenson started her teaching career at Potter 4 years ago her favorite thing about teaching is getting to know the kid her hi I'm Francesca yannie hello I'm Rowan melow we went around poter school and asked the teachers what's the funniest thing in student has ever said to you and here's what they said um a student told me that their mom told them to clean up the biggest mess in

025the house so they grabbed cleaning supplies and started spraying their sister yes the students picturing a fountain that you see outside and trying to take a drink from it now realizing the rest of the country uses Fountain instead of bubbler so we had a good laugh at that one hello I'm Liliana and these are my friends Ry and Maisy today we have a book new on the book Wonder by RJ P back to M and Aubrey thank you Maisy r and Liliana Miss Ken became a teacher because she enjoys working with kids and she wants to teach students to believe in themselves she enjoys learning about literacy but likes to teach math hi my name is Leah and I'm BNA we in students in kindergarten through fifth grade and ask them the burning question what

026would you do for your principal for a day you do I would make the kids learn our recess but they can also have fun I would let the kids learn less and have have more time at recess thanks Au and Nico hi I'm Eddie some people can't decide between a cat and a dog so I'm here to decide I'm here to give you my opinion about each of them thank you Eddie our final segment is also our final staff Spotlight he started as a fifth grade teacher and taught fifth grade for 18 years at Potter School he received his master's degree and wanted to see if he likes being an assistant principal thanks for tuning and happy holid holidays [Music] [Applause] good evening thank you so much to the school committee for providing us with

027another opportunity to showcase uh the fabulous work that our students and staff are doing at Potter and I would like to repeat what Abigail said and give a couple of shoutouts to to starting first with um to miss chicka our technology integration specialist I think I said that correctly um thank you for organizing this for us and to Rob parate and the DHS uh TV media team for giving our students this wonderful learning experience and most of all to our students so if you wouldn't mind joining me and giving our future news anchors I'm not sure if they're evening news anchors going to be the next Today Show post Good Morning America whatever you watch but if we could give them another round of applause for our job well done and I'd also like to

028acknowledge our families who joined us and our staff that joined us as well we so appreciate you coming out on this cold evening in between dinner and basketball practice and all that good stuff um so thank you as well um and I also want to acknowledge um that this is Mr por 's last Spotlight on schools which makes me very sad so if we could give him a round of applause that would make me feel good all right and I'm going to turn the students back over to you if you have any questions or comments they'd be happy to answer them thank you so much any of my colleagues have any comments or questions adding down there I I'll just start I super impressed the way in which you all took you know your roles

029uh turning the slides and integral part of this presentation you did a great job um and I enjoyed listening to you and learning more about the process you really described it well and um I would like to know if uh any of you were inspired from this opportunity to go have an interest in some sort of communication field and broadcasting and such I don't know if anybody wants to go to the microphone if you have yeah nobody else is well I think that it was a great learning experience and it makes me wonder what I am going to do when I grow up and this is seems like one of my options so think I will do this further I don't know if I'll do it professionally or just somewhere else but I did think

030about that that's excellent such great skills you know learning uh just just um learning how to better communicate getting up in front of a crowd of people and knowing that you are being recorded uh that's it's something to be proud of for sure so thank you turn it over to my colleagues thank you Kathleen well nice job ladies and gentlemen you know I'm just thinking do we have like Patrice Woods or Savannah Guri or photocopy or you know Doug jck you know type of deal but seriously fantastic job how long did it take you when did you start working on on this uh we started about I would say September ear October yeah late September early October and then we Ed like when we did the video and then now we're here did you did

031you work on it like after school or during lunchtime recess um we kind of just took different times and we shifted it around to make it work and everyone's in different classes so we had to figure that out we did it during Library like we just really tried to shift it around and we did it whenever we could and stuff and it was great and we filmed in December right before Christmas and from so like from late September early October to December and then we had and then some of us worked on this project too to share for you guys tonight excellent well thank you very much that was excellent thank you Mr chairman you're welcome yeah definitely excellent and um that just looked great and so my question and any of you can answer

032as many of you can is did it turn out like you pictured it when you were writing your scripts and what was different than you expected thank you it turned out even better than we expected that's always a good thing good yeah that's great a great question anyone else um I had a I had a slightly different picture in my mind but the way it turned out I really liked it great excellent good I also did I didn't think the studio was going to look like that or I thought I was going to be a lot more nervous or like I didn't know really what to expect and it was all really good and like it was fun and I wasn't as nervous as I was when I got to it and did it so

033good thank you that's cuz you prepared thank you um very impressive absolutely um so my question is along that lines but was it more difficult than you would anticipated or or and um what were some of the most challenging things so was it more difficult was it challenging what was the most challenging part um I think the scripts we were trying to make like paragraphs and all that about their answers and it was just a lot but we went through it and we're just going nice job I will say it was a lot of work but at the end it's all rewarding and it was a great experience to have and I am very grateful that I had a chance to be able to do that great very thank you you're welcome and I guess

034I'll wrap it up here wonderful job to all of you and the even even the students that weren't here very very professional I will say seeing everyone up there was anyone a little bit nervous when they were B in front of the camera sitting at that desk maybe a little bit maybe a little bit some yes some no I know right how many of you were like amazed when you walked in and saw the studio for the first time and you're like wow this is pretty cool it's pretty it's a pretty cool space especially for for high school it's like real stuff in there so well thank you all of you for presenting you all did a fabulous job thank you to the all the teachers uh Mrs chica that was involved thank you Mr

035Porter for coming out Mr I can just add that whenever we have an opportunity to bring our elementary kids up to Dartmouth High and see this amazing building so I also want to thank Mr Shay as well but we're hopeful that when the kids at this age are seeing what's offered up here at the high school they WI a few years will make the choice to become a dharm high student so with that I just want to thank also Mr Kylie because he was able through um the school Department transportation to get a bus to take 25 of our students up here because as you can imagine that's where the biggest expense comes in is when you're paying for a bus so a special thank you to Mr Kylie so thank you all very much

036thank you you great job J great job thank you everyone okay nice that was awesome so the rest of the meeting's anti-climatic it always is always is that's the best part thank you you're all welcome to stay if you'd like to stick around for the rest of those agenda items basketball always enjoy an audience what happened to all our people I know we just wait a second here and all right I think we're ready to move on uh up next is a consent agenda item turn it over to Dr sabba Maguire so we have a trip planned with our students who are on our student council um this is something that happens yearly where they have an opportunity to go down to hyanis much like we did in the fall um as school committee and

037the mass Association for school superintendents but this is for school committee and for students to go and actually learn more about uh what it means to represent uh to be Civic uh for lack of a better way of to um to explain but um we're excited to offer them this opportunity again and that will be on March from March 5th to 7th and they will leave Dartmouth High School and they will be at the uh annual conference in hyenas the same place actually that we were in the fall so we're asking for your approval perfect and it looks like 10 students 10 students that's correct one teacher okay motion to approve second motion by Mr nun second by Mrs Amaral on the motion any other discussion you're hearing none all in favor I I opposed

038extensions motion carries unanimously thank you very much next up it looks like we have a few presentations here this evening busy busy night first up we have Dartmouth High School uh School Improvement plan so I see Mr Shay is making his way to the podium and I know he has a presentation prepared that you received in your p pocket and so we're um we're excited to listen to our first school Improvement presentation and what we are you know really proud of is the connection that our school Improvement plans have to our strategic plan and you can see right off how Mr Shay starts off I don't know why they're moving sorry yeah they're moving with the uh with the actual dashboard for the Strategic plan so Mr Shay yeah I want to thank everyone for

039taking us as the first school um as you all know we have Nas this year and one of the critical standards is having a school Improvement plan in place so um it's really important for us to have a a school Improvement plan I also want to um just thank two groups of people one I want to thank the strategic planning committee and um because with their guidance this made the process a lot easier than it would have been on our own and I think that sets a nice framework for everyone to work together and keeping us rowing in One Direction and I I think that was really important um also the um the um school council is the other one that has reviewed this and I want to thank for their time too dedicating a

040a afternoon to be here and and looking at it and asking questions and helping us revise it before we prevent present it to anyone so thank you to those people um two others I apologize is um are the the admin team at the high school has really put in a lot of Blood swe and Tears in this and then um Ross was really critical into helping me get this out and get this together so um I'm grateful for the team that is Dartmouth public schools and you'll see throughout this that there's a Common Thread for everybody um so like I said the school district set us up in really successful fashion by really taking our our four strategic areas of teaching and learning um safe and supportive schools family and Community engagement and budget and

041capital Improvement and we're going to walk through each one of those as we go you have all seen this but I just want to clarify that um so the first area of teaching and learning is where we spent a lot of our time as an admin team really focusing on um it also ties directly to a lot of our NES standards so um we know coming out of Nas one of the things is just mapping our curriculum and making sure our C curriculum is mapping that is something you're going to continuously do throughout your process and your evaluating it that leads into all of the next the the next um action steps as well as developing schoolwide expectations for equable grading in academic Excellence what does that mean at darmouth high school what does that

042look like what are practices that are common um we we've seen that if you have seven teachers you might have seven different expectations and students that are um new to first generation or new to a high school experience don't have as many advantages of someone that families have lived it when they know that this teacher's rules are this way and this way and this way so we want a common language for dharmi high school um we use common assessments but it's nothing that you never want to stop you want to keep going with them you want to analyze them you want to look at them and you want to use that CPT time and that PLC time to really Norm those practices and develop our practices together so really working together and one big thing

043is we have our curriculum and what do we do with that curriculum we have expectations for what the curriculum looks like we look at our curriculum we look at our data from what we've tested and we make sure that we have normal practices that we do so kind of in that sense of following in that tl1 in that tl2 this is really big to us as professional development that's also going to be another neas um goal that we're going to most likely come out of we're assuming um so we really want to have a um use our strategic plan to develop a PD calendar going into next year so really if you look at it that's um August through June but we're going to go into school with straight strategic um straight PD plans that

044are already identified with flexibility because obviously there's times we want voice and choice and we want people to have availability but we want to know where we're going using this plan as our model to work continue for that and then um we also that's great we do that as a department once a month we also have our PLC times that we um we want to work on our departments as well so using our department what their goals are so science might be like working with we brought in a specialist for our atomage table we brought in other people we've worked to update some of our Labs that's kind of the stuff that we want to do departmental so whole school and then departmental I apologize I talk fast I will try to slow down I'm

045realizing it I hear my wife watching this at home saying slow down um so and then tl3 is the reimagining pathways that's really big in the high school world right now um currently we have two Pathways we really want to expand those we have um so and we want to really work with that um we're working with um Mass on some AI Pathways that they have um and we're going to continue doing that but we want to really find identify Pathways that also fit into the building you're going to see that later on in one of the other St in one of the other Focus areas is how do we put some Pathways into our building with our schedule and our and our plan um so examine it through the program of studies and what

046it needs and then identifying Staffing uh to best support that the students's transition that's a big other thing that we see is that freshmen coming up here is definitely one of our bigger struggles one of our one of the big pieces of data we see is freshmen do struggle here we want to we want to identify that we've done a lot of work this last year in a little bit last year prior to work with the eighth graders coming up and really supporting them I think it was better this year and I think we can do a lot more to continue that growth so we want to use um our staffing assignment to support our students one of the things you'll see is um in our program of studies is the preap programs that we're

047working on in especially like in English that we've piloted and and what that means and how we use our staff to support those programs uh Focus area two is safe and supportive schools um under kind of Mike's leadership we really do do a lot of support for um safety plans and safety drills it's nothing you ever want to not give up though it's something you want to continue so um you're going to see that but I want to make sure that you all know that we have worked our drills and we do it we always want to continue and grow on that um we do want to develop um a schoolwide culture and climate study we're meeting as a group tomorrow with a culture and climate committee um we want to do some culture and

048climate studies I know there's going to be a district push as well that's going to be really nice to work into what we want to do we want to look at like what what makes a dmouth high school student what makes a staff and what makes us to be successful um that's the creation of the committee that we're going to meet tomorrow and then the other big thing is is that we have our advisory period which is wonderful um one of the things that we really want to push into our advisory is those social morning learnings like those Castle skills how can we support our students um in that social emotional side we did that last month as a simple one in the sense of like how do you even organize your computer how do

049you organize your Gmail because we've seen our students not getting emails we've seen our students just not taking care of themselves on that the digital side so we really focus on digital side and just teaching kids like how to filter their emails and stuff like that because our kids are on seven Google classrooms on the minimum if they're on Sports and they're on um clubs and activities they get emails all day on on on those and how do we filter them out so they just get the right ones and they see the emails that they need to see that was a selfcare that we really thought was important and that's going to continue with those social emotional um competencies um continuing that is that we also want to recognize what the good is here um

050oftentimes we only hear about the bad but um as Jordan presented that we had students for their first time in debate team get first place we had students um we have athletes everywhere performing well our our theater program our debate team our math team is undefeated there's a lot going on our our BSU is creating like some really nice like bulletin boards and and supporting our school to we want to highlight make sure that we're highlighting the good and and continuing to push that good and you're going to hear that in the in in Focus Area 3 as well um but we want to celebrate individual accomplishments and then one of the big things is is one Dartmouth is not just a saying to me it's something I believe in and we really want to

051create like a one Dartmouth recognition and what it like just like um Dr s McGuire is doing with the green apple we want to bring that down just to the high school level of a one Dartmouth recognition program for next year um then um and then this is where I was talking about with Mike where we really do a really good job of drills but it's something that we want to continue and reflect one of the things that we started to do last year is after drills we put out a survey for for conversation about what it was look like but um we want to continue to monitor our school safety preparedness um quarterly drills with the district planning um seek opportun educational opportunities for um professional development there's a lot of training on school

052safety we want to continue to send people to those those things we've taken a lot out of it one of the things that um used to be is you would all shelter in one corner that's not necessarily something you want to do because you're all in one spot right so some of the stuff we're taking away from a lot of these trainings is what we can do and Implement in our day every day um deescalation is a really big thing right we talk about CPI 10% of that is Hands-On um 90% of it is how do we take a student that is up here and bring them down right and how do we support them what are what are those skills so we're lucky that we have some CPI opportunities in the district we want

053to continue that and what does CPI look like in a sense of deescalation for staff and re re refresh those skills that we all have and then um I don't know if you guys have seen this in the building we've continued we've started this project but we've really tried to Norm what our building is talking what our locations in our building are so if you see any stairwell there's some red letterings on on a lot of them we're still going to continue to update those lettering so they're easy to identify for the camera right so it says it'll say if you're looking at that stairwell way over there that would be B level D stairwell right that's the language we need because that's what the police are going to see and that's the language we

054need to use use kids used to call that like a be high that means something to us but it doesn't mean anything to the people that are responding so we're trying to Norm the language in our building and we want to continue to do that um in family and Community engagement we really want to continue um using parents Square it's a really great platform it gives us a lot of great data um we want to get more parents on it we've offered nights on support of it on open house we had a whole session on it we're going to continue pushing parents Square in our main office we have little QR codes for parents just to QR and and automatically get the app on their phone um we want to continue that process and we

055want everyone in Dartmouth Public Schools especially Dartmouth High School to have it on it we are the bigger users of the district that's also because we have Athletics that use it a ton band uses a ton clubs and activities use it a ton and our teachers are really starting to use it as well um we're lucky with Jess burningham in here who um used at Oxbridge she's really brought that energy in with it too so we want to continue that but if we're all using it we want to make sure parents have it on their phones too um the roll out of the new website has been really great um we want to increase our social media presence you are talking to someone who's very afraid of social media doesn't have a social media Presence

056at all but I need to be more on that because there is where that is where people get information and we're going to develop that and grow that as well and that comes out in a principal's newsletter as well um I want to start a parent advisory Council this is different than the the um school council that is different their job is budgeting and Sip and um really those responsibili ities this is um more like coffee hour you know come in let's have a conversation about what's working and what's not working for you as a community member because we really want to prioritize engagement in our community events you know we had a um art show last year that filled the gym and there were PE parents in town that had elementary schools that have

057like I've never gone past the the front Foy year I've either gone to the auditorium I've gone to the gym I've never gone past it so we gave some tours that night just impromptu really trying to build up what this looks like for our what our school looks like for Community cuz we have so much to offer and we really want to show off and continue those showcase nights those open house and awards nights where we really again we're celebrating the good of dmouth um we want to explore opportunities to increase our internship through Community Partnerships we do a really good job we have about 90 students right now that are on internship we would really like it to almost all of our seniors at by this second semester to have some version of an

058internship if they have credit wise if they're able to do it because it really does give you an opportuni to the world and I use myself as an example and I think I told you guys last year when our Spotlight was I started in a marketing internship and about 3 days in I'm like I can't spend $40,000 a year on this this is not what I want to do and so even those awarenesses on the pros and the cons side of it we want people to be be able to see what the internships are and then the last one's a little bit of a passion project for me but um it's developing a community Ser service opportunity plan um so many of our kids especially when they're juniors are scrambling for hours for a National

059Honor Society or they don't have those opportunities and they want to do good and they want to get back and they want want to build their resumes and there's not a bank for it so we just need a bank of what we can offer to be involved with community service it ties us to our community again I know the food bank at the Y is a really big one um as a really nice option so we want to continue to build those community service Partnerships I think we can do a really good job and again we have 900 amazing students at darmouth high school and I want them to get I want the world to see them that I see them through the lens in um budget and capital Improvement obviously a lot of This

060falls under Mr Kylie more than more than us and I really appreciate his guidance in it um one of the things is the needs assessment we have the msba coming in in a few weeks to really work on that and we're going to collaborate with those stakeholders to implement Improvement plans um we are working on a dedicated PE professional development space right over here that's going to be gorgeous hopefully um but it's going to be it'll be a nice space that really it's professional we look at like when we go to like an msaa meeting or a board meeting or any of those you come into an environment where you're like you're you're professionals and we want people to come in and say we're going to learn but we're treat you are a professional and

061we want to respect that so we're really designing it in that way and then um again I talked about this earlier but we want to look in those Pathways but also like what what our building can do based off of our program of studies and are there changes based off of what our program of studies is saying that we need and what our building offers and we want to do like A needs assessment on that side of things um again I apologize I talked really fast if you have any questions I can answer them um I can like I said I can hear my wife saying slow down thank you very much Mr Shay uh questions start down this side of the table how do you manage to talk so fast caffeine yeah we have

062plenty of time for questions um impressive uh looks like a lot you are in the midst of and planning to do um two questions one is um for your newsletter which you haven't done yet um so how are you going how is that going to be accessed yep so currently we use a uh we use a sore as our basis of our newsletter um so sore is a um an app that creates like a pamphlet for you okay got it um in short words um we're going to continue to use that we want to actually Spotlight more of like the media program because if anyone notices most of my principal messages are videotaped I call Ben Smith my producer if anyone watches like um shows he's he's my producer he writes my scripts he he

063comes in our students can do a lot in there and they do really talented work and we want to produce their work as much so as much as it's a principal new newsletter platform we really want it to be students driven and again it's that voice and choice with them working with us in a class that they're they're passionate about so we are we do have one we just want to revamp it and and again we want to make sure it gets in as many hands as possible that's the data that actually parent Square gives us so we average about 900 views we need to get that up higher okay so yes I've seen your videos your principal message but your newsletter which I'm still not clear like how do students access it and is

064there a way for the Greater Community to access it yeah so my intentional plan is is one again it's emailed to everybody also available on the website okay um and sorry I didn't understand your question originally no that's all right and um so parent Square um we've been hearing a lot about it in the last year but is there a way for us to access it to see what it looks like absolutely I can get you on groups um I well wait I'm not going to speak for myself just burningham can get you on those steps I can get you in with her um and get it on your phone and what groups you would need to be accessed to and what what you would have as rights but I can get you guys set

065up on that absolutely I'm looking at Mr gashaw and he's looking the other way he's looking other way he's going to get us all on parent Square yeah if not you can come to high school and yeah if if he's Jess is really helpful in that um great and everything else you're doing it looks fabulous you're taking on a lot it's great yeah it looks really comprehensive and ambitious so um it's imp impressive I'm most interested in internships and um your thoughts about how how to expand internship opportunities for students I think Hands-On is both good like you said to learn what you don't want to do uh but also to just be in a work environment to learn how to how to be more professional 100% agree like and that's that's the standard right

066there is like what does professionalism look like and how do we up that um I think it's um it's it's a it's a twofold challenge I think parate and the bit department does a really good job with promoting it we did a better job this year than we did the year before one of the things that our students are going to do in April and Mr pry might yell at me about the date because I don't have it off top of my head but um we're doing a showcase for all of our students on their internships so students can see it um what we see with a lot of our Juniors that are struggling academically at this point in the year they're like I know I need to get these classes so I can have

067two periods available for internship right so it's another motivation for our students um for traditional Learners and non-traditional Learners great thank you but anyone in the community that wants an internship please don't hesitate to reach out we're really um we're really like trying to expand options a lot of it is student driven to find what they want with the support of the teachers terrific thank you thank you Mr chairman thank you Mr Shan yeah I agree with my colleagues very comprehensive um you talked about uh under tl3 uh you know with the eighth graders and the what types of struggles are they having when they come up here and how are you working with them it's it's it's the the transition is tough right you're going from K to 8 where you are in a

068very structured organized system you are in you walk to classes you sit in the tables you you have those those supports you come to the high school and there's a release of responsibility and we believe in that we believe in that growth in our students sometimes that the the biggest struggle is the students that are like this is almost too much freedom and and Mike and Graham spend a lot of time working with students pulling them back with their Pace choices or or pulling them back some of their selections on like when they're passing and stuff like that um so that's one of the struggles the other big struggle we see in in in all honesty is um the understanding what credits mean at a high school level right yes freshman sophomore junior year exists

069but that only exists based off of the number of credits you have it's not like we can just give give you pass you to the next grade you have to earn 24 credits to graduate from darmouth high school in different fields like I Mr tbo's going to talk about in a little bit but you have to earn those credits that's a different mindset for people right and we have to do a better job of from day one explaining that I think our freshmen right now with report cards are starting to really grasp that concept and we have to be better about putting that out earlier and understanding it and some of it is living it and unfortunately you have to live it but we want to be proactive in supporting them um I do want

070to say that um our student support teams have done a really good job job of identifying students early this year and getting families in and communicating with them so we've had some success we just want to continue to monitor it and we still want to have that growth and again I love what the middle school does I think they do a really great model there it's a different building and it's different ages and what um when they come up here we want to make sure that they're ready to go okay thank you and then the uh just following up on the uh internships and such is that we had uh my memories any good uh coach white and a couple of other teachers last year that our SP that was the spotlight there that was

071on that okay that that was F we had student show like um one of our students she's um at BCC now which is great because it's free but prior to that her her dental agency was going to pay for her classes now it's free so it is but like you know you build those connections and you can find ways to like support those growth yeah different I mean I remember the different areas they were in yep so it was good okay thank you thank you Mr chairman you're welcome thank you so when you when you go when you're almost last you have to start think about like what can I say that's different because they've captured all of my questions um I I think you ambitious uh I I just appreciate your uh Team under

072your leadership under our district leadership of you know that you making those database decisions um being thought thoughtful and reflective that was very clear um and just I just want I just want to commend your um you know your part in that and your energy and enthusiasm clearly comes from your heart uh and it's infectious so um I've you know I've seen you interact with students and and so it's it's really it's really it's we're lucky to have you um I'm very lucky to be here yeah thank you I'll never forget that oh well we can tell that you feel that way um and I just really John kind of took I had some questions about that um about that middle the middle school piece but that's okay but I'll just make a comment to

073say that you know it's been my experience as a parent um the efforts to sort of engage with the the eighth grade and I just really am impressed with your clear mindset of constant Improvement like how can we do better um there's no ego in the game it's all about the kids and uh that can only you know only good things can come from that so I just appreciative of that and uh love you know the family engagement piece that's my jam uh I love your your idea to have that parent um advisory Council uh just so that you're hearing from boots on the ground I love to hear at a later point when you when when you have a little bit more of a solid plan of what that's going to look like I'd

074love to hear more about about that um and just check in on how it's going and things you learn from the community and if and how and those dat decisions how it it does you know result in changes you know and improvements with engagement so thank you that's all I have thank you Mrs Amaral thank you Mr Shay I certainly appreciate the the time and effort uh with you as well as your team uh that's been put into this I think you articulated all the all the actions steps in your you know the certainly the measures of success very well throughout your indicators um you know a couple of questions that I have well not really questions just thoughts I'm happy to see the pathways are in there and developing those and working towards those

075um I actually it's funny that you brought up community service program or community service because I've actually a couple of parents Dartmouth High School parents have reached out to me and wanting to know what they can do to help and see if the school committee can work towards with the in cooperation with the school department and with the High School uh about doing some kind of community service program and I think it it if not anything else it certainly would build character that's it love it so yeah it helps when Andrea is on my school advisory Council so who is that Andrea is on fair enough yeah so she's been in my ear for a bit about it and she's right so there's anything I can do to assist um then I am also happy

076to see that you're working on a social media presence because I think a lot of the newsletters the websites uh the website's great the newsletters through parent Square are great the s'more um but I think getting out there um if we really want to advertise and brand ourselves and let's face the education is very competitive now public K12 education it's competitive yeah um with school with school choice and with chter schools and everything else so the the more we can do to um to you know brand ourselves and advertise all the wonderful things in tonight's uh presentation from Potter is one such example of you know a great way to collaborate with students across all grades for sure so I'll just say that I I think uh Mr Shay I think you're you're the right

077person for Dartmouth High School um I think the I think Dartmouth High School is very lucky to have you um from my standpoint as the school committee's chair if there's anything I can do to help you grow um Dartmouth High School and take it into uh the next level please um please let me know I'm only speaking for myself but um I think you there's a lot of great opportunities uh that happen in this school um lot more than some of the other surrounding communities so I think all we got to do is just uh fine tune um as you go into knash so thank you for your presentation I and I appreciate all of the support Chris and all of you all I really really appreciate the support you all have been kind from

078day one and that's just the first like that's where we start and that means a lot so I appreciate all of you thank you you're welcome thank you thank you all right I'll see you in about five more minutes yeah we've got say that again y oh uh take a vote oh thank you that's fine absolutely uh looking for a vote here Mo Mr chairman motion to approve the dmouth high school uh School Improvement plan for uh school year 2526 second got a motion by Mr Nunes a second by Miss Beckwith on the motion any other discussion all in favor I I opposed motion carries unanimously thank you thank you for the reminder Mr shy uh next up DHS competency determination update so this this is actually a great segue um so thank you Mr

079Shay for the presentation and and I I what I'd like to point out is that I hope you could see how the school Improvement plan truly mirrors the district strategic plan and how the district strategic plan um is driving the school Improvement plan and vice versa and how they're working in concert with one another and the initiatives that were shared with you tonight by Mr Shay and his and of course the work he's done with his team and with with Dr t-bolt there to support them is meant to do exactly that they're meant to work in tandem with one another so that we're all working toward the very goals that are set out in the in the district strategic plan and at our last meeting I briefly spoke about the competency termination and told you

080that Dr tbolt would be here to give us an update and what I said to you and I'm sure miss and Dr tbolt is going to affirm what I said is that we're in really we're in a really good position here in Dartmouth um and I can't say that that's true for all of the districts across the state based on some of the conversations that we've been a part of so Dr tbal thank you thank you Dr sa McGuire and thank you to the school committee for allowing me to provide an update on um what admittedly is not as an exciting a topic as our Potter presentation or our school Improvement plan presentation but I'll do my best um it is it is uh important that it and this work is align to our strategic

081plan fall squarely under you know teaching and learning but also this opportunity to kind of update um you know use this uh um platform to update our community as well because how we go about earning a high school diploma in Massachusetts has changed there um are some changes because of the ballot initiative that was uh passed in November so hopefully um my presentation tonight will kind of clarify some of that and um we can go from there um starting with what is a competency determination because I have to admit as an educator um you know it's always it's been around since 2003 but it's not really something we talk about all that much you know um the state likes to refer to as the CD the CD you hear that a lot the CD but

082really what the competency determination is it's the minimum requirements that a high school student must meet in order to earn a high school diploma um and they are aligned directly to the mass curriculum Frameworks or as we often just kind of um call them in shorthand the standards okay so the CD is directly related to the standards and specifically um the the idea is that students have to demonstrate Mastery of um those standards in order to meet the CD so PRI prior to the November uh ballot initiative that was done um by looking at the achievement scores on mcass in ela and Mathematics uh which both take place uh after at the end or in the spring of grade 10 um also science technology engineering exam which actually takes place uh in June of the

083freshman year um from 2003 on that was how CD the the competency determination was met by a student what the no member ballot initiative change uh changed was that's no longer allowed to be used as a competency determination and I just want to be clear and clarify for folks um what that ballot initiative did not do was it did not eliminate mcast and so I just I think it's important that we're clear about that because our students will still be required to take mcass in the um you know our freshman will take it in bi for biology in June and our grade 10 uh students will take it in ela in mathematics in March and and may uh respectively um and while that's not linked to the high school diploma anymore it is still part

084of the school accountability um ratings that we'll receive so is still important that our students do our best and that should be our Collective message around that um but it's no longer tied to whether or not a student earns a high school diploma and that is the change so the requirements of uh the new ballot initiative is um is that according to the new law a student who has not yet earned a CD must demonstrate Mastery and these um bold italics were added by me as a point of emphasis so that we're clear but Mastery of a common core of skills competencies and knowledge by satisfactorily completing coursework that has been certified by the students District as showing Mastery of the skills competencies and knowledge contained in the State academic standards and curriculum Frameworks in

085the areas measured by the mcast high school test described in Section 1 I administered in 2023 so what that means is we have to identify um or certify I should say the courses that are offered at Dartmouth High School that if a student earns a passing Mark and earns Credit in that course would reflect that they've mastered the standards for for um those areas so what does that look like at Dartmouth High School what that means is that um students uh and and I should also uh highlight this pertains to kid to students who are in our class of 2025 who have not yet met that CD so we have about seven students uh in the class of 2025 who this really applies to and that's why it's timely that's why the mass Association of

086um superintendents has recommended getting out ahead of this um you know quickly with the school committee so um how are student well we're proposing as the CD requirements here at dmouth high school would be that a student must earn a 65 or higher which is our passing threshold in English n and English 10 or to higher core English course equivalents um such as AP seminar AP language and seminar AP Literature and composition or AP research um to fulfill the English piece a reason for that is we have uh students who take English n but then in their 10th grade year they start to have more choices um and we do have a number of students who take an AP course that fulfills their English requirement the standards are such that um you know a student

087who passes that course would be demonstrating Mastery of of those grade 10 um English standards for math similarly it would be Algebra 1 and geometry or two higher cost equivalents um and again for this uh Mr Shay and I uh spoke we we have actually two students and I've been here for eight years it's the only two students that I can think of we had two students who came in and right went right into pre-calculus um so those two students are really an exception however we wanted to provide language in case that were to happen you know we're not going to force a student who is and they've done extremely well I might add um we're not going to force that student to take an algebra one course that would you know um kind of

088be silly they clearly um you know if in pre-calculus as freshmen have those skills so that's if you're wondering why we have the language boed that way that would be why um and then for science Technology and Engineering um this is where it's just a single course that's how the science mcast is set up um at Dartmouth uh High School we've always done biology as a freshman however if we had a student who came in and said I really want to take the chemistry mcast exam we would have allowed for that we probably wouldn't have encouraged it but we would have allowed for it the um requirements uh are clear that it's any of the science technology engineering courses that were included in the mcast administration in 2023 so those would be bio chemistry physics

089um or engineering for us I just draw our attention to our engineering classes our halfe classes that's why if you're wondering why is it biology or chemistry or physics or engineering one and Engineering 2 the reason for that is that Eng engineering one and Engineering two a half year courses and in order to demonstrate um you know Mastery of the engineering standards that would have been on that mcast exam it needs to be a full uh year equivalent so most of our students would meet uh the uh competency determination in this way but we also try to be mindful of students who maybe this is not the pathway that they're on um you know we have students who have unique uh learning needs who have some significant um and profound disabilities who already are on

090like an alternative um uh mcast all we want to be mindful of that population so today um I met with Mr Shay and Mrs redlon and um Mrs uh Coker Pon our Pal's um teacher here at the high school and we wor we walked through this language and we're in agreement that this made sense um also uh you should know that we reviewed what other districts are putting forward as draft proposals to their um School committees as well and so uh some of this language was taken from examples that we've seen uh other districts using but what we're proposing is a portfolio alternative to to the competency determination crosswork identified above will be evaluated by the competency determination assessment panel that's a local panel it would be teachers from here at Dartmouth High School that

091would would do that um but they would assess uh an a portfolio to make sure that Mastery is demonstrated through that portfolio of work um but again being mindful that this is a team process right because what we don't want is a student to be in a position where they're issued a high school diploma and then that um means they can't get the uh special education services that they would um need uh as an as an adult as an 18 to 22 year old so it is a team process and but we want to be flexible so that we can really meet the needs of every student and provide a pathway to a diploma if that's what's in the best interest of a particular student so that's what we try to to do with this

092language and then the final part here the dmouth high school principal May wave local graduation requirements that's just standard practice that has always been the case and we do have some of that um you know from time to time again that's often through a team process where student might have a language based disability and so World language for example might present a challenge um and the team might uh request a language waiver that the principle there then signs off on that's again has been standard uh practice for us so what we're just calling out here is the principal maintains that right because uh for local graduation requirements however for the competency determination that is not the case it's a requirement by law that students meet that in order to earn their high school diploma so

093understanding the impact on Dartmouth High School of this again as I mentioned class of 2025 there are uh currently about seven students who have not yet met competency determination through prior mcast performance um those Stu of those seven students there are a handful who will meet it if this if these uh requirements are approved um and then there are other Stu other students who um would probably if a diploma was what they wanted to pursue would have to look at maybe the alternative um uh pathway that is described um students must still meet local graduation requirements I can't stress that enough as Dr Sabre Maguire said we're in a good position here 99.2% of our students meet Mass core requirements Mass core uh if you're not familiar Mass core is the recommended Curriculum by the

094department of uh Elementary and secondary education um it's a very rigorous C uh curriculum requires four years of English uh four years of math three lab Sciences um um and I won't go through all of you know you so many credits in arts it's really um a rigorous curriculum and our program of studies is and has been for some time aligned to the mass Core Curriculum so we are in a very good position there finally the future of Competency determination Massachusetts um Governor Healey just uh issued an executive order that established the Massachusetts Statewide K through2 graduation C um it's going to be made up of a of a of a variety of stakeholders um and they're going to be charged with examining the variations in local CD um requirements so we just had a

095ballot initiative that is what's going to create all of these variations and now by executive order we're going to have a council that's going to look at all of that and try to redefine reimagine um you know a high standard for what it means to graduate um and with a high school diploma so all of that is to say that I do anticipate we'll be back um in the near future to have up you know recommended updates and potential revisions to our competency determination requirements um and with that uh I'm happy to answer any questions if there are any um thank you very much for that see Chris has stepped out do anybody have any questions or comments I think I'll um if I may I'll just begin with um uh that for I well

096bit of humor um that from if I may is that I think any educator who has put together a portfolio of uh uh a valuation deserves extra credit on their performance evaluations and a coffee break um if anyone has been part of that process is pretty uh there's nothing alternative or shortcutting about it it's uh it's about a pile of information about this deep and uh uh it's a lot so um anyway I just thought I'd start with that humor um I don't have any questions I think I asked a question last um last time that we were hinting at this was to to come in front of us um and I had my answers um and so I really appreciate you noting that the seven students and you know the the the um the

097steps to the ways in which this has helped and um and the that there's a plan um in place for those if graduation is something that they are hoping to obtain or um uh to attempt to obtain so no I I thank you for this it was it was helpful um and I appreciate your presentation I'll turn it over to my colleagues thanks all right thank thank you madam chair uh one the first my first quick question is if I'm all wet I'm all wet and I'll apologize the uh John and Abigail Adams scholarship that's tied to mcast what what's happened to that so thank you for asking that Mr Junes that's an excellent question uh and that's another reason why mcast uh the message should continue to be to students to do your very

098best on MC because it hasn't changed mcast will still be used to determine the John and Abigail Adams scholarship as well as the coplex certificate of mry so um thank you for for highlighting that because I was here for and I'll get into that later thank you U thank you for this I guess my major concern just becomes and thank you for answering engineering one and two because I had highlighted that as to you know what was going on there uh I know you said that uh you know most of the most of those seven students are going to be okay I mean and I know you've identified them I mean is there any special help that these students are able to get is it just a whole bunch of different scenarios without getting into

099right without getting into specifics so I think that the students who the students for whom a diploma was their end goal those students will be fine I believe and for students who um had other plans after high school I think that those students that's going to like I I don't see this this changing their plans I think that uh that's you know for a while has been kind of uh the plan in progress uh for those students and that's um you know how I I would expect that they'd continue all right thank you sir I'm good thank you my only question is is the seven students is that atypical um from past so no uh we always have a handful of student so the atypical part is now they won't need to continue to retest

100and and hope that they pass in time earn a qualifying score in time um for the seven you know I mentioned there are some who have already met the you know met these because again the cost workor we're identifying is just cost work that all of our students take anyhow and as Mr alluded to if you're not earning credits you're not progressing with your class so um you know it it would be rare if we our local our local requirements are higher than the CD and that's you know um so again if a student doesn't meet the the four years of English for example they weren't earning a diploma from us anyhow so um these are actually it's you know that's why I refer to as the minimum because our local requirements in many ways

101are actually higher already than these okay thank you you're welcome um so I'm just curious we've always required our students to meet um the certain number of classes getting a 65 or better um so in the past did we often have or students who got 65 in all the classes that were required and still did not pass the mcast where was it always like the seven so in our community it was always you know I'm I I can't really even think off the top of my head of a student I mean there's always a chance we would always that's another thing that we should clarify students have the opportunity let's say that was the case they can come back and retake mcast with us even after they've stopped coming as a student you know because

102let's say they earned a certificate of completion from us right they could still come back um um I can't and I'm looking to Mike and Ryan I can't think off the top of my head of any student that that has been the case since I've been here um in other communities that is more common that that would so in our community it's really not going to change things that much no right okay thank you very much for all your work you're welcome thank you thank you Dr tibo um I think it's pretty for me it's pretty straightforward cut and dry um I think like you said like every you both said that we're kind of ahead of the game in Dartmouth with where we're at with our program of studies um and I feel comfortable

103with everything that you presented so um no I and I I think my my colleagues have certainly answered some of the questions that or asked some of the questions that I may have asked um so I don't have any concerns um I think um yeah I'm I'm ready for a vote so thank you for the presentation thank you thank you so we're going to look to for a vote uh to approve the competency determination for Dartmouth High School graduates so moved second motion by Mr n second by Mrs Amal on the motion any discussion all in favor I I opposed motion carries unanimously thank you everyone thank you thank you uh next up uh we have one more presentation this evening it's the preschool reconfiguration proposal like to say yes so um Mrs denisio is

104coming up um to present but I would just say before she gets started with her presentation that um this is something that has been in the works for since I've been here U something that we re recognized right away um that we needed to make some modifications to our prek program and Mrs denisio Mrs redlon the kushman um prek staff uh they've done a great job and poter prek staff have all been part of these conversations and they've been thought Partners in this and so uh this reconfiguration proposal is one that I think we we spent a considerable amount of time developing so Mrs denisio I know you have somebody you're going to be introducing as well so I'll turn it right over to you um good evening good evening good evening uh making substantial

105changes in any aspect of educational programming is hard and complicated and that's why we don't do it a lot um trying to balance mandates District resources be best practices and family needs and what's in the best interest of students often present competing priorities rather than a ignment when we look at the Strategic plan like we've been talking so much about tonight we see the call for consistency and aligned practices in the special ed office the way we've been thinking about this are um vertical alignment sustainability and building structure uh building flexible structures that will meet the needs of our students that will meet the everchanging needs of our students so with that in mind I'm here to present the proposed restructuring of our preschool programs um as you know because we discussed it last year

106at a school committee meeting we currently have eight preschool classrooms all of which can service 15 students um ages 3 to five in a full classroom that would look like seven students on individualized education plans and eight peer Partners um all of our eight classrooms currently are full day students attend school from 9:00 a.m. to 300 p.m. this has been the district's model for over a decade the proposed changes for next school year um is to convert two of those classrooms into half day programs for threeyear olds maintain five full day classrooms for fouryear olds and introduce a substantially separate classroom for students with a higher level who require a higher level of support why would we do that why would we take away programming from children what's the rationale um there are a lot

107of reasons the first one and I think the most important one is the developmental appropriateness of our classrooms a three-year-old and a 5-year-old have very different needs um and by separating these age groups that'll allow the the teacher in that classroom to meet those needs more specifically a three-year-old entering School needs to focus on play and language development and Social Development and finding gross motor skills and then they need to go home and take a big nap our four and five-year-olds are truly starting that pre kindergarten experience the foundations of curriculum transitioning to special areas being being able to sustain a full day of school currently when any of our preschoolers come to us at 3: and stay till 5: they're getting the same experience twice sometimes three times depending on the birth dat of

108the of the student this change would allow a student to be able to grow with and into our school experience as we discussed last year the district is required to provide preschool to students with disabilities when they turn three this presents a particular challenge each year as we often don't know how how many spots we will need we run the risk of running out of room and having to add a preschool classroom in the middle of the school year which would be a logistical nightmare by changing the structure of our programming we could build in the room to grow with existing staff and resources and really never have that worry of we don't have enough slots we are also seeing an increasing number of families accessing outside services in addition to our preschool um because

109we only offer five full day option that puts families in a difficult position are they going to access preschool or are they going to access outside Services um we have students who are being dismissed multiple times per week for outside um therapies and appointments that they have because it becomes an either or situation and perhaps this more flexible approach would create um a both and situation for family so they don't have to make that choice um another change in this proposal is to not have school for preschool on early release days the intention behind this is so that teachers and staff can use that time to participate in child find activities such as visits to community preschools to conduct screening and observations oftentimes we receive referrals um for students from outside preschools or dayc carees

110and rather than jumping immediately to an evaluation uh which can be an exhaustive process and time consuming our staff could provide guidance in the students more familiar environment this time could also be used for evaluations and meetings despite its small size uh kushman holds well over 100 team meetings per school year and because our preschool teachers wear two hats as the classroom teacher and the special education teacher this results in a lot of time away from the classroom um and some coverage issues having monthly time to complete these tasks would alleviate some of that challenge this chart shows the prop proposed configuration as you can see by the numbers on the bottom um there is a net gain both for special ed slots and for peer spots utilizing the staff we already have in place

111if you're a more visual person like me this is um a visual representation of the classrooms so I would suggest start we start by filling three of the four available three-year-old slots so many numbers um we would do an a the 2 AMS and then 1 p.m. and leave that see that orange p.m that's our one that we would open if we need to again the staff is already there the room is already there we would just have to add the students to it um by having this flexible afternoon it would again give opportunities for teachers to complete evaluations and paperwork because what we're doing really um for the teachers who are going to be teaching the three-year-old programs is doubling their case load um so we need to provide some some time for them

112in order to complete all that comes along with that um as far as IEPs and meetings the substantially separate classroom would be for students on individualized education plans with a higher level of need there would be no peers assigned to that classroom instead those students would integrate into the inclusion classrooms as appropriate or peers from the inclusion class would then join them for activities in their classroom this mirrors our substantially separate programming um that's currently in place uh K to 12 again working towards that vertical alignment our full day preschoolers would continue to participate in PE art music lunch recess and rest time and our halfday students would participate in classroom activities incorporating art music and movement but would not have Specialists this reduces the number of transitions for our three-year-olds which can be a

113challenge um so here are some of the logistics uh there's also a propos OS increase in tuition for our full day programming currently the cost stands at $450 per month which has not changed since we started full day um preschool about 10 years ago the hope is that the moderate increase will cover any additional costs which would really just come from Transportation it's easy to look at these changes and build a narrative around what the district is taking away but I am encouraging our community to look at this through the lens of how these changes will better S serve our youngest Learners how creating sustainable and flexible structures will allow us to meet the varying needs of our students and how increased individual individualization is not only more appropriate but it's our mandate through the

114IEP process and how increased opportunities to connect with Community organizations and preschools will better serve all of our students and families so before I do my big introduction does anyone have any questions about the proposed changes for preschool questions from Mr Nunes thank you thank you Mr chairman thank you Mrs denisio very nice uh couple of thoughts uh and again more so with you I got the foury olds their full day type of deal uh but the three-year-olds with the half days and such uh when we have you know when we have a half day of school because professional development and such are they going to be in are you going to rotate so that the after the afternoon students my proposal is no no preschooler has school that day and we use that time

115um as professional time for the staff to be uh holding meetings visiting Community preschools doing more of that Outreach work okay because that was the tricky part like who would come to school that day it would always be the am kids so that's why I thought again using the time we have to to complete some of the other things on our plate okay and then take a one step sorry take a one step further this is winter time we get snow doesn't snow anymore Mr I know well we do I don't care what anybody says we do uh but the superintendent calls a one hour or twoh hour delay it's like these St you know the morning ones are no sooner going to get there and they come we would just have to cancel that

116morning session and then if it were delay the afternoon session could come in okay yeah all right and do we have uh would we be transporting these year olds we transport students on IEPs um that require that as part of their disability so the majority of of students who who do come to us on IEPs are being transported so that's sort of where the increased cost might come in because we are adding sort of a trip and the size of Dartmouth is tricky so that's sort of the anticipated increase of cost okay I think that's all I had yeah it's all I had at the moment thank you Mr chairman you're welcome thank you ma'am one a very wellth thought out plan um I I like it um I personally think three-year-olds really can only

117handle school for half a day um so with our students who have IEPs um we have to we are mandated to have um threeyear old kindergarten for them or preschool um is there a certain number of days by taking away the half days do do we are we still able to make the required days yeah there's really no parameters around that um an i AP is to provide access to the curriculum so what's our curriculum what is our sort of structure right now it's a full day but changing it to a half day won't necessarily change our responsibility but it might change our response if that makes sense um also we might run into the not to go too far down a rabbit hole here but we might run into a student who needs more

118than that and that's something we'll have to be looking at because the nature of their disability um is such that they do need more services that than can be provided within that two and a half hour day so and I will just add that most the of the area communities have halfday programs for three year olds and even four year olds um so having half day program for threey olds is is appropriate and recognized by the state as a as a best practice yeah thank you anyone else good I'll just oh go ahead no I just took an audible breath when you said that because I was hearing the word individual and then I was hearing we're doing it this way and I thought where's the eye and individual here um and I appreciate it

119um it's here Kathleen it's right here and but there was a slide and I apologize um I'm a little bit late to the to the party although I'm aware of this but um so my questions might be some that others have already talked through um individually with there so I just preface it with that um there was a slide where it said full day so peer Community Lottery same could choose a full day program or am I missing is the half day for everyone in the the half day is for three year olds okay the full day would be for four year olds as far as the lottery goes okay including the peers including the peers yeah okay okay that make that that makes me feel a little better um and I have heard from

120some folks with some feelings around this I'm sure you have as well um and so I do appreciate your rationale um my only I I just have to say that I trust I trust the district but I just worry I I the beautiful program the inclusion program was uh something um that I think our community was was a value added to our community um and I always did hear from families where then when they would transition there wasn't that vertical alignment and it was often difficult to advocate for inclusion when the model that our district supports on the upper grades was more of a secluded model for that kada five specifically let's just say and so I do have slight apprehension and uh my hope would always be that we would work harder to be

121more inclusive rather than going back to that substantial separate model um which I understand there is there is a need for it um that has been my experience in thinking through the pros and cons of my own life is sort of what is my you know my vision and what is the reality and where do we have to go and it's often not where you right we often take we ve are off in that path but um I do have a little bit of pause with that although I do understand and recognize the need um and so I just I just have I just have concern with that I'm not going to like put my heels down I just feel that um this change is something that I'm processing in the moment so I apologize

122I just um C could you maybe talk through some of the discussions around you know landing on we need to do this because it's better maybe some of how you processed like well what does that mean for the the path we were going or I that I was hoping that we would go as a district so to be honest two things idea requires us to have a Continuum of services and right now we have eight classrooms that operate the same way so while provide students with individualized Services we are not really providing them a Continuum um in 20121 there was a preschool evaluation done and that was one of the recommendations that this that this substantially separate classroom um exist to be quite honest I'm not 100% sold on it either what what happened when

123I started putting this on paper and I started looking at the staff is that we have the staff to make this work and I I think it's worth making it work because there are students who can who can be identified who being in a class room with 15 kids is too much for them it's over stimulating they need a smaller environment um but again that whole I mean you want to call it reverse inclusion you want to whatever you want to call it they are going to be included in those other classrooms um that being said we are looking at our programming because one thing is not enough we are looking at our Sub sub separate program in K to2 and making changes there as well and really the point is that vertical alignment um

124inclusion is always the goal but it's not always the reality and how do we balance that so that's where I and I trust you and I trust the district and I just um no I love this trust trust that we are reflective in this and we make some data based decisions and that we don't lean into it um and I understand the parents going for a you know um outside Services I did that as well um and I appreciate you saying that some kiddos might need more thank you um uh I took a nice deep breath with that one and uh I mean I trust but I just hope that we are reflective and revisit this and we don't get stuck that this is the way flexible structures right so I want to build things

125that can be um thank you flexible thank you for my time that's it you got to be done now Chris right I've got about five questions okay I'm just I'm I'm I'm I'm just kidding thank you for your presentation I did have an opportunity to meet with Dr sa McGuire ahead of time um I think what you propose certainly uh makes sense uh the two questions I actually do have is right now uh the programming structure for the one preschool class at Potter will stay the same as a four-year-old program and that's what it is right now yeah there hasn't been a three-year-old at Potter in I don't know 5 years or something um because the need is so great and we only have one classroom to service that area what happens is the kids

126end up starting at kushman and then going there when they're four so that's not going to change that's well I am a big proponent for Equity across the town um and I know for those role model students that may not have transportation um that I know there's there's only so much room to go around um but whether or not we uh can look at a modular or some other kind of scenario for Potter it certainly uh you know would would make me happy to see Equity across the town and not just having a three-year-old program um over at kushman but that's not really for anyone specific to decide but I just want to throw my two cents out there and then last but not least would be the uh CU we do have to vote

127on the um the price increase um that that is that will need a vote this evening um the going from the full day uh going from 450 to 600 and then the half day of 450 I'm just curious is I'm sorry 250 250 I'm just curious is this a um regardless of the month it stays the same or is there a daily rate for those months that have like Christmas vacation or it's a set monthly rate it's a set monthly rate regardless of and how do we come to that decision well well it was in in uh 10 years ago we um we instituted the $450 a month based on um comparisons with other other districts at the time and we haven't even looked at it since then so um what we envisioned with our

128current structure we knew that uh implementing this would have some increased costs we're going to have midday transportation of students um home from school and then two school that we don't currently have um so we're going to definitely be incurring costs in that way um so in order to accommodate that we took a look at you know the tuition rate and adjusted it um the the increase ends up being um the the average increase of our counterparts who have similar programs um would be $733 a month for full day we're we're increasing but we're only going to $600 y um and $417 a month for half day okay um and we're at we're going to be at 250 y so we're still going to be a very reasonable program um you know to answer the

129question regarding you know should December be less than than May let's say um for ease of payment we have a we have a set monthly rate Sur really we look at it through the lens of it's an annual payment school year payment and we divide we divide it by div by 10 divide it by 10 okay nope it just actually it's also more for me as well just so when I get questions you know Mr Oliver wires every month the same I can can answer that so thank you um and we do need a vote um on the um proposed uh additional costs Mr chairman make a motion that we approve the reimaging of uh the kushman preschool for school school year 2025 and 2026 including the adjustments to the cost price costs second motion

130by Mr n second by Miss Beckwith on the motion any other discussion jaring none all in favor I opposed motion carries unanimously um so while I still have the microphone as they say the devil is in the details and I am more than thrilled um to introduce someone who's going to help me sus out all those details um as of Monday February 3rd we are welcoming a new uh Early Childhood director Stephanie ricardi um no you come over here please to the district I thought I was G to get away uh there's much work to be done and I'm so glad to have a partner in this important work what an exciting time to jump on board um I wanted to thank you all for having me tonight Dr sa Maguire for giving me this

131opportunity preschool is definitely a passion of mine I love the littles um and I take a great honor in being a part of their Early Education the littlest Learners they have the the the most rambunctious energy that we just love to harness and it's really a foundational preschool goes by in a blink of an eye but really we're setting the stage for all of these wonderful other things that we heard about you know at the elementary level and certainly at the high school level um so it's an amazing opportunity and I'm really glad to be here welcome welcome welcome to D happy to have apprciate it thank you very much good luck thank [Applause] you all right and that wraps up our presentations and under old business what I would like to do uh with

132the committee's uh okay with it I'd like to take out of order uh the April 2025 DHS World Language Department cultural Excursion to Spain and Portugal and bring that up to our first item under old business is that okay with everyone sounds good that's fine so Mr Shay is going to come up and introduce um happy to see this trip moving forward as you know um our trip last year was a great success our students got so much out of it um our students and staff and we want to continue to be able to offer these kind of experiences to our students because it does make a difference for them and I think Mr Shay has a presentation planned and has some answers to some questions about some things that are going to look a

133little bit different this year we're still working with EF Tours but we um we have somebody else that apparently is a familiar face here in Dartmouth and we're going to talk about what the trip will look like for this year so I want to introduce to Mar Ellen I'm going to skip some slides down so I can introduce you um to maryi Ellen um so Mary 's LED at least 25 International Champs with Stu uh trips with students beginning in 1999 um former New Beford High School teacher for 35 years a Dartmouth grad and um she works with the chaperon with EF Tours to make sure they're doing the background checks in through this so we're very lucky to have a very experienced person leading our trip um this year who done these trips with

134our students and um working with our students I I begged and I appreciate her stepping in in this moment so I I just want to take the time to introduce Mar Ellen she is leading the trip this year and we're very lucky for that so um anytime step on my toes when I go through this um so it is Portugal Spain it's Madrid Salamanca kbra um Fatima and Lisbon um this was pictures from last year um a lot of it is my group of students but um this you can see um over here is um the the residence of the royal family um you have down here where we get to see a Picasso about this far away from I was this close to a Picasso in that museum um this is before we leave

135that's our beach day where our students actively did the one Dartmouth for us um and this is an a plaza mayor in Madrid um so our students got a really nice opportunity to travel to some really great places oh and actually this here is in a park that is um it has like a devil statue in it and um but it's like one of the Royal Family's old parks and it just opened up to the public like in the 60s or something like that so it was really cool for our students to experience that like World culture and see these beautiful gardens um so the trip goes from us to Madrid then um Avala which is Stone City you get to see um literally middle-age Middle Ages walls like that were built to circle the

136whole city um they have a really nice like actually Co Memorial there too which was really nice um and then they're in Salam Mona for a night which is you're right in the heart of the city um you get to see um uh some universities there for our students where you go to um then we go over the um line into Portugal where we go to Kimbra where um you have a library that Harry Potter was based off of um they actually let bats free in the library at night to eat all the um things that attack books I don't know what that would be mes I guess um but it's gorgeous and then they go to Porto they come back down to Fatima which is like such a religious or non-religious it's you feel

137something there it's it's a really impressive City and then you end in Lisbon and you leave from Lisbon um did I miss anything on those trips no okay um so they you fly overnight and you go right into a walk toward Madrid into the pra Museum you're exhausted but they they they they do really well um again you do some sightseeing in in the village the next day you're in the Royal Palace you get to see the throne room you get to see the the former bedrooms the walls are Inc like I couldn't get over each wall like just was ornate um it was really great um into exploring the city again in uh Madrid then you go to Avala which is again the Stone City here um it's it's just like a breathtaking experience

138it's a cool dip in temperature when you get there too just that area um that you feel and then you're going to go across into Portugal um tons of old Cathedrals gorgeous like gorgeous gorgeous sightseeing um when you go to kber you go to the university again you see the students in capes literally Harry Potter it was pretty cool um and she wrote it there like she um when she was when she was in um when she was touring that's where she wrote it from um then you to Porto which you take a riverbat cruise on the river um and you just see the City built into it into the city it's gorgeous um and then you go like I said you go to Fatima which is a Solly experience um when you leave Fatima

139you go to um the the monastery which is this incredible church that is it's actually not even finished but it goes back to um Prince Henry the Navigator times and um I think he's buried there right or his family is and then you go into Lisbon and um you get to go to the top of the city and you get to look down in the whole city it's it's quite a hike up it was quite a hike up but you yeah it is your legs are sore by the time you get to the top but it's gorgeous and it's so worth the hike up there and then you leave to return to the to the US um again this is some of the the royal family residents um this is p two um oh this

140is a tower in Portugal in Lisbon where um the um conquistador fought off um Invaders and there's like an epic battle there which was really impressive to learn about um this is the Prince Prince Henry this is one of your trips not M of mine uh this is the Prince Henry um the Navigator and celebrating the the mon the Monument of discoveries thank you yeah where you get to celebrate all of like the Portuguese um impact on on C on culture and Society they have on the ground they have a map of the world and where the Portuguese pushed out to it's really really just beautiful they did a really good job and if you go across the street you have the best nazas in the world um Lisbon City Hall again everything is just

141gorgeous um and then the food oh my gosh the food if you don't travel for food I don't know why you travel right like that's my belly speaking but um again we had the original natas which were incredible and in experience um EF Tours is our travel partner um they they put together are a great program um again and I think Mar Ellen can speak to any questions on EF Tours in the support that they provide us but it's 24-hour support tour guide um we're part goad y they're present all throughout the world so um in many European countries they have oh I'm loud in many European countries um they have an office so they have an office in Lisbon they have an office in Madrid they'll have an office in Athens so they're very

142well present throughout the world EF is and on the trip too so yeah and so and so in case of e an emergency they're there in a Flash and that's why I use them is because of their presence and um you affordability as well they're out of all the travel companies that I've looked at they're also I'm not going to say they're not cheap but um lower cost and they're fair for what you get yeah MH um again our students get round trip hotel stay Regional meals every night for breakfast you get breakfast and dinner you get a tour director who's with you 247 um transportation on Amazing coach buses that are so comfortable um you have the cultural guide so not only is your tour guide there but you'll get a tour guide that

143comes on your bus and takes you or you um when you go to the um Palace you get special entrance at the palace with with the tour um that's throughout too and then um so many just like landmarks that you just see that you're just like oh my gosh that exists too um students their themselves they were travel they're required for their passport they contribute to the obviously the fees and the baggage fees that they would have to pay for extra try to encourage students to the only baggage fees they would have is if they overpacked yes they're not going which they will not they were scales for us all um tips for the local guides and bus drivers and then snacks at then um lunch meals but usually you're pretty full from breakfast and

144dinner so it's a quick meal um again I introduce you to Mary Ellen um and then this is this is why we partnered with wef tours um and again you have a local safety guide that's with you um throughout the whole the whole tour and then you also have the support at home throughout the tour um Mar will get like surveys throughout the whole tour just to ask how it's going to keep you in the loop of what's going on and what you need and then again top Soup To Nuts they're hooking you up they're taking care of you so I'll open up to questions on it um you're still waiting on final dates because they wait until the air fair oh you got it oh yeah oh I haven't seen oh perfect yeah we're

145leaving Good Friday okay coming back on Sunday the 27th excellent I already have the flights oh perfect yeah I was very mad I missed the ice cream bar on the way up so I'll start off here a couple of questions for you either one of you uh how many students do we have uh currently registered 19 Dartmouth High students 19 excellent and what what is our uh volunteer or our chaperon ratio your chaperon is Mr John Karen from Dartmouth High and I have um Educators uh Jerry forts who's a track and field coach here she's been a track and field coach here since the 1970s she's also another do dmouth chaperon um Amy and Rick Houston dmouth residents new beff educators um you know I'll I'll I have an English teacher at uh New Bedford

146High School who traveled with me four years as a student she my former student she went on four trips uh with me from at New Bedford High School and this is her third time chaperoning as an educator so her family has actually done 19 trips with me oh wow that's great I'm four kids I'm happy to hear it and what is the uh just so we're all on the same page will will the chaperon be briefed ahead of time so the chaperon have a lot of responsibilities um maybe more than what you guys did um my chaperones we do room checks at night we wake them up in the morning um um I stress that punctuality is very important and if you're late everyone's late so the chaperon will wake up the students y knock

147on the door student has to get up open the door all the lights go on everybody's up so that they can't go back to bed um so yep every shaone have six students okay so it's a 6:1 ratio actually there's going to be a few with five and um yeah any questions uh perfect no that's all I have I don't want to monopolize the time I have one word the importance of these trips my favorite word growth growth because you know you look at the itinerary and you think okay they're going to learn about the country they're visiting the culture the foods history they're going to learn about themselves they're going to learn how to use foreign currency to make a purchase with that currency to use an ATM in another country um to get

148along with two other people in their room and share bathroom which prepares them for college very true it's a lot of growth there not just the knowledge of you know visiting sure that's a great perspective it really is yeah yeah yeah any other questions Mr Nunes two two quick questions um what's the airline we are uh Air Canada Air Canada so the Boston Logan yeah Montreal Montreal Montreal Madrid y okay then Lisbon Montreal Boston Logan okay so it'll go through I've already uh arranged for Coach bruss Transportation round trip we're lucini bus lines from West Bridgewater y Bridgewater yep familiar with lucini we use them with the band and they're good and I I contacted five companies to get the best I always do that there you go that's fine and uh off the top

149of your head what's the Euro valued at I haven't looked lately that can change every day I know it changes every day I know it was a dollar 10 the yeah it it's we lose money yeah we do I was just curious um I I recommend AAA to get the Euro yeah a lot of banks don't even bother like Santander doesn't even um you know do it any longer you can't get Euro or any other currency from Santander it's crazy I know but I five to 10 days too triple even quicker than that yeah it's usually sometimes three yeah with triple A um I also they can use debit cards and that's another experience for them to use their debit cards I um I stress that they are Frugal And I stress that I'm going

150to I teach them some things bring bring snacks from home non- perishable snacks bring as many as you wish because if you ever been around a teenager they're hungry at 10:00 at night oh yeah I sh bandr dinner's over they're hungry so bring snacks from home go to Walmart stuck up um I also little senior citizen trick take from The Breakfast put it in your backpack for later that's a see trick I did that oh yeah I say bring some um sandwich bags from home and pack those sandwich bags with croissants you know some fruit from breakfast because we know teenagers don't always eat breakfast as they should so this gives them an opportunity to pull it out of their backpack later and know consume thank you anyone else sounds great have a great have

151a great time oh they will and I also by the way this is something I I would like and I would like you to be on it too is that um there's an app that is the most um widely used app in Europe throughout the world but in Europe This is their app which called WhatsApp yeah and I am going to have a separate WhatsApp group for the parents so that we can um throw in photos every day the chaperons and myself will be throwing in photos so that uh those parents get able to see you know their child oh good every day sounds good love it I like it make sure the cell phones have internation Yeah well yeah and so here's the other thing you know I I'm a talker I do have

152the gift to gab and I'm very repetitive um must be the 35 years of teaching um so is I try to keep them like I give them as much knowledge about how to communicate with people at home whether it's their parents whether it's their siblings whether it's their boyfriend girlfriend significant other whatever um there's if you like a lot of them are on Facebook but their parents might be on Facebook use Facebook Messenger uh face you know FaceTime if you have the iPhone use FaceTime all with Wi-Fi free WhatsApp free free phone calls with Wi-Fi so if all parents download WhatsApp they can communicate every day with their son or daughter and I stress that because if you have Verizon or AT&T it's very expensive I personally have T-Mobile so with T-Mobile you can you

153can text in over 300 countries free free texting but that's not so with Verizon and AT&T AT&T is 10 bucks a day 10 bucks a day so that's why use use the WhatsApp use uh you know FaceTime uh messenger y y good very good great great presentation thank you both very much question very appreciate it thank you everybody sounds great thank you safe travels that's awesome yeah wow all right we'll take it back to the top uh school committee policies section B school committee and governance operations and school committee policy section A ADF wellness policy second reading and vote uh Mr Mr okay so um we reviewed these policies at our last meeting um and uh we had uh some discussion and some comments um we did have a brief discussion about suggestion about possibly

154adding a Corey requirement for school committee members um and and we did check with the masc and our attorney and they advis those uh to not include that um and that the committee really couldn't establish um qualification requirements for it for members so um so we did not make a change to that policy and everything else is Remains the Same so we'd be happy to talk about it and um answer any questions you might have before you consider it further thank you very much Mr Kyle I do appreciate you reaching out to masc and uh legal counsel on that um I thought it was at least worthwhile to to have that discussion um comments questions on our second read and vote on this policy Mr nun thank you Mr chairman um again I wasn't here

155at the last one the last meeting but I did catch in bits and pieces different parts of uh the meeting was never able to catch the whole thing uh and I appreciate the comment about you know know all the different lettering the alphabet soup as it was was was talked about type of deal and I appreciate and I really don't have uh anything I mean personally I am cored because of my involvement with the band and Athletics and I mean I'm one-on-one with students so I have a Corey on file so but other than that I have no uh no issues with these policies yeah good job by everyone thank you Mr Nunes yeah and I honestly you know not single in you it was just a matter of I just thought it was good

156practice uh but I understand the the political Fallout from that and something we can enforce so I'm okay with it so chair we'll entertain a motion to approve uh the policies as stated so move second motion by Mr noon second by Mrs Amal on the motion any other discussion jaring none all in favor I opposed motion carries unanimously thank you everyone for your work thank you Mr C KY uh continuing on FY 26 through 35 Capital Improvement plan for the discussion and vote to approve thank you Mr Kylie thank you so um again at the last meeting we presented the FY 26 through 35 10-year Capital Improvement plan um I I guess the biggest we haven't changed anything based on that discussion um the biggest thing that I wanted to make you aware of is

157that at the next meeting I am so the February 10th meeting I'm planning to present a mass School building authority statement of interest for the high school roof yay to you um it'll then need consideration from the select board uh before we actually submit it so assuming that the school committee is uh going to be in support of getting new roof here um then we'll get it on the select board's agenda and then submit hopefully um in March to msba great fantastic questions about the CIP no so that'll be for the next meeting you said Mr that will be yes right and we thinking um I know it's a little early too little early to tell but we thinking potential uh project for FY 27 well you know we're going to be in a pool

158of candidates with msba so they'll determine it I it likely will take a year is to get it ready and get funding at town meeting and uh get it fully designed so it'll be a process over sometime but in an ideal situation yes okay it would be a 27 yeah perfect Mr chairman yes Mr Nunes through you to Mr Kylie uh is this something because we we need town meeting approval and such is this something we're looking to put in on the June town meeting or maybe the October fall meeting I think more likely just to have it available yeah I I think that um obviously a lot hinges on whether or not we're even uh accepted into the msba yeah uh I don't think we would learn of that in time so um it

159it's not going to be submitted till the end of March so they're not even going to start considering projects until April it maybe they'll consider something in time for the beginning of June but um really not sure yet they could give us a placeholder they they they certainly could I mean I say placeholder I mean the town could give us a placeholder at the June meeting and then just withdraw it right it would be strictly for design money I think that we would need a vote um which uh when we present to the select board we can we can make that recommendation I hope that there'll be a quick turnaround I mean obviously I don't want to I don't you're you have the option to approve or not approve the statement of Interest so um

160I think we've talked a lot about the need for this but um I I've already made uh the town you know aware that we're in this process and um yeah it's pretty easy to to look at the need if you just look up um so hopefully you know we can get on a select board agenda in a prompt fashion and get it in but yes uh we'll have that discussion with them about town meeting possibilities and the last the last thing I have is I know uh there was discussion you know a couple of schools in this this 10year plan which with the amount of discussion that we had with the 40-year capital Improvement plan this I mean should not be a surprise to anybody that we've got two schools out there I mean I

161know Mr Kylie made the comment or Dr Sabre Maguire made a comment about all of a sudden having two or three schools and one Fell Swoop and you know I happened to in the stand standard times the other day was uh half a dozen schools in the city of New Beford with you know design work or whatever they needed done you know going out for loan orders for half a dozen schools so we hopefully don't want to get into that that type of a situation so I mean I appreciate everything that's on here yeah and when you get a note from CIP if you'd let me know i' if I can make it I'd love to I will I will yeah I I'm expecting possibly in the next couple of weeks okay but I don't

162have a DAT or anything at this point let me know thank you and just speaking about um town meeting and all of this to just out of curiosity have they um signed a Town Administrator yet I know I don't believe so no that's the uh they were supposed to meet tonight in executive session with Town Council to go over the uh from what I remember listening to to go over the contract to send been quite some time all right thank you thank you for the update so uh at this point I guess we're looking chair we'll entertain a motion to approve the uh FY 26 through 35 Capital Improvement plan so second motion by Mr NES second by Mrs Amaral on the motion any other discussion sorry j hearing none all in favor I opposed

163motion carries unanimously thank you very much thank you Mr Kylie for your work on the cipk you uh next up a Hot Topic here 2025 2026 I'm getting a little Punchy uh school year calendar uh further discussion in vote and I'll turn it over to Dr sa Maguire for her thoughts well I I think that you're correct this is a Hot Topic um in in town and I'm sure that you have had discussions um with folks who live here in Dartmouth who have thoughts about the school calendar it seems to be one that's a Hot Topic in other communities as well um but what we did do is we revised option one um if you remember uh with option one we were proposing a shorter holiday break and we would have had a full day

164full days of school the Monday and Tuesday before Christmas Eve um in op the option one revised proposal is exactly the same as option one with the uh proposed addition of that half day on the Tuesday before the 24th and then option two is that one with the longer holiday break and that provides again for a later last day of school uh that would bring us to the 15th without snow days uh all options are include that the Friday before uh Labor Day uh that we don't have school on the Friday before Labor Day Labor Day and that there's a half day on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and so we had lots of discussion about that I know you wanted time to think about it um so I don't know if you watched any of

165the uh deliberation Mr Nunes um but it certainly was uh yes it was but that's okay good healthy deliberations if I may yeah go ahead I mean in in all seriousness I was in I mean I knew I wasn't going to be here but in conversations that I had with uh Dr Sabre Maguire uh I mentioned to her about you know going to Monday in Tuesday of Christmas week with the half day type of deal uh if there are no if if you don't do that two thing two things personally come to mind number one you're coming back on a Monday for half a day nobody's going to be here anyway type of type of deal it's you know you're opening up the schools and such and number two more importantly me personally uh that

166juneth holiday scares The Living Daylights out of me if we get any amount of snow type of deal and just extend out you know four or five six snow days type of deal bring us well into the uh you know the last full week of June and uh you know we need the Summers to get the schools reset for uh the fall and you know summer projects done and custodians to clean and and everybody else you know the the faculty and staff to to recharge their batteries so you know that much longer so that that was my thought on uh going the two extra days you know that that type of deal and I've had discussions not with parents not in this District but in you know some other districts and you know I happen

167to mention it to them and their comment to me and their Educators and their comment to me was take the two days you know take the do the Monday and half day Tuesday so that's that's where my vote is thank you for your input any other thoughts I can share mine or sure so after uh thinking about it taking it back and uh reading and having conversations with several several uh parents in town and folks in town uh I I'm leaning more towards having the two full weeks off um I'm thinking of it from an as an educated point of view I can understand that um you know it's a long two weeks could some people may say two weeks is a long period of time to keep students out of school and they're going

168to miss stuff but in the reality of it there's two things in my opinion the two things being one that it's one and a half day you so first thing is going to school on the 23rd the day before Chris Eve with parent I think we're going to have a lot of absences as it is and then my my other thought is where am I going with this if you ever been in a classroom uh the week before Christmas or the month of December kids are very very rambunctious and I don't know how much you know I'm sure the teachers will do as best as they can to educate those students uh during those two days uh but the reality is uh they're ready for the holidays so my my opinion would be to have

169the two weeks off that made any sense um I I I in agreement with you Mr Oliver um i' I've shared personally the break-in routine is a very difficult thing for for certain members of my family um but you know it's you know looking at the calendar I think we did this once before a few years ago and um it might have been five six years ago I think Dr Jenkins proposed we not have a day at one point and ended up being a longer vacation and I do think there was a little bit of oh my gosh when do school start again uh but the reality is I overwhelmingly I I've heard from both sides but um I've overwhelmingly heard from people who made a great case for and Mr n said it I'm

170going to steal his words but I'm going to say it for the for the option the different option that Mr Oliver is in support of is recharging battery um and some other really um compelling reasons to you know if we're going to do it it's a day and a half this option versus the other um the 15th isn't too late I unless we do get massive snow um but that uh you know with couldn't do this next year next year right we're we're in another week you know it it falls an extra day away so it's um I think given folks two weeks uh would be my I I won't um I'll support what the committee's pleasure is but um that would be my my choice option b option option two a longer holiday break

171with the full two weeks um I get a handful of emails um that were split right down the middle so um as I considered everything um I'm leaning towards uh John's Proposal with the um Monday full day Tuesday half day okay um I also have heard from both sides it's a weighty decision um that's why we get the big bucks just remember that and I am uh in favor of Mr noon's revised plan a um for not breaking up the routine um of students for working parents who have to find child care for those couple days and also um the real possibility that June's going to be really hot and we don't have air conditioning in these schools which are not modern um so I will whatever however we vote I will support it but

172just waiting for a [Laughter] motion can put the put the calendar to bed put it on the table but why not go down in glory yeah Mr the chairman seriously um make a motion that we uh for school year Academic Year 2526 uh we adopt the revised option one as provided by the superintendent which has uh December 22nd as a full day and December 23rd as a half day with the last day of school at the moment be being June 11th 2026 wow I know do we have a second I'll second it thank you so we have a motion on the floor by Mr nun a second by Miss Beckwith on the motion any other discussion J heing none all in favor I I opposed extensions motion passes three- two with no exstension save the

173pieces and thank you everyone for your for your thoughtful uh reflection on this uh next up boy update we have a budget update thank you s you're welcome budget update um before I turn it over to Mr Kylie I just want to say a couple things related to the budget before Mr Kylie talks about really where we are in terms of planning for the budget you heard tonight you know references to the district strategic plan you heard um Mr Shay talk about the uh opportunities that we have uh through school Improvement planning for internships for opportunities for more relationships with uh higher ed you heard our AP parter school students talk about their opportunities to come here to the high school and to be part of the TV and Production Studio um so the folks

174that are making those things happen are the Educators in the buildings that are working with the students and so when I think about the importance of supporting a budget and when people um ask us well you know what what doesn't instructional technology coach do well you saw what an instructional technology coach does here this evening when you had the instructional technology coach here supporting even though we had uh six students presenting there was a there were many far more students involved in what we were able to see on the screen and what we heard from our presenters this evening um we talk about opportunities for kids and we talk about that in ways that we have to make those direct connections back to staff so I think that we have to keep that out in

175front of our discussions when we talk about numbers of course which are important of course and we have a responsibility to the community um both the town community and and the Dartmouth School community in particular to make sure that we're finding as many ways as possible to give our students opportunities and you heard our students tonight as young as fifth grade starting to talk about having these experiences that may shape their very Futures and that's why I'm those positions like instructional technology coaches are important because they exist in all our buildings and that is how they're supporting kids in their development so with that I know Mr Kylie has a an update as to where we are in the process yeah thank you Dr s McGuire so we have a uh budget subcommittee meeting coming

176up on February 10th and that um meeting is really to set the stage for our budget presentation to the school committee did I say February 10th you did subcommittee meeting on February 3rd yes um next Monday um to get us ready for the budget presentation to the school committee on February 10th so we've got a lot of work still to do before February 3rd and then leading into our presentation for you folks on February 10th um we we got some news this week uh in that the the governor's budget proposal is out um the governor has proposed a $75 per pupil uh increase which could could be worse um it could be the the the lowest that they would go would be $30 um so $25 though per pupil is less than two and a

177qu% uh increase for us so it's $242,000 increase which unfortunately is not going to save us um from you know facing some challenges in this process um another thing that I am very concerned about um and and I don't know I think the legislature is probably going to adjust this but the governor uh failed to fully fund Universal free lunch and breakfast which you know we just had our wonderful presentation um that uh Mrs Sheridan did on on our food service operation and and we really have made great strides I think in in terms of um both what we offer kids and and and just the the level of participation that that we get um you know from kids in our program and and we certainly want to be able to continue to do that

178I'm I'm a little concerned that was not fully funded she didn't fully the governor didn't fully fund no community no and you know it it's now the law so I don't really know how that's going to work out so I I think I think that the legislature is going to act um and adjust that but we'll see um I mean there's other things that the state doesn't fully fund and is the law too so you know won the first time but I hope that that's not the case because that will have a significant impact on our kids did I hear there was some kind of supplemental budget being thrown around for circuit breaker yes to fully fund that and I you know I think that's that's important and um we have a substantial amount of

179of um claims in circuit breaker and if that is not fully funded that will have immediate detrimental impact but but I think it will be um the other thing was that the towns side the unrestricted uh Town Aid uh was right about the same as uh as ours it was about 2.2% so uh in the governor's budget so you know they're not not particularly helping us um at the state level as usual and that's um that's where we are and I look forward to meeting with uh the subcommittee on the third and really uh getting this out out in public and and move forward yeah no same here questions comments from my committee members no as always thank you Mr K up go ahead Mr n no I I'm just I'm just looking at the

180cherry sheet yeah type of deal and you know the U you know 242,000 in chapter 7 $69,000 in local Aid you know everything else you know yeah some other stuff went out but that's just reimbursements you know and it's I'm not quite sure how they're expect you know and you look at o and I'm a broken record and I apologize but and not I've given up with the Gateway cities that Tye that type of deal but you look at some of the other communities around here you know and they've got substantially percentage wise substantially more than us type type of deal with with what we have in it's you know we've got you know twice the number of students and such and I'm not quite sure what anybody thinks and again I realize this is

181out of the box from the governors and there's going to be some adjustments but there's not a lot some of these don't don't change that much if my you know intuition is is there so I'm not sure how they expect us to survive no certainly agreed um do you think you'll have um for the uh February third budget meeting Jim a number um from the town we're working on that we're working on that certainly be very helpful if they had yes had something to give us to work with for sure since we're trying to get our budget ready um every year a little bit sooner so thank you for that all right next up under new business school choice 2025 2026 discussion and vote I did ask Dr Samu just to provide some numbers for

182us as to where our school choice currently stands enrollment wise yes so um actually 122 well 122 I have it up on my board I don't but yes we have 122 students in spread across the high school spread across the high school and I I think Mr Kylie has some if I'm not mistaken in front of you you have some numbers related to school choice right right so funding yeah I do um so uh school choice students right now make up 133% of our high school population so just um for your reference um we um I provided you with some financial information I mean we had a pretty in-depth conversation well actually we had a bunch of them last year regarding um our use of school choice funds and um the benefit that you know

183it had on our process especially considering um there was not a lot of collaboration with um the town and working on our uh our budget issues last year so um we receive about $700,000 in annual revenue um $5,000 a student but if the students have any have an IEP um there's an increment depending in on the services that they receive so it's not a flat $5,000 um for those 122 students so we we're projecting right around $700,000 of Revenue this year um we right now have more than $1.3 million uh planned on uh in expenditures so we had you know a significant like I said significant amount of discussion last year about how we were going to bridge the budget Gap um and you have um before you uh uh plan to do that over

184the next several years unfortunately um the expense side of it continues to be more than the revenue side so um we'll slowly use our reserves uh to the point where three years from now um we will be in a deficit if we were to continue that so we have some work to do and and hopefully find some support uh in the town in order to resolve this but uh in the short term we're going to continue and you'll see in the in the FY 26 uh budget proposal that uh we'll be we'll be making that um we're going to continue to supplement our budget needs with with with school choice in the short term so questions around I think we got two pieces here right we have I certainly want would like to have a

185little bit of discussion around school choice budget but also um just the school choice program as it stands and what is the committee's pleasure on uh approving school choice for the fy2 FY 26 school year um uh I would say we should continue school choice um primarily because we need the money right now um I am beginning to wonder whether I would want us to have school choice if we were fully funded um you know we talk a lot about um School culture and belonging and a lot of it is about us being Dartmouth and it's our citizens of Dartmouth giving their tax money to our students and I can understand how a the taxpayers might feel like we shouldn't have people from outside and also in terms of our culture you know it's where

186we live it's our town um I don't want to be isolationists I believe I want I want our school to be the best public school um but I also understand that our students sometimes want to go to other schools and so therefore I'm fine with other schools having school choice and accepting our students um uh so I'm a bit on the fence about the long-term um idea of school choice but I definitely am in favor of school choice going forward this year Mr nudes oh did you very I'm good for right now okay go ahead uh couple of things uh Mr chairman uh and again catching bits and bits and pieces I know you happened to mention uh about checking with the middle school did anything come about from that yeah good question Mr noon

187so I actually in my um bi-weekly meeting with Dr sabber Maguire we did have that conversation and that is something you know it's a little bit late in the game right now to introduce uh that opportunity at the middle school um but for me you know I think we obviously have a we obviously have a number of students that leave 8th grade uh to attend uh New Bedford voke or attend other schools even other school choice schools so um my feeling is if we can bring in students uh from other communities starting in sixth grade that they would certainly be um a reason for them to stick around and attend Dartmouth High School um so but to answer your the quick question the quick answer to your question is um I I don't think we're

188you know we're just not there yet for the middle school no I I would agree Mr Oliver and we did talk about have we had conversation about putting sort of a little study team together to see what the interest would be in um in including and really it would be a sixth grade entry point point but we would have to have a a team to look at that see the impact on class size uh one of the things that Mr Oliver said that I I would agree with is if we open school choice up to our to sixth graders then you would those would be the students that you would have grades six through 12 so it you would have the same group of students that really realistically you probably are having enter dartus schools

189in ninth grade it would just be that you would have a chance to have them become part of the culture of the School System earlier um and that would mean that you would have obviously more students overall because it would be from grade six through 12 um so that would be a recommendation that we would make but we would want to take our time before we entered into bringing that forward to the committee and we would have to do really have a St a team study what the impact would actually be so we weren't quite there yet that's fine so this is something that this time next year we could be talking about to bring in for we could be for for the following for 26 27 yes type of deal okay thank you uh

190yeah I thank you for the uh the financial the financial picture uh my vote hasn't changed okay I'm not going to be a surprise to anybody there type of deal but also too I have to be I would have to be foolish and naive to say you know the money is good and thank God we've got it because if we didn't have this this year we would have really been you know worse than Whistling Dixie as as they say type type of deal but then again this is extra money that in my this school committee members opinion should be doing the extra things okay 100% agreed with you there this is this is what should be doing the extra things okay you know for teachers for students you know things of that nature this should

191not be this should not be balancing a budget okay that and such so you know between the town and the state and again I'm a broken record and I apologize but no I don't apologize because it's the truth uh this is this is this is the real ity of it type of deal so yeah thank God we've got the money because other than that we'd really be in trouble but and I appreciate you know you know Mr Mr Kylie can get uh dollar bills out of pennies thank God so uh you know we've got this to at the moment yeah fall back on but you know we don't have we've got a little bit of a safety net but we don't have a big safety net MH okay and all of a sudden this is

192going to dry up in a hurry MH and then you know kind of go back to the E now never mind but I won't go there okay I'm good thank you Mr nudes I I can certainly agree with you on that the as I look at this here the 11 FTE positions that are funded through school choice should be funded through our operating budget not through school choice and I I think we need to make ourselves very clear clear to the finance committee and to the select board that those positions really should be funded in our operating budget for sure absolutely anyone else before I give my two cents I'm obviously for a number of reasons I'm in favor of school choice education becoming more and more competitive uh as the time goes by we

193look at perfect example is uh o Rochester Regional they have a very successful school choice program they are pulling I think actually 6 through 12 school choice and a number of them are coming from uh for Haven School District and from other Wham and some of those other districts and the reality is that in order to stay competitive especially at the high school level if if we didn't have 128 students 122 right 122 students at dmouth high school if there was 122 less we would not be able to offer the the types of uh classes that we offer that's the reality of it so for me I think school choice it's about course offerings at least at the high school level and in keeping our C course offerings big we also have there is also

194a financial piece to it and I understand I certainly respect your your values Mr Nunes um around you know being part of the U darta taxpayer uh but we do have our students going to other districts for one reason or another um so there's also that piece of it and it's also the piece for me it's about empathy to teaching empathy to our students at Dartmouth High School that there are there are students families uh that don't live in the Dartmouth community that have an opportunity to come to Dartmouth High School through the school choice program and I think that teaches them a little bit of empathy about they're fortunate enough to live in this town and come here but we also have students coming from other areas towns and cities um into the Dartmouth

195High School uh school choice program so I am once again a yes no surprise uh for me do we know the number of students that go out uh from Dartmouth to um other districts for school choice good question we do there 53 right now okay thank you anything else I I just want to say I I um agree with u both of my colleagues to my left here that um I think that the good outweighs the bad and I think that we can be isolationist as a town and I think that was a good word um beess and I do think that students coming from other places enrich our population and present possibilities of learning for all and so um that's where I am on it so I'm in favor I I I I've I've

196been clear about this I think from the get-go I'm in favor of it and I don't think I could say it any better than my colleague um Mary back with uh you know it's about opportunities it's about enriching um the student body and the experiences and you know and um and just learning from others and I think it's uh it's just a good thing and also um not much anymore but some Financial uh um benefit to it as well and that long list of expenditures that should be in our operating budget but I'm I'm in support thank you Mrs amiral and I will just I'll just say um and I'll stop talking because I know we're going on three hours here is that if the school if Dr s mire uh Mr Kylie were to

197say we're maxed out at at Dartmouth High School and we didn't have the space well then that's one thing yeah well one for me that's 100% you know if we were maxed out and we're going to you know it's going to be a detriment then my vote's no right it's always no at that point but right now we have the room we have opportunities for you know for other students um outside of Dartmouth so it's a yes so chair will entertain a motion uh on school choice yeah Mr chairman make a motion that the D public schools adopt school choice for school year 2526 second so we have a motion by Mr Nunes a second by Miss Coughlin on the motion any other discussion chair hearing none all in favor I I opposed me abstentions

198motion passes 4 to one with zero abstentions and thank you all for that uh that conversation I think it was a good one thank you for allowing it next up 2024 annual report and vote you um I know that you received your a report I've heard from a couple of you about a couple of things that we'll certainly address before we um before we submit to the town but the annual report does require a school committee vote before we can officially submit it to the town perfect comments questions good job yeah it's a lot of work I have no doubt a lot of work by a lot of people across the district so I appreciate the work that's been put into it interesting to look at motion to approve the annual report second as adjusted

199motion by Mr noon second by Miss Beckwith on the motion any other discussion just a big thank you to everyone on the administrative Team all in favor I opposed motion carries unanimously uh next up super attendance report okay so I'll try to speed through it I'll try to talk as fast as U Mr Shay there you go I don't think it's possible but I'll try um but under teaching and learning I just continually want to reiterate the importance of the work taking place at all levels of the district uh we expect to have high quality resources in place in all of our major content areas um not every single content area at every single grade level but certainly I think that we're seeing big impact right now we will have as you know a new

200resource um for elementary for literacy in the fall you'll hear more about that soon Science World Language math we're we're again as part of our district strategic plan that is a real Focus for us and I just will make that connection back to how important the budget is in supporting this kind of work because that is those are expensive commitments and the resource is one part of the commitment and even as important is the professional development that needs to take place in order to support our Educators in the implementation of those resources um we continue to explore ways for educators uh to participate in opportunities for professional development both internally and externally we talked about the cohort that we are um able to provide through Bridge state for Ed educational leadership tomorrow we actually have

201a a meeting a virtual meeting for educators who may be interested in getting a master's or even a postmasters in reading so that they would have a a an actual uh degree in in reading and so that's something that folks again along the same lines as a cohort model where it would be a reduced cost for our Dartmouth Educators and it would be a hybrid model so that much of the work would be virtual uh but there would be some opportunities for some in-person kinds of uh experiences at brid or maybe even here in Dartmouth if we have a cohort that is uh is really made up of all Dartmouth Educators so we're really excited about that I'll mention to you that our school has earned the college board's AP Computer Science female diversity award

202and what that means is we've expanded young women women's access to AP Computer Science principles and that this is uh this is something that is is um something to be commended here in Dartmouth because our school is one of 847 schools to achieve this accomplishment and so we're excited about again when you think about some of the work that's happening here in computer science and through the work Mr parate and others are doing they're offering lots of opportunities for you saw the number of of young women that were here tonight talking about their experiences in uh TV and production and so that is exciting for us uh you heard uh Mr Kylie talk about the budget already I'll mention as far as uh HR is concerned and I know the Here I Am the broken

203record but we are seeking special Educators um both at Dartmouth High school and the middle school and those job ads are out and we're hoping that we get a qualified candidate pool again a great place to come and work and we want to just promote ourselves as much as possible so we can attract talent to the district we are in the process of interviewing for the Quinn and parter School principal ships I thank Mrs Pavo and the team that she's put together uh to lead this process uh this has consisted of a screening team made up of various stakeholders and really representative of the school district I thank the committee members who have been willing to step in and sit on one of those panels um I also Shar that our associate principal Rachel chavier

204has taken a job in a neighboring POS neighboring District I was certainly sad to see her go and at the same time you have probably noticed that we did put out a job ad and much like the processes processes that we're using to select principles our director of Early Childhood um that will also be extended to any really administrative position in the school district so we'll update you as that goes along on and again come to you and ask you to be part of that process it's such an important position um monitor substitute teachers you know I always have to talk about it um because even even today and in talking to Mr Shay about a position he needs to fill he said oh I you know I I thought I was at the point

205where I could say I have a full staff and I think what we've ackn what we all need to acknowledge is there really doesn't seem to be a time where we can actually ever say that and so we're constantly in the process process of hiring the right people for the right positions for the school district um as I said Jim already updated you on some of the other ongoing work um I am going to just take a moment to talk about uh you know there have been a couple of events I'm going to call them in the Dartmouth Public Schools over the past couple of weeks um and what I think is important for us to focus on is really the district focus on safety respect and responsibility in our schools and these recent events

206have shown us how vital it is that we all work together for to create safe and supportive environments where all our students and Staff feel safe and supported um we hold high expectations for our schools and these expectations are rooted in our shared values of respect inclusivity responsibility it's important that everyone students staff families and community members play a part in up holding these standards so that our schools remain places where everyone can Thrive um I want to acknowledge the successful relocation um of our Quinn school students and staff to the middle school that just happened it seems like you know it was months ago but really it was just a short time ago uh that process went incredibly smoothly and thanks to that was thanks to the hard work and planning of our staff

207at both the Quinn and the middle school and you could see really clearly how teamwork comes into play and that the relationship folks have built between throughout this school Community becomes so important in that wasn't a safety crisis but it could have been had not been for the response of the the effective response of all the adults uh that were involved and and there were lots of people involved I hear uh Mr Kylie talk about I think he said he had 44 phone calls 42 42 I was close um I had number as well we were both working different angles and then we had our staff on the ground uh doing the the real uh you know actual relocating of over 700 students so I thank everybody that was involved to make that transition I

208I would say as seamless as it could possibly go and I thank our parents and the community for responding so positively to us um I also think it's important that we highlight the positive experience positive experiences that we want for our student athletes and for our Spectators uh Athletics bring our community together and our sporting event should reflect the best of who we are I've always felt that way in Dartmouth I continue to feel that way there such a source of that's such a source of Pride um and so we remind people that whether you're competing you're cheering from the sidelines you're working behind the scenes so many folks are in involved we all have a role in making sure that these moments are fun they are competitive they're respectful and memorable in really uh

209special ways for our student athletes and for our community at large um when challenges come up we certainly take them seriously we act quickly we follow established safety protocols and we work closely with our partners uh D like the Dartmouth Police Department and it's all about ensuring the safety of all of our students our staff and our school community and I thank our staff and law enforcement for their dedication and professionalism in these efforts uh we're all here every one of us because we care about our students we want them to succeed and as a district we're committed to supporting our kids and our families with clear communication with resources and opportunities um and I think it's important to mention that the trust that we build in our community with our families and in our

210community in general we really lean into that trust and when there are challenges we lean into the trust that we've built in the community that they know that we're responding effectively and in the best interest of of their children and staff so we've had some I would say challenging uh events and at the same time I can't thank the staff this the team here enough for coming together including our commit our school committee um you know us being able to pick up the phone send you an email let you know what's going on knowing that we have your support out there and that you're doing what you can to communicate uh what's happening behind the scenes and so I just want to want to thank everyone honestly I've said this to the the district leadership

211team and to teachers when I can it's when challenging times come up that you see the strength of a team and that is what I am really fortunate to be able to say as superintendent that I felt like I had a team of very effective folks around us to uh sort of Shepherd us through those events and and I thank again I thank the community for that so I just wanted to say that and you know I'm excited about the rest of this Sports season the girls basketball team I was reading in the Monday minute this morning that I think they're ranked third in the state um that is something really that we need to continue to celebrate and we have other athletic uh teams doing really well too and we are very proud of

212our athletes and we're proud of our community and that's what we want to keep our focus on so thank you thank you Dr Sab oh can I just mention one more thing I'm sorry um we're going to put out our first ever Dartmouth staff newsletter um I don't think we've n we've come up with a name yet I want to call it the Dartmouth Compass but I think we're both we're still working through it and that's a staff a newsletter that will be put out quarterly by the district leadership team highlighting some of the work that is going on across the district and at our next school committee meeting just before we'll have a reception for our first ever um Green Apple award recipients and we'll talk about what that is so we somebody has

213a green oh Mr G actually has a green apple and we'll talk about that at the next committee meeting meeting but we're excited about that and that's a part of our family and Community engagement and safe and supportive School uh the work that we're doing to ensure that that is also uh of primary importance in our work so that's all thank you thank you and just piggy piggybacking off of that I have it here as a 5: PM uh ceremony before the next school committee meeting is that correct 5:15 we will have a reception we'll have some um Refreshments we've invited those folks that were recognized here with their families uh we'll award them an actual green apple uh not an edible one and then we also will ask them to come just to the

214beginning of the committee um meeting so that you will'll have certificates for you to be able to present to them fabulous fabulous yeah thank you very much for your report any questions oh just one quick comment if I can Mr uh chairman just through you to and really to everyone is you know we've done a the district has done a lot of work on a lot of these internal policies when situations arise and such and U they work there is no doubt in my mind that they work and I know a few years ago that you know there were other schools that wanted to you know can we borrow you policy you know modify it to what we need they need a type of deal but they just love the policies that we've you know

215the the administrators and central office have put into place so I'm glad to see that you know on they work no 100% agreed not only as a school Committee Member but as a resident of this town I'm proud of the the actions and in the work of uh this faculty and staff here in the Dartmouth Public Schools under your under your leadership Dr Sab Maguire um I really don't have much I'm I'm just going to kind of just share my own thoughts and my own recommendations uh under for sporting events um I think we have a fabulous athletic Community here uh students uh we have a high participation rate and you know I would just ask the community uh The Spectators out there to just um you know enjoy the enjoy the game for what

216it is high school sports I know everyone gets excited I remember those days um but just try to keep it into perspective of that these are high school students and the refs are or the umpires they're they're not always perfect but they do their best and they you know they they do their diligence to uh have Fair calls and um please leave it to the officials as well as to the high school the the staff the athletic directors the coaches um to take care of their teams um and just keep your comments uh to yourselves yeah so that's that's all I have um did you listen to Wei this on your way in I didn't no because they would more so because of the the football games this uh yesterday type of deal yes but

217there was conversations about officiating in high school and college and even down into like little league and that type of deal you know the issues so thank you lot I'll have to see if I can catch that pick up the podcast anything else for the greater good I could Yeah couple of quick things Mr chairman uh and I know it's it's old hat now but it was back in December I had the uh distinct privilege of being here for the uh John and Abigail Adams Awards uh back in December type of deal and uh you know breakfast and I helped uh Mr Shay and miss shavia hand out the uh certificates and that and it was funny going back to I know Mr Sheridan was here at the last meeting and talking about the meals

218and everything else and the parents were just Overjoyed I mean you know they were expecting breakfast and expecting you know muffins and that type and it was scrambled eggs bacon home fries sausage it was you know Juice Plus stain is it was delicious it really really was they they outdid themselves so I just but again more so congratulations to the students and the parents for those Awards it was nice you know nice to see thank you for representing the committee no problem call being retired and do these things sometimes uh our indoor programs are in the band are going uh our kot had a uh critique performance this past weekend which they they did well at uh we have three home shows coming up uh I don't have much in details type of deal I

219just know they're March 1st March 8th and then nesba finals for percussion on April 5th so I'll get more information and I will uh bring out for uh trophy presenters that I need you know with times and and everything else and uh last but certainly not least uh our athletic trainer Kathy thoron has one MIAA trainer of the Year type of deal and such so maybe we can have her at our meeting I I was just talking to the superintendent about yes we can certainly do that next time have to add I'll take for responsibility for that I'll drop that ball I we you know she was here earlier yeah she was here at the game yes absolutely you know but you know that that type of deal ABS well welld deserved award she is

220very well respected and uh you know loved by the students and and the interaction that she has with the students is is second to none and you know very calm demeanor so it's great just congratulations to her no we'll set something up okay thank you that's all I have thank you uh anything else all right next regularly scheduled meeting of the Dartmouth school committee is Monday February 10th y uh 600 PM uh with a 515 U you know reception this time chair will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second motion by Mr noon second by Mrs ameral on the motion any other discussion J Herring n all in favor I I oppose meeting is adjourned have a good night everyone you too you [Music] too for