Dartmouth School Committee Meeting, October 7, 2024

001e e e come good evening everyone I like to call this meeting of the Dartmouth school committee to order for Monday October 7th 2024 would you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all please be seated well good evening once again everyone we like to thank you and uh welcome you uh to uh tonight's dmouth school committee meeting I appreciate those of you you who are in attendance this evening as uh we're very excited and I know Dr Sab McGuire and her team are very excited to be presenting our uh District strategic plan um as a reminder this meeting is being videotaped by uh our actually

002our Dartmouth High School media uh class and it'll be rebroadcast on Dartmouth Community television channels uh on Channel 9 on the following days Wednesday and Thursday at 5:00 p.m Friday at 6:00 a.m. Saturday at 8:00 a.m. and Sunday at 2: p.m. and you can always watch it on our Dartmouth High uh media channel a YouTube channel so i' just like to remind everyone to please silence their cell phones uh if you haven't done so at this time and if I could have a roll call please Chris Oliver here Elizabeth Coughlin here Kathleen Amal here Mary Beck here John Nunes yep thank you very much everyone uh I would ask for uh the committee's uh pleasure if everyone is okay with moving public comment this evening based on uh the uh presentation of the district strategic

003plan uh that I felt it it would be helpful if we move that to the end of tonight's agenda uh for this one time so we'd give our audience members people in the audience any uh opportunities to ask questions following it considering that we are going to be discussing it is uh anyone opposed oos to that I think it's great all right thank you very much I appreciate it all appreciate you all uh at this time chair will entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes of September 23rd 2024 so moved second so we got a motion by Mr Nunes a second by Miss Beckwith all on the motion any further discussion sh hearing none all in favor I I opposed motion carries unanimously thank you very much uh chair will entertain a motion

004to approve the executive session minutes from The Joint meeting uh with the select board on September 23rd so move Mr chairman with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were intended is complete have a motion do we have a second second motion by Mr noon second by Mrs Amaral on the motion any further discussion chair hearing none all in favor I I opposed I will abstain yeah I will I was that I was there okay okay so yep motion passes uh 4 to zero no she wasn't there that was when with the select board correct Iain second that we have quum oh thank you yes yeah I'm seconding it I was not I was not there so I'm seconding it okay so motion by Mr noon a second by Miss

005Coughlin exstension motion passes 3 to zero with two extensions thank you everyone for that it's always the little things that get us hung up yep uh next up I'm pleased to uh recognize our student representative uh Jordan Rosenberg and we welcome you to the dart school committee meeting and we ask invite you to share what's going on at dmouth high school hi thank you for having me so the first thing I wanted to go over was we had a successful Club Expo recently it took place during the Lunch Period and it was just a great way for everyone to see what kind of clubs the students are running in the school especially for freshmen who want to get more involved we also have the Freshman elections coming up and the student council will be running

006those so recently we've had student council members go to advisories of freshmen and just explain the logistics of the elections and with more info to come midterms are approaching towards the end of the week so this will just be a good way for people to see how they're doing with classes if they need more help or how their grades are holding up um student council is planning a trunk Retreat fundraiser on October 6th so that'll be a really fun event we're planning to have it in the parking lot of the high school and we're going to have candy different treats a fun uh raffle and fundraiser so we encourage people to go to that and contribute also at our recent advisory students have filled out the neas survey and we asked that parents also fill

007out the survey and it's basically an evaluation of the high school and to see if the school standards are meeting what students and parents are seeing day-to-day as well um and lastly we our sports teams are also doing very well as mid te mid season is also approaching uh excitingly the football team is 4 in one so any questions good any questions for Jordan when's the the Trunk or Treat is what the it's October 26th okay well thank you very much Jordan for your report uh we certainly appreciate it as we do all our student reps you're more than welcome I'll say what I say I said a few weeks ago you're more than welcome to stick around with us and participate in the meeting um but we understand if you have other obligations all

008right thank you thank you uh next up consent agenda items uh I'm going to turn it over to Dr Saba Maguire yes you can see that we have a number of schools who have submitted fundraising requests for the 2025 school year parter Quinn uh Dartmouth Middle School the Dello School the Dartmouth SMA I mean I have to say I'm so impressed with all all of the efforts that are going on in the community amongst the different parent groups and making sure that our students have opportunities um just beyond what schools provide but also coming from the community itself so I think that uh tonight's consent agenda is truly representative of all that families are doing out there to support their children in Dartmouth so I recommend that we accept that's that the committee accepts um

009the fundraising requests uh for the 20242 school year thank you Dr Sab questions from my colleagues just a comment thank you all for participating in the parent teacher organizations and um you really make possible so much more for our community than we would have without your efforts um the students benefit primarily and we really really appreciate it I would second that and I I didn't tally it up but I I have no doubts in the tens of thousands of dollars that are being it's absolutely being greatly appreciated you want all one motion to approve them or you want them individually I don't see why we can't do one motion for all of them Mr chairman make a motion we approve the part of school PTO fundraising requests the Quin school PTO fundraising request uh dth

010middle school PTO fundraising requests the Dello school PTO fundraising requests and the dsma Damas school music association fundraising requests all for school year second motion by Mr nun second by Miss Beckwith on the motion any further discussion J hearing none all in favor I I I opposed extensions motion carries unanimously thank you again for all of those uh PT members that are in the audience this evening uh we certainly thank you for your support and now the uh the highlight of the night I'm going to turn it over it's a lot of pressure Mr Oliver the highlight of the night I'm going to turn it over to our superintendent of schools uh for our district strategic plan yes so thank you so we are truly excited to be able to share with the public tonight

011the uh five-year the public and the committee The Five-Year District strategic plan for Dartmouth um we believe that and I'll talk about this throughout I will talk about this throughout our presentation that we had um a a unique um amount of representation in developing this plan and as we go through some of the slides we'll share with you some of the folks that were involved and hopefully as we share this publicly uh no matter who you are or what part of the community that you serve you will see that your voice has been taken into consideration and incorporated into the plan that we're going to present to you uh we have a number of people here with us tonight we're going to take some time to thank them at the end of the presentation and

012that's just to keep them here till the end so they can't sneak out and we can take a photo uh we want to make sure that that we have a photo of all of the folks that are here tonight T and uh and the we want to represent who you are and where you're from in the community in terms of developing this actual plan so before we get started I would like to invite um Kathleen Smith from teaching Learning Alliance to the podium uh you'll have to sneak behind through a few obstacles uh but uh Kath Kathy is here tonight representing TLA teaching Learning Alliance tlaa was the Consulting Group that we used to help to facilitate our process um PM Gould was our our main contact and Kathy came on board with her I

013have to say that I have a long relationship with Kathy Smith um worked with her back in the day in Brockton and I was really pleased that she was on board with us here in Dartmouth to help guide us through this process so I wanted to invite Kathy to say a few words thank you uh Dr saber Maguire and it is Wonder ful to be back in the Dartmouth Community um I'm glad Jun you mentioned uh Dr Pam Gould who oversaw this process it was actually my first time doing a strategic plan with a district as a consultant and I know we've said this to our team a number of times you have set the bar very high it is the gold standard and when I tell you in the end after looking at all

014of your elected officials John and Elizabeth certainly from your school committee your Town elected officials a district that pays attention to its students and their voice that was heard loud and clear to your teachers to your families to your community members you have an excellent strategic plan that is a living document that will live probably beyond the five years when you see and I'm sure you've seen the scope of what's ahead hours and hours were spent with this group and I will tell you this having been an education and a superintendent in five districts in dealing with strategic plans and Community to look at the way people were not afraid to share their ideas if something was missing that empty chair that each of you honored because they represented somebody else or a group or

015an entity and you could hear that loud and clear as this as this strategic plan you know came to life so again um I guess on a personal note I am so pleased to come into this district and to see the that you have Dr Jun Saba Maguire she talks about all the and I know her I know when she talks about the excitement or just seeing the wonderful things that are happening are when we met with students and I sat back very proud so this is back last February we met with a focus group of probably about 20 students freshman sophomore junior and seniors and the one thing that they said and I know her and they said Dr Maguire actually came and this was a young girl one of my basketball games can

016you imagine the superintendent coming and thinking that we were that important so I'm so proud I listened to how wonderful everything has been a lot of challenges a lot of work ahead but you have the right person in that job and she has the right people supporting her so congratulations to your entire I really didn't expect her to say all that I just want you to know that that was purposeful but thank you and that's where I learned everything that I know so I'm okay with that thank you so thank you thanks so we're going to now get into the actual presentation of the district strategic plan I know that Jonathan's over there skillfully changing the screen so that the presentation is yep see he's calm cool and [Laughter] collected so now I I can

017make changes is yeah I don't it's not is it on oh it's on now Ross you didn't turn the the remote on for me Dr t-bo okay so um as uh as Mrs Smith was saying uh the Strategic is meant to it's a five-year strategic plan but please keep in mind that that doesn't mean as we work through the plan there won't be adjustments or modifications based upon how we work through others to enact this plan um but this is meant to be the 2024 through 2029 plan and what I also hope that you see as we go through the plan is that much of this work is actually happening and so it's not that after and hopefully the committee approves the plan this evening but it's not as if we haven't been enacting some

018of what we know uh the next right steps uh for moving the district forward and so here is a snapshot of the many members of the district strategic planning team and again we'll invite them up at the end uh to take a photo but hopefully what you can see here is that there are a wide range of both uh internal School Department uh teachers um Tas or esps I should say uh we have Administration we have folks from the select board we have parents um we have finance committee member and what we worked toward and we thought was most important is we had we had three students also on our team um so when we submit the final plan and it's published you'll see who all these folks are are and what uh they represented

019in terms of where they what their represent representation was in terms of of the community itself um so we talk a lot about what is our why and it's something that we've worked on quite a bit in the district at least since that I've come in as a superintendent and so it's always all the work that we do we recognize always has to be uh grounded in what is our our why so for a strategic plan why do we need a strategic plan and why is it important to a school Community our strategic plan helps create a shared vision and common purpose for every member of the one Dartmouth Community it identifies our District's Mission core values goals and the underlying theory of action that we believe ultimately will allow us to make good on

020our promise to the community of providing unparalleled opportunities leading to educational Excellence for for current and future Generations it helps guide us when making important decisions identifying areas of need committing resources human physical and financial it serves as a road map for our school district and so one thing that was important to us early on was honoring the work of those who had been part of the initial District Strate core District strategic planning team and with that team they spent I think it was uh almost two years developing the portrait of a learner and what those five competencies are each of the five C's were developed again with input from a range of community members including Educators families and caregivers students at the high school level and town officials so while this rep representation is

021not quite complete we are working on uh graphic design it does incorporate the competencies that we've defined as developmentally appropriate to communicate exactly what we mean when we say dmouth public school learners are critical thinkers and problem solvers they're communicators they are continuous Learners they're contributing citizens and their collaborators and these initiatives which are outlined in our strategic plan will allow us to bring the portrait of a learner into Focus across our district pre to 12 so next we just wanted to uh remind people that this was in fact a comprehensive process that began in Earnest back in the 2022 23 school year during that year the core of strategic plan of the planning team was formed and focused on developing the portrait of a learner that is what was done as the community these

022are the essential skills and characteristics that all Learners who passed through the Dartmouth Public Schools should be supported in me in mastering uh we worked we went on to focus the efforts of broader strategic planning work uh with the again many members of the one Dartmouth community and we partnered with teaching and Learning Alliance we believe that our strategic planning timeline reflects an inclusive process that honor Collective voices of the D Dartmouth community so again some important um I think some important messages here are who informed the district strategic plan stakeholder input well that included the portrait of a learner survey entry plan survey listening tour focus groups we use comprehensive data sources and artifacts the previous strategic plan was was discussed it was absolutely used as a a resource to to look at what

023was in the previous District strategic plan and see what needed to continue to we needed to continue to move forward we used the air report mcast data AP data the capital Improvement plan budget proposals Etc so these were all of the different stakeholder groups and artifacts that were used in in to inform the strategic plan we were regularly reminded that although there were 36 people as part of our team many of you are whom are here this evening we have what you see there as the empty chair and we constantly I think reminded each other and held each other accountable for continuing to bring back the work we were doing to those that were our colleagues community members family members Etc and to make sure that we were thinking about the kind of of data

024and um information that was being shared with us even though those particular people may not have been in the room so summary of the strategic planning process you can see phase one we're building the foundation and that came again even before I um before I began in Dartmouth as superintendant and that was around your portrait of a learner but for me coming in was really building my my part in building the foundation was around entry planning and spending time getting to know the community and we did that in multiple ways we did that by visiting schools we did that by visiting pto's we had a family Forum uh we sent out surveys uh but the best way I think that we learned about what we needed to do in working with the Dartmouth Community to

025move it forward was just listening to people and so we did have focus groups again TLA helped us to facilitate some of that um so there were quite a number of of people whose voices are represented in what we're presenting to you this evening so here with our mission statement so there's always so much sort of angst over developing a mission a vision in your core values but what what a mission statement does for us is it explains who we are and it highlights our fundamental reason for existing when others read the mission statement they should understand what our core role is as a school district the mission creates fundamental questions for all all organizations to ask what is it that we do who benefits from our work and what are the results of our

026work so our mission statement and hopefully as I read through it you'll be thinking about those three things what is it that we do who benefits from our work work and what are the results of the work so with a 36ers committee again including uh the voices of others this is our statement together with students staff families and Community we are committed to cultivating a safe supportive and inclusive learning environment that empowers all students to become compassionate informed and contributing members of our local and Global community and something that I think that really stood out as we did this work together was how grounded the folks that were involved and and again through surveys focus groups Etc in the idea of supporting local community that was something that came through um through again any of

027of the sort of data collection that we did the the pride in Dartmouth and the idea that this was such a uh vital Community uh supportive of one another was something that was clearly communicated uh throughout this process and so as far as core values are concerned again something that was truly important to this group and they took very seriously um there was a group that you can see that we have the acronym Pride I already just mentioned that Pride came through as something that was important to people and they definit itely expressed a wish to have pride be something that permeates throughout the entire plan so for core values we have personal excellence and responsibility respect for self and others inclusivity equity and belonging diverse opportunities and student agency voice and choice very important

028to the group that voice and choice was included and most especially our students um and ethical commitments and we talked a lot about ethical commitments in in our district and it's something that we have a lot of conversation about uh with our entire leadership team and with our Educators so remembering that core value should remain constant and that they shouldn't change even in an Ever Changing world for a vision statement again these are the things we look at the final product and think oh that's you know I can that resonates with me but when I tell you that the work that went into uh what I think uh people came to uh to accept and and say this this is what we were thinking this was hours and hours of work um United as one

029Dartmouth we are invested in the ongoing Improvement of our community so that's a pretty uh strong statement and a statement that we're sharing with the rest of the Dartmouth community in different ways uh for example I was able to to meet with Amy drio from the Council on Aging and share that part of our vision statement with them and with that group and she is going to take that and work with her staff to develop the second part of the statement which is Dartmouth Public Schools proudly offers unparalleled opportunities leading to educational excellence and success for fut for current and future Generations again the idea of generational um sort of support and what that means in contributing to the Dartmouth Community was a really strong message throughout so as far as a theory of action

030an organization's theory of action represents a set of actions that will be implemented in order to improve the organization and help it it reach its Mission um so I'm not going to read this theory of action to you but what I will say is if you take the time to read the theory of action in many ways the theory of action is the uh the summarization of the entire strategic plan and so you should be able to see in there the mission the vision the core values the four areas of focus and then ultimately what our uh goal is in implementing this strategic plan and so now I'm going to invite uh Ross up he's going to talk about the action plan layout and give you an idea an an overview really of some of

031the high leverage initiatives that are included in the plan thank you Dr sa Maguire so our strategic plan we really as Cathy alluded to earlier we we want it to be a living breathing document and so in order to achieve that um goal we really believe that there's value in uh understanding the community as a whole understanding exactly how the action plan is laid out so in the broadest area we see um the focus area we have four main focus uh areas then just under uh just beneath those uh Focus areas we have our objective so our objective is a slightly more defined goal that we're hoping to achieve underneath that uh larger kind of umbrella from there we have uh our strategic initiatives outlined and each of the focus area has multiple strategic initiatives

032um our strategic initiatives are the strategies that we plan to employ in order to achieve the uh objective at the most granular level um we have the action steps these are very detailed intended to be very detailed actions that the district will take in order to uh achieve our goal and to implement fully Implement our uh strategic initiatives we also have I don't know why I keep jump in twice we also have our proposed timeline uh for the work again proposed because it is going to be a living breathing document so we may have to make adjustments along the way um but we wanted to clearly communicate to the community here's the proposed and planned timeline that we uh intend to um to to carry out the next column here is the led by and

033this is specifically um only highlighting folks who are resp ultimately responsible for facilitating the work this is not this column is not indicative of every single uh person who's going to be part of all of this important work that's going on um we wanted to make sure that um we highlight the fact that none of this work will be accomplished without the uh tremendous input of the community without our Educators um you know and everyone that's part of the one Dartmouth community and then the final column here really identifies the measures of success these of multiple measures um with our uh with each action step we've identified a series of different um measurements if you will to determine whether or not our uh action plan has been successful so each uh as I said there

034are four Focus areas the first one is around teaching and learning and uh our our objective for teaching and learning is to support the varied needs of students and staff through best practices while promoting innovation in a hor horizontally and vertically aligned curriculum for our second Focus area it is um are you hitting it too I that's the problem I'm hitting it on this computer and you're hitting it with the clicker my fault I apologize I all right our second Focus area is safe and supportive schools and um this uh Focus area it's all about ensuring that uh students and Staff feel a sense of belonging as well as um you know attending to social emotional well-being in our schools throughout the implementation of culturally and intellectually affirming practices and tiered supports Focus area three

035oh Focus area three is around family and Community engagement um and it it highlights the importance of engaging with families and community members as partners in our school uh district and uh in our students uh continued success under this Focus area our goal is about enhancing and strengthening existing Partnerships while also seeking opportunities uh to build new Partnerships and strengthen uh new Partnerships across the district and then finally um focus area four is um you know in many ways uh the most important um it's budget and Capital Improvements and um our goal there is to enhance collaboration between schools town government the commu and the community with the goal of creating a joint Vision to address school funding facility issues and staff recruitment um and of course without uh tremendous support in that area none

036of the uh the work is possible so at this time I'd like to invite Mrs Pavo up to talk a little bit more about Focus area one teaching and learning thank you Dr tibo and members of the school committee for this opportunity to talk about this most important work um I'd like to talk about our first and obviously my most favorite Focus area of teaching learning so um as mentioned our first initiative under teaching Lear teaching learning is one that you've heard Dr TBO and I talk about and great detail um and it's clearly an issue of importance uh when we did analysis of our stakeholder and Survey data this was something that repeatedly came up um across forums across stakeholder groups and that is around um ensuring vertically and horizontally aligned curriculum prek to

03712 um and making sure that we are using data to inform our instruction around our needs and um obviously we did a everyone did a great job sort of talking about the portrait of a learner work that has already been done that has also outlined the values and the things that we know to be important in our community um additionally when we talk about teaching and learning um I think when we hear the word learning we naturally tend to think about our students learning but of equal importance is the learning of our Educators sorry Dr s McGuire I'll I'll we'll hit the button you want no it's okay I got it sorry so I'm talking about these initiatives and now I'll show them too um our second initiative is around designing professional learning opportunities that

038are relevant and support the professional growth for our Educators and our staff and so as I was saying I think sometimes when we hear learning we our brain naturally sort of leans to thinking about our student learning but it is of equal importance that we continue to Foster the growth of our Educators and finally we're talking about reimagining and expanding our um educational Pathways and opportunities for our students um and you know it's really about making sure that we create opportunities for our students to feel like they can grow to be their best selves and the all the things that are encompassed in our portrait of a learner are things that we're giving our students opportunities to practice to refine and to figure out and and to grow as to be their their best version

039of themselves and so it might seem like the natural Next Step would be to talk about our action steps but we're actually going to talk about our measures of success next in a very similar way that we often do backward design when we're planning lessons and units our first step is to think about where do we want our kids to end up what do we want them to know and be able to do and so in the designing of these Focus areas it really made sense for us to say what are our measures of success what are our goals what are our outcomes in this area and then we can start to talk about what we would do to get there so in that sort of backwards design model these are certainly not the all

040encompassed these are a few that we'd like to elevate um in our full plan you would see all of those measures of success under teaching and learning but three that we wanted to lift up and talk a little bit more about in detail tonight again is one you've heard me talk a lot about is that published curriculum review cycle when we're talk about when we're talking about um an aligned curriculum prek to 12 we have to talk about doing that in a cular cular way where we are repeatedly and um consistently looking at the revisions that need to be made to our curriculum looking at bringing in new high quality instructional materials when the time is necessary Dr tibo talked about budget having the implications and there are common threads and these these Focus areas

041all overlap budgeting is a huge part of curriculum review Cycles because you can't afford to replace all of your things all at the same time and we also have to keep in mind our Educators who are doing this we can't also ask them to do all new things all at the same time and so so you really need to have this cycle of um revision and review of your materials I could talk about it all day um but this is very important um also looking at just a published horizontally and vertically aligned curriculum PR prek to 12 what we're doing with our students is certainly shouldn't be a mystery to people and we want to have an an um accessible way for people if you are um someone who has a second grader in your

042life and you want to know about what a second graders learn about in social studies a way that you have um an accessible way to look into what the kids are learning about and the connections that it makes to our Frameworks the connections that it makes to the other things that they're learning about in their school and finally um a published data dashboard that we would consistently report progress on those are those sort of metrics that we're looking at to measure our students growth are the things that we're doing around teaching and learning yielding the results that we want them to to yield um and so you know again having a way that we can publish and access data for people to understand in a way um that shows how our students are growing so

043those are our measures of success our outcomes then the question becomes what do we do to achieve those again there are far more than just these three action steps under teaching and learning but three we'd like to elevate and lift up and talk a little bit more about tonight is developing that curriculum review cycle developing it but also implementing it a curriculum review cycle is a multi-year cycle because you have to first figure out where you are in the cycle with your curricular areas and then map out in a way that makes sense areas of priority that takes looking at data and making decisions about areas of importance um and then mapping that out um not just in our core curricular areas also to be clear we're looking at right we have new health and

044fed standards making sure that we have the resources that we need to be ble to implement new standards as they get updated um identifying piloting and implementing high quality research based curriculum materials we've talked a lot about making sure that we have research based highquality instructional materials in the hands of our teachers in the hands of our students and um assuring that we continue to make sure that they are culturally relevant up toate um and free of bias and finally identifying and developing a data dashboard related to student achievement so what is the data that we're going to use um I'll just in my very close world we brought foundations Integrity in to address um foundational reading skills right so looking at the Dibbles data is the data that's we're getting back which yes it

045is I'll talk more about that in another meeting giving us the results that we hope when we bring in materials to address with our students are they doing the things that we hope they would be doing and making sure that we are explaining to people when I talk about phone name seg if that's not the world you live in every day making sure people understand what that means and how it's important to students learning and so this is where I'm going to hand it over to Mrs dionio who will talk to you more about Focus area to I'm just going to come up and press all the buttons okay um focus area number two is safe and supportive schools so in this initiative we are looking um at how we are keeping students and staff

046physically safe in our buildings as well as the social emotional wellness and the sense of belonging which we know is crucial to learning so the initiatives in this Focus area reflect our commitment to building a capacity of staff and students to support the social emotional needs um of the students looking to research and evidence-based practices to identify culturally emotionally and intellectually affirming practices consistently across the district we're also looking to expand our before and after school program so that it exists at all levels not just at the middle school and high school aligning our safety um protocols and practices again across District consistently and really living out the one Dartmouth theme that is at the Forefront of this plan so it becomes more than just a logo on a t-shirt although it's a nice t-shirt

047um how do we know we will be successful so our Decap our district accommodation plan will um be robust and full of real um and effective interventions that help support all students um we'll have operational and well-funded consistently funded U before and after school program at the elementary middle and high school level and all our schools will be practicing um safety protocols within the district some of the things we're going to do um in order to get there um again with the evidence base looking at the evidence looking at the research that exists um to address the social emotional Wellness as well as how we're teaching kids and making sure that we're addressing the needs of all students um and then Jonathan is going to come up and talk a little bit more about the

048safety protocol which leads us to focus area three thank you Dr m t McGuire you found one way to get me off by holding the remote I did that's a good job so thank Youk I won't be able to thank you for recing give me the hook any time but as Lori said um the social emotional well-being of the of students and staff is Paramount but also there's some physical things that we need to do to keep people safe and they come in the form of intercoms and telephone systems and um security cameras as we maintain the um the relationship with the police department and the and the fire department and we talk about procedures and protocols U it's a good opportunity to ensure the safety and security of the schools could you uh just

049speak up a little bit I guess the back of the room's having a little bit of trouble or maybe Mr Pate can turn up the volume thank you oh that's better thank you so I actually was finished Mr Oliver but um but uh just talking about Safety and Security and the physical elements of that so that transitions uh next slide please oh I do it there we go the next slide talks about family and Community engagement um this speaks to initiatives uh such as communication a communication team uh committee as well as a communication plan uh complemented by items like a um a communication system called parents square that we've embraced to give messages throughout families it's the next level of communication for families because parent Square allows uh control by the individual to receive

050messages when it's convenient for them and which messages they receive so it it it makes it easier than being bombarded with uh messages throughout the day allows for that um as well as um a communication making communication smarter and uh more efficient as opposed to more communication just better communication those are some of the initiatives measure of success will be the survey Dr s McGuire did you want to mention that no you're doing oh great okay I can keep going sure um public and and um do the communication plan coming from the communication committee uh increase diversify engagement opportunities as you can see there um from all the town departments as I mentioned we've had our meetings with the police and fire talking about um communication and how to uh be better prepared together if

051there's an incident that we can work more flu ly and more efficiently and the action steps to those will be uh a survey that will go out to talk about that also the increasing uh promotion of parent square and the release which I'll talk about at the superintendent's uh report um of a new website that we've been working on feverishly in the background which will have most current information as well as um links to a lot of the things that people need for the district and that communication team will analyze the data to make sure we're communicating efficiently and and accurately so parents and family and Community uh are more informed and better informed thank you thank you Mr gashaw so um District strategic Plan Focus area four is budget and Capital Improvements so obviously

052in order to make this plan a success success we need to identify advocate for and Implement um resources that support the plan and support student achievement so the initiatives in this in this Focus area are to communicate and advocate for the instructional and operational needs of the district and to do the same for the facility and capital Improvement needs of the district some of the measures of success of some obvious things like a bud reflecting the needs of the district consistent and clear communication of the budget plan uh Capital Improvement plan reflecting the needs of the district and things like successful completion of capital Improvement projects and other initiatives some of the key action steps are to communicate the budget plan to all stakeholder groups to implement and monitor the effectiveness of the budget plan

053to develop a 10-year Capital Improvement plan reflecting our facility and capital needs right now we only have done a five previous to this um so we're going to expand that and to implement and complete Capital Improvement projects okay thank you and so here on this slide what you see is really a snapshot of the entire District strategic plan I remember I know a few minutes ago I talked about the theory of action as sort of being a synopsis or a summary of The District strategic plan um and in the same way this is this captures all of our um our strategic FOC our four strategic Focus areas of course it doesn't get into the initiatives the objectives the action plan but by looking at this uh snapshot or dashboard as we're calling it uh folks

054should get an idea of where we are going um as a d as the Dartmouth Public Schools over the next five years and something that I think is really important just to point out I mean our strategic Focus areas if you look across different District strategic plans across the state or even across the country you're going to see some similar Focus areas and that makes a lot of sense right that teaching and learning emerges as as a primary of area of focus because of course that's the work that we do every day that's the most important work that we do and yet we know without safe and supportive schools family and Community engagement and budget and Capital Improvements we can't get to the very work that's the most important work that that we do as

055an organization and that is in fact teaching and learning uh the other thing that I would say is important around core values and something that we we talk a lot about is pulling a core value out and talking about um whether it's uh it's it's inclusion inclusivity equity and and belonging you should be able to ask any one of us questions about how our organization is demonstrating a commitment through its core values to inclus inclusivity equity and belonging we should be able to speak to that um because we're espousing that as a core value and so how does that value exist in our organization and so again here what you're looking at is the dashboard of the entire strategic plan includes the mission the vision the values the Strategic Focus areas and really importantly the

056one Dartmouth and the pride right so we wanted to have symbolism that represented folks and what they shared with us about how they felt about being part of not only the Dartmouth Public Schools but the D Dartmouth Community uh so when we present something like this a strategic plan like this is the work that excites us as Educators I wish that there was like singing and dancing and that we could be up like have bright lights and and all of those uh fun things that people go to concerts for uh but I appreciate the folks that are here to listen to uh our presentation of the Strategic plan because really when you get into the details of the plan that's really where the work is and as you will have an opportunity because it will

057be published eventually once the committee approves it on our website you'll be able to get a very detailed uh you'll have the opportunity to have a very detailed view of what the entire plan looks like so things that again we're so incredibly proud of and we we started off the year at our converation talking about who we are and why not do the things that we do in terms of education and our commitment to our students and our community and one of the things that we're as you can see with our t-shirts one Dartmouth we want to move Beyond just a slogan you know we want to move to a real um a real commitment to the idea that we're one Dartmouth and for all of us as individuals to think through that lens of

058how we contribute to making sure that one Dartmouth is a reality and not just a slogan and every one of us has the responsibility to contribute to that culture and that belief system so you see on the um well not quite the first day but all our staff got there um we are we one Dartmouth t-shirts uh some and many of you got them this evening so we are one Dartmouth the kushman school we are one Dartmouth there's our Dello School staff um we are one Dartmouth there's your our parter Elementary School staff we are the Quinn Elementary School we are the Dartmouth middle school and we are Dartmouth High School and all of the Educators that are represented on the in these photos um from teachers to our esps to our custodians to our

059cafeteria workers to our lunch people that are serving our students lunch um to our security staff um so so many people are invested in the success of our school community and it's up to us to support them in the work they do through the implementation of a strategic plan but really when it comes to implementation the real work happens at the school level it happens at the classroom level and it happens between teachers and students and so again uh as we we made this we were like super excited about this presentation because that's what we do we're behind closed do going this looks great oh my God we're so excited and I see people looking going hm you know this is exciting but I hope you feel like the same kind of excitement that we

060actually have about this work moving forward and so with that um I've already talked about we are one Dartmouth I truly believe that we do have time for well are we do we have time for questions from the committee we do yeah well we also have discussion under new business for the uh it's up to the committee if we want to take it on right now or we also have it under new business discussion and vote on the district strategic plan and somewhere in there I want to throw in public comment so let's wait that that's fine whatever you want to do is fine what did you say I'm just thinking probably waiting for for that opportunity so if it's okay with a committee if we could just have the folks that are here come

061up and take a photo together and so that they they can if they choose to leave then they'll be able to do that we wanted to capture a photo though so these are our a some of our district strategic planning team members where we going you're going right here Ross is gonna organize [Laughter] us supposed to go to the other side on oh no we're not aren there people from the finance you know than see the top of my oh yeah so just hi that right underneath oh jeez thank you there it is let John oh sorry well before everyone leaves I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that was part of the committee uh we're going to be discussing it in just a few minutes uh but for those of you

062uh leaving uh we know I I know for sure that it's taken a great amount of time to put this together there's a lot as well as a lot of planning a lot of cooperation and communication so uh thank you to all of those uh that were part of the strategic planning process uh next up under old business continuing discussion of the FY 26 budget and following this I'm going to uh insert the uh if it's okay with the committee I'm going to ins assert public comment uh so uh Mr Kylie thank you Mr Oliver so um you know it's the such a cyclical uh business with these these fiscal Years and we're working on the FY 26 budget as you know um we just finished the fiscal year 24 end of year report and

063I'll be reporting back to the committee at some point regarding um a report for the the end of the year it's actually um I I provided the full report to Mr Oliver for his uh review and and signature um it's so we're closing off fiscal year 24 we're living in 25 and we're preparing 26 um we have begun meeting with all the district administrators and department heads uh regarding the the fiscal year 26 budget um obviously you you know we we're just in the process of finalizing the Strategic plan here so um we're incorporating this strategic plan into our into our budget um and understanding what that impact is so we're working with the schools to do that now um we have a proposed budget subcommittee meeting for October 28th in which we would PR

064review preliminary uh budget numbers for fiscal year 26 so got a pretty pretty quick turnaround here in 3 weeks we've got to you know pull everything together from the Strategic plan and from uh our meetings with all the schools and present something to the budget subcommittee meeting on the 28th so that's that's where we are with budget at the moment thank you Mr Kylie questions no it's I'm going thank you for the update yeah thank you um I will just say I am available on the uh 28th I did see your email didn't have a chance to respond I did respond and I am aailable perfect thank you both so appreciate it look forward to seeing you on the 28th and as always thank you Mr Kylie for your diligence and the budget process uh

065next up before we get to new business I'm going to uh invite anyone wishing to speak on any of tonight's uh agenda items uh to do so at this time we've allotted approximately uh 10 minutes for any anyone wishing to comment on any of tonight's agenda items we just ask you to keep your comments brief um and approach the microphone I'm Bob gin chairman of the finance committee I'd like to thank you for all your hard work and doing this whole strategic plan uh I just have one question vertical and horizontal alignment of high quality research based curriculum what is that that's a great question that's a good so so just for the members of the audience uh we typically don't allow uh back and forth but because of the uh the cooperation that we're

066working with with the finance committee and tonight's uh um strategic plan uh we certainly will entertain questions from uh from the members of the audience it's a great question so vertical is K to 12 right so it's K12 so we want to make sure that all of our curriculum is aligned K12 aligned not only within the district but within the as far as the state standards are concerned so there are standards that are available not that you would want to go to the desie website and look at every single standard that exists but what we do do here in Dartmouth is we spend time um with our Educators and curriculum committees and with our teacher teams looking at what those standards are and aligning them not only again K to 12 but even as important

067if not more so um let's say across first grade right so that when you enter or you visit any first grade class in the Dartmouth Public Schools you should see that students are uh working on the same skills learning the same content using the same resources though that would be horizontally aligned vertically and again I'm going to talk K5 is you would expect to see uh for instance the district recently adopted uh Bridges which is the math resource and so you would expect to walk into and visit K5 classrooms whether it's the Dello the Quinn or the Potter School and let's say it's a fourth grade um you would expect to see the same resources being used across all of those fourth grade classrooms and in terms of the pacing of what's being taught at

068that time it should be within a range so that you can see that the kids the students across the district have access to the same content the same learning the same materials as any classroom in the district and you could we could say the same thing for middle school and we would repeat that for high school I mean High school can be a bit different because there are different contents being taught in in high school for instance math you might have an algebra class and a geometry class you would expect that there would be different content being taught in those classes okay all right thank you great question you're welcome thank you anyone else wishing to speak on any of tonight's agenda items all right I will take that as a that as a wrap

069and we'll close our public comment time uh next up under new business discussion and vote on the district strategic plan so we've now all had the opportunity some of our colleagues have had the opportunity right from the start to be part of the process but we certainly have had the chance to listen to the presentation this evening we all received it earlier this week uh in an email attachment uh so we could take a look at it ahead of time uh so thoughts comments questions from my colleagues I'll start over there on the other side of the table U Mrs Amaral thank you first I just want to say that was an excellent question Mr Goin took me still takes me time to think through okay what does that mean so thank you for asking

070it um for especially for all the people that really were afraid to ask because uh it's important um okay so I'm so supportive of this plan um I just from the beginning and in hearing from folks who were part of the committee and then hearing the report out of that committee um and I I'll just say like starting from being so intentional to think about um wanting all perspectives at the table and um making sure that students Educators the community were part of the process and also in being intentional about that recognizing that um there still are people who are are not at the table and being mindful about um that empty chair reference was really impressive um and just the investment in listening to others ideas um you know fears I'm sure I wasn't

071at that table you know I really was um uh you know John and uh beess can speak better to this but I I can only imagine like fears right questions come up in um as folks are thinking through what this might mean for um a plan with such large um impact potential impact um like that's against student voice and choice incredibly important and in my tenure on the committee I do not know that we have paid that much attention since I've been on the committee to that um as well as Rec I don't mean to look right at you just recognizing while we need to have the you know the supports and resources for our students it's equally important if not more important to have the resources and the tools for our staff um and

072threading that through the safe and supportive school right that um the mental health of our students mental health of our Educators um uh we're all in this together and that vision of making that generational connection I really look forward to seeing that come to fruition and look back you know 20 30 years from now to look back to say wow the impact that this plan made um because our students are going away and doing lots of different things whether they're going to college or going right into the workforce going into the military and coming back and wanting to be part of this community again and that retention um what that can mean for the town of Dartmouth um is is has has great potential so I'm I just That's so exciting and all the teaching

073and learning stuff feeling the passion and the commitment from all the folks that are coming up you talk about like the leadership team coming up um and just the incredible work that's being done behind the scenes and just the intentionality about what what does this look like uh how how many things can we change and what are on the plates of our students and our staff to make these changes and Scaffolding it and and and and building out a plan that's um you know may take a while to get there but we're going to get there because we have the end goal in sight so I that's all I'll add but um I am personally very uh excited about it and and just um enjoyed reading it and learning more about it um and every

074level it's just the thought and the commitment really comes through great that's it thank you very much Mr NS thank you Mr thank you Mr chairman uh yeah as one of the committee members that that was on this committee and thank you to Dr Sabre Maguire for putting me you asking me to be on this and you know in my tenure this is the first time I've sat in on one of these and uh it was personally a learning experience for me and I learned a lot from it uh my thanks to everyone that was on that committee uh I know I've kind of probably said this before but I'll say it again it was a great committee I mean Pam and Kathy did an outstanding job facilitating this and there was you you know

075the old adage you know no dumb questions type of deal but we sat there and we went through and you could ask a question uh about what was going on or if you changed an i to a Wii or whatever type of deal you know Mrs Pavo was our resident scribe changing literally changing things on the fly to uh to put it in to see what it looked like you know we get a thumbs up or a thumbs down you know and and and it was great to uh to have that uh the students that we had sit on this committee and I know again I've said it before unbelievable I mean they they were not afraid to put their two cents in believe me when I tell you that that you know they sat

076there if there was something they didn't like or they were they were not afraid to ask that question to make sure that they understood it and even in some of the folus groups that we were working on type of deal asking questions about things type of deal uh I wish Kathy was still here because I was just curious if they still had those four big sheets when we did these four focuses and you know the the first group going through each one would have been great but then the rest of us adding to it as as we went through was just unbelievable I mean when you sit here and you know that you know Kathy was right and and everybody's right you know the amount of time that went into it to to do this

077was just uh unbelievable but I think what we've got here is something to really be proud of and and to hang our hat on and you know I'm looking forward to seeing how this gets you know imp getting this implemented and and moving forward with it so my uh again my just my thanks to everyone that that participated in this uh this great piece of work I think for our students and our staff and our community this is something we can be very proud of I think um what I would say is this is an extraordinary effort um for from so many standpoints but but two that I would point out is such a large group and to focus such a large group is difficult to do um all of whom have different wants and

078needs and and agendas um so that is so impressive the second thing is to have accomplished this in such a short period of time having done a lot of strategic plans um in in my lifetime uh my working lifetime I it it this is very impressive so comprehensive um and you know I also know that for the folks that are from the school distri work in the school district it is hard to do your everyday job and to be also focused on the future and to go kind of go back and forth and um so I I compliment all of you and then for the folks from the community to bring this investment and this time commitment to this effort is um so appreciated uh and so important so um so this is just really

079impressive I'm very excited to watch um this be implemented and also to see to measure the metrics um and measure the accomplishments as we go through so thank you um so I also was on the uh committee and very grateful to be asked um it was a wonderful experience and yeah uh we can't emphasize enough how amazing it is to get you said 26 but I thought it was 27 37 37 37 people together um not be bickering moving forward um and though not bickering arguing over particular words because people cared so much I've never been part of such a large group that was so serious um and allowed everyone to have input so I I do think it's a great document um and I don't know I have like two little niggly things about

080it which um one is that we're not all teachers we're not all we don't know old the jargon so um in the theory of actions we assume that everyone knows what seel is engage in review of current seal curriculum through curriculum review cycle I just wish that we would write social emotional um learning there um because we want this to be an accessible document to the parents and to the community um and because we did argue over not argue well argue we discussed words disced and we thought words friendly discussion um that in the great letter at the front of the document um in the letter under the mission the word engaged is not used in the document the word inm mission in under mission is contributing it should be the same in both the

081letter and in the document yeah I miss that and oh you're talking about the the letter at the beginning of the okay got it just because I mean I feel like it's all part of the document good catch and I missed that we actually and then the other thing is core values in the letter of introduction um didn't did we change that I thought we did we t Okay so that wasn't part of the presentation no what you have in front of you is still in draft form and so we actually did you'll be happy to know we caught that the thing in Pride yes and we're making changes for the voice and choice thing yes we are doing okay yeah and um lastly in terms of accessibility to our greater Community which I'm part

082of um just in the document above the mission statement um we talk about exp poost facto data and I don't feel like that's a very accessible um phrase I feel that we should speak in a language that everyone understands um but I don't have a problem with it because I looked it up on Google and not that I could fully explain it to you but I got it we can make some we can make those changes that's um but it's great to know that is why it's in draft form it's not a published document so and this is what we're voting on so I wanted to bring that up um but it's great to know what we do why we do it and with where we want to be as a school as a community

083um so thank you to everyone who worked on it and thank you to all of those who will work on implementing it thank you very much yeah I will I will also uh Echo and agree with um I think throughout this uh I think it would help a lot of us are at the table and in the room are probably familiar with some many of the acronyms that are used in education um but for the general public I think it may be helpful to to spell it out for everyone so that that would be my only uh my only recommendation as far as uh editing goes uh I will say that um you know what else is there to say uh I think it's important that we we recognize uh uh for those those people

084that are watching at home or will watch that this document is a product of months and months of collaboration between multiple stakeholder groups uh from town officials parents students community members um as well as members of the administration team instructional team and school committee um I'm excited for one that we finally uh have I feel some some substance planned with some substance um to move forward with and build our uh our future our our next five years and not only that but as we go to um town meeting or we go to um other meetings uh with Town officials uh we certainly have a why as to why why we need this why we're doing this um so I think it helps and I think this is something that our instructional Professionals in the classrooms

085uh certainly uh uh will be grateful for um our our teachers are educational support professionals um you know I I think this puts some some substance behind uh what we're doing in this district and really how how are we going to take this District to the next level um and I personally would love to see I know we're a great District or I should say we're we're exemp we're an extremely good District um and I think we have some potential there to uh to move it up a notch um it'll take some work and some effort uh but I'm excited for the future so um thank you Dr sa McGuire thank you um thank you to everyone else uh that was part of this team and I look forward to uh seeing where this goes

086uh at this time if there's any other questions yeah thank you Mr chairman just taking a step back with what uh be said about some of the pneumonics type of deal maybe uh a page with all the abbreviations and what they actually stand for yeah we can do a key you know a key in there type of deal so that they would you know people be able will know what they're looking at just a thought yep we can do that other than that I'm fine perfect at this time the chair will entertain a motion uh to approve the district strategic plan Mr chairman make a motion that we approve the uh School District achievement plan for school year 2024 to 2029 as presented with the necessary small Minor Adjustments second so we have a motion

087by Mr Nunes a second by Mrs Amaral on the motion any further discussion J hearing none all in favor I I opposed motion carries unanimously great that's wonderful news thank you so much and again thank you so much to the committee for all your support because you have been giving us ongoing Support over the past really seven months that we've been working on this well thank you and I also like to before they leave thank our members of our our finance committee for joining us here this evening uh we did extend an invite uh to the uh finance committee as well as the select board select board was in session this evening but we certainly appreciate uh those of you that were able to make it uh next up uh school committee policies section A

088foundations and basic commitments first reading Mr Kylie are you going to jump in on that you have it right there in front of you yep I can start us off so um so we have begun our ccal review of policies um we are planning to bring forward a policy section every of every other month to you um attempt to bring forward a full section as best we can um and I'll talk about some specifics that go along with that as we uh as we get through this so we've we've brought um policy section A which is called which is called foundations and basic commitments um to you this evening so the school committee um so the the administration um met in August and early September to review these policies the policies in section A um

089and then brought them to a school committee policy subcommittee meeting on September 16th um at which time we agreed to bring them forward we had discussion about them and agreed to bring them forward to you folks for a first read tonight so I'll walk you through um what you um what you have before you in your packet was um a little summary statement that I wrote um but then a summary page that shows the all the policies in section a um their policy title and what the recommended actions were for those so hopefully that's helpful to sort of organize um as we go through this we'll hopefully continue to you know continue to do that for each policy section that we're able to tackle um the first policy for which we're recommending A change is

090policy ad which is Mission statement obviously tonight we've uh you've now agreed that we have a new mission statement so that's timely um it this this policy ad revision is reflective of that I included uh both the prior policy in your packet as well as the um as the revised policy really didn't make a lot of sense to redline the old policy since all of the words changed from one to the other so I just included the old one um for your review in case you you know wanted to see what see what it looked like prior to this um so that's the that is the first policy and I guess if there's any questions about that or things we want to talk about discussion we could could do that now I think policy ad

091is uh pretty straightforward Bas um yes easiest one so once again the mission statement in the new school policy does not reflect the mission St statement in our new strategic plan um again that word contributing instead of engaged um I don't know why it's contributing um but say contributing yeah but in the it should say engaged it should say engaged because I know what you're saying I know what she saying I know what she's saying in the Strategic plan the mission statements says informed oh no oh that was for the other one never mind okay so at the beginning in the mess forget that that was for the other one okay um together with student staff families and Community is what the policy says and the mission statement where's the broader Community okay I'm confused

092I think I'm mixing things up local and Global Community we we can certainly the broader somewhere we say broader community and other and then other places we say community MH um might be in the letter oh it's in the letter so it's not the policy but it's back to the letter oh okay that the word broader is inserted okay I just want them to both both a letter to be to be aligned aligned yep so we're going to make that change and make sure that's reflected in the policy as well right okay that was it because it is straightforward and I'm cool with that I was getting the letter and um the policy mixed up as long as you're cool with it okay so since this this is a first read we're not asking you

093know anyone to to vote on anything tonight so um the next policy for which we're recommending A change is policy add background checks so similarly to mission statement this is a full rewrite um the old policy is from 2012 so it's been a bit um in 2012 the whole fingerprinting um process that we're required to do now didn't even exist so it's it's about time we we get up to speed here and and update that policy um we I I will say that I can assure you that operationally we have complied with what this proposed policy is um and I I've been here since then you know since that was implemented and I can say that we are com in compliance with um with the Department of Criminal Justice um guidelines and and this policy

094so this policy reflects actually practice as it current ly exists so if you have any questions on that be happy to field them questions on ADD remember this is just a first reading anyway yeah okay thank you Mr Kylie okay thank you uh so the next policy we ask you to consider is a brand new policy so add is uh the reflective of the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services model policy so masc recommended that U this policy be included in addition to add which you just took a look at um in order to make sure that we we are specific in regards to our process and that in the instance that the Department of Criminal Justice were to um audit our our process we would have regulations procedures in place that reflected exactly what

095they're looking for so um based on that recommendation of masc it made sense to add this policy that that previously didn't exist questions cut and dry sounds wise think it makes sense okay so um those are the policies that we're asking you to revise or change but I just wanted to fill you in because um there were some other policies in section A that um first of all there were some policies in section A that were identical to the masc um policies um and did not you know require a change from us some policies that you know were currently in place that that made sense but there were some that uh we have not brought forward yet so the policies that relate to um the title 9 process and discrimination and harassment uh on the

096advice of our legal council so there's there's some in court injunctions at the moment relating to those policies um so at the advice of our Council they have been revising recommended policies um in the background waiting for these injunctions to to clear up so that uh we can move forward with revised policies so at this point um those are sort of on hold uh on the advice of council we have one other policy ADF which is the school district wellness program uh which we have a wellness Committee in the district you may or may not know um and they meet four times a year and are um going to take a look at this policy they' did some work last year on it and uh are going to take a take a look at that

097prior to bringing it forward to the to the policy subcommittee for revision so those are that's where we stand with policy section a um again if if there's anything that comes up that you think of prior to bringing it forward to you know for a vote we'd be happy to revisit that um we are this month um going to be working on policy section B internally so that we can move it forward um with a policy subcommittee meeting scheduled for tentatively scheduled for November 18th for Section B section B is school committee and government operations it's extensive um so it's it's some heavy some of the heavier lifting that we will be doing uh in this in this process but we're going to dig in and get it done so well I certainly appreciate appreciate

098everything you tackling this Mr Kylie and just as a reminder this was just a first read we'll bring these back for a final vote and thank you to our policy subcommittee all right moving right along superintendent update thank you Mr Oliver um Mr Kylie did you want to start with the update on town meeting sure why not I'm you're roll at the moment right uh so we just wanted to give you a quick update uh so we had received word from the capital Improvement planning committee um that several of our requests uh were approved to be placed on the town meeting warrant um technology Hardware replacement for $300,000 bathroom Renovations for $150,000 interior and exterior painting for $75,000 Energy Efficiency projects for $120,000 music equipment for $65,000 and generate a replacement at the Quinn school

099for $150,000 so a a good a good number of projects we're obviously thankful um for their support and look forward to completing these projects some of which we'll be able to do you know start right away and um you know after approval and and and get those underway the the two uh projects which were not um approved as this at this time were the high school track reconstruction which to be honest we wouldn't have been able to do in the winter anyway that that part of it um and it's not my my understanding from speaking with um some folks on the capital Improvement planning committee it's not that they don't support that it's that uh they wanted to consider there's some other projects in town that may be able to D be done um at

100the same time playground projects that um we're going to take a look at and see if vendors can complete uh if one vendor can complete multiple projects and and so my understanding is that this will be that'll be considered in the spring the other thing that didn't receive funding is the stadium renovation project at this time but so but again we're thankful for uh for for all the support that we've gotten in terms of getting some of these things done so no agreed thank you for the update questions thank you sir thank you to thank you to CIP is there any design work that's involved with the track that could be done ahead of time or so very very basic design work it really it would be by the design by the the construction company

101can do design and build so that's hopefully it's not a it's not a time consumer no okay no it should be able to be if we do receive funding at the beginning of June depending on how many other tracks get scheduled before us um we hopefully could get it done over the summer all right thank you Mr Kylie so I'll just jump right back in um so again with the approval of the uh District strategic plan part of the way that we want to share with you our progress toward meeting with success is through the way that we structure our reports uh to you uh through the superintendent report and and just other opportunities to report out to you uh so that it isn't just um a once or twice a year opportunity for you

102to hear about the progress that we're making um part of the way that we have structured our superintendent report is with that in mind with not necessarily being as intentional about it um so as we move forward we'll be more intentional about tying what we're reporting out through whether it's the superintendent's report or presentations back to how that connects to the Strategic plan and so with that under teaching and learning again I'm just going to mention it's just a brief update on our mcast performance you can see that dth week did a story and so um we really appreciate that that they're actually taking the time to really look into and have conversations with us about where we are in terms of of our mcast performance so um as you could see the results have

103had both highs and lows and we plan on doing a detailed uh presentation at one of our November or at our November I think there might only be one uh school committee meeting but some key points that I think are worth sharing tonight first we're incredibly proud to announce and you've saw it in the Dartmouth week uh article that the Quinn school has been recognized as a school of recognition I see Dr Thomas is here tonight um and want to congratulate Dr Thomas and I also see M pareses here and we had a celebr a at the Quinn school last week we plan on coming out we were supposed to be there um just you um I I didn't have my clock um calibrated properly um but we will be out to celebrate with you

104uh because again we're incredibly proud of the work that that you did and it's quite a distinction the honor is based on the school's exceptional progress toward meeting its own goals and again when we come out and when we present present to you in November we'll talk more about how what metric that is used to make that determination but the Quinn was one of 27 schools I mean 57 schools across the state to be recognized so congratulations to the faculty and again all involved uh with supporting the Quinn school and at the same time I want to say uh that there's hard work happening across the entire District we could certainly see that in um our mcast scores and mcast are not is not the only data point we're using to assess our students progress

105uh so again lots of great work happening for example as you saw 55% of our students districtwide met or exceeded expectations in math and science and that was an 11% increase over last year and that's a districtwide accomplishment so again the hard work that goes into that by our teachers and our staff members uh cannot be underestimated uh we are just about returned to our and and you hear the state and at the national level them referring to pre 20109 preco achievement so we're right about there in math um and in some cases we've even exceeded our 2019 results and we also recognize that there's much work to do we can see that in literacy we are seeing increasing achievement and at the same time we can see that we have not yet reached not

106we haven't even gotten back to 2019 achievement results and it's a pretty significant Gap and that's work that we're doing and again tying it back to the district strategic plan you can hear again Mrs Pavo up here talking about teaching and learning prek to 12 research based horizontal and vertical alignment research-based high quality resources and as we've said all along it really is the responsibility of the school district to provide to to provide those resources to our Educators and to our students um so we'll again be presenting to you in November a more detailed overview of mcast scores across the district as far as Personnel um under again HR budget Capital Improvements Mr Kylie already spoke to but um we are are excited to share with you that we do have a new yet experienced

107Behavior specialist who's going to be starting with us on October 28th and so we're excited about being able to find somebody and it's just you know that we we waited we are patient and we believe that um I know Mrs denisia would agree that we believe that we found the right person to help support our teachers and our students with their social emotional learning needs that's sell Mrs so I'm trying to weave that in that's good I appreciate that yes so um that's something we're excited about uh where I'm pretty sure we're on boarding that halftime PE Health position and so we're still searching for a person for the facilities department and another real area of challenge for us is the elll teacher that we need to share between the English language acquisition teacher that's

108what that position you're welcome um so uh we are not the only Community across the state that is struggling to find the appropriately licensed Personnel for that particular position but we are working toward and hope to share with you soon what we are doing in lie of because we're we have to take action because our students right now need to be getting the direct Serv services that are that they're entitled to so we are going to have to um probably bring in uh a teacher somebody who's got a certification but not necessarily that elll certification but at the same time support them to best meet the needs of the students who do need to be provided direct service um so other than that we're in we're in pretty good shape um we still all you

109know what I'm going to say monitors substitute teachers esps Food Service workers all those folks are as I said earlier everybody that has one of those roles no matter what role you have in the district you're critical to the operation of our school district and to supporting our students uh so we're going to keep working on that and I again thank K Kate for her uh commitment to that and working and on boarding people on uh really on what is a pretty um constant basis uh so pretty we're in good shape Mr Kylie already talked about Capital Improvements did you have anything else you were you were good um so the other thing that I want to tie back to the district strategic plan is our effort our our efforts to strengthen communication throughout the

110district uh just recently as a matter of fact just last week myself and a group of Dartmouth Educators including Mr gashaw had the opportunity to participate in a parent Square Summit um it was people were really from all over the country but I'm pleased to share that we learned quite a bit and we look forward to employing parent Square's many features the beauty of having a big group from a representation across the district is everybody has a different role a different perspective and ways in which we can utilize parent Square to be even more effective than it already is and so again back to the district strategic plan Mr gashaw is going to talk about the efforts with parent square and talk about where we are with our website thank you as Dr s McGuire

111mentioned um the parent Square uh we're all in on the parent Square software um I had do Mr Chris foi Dr TBO Dr s Maguire and two instructional tech people came learning different methods of how to use it for communication I put the founder of the soft software together with Mr christop Foy so in a room for an hour to discuss how the software can better serve Athletics and coaching and the communication of that they were both excited um I think the the developer uh got some free um Consulting of how to where to go and Mr Chris Foy felt like he was going to make changes to the software so it's wonderful um but so we can increase communication better communication and that parents and and students can have control of that communication so

112you can find find out what you want to know when you want to know it and all that you want to know about the district Again part of strategic planning and communication uh as I mentioned quickly before uh we are uh developing a new website uh we've been going through painstakingly going through def every Link in the old website finding old documents and broken links and such so we have a Target date of the end of the month October 29th we're in the process now of trying to redirect all the um the domain name controllers that are out there in the in the internet to go in the direction of the news site so that'll be something we'll be working with uh the um those companies to do so uh we still are it's an

113ongoing thing it'll always be it will never be done because it's there's always new information always changing information but we're excited about that so as a as a good foundation of things like calendars and menus and and um bus routes and things like that the the what the parents need what the families need to have that base of information and then the ongoing information will come from parent Square the dynamic information so that's exciting both on those two fronts um I just want to add quickly off of what Mr Ki said I am currently reviewing the I policies that's information so down the road we'll be doing that after I've cleared them through the technology committee as well as the policy committee so we're recommitting the technology committee to look at that so I'll be

114asking two members of the school committee who have assigned to the technology committee to find um possible dates uh do you know who the other person is Mr Oliver you're one of them I believe it's just me that oh just so far always love to have two people is it just you I'd love to have two I thought there was two I'm fine with that I'm sure it's written somewhere we can look it up but yeah we we can look at it later I'm in I'm in that be got your second I won't accept three that's a quorum and I won't accept that so we'll just have two so that's good uh I don't want that responsibility of having a quorum but uh we will do that probably in the month of October to take

115a look at some ongoing things right now and the changes are coming but then later of course to look at the policies so we can present to the policy committee which will then probably get you a meeting if it's every other month Mr K will'll probably be more like May by the time we get to I so that's good that was good that's quickly thank you didn't want to take up too much time great job thank thank you Mr gashaw Okay so next I'd like to give you an update as to um how we're doing with our Dartmouth High School internship program and again Mr parate provided me with this information and I want to tie it back to District strategic plan and do that in the way of saying you know this is an

116example of giving students more opportunities through voice and choice and hearing what kinds of excuse me opportunities they'd like to engage in and so uh 90 students have enrolled to start the school year and more are expected next semester and that will bring us to about 100 or more students in this year's program and that increases participation from last year which was around 94 students so the Highlight is that the quality and visibility of the program has obviously resonated with our students but again strategic plan we have been able to partner with organizations local and Regional to expand the network opportunities for our students uh for example um through again Mr pate's leadership we built out a program with South Coast Healthcare to include 10 opportunities for Health Care students uh across St Luke's Charlton

117Memorial Hospital uh he's Mr AA is working with Dave mccre president and chief executive officer of South Coast Health uh we opened the program last year and again students are going through an orientation process and they are going to have an opportunity to work across these Health Care organizations in preparation for what they want to do After High School uh additionally this year uh we were able to welcome several local establishments again through Mr pate's advocacy including Chase Farm vet Veterinary Hospital Kia of Dartmouth Alden Court Nursing and Rehabilitation Center Center the cas and Pig Restaurant I Health Vision Center and mados and Suns construction so more opportunities for students to get out into their community and experience internships that will help to inform them as to what their next steps are uh B Bay

118Coast B uh Bank Grant was we were awarded a $1,250 um appropriation to renovate one of our computer science labs at the high school and use those funds in donor Choice which match the donation so you know Mr parate is really good at finding match donations and so there is $2500 worth of new technology soon to arrive and be installed in the new lab so thank you to Bay Coast Bank for that our dhsv media studio uh students are working with the Bristol County Sheriff's Office to produce criminal justice PCA commercials to support and Spotlight the local public relations of their program and uh actually it's just passed but Captain Raposa presented to the media students uh just to start the production process this is gives them an opportunity to be engaged in a real

119world production for their students and maybe even do some on-site filming and so thank you to Mr parate who I know is going to be sharing more good news coming out of the uh the high school media Studio because they're doing lots of really great work I know I talked to Mrs Amaral recently and I know even her daughter May is now involved in the um the broadcasting of the local high school news show so as far as uh you know what's going on out in the district this past week uh we were engaged in school visits in schools all the time but as I've shared with you on a bimonthly basis we're in there for a very targeted business uh I mean visit and so we've been out in schools and classrooms and for

120our first visit it was really about engaging teachers and conversation about how the school year is going um really how was the start of your very simple how was the start of your school year if you had a positive start are there things that we can do to support you and I am pleased to share that there there is an overwhelming sense of positivity across the school district and we've been in all of our schools that's not to say that we don't have challenges because we do but the positive energy that our Educators that our school leaders have brought to the start of the school year has been truly impressive and I was so happy to walk through classrooms and schools just this past week so was only this so we're couple weeks into the

121school year and just to be able to um be get a sense of climate and culture in our schools and that I would say I would attribute that feeling to every one of the schools in our school district uh as far as the community engagement piece again going back to District strategic plan so I'm being very intentional about saying this tonight I won't always District strategic plan I won't always do that but I just want to make sure that we're making those connection between the work that we're doing and what exists in our strategic plan because everything in a sense that we report out to you you should be able to tie back to our strategic plan and so Community engagement is truly important to us I met with Dena St Pierre she is the

122director of Library Services here in Dartmouth and we're pleased with the individual uh Outreach that schools have with the local library and at the same time we recognize ize that there's room for us to strengthen our relationship and our partnership and just for one uh this spring what we will be working toward with our elementary schools is uh that all of our fifth grade students will visit the library either the is it the sou Southworth Southworth Library and then the newer Library dmouth um so we will have a a field trip opportunity for them to go to the library to receive a library card and while that happens like the Potter has easy access right in some cases the Dillo has easy easier access um and then we have the Quinn which is a little

123bit off the beaten path so we want to make sure that not really off the beaten path I mean you're right in the middle of everything actually the Quinn school but we know that the Quinn school isn't located in close proxim imity to one of our libraries so we are going to make sure that we provide a way for our students to be able to access the library so that's just a start um and we look forward to being able to grow those kind of Partnerships so that they become embedded in what we do um because I so appreciate what the schools do and but and we want those individual efforts and at the same time we want to systemize things so that they happen regardless of the IND individual that is sort of reaching

124out to the library or any other organization and just again stealing from the Monday minute but goes along with what we're talking about in terms of community engagement um our cheerleader coach Rebecca Braga the chair program she was if you remember last year our cheerleaders visited the Dartmouth Council on Aging and they participated in their weekly dance class they did that again this past Friday and so by all accounts the student athletes had a great time and uh the senior citizens that were part of that experience they were excited they expressed their appreciation toward the girls and it it's a great example again of community service Outreach in Partnership and we're looking forward to welcoming them to our uh October 18th football game so if you remember we did that last year so now we

125want to see those kind of uh opport opportunities just become embedded in what we do every year um and so I I know our student representative talked about what was going on with uh Sports you know the football team they came back after dropping their first game I'm so happy to see that they were it sounds like it was a great win um we also have our field hockey team uh that just supported that just uh participated in community outreach supporting Morgan message which is about raising awareness about suicide prevention so we have again the field hockey team engaged in that kind of community work and and we owe that to our coaches who are taking those steps to ensuring that we have that type of community outreach so those are the things we're going

126to keep building off of and as we come and Report out to you what what is our progress we'll be able to say to you as a committee to the public well here is where we are in terms of building Community Partnerships here are some um of the uh just some of the successes we've had so we're excited to continue that kind of work and I think that's all I have there's certainly a lot going on there is a lot of exciting things thank you for that update questions from my colleagues good Mr noon just just one thank you uh Mr chairman uh Dr sa Maguire you talked about the interns and that's great what grades does that Encompass do you are you do you know what grad it's the seniors just the seniors okay

127thank you and Mr noones I want you to know that I'm keeping myself from talking about the band because I learned that last year no you're fine no I'm good it's not all about me no I'm good well the band is all about you no it's not it's the kids it's the students kids Yes the band reporting out on the band at school committee okay thank you very much uh just an update just curious who will be attending the uh Mas masc joint conference uh will we have four of us uh that's all right I've been before the only reason why I ask is um I'm just trying to get the committee's feel on whether or not you would be interested or if anyone's going to be around on Friday afternoon for the delegate assembly

128in which uh the school committee uh here at the table maybe at the next meeting we take up all the uh ma SC resolutions and then we'd vote on them and then we'd elect a delegate to attend um the delegate assembly where you would uh vote uh on behalf of the doas school committee uh around along with all the other school committees in the State um so before I go and you know waste everyone's time uh on uh debating these resolutions at our next meeting um I believe if I were to look it's not until Friday afternoon the delegate assembly um and that's at 3:15 I'm there Friday so I can do it oh you can do you'd be willing you'd be willing to do it good is it long is that like a really

129long thing I cannot answer that uh as I've never been uh as a delegate uh but I would nobody no but I would it's just something that I you know I think I I'd love to see the D school committee um you know have a voice yeah thank you sure thank you for that so um we'll look I might be texting you at 9:30 p.m. what did you get me what did you get me into um you know uh certainly if if you have to leave you have to leave but uh no that sounds good and then this way it gives us the opportunity to hash out some of these uh resolutions that masc has put forward for consideration so if we could maybe add that uh we um when I meet with uh our

130superintendent um to plan out the agenda we'll make sure to add that to the next school committee agenda uh last but not least just to reminder uh that and I'm guilty of this I have uh according to my calendar two days left uh to submit the superintendent's evaluation uh to Kathleen Amaral or and and or Mr noons or you just send them to you can just send them to send them to Kath and I sit we'll send them uh to Kathleen and the intention is to present uh the full committee's evaluation at the October 21st School committee meeting that's right soy we have a correct me if I'm wrong we we have a zoom meeting scheduled Dr saber Maguire on the 18th at noon time that Friday to to go over it with Youk yeah

131no fine I'm good all right Y and that is all I have um turn it over to my colleagues go ahead I I just wanted to put a plug uh quickly um Miss Mrs Den had mentioned this last meeting but October 15th which is before we next meet um which is a week from tomorrow at the James Quinn School the uh Dartmouth special education parent advisory Council will be meeting and um it's twofold it is uh the we're required every year to present on parents gardenian rights so we'll be doing that and we always make room for Q&A but also to encourage and welcome uh other Guardians and caregivers to take the lead on this important um uh activity that is uh stamped in Massachusetts regulations were required to have a special parent advisory Council

132um I'm here but I'm uh I'm recognizing right there's some we need some younger um no experience necessary the requirement is to have a student uh who uh receives special education services um and the um sort of the p i an encouraged perspective that it's not about your child it's about all children who are receiving services so it allows you sort of that overarching perspective to think about not what's only not what's good about good for my child there certainly value and getting to connect with the school department regularly and learn more about the laws but really to think about how can I volunteer to make an impact um for all students in our town who are receiving special education services um and if anyone has any questions they certainly can reach out to me

133but I encourage everyone to stop by Quinn on October 15th at 6:00 to learn your rights and sign in the dotted line and take over this one F role that I've been filling since 2012 I think so um the more the merrier that's all I have thank you Mrs Amal Mr NES yeah thank you Mr chairman uh yeah the band uh last Saturday we were at dery high BMC dery High School uh for the US band competition uh students scored a 90.5 in division 4 uh which was the number one the high score for the evening uh gave them first place in that uh division uh they walked away with all all the captions uh except for color guide so they had a a great night uh we're in King Phillip uh this uh Saturday

134night up in rentham and then uh the following week which is October 19th is our home show um starting at 6 PM in the evening uh we've got 13 bands lined up to perform uh that would put dmouth on somewhere probably about 9:15 you know and again they haven't come out with the times yet so uh what I will do is get a an email out this week to uh Dr Sab Maguire you Mr Oliver and to Mr Shay at the high school looking to see if anyone's available to uh a representative to uh help with the uh trophy presentations and awards at the end of the night so I will do that so uh the gates will open at 5:30 and we'll be good to go is it 19th 19th I'm sure I can

135but I'll let you know yeah yeah that the more the marer and that's October October 19th all right thank you very much anyone else nothing for me no all right let's get back over to the agenda with that uh the next regularly scheduled meeting of the adou school committee is scheduled for Monday October 21st 2024 right here in the dmouth high school media center uh do we do we have an executive session tonight do not I didn't think so okay perfect so please disregard that on the agenda that was put there in the event we needed it um and I do remember having the conversation just wanted to confirm uh there will be no executive uh session this evening so with that chair will'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second motion by Mr

136noon second by Mrs Amaral on the motion any further discussion chair hearing none all in favor I I opposed motion carries unanimously meeting is adjourned thank you everyone good night oh you f that was good good stuff good stuff great thank you [Music] Chris e