001[clears throat] It's usually delayed. >> [clears throat] >> Good evening. I'd like to call this meeting to order. It's 7:01. It is Wednesday, December 10th, 2025. This is the East Adam Board of Education uh regular meeting, our December full meeting. And I would uh join like to ask you all join me in the pledge of allegiance. [clears throat] >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> We have two exits in this room. The right side brings you to the back of the building. the left brings you to the front level. And our second item of business is chair. Uh good evening. On Saturday, November 22nd, my youngest son and I
002attended the matinea performance of Little Women at the high school. I have my hil Playmill. I like that. Right, Bill? It was an excellent performance. This was my son's first time attending a play and he was really drawn in when one of the sisters was called a He leaned forward and said, "This is going to be a great play." Because they say bad words. I can tell you that was the worst word of the play. And it was it was a really great performance. On Monday, the board of education had a working retreat at Smith Farm Gardens. Uh we'd like to say thank you to Smith Farm Gardens for giving us a beautiful space to work in at no charge. Uh the evening was very productive. It has come to my knowledge that there's been
003an incoming email issue. Um I don't know if it's just specifically my email. Uh but we're addressing it with it. One of our main IT people was out today. If I have not responded to your email, please resp uh resend it and I apologize for the technical delay. Uh lastly, I'd like to quickly address the upcoming budget season. The business and planning subcommittee is going to meet on January 7th and 8th uh to review the budget. the tri board meeting, which is the selectman, board of finance, board of ed, will be meeting on Monday, uh, January 12th, 2026 at 7 PM. Um, yearly, uh, the board of education, we do our best we can for our school district and our community as a whole. uh we would we will likely be seeing increases with uh
004three con uh contracts that commence on July 1st 2026 which is the teachers contract upsue and the transportation contract plus health insurance is set to increase again. I hope the board of finance and board of education can work together. It's what's best for our community. I'm going to move on to uh item three which is our school presentations. the next generation accountability reports, the 2025 standardized test results, climate survey results, and the 4DX goals. >> Yes. So, all the administrators um will be sharing and uh Wendy will be starting us off. >> Wendy McCabe, people services director, newly installed and learning along the way and finding my way. Thank you very much. So tonight you're going to hear from my esteemed colleagues about their school data and the pieces of that data that they're looking
005at is the NextGen accountability. I'm going to talk a little bit about what that is, their standardized test scores and their climate survey results. All of this information comes together to create their goals and they use a process that calls them 4DX goals and that's really working towards always having continual improvement towards our vision. We we never reach the vision. we always continually striving to get there and do better in doing that. So the way that we create those goals is using a process from the four disciplines of execution for educators. That's a book that I believe the board had a presentation on last year and it looks at creating what we call wildly important goals. We can get lost in the weeds sometimes with developing goals. There's so many goals. We got to look
006at what is the most important. What driver is really going to have the biggest impact? That's your wildly important goal. And then the steps along the way are acting on those deep measures, keeping a scoreboard, which is important to be able to look at that data that's actually like a scoreboard in different areas of where that improvement is happening, where it isn't happening, and what we can do. And then it really creates a cadence of accountability. So that what we're doing is always helping each other, holding each other accountable, and trying to move forward in get achieving that vision. So the first index, the first measure is looking at the accountability index. This is through the next generation accountability system. This is something that really tells the story of how the district is doing in
007preparing students for not just careers and for college, but for life. How are we doing? And that's what Connecticut has determined is we're we're beyond just standardized test scores. There's a lot of other areas we need to look at. So those areas, I'll go quickly through those 12 indicators. >> [clears throat] >> So the first indicator and each one of these indicators is not going to be measured at every level. When we look at our elementary school, it really the these measures really start at third grade because that's the first grade that is tested and the middle school has quite a bit of indicators and the high school has them all except for one. So the academic achievement, this is your standardized test scores, this is your ESPback test scores, and it's looking at the
008achievement for all students. The second one is only for students that are in grades four through eight because it's looking at a vertical alignment growth of an individual student. So it's taking third grade, they can't have that. We it's their first year. We need to have that baseline to see what their growth should be. And the system gives them a growth target. So this is giving us the percentage of those students that have reached that growth target. Okay. And that growth target continues with them right through that ESPback which ends in eighth grade. You the next part is looking at growth for our English language learners. This is something we have a test called the lost links which examines their proficiency in different areas of language. So we're looking at how much growth those students
009are making. We're not comparing them to anybody else. for comparing them to themselves and how much growth they make year-to-year in that test towards English proficiency. Um, you'll notice there's no indicator three. That's not a mistake. Indicator 3 is not actually in the accountability index. That has to do with the participation rate. And it's a requirement in the state of Connecticut that at least 95% of our students participate because we can't really look at data unless we have the whole scope of it. So if we don't have 95% there's some things that we can't achieve as a district because [clears throat] of that. So that's why it's not quite listed here because it's not given a max point score. Um next is the chronic absenteeism rate in Connecticut. Our goal is to have that less
010than 5%. So those are the students that are absent 10% or more of the school year. We don't want more than 5%. That's the goal for Connecticut. And as that rate goes up, the points we can earn go down. If we get to that point where it's 30%, then no points are awarded at all in that category. Um, thank you, Christine. The next one is looking at students that are taking AP and dual enrollment courses, those courses where they're also getting college credit. The part that is I like here is it doesn't just look at that. It also looks at the career and technology courses, students that are taking two or more career technology courses in one cluster. So, we're not just looking at those students that are going towards those AP classes. We're also
011looking at those students that are looking more at trades in in our agricultural field. There's also points awarded for students that have workplace experiences. That's all within that preparation for secondary. Um then the next one is looking at the test scores and it's looking at earning the college credits through our dual enrollment coursework. So that is students that can and this one also has our career and college readiness benchmark on there as well. So it's not just that one area. This is why Connecticut is trying to make it the big picture. So we're not just looking at those high achieving students in one academic area. The next one is the on track for graduation. Research tells us that students that are on track for graduation in grade nine are going to be more successful. That
012means they're earning at least six credits that freshman year. So that's one of those indicators looking at our freshmen. And then the next two are about our graduation rates. We have the number of the percentage of students that are graduating within four years. That's a successful graduate. But then our high need students and I'll talk a little bit in a minute about what high need students are. They we are looking at they get kind of an extra time. We want to see if their graduation rate in six years. So it does recognize that some students are going to need more time to reach those goals. Um next indicator 10 again these are all at the high school level is the um enrollment in two and four-year colleges after graduation. So that is something that the
013state collects. And then we have our physical fitness test. That's a test that all the students take and it measures them. I can see that they love taking that test. It measures their core stability. It measures their endurance, their aerobics. um and that they can that's a percentage of the students that reach that benchmark that threshold of what the state is looking for. And then we have students that are enrolled in at least one arts class. That can be dance, that can be visual arts, that can be theater. It's looking at that access to arts education and how many of our students are taking advantage of those classes. All of this combines in a formula that is very complicated and I'm not going to get into how to figure that out because I need a
014math degree for that and I don't have it. But that gives us that accountability index. So you're going to there's two main areas that are displayed. One of them is all students that incorporates no matter what their needs are, they're all in that measure. And then the high need students. There's three areas that are included in that high needs area. That is students that have special education services. So those students with disabilities, students that are multilingual learners, our ML population, and students that are economically disadvantaged, which is our free and reduced lunch students, all of those equal that high needs category. So when you see that, that's what that means. We want to make sure we don't have a gap between our all of our students and our high need students. That's one of the
015ways that we're looking at this data. I talked a little bit about this, the difference between achievement and growth. The growth is looking at that one student, that same student where they were the year before and if they reach that growth target the next year. So a student that scored really high one year, we want them to score even higher the next year. We want to keep them moving in that right direction. Someone that struggled a little bit, we want to see them reaching a little bit higher in each year, improving. We don't we were looking for at least a year's growth, but preferably even more to catch up if that student needs that help. And then I want to show you quickly on the charts that you're going to see where the data is
016displayed. These are the different areas that are listed. I'm going to show you just a minute what that chart will look like. Your first column is going to be your indicators. And then you're going to have your index rate. And that is really some of them are going to show as an index score and some of it is a rate. So there's two different ways that they do it. It's Connecticut. We can't do it all the same way. To make it easy, we got to make it a little more complicated. Within each of those indicators, there's also a target. This is the target that they are looking for every single district in Connecticut to meet. So, they display that target. And then we see the points earned in our district. And it also gives us
017the maximum number of points that are possible in that category. And then the percentage of those points that we earned. And then it gives you the state average, which is important because we want to do better than the state. That's what we're always striving is to be higher than that state. This is just a quick snippet of what some of the data will look like that you're going to see. You'll see the indicator, the index rate, the target, the points earned, each of those categories, and that's how you can read that data going across. If you see a star, it could mean one of two things. The star could mean that that's not a category that you can measure. So, if this is high, this is our high school data. We don't have the academic
018growth because they're not taking the S back. If this was middle school, we would see that growth data in there. The other reason there could be a star is if there's less than 20 students in that subgroup, they suppress that data for privacy. So that just means we're not going to display data of a very small group because that could be figured out who they were in their scores. That would not be public information. Okay. And lastly, there's also something called gap indicators. This is where we're looking at those high need students compared to all students and we want to make sure, excuse me, our non- high need students. We want to make sure that that gap is small and not bigger than the state gap by the definition is one standard deviation larger than
019the state gap is a problem. So it will tell us it'll say if you have a gap, is that gap an outlier? If it's an outlier, they the state wants us to really investigate why that is. Why are our high need students performing significantly lower than high need students across the state compared to the state average? So, if we see an N there, that's a good thing. That means our gap is not too wide. If you look at the chart, you're going to see this is how the data is going to be displayed. You're going to see the state data, then you're going to see the district level data, and then you're going to see the actual school. So the first chart right here is showing us high school data and you're always going to
020see that blue is our ELA and for all students. Orangey yellow is our ELA for our highnee students. The second one shows you what the math will look like and the the principles are going to go into this data a little bit deeper for you. Just wanted to give you the overview of what you're looking at. So our gray and our black is looking at our all students and our highnee students in the math area. So that's how it gets displayed for every single school. And lastly, this you will see only at the middle school. And this is what it will look like for student growth. And this is looking at that percentage of students that reach their growth target in each of the areas. Again, same colors for ELA and same colors as for
021math. So this is where we want to again we want our students reaching that growth goal and we want to be higher than the state average is always the goal and moving in the right direction. All right now I'm going to pass it to my esteemed colleague Megan. >> Hey. >> Hi everyone. How are you? >> How are you? >> Good. If I haven't had a chance to meet you yet, I'm Megan Peterson. I'm the principal at the elementary school. Welcome to our new members and congratulations to our members who have shifted roles as they've are sitting around the table in different spots today. Um so I'm going to talk about the elementary school. I have the least amount of indicators. Yay me. Um [laughter] no no >> I have more indicators. No. Um because
022we assess the state level assessment only at third grade. I am going to show you some snippets of some other data from our school too because we're really proud of the work that our teachers and our students are doing and I want to be able to highlight that in some of the other ways that we're looking at data daytoday monthtomonth and throughout the year. So my indicators are specific to ELA and math um as they're measured through the standardized assessment and then chronic absenteeism is also included in there. And as Wendy mentioned, there is an indicator three. It's the participation rate, which isn't necessarily factored into the overall numbers, but you'll see a slide that shows what our participation rate was for the last school year. Yay. [laughter] Okay. All right. So, here is a
023snapshot of the elementary school data for 2425. Um, you can see our index rates, which are kind of like our average performance, what the targets were, how many points we earned, the max possible points, what percentage we got, and so forth. And then there's that state comparison in the final column. We are super excited that we achieved an accountability index of 92.6. So I put a little gold star around it so you can see we're that column on the right. Um you know we've continued to kind of grow. We we felt really great about our performance the previous year. Um and we exceeded it which is amazing and awesome and a real testament to the hard work of my educators, my support staff and my students. Um this is identifying that gap that Wendy was
024also talking about. So you can see [clears throat] our non- high needs versus our high needs rates. Um there is no outlier gap. We wanted that no there which is great. And I'll show you some more specific data about our students um and their performance on the Smarter Balanced assessment itself. We had a 100% participate participation rate which we're also really happy about. That was excellent. Go to the next slide. Okay, here is the um NextGen accountability chart for ELA. And again, the blue line is um all students and then the orang-ish line are our high needs students. And you can see we're all the way on the right. Um we've continued to have an upward trend over the last few years um which is exciting. Um we're at at 74.5. So we're right almost
025at that target line again for for language arts, which is great. Um, our high need students are also on that upward trajectory. There's a little bit of a a difference there between how they performed on the Smarter Balance assessment, but we're seeing them trend upward, which is exactly what we want to see. Okay. Um, here are the Smarter Balance assessment results for third grade. Um I just have kind of the chart on the top which shows a number of years um and how we were scoring based on that meeting or exceeding um the expectations. So in 23 24 we were at 50%. So 50% of our third graders met or exceeded the expectations for language arts. This past year we went up to 66.2% which a 16 point jump is is big. We're really again
026really excited about that hard work. That was a a schoolwide effort. That was the support from the superintendent's office. It was professional learning. A lot of effort on everybody's part. And then underneath [clears throat] um students with disabilities and their performance. I just wanted to show you um in 23 24 16.6% of our kiddos were meeting or exceeding and last year we bumped up to 33.3%. So again, we're seeing that upward trend in students being able to meet or exceed those expectations. massive efforts on the part of everybody. Next slide. This is a sneak peek at kind of on the ground what's happening daytoday. Um we use the uh Dibbles 8 universal screener which is a state approved screener for reading um K3. And I've been sort of just tracking the data in different ways.
027This is just specifically the beginning of the year data. So how our kids came back after that 11week summer break. So, how have our third graders been doing the year we piloted the program or the assessment last year when we adopted it and now this year? And again, we're looking to see those above level, those benchmarks growing year after year, which shows that the efforts that we're putting into place are um having an effect. We're hoping to see those lower two, the yellow and the pink declining. Doesn't always work exactly perfectly, but again, I think we're on the right track. And the that's oop sorry the chart below was looking more at a cohort lens. So students in kindergarten in 23 24 as first graders and then this year as second graders. And again we're
028seeing some good trajectory on that above level. We're declining at that strategic level and we have some work to do at that benchmark and intensive level and that's what we're focused on this year. Here's our math performance index graph. Um so again the kind of average um performance we were at a 70.9% um or indicator again that target of 75. Our students with high needs at 62.8 a little bit more of a a difference here um which gives us an area to focus on with our our math um tier one instruction, our tier 2, our tier three and working with our students who need additional supports. Here is our Smarter Balance data for math. Um, again, in 232 24, 58.3% of our third graders were meeting or exceeding expectations on the Smarter Balance assessment. And
029this past year, 69.1%. Whoop. We're very excited about that because if you've been in education before, you know that sometimes when we hyperfocus on one area and we're bringing in new curriculum and a lot of professional learning, sometimes we don't see the same kind of increase in the other subject area, but we grew in both areas, which is super exciting. And our students with disabilities in 23 24% were meeting or exceeding um on the assessment. This past year, 33.3%. So again, some areas to focus on there. And this is a quick snapshot of, you know, an assessment we use um multiple times during the year in our kindergarten. It's called our number corner assessment. It's directly connected to our bridges math, which is our tier one instruction, also used at the tier 2 level. And
030you can see these are our four kindergarten classrooms and their beginning of the year baseline assessment and how they most recently at the end of trimester 1 have performed. We are seeing a lot of growth there. So, the direct tier one instruction is having a positive impact on our kindergarteners learning. Chronic absenteeism. Um, again, this is one where we want to see it start to go down more and more. Um, we've put in a lot of efforts, which I'll touch upon in a minute, but our all all of our students, um, we're down to, I think it's 48% down from 7.5 the previous year in terms of our percentage of students that met the criteria as chronically absent. our students with high needs, we were at 11.5% and now we're down to 8%. All good
031things. All right, action plan. What are we doing? How are we addressing these things? Um, so for English language arts, um, we are in our first full year implementation of our bookworms curriculum. So, we're continuing to work with specialists to help our teachers develop their capacity to deliver that instruction as it's intended. Um, so we have professional learning community opportunities going on and we're also meeting um, we've been working with a group called the the it's called the new teacher project or TNTP which was some professional learning that Teresa, myself and my reading specialist engaged in. Um, and then we've been using that information to support teachers to help them really dive deep into the lessons in the curriculum called lesson internalization. Um, we've had one grade level go through it so far and we
032have another one on Friday. Um, and we're looking to expand upon that, increasing our fidelity to our our tier one instruction, strengthening that using common resources. We're diving [clears throat] to into more um student exemplars, really looking at what are students doing to help us know what they think they're supposed to be doing so that we can then shift our instruction based on um the learning that we're intending. providing feedback to teachers to strengthen that delivery of instruction closely monitoring student growth not only through our benchmark assessments um but through our progress monitoring our MTSS or multi-tered systems of support or intervention model that we use um and then we're also using the IEBs which are interim assessment blocks which are kind of like mini smarter balance assessments that are targeted on a particular domain
033of math or reading in this case reading um we're administering those throughout the year so that we can see how students are understanding that information. Are they putting the learning from their classroom into practice on something that's a little less familiar? And then we're using that data we're meeting to analyze it to make instructional decisions to improve their experience. Um, oh, can you go back? I'm sorry. One of the things with the 4X model, which is identifying your wildly important goal, which for us is to improve reading instruction, improve our proficiency of our readers. We all have the goal of 90% of our students would leave third grade as proficient readers. That's our state goal. That's our always our our aim that we're reaching for. So, one of our visual scoreboards that we're using this
034year that the teachers came up with was soaring through the core. The core is a phonics survey assessment that we give periodically throughout the year to measure students progress on their ability to identify letters, letter sounds, different sound patterns and words. Um, and so when students are mastering the particular area and it starts with letter name and letter ID on the left with yellow over to the gold star multi-elavic words on the right, um, they get to add their color dot to the bar graph or rainbow which they're loving. Um, for the star they get to come to me and request their special gold star and then we get to talk about like how they did what they're learning. It's a big deal and they love it. So it's going really well. Um, in math,
035again, focusing on tier one instruction, using common resources um to strengthen instruction and um the the needs of our teachers and our students, providing feedback, closely monitoring progress, those IEAs again to look at how students are responding to the the learning that they're doing in the classroom and how does that translate into that um mini kind of smarter balanced opportunity. Um, we've been working with a consultant through the Bridges math program to help coach some of our newer teachers or teachers that have switched grade levels. Um, we're considering bringing Bridges down to the pre-K level, which we'll talk about when we get into budget talks. Um, building thinking classrooms around the school in math groups, problem solving, and extending thinking. And you can see some pictures on the right, my right, yes, um of students
036engaging in those vertical work surfaces in random groups to solve problems and challenge themselves in math class. Um and we're also considering a family math night um later in the winter to bring families in and kind of again like give them those experiences that the students are engaging in, play some of the games, learn some of the techniques and strategies um that their their kiddos are learning. and the multiplication facts thing there. That's a particular teacher scoreboard. As kids master their multiplication facts, they're able to put their dot and name in one of the areas. So, that was something they shared with me. Um, quick snapshot of our IAB schedule that we have throughout the year. So we have intended dates for the delivery of the language arts IEBS, the math, and then an opportunity
037for myself and the math specialist, reading specialist to gather with the team to review the data to have conversations and make decisions for next steps. And chronic absenteeism, again, we're on that de trending down, which is what we want to see. We have bi-weekly attendance team meetings. We're carefully tracking the data and having sort of certain checkpoints that we're looking for um and looking at. We're sending letters and attendance information home to families. We're meeting with parents, providing resources and strategies, and then increasing levels of support as needed. And that's a little sample of a fact sheet that we send home when we start sending home some of those attendance documents. >> I'm almost done. I thought I was going to be way quicker than that. Look. >> All right. Next um is our survey
038data. So, we um implement the climate surveys in the spring for families and for our students. we do at a few points throughout the year. So, um we uh in our school climate committee, we dove into the results of the data um at we started to look at it at the end of last year, but also at the beginning of this year and sort of figure out where where is an area that we really need to focus on um to support families to feel they're you know connected to our school, feel that they're heard and they're valued. So, these were some of the things we kind of looked at. Um, you know, the feedback on whether or not they're comfortable sharing thoughts and ideas with staff. Do they feel like their child's peers treat them
039fairly? Um, what are some of the ways they felt like they're treated unfairly? And I thought that was really interesting. It was kind of a an other. It wasn't one of the the selected things, gender, race, disability, things like that. So, you know, if 56 of our families felt like their child was treated unfairly by their peers for some other reason, then did you let us know that that was happening? And that 36 said no, they never reported it or gave us, you know, that information. Um, looking at how often, you know, some of our families are communicating with us. There's some that communicate with us multiple times a day, but others that quarterly or or monthly is, you know, we really want to be able to connect with them more. So we decided that
040our focus with families would be to ensure that their voices are heard, valued, and acted upon to help enhance the educational experience for all stakeholders involved. We want families to be reporting that they're having positive communications, opportunities for feedback, and really feel like they're partnered with us. So in order to do that, we did a brainstorm as as a faculty and what are some of the things that we feel like we do well here and what are some things that we feel like we could try um to achieve that goal. So all of the staff had an opportunity to share their ideas. We highlighted um and people felt like they left with some some new things to try um which was great. That was the point. and they have access to these um in a
041folder so they can kind of jump in and look at it if they're looking for a new idea. And for me um one of the things that I've been working on this year too looking at that data is trying to elicit more feedback so people are not feeling like they wait till that spring survey to say that there was something that happened that didn't feel great or they didn't communicate. So um I have a a Google form called glows and grows which gives the opportunity to share feedback what things people feel like are going well areas where we can improve. Um and then I have a little scoreboard on my office on the office window. So glows grows and then glows to grows. So when I address one of those areas to grow in sort
042of moving us into the category like the the family has been communicated with we've problem solved. we come up with ideas and ways to address the needs that they've expressed. And then my little thank you so much, I send that out after I get some feedback from families. So, they see that I'm reading it, I'm looking at it. Um, and if it's something that we can we can figure out, I'll be in touch with them. Sometimes it's it's more just feedback, not anything that requires an action at the time. Um, but I'm trying to just encourage and elicit more of that feedback. So, meet the principal. Um, every couple months I'm doing an opportunity for families to meet with me to share their thoughts and ideas. We did one after conferences. How did they go?
043What was your experience? What could we do better? Um, and then the new one that's coming up next week is all things kindergarten. So, that's specifically open to kindergarten families. So, they can join two different Google Meets with myself and just share, you know, how's their experience so far? What are their kids saying, what what do they need? How can we again improve upon that? And then I have a bi-weekly newsletter that I send out. And for students, um, some of the information that's always, you know, really important for us to be looking at, especially with our littles, is, you know, how do they feel about school? Because we want them to feel positively about school. That's going to lend itself to the years to come. So whether or not they feel like adults care
044about them, there's two different lines of data because we have a 345 survey and then we have a K2 survey. So they're they're worded a little bit differently. They're a little bit more um aligned to, you know, kid-friendly language for the age group. So you'll see two different markers there based on um that age group, which we also notice that some of this stuff we do start to see it decline as the kids get older, you know. So at K2, 96% of the kids feel like their adults care about them at school. When they're in third grade, it's more at that 86%. So, you know, where are we kind of losing some of that along the way? um do they feel like things are going well for them? That was a third grade um item.
045Um can they pull themselves out of a bad mood? Do they feel like they have friends? Do they feel like their friends help them? And how do they feel about being at school? So again, as a staff, we looked through all of that data. And our focus as an entire school [clears throat] is to ensure every student consistently experiences a safe and caring learning environment by explicitly teaching, modeling, and reinforcing those social emotional skills and positive peer interactions. We want kids to feel safe, a sense of belonging, and they want to be at school. So again, we did the brainstorm together as a staff. What are some things we're doing, and what are some other things that we could do? This was a great one, too, because a lot of times, you know, a second
046grade teacher might not know what a kindergarten teacher is doing to um you know, build that sense of community and belonging in their classroom. So, you know, someone's sending glitter notes, someone's sending happy mail, someone's doing and just getting those ideas and sort of generating a new enthusiasm and kind of excitement around ways that we can make our kids feel a real part of our school. Our PBIS, our positive behavior intervention support plan, which is our soar um expectations, safety, ownership, attitude, and respect. That's been in place now for six years, six and a half years. Um, and it still is very positive for our kids. They like earning their sore tickets for showing expectations. Um, you can see on the left, we keep track of how many sore tickets as a school we've earned.
047Um, as a community, each time a student gets a sore ticket, they get to add a feather to East's wings. East the eel is our mascot. Um, so we're building the wings together all year. It's a real community um community effort and the kids are proud of it. They still even third graders will wave their sore ticket as they're walking down to the office to put it in the in this bucket and I got this today. I got this today. We acknowledge kiddos for monthly awards who are, you know, showing those expectations over and over and over at each grade level. And then even on the right, we have PBIS assemblies every other month. And so students have the opportunity as leaders to present to create some of the slides and the presentations. So, third
048grade recently um shared their thoughts about safety with our school. We're also engaged in social emotional learning using the choose love movement this year um which is a free online program which was created by a parent of a Sandy Hook student. Um we have our second step program which we have used for many many years but we wanted to try some additional resources so we're diving into that. We use our restorative practices daily. We have students doing daily announcements, and we're building community through reading buddies, mentors, community food drives, our turkey trot, adult mentorship, and I wanted to share on the right, uh, Lauren Cryan, our our art teacher, um, had students at the beginning of the year create these affirmations and art class. So, students were able to take a letter of the word.
049Um, and these are framed and hanging around our school. So, please come by and check them out. Um, hope, kind, calm, epic, able, glow, zest. I love that one. um and care. And so these are around our school, which is wonderful. That's my [applause] goal. >> You're not done, Mrs. Peterson, yet. I'm going to allow round table questions from the board fashion. Starting with you, Sean. >> [laughter] >> I say I have no questions, but thank you. It was very enlightening and I definitely appreciate the the sore thing. I was going to say I I keep all of my sore tickets and they do come home still and all and still super proud to tell me all about them. So I keep up the good work. So even when they don't earn the raffle prize,
050all the store tickets that we collect get sent back to the classroom teachers to get sent home so parents can see what their kids are earning. >> Thank you. >> Great. Well, thank you. That was a really thorough presentation. I do have a few questions. So So the [snorts] first is I noticed on a couple slides you talked about an intensive level um when it came to um helping kids uh achieve uh their outcomes. I'm just curious, what does an intensive level look like for a child? Do that does that mean they have an additional aid? Do they have additional curriculum time? How are you providing intensive learning to kids who are struggling? >> Um, [snorts] so we have our what's called the multi-tered systems of support or MTSS which is formerly SRBI, RTI, it's
051had a number of names over time. Um, and so we have a core group of individuals who meets on a regular basis every six to eight weeks. We look at student data and we make determinations based on whether or not they need additional supports, additional layers of support. So, everyone gets the tier one instruction. That's the learning that happens across every class for every student. Um, students who might need a little bit of additional support or some additional teaching in a particular targeted area may receive tier 2 based on how we're monitoring their progress if they're not necessarily responding to the tier one and making the kind of growth that we're looking for. So, I guess I guess just in layman's terms, teachers, you you guys have a vernacular that that layman probably isn't as
052familiar with. So, just not in a tiered way, what does an intensive support look like? Does does a parent get called? Are they have more classroom time instruction? Is there an aid assigned to them? That's what I'm trying to understand. >> Yes. It depends on the individual student and what their needs are. >> Okay. Have I used intensive support when I was speaking? But so I don't want to miss. >> So, but it's tailored for for each individual and the parent is is involved in that as well. >> Yes. Okay. Um, and then you also talked about um tracking those who are consistently uh not uh their parents are for whatever reason not participating [snorts] fully in their child's education. You talked a lot about >> sending home newsletters, doing things like that. >> Talk
053to me a little bit about um how you're continuing to help that parent. Is there a relationship building? Are you calling them? Are you making yourself available in the morning, in the evening? I'm just curious. I know parents, you know, we all want our parents to be 100% involved. Unfortunately, they're not always that way. >> What are we doing to make sure we're getting as much involvement with our parents as possible? >> So, I think it again, it depends on each family and what they need. I mean, families that need that individual level of support. We're calling, we're meeting, we're Google meeting if that works best for them, we're engaging in parent square or email communications. Um my I have a very open door policy so people you know who are even at this table
054probably know you can stop by and if I'm not in the middle of a meeting I will take you in we will chat about what's going on your concerns things that you might need for your child or you know just information that that you might be looking for about what's happening instructionally socially emotionally or whatever the need might be. And my last question there's a lot of I'm you know used to hearing acronyms in the state and the state capitals. So that's certainly not [snorts] uh new to me, but um I'm just curious. IAB, you mentioned that a couple times. >> Intramim assessment block, which is the mini smarter balance assessment. It's about 15 questions long, and it's targeted specifically. So in language arts, there's one just on listening and interpreting data. There's one just
055on vocabulary, and in math, you know, just on geography. So you can really hone in on how students are demonstrating those skills on something that's outside of their regular curriculum. based assessments. Are they able to take what they're learning and apply that in in another kind of assessment format? And it kind of gives us a sense too of do they understand how the question is being asked? Do they understand how to manipulate, you know, the tools or the multi-step problems that they're encountering? >> Thank you. >> Sure. >> Thank you so much for your presentation. It was great. I particularly loved the climate survey and I'm I'm curious to see how that progresses over time since this was the first time the first time you're doing that, right? >> Yeah, >> we do the climate
056survey every year, but this is the first time it's we've been asked to kind of bring it here and share >> to bring it here. >> I like that the kids are doing it. Um, and it would be I would be curious. I know like it's hard because their dayto-day changes and when they fill that out it's like were they having a bad day when they f it's harder for them to think overall you know yesterday yeah big picture >> um but I love that you're taking it to the next step and having these open forums because then it gives the parents an opportunity to come to um their grade level and I have a question about that but their grade level at least and then maybe ask and go a little bit more in
057depth depth with the group in some of those questions. Um, so for parents at the elementary school, obviously the first inclination would be to go to your grade level, but like are is it open? Like say, you know, I have a student in second grade as you know, but if I wanted to go to the first grade one either as a community member or a board member, is that open? I >> mean, it's not not open. This is our first time doing it and the climate committee has actually been giving me some of the ideas about topics. Um so I because I have parents and community members on that on that group. Um and so it was actually one of the parent members who was like hey why don't we target it towards a specific
058topic that way people who were highly interested in in wanting to talk about that could talk about that. And one of the things I was we had thrown around as an idea was like talk doing one about attendance and they were like well that's a you know the people that are going to maybe come to that aren't necessarily the ones that we would want to kind of be there maybe sharing some of that information. So maybe if we targeted the kindergarten group and there's lots of things you can talk about attendance being one of them. Um you know how things are going socially emotionally. So um there's going to be all different ones throughout the year on different topics. >> Okay. So it has a specific topic. >> Yeah it's more topic specific. Yeah. just
059to kind of see, you know, and and tr somewhat based on, you know, the buzz and what we're hearing and what parents are hearing out in the community, you know, things that they're hearing as concerns or kind of rumors that are flying around, things like that. >> I see. And then you'll have like a Q&A. >> Yeah. [clears throat] Yep. >> Um I'm gonna absorb it. We might have more questions later, but [laughter] >> um [snorts] >> there was only 91 responses to the surveys. I know surveys are always >> I get the most. >> Sorry, friend. >> I get the most. [laughter] >> Yeah, 91 families responded to the the parent survey and we send it out we we send it out repeatedly over a period of a few weeks. >> Percentage that is
060probably not. >> I mean I had last year probably 30 well 360ish students. So 20 I don't know how many families it's maybe 50%. >> Maybe a little more. That depends >> sort of high. I'm wondering if there's a way to increase it like even having paper ones or something while people are waiting pick up their kids something like that. >> Um I'd be curious in the past year's climate survey data because we have this one. So I'd be curious what you know over time how it's changed um if we can get that. Um, and the climate group you said is parents and teachers. Do you have like a group of kids that you've had like third graders? You're not gonna ask. >> So, we're working up to that. Of course, this it's the requirement
061to have the school climate committees is more connected to the legislation and some of the changes and how often we have to meet and kind of the work that we're doing right now. You know, there's the district level climate, there's school-based climate, and then there's how does it feel to be at our school climate, which is tied into that. But we're sort of working on what's the overall plan that's addressing the legislation and then what are the things in the day-to-day we need to be doing to engage our families, engage our kids, engage our staff in those things. >> There were some things up there that were concerning with the kids. And so I'm just curious if there's a group of third graders that you could ask. >> Definitely. >> Um my question is about
062the survey itself. Um, this is the first year you're doing the survey or the second? >> Oh, the survey has been required for many, many years by the state. >> Okay. So, I'm glad you said that. How does this compare in terms of the number of responses that you're getting year-over-year? Is it going up? Is it >> Mine's hovers around that same area, the 90 to 100 respondents. What uh [clears throat] how would you given the fact that it's hovering and it's kind of sounds like it's flatlining. What what thoughts do you have about improving that number? >> Um thoughts in this moment? Uh you know, none. Um, but you know, I think a lot of the things that we're trying to do are to elicit that feedback and make it more of our common
063practice rather than a once a year spring survey so that it becomes a more familiar process to engage with us, to share your thoughts and ideas, to give us your feedback, and and know that it's going to be addressed. Um, I know that for myself, um, when I share out information, say in my, um, my bi-weekly newsletter, if it's something that's connected to the survey, like, hey, we're having this forum. We're going to talk to families, you know, we're trying to use the feedback we were given from parents to make adjustments. Um, and so that really trying to make that connection to like these efforts are in response to what you shared with us. um hopefully laying that foundation for this isn't just a thing that we do that we don't value or do anything
064with. This is a thing that we do that's really important to us and we use that information to create goals to create focuses for our schools, for our teachers, for our kids. Yeah, I think that's really important and you know just keep repeating that messaging and getting it out there to the parents because it's when when you mentioned that you know only 22 I believe it was 22 parents responded that there was uh an issue and you were expecting that number. I guess it was at what 56 >> and only 22 of those 56 actually reported something. um that kind of troubled me a little bit that there you know you you want them to come forward and talk to you so that you can create that relationship. So um you anything that can be
065done there to enhance that throughout the year? >> Absolutely. >> Thank you for the presentation. I'll keep it quick. Um yeah, just a couple of questions. So for the you can tell we're all interested in the stakeholder survey obviously. Um this is a broader question. Do those questions differ across the different schools? Is this a survey that's just for elementary school? >> Uh well, so there were surveys that were created by our PDK committee, right? Professional development and >> survey. >> Yes. >> So >> yeah, what is the moment [clears throat] educator >> evaluation >> committee? Sorry. So it's a group of educators and administrators who had worked on the survey. There are some parameters that were given from the state level about some of the questions and some of the things that we do
066need to ask on the parent survey um and the student survey, but we decided um to create bands of a K2 survey, a 35 survey, 612 or 68 and 912 >> 68 912. So we have different bands so that we could try to still elicit similar information but say it in a way that kids might be able to connect to what we're asking. So it might look a little different across the grains. >> Yeah. I might have like a little emoji or a little Lego builder scale to show like this means more to me or less or Yeah. >> And the questions presented here were those all the questions on this. >> Okay. So that was just a snapshot selected. [clears throat] >> Specifically the ones that we focused on to make improvements for this
067year. >> Gotcha. >> Um and then I think it's kind of piggybacking off Terry's question. One of the questions, it said something along the lines of 15 of the respondents were not comfortable sharing concerns with schools. >> It sounds like you guys are still in the process of gathering more info to understand that or do you have ideas about where that's coming from at this point? >> No, I think I think our staff and and myself included, we we work hard to be welcoming and opening and have lots of opportunities to have our community, our families into the school. I think um you know sometimes the feedback is it didn't really feel like such a big deal that we felt like we had to come to you or the teacher handled it or you know
068we worked I have a lot of great families who like to work it out together amongst themselves too. They like to problem solve behind the scenes and let me know they've already you know worked with each other to address you know social issues or whatever might be going on. So um you know I think it's comfort level. Maybe they're new. maybe they don't have that relationship built yet, but we start, >> you know, we start, we have our pre pre-K program, but for our kindergarten families, we start that in February of the year before. So, we start with a parent information night. We welcome them in for multiple events. So, we really try to start building that relationship well in advance of them joining us and then continue that as we go. >> Very last
069one, and I just didn't catch it when you said it. Is the choose love curriculum new this year? you said. >> Um, so we had some staff who as part of their personalized professional development um, exploration last year dig into the choose love as to see if whether or not that would either provide um, additional resources to support second step or if some of the resources there felt like a better fit for our age group for our kids. Um, and it was particularly members of of my first grade team who worked on that and then they brought that information to the full faculty which kind of energized folks. We we engaged with some of the lessons, some of the videos and learning. Um and so the in the decision this year was let's let's dabble
070in it. Let's see how it feels. Let's see how it fits. Um staff have been given some time to investigate those lessons and determine which ones they're going to try out. And then we regularly kind of touch base on how's that going. The kids are loving it. They're loving it. There's a lot of songs and videos and um a lot of literature, a lot of stories to help, you know, with that kind of internalization of the the message or the lesson. >> Yeah, of course. High school students, you have anything for me? >> Um yeah, I really enjoyed it. I thought that I really admired how you guys are trying to um enhance like the positive performance and through those activities that you did with like the dot points on the wall. I really like
071that. >> Um Yeah, I thought it was great. I really like that and I I hope that we can implement more of this as well. >> Yeah, I really en enjoyed the uh presentation as well. Um everything Sarah said I thought as well. Um everything was very like out there and I was able to understand it and I just thought it was great. >> Thank you very much. >> That was very positive. I like your uh can't say it fast enough. glows and grows and grows very much. >> And so that's great. >> Feel free to fill it out. It's always on the newsletter. >> You know, I'll have to be honest. >> There's a QR code. You can scan it at any time. It's always available. [laughter] >> Encourage your feedback. >> Okay. Great.
072>> Thank you, >> middle school. >> Yay. Middle school. >> [applause] >> We paid them >> in the audience. [laughter] >> Good evening. My name is Raina Northcut. I'm the principal at Nathan Hillight Middle School. Um it's really nice to be here with you tonight. >> Bridget Earlson, the assistant principal at >> So we're going to go over some of our indicators and also our current action plan for each indicator and what we're doing in the school. We look at ELA performance for all students, high need students. Same things for math um performance all students high need students um science as well and we also look at growth and we look at growth for ELA and for math and we also have physical fitness and absenteeism which we are going to talk about later on
073in the presentation. We did grow last year we had a 66.1% and now we're at a 66.7% for our um our school performance index. So, I'm going to start with ELA and we looked at our data a little bit differently. We really wanted to target in on our spring ESPback data as we really focused there in a lot of the initiatives that we've been doing over the past um two years. Um if you look at the two bar graphs there, you see our nonidentified students and our students with special special needs. um we see that we have almost um 40 p 45% of our students um that are approaching or u meeting or exceeding benchmark and then for our special um education students we have 10% that are meeting or exceeding. We did one of
074our um I Ready testings today and I had a student who ran up to me after um and said to one of our students of the IEP and he said, "Mr. Donaldson, guess what?" And I was like, "What?" He goes, "I gained 11 points." And I was like, "I'm so proud of you." So, I think talking specifically about our individual kids and where they need to be and they need to grow and having kids understand their data and their growth has been really beneficial for us. So, when we talk about our action plan for our data, one of our major focuses is building our daily reading power. And this comes across the board in a lot of different ways. You can see it in our visible scoreboard, our reading scoreboard. Um, Dr. Dr. Northcut shares
075um our updates um in our weekly snapshots. But the goal for the entire school is to really strengthen the stamina behind reading. We've noticed that kids have lost that ability to read consistently and for long periods of time um in our individual classrooms through our library media specialists through um our reading scoreboards. We're not only strengthening that in school but at home. Um, we've had a lot of feedback from families saying, "All of a sudden, all of my my students are or my kids are asking for books for Christmas because they're starting um they're asking teachers to do book groups with them and to come in for lunch and read. We have um a a group of eighth graders who are very interested in the the murder mystery genre. Um, so um we're really strengthening
076that daily reading power. And students when they read a book, they get to write the title on a star and then the star goes on the wall. Um we have different competitions for kids and um grade levels and classes who are reading the most. Um and it's really really wonderful when you have a class of kids who come down and say, "Look at all these stars we have. We can't wait to put them on the wall." So that's one of our visible scoreboards. Um we're also strengthening our tier one instruction. We focused on morphine magic which supports students by strengthening word reading, spelling and comprehension through a very structured understanding of word parts. This is happening across the board. We have a group of uh teachers who are doing their um independent um learning their
077we call it the SDCS project on understanding morphine magic and they're teaching that to um the rest of their peers. So as a student learns prefixes and suffixes and roots, it's going to build stronger vocabulary. This is being implemented across the board for all students being that tier one or that tier one is that everybody learning that everybody gets the same instruction because if you are struggling with your vocabulary or your vocabulary is really really advanced, you can still strengthen by understanding and learning prefixes and suffixes. We also um sorry we're also putting one of our focuses and Dr. Northco will talk about that in math on focusing on differentiation and differentiation is for all it's for every single student. Every student learns differently and so having our teachers understand how every student learns allows
078them to differentiate to meet their needs. Whether that is to different differentiate to increase fluency for one student or it's to differentiate to challenge another student. that focus on differentiation um through product process and pro and pro content product and process will help all students. Um Mrs. Peterson talked about IES and so we've really as um admin team really tried to be consistent in um K through 12. We also implement um our interim assessment blocks which are those short snippets of um assessments that are very much modeled after the smarter balance assessment that they take at the end of the year that really targets that specific skill and it gives immediate instruction and feedback to teachers so they know where every student is. This is a snapshot of just what some of our teachers are,
079what um the date that they're implementing the IE and what the theme of that IEB is. And those are implemented monthly in all core classes and then as we come back from our winter break that will become weekly as well. So we've also adjusted um our schedule and um our schedule in the past was um our classes were very short. they were 42 minutes. Um, and so getting kids and we that was not accounting for transition time. Um, and so by the time um, our kids would get into the room and then by the time they would leave there was maybe 37 minutes of instructional time. That is not enough time to do our ELA, to do our math, to do our science labs, to practice our world language. So Dr. Northcut worked really hard
080over the summer um with the support of our teachers to really expand that learning time um to create longer academic blocks um adjusted that in four through eight. So that increased class time will also allow us to increase the intervention piece. So that is that MTSS and so tier 2 students get support every other day. So, a student might be identified for tier 2 and that might mean that they need um they've done an IEP and we have some other data points and we say, "Well, they're really struggling with their fluency." I'll use fluency again. They're really struggling with their fluency. They could use support every other day with their ELA teacher to work on that specific skill. So, they'll work on that specific skill in in uh tier 2, tier 2, every other day
081for six to eight weeks. we'll take another measurement and then we'll see their growth. Do they need to continue on in tier two? Do they move out of that extra support? Tier three is when we see larger gaps or we see gaps that there might be multiple areas of gaps. They'll get that support daily. And so our longer academic blocks allow for more time in that tier two and tier three and allows our students more access to our teachers to be able to provide that individualized intervention. One of the other um pieces that we're um focusing on as we talk about increasing our um our understanding and our literacy is to actually limit Chromebook usage. We want them off the Chromebooks. We want them in books. Um so we had a fantastic team who really
082spearheaded this they they're here. >> [laughter] >> um spearheaded this SDCS project. SDCS is a part of teacher evaluation. So in teacher evaluation we have um the work that the teachers do on their individual goals but then they also do a group um professional learning. They find a problem and they attack that problem first. They seek what the problem is. They discover where they go and do research. they confirm through that refer that research and then they share it with everybody else. So we had a team that really found that a lot of the time ELA deficiencies and and um gaps were because kids were really engaging in technology and what we can do as um a school and how we can support families in order to um promote kind of that safe but active
083learning. They held a series of uh parent and family workshops last year in the evening to provide guidance on tech use and safety. They brought in a presentation for our seventh through eighth graders that focused on safe communication, how to communicate appropriately, how to communicate in a healthy way. Um whether that's online or through cell phones and they're working this year with our elementary school team to kind of bring that as well. um really understanding that communication and because we're seeing that impact of the inability to communicate through their writing or through their presentations in their classes because of kind of the stifling effect of technology and so that team really brought um a lot of awareness to our faculty and now and our parents and our students as well. So, this is um another
084piece of like strengthening that MTSS support. Um the middle school has gone through a series of iterations over the last four or five years of what's going to really work for our kids and how we're going to get that really specific intervention to help individual students succeed. So, we've created a system this year um that is working really well. Um and it's working really well because our teachers are working it really well. Um we have tasked them with um providing that tier 2 and tier three intervention for individual students. We're at the end of our first cycle and we're really happy to say that we're going to be able to exit some students from tiered intervention or drop them from tier three to tier 2. And I know it says we have about four and
085about two in in our group of students. That's that's that's big marks. a lot of children who are getting the what they need and they're demonstrating their um growth in their skills. We've also added that our MTSS groups which in the past really focus on just grade level teachers and core teachers. We've asked now this year included our unified arts teachers, they provide a broader perspective and um different support. So they also advise what intervention needs to happen for individual students. We use a series of student assessment and progress monitoring tools, easyc because we can't rely simply on one data point. We have to be able to measure students in multiple ways. And so using those different progress monitoring tools allows us to see different areas of strength and weakness, but also students look at
086their their data. they have their individual sheets and they look at their data and they say, "Oh, look, I'm I'm growing here in in as web. I have this growth I need to do in I Ready," which is really powerful. Our math and ELA consultants um really have spearheaded this support for our teachers um as well as the tiered intervention. They run our tier three interventions, they advise on tier 2, and they support in tier one as well. We've also focused um on a revamping of the collaborative structures that we use for MTSS. Um we have our monthly um MTSS meetings with our grade levels which really feeds off the weekly meetings that our grade levels and our UA teams are doing and we focus specifically on math, ELA and behavior because we know that
087behavior impacts academics. Um, we have our weekly feedback cycles where we review their notes and then we give them feedback about what they have done really well as a team, areas that we have questions about or what we would like them to do for next steps about individual students or um about the the group as a whole. And now we really have focused on datainformed conversations rather than kind of data dumps. it really you come to that conversation you're talking about these eight students you have their reports you have their asb scores or ECC CBM scores you're talking about here's how they're tracked in their progress this is the growth that they have made these are the strategies that we're doing so we bring that to the team and then we brainstorm if we're not
088seeing enough growth or if we're on the right track um and it really is focused on data and it's not anecdotal it's not talking about um something that really can't be supported by by student student work >> and our teachers really let it after our first meeting which was more of a data dump. They filled out a survey. They say what they were looking for and they they really own the process and because we took their feedback that's really what made it successful. So now we're going to get into math. um 56.51 students um with were nonsp specialcial education they met or exceeded the they met or exceeded. However, 16.67% of students who are special education they met or exceeded. So our goal really is to make sure that our students who are special education
089are advancing at the same rate as students who are non-special education. So our focus is growth and also making sure that we're digging into tier one and that we're differentiating within the classrooms. So we're going to talk about um the current action plan that we have. So we expanded accelerated math opportunities and I included a quote from one of the students. Um they said it's nice to be in a class with other peers who are at their level. Um, what that allows for is a teacher is able to work with students at their zone of proximal development basically where they are and scaffold up so students are able to achieve more as a group and find that area of success without also being frustrated. We now have algebra class and we also have pre-alggebra class
090and we also have a seventh grade accelerated math class as well and that's based off of student test scores. It's based off of um if students are able to if they're able to like work through problems and also a mindset. We involve parents in the process. Some parents reached out over the summer saying like, "We think my student will be able to do this based off of this information." So, we tried it out. We worked with um Miss Tol, who's their math consultant as well. And we communicated this with parents over the summer. um some of our teachers their um SDCS projects this year is to come up with more of like a rubric so that way we can explicitly say your students scored this is why they're going to be in this math class
091and we're also trying to have a through line with high school as well and this is a part of our um our our MTSS system or our tiered instruction. So, making sure we're giving students what they need to be successful. Part of the MTSS um structure is that the first 30 minutes for like let's say tier 2 is an extension of tier one learning, which it should be. So, the first 30 minutes we are frontloading what students are currently learning in the classroom and then the last 30 minutes we're working on their areas of growth. Our goal is to build a schoolwide approach to differentiation and Miss Ernson spoke about this as well in this content process and product and this is one of our scoreboards of teachers. They updated like basically every staff meeting
092where they get together and they talk about what they're doing. Um some areas of really achievement is I had a UA teacher said that they went to a science teacher classroom just to see like how their students were doing so they can get techniques and also seeing how the students were progressing. So, we're building a culture of teachers going to other teachers classrooms and they're learning things from each other. Um, sometimes they go like during their prep periods or sometimes we cover so they can do that but their colleagues feel comfortable having them within the classroom. We also have common language and share tools within the school. So, if we're noticing that like a student may be struggling within a classroom, we have those courageous conversations to figure out what we can do. Parents also
093feel comfortable asking about like accommodations, modifications within the classroom and we're able to tell them explicitly what's going on in the classroom to have that that conversation back and forth. [snorts] We have created a system for classroom visits. So far we have um accomplished 141 and every time we go to a classroom we put like a marker on the door. This was in part because I noticed with myself there was a gap between the classrooms that I went to. Like I had one classroom that I'm like, "Oh, I really like the content." So, I'm a science teacher. I always visited the science classrooms, but I neglected some of the other classrooms. So, it's a way to hold myself accountable as well to make sure I'm visiting all the classrooms within the school. And it also
094makes things that are invisible, such as classroom visits, more visible, and everyone can see like we are visiting all the classrooms. We had a we had a teacher who joined us this year who came from a different district um and we were meeting for his their goal setting meeting and he said, "You know what's really different is that I there's administrators in my room all the time. It's not weird." And I was like, "Well, that's good because we're we're there and I think that we as a team have really made that um part of what we practice is that we want to be in the classrooms. We need to see what's happening. we need to see how the kids are performing and how um and so we are there all the time. So it's not
095a disruption. It's not awkward or strange when we come into the room. So >> in math class and also in science and some of our other disciplines as well, we champion building thinking classroom. So you have the vertical non-permanent surfaces. Students are able to have that transference of knowledge and they work in groups of three. Something that's really amazing is now that students are like going to the next grade, they already know what to do. So, the teachers go over like the whiteboard moves maybe once and then they're able to just get into their groups and immediately start like the building thinking classrooms. Um, also we have some newer teachers to our school and they're learning how to implement building thinking classrooms by going to the teachers who were trained last year. So, we have
096that turnkey model and they're going like like I said during their preps or we provide um coverage they can go and they're having conversations after they're inviting each other to the classrooms. There was one health class I went to and the teacher was using um randomized grouping and also vertical non-permanent services and that's in a UA classroom because as a full staff we did building thinking classrooms together. So students are really getting the quality tier one instruction in all of their classrooms. Next for project lead the way in STEM. This is an example of um Miss Dodie she had the students like building some type of house. It was for the architecture unit and she for the UA ways they're having stretch goals now. So the trust I believe that's what it's called. But um
097>> yeah yeah I tried to learn when I was visiting. [laughter] Um so that was one of the the stretch goals for the students. So some students were able to put the trust on some students were not. and she had to teach them like over like how to use a ruler um how to do the math for it and they're doing that within their classroom so they're not using skills in isolation and math is bridging into other classrooms so students are able to see the real world application of it the same thing for chorus and I sat in this classroom and I was like listening to the teacher talking about like four count rest and then she was talking about how like you have four quarters and a dollar I'm like oh my goodness she's
098teaching math and fractions so It's really cool how in all of our classes they're using all types of disciplines. Um like for band notes for in for instruments he's talking about reading music and he correlates that to like reading a book. ELA we have lyrical analysis and Mr. Anderson will invite Mr. Blaine to his classroom sometimes to do the annual rap during Halloween. It's the funniest thing. Really nice. But um the teachers are really honing into different disciplines so the students can see that learning is not just in that classroom. Next we get into science. For science we had [clears throat] 60% 60% of the students um who were not identified as special education they met or exceeded and then 21.05% 05% who are um identified as special education they met or exceeded. So again,
099our goal is to make sure that our students who are in special education are achieving at the same level of students and who are not special in special education. And we have really dove into what science can look like and also hands-on learning and making sure that we're teaching the standards as far as like next generation science standards. And we're not teaching the test, but we're teaching students real world application to science. This is our current action plan. This is project lead the way and the picture of like the brain that's from Mr. classroom [clears throat] and at first I'm like what is it like what is he doing but for project lead the way they were learning about input output in a computer system and they correlated that to the brain and that was
100for fourth grade which is pretty amazing because they're using mystery science and they have like the portion of the class at the end of the day for science but they're getting extra science and like extra learning in project lead the way and then to correlate input output with the brain system that helps with like hot cognition so students are going to be able to remember that more and they're getting science science in a different way and they'll be able to remember like the input and output system. So then when they get to seventh grade and we're talking about like the nervous system, they'll be able to like relate that back to it. We started using open sad this year and open sciad it uses the next generation science standards is very much hands-on based and
101also collaboration and making sure that you're talking with the students like in the classroom. We have teachers who are using um we're doing their SDCS project on open sad but they're relating that to building thinking classrooms. So students are up and they're moving. This is an example of a scientist circle and it embodies like restorative practices as well. So Miss Harris is talking to the students and doing a conclusion for the lesson because we now have 60-minute classes that allows for the like the ground consolidation. Meaning you can start a class with the introduction, you can teach like the full lesson, and then you can conclude it to make sure students are actually learning and have your formative assessment to figure out like who still um has difficulty or where you need to go with
102your next class. So you can really dive in. Um we also were addressing chronic absenteeism and um as a team we've really aligned what we're doing in elementary, middle, and high school. So families if they are in multiple buildings are hearing the same thing at the same points and getting the same information. So you see my fact sheet is the same fact sheet that Meg shares because we actually developed this with youth and family services um because we partner with youth and family services um for support for families in in many ways and one of those ways is um chronic absenteeism as well. So um we have weekly attendance meetings to monitor trends. Um I get the daily attendance report. I look at the patterns every day. I some make the phone calls. If I
103see that a student has been out two days, I might call mom or dad or grandma and say, "Hi, I what why isn't so and so in school today?" and have those initial those immediate conversations. Um we track individual and we also track group data if we're seeing trends with grade levels. Um right now we're seeing trends with grade levels because of the flu [laughter] as you all know, but but that is also really important to know. And so, um, I was talking about this this morning. I went to the nurse. We have some students who, um, have compromised immune systems. I said, "We need to reach out to those parents." So, there it across the board. There's a lot of different kind of pieces to it. We really streamlined the procedures and clarified those
104absence thresholds and next steps and we've done that as a K through2 team. Um, we have a lot of parent and family meetings um to engage their support. Um, Melissa, you had asked that question about like how we get we I have a lot of families who come in and we talk about what roadblocks it is and I'm I always offer I will be the bad guy. I will be the one who you can say Mrs. Earl says you have to get to school when that student is struggling to get out of bed in the morning. I will be that bad guy because it's really hard sometimes for parents to be able to to do that for their kid. Um, we um also do home visits. Um, we have done home visits um when students
105are having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. We have used um Officer Dave because he has a really great relationship with a lot of kids and a lot of families and we've used his support as well. We've created tiered intervention um plans for students with chronic absenteeism, that band in the middle. Um those are kind of the categories that I look for when we're in that area where I'm concerned about chronic absenteeism for a student. I look through the medical lens. We um create uh attendance meetings. We talk about home visits. Are they going to happen every day or as soon as the student is happen uh is absent or is it going to be on a kind of PRN status? If there are service hours that we're missing, how we
106are making up those service hours, are we creating an incentivized plan for that student? Do we need outside support? And then what we're doing at our weekly team review and we progress monitor that as well. Um we also have individual student meetings. Um I sit students down a lot and I show them their data and I say look at the trends you are you know over the past four years [clears throat] um and I think that might be on the next slide you October is really hard for you and you are struggling in October why are you struggling in October and there's always a reason and so we discover that reason and how we can support um I work with um I work with the high school and the elementary school if we have an
107eighth grader who really struggles with um attending school. Allison and I will have a meeting with that student and say, "So, when you're in high school, credits matter, right? And so, what does that look like and how can we support?" And that also builds that relationship with um our eighth graders that are moving into high school um as well. Um but really, it is to identify that root cause of attendance issues because there is always a cause. And so, we need to determine that cause and then determine how we can help. and it's going to look different for every single kid. And we do um use the support of outside agencies like youth and family services or DCF as well. So this is some of that data. Um so this is um through powers school
108there's a really interesting analytics portion of that. So that is a snippet of um some data and so you can see that I can really show that student um where we see some dips. And so this data has tracked back from to 2019 and we can see some of that trend data and I can see or predict what might be happening. So if I'm looking at this student, I said, "Wow, January is pretty hard for this for this kiddo or a couple years ago, January is hard. What can I do to prepare and how can I um let let the families know that I'm here as we come back from winter break?" Um Dr. Northcut actually puts all of our attendance data in our snapshot as well. So we share where we are as a
109school. So right now we're at 6.2 28% and we need to decrease that number and so we she shares the comparison of where we are and what we can do to help for physical fitness. This is something that I'm really passionate about because last year I did receive some feedback just regarding my my visibility with sports and what we can do to make sure that students are being physically active. This year we do have um a subcommittee with our noise makers and they are the fitness committee and we had our Nathan Hillary Middle School first ever turkey trot and the students were either running or walking around. It happened like the day before thing the break before Thanksgiving and we also celebrated our athletes because the goal is to have more students who are involved
110in the sports. So we had a full school assembly. So our fourth graders were there, our fifth graders were there. Um I mean all the grades were Mr. Bossworth. He gave a speech just about being active, about getting involved in sports. And then we were able to honor our sixth through 8th grade students. And we honored the students with the most school spirit. We honored the teacher with the most school spirit. [laughter] We honored the grade level with the most school spirit and we had like a school spirit necklace and our noise makers, they awarded um that grade level. And we also have a subcommittee within our noise makers and they are the spirit committee and they are going to be tracking the students who dress up when we have a spirit week, the students
111who go to sporting events because if we can get our younger students to attend sporting events then hopefully they'll be more likely to play sports. We started this year the Bosworth Buzz. So we have been communicating with Mr. Bosworth. He gives us tips on like the pacer test. He gives us um information about when sporting events are coming up, how to be involved, and so far we've put out 13 um buzz buzzworth buzz buzzes >> buzz buzzes. Um next for every sporting event that happened in the fall, we had an act we had an opportunity for students to come out and we had like a school spirit showdown. So we tracked the amount of students who were there from each grade level. We had pom poms for We had pom poms for like the soccer
112games. We had cowbells for the track meet, which I really didn't think about cuz I'm like, "Oh, please don't bring them to the school the next day." [laughter] But the kids loved them. And it it was nice to just see the school spirit. And then also um one moment that will always stick with me, we had one student. It was our sorry, it was our our last home meet and they got third, but they were getting ready to kind of like give up. They were doing their absolute best and Mr. Cornell like before they had finished the lap he was cheering them on. I'm like, "Oh, wow. That's like looks familiar because that's what he does in this classroom." So, it's really nice to see like even our coaches who are teachers like or most
113of them are teachers um in a different element. And also like if you can cheer a student on on like the cross country track or field >> sport. Thank you. Course then you can do that in the classroom as well. So, next we're going to dive into our climate results. We're going to start with the parents and guardians and then we'll go into um students. So, the first one says, "I feel the adults help my students develop effective work habits." And 27 or 23.7% strongly agreed, 47.5% agreed, 23.7 disagreed, and then 5.1 strongly disagreed. So hearing and or getting those results and I think about like 59 parents took our survey. So it is a a small um size. However, throughout the year the parents do communicate with us often about what's happening in the
114classrooms or if we need to um like if we need to have extra support for their child. So we do have that communication, but we only had about 59 students or 59 parents um complete the survey. Can >> I jump in really quickly? Um Jessica, to go back to your question, what our school climate committee met last year, um and we talked about kind of the lack of participation. So we tried paper copies, we made posters with QR codes, we put them in Village Pizza and we put them at different places throughout town. And so we've tried different kind of ways to do that. We talked about this year actually kind of sending home um a paper copy in everybody's backpack um for a QR code to have them do that and also sending home
115if they need a hard copy of that survey because not everybody has that equal access or can use that um use a QR code. Right. So um we have as a school as a as a team have talked about um different things to to address that as well. >> Yeah. Um, so some things that we're doing for um, for this question is we're teaching strategies for active reading, problem solving, and time management. And for the seventh grade team as a whole, like their SDCS project is all about growth mindset and making sure students develop the the perseverance to continue on. They even have posters in the hallway. That's something that they they're always bringing up. Um, promote a growth mindset with consistent positive reinforcement. So, if we're noticing that students are improving, that we're giving
116them the praise that that they really need to keep going. We use monthly and weekly IABS. Weekly IBS are something that we're doing this year. Um, fourth grade about 60% of their students were um meeting or exceeding like grade level just like for their band for ESBAC. And something that we noticed that they did is in January they alternate the IABS. So, instead of doing it weekly, doing it monthly, they're doing it weekly. So, we're going to have each teacher on a team. Um, one week we'll have like a science teacher do the um IAB for for NGSS and then we'll have a math teacher do IAB for math and we're going to do it weekly. So, students are going to get more access, but we're also encouraging teachers to make it fun because we
117want to correlate testing with also like fun and making it positive. So, after they do an IAB and they review it, then they can do a team building game. They can do a game on um like growth mindset. They can talk about like the eight to celebrate testing technique. So that way we're not saying okay do an IAB and then write an essay on top of it. Last year we did AAS and basically it's an IAB but a lot longer a lot longer and you have an essay attached to it and then you have the math questions attached to it and it's a lot of grading and you also have to grade by hand. So we have discontinued that because it led to testing fatigue and I do think that is what impacted a lot
118of our testing scores as well because our I Ready scores they improved last year but then we did the AAS and then I mean this the students were tired by the end of it to be honest everyone was tired by the end of it. So we are no longer [clears throat] doing that this year. Um our goal is to strengthen communication around the purpose and importance of testing. So before we started this testing um session we talked to the students about what that looks like. um each grade level gave an incentive for their students and we also sent out a message to the parents as well. The goal is not to have students stress about testing but we want them to take it seriously know that they can do hard things. Um we improved our
119MTSS practices and we increase in-class support including pushing services from Miss Mastersonson. So she's helping with differentiation for so for instance she helps like in u Mr. Hopkins ELA classes and she created these really cool uh bookmarks and they had like the vocabulary and she had three different levels of it so that students were able to get the support that they needed but they also have like those stretch goals where they can do a little bit more. Um we implemented the 60 minute classes to deepen learning and focus. Like Miss Erinstead said we had 42 minutes without um passing time. So students would get in the classroom they would learn and then they would go off to the next thing. But now they can really sit and dive in. And that really helps the UA
120classes because for like Miss Dod's class before it was take all the materials out, work for two seconds and then put it all away. But now the students can dive in in a project. They can struggle with the project and we can have that time for the product or productive struggle. Um, and students are able to still have the conclusion for the lesson. And like I said, for our MTSS or our our interventions, you have the 30 minutes of front loing, which is a continuation of what they're doing in class and the last 30 minutes for the support that the student needs. And we also have co-eing going on. So Mr. um Anderson and Mr. Bachelder, they're working together. That's ELA and social studies, and they're able to work together to give that support to
121students, and they're doing fun things like MAD lip. So it's not like punitive. The students are still having fun. some of them do not want to leave that class at all even though like they can test out of it. [snorts] Um we're also increasing intentional classroom visits aligned to instructional goals. Like Mr. said, we are Ernson said, we're in classrooms all the time and we're making sure that we're being supportive for teachers and also joining in in the fun. Um engaging in peer classroom visits to share effective practices. We always encourage the teachers to get into their classrooms even if it means that we are covering their class so that can happen so they can see their colleagues because there's a lot of magic that happens within the school. And then we're expanding the use
122of visible scoreboards. Last year we had I think one yeah we just had the reading scoreboard and now we have four. And um the cool part about it is our unified sports team they update them every Monday. So they're like putting everything on the wall and they have a system. So they're owning our scoreboards now. [clears throat] >> Um, so this has like three three different questions. My student has reported to me that they have experienced mean behavior directed toward them. 55.9% said yes. I feel the students in school are friendly. 51 5.1 said all the time. 61% most of the time. Uh, my students feel comfortable reporting behavior that is unkind against unkind or against school behaviors. um etc. and we had uh 23.7 strongly agree and 47.5 agree. So those are those are
123positive numbers um on our left but we have to focus on those other numbers. So if we have um if we have 30 34% um of our students who feel that students are only some of the time friendly or if we have 30% of our students who disagree or strongly disagree that they feel comfortable reporting mean behavior, we have to address it. So part of what we have done is really celebrated um that every everyday kindness um to really put a lens on what we expect for behaviors um Mrs. um Peterson has her sore we have our three A's which are actions, attitudes and awareness where um those also show up on um students report cards and they are assessed on um they're meeting um or exceeding those expectations. But we've grown that to really
124try and help celebrate um and spotlight kind behavior. Um Dr. Northcut has created um high- five recognitions. Um that was based on parent feedback as well. Um where we um Mrs. uh Dr. Northcut will um hear um kind of what used to be called kind of like those bug awards or those um but those unexpected kind you remember those right? um those unexpected um just because um acts of kindness and they're celebrated. They're celebrating the snapshot. There's high fives on the wall that have their name. Families are notified for that. Um we highlight world kind world kindness day to reinforce those schoolwide expectations. We provide individual retaching of kindness. So, a lot of our focus as a district has been on restorative practices because of not only the um school climate legislation, but also because
125um it really has shown growth in students abilities to um repair harm with the environment, repair harm with others. And so, we do that individual teaching um to reinforce uh that kind that expectations of kindness. We facilitate small groupoup activities that build empathy and positive peer interactions. Um we have um one of our pareducators who said, "Hey, can I start like a like a boys group about kindness?" I absolutely. So every other Friday they um go and they have lunch together and they talk about how as young men how they can present kindness um to their grade. Um there are grade level lessons on being an upstander for peers um for being an upstander in the community because we had feedback that sometimes students were feeling like when I do speak up about unkind behavior
126my peers are then not kind to me. So we did lessons about what it means to be an upstander and who they can go to for support and how that community of kids when someone is being an upstander how you have to support that as well. um talked about the restorative practices that help students understand their impact. Um and reinforce that students can safely report unkind or unsafe behavior. Um we have an anonymous and all all buildings do an anonymous bullying report. Um our teachers have really kind of promoted that, put that in their Google classrooms because sometimes it's really hard to share about that unkind behavior and to do it in a non-threatening way. Um we have students who um come down and speak to us or talk with the other adults in the
127building to really kind of help process and um report any unkind behavior. The next question was I I feel there are trusted adults in the school who my child my student can go to go to talk to for help and 88.1% said yes, 11 um.9% said no. Uh, my student likes to come to school each day. 10.2% said all the time. 55.9% said most of the time, 27.1 some of the time, 6.8 none of the time. And then the last one says, I feel the adults in the school support my students academic success. 33.9 um% strongly agreed, 47.5 agreed, 16.9% disagreed, and then 1.7 strongly disagreed. Um as a school we are really making sure that students or our goal is to make sure that students have a trusted adult that they can come to
128and we have focused on restorative practices. Miss Erson has led that. Um she taught our staff how to do circles and when I say staff I mean support staff as well and taking the time that they know how to like deescalate or get to know the why or really understand students. Um we also champion making sure that we are giving positive praise. So, we set time aside like when we have like our our staff faculty meetings so that teachers can make sure they're reaching out to parents and not doing that way after their contractual hours. Um, so making sure that we're building in the time for what's important and then we track it. So, if you look up there, it says logged in P school. So, we're logging in P school whenever we're contacting a
129parent or guardian for something that is positive. And for the first month of school, the goal is to have every student contacted. Um, we expanded student leadership opportunities and we did that through our National Junior Honor Society. We have a kindness crew that is u mostly eighth graders right now, but we're going to be recruiting seventh graders so that we can continue it. And the kindness crew, they led the sock drive. Um, they're going to be doing like an inventory like what does kindness look like within our school. When we meet, we talk um we discuss like are we improving, what are things that we need to do for the grade level and what are things that they're noticing within the school and having those courageous conversations. We also have a student council. Um we're
130making sure that we are giving leadership opportunities for sports for sports and the noise maker has subcommittee such as a restorative practices subcommittee. And we also have um for that subcommittee they're going out and they're helping with fourth and fifth grade recess and they're helping problem solve and making sure students have even like a trust mentor within the school. So we're having a through line between our seventh and eighth graders and our fourth and fifth graders. We have strengthened our restorative practices and it happens and Mr. taught us you want to make sure that you're doing circles like when there's not a conflict. So if you go to one of our science teachers classrooms any day he's starting his lesson in a circle he's ending it in the circle and then if they have a
131class or if there's a substitute and maybe they need to have a talk after of like what happened then they automatically know like okay we're going to get in the circle we're going to talk about it. We're going to problem solve because they're doing that every single day. It's a part of their practice. Um, we're have increased meaningful parent involvement with with structured purposeful uh driven parent meetings. We identify students who reported not having an trusted adult and making sure that we're reaching out to those students. We had a survey and it was really cool to see a lot of students had someone in the school that they can go to that even like know them beyond the scope of the classroom. Um, we provided individual tiered interventions to support students social emotional needs. Um
132the quote that we had on the other slide of a student saying like it's nice to be in a class with students who are around my level, they said that to their teacher. So that was nice that they were able to report that and have that conversation with their teacher. Um and we have increased staff awareness and responsiveness to student moods, especially daily check-ins and ongoing support. So if a teacher notices that a student is a little bit down, sometimes they'll send an email like, you know, handle with care. And that way if we are going to approach a student, we know like positive reinforcement or making sure we're talking with them first. Um so this question was I feel that this school is physically safe. Um we have a large percentage um who said
133that um all the time or most of the time they feel it's uh physically safe. And I know that the numbers on the the some of the time, none of the time are low, but Dr. Northcut and I want that to be zero because being physically safe in school is the utmost um important thing. So, it's not only about being physically safe um from threat, but it's feeling physically safe around peers, around adults. And so we've done a lot of work um this year to really build the capacity of um our staff and our students to also share if they are not feeling safe. Um we've conducted an all staff emergency scenario training where we went through with all of our staff um about different scenarios and how we would react which whether that um
134is a student who was a struggling or if there was um a lockdown or any kind of scenario like that. and we were able to really problem solve through that. Um, we've strengthened our ID checks um and power school verification at student pickup. Um, maybe to the sugarin of some families because it is a change, but it is because we want to make sure that our students are going with who they're supposed to be going with and that the people picking them up are verified and they're being run through Raptor. And we have to make sure that we know exactly where all of our students are all of the time. We talked about adjusting Chromebook usage and expectations. Um, we've also enhanced um our kind of monitoring of Chromebook uses usage through GoG Guardian. I've
135had a lot of phone calls um and I know the rest of the admin team has too late at night when you have an alert through GoG Guardian that is something that is concerning that we are reaching out and we are calling families and we are saying so you know this is what's your student is searching right now. Can you please check on them? Here's some support. Here are resources if you need them. Um, we're holding individual meetings to address students feelings of safety. If we have a student who says that they don't feel safe or a parent reports to us that their student is reporting that they don't feel safe, we have those individual meetings. We have them with um our school support staff, whether it's our school psychologists or our social worker or
136our guidance counselors to help them and to create a plan um to help them feel safe. Um we've partnered with outside agencies to support safety concerns as well. And we've practiced um in our safety drills when we do our monthly lockdown drills and fire drills. Um we have a tendency to try to throw some curve balls in to see how our staff and our students react. And then we do an afteraction review um where the team meets. We then meet with the teachers or we send out kind of a notification that has um things that we did really well, things that we've noticed and we've gotten a lot of information about um we need a walkie-talkie down on this end or when we blocked this exit, what did we notice? So, it's been really really
137powerful. And then we've enhanced our communication with parents and guardians regarding emergencies. When um something uh emergent happens, we don't want our kids going home and saying this happened and we don't know why. And so sharing that information with our families so that everyone feels safe and knows that we are communicating clearly with them. >> Um for the next part it says as a parent or garden I feel comfortable sharing my thoughts and ideas um at the school and we do want the percentage to be higher um because the goal is that we need to have the communication with our our parents so we can make changes or the necessary changes for our community. Um then it says my I feel my students school/ teachers communicate well with them. So 35.6% strongly agree, 42.4% agree.
138And then we have some um some parents that disagree and strongly disagree. Some of the things that we have changed based off of the parent feedback back that we did receive. So last year the school snapshot was about like three pages long of and a lot of essay writing and I got a lot of feedback on that as well. and my daughter actually started school recently and they send out parent squares and I thought to myself if I get three pages of just writing there's no way I would read them. So we focus more on pictures and what the students are doing and we send that out and it's like more so like the like if we have dances coming up or what unified sports is doing and we keep it to a minimum like
139couple of sentences and more pictures. We also um are we started doing peak at the week so everyone would receive this on Sunday and you know what's going to happen for the week so you can have like those reminders. We emphasized um kindness as a core value across all the school settings. We launched the National Junior Honor Society. We highlighted student participation and achievements and that includes like sports or our unified sports and making sure that if a student is involved in other things outside of academics that they're also getting an opportunity to be showcased which is important. And then each grade level they work to expand communication methods um and connections with families. So sixth grade um puts out notific I mean every grade level has their own type of communication with a parent
140or guardian. And last year I was sending out communications a lot. I kind of have a schedule now where I have Bosworth's Buzz um that comes out on Wednesdays. The school snapshot comes out on Fridays. Peak at the Week comes out on Sundays and then our school scoreboard it comes out on Tuesdays and that's just a rotation. If there's like an emergency then we communicate that as well. But those are the um the school publications that come out and they're significantly shorter and that's based off of that feedback we got last year. Just to build off that last piece, um sorry Christine. Um every teacher um has a parent or stakeholder feedback goal and they as an individual talk about how they can enhance their communication. Um and they list all the strategies that they
141are currently doing and then they list new strategies that they're going to try this year. So parent communication for individual teachers and teams is the focus of every teacher's professional development um and teacher evaluation. Great. Thank you. >> So now we have the climate climate survey for students and the first one is increasing student engagement and interest in learning and this is a focus because across all grade levels a large portion of students they reported feeling about whether their school work is interesting. So, how we are working on this is we're expanding um student leadership roles through national junior honor society through the kindness crew, student council, and the noise maker subcommittees. And we're also making sure we give more of our time to the subcommittee. So, if a student has an idea, well, for
142the most part, we say yes, like let's let's go do it every idea. So, that way they they they have ownership within the school. Um increasing hands-on learning opportunities and that happens through project lead the way at STEM and also our robotics that's happening. And now that we have 60 minute classes and the way that our our UAS are rotating, the students are able to do a lot more and the teachers aren't feeling um so like pressed for time. We're strengthening enrichment UA courses and clubs to align with student interest and provide meaningful choice. Our project lead the way teachers last year they engaged in a lot of professional development to bring other courses and they're doing the same thing this year as well. They apply for grants. Um, we had our fourth grade teachers
143like they went off to Iceland and learned more about like the scientific concepts and they brought that back to the school as well. And then we're focusing on differentiation and creating opportunities for teachers to observe one another and share practices. But this also allows um like a student is not going to be as engaged in the learning environment if they're not able to like grasp the concepts. So making sure that teachers have the time to differentiate to make sure that students like the work is within their zone of proximal development before we start scaffolding up um so every student has access to the curriculum. So another a layer of this is um ensuring that there's an appropriate academic challenge for all students. And again we focused in this area because there's such a large group
144of kids at every grade level who were neutral. They weren't really sure if they were being challenged. So we talked about strengthening that tier one instruction and creating those clear learning goals and success criteria. So this is how you know that you are being successful. Um we've increased the opportunities for um math choice for classes um as well as math discourse. Um really using the building thinking strategies um that really challenges um individual students and groups of students to push themselves. Um again differentiation as well. And then teachers are really focusing on that those immediate feedback STR strategies and engaging in those weekly data team meetings. And so those weekly data team meetings are looking at student data and saying, "Okay, so this student is um at the the meets or exceeds level. What am
145I doing to challenge this student?" Um with Lauren Masterson who is our enrichment teacher, she is advising and helping our teachers differentiate up so that students are feeling that next level of challenge. Um our teachers um are providing a lot of choice and voice. Um for instance in our sixth grade classroom when they do their readings they have a choice to read one, two or three books. And so really pushing our students to um to be challenged to really um set a goal for themselves and then also work help them support and work through that goal. Challenge looks a lot it looks different at a lot of at different grade levels. Um, we had I did a restorative circle um in a PE class because um we the the girls were they were actually doing
146a pacer test and the girls had a question um a really good question. They said, "Mrs. Armenson, why do the boys why are they expected to do more push-ups than the girls?" And I talked about kind of the expectations of the state and I talked about how you even though someone's expectation for you might be here and I said if you really want it, you can write a letter and I will help you write that letter because I agree with you. Um, but if you really want to push yourself, push past that expectation and push past that challenge. And we had a really powerful restorative circle about how um, even though someone's expectations for you might be here, you can always push yourself higher than that. Our next focus is strengthening student teacher relationships and
147restorative practices. And it's a focus because um a notable percentage of students responded neutral regarding adult relationships, respect or feeling prepared for the future. Um and that let us know that we need to have or deepen the connections. So what we started doing is making sure we give time for teachers like to implement the restorative circle. So now we have our 60-minute class periods. So, if you're finding that if you're starting a class and and some students are struggling, like you can have that extra time to do a check-in to make sure all your students are are in the mindset to learn. Um, we support teachers and conducting restorative conversations with students. Miss Ernston just gave an example of that, how she went to a PE class. And then we expanded student committees that help
148to build belonging and voice. So, we have our noise maker committee that goes out to the recess for fourth and fifth grade students and making sure that we have the mentorship there. Also because we have changed our um our MTSS system, the teachers now have less team time essentially. So we make sure we build that in for like our faculty time so that way they can get together to talk about students and that was a point of feedback that that we received from them. So if we want to strengthen our our student teacher relationships then we have to give time for teachers to contact parents and we have to get times for teachers to meet together to talk about the students to have those data driven conversations so we can figure out how to best
149support our learners. Um one of the other opportunities was um expanding meaningful student leadership and voice opportunities. Um we had about 40 to 49% across all grade levels were neutral in this. And the question really um was what more could you do or what other things do you want to do? Um and they the kids list all different kind of topics that they want to do um from learning different languages to um cooking clubs to auto mechanics. Um, and so really taking all of that information and sharing it and saying how can we infuse these things into um into our daily um or our um structured curriculum. Um so we've talked a lot about some of the things that we're we're doing um to really expand student leadership and also choice and voice. What I've
150noticed greatly um in our classrooms is that teachers are constantly saying, "Here's your opportunities. here are all your different opportunities for how you can present your work or here are all the different um modes that you can use to present your work. And so really providing that that choice and voice in the curriculum um has really helped students really shine. um whether someone is constructing um a a song to present their understanding or uh creating a poster or they're doing a presentation um it's really allowing them to really use their voice and to hone in on their skills when we look at different opportunities that kids want from us and we would love to give them I know everybody would we'd love to give them all the opportunities right um but if we have a
151student um and the powerful thing about the student survey is that it's not anonymous so we can individually talk and meet with students. So, if we have a student who says, "I really want to um work in mechanics." I can say, "Hey, we have an auto club. We have an auto club that goes up to the high school every Thursday. Why don't you join the auto club?" And that has been really powerful. And so, having those individual conversations, I really want to do cooking. We have a parah who's a certified chef and she will do a small group uh activity about baking or um our teams, our grade level teams when they do rewards, they'll build things in that have to do with like using our culinary space and um doing cooking opportunities. So we're
152the powerful thing about that student survey is that we can have individual um conversations with kids about what they want. So what does it mean for you to be able to be a leader and what opportunities can we provide for you? >> And then our the last thing that we wanted to focus on is strengthening family engagement and communication because there has to be a partnership between school and home and the survey comments show that students value support systems and they benefit from stronger school home partnerships. Um an example of how or examples how we're using this from the school. We recently had town hall meetings where we talked about grows and glows for each grade and then we sent home a communication to parents to say like this is what each grade level is
153working on so that way it is transparent. Also we invite caregivers to um to leadership recognition celebrations and schoolwide events. We let everyone know like when we're having events so that way um we so that way they'll be aware and we also send pictures out through the school snapshot. We involve families in restorative um processes when when appropriate. So, if we're finding that a student is is having difficulty within a class period, we'll invite the parent in. We'll invite the teacher and we'll have a conversation about what we can do to make sure that the student is more um successful. We have meaningful two um two-way communication between parents. And a lot of times, I know we only had 59 people who responded to the survey, but we get emails daily on just what we
154can do to um improve certain things within the school or checkups on their child or anything of that sense. So, we do have um open communication [applause] You guys want to start first? Why don't we start with Dan first? >> Spot. You can be honest. >> Okay. >> I enjoyed how you added in the unified arts teachers into the MTA MTSS meetings because the unified arts teachers really do see another side of the students and their feedback. [clears throat] >> And also as a member of the student council, I am a big supporter of school spirit. Um, I love our spirit week. So do does u Mr. Reie and Mr. Edwards. They [laughter] they fully go out for it. And I I believe that creating like a more spirited um environment like helps the students
155want to be at school more. >> Yeah, I really enjoy your focus on um uh school spirit while also having such an immersive academic environment. Um, and I think that the cell phone policy that you have or the Chromebook policy that you have, I think that's really important. Um, especially in older uh students because they're on their phones more often. I feel like it's it's much better to learn off screen. >> Yeah, >> thank you for the presentation. [clears throat] Um, just a couple hopefully quick questions. One kind of technical one, we've heard the term IPS a lot throughout. Are those created by teachers? Are they part of like a curriculum set? Curriculum set. >> Well, they're part of Smarter Balance. They actually send them out to us, so we don't have to create them.
156So, they they are um standardized, which is >> um and then I was also just going to say thank you guys for having conversations about the Chromebooks and the cell phone policies and stuff like that. At some point, I'll be curious kind of how families and students are receiving some of those ideas, but it sounds like we are kind of in the process of building up some momentum around that. though. Um I think the only last question I had and I apologize if I missed it at the beginning. Is there a next generation score for the kind of like pacer or physical fitness um index? Did I miss that on the first slide? >> There there is it was 47% for that's how many% we earned for points. Um last year was about 23%. >>
157So a significant increase this year >> increase with attendance for the amount of students who took the test but for the actual like fitness score we went down by 0.2. two like by 0.2. >> Do you know offhand how it compares to the state levels? >> We are we are lower than the state. Um but I do think now that we have 60-minute classes and Mr. Mr. Pel and also Miss Tui that's a part of their SCS SDCS goal. Um but we're trying to build up from like the fourth grade to eighth grade. So it is difficult sometimes for students like to run a mile or like to run the lot eighth grade. So we're starting in in fourth grade. We want them to take the test seriously. They know what it's about. And in
158their gym classes, they are practicing the pacer test. One thing that I really liked is we had like a student athlete and they were encouraging other students to like the run the whole time. There is a correlation between students who are like on the soccer team and the students who are passing it. So we are Exactly. So that's why we want students to be more involved in sports too. >> Thank you guys. >> Terry, a lot of good news. um a lot of really positive things that I heard. Um in particular, uh earlier this week, I had and TA and I had actually um uh had a conversation at uh the CA conference with in one of the seminars where they talked about the anxious generation. And I was really happy to hear about your
159efforts with teaching our children about responsible technology because that was the topic that came up. How are we teaching them how to use it responsibly? So I was really glad to hear that. Um also about the real world application of principles. Um in particular how you built those houses and you know uh how the children were able to um take a look at how they how it was uh you know the engineering piece of it. So I was happy to see that. One question I did have though, um, if we could potentially go back to the slide on the percentages for the, um, reading and math. Either one. >> The barraphs. Yep. >> So, >> that was science. We can go back. >> Any of them. >> Yeah. My my question was the the on
160the special education piece >> there seems to be a obviously that there's a huge performance gap there. What are we doing to address that? >> So because so are with our longer class periods of times last year was like 42 minutes that's after we transition and then even when we did like MTSS we couldn't really give a true MTSS because we didn't have the time for it. So now we have 60 minutes. In fourth and fifth grade, we have an hour and a half now for dedicated like math and ELA. So we're giving more time for it. We're able to use progress monitoring to figure out where our students are. And then we're also having the conversations where if a student has been in MTSS for going on three years and they're not progressing, what
161are our next steps? And we're able to have that as a team or talk about like if students are exiting out. if students are exiting out then we're finding like having the conversation say did you take this test seriously or do you know the importance of this test so giving more time having a true MTSS model involving our special education teachers I think that's really how we're going to be able to influence these um >> any insight into what's impacting that score without violating fura >> what's impacting the score sorry like this score >> yes >> I think it was the time period I also think ICAS that was not beneficial Last year we had a lot of test fatigue. So for the A we thought it was just math and ELA and then it
162became the ELA um like the essay but we don't that's not really a part of ESPback but they still have it for the AA because they get the data from it and then we had to score those by hands and the data that we got from AAS it was basically equivalent to IABS but it was a longer stretch of time and then we had to use a testing schedule. So I think then when we came to like the ESPback testing in May a lot of students were tested out. So our goal this year is to be more strategic with testing. So we are going to hopefully have testing for I ready in March. So then we have a stretch of time and then we can have ESPback testing in May. So it's not on the
163heels of itself because before it was it was a lot of test fatigue. I mean it was fatigue for everyone. >> Understandable. Hi. Can I just I was just thinking about those students with disabilities, those special education students. We also got to think about that growth, that vertical growth for them as well and really think about where they are and what we're doing to and where they have improved within themselves. So this is the same test for our highest achieving students and our students with the most significant disabilities. So we really need to look at how is that individual student making achievements and that's not always shown with this type of an assessment. But I do think that we presented this data because we also have to see the data and we have to see
164the areas that we need to grow. And so when we talk about a student with an IEP who might have individual goals and specialized instruction in an area, how can we match that instruction and still get them where they need to do to meet that grade level expectation? But what we have to do first, we have to look at the data because across the board if even though everyone's taking the same test, we want everyone to to be at the same level at some point. So the first step is to look at that data. >> He's a great test taker. So >> for sure. >> Yep. >> That is all I have. >> Uh thank you for this. It's a lot of information. It's really great. Um, I'll echo the real world application is really
165awesome. Um, the trusses are really cool. Uh, Mr. Blaine doing the Raven. You alluded to it for a second. My daughter is very excited about it because we're big Po fans in our house. >> Um, and the cowbells. I saw those at soccer games that were completely unrelated to school. We're very excited about the cowbells. Um, I was jealous. Um, and thank you for addressing the number of surveys that 50 something is. Yeah, I right. >> Like some of that data, it's it's curious whether it's accurate at all. >> I know. >> Um with that low of a percentage. Um but surveys are notoriously like national surveys, what do they say? 3%'s a good rate. >> Um uh the snapshots are much better this year. um [laughter] um the individual growth rate that you were
166just do we have information to I mean you can't obviously do one individual but can you say this percentage went from this yeah because that would be interesting to know because this is concerning but it you know the growth is really where it's at that's that's really what's important >> um how did they you mentioned that they I they pair students who said they didn't have a safe adult. How do you do you just arbitrarily pair them or it's >> So that actually came from our UA team about three three years ago. >> Three years ago. I'm looking at Trish because she's our UA team leader. We took our student survey and that was one of the questions. It's a parallel question on our student survey about trusted adults that it is on our school
167climate survey. And the students were able to say yes, I have a trusted adult or no, I don't. and then yes, who are my trusted adults? Which was also really helpful. We then looked at the all of the students who said either no, I don't have a trusted adult or they said yes and they didn't list anybody. Our UA team then because our UA team sees four through eight all the time, they actually took the list of individual students and they said, "I'm going to take ownership of this." And so, um, Mrs. Rafala maybe said, "Okay, I'm going to take these 12 kids." Mr. Mr. Pernell said, "I'm going to take these 14 kids, Mr. Blaine said, and they made it their mission to build those relationships with those kids." So, it was individualized intervention
168for kids, whether that was, I'm going to stop by lunch and I'm going to go see how they're doing or they're in my class or I'm going to have a conversation or in the hallway, I'm going to check in on their grades. And they had like almost individual plans for every kid to get to know them. >> That's awesome. Um, because there are some kids that I hear that just tell me they they don't and um the sorry the surveys and just like parent contact I guess this is a question for all schools I know it's it's East Hatam the vast majority of everyone speaks English but do we have a mechanism to give those surveys in another language do we have a mechanism to contact somebody in another language trying to increase that parent
169engagement we have to do that Um the surveys there's a lot of neutral. Should we consider taking that out? >> So for our for the the parent feedback they it is very specific that we have to have the neutral zone. >> Yeah. I meant students for the student one. I think that's something as an admin team that we would have to make the decision because we do do it across the board. So that that trusted adult question carries from like from elementary school all the way up. Um, but we also didn't want to force someone into making a a question and skew the data that way either because if a student doesn't know and they can put neutral, that's still action we have to take. >> So, um, the you so you said the student
170ones are not um >> not anonymous. >> Yeah, they're not anonymous. Do we think that that skews their data because are they >> We actually asked that we asked that question. That's the last to last question and we say would you have answered this qu differently if it was anonymous and the percentage is really really low. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> I was wondering if kids were saying were not willing to say that they weren't challenged if people knew that they weren't challenged because then they're going to give them more homework or whatever you know whatever. >> Yep. >> Yeah. But we do we do ask that question and it is very small. It is between like like three and 7% that say we would have we would have done it differently. Um, and my
171I think my last question, how are students overall? What's the feedback about the longer classes? Are they happier with them? Are they >> with them? >> It's a change. I think it's a change. I It's It's not so different for our four or five students because they're very used to being in a classroom with the same teacher for a long period of time. But for our specifically our seventh and eighth grade students who are very used to those very quick classrooms, it has been difficult. It has been a a change for them. Um, and we talk about how when you get to high school, your classes are >> 74 minutes long. And so we're trying to build some of that capacity, but our teachers have done a phenomenal job of also recognizing that and doing
172different movement activities within the classroom. Um, using like we talk about building thinking classrooms, restorative circles, um, different engagement strategies that get them up and moving. And we have teachers who will read the room and go, "Okay, we we need a three minute, we need to like take a break. we need to like get get all the wiggles out, whatever it might be. So, but it has been a change for for our seventh and eighth grade students for sure. >> But one thing that is nice sometimes students will say like, "Oh, I didn't know class is over." Because they they're able to actually like more engrossed in a task than they were before. So, it's like, "Oh, the class is over." So, that's that's nice, but it has changed. >> Thank you first of all.
173Um, I think a lot was said, so I don't want to take up too much time. Um, Terry touched on the device usage. I'd love to see more of those conversations happening with the kids specifically because, you know, there's a difference. we talked about in our um meeting with Cave in that specific breakout that some students have devices, some students don't and there's a variability and that you know can be challenging across different students to kind of navigate all of that. Um and uh and then just one question that I had in terms of the climate surveys. I think that you had said Raina that you are reaching out directly to parents who are filling out the climate survey and saying or was that anonymous and they're saying like they're reporting something negative. Are you
174reaching out to those parents? >> So I I normally get the communications like for the snapshot parents email like that is entirely too long so that no can over this. >> Yeah. know the um the if they're reporting um I don't know I can't remember the specific questions that were on there but there was like a small percentage of parents that were reporting something negatively. Can you go back to it? I'm just curious like is that >> uh the parent is anonymous? >> Anonymous. The parent one is anonymous. Mhm. >> It would just be interesting to explore it not being anonymous for the parent one and is that able >> but I think by by the regulations it has to be anonymous by the state. Yeah. >> Okay. So that's good to know. So, I'm
175glad that I just asked the question to say it out loud because then, you know, people understand that if they are filling that out and they're reporting something negative some of the time, none of the time, >> um, that they would need to reach out directly in order for you to know that there's a problem. Great. >> So, I'm glad that I said it out loud. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Uh, so I guess I'd like to if you could just go back one slide previously. Um, I have to say I'm a little concerned. um that 30% essentially of our student uh our population whether it's the parents I know that they're it's anonymous but you know 30% of our of our parents in our school community are not loving their experience at the middle
176school and that to me is my takeaway message I'm concerned about that so I guess you know when you look at 50 plus parents responding to this survey What is the percentage of that across the school? How many parents are there? So is 50% how many what is 50 student of 50 respondents? What is the percentage? What what how does that reflect and why aren't they why aren't they participating? >> So we have 378 students in the middle school. And so at times a parent will fill it out for all three of their students or they might do one for each student that they have. So to give a percentage is really hard. I So we're unsure. >> So it's really small and and that what you just said >> really small. >> It could
177be and that's even a bigger problem. >> Yeah. >> We we agreed. We agreed. >> Okay. To me that I'm very concerned hearing that because when I then look at the declining enrollment in our high school, I'm wondering what is the experience at the middle school that's leading them to make those choices. So for me, I just think we need to really grab the bull by the horns and try to really understand why 30% of our parents are unhappy with their experience. Those th those folks are making different choices uh when they get to high school. And that's a that's a problem. Um when you when you talked about um uh all these surveys, I I just want to be clear because this this was a question I had at the last board of ed
178meeting. We have a lot. We're talking about all these different surveys. So, I just want to make sure I have them delineated correctly. So, we have a school climate survey that's anonymous submitted by parents or guardians. Correct. And that is uh buildingwide. Uh so there's a climate and each will the board of education get a copy of all of those uh climate survey questions, not just a pulled out snapshot of specific questions. >> Sure. Absolutely. We can certainly I don't think that's ever happened before. >> Well, I I certainly as a board member am interested in all of the questions that were asked, not just the ones that were pulled out for the presentation. I mean, you guys have 115 slides. I don't expect to see them all tonight, but I think, you know, if
179board members want to do their due diligence, they should be able to look at all of the climate surveys for each school. So, that is a request, Dr. Drito, that I'm putting towards you. The next one is the student survey. That's not anonymous, but that's an again, every single school has uh their own student survey. >> Okay. And can we also get a copy of those student survey? Yes, of the questions. I'm especially interested in the elementary school. And then while we haven't talked about it tonight, at our last meeting, I asked about a teacher union survey. My understanding that's also anonymous, not included in the presentations here tonight. Is that accurate? >> That's not a school district survey. >> It's not a school sanctioned survey, but it's a survey that that's h has happened
180somewhere in our system. That's not a school district survey. >> Okay, we'll we'll get to that later on in the agenda. Are there any other surveys besides these two? School climate and student survey. >> Got it. [laughter] >> All right. All right. So, we'll get to that the high school time. Okay. Great. Thank you. [clears throat] >> All right. Well, yeah. Thank you again. A lot of information, a lot of good stuff. I saw um you just starting off with I think the biggest thing that I love seeing is the increased class time. That's that's fantastic. Obviously kind of for some of those slides that seems like it'll be very appropriate. Um uh another thing really enjoyed was the like you talked about the classroom collaboration where the teachers going into each classrooms. I think
181that's real important. they could learn new skills from each other. And like you had mentioned the especially with the administrators going in and sitting there, you know, it shows, hey, it shows the students that, you know, administrators not only just care but getting more comfortable with administrators and it's not some, you know, ivory tower type situation. So that's, you know, all all good stuff. Um, uh, the the the less Chromebooks. Um, yep. A that's great. Curious specifically to math. I'm just curious like in maybe whether you do or don't just the feeling. What is math provided more on Chrome? Is it in Chromebooks or is it in math books? I don't know. >> So it's neither one of those. It is manipulatives. It is writing on whiteboards. It is doing hands-on activities. There's not a
182lot of math book work. It is active math. It is it's amazing what they're doing in math. And I think I probably would have been a better math student if I was learning math in this manner. So it's manipulatives, handon, it's writing on whiteboards, it's putting pieces together, it's writing on big whiteboards up on the walls, it's moving around. So um there's some work that happens on a Chromebook and there's some work that happens like in our math IM books like but it's much more than that. It's taking out um the grocery store flyer and saying like these are this is the amount of money you have and this is what you need to do and what percentage of tax are you doing for this like so that is that's really what it is. >>
183Yeah, it's definitely the less Chromebook is great and the active work is definitely great. I mean, I would, you know, think, you know, paper books aren't bad just because it's something you can resort back to and look at your work and, you know, see that when it's kind of on a whiteboard, it's there and then it's gone. But, >> but our IM curriculum is based upon the the the workbooks, but they do a lot of that work in different ways and then kind of kind of transfer some of that into their book. >> I don't think so. It was more just just curiosity. Um, and uh, you know, the sport just other things that were great. I love hearing about the sports push um just across the board um and then what you had mentioned
184with the um the fitness goals and everything. It's just and you know you did the turkey trot and and it's just funny because like yes pushing fourth graders we should be having them do that in fourth grade because hey I was just at the turkey trot and for the elementary school and watching you know on an average of say third grade and second grade they were doing around the laps they were doing up upwards of 15 to 16 laps in third grade that's over three miles in the time that they were doing. So, if we're sitting there pushing kids that, you know, in third grade that can run three miles, we should definitely be able to push fourth, fifth, and sixth to uh, you know, to higher higher bars, which, you know, again, we say
185it's just fitness, but that leads into, you know, many other higher bars. So, that's just all all great stuff. Um, things. So, I'm not going to beat a dead horse, but that was this slide is exactly, you know, something of major concerns. I know we look at the blue and it's good, but I'm more focused on the red and just what we had talked about of having the gap, right? These are all the the same criteria that nonspecial versus special are meeting, right? And so, yeah, I see 68. So, I'm just trying to figure out, you know, why what brings us what brings us to that 68 and million reasons that you had mentioned. Um, and we talk about the small small goals, the personal goals, right? But it's definitely good because it's almost like
186it could be in a silo. It could be could be great personal goals, but if we're not looking at that, I mean, they could be making huge strides amongst their little silo, but in the real world, they could be nowhere near meeting expectations. So, absolutely need this this and we can't just focus on one versus the other. Um, with that said, no uh trend data like the elementary school we were able to see. So, I have no idea is this getting is this 10 times better? Is it 10 times worse than last year? I'd really like to see some kind of trend data. This is too much of a right now. You know, last year what was the, you know, so maybe next time we can see some kind of trend data on that. And
187um no, I think I'm going to uh just want to have one more. Just one more. The um No, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you again. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. I just have two notes quick. Um I like your classroom visits. It's nice to see a I think uh administration not in a um I don't know, punishment, [laughter] you know what I mean? just uh nice classroom visits. And I also have a very random question. Um I saw in one of your slides at the bottom, you are wanting your fourth and fifth graders at 8:30 because their instruction time starts at 8:40. How are the bus times running for fourth and fifth grade? They're on time. >> Wow. Okay. >> Knock on knock on something. They're but they are I mean they
188are there. They are moving into their classrooms at 8:30. It's awesome. Yeah. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. [applause] >> Before we begin, um I'm Allison Stroley. I'm the assistant principal at the high school and this is Chris Eckert, the principal. And um we understand this has been a very long presentation and hopefully informative. So, we want you to know we will not be offended if you eat your snacks >> um while we're presenting. I just had to get some sugar in myself to keep going. So, and I' I've got a bag of candy here to an audience. So, if you need some candy. >> Yeah. And um to be transparent, but also aware of our time. Um our presentation is going to take you through the data and be specific about what it
189represents and where we were trend data um and where we are now. uh at the end of the representation of the data, uh we're also focusing on our major focus areas, but if there's something that I didn't talk about or didn't cover, please ask that question. Maybe we didn't we don't stress um so much around um physical education scores. Um please ask those questions. I'm just cognizant of time and my high school kiddos is uh getting to bed early. So, all right. So in front of you and on our first slide represents the entire index. I just want to remind you that the high school is graded upon 11 of the 12 index standards. We are not measured by number two. Um that's the growth grades four through eight. Uh again number three as Wendy
190mentioned earlier is the participation that is in the top right um of the screen here and on the bottom on your document there. Next. So, the first uh slide that you'll see up here represents the far right category for us. That's our high school. The middle is the overall district. And then the far left uh columns represent the accountability index for the state. Um on the far left, so on our right, we scored this year as 81.7 of possible 100 percentage points. Um which is good. It's an increase from 76 last year. So we are moving in the right direction and again that's our [clears throat] overall score. It's the accumulation of all of these indexes the the 12 together. Okay. So far so good. All right keep moving there trying to go there. So
191uh the first index is our performance index and that is represented by a um the the pooling of information with regards to SAT next generation science standards a the Connecticut alternate science assessment as well. It's based on a scaled score not achievement. Scaled score not achievement. All right. Um, and I included their formula for how they came up with the index because quite frankly, I was diving into that quite a bit. I'm like, how are they getting 56.4 um for all students? I wanted to know that number. Something that you'll also notice on this chart is that we do not have students um that fall under the category of high needs with a data point. There's three slides or four slides in um that we'll come up to that will explain to you why we
192don't have a data point. We also didn't have a data point in 2122. It goes >> I'm gonna just say it now. We can't wait. Let's just jump into it. >> Well, I was gonna say was gonna give this. >> When our population is small in that area, it's not reported out, >> right? So 20 or less students. So in 2021, 2022, and 2024, 2025, we had fewer than 20 students that fell into the high needs category. So it's not reported. >> Correct. We had a total of 20 that fall into that category that were assessed. And anytime you don't reach 20 being assessed or reaching 100% this year, we needed we wouldn't get a data point. That's explained to you in three slides. Captain impatient. All right. So, this is our score for ELA
193only. There is a slight dip. This is a target area for us next year. Okay. And again, I'm going to talk to you about what we're doing in those target areas towards the end. Next slide. This is our uh college board um data from the SAT that was conducted for our 11th grade students last spring, our 12th grade students right now. And this represents the benchmark data. I want to highlight the column that says performance levels. It's looks to me dark brown. Um that's the meets or exceeds benchmark. uh that is a 64 percentile. That's uh that means 64% of our student population that tested which was 59 achieved meets or exceeds benchmark which was 480 on their SAT score. So if they got 480 or above they're in that category. For below they are
194not. They're in the approaching benchmark or not yet approaching benchmark area. So far so good. As compared to we'll go back as compared to 33% of our students receiving special needs, they met or exceeded the benchmark in their assessment as well. Okay, so again that's just a percentage not a number of students. Next one, this is math again. Still indicator number one. Indicator number one is going to be divided three ways. Math, ELA, and science. This is our math uh data again. Overall population or all students has gone down from 51 percentage points not achievement scores 51 down to 48.5. Again, this is a target area that I'll explain what we're doing um towards the end of this [snorts] next one. This is the percentage of all students reaching benchmark in SAT for math. The
195benchmark is 530 in math and again the performance level of uh 32% of our student population uh exceeded benchmark. That's up from last year. Last year we were at 28%. This year we are our juniors to seniors now achieved 530 or greater. Uh students receiving special education services however are at 16%. um reaching that performance level of 530. Okay, next one. And this is NGSS. Um this is the next generation science standards. Um all students uh are at 50.3 to again to the far right and uh students with high knees. Unfortunately, uh we do not have a data point for 2425. um we are at 50.3 uh the state average is 52.1. So again all those scores are a scale score that go into indicator number one that you achieve a certain number of points
196towards and that's on the sheet that you have in front of you. So that's index one. I'm going to highlight that performance index is a target area for our high school. And so at the end of this you'll see that I targeted most of the stuff we're going to talk about what we do in school to address these things are are attacking performance indicator number one. Okay next one doing great Christine. Oh this is um our percentage of all students reaching benchmark in NGSS level three and four. 31% of our students met or exceeded benchmark score for NGSS. Whereas students with receiving special needs, 16% met or exceeded the benchmark on this particular su uh science assessment. And this is all 11th grade data. Now are 12th grade students. Okay. And you're in there somewhere.
197You are. All right. Next one. All right. Next one is um participation rates. And I did mention that we were going to come back to this, but along the bottom it does identify the number of students that took the assessments that fall fell under the category of high needs. So we had 17 take the SATs out of 20. Remember, we need to reach 20, but our denominator, our total number was 20. So we needed all of those students to be present on the day of SATs and taking the SATs. Um, and unfortunately when school day SAT gets defined, we don't get to make that day up. So, you need to be present. NGSS, we had 18 out of 20 take that assessment. We attempted six times of issuing that NGSS trying to target the students
198that were absent, locating those kiddos and trying Oh, you're shaking your heads. Yes. on the day that you had a softball championship game. >> We tried so hard to get that number because we know that at 95% is the number we want to reach uh in terms of participation percentage. We did it in many many areas but unfortunately um our denominator is so low it really is really is a struggle to make sure that we can get all those kids to take the assessments because I want to remind you that it's students with receiving special needs services e students but also students that are in free and reduced lunch population and we don't have that information all right so we're guessing on anybody that's absent we're trying to take it >> can we just clarify
199what that means so we as administrators in the district We're not we're not allowed to know what students are free and reduced lunch. >> So I see I saw your face look. Um okay. >> So we don't have that information. So we can't target students and say you know you must take it because you're a pre-induced lunch student. >> Thank you for clarifying. All right. Next one. [clears throat] Indicator four. Chronic absenteeism. Um so the orange is uh students with high needs that fall under that category. The blue is all students. Um I do want to highlight the fact that this has gone down. Noli has done a tremendous amount of work as well as the other schools to help support this charge to uh to attack chronic absenteeism. It is not an East Hatam
200issue. This is a state this is a na national issue that um attendance is it's it's a really scary um negative data point for many many school districts. Um and we've done a really good job of dropping it and it's going to be even better next year. Knock on wood. [clears throat] Um that I I feel with the targeted interventions that we've got. So that's what we've >> and I do want you talk now or do you want to talk about later? >> Well, I just want to point out that since um Mrs. Peterson and Mrs. Ernson and I have started to work together. I've noticed our we currently have no ninth graders that are chronically absent. Um the 10th same in 10th grade. We have no 10th graders who are chronically absent and it's
201been we're approaching our year three of this. And I I know the data is still growing, right? We still have many days left in school. Um but I'm hoping that trend will stay positive. I know the meetings that Mrs. Erlandson and I had with eighth grade students that were chronically absent last year. I mean those students none none of them are chronically absent this year. So that is a huge accomplishment. We make sure that we've been celebrating those children that are making these major changes in their schooling. >> Next one. Okay, this is indicator five and six. Uh this is a proud uh uh data point. So we've got 98.5% uh of the index possible points scored. Um, that means that we've got grades, kids in grades 11 or 12 that take two AP courses
202or two CTEUA courses or two workplace experience opportunities. I mean, that's just it's high level education. It's a wide variety of opportunity for kids and we can we hit a home run there. I mean, it's tremendous. Um at the bottom is indicator number six. That is the them uh the grades 11 and 12 students. The percentage of students that met benchmark on one exam of SAT or AP. Uh AP the benchmark is three or more or three plus. Uh on AP exams are scrap scored on a level of one to five. So, if they go three or more, they've met the benchmark for an AP assessment. Um, or earn three plus credits through a dual enrollment uh opportunity. And we have some dual enrollment opportunities at the school. And so, some kids have scored there
203as well. And so, that's a 57.3 um percent of possible score received. All right. Next one. All right. Uh indicators seven, eight, and nine. Uh seven specifically is about being on track. Uh this is targeted or focused entirely on ninth grade. Uh that's the blue and that's the number that's again that's the percentage score of the students that are on track leaving ninth grade um towards graduation. That means their grades, their credit earned, their attendance, and their well their discipline record are all in line or uh exceptional and on the right path to graduate. I think that's a a major plus into Miss Stroll's cap about the the power of bees are better program that she implemented last year with the nth grade and now has exploded all through the school. And look, 12th grade,
204that scoreboard is up there. See the buses? I'm working hard on that. All right, I'm getting there. Um, so I'm I'm partly in charge of the 12th grade committee with our couple other members there with me and I'm in charge of filling those buses. So, um, but so, so, uh, indicator indicator 7, uh, 96.8. That's a, that's an exceptional score for us. Uh, except indicator 8 is the first time 9th graders who graduate with regular diploma in four years. Uh, that is highlighted by the orange color. So you're looking at 93.9. That's generally reported as being consistent with your graduation rate. What's the percentage of students that graduate in four years? Um we're we're around 94% of that as well. And then the gray is uh that graduate in sixyear graduation. Um from the first
205day that they start to six years. There's a number of things that could impact that uh percentage or or what goes into a six-year. Um there's a number of variables that can be impacting, but that's uh still at a rather high level. We're targeting to get that to 94%. >> You want to say anything about Bees are better? >> Well, for our new board of education members, you just might not be aware of our work that we've done with Beer Better. We're partnered with the Connecticut Rise Network. They're a fantastic organization. and we've been working with them for a few years and their primary focus um working with schools all over Connecticut and beyond is to really um promote nth grade success because as re research shows if you're successful in nth grade with um
206getting your six credits or beyond and having positive attendance then you're more likely to graduate on time. So we have devoted um a ton of effort into our ninth graders. Every single ninth grader this year has a peer mentor. We have weekly grade level meetings with our ninth grade te team of teachers where we're looking at students grades um looking at their performance on with a number of different data points just to really make sure I mean we know where every nth grader stands at all times. And I'm talking just nth grade now because that's what the um what the research suggests but we have since expanded it to all grade levels. So we've got a grade 10 team. They're looking at all the grade data for our grade 10 students. I I work with
207the grade nine and grade 10 and Mr. Eert works with grade 11 and grade 12. Um our upper classmen were asking us why we weren't doing bees are better for them last year. And so it has since become a celebration. We look um weekly but also do bigger celebrations at progress reports and report cards just to acknowledge those students. And um last year 94% of our nth grade met these are better in at least one reporting term. >> Next one. Uh indicator 10 is a percentage of graduating class who will enroll in a two-year or a 4-year uh post-secary institution. Um this is at 62 66.2% of the possible points scored. I'm saying that slowly because you and I talked to it's not number of percentage of students, it's points possible. Um, but that represents
208uh, you know, we highlight five different pathways for our kiddos. Two-year school, four-year school, trades, military, and job placement. And we want every kid to have a path a defined path before they graduate. And so this data point only represents those children going to a two-year or four-year school. But yet we celebrate every path possible because we know in East Adam and in all schools really across our state not college isn't for everyone. Uh but a path is needed for everyone, right? And so we in the 12th grade uh specifically our 12th grade team is identifying some of those milestones to help celebrate, you know, two-year schools and four-year schools, they celebrate college acceptance, um the FAFSA completion days, right? Scholarship re receptions, those are great. Um but how do you celebrate the trades? How
209do you celebrate the military placement? How do you celebrate getting a job um for those students that are going right into that job placement? So our 12th grade team is working very very hard to identify those milestones so we can celebrate those kids along the way that are in that path. Again, this is a data point that we still have to see, right? And so those are that's how many points we've earned of kids that are going to a two-year school and a four-year school, but they're not only those kids that we celebrate. We celebrate so much more. Next one, physical fitness. Huge upswing on physical fitness. Um apparently uh we are not alone with some uh uh a struggling data point last year where the the uh many schools including us uh inputed the
210data. Um I wouldn't say incorrectly but we we struggled to identify the specific necessary items in the reporting of the data on a new platform. Uh and across the state it was much lower than it was this year. And now the numbers jump back up or increase a little bit uh across the state. So we reported it correctly and now we've got awesome scores. Kids are successful in the physical exam uh physical uh exam as it's measured by the state. It's mile run, the push-ups, the sit and reach and the situps. And I'm sure that we've got two of our student reps that smashed this um in the their assessments. All right. So, we've got we've got 100% of our points scored there um with a 98%. So, anytime we're above that target, we receive
211a percentage of that points. And anytime you're above 75%, you'll get uh close to 100 and we did. So, that's a celebration point. Next one. All right. And then this is art access. So, this is a class uh like Miss McCabe said earlier that you can take dance, you can take art, you can take music, you you take um theater, you can take visual arts, media class. Um and that's the percentage of scored or possible score for students to receive that are taking those types of classes. Again, the target is 60 and we have increased that to 66. Um and I feel like the numbers of kids that are participating in um performing arts and visual arts are like through the roof this year. So that score is going to be uh gone up. It
212likely will be up next year when we do this presentation again. Maybe in less time. All right. So, um, just kidding. There we go. [laughter] >> My bedtime alert back. >> I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm trying to go as fast as possible, but still providing you with as much information and detail as necessary. So, these are the the strengths. These are the areas that we scored um a high percentage of the possible points and we wanted to just celebrate. um the kids are being prepared for college. They're taking those courses that are getting them ready to enter a two-year or four-year school and be successful there. Um even though our numbers aren't there in absenteeism, crying neck absenteeism, they're moving in the right direction and they've gone down tremendously. Uh so I wanted to highlight
213that. So that's going to be shown on the next slide as a target area, but also something that we wanted to highlight a positive. Um our four-year graduation rate is on track. Our four-year graduation rate is tremendous. Our uh on track, our se our ninth graders data, that is outstanding. Our physical fitness scores, there we are. We're back to where we need to be. Uh the art access and the six-year graduation rates are above the state, you know, the state um bar. Um and we're we're earning a high p possible high percentage of the possible points. Next one. Our targeting areas however are those uh performance index. It's the ELA, math and science uh for all students and students with high needs. Um so again we you heard a lot of presentation around the tier
214one work and that's for all students and that's where we're we're focusing our uh efforts on these two index scores as well as chronic absenteeism. So just provide highlighting that data there uh to tell you that those are our areas of growth. Next one, Christine. Keep going. Perfect. And then this is how we're doing it. So, uh, content teams are conducting a review of current curriculum. They're reviewing their instructional strategies as a content teams and or grade level teams. Uh, they're assessing the data that you saw. They all have SAT data. they've uh reviewed it in their content teams and they're trying to pull out what almost down to the question style around where the kids have struggled and what areas of weaknesses are identified in the SAT uh so that they can implement strategies
215to address that in their classrooms. Um they're focusing more on small groupoup instructional work versus a stand and deliver type uh of of instructional model or a workshop. Uh there's a lot of tutoring that's going on especially during rises. Um we actually also have um the ability to now um have a math intervention air quotes uh teacher. And so we've got a section of time during our bell schedule titled rises. And that's a in between our first block of the day and our second block of the day where students travel goes. You want to explain what rises is? >> It's basically like a study hall. Um, but you can work directly with the teacher like, um, I go in a lot for AP Chem because that is a very difficult AP class. But, um, the
216teacher, Mr. Picacho, he's great. He goes around to every table helping each student on a few problems, going to the next student, coming back to the other student. It's it's just great. I love my rises time. >> It's also a time where you can meet with clubs and other student organizations, and I find that's really important as well since a lot of people can't meet after school. And speaking of clubs, our National Honors Society members sitting here help provide some of the additional support to students. You mentioned workshopping happening in the classroom, but we found a lot of a lot of success last year with events for our 9th and 10th grade students where National Honor Society kids host. We did a popping up for bees are better, Coco and Climb. And so we get
217a great number of students that will come and stay after school for these. Sometimes they're weekly events. Um, and you folks are tutoring every Wednesday after school for 9th or tth grade students that may need some extra support. >> Uh, we pull students that are struggling in their math class and they meet with a math interventionist uh or a teacher that's available during rises that's in the math department. Uh, she doesn't have a rises group, but so she pulls in students that are struggling on math and works with them in particular from algebra one all the way up to pre-cal or all the way up to calc. Um, let's see. uh uh our students are using all the IABS and I think we heard that enough today, right? So um to but they're regularly assessing
218using that information to to redirect their instruction to ensure that the uh what they're teaching is aligned to the to the assessments that they're taking uh in the spring. And so our instruction is aligned with what how they're going to be assessed or what they're going to be assessed on in the spring only to benefit the kiddos. uh and obviously it's all targeted to try to get to that target index of 75% for all students both with uh students of high needs and students without all students chronic absenteeism. >> Yeah. So I can speak to that. I know that Mrs. Earrenson mentioned earlier powers school analytics was which um Connor Murphy one of our IT specialists brought this into the district. It is a fantastic tool that um we didn't have access to until maybe
219mid year last year. But what that can provide me with is a really detailed look at what students are chronically absent, what students are trending to be chronic. And as Bridget mentioned, it really helps with those proactive conversations with kids. We can look at trends. I just had a meeting this morning with the student and her parent because they know they get seasonal depression and that this is a time of year that they're going to miss school more often. So to talk about some of the strategies that we can put in place, um we've started, we adapted a program the middle school was using where the um social worker, the administrator and school nurse are working together uh weekly to look at the students who are absent and to talk about the interventions that we
220can put in place. Now sometimes kids are going to be absent. Families take vacations. We go on college visits. People get sick. So, it's trying to also be delicate with these conversations so that we're not making families feel um disengaged with the school or um you know, we don't want any we don't want a 10th grade student to feel bad if her family is taking her on vacation, right? We want to work with the parents on that um to maybe try to encourage those vacations to happen on some of the long weekends that are built into the calendar. Right. >> Next one. Okay. All right. So, we talked about surveys here. Go back one. So you said I think Melissa you said is this the only survey? So the high school All right. So the
221high school has three. Okay. Don't move Christine. The first one is the districtwide uh climate survey that gets issued in the spring. Okay. We are also partnered with uh uh leader and me program which are a leadership development program and they uh ask us to conduct a survey titled an MRA and that was to be conducted in the fall and it collects data for current students, current parents and current staff um asking the same climate questions. Okay. So, literally two surveys asking the same exact questions. And then a third survey uh was asked for us to be uh to be done uh through NEASK. Uh we have our collaborative conference visit. It's our accreditation uh process that's going to happen in April and we conduct a survey around uh that they create um we send
222out the link they provide us the data when we reach a certain number of part participants on that survey. Um, and we are not there yet in terms of many categories. So, we keep trying to send that out. So, we issue three surveys. What I decided to share and I thought it was most relevant was in the most timely was the MRA data that we issued in the fall of this year, which presents to you percentages for kids that are in our building right now, not just spring. and we developed our goals and our focus areas around um you know what we can do now to address some of the areas that our students gave us feedback on where we need to improve or where they feel disconnected. Uh so it's the kids in our
223building now the parents that are supporting them and the teachers that we have in terms of participation numbers before we go any further. Um I was able to knowing that this was a how many participated I looked up my data while we were here or I was sitting over there. uh 44 families are represented in this data. 37 staff members or faculty members are represented in this data and 179 students are represented in this data. Um because you guys took care of this during like a rises block I do it now sort of thing. Um so a lot of students were able to complete this. So this is current data for our kiddos right now. So these are areas of celebration, >> right? And I have about a 45m minute presentation to share with you
224on this, but I'm going to give the reduced version um because you have to be in school tomorrow morning. [laughter] >> So do we, right? Yeah. Um, so I I do want to quickly thank I'm sure that we still have many of our public audience listening at this hour, but we've got a really wonderful climate committee at the high school that's made up of parents that have been coming to these meetings and high school students and a teacher and myself as the school climate specialist. Um, they actually asked the question at our last meeting, can we look at every single question that every parent, kid, and staff member were asked when they took the survey? And so we were diving on Friday at our meeting. We were looking through all of the individual questions. So
225you know, Dr. Drito, if you'd like us to share, we certainly can provide the MRA to the board of education. So the we are not going to talk about every area. We're just going to talk about um four for areas for celebration and a couple for areas for growth. So 82% of our staff provide support to each student and their unique needs as well as develop necessary skills to pursue student potential. Um oh another part of this is some of the questions are only asked of students, some are only asked of parents, some are only asked of staff and then some are a combination of all three. And so the actual survey questions do indicate who is asked what question, right? Um but the MRA leader and me has a formula that um takes a
226series of questions um and then puts it into these categories. So supportive environment we had 82% of respondents agreed with that. Um student leadership 80% believe that students take responsibility for their actions. Um we don't we can't show you what our data was last year. This is the first time we've given the MRA. So, we don't have a comparison now, but we will give this again in the spring so we can share that data with you. Um, so we can hopefully share with you our growth. Our climate committee is developing action plans to get these numbers to go even higher. Um, 74% agree the staff provides a caring and understanding environment for our students at school. We're really hopeful that number is going to shoot up. We're thinking since it was given in the fall,
227maybe some of our ninth graders just didn't know that there's a caring environment yet. um it was given so early in the school year and um 85% of our staff feel that their work is meaningful and valued by building administration. >> I'll take that. >> Next one. >> All right. So these are some areas where we'd like to um improve and again our climate committee is is working to target these areas. Um this it's really be a beautiful thing. This is why I want to talk about it for so long because it's beautiful to have these students in high school working with adults who aren't their parents and to see them interact and talk with each other about how to improve our school community. It's my favorite meeting. I love attending this and being a
228part of it and um I just sort of sit back and facilitate and the the kids really take the lead. Um so we had 71% of our teachers and staff in um agree that instruction can positively impact student success. So some actions that we're taking to really improve this um are those professional learning communities, the grade level teams where we're looking at individual student data um trying to take a deep dive into formative assessments. Those are the assessments not like the big end of unit tests but the small checkpoints that are happening in each lesson, right? to make sure that we're measuring and monitoring student growth and making sure that students really understand what they're supposed to learn in each lesson. And so Dr. Drito has been working with our instructional facilitators um through a
229book study called Leaders of Their Own Learning where we we really want to ensure that our students know what they're supposed to learn each class um what the measure of success will look like and um you know set their goals for themselves so that they know that they're going to be successful. 73% of our students said they have high trusted rel high trusted relationships with at least one person in the building. Um I do want to put a disclaimer out there. The question did say teacher and so when our students in the climate committee were looking at the questions that went to this it kept saying teacher teacher teacher and um the students in the meeting said Mrs. Chrysler, our library media para educator, is my is my trusted adult. And so I didn't I
230answered no because she's not a classroom teacher. And we have no and and I'm thrilled. If you ask any student, they'd probably tell you Mrs. Chrysler is their trusted adult. Um but we've got other students that when maybe the custodian is their is their trusted adult in the building or someone who's on the calf staff. It doesn't mean that they don't have strong relationships with their teachers, but you know, we all find that one person that we can connect with in a school and um they the students on the committee want to give feedback to the leader and me, which is this major organization that they need to change this question, right? And and we agree with them. >> Something else that we did there was so we got the students perspective of whether or
231not they had an an adult they connected to, but we also got our staff's perspective. So during a faculty meeting um I put up um every single student name in our uh in our school and asked our staff members to put a dot next to the students name if they felt they had a good connection with a student. And we were able to identify some students that had few dots, maybe no dots. And those children were were talked about during grade level team meetings on the on a weekly basis about what we're doing to make that connection to build that connection with those students that maybe didn't identify that they had one and we didn't identify that we connected with those kiddos either. So we were able to uh pull that data point in as
232well. >> And sorry, >> we're we're we're both parents and we call them our kids. We love these kids. And so for us to think about like if our if our own kids went to school and didn't have a trusted adult, you know, while this number is is high, it it is where our work has to happen. >> 27% of the student population that feels that they don't. So >> um and and lastly, 74% of our staff support students in goal setting and achieving their goals. Um I mentioned this earlier, we're working on this with Dr. Drito for our leaders [clears throat] of their own learning. Um, in addition to that, we have um we do ontrack conferences with students three times a year. This is another process we learned through our partnership with the
233RISE network. Do either of you want to talk about I I busted in on your last one when you were having it with Mr. Eert. Do you want to explain a little bit about what it is? >> I mean, yeah. When I met with Mr. Eert, he kind of asked me questions about myself. Um, asked about how my year was going so far. I was in the beginning of the year, so I didn't have much to talk about, but um yeah, just how academics are going, how I'm fitting in with all um my extracurriculars and just learning about myself, learning about he was learning about me um and what I enjoy to do, which I found really I found I found it really um nice to hear that they actually care about what we enjoy
234to do outside of school. >> I can't tell you how cool it is to hear the thing. I see the kids in class and they're doing XYZ, but hearing one-on-one talking with individual kiddos and learning what they're like out of the building. I don't I didn't get that opportunity and nobody wants to share that with the principal. So, this was a really cool opportunity where it was, you know, circle of trust and it's just her and I and we're talking through what our life goals are and it's just cool. That was a very, very cool opportunity. >> And in those on track conferences, so every single student in the building has one three times a year, we ask that question. Do you have a trusted adult in the building? And would you be willing to
235share who that trusted adult is? And so that's why I I am fairly certain that number is higher because we look back at that data to say, is there any student that is saying no one? And it it's been very low, [laughter] like maybe three students that have said that >> and then we find them and we make them. >> We're almost there. We're almost there. We're almost there. >> Okay. Um, our last few 75% of our students uh are provided with schoolwide and classroom opportunities that include them in decision- makingaking. This became one of our big goals last year when we partnered with the leader and me organization. And we are really trying to um embed student leadership throughout our throughout our school, not just from student council or captains um but just even
236in this climate committee, right? having student leaders that might not have served in that traditional role historically. Um so Mr. Eert meets with our student leadership committee. Um I jump in on that when I can, but they provide input on school school um protocols, classroom practices, school culture initiatives. Um so we're going to continue with that and we hope to see that grow um as a result of our partnership with Leader and Me. And lastly, um 74% of our school includes families in their child's learning through inclusive opportunities, communication, um and support for learning at home. So this is our um our building goal. It's one of our wigs um where we want to ensure that we've got weekly communication happening. A lot of teachers have embraced a process where they have students leave this
237communication. So u Mr. Ricky, for instance, our tech ed teacher, on um many Fridays, I think he does it every other Friday when he meets with the students, he has the the student send home a communication to the parent with maybe a screenshot of work that they were doing in his tech class. And the student writes, "Dear mom and dad, this is or parent or guardian, this is what I was doing in class today. Let me tell you all about it." And they copy Mr. Ricky on the email and then Mr. Ricky can respond back and forth with the parent. But what's really fun is when he shares with me how parents are responding. And so if you're a high school kid and you're getting home at 10:30 p.m. from a board of education meeting
238and your parent asks you how your day was, um you may just say fine or it was okay. But but now you're getting a more indepth look at what was happening in the classroom. And those of you that maybe have teenagers or have had teenagers, you know that that could sometimes be a struggle. And so now you get to really see that work. Uh we did want to highlight that last year's data around this time or I think in the fall of last year we presented that our family communication goal or uh family communication data was around 55% uh that parents were satisfied with our communication. That's up to 74% which is great and we're still not there yet but it still needs to be a goal. We got to get closer to closer closest
239we can to 100%. >> And in our grade level meetings we do a check-in. We're holding each other accountable for that. And so tomorrow I have my 9th grade team meeting, we were at 78% of parent communication. Last week when we met, so we're hoping that this week we're going to be at least at 82%. And this is of that positive communication. Um we didn't want to rush the goal because we wanted it to be authentic and and really meaningful be able to have some some solid data. >> And I hope you all are enjoying our newsletter, right? The principles. All right, there we go. There one page. one page r. >> All [laughter] right. >> Uh, is that it? >> I think this was [clears throat] >> Yeah, we're all gonna fall over. [laughter]
240>> So, we tried to give you the abbreviated version, but still be as comprehensive as possible. So, if you, you know, please don't hesitate to ask us questions or if there's more data that you'd like. Um, and we're trying. We're trying. >> Thank you. [applause] I wanted two notes to our new board members and our new uh high school representatives. I promise that for me >> I know they don't >> these are not normally >> this is not normally >> maybe one is the school year and this will be it. Sean, I'm going to start with you this time with a few questions. >> Okay. Um thank you very much. Very much appreciated in your expedited fashion. Um, yeah, the good news is, you know, I love when we hear about the the great student,
241you know, teacher relationships. Seems like that's good. The students I like how are feeling supported in their goals, you know, making their goals. Um, good. The family engagement as you were just talking about seems like communication's getting good or better. The physical fitness was a huge improvement. So, all those are really good news. The bad news is that I see is that the all the key academic, you know, indicators all took a huge decrease or took a big decrease and we're talking our our English, our language arts, our math and our science all took a huge dip. So, um I'm trying to understand in my head like what does that mean? So, it's like a communications everything's good but like our you know our school is is is not good. So, I'm trying to understand
242you know what does that mean? Where is it? Is the bar not being set? Because if they're if they're feeling good about reaching their goals, but they're still going down, what I'm So, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it, but I just I just know it's that's not good, >> right? So, so um so again, a lot of good things to celebrate, but to me, those are the most important things. And I know that's what you mentioned. that is what we're here to that you're that you're mostly pressing on. But to me, that's a big, you know, that's that stinks. >> You're right, [clears throat] Sean. You're absolutely right. That's why it's the major target area for >> I'm definitely glad to hear. I definitely glad to hear. Uh, so I I
243would uh uh certainly support Sean's comments obviously that every every everybody whether they're a parent or not, they want their school community to be ultimately successful and so I'm glad to see that you've identified that and I look forward to hearing the strategies that we're going to be implementing to get there. Um, I want to go back to uh family communication. Obviously, it's been a theme for [clears throat] me in every single school. Um, it's something I see certainly at the state capital. There is a real focus on uh the chronic ab absenteeism, the lack of uh parental involvement sadly in in some cases. So, it's going to continue to be a theme for me uh throughout my tenure on this board. Um, and so I'm curious, the 55% last year, it's great that you're
244up to 74, but what do you think what do you think is driving uh that uh 55%? I mean, if you just had to give me I'm not I'm not in I'm a straight shooter. So, just give me the top three. What do you think the top three things are? >> So, I'll give you I'll I'll definitely give you the one that I heard the most. My kids in high school. >> It's time for independence. And so, their feedback, parent feedback is less and less and less. And I think that's kind of the pattern you've seen with the number of participations from parents in doing the surveys. It's 91 to 50 down to 44. and just the participation of parents at home is in decreasing and I think it's because of their push for their
245child to be more independent. [clears throat] That's what I'm hearing. You know, not saying that's the the number one variable. Absolutely not. But I think that's a factor that we have to consider. I think that's the first item, you know, for one idea. You have another one? >> Well, we through parent square we can track data on communications. So while um feedback from families is certain certainly helpful to indicate their their perspective on [clears throat] receiving this communication, we can we get weekly updates emailed to us from parent square giving us information about communication that's going home. So it I we do know we've got data to support that there is frequent communication that is being sent home. Um, so it does make us wonder is is parent square maybe not always the best method,
246right? >> So in that data, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt you in that data sharing. So in other words, can you tell if a parent hasn't opened? >> Yes, that's where I was at. Okay. >> So I can when I send out I'll use my newsletter as an example. I'll send out the newsletter and I'll get back that 600 people were uh notified and that includes students, staff, parents, board of ed members, um and anyone else that's on that list of high school law, right? Um 600 plus notified. That means they've received the email or received the posting. If they click it, then I get another indication that it's been opened. All right? And then I can see how many minutes they were on that item. That data is not strong with a click
247or time. >> Not everybody's notified whether you click into that email. And I'm guilty of it myself when I review to make sure I didn't screw up on the newsletter. I'll look at it, but I won't click into it. I'll just see the email and I'll look at the newsletter. I'll zoom in through it in my email. Unless I click it, doesn't count. >> Yeah. I I I think, you know, I I'm not going to bog down the meeting tonight, but I certainly in a subsequent board of ed meeting, I uh hope we can have this as an agenda item because I think it is critical. Um and I won't belabor the point here, but I really hope we'll continue to have these conversations of why parent involvement is the best thing we can have
248to improve everything all around. I'm a big believer in it and I hope we can figure out strategies um to get it early. So, >> thank you. >> Yes, thank you. Um, I'm gonna be brief again. I love the bees are better. We're all moving in the same direction together because there's a lot of like opportunities for differentiation, but when you're going together, I love that to achieve the goal as a class. Um, I love your ninth grade mentor program. I think you guys have mentioned that in the past. Um, I'm just really big on relationships as you know. Um, prizes sounds great. The flexibility to engage in the things that you need to engage in, but having access to your teacher so you can get extra help because like as a student going home
249and you look at your homework and you're like, I I got no idea. And then you're stuck and your parent can't help you because you're in high school and the stuff that you're looking at your parent forgot how to do. Um, most likely that's what my older sister said. Um, and I really love how you guys went around and put dots uh the the sta the teachers put dots on the students that they've connected with and you were able to identify the students that didn't have a connection. >> It was all staff. We had calf staff. >> Yes, >> we did custodial staffs, SRO came up >> because we talk a lot on board of ed about how the greatest indicator of future student success is the teacher. And so even if that's a staff
250member, if it's a custodian, cafeteria person, whoever it is. So having those connections are going to be like a grounding point for like do I feel seen? Do I feel known? And then like then I can actually have the opportunity to learn because if I don't have that, then what do I have? So that's cool. So thank you. I'm looking forward to academics improving and you know, we're seeing everything that you guys are doing. So really believe in you and excited to see what the future holds and thank you. Um, yeah, I'm going to echo a lot of that. I do love that sticker thing. That's one of the benefits of having a small school that you don't get >> other places. And it's really awesome to hear. It's important for our kids. Um, and
251I love that that mentoring program and the bees are better. I was here last year on the other side of the table hearing about it, so I remember it. Um, and I loved it then, I love it now. Um, and it is very curious why when we have such a cool program that's working so well, why all of our indexes are down and that's [snorts] do you have like any hints? >> So, >> like did something? >> Go ahead. What are you going to say? >> We have a lot of students that don't find value in the SAT, >> right? And so while we have um you know ESPback and I ready and you're you're in elementary school and middle school, you're excited to take all these assessments, we when you're in 11th grade, you
252often know your trajectory and you know if you want to, you know, be a full-time employee at Eddie Eddie's Auto Body right when you graduate or if you want to try to get into, you know, Yale and Clemson. And and so when you're sitting down to take that SAT assessment, there are many times where we our scores may plummet because we have a student that just right fills in a couple bubbles, right? They just come to school and they take it because they have they have no interest. And we've been really trying to hype up. We did last year, I mean, our our 11th grade team did a breakfast cereal bar for all of the um 11th remember the 11th grade students to try to hype them up and make it more important. Um but
253I I think one of the struggles that we face in in our community is we do have a lot of students that that don't have interest in college and there's nothing there is we support them fully like you don't have to have that interest but if it if the interest isn't there um we've we have found some challenges with trying to um push students to really try their best on those assessments when they don't see it as being something valuable for their future. >> And I think the data supports that as well. We've got a data point where you've got a decrease in the number of students that are enrolling in a two-year and four-year college and you also have a decrease in the student performance on SATs. And that's a direct correlation in my
254brain. If you're not going to college, then I mean I care as much as about SATs. Not to say >> like our our AP scores are fant are fantastic. So when you look at students that are enrolling in AP classes and you know that's generally your population that wants to have post-secary education, we've got really great scores on AP assessments. And so um never would we want to remove we would never give you data where we're removing a population of students because we're saying they're not they're not interested. We're giving you all the data, right? So we're not going to take a pool of kids out because they just maybe didn't try their best like that. So, is the SAT the only test you have for these indexes? >> SAT and NGSS, >> right? >>
255Correct. >> Yeah. I I hear what you're saying and I understand it. >> It doesn't mean it's not our goal. >> Been the same challenge. Last year we had that >> dip. So, there's got to be something else. >> And it makes sense. I mean, if you if you're >> The other piece of it is >> like I'm worried and you know, I'm wondering we had the test fatigue theory. We had >> you know the other So, I was just curious if there was something Fatigue is a good especially for 11th grade. >> Um the other piece of it is we've got 50 I think it was 56 test takers. Last year we had 64 and so the denominator changes so the impact on the percentage is greater for sure. >> So that could be
256three kids you know >> and the small class the small size is definitely going to swing things. >> Yeah. >> We are comparing apples to oranges. So in this grade level we do have a a very high number of students the students that were our current seniors that are entering planning to enter the workforce. So it is just it there's always going to be that variable. >> True. >> Good question. >> Um so the you don't get the data. You don't have we don't have data for the the high needs kids who because there's 20 or less. Right. >> Correct. >> Do you get that data and it's just not public? But nobody gets that data. We don't I think the secure sites side can access that data. I don't have access to the secure
257site. I and I I haven't been able to dive into that as much. I don't know. Is that a Wendy? Is that a question you can answer? Do you have access to that? >> I do have access to that, but I can't answer that right now. >> All right. So, that's something that we can work together on. >> Yeah. because I I would at least want to make sure that you have that data. Whether you can share it with everybody else or not, that's a whole different story. But >> we can look at individual student scores. So we right we can get that information. Yeah. So we but we may not necessarily know if that student fit into the high needs, but we do know every individual student score. >> And so that's exactly how
258I received uh uh provided you with the um students with special needs percentage at the bottom. Um Dr. Drito and I went into college board and we were looking at you know what >> up all the kids and so on and so forth. Yes. So good point. Yes. >> You also know you're multilingual learners. >> Yes. We know that. >> Absolutely. >> Um the that six-year graduation rate dip um is that that same 20kid cohort? >> Correct. >> So two kids one way or another. Okay. Um and then the post secondary do we have data or even a way to so I work at a college and we [clears throat] have all you know all kinds of surveys that go out to have data as to what kids are doing a year after school you
259know a couple years do we have that do we have access because you know this the rate of kids going to two year four year schools great um but you know do we have data as to how many entered the you know into a a workforce or a military or a trade that they >> we do have that data when they leave us. We don't have that data one year out. >> Sure. >> If they stayed in college, if they enrolled in wanted to go to a job and then enrolled into the military, >> we don't have that data. >> Correct. >> But you have how many? So we only see the 66% to the schools. But you >> we have the data of the people that are enrolling in trade schools, in military, and
260in job force. out of those five big buckets or those big five avenues, we have all that data. Yes. >> I'd be curious what that percentage is, too. >> We're happy to provide that. Yep. >> Um, and the, you know, high school time for independence thing. There's some validity to that. Again, working at a college, you know, you can't have a parent checking in on their kids' grades at that level. Um, but that's a very different conversation at 9th grade than 12th grade. So, do we have an indication as to what the parent engagement is >> by grade level? It's definitely more involved than ninth grade. It's definitely more involved than every parent on the climate committee has a ninth grader at least, right? Because that's just the the nature. They do want to be
261more involved in nth grade. We see at parent teacher conferences, at open house, significantly more nth grade families than our upper classmen. >> We collect that data, too. The the number of parents that show and sign up for [cough] the appointments and come to open house. >> Yeah. And it we do want them engaged. Absolutely. That's definitely a big thing. But checking in on their grades at 12th grade is a different conversation than checking in on their grades at n. >> That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much for this, >> Terry. Um I have a lot of the same concerns that everybody has already spoken about, so I'm not going to reiterate it. Um, you know, just seeing that the looking at one of the charts that with the district level trend being down
262year-over-year, that's a concern. >> Um, but one point of clarification I was just hoping you could help with. So on that on those data points if a data point isn't produced because of the low numbers is the calculation based on what is available or is it like how does that impact the overall score? That's what I need to understand. >> Those kids, those high needs kids are included in the all student score. They're just not pulled out to look at separately because that could be a violation of their rights because you might be able to say, "Oh, there's only three of them. I know who they are." >> Yeah. >> So, we protect those rights by only including all students. So, when it says all students, all of those groups are in there. >> So,
263they are included somewhere, just not. >> Correct. >> That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted to know. >> Um, in terms of the uh, you know, the other programs, I I the bees are better. I love that. That is just wonderful. Um, and I love the rises program because it's really important for leaders to connect with the students to find out what their likes and dislikes are and because when you touch reach out to an individual student that stays with them that's I I remember my administrators in high school doing that with me and to this day I will never forget that because it meant that they cared. So kudos for that, >> Dan. Um, yeah, I'm just gonna reflect. It seems like you've got a board here who's pretty much in favor of
264relationship building and that like one person out of the family. So hopefully we'll have to talk more about that. Um, I'm not going to reiterate anything. I'm just going to say ditto. Um, one concrete question. Um, what is the threshold for chronic absenteeism? Where you guys start looking more closely at it or intervene. So when a student hits below 90% of the days that have h that they've been in school. >> Gotcha. Okay. So that Yeah. >> So it fluctuates, right? I will look at a student and they'll be at like 89.86% and I'll call them and be like come to come to school tomorrow. [laughter] If you come tomorrow, you're not chronically absent. Like please come to school. So it does fluctuate. It goes up and down. Um but it's that 90%. >> Totally
265just curious. And last thing, I do appreciate you guys taking a close look at the data with the performance scores and kind of hypothesizing like the interactions and like what's predicting stuff. Um I I like some of the questions about like maybe breaking it down by pathway to see um because we're basically saying that the pathway might predict the SAT scores be associated with it and then we can maybe get a closer look at what's actually going on for the kids where that is an important part of their story. But yeah, just a comment of thought. I like data. I appreciate the way you guys looked at it. >> Thank you, >> Sarah. far away. >> They're like, "Let us go to bed. We our alarm's going off at 5:00 a.m." >> Um, yeah. I
266think you guys are doing a great job. Um, I really appreciate all that you do with reaching out to us and trying to get us into like the school spirit and wanting to get better and wanting to be academically driven. Um, but yeah, I appreciate all that you guys do. >> Yeah. Um my experience in this school like the high school particularly is the best out of all the schools that I've been in. Um, ever since, sorry. [laughter] Um, ever since freshman year, it's just like doors were opened for me. Like, um, sophomore year is when I started taking AP classes. And I am very glad for that opportunity because if you get a three or above, most colleges accept those credits and then you're don't have to pay as much for college. And I
267that's just a great opportunity. And I just love the school environment. And >> it's fantastic to hear. >> Thanks. I'll be delirious and that's why they're saying [laughter] no I'm just kidding. >> Thank you. >> They're great kids. They're great kids. Thank you. >> Thank you. I appreciate [applause] it. >> We are going to move on to item four. I tell you, you only got a few more minutes. It won't take that long. >> Started. >> We can blaze through the rest of this agenda. >> Okay. So, >> we wanted to share a little bit about the recent happenings at our school. So, this past month, our drama club, as you all know, put on an excellent rendition of Little Women. Um, the play, which was held on three nights, was heartwarming, fun. Um, the
268class of 2026 recently, uh, ran a trivia night fundraiser on December 3rd. Um, class adviser, Mr. Oro, organized a set of questions, and we had a lot of groups come out, um, and they had to work together to figure out the answer to the question. Um, we had a great turnout and we raised a lot of money for our senior trip. Um, we also wanted to give a big congratulations to our student of the month nominees, uh, Jaden, Matthew, Carly, Shane, and Michael. Uh, these students have demonstrated a positive attitude, consistent effort, and commitment to our school community. And a special congratulations to Carly Cummings for receiving the student of the month recognition. >> Um, feature Fridays is something uh, newer at our high school. Um, so they are so teachers and students can nominate
269another teacher or student or staff member to get a shout out for their amazing work and attitude every Friday. Um, last week's recipients were junior Olivia Scooby and freshman Brian. I also wanted to highlight some things happening in specific classes. So specifically in Mr. Bell's physics physics classes, they recently participated in an egg drop egg drop contest. Students were tasked with creating a contra a contraption that would protect an egg draft from a certain height. Groups work together enhancing problem solving abilities and were very successful in the process. Oh, again um and then this past month we had four student athletes sign their letter national letters of intent. Um, we wanted to congratulate Colobby Bryant who was signing for baseball to Marramac University, Bones Baker, who signed for track to Fitsburg State University, Faith Kalis,
270who signed for softball to Uain Farmington, and Lily Janie who also signed for softball to St. John's University. Uh, we are very proud of our student athletes, and we cannot wait to see all that they accomplished in their college careers. And this past Sunday, the debate club took a field trip to Yale University for a debate tournament. And uh senior Arlo Muso even placed second place. >> On November 21st, u middle and high school student leaders represented Hill Ray at the CASCAC women in leadership conference held at the TPC River Highlands in Cromwell. Students were able to hear from accomplished female leaders and learned the importance of leading with a purpose. Um, and our last note is every year, at least since I've been in the high school, we've had this event called the 10
271days of kindness. Um, so basically we hold this two week long event and clubs can sign up for a day to run a kindness activity to just spread schoolwide positivity. Um and then for example tomorrow um I'm FFA secretary and we are hosting a beaded necklace rock paper scissors tournament and everyone will be able to participate. [snorts] >> Anyone have any questions for our high school reps? >> Congratulations. >> Absolutely. >> Just wanted to say thank you so much for being here. Like we all really look forward to your updates. Um the play was like absolutely amazing and also the Halloween walk. Um I got very scared when Sean [clears throat] we were walking together and my kids were far ahead so one of the high school students took it upon himself to jump out
272at Shawn and I and [laughter] when the kids weren't there and like I screamed so loud. Um and the chorus concert was great afterward as well. So thank you so much for everything that you do and put on for the community because we enjoy it. Thank you very much. >> Thanks for hanging in there. >> You're almost at your curfew, right, for driving [laughter] tomorrow. >> Thanks. >> Take the cookies. >> Agenda [clears throat] item five is the audience of citizens. The audience of citizens provides an opportunity for East Adam residents to briefly and respectfully share their thoughts, concerns, and questions with the board of education. Any written comments and materials must be submitted to the board chair and may be distributed at a later time. The chair reserves the right to discontinue public comment
273at any point if the remarks include specific or personally identifiable references to board employees and/or students. This portion of the meeting does not involve discussion. All questions will receive a timely response from the board chair or superintendent. Is there any audience members? >> Adam, I'm also the chairman of the board of finance. Um, and I had shared a memo with the board of ed. So, I just wanted to read it sort of into the record and so that anyone watching um could u, you know, be aware of the memo that the board of finance shared with the board of education. So, it's in reference to the budget for the upcoming year. I know you guys are getting ready to start um your planning in January or I would have come to the January meeting not
274kept you a little bit 2 minutes later, but um so the board of finance is pleased to present the bud budget guidance for fiscal year 2627. We are initiating the annual budget development process with the expectation of adhering to the normal schedule and time frame outlined in the town's budget policy. This memorandum provides key details on timing, submission requirements, and guiding principles to ensure a collaborative and fiscally responsible process. The fiscal year 2627 budget process includes a schedule of sessions to review each department, board, and commission's budget requests with designated time slots. Meeting with all interested parties early in the process will provide ample opportunity for discussion and collaboration, allowing us to evaluate the town's priorities for both operating and capital budgets. The Board of Finance has requested preliminary 5-year long-range capital budgets from each
275department, board, and commission due by early January. Department budget requests for town operations and capital budgets, as well as the board of education's operating budgets are due late January to be entered into clear gov. Um, this is the second year of the state's bianium budget, which provides greater certainty regarding the state's revenue stream expected to remain flat. >> [snorts] >> Additionally, the town's grand list continues to show stagnant growth, meaning any budget increases will likely require corresponding tax increases. As such, we're asking all town departments and the board of education to refrain from initiating new programs or initiatives that have a cost impact. We strongly encourage a thorough review of existing contracts and contracted services to identify potential cost savings. The town has not identified any new revenues sources at this time. Um the board
276of finance is not prepared to consider any increase to next year's budget beyond this year's approved amount. Our ongoing goal is to maintain a reasonable mill rate while delivering quality services within a framework of fiscal responsibility. All departments, boards, and commissions are encouraged to continue seeking opportunities to enhance program delivery, operational effectiveness, and efficiency. In doing so, please identify potential cost savings that will allow you to focus limited resources on the town's core services. We also encourage active participation in planning larger capital projects and requests as part of our five-year capital improvement plan. As part of the fiscal 2627 budget process, we encourage you to highlight key elements of your budget with a focus on programmatic and operational changes. Please be prepared to discuss your department, board, or commission's priorities and the decision-making process behind
277your budget with the board of finance. By working collaboratively, we can develop a responsible budget that meets the town's service needs without placing an undue burden on taxpayers. As in previous years, the board will meet with the department's boards and commissions between January and April to review analy and analyze submitted budgets. Our goal is to balance the needs of all areas of the town and present a propo uh a and present a proposed budget at a public hearing in April following public uh feedback and a final budget proposal be submitted at town meeting sent to referendum. The fiscical year 2627 operating budget will build on the success of prior budgets, support our commitment to fiscal stability, and ensured continued delivery of essential services to our taxpayers. soon. Thank you. And uh feel free to email
278the board of finance if you have any questions. [laughter] >> Audience members, >> moving right along. Number six is report of the superintendent of schools. >> Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I want to thank my administrative team. That was outstanding. You can see the amount of work that they and their staff is doing at the school level. um might be a small group but a mighty group. Um there was a lot of information to digest. All of it is being done collaboratively. Um we're focused on getting better by elevating learning and I want to recognize their efforts and all the efforts of my colleagues. So thank you. I am super proud of your reflective practice. I have to do a special shout out for the elementary school school of distinction. We really celebrated last
279year got that banner and you all like rose even beyond recognition from last year. IS DEFINITELY [applause] a designation that reflects collective dedication, expertise, and unwavering commitment from our entire staff and really from the families who support what we do because we're here to serve children and families. This honor is more than an award. It is a testament to the daily efforts of the teachers, support professionals, our administration, all who contribute to creating an environment where students can thrive. So, congratulations. I want to just take a moment to um talk about the development of our strategic plan. We continue to focus on articulating that vision of the East Hatam learner. The administrators continue to work with their staff. Just yesterday, they all worked with the non-certified staff and they engaged in the process of the
280next steps. Um the board of ed also started that um process this week and we are having a districtwide um opportunity to together on a day that kids don't come to school. I think I want to say January 20th. So, everyone's really committed. Um, and the energy is very positive and so, you know, thank you for for everything. It's my little short. >> Thank you. We're moving. Um, >> I have a question for the superintendent for her report. >> Yes. >> Great. Thanks. So, uh, uh, just piggybacking off of, um, uh, the chair of the board of finance presentation just now, we did get that via email, uh, I think two days ago. When I received it, I did reach out to the superintendent asking a very specific question. And that question, I haven't got
281a written response, so I would like to ask you now. Um did we ask when we had the admin [clears throat] uh submitting uh budgets to present a 5% or any other reduction option? Did you give any instruction for that process? I believe that chair spoke to you about that and the answer was no. >> No, I didn't get that answer. What I got was my additional request was understanding a future formatting. She did respond to that telling me that uh we were going to try and work on putting three years so I could see actuals for three years and then the actual uh budget but I did not have an answer to the my question about budget options. So when you uh requested budget uh input from your administrators there was no direction given
282for flat funding or presenting any reduction options. So that's not a part of my report today and we're going to talk about that at the business and planning meeting next week. >> Okay. So okay, I'll I'll accept that answer now, but I would think in the future this is a you know this is our board of finance chair was just here with that directive. I did put it in writing. You could have responded to me. I didn't get a response. So that's why I'm asking you today, but I'll I'll look forward to seeing that uh in the budget and planning process and I will be uh following that pretty. >> Thank you. >> The memo that was sent by the board of finance also was sent because they're um it's hard every year. I think
283that's why they're trying to jump the gun on getting like the tri board meeting earlier is our school budget process is a basically almost through. It's not through with it. It's a preliminary numbers are here now and then that then you start talking business planning next week. We're not going to really hit on it until January, but you're going to get there pretty soon. >> Are there any additional questions? >> Not a question, but um we've talked about a lot of events that happened and they are all awesome. I did go to the play, too. It was really good. Um, last night there was a band concert that was the middle school and the high school and it was so good and I just wanted to make sure that they got that that kudos that
284that was really awesome. It was very well planned very and the kids were great and it just was really well done. >> Thank you. >> Uh, item number seven is action on the minutes. I am looking for a motion to approve the special meeting minutes of November 19th, 2025. So move. Do I have a second? >> Uh, any discussion? >> So, in that special meeting, there was probably a good five minutes or more conversation regarding understanding if there was a teacher union survey. Um, that's not even mentioned in the in the meeting minutes. I would like the minutes to reflect that I did ask that question and I would offer to put forward just a quick statement saying that I as a member asked about that teacher uh survey. Um and I hope that you
285would be amendable to adding that to the minutes because I have a correction too. >> So I would I would ask that that you add that to whatever correction you're considering. >> Okay. a year of friction. >> Actually, Madam Secretary, can you write that down? >> Thank you so much. >> I'm [laughter] halfway through. >> Um, anyone else have any corrections? >> I have a correction for you. Under number two, my name is spelled wrong. K. >> Oh, I see it. Uh, yeah, but it's everywhere. >> Five times. Copy and paste. >> Do I have a motion for the minutes as corrected by the two? >> We have to wait until we have verbiage for the >> No, we'll add in Melissa's and we'll No, we'll add it and add my corrections. >> Okay. I
286just was wondering if we needed to have verbiage for Melissa's addition before we approved it. Okay. Thank you, Sean. I have a second. >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> I oppose extensions. Item eight is old business. We have none. Number [laughter] nine, new business is uh point a discussion and possible action on the 2026 board of education regular meeting schedule which is a couple pages in says a 2026 scheduled meeting. So we did every the second Wednesday of the month I think except January 21st is the 3. Do I have a motion to accept the 2026 board of education regular meeting schedule? >> So moved. >> Second. All those in favor session. Motion carries. Item 9B is the acceptance of the consent agenda. Let me read it. Number one through four. One is
287the discipline report. Two is the enrollment report. Three is the October and November warrants. Four is the resignation of Melissa Weaver Benzy School Monitor November 28th, 2025. I have a motion to accept the consent agenda. >> So, do I have a second? >> Second. >> All those in discussion. >> I have I have I have questions. >> Okay, great. Thanks. On item number three on the October and November warrants, I have a question on page uh 19. Uh I see a uh item 53020 under legal services for $200,000. And then I see legal services again uh later on on page 19 uh the second half of 19. Is this a duplicate report or is our legal services $400,000? >> There's there are two. >> Okay. So that's so that's how you're that's how you're So
288when I see it, it was sent in two attachments. So one the first attachment was just the first month in November. >> That's so that's that's helpful. So when you say when I this is my first time looking at your mun sheet. So the year to date is calendar year or fiscal year. >> Fiscal year. And the fiscal year runs July 1 to June 30th just like the state. Okay. And so this is uh so when I look at each sheet and I see I'm looking at 2026 05 that is October month. >> Got it. >> And then 04 is October 05 is great. >> I appreciate that. So I was just looking through so our entire budget for legal services systemwide is $200,000. Okay. Great. And then the other question I had was regarding
289special education. And I noticed we were over budget already um significantly on page 25. Um am I reading this correctly? It has uh tuition for special education. It's percent used is 115.5%. Is am I reading this correctly? So you are reading correctly that it is uh encumbered to 115%. So the first column is the budget, the second is the revised, the third is what's actually spent, then is what was spent in that current month, and then the next one is incumbrances. Yeah. So there are incumbrances for potential um for future uh tuition costs. >> So you're all of those are realized then we would be at 115%. And so as you keep looking at it each month to follow that 115% to see if it actually adds up that way. >> I see. So when
290you're talking about your incumbrances, that is your projection uh based on your current student enrollment. Yes. >> Okay. Great. I just I my first time looking at this sheet so I just wanted to get a better understanding of it. >> Okay. Thank you. I appreciate your question. >> Are there any additional questions? I have another question on item number four. Um I understand we accept resignations on a regular basis. However, I was reminded that uh we have a state statute uh that was a public act PA23-159 which mandates board of educations provide exit surveys. Have we ever reviewed exit surveys? And do we >> this for n for n for a monitor? There's no exit survey. >> And do we have exit surveys for teachers who have left? >> Certified staff only. >> Yes. >>
291And does the board of education ever review those exit surveys? They do. >> Okay. Great. Great. Thank you. Any additional questions? We have a motion. Do I have a second? So all those in favor? I in opposed [clears throat] numbered wrong but number 10 is adjournment. Who would like to make a motion to adjurnn? >> Everyone every so moved. >> Thank you. I need a second. >> Second. >> All those in favor. >> Any opposed? Thank you very much everybody.