001[Music] good evening everyone I like to call this meeting of the dman school committee to order for Monday November 4th 2024 would you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all please be seated well good evening once again everyone like to welcome you all to uh dmouth High School in our November meeting of the dmouth school committee our first meeting anyway or I think our only meeting this month no we we don't yeah three weeks from tonight three weeks from tonight thank you I John wasn't sure if we had uh decided to go that route just a reminder that this meeting is being a video
002taped for a future broadcast on our uh YouTube youtube.com dhsv media channel it's also being live streamed there as well as Dartmouth Community television on Channel 9 on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 5:00 p.m. Friday at 6:00 a.m. Saturday at 8 a.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. in addition to that darmouth Community television broadcasts us on channel 18 on Monday and Saturday at 12:00 p.m. and Thursday at 300 p.m. at this time if you have any uh cell phones or electronic devices we ask you to please silent them roll call please miss G Chris Oliver here best Coughlin here Mary Beck here John Nunes Kathleen Amaral here thank you very much to my committee members uh at this time we have allotted uh 10 minutes for public comment anyone wishing to speak on any of tonight's
003agenda items we ask you to please approach the microphone keep your comments brief uh to 3 minutes or under and keep it relative to uh any of the topics on tonight's agenda and it looks like we have no takers this evening very good we're moving on from public comment at this time if it's okay with the committee I am going to uh turn it over uh before our approval of minutes to uh Dr Saba Maguire uh for some recognition great thank you so much Mr Oliver so you know oftentimes we talk about our educational support uh professionals and talk about the work that they do in our schools and how much they truly are the backbone of our community and how needed they are and how much we depend on them every day and so
004we invited uh a couple of our esps here and I'm going to ask Dr Thomas uh to come up and to speak to uh a situation an event that happened just last week this past Friday at the Quinn school and I think that in this way no more does this illustrate how important our esps are in our school Community than what um Dr Thomas is going to share with you this evening thank you thank you Dr Sabre Maguire and members of the school committee for allowing me this opportunity to speak of two of my educational support professionals if I could please have Sarah Martin and Lexie Whitney come up with me and I'm just going to interrupt very quickly for the record I just like to say that this does fall under other items that
005may not have been anticipated at the time of the agenda for anyone that may be watching at home so as we all know teachers and staff wear a many hats and uh student safety is our number one priority last Friday was no different when in the cafeteria one of our students began to choke and Sarah and Lexi acted immediately and calmly and were able to perform the heick in order to remove what was lodged in the students throat they are being commended this evening not only for their quick thinking but also for doing this in such a way in which no other student in the cafeteria and there were approximately 100 students in the cafeteria at that time were the wiser they had no idea that this was happening when I asked Sarah and Lexi
006if they could come this evening both of them shared that this is just part of their job this is just what they do and didn't feel like they needed to be publicly recognized and we disagreed which is why they're here this evening um they both shared that other power Professionals in our school and staff in our school would do the exact same thing any given day and although they are correct we felt it was really important for them to be recognize this evening so I thank you for this as one of the leaders of the Quinn school I am so proud of these two standing with me I have an amazing staff and I want to just give certificates to both of them that state for your courageous and quick thinking that saved a life
007your bravery in a moment of Crisis was an inspiration to all and has earned you deep gratitude and respect from our school and after speaking to this particular student's mom over the weekend she was so happy that we were recognizing both of these individuals this evening and wanted to make sure that I also told them how happy she was that they were here being honored this evening so thank you very much also have some [Applause] thank you well thank thank you thank you Dr Thomas and thank you both uh on behalf of the dmas school committee as chair of the D of school committee I personally want to thank you for your quick actions um it's you know it's truly um something you probably you wake up in the morning it's one of those things
008you don't think you ever would be doing that you know you just go into action and you just do what you have to do to keep the kids safe and you would hope that someone would do it for your child so that's right well thank you thank you thank you and if we could just have you come up here and we want to make sure we get your picture Dr Thomas do you want to get in the picture no it's okay well no we want you to Dr Tom so again and thank you I see your families are here Sarah and Lexi your families are there in the back again we know how proud you are thank you so much for coming out tonight again just a small way for us to recognize what we
009consider to really be hero heroic uh work that you did so thank you so [Applause] much it's always nice to start the night on a positive note for sure unfortunately it's unfortunate that it happened but we're very fortunate that we have staff members that are trained and willing to jump right into action for sure any of my other colleagues like to share anything or you said it all you did thank you perfect uh next up uh chair will entertain a approval of the regular session minutes of October 21st 2024 so moved second motion by Mr noon second by Mrs amall on the motion any further discussion J hearing none all in favor I oppose osed motion carries unanimously thank you uh next up we typically have uh our student representative report um I'm assuming that
010there's a lot happening uh this week very busy tonight we have teams everywhere playing this evening it seems that way so uh maybe uh maybe uh he or she will pop in yep we'll later on moving on under I'm sorry uh before that presentation uh overview of mcast results turn it over to do our superintendent of schools Dr Sab thanks so much I'm going to invite um Dr tibo and um Mrs Pavo up um we're going to share and again this is a highlevel overview of the district's uh mcast results from this past school year and it certainly is a timely topic isn't it where we know that uh there was a ballot question that addresses this um very question about the uh the mcast being used as a graduation requirement so for the focus
011of this discussion though what we're talking about is how our students faed because regardless of what happens on the question tomorrow the mcast is actually not going away and we're going to continue to administer the mcast and as we've said before the mcast is just one measure and it's an important measure of how our students are doing academically and just for us to continue to monitor their progress toward meeting the standards so Dr TBO and Mrs Pavo I'm going to turn it right over to you turn right back oh I'm going to talk first about our mission statement so I I mean I do think it is important for us to continue to connect whatever work we're doing in the district to our purpose and we've talked a lot in the past couple of months
012about why a mission statement is so important and what it represents for us as a district and so we have committed to working with our students our staff our families to and right there cultivating safe supportive we heard about safe and supportive just a few minutes ago that's an ex a really I think an excellent example of how well supported our staff is to be able to perform something that really when we talk about heroic it is because acting in that moment had to have been somewhat um uh not somewhat had to have been challenging for those two folks as individuals but we also talk about inclusive learning environments and how we want our students to be compassionate informed and contributing members of our local and Global community and the mcast is one way for
013us to measure student progress toward that goal our core value vales again I love that what we've talked about with core values is they're kind of their static but how do they show up in our work every day uh and we talk about mcast again I just pull out personal excellence and responsibility because again mcast one measure one way for our students to demonstrate personal excellence and the responsibility that they have as students in engaging in in what is a high stakes um assessment and so Vision we're going to keep talking about this and how it ties to our work uh we definitely are committed to the unity piece of one Dartmouth and that's coming through uh louder and louder which I love I see it in different aspects of the work that we're doing
014across the community at large and certainly the school community and we're getting to this place where we're talking about unparalleled opportunities for our students and making that connection between current and future generations and the importance of that and building toward a healthy Community uh for again for the future and so we're going to talk to you tonight about what is mcast and why does it matter um and I I think again I want to make the connection not to the vote that's happening tomorrow because this presentation was happening this evening anyway but this is a way for us to put mcast into its proper context thanks Dr so um as I'm sure we all know by now mcast is a series of standardized tests that began in the late '90s to meet the requirements of
015the Ed reform law it's given to students in grades 3 through 8 and grade 10 it seeks to assess student in District achievement and growth in the areas of English language arts math and in grades 58 and science so the mcast uh exam why does it matter um it provides the school community with uh some feedback in terms of how students are doing on grade level expectations in the areas of English language arts Mathematics and Science and Tech engineering it's also part of our accountability system uh at present so uh deter uh based on how our students perform um on mcast the state ends up um uh sorting the schools and determining what level of assistance uh schools need in order to make progress so that's the accountability piece at the high school level at
016least as of tonight um mcast is also used to determine whether or not a high school student meets the competency determination and as a result will receive a high school diploma and so that's uh true in English language arts um mathematics and um science at the high school level in addition to that based on student performance students may also qualify for scholarships the John and Abigail Adams scholarship and or the um Copic uh certificate of Mastery and each of those the the benefits of qualifying for those are it reduces the cost of college for our students who are going off to one of the state universities um so that's why mcast matters for us I we do think um and this is when the state presented the state results they kind of talked about this
017as well we really need to look at our data in the context in which it's been administered over the past 5 years and and um you know we all know and we probably don't need any more reminders but um in 2020 we faced a global pandemic um you know for the first time in a 100 years that really um rocked our um you know our profession our communities and whatnot so 2019 is the last pre-pandemic mcast uh data that we have and then 2020 2021 well 2020 we didn't administer mcass at all um but then in 2021 we administered a shorter mcass uh at the elementary level and Middle School level and a full mcast only at the high school level um and then in 2022 uh I'm sorry in 2023 it was a return
018to full mcast across the board um the state last year was kind of quick to say oh the the slide on our mcast results has been halted and recover is fully underway I think they were optimistic and they were trying to project that optimism I think this year's results showed that maybe it was a little premature um because the mcast results across the the board in the state of Massachusetts were not um as uh positive as they had been the previous year and um in addition to that though it's important that we take away from from this the idea that the lingering effects of covid are going to show up in our data for several years to come our youngest Learners during the pandemic were in prek and K when that pandemic hit they're just
019entering the testing window now in grades three four and and five and so um the impact is really just being seen and so I think uh it's a reminder that there is a great deal of work to be done in order to uh mitigate the impact of of covid still on our uh Learners so how did the you know how did Massachusetts do on mcass so I'm want to just give a sort of high Lev look at um Trends across the state as a reminder um students all students L the screen okay I I got I'm GNA try not to touch anything I talk my hands and that's not always a great thing uh all students receive an achievement score don't breathe um Dr Sabre Maguire doesn't have the clicker this time so we can't
020blame we can't blame her innocent so just as a reminder all students uh who are a testing grade receive an achievement level it ranges from 440 to 560 and uh within that score it breaks down into four categories we have students who are exceeding expectations meeting expectations partially meeting expectations and not meeting expectations and we tend to look at meeting and exceeding together we tend to look at partially meeting and not meeting as a group together um and so you'll see at the state level this is sort of again we're talking about a very high level look we're talking about across grad spans this is an aggregate score we C are doing a much deeper dive at um individual grade levels within within subgroups but we wanted to talk at the high level about how
021the state was doing and talk um a little bit about trends that we're seeing that are common between the state and with our students here in Dartmouth so as Dr Teo alluded to um in ela we saw declines across all grade levels and uh the sharpest decline was seen in grades five and seven so those are our students who are currently in grades six and eight uh the thing to remember about students who are in grade six are those other the students who were in first grade and never finished their first grade year had an interrupted second grade year so we're talking about foundational reading skills our students who are in eighth grade were in third grade when they went home that's the shift from learning how to read to reading to learn so as
022we're seeing our kids start to do deeper reading we know that there's a lot of work to do it's not a simple matter of just filling in holes it's matter of going back filling in holes and keeping them moving so that they can continue to attain grade level work um the results in math were a little bit different they were more relatively flat in a little bit of what we saw last year there was a little bit of a of a positive in increase across the state in grade three with math um and we'll talk a little bit more about what that meant for us here in Dartmouth science results were mixed across the state we did see Improvement in grades 5 and 10 while again we saw a decrease in our grade eight science
023scores across Ross the state and so we went from looking at our state level data to looking at our students here in Dartmouth um and before we do that I just want to talk a little bit about why it's important that we look at the state first I'll go back to that for just one second um we're certainly more laser focused on our own students here but it's important to get um a barometer the state the state results kind of act as a barometer for us so that we know that if our if our results are sort of trending in the the same way across the state or is it an anomaly here in our in our district so one of the things that we tend to use our data for is to look not
024just at how our students are achieving but how are our students achieving using the tools we're using for that could be a different that's that's a variable that's different town to town right so if you have towns or other places in the state that are outperforming you and you are not or vice versa you have to look at what variables are different within your town and so it's important for us to analyze both the state data and the local data as we continue to do that and so we're going to look at our uh Dartmouth data I'm going to talk a little bit about our three through eight students and then I'll let Dr TBO talk about the high school specifically um again you'll see that this looks very similar to the state demographic once
025it's hard because I want to flip back and forth between slides I want to talk a little bit about what the overall says and I'll come back to the numbers if you want to look at them but one of the things that we are proud of even though we know there is work to be done is that we continue to outperform the state in ela in math and in science in grades 3 through 8 and um one of the things I said I wanted to talk about was our of particular PRI Pride for us is our grade three math scores and when I alluded to talking about um the impact that curricular materials can have so our students who are in grade three are our first students who have had the bridges for mathematics program
026all the way through since they started it in kindergarten and so what we start to see is students with flexibility of thinking students who have multiple strategies to attack a program and that's you know you never you can see in the day-to-day as we said this is one snapshot but it's always very reinforcing when we say that work that they're doing on the day-to-day is transferring over to the standardized testing that they're doing as well so just to speak to the high school a little bit um one of the previous slides when we talked about the um Trends across the state it said that Ela declined across all grade levels for us at the high school level here in darmouth grade 10 we didn't actually decline we stayed at 64% meeting or exceeding which was
027what we were at last uh school year as well so while the state declined we stayed uh flat which we you never want to be flat you want to make Positive Growth but again in context of how the state performed on The Great 10m cast I think we can um be reasonably uh proud of our of our efforts here in Dartmouth uh in terms of math uh the percentage of our grade 10 students who are meeting or exceeding continues to be above that of the of the state and the one I really wanted to highlight is our Science and Tech engineering um results in the high school last year that was the one area where we were a little just a little bit below the state in terms of our performance um in uh at
028the high school level there was an increase of 11 percentage U of students meeting or exceeding uh and that is definitely attributable to the U hard work of our biology team here at the high school um really digging in and and doing some uh hard work with our students and making sure that they had what they need um and so we're 55% meeting or exceeding uh compared to the states at 49% also um you know you can see the note here where the eth grade is just above the state uh in terms of meeting or exceeding um and again there's there's work being done at the middle school level specifically looking at high quality instructional materials that are inquiry based that are more up that are better aligned to the types of simulations and questions
029that students are going to start to see on mcast related to uh science in particular so um you know our teachers uh and our uh building leaders are all working extremely hard to make sure our students are well prepared uh to to be successful continue to be Su successful another group of students that um you know so that was those Trends were for all students uh across Dartmouth Public Schools um and this slide here here takes a little bit um of a more pointed look a deeper look at a specific subgroup of students which is um High needs students the department of Elementary and secondary education Massachusetts defines High need students as students who are economically disadvantaged students with disabilities uh students who have ever received any English as a second language instruction um those
030are the the major groups that um student groups that make up this High needs group um and in terms of trends for our high needs um the good news is our our high need students are outperforming the high need students across the state um pretty consistently um and you can see that in front of you in the presentation um but uh while it's an area of strength that we should definitely recognize and take some pride in at the same time we need to um really dig in on the fact that there's a significant percentage of our students particularly in high needs who are not meeting uh or exceeding grade level expectations so yes it's a source of Pride and a source of strength and it's also an area and an opportunity for us to grow
031and to continue to improve our practice okay actually can I just go B sorry go back one more thing the other thing that I'd like to highlight is um you know just thinking in terms of our strategic plan because I know that that is freshen on everyone's mind right this is the type of work that you see that falls under that uh Focus area one of teaching and learning but also in Focus area two of the safe and supportive schools the supporting piece what what do we need to do to make sure that we're supporting all Learners and all truly means all sorry no you're good um so you've heard us talk in past years about our Dart schools and so this is another way to continue to look at the data so when we
032talk about State data we're talking Mount all com all districts of them in Commonwealth and so what the department of Ed does is also pulled a group of schools which have similar demographics and these are the schools that are considered our Dart schools so they have a similar um enrollment they have a s similar low income percentage and we look at compared to students coming from districts similar to ours how are our Dartmouth schools uh and students performing and you can see that we are especially proud of this data they certainly again this year um are above the mean and the median in all areas and uh really outperforming the majority of the schools that are similar to to to ours one area that I um actually didn't speak of before and that I want
033to call to your attention as well is that our student growth percentile um student growth percental is different than our achievement data in that it looks at comparing students to those who scored similarly to them the year before so rather than just saying in the aggregate this is how our students fall uh the department groups students of a similar score band and ranks them against each other the following year and then they create a percentile of growth so it allows students who may not be a high achieving student to also be able to show good growth and so the goal obviously is to have high growth and high achievement um but there are categories of growth is this where we're getting into that I'm ahead of myself right so um obviously 50 being the middle
034of the road 40 to 60 is considered typical growth um and so anything above 60 is considered high growth anything below 40 is considered low growth and so um you know we are pleased to see the majority of our grade bands be on the upper end of high growth we know that there are still areas um that we need to work on for student growth in particular at the high school and I know Dr TBO will talk a little bit more about that um but overall when we talk about Dartmouth compared to similar districts to ours we are more than holding our own and certainly proud of our students and staff thank you Katie so yeah one of the areas um that we continue to be concerned about is SGP in math and Ela um
035the way I think of SGP is it's just about our all of our students growing right our achievement levels are are good but are all of our students growing our high Achievers as well as our struggling Learners we really want them all to be growing and that's what SGP is a measure of so um you know uh grade 10 Ela and math are areas that we need to dig in on and one of the um things you know there's a couple of things we already are addressing uh this with and that is by making sure that our students have access to high quality quity instructional materials we're piloting um you know Carnegie in grade 10 math um it's important if all students are going to grow that they all have grade level rigorous learning task
036in front of them and we don't want to ever be in a position where we're saying these students can and these students can't right we want to provide a challenge for all of our students and so that's one of the uh that's one of many reasons why high quality instructional materials are important because they've been vetted their grade level they're rigorous and we know that they're aligned to standards so in mafro Pilot and Carnegie what we haven't talked about as much perhaps is that in ela we're we're piloting um preap strategies and embedding those into uh our ninth grade ELA courses so that's upping the rigor there so that our students will have access to uh more rigorous challenging tasks on a daily basis and hopefully you know we will eventually see the benefits of
037that uh in terms of increased SGP so what are we doing with this data right we this we have all of this data and what is it that we actually do with it so uh it provides one data point that's used to inform and adjust our curriculum and instructional practices at the elementary level data teams uh analyze individual student data as part of the beginning of the year student data review this information is reviewed when making decisions about intervention services uh in student support some differentiation and then Additionally the curriculum teams will look at uh item analysis data to identify areas of strength in areas for growth at each grade level and that doesn't just happen at our tested levels I think it's important to Remember at the elementary level our kindergarten first and second
038grade teachers are looking at this mcast data just as closely as our tested grades they provide the foundational skills so our success in grades three four and five is yes we have wonderful teachers in 3 four and 5 but it starts in kindergarten right and so the work that the kids are doing in 3 four and 5 really does begin and if for lack of success if we have areas that we need to grow in we need to go all the way back and find out where that problem starts and so we're doing a deep dive of item analysis looking at individual questions the state is not re releasing questions this year much to my shin but looking at individual questions and looking at individual standards and making sure that we are um adequately preparing
039our students to be able to do work um and so that we can ACH maximize our student achievement similarly at this secondary level teams um get together and analyze um the the data conduct uh item analysis uh item analyses I guess would be the plar of that um in fact just last week I was over at the middle school um and and brown our math coach uh over at the middle school was leading the um curriculum planning time and they were looking at the math data it was the eighth grade team they were looking at the eighth grade math data from this year but also the seventh grade math data uh as well as the 10th grade map data so really trying to take that vertical um you know uh look at at our data
040Trend in map um you know and G Gary laau our Lead Teacher here uh does similar uh work with the math department but also he uh one of the things that we're trying to do is improve vertical articulation as we've talked about and so Gary and an myself we meet monthly and then we uh visit one another's common planning times as well monthly so Gary was at that meeting as well and it really led to some rich discussion around uh Trends and uh curriculum uh and instructional practices at uh the e8th grade level as well as um at the nth grade level uh so that was helpful and that's the type of work that uh is ongoing uh and so I think to always end on a high note we are exceptionally proud of all
041of our students in schools during this mcast season but we'd like to call out in particular the Quinn school who has been named a desie School of recognition each year the department identifies schools that have demonstrated progress toward their accountability targets and award them with this distinction Quinn school was one of only 57 schools across the Commonwealth to be recognized uh this mcast season and we want to wish our sincerest congratulations to the students and staff of the Quinn congratulations school so at this point we want to say thank you and we'll take any questions thank you very much for that very detailed presentation uh questions from any of the members um great work glad um we're doing better than State averages um but I guess my question is with constraints on The Bu budget
042um what are we not able to do because we don't have the money or um you know do we have enough teachers do we have the right um instructional material do we need you know we always need more I I I just so I I think that those are obviously that's a really important question and so closely tied to our district strategic plan and how effective we will be in implementing the district strategic plan which is tightly are very closely tied to our budget um so uh we mentioned and I know Mr Kylie is going to talk about the budget subcommittee meeting and just a couple of minutes that happened uh just a couple weeks ago but one of the things that we're finding ourselves um having conversations about as we get excited about the
043work is saying are we going to have the funding to be able to do this and recognizing that there are very specific steps that we need to take that do involved Personnel decisions uh that we will absolutely be coming to the committee with during budget presentations and talking about what we need to be able to support our plan and one of the simple I guess when you think about curriculum teaching and learning of the curriculum pieces curriculum costs money and not only do the physical materials cost money but the professional learning that comes along with supporting teachers and the use of those resources es is also has budget budgetary implications and so yes those are things that we worry about so we have to balance our excitement with um the work that we're doing that
044is happening in this district with also recognizing that we do face budget constraints that might and might not but might slow us down from some of the work we need to know uh we need to know is going to happen and I think the SGP when you look at it particularly at the high school um and Ela and math and think about the importance of um SGP again acronym student growth percentile um but percentage and what we want to see there is we want to see that increase because when that SGP student growth percentile increases you're also going to see that student achievement that's going to be in tandem student achievement is going to increase and I'm going to tie that back to uh curriculum teaching and learning and making sure that our faculty and
045our students have the highest quality resources and professional learning to support them in this kind of work because that is that's going to be a Difference Maker and yes we need a budget that supports that given the um pilot the various pilot programs you're running this year curriculum um and I know some of them aren't directly related but what data are you going to be most interested in looking at at this time next year given those Pilots so I think when you're implementing the thing you have to remember is that you have to be ready for an implementation dip right and so we have to be realistic about the fact that this is not a light switch change that we're going to be making that you're just going to see all of a sudden it
046happen part of the reason for that is that you implement across grade levels so when we talk about vertical alignment right we talk about curriculum building on itself year after year you are going to be talking about grade levels of students for whom this is new and they don't have the previous years so I think we will be um cautious when we look at the data and that's where looking at individual standards and looking at individual um item analyses of what are the things that we knew we were not doing well are we improving in on those areas um but I think we need to be cautious and then also look longer range so you're asking what I'm looking for next year that's where I started to allude to the third grade data in math
047this year we also look long range when we have a implementation um not mcast I'll talk my other my other area which just dibles our early literacy right so those kinds of um data take a minute um and so I guess my short answer is we're going to be cautious but deep in our looking at the information next year great thank you thank you Mr chairman uh one thing I would in I had written this down usually so you me you made a comment about the fact that the state wasn't releasing the answers to the questions or questions themselves the questions themselves correct type of deal so I mean how are we supposed to know an issue that you know if all of a sudden you know 20 students got question a wrong why you
048know was it the way it was worded the way it was taught you know that type of deal that were they looking for an entirely different answer type of deal how were we supposed to be able to so that deep dive into so that is that is the challenge right and again I mentioned the eighth grade um meeting they were doing exactly that the state didn't release the the actual item but what they released was the standard and a description of what the question would have been like um so it's not the same as just releasing the question itself right but in years prior they have so we do have partially they haven't they've never released the whole test right so there are try out questions and then there are unilateral questions and so they
049releas some not all um but to your point and to to what Dr TBO was saying like if we saw across the state State across the district that 80% of students got a question wrong we're not that's not really where we're putting our emphasis right our emphasis is on a question that 80% of the state got right and we're only 50% right and so that's what I mean when I say like we have to look at some of the um the state data and those trends that multiple kids outside of our district are doing compared to our district but it certainly does make it more difficult to do that deep analysis without the actual question in front of us we have some information we know which standards um but not the actual question thank you
050I'm good I just had a question for um for viewers um if probably Ross um in with your focus on the upper grades um sort of relating to the question on the the ballot tomorrow and folks like maybe voting one way or the other because they want to get rid of the mcast but we are keeping the mcast it just the question is whether or not the compet it towards the student competency um whether or not that passes could you talk a little bit about um is it a oneandone um the retake process um perhaps I don't expect you to have it but maybe you do the data around those students who are willing to retest what that process looks like sure that I can speak to I I so the the data that the
051state sided when they presented the mcast results this year because one of the other things to keep in mind and I didn't mention this but on that timeline Slide the other thing to keep in mind is that during just before mcast just before the pandemic mcast was also transitioning to NextGen mcast so there was a transition to a new form of mcast different style questions then the pandemic hit um so that's an important piece to keep in mind um along with that the cut off scores for meeting and exceeding and all of that at the high school level also changed it was increased um after the pandemic and so to meet that competency determination the bar was actually raised a little bit and so the data that the state uh CES is that um there
052was a about a I believe prior to the increase it was 4% of students who um did not meet the competency determination across the state and there was an increase of 4% with the new cut off if I'm remembering correctly so it's a small it's a relatively small percentage of students who don't uh meet the competency determination across the state um certainly there are communities where it's much more impactful than here in Dartmouth um Dartmouth every year there is a small percentage of students who don't meet the competency determination and they have opportunities to retest uh in November again in February um and then in certain circumstances at the uh you know in the spring as well depend determining uh based on their unique Mr Dr T students have opportunities to retake the test and
053that there's no limit toties thank you I think that's important for the community to recognize that there are those options it's not just a because it is like it you it's worrisome when you you know so anyway thank you for sharing that you're welcome that's all I have thank you Mrs Amal I'll just close by saying a very thoughtful presentation to both of you um I think as a whole my personal opinion is Dartmouth we're holding our own I think uh like you both re reiterated several times as well we as we've heard in the past is um we certainly have some work to do around curriculum we know I think we know that um I also appreciate uh you Katie coming out and saying that there we should be expecting a uh a dip
054possibly implementation dip uh which is certainly uh we should be mindful of that um but but I think at the end of the day uh with the Strategic plan Dr Sab McGuire's entry findings as well as uh what we've been hearing from teaching and learning is that uh with high quality curriculum uh and then the training to go along with that uh I think we'll you know ultimately see some increases um in our scores for sure uh the other piece that I'll mention is when you look at not so much that I have the dart districts pulled up here but not so much just the dart districts but when you look at scores in general and you compare uh per pupil expenditures there are some clear Trends um not completely but there are some clear
055Trends with uh those school districts that have a a high achievement level or a higher student growth uh level and their higher uh per pupil expenditures uh so they're at the end of the day they're they're spending more money on their students and they're seeing the results in their performance so uh just something else to to keep in mind but uh thank you both thank you thank you thank you thank you uh next up under old business uh preliminary FY 26 budget this is a standing agenda item um and I'm going to turn over to uh Mr Kylie uh which uh we had the opportunity to attend uh the last budget subcommittee meeting and he has some some things to share with us thank you Mr Oliver so as as you mentioned on October 28th
056we had a budget subcommittee meeting uh in which um we began to discuss um where we are number-wise for FY 26 and and I guess um I think what I stressed at that meeting is that um all discussions were extremely preliminary and um that we're still in the process of developing um the a draft FY 26 budget we as you know you folks were good enough to approve our district strategic plan on October 7th we're in the process of um completing School Improvement plan plans that'll be coming forward to you for your approval um there's a lot that still needs to be shaped in that budget process um and as um as you were just speaking about I mean the impact of the Strategic plan is is a key element and we want to make
057sure we get that right and bring that forward to you in a thoughtful way um which we will be doing so we're continuing continuing development of the budget um and and we'll continue to have preliminary conversations about that until we get to the point where we're ready to present to you a a um you know a a budget proposal um I'll just add also that I had mentioned at the budget subcommittee meeting that I began conversations with um the town Administration um regarding the budget and so far they've been very open to discussions so it seems to be um a good situation hopefully that uh you know we we can hopefully problem solve together on on things as we move forward so that's really the update of where we are with it at the moment
058thank you Mr Kylie uh M cofin do you have anything else to to add from the meeting not much but I'm hopeful that we'll be able to figure it out with other Town agencies um and support our strategic plan and support our students and educators yeah no I I certainly agree and I I think the we're still a little bit too early but obviously based on some of the early projections as well as what we've spoken about in the past is the use of uh one uh onetime Revenue which would be school choice funds um to help uh get us through the FY uh 26 budget and then beyond um but there's also there's there's definitely some some other things in play for sure so I'm looking forward to continuing these conversations uh at the
059budget subcommittee level and as soon as we have more developments uh we'll bring them back to you any comments questions concerns from committee members work in process constantly yes it will change thank you thank you Mr Kylie thank you uh next up continuation of discussion on the masc resolutions I believe do we leave off on five or six we left off on eight but we were going to revisit five oh okay you want to hold oh yep decide on do we want to hold that to the end or yeah let's is everyone all right with that we'll we'll revisit five after we get through sure yeah sure so resolution 8 Equitable funding for non Regional School Districts with high Transportation costs uh this was sponsored by by the Plymouth school committee whereas many non-regional school
060districts face significant financial burdens do the extensive Transportation cost and longer routes required to serve their students uh and then it goes on um you have this in front of you uh let's see let me just get to the end here uh where is the last paragraph where I'm a little confused here I look at it from here and it would help if I brought my glasses with me too hang on that's which one they want an annual report on adjustments busing and then that's eight The End Of Eight Annual reporting and adjustment requires school districts to submit annual reports detailing the actual busing cost the number of buses used and the miles traveled based on these reports adjust the reimbursements for each district to ensure they're aligned with actual expenses comments questions thoughts uh
061we we like to from Mr Kylie on this here Mr Kylie yeah sure i' I'd be happy to uh speak about it so um I don't think from what the uh rationale that was given by masc I don't it wouldn't we would not qualify for um for this um it it relates to our per our costs in relation to um comparison to State average so my thought is uh first of all the state has failed to meet the requirements that are currently in the law in regards to Transportation reimbursement to Regional School Districts so they haven't come up with the money to do that on a regular annual basis I highly doubt that they're going to come up with the money to do this and it wouldn't apply to us so I feel like it
062if they actually did do it it would be some Di verion of resources to somebody other than us anyway so um I don't I don't think it particularly behooves us we about um about State average in transportation spending so um and they were looking at 125% to be the floor um which I I don't think we'd ever be there so that's that's my opinion um I'd rather see resources spent on actual ISS issues uh in terms of being able to support um our students in another way like rework the Chapter 70 formula rather than do this but that would be my my my thoughts on it books and papers put the put the money to books and papers that sounds good you know yeah I mean I I I thank you for sharing that Mr
063Kylie and it just you know reframing this whole thing these are resolutions these are ultimately ways in which masc wants to Lobby on the behalf of districts for certain things and um I do think it it would beho us to you know I know we last meeting we were just looking through them and saying yes or no and what that might look like but um for us I would suggest that we really only focus on supporting those top priorities that would be of benefit to us in the global um Chapter 70 formula Rec you know fixing um so that you know Mass masc goes to State Legislature with like 40 asks they're going to say sit down in the corner but if masc comes with three four real powerful asks they're more likely to to
064to get some Buy in um and so I would I would ask that as a committee we really think about what our priorities are what the priorities of the state are in terms of fixing that formula and and only supporting I know we didn't do this last time we were looking at the one to one but in a fresh lens and it just um yeah that's my thought any other thoughts it's good we either vote no or we just abstain that would be you know I think we should I think abstaining would be the better of the better of the choices I'm good with that I'm fine with that as well um and I agree with what Miss samal said um yes we we should be supporting things that will behoove all school systems um
065not just Regional Schools not just rural schools not just schools that have huge Transportation costs um this is just Band-Aids on a bigger problem yeah um and so I think we should also go back to what we voted on no last week and perhaps abstain for them as well it's not that we're against other schools trying to get help for this that or whatever but it doesn't seem to be the right path yeah no I'm I'm certainly fine with that like I said I think this was our first time going through this as a committee um so okay we had voted no on resolution six I can change that to abstain a resolution was the um western Mass schools yeah rural support of legislation to improve the fisical health of rural school districts I'm fine
066with an exstension on that yeah okay that's more Let the they they need to Lobby the their specific legisl agreed legislative members type of deal any other no votes there no that was the only no vote okay yeah no I'm certainly in agreement with uh my fellow colleagues so I would uh looking at our next resolution resolution nine msba Grant evaluations grants evaluation for chapter 74 SP by Tri count Regional Vocational Tech Technical High School committee and this has to do with msba funding for Vocational Technical and agricultural high schools uh in uh rating their project rating projects across the state in a tiered system which really I don't think would benefit us not at all not at all I suspect the next one's going to be the same same thing resolution 10 expansion in
067capacity in chapter 74 Vocational Technical program Tri County Regional Vocational Technical High School abstain yeah abstain okay good and is that it and then the rest is expiring y yeah we have to go back to number five number five five thank you uh resolution five aligning taxing Authority with the required local contribution thoughts comments questions what do you want to do well at the last meeting Mr Kylie said um that it certainly wouldn't behoove Us in the short term but perhaps 10 years out it might um it it seems like it's a broader answer to the question so I personally would be okay supporting it um um but don't feel strongly yeah Mr Nunes yeah Mr chairman my my only concern here becomes the fact that you know in some instances the state's having problems
068trying to fund everything type of deal and if you all of a sudden start you know pulling a dollar here a dollar there type of deal the dollars are going to run out type of deal and they're going to they're going to sit back and look and they're going to take something like this and they're going to say well you know great idea but we can't afford this and it you know gets put on the shelf and that and you know well you want to bring it back next year and we'll we'll look at it type of deal I mean you know two and a half is personal opinion two and a half's outlived its usefulness but that's a discussion for another time uh but I think I best my opinion type of deal I
069mean is to uh just let just abstain on this one that that that would be my suggestion okay anyone else I mean I don't have an opinion on this one yeah I'm good with abstaining you know I mean I don't feel strongly one way or the other yeah yeah I'm fine with that yeah on this one so yeah exension good to go number five all right well we thank you in advance for your uh for your dedic a to the cause all right next up under new business uh superintendent evaluation and I would be happy to turn it over to our evaluation uh committee uh members um if you want to explain uh the process uh as to what we did or I'm happy to do that as well and whatever matter whatever is however
070you want to go about it it's fine I'll turn it over to you Mr NS all right so number one first and foremost thank you to our everyone everyone for your uh comments very thoughtful uh process that uh you went through uh also thank you again uh we had hoped to have this at the at our last meeting but uh Mr Murphy took over so that took of that that situation but so be it type of deal my personal thanks to miss Amaral because she does all the computer the computer stuff so that is uh fantastic and and very helpful to me uh we did meet uh via Zoom this afternoon with uh Dr Sabre Maguire to uh to go over this uh I'm assuming you guys it has been forwarded to uh to everyone
071uh again just for the benefit of uh our audience at home um there are uh five different uh performance goals it's you know did not meet some progress significant progress met and exceeded type of deal so the committee uh has put everything out in we've compiled everything and with regards to uh the professional practice the goals we have a meet met um student learning goals met District Improvement goals met uh that was step one step two is assess performances on the standards uh checking one for each standard standard one on instructional leadership was proficient uh standard two management and operations was proficient uh standard three family and Community engagement was uh proficient and uh standard for professional culture uh was also proficient let me take a step back there are four categories here uh they're
072unsatisfactory needed to Improvement proficient and exemplary uh proficient practice is under stood to be fully satisfactory this is a rigorous expected level of performance so this is what we came up with uh as a committee uh the step three overall uh subn subna performance is proficient uh the comments uh the committee provided individual evaluation response and below is a summary of those comments the school committee provided comments to describe Dr Sabre Maguire's demonstrated exceptional leadership this first year notably her proactive engagement with staff parents community and school committee members and how she has fostered a collaborative environment ensuring everyone feels heard and valued the committee also commented on her deep understanding of the strengths and needs of our district and her belief in datadriven curriculum as a vehicle to students and achievements additionally it is
073clear that she is dedicated to building buyin from all stakeholders beginning with staff in the classroom and families and community members the committee described Dr sael Maguire's highle level skill in articulating goals seeking information and synthesizing both qualitative and qualitative data are the words that came out in each committee's member evaluation described Dr sa Maguire included effective intentional strategic available supportive overall the committee shared consensus that Dr Sabre Maguire has demonstrated a strong first year committee members described her as approachable and visible she spends time getting to know staff students and makes herself available to family and community members she is identified with d Public Schools do well and when where there are opportunities for improvement uh the superintendent's performance goals uh professional practice uh again there are uh five categories here did not meet
074some progress significant progress met and exceeded and on the professional practice uh the new in superintendent induction program uh she met those goals District Improvement goals goal one by late spring the district will have a broad recognition by key stakeholder groups about the district's most critical needs will have a widely understood process underway to identify the strategies and goals that will address those needs most effectively and the measure that will be used to assess program progress and that goal was met District Improvement goal two says uh maintaining momentum during a transition keep the district moving forward during this year's transition in leadership by working with principles and other District leaders to ensure that meaningful progress is made on critical district and school goals and that was met superintendent performance rating for instructional leadership uh curriculum
075[Music] in uh excuse me I apologize ensures that all instructional staff design effective and rigorous standard base units of instruction consisting of well structured lessons with measurable outcomes and that was proficient they use just letters yeah messed me up a little bit uh instructions ensures that all practice in all settings reflect high expectations regarding content and quality of effort and work engage all students and are personalized to accommodate diverse learning styles needs interest and levels of Readiness and that was proficient assessment ensure that all principles and administrators facilitate practices that Propel personnel to use a variety of formula and informal methods and assessments to measure student learning growth and understanding and make necessary adjustments to their practice when students are not learning and that was proficient evaluation ensure an effective And Timely supervision and evaluation
076of all staff in alignment with state regulations and contract provisions and that was proficient data informed decision-making use multiple sources of evidence related to Student Learning including state district and school assessment results and growth data to inform school and District goals and improve organizational performances educator Effectiveness and student learning and now was proficient student learning demonstrate expected impact on student learning based on multiple measures of student learning growth and achievement including student progr ress on common assessments and Statewide student growth measure where available that should be proficient that's proficient and then uh the overall rating for uh instructional leadership is proficient uh comments that were made by the committee members Dr saber Maguire has shown leadership in steering the dmouth public schools towards rigorous standard based units of of instruction as evidence by the implementation
077of Hager and Foundations kat2 horizontally through our system through K to5 literacy Pilots through grades three and four Desi social study Pilots the math pilot and the World Language pilot at DHS through the silence pilot science pilot at the dooth middle school through curriculum Summit in a principal teams meeting team meeting on elll and then another comment says Dr saber Maguire has shown a dedication to using multiple sources of evidence to inform curriculum choices using mcast Dibbles star and teacher input through the curriculum review cycle and there's uh performance for management and operations uh under environment executes effective plans procedures routines operational systems to address a full range of safety and health and that was proficient uh human resource management and development Implement a cohesive approach to recruiting hiring induction development and career choice career
078growth that promotes high quality and effective practice that was proficient scheduling and man scheduling and management information system use systems to ensure optimal use of data and time for teaching learning and collabor collaboration minimizing disruptions and distractions for school level staff and that was proficient law ethics and policies understand and compiles with state and federal F state and federal laws and mandates school committee policies collective bargaining agreements and ethical guidelines and now was proficient fiscal systems develops a budget that supports the district's vision mission and goals allocates and manages expenditures consistent with district and school level goals and available resources that was proficient and the overall uh rating for management and operations the educational leader promotes the learning and growth of all students and the success of all staff by ensuring safe efficient and effective
079learning environments using resources to implement appropriate curriculum Staffing and scheduling and that was proficient uh again ments required uh not required but provided uh by the committee members Dr sa Maguire has shown Earnest effort in developing and executing systems to address a full range of safety health emotional and social needs for our students through the deib reviews DLT meeting and a good working relationship with our local law enforcement reports to the committee about safety concerns and how they are addressed transparent proactive about sending letters to families and another comment uh Dr saber Maguire has shown a firm understanding of laws mandated and policies concerning our schools she definitely welcomed our newcomer students in the fall of 2023 understanding pla versus doe decision of 1982 she has looked at mcast data to see how dth educates
080equitably in compliance with student opportunity act she demonstrates High concern about policy and law and she engages with the union and meets regularly uh superintendent the next standards the performance for family and Community engagement engagement uh actively ensures that all families are welcome members of the classroom and school community and can contribute to the effectiveness of the classroom school district and community and that was proficient sharing responsibility continually collaborates with family and Community stakeholders to support student learning and develop an atome School in the community and again proficient excuse me communication engage in a regular two-way culturally proficient communication with families and Community stakeholders about student learning and performance and that was proficient family concerns addresses family and Community concerns in an equitable effective and efficient manner and that was profis and the overall rating
081the education leader promotes the learning and growth of all students and the success of all staff through effective Partnerships with families Community organizations and other stakeholders that support the mission of the district and at schools and that was again proficient again comments provided from lettuce to parents on how best to view the solar eclipse to the August welcome back school letter to the families Dr Sabre Maguire has communicated with families and Community stakeholders to support student student learning not just in the schools but at home and in the community parents and family surveys strategic planning committee and work working well with school committee and one other comment Dr Sabre Maguire has engaged in two-way communication with families Community stakeholders about student learning and performance during every school committee meeting she has communicate communicated the business
082of the school with enthusiasm and Clarity she held a Family Forum in the spring of 2024 where she presented the business of the schools and took comments and questions from attendees and the last one Performance Reading we have is professional culture and uh committed to high standards Fosters a shared commitment to high standards of service teaching and learning with high expect expectations and achievement for all and again that is proficient cultural Prof proficiency ensures that policies and practices enable staff members and students to interact effectively in a culturally diverse environment in which student backgrounds identifies strengths and challenges are respected and that was proficient community ation demonstrates strong interpersonal written and verbal communication skills continuous learning develops and nurtures a culture in which staff members are reflective about their practice and use student data current
083research best practices and Theory to continually adapt practice and Achieve improved results models these behaviors in his or own her her own practice and that is proficient shared Vision successfully and continually engages all stakeholders in the creation of a shared educational Vision in which every student is prepared to succeed in postsecondary education and become a repon responsible Citizen and Global contributor and again proficient managing conflict employs strategies for responding to disagreement and dissent constructively Revol revolve resolving conflict and building consensus throughout a district or School community community and again proficient and the overall uh rating for professional uh culture is proficient uh some comments made uh Again by the committee members for Dr Sabre Maguire everything stands on the foundation of Ethics she Fosters the shared commitment to high standards of service teaching and learning
084with expectations for a achievement for all because she has lived it and is Guided by it and the last comment Dr sa Maguire demonstrates strong interpersonnel written and verbal communication skills from one-on-one meetings the weekly updates to the school committee school committee meeting presentations family forums convocation addresses to her report of Entry findings she does not fail to share in concise clear Pro and speech that's what's there thank you very much Mr Nunes Mrs Amaral we certainly appreciate that uh before I turn it over uh to our superintendent Dr sa McGuire any other uh closing thoughts uh from our committee members uh anything that was not said or you want to share you can start down there this amiral I'm I'm cons I'm I'm curious as to what hopefully we captured it all we really
085didn't we were trying not to be repetitive um those comments they were a little repetitive but I felt that uh we wanted to share them individually because they weren't necessary um but they were accurate I think um uh you know we spoke to i i in meeting um in meeting earlier today I I shared that I I tried doing a word cloud but my my menty meter let my it just wasn't working um but it was uh interesting to see the words that that came out um of all of our uh evaluations uh in terms of describing Dr Sab Maguire's um you know who who she has demonstrated herself to be um through what she does and how she interacts uh and you know some of those it is true effective intentional strategic available supportive
086um but there were several others that were common threads throughout all of our um evaluations um and so I'm just that's all I have to add uh and and I would also add that I think John talked about you know proficient equates excellence um and uh and that's the average so some folks did score exemplary in certain areas um but but we taking into account the average uh and you know that more so proficient than Exemplar not that it wasn't it's just that you know desie does sort of guide with don't only if there's no more growth to be had you know on very rare occasions they're they're really hone in on that is you know be careful if if you do it because it's really got to be there and you know that particular
087person could be a leader someplace you know doing you know teaching that particular that area of it type of deal so just have to be careful no disrespect you know because every you could make everything excellent and that yeah I said n such we will talk about next steps for exemplary because you know I'm a little competitive yeah I think we had this this this afternoon we had this conversation when we were putting this together it's a good starting point this bew um I just want to thank you both because I think you really did a good job at synthesizing um our intent in our um shared evaluation and I just want to acknowledge how award awward it kind of is you know thank you in my world evaluations are very private so um so
088I just want to acknowledge that and um and thank you for your I think I used word awkward a couple of times today so thank you for acknowledging I'm glad you saw it before um we were here tonight yeah um really A lot has already been said I don't know that I could add but but it was a great first year thank you yes and I look forward to the next yeah same thank you to Kathleen and John much appreciated uh there's a lot said uh certainly a lot said and I think that's a a testament to uh how last year went and uh just it solidifies uh my my feelings on the decision of bringing uh Dr Sab Maguire in as I heard and listened to uh the comments uh in those sections just
089I just jotted down a couple just a couple of things that really stuck out in my head as well as that I personally think uh you know it's very commendable job and just a couple of things that I that I heard committed to Improvement approachable impeccable Communications in care is about building relationships yeah that's that's kind of the gist of I synthesized everything and put it into just a couple of words there so uh thank you uh on behalf of the school committee Dr s McGuire for a successful first year uh we look forward to many more great if I could just offer a few comments um first of all thank you to the committee you have been an incredibly supportive committee and you've made that part of this work really not easy work but
090you've made it easy um for me as a brand new superintendent coming in so I can appreciate so much um and I just want to say that the comments actually have more weight for me than the actual ratings and so again it's humbling and at the same time really validating to the work that we do uh every day in our school district so a superintendent doesn't do their work alone and a committee a school committee a supportive School commit who is as invested in the school district as the superintendent and who has the right commitment to the right things um makes this um this opportunity and this made this opportunity and transition for me um one that has been incredibly meaningful to me in my life and in my career and I want you to
091know that um Additionally the committee I mean I have a a phenomenal central office leadership team again the support that uh we have for one another and getting our getting the work of school done because in the end it's all about us and I've said that's being in service um to our schools uh our families our students our Educators our staff Our Town leaders um you you mentioned in the report the union that's been a very important relationship um and I appreciate the uh the commitment that they that Union leadership has had I'm looking at Mrs paresi cuz she's right in front of me this evening um but again Mrs Vieira everybody part of that leadership has been really important in um dealing with some of the difficult things and at the same time celebrating
092what's really wonderful that's going on here in the district uh Town leaders have been wonderful here too I felt so welcomed by Mrs H Mr tattle buom um I could name all of of the folks that were involved in the work that we we've done together but this is really about moving not only a school district forward but how are we partnering with this community to really become that Vision that we all have for being one Dartmouth in our commitment to the betterment of this community because it's our young people that are going to be the folks that are stepping into those really important roles that we're all talking about tonight and that our educators are the one are the people the people out in the school who are supporting that learning and that growth
093um so again um I just have to say that I am again humbled by your comments I thank you so much and I cannot in any way overate how important you have been uh to making this a wonderful year I'm looking forward our district strategic plan is launched um we have a lot of work to do and that's the great thing about our work is that there's always a lot of work to do um and that's what keeps us moving forward uh as far as like ratings are concerned I just want you to know I am a little competitive so I will be working very hard to get that coveted exemplary and that's also the work and the conversations that I have with with the staff that I work with every day about what you
094know what do we do to take ourselves to the next level because that's really what it's about what do we need to do in order to take us to the next level and so thank you so much I really I'm I'm truly um so pleased to be here and looking forward to another wonderful year in darmouth lucky to have you we're pleased to have you thank you thank you Mr chairman you yes Mr Nunes we do need a motion to approve this evaluation type of deal and then we need uh Mrs Amaral and I have signed it and we just need Dr Sabre Maguire's signature on it for for her file okay because this is part this is has to be done an open session and this is a part of her personnel file and
095such understood chair will entertain a motion uh to approve Dr s mcu's evaluation so moved second motion by Mr noon second by Miss Beckwith on the motion any other the discussion chair hearing none all in favor I I oppos motion car is unanimously good job I'll get her sign it after thank you again thank you uh continuing on uh superintendence update I know I'm right back into it so um I am happy to share all that's happening here in the Dartmouth schools and every time I put together a report to share with you at a school committee meeting um I just I always realize how it just gives me moment to pause to think about all of the Great things that are happening here and all the really good hard work that's happening so I'm
096going to give you a quick update under teaching and learning you've already heard from ktie and Ross who gave you an overview of our mcast results I thank them so much they did a wonderful job and I think gave us a really high level and detailed view of what's going on in terms of student performance related to our standardized testing um I would mention and I know you've heard this pilot pilot pilot but we started our second ell Ela pilot and simultaneously Mrs PVE was able to take a team of people to barington to talk with folks who were using um one of the resources that we're piloting I want to thank those folks in barington and I want to thank Mrs poo for bringing a group of folks out to another school district to
097see um some of both the challenges and successes that they've had because this is a big decision for us and so we are in the process of the implementation of the second pilot looking forward to feedback from our Educators um really uh again their positive approach to this work is making a big difference and I do believe in the end using the data that they give us and what they're sharing with us will we will make a great decision to lead the the Dartmouth literacy um the learning for literacy of our students in uh pre really K to 5 um same for Dartmouth High School leadership um I'm particularly going to just pick out the uh the math department I did have an opportunity to sit on in on a recent math common planning again
098those are things that I think are really important Dr t-bo makes himself uh available for those Tye types of meetings too more to be listeners um and listen to our teachers talk about the resources and what they're grappling with what they're finding success with because it does help us as a district when it comes time to make those important decisions of the direction that we're going in I was really pleased to hear them talk about how some of the students are um demonstrating uh better or or a more um uh more understanding of the material in this new resource because it is a it's a really different way for our teachers to teach and it's a really different way for our students students to learn and so again thanking the Educators for being willing to
099take those kind of risks both for themselves professionally and also with the students with their students so we thank them for that I am pleased we had mentioned project 351 we are hoping to hear from them soon we did and uh we have been accepted into the project 351 Pro initiative again again Dr tbol works with uh again Folks at the middle school high school but this is a highly selective process and so being part of this initiative is a big deal for us here in this community and we look forward to having our students come and talk to you as we did last year about the work there were that they're doing and what that looks like uh in terms of the other students and how they're being impacted so again thank you to
100Dr t-o for a stewardship throughout this process um next uh quick update on where we are with budget Capital Improvement HR so uh Human Resources I want to mention to you and you've heard it the elll teacher we're still in the process of interviewing for an elll teacher who will be shared between the high school and the middle school we think we might be making some progress and hopefully at our next meeting we'll have some good news to share with you uh at the same time you know that we've had a change in leadership at the kushman school right now we have have Mrs Heidi Brooks and we also have uh Mrs Karen McCarthy who are sharing the duties of supporting the kushman school as we begin the process of reviewing applicants and we'll begin
101interviewing and selecting a new director we hope that we're going to do that fairly soon and at the same time we we're aiming for a January start but at the same time we know we're in good hands right now with the two people who are very experienced Educators who are uh helping to support the kushman school right now while we go through this process you know I'm going to mention monitors substitute teachers ESP it's just it's it's all the time that we're looking for folks our food service workers you saw tonight we had we honored a few of our esps tonight for the work that they do and again we talk about them as being our unsung heroes and in many ways all of those positions that I just talked about I just said that
102we're we're continuing to look for folks to fill positions they are some of the unsung heroes in that work in schools um Mr kyy now I think wants to do an update on some of the work that he's doing with capital Improvement projects thank you Dr sa Maguire yeah real quick on um our Capital Improvement plan we're working on our FY 26 through 35 Capital Improvement plan which you know the five-year Capital Improvement plan process that you know I've done every year since I've been here um has a fair amount of margin of error particularly when you're talking about 70y old buildings um but the 10-year Capital Improvement plan has a quite a um it's that's a pretty broad time frame to be trying to um you know estimate everything that a 70 and at
103the end of this plan 80-year-old building is uh is going to need so we're in the process of doing that um we're working working with our administrators in the schools they're preparing um preparing their thoughts uh for the end of this week and those will be submitted to me and then we'll do some more homework and have some talk talking about that um with everybody and then uh we'll put a plan together to bring it forward for the group so right I'm going to move right into family and Community engagement I think I said this at the beginning just a reminder the way that we've structured the superintendence report support is really around the four Focus areas of the district strategic plan and so with f I'll actually go a little bit out of order
104because it's just a quick safe and supportive schools update um Kim redlon who is here tonight um she uh is meeting for the first time with the district crisis team meeting this coming Wednesday and so we'll be looking forward to updating you as to the outcome of some of the work that's going to be going on with that team in in um a future school committee meeting and so under family and Community engagement again this is a strength here in Dartmouth there is so much going on with family and Community engagement at the same time we won't to be intentional about how we're engaging with families in the community since our last school committee meeting we've had several opportunities to engage very intentionally with the community uh as you know we hosted a community Forum
105to introduce our district strategic plan we appreciate those folks who showed up to hear our presentations um again Mrs Beckwith thanks for being there and we did have a few inperson people but we also want to thank our at home viewers um at last count and I check every once in a while we are up to about 280 views so perhaps you know people are maybe not showing up in person but that doesn't mean they're not taking the time to walk watch and to listen and to learn about the work that we're doing I've actually had a few people comment to me that they've seen it and that uh they're excited about the work ahead so that's been important so again viewership is up um even if iners wasn't uh wasn't quite what we'd H
106but next time because again we're going to continue to do this kind of we're going to continue to host these kind of opportunities uh Dartmouth High School hosted its open house for our eighth grade ERS uh again really pleased that so many families attended and they weren't just all students from the Middle School we did have some students who are attending maybe private schools or other um opportunities for educating for education and they are expressing interest in Dartmouth High School uh so I also had the opportunity to tape an episode of what's cooking in Dartmouth um mhm so this allowed me to talk about our district strategic plan and share my baked mac and cheese recipe so apparently it will be on uh shortly before the holiday because it's a great side dish for Thanksgiving
107um so I want to thank uh Magnolia mccomish and the folks at DCTV I was so impressed with the their operation I don't know if you realize if you've been in there but they actually have a kitchen that is designed for this kind of cooking show now I wouldn't hire me to be the person who hosts the weekly cooking show but we'll see we'll see I did get some good feedback about the mac and cheese uh so again impressed with their operation and their professionalism they are such a really a valuable asset to not only the Dartmouth schools but the Dartmouth community so also this past Thursday Dartmouth High School hosted its annual unified Halloween ball I think that's what they call it um it was quite a party lots of students and staff here
108Refreshments kids students were Dan students and staff dancing um you know again the commitment from the between the staff and the students is really palpable here as this was an after school event there were a number of Educators here working with the students um and the students were having so much fun and it was just really nice to see that collaboration between all of our students regardless of of their background I'm going to give a special shout out for a minute to Daniel and Avery So Daniel and Avery are our um Dartmouth High School students who apparently watch all of our meetings and they do some commentary on them so thank you to Daniel and Avery and uh we appreciate that we're going to have to look at one of those versions of our meetings
109to see what they really think about our school committee meetings be interesting I'm going to invite Mr gashaw oh he looks surprised yes I'm going to ask you to come up and to talk about where we are with the website as Dr sa Maguire begins her quest for exemplary we start with something that she's been uh driving me for the past months and months but mostly supporting me uh she's she's been to a lot of our our uh meetings where the the tech people have gotten together to build pages and such and she drops in whether it be at the in the conference room or in the office just to give input and and comments about what we're looking at so um as part of the Strategic plan uh we are providing one of the
110elements of family uh Community uh communication and Outreach um it's very important that'll be our new website um we have been working for months uh building a new website uh We've weeded through the old website trying to clean up uh documents and forms and uh links and such it was very important to to go through all of them to make sure they're accounted for so on the new website we're keeping it um mostly simple as we develop more uh forms and documents as we build them uh and when you do that you must make sure that we have ADA compliance it's American disabilties act so that documents can be read online uh also multilingual and such like that so it's a work it's definitely still a work in progress I just wanted to thank um
111some of the people in my office Tom farz and and Tracy bis who worked really hard at doing this as well the instructional tech people administrators uh We've we've gotten together uh people at all over the high school that are having part certain parts that they update music department Athletics and so on and all their parts um as well as the library um and the secretaries as well who will control the calendars from each of the schools uh we chose tomorrow at 3:00 to flip because we figured nothing else would be going on in the country so we thought that tomorrow might be a good time to no it's trly coincidental we didn't plan that but at 3:00 we'll be working with the domain name Services System basically it's the same site Dartmouth School just
112a new look so what happens is they point the Dartmouth do school to another uh website and the old website right now we've been working in what's called a sandbox with the new website and it flips so the old website will be in the sandbox and we can make reference to anything we've also put on the new website this is a new website please give comments questions links you know if there's something missing you can't find something let us know so we can take that input as well so we look forward that tomorrow at 3: so be patient uh maybe you can check on anything else that's in the news uh at that time but at from 3:00 hopefully it flips within a matter of 30 minutes but there might be a a a Twist
113between that so I just wanted to announce that and we're on our way to exemplary Dr s mire so we'll be good I'll be counting on that Mr G thank you yeah the emails that are that we have you know saved and file folders those are all going to flip over oh they're all fine yeah every everything else around us it's just um how we present schools with uh we brought in the parent Square feed we brought in new you know latest updates uh principal messages uh Calenders pictures uh lot more Dynamic but there's still the busing listings the nutrition for the menus uh the calendars people these are important things to families and parents and such uh so so we're always uh you know open for suggestion people pto's community uh community links a
114lot of um it's a great place for links for you know software and links for do documents and forms and such for people registration and such yeah well we will send out a message to the entire parent parents yeah yeah to the parents to our staff letting them know I I mean it's not going to disrupt anything that they're doing but we want them just to let them know that there's a new look website that will be out there yeah and so the way they navigate might be a tiny bit different like whether they're getting to teach point or something that's part of their regular practice but we will be sending out a communication Mr I just had a quick question if it will still continue to um operate through the app oh you know
115actually there'll be a new app there'll be a new app not tomorrow but um the the new app will be unveiled very shortly what it is is the actual website can be viewed on a phone uh as if it's an app but there's also an app that will come with that excent so um yeah cool great looking for yeah there'll be there'll be um I'm sure some bumps but I we'll make sure it's it's uh very prominent of how to call or how to write if there's a problem um but we also place things exactly where they were in the old website so the familiarity of going to Aspen or the uh the menus or the calendar are in the same spot so we figured people by force of habit would go right to that
116spot great thank you thank you and I think just just a couple other quick things because there are a couple sports events going on right now actually um we have boys soccer I think it's over so they so they lost so that's unfortunate but again oh the girls we did find out that to the girls um field hockey and we have volleyball going on right now so I've been listening to see if I could hear any cheers but it's been a little quiet for the last few minutes but we'll definitely be peeking in to see how they're doing um and I know Mr Nunes is going to give his update about how our award-winning band is fairing so thank you thank you uh for the report of the chair uh just very quickly in my
117uh and this is where that thought earlier came from in my uh bi-weekly meeting with the superintendent uh we had discussed um our next meeting on November 25th that's the week of Thanksgiving uh it is a what we felt would was a very light agenda and probably it not necessary to take up everyone's time uh that week of Thanksgiving um if anyone has any uh any objections to that or are you okay with uh having the night [Laughter] off oh that's good that didn't take too long what would in all because I have missed putting it on my December what's up meeting date in December meeting date in the 16th yep yes the 16th okay that'll be our only one yeah that's our only December I'll fix that I'll fix that so anything that uh
118okay I'll take you thunder Mr noons and say any any warrants or anything that may need to be signed yeah yeah yeah we can contact you all and yeah arrange for signatures perfect so you can wipe that off your calendars Monday November 25th uh and that's all I have uh for this evening um I'm turn it over to my esteemed colleague uh Mr Nunes for the report of the Dartmouth High School Marching Band thank you got a got a couple of things uh we do have a uh a football game Friday night the football teams in the in the state tournament they ranked number six I believe in this in a division type of deal so we're hosting uh uh Milton High School uh 7 o'clock Friday night so come out and support the students
119and such uh our high school band wow keeps keeps on trucking uh on October 27th up in STO um they were the US band's Massachusetts state champions uh they had a score of 95.0 for division 4 and um winning all all the captions as they've kind of done all year uh then this past uh Saturday we went down to uh metti stadium in East Rutherford New Jersey uh where the Giants and the Jets play and uh the band uh came came in first place in division 4 so they are national champions again uh with a score of 97.65% that's how close some of the some of these are type of deal but uh they've had a a great year so now we just uh get ready to uh move on to indoor percussion indoor winds
120and uh indoor Color Guard both of varsity and juniority on the color guard so that's there and again you know Dr McGuire talked about you know the teams in the tournament so you know volleyball's playing now hopefully it continues that's all I have Mr chairman they're up two sets To None volleyball yeah yes we have a really nice system of being able to watch the games when we're not there so it's really good camera work watching this the entire meeting but I am impressed notice you're a little distracted I'm impressed with the quality of the video anyone else Noe all right uh so with that chair will entertain a motion to adjourn our next school committee meeting is Monday December 16th Happy Thanksgiving everyone Happy Thanksgiving safe travels so moved second motion by Mr noon
121second by Mrs Amaral on the motion anything else J hearing none all in favor I I opposed carries unan unanimously meeting is adjourned watch I'm of vot [Music]