District Committee Meeting (Mar 28, 2023)

001uh could you please call the roll for the purpose of attendance foreign Miss disler Mr Hayden cirilla here Miss mammal Mr LaMontagne president okay superintendent another great thing to do the exceptional Reggie please good evening everybody yeah your microphone John please hey there everybody I'd like to start off this evening recognizing one of our exceptional Regis this evening from our dental assistant program Edgar Martinez the exceptional Reggie of all exceptional Regis here with us tonight uh Edgar Martinez is the son of Elizabeth Virgos from Lawrence Mass Edgar has been a student at greater Lawrence technical school since September 2019. he is studying in the dental assistant career program he is OSHA and CPR first aid certified and has extensive skills in his career area along with experience in patient care record keeping sterilization infection and

002infection control Edgar is currently employed at Smile Design Dental as a dental assistant in Lawrence through our Cooperative education program Edgar would like to eventually attend dental school I think no wonder they hired you Edgar they know how well you smile perfect name fits you perfectly Edgar has been successful in his academic and career area coursework at greater Lawrence with the 4.43 GPA and is currently ranked first out of a class of 405 students in the class of 2023. Edgar is a member of the National Honor Society as as a result of his outstanding academic career Edgar has enrolled in concurrent enrollment classes with Middlesex Community College and will graduate from high school with nine undergraduate credits Edgar was awarded the St Michael's high school with night awarded the St Michael's College book award as

003a junior due to his outstanding academic and community service record Edgar was selected this year to be our school's nominee and state finalists for the United States presidential scholar program Edgar has been accepted into the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy Northeastern University St Michael's College Merrimack College University of Detroit Mercy Curry College University of Massachusetts Boston University of New England Fitchburg State University in Worcester State University Edgar has made contributions to our school Community outside of the classroom at senior class president for the class of 2023 providing leadership for the student body Edgar has been a ready leader MIAA student ambassador big future Ambassador Rising leader mentor and a four-year member of our cheerleading team and team captain as a senior Edgar has been a member of the Upward Bound in our schools chapter a genius

004sexuality sexuality Alliance these experiences have allowed him to develop and to use his communication skills and Leadership skills which will help him into college Edgar Martinez [Applause] oh I have it yeah I do need to sign it though I'm sorry I moved it I didn't want to spill any soup on it 17. wow I have to reckon if you pick the school uh kind of I'm still waiting to hear from Australia I know but I mean it's not I did not I didn't ask him anything terrible I'm going to hear from uh so the University of Pennsylvania and New York University my gosh [Music] of course smile if anyone else wants to join in congratulations thank you thank you hold on one second I'm sorry sorry sure come on WOW [Laughter] I'm so sure ready

005well Edward make us all look short thank you you make us proud no doubt about that thanks Jimmy okay very good um kill except a motion to accept the minutes from March 7th please discussion all those in favor and you want to post okay moving on uh chairlas at this time to uh for a motion to adjust the agenda to student report please all those in favor up all right thank you um good afternoon everyone it's good to see you all here today we're going to be discussing the club Sport and Student Activities for the month of March um unfortunately we don't have it projected so some videos that were in the packet you won't be able to see um but everything else is in there okay starting off [Music] thank you for House of

006Affleck athletic for an amazing three weeks of conditioning they helped to they help our Reggie's progress for their spring Sports and did an amazing job students gain speed power strength and Mobility as well as mindfulness and nutrition just in time for the spring season right um and our spring sports tryouts and practices have started um upcoming this week tomorrow we have a Merrimack baseball game and a girls softball game versus Andover High Thursday it's going to be a busy day with boys basketball versus Dracut High girls softball versus Manchester Essex Regional High School varsity girls track outdoor versus Lawrence High and lastly varsity's boys track outdoor versus Lawrence High there's nothing on the schedule for Friday but on Saturday there will be a game for varsity girls softball against Phillips Academy actually and we did

007have um an NHS candle lighting induction ceremony um that was very very beautiful um there was a big amount of support from students current members of NHS the staff and the families nine Juniors and 44 sophomores were inducted on March 16th a special thank you to everyone on the NHS faculty Council who scored 102 applications each so thank you for your hard work on that um I wish we could show the video but we can because of course it's not projective our Regis have talent um our let's get loud talent show was um a big hit thanks to our singers dancers and musicians and the support students staff included the stage and the show was absolutely amazing foreign [Music] and on that um the next page there was a video hopefully we'll be able to

008show it at the end of the presentation um but um on the next piece of paper um we've had many Banquets for our winter sports and there's some photos of our veggies celebrating all their hard work this past season there are photos from girls basketball winter track and hockey but a big thank you and congratulations to all the students who have participated thank you we had door decorating for Black History Month um we have a good healthy competition so we held a door decorating contest for Black History Month and our Regis were very creative students voted on their favorite and the top three were first place um biotechnology second place cosmetology third place um Health assisting hmm [Music] um we had National um African-American um reading um launches one and three in the library at

009the beginning of the month during launched one through three win there was a special poetry event honoring Black History Month that took place in the library students and staff could help or listen to poetry written by black authors they also enjoyed cookies made by our culinary students all right um and that concludes the end of our presentation thank you all for your time and attention hopefully we could take a look at those videos now [Music] thank you [Music] it was just a short clip I'm sorry um yeah this one's also short as well it's only like six or seven seconds [Music] unfortunately they're only short videos because I was having a great time at that talent show um it was definitely a lot of fun and if you want to see more hopefully there's another

010one next year we would love to see you there but that concludes our presentation thank you very much do we have any questions for our students reps Mr Hayden Maureen I don't know if he did but I didn't catch the young man's name can he introduce himself please um Jason more nice to meet you all this is for Joe I would I was wondering if our most talented Reggie faculty participated namely was Mr Middleton there this year all right thank you anything else you have any questions for us thank you very much a very nice report as always okay you're going back to the regular order of business uh Mr DiStefano a cash balance report please sure cash balance report as of March 21st 2023 count balance on February 27 2023 was 4 million three

011seventy 080 spot 58 we had deposits from February 28th to March 21st one million 415 77. you had transfer out to mmdt of 2 million less payroll on March 2nd of 1 million 103.054 27 pay small payroll on March 10th 23 58 51. payroll on March 16th of 1 million 23 898.77 warrant number 34 on February 28th of 664 716.50 warrant number 35 on March 7th 203 761 15 leaves us with a book balance on March 21st of 851 707.15 and a corresponding bank balance on the same date of one million 880 237.21 in our mmdt account as of February 27th um the balance is nine million three Thirty One three seventy two forty three year-to-date interest was 172 131.79 we had the transfer of 2 million from the Eastern Maine account interest for February

012was 34 million 664.22 and an overall mmdt balance on March 21st of 11 million 538 168 44 and a total operating cash balance of 12 million 389 875.59 chill except the motion as presented discussion all those in favor anyone oppose thank you very much uh handout is a Consolidated cash Reconciliation Report revolving fund report the packet budget report the packet and uh Mrs martells you handed out the budget books do we need to uh elaborate on that at all no a bunch of books you already have a question Mrs Fitzgerald yes I had a question about one of the warrant um not warrant articles but one of the things in the warrant oh okay all right it's all right Tim sure okay um I did have a question about an 11 670 payment to Elena

013Stafford um if I could have an explanation of uh who she is or what she does and um for how long of service is that eleven thousand John to who's the best to answer that yeah Eleanor uh Mike please oops has been working with us since the beginning of the school year she was hired as a support um coach she's a coach uh we have three coaches she's one of our curriculum coaches and also does she's the one that writes our uh does the uh bi-weekly newsletter School newsletter she's the one that does the writing for that she's also rewriting doing all the writing for our new web um page um and uh I'm not sure what the actual she also is doing in Grant for she works also with all our new teachers and

014helping them pass the uh detail any of the staff members who are working on that helps them also with their licensure work she does work there so she also coaches teachers on curriculum and instruction um she I'm trying to think what else she does oh she's also overseeing working with me closely on the Strategic plan that's one of her projects this year she's basically helping me facilitate that uh getting a lot of the Committees organized that kind of work she's doing a lot of that as well and she has been doing she's got a grant I don't know if the 11 000 foot was to work for the grant uh was that the workflow do you know what that exact po was formal assigned I don't remember I don't have it in front of me

015here letters out oh that's her two her oh yeah so that's probably what her uh she's making approximately around 80 000 a year so that might have been her monthly salary part of her monthly salary which is the show yes I I guess I would follow that up I just don't remember um the position when it was either posted or um was it a contract so is they it's more than a one-year contract it's a two-year contract three-year contract an issue with a company or is she her own coaching consultant her own consultant consultant yep okay thank you you're welcome anything further you sure a part of her paying also comes from a grant that she's uh the money Frank had gotten us a grant last year for about 40 000 of that money she's

016been uh that's what we've been using for her work that she's been doing tutoring and coaching uh new staff to help them get past the veto and work on helping them get their licensure okay we all set to move on okay donations uh we have a 2003 Chevy Trailblazer valued at 4 375 donated by Alexander Ames from Methuen Mass see no articles no public participation the great student report we already got admission report uh superintendent please so you have in front of you uh the admissions report based on each community and each School how many students were applicants we had have had so if you look at Lawrence it was 959 students from Lawrence 290 students from Methuen 29 from North Andover and [Music] I missed Andover it was 24 for Andover for a total

017of 1 300. and 16. um this was as of three to 23. and then the next page shows one second on side Mrs Fitzgerald had a question yes I have another question I realized that not all of these schools are within our district and for instance um Saint Augustine's which is in Andover but you can live anywhere and go to that school so I know that when the records come they come from the sending school but some of these are also out of state and how do we know that that person is moving into a district in order to be accepted into our school or if they are in fact already living in the district but they for whatever reason go out of state to school so anyone that's out of that in their application

018they have to identify where they live and if they're moving into the district they have to provide proof of that um what are the different ways we ask them to provide proof Brenda oh yeah foreign thank you I just thought just to make sure everyone knows Brenda Richardson who is director of admissions and guidance for those who might have forgotten who she was she's here I'll sort of talk a little bit about another issue that's going to come up thank you so um when we do receive an application for a student and they're attending a school in another District we always make sure that they are actually living in one of our four sending communities so um you know there was actually a higher number I think than usual this year of both out of

019state and you know just outside of the district mostly Haverhill so we always look into those situations before we actually accept the application so in some situations it could be that a student has two parents one parent lives in New Hampshire they're currently living in that school but the other parent is living in our district so then you know we ask for their proof of address if that's the case and also in some situations it might even be their legal you know custody paperwork because it is supposed to be a student who has or a family that has split custody we've had you know situations with students who are homeless who are temporarily housed outside of the district and according to McKinney vento they actually have a right to stay in the district and the

020the sending community and they can actually apply to both so it say if it's a student who's living in Haverhill they actually have a right if they're originally from our community to apply here or to to Whittier so we do sort of dig into that just to make sure that they are actually you know living in the district okay listen I said continue down please if you look at the next page it lists uh the total applicants we've had up to this year at this point for 2027 class of 1467 applicants and it's broken down by Community if you look down at the bottom of the page you can see how it's broken down by Community different community uh Brenda I've been noticing in to my extreme pleasure an increase in the certain body of

021um from Methuen is there are we doing anything different that we haven't done before or is it what has sparked the more um applications from method so I am not entirely sure we definitely have tried more Outreach we did have a parent Zoom meeting in addition to going out to all of the schools we did receive some email addresses this year from the the districts including Methuen which we have not in the past and I think having access to that information has made a big difference so you know we want to try to continue to get the email addresses so just having that contact information and typically we do get to present to all of the students in the eighth grade and some seventh grade as well so I think that that really helps and

022I also think you know students students who are involved in local organizations like Spartan football and you know those other connections I think that that's also had an impact [Music] and that that completes that report any other questions for the superintendent over Brenda thank you very much are you saying uh yet another issue that um the enrollment process oh okay all right sorry I think that the committee had last week some questions on the enrollment process so uh it's included again in this this week's report so you're open for questions open for questions on the enrollment package questions either Mr superintendent or for Brenda you received all the letters and communication that we have with the parents uh when we accept students so when we deny students that we shared with you I didn't know

023if anyone had any questions regarding those Communications yeah so questions on the letters and we spoke about the dates that were shown in the letters so um the letter sent to the applicant to the applicants that are put in the waiting list which is the first one right on the packet yeah yes um so it says you know that they were going to be sent second round of admissions in the news and acceptance in the near future so I believe that needs to we spoke about this already um that should be a date there when they are expected to receive another round because near future could be anything or they probably never gonna get any um any any communication so that's one um on the at the end of that sentence it also say says

024that um okay can you answer that first and then we'll continue sure we we don't have once we send out that initial round of acceptances we don't have a specific date that we're sending out the second round because it really depends on the response that we get from the applicants that we do except so I know that there was a concern previously about our the language where we said you know we want people to respond within 10 days we are trying to encourage people to respond as soon as possible exactly for this reason because we know people are anxious to get off of the waiting list but even once so we send out the letters we send out the information and we wait well after 10 days well after two weeks more like three and

025then anybody that we don't hear from we then start calling and emailing and trying to get a response so as of this time I can tell you that we have three out of the 514 students that we accepted we have 366 who have committed 75 who withdrew after they were accepted and we're still waiting for 73. so we try to wait for as many of those as we can so that we can send out another you know larger round of acceptances sure did you need me to repeat any of that 360 security yes yes right right and and possibly more we still have 73 that we're waiting to hear from so that's why we don't provide an exact date because we just don't know how long it will take us to get to all of

026those families I got you there but then that you have in the acceptance letter there's a date where um the ninth graders are going to take it exam which is maybe six so you already had dates where you had commitment I believe you need to have a date there and actually I'm not asking for I'm asking for a date to be put there because you guys have a guideline of when things need to happen so a day there should be put in and I understand what you're saying I'm waiting a little longer than you should factor that into the dates to add in there because I'm it's just this is I feel this is a whole and people are not going to get response when they they're supposed to be getting response again um and

027actually this letter says that they are going to get a notification when everything is all set that doesn't have a date either but again I'm sure that they probably don't even get anything um yes just to respond to the uh their second round that we do a second round I don't believe we notify parents when we're starting that second round of uh acceptances they could yes we don't in the letter we're not telling them they'll hear from us we'll do a second round but they don't hear from us when we're doing that second round the only way they're going to know there was a second round if we notified them that they were now taking off the wait list and been accepted other than that they're not going to know any specific time frame right

028and if I could just speak to that so I think the only way that we could really do that and come up with a date and stick to that date would be to have an absolute cut-off so if somebody doesn't respond by a particular date that we set if we don't hear from them by then then we would move on on the list but unfortunately I know that we would have lots of families who were still interested who just for whatever reason hadn't responded yet and we do worry about that being sort of an equity and act access issue in some ways um for you know for a variety of reasons but I feel like if we were to set a date for that second round we would really have to set a final uh

029date on that first round and we do try to reach out to families as much as possible like I said We call we email and then ultimately we send a letter because we're trying to give everybody every opportunity to respond but if that's a a decision moving forward we can certainly consider that I think we just have to be prepared for the impact on the other side with somebody who missed that deadline and we would just have to be prepared to respond to that have a way so we have um it's almost 17 100 applications for 400 and some seats we should have a specific days when um response are coming back to us so that we can place those people that are waiting and again it's just no having dates there it's not going

030to give you that so unfortunately I understand that people take longer to respond but that is their problem there is a waiting list of people that are waiting to hear from us and they deserve that opportunity as well so if you don't have dates you're waiting for what um that's my position and I believe that day it's necessary there just because of what I just said um again we are a committee there's a decision made um in like Mr chair said he has to be four four friends or more right but I believe we need to have that um set and because we have commitment days and we have too many people waiting we just had too many people waiting superintendent wanted to say something but I just want to address that so I would

031be happy to sit down with uh Brenda uh the uh director to look at this particular situation and uh you know we could pick a date might be a lot further out than people might like us so you know if we anticipate usually let's say we say Well it usually takes us three weeks we may put out that all right we're gonna look at we may hold off and put it out there five weeks and not and not look at them and for at least five weeks but we'll look at it and see what makes sense in terms of trying to come up with a second date maybe there's another approach where when we do start the second round we could advertise it in the website on our website or uh in our school newsletter

032or something like that to notify everyone out there that we are going to be looking at a second round of acceptances uh if you're uh if you accepted you'll hear from us within the next week or two weeks or something like that just so they're not waiting forever we can look at that and see if we can come out with something that makes sense that you feel that you would be comfortable with um so so I know that there's many applicants that are put on the waiting list that have no clue whether they need some type of documentation or anything I know here is a paragraph that says that if there are documents that that they need to provide that they need to request an appeal within 30 days I mean again I'm hoping and

033I want to see or I want to know if you have a process where the people that the applicants that actually need some type of documentation that they are they are being told what do they need because this letter again is too big and it doesn't say anything for example I have a student that call I mean a pattern concern pattern that called me the other day because um you know their kids were devastated because they couldn't get into the school having two two sisters already here which are one of them is already um [Music] ah it says you're not right you thank you um in the kit it has high honor just like there's his sisters um and the only problem that he has is some attendance because of Kobe and all that so

034I'm sure they didn't know that because this letter doesn't say anything um um hopefully they already helped because ideas spoke to somebody in the um office but that's a concern that I have and I still had a concern because this letter doesn't say anything for those particular application applicants that are put on the waiting list so um situations like you're talking about there Zoila um what the fir that's why we have a a an appeals process so there are lots of situations like because of mental health or covet or something like that that impacted their attendance that uh you know shows that they had a lot of absenteeism and that hurt them in getting in they lost a lot of points so in an appeal process we would have a conversation with the parents and

035talk about what it is going forward that they would need to do in order to get accepted so you know we try to work with the parents if they had great grades and everything else looked great but the issue was attendance that hurt them a lot that really impacted their opportunity to be accepted that's why we'd have an appeal we bring in a lot of we do accept students who have those exceptions after we've had a conversation and sit down with the parents I'm question in the process that we're doing because I believe we are helping those people but that's when they already know but my point is how do they know what I'm missing or what they lacking off because unless they they have patterns that are actually on top of their students and

036they want to know and they look and call people like they call me they call us they will not get answers that's what I'm saying I'm not I'm not saying that you don't have a process for it if people come and ask but it's before they come and ask how do they how do they know so I would say well first you know I can understand why they would call you but the answer really for them is that they should always the answer that you should always give them is to contact the school because we really can't give information to anybody other than the parents um so I would I would ask that everybody encourage the parents to call the school to ask for an appeal because that's when they find out so we don't

037give out every single student the information of why they may not that they're put on the wait list and so if they feel as though there was an acceptance and we do but we do say if there's an exception something exceptional that we should be considering that they should request an appeal so they can come in and have a conversation with us I believe the letter articulates that mine's going to be a two-part question um Brenda if we put a hard day how would that affect people that want to appeal so we don't want to be filling all of the spots while we're still dealing with ongoing appeals because you know you're potentially holding up spots for for families that do want to appeal so it's also you know that's where you have that balance

038you're kind of you know estimating um and realistically it truly should be a very small number of people who appeal um because it's you know those extenuating circumstances that sort of go beyond and it's it's more than you know typically just a few absences or a week or something due to to covet or something like that we're also very clear with the middle schools and the records that they submit so there's a spot on the The Counselor recommendation form where if there is a known extenuating circumstance that impacted that student they'll fill it out right there on the application so what happens is anybody can call to find out where they lost points and then try to find some way some Avenue to make up for those last points that more often than not do

039not constitute an extenuating circumstance um so if if somebody wants to um even look at their you know their score if they understand if they're looking at their grades and looking at the attendance any parent can can request their students records from the middle school and they can see for themselves how many excused and unexcused absences there are but if somebody does call we'll certainly give them that information but but the the appeals process does um sort of hold up us being able to go and turn around and fill every spot and send out more acceptances because we don't want to over accept so it's sort of that balance so thank you um so come with a close-up again one the word extreme circumstances even if they do have it that automatically they don't know

040if they don't they have that so they it turns them off from trying to appeal the other biggest complaint I've been getting is um failure response from the sending school and the school is not sending the records the parents can get a hold of them um and they've they've talked to them or they try to set meetings and it's become difficult for them to get the records sent over to the school um so to me I mean and if they could have a certain extremely circumstance um but they don't know that and it's hard for them to find sometimes it's hard for them to get their information they need um to appeal because they also don't know what what is what is they should be appealing um or they should be appealing so I mean

041to me the same circumstance I don't know maybe is looking at what kind of words we could use different but besides them flooding your your office with with millions of questions because I'm pretty sure we all get millions of questions from people all the time right so in the letter we did try to give examples of what an extenuating circumstance is and and I think these are really this typically does capture so special education referrals so if there's a student who was referred for special education and they hadn't previously been receiving services medical and mental health issues homelessness and Foster Care those are typically the most common extenuating circumstances so we did try to add that language so it wasn't just completely vague but I'm certainly open to you know any other suggestions in terms

042of the language that we could use yes um do we do we have a specific number of special education applicants that get accepted or it's it's just the part of the whole number yeah it's a blinded missions process so students can voluntarily identify if they're a special ed student or an English learner but that that does not come into the admissions formula yeah there's not a certain percentage um so back to the question that Mr cerullo asked if I got it correctly so this letter says the 30 days appeal yeah they had 30 days for appealand um the um the ones that were asset that they had 10 days to get back right to receive the acceptance package package I'm not sure if that I don't know how that relates 10 days versus terria I'm

043not sure can you help me figure that out so I don't I'm not sure if I can answer this in a way that makes it so there's really not a direct connection between the two it's just really with the 10 days we're just really trying to encourage families to respond as soon as possible so we can continue to go down and access students from the wait list um you know we thought that we could say 10 days you know you have 10 days to appeal but we thought that 30 days was more generous and you know as as we know that some some people have questions about that they're not sure that they understand so I think it gives families a greater opportunity than saying you have 10 days to respond you have 10 days

044to appeal you know if we did 10 days to appeal people would probably be very upset about that when they're there because the 10 days is it's just not enough some people don't read their mail unto who knows 15 days after so this is going to be late uh 10 days for me is not not enough but again we need to move on on the waiting list so it has two two-way here um again it's just the dates again I mean I do have a concern on the dates um it says that like I mentioned before the night grader are going to have a placement test on May 6 2023 which is very clear then um they're going to get additional information and let it later date we should have a date when they're gonna

045get information because they need to get ready right so I have a problem with the dates if you can work on that and fix it or get it to a better understanding um I I still going to express my concern because I done done it before and I wanted I want to do it again we have an opened receiving application concert and it we so many applicants and so little seats available I think we are we're setting ourselves for failing in that respect and I'm concerned there so I think we should have and again I'm just saying something that I already mentioned before we should have um due dates when we're not taking more applications and days going forward to when we're going to start when we're going to end and all all that um

046set because it's just too we don't we're not I mean I know um we are working towards getting more um space and more programs and more of to accommodate so many applicants but we're not there yet we're not going to get there anytime soon so we should at least um take care of how we get applications in because we can know we cannot accommodate everybody that wants to come in that's a problem and we need to figure out how to fix it now and then when we are able to and we can take all 1600 1700 2000 applicants then we'll get back to that whole you know year-round receiving applications Brenda you said there was a small number of appeals what's a small number so I said there should be a small number of appeals

047last year I would say probably 50 maybe requests the year before that or the pandemic here I remember we had that just kind of kept going we had close to a hundred you know that was just a crazier but you know I would say 50 60 and that's a lot that's right so just hearing those numbers to me it's a it just further highlights that that the issue stems from the initial application process so if the appeal process should be uh a loan number you know if you should only be receiving a low number then that just tells me that had we have a deadline from the onset of the application process we wouldn't be seeing ourselves in an issue with um so many appeals but because we leave it as an open enrollment all

048year round accepting applications then you're more than likely going to receive a lot more appeals because we are putting a lot more students on the waiting list and because of the letters and I'm going to be um I'm going to be referencing uh probably the letters that we were sending out a year ago because I'm assuming the letters that we're seeing right now adjustments were made um especially in kind of giving an example of what extenuating circumstances mean but that's probably why uh the years prior these letters being sent out to parents it's vague and it would it just continuously would further um validate why parents are going to appeal because they don't they don't know everybody's gonna appeal because they think that they they have a chance to either convince the school the department

049there's something some information that was missing in order to get their child accepted so I'm gonna have to agree with Zoila in the sense of at least during the initial application process like that the first application being submitted there needs to be a deadline um because just accepting applications all year round you're just going to see yourself in a pickle in terms of high numbers of of Appeals um first of all Brenda I know when I reach out to the office yours responsible I gotta say thank you for that um and a lot of the appeals is because a lot of kids in the eighth grade hear about the vote it don't realize that what they did in the seventh grade affects their grades coming in um and it does um so that's one of

050the things that we could eliminate is if we could start having a conversation with a lot of kids in the sixth grade level to let them know that if they're thinking of coming to glts what does what happens in this in the seventh grade year is going to affect the process coming in um in in a lot of the kids that I've seen have had that issue where in the seventh grade they've had absences or or whatever it was that then all of a sudden they hear about glts in the eighth grade now they've turned it around but the eighth grade doesn't count as much as the seventh grade level does um do I agree with with close dates um no because there's then we're eliminating a lot of kids that can imply but we

051do have a waitlist problem and looking to expand and soil is right it's not going to happen in the next six months it's going to take a lot of work and not just from us but from our ascending communities because we're going to have to have conversations with them about in legislation that needs to be changed in order for that to start happening which will affect a lot of things moving forward but I think just a little just if we start at the sixth grade level compared to the eighth grade and seventh grade that could that start alleviating some of that that issue no I would agree with that and would love to get into the middle schools and start you know speaking with students towards the end of the sixth grade I think if

052we went too early you know for when they're talking about ninth grade that's a lifetime away for them in their young lives but yes certainly um you know we want the seventh graders early on to know you know how important that year is and some schools do give access to 7th and 8th graders which is great and I think the commissioner said that all superintendents had to give of access for for um for vocational schools to um go into the schools and if they're not then they could be a violation don't quote me on that but I'll ask you in the next um meeting Vivian um I'm I'm for educating um the students as early as sixth seventh to fifth grade for all that for for all that matter but it does not alleviate the

053issue the numbers are not going to change as to the amount of applications that we receive whether they are getting straight A's as of sixth grade going forward we're still going to continuously receive high number of applications every year especially with the new programs that we have coming in best believe we're going to have even more students wanting to apply to to attend this school so it does not alleviate the amount of seats that we could only offer and we're going to continue to see this issue because we allow for this for a non-deadline um applications are just going to come in and parents are going to continue to appeal because they as parents as any parent they're going to fight for their students to have a seat at the school so we need to

054figure out like we need to definitely figure out how to resolve the issue or at least alleviate until we can come up with certain initiatives to expand in the near future everything further okay I heard a lot of good things going on both sides of the table but where do we stand uh what are we going to do are we going to ask the administration to come back with us with a revised letter with dates or what do you think John I've been a lot of good things were said but I would I would uh say that uh if you forward it to myself and the admissions director we'll sit down look at the dates and we'll come back and make some final recommendations to you whether what we're doing is the appropriate way but

055we'll engage some of our sending communities as well in the conversation to get some input from them in terms of where they sit with the uh with the some of the dates and the issues and the challenges that are out there so we'll reach out to some data collection and then we'll come back to the school committee with some answers or things that we found out in reaching out to our community leaders our principals that are out there and our superintendent I do me with the superintendents every year when we first start this process to talk about to ensure that we're able to see all of their students and they've all been actually very accommodating uh in fact they've been I think improving commissioner has put out a Department of Ed and the board of

056education has stated that all students should have access to hearing about opportunities in the vocational school so and since that has happened we've seen a better response from some of our schools so we're encouraged by but I would agree with Frank in particular with regards to at least having a opportunity to talk to all seventh graders early in the process can make a difference for some kids and maybe we could look at commute sending out some communication to parents of seventh graders as well if we had if we could get their email addresses of 7th and 8th graders then we can communicate with those parents at an earlier date so we can talk and look at that as well because that would we can only reach out to the in many cases to the parents

057and students that we have for eighth graders we get their addresses and their emails in order to invite them to open house and other Communications for 8th graders so if we could receive early seventh graders then we could start that process sooner too so in my communication with the superintendents and principals as we continue to look at this process I'll request that as well is the second week second meeting in April yeah second meeting in April too soon or do you think you can get back to us by then uh like five weeks away I think sure I can at least come back with some uh where we're at in that process okay thank you good next week yeah we're going to have to yes the special meeting but Vivian okay out of curiosity have

058uh have we've always operated um in terms of enrollment it was there ever a deadline at one point and we changed the policy on that and if so why we did we we did have uh we did uh not always have everybody on the waitlist we did deny uh but it was encouraged by the department of Ed not to do that deny um in like application process was there a deadline at one point and yes there was deadlines at one point but we used to always continue to get applications after the fact and we would accept them so uh in Rome and then it became very difficult to um um work with the the issue of having a specific deadline and then getting another 200 applications after that uh and so in order to give

059people more time uh we found that and also there were opportunities kids sometimes will make a decision until later in their eighth grade and they say oh I want to go to Great Lawrence Tech so we're always we feel like it's Equitable it's more Equitable to leave the door open to all for students and so I think and that was always encouraged as a equity uh issue so that's one of the reasons why we opened it up to uh row uh role enrollment continual enrollment you know I know I'm a genius this idea just came up to you know just came to me I don't know if it will work but what if what if we had a deadline and then still allow for applications after the deadline and kind of have a separate letter

060letting those parents know that this application has been received after the deadline however if any open seats have become available that they would be taken into consideration or be put in the pool but those parents that did the due diligence of submitting the applications and the documentation within the deadline those are the ones that we should kind of be focusing on and probably alleviates a lot of the headaches that your department has and it will be a lot less Appeals and if we have more open seats available then that's when we'll open the doors for applications that were submitted after the fact if that works I want my ten percent I can say I do know one school that uh did that in the past I don't know if that's still their practice so regardless

061of their score even if if they applied late even if they had a perfect score they would go to the bottom of the list so that's certainly you know that's something that would be discussed as part of the admissions policy that this committee approves the only thing that I just wanted to add about having that cut off date and again it's up to the committee to approve the policy but one of the the biggest things that the Department of Education is looking looking to do is to open up access so if we were to have a hard cut off say you know late fall early winter then we would be that would be a disadvantage to anybody who would be potentially a newcomer and they're you know looking they're looking at our number of English

062Learners and you know access for English Learners and newcomers so that would be a disadvantage to those applicants so I'm just putting that out there as a point of um you know just discussion in terms of the um looking at the policy and making sure that it is equitable Frank thank you Brenda he just reminded me of that conversation um yeah if we put a hard deadline we could be in violation of Department as rules um putting a hard deadline on the application process and I know the commission is looking for make sure that we make it Equitable and I know another other schools in the in the Commonwealth of the vocational schools are in trouble for that same thing okay anything uh Zoila I have a last comment um I do have another family

063that call and that's why I asked a question about the special education number um this um third student um all of their their the students that are with him um a classmate they were accepted but he was not accepted he has good grades and good attendance and everything so do they need to just call for an appeal is that what I need to tell them they could certainly call I don't I don't know if it's somebody that we've spoken to or not yet but they can certainly call and ask you know what the score was what the breakdown was and where the student lost points and we can talk about whether there is um you know some basis for an appeal just a student being on an IEP that in itself is not a basis

064for an appeal but there could be something else that's that is relevant to that so they could certainly call and we could talk to them I know they haven't called because they waiting for me to get back anything further okay so second week in April will tackle it again thank you very much brother oh I'm sorry whoops here for this next issue Next Issue oh I'm sorry I didn't realize the concussion policy that I don't know I'm just I think that's what I was on the policy committee but I was not planning to speak to the concussion policy this evening that was Mary I'll try to answer any questions if I can yeah it should be oh should be all set though oh okay we're all set thank you very much we're gonna blame you

065for that policy pretty soon we'll have you packing cars okay concession policy superintendent so uh you received the concussion concussion receive the concussion policy last week pardon me but felt it's all you needed more time to review it before voting on it so we still need to committee to vote on that concussion policy that was a motion please students going to have it on the table of matters no I said I don't have it on the table of matters I'm not saying it was just in case I have a question on this because you were sorry I don't have another table now it was table before yeah last we discussed it last meeting yeah it doesn't mean it was table but okay we'll put it off for now then oh you want to put it

066off right we're not down to table matters in the agenda though matters in the agenda classroom space for new programs thanks Mrs Fitzgerald sorry in terms of the concussion I thought that it was removed from a vote last time so just so that we would have more time to study it and that it was supposed to be on the agenda for our vote tonight that was mine we'll vote on it on the table matters if they I don't have a here in the table of matters myself I have it on my um as part of my report right I understand that but they're saying that has to legally it has to come off the table to be oh okay thanks okay let's move down here uh classroom space for new programs please okay so uh

067in terms of classroom space in the program so we have three new programs um and then we also need space for for uh academic teachers as well uh because bringing in having three new programs will allow us to bring in uh somewhere between approximately 45 new students which will have an impact on our academic uh scheduling but in terms of the space for the new programs the aviation so right now we're in the process of hiring a architect to to do the final design work on the three spaces that we initially gave the architect uh to look at um which is a shop space for the aviation program for four years for the four years and then a shop space for programming for four years and of course Child Care early childhood education which we

068have that space already um but in the interim we need to have a space for ninth graders next year in order to get the final approval for the program so the program today we got word from the Department of Education that those three programs have been accepted to move forward for next year pending a visit to look at the Freshman space which they will do in the early May so um so it's been approved to move forward and actually the only thing left to do really is have them come and inspect the space for safety so we're we're all set with those three programs to move forward and plan for them for next year um so in terms of the space for Aviation ninth grade we are going to put the aviation ninth grade if

069uh in where carpentry 1112 is now which is next to the Horticulture program down below the in the construction area on the corner of the as you make the turn to come up the hill under the tunnel there's a corner shop there which is the carpentry 11th and 12th graders they are moving in with the 10th graders who has excess space they are rarely in their space because they do outside projects so for instance this year they're working in three different projects outside of here next year we have a request to build three different houses so we're trying to do one next year and one the following and won the third year working with different uh committee organizations for that so they'll be building a house next year so in terms of 11th and 12th

070grade we can put them there as a home for when they first come in in the morning that's where they meet and organize whether their work for the day and then that'll open up the 9th the 11th and 12th grade carpentry shop we will be where we've already started actually preparing it for the aviation ninth grade shop until we build a new edition which we hope to have done a year from September so that gives us about a year and almost a half to get the four-year program space built and in place um so that takes care of the aviation program we were also still continuing to try to either purchase or lease or have access to the um the um hanger out at the Lawrence airport we've come to a few roadblocks on that

071but we're working on getting that result um so and then we're also putting up a building here for that on-site uh shop as well then the next program which is programming we are going to for the ninth grade program we're going to put the ninth grade I'm probably 9th 10th and 10th grade program up in the mezzanine area which is up on the third floor so that'll be a shop space we did use it for a while for a science Pro for science but the problem with having science up there is that we had continue student uh going up to the third floor uh which was a problem so rather than have ongoing students going up and down once they get up in the shop they stay there so it's not a problem of having

072kids going up to the third floor there we meet all the regulations in terms of safety uh alarms security everything so it is an acceptable space for programming Department Aid we'll also come and inspect that it's also been inspected by the building inspector and all that uh in the years past to use it for educational space and will be and has ought we've also gotten a letter of acceptance from the building inspector which we had to provide Department of Ed to use that space as well and as well as Aviation we had to send that in with our application I have a question does the elevator access that yes there's an elevator so that provides uh handicap access yep thank you uh yeah it's been a while since I've been up there and then our

073Child Care Program obviously is brand new and has already ready to go so it built so then it the question remains where would we get some more classroom space so we're looking at I think we put in the budget I believe we put in the budget but there's some so wasn't sure if we did or not maybe unless I remember if we didn't we will revisit anyways some three new academic teachers one for History Science and Math yeah I think we put the I'm almost positive with you but anyways we'll need three more classrooms for that space and there are three possible classrooms down in the construction area there's one classroom space over by the cafeteria and there's also another classroom space near I.T so that's five different possibilities for classroom space that um that

074we're working on preparing and getting ready for classrooms next year um down in the construction area so you say all right where where are those three spaces down in the construction area so where we where the 11th and 12th grade carpentry students were we're putting Aviation but there's also enough space to put two classrooms down there we have to take a wall down that has storage for electrical but we're moving Electro across the way to another space so that'll allow us to build two classrooms down there in the future and then there's also another space that used to house low low voltage electrical we can put another classroom space there then up by the cafeteria there's another space up there which uh used to be we had in there the um mail room in in

075uh so we're gonna expand that space to be able to have another classroom up there and then it has um there's a classroom down by it also that will be available next year so they would give us up to five classrooms bases one of them small but can have a small classroom and there's still a couple other spaces we're looking at that we can make changes and adjustments to excuse me John Mr solo yeah thank you though um we're in the budget that we process put in four to three extra teachers for the what for three extra teachers you just said that's one question we're in the budget Zone and we need three I could so did we not talk about the three academic we didn't put three academic in there all right so we'll

076revisit it we'll find we'll we'll be able to make adjustments we'll we'll add them just to make sure they're in there I thought we did put them in there we talked about it but if we miss it that's my fault so I'll go back and revisit it again with you Melissa and the other question John can you give me give us like a little floor plan or something where all these classes are going to be um I'm more of a visual person I'll bring that I'll bring the school blueprint with me next meeting so I can point them out on the blue on the blueprint uh I have a full set of the school print and I can I can highlight the I'll uh highlight those exact spots for you so you can see it

077you keep talking about this third floor and I know Leo's knows where it is Sue knows where it is but I can't even picture where a third floor in this building is okay you don't want to this is uh Fitzgerald yes I I guess my concern is that we're trying to play catch-up and last summer we got ourselves in a real Mess by taking on so many projects that included construction that they were not completed when they were supposed to be and we're still working on some of them so are we looking to do this in-house or are we looking to bring contractors in to do this so it can all be done at one time I I don't know what the answer is and I don't think it's where it is in the budget

078I don't know but I'm just concerned again that school will open and kids aren't in the spaces they're supposed to be in so I think the floor plan that we asked about at the or I had asked about at the last meeting where these were going to go I I just don't want us to be in the mess we were in this September with the products we needed not here and the space is not completed I I think that would be unfair two years in a row to our students to have that happen so the aviation for ninth grade has to be ready by the second week of May so we're already started that that will be ready the space for programming has to be ready for the second week of May and that'll be

079ready uh we've already started that but those are not major jobs they're basically for the aviation for the Aviation Space it's a matter of moving some staging that's in that space and putting up a wall and then splitting the space in half and then we have two classrooms so we'll have two classrooms with a matter of putting up some walls doing some electrical work it's all minor construction nothing major once we put up the walls we have to do some wiring electrical wiring because they're already learned they're already educational space it's just splitting up the space in a different in a different way by adding some some partitions uh end up in the mezzanine area the same thing it's a matter of adding a partition and then of course ordering computers which we've uh Furniture

080which we've already ordered Furniture either went into there is going in tomorrow I know that Lance uh has touched space with Melissa on that already uh so that that's in the works we have to order all the computers we had a conversation today up in the mezzanine looking at the space with uh Jason was up there with Lance and myself looking at how we're going to wire the space for all the technology we need up there so it will be working on that the custodians today moved a lot of equipment out out of there to open up the space so we're already in progress and getting all that space ready and prepared the classroom space those are all minimal it's really just a partition and doing some painting and moving some doorways and those will

081be done before the end of the school year as well so all of these spaces will be done before the end of the school year they're not big construction projects so they won't impact any of our bigger projects that we're looking at that will be long-term projects the bigger projects we're looking at not doing anything in-house but putting out an RFP we're in the process of trying gonna put up uh select a engineer and architect for the do the final design work and then once that's done we can put it out on the streets those are projects that will be put on the street and then hiring contractors for the most part some of us a little some will be subcontracting some of it but we won't be doing the work itself until the structures

082are totally up and then we may do a little bit of the electrical or something like that I know in the um in one area we might be doing a little bit of heac but most of the work can be done by contractors not by us as we did on the other projects and then those none of those projects that we need for September but we don't need it for until a year from September the only ones we really need for upcoming school year is the three new shops for the ninth grade and the three or four classrooms that we need for the new academic teachers we may have we we're not totally convinced whether we need three two or four we're still uh we're just doing uh Isabelle's working on the schedule now to

083make that final decision on whether we need another Ella teacher another math teacher and another science teacher so once she completes that then we'll know for sure but I but it looks like we're going to need one for each of those content areas our preliminary data shows yeah okay y'all set my own okay yeah last final thing so the very last thing you were talking about with outside contractors and putting together an RFP so we can go out to a bit eventually what what project or building is that those are the three buildings that I had given uh when we went out for a we went went out to hire a contract I mean we hired a uh architect to do some preliminary work and they provided us a drawing for the aviation I think

084I gave you the drawings there was three buildings there was the aviation and John I thought you were dreaming of something else so it's okay I understand now Mr Hayden Mr Lavoy you said you were going to relocate electrical for one of those classrooms downstairs what are we going to do with electrical no we're not moving the shop just a storage area that they have yeah just some of the they have three storage areas so we're gonna get them to organize a little better uh well not that they're not organized but we're going to consolidate even more and move some they have some uh electrical boxes and some conduit and some of that but we do have another smaller space that we can move that to so we can utilize that for the classroom anything

085else I met with all the I met with different I met with the carpentry the construction guys were impacted by it we met with them um earlier this week to talk about what we've been having ongoing conversations but we did a final meeting to make sure everybody was on the same page on the changes in the moves and how it's going to impact people and if they thought it wasn't going to work for them I wanted them to express that and so we could kind of try to problem solve it and so we resolved all that this week robotics grandchild so um we got an anonymous anonymous Anonymous uh is it easy for you to say yeah uh Grant we've got so we've got the mysterious person who has uh given us a 250 000

086Grant which they'd like us to use to purchase robotic equipment so we're I wanted to inform the community that we're in the process of identifying uh how we would spend that Grant and once we determine how we're going to spend that Grant they said they hey they would have another 500 000 that they would like to give us to but we have to determine how we would spend that and we Susan Amano when we met with the uh the CT staff to determine what are some possibilities for five hundred thousand dollars and so we sent them another Proposal with bullet points uh part of it was they wanted us to look at internships and other things to help get young people started in the job market so we sent them another proposal this week for

087another five hundred thousand dollars so that was the second one we got this year because we had gotten the 500 000 from Fidelity earlier this year from another Corporation so we've been very fortunate this year to get some support for our programs very good um legislative breakfast superintendent so as you all know we had our legislative breakfast last Friday opportunity to kind of show off the 90 done four wins but we also I had the opportunity to uh talk to our legislators about where we are as a school today where we hoped some of our plans and future thinking for moving forward and also getting some legislative support for some of the legislative bills that are out there we're also going to be looking for some legislative we may be looking to put out a

088a bill to help us purchase the uh um the airport Hangar that may take some legislation in order to look at our Charter because it may not be possible we're not sure yet the attorneys are looking at it but we may need some legislation so I've had some conversations with our legislators about that also after the event but they I thought the event went very well had a lot of feedback from people who were there and like a lot of new legislators who were looking to do a tour of the school because they've never been in the building so that really worked out well in establishing some new relationships and getting new any support we may be looking to get from our legislators moving forward so I thought it was successful and it was great

089to have our many of our school committee members at the at the event and be able to connect with our legislators as well okay excuse me moving on um marketing updates John so I really haven't done a lot with marketing in terms of strategies yet although um we are doing a few things um as you know we do our bi-weekly newsletter we're trying to expand that right now goes out to parents uh faculty we are looking to send it out to our advisory committee on a regular regular basis and one of the other things is to ascend to our uh our news outlets copies of that every time we put one together so the rumble the Eagle Tribune so we're reaching out to them to see if they would be willing to accept it and

090see if there's anything newsworthy they'd put in the Tribune for us we we do have our marketing company but we're looking uh talk thinking about putting out a new RFP to look for a new marketing agent haven't made any final decisions about that next step at this point is I'd like to put a marketing committee together so that I have a team of people that can work and uh try to determine I I wasn't at this point looking to hire anybody full-time for marketing but try to utilize who we have on staff now and maybe somebody that can do some uh specialty work as we do that we have now when we have a special article or as we do with the company we have doing some of that work now I think the challenge

091for us has not been that they're not willing to do certain things but for us being so busy with so many things not staying focused on just marketing as much as we should although we've tried to do a little better this year we still have Cassandra doing a lot of work on it and Eleanor the lady that we were talking about earlier is working on marketing material as well we're in the process of hiring a new company to re do our our website I think Susan's in an interview Thursday I think is a Thursday a meeting with a company Friday the meeting Friday with a company to looking to hire a company to redo our we've done some work already preparing for that both in a lot of the writings completed already Eleanor has Rewritten

092a lot of the material that's on our website as well and um so and uh Cassandra's putting some material together but we're meeting with a company that we feel will be can do some uh exceptional because we feel like that would be it's important to upgrade our website and do a better job than we've done in the past so new policies and procedures and using it and staying on top of everything we put on the website we're putting in place as well Mrs Fitzgerald yes if you do put together a marketing committee at some point I'm volunteering myself but far more important than that is there any way that we could bring together marketing and alumni relations so that it's under one umbrella I feel there are two areas that we feel miserably at and

093perhaps we could copy some of the other schools that do it very well at use Central Catholic as a prime example where their alumni know every single thing that's happening and if you know I use our golf thing as an example every Reggie alumni should be fighting for a place on that golf course but we just don't seem to have the vehicle so I guess I'm I'm asking that we look at the possibility of combining the effort or tying the effort in together thank you Mr Hayden it's lovely we know what the marketing our in-house people are doing and that's fantastic my question was and I think Frank backed me up on this was what is the marketing company that we're paying doing for us now I understand you're going to get rid of them

094so I guess they haven't been doing too much I I don't think it's so much that they have um we haven't reached out to them they do one article a month for they're supposed to do one article a month for us that goes into Tribune and they also do special projects if we have special projects but we haven't given them enough like we haven't brought them in until we link an article on this or like they have done some but we haven't ourselves put enough enough effort specifically to communicate and work with them it's not so much that they're not willing it's more I think it's more on us that we haven't brought them in to have the conversations and do the work that we needed to do to get more articles out there so

095I think you know trying to put a little more effort in that it's probably something that we can look at but of course um and it's just really been a matter of time with people focus on so many other things that we haven't you know set specifically we do you know the athletic stuff and I mean we do do some some stuff um and I think we've done more we're doing more than we ever did before but that outside communication we need to do a bit more of okay connecting more with the uh um the agencies that are out there the news agencies that are out there uh better job connecting with them and and doing a better job with that so that's it's hard when you don't have someone that's specifically that's their job

096although Cassandra does some of that but we also have it doing 15 other things as well sometimes so she supports the staff on a lot of educational stuff as well so it's just not been our major Focus foreign I just wanted to add that recently um there's a there's like a group it's actually a New England school public relations Association it's a there's a New England chapter and it's publicly relations specifically targeted for schools and so um we just became a member of it it was very short money and they're having um an event on in April and we have um uh several we have a couple people from the staff Cassandra being one of them attending that and part of what they do is um they've already shared a folder which has some materials

097and it's about marketing but it's also about Communications and they even gave us a shell of like a Communications plan so like a plan for the year and I know that it is a lot but I would I would agree with the superintendent we've had Cassandra and she's really done some more targeting but in terms of getting ahead of it it's like when we have an event or we have plan it is it's it's a lot for one person we have other members of our Administration like our student information officer Isabel Joya she has she also has a responsibility to reach out to um families in a different way so we're looking to find out if it's not one position can we harness the this organization and kind of get some professional development and what

098I really like about it is it's partic it's specifically for schools so um you know I'll be updating the superintendent once some members of our school attends and then we can report out on what we learn Mr Cirillo I I want to thank you for that of the um I think that's something very important and I'm gonna Echo what time in Maryland you break a very interesting um point about combining the two together with the alumni because we're there's a lot of alumni that come to the school that came to the school that have no idea or how to join the Alumni Association um weird a beautiful gem but we're only a gym in our own house because nobody on the outside really knows what's going on and when we're looking at looking to expand

099this is this is the reason why this is more so important because we have to show the communities what we're doing um and why it's important for them to partner with us into EX in helping us expand but in order to do that we have to do a better job of the marketing it might it might be putting bringing another person part-time to work with with um staff that we already have here um I don't know what the solution is it's something that would have to be looked um and we work at Maryland who's definitely on board on jumping on the committee anything further Vivian well I'll call the same thing that Francisco and Marilyn mentioned um and I even have talked with um the superintendent in creating a tour that is specifically for alumni

100you know we tend to do tours for elected officials and I think it would be nice that a lot of the graduates like myself and the only reason why I'm I'm even aware as to the amazing changes that we have going on is because I'm a Committee Member but had it not been for that um there's so many graduates who have not stepped foot in the school and I think it would be an amazing opportunity for them to get involved um if they come and visit and just kind of reminisce and and get to experience um the amazing things that we have going on in the school and I think if we start creating events like that it would potentially bring in more foot traffic and alumni to sign up if if that's a way

101to attract and I know that that was also a good pointer to hire higher graduates you know as potential teachers or shop teachers which I know that that was something that we were struggling with at one point um and I definitely wanted to touch on the whole marketing thing I feel like we've we've touched on this before when I've expressed uh my interest in us going a little bit harder in social media considering that that is one of the main methods of communication um and for us not to take advantage um of that it's it you know it's it's sad on our part um so I definitely think that hiring maybe someone part-time to help us revamp I I do honestly agree you know I love everything we do but I I believe that we

102need to revamp our the way we Market ourselves but then also like the communication that we're giving out once so like when we're posting something it just needs to come across a little bit more streamlined more cohesive more modern and I think we're falling short in that so if if it takes by hiring I'm not sure if when you say no RFP to hire a new company is this just solely for they're in charge of like the news like the ego Tribune or like what other so it might be what are what are the responsibilities would this marketing company have yeah so doing exactly what you said what kind of social media uh should we should be utilizing social media more what should that look like and how and how should that come together all

103of that so it may not necessarily be a a company that like we've had companies that came before come in before they have talked about that in terms of doing more work with social media and and uh using platforms that we don't use now to do a lot of of marketing that we could start to utilize and it's not so much just for admissions but to also when we need support for if we want to put an addition on the school when we need to get Community Support how do we use those Avenues in order to get the right kind of support So if you're in that world all the time people are looking for what's coming out all the time at glts so so having someone has an expertise and that might be the

104way to go so putting out an RFP looking for that kind of an expertise as well as standard type media work as well so you know that's why I thought of if we had other voices beside myself besides ourselves we had committee people in the school that are interested there may be people out in our building it's amazing like we had staff that were at the talent show who knew they had all that Talent might have you know might have the same thing going on with uh you know some expertise when it comes to working out marketing ideas and moving forward okay Mr sister I would suggest that right now Sue got me all excited when she told me about this new group format that we are now members of um seeing what they have

105um using Cassandra as a Channel of vehicle to get all this information and maybe by the end of June we could come up if a committee is being formed we could come up with the best way to go forward whether it's combining two things whether it's doing it in-house with Talent we might not even know we have with a stipend type position uh whatever but instead of just saying oh we should do this we should do that I really do believe we need to figure it out separate from sitting here and throwing out ideas and I think starting with this new um group would be fabulous anything further okay uh principles report please I'll make this quick I know that um the report may look a little dated because it was a report that was

106deferred from February so it's kind of a combination um but I did want to just share our Quarter Two update which soon I will be able to compare it to quarter three um also we've talked a little bit about elective surveys I wanted to just briefly share the results and let you know what the next steps are in terms of that process um I won't go through the whole thing but I did share with you our school Improvement mid-cycle assessment so the school Improvement plan that you all approve every year we had the um we had our faculty Council go through it we asked for staff input and also the school council and the administrative team it's almost kind of like a my own our own formative assessment on where we are in our school

107Improvement plan so far and again that's we always want to try to get the most and then I just want to give a brief update in Spring MCAS testing which was today um so again quarter to your results they're there for you to say see we start off with the honor roll and then we have all of the numbers for our students that are failing with one or more failing grades um sometimes it can look pretty Stark with a q1 comparison compared to Q2 quarters are fairly short uh time frames when you look at a vocational one week on one week off a lot of the times quarter one is uh students getting into four or two is really when they get into the curriculum so I did include a comparison one thing that is

108notable is our grade 10 students they have um a sick you know a fairly low failure rate we look at grade nine and ten are those are the students that we've been working with the bar building assets reducing risks and we're really trying to continue and looking for ways next year to continue those um what we refer to as cohort meetings where groups of academic content teachers counselors other Specialists meet together to talk about kids which is really the way you can get some results we've had some challenges this year with a new schedule but you can still see that some of those 910 results are still looking good so again these numbers have already probably changed because we're within quarter three now we also know some of the students that came off the failure

109list some students are are still failing the same course and 183 students were added to the failure list I know that superintendent Lavoy also spoke to you about the Student Success plans last time and how it was important so you can see that referenced here in in terms of our action plan so when you look at the the next slide is actually we did a year over year because we want to kind of see what that what's that looking like and kind of look at the trends to find out if we can determine exactly what's going on is it an academic content is it within students coming back like what's really going on so we're looking at all that behind the data I also want to share this is all already all happening and actually

110pretty soon we'll have results but you know we were concerned with the uh the number of failures that went up we had a whole plan where teachers really work to develop success plans guidance worked and we have added an academic support session on Monday that we weren't offering and we targeted specifically those students on these failure lists we also ensured that all families that had a student on this list got a particular message from the superintendent I outlining this plan of action and asking them to contact us should they have questions we've been following up quarter three what we'll do is um when quarter three results come out we'll be looking again and all the administrators in terms on the academic side have also been working individually with teachers to support them and answer any

111questions we also have been meeting with students regularly just to kind of make sure that they support them so even though Quarter Two is beyond us it was in the report and I still wanted to share it because I like to make sure we share that um elective surveys I mentioned earlier that we were going to as part of our schedule change we were going to be looking at a way to provide some electives for our students where we believe that they could benefit from especially in the 11th and 12th grade we have a multi-year plan for this the first stage this year was to have the seminar courses which you know about we surveyed our students and I believe I discussed this a little bit you can see that um the the survey which

112I kind of not interested interested some of the things that students are very interested in are things like criminal justice they're also understand they're interested in personal finance we so sorry um and um you know also psychology was another one so we have those potential elective offerings and what we did um is we actually surveyed them for the next year because again as I said this is a multi-phase plan and some of the things that we surveyed students about that will take longer because it has budget implications space implications you can see that students did express interest in having a foreign Spanish also Fine Arts music appreciation and even Spanish too so that's just this is kind of our for our planning purposes but I wanted to share really what our students are expressing interest

113in the third phase of this is something that the superintendent has talked about and we believe is a part is in terms of offering electives to look at how we can do some integration with the shops so are there some electives that are specific aligned with some of the disciplines blueprint reading could be an example of that the superintendent gave me a list of about 100 other ones that he'd like to see in terms of electives but we wanted to phase this in slowly but one thing that we're hearing from our students is even within the academics for the 11th and 12th graders they are looking for a little bit of choice we are going to keep electives out of Grade 9 and 10 for now because we're still monitoring all of our students coming

114back from the pandemic experience learning loss and we want to make sure that we have an a solid foundation for them so right now we've identified the electives from the surveys we can't offer all of them but we've identified the electives that we're going to offer Additionally you don't want to call them electives because they're not there will be additional courses that will run simultaneously with these in terms of other courses that students might need in terms of literacy or math support and those aren't we didn't surveys to the students on if they wanted those so I will not go through this for sake of time but if you want to go through and if you have any questions or feedback the superintendent I'd be happy to answer any again this is just our this

115is our school Improvement plan and I went through every single goal and action step and um you know still the teacher in me I highlight I stop light highlighted where we are and so you can see whether or not we're still in the attempt planning um or achieving um our school Improvement plan as you know is always a pretty lofty goal so we may not get all we might not get to all of it and we'll probably continue a lot of things on it but we're making slow and steady progress um and finally I just wanted to share that we are in the MCAS season so to speak our students started off today we had our 10th graders we had a delayed opening for the 9th 11th and 12th graders we had our 10th graders

116um participate in the first day of ela and I will say it was pretty amazing we had all students but five we only had five student missing which is pretty incredible there was a few a few glitches on Pearson's end but it is a huge logistical task that gets even more complicated as we change schedules and we have room so the administrative team has been working really really hard to make sure that we have the most supportive environment for the test that we can have we did have a grade 10 staff the ELA staff and other staff we did have a short we call it a student information I like to refer to as pep rally no one really likes an MCAS pep rally except me but we did meet with all the grade 10

117students yesterday afternoon part of it was um you know just letting them know Logistics what they should expect for the test but the other part was really sending them a message a clear message that we believe in them and so we also encourage them to believe in themselves so it was great to have that back we haven't done that because of the pandemic in the last couple years um but we wanted all of the grade 10 students to know that we believe in them and we wanted also to recognize all the grade 10 staff because even though it's an English test an ELA test it really is a test that um it's every class every shop every experience you're You're Reading Writing listening and speaking and you're getting prepared for that test so we feel

118pretty good for uh tomorrow day two and that's my report Mr sorell thank you your reports are always very visual um I'm curious on in the electives um yeah I know you said you they're not gonna be they're gonna be part of the curriculum um you know seeing the high ones some of them that I probably would never have thought of um what is the curriculum for World mythology and I'm kind of I mean we got 60 of people that students that were interested in that can you um elaborate yeah so what we did is we took our current seminar courses and we asked our teachers if they could align enough to the standards to expand it so that class would come out of the English Department and the curriculum would be built it's not

119built yet so if we choose that one we would be building a curriculum directly aligned to the standards anything further thank you very much oh I'm sorry Mrs Patel yes I should have known okay um I just want to compliment sue for the she said it brings out the teacher in her on her um mid-season assessment of the whole of the Improvement plan I just think it's great by showing the status and where it is so keep that teacher in you alive thank you there's a lot of red still anything else okay moving on um District committee priorities see none policies this will require a vote uh chair will accept a motion on uh accepting section B bdh Consultants to the school committee second discussion all those in favor anyone opposed new business nothing here

120at this time table matters to chill except a motion to remove concession a concussion concussion that's the third time concussion policy from the table of matters oh I'm sorry oh I oh I'm sorry new business go ahead sorry sorry um sure this is where we add stuff for the next agenda right if you'd like to yes okay so I would like to see uh exit interviews as an interview for those um that we have done for the last year or two foreign [Applause] how much is it John how much of those can we legally share though probably no names right I don't know much information we could probably get some you probably for all information right I don't know I don't know if we can give names some of the concerns that we've received that's

121what I want to see I want to see it concerns um you know whether we are working towards some of those concerns and and exit interview that we are getting yeah I can ask Janice to put something together on an overview of some departments over the last year or something right I just don't think we can use names okay no anything further yes one more oh sure go ahead sorry so back into the failures for the the Mr Lincoln reported and the conversation we have on the last meeting um I actually read a article in the um Eagle trivia talking about a pass on the Supreme Court where parents can now sue the schools for the school passing students students that are only learning middle middle um Middle School grades yes so it brought me

122back to the conversation we have and last meeting which you just brought up and I can see the failure rates like in ninth grade there's 70 70 students so again I know you both mentioned that as a as by law we cannot um spell students for not um which we we talk about students that we give help all the help that we can and I know you're working on that and that you mentioned that you reported that and you're working with the teachers but the students that don't want to be helped and there are a problem and that's the reality So based on this um this article that just came into into the um the world I guess um I want to see that law that you mentioned where we can now spell students and

123um I don't know we if there's any potential that we make changes on that it's regulation more than a lot right yeah a lot of us say we can't fail we says if we if if we fail I mean if we expel a student then we are responsible they're very strict regulations on why you can what you can expel student for but if you do expel a student then we're liable to for their education I'm sure that if we give them all the need the help that they need and we still haven't I'm not able to get them to where we need them we should do something different that's what I think so I understand a lot I mean I would like to see the law more um in detail um and then what can

124we do about that because I mean we don't want to be sued [Music] yeah so I would agree 100 with you that if students are continuing to fail then we need to do something different and that is part of the process that we're doing so particularly this last term when we had conversation we had actually had full faculty conversation about this that when a student does fail the starting point is understanding what the what the reason what's the reason for that student feeling understanding getting to the root cause of why that student is failing so that when we then know how to proceed so we are in that process of trying to figure that out and we're trying to address it in different ways and new ways because uh obviously in some cases it's not

125working the way we hoped it would work so we will never you know give up on trying to figure out if this isn't working how can we do it differently so you're absolutely right about that what's up we offset okay now back to the concussion policy she'll accept the motion to take it off the table now discussion all those in favor aye any other polls jail accept a motion to accept the concussion policy so move discussion questions comments John you have anything to add to it no no bring all those in favor I know well not intentionally not intentionally there must be something though oh my God it's under a report of superintendent oh okay it was Optimus yeah that's why I'm getting lost um so at the beginning of the whole procedure it says

126that if there's an accident or injury call the nurse so my question is and I I hope the answer is what I'm thinking do we have a first 18 in the school that's one question and I'll continue after that there's something the principal would answer first aid team can you share a little bit more um so I mean if we start call the north right it's the first after the session one so it says if if there's an accidental injury call the nurse and uh already then or to bring them to the scene my question is do we have a first 18. so I think um in terms of who would respond when you call the nurse we communicate regularly so typically say for example there was an accident you would not only you would

127have a nurse you would probably have two nurses you would also have officer Milligan so officer Milligan is our police officer in the building so he is traveling we have a member of administration depending on what the accident or the injury is we would know like they would triage but if it's a we do have kind of that team the other thing I would say is that part of our crisis response protocols which we are working on is to to build that but it say for example if it was a mental health crisis if the nurses would respond this resource officers respond members of the administrative team would respond and we would have like a social worker so depending so I would say yes we have kind of that first aid team if that makes

128sense the answer part of the question because that's what I'm looking for do we have a group of people in the building that are first aid set of five and CPR obviously because some cases will need CPR before the ambulance come in we need to figure out how to get somebody um try to to keep and keep them alive because it could happen you never know so my question back it goes into that do we have a first first a team in house that will respond that collectively will respond to any emergency that we have answering but what you're saying is that there are people through the building that have the ability to um give help because they are I mean a police officer is that if I I suppose they are the or nurses

129are certified um but do we have a team that we say okay if something happens we're going to call a number you know how we call 9-1-1 there's always an internal number and or on in organizations that are large large number of people we have a number that we call and then you know that group of people will go and see what's going on 18 verse 18. a crisis is at first 18. because it could be a minor thing but you don't know that until you go to the to where the problem is you know I I wouldn't call them first aid he might come First Responders so we have protocols and procedures if there's an incident or their accident in the building uh calls made and then we all all administrators also have walkie-talkies

130and we communicate immediately through the phone through walkie-talkies and so we do have procedures and protocols if something happens in the shop might the first call may go out to the nurse and then the nurse gets may also uh our security often is involved and they and they reach out to what other other assistance is needed once is to determine what the situation is sometimes it's an ambulance that's called right away uh you know um even at times um it could be anybody that has CPR experience if they're in the area if we needed that but people are trained in CPR all of our athletic team is is trained in CPR but its First Responders and it's prestigious protocols that everybody is taught the first day of school we go through all our procedures and

131protocols at the beginning of the year so everybody remembers they also have a document in their classroom that identifies what the protocols and procedures are depending on the on the emergency what needs to happen so but it's not for I wouldn't call it a first aid team I would I would call it our our uh first responder protocols and and procedures that we utilize so there are people that have the background experience in first aid in CPR Beyond even the nurses background and we do can we do collect that information so we have a list of who is CPR certified so we we collect that and um I know that um um the athletic director Mr Nelson and I were talking about even this year expanding it because he always has coaching training but even

132having some time during professional development opening it up for any other staff member that would want to get trained but we do have that listing I would like to see that protocol if you can bring it sure I I mean hopefully we'll maybe have a major incident but when we do we want to make sure that we have the right group of people to make sure that that student or that person in emergency is taken care of immediately before um help arrives you know the actual professional helper rights thank you Mr Cirillo in along those lines in in Bright Light of the recent shootings um yeah I know that a lot of there's a lot of talks about amping up um the emergency protocol and and for um for um active Shooters to make sure

133that students and staff are are more aware and becomes almost like second nature so um for that it's called um yeah let's plan um that way we're making sure that we we communicate with the town and have a couple of incidents make sure that also that they're being that if our system goes off that their that the communication is going from the school to to bless you um to the um property departments within the city um because I know we have an officer here but if the officers and the other side of thing I will make sure that the alarm system is working students know if they need to be evacuated where they evacuated to or they need to um secure in place what the process is as well for the teachers and the staff

134and I know that wasn't a news party yesterday or even this morning of how we should be um do a little bit more frequently yep I think we had a motion on the table right if I'm correct in a second it that can I know they can concession yeah the concussion yeah all those in favor anyone opposed okay thank you very much uh personal considerations resignations I see none leave of absence retirement so Mr Victor Martinez social studies teacher effective 6 30 24 Mr Tim Cusack guidance counselor effective 2-9 of 24 appointments uh Ms uh Mariani uh and cancion career tradition Specialists the evening program effective uh March 20th 23 and Ms Courtney Moran gator in an assessment The Specialist effective 320 of 23. the following of postings ladies and gentlemen that need to be

135voted on John why don't we do three at a time please my voice basketball head coach annual position your microphone jungle I'm sorry sorry uh boys basketball head coach annual position golf head coach annual position Auto Collision instructor for seven local 1707 school year contract 2023 replacement position um those are three yep those are the three second discussion well follows in favor and you want to pause continue please biotechnology instructor uh per never filled per 1707 school year 23 24 replacement position I.T hardware and operation systems instructor for 17 I mean local 1707 contract school year 22-23 replacement position Auto Collision instructor due to a waiver replacement position have a motion please discussion all those in favor can improve anyone opposed robotics please robotics automation instructor due to a waiver replacement position biotechnology instructor due

136to a waiver replacement position engineering instructor due to waiver replacement and replacement position motion please second discussion and all those in favor anyone oppose and wrap it up John environmental science instructor do the waiver replacement position LTS physical education instructor Grade 9 through 10 tentative dates may end of May to the end of the school year replacement position freshman assessment test practice and support staff Personnel for freshman assessment testing May 6 2023 7 A.M to 12 p.m 30 test practice six registration staff two parent liaison what custodian one school nurse and one dog I mean that's it 250 dollars type in the annual position have a motion please discussion all those in favor if you want to pose future agenda items exactly oh yeah we did it okay sure we can move that to a

137future yeah we can move that please I would appreciate it yeah right yeah with the three the three issues achieved uh executive session will be a need for one John no no we didn't get anything coming well for the business ladies and gentlemen the chair will accept the motion to oh no I'm sorry there is one for the business uh the April the April first meeting um next Monday third um it'll be the third April 3rd first business first business day in April is when we have to meet uh what do you want to do with Morning Noon night do the night meeting yes Mrs uh I am unavailable during the day I am available from four o'clock on okay we want to do uh 5 30 6 o'clock or so it's usually very uh

138usually very short it's only you know selecting the positions we'll do 5 30. okay we'll do 5 30 a third we should have our new member all sworn in uh by then okay at this time to chill except excuse me the North Andover not the end of us you're being elected today being elected today unopposed uh all those in favor of German anyone uh not you're not invited the boring thank you