001e you know e test e i' like to call a meeting to Otter please uh we'll start with the pledge of the flag the moment of science would you stay standing please um I'd like to recognize Mrs foron who was an English teacher here back in the 70s and 80s she passed away on April 4th her husband was also a fizzed teacher um our condolences to her family and the Reggie family thank you can we do the roll call please sh Miss FIS here miss dler uh pres Mr Jones here Mr M present Mr Mercedes pres Mr tbox here Mr Hayden here um at this time I'd like to recognize uh Mr Mahir I believe he has a few words to say before we start the meeting Mr Mah yeah I just wanted to uh
002congratulate the National Honor Society students and to the uh folks that were facilitating the event it went very well and uh I just wanted to congratulate them and the uh superintendent and the assistant superintendent for um their efforts on this thank you thank you it was a a great presentation they did up to this um I'd like to have a recommendation to approve the minutes from last uh last meeting March 88 March 12th and April 1st as presented so moved second any discussion please mik I'm requesting to get those approv separately please you want because we know everybody was here on all those meetings thank you noted can we accept the meetings of March 8th please motion so move any discussion on that March 12th meetting of March 12th please motion motion to approve second
003discussion meeting of April 1st motion please motion to approve thank you and before we go any further um in your packet there was we forgot to roll call please I'm sorry need to roll call for is thank you for March 8th Mr Maha yes Mr Mercedes yes Mr tbox yes Mr Baris yes m dler i Mr Jones yes Mr haem yes for March 12th Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia yes Mr Mercedes yes Mr tbox yes Miss Baris yes Miss dler yes Mr haam yes April 1st Miss tler yes Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia yes Mr Mercedes yes Mr toox yes Miss Barris yes Mr haum yes all right just to uh continue um in your packets that were sent to your homes there were three um post for positions that were loose inside the binder
004I think everybody got one but it was neglected to put on to the uh agenda I'd like the vote to have it put onto the agenda please can I have a motion make a motion put on the agenda second any uh discussion Mr tarox yes M Baris yes M dler yes Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia yes Mr Mercedes yes Mr hayam yes Mr Deo Finance report please cash Cas balance report I'm sorry cash balance report as of February 29th 2024 beginning balance was 594 28718 we had deposits for February of 9,899 6729 that's a pretty big number um we had a delay in the Chapter 70 funds uh that came in um in early February they were supposed to be received in January uary and then we also received Chapter 70 at the end of
005February on February 29th so we had two chapter 70s for the month plus assessments so that's why you see that uh large number for deposits less the three payrolls in February as shown um uh the two warrants leaves us with the book balance on February 29th 20244 million 77879 in our mmdt account we had 6,174 37757 uh interest was 26,26995 back once we receive Chapter 70 leaves us with the balance of 6,200 64257 and a total operating cash balance of 10,832 42136 thank you we need to uh vote on accepting that cash balance report can I have a motion please motion to accept second discussion see none V please Mr Mercedes yes Mr tbox yes Miss Ferris yes Miss tler yes Mr Jones yes Mr Mia yes Mr Hayden yes Consolidated cash Reconciliation Report is
006a handout formal revolving fund report also a handout budget report going out of audit here next I have this donations donations from Mr Christopher Charles donated a two uh 2019 Honda Odyssey valued at 2175 Mr Dan Holland second chance cause conquered Mass donated a 2012 Mazda valued at 3250 uh 2007 Toyota yarus valued to 2240 and a 2007 Honda Civic valued at 2975 thank you for your generous donation letter is in there to him do that before the communications um budget transfers uh M Matel update the district committee on the transfers y so it's just a vote to accept the budget transfers as presented um just to let you know I applied the overage that we had from last year's um Ed to net School spending um so I applied that to all the balances
007that were negative and then I did further transfers just to clean up the rest of the budget because we are in the last quarter now so um we're really keeping track of what's going to this point any questions can I have uh a motion to accept please I put the motion second any any uh discussion we have a vote on that Mr Mahia yes Mr Mercedes yes Mr toox yes M Barris yes Mr SLI yes Mr Jones yes Mr Hayden yes uh we have a communication report um on one of our Brads from who's in UMass uh there is a piece on it from a magazine that's in there I'd just like to uh take a moment take the pleasure to thank the teacher that she had thanked here uh one of Jee Marie's Match
008Day guests was her High School history teacher at Great allowance tech school Victor Martinez Jean Marie shares that it was was if it wasn't for Mr Martinez she wouldn't have thought she can go to college mus less medical school with Miss Martinez encouragement she became a certified nursing assistant and graduate from the colonal Honors College at UMass Amherst with degrees in microbiology and public health it was there that she discovered the bcmd program uh shout out to Mr Martinez indeed um if he was here I'm sure he would say uh Jee Marie owes it all to her hard work and dedication thank you Mr Martinez I look participation I don't see any unless Miss Rogers has something to say uh student Opportunity Act Joshua wette um he started this at the last meeting um I
009think he's got a little bit more to say to it please Joshua so last meeting Josh gave us just a overview because of it was just a special meeting so in order to everybody to understand what the student Opportunity Act uh which is basically a grant from Department of Ed that is included in our Chapter 70 funds he's going to kind of outline the specifics of it a little bit more tonight thank you so much for having me again tonight um so I'm going to doing an in-depth but brief presentation on the student Opportunity Act plan that you all voted to approve last week um before I start I do want to let you know that um the Department of Education has approved the plan without requirements for revisions So the plan is approved it's
010been uploaded to desie um and we're good to go moving forward with the plan so just as a reminder uh the student Opportunity Act plan is for fiscal year 25 26 and 27 the goal of the student Opportunity Act from the Department of Education is to ensure that every student in the Commonwealth regardless of their zip code has access to highquality public education inclusive of your most marginalized student this requires districts to focus on addressing disparities and learning experiences and outcomes for student groups that are the most least well served this requires districts like ours to implement evidence-based practices from um a list of approved Desi supports that we can choose from and it requires districts to allocate financial resources and funding across all funding sources to address disparities and achievement for our historically underserved
011or marginalized students we reached two databased conclusions as part of the student Opportunity Act data analysis focal areas were selected to best address the disparities in student outcomes in relation to two key areas out of school suspension rate for students with disabilities and multilingual Learners and math and Ela mcast achievement for students with disabilities and multilingual Learners we have two goals over fiscal year 25 26 and 27 the first is to decrease the percentage of students with disabilities and multilingual Learners receiving out of school suspension with sustainable practices driven by the mtss framework um you'll actually hear a little bit about that um tonight once Miss Gillis speaks on behalf of the safe office and shares what we've already started doing to help decrease that number our second goal is to increase the percentage of
012students with disabilities and multilingual Learners meeting or exceeding on the math and Ela mcast driven by high quality instructional materials um now you'll notice that we site mcast the the the department of Elementary and secondary education requires us to use desim metrics when we're looking at our data over the last five years to identify gaps in learning so we're not as a district just committing to decreasing to increasing the percentage of students with disabilities and multilingual Learners meeting or exceeding on math and Elam cast but we're also committed to them a attaining Proficiency in those subject areas before they graduate so I'm going to do a brief overview of the um data for out of school suspension as well as the um mcast assessment over the last three years so that you can understand where
013we reach how we reach these conclusions so for students with disabilities our out of school suspension data is as follows so in 2022 we had 8.1% of our students with disabilities receiving outof School suspensions that's 10 or more consecutive days in 2023 we had 8.1% of students with disabilities so that number remains stagnant the aggregate for our district was 5.4% in 2022 in 4 and a half% in 2023 while the percentage of all students being suspended for 10 or more days decreased the percentage of students with disabilities being suspended for 10 or more days remained stagnant there was no change for our multilingual Learners another um group of students that are at least well served across the state and across the country our out of school suspension rate for multilingual Learners in 22 2022 was
0140% in 2023 it was 7% a similar Trend um can be seen here for our multilingual Learners the percentage of all students receiving out of school suspensions went from 5.4% in 2022 to 45% in 2023 while the percentage of our all of our students decreased the percentage of multilingual Learners receiving out of school suspensions increased so we're going to be looking at addressing these disparities um in the rate of suspension for students with disabilities and multilingual Learners specifically through um our mtss process as well as the expansion of different services that we offer our students so we're going to be looking at developing a more focused and holistic approach to implementing multi-tiered systems of support to ensure that all students progress academically as well as socially emotionally and behaviorally the sub areas that we're going
015to Target under this priority are to further develop the district mtss team inclusive of all relevant stakeholders expanding access to our school adjustment counselors for students in crisis expanding the adoption of restorative practices across the district and furthering the tiered supports for Behavior inclusive of of the expansion of restorative practices at this time I'm going to review the mcast data that supports our second priority as part of the student Opportunity Act plan and then I will open it up for any questions that you may have this visual right here is all students meeting or exceeding Ela mcast from 2019 to 2023 as I go through the mcast slides you're going to note that the year 2020 has not applicable in it that was the co year where mcast did not happen so we went in
0162019 37% of all of our students were meeting or exceeding on the Elam cast in 20120 there was no score in 2021 it went to 52% in 2022 it went to 53% and in 2023 it went back down to 51% you'll notice that we actually increased the percentage of our students meeting or exceeding on Elam cast in relation to the aggregate now we're going to look at students with disabilities who are meeting or exceeding on Elam cast I've included the aggregate number below as well as the students with disabilities above in this presentation so that you can quickly compare it in 2019 10% of our students with disabilities met or exceeded the Elam cast um I do want to clarify one thing meeting or exceeding is not the only way that you pass mcast our
017students can pass by partially meeting but at greater Lawrence Tech and at other schools across the state our goal is not for our students to partially meet we want our students to meet and exceed at the same rate as their peers especially our least serve students so in 2019 the percentage of students with disabilities meeting or exceeding on the ELA M cast was 10% in 2020 it was not measured in 2021 it was 25% in 2022 it was 15% and in 2023 it was 177% if you quickly glance between our students with disabilities in all of our students you can see the stark contrast between achievement between those students who are least well served in the aggregate of our student population our multilingual Learners in a similar scenario meeting or exceeding on the Elam cast
018in 2019 2% of our multilingual Learners met or exceeded the Elam cast which is in extreme contrast from all students meeting or exceeding at a rate of 37% in 2020 that year was not measured in 2021 0% of multilingual Learners met or exceeded on the Elam cast while the aggregate Rose to 52% from 37 2 years prior in 2022 10% of our multi ual Learners met or exceeded an increase however still in stark contrast between all students who met or exceeded at a rate of 53% in 2023 our multilingual Learners meeting or exceeding on the Elam cast dropped to 3% again another really deep contrast between all of our students meeting or exceeding at a rate of 51% at this time I'm going to go through the math mcast data um which was another data
019point that we utilized to triangulate what our next steps were in terms of addressing the disparities between special populations of students and all students for math mcast all students meeting or exceeding math mcast in 2019 it was 34% in 2021 it went down to 29% it remained stagnant at 29% in 2022 and it's slightly decreased in you'll notice that the percentage of students meeting or exceeding on the math mcast is much lower than on the ELA mcast that is because um a couple of years ago the state increased the bar for meeting or exceeding on the math mcast while leaving the ELA mcast bar the same this year for our students who took mcast in 10th Grade just about two weeks ago they raised that bar to be equivalent to the math bar um so
020looking at this data we know we need to make a change to address these dispar ities as if they raise the bar on Elam cast it's likely to affect our accountability moving forward for all students the average was 28% across the five years in math mcast meeting or exceeding um that is slightly below the state average um the state average does have students um meeting or exceeding on math mcast at a rate that is lower than the ELA mcast um for many reasons but one of which is that they had changed the uh passing score for students with disabilities meeting or exceeding on the math mcast we had 9% in 2019 we remain stagnant in 2021 we slightly increased to 11% in 2022 and in 2023 we decreased to 5% you can quickly compare how
021students with disabilities did on the math mcast when compared to the aggregate um we're roughly um 20 percentage points lower across the board for multilingual Learners meeting are exceeding on the math mcast in 2019 our multilingual Learners met or exceeded on the math mcast at a rate of 6% in 2021 it decreased to 0% in 2022 it increased to 3% and in 2023 it decreased to 0% so we kind of went up and down and up and back down again um which is again a trend that's worth addressing through the student Opportunity Act plan because it is not the same Trend amongst all of our students yes our aggregate number stayed steady and then decreased slightly but it did not go from 6% to 0% so we're going to be addressing the disparities in achievement
022in math and Ela um through the the further expansion and adoption to high quality instructional materials by all students as part of tier one instruction in math and English including targeted tiered supports across Ela and math to increase student achievement we're going to be expanding access to high quality instructional materials in math and Ela to ensure grade level engaging affirming and meaningful instruction for all students we're expanding access to high quality instructional materials and English language development to again ensure grade level engaging affirming and meaningful instruction for all students and we're looking to expand the tiers of intervention in ela and math as well inclusive of in school and out of school opportunities for students to re to receive targeted support based on individual student data over fiscal year 2025 2026 and 2027 we're allocating
023over $2 million in Financial Resources across all funding categories to work toward eliminating disparities in out of school suspension rates and math and Ela achievement um that concludes my presentation but I'd like to provide you with an opportunity to ask questions if you have any um thank you here uh so you said this plan was approved today by the department of event okay uh what are we doing if you could go back to the so we went from0 to 3 to Z is is there a reason why I mean was there any changes within 20121 to 2023 that could have impacted that uh Co okay um so in 2021 was the year right after Co that was zero in in 2023 our 10th graders would have been our 10th graders who missed eighth grade so
024they missed a substantial amount of foundational math and Ela skills in eth grade and they were home and you're saying the same from 2022 to 2023 so 2022 to 2023 these are all students that have gaps in their education due to covid so you're looking at 10 plus years to see that decrease okay thank you you're welcome so what program did we have in in effect prior to the this um we've we've we've massaged U mcast we've we've done um several programs where we have targeted the multilingual learner and the disability the disability population we've we've had several programs in place have we looked at the accountability of those programs to see see what worked what didn't work and how when you say um when you say the um high quality instructional materials what are
025you talking about that I'm sorry because that I would see is like different so desie um has released guidance on high quality instructional materials um they did that several years ago but since then they've recently um put the use adoption and use of high quality instructional materials in District guidance as well as different rubrics for district stakeholders so teachers and administrators um the high quality instructional materials desie is now committing funding for um because they're asking all districts to adopt and um use highquality instructional materials widespread so high quality instructional materials are materials that are vetted by the Department of Education by teachers and it ensures that you're aligned to grade level standard and competency both vertically and horizontally um so high quality instructional materials for greater Lawrence technical school um this is the first
026year that we have adopted high quality instructional materials in map um we recently applied for and also received a grant from the Department of Education for $144,000 to further our adoption of M um high quality instructional materials across core subject areas prior to this um two years ago we made a change in our schedule so we're in year two of our schedule right now to include tiered supports to ensure that all students can access the general education curriculum regardless of whether or not they're a multilingual learner or a student with disability so the 10th graders that would have taken mcast in 2023 would not have had they would not have had Wind Block um they would not have had some of the targeted interventions and supports that we've started to provide during the school day
027um so with that said we are in year two of the changes that we've started to make in terms of the schedule to allow for our students um to receive targeted support so it does make sense that this data has not increased yet um desie is also recommending and really requiring districts to adopt the high quality instructional materials because it removes the question of whether or not the materials that are being put in front of students are aligned to grade level are bias free it allows students to see themselves within the curriculum and it also gives students the opportunity to engage with materials with the embedded supports um so it takes the guess work out of developing and designing curriculum while we know that we have many many teachers who are fantastic curriculum developers and
028they could do it in their sleep the Department of Education says but that's not high quality instructional materials not meaning that what our teachers don't produce is high quality but as defined by desie it's almost impossible for one human being to vertically and horizontally align a curriculum and this is done throughout the school day yes so we're talking about our core content materials so the Core Curriculum that you would use in math and Ela we're talking about the core materials that you would use in English language development and you would build on those materials for your tier 2 interventions and supports using those core materials to help students progress both academically behaviorally and social emotionally so this happens during the day um we do have after school mcast tutoring still um and next year uh
029I'm going to be looking at acceleration acmy for targeted groups of students to help increase their achievement yes yeah I want to um would you when at what point of the school year does a student do we realize those students that were having an issue whether in ESL or or you know uh get evaluated so they' be able to work on because again from my own experience with my child you know unfortunately wasn't wasn't noticed wasn't approached on a on aali manner by the time that they wanted to address it was almost coming to the end of school year where obviously there was a problem from the from day one what are we doing to evaluate the student and what point of the year are we able to evaluate the students is it in the
030first semester so that by the second semester the student is already getting the help they need to by the time by the end of the year the student will be expected to be where most most of the student will be um a level would me so last year um was our first year implementing our star Universal screener so all freshman students before they even walk in the building receive a universal screener in math and Ela um the universal screener puts together together amazing data actually um that can provide teachers with instructional reports to help them group students to best serve them on a tiered basis um to allow for tiered instructional practices within the classroom um so that's one thing that we do and that assessment happens before students walk in the door so they
031take it at accepted students day then they take the assessment again in September they take the assessment in January and then they take it again in April so we have three progress monitoring um dates that we use to measure students progress and how they're achieving related to math and Ela that assessment also directly aligns to the math and Elam mcast um and the data that we triangulated within um that Universal screener actually aligned really really well with this data even though it's not data that we'd like to see um it does align so we provide our students with that Universal screener and then teachers are able to respond to that individual data in real time in their classes another thing that we've embedded that we started last year is our intervention block um you may
032remember it I've been here before to talk about it but our intervention block allows for students to receive tier 2 and tier three interventions during the school day removing that barrier for possibly Transportation or things like that so our students who are multilingual Learners that's when they go with their multilingual um learner teacher to work on the four domains of speak um of language reading writing speaking and listening um they are not with that teacher for all four win days so they have the opportunity to put themselves in their math wi block likewise their math instructor can lock them into their math wi block for targeted intervention and support during the school day so if I'm a student and I take a math exam on a Tuesday and I know that I didn't do well
033and I say oh I need to go see Mr so and so for support I can book myself in that teacher's class right after I take the test and I can go see them the next day in the same regard the teacher can also do that so if a teacher is looking at their assessment data and saying oh my students have gaps related to this grade level standard they can pull all 18 students that have that Gap and provide ring and further support um same thing for any subject area so we they can do that in ela they can do that in Math Science History ELD um their special educator special Educators as well provide targeted instruction um specially designed instruction directly line to students goals in their IEP um myself and the director of
034special education last year had designed a support for those students to have as well called an individualized instructional plan where their um their special education liaison would actually work with them to develop a plan based on their goals to ensure that their meeting are exceeding their benchmarks that they're supposed to be um so those are a couple of different ways that we've worked to reduce this disparity um but famous saying um from an educational leader that we work with very closely here is that you can't intervention your way out of a tier one problem um so we could not build in enough interventions to support this problem which is why Des is saying you need high quality instructional materials you have to use vetted and fully aligned materials and that can feel really difficult for
035teachers right because and I want to recognize and acknowledge that because for anyone that's been teaching for 20 plus years they may not have ever used high quality instructional materials because this is new research this is new guidance from the state um it doesn't mean that what they were creating was bad it just means that when we have barriers the barriers in our design adopting high quality instructional materials removes the barrier of the design because the design is done for you so then I can focus on my pedagogy and how I deliver my instruction to all of the students in my room excellent and my last question um I know that you had mentioned that was the uh the plan was already approved when does the in-house suspension become active um next year school so
036um Miss Gillis is here from the safe office so I'm not I can't answer that question so I will bring it to miss Gillis um like we had talked about last time we do a number of different things with our students including the pass program and things like that so I will defer that to miss Gillis when she comes up to present her data as ex thank you thank you maybe this is this is um maybe this is out of your realm but I don't think so because you're doing a fabulous job here so maybe I can get an answer how does this this is an an intensive approach to deal with the disparities with these two populations you have this intensity versus regular grp rating of curriculum of students in in everyday classes are
037these students I know that the the grading scale is 40 to 100 is is that with this group as well as well as mainstream students So currently all students um are graded on a 40 to 100 point scale as um dictated by the current grading policy um with that said the grading policy does not have an impact on whether we know that students can meet or exceed grade level standard um we're putting numbers to things that are actually about whether they can attain competency so when we're looking at high quality instructional materials in students accessing grade level curriculum we're looking at are they not meeting are they partially meeting are they meeting or are they exceeding the same way that the mcast assessments measure progress as well so we're looking at it through the language
038of the standard so I might have 20 different standards that I teach in one year in my 10th grade English class um and I'm looking at all of the students in my room and saying are they not meeting are they partially meeting are they meeting are they exceeding and then I'm revisiting my instruction with database decision- making to ensure that I am giving the students the targeted support that they need within my classroom okay but if you're starting off at a at at 40% then you only need 20% to pass is there a motivational uh indicator there or or is it a student just going to say I'm just going to you know get the basics and leave it at that I mean that to be honest I mean the mcast scores generally aren't aren't
039great and I know that they have been improving years ago they were improving and I know Co hit but I I my feeling is I don't I I don't think that Co should be a crutch anymore and I think that I don't I don't want to see us do a disservice to the students when they leave here um and I don't want to see an entitled Society so so that everybody helps helps helps and the student can't decipher and use their own resources to gain access to a a problem so I think I understand what you're saying now so whether a students going to be graded on a 40 to 100 point scale or not the teacher and the student are working together to figure out is the student not meeting that standard are they
040meeting it or are they exceeding it so regardless of the number let's remove the number from the conversation for a second okay y the point of our kids coming to this building every day is for us to know whether or not they can meet or exceed the standard that the state has set to say okay you can go out into the world and you are able to compute at grade level you are able to read write speak listen you are able to read the 1400 Lexile text that's presented to you in automotive technology because you've been provided with different supports so when we're talking about the grade scale in high quality instructional materials the grade scale is not is not really a factor because the curriculum itself Prov provides instructors with assessments that tell them
041are they not meeting are they partially meeting that standard are they meeting or are they exceeding because really if I'm a student and I get a 47 and I get my essay handed back to me and it has a 47 on it but I don't have any feedback on it that's aligned to the grade level standard that that essay is aligned to let's say it's W3 which is a writing standard in ela if I'm not getting the feedback related to that standard I'm just getting a number then I don't know what I need to do to improve so the goal of this is not whether or not they get the 40 or the 50 or the 60 it's can they meet the demands of a grade level standard and by doing so are they able
042to excel in their career or are they able to excel um in further education as they move on after our school um so really we're we want to make sure that we're looking at the standard less than the number oh I totally understand that I mean I I totally and I'm in agreement with that I mean you know number is a number I and I'm not sure I mean I I really do think that teachers in this building though I'm kind of removed but teachers in this building really do care and really do take that go that extra mile with their students so I mean I don't think that they're looking at as a number but more what are they learning so in that respect I I totally agree so the other the other piece
043that high quality instructional material seeks to address is grade level engaging affirming and meaningful instruction when I'm if I I designed my own curriculum as a teacher so I know that if you're designing your own curriculum it's not bias free it may be engaging to me as the instructor but isn't engaging to the kids that are in front of me um we've done a lot of work on Universal Design for Learning here in the last few years ensuring that we're bringing our kids into that conversation so that their choice and their voices is heard and embedded into curriculum practices however engaging affirming meaningful instruction is exhausting right it's a lot of work to fully align to grade level and be bias free and being engaging and be affirming and have meaningful instructional practices so by
044adop op ing the high quality instructional materials we not only get at that piece where our students can now see themselves more frequently within the curriculum and they have the embedded supports that they need to be successful and they are learning at grade level but it also allows me as the instructor to focus on my practices when I work one-on-one with a student or in a small group with a student um so I would say yes we are addressing that as well through this um but our main goal more than anything is that our students leave this building meeting or exceeding on every standard that they're assessed on did you I got it nice job um um great presentation thank you um actually you answered many of my questions while you were doing your presentation
045I do have a um I would like you to please um just um give me Clarity on this student with disability out of out of school suspension yes versus um the multi- learner out of school suspension because the this the it shows that 2022 for students with disability this is 8.1 but then for U multi learner is zero mhm so what's the I just wanted to understand the different uh on numbers sure so when we're looking at the data for students with disabilities we're looking at one group of students so as a student I can be a student with a disability or I can be a multilingual learner or I can be dually identified and be both so right now the data that we're looking at is two different groups so students with disabilities and
046multilingual Learners so our students with disabilities out of school suspension rate was different for multilingual Learners because they're two different groups of students and that 8.1% is 88.1% of our special education population not of our aggregate so when we look at the 8.1% the 8.1% is out of the 200 or so students with disabilities that we have that's why such a contrast this percent coming from MH so um the zero is coming from what so 0% of multilingual Learners were suspended in 2022 how many students do we have that are M uh right now about about 160 we had less than that in 2022 and that data comes directly from desie the Department of Education so this is right this is sourced right from the Department of Elementary and secondary education okay um okay so
047I do have a followup question on Julia's uh question to you can you go back to that okay this one no one more is the uh the 3% 0% 3% oh the mcast data yes because you your answer was that on 2019 I mean the 2021 0% was because the covid-19 but then we have a 0% in 2023 so what was that about are we looking at math um I'll tell you in a minute for in a second right here 0% and then 3% one more that one this one yeah that one so in 2021 you said it was because of Co so in 2020 they did not test because of I understand but when he asked you the question about 2021 Z 20 2022 3% and then 2023 Z M you said that the
048zero on 2021 was because of Co so my question is why we why do we have zero on 2023 because there's no Co there right no I understand that um So my answer about covid was not about it being a year that covid was existing and being running rampant I'm talking about the Gap in education that students that were testing in those years had so in 2021 those students missed their eighth grade math mcast year that's a critical year for them to uh receive instruction related to those skills and then they move into their freshman year of high school and they have a year-long gap in 2023 the group of um that group of students Miss sixth grade another foundational year in mathematics so regardless they're Miss they have a gap in their education they
049may have been attending school remotely but I don't know how many of you have kids and we're able to watch them all day right but our students they come from homes where their parents are working to two or three jobs they may not have had supervision while they were home learning um so that is that is where I would make the correlation because they're missing the foundational skills however those years we have also had not in introduced the high quality instructional materials that are supposed to help bridge those gaps so this is that first year okay thank you um thank you yes yeah just following up on that so we're talking about Bridging the Gap that we have from Co so what are we doing for students that are coming in from 8th grade to
050uh to now freshman uh what have we done in the past so that we could bridge that Gap because we keep talking about Co and the impact of Co but what are we doing to bridge that Gap from students that are coming from middle school to their first year of high school so we've done a few things so one of the things I already spoke about was the way block that we've introduced to provide intervention and further targeted support the other thing we've done is this year we adopted highquality instructional materials this is year one um of that adoption so our n9th grade and 10th grade math instructors are using highquality instructional materials and have been all year another thing that we have done is we've added an additional math class um for students to
051take to help bridge that Gap so identified students have been placed in that additional math class to receive um instruction related to the basic foundational skills that they may have be they they may be missing thank you you're welcome I think one I think it's Josh was talking about covid and when you think about the students we're getting today are students that are performing much lower coming to our school much lower than in the past because of covid so we're receiving students from Lawrence and our community sending to us students are way below grade level in their performance so that's a bigger challenge for us to get them to grade level and then start teaching and working with a curriculum that's at grade level so that in itself is a major challenge so um one
052of the things we've done we've done several things but we also have particularly in the last 3 or 4 weeks starting to look more closely at some of the challeng es we've had and uh what are some of the things we can do to overcome some of those there's several things we're looking at and changes we're making for the upcoming school year that I think will have a big impact one of the things that our kids are really um struggling with is reading and literacy they are coming to us way below reading and literacy and when you think about reading and literacy across all content area everything from Ela history math Lo literacy scores tend to impact math as well because a lot of your math content requires the ability to read and think and
053communicate so um those are challenges that are coming to us the other so some of the things just in talking a little bit about some of the things we're doing n number one and important critical thing we've done last year and this year is uh We've hired someone to oversee data we have a director of data now who's also you utilizing all kinds of data that support instruction day-to-day instruction for the teachers but also data and looking at uh uh data from uh the assessment such as the star data that we get at the beginning of the school year all our students took the star data to see where they uh where their gaps are in math Ela and uh to take a look and see where are some of the challenges we have uh
054in the coursework that we have to offer so uh um some of the big things that are going to change next year we are the ninth and 10th grade students are going to have twice as much math as they had this year this year they had math just on the academic week one period a day next year they're going to have math on the academic week and on the shop week so they will get twice as much math next year as they had this year and the same thing with Ela so we'll be doubling them up both in the ninth grade and in the 10th grade they were both grade level students we'll be getting a lot more math the other thing that we've uh looked at we've looked at our uh a high percentage
055of our classes our inclusion classes where we have co- teing going on so we've done a deep assessment and we've hired a a consultant to work with us and improving the quality of co- teing so we have a major initiative where we will be looking at how do we uh improve the work of co- teers both working together uh and in planning and delivering instruction and understanding the G the needs of each of the students whether uh particularly in our uh El students and our special Edge students we also have gotten a lot more El students over the last few our po El population has grown substantially over the last three years so that's more work for us to identify and figure out where those gaps are and those problems are so that's uh a
056lot more for us to do we're also changing our uh schedule we're improving our schedule so that students can have better opportunities to ensure that they get the um support programs that they need uh both for Math and Science and also literacy we're hiring another thing we're doing we're hiring a reading specialist uh that will be working with students who are struggling uh with readings right from the 9th through 10th grade in particular and also doing a literacy program ac across all content areas to improve literacy across our content area so that's another decision we've made um some of the other thing if you look at um uh we we doing more time on learning next year we're doing less professional development days we're doing this year we had 14 we're going back to seven
057so that there's more time on learning for students uh and there's less half days than we've had in the last three years I think that's going to make a difference uh we're ensuring that uh all students have uh in the shop areas have related Theory both on the academic and the shop week so they get twice as much related Theory which in related Theory content in itself has more math more Ela more reading in it so that will help support those weaknesses as well um and we're looking at how do we uh do uh more inclusion of academics into the shop so it can better support their academic skills and knowledge we're identifying uh as we uh redo a lot of our shop curriculum one of the uh areas in which we're improve our curriculum
058is when uh teachers develop a shop project the project has to also assess the academic skills that are embedded in that shop pro project so it's not if there's math and there's reading and writing within the development of a project we no longer just do the project we also assess the skills of math in order to get that project done so that reinforces the math skills and a lot of this we are just starting this year and next year to embed a lot of these new Chang changes in in uh in order to try to improve uh uh the success of our students within in our program so uh and then of course the uh the grading policy we started the new grading policy this year we already started to uh assess you know is
059that working what are some of the challenges that we've had this year we are going to be making we're revisiting it and there will be some changes within the new grading policy that we will bring to you because you approv the policy so some of those changes will be coming to you that we believe will help improve the the motivation of students so I think the new policy from what we're learning I think in some of what we're hearing from teachers that some students have lost motivation and I think part of that du to the new uh grading policy which we've learned from so what do we do to change that and how do we motivate our kids at a higher level so we're looking at that as well um that's another thing that we're
060doing so we're you know we're we're making substantial changes next year we we spent uh I spent almost two hours today looking at next year's schedule with Isabelle uh Brenda our assistant superintendent our data person uh and our uh Vice principles and um we are uh looking at a schedule next year uh that we believe uh will uh uh improve the amount of work that were uh opportunities for kids to be more SU successful in the the scheduling itself has a large impact on on the amount of time the students spend uh in the classroom as well as into the shop I think this schedule that I think will be going to the full has gone to the full administrative team ones where we've made some tweaks today it's going back to the uh administrative
061team to reassess and look at it a second time to ensure that all administrators have some feedback on the schedule because I value what the vice principls have to say all people that all staff members who have a vested uh uh investment in this in the knowledge of what kids are able to do within the classroom day in and day out uh what they have to say about the schedule and how it impacts learning in the classroom is critically important to me because I want to hear from our administrative team to help lead lead uh moving forward I want to make sure that we utilize the mind of all our administrative team and I think that's going to and even that I think you're going to see a a uh improved um opportunities for all
062all staff members to participate in the thinking and the uh thought processes that go into learning moving forward so these are a lot of the things where we're making changes so we're not you know just ignoring the fact that we're seeing data that we're not happy with but the other important thing to remember too is we're looking at some things we've never looked at before the student Opportunity Act that Josh worked on Josh did this uh student Opportunity Act plan he did a lot of research and work on this substantial amount of work I think he did an outstanding job very impressive in a short amount of time because we had a short window in which to uh get this in not only did we get it in but we had no findings on it
063which is unusual so the quality of the work that Josh did that went into the Department of Education was very exceptional and will be very useful as we move forward so I think you'll see a lot of improvement and as things get better we will continue to bring you up to speed so when we saw this uh report we weren't thrilled or happy with it but I told Jos it's important for the school committee to understand where we are today so that they can see the progress as we move forward so I think that was important I want you to we want to be very transparent of and as bad as you might think it looks it really isn't as bad as you might think because there's so many changes that haveen happened and we're
064not that far off from where we've had good performance we've slipped a little bit but I think we can get back to where we were because I don't think just so many different changes have happened over the last three years so I look forward to many successes moving forward um because we do have a great staff that's really working hard else yeah Josh I won't have too many questions but you worked hard tonight um things I'm just not familiar with so a Wind Block is that like a study period during the day where they can go and get caught up on extra so it does it serves a few different purposes so yes some for some students they might be in a room getting caught up on their work um they might be doing homework
065so that they don't have to bring it home at 10:00 at night when they get out of their job um for other students there are targeted interventions and supports that they receive so some students have a say in what they do with all four days in their Wim block other students do not some of our students receive their grid c special education services as part of it other students receive their targeted multilingual um sorry their English language development as part of it as well so the answer is yes but no um it it actually does many many different things we also have behavioral and social emotional supports built into windlock as well um so we're not just looking at academics as well because we have to teach the whole child the whole child has to
066be taught in order for them to learn and develop so if we have students which we do have students who have um substance misuse issues we have a wind block for that um we have a couple of our our social workers partner with other staff members that run a block like that so that's one example um of one thing we do that's not academic but targets behavior and social emotional um but every academic teacher in this building has a Wind Block every single day okay um high quality instructional material is is that a program when you say that I think of like a book that's is it a program that they consistently have to follow so it's fully developed instructional materials um no one could ever take one prepackaged high quality instructional material for grade
067nine let's say I'm just using a grade and open it up and say all right I'm ready to teach right it is inclusive of fully aligned assessment measures with lessons that are backward designed to ensure that we start with the end in mind and we can get students to that end point however we are also a vocational technical school so we have to remember our kids have half the time on learning in math and Ela they have half of it so instead of 180 days they have 90 so then we have to figure out what do I need to prioritize as part of this 180-day package that's going to give me the most Bang from my buck for the kids that are in front of me and that's where the data comes in that's where
068they look at the data we look at the mcast item analysis we look at the universal screener and figure out where are my kids what are the skills they have the biggest gaps in and what do I need to prioritize first as part of this curriculum um so the answer is yes it is inclusive of all of the things you would need to deliver your lessons and your assessment measures but in a school like ours we can't just take it and say okay I'm ready for the next 180 days it doesn't work that way um and you would actually be doing a disservice to kids if you did that too because these are not modified so teachers still have to develop the modifications for their students as outlined in their IEPs they still have to
069provide the supports to multilingual Learners some of the curriculums that we've looked at for ELA do have those supports embedded but every single student in front of our teachers is different so we could never say yeah this is just a program that we're going to throw the kids on and be done with it right we know nothing can replace the interactions that our kids have when they learn from a teacher um that really cares so yes it's a program but no it's not okay I guess I guess the last thing we know that you know Co really really killed education and all but mcast came out to to define the line of how well students are doing from what fourth grade eighth grade and sophomore and what we noticed is you know this is more
070from being uh in a career area on an Advisory board that we would notice that the teachers here have to make up for the sins from kids that are coming in with a sixth seventh and eighth grade reading or math level and it's like here is where it stops you know if they don't do well and the others they keep moving them on but you guys are the ones that have to like get them over with the hurdle and that's a big job for you guys it really is so I appreciate you recognizing that um I think it's really important to recognize that we don't get the kids from Lawrence methu and Andover North Andover and wave a wand and say oh suddenly these students are going to struggle with reading or these students are
071going to struggle with math however it is our job to make sure that we put the supports in place so that they can meet or exceed at grade level um and that's what we're trying to do right now um so we're taking a look as John said at all of the different things that we do at the school and we want to make sure that we're making the most um high level database decisions that we can to impact all of our kids and that's really what it's all about is supporting all students in meeting or exceeding that standard um so we do have changes coming they weren't my changes to share um so thank you John for sharing them and you know I think that I am confident that we are able to move this
072needle forward in the right direction over the next 5 years change won't happen in a year it won't even happen in two years but it does take about 5 years of consistent practice in order to see that change um I'm a graduate of the school I feel very deeply connected and strongly support the need that we need to increase um how we support our kids we do because it is our job to make sure that they leave this school with the skills they need to be successful in their trade or in college um and with I think we have the right team in place right now that we'll be able to get this work done it's just a matter of time and funding okay thank you last note so in spite of everything you've heard
073tonight the one really super positive thing that I want you to take away is that we have more kids on Co-op this year than in the history of the school between 250 and 275 students are out working right now and we've had very very few students come back they're finding a lot of success out there and so that data Point has been exceptional this year which is a real positive point I think so at least the kids really are learning academically not at the level that we all want them to get to but they have grown and have gotten a lot better due to the great instruction they've had but we still have a lot of work to do based on the data but what they've learned has helped them be successful out in the
074workforce so I think that's important thing to note anyone else I'm sorry go ahead I'll be quick um these are commendations I just want to commend Josh he did a fabulous job and and to stay up there this long and to to continue even looking at me I don't know if he was afraid or what but he is he's terrific so accomodations to him and to Mr Lavoy for answering my questions that I didn't really want to come right out and say so he did and and I am interested in the data um because that's the only way really that you know we can all say all we want but as you know the you know you have to see it right so I am I am happy with both thank you I definitely would
075have been afraid as a 14-year-old in your office but that was my brother so twis thank you very much I appreciate your time um always available for questions you can always email me give me a call at 104 so thank you Mr L uh I want to thank you for all your time this was a lot of work I know the superintendent worked with you on this as a committee we' like to thank you for all your hard work and everybody else who is connected to it on a personal note uh Joshua I've seor grow as a teacher a student first a teacher now a young administrator from The Vocational end of the house and you're probably expecting this we expect a lot more from you thank you for coming to us thank you all
076right next is an easy one too superintendent and Miss Gillis I want to introduce Christa Gillis she's our assistant principal I want to say discipline because it's old school but it's safe now um I think her and Mr Lavoy going to help clear out some of the questions we have as far as uh discipline you want to say hi good evening everybody um thank you for inviting me and I have to say I'm not as great as Josh so I don't know if anyone is so um it's it's wonderful to work beside Josh now um every day he's been a great addition to our team so um what Miss Faris said about Josh is is very true so um and Mr ha him um so my name is Christa Gillis I am the principal of
077the safe office um this year we have um and I know you got your big presentation in front of you um so uh this year we have changed our name we were the discipline office um and as a school we came together um to try to do a change discipline office was somewhat negative um you have to go to the discipline office for this and really discipline is a very small part of what our office does um if you are ever in our office off during the day as Miss Ferris knows we have everybody coming in for everything right we have teachers coming in we have admin coming in we have parents coming in students coming in for uh like a variety of different things um discipline definitely is one of them but is is
078very small part of what we do every day um so we have changed the name to Safe which stands for student and family engagement um and we are hoping that that name um gives a little bit more welcoming to students and families when they walk through the door that they're not headed to the the discipline office so um thank you for inviting me to go over some data points for a discipline I know there are some questions that Josh had told me about um in school suspension out school suspension and what we are doing to help decrease those um rates um so in the safe office we are taking really an holistic approach to discipline while holding students accountable for their actions um and helping with behavior modific ations um based on reflection mediation relationship
079building restorative practices um and we are doing alternatives to school suspension with research-based um Alternatives so in our office we um as myself is assistant principal we have an administrative Dean um and in this year we have a Freshman Academy team leader who is in charge of all of freshman so they do uh discipline for the whole freshman class which has been a huge um asset to our uh Department uh we also have three parently aison and one Administrative Assistant they're the ones who create those relationships with our families and our students um they help us with translation they help us with home visits they help us with getting parents in they help us with Community Resources to help our um our parents and our students because not only are we here for our students
080but we're also here for our family Ames and our families rely on us as a school to help them in their students education um also part of our office is we have six security staff throughout the building um one sits at the front desk which is new this year and then we have five throughout the building that help create relationships with our students so that they feel safe if you walk around and ask students if they feel safe in our building they do and it's a big part of it is because of our security staff um and also knew this year we have an adjustment counselor who is new in our offices here it's been another great asset to our uh department where she has been able to work with students who have been identified
081as having behavior problems in class um as well as Crisis Intervention um triage for kids when they're having a bad day um or when kids are coming off of a suspension she's able to meet with them um and create a plan for them to be successful um so just a little uh overview of the laws in disciplines so there are many laws in discipline um Mass general laws um and what really falls under the discipline is we have 37h 37h and a half and 37h and 3/4 um so there's really three parts of 37h mgl um the 37h is we are allowed to um permanently expel um students if we choose that are in possession of a dangerous weapon a controlled substance or assault on a staff member okay um in addition to that they
082added 37h and a half which includes um if a student has a felony charge against them we as a school can decide if there are a safety risk to the school Community um we are allowed to keep them out until they've been fully charged or until that charge has been dropped okay um those two if those fall under um if a student is in possession of a dangerous weapon a controlled substance assault on a staff member or a felony charge they are uh go before the principal uh for a an expulsion hearing at that time the principle listens to um their testimony talk to the teachers and then the principal decides if they are a threat to our school Community um if they are they will keep them out for an extended period of time
083if not we will bring them back back into school um usually have them on a contract get them the services that they need to be successful okay um 37h and 34s is any violation within the student handbook so it is up to us as a school um what we want to do with those students whether it's a suspension a detention a mediation um that that is the discretion of the school um last year November of 2022 the governor um in state came out with the act addressing behaviors to care for mental health which covers uh 37h and3 quarter violations they said before you suspend you must try a bunch of different things before you finally suspend okay and those would include mediation conflict resolution restorative justice practices and alternatives to suspension so we were given
084that in October of um sorry November of last year um and so as a school and a department we've worked to come up with those things schoolwide um working together with the guidance Department with our teachers as well as directly in our office so over the last 10 years here are is our suspension data which you see in front of you or up on the screen here um we have as you can see our suspension data has gone down um you will also see that there is no in school suspension so we have um gotten rid of in school suspension um and the reason being is that um when they are receiving in school suspension they are still considered it's still considered a suspension uh we have done a partnership with the NorthShore YMCA for
085the last four years which is called the Pass Program positive alternatives to school suspension so it is an alternative to having kids outside of school um outside of school suspension or in school suspension ention and what they do is they come um it is a it's working through a grant um and we are we got it in the ground level so we are one of 10 schools that is in it um there are people banging down the doors to try to get into it um but we got in on the ground level and it it the cost is $10,000 for us for the year and what it covers is every time a student is suspended um or they've been caught with a marijuana or a a variety of different things we sign them up for
086the past program and what they do is transportation comes to the school it picks up the student it brings them to the program at the program they get counseling they get tutoring they get group work they get therapy um and they get resources so they are there for 3 to four days and those days actually count as a day of school because they getting tutored by licensed teachers it is counting as a day of school so it is not impacting our suspension there removed from the school because part of whatever it is that they may have done um removing them from a school from the school environment it is a good thing at sometimes right um so while they're there though they're not home um they're they're getting the instruction that they need um thankfully
087with Chromebooks they have their their Chromebooks right they have Google Classroom so when they're there they can sit down with their tutor and get work done um and then they're also getting the counseling and the help that they need they are also meeting with uh individual counselors that then reach out to the parents to get them the community resources that they may need um in order to be successful um the next slide is our discipline incidents which result in suspension this is just for this year and this is very similar to most years but the N our number one suspension rate is because of drugs either possession of drugs or use of drugs while in school um so this P this as of um octo sorry April 5th we've had 36 suspensions um due to
088drugs one assault on a staff member eight for fighting five for threat either verbal threat uh physical threat um two for weapons and one for a felony charge um three years ago I believe three years ago um we installed Vape detectors in our bathrooms okay um if you don't know vaping and vaping of marijuana is becoming an epidemic within our own with our in our communities all the kids are doing it they think it's legal they buy on the streets they it's much easier to get than alcohol or anything else um and they are bringing it to school and they are smoking while in school um so The Vape detectors will identify if a student is vaping in the bathroom so it's like a smoke detector okay um when students are vaping in the bathroom
089the detector goes off we security staff in uh this safe office gets a um text on our phone and we're able to go to the cameras to figure out who is in the bathroom at that time um so it is very high a lot of schools don't have Vape detectors if we didn't have Vape detectors this um probably our suspension rate would be much less okay um so we are able to get the kids and it's not a a a gcha right because we are a vocational school we really take that um kids that are under the influence at a very different level than maybe a comprehensive High School right we don't want kids going back to the automotive shop and putting your brakes on your car right I I don't want my car going
090up on the lift when a kid has been smoking in the bathroom THC and then I'm driving home and my brakes don't work right I don't want someone cutting my hair after you know while they're high or not going to have any hair left um so also metal fabrication they're the most dangerous shop in the school we don't want them operating machinery while they're under the influence so again this number seems high it's alarming yes it is but the what we have in place is to try to keep our kids safe so we are catching more kids um than maybe your other typical schools um what we are doing in the safe office to address the the new act that was enacted in October is um we have a mediation program which we've had for
091several years um it is a peer mediation program they are now trained by the resolution center which is a um Center out of wuber and they come to our Stu our school and they um train our peer mediators okay so we have students that are nominated by their teachers to be peer mediators they come in they do a two-day training over the summer um and they are trained as well as our two advisors are trained how to do mediation um this is a skill that is great for them and for our students it has um it's you'll see in our next slide that it's been a very successful program um our other program that we are using again what I called is the Pass Program um it is through the noro YMCA and it's been
092a great asset for for our kids um our P mediation program is 99% effective practice meaning that we a lot of teachers or students come and say that they are having issues with another student and before they get into a fight they ask if they can have a mediation so we run mediations um you know in 99% effective right so if a kid's having an issue they come to us we mediate it out and typically it does not end in a fight we also require any student that has gotten to a fight to do a mediation before they return to school so what we used to do is if two students got to a fight we would automatically suspend them send them home um for 5 days now what we have done because of this
093act is we um assess the situation figure out what's going on um we'll send them home for the day and then we try to get them back the next day if possible to do mediation majority of the time the fights are between two friends right that has gone a little bit too far and they regret it and they they want to make amends okay they want to be in school our kids want to be in school they want to be here they don't want to be home all right they want to stay in the school and they're willing to do whatever it takes to stay in our school um so our peer peer mediation program has been um a great success last year we did 31 mediations as of um April 5th we have done
09436 mediations this year okay with hope for it to increase throughout the year um our P our pass data okay is the days that we've sent our students to pass um 2122 we started halfway through the year um we sent 33 kids last year 79 days sorry so it's not necessarily the kids but these are the days that they've spent there so it has saved us 79 days of suspension essentially and this year so far we've had 56 days at pass uh we are doing things outside of our office we're doing things schoolwide to help address the ACT um for barriers to to care for mental health um a lot of things what Josh said um we're embedding seal in all areas of our school school um our teachers are embracing it and embedding it
095within within their classrooms they're doing restorative practices in their classrooms uh we have our mtss implementation which is tier one two and three supports for all students we have the bar uh model which we use for grades nine and grade 10 where we come together as um group of teachers that have common students and we talk about students we talk about students that are doing well we also talk about students that might not be doing well um so Mr Mercedes when you were asking um before like what is being done right now right instead of waiting till the end of the year for a student to be identified a lot of these kids are getting caught early because teachers are coming together and say I have a you know I have a question about Johnny
096or Johnny's doing this in my class how's he acting in your class and we're able to catch them at an earlier time and get them the resources or help that they may need or identified for testing for um special ed or 504 or whatever so we were able to do that and it's been um a great success for both grade nine and 10 um we do uh our Health and Wellness Plan in curriculum in in JY uh we have uh social workers within the safe office within the special special ed office and within the guidance that all work together to create um supports for our students uh we have wind block which Josh talked about what I need we have wind enrichments which we call them which is groups that come together and address drug
097addiction they address um empowering students they do mediation we do LBGTQ groups um we do you know um groups talking about dating and and you know positive relationships um so it is it's been great to be able to do that and it's really helped um our behavior of our students uh we also have a partnership with cartwheel care which is um been great for our students that need um counseling we all know we've heard counseling can take six seven eight months you're on a weit list if you need a counselor for mental health this is a program that's online we're able to make a referral for a student in they're online with that with that um therapist within a week or two um so it's been a great partnership for them and it's getting us
098our students and families actually um counseling if needed um we also like I said as we added um a new position into our office our Freshman Academy team leader who essentially is our freshman Dean and she works directly with the Freshman the key is that we need to get freshmen when they walk through the door they need to understand the expectations of our school they need to know um you know that we hold them to high expectations but we're also have a supportive environment for them and what we expect from them as a freshman is really going to help them with grades 10 11 and 12 um so I'm here for answer any questions that you might have yes Mr chox first of all I think fact that you have such a great our people
099as staff supporting the needs of the population is huge yes it's been very great the ratio thing yes kids are going to the YMCA in Beverly wherever they go are they repeat offenders do they realize they've been there for 4 days they like going so they go back again what how does that all play out uh typically we do not have repeat offenders there are a few repeat offenders uh which are are definitely high-risk students that need that need the help but they do enjoy going it is um a very welcoming and place for them but they're not redoing it just so they can go right um you know we we we know those kids um and we might say you know what you're not going this time or um we're going to find something
100else that's going to be better for you it might not be working uh but they're not doing it just to go yeah anyone else um those um students that have been sent home how is how is the parent following through with supporting the student who has been sent home for drug use or marijuana use in in in in the facility how are we also making them accountable for to follow up with the student because obviously you know there's only so much we can do to hear so what's the communication between the school and the parent so for every suspension we have we have a parent meeting we have a hearing with the with the uh with the parent we give them resources we bring in their um a social worker to the meeting we bring
101their uh guidance counselor in and we offer them help if they need it um majority of the time the parents are embarrassed upset scared and ask us for help they ask us what are you going to do to help us how can we help you and what can I do to help you um so we try to get as much resources for the parents um and we do hope you know we we can't control once they leave leave our front door right but our hope is that the parents are helping support their students to be the best version of themselves and how many how many days are the the kids being sent home for when they are found found with with drugs in school so typically what happens if a student is caught with drugs
102we send them home that day um depending on what time it is right and depending on the the the time of the day we try to get them in the Pass Program the next day so they're really only home for one day okay and then they're in the pass program for three to four days and then we try to get a hearing with the principal the next day and then they're back in school uh and how many how many students have been sent home for over five days 10 days this school year over 10 days I don't think we've had many kids over 10 days I'm not sure of the number but there's not many that have that have made the 10 days we try to get them back as quickly as we can but
103we have to do follow certain protocol and are we looking to um uh in the 20 20 24 25 uh school year we're looking to be able to do back to um in in inhouse suspension or is that going to continue with with the yeah at this time I don't think we're looking to add in school suspension um it is an added uh we would need to staff in the school suspension room um and we don't have that staff right now um I think the the past program is in instead of our in school suspension um and they have much better resources than we do here at the school um to be able to support the student any else yeah you said it's 10,000 for that program yes is that does it Define how many
104kids we it's if we send one are 100 Kids yep so it's $110,000 um it is they're working with a grant but um it's been very fruitful for our students all right does the student come here and get on a bus and get brought there yep so they they they come here and they get picked up here they're brought to the program and then at the end of the day they actually brought straight home they it's oh straight home yep straight home y so we're able to check in we check them with the student every morning before they leave yep okay so if they happen to be suspended on their their career time they lose out on that because you're saying you know they do their academic stuff there but if it's career time that's
105a loss for them so they're not able to do the Hands-On but teachers do send them work related work um or whatever it is and then when they come back they're expected to make that up yep all right and if they're on Sports no sports for those no when you are suspended um it's considered the good citizen rule so when you are suspended you are not allowed to participate in any after school activities okay um and is we weapons on here what do you consider a weapon so being a vocational school a weapon really could be considered a tool that leaves the shop so any tool that leaves the the shop lines right like if I am working um in auto body and I'm using a razor blade right and I leave shop with that
106razor blade that now is considered a weapon um so typically because we are a vocational school students are have access to weapons all day long right um so we really try to instill on them and their teachers that they have to make sure that all those stay in the shop do some of them leave yes um have we found students with knives on them not that they're using them but do we find them on there yes um a lot of our students are afraid when they walk home um so we are finding those at times but we've never taken a weapon away from somebody while they were using it okay if that if that makes sense yeah it does it's more of like on their person yep okay could they check in and check out
107a weapon if you're saying some are scared to walk home yep so we do we do tell students if you know a lot of times a lot of our kids work after school right and they have box cutters and their pants and they wear the same pants they come to school and they're like oh no I forgot I have you know a knife on my box cutter at me we do tell them to come right to the office and turn it in we'll keep it for them all right and what about if they have a small group of tools that they need to bring and they take the bus are they allowed so we do tell them they shouldn't be taking the bus with tools that they should be getting dropped off okay um and
108then they go directly down to their shop so we'll bring them right down to their shop to bring their tools okay yep thank you m can I just ask wait till you uh recognize by the chair before you ask you a question please M thank you for your patience sure thank you um Miss skill thank you for coming um actually great timing because I happen to have a a few um pents that have called me because concerns uh about safety um and it's very related to what you said and actually you you said something that um even make me more understand of what these um concerns are you said that the students wants to be here but the students that wants to be here are the students that are creating the the situations the the
109ones that are fighting the ones that are um using the vapors so what about the students that are not they want to be here but they want to be safe another thing you mentioned and I I get to the questions um you mentioned also um these students are going um to a mediation program for one day and then they're back um is that what um that's where my so you know again the students that are here that don't know about this program they don't know what's going on they see the students going uh having fights leaving and then here again next day so we are talking about um inhouse suspension not inhouse but in school suspension versus um um home versus a place that you we're sending it because we're getting a grant um so
110again these are concerns very legitimate and we not addressing them as I mean I didn't hear you addressing them at all you're addressing only the people the the students that are having this situations and they need the help right so what are we doing um for the students that are here like I need to get back to some pattern that have called me and say say you know I want to make sure that the school is safe for my kids on top of that the kids are also concerned because they what I just explained they see the students that are in a fight right they went home because they don't know they went to a mediation and they're back the next day so we need to you know we need to do something about that
111so I want to know what are we doing besides sending a student that's causing problem to a place for mediation and they're back here next day okay um so if I am hearing you correctly so the concern is that students are seeing right the optic right is there's two people that get in fights they're being sent home they come back they have a mediation on their back in class right that the students the students that are here the students that are here that are seeing this the ones that are not causing problems correct they don't know anything about that Med ation that we sending the student or anything like that the pents don't know that the pents of the students that created the problem it seems that they are getting back you you said the
112pents are they want us to help because they don't even know what to do yes but what about the rest communication with the other panties schoolwide Y what we doing with that yep we can't share discipline with uh other not I understand that okay we still need to um make sure that all students are safe that they feel safe and again what I'm pointing out is there are students that are here that they don't feel safe okay so you what I'm getting to okay um I have not heard from the students that students do not feel safe um other other students that has not been brought to me um we do ask students we have um School climate survey that we we ask um any concerns that we have we we try to give as
113much information as we can there is so much information that we could share as you know um and we really are the you know the state has told us that we can't even in school suspension is considered a suspension um in that we can't do that unless we do this this and this first okay you still didn't answer my question I mean we should be able to do something so the the the school Community knows that everything is safe that we are again I mean I understand about the no this no um there information that are not we're not supposed to be providing that's fine there's always a general email a message saying you know something happened in the school it happens sometimes there incidents that looked are small but they are big um and
114they be they can become big so if the community the school Comm parents students um staff if they know that you know something happened and we took care of it you know so that people feel feel okay I'm in the same school that that goes a long way okay we're not doing that you you didn't say we're doing that okay so I'm sorry I was I was guess I was misunderstanding what you were saying so what you would like is for us when there's an incident in school is that you would like us to let the community know in what we have done yeah I mean no not what's going on in the discipline set but something happens be aware you were taking care of it everything is it's fine you know what I mean
115yep General we need to do that that's one um and you know I know you have you throughout everything that you said we have measure not that like and a mediation in one day because and this is my this is the way I'm taking it we have a mediation program and we send in these kids that are causing problems because bathing is a problem and you know having a a um how you call it you say that in the bathroom the detectiv where you know yeah it's advising some people but when you go there you don't even know who the kids are because you don't get there on time so it's not doing much we are we we're so when we have a reasonable suspicion of a student we we allowed to search them um
116so we are doing that and that's when how we are the kids are coming next next day they want to be here I'm having a problem with that the kids that want to be here but they are causing problems and they are violating the rules yeah they're teenagers you know what I mean um I know but it doesn't matter we are an extension of they here for not just for education but we they here to learn even to leave to leave life because unfortunately this is what they learned um including Behavior so if our behavior is that okay we'll send you to a program and next day everything is fine then I mean I I wouldn't want my kid to be here so for if they're caught with um doing drugs it's not just a
117one day okay it is there out for but you don't have I'm sorry I'm G to cut you off again there's no data that says how many days Mr Merced ask you and you couldn't you didn't tell us how many days um a person is a student is out for certain uh Behavior oh okay so I thought he asked how many 10 plus we've had out so we did but yeah okay so we haven't had many 10 plus out but the average if a student is caught uh smoking marijuana the average day they are out is is between 5 to 6 days between their cuz they have a day of suspension they have 3 to four days at pass and then they have their day of hearing and then it's decided if they come back
118they are counting us if they are in school right no the days that they're are pass are counted as in school the days that they are not in pass are counted as days out say that again sure so the days that they attend pass it counts as a day of school but the days that they are not at pass it counts as a as a day of suspension is that answer no that's good okay thank you I would like you to come back with some data to show us you know numbers of you know the students uh suspended for and how many days they they more data because I don't think we have enough so you want more specific data of how many days they are out okay so most what I'll tell you is
119they're usually out two days of suspension and then it's 3 to four days of pass that's going to be across the board there are some outliers uh for sure um but the majority of the students are up for two days the majority of the student okay um okay thank thank you no but I will got plent time I'll bring more questions later thank you excuse me one second I think Mr want to add to that question this is an answering session between boy and Christ would you want to say to this sure so what I want to say is that in terms of do students feel do students feel safe here at glts I think a lot of things that are considered in this particular question I think how we try to ensure that students
120feel safe when they come to school is first of all we have six security staff we have apparently aison administrative an adjustment counselor Freshman Academy team team leaders but it's not the fact that we have six security people out there but we have people not only those me those security people are not out there just walking around they're building relationships with the kids and when you build relationships with kids you hear a lot and kids tell you stuff that helps to keep the environment safer the more there so they're really good with kids they're not there to get on the kid and or if they kid see a student doing something that they shouldn't be doing first question isn't trying to punish them it's like why are you doing this can I help you it's
121always in a positive manner so we can build those relationships so I think that's very important and the whole safe office Concept in uh what we're trying to do and we call it the safe office so PE kids know that that's where I go if I don't feel safe and we want kids to go there if they don't feel safe or something they heard something and didn't so what's important but also when you think about building relationship is building relationships with teachers building relationships in the shop so the key place as some of you have been in shops right teachers build uh students build unbelievable relationships with shop teachers it's like sometimes it's like their father or their mother that they're building because they it's the best thing from being away from home and they
122build these really good relationship so it help helps them make them feel safer it makes them know they can go to somebody when they don't feel safe or they see something that's going within the school I think that's a real big difference with glts than it is in a lot of schools and when you think about our culture and the way we work kids and how we really show kids that they matter to us and so that's that's an important thing to think about consider the other thing that's so important that also makes us such a safe place I think for kids is we have an amazing guidance Department we have guidance counselors that are well trained and understanding and working with kids that they can adult to but then we also have uh four
123to six I think we have four uh adjustment counselors and social workers in guidance that are there for all kids who are struggling emotionally and mentally which is so important because when kids who are struggling emotionally and mentally have somewhere and somebody to talk to that they care about and it matters the people we work with we stop a possible problem from happening if a student's frustrated with another student or struggling having that person that guidance counselor there makes a huge difference in terms of keeping the building and the and the facility safe and kids feeling safe so I'm not saying that every student feels safe because something can happen in a school and I don't feel safe today based on something I've experienced or something that I saw but genuinely speaking I think that
124What Makes Us unique is that there's it's a really caring environment it's a community of people who care about what they do every day and they really do try to connect with kids I walk through the building every day and I'm always amazed at how well behaved the kids are and how they how adults treat the kids and how kids treat the adults so it makes me feel like wow I'm just seems like pretty safe place for the most part not to say that there it's perfect but in terms of an environment we live in a culture with so many and we live in a community where you know there's some challenges that kids deal with when they go home but they come to school and they find this to be a pretty safe place
125compared to home that's you know that's kind of the the the input that I want to say in terms of who we are and and we have all these services that we provide to kids and you know when you talk about the mediation program that is such a plus because it's kids talking to kids it's not on your phone it's face to face and that's a big challenge phones are a big Challenge and cause a lot of problems in a school we've s we've tried to make that safer by not allow trying to limit the amount of time students are on the phone and that's another factor that keeps our school a little safer the more we can take phones out of the hands of students I think the safer building we're going to have
126to be honest with you because that's where you a lot of it starts with the phone so anyways those are just a few things that I want to point out and I that are making us a good so I just want to add to that um to Mr Lavoy is that we have seen a lot less fights and a lot less um negative interactions with students because of our form policy uh which has been great and I forgot to add that so thank you for reminding me about that um but as well as our students are our number one assets they're the ones who come to us and Report things um we wouldn't know half of what we know if the students didn't let us know so they feel safe enough to come to their
127allies the security staff to myself to the parently aons to their teachers to say hey something's not right and we need to do it do something about it um and we do we address it um right away um and we you know we do our best to keep our kids safe so that they feel safe because a lot of them go home and they're not safe we want them to come here and wor not worry about what's going on out there um and just worry about what they need to get done for the day and not um always be looking over their shoulder I and thank you Mr way for um making more clarifications um and what I see is that we so we still have a communication issue I mean so if we have
128all those programs in place and we know that the the school is safe safer for the kids that are here and you just mentioned you know the the relationship you you see them on the hallways that's great I mean I seen them myself too I'm not not here often but I'm sure you see it all every day so that's great but we need to let everybody know again we have those programs we have the mediation we have this but people do not know so when you don't know something you don't know you know how do you know to feel safe you um agree and you agree that we don't um we know not always we send the information right we not always communicate so we need to do that um we have all those things
129let's put it on a letter and say something happened today parents and as teachers everybody something happened today and we took care of it we had these programs and just we want you to know that everything is fine simple same thing as if something happened and we had to lock down the school y you had to send those Comm communication but this is not different because one little fight today can be become something really bad tomorrow so we want to take every single situation that we have it doesn't matter if it looks small we want to address it to everybody and say hey everybody we are okay this happened today and we don't have to say what it is and we don't have to say exactly in details what we are doing but we can
130say this happened today and we are taking these measures highlight a bullet yeah it it just give everybody that safety comfort that they need everybody everybody I mean I'm talking the whole Community yeah I think you're absolutely right that we can communicate in some situations better and there are times when a incident happens in the school that everybody knows about and so we could probably communicate that this happened in our school this is how we handled it and this is where we see some this is where our expect ations will be moving forward to try to prevent that from happening again so we put it out to the parents because we know the parents all know about it we put it out to the kids all that so better communication you're talking about I think
131you're absolutely right I think that's something we can work on it's communication is always a challenge because you're in the moment of something you're not always thinking you know that you're going to who do we have to think about that might be feeling unsafe because of what happened in the school always yeah so I think you're right other things is the data the data like you just mentioned the phones but we don't know how we doing with the phone yeah you know what I mean like to know that um and people knowing that it it's just you say oh we're doing better we're doing better but better just numbers yeah and it it just tell us how we have been progressing and what else we're going to do because you know some things are not
132working well how are we going to change things quick and fast you know what I mean so I would like to see datas of the things that we're doing the programs that we have the phone how they working when people are not you know add the the um all these things we have some numbers we don't have data yeah so from your suggestion I think we'll put in our newsletter and I I do I do that as a motion because I will do a motion for that so from your from your suggestion I think one of the things we'll look at is in our newsletter a Communications Cor that we can talk about different issues that we think are concerning to parents and concerning to kids as as that communication is it's it's like happening
133quickly right absolutely so I think uh I hear you and I think we do we could do better in Communications sometime and I know it because sometimes I think oh why didn't I communicate that or you get so busy and you forget some of the important things like communication that's so critical so we will look to do a better job at that and knowing that it's important to the committee that'll be one of the things topics we look at as we move forward in our school how do we communicate what people need to know better I would definitely take that serious yes what he said I want and I I also want to see data uh of all the different programs we have and how we're doing how we progressing on those programs all right
134um absolutely and I put that as a motion if I need to yes of course I second any further discussion we're not done by any means any discussion on this motion first more discussion on the motion Mr toox yes M Ferris yes M tler yes Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia yes Mr Mercedes yes Mr hay yes next pleas thank you for patience yeah I think um I'll I'll I'll piggy back off of um Miss dla there um I think I mean building relationships is one of the things that in my 36 years here I've prided myself on so I mean that is that's like an age-old winning strategy and and I'm glad to see that it's continuing I mean I it it would be awful if it didn't but so I'm glad to see it
135is I guess I have to I I know you already have it in place so you don't have to sell me on anything but I guess my only concern is that in-house suspension void that I feel as though sending kids from here to a program paying okay the $110,000 is not so much but you're paying to transport them I'm assuming no that's back and forth all included the 10,000 includes everything yeah okay um I just I I feel as though who knows your kids better somebody outside the building or somebody inside the building and with all the money that is being spent on a million things um I do believe that investing in a kid's welfare health and and behavior is should be right up there and so that's how I feel about that and
136I think again there's nothing wrong with the word discipline I mean I'm all set with the you know the word watering down with watering is for flowers not for adults and not for education I think that you know it has to be some semblance of structure and I'm not here so I don't know but I don't have data in front of me other than this which I got to be honest I did my homework before I came here and these numbers don't drive with off of the doe or what do you call desie doesn't report they report like the 10 plus I got these off of desie but it doesn't make it I mean it's not a it's not a big thing to me numbers is not a big thing to me I want to
137see Trends I want to see improvements um and and the Optics of you know the safe room I don't know what that does for me as a student I think showing that they're safe is better than a title but that's that's just me so you know what I mean I'm okay with the nice presentation thank you um and to just to respond to the um knowing our kids better a thousand agree 1,000% right um and we did look into creating like our own pass program right um and it would cost like close to $200,000 really to be able to have all the resources that they have and when they come back um we get like a a report um and we follow up and we have our social workers work directly with them based on
138what was told to us and we we work back and forth with them sorry go ahead are they in with other students from other areas yes yeah y I don't I don't see I don't know the program and I don't know the data on the program again I'm just going to say who knows your kids better yeah we do yeah okay so um and this in-house suspension worked with a million caveats but it worked with the right person in charge the right resources and they were doing their work in there albe it not not career area stuff but um yes and and I know that mental health component is very important and I agree it that's something that we didn't really focus on back then but it needs to be focused on yep um so
139yeah I mean that's just my my my view yeah and we can I mean I can work with John and Brenda and we can you know revisit revisit it and see um based on you know people's comments and and going through the data for sure but I think in the community the Optics of things is just as important as the reality of things and um you know what I mean and and I think uh backing it up with sound data is is important and whether it works or it doesn't I mean I think people want to see you know whether what the problem is with it yep okay thank you thank you superintendent wants to answer just uh just said I was going to say that we can uh bring together uh Chris can bring
140together her team to revisit in-house suspensions and take a look at some possible strategies along those lines we're happy to look at that and revisit that because we haven't looked at in a while so yeah absolutely we'll look at that sure yep no problem with that yeah the other thing I want do want to say is that you know one of the when we take do admissions today U we can't count discipline anymore it used to be one of the factors that we could count for scoring but no longer can we so we don't you know we take in kids uh regardless of what the discipline issue is we're not looking at that anymore when we take in so we're probably I think considering that we still work with those kids pretty well you know
141so I think we're having some more challenges than we've had in the past because we're not you know it's not it's not a factor in terms of being accepted to the school which I'm not saying it should or shouldn't be it hasn't been a real detriment to us in terms of our I think uh culture in the building I think it's been been still been very good but it has had an impact on some of that so and that's why you know our new position in the in the uh office having someone work directly with fresh has been huge uh because they're able to create those Rel like Amry said um the relationships you know that's the number one thing she taught me when I came and worked with her is about building relationships because
142if you have strong relationships with the kids they're going to want to trust you and they're not going to want to disappoint you um you know when they when kids screw up and they come in and they're like I'm Sorry Miss Gillis I didn't mean to um it's because they don't want to disappoint you as a person um and that has been you know for the last you know when Amry was here for 30 years that was her her number one thing and it it shows true today too with building the relationships with kids they don't want they don't want to get disappointed and getting them as freshmen which uh Miss Keys has been able to do an unbelievable job this year building the relationships with kids and letting them know what our expectation is
143to be a Reggie is much different than you might go to another school right our expectations are very high because we know they can reach it um and do we have incidents happen in school absolutely uh we work with 1,00 teenagers um and you know they're going to screw up their job is to make mistakes and our job is to teach them um you know how to learn from those those mistakes um and and they're learning they're definitely learning part of it she still the floor oh no I'm okay and I I I also see you know you added the adjustment Council which we did have at at one point but it was taken away I mean honestly I mean it's it's great that you have you know the resources and I know you work
144hard to get the grants and stuff so it's it's great that you have that at your disposal I just would like to see more concrete like data that supports the efforts and the money and the time put into it okay yeah we can I wasn't sure to be honest when I got called to what exactly it is that you looking for so I um just put some data together but now now that I know exactly what it is that you want we can pull that very specific data um and get it and share it with you at a later date yeah at a later date uh I was unclear with uh after the 21 to 22 school year uh the in housee suspension was removed yes correct what's the reason behind it uh it was
145resources um it was we um had an in-house room um we had Co and then after that it was um base in in Personnel really okay and so you said the past program is running under a grant do you know when the grant ends I don't know that's through the YMCA um it looks like it's going to be staying for a while um it we haven't you know so I think it's going to continue for a while yeah okay thank you um obviously for 800 students uh 53 student to be suspend is actually not a lot of people however it's still kids outside the school um I really believe that definitely looking into in how suspension will really as far as because I also have parents who are who have addressed me with that as
146well and I think this is a pretty good number so I don't think we need again I'm not a teacher never work in school um I don't know what we require to have somebody covered 53 people within a school year um who's being sent home for six or CL most days then again we don't have the data to find out on these 36 people were there they the same three times you know same student were same three times which is really not going to be 36 times so it's you know be really more you know 10 students 12 versus 12 students or 18 students or whatever amount of student like we don't know this data so but but again I as far as um looking into inhouse suspension um I personally if if I had
147my my my kid here I would want it to be in school myself okay so thank you uh just a point of clarification it's the number that's here is the number of days so now that leads to my NE yeah 56 days of suspension so do we have a number of how many students were suspended CU this is giving us the number of days yeah I can get that for you the ex 36 is not 36 incidents so that was 36 incidents okay incidents yeah y so that's by Incident That's discipline incidents and then that is days uh days out yeah but I can get you the number the ACT actual exact number of students thank you I'm sorry um and and then again going back to I know you had mentioned that and I
148just want to cuz kind of got a little confused when Miss Ferris asked you about um the when the kids were sent to that particular program they come here then they go to the program then they I think the question was do they count as absence and I I think you said yes when they're not okay just wanted to kind if you can of just re re-elaborate a little bit about that so we can understand better because I kind of got confused when it was said well they count the day they were sent home they counted like they're here but those days after that they were count absent so typical a student gets caught smoking marijuana in school okay say it's 10:00 in the morning right uh we call their parents have them pick them
149up that is a day of suspension we're sending them home for the day okay so that's day one of suspension then the goal is to get them to go to pass for three to four days depending so we send them for so say this happens on a Monday so we're going to send them to pass Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and then our hope is that on Friday they would have their hearing Friday would count as a day of suspension okay so that's two days Monday would be a day of suspension and Friday would be a day of suspension Tuesday Wednesday Thursday at pass counts as a day of school that doesn't count as a day of suspension because they are getting the services that they need in order for it to be considered a day of
150school does that make sense okay Mr Jones yeah could uh could they qualify into two columns say they hi and they get into a fight yeah they could they could but I um I think it's first incident so um I don't know if you've had actually any double incidents like that okay but it could happen if they don't want to go to the to the Y if they don't want to go to the Pass Program um we they have the option not to go um we do try I've only had one student say they don't want to go um so we try to get them back to school as as you know as quickly as we can and getting them resources within the school um but I've only had one uh person say they can't
151go or didn't want to go yep okay thank you y um can we make this as a formal motion to um request the superintendent and the safe to uh to reconsider the the discipline policy on in-house suspensions we already said committee yeah we can definitely Rec consider it but we'll after we do a committee will make a recommendation and let the committee know what the what the outcome of that was okay and you want to make your own motion yeah so so what would the committee be composed of teachers or who's yeah so it could be it would probably be teachers and would be teachers administrators and maybe even some students okay so can you update us the next meeting then on proba be the next meeting we have vacation next week okay well maybe
152I don't know wait no our next meeting in May May so it's possible we can have it ready for May depends on the uh the time frame in which we can get people together to uh if we're going to have a crosssection of stakeholders then uh it might take us a little more time but we will get some information back yet okay thank you we'll at least let you know where we're up an update in the next uh to committee meeting that the committee has been formed the committee has met and they're looking at this this and this so we can give you at least an update may not be final the uh recommendations but we'll come out they'll come out with some recommendations to the committee you want to make a motion to I'm
153going to continue with my motion yeah on getting an update yeah meeting uh to receive an update from the superintendent on the um in-house suspension policy progression progression yeah the progress the progress on just an update yeah just an update nothing final I'll second that any other discussion please Mr Mercedes yes Mr toox yes M Faris yes M disler yes Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia yes Mr hayam yes any other questions from Miss Gillis can I just add one you certainly can don't be afraid to throw something at me because I can't see you from there so I just wanted to add from the admissions perspective because I know do have some new committee members who were not part of voting on the um last two admissions policies so about two years ago desie changed
154the regulations so that we can no longer um include suspension unless it falls under those um those categories that Miss Gillis referenced on her slide so out of about, 1500 um applicants last year we probably um subtracted points for discipline for less than five students so unless it's 37h which is your weapons drugs um assault on a staff member um or a felony charge or if it's a handbook violation 37h and 3/4 it has to be at least 10 days of suspension so before you can take any points off so that is a significant change um so I just wanted to mention that and as the the laws the regulations were changing and we changed our policy I was concerned about the impact so I think that's why we have added the additional staff the
155adjustment counselor and the freshman team leader because I think that's really um needed when there's such a big change um for discipline because you can have somebody who has you know multiple pages of discipline and that you can't count and can't take um any points off so I think that is an important thing to think about in this conversation further SK thank you very much thank you for having me and I'll behind that the what get a high talk cheer for behind that I know right Josh and I thank you both very much I know you have young families at home for spending so much time answering our questions yes thank you very much and um I'll be back with the the data that you guys are requesting so thank you thank you thanks Christa
156at this time do I uh need a motion does anybody have a motion to take a break to stretch their legs we have quite a bit more to cover and we've been here for a while does anybody want to take a break motion to Rees us for five minutes thank you can I have a vote please no vote all those favor all those in favor hi those motions clear please stop me if you don't understand you guys missed bedtime [Music] sure so I can uh Sher can you uh leave a note for Su Mrs Ferris doesn't have the school email it's a special and she also needs her name tag [Music] spell e session uh reported a superintendent uh superintendent o District commit to adopt a form of appr authorize the district to issue the
157bonds for the AL Club purchase qualified bonds General there's a statement in the back would you like me to read it or would you like to read it so uh read it and then you can ask someone to put it in the form of motion okay R launch Regional Vocational School District vote of the school committee to permit the issuance of State qualified bonds voted that the appropriate officials of the district are authorized to file an application with the commonweal of Massachusetts and Municipal Finance oversight board to qualify under chapter 44A of the general laws any and all bonds or notes of the district authorized as of the date of adoption of this vote and in the connection therewith to provide such information and execute such documents as the municipal Finance oversight Board of the
158Commonwealth of Massachusetts may require so we just need a uh someone to move them the statement as a motion that I'm made uh discussion on the motion please no I just want to discuss it yeah yeah yeah do that after you get yeah thought he was making a motion okay no it was just a discussion um so making motion [Music] yeah you want to discuss oh you want me to tell you about it so okay my question is is uh in order for the district to purchase outside of 57 River Road we needed that bill to pass the legislature correct well there's some debate that we no longer need that bill for this um for the purchase of the El okay so but we still have to the bond okay so the legislative bills is
159still going through the leg legislature so what is the purpose if we have it moving forward in any any uh purchase of any property or land we may need to okay so it's according to the bond oh that's according to the bond uh attorney that purchases we can move forward on it and get without the legislative bill being passed and then uh but we still need to legislative bill because of the language in our Charter okay so and from when it passed back in 1960 according to the act of 1960 it's going to change that act allowing us to purchase property so this is just for the bond this is not to finalize a purch this just the purpose of the bond okay thank you yep thank question can I get a motion I have
160a question so I know I wasn't in the meeting this was in a meeting on uh March 8th that you guys discussed this so this is just a formal motion for us on this meeting to say yes we are approving to move forward with the bond Bond yeah to uh but this is for one time thing the issue for the uh for us to move forward and get an issuance of the bond you voted to go ahead and pursue the bond but the bond attorney says we have to have this exact language or legally to go at in order to uh apply to put in an application for the bond this is the exact language that's required according to the bond attorney so you've already said yes to the bond but you haven't said yes
161in this form of a uh of a the way the vote needs to be asked this is specifically for the El this specifically for the Elks yes yes so this is the language that's needed that this was approved few weeks ago and now but it wasn't approved through this language but the approve was to hire that Bor attorney right that was one of the we did we did do that also so now that Bor attorney is saying this is what you need that's the language we have to use that one of the things so what is the language that we need when we hire him we didn't have to have special language to hire him okay no okay we it feels like we're doing things for L but yeah okay thank you for answering my
162question can I get a motion on this please motion to approve second discussion Mr Jones yes Mr Mahia yes Mr Mercedes yes Mr toox yes Miss Barris yes M dla yes Mr hayam yes uh report of the superintendent superintendent lvo will update the district committee on Crest uh there is a letter in there so chest is requesting from the it's District committee uh District school it's school districts to approve them uh going uh expanding their uh capital reserve fund by 2 mli $2 million plus um it um we pay when we we utilize CR for one of the collaboratives that's a collaborative we utilize for different services for our students such as if we they need to go in for a 45 day observation so there's certain uh Services they provide us rarely do we
163use them but we're in that collaborative so we have a vote as to whether we're going to allow them to increase their capital reserve fund so I just need to uh as a member of the of their uh committee their executive board uh I bring it back to our district and our school district has vote yay or nay to allowing them to move forward with capital funds based on their request correct me I'm R Mr superintendent this doesn't come out of our working budget no it doesn't come out of our bud just not come out of our budget we pay based on our use so they charge us a fee anytime we use them they're TR they need they need to increase their they want to increase their Capital allow to expand their Capital assets
164funds so they can say they can put more money in their cap uh savings eies I'm sorry they need to have approval M well we're one of them and then there's and over town we're one of many there's about 14 different cities and different school districts that belong to it to that collab we're only born of about 14 so I just I had a question because when I read it I I was wondering what that was yeah they comprehensive other schools yeah we yeah they near you guys they are in my in my company yeah absolutely they agree way M feris did you have your hand up make a motion to approve second