District Committee Meeting (Jun 21, 2022)

001plot from andover articles um the mcast the not mcas m-a-s-e joint conference coming up in 2022 please let the superintendent's office know if you're planning to attend uh if you could by july 15th because i guess the discounts are start falling off after that so if you attend plan on attending if you could let sue know but but did you have a question or sue tomorrow sure let's you know if you're going to attend so yeah i guess the from what i was told the discounts and everything start falling off if you do it in august it's later if you don't do it i mean it's more you know is there any public participation this evening i didn't see any uh sue do you know if we're gonna have a student report by the student

002or um that's fine of course please please whenever you're ready um so we're very excited this year and the month of may may was mental health awareness and we had our first ever mental health as well as our guidance counselors what was really great about it was they reached out to local community kind of community organizations and we have all kinds of cool community organizations here um what this photo that you see is um there was an opportunity for students to write a message uh an affirming message for someone that was suffering from a mental health um we had a last period and we had all students were able to go out and attend the fair they were able to speak and it was really something great that i really wanted to be an annual

003event now in honor of mental health awareness you can see some of the vendors that came um so some some highlights for athletes as well our track this year was a bigger track team than ever the boys won the cac league champions and they also were dual league champions and uh the first time in school history the girls champions oh yeah so sorry um the boys won the freshman sophomore meet and um we had a manny vasquez that was a state champion the javelin and he went uh and he was a division four state champions owen carlton finished fourth in the state in the 400 so we had a great great showing for the track team and what was great about it is we had so many kids that wanted to participate the athletic director

004came to john superintendent at lavoy and i and said hey we don't really want to cut kids but we have more kids than we could even bring and so we actually divided the kids and had this first time ever freshman sophomore group boys volleyball they qualified for the state vocational and m.i.a tournament they had a great season and right now for fall sports registration for all fall sports is happening right now as well as sign ups for our summer conditioning and according to this athletic director we already have over 135 athletes signed up for summer conditioning what's great about that is also already include some of our incoming freshmen so we do have three cac all-stars james mcconnell and this is for baseball he's a junior jersey anduhar and victor roa a senior we also

005had the biotechnology fair it was um just recently and we had our biotechnology students they actually did projects they did experiments and then they were able to not only to present to their um their peers but they also had some parents can come in and other community members come in and it was a great showing and they really um tested all kinds of things as you can see here they tested plato conductivity so who knew we just are in the process of celebrating pride month for june and we did have um uh show up for pride on june 10th where we invited the whole entire school community to wear stickers to be allies and also students were able to wear things that were appropriate and it was a great showing it was a great community

006day we had some of our students attend a field trip for the gsa club and they went to the pride parade in boston and they had an opportunity to take a dance at the high school and then we all know about graduation um just for a second a great night that she added in there um and so again i'll be talking about this a little bit my principles report but it's also summer reading time and we had a book fair for all of our students to come and purchase summer reading books we also have provided access in terms of getting them digitally through sora or hoopla both audible as well as written print so that's a list of our book selections i believe you also have a bookmark and the qr code on the bookmark

007will bring you right to our summer reading website um you can get more information and read along with us finally we had a class of 2025 community fundraiser happened on a a beautiful sunday on june 5th and we had the members of the community we had a great showing of the freshman class i believe all of the representatives were there and we were joined by many other community members so next year there's a hope to expand into methuen the purpose of that fundraiser was to start to help the freshmen defer some of their costs for yearbook class trips and prom fees so thanks to everyone for making that a great day and that's a message from maureen how much did we raise that day the i believe the total was fourteen hundred dollars on the

008sunday when the ss3 was completely closed so imagine that yeah i didn't think it was possible for these uh presentations to get any better but uh she's outdoing herself uh every week excuse me every month you know please uh please let her know at least let her know how how much we appreciate it i mean that's one of the that's one of the best i've ever i've been here for quite a few student presentations you know so yeah very good okay uh brender is not here for the admission or any other questions i'm sorry comments no brenda's not here but that she's not here yet though right okay this time the chair would appreciate a motion to table the admission update to a later part of the meeting so move discussion all those in favor

009[Music] all those in favor anyone opposed after dark policy admission after dark admission policy this will require a vote ladies and gentlemen superintendent in front of you you have the after dark you should have the after dark admissions policy which would require its uh it uh simulates our regular program with some uh changes in terms of the uh some of the uh words which reflect after dark program versus a regular day program but it's inconsistent with it's consistent with the our day program in terms of students that apply to glts for the after dark program yes it was the recommendation whether you have anything else to add no no okay the recommendation from the superintendent of a motion police the second thank you discussion any discussion um yup sure mr soil just for clarification purposes

010um under the admissions part where it states no non-resident applicants must submit an application of admission no later than march 15th are we accepting students who are non-residents of our serving communities uh we we're not accepting residents of uh that are not we're not accepting students that are non-residents but you are accepting applications yes okay because they sometimes students are uh coming from another district and maybe applying okay [Applause] because they're going to be coming into the district okay all right into the district to the after dark program or to the regular they would be coming into the district to the regular high school and then if they're interested in the after dark program they'd have to come through that process so for the after dark now we have a committee that's going through the

011application process and they've grading it on three criterias a b and c scholastic achievement attendance and school discipline and conduct um now correct me if i'm wrong but i believe school discipline conduct was something that this c was taken out of our own regular missions it can it has to be something of severe it stays in but only severe infractions can be considered suspension or are greater um if someone has to have been suspended to count it okay so this this criteria is maximum of maximum of 10 points for 1 25 for the other and 10 points for c um so are we grading the participants as they're coming in how we have is that the evaluation process is in it and if so um and i know superintendent you might not be able to

012answer this one and i wait to um the uh brenda comes in um is this the same equivalency to what our application processes for attendance for the school yes same criteria we use for our day program yoshi yeah zoyla yeah actually that was one of my questions at that line because if i understood correctly we have a rolling application process so there's a deadline of march 1st and you're saying this is the same as our regular admission um i'm missing something there the march versus when we expect students to apply if someone applies after that it doesn't have rolling admissions in here it's the same it should be the same criteria as our our day program so if that language is not in there i'll ask susan to put it in there sue amano to

013put it in there it simulates should be exactly the same as our regular program so if it's missed then we'll we'll add it presentation too for if i have no no but we but brenda is going to talk about mission right right and this is admission so and it's the same as our regular admission so the same questions for regular admission is going to be for this thank you mr chair through you um john this is when the the march first is for those in let's paint the picture is for the after darkest juniors and seniors so you have to be in your sophomore year for the application for the after dark correct yes you have to be in your sophomore year okay and they have a tool march first deadline to apply yes those

014are your uh opportunity to get in is a lot greater if you apply prior to march first prior to march first okay um okay you're all set yeah i mean most of it will apply to admission so most way to brenda gets here aka anything further on all those in favor anyone opposed could you call the roll uh would you have a moment please miss marmal yes mr rossi miss fitzgerald yes miss disney nope mr hayden yes mr cyrillo yes mr lamontagne for anyone to answer yeah no okay i did turn mine in via an email attachment so i haven't turned mines in um i saw an email from susan lally that was sent yesterday so i'm trying to understand if there was an expectation in doing it via that okay um my computer for

015some reason wasn't cooperating with me and i couldn't do it on my phone that's what she has to okay um for clarification purposes i could have sworn in our last meeting was it mentioned or discussed that we were waiting on certain documentation that would have been provided in order for us to finalize the evaluation process yeah you should have received the surveys early last week i think you didn't get them yet i thought that susan sent them all out the surveys it was part of the school improvement plan if you got a copy of the school improvement plan on the back of the school improvement plan or all the surveys maybe we we probably should have articulated that yeah in the back you'll see the two surveys there's the conditions for school effectiveness survey and

016the panorama survey or in the back of that i think did sue send that out to lally oh in the packet oh okay yes i received both online but it was last week sometime i believe that and it said with the school improvement one that we would also receive a hard copy in our packet but we did receive it all online i just don't remember the date but it was last week for sure yeah i know that um susan came to me and asked me if there was a way we could send this out digitally so we sent out a digital copy the only difference is um the comments were only in this part but all of the other data as well all of the panorama and the conditions data was sent digitally it's this

017is the full version with the comments is there anyone else that's uh able this evening to uh to pass it in to uh well do we have any idea when we would be getting it knowing that the state is supposed to have it for july first yes mr joe i my recollection of the discussion was that we would receive the format if we chose to do it online but we could do it handwritten and that it was due today the 21st so that there was time to collate include comments overall grades whatever in order with the hopes of getting it in for july 1st but also i believe it we were going to ask for if it was possible to have an extension if it all didn't come in that is my best recollection you're

018correct uh they made correct me if i'm wrong john we had spoke about this uh i guess everything the whole entire school goes in on the same day and the fact that if the superintendent's evaluation was not along with it it was whose opinion was it that it would mess up everything so we had i had can you explain it a lot better than i just did please um we i had our director of student data contact department they they would like it to be part of the application isabel goya if it's not then we'll just forward it forward it after they would prefer it that way but if it's not they'll take it okay they'll take it after july first okay and who who is this you spoke to isabel we send all the

019day all our uh our evaluations are due july 1st and if for some reason mine is not ready then we could we'll submit it at a later date after they'll still they'll still accept it okay my my point was just to let someone know and to see if it was acceptable mr hayden yeah mr boy you said everybody's evaluation goes in yeah that is that's actually brenda let me see maybe she's supposed to be here maybe maybe something's going on one second must have had him excuse me that call for five minutes that's okay now i gave him time lavoy you said that everybody's evaluation goes in at the same time does that include the administrators are the administrators all done with teachers are all done for the end of the year there's still uh

020some all the teach the most i believe most of the teachers are i can't swear that everything is done because i haven't gone on in check to see that everything is has been submitted hr would know that better than i because she collects them all and i haven't gone on to check to see if all the reports have gone in i know that some of the administrative reports are still being worked on but they'll be done by the end of the month by before july 1st okay so what date are we gonna push this up to now to get the superintendent's report this friday is that uh mr hayden i'm sorry can you confirm that mine did go through i had trouble also but i did share it it did go through as far as

021i was concerned if it's not in there please let me know and i'll do it by hand i know i know it's not in this particular packet i don't believe no no you're uh i don't have yours here physically uh yeah i'll check tomorrow with soon i'll see which one she's waiting for and uh tom i'll let you know okay what's the next date then that we're going to um as i'm looking at it and i know it's different from last year's i'm looking at the stuff on here and it all looks completely different from what we've done in the past two years uh my question is and i know that talking to sue that all this came copied out of teach point is the superintendent evaluation being put into teach point now as well

022the evaluation has always been in teach point all the administrators superintendent everybody's has always been in teach point uh but it comes from it's supposed to have come from the um from the dsc's uh manual i know that um the one that you're completing this year i believe is the same one as last year i think the same elements and same standards as last year last year's i've looked at it over so i know it's completely different i mean especially the front and in the ending of it that's why i'm asking is it has it changed the process because even one look in the air is looking at a summary of assessment um evaluation what you did educator plan and form and you're going to plan trash observation of evidence collection and so forth so

023there's six um you have six different points here leo but yes this is the show i'm not sure what um you're looking at but the form that i filled out did not have what you just said the observation points and everything the form that i filled out was i think identical to last year except that there were um at the very beginning there was a place that i don't remember from last year where it showed that it was either a one-year two-year uh three-year plan and the start date and the end date so i made the assumption that the start date was july 1st 2021 and the end date was june 30th 2022 but it didn't have those things you're just saying so i don't know if you were center are looking at a different

024form i'm looking at the desi template and the reason i'm looking at the lesson template is because i'm looking at this form which you're right the beginning part but if you look at the back part is also completely different from what we've had um in previous times which made me go back and to look at the template for um from the from dusting so that's why i'm questioning is it did the format change they were steps that we missed throughout the year i can just try to clarify the what you're reading out those are the steps of the six cycle like full evaluation system so if you were going in to actually observe a teacher that would be like one of the observations i know last year and the year before due to covid we

025did especially with our teachers as well as our administrators we had focus elements instead of having the whole rubric but i believe what you received last year would be the whole rubric it just probably wasn't out of teach point like we gave you this year because if it's the full rubric but you'll see the same elements and the same ratings are there but all those things that you mentioned those are the full those are the site that's the cycle of the the full evaluation that helps you applying for what dates yes what dates what dates of the committee is committee comfortable with i think mr hayden is all set maryland's all set i myself am set i'm not sure about any of the other members uh oh i'm sorry and mr rossi is all set

026yes mr rossi is all set also monday the 27th of july no well the 27th of what of june i mean you want to do it for the 27th of july no no i don't want to do my first how's the the 27th look for everybody everybody you have a problem with getting it in for the 27th okay can somebody make that motion please you have a second discussion chef francis did you have oh no no okay all those in favor who does oh okay all those in favor anyone anyone opposed okay gets us to the front office and john you'll check on mr hayden let's make sure it's not out in cyberspace somewhere yes floating around okay do you have a hard copy of it somewhere at home no so you have a hard

027copy of it okay okay this time the chair would appreciate to bring your agenda back to an admissions update do you have a motion please move all those in favor anyone opposed hello i think everyone remembers brenda is our director of admissions and guidance brenda richardson okay thank you again i apologize i didn't realize the meeting was starting early this evening so i believe everybody has in their packet um our most recent admissions data so we have our applications from each community our current enrollment for the class of and also the numbers of transfer applications that we have for each of the classes 23 24 and 25 and we also included just a sample communication for an acceptance letter and also a waitlist letter so i believe miss salinsky just passed out i just kind

028of typed up these notes and just gave you a copy they're sort of informal but just in case you wanted to follow along or had questions and the extra page is our current admissions criteria that's in our most recently approved admissions policy yes yep that's right from the admissions policy so i won't go over everything in detail but i'll try to touch upon what i think were some recent questions or concerns that the committee had had and then i'm happy to answer any questions so just the overall admissions process for the past school year for the class of 2026. we started out the school year with our middle school counselor's breakfast that was actually held again virtually unfortunately that was in october so we invite middle school counselors and also some principals and assistant principals

029from all of the communities and you can see outline there those are all the topics that we cover and basically want to give an overview of what's going on what's new at greater lawrence tech and this year we also went over in more detail admissions policy changes that were part of the the new state regulations and what the impact that was having this year on our admission cycle we followed that up with scheduling middle school visits in our four district communities i feel like it was maybe about 50 50 some were virtual and some were in person and that really we left that up to the individual communities and schools as to what their preference was so that was kind of case by case for the most part the schools have the eighth graders only

030some schools will also invite the seventh graders to those visits we also attend some events in the community we had some virtual parent information sessions that was on zoom in november and december they weren't really attended as as well as we would have hoped but we did provide those the past two years virtually again our open house for the past two years was also virtual so go to cte is our online application portal so this system actually went live earlier than the previous year it was live and we started taking applications as early as september so it's a very brief online application that students and families need to fill out they create an account just provide middle minimal information and that starts the application process so once it's signed by the student and parent it's

031it's considered a submitted application the middle school counselors are notified that a student has applied each time there's an applicant from their school and then it is up to them to upload to the portal all of the required information so the full year for seventh grade and the first quarter or first trimester eighth grade grades attendance and discipline record and also a counselor recommendation so i did attach the selection criteria there this year what we what we did end up seeing i think due to those admissions changes where we changed the points for grades so this year an a and a b average were they were both worth 30 points where in the past there was a bigger divide for an a and a b and a c was 25 out of 30 points so

032it was you know very close behind that and the reasoning for that was to make things you know the process more equitable for english learners and special education students another big difference this year was that discipline had a very minimal impact because of the the new changes with deci only very very serious um incidents actually count and students don't lose discipline points for for most offenses so out of 1500 applications we only had two students lose points for discipline which is very very different and i think kind of a combination of those two factors did result in higher scores overall for a lot of our applicants so in the uh for the appeals process in the letter that we send to any student who is not accepted who who is put on the wait list

033we didn't deny any student this year you were either accepted or you went on the wait list in that letter we did reference the appeals policy and you can see that in the attachment that was in your packet basically the the family would have to submit either a letter or an email to us or some in some cases they did call to request an appeal they had to it had to meet the criteria for an extenuating circumstance as outlined in the admissions policy and they were also required to provide documentation of the extenuating circumstance that would be submitted by the middle school counselor or an administrator so we reviewed all of those appeals i don't have the exact number i believe it was roughly 75 to 80 which is a very high number because it

034appeals appeal truly should be just for an extenuating circumstance so that's really kind of a rare circumstance it might be something like a student who was homeless or in foster care and had to move didn't have transportation to come to school a family that was displaced because of a fire um so it's hard you can't really outline exactly what all of those situations would be um but it really is something that's outside of the norm so 75 to 80 is a high number yes i just when you said that 75 to 80 appeals um it seems it's not the only time we get phone calls but we do get phone calls when a particular student in our community didn't get it what could they do so my thought is if in the past there haven't

035been near the number of appeals how much additional time is spent like how long is spent on each appeal and if we're looking at 70 to 80 appeals whereby prior to this year some of them would have been declines and of course we aren't declining so i'm just thinking of the workload on that one issue was it a huge difference well i have to say it's actually lower that it was so my first year in this position so that was 2019 2020 we had over 100 appeals but that was very tough because we had sent out the decision letters right really the same week i think that the pandemic hit in school went remote and we were doing everything virtually so that was very tough so we were very sort of lenient about that and

036there were i would say over a hundred and there was not a very clear criteria and then the admissions policy at that time last year i feel like it was a similar number and it is a huge amount of time so between going through all of the documentation and communicating with the families communicating with the middle schools i guess it would be hard for me to estimate but it is a lot of time so what we do is we go through all of those appeals we look at what the family is saying first and foremost like what the reason is for the appeal and if it seems like it is something that's you know outside of the the realm of you know what is quote unquote normal we also look for the documentation from the

037middle school unfortunately i think what happens is a lot of families that submit an appeal they end up requesting letters of recommendation from a teacher or a guidance counselor or an administrator saying why the student would be a good fit but that really doesn't meet the criteria for an appeal so it is very time consuming thank you let's see uh oh sure hi um back so you meet with the um guidance counselors because i'm thinking of a case where a guidance counselor told the student because they were wait listed after i had the conversation with a parent to sign to apply for an appeal guys counselor told her you're an iep so you don't even qualify so are they guidance counselors in the schools getting the information of what are the criteria's for applications so

038you're are you i just want to clarify are you asking are the guidance counselors in the middle school giving accurate information to the families about appeals a lot of what are our criterias when you meet with the guidance counselors because like i said the parent got frustrated didn't want to appeal because the guidance counselor said your child's an iep and they don't qualify to go to glts and i explain to the parent that's completely wrong but right so my question and i think and john and i have had this conversation are the guidance counselors in the ascending schools getting the correct information because a lot of the times they're either giving that's and that's the first one i've heard but yeah the other times are the guidance counselors are not submitting the informations right so

039um really we deal with so many middle schools that i you know i have to say that they're not all the same and we have great relationships with many many of the counselors in a lot of the middle schools i have heard similar situations comments about you know special ed students not being accepted i haven't heard that about not being eligible for an appeal and when you hear something like that you really have to have all of the information to understand because there's so much room for miscommunication so it could be that a counselor said just the fact that you're on an iep does not mean that you are eligible for an appeal which would be accurate just being on an iep does not make somebody eligible for an appeal so it you know it's

040really hard to say without having all of the specific facts about each situation but we do at the middle school breakfast we talk about the appeals process we provide it in writing and before we sent all of the decision letters in march we also sent an email to all the counselors to let them know that the letters were coming out to be prepared and a reminder about the appeals process and what was required pretended if a student has an iep that doesn't prevent them from being accepted but we shouldn't know that they have an iep it's a blind admission so in most cases we don't know students on an iep i mean it can happen for some reason we we find out but has no impact at all whether they get accepted or not no

041it's it's blind admission so there is a voluntary section on the application where a student and family can check off if they're on an iep or if they're an english learner whether they check it off or they don't we still um score each application the same way the o3u it's not on our end um and i think i was clear about that it wasn't our information given it was the guidance counselor at the ascendant sending school with one that gave the wrong information um thank you vivian did you have a question okay um in reading this template letter that gets sent out it states if there are documented extenuating circumstances who makes the determination of what's considered extenuating so that would be myself and one of the guidance counselors we meet together so i work

042with the same person so that there's consistency so it's not just myself looking at that so it would be the two of us so reviewing the letters reviewing the documentation that's provided and then if it looks like you know and we try to always you know give the the student the family the benefit of the doubt but if it's pretty clear-cut that it's really just sort of like a letter requesting reconsideration because you know family history with glts or because you know they always wanted to do a b and c something like that like unfortunately those are not extenuating circumstances so those are very clear-cut there's definitely some subjectivity you know to the admissions process and and criteria um also on this letter it states uh following that specific sentence if there are documented extenuating

043circumstances circumstances that may have affected an applicant's point total you may request an appeal do the parents receive what the point total is is there a breakdown as to how the student was scored so we don't send that out in the letter but certainly if they call and request that information we can provide it so how would they be able to appeal and know what documentation to provide if they don't know where the student was quote unquote lacking in whether it was attendance whether it was an academic issue so i i remember kind of having this and addressing this before you know generally parents students the schools know that what the criteria is it's grades discipline attendance and recommendation which is a small number of points so you know whether somebody loses two points here

044three points there and the reason why i asked is because i've gotten many phone calls and i am sorry for cutting you off um some parents they they feel they think or they know that their student is academically there's no issues attendance there's no issue so they have a hard time understanding as to what you know what went wrong why are why is their child waitlisted right so again it's hard to even um when they're calling a committee member asking what to do and you tell them to appeal it's kind of blindly appealing not knowing what documents need to be provided right no i can understand that for sure and what we tell them um when they call when we have these conversations is that there was not a problem with your student's application but

045if we're looking at the students who really you know we're very solid right there are definitely some there it's very obvious they might have lost all of their points in one area and in those cases it's a lot more clear-cut but when we're looking at the number of applications that we have and the students that we're accepting right now we're still accepting students with around 69 out of 75 points which is very high it's roughly 10 points i think above where we were by september of last year so that's we try to have those conversations with families to make them understand that there was not a problem with their application you know if they lost maybe you know if they got i shouldn't say loss if they had 9 out of 10 on a recommendation

04625 out of 30 for grades um maybe 20 out of 25 for for attendance there is not a specific issue or problem at all with that student it's just the number of applicants that we have so we do try to get that message across but i think what's really difficult is there are some students and families who really are you know very upset when they don't go when they don't get accepted they don't feel that they have other great options if they don't want to attend their high school in their community so some of them really are just feeling i think a little bit desperate and want to do whatever they can to get their student in and it's really um it's very difficult it's heartbreaking sometimes when you you know read some of these

047letters and um we just know it's just we don't have the space available so i think we still have roughly 800 students on the waiting list right now right roughly i have uh two more or maybe one with an addition to that one is i heard you mention like a portal so for those who and i'm thinking of trying to streamlining or making things more efficient on everyone's end so do we have something in place where a parent who is considering appealing that it's done electronically in submitting the documentation electronically and they're able to log in and check the status of that appeal as opposed to having to contact the school committee member not knowing what's going on and that way it's you know the confidentiality of whatever information you you know you guys are

048able to provide the parent in explaining where that student is right in the waiting list um or various documents missing that way it's done electronically um and then the second part to that initial question is there has been conversations in our previous meetings where we have discussed how there is a lack of communication on admissions end considering that some parents have mentioned that they have appealed and once an appeal has been submitted they have not heard anything on our end so i would like to know what are we doing to kind of improve on on that side of things so first in terms of your question about the portal there is not currently a feature that i'm aware of in go to cte where somebody can just electronically submit an appeal i would it's something

049we could certainly look into but i would maybe hesitate to do that because that's so very easy to hit a button which then creates possibly a lot of unnecessary work when really a phone call is actually more effective where we can actually have a conversation with a family about their status is something that we could certainly look into but in terms of knowing the status of the application they can log into their portal and it will let them know you know if there's an incomplete application it tells them you know if they're accepted or wait listed so that status information is there but as far as the appeal it's certainly something that we could consider and look into in terms of the communication again i would go back to i feel like there are such

050so many situations that are very individual and there may be a perception on the part of a family that somebody didn't get back to them but it could be simply a miscommunication where maybe they're waiting for a decision when we've asked them to submit documentation from the middle school that we haven't received yet so you know and i'm sure you get many of those phone calls and it is tough because it's you know confidential student information you're not able to directly get that information for the families but i would always you know encourage them to um to reach out to ask for clarification if they feel like somebody hasn't gotten back to them because i think lots of times when we sort of dig into it and you find out what's really happened not to

051say that we can't miss communication with 1500 applications and you know there's a just so much documentation and communication around not just admissions but then it's the enrollment process so it's certainly possible um from time to time that we could miss something or you know i know myself i've gone to call somebody back you know a half hour after they've called me and i get a message that says their voicemail's not set up or their voicemail box is full so you try again so i can certainly see how things um you know can be missed from time to time but i think the admissions staff does an incredible job with with the volume of everything that they're handling but i would definitely just encourage um you know that family to reach it back out to

052ask for clarification another great thing this year is through the fund 106 grant through desi the equitable access grant for cvte we were able to hire an eel recruitment specialist so juliana garcia who is previously an ial para here so she joined our staff in january so she has been a tremendous help in terms of helping us to reach out to families particularly spanish-speaking families helping to get documentation for incomplete applications particularly students who are maybe coming from out of the country so they don't have the documents that we're looking for helping with enrollment paperwork you know she makes appointments sometimes she'll help them on the phone she'll make appointments and they come in and sit down and actually physically complete the paperwork she also helped us to reach out to the freshmen who had

053not done the placement test and as of this afternoon i think all but 10 incoming freshmen have now had a placement test which is really incredible so that's really been a huge plus having her support with the communication um so you did mention that there when the parents receive the acceptance or the the letter per se we don't know if um regardless if the the student was accepted or not they are they are notified that they could log into the portal of showing that that that student was waitlisted exactly seen it on the letter itself yeah so that's just part of the application system so they can log into their account at any time they can update their contact information and they can see their status throughout throughout the process okay clarify that for me

054again so when when the parent is initially applying it is then mentioned that they are able to log back in to check on the status even well after a decision has been made i don't know that that message would specifically be there i think of it as just any other sort of online system that you have whether it's your your bank or your you know x2 for student records it's just sort of that system that's there i don't think that there would be a specific message stating that all right well just to finalize my point superintendent um ms richardson i really would hope that you guys would consider um how we can improve in simplifying this a bit and if taking the consideration of adding that an electronic feature where parents are able to upload

055the documents because we already know that it is part in order for you to appeal you have to submit documentation so i i don't think a parent is going to go out of their way to just click appeal without having to do their homework and go out of their way to provide the necessary supporting evidence as to why they're appealing right um so there's a way that we could kind of have that conversation right um and think of ways to improve the admissions process please um let's let's get this conversation going sure absolutely vivian yeah right okay you're set okay uh frank if you could hold on one second zoila was next zoila thank you mr cher my question was related to the question that um vivian is um was making is the parents looking

056to know what why they didn't make it to school why they didn't make it and they are in a waiting list um and it seems to be again they had no idea why they were wait listed or why they didn't make it so that and i i don't think just a phone call i understand you say a phone call is more effective but i don't think it's working the phone call is definitely not working otherwise we wouldn't get the call and the question why we didn't get you know why we didn't get my student didn't get into the school so i agree we need to i mean we need to um improve in the whole admission process but that's one thing that keeps coming back to us people family do not know why they were

057they went into the waiting list and that's a problem they need to know ahead of time i believe you i heard you saying that the counselor has some information so what is the information that goes back to the counselor of the the descending school so you're asking what information the counselor receives about the appeal or just in general about the admission so the information that they get is just about the appealing so after a parent or student submit the appeal they would typically reach out to the counselor or it might be an assistant principal or another administrator in some cases asking for documentation of the extenuating circumstance and then it would be up to the middle school either the counselor or the assistant principal to provide that documentation on their behalf sometimes they email it

058to us or sometimes they will upload something into the portal but that that additional documentation needs to come from not from the parent in some cases there could have even been a doctor's note for example you know that addressed a student's attendance that would have made it you know an impact and then we wouldn't need the middle school counselor for that but we do need that sort of outside documentation about the extenuating circumstance and that that piece of the process and i agree if people are confused they don't feel like they have the information then we certainly need to take a look at that and see how we can clarify it but i do have to say that the appeals process has improved once we added that component about the contact from the middle school

059no okay okay mr cervelo thank you seeing a lot of students and coming off of every two very rough years um are you seeing a trend of a lot of students that did great when they were in person but then suffered during remote that completely affected their the grades coming in you can you can certainly see that with some students for sure that with the seventh grade when they were remote most of the year they did much better when they were in person and then the other one would be um yeah i know because that's one of the biggest trends you've seen not just here everywhere the remote was not working for anybody yes i mean let me correct myself it worked for some people um it didn't work for everybody you see saw kids

060that did bad in person hit remote then they started achieving i mean you saw achievers they were achieving but then remote came and then they they went fell behind yes um one thing that vivian said so when they apply on the portal is there thing showing what they're missing um because if they're looking at that then they should be able they should know where they are in the application process um i think you should they should also know where they are in the appeal process because that that helps them out um because i do get the complaints that they've called or they submitted i mean because i'm looking at it and i always tell them write a letter some submit it in um but one person stopped me um at a meeting and said well

061i called and i'm not getting a call back i'm like did you write a letter um because that's what you where you should start oh no they suck a call and i'm looking at here saying that they can call um but then a lot of times they're not reaching anybody or if they do they get a brief thing and they never get a call back so if it's added to the portal they could be directed there and there should be a easier spot where they could request a a um an appeal um but a lot of problems i also see not an hour in i see in the ascending school where the counselors aren't sending the information so i mean that's just two things that could actually get better proof so that's why my concern

062is what kind of information are they getting in the ascending schools that they're not following through thank you leo mrs fitzgerald yes i i had a couple of thoughts we are seem to be more hung up on the appeals process than we are on the actual application process the bottom line is that um as of this date which was last week whatever we have 423 new students that have we've accepted them and they've accepted us we know there's a little wiggle room for a few more not a whole lot more because we've asked the superintendent not to super load until we have space and teachers and everything but my point is that perhaps a gentle opening to the letter about either you've been accepted or you've been wait listed is letting them know everybody we

063had 1700 applicants or whatever and starting off that way we only have 425 slots available um congratulations you have one of those 423 or unfortunately you have been wait listed so that people are a little more realistic i'm going to use an example as pretty much everybody knows my involvement as a volunteer at the y and that includes their camps both camp otter which has room for 1700 camper weeks camp nakomas which has far less up on lake winnipesaukee and camp lawrence my own granddaughter because she didn't get her application in on time is um and she's only eight is number 46 on a wait list usually they can only take two or three off that wait list and that's because some parents plans have changed from whenever so realistically we would love to take

064everybody that applies and is eligible but we can't so i think if we fine-tune our communication that some of the things that we're all talking about as a committee and i didn't just receive calls this year first time ever not just from another parents whose kids had been wait listed but from other communities where they said oh i know mrs fitzgerald she'll help you out well mrs fitzgerald can help them out except to tell them the process and that's what i did with every single person but i will say this is the most i've ever had and i do think we need to come up with a full communication plan as part of it but we can't take them all right yes i am nice hope built on my merlin just said because she said

065her granddaughter didn't make it and she is the number 40. she's number 46 on a wheel lately so my question is do we have a process on the waiting list that we know exactly where people are so the expectation of yeah i'm going to make it oh i'm not going to make it and how can i move forward that is a great point um thank you madame because i have that in mind the process of what is the waiting list how we are how are we accounting for who who gets um the next available seat um based on that 800 that we have on the waiting list if you can answer that for me yes so we don't give anybody a specific number on the list and there are a couple of reasons for that

066one if you're a number 792 out of 800 that probably doesn't feel too good in the past we actually denied a certain number of students because you know we felt like it was sort of unfair to have them expect that maybe they would get in and that we knew that they didn't have a chance but the department department of education didn't like that we denied students um and even though we explained the rationale for that they they were not pleased with that so we changed it and everybody was either waitlisted or accepted so i understand the point with that a couple of other things if somebody calls and i tell them you are number five on the list right now then we have 10 appeal hearings and we decide we will admit some of those

067students on the appeal that person might go from number 10 to number 15 and be very upset and want to know why their position changed we also have sort of a rolling admissions policy so even though our deadline is february 1st we continue to accept and process applications after that so we could get you know another 20 students who have a higher point total and then that person's spot on the list changes again which i think would be very um frustrating okay yes thank you mr share that is another of my question why do we keep getting accepting application when we have so many students that are waiting for a chance and i know what you just said um that you're looking for people that had a great point but why why do we do

068that that person needs to wait if they didn't apply on time why are we even accepting more application it just it makes no sense to me so that is just the way that the language is written in the admissions policy it's certainly something that we could look at some schools do have a hard deadline and some don't we should have a deadline absolutely and it because we keep building on a list that is not going to it doesn't have end and then we have we're going to continue having access families because there's no way they're never going to get in because every day a person that's more qualified is going to be applying it just doesn't work i mean it doesn't work in my head that we have that and we're okay with that it

069just doesn't vivian so i just want to understand a little bit regarding what you just mentioned so if someone applies after the deadline who is considered more qualified they have a better chance at getting in from those that applied on time yes that's insane to me i don't think that's fair francis i'm sorry excuse me francis frank the guy in black um first of all thank you for being here i know sometimes this feels like grueling it's a difficult conversation there are no easy answers um one if they weren't on the waitlist or being denied we wouldn't be getting the calls we never get the calls hey thank you my kid had gotten in and i'm one that gets a lot of calls from different communities outside my own very few from my own um

070but with that there's several things um yes um and i'm not sure and you could correct this on the hard deadline is this you know allowing that um that's question one so in our admissions policy february first is a priority deadline so anybody who applies by that date we make sure that they are considered in that first round of acceptances and that's somebody's best chance of being acceptance accepted because that's when we send out 500 decisions so it is possible for somebody to have a good score who ends up not being accepted if most of the seats are filled so we call it we say it's a priority deadline and we try to include even somebody who applies after february 1st but they have a complete application before we send out the decision letters in

071march we'll also include them in that first round which is where a person that applied after becomes gets put forward before a person had already applied because the application wasn't approved because it's missing information um even though they had a good score in certain things um but there was something you mentioned that that just i'm start desi was not didn't like our reasoning for denial letters can you elaborate a little bit on what that reason was so when we had to do the waitlist data collection last year and i was speaking with somebody from the office of ccte about what we were submitting and after we submitted our report they had questions for me so i spoke with them on the phone and they wanted to know if we had a specific cutoff score and

072how we determined who was denied and who was wait listed so i explained that we looked at the number of students that we had who we accepted and then what that wait list would look like and i can't tell you the exact numbers but say it was roughly you know 800. we maybe did 400 on the waiting list and then 400 denied those aren't the exact numbers but roughly you know we tried to be reasonable about that and just knowing that those other students who really were at the the bottom of that list would not have an opportunity and the response was how do you know so it was kind of um you know it was very clear that that was um just not something that they were in favor of i and i agree

073because i said through any of those cte meetings so i know where that that portion is coming from which is what bronze brings to mind um that the more information the families are getting in the beginning is being more clearer and it eliminates the process of calling somebody saying this is what's going on because when i talk to a parent and they come to me the first thing is how are they grades how is their attendance and i'm and i'm talking about in the seventh grade and so forth and i i bring it up so i started eliminating the process of elimination if they're not from methuen my first my other question is did you reach out to one of your members um from where your communities because if you did then you should continue

074talking to them um to go through the process before anything because i don't i definitely don't want to be taking on more than i want to um but and like i said if they weren't getting denied on the waitlist and i know which one i'm gonna bring back to think they wouldn't be calling us to say this is happening um and they don't they're not understanding why um so we are a little bit more clear why then it helps them be clear um which so if desi wasn't a proven denial thing is it because the emission policy had changed um so they were already i'm looking at removing the denial process um and just making sure it was weightless because i know we submitted um i mentioned policy to desi last year year before in

075september or october i think was october right yeah and we were getting approval for it um so is that the change in in the reasoning rationale for removing the denial i think it's really part of that whole process and all of the regulation changes and and to be honest i i feel like it may be because of other schools that are very different from ours with the number of applications so there were some schools that were denying a student admission even if they had the room right so maybe if they got below a certain score they would deny them when they had the seats available so we're in a very different position than that but i i believe that it's really a matter of sort of trying to set a consistent policy even though it

076doesn't apply to each school equally right um and i i'm completely aware of all those denials and um keeping it to a certain demographic um which is why defus does he has done the whole revamp of the emission policy um and maryland brought up something about the committee had set a number misinterpreting that back probably about a a year ago maybe less um we i brought the point up about not expanding admissions just for the sake of the numbers in that we were in this position many years ago where we just kept on bringing in kids we didn't have the room for them and but they brought in a lot of money because obviously you get x amount and i ask that we never got in that position that that was the reason we were

077taking them and when we when we discussed this at the last meeting what was the limit that this school could handle and um we're getting really really close to it so when i saw that 423 number as of the 14th um knowing that there will still be some more um that i didn't want us to be in that position where we where were we going to put them and we did we discussed it that length about the safety of the shops and so on and to that point the next one two three pages even though they're not labeled as such um the new applications or for transfers it actually because there's no label at the top it makes it look as if we have accepted 72 kids for um the class of whatever 24 and

078um six coming in as seniors and so on and i know that's not so but i just want us to pay attention to the numbers that we don't get more kids than we can safely educate and i use that term safely as the criteria can i just clarify what those sheets are that i'm looking at so they are just applic applications for transfer students so uh for the class it says community 2025 so class of 2025 our current freshman so they would be 10th grade transfer students as of last week there were 153 applications and we have virtually no space in the class of 2024 72 applications that's a high number of applications for junior transfers so my point is that we should have a label at the top uh i'm saying what it is

079because when i first read it i went oh my goodness where are we going to put that many sophomores next year and then when i went back and and looked i realized i never ever remember numbers like this looking for what you would call upperclassmen to transfer in um if the state doesn't get the message or the federal government soon that we need more space i don't know this is this is wonderful but crazy and i'm looking at these numbers and i'm looking at some of these schools um roxbury prep madison the pike um exclu of the sectional studies i believe that's lawrence correct yes um londonderry middle school whitcomb middle school am i is these schools out of districts and i'm looking greenfield common virtual right so in most cases we would just consider

080those applications or those students out of district and we wouldn't process the applications in some situations if there's a situation with say parents who are divorced or living apart one parent verifies that they live in the the district and that's where the student will be living next year then we do process that application okay so we're not because i remember we voted as not to be um school choice um so we're not so when i saw that i was like wait a minute um okay no i think i'm done completely done and brenda thank you for a great presentation and i know it is grueling sometimes it is but um i you know definitely appreciate the feedback and and hear that the communication um seems to be the the biggest issue at least that we

081can um you know potentially impact the numbers we can't but we can definitely take a look at the communication mr haydem brenda thank you very much i know how hard your office works i've had a few phone calls same as mr cirillo has from the same probably the same people and i give them the same information that mr cirillo gives him follow the administration follow the admission policy but i also tend to throw you under the bus i have people that i have call you see you there have been a couple people said they haven't gotten a phone call back and i said there's no problem coming down knocking on the door making an appointment i think a personal invitation is always better i like the go-to cte program but i think knocking on your

082door and sitting down saying talk to me is the best way to do it um again thank you very much it's disappointing we have 800 students trying to get into this building and we can't service them i'm looking at 800 tradesmen we can't train but and we're sorry to put you through this it's unusual for us to have someone who talks longer than the superintendent thank you brenda thank you mr hayden thank you very much a lot of good things came up this evening but we also haven't uh we haven't resolved anything so um superintendent i think we need to work with brenda's with the admission office and if you could report back the second meeting in september on on changes or stuff that we can do uh is that enough time to get into

083next year's uh next year's paperwork so we have an admissions committee that reviews all the data from this year we'll also uh with the information and the conversations you had this evening we'll bring that back to the committee we will be meeting during the summer to review a lot of the information so that we can try to get that to you uh for the second week uh that's yeah so it will be before we'll get it to you before because you have to vote again on the admission every year you have to vote on me before but i'd like to probably address it there if it's the first week in october yeah you know that's that's fine also we usually start uh we have the uh all the guidance counselors from our sending community come

084the first week of october so we'll take try to make sure we do it in september just to recap i would like us to consider having deadlines for applications coming in um so it makes it more clear of how you know that that waiting list is the waiting list and nothing else is coming in at a certain time um i would like also for us to consider having a date stamp as you know the the the sample of um marilyn's granddaughter because if we have a stand stamp how application comes in huh great great granddaughter if we have a stamp date times um stamp of one application comes in and there's no question of you know you didn't make it just because we don't have seats then we know who's the next person is even

085if we have appeals we should be able to know who the next person is in line to get a seat that becomes available i know i also i know that some criteria is here about how people how the points that people get to get you know to get to a point where they get accepted i don't see anywhere um i mean i see 65 i don't know i still don't understand the points the point um situation but um i want to know if we are considering like graduates from the school within this point which is not here but it's something that we can add because we want to have you know give certain points to to a student that the parents came to the school they graduated from the school or you know things like

086that um i mean it's just one of the things i think that's a reward you you'll have family that graduated here for that you you should be able you should be considered give some points so it's part of the of the criterias um yeah well for now i just want to make sure that those are in in a minute and that we have that in consideration when we are doing changes to the admission thank you yeah they'll they'll be in the minutes but could you forward that section to the superintendent specifically so that we know specifically what uh or write it up specifically one or the other because uh the minutes end up to be 65 70 pages uh and the information gets lost so uh if we can make sure that that gets highlighted

087give it to sue okay john you had something to say thank you i was just going to suggest that committee email brenda with any thoughts ideas that we talked about tonight even if two weeks from now you something comes to mind that you think might be beneficial when we meet as a committee we can review all of those thoughts and ideas and in trying to make changes that might be impactful or useful in helping improve the process both with communication as well as opportunities for fairness with our students now just uh i would just ask the committee can we uh we put the organizational chart in there committee can review it there will be a few other changes as we make to do some hiring this year that will fall in this packet so as

088changes i will update the organizational chart for you first meeting in september as well so you can see any changes that might have been impacted based on some new hires that we still need to do mr hadem mr voya i noticed that the or maybe i'm reading it wrong the cte director answers to the superintendent shouldn't she answer to the principal leave the superintendent as far as a backup if there's problems so the cte director under this organizational chart you'll see is answering to the prince is reporting to the principal next time next year so that is a change in our structure mr saul thank you leo 3u um that was one question and the other one is um and i know there's going to be some changes but the school business administrator title um

089i think that needs to be changed because we already changed that title yes we'll make that what was the other change so the so the business director of finance is also in charge of the transportation or the hr tech business office specialist yes and the coordinator of human resources and human resources director of human resources no because this is here coordinator of human resources coordinator of human resources reports to me to the superintendent there's an office specialist that works both with the coordinative human resources and finance director of finance which is the position we're trying to hire now is that position the director of of human resources the finance uh where it says finance specialists the school business administrators at the very top the gray the gray kind of a brown and grayish color to

090the right of my where it's a superintendent director a school business administrator reports to the school committee and the superintendent so then that position shouldn't be under the director of finance am i correct finance specialist is someone that is basically works in the business office that supports here says coordinator of human resources is our hr director okay so right here in this organizational chart it answers to the director of finance yeah so you're saying that needs to be changed the coordinator of human resources reports to should be reporting to the superintendent okay um okay so this to me i think this organizational chart completely needs to be done um because it's just all over the place to follow yep um they make it a little bit more simplified because i'm looking at positions that should

091be answering to you what they're answering to someone looks like they're answering somebody else um there's even one here that says um administrative student information specialist who looks like based on the way the line is looks like the answer to the district committee so i mean this organization is a mess so coordinator of human resources should really be switched with finance specialists that's in the wrong place so there has to be some changes as you suggested around that okay that's well yep okay john will you we can do those uh do those changes then yeah back to us and so as we as we get when we finalize we get a couple hires that are going to be reflected in here um probably within the next couple of weeks i'll send it back to the

092committee in the next couple of weeks with these changes as well as some new positions in there in the next couple of weeks we'll be we're in the process of hiring the language acquisition specialists who will be reporting to the principal that's not on here yet that's a administrative role as well frank the next meeting is in august but i'll email this just so the committee has it yeah right we will address it uh probably then joyla did you have oh no i know i just thought i saw you put your hand up i'm sorry admiring her manicure i understand okay here we go i don't know what's on or what's off it's wrong are we set with this ladies and gentlemen um okay right i was said at the moment uh building truck excuse

093me building projects uh superintendent uh here's a there was a request for listing the building projects and the start date and the completion date so you have a copy of that that document do you want me to go through read through it uh are there any questions ladies and gentlemen on any of that uh information mrs fischer oh i thought you said yes oh okay a little sidebar here i guess okay all right we're gonna move on then from building projects uh yes um vivian on the uh building projects um was the guard shack did you mention that there was still um something that had to be fixed or um because this has completed here but it could have i could have sworn you said that some changes were going to be made um yeah

094so the the actual guard check is complete we are looking at putting another drop gate on the other side also that would be like another building project um at a later point in time it's not actually it's just a matter of putting in another gate but it's not the guard shack itself is completed okay the building itself frank the building itself is complete but the title is not here it says guard shark oh yeah so that was going to throw me off i didn't know we were looking for great whites at the cape or something okay all righty uh request diversity report this was requested so you have a report of uh this was requested by there's a few different reports here yeah you can see the list going down we'll just go down them

095john oh please uh so uh you have glts current staff people of color percentages requested by uh committee member uh cyrillo the jlts last five-year administrative people of color requested by miss marmal and the handout glts last five-year retention report of people of color requested by mr haydem all are in your packet here we gonna are you gonna take time to digest these or do you have questions and comments now yeah uh francis frank sorry um that was the man in black today um and and thank you john for for giving this um and the reason this is also requested because i know that the last time we you and i were at the budget here in lawrence the city council is over there were asking for this question of the same information um to

096be turned over to them before the final budget hearing which is the 23rd correct yeah um so and i'm looking in in looking at tom's request of retention for our teachers and i know for research shows that if a child of color sees another person that resembles them their ability to finish school increases um what are we actually doing not only to recruit um but um also retain our teachers because also i mean not just a teacher of color but any teacher who impacts a child's life if they're still there four years later what if they graduate it's somebody they've connected to and it's become their mentor and actually finishes school and actually comes back and sees that same teacher there knows that there's stability in the school what are we doing to address such

097a thing well in terms of teacher retention we do several different things i think the most important thing i think we do for our teachers first and foremost is when they first come in we have a good program for our new teachers which we spend where they spend the week when they first come in they each get a mentor uh throughout the year uh they are meet with their mentor uh and once once a month they also come together as a group of new teachers again to um to support each other and and continue to learn throughout the year both strategies in terms of teaching and and working uh collaboratively collaboratively with each other uh so that's i think the first thing that we do also one of the things we try to reinforce any

098concerns or questions that new teachers have we try to direct immediately address immediately any kinds of resource materials materials they need we try to make the new teachers the priority so that they know they're welcomed those are probably the first step in trying to retain teachers then continuing from there we have i think outstanding professional development program here at the school that allows them to meet their state requirements in terms of maintaining their licensure every five years we work to ensure that they're getting each area of the require criterias for renewal of their professional status i think that's one of the things that we do for to help retain our teachers are i think one of the other things the evaluation system we have a highly i believe highly high quality evaluation system that gives

099teachers feedback uh on what they do well and and where they need to get continuous support our curriculum development process uh is well supported in helping them develop a curriculum that makes them well prepared every day well-prepared teachers makes their job easier and so they feel like they start to enjoy and feel confident in the work that they do i think that's important in terms of re uh retaining teachers we work closely with those teachers who may struggle with particularly in the beginning with classroom management our discipline office i think it does outstanding work to work individually when we find there are teachers who need some support and extra help to support those teachers in terms of almost in every area of the school we provide outstanding resources everything from materials to equipment to tools

100there's rarely occasion when we don't that we say no to a staff member when they're looking for some kind of a resource uh i think the other thing is i think we have probably uh at least in the top 10 best technology in the state with regards to resources we give our teachers for technology everything from software to equipment support for our teachers so we this year we inc last year we included a support technology for development of curriculum and development of developing technology resources we have a coach for that now that's a great uh i think that helps teachers feel as though we care about meeting their needs this year upcoming year we we hired another coach to support and help teachers with their instructional learning instructional support and resources with curriculum development we

101also hired us we're in the process of hiring a second coach who can work with them more closely particularly new teachers who may be struggling with the m-town and the vtel uh that again is to try to retain those teachers uh who will also work with particularly the technical side of the house in developing curriculum that meets that provides high quality strategies in terms of working with kids that struggle we have a great special ed department that provides all kinds of individual learning plans that are that are wealth designed well thought out so that and provide teachers with that support we have inclusion classes and we have many many probably more inclusion classes in most schools and we have a program to continue to improve the quality of teacher that work together in teams um

102special ed and we're constantly training our our special ed staff teachers to provide the kind of support that uh provide special ed students with adaptive curriculum which makes the job easier for all teachers in terms of trying to help student be successful let's see we are providing one of the things that we're providing uh we provide them with a very clean building clean classrooms which is a you know it's to me is you know it feels good to come to work every day in a space that you know uh that i think you're you feel respected when you come to a building that's clean and your classroom is always clean we also provide opportunities for support systems for both maintenance within their space and also support systems for technology when they have a problem with

103their technology so that makes their job much easier some of the new things we're doing is we're providing a new child care center which one of the major difficulties and challenges for teachers is to find child care help and i think that's one of the reasons an important reason why i think the child care center was important to get is important to provide them it also allows them to participate more after school also gives them peace of mind knowing their child is safe and the child care center will have a high high curriculum a high quality curriculum that will provide learning for uh from uh infants all the way up to five years old when they when they leave the school so it'll be a place that uh and it'll be a place that staff

104will be well informed and about what's happening with their children and so i think that's very important um i think we provide them with a high quality payroll system a pay pay they're our pay structures very competitive i think our insur our health insurance system what we provide is very supportive we have what we call common planning time where teachers can learn how to collaborate and work with each other in an environment i think the environment in the school itself is very healthy and strong we know we need to do more work around you know supporting our our staff of color so we're looking at making changes to provide that support with committees not only for them but for all staff so that they can learn to work and collaborate better together so those just

105a few things that i think that we're doing to help you know retain our teachers there's always we're never satisfied we're always kind of looking at you know what more can we do and i think the area of culture is an area that we want to do more work in to help our staff uh feel that they're valued but in the long i think the bottom line i think really is we try to ensure that our teachers feel valued and that they matter and what they do is important to us but most importantly it's that they um that we're clear to clear with them that what they do is making a difference with our students and we try to point out that success to them because it makes them feel uh good about coming to

106work every day thank you and i know that we've in the last year we've been putting providing more towards that um with the money i brought in for the internal detail um and then teacher what was it um the new position you were talking about the teacher um support person oh yes um those are great um avenues but yeah instructional coach yeah they're going to have three three coat and we also have a new data person that helps them determine you know to look at their own data and help them adapt their curriculum based on the data and this person will meet individually with teachers she meets with groups you know she helps with local assessments as well as state assessments to get a sense of the success of our students and where we need

107to make some where we have gaps and need to make some changes i mean those are all things that make you makes you makes their job easier that i don't think you find all those things in all schools some schools are stronger than others but um and i am i'm gonna i'm gonna agree with you on that there's not much of that being done um in other schools so these are great things that we're doing now but we've lost teachers because these are things that we didn't put in place then so my question also comes to the point where i'm looking at evaluating stuff that teachers wrote how much of this are you guys putting into thinking about and then not taking it as a bad critique but taking as opportunity a learning opportunity to

108actually start resolving some of these issues where you could actually be more effective and trust me this school's a lot better than most schools i know out there i think uh well i think you're right frank that uh we are uh trying to do some work too in fact i wrote something down here i left it back at the office but we are we we know that we have to do more work around our culture and our environment to support uh not only our staff but our students of color um that we're not even close i don't think we've even just started to kind of scratch this first to better understand what we have to do you know such as one of the committees that i talked about last week putting together but also trying

109to take a look at more data of our staff and what what's working for them and what isn't our our staff of color because i think if if we have a culture of acceptance uh of all staff where they feel they are integrated in a in a school system that they are highly valued not just by the administrators but by their colleagues and they're respected by their colleagues trying to understand do they feel that way trying to put a plan in place to help us know that they feel that and if they don't you know what do we have to do to help improve that culture because that then uh trickles down to the students as well if our staff is not feeling it 100 percent maybe our students aren't feeling it 100 so we

110need to take a look at that as well because that's critically important for our students to feel um uh that as well that uh all teachers value them as individuals uh and uh and feel that uh they should be have all the same opportunities anyone else in the world and i know that many you know the the idea that having uh people within our own in our own system uh whether it be teachers administrators that look like our students is critical and important and trying to figure out how we improve on that is definitely a priority for us and i think it's it's become more and more apparent that we need to do more work on it and spend more time on it so as part of our strategic plan moving forward that our five-year

111strategic plan that will be a a a large priority of you know significant priority within that plan to take a look at that in our in our five-year strategic plan not just you know not only in terms of within each and every each and every individual shop to assess and evaluate you know the career areas as well to understand better in any of these careers where the challenges are for kids entering these careers for our students of color and you know what what can we do to help improve that work environment that we have some impact on particularly with our advisory committee and some of the work we do with them and that conversation has to happen across the board so we definitely we're putting together our committee our minor committee for improving staff hiring

112minorities half staff hiring is looking at strategies long term strategies particularly looking at data and looking at the right kind of data so i think you'll see us continue to grow and improve as we looked at as we continue to look at this year's hiring you'll see that we've improved tremendously we continue to improve in terms of our percentage of staff of color that we're hiring and i know one of the concerns for the committee is administration so that's something that we're going to take a closer look at to try to see to take a look at that more closely how do we recruit and and i guess inspire more people of color to participate in our impart apply in that particular area yeah and like i said when i was listening vivian asked for

113this this particular data and i saw the resistance um this is the stuff that helps improve the school when we know what the small problems are um especially at our level because we're the ones that setting policies for the school um this is not a negative this is actually a positive where we can actually look what what the teachers are lacking not just teachers of color i'm talking about staff in general um no matter where they come from um because we're looking at this and we're able to put things in place will help us to better retain our staff instead of getting a set of them going off somewhere else um for less money because they prefer to be there than than here because of the environment so these are the things we have to

114look at to start really addressing i want to thank both tom and vivian for asking for this data because this is very helpful to start looking at the next steps of keeping and retaining our staff leo thank you mr adam for mrs linski please are there any new people that are leaving or veterans i should say i know the retirees are going any veterans that are not on the end of this school year is tomorrow right are there any new veteran teachers who decided to go for greener pastures what report are you looking at mr hayden um it's a certain i don't think so because i think that um um the student information officer ms joya did that for the superintendent most recently so i would have to just verify if everyone's there but if

115it's a if it's a recent report there's no one new that we are aware of okay we have lost a lot of experience as far as retirees just in plumbing alone is over 60 65 years of experience that just left the door and i know there's nothing we can do about that mr cirillo had touched on it and i'm glad he did about how our kids latch on to teach us they latch you can't fool our kids they know they know who to latch on to they know who grew up in the area who who lives around them who's honest when i've had kids come back to me years later and i'm afraid we're losing that with all our veterans teachers that are leaving and i just wanted to thank mr cirello for picking that

116out thank you vivian okay so i just want to give a breakdown of the three reports that you gave regarding mr hatems um it's kind of hard to even make an assessment as to whether these num these retention rates are actually positive or negative considering that we we barely hired staff of color so to see that only two uh were were terminated or uh or resigned so wait number of terminations are these that they were terminated or they resigned or is that just uh bad wording yeah is it bad wording by using terminations yes so okay so continuing what i was saying it's hard to make an assessment when we're not really hiring many uh staff of color to begin with so when when i'm seeing only two uh two were terminated or resigned for

1172020 2021 only three yeah by the looks of it it sounds very like small but for all i've known for all i could for all i could know only two were hired for that year to begin with um so i'll just keep it at that regarding this data um okay go ahead the one thing i would say that 2021 uh this year this year's hiring season we are doing much better far better than we've done in in the history of the school in terms of hiring people of color and um i i think i feel like that's going to continue to improve because we're actually trying to do more recruitment recruiting so interesting to a couple of shops where we had openings i i spoke to some of the staff members in that shop and

118i said a lot of them in fact i said can you reach out to students who have graduated in the last 10 years because 90 of our kids were kids of color so i think we need to start looking at someone with for years and years have hired many many of our graduates in the particularly in our vocational area so if we could continue that practice we should be bringing in more and more students of color because um and we and we've been successful this year in a few cases in doing that bring uh uh and in fact so we're looking for a third a third plumbing teacher this year and so far we've hired one grad two graduates and one of color and i said let's try to get another one let's try to

119get another graduate can talk to the kids that are that we hired maybe there's a third one out there that we can try to try to recruit because we we're there's nobody that applies we haven't got that third candidate yet so we are trying to reach out in the places we know that could have an impact i mean thank you for uh mentioning the strategies that you're looking into implementing um i'm wondering are you able to provide that in a report form as to the current strategies because i know in our last meeting we've discussed it and a lot of the information just gets lost in translation and if i'm not mistaken considering that a lot of the the items that we're discussing right now it's items that the city councillors are requesting as well

120so i think it would be beneficial for us to at least have a report indicating the strategies that we currently have in place discussing what are we doing in regards to the retention rate um and in regards to the strategies that we are currently implementing and will be implementing um regarding recruitment so i think that's two separate data it's the retention and the recruitment process um i i'm i'm trying to grasp and have an understanding um superintendent because i know you've mentioned it a couple times that um we're having a hard time recruiting staff of color and i'm just the reason why i'm so confused is because i don't see that as an issue with our neighboring schools in regards to hiring administrators of color and staff of color so i'm just trying to understand

121why is it that we're struggling in obtaining qualified candidates well typically um we typically have less candidates in all areas than our sending communities whatever doesn't matter what position we post we're going to end up with a lot less candidates than they will they tend to get more candidates than us so that's going to impact somewhat you know the people of color and i think vocational education has been uh weak in that area that has not been proactive enough in that area and i think that's been a problem so we've gotta um assume it would be a strategy that we would have to come up with yeah so it's something that we need to be uh to be more proactive and everyone across the state is dealing with the same thing and particularly in the

122vocational community we're i think in we've probably been most guilty and not doing enough in this area um and so we we're finding even at the mo the level of mother who is the association that of administrators for vocational education in massachusetts is doing some workshops in uh in the end of the month on this in this particular area as well so everybody is recognizing that we need to do more work [Music] for lots of reason if nothing else to show that that we respect people of color being part of our institution at all levels and so just trying to figure out and it and it's not just recruiting it's like how do we help people of color that our teachers become administrators and help them learn what it is they need to do to

123we need to be more proactive proactive in educating uh our teachers uh about how to to move up to that those levels and and i think we need to do some work around that our teachers and other teachers we know on the vocational side of the house um with more young people coming into the career area that that it shouldn't eventually make a difference but we understand that we're not there that we need to do more work and yeah and i i will send you um uh what we've what we have in place for strategies for recruitment and retention um i'll put something together and email it yeah i'd like to see what we currently have and what are you thinking of putting into place considering that um based on the data it is clear

124that we still need to improve on certain things and just looking at the date of the last five years and how many staff of color are in administrative positions it's just clear that we definitely need to look into that a little further yes okay i will definitely send some get something out to you to the committee yeah uh thanks leo through you and first of all i want to commend whoever put this together because this is information that you can actually look at and dissect and go through um so i mean this is the stuff that when we looking at and we present them we could look at in a second say okay this is where we need to work on if and i know we put an instructional coach together correct um so that's

125going to help with teachers and have that mentorship where they could find somebody directly and have that connection um instead of just showing up once and they see them one time and they don't seem again but and this is why it keeps looking this is where longevity starts i mean tom has been here what 80 years maryland falls behind in 60. but it's longevity that that shows and if we appreciate our staff then at all levels then we know where we where we're heading um and we're top of tier school we need to keep our top tier teachers here not having them go somewhere else for less money leo thank you the uh just to comment on on that document you're looking at frank uh i would commend our principal oversaw the development of that

126document working with different committees to come up with the school improvement plan and then putting it in a high quality presentation that's easy to follow and read so that's who i would like to recognize for that work i'm aware okay very good the deci diversity program update john oh this is this is that program that frank had uh asked what are some of the things that we learned or covered from here so i i took the table of content content that uh that outlines all the different topics that we uh covered in uh in the coursework um and i one of the things that we're the uh committee that we're putting where we have staff of color were coming together as a committee uh was one of those ideas that came out of this this

127particular program uh a lot of and there was a lot of what we learned a lot about is um data that we should collect and what kind of data we should collect in order to uh better understand where the gaps and what the work needs to be before before we start putting a plan together that put to develop and provide our committees that we're putting together with as much data as pos possible and also they went over a lot of the different pipelines that we should be looking at in order to either participate or join some associations and some different groups that would be useful some other suggests some other suggestions you know everything from looking at our all of our hiring practice documentations our ads and information put out to the newspaper or other

128resources we use for uh recruitment um are one of the big things that i think which we are going to be working on this summer is our um our um um web page um is something that we're doing a lot of work and we're going to be doing a lot of work on but that's a critical document to take a look at for biases and other things that may be someone from the outside looking at looking at it realize you know doesn't speak well for our school is a welcoming environment so we need to take a better look at that to see how that may be impacting people who may want to come and apply for our to our school and then also in our interview process when we uh what are some of the

129kinds of questions and kinds of concerns that people may have when they they're not we're not only interviewing them but they're also interviewing us we've got to understand that better so that we are asking the kinds of questions that allows them to feel that we want them here and that we think they're important and that they that we value who they are uh so those are just some of the things that uh that were learned from this particular program now i will add when i give you the report i can add other things that we learned from it that we plan on implementing next year as well okay no are you up no no do you have a question uh no i do i'm john thank you for putting this together and providing a table

130of contents i mean i see the pipeline of development um and this goes and coincides with everything else of how we develop an ingrown um pool of candidates um and i think we already started putting that together with the intel retail um reaching out to the power educated training program out of lawrence the working families initiative i think those are small starts in the right direction so thank you for putting this together and remind you and i do want to recommend also commend your staff for not only putting the school improvement plan together but for the work you do sometimes it's not always a critique is always how we could make it better hey anything further thank you you're welcome hey leo you're welcome so school year 2223 job posting updates john this is where

131we were looking at in the future starting next year not having the committee vote on postings and in in presenting what i did some research on the different schools uh all the vocation schools in our area and a couple of our our comprehensive schools as well but none of the schools have the school committee approved postings okay so that's your recommendation and then and then the uh rationale for that why you know why why i would recommend that we no longer uh request voting on the postings uh well first i bullet about seven or eight things here i can go through them or if you'd like me to go through them um okay it is responsibility what i post uh put bullets on is responsible the superintendent principal to establish job descriptions credentials required and

132to hire staff for each position it is timelier to fill vacant positions already in the budget so one of the things sometimes we get someone that resigns and it may be difficult to get that position so the faster we can get it out there the better so it would be more timely a superintendent is spending i spend many many hours preparing for postings for school committee member along with trying to prepare what i might think is the concerns that might be within the postings of jobs that were already approved we can provide the committee list of postings to pack it without presenting at the meeting to save time easier for developing and planning budget knowing it has to be reviewed by being reviewed by the committee so knowing that a particular jobs are going to

133be already been approved and as part of the budget makes it easier and easier for the committee to review in the budget less controversy at committee meetings i think saves meeting time for more important issues during the meeting and at times it's urgent to replace the staff member that that may resign so that just some of them things that i feel would bene would be useful in terms of helpful in terms of uh postings to yes not um i would ask committee consider that we no longer vote on postings if they're in the budget if there are if new positions or any changes from a grant to a into the operational budget uh we would continue to ask the committee to vote on those yes i totally understand why we do not have to vote

134on them because they've already been approved in the budget and as mr lavoy said only new positions would be brought forward first as a vote on the position and then obviously on the the posting but i would if if this were to pass i would like either the motion to say or as something that would happen that we still receive in our packet all of the postings that might have happened in the two weeks since we've met and then i would also like a listing of all any and all positions filled with the name the position don't need the salary or anything because it's in the budget but i would like to see those two things as a regular basis any postings that have happened or are looking to happen within the next until the

135next meeting and then follow that up with any and all positions filled and i have no problem with not voting on that yes absolutely further comments questions yes uh friends so there's controversy at school committee meetings i'm not sure what controversies outside of uh posting descriptions there is say a small time in um in meetings i mean i believe we this is part of the stuff that comes in the end um so just be clear in the budget every position is is already approved in the budget unless there's a brand new position that's going to require money that's not in our budget it makes no sense because every position is in the budget even new positions so i don't see where this actually going to save more time so there are times when there are

136times when their a position is not in the budget and then something comes up and we need to where we would feel like it would be important to have the position i bring it to the committee for a vote that can have that that happens several times when i talk about just to give you an example of controversy we've had situations where um i've had to come back three or four times on a on a position to try to get it approved even though it's in the budget because of something that a committee member may not like and so it gets voted down whether it be you know the description or the credentials or something like that but it's in essence the truth of the matter it is the responsibility of superintendent and principal to

137establish those things but then we get into a big debate as what should be in those things and what shouldn't be in those things so then it gets put off for weeks and sometimes it has had an impact on hiring desperately needing somebody not getting getting it done in a timely way so i mean it's not happen it doesn't happen all the time it happens it has happened i i should say and um i just think it would cause less controversy about those kinds of issues and so that would um and we and sometimes when we do the postings it can take a long time to get through the postings um you know it can be we spent anywhere from half hour to an hour at times on a post on the postings um at

138times so that's i mean uh i'm you know happy to do whatever the committee's suggests but i just wanted to be sincere and honest about what i think the rationale was no and and i thank you for your rationale um and and i can really understand but at the same time this is where we start checking those facts and checks on everything different things when poses are being posted we look at who how many people have applied because one of the biggest complaints i get is i'm not gonna apply because that job was already taken before it was even posted so that's a huge complaint thing for me so this is things that i'm looking at because i look in school springs and anywhere else to see where where we will put a supply put

139opposed to the job and how long it's been up there so just to spend and spend more on that on that comment controversy at committee meeting it it does happen a lot um it does happen because the posting of the listing in the description it's not there's no matching um they come incomplete we don't have enough information so yes there is controversy yes this information missing so you definitely we need to get to the point where we feel comfortable that every posting that comes true it's consistent it has the all the key ingredients that it's needed to hire a person that anybody you know can apply for it and have the equal opportunity to get in and the controversy happened because that's not there so this so just not bringing job posting and approving it

140here it's just it's not going to work because we know that there are too many inconsistent in when posting happen and to francisco comment yeah people are not applying because many times these postings which are supposed to be consistent they are coming with a name on them and what i mean is there's already a person attached to that posting so there's there are differences for posting even though they should all be the same that is where the controversy comes and as long as we have controversy that means we don't have a well hiring process hiring process yeah that's why we have to have the posting here and go through them unfortunately again i'm not saying we're not going to get there this is the same as hiring people of color we had to have a

141strategy we already talked about that and what are we doing to improve this we need to have a process or strategy or how we're going to improve the job posting and then we can say no they don't need to come to the to the committee maybe the other school let's see what the these schools are doing that they don't need the committee to go up approve the posting and that maybe we can start there but i definitely don't agree with this just with the bullet some of this bullet the reason for us not to not to be approving the job posting thank you thank you in terms of controversy certainly postings can cause controversy when we don't agree what should be in the postings a lot of times somebody may think something should be in

142the posting but it's not necessary or something that depends on the jobs because every job can what how the posting is designed or the description is designed can be different from one kind of a job to another so it can make it difficult to try to understand why one looks different than the other but in most schools the committee doesn't even see what the posting looked like um you know they have it's and you know as i put on the first bullet there it's the responsibility superintendent and the principal to develop that job description and credentials required to hire the staff for each position you know so we may disagree on what that job description may look like and that's where we get into controversy but that's all i want to say to that in

143terms of people that are applying people don't apply because they think the job is already taken on rare occasions somebody within the building may be interested in a job and the word gets out that that person may be targeted for the job but boy that's a rare rare occasion when that happens um and sometimes it happens because of someone that's worked hard and is looking to move up the ladder uh and you know they may have um you know put in for the job so people think a lot of times that they're going to get the job but even at that that's just so unusual when that happens i can think of you know very few times that that's ever actually happened uh that that's been the case so we we try to be very

144um you know fair and with all our hires in terms of who we hire for different positions right thank you leo for you um and and i so as you're looking at teachers administrators there's a radio criteria set by the department of ed um and i sat with you and we have this conversation of you providing that information what the criterias are for certain things but to educators in the licensure process and everything else that already eliminates most of the what you will say will be conservatives because everybody knows that these are not things that we can change um so i think if you're educating and providing the information being needed i'm in a timely manner then it just eliminates that process so and it's just an observation that we've had this conversation brilliant times

145anything anyone anyone else anything further hey all those in favor all those opposed would you call the role please uh when you have a moment please mr cyrillo miss marmal no mr rossi miss fitzgerald yes miss dizza no mr hayden yes mr lamontagne yes it was 3-3 correct the motion does okay uh principles oh no i'm sorry school improvement plan john [Music] is going to do a report on the school improvement plan that we require a vote of the school committee yep yes on that document we shouldn't go through the school improvement the committee has to vote on it i promise you i'm not going to go through the whole document so thank you as part of my principal's report tonight i am proud to present our school year 2223 school improvement plan the actual

146improvement plan is only the first couple pages i want to first i would like to just acknowledge joshualette he's a grade 10 ela teacher he's here this evening he is doing some hours for his administrative license and as part of it he stepped up and kind of volunteered wanted to learn more about the process and really helped this document to become even more transparent as well as comprehensive so i want to thank him for his efforts i also want to acknowledge our instructional technologist miss jacqueline hunter she also worked closely with josh and i would say that sometimes we call it sue speak when i say well how about this this and that they really made it happen this document has gone through a process just as a reminder you know we we start with

147the the surveys that we send out we also take a look at that and then we bring it through three groups of people prior to coming to this committee the first group is our faculty council which is our instructional leadership team they take a look at the data and they make it make recommendations on what they see as goals we also the first approving body is also our school council which that body is made up of students family caregiver members as well as faculty they take a look at it this year we also sent out the whole thing to the staff with a google form for them to also comment on and provide input so some of the highlighted changes that i just want to go through is one of a few improvements that i

148see is we added some acronyms and key terms and part of that is sometimes in education we assume that when we say the sip and this and that that everyone understands and part of this will be a public-facing document so we wanted to make sure that some of the key terms that are used in here is are explained also what we also included this year is kind of our rationale in terms of aligning goals we want to make sure that we're taking goals and we're we're looking at what our goals were for 21 22 and aligning them for the next school year and giving the rationale on why we want to keep them or change them the other great improvement is to take this data that we always talk about using and actually have a

149data visualization so you can actually see the data points that we're using to say hey this is an area of opportunity an area of growth that we're using in order to use this so also one of the things i want to point out which i think is great is instead of starting over with four new goals we're really looking at this year as like a design and a creation phase where these goals really kind of started except the sel goal which is ongoing next year we're really looking at taking those goals refining them and implementing them and then making adjustments thinking about goals someone said today in our admin meeting really what kind of goal do you actually finish complete all in one year a lot of the times it takes it takes multiple years

150to get some of these larger scale things that we want to accomplish so you'll see in most of our goals our goals for this year are really just the next phase for next year so you've heard us talk about the multi-tiered system of support and this year we're going to this year we were just kind of exploring and learning next year we're going to fully develop and start the implementation process of the multi-tiered support system we're going to be looking at classroom based and school-wide curriculum instruction and assessment some of the other things that you've heard the superintendent and i speak about this year instructional coaching getting the win block doing a lot of those things are all things that we're actually going to now now start to do last year our goal was to

151look into and make a recommendation for a new master schedule but now we have to actually implement our new master schedule which is going to be um you know next year is going to be you know it's going to be our whole year to try to try that out see what works make adjustments in terms our social emotional learning goal which we have had a five-year seo plan but next year you can see that we are really kind of really targeting what we're targeting next year is work we are our social emotional learning goal is to focus on belonging diversity equity and inclusion in instructional practices that includes curriculum instruction and assessment it also includes interactions between students adults and all professional learning communities so we're really going to be working on what is what

152does it mean to belong we're going to be looking at that data what did our students report do they feel belonged they feel safe but what does that mean and also in our full community what does what do we mean when we talk about belonging diversity equity inclusion so it's really our social emotional learning target goal and finally this year we talked a little bit and started some work on getting back to assessments we did some professional development and some work but next year we're going to work on designing a school-wide assessment calendar that has benchmark assessments as well as even department assessments and all of those assessments the purpose of them is to support strategic planning and school-wide expectations and support so we need to work alongside our staff in what a student assessment

153a high-quality student assessment looks like and also what are we doing with the data as superintendent olympus said we have now a data assessment specialist but we want to get back into the practice and support in looking at data and making data decisions including at the administrative level as well as our teachers right at their teacher level they are always looking at data both formatively and summatively so without going into the whole school improvement plan because you do have a copy of it what you'll see in that whole document is it's the school improvement plan it's all of our data it is the side-by-side comparison from last year to this year and the data that we used it as well as the comprehensive results you know now it's just it's it's it's in paper and

154we have these full goals but we also know that there's a lot of data inside that booklet individual data points that may not be part of our plan but they're part of all of the efforts that we want to do and do our work on so i will entertain any questions you have regarding our school improvement plan the process or our goals yes i i understand the timeline being a year and then looking on many of these incorporating for the 23-24 and i also see that obviously you're on every one of these as the um person over seeing it but i guess my question is at what points do you check is it at school council meetings that you see okay we're online we're doing okay so this doesn't just go up on a bookshelf

155someplace that it's a true working document so how do you assess that you're on tap to make this all happen that's a great question and i'm um i might be on there as like a goal leader but each one of these goals is going to have separate goal leaders that are going to teams of people that are really working on them and one way we assess this year is with those different groups i brought it to them like so for example in our faculty council we broke up into small groups and each small group had a goal and i had them assess how are they doing like you tell you tell me or you tell us the administrative team how you think we're doing on that and we assessed it red green or yellow so

156a lot of things that were not done yet so we had that mid-year and then once we had that mid-year we shared that out with the staff so they could see where we're at and that also gave us a renewed focus on like okay what's left to kind of do that just one more thing frank said it very well this is something to be so proud of the inclusion of things that we looked for especially the data that supports this it's just be so proud even if it's just for a little bit i know you don't like to take accolades but this is fabulous thank you just to get clarity on the checks and balances of the school improvement plan so the school improvement plan and this process we started almost 10 more than 10

157years ago and we've consistently done it year after year but it started with collection of data through the conditions for school effectiveness and now we also include the panorama survey as well as susan said step one before we develop the school improvement plan but of course we're building it from last year's plan knowing that it's a progressive process our particular school improvement plan and and how critical the work is that's going into this particular school improvement plan but the con this the data is reviewed by many you know the staff by administrative team and by the school council by working with susan's leadership to come up with the gaps of what needs to be improved and learned and grow within our school and then from there the plan is developed and then goes back for

158more review by the same committees and then one of the checks embedded i think one of the most important checks and balances to know whether we're moving or not is our the third important piece of the school improvement plan is and when we talk about implementation that it's a living document is when we evaluate teachers we evaluate these criterias that are in the school improvement plan and we evaluate the data to see if it's happening in the classroom and that the work is being done in the classroom and then we give teachers feedback on so we specifically look so we identify one of the processes we identify in the beginning of the year is what are we going to focus on some of our evaluation these are some of the criteria's we're going to focus

159on so when we go and evaluate teachers and administrators we specifically look for these particular improvements that we're looking for happening day in and day out so that'll be the real test as to whether it's working as well thank you mr linski you said uh mr led his work on this plan would it be proper for me to ask him a question mr lamontagne sure you said he worked on the plan he's here to speak uh joshua i know you can handle your classroom i've seen you teach i'm sure you can handle us i'm gonna ask you a question and just a quick answer what is the downside for this schedule for vocational and what is the downside for academics it is can you repeat your questions yeah as a teacher what is the downside

160for the academic side and as an instructor what's the downside of the schedule for vocational what should we be watching for what are the negatives last year's this current year schedule or next year well we're in the first year of our schedule so we really need to make sure that the five-day rotation works in terms of engagement for students i think that's what you're asking me so we'll be looking at our data specifically if you look at the school improvement plan you can see that a lot of our goals align with multi-tiered systems of support and we're really looking to open up the avenue or the door for students to be able to access the support that they need and if they can't access the support then the schedule isn't working thank you leo tell

161me your experience working on the document first of all i want to commend everybody involved because this is what we look for when we're looking at actually implementing policies that's going to be effective for everybody involved for the statistics for the staff the students the families um so what was your experience like are you asking in terms of how it performed my practice or personally yes um as an educator it's important to look at multiple years of data in order to accurately assess whether or not certain instructional practices are working for students and so to be able to look at our last three five or even 10 years of not just qualitative data but quantitative data it allows us to get a holistic view of the entire school and what's happening for our students in

162areas that we really need to improve in when we look at the data we realize that our students really need to be supported in terms of what do they need at the moment right okay so ms silinski talked about implementing the win block implementing seminars reinventing the schedule so that all of our students feel supported our students can't achieve unless they're all supported by a schedule that works for all of them not just some of them so to be able to look at that data and say something's not right yet really opens up that door to as missilinski said looking at the next few years of the implementation of the schedule as well as how our current school improvement goals are being met through the data that mr lavoy also talked about and personally personally

163um for me it's helping to grow my practice tremendously i don't some of you may know i'm a graduate of this school i'm a product of greater lawrence technical school i'm a culinary graduate i am proud to say that i chose to change my career path and it wasn't because i wasn't interested in culinary i love cooking but the impact that teachers had on me at this school made me realize that i wanted to make that same impact on students and for me it was about making that impact through building in those foundational skills of reading and writing for all students especially our english learners and our special education students thank you um and that's exactly when we talk about the impact of teachers on students thank you i don't know if anybody else might

164have a question for you but i really want to commend you and thank you for that that is exactly what we're talking about when we talk about teacher retention because they inspire the next generation you come here you could you start it in something and then move on to something else um and and john and sue and you're right it is a living document it has a constant control it's not changing all four criteria every year to suit something it's about steady moving the pace forward with the same game plan that's how championships are built thank you very much for everything you've done thank you um the effectiveness survey at those for oh what's happening is that for students for teachers for administrators can you say what survey oh the conditions for effective that's for

165staff that's where students have the panorama survey the panorama survey is the one that is for students staff and family the conditional school federal is for staff okay so my my next question is i'm not sure what the percentage mean can you explain that a little bit because again like i'm looking at one i was looking at a few pages but it doesn't matter either well if you look at the results right um it has the year and if and then it has how many participants and it has a percentage but the percentage doesn't make sense to me because i would i will see that if 109 let's say 109 participant in 2020 2021 that makes 60 but then the 96 cannot make 63 so i'm not relating the percentage to the participant can you

166explain what the percentage coming from please yeah i think i can try so um so the it gives you the total number of respondents and then the first under question one it gives you whether or not participants identified as a career area teacher academic teacher an administrator or support staff and that totals the same 91 and those percentages are of the 91 as an example so the percent the percentage the total number of respondents um for that year yes are you talking about the percentages um on question one okay so the ones that are highlighted the green yellow red those are the percentages and in the key is up top like what's highlighted red the percentages of oh okay sorry um okay so if okay um thank you for that clarification so the average of

167providing a sustaining um that's the the percentage that's what we look for in terms of the percent that is the green and the yellow yeah so if you look at the it's that's the that's the ones that we have that are providing or sustaining that's the percent that we're looking for that should be higher so for example the yep so any page if nope if you look at say page 50 i just pulled one open the the average of whatever is yellow and green so we're looking at the higher number um but we're looking that's what we're looking to get if that helps that the average we just show you the average of providing and sustaining which is the but you have the whole thing like if you look at um every single one gives

168you the the full breakdown okay i can try and yeah i can try and clarify additionally okay you're welcome all right john osu the assessments that is being done is that to evaluate where the students are for mcas because i know you know this year is where mcas is going to count correct for graduation rates for the for class of 2025. so the assessment we're doing is to evaluate where where our students are moving along in the nah is it yeah um and for the m cash rates yeah well start next the uh counts towards graduation will start again next year i believe yep 2020 yeah 22 20 21 22. no 20 22 23 22 23 i think you mean the assessments that we just started so what you're referring to so the um we

169we started with a product called star assessment and um it does have crosswalks to standards as well as it will give you alexa on quantile which is like a reading math level but it also does give you kind of like a an association with mcas and we're going to have train our whole staff on that so it's not it's a predictor it's not a 100 but it's a it will give you a predictor which which when we review that data helps us to better understand the gaps of the standards that we need to focus in on more before they take the mcas no i'm sorry i apologize um so just very quickly the rest of my report a few highlights i just wanted to share other than the school improvement plan um i also in

170your packet you had a bookmark for summer reading we this year every year we've our summer reading program continues to kind of change this year the summer reading committee has put something together it's summer reading jeopardy so it's going to be you know an activity where students come back and they're going to have an opportunity to have a jeopardy based thing so in terms of for time i won't show the video but i might send it out through the superintendent we uh our staff member tom middleton and some students did a promotional video which was great um so all students are required to read one book from the reading list they can read extra books to be entered for prizes there is a summer assignment they submitted on a google classroom and we offer three

171summer support sessions for all students to attend either to find a book get access to a book make recommendations to a book and then we will have a summer reading event which is school-wide as a community in september where there'll be book discussions and they're going to right now the summer reading committee is creating a summer reading jeopardy so we're really excited the book list is also you shared it we also have worked really hard to provide some choice and also access to books so although we did have a summer reading book fair where students could purchase books all the books all the students also have access to check them out digitally through hoopla and sora which is through our the boston public library and our library and all of that information is available on

172the summer reading website so i'm excited and should take a look at the books and take a look at the book list and read along with us that's the video it's i'm sorry sorry i will send it out to you it's are you sure all right was that a joke yes that's just a yes i wouldn't throw i wouldn't put that one these four items make up the core values and plts yes [Music] super bowl appearances made by the glts football team yes well it's been an exciting game contestants now it's going to come down to final jeopardy this is the most highly anticipated event at glts what is [Music] i'm sorry melanie prom is incorrect anna what is the summer meeting program also today's winner with 200.00 [Applause] this year's books for grades 10

173through 12 are platform you land golden arm the inheritance gains landscape with invisible hand love in english steve jobs insanely great and infinity sun and the books for the incoming freshmen are the silence between us here to stay almost american girl refugee march book one and house arrest thank you for letting allow me to share that and stay tuned to see how jeopardy goes in the in the fall yes i'm looking at i was looking at this and i see some pricing here which means i think that the student has to buy this nope as i mentioned so they are available for sale because some kids like to have their own copy they like to mark it up we also have copies digital copies available so any student can take a book out on digitally

174through sora or hoopla for uh free for no charge can even if we have hard copy i mean can we give it i mean i just i would love that me too that's what i'm asking i mean we should buy a pile of books and give to the student we spend money on many other stuff we should spend money on the books for the kids to get them free and you know this program is excellent i love it um we should give them the books that's just mine we can explore that i can explore that with the superintendent i know many teachers have done grants and uh we did give we did check out as many books as we could but i love even thinking about that because i think it makes a difference yes

175we always make sure that there's books available in spanish and audiobooks available really quick oh sorry really quick i just want to acknowledge our 2022 retirees we actually had a little celebration for them at our last faculty meetings this is the number of years i think it was mr hayden that mentioned earlier this is the number of years of experience that's leaving us this year that's a big number 214. so here's our retiring we have sheila ballinger with 30 years kathy clemente with 34 years kathy scanlan canzano with 35 years rob ferrara with 34. elaine gosselin with 30 years john hardacre with 15 years and mr henrik 36 years and two of them are graduates so we've missed miss ballinger miss clemente miss canzano mr ferrara yep mr hardacre miss gosselin and mr henrik so

176and if you will indulge me i just want to share this this is something that i think we're all here every meeting we're talking about why we're here why we're all here and it's for the students earlier this year christa gillis and chris plourde came to talk to you about the program bar building assets reducing risks this was an end-of-year celebration for this is our third year of the program and this is for the teachers and what they did was they asked all students a question on what have you learned from your teachers from your coaches we asked staff what have you learned and this is just some of their responses [Music] is [Music] crazy [Music] is [Music] special things [Music] i don't care i don't care if they cause crazy [Music] is [Music] hide

177away [Music] run away [Music] oh [Music] this is me [Music] me [Music] is [Music] me this is [Music] yes [Music] yes this is [Music] thank you for indulging me i know that was long but tomorrow's the tomorrow's the last day of school tomorrow we're going to be celebrating our retirees as well as celebrating our students and this is a compilation of the hard work this year from administrators from the superintendent from the teachers and all the paraprofessionals the custodians the cafeteria this is all in this is what our students had to say and i couldn't be prouder and the district committee of course frank can you remind me and i can't remember what bar was about so bar is a three-year program we started the first year before the pandemic and so we only had

178really one year of it so bar is stands for building assets reducing risk so it's all about our freshman teachers working in small groups on wednesday afternoon and they talk about students so they you know use data and they try to identify students areas of need and match them up with interventions we also do i time lessons which are those sel lessons that students participated in so we found the program to be very successful we are even though the grant's over we are planning on trying to find a way to continue it and move it up to the sophomores that's also the data that you'll see that our freshman failure rate has you know with these students and since we've started bar we've seen we've actually seen the data show that students are more successful

179yes frank thank you leo um so this was a granted program and it the grand already finished is there um opportunity to extend the grant or and if not what can we do moving forward i mean unfortunately budget time has already passed um plan for next budget season to get some of that money to invest into this program with the superintendent support we have decided to continue with bar and we're actually using some of our other funding um to continue and try to expand it any further okay i'd like to bring it just one step further i would ask one of my committee members um i know this is out of sort um we spend a lot of money on a lot of stuff i would like to see a committee member make a motion

180that we spend up to five thousand dollars on the book program um not to exceed five thousand dollars and to still encourage those that want to do it that would over um ebooks or whatever to do it that way but i think that that's something i mean if we can't find five thousand dollars to do something like that we've we're making a lot of mistakes so it's up to any of my members with if they i can't make the motion i'll make the motion any further discussion all those in favor anyone opposed thank you very much okay on to out-of-state travel uh miss nari melconian excuse me athletic trainer is traveling to philadelphia pennsylvania we hope uh to attend the annual national athletic training association clinical supporium june 27 to july 2nd at a cost

181to the district of 660 dollars i need a motion supported any discussion all those in favor anyone opposed excuse me see no reports from committee no district committee priorities um i i'm sorry oh i'm so sorry two to three minutes of a break off at least for restaurant break sure yeah before continuing because they'll accept the motion of recess for nature all those in favor and you were opposed i can wait what would cost but we allocated uh we had a request so we didn't allocate money for that program so there is we have plenty of money for that program yeah just trying to put something next year um they remind me that i still go yeah one thing is to give money more money for the um the anti-veto yeah support but definitely that's

182something that would happen well that's a that's been a very successful program because that's is yes right okay oh oh this is going to be one of the most marathoners that would be a lie motion to return the session all right um effective 630 22 it instructor effective 630 22 auto body instructor effective 630 22 plumbing instructor effective 630 22 robotics instructor effective 630 22 graphics excuse me sorry graphics design instructor effective 6 20 22 and the cte coordinator effective 6 30 22 uh leave of absence done i don't see any retirements here but we just had a whole list of them but uh appointments ms johanna director of language culture and equity effective uh august 30th 22 ms emily mac donald school adjustment counselor effective eight thirty twenty two and mr michael moss sonius

183history instructor sorry michael effective eight thirty twenty two the following ladies and gentlemen are job postings and they need to be voted on superintendent i think we should uh yeah let me take him in blocks of three john if people if somebody has a problem with excuse me i'm sorry i didn't hear your suggestion oh two or two at a time all right john want to do uh the first two please personal development for evening five positions mike jones please i'm sorry no no apology necessary curriculum development for evening adult programs up to five positions this summer funding is career technical initiative grant up to 6 500 per position annual position adult apprenticeship program instructors school year up to five electrical instructors each will teach 150 hour class up to six plumbing instructors each will

184teach 110 hour class funding is adult education revolving fund up to eleven thousand dollars per position instruction and prep so move a second discussion all those in favor all right i want to post continue john please exploratory redesign team members uh up to 19 tier one full participation 150 i mean 1 500 tier 2 partial participation 50 time effort 750 dollars july 2022 until september 2022 this is a new position exploratory redesign team facilitator stipend three thousand dollars july 2022 to september 2022. this is a new position for motion please some move discussion all those in favor they want to pose continue please curriculum development business technology landscape electrical systems wellness auto collision per teacher contract number of hours based on department needs up to 30 hours annual positions one more john instructional equity coach

185per teacher contract grant funded 2022-23 this is a new position a promotion please discussion all those in favor aye anyone oppose you police admissions equity access liaison grant funded this is a one-year grant funded position this is a new position eit instructor i.t instructor per cba school year 2022-23 replacement position promotion please subscribe don't get funny it's too late all those in favor aye anyone opposed continue john please uh school nurse lpn this is a new position that will be required to provide one-to-one nursing service for a student as outlined in their iep the nurse will be required to attend all classes with the student as well as accompany the student on the school bus or van as indicated in the iep this is a new position custodian john oh sorry uh custodian night shift

186per custodian contract uh 2022-23 this is replacement position support it any discussion all those in favor aye anyone opposed future agenda items executive session there will be a need for an executive session you have a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of contract negotiations second support yeah can you call the roll when you have a minute uh madison please i'm sorry mr hayden mr cirillo miss marmo yes mr rossi miss fitzgerald yes ms dizza yes mr lamontagne you we have a motion do we have a second supported supported okay uh any further discussion all those in favor anyone oppose any further business john no she'll accept a motion to adjourn all those in favor all right have a nice summer we'll see you august 16th never mind okay [Music] okay