2024-10-09 Board Meeting

001e not e e good evening welcome to the rsu5 board of directors meeting it is Wednesday October 9th 2024 we are here in the Freeport High School library we have a full board with the exception of Carolyn who will uh not be here tonight but we will get started with the pledge of Allegiance do I have a motion for consideration and approval of the minutes from the September 25th 2024 and October 1st 2024 meetings as presented by barring any errors or omissions car uh said Caroline she's not here uh Danielle and Cara thank you all those in favor great none opposed um adjustments to the agenda I do think we are going to move item 8B which is our discussion about um cell phone usage in uh in the schools which is currently 13A we're

002going to move that to up until uh right after 8B the student leadership team um in in hopes that if any of them have anything they'd like to share or weigh in on in our conversation uh that way they don't have to wait through the rest of the agenda um we'd love to hear we'd love to hear their thoughts and so we'll we'll move that up otherwise uh the agenda I think is as it stands and we will get started with number six good news and recognition a report from our board student rep bab all righty so as always lots of good things going on on Saturday we had our homecoming dance at the high school gym which is a great way to celebrate our return to school so that was super fun um for

003sports the field hockey team beat gy today 2 to zero they are still undefeated um the girls and boys soccer team will be playing against York tomorrow evening I think the boys are at home and the girls are at York and then the cross cross country team will be participating in a meet in fryberg tomorrow um so sports are going great playoffs coming soon um PSATs were this morning so all of our Juniors participated and then we had about 60 sophomores opt in to take the PSATs um which is a great way to prepare for the real thing which will be in the spring for a lot of us um we have two new clubs this year that are hitting the ground running we have the martial arts club and the Aerospace and Robotics club

004which is super exciting and then we have two clubs that were new last year that are still going strong which is Sega who connects FHS students with students out of school in tan Tanzania and our best buddies program which connects um students with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities um the active Minds Club is hosting a trivia event tomorrow during our advisory time in honor of mental health awareness week and finally FHS student Baya bukai was nominated as an Arts Sonia artist of the week Baya is in our 2D design class and she used tiny little dots to create a design on a piece of wood that she turned into a functional clock which is so cool and it's on display by the cafeteria if anyone wants to check it out so lots of really

005cool stuff thank you I think I also heard uh that the boys golf team locked up the Western Maine Championship yesterday yes and states are on Saturday yes so congratulations to them I like that they did their senior night in the middle of the soc so because usually not many people get to go to the golf event so they did it with a bunch of people there which I thought was great Colin just a geographic question are we in Western Main we are in the Western Main conference I have no idea if we are technically in Western M than you to confirm that I don't pick our conference Colin talk to Eric wait is he here tonight no he's not here tonight all right so uh we will start with public comment we do have

006two public comments on our agenda one here um and then one at the end of our agenda if anyone would like to speak we just ask that you come up to the Podium uh tell us your name the town you're from and limit your comments to 3 minutes um so we'll give anybody who'd like to speak an opportunity okay Ranna and Carpenter I live in Freeport um I thought I was going to hear the discussion first um but happy to make a comment based on what I know today here to talk about cell phone policy and cell phone usage in rsu5 um my kids are tiny they are two and four but this is already top of mine for me um just implore the board to think about the policy and how to enforce it

007and um the impacts that it will have on our children and I think I'm coming from a generation where you know more and you do better so the data is just astounding on the harms that it can do and I really think that we need to address it and have firm policies um that exist today but are also enforced and I think that is my public comment appreciate you all do any your time and listening to to my comment thank you thank you we do have another public coming at the end of the meeting uh it's not directly after the conversation but if you did stay through the whole thing you would have another opportunity if you chose to um okay so we will get started with number eight report from the superintendent I have

008one item for information um we've this is new to the report this year is that we realize we had um many support staff that were hired throughout the year um you don't vote on th those folks but certainly should be informed about who we're hiring so we're going to add this every time um so we have a new hire and this is probably a familiar name to you all um Melinda Carr uh retired last year from teaching many years for us and she's returning to mass leaning as an edtech 3 so we welcome her back but the most important part of my report tonight is the freeboard high school student leadership team um we're going to invite them up to the podium to do their presentation and I and any board members who need to

009move to to see the screen I would invite you to do that all righty um so my name is Madison Porter I'm a junior here at free Port High School and I'm a member of the student leadership committee and then our other returning members this year are Kessa Benner who's a senior and then you know Phoebe and then we have Mera Goldman she's also a junior and Izzy George who's a senior J and then Rihanna anine who's also a junior so here's phoei so these are some of our like longterm goals and kind of our purpose in the team we are a group that is unlike other like student leadership groups because we're not like a student council or class officers who would like plan events but we um we kind of have a different

010approach we want to change like the school in a way that allows students to have a larger voice in decision making and so we find like specific goals each year that we want to um kind of talk about at the school but some of our like overall goals are to have like this long-term culture change at the school that allows for communication between admin teachers and students in and for everyone to be able to come to school and feel like they have a place and that they're excited to be there um so these are some of like our goals and our values that help us achieve that more long-term goal so there were four major um processes for our data collection the first one was hosting groups we hosted several focus groups with about five

011or six students and in those groups we asked them about their thoughts on decision making at FHS and the second thing we did was Data compiling we transcribed recordings from the focus group on this app called for and we also coded that the data that we collected from those groups and then the third thing we did was Data analysis we turned the data into Data data Vis visualization and as a team we analyze what we learned from those and then the fourth thing that we did was presenting we split into smaller teams within our big group and we compiled what we learned into three major presentations the first one being to students and then the second one was to teachers and the third one was to admin as Rihanna mentioned we did present our findings

012to three different groups um the first one that we'll be sharing is the administration group and we presented to the principal the assistant principal and then the superintendent and we really found the two themes that stood out from the data like in relation to Administration to be one the students bring up many concerns about their role in decision making at FHS and more the lack of the role they had and students also felt that there had been poor Communications about how these decisions are being made and why so from this presentation we further led us to have many conversations with Miss GCO about how to communicate and more send out emails and announcements to inform the student body but also we really wanted to initiate a student Forum um this essentially is a way for

013students to have a role or input in the decision-making process and we are still finalizing it um and we do realize that all decisions cannot include student input but for the upcoming decisions that can our student leadership group will seek out and hold conversations amongst a variety of students throughout the school and we'll ask them questions about either the upcoming decision and what we really want is their perspective their thoughts and their feelings and then our student leadership group we would take and report back to Administration and we really just want to ensure that student input is being considered and it is being heard before decisions are made so we're really excited to try to finalize this system and implement it ongoing this year so our next presentation was to um the student or some

014of the student body we shared with um other student leaders which included student council and student officers and we did this to spread awareness about not only what we were doing but also to um so they could help us spread awareness to the rest of the student body that has really been something we've been trying to work on we feel that not necessarily the student body as a whole knows a lot about us and we're trying to get more out there um through this we actually created a bulletin board which we are going to be able to share our work and then we'll also be utilizing a suggestion box which students can put topics um that they think that we should discuss and it'll be completely Anonymous unless they choose to add their names we'll

015be checking that Weekly um and then also just as the year goes on we would really like to strengthen our connections with other student leaderships uh leadership committees such as um student council and student officers uh all right so the last presentation we did last year was We presented to uh small groups of teachers um or PLC teams uh in order to share student feedback um mainly on strengthening student teacher Dynamics uh and so this year uh we're changing our student leadership selection Pro process in order to initiate an interview process that can contains a teacher as well as members of the team and that's going to be starting tomorrow and continuing into next week uh to for us to get new members on our team and also like our major goal is we want

016to just work more closely with teachers as it as a whole um especially about school issues all righty So within the team we have some leaders as well so Izzy and Kessa were appointed OED last year um we had one election within the team um and then miss gko appointed the other so we have um leaders that kind of work on communication within the team and they create the agendas for each of our meetings so we're really trying to um have a really strong um leadership within the whole school which starts in our team and so we really try to work really hard on communication um within the team so that we can model that out um and one of our other big goals is to create stronger connections with the other leadership groups at

017the school um whether that's class officers and student council members um in order to kind of have like a a bigger group of people that um has like this input on these decisions so yeah can question we always have questions Phoebe you know that first I want to say thank you guys this is I mean you can tell you guys have done a lot of work I know this this group has been in existence for three years is that right okay um so I know you guys have done a lot of different things over that time and so this is the first time I think you guys have come and reported out directly to the board I think we've seen some of the feedback second time was like the first year right we saw I'm

018I'm picturing in the in the cafeteria up on the board or on the on the screen so um so thank you for that uh this is great information um and it's great to hear the the good work you guys are doing I was curious in your host groups um how many students um how many students did you guys actually get to talk to did you find it challenging to get people to participate just curious how that process went for you guys so um we had I don't know exact 56 students in all last year were able to um participate in our conversations and um one of the big things with these is that they were facilitated by us um so we were trained in order to be able to facilitate these um and so there

019were no teachers no Administration no adults present in these and there was also the promise that um until they were being like shared out as findings that the um no adult in the building would be listening to um any of the words that were said and so one big thing is that these conversations are recorded because we use software um from MIT to help us um code the data in order to find the biggest Trends and so that's definitely like a struggle in getting people to participate because it is definitely like a little bit like scary to know you're being recorded but it also helps us so much to be able to like look back on that and be able to really um be present in the conversation and being able to facilitate it without

020having to like take notes the whole time um so yeah 56 we're definitely aiming for more and more every year um but it's definitely like a good portion of the student body so and I'm curious about what kinds of topics what kinds of decisions um have been discussed with the student body um so the questions that we asked were more about what do you think do you think you have a voice in the overall like decision- making process um in past years it's been more about specific issues um two years ago it was about um microaggressions uh AP test in and cost and then mental health um but this year we were more looking at like a wider issue and just the overall issue of yeah process do you have a voice not necessarily about

021a specific issue per se other questions cheyen how's the collaboration going so far at the other leadership teams it's going um well I think we're still like kicking off for this year um but yeah I think we we presented in here last year at the end of the year to all of the members and I think a lot of them were're like almost surprised because a lot of kids at the school don't know like exactly what we're doing because it is hard to like give like a like a one sentence like this is what we do because it's like a lot um but I think just the awareness um has definitely helped out a lot I will add to that like um this year um some of us or at least I know I did

022we helped um student council set up homecoming and stuff and it's like little collaborations like that so far we are trying to focus right now about getting our whole group um to like getting a whole group together usually we have like 16 people and so we've lost some people and we're trying to just regain the whole group right now yeah did you say 16 in total yeah four per grade four oh okay so you split it up by grade what else do we have for them Daniel I have a question about the communication part can you explain kind of more you kind of briefly went over that so is it communication like in the school like what do you think is lacking and what is your goal to try to fix that yeah um well

023I guess one of the things that we kind of heard from students in general is that a lot of the times there's a bunch of decisions being made but the students don't really know why or when or really just any information about how they came about so I think like moving forward what we really asked for was just an increase of like emails or announcements just when decisions are being made and then of course trying to incorporate when our student input can be like part of when the decision is being made so so some transparency around the reason behind some of the decisions yes I know it's it's always easier for me to accept change when I kind of know the why behind the change I will say though having a few high school kids

024that have lived in my house checking emails is is not a strong shoot of theirs so I'm not sure more emails is going to be helpful to that process but maybe yeah emails are definitely a struggle I think we're we were trying to last year think of something that would work better for that I think also something that especially this year I can think of um habits of work changed this year and like I can even remember in the um when we learned about habits of work changing and when the student body learned about it it was mentioned that like student leadership helped with that process and I think that also helps the student body kind of take in and accept something when they know that their fellow students have been a part of the

025decision yeah I really appreciate you guys taking on the student voice piece because that's something as a board that we have prioritized for the last few years um when we have administrators come and present to us um we always ask for how was student voice included in the goal setting and the goal attainment um so it's it's great to see on the ground you guys are um you guys are really that check is student voice happening at the high school um you know I would just encourage you guys to to stick with it when you try and get people to participate because it is hard um but really be wide and diverse in your net of who you're trying to talk to um because I think you'll you'll hear different things from different people so

026Colin yeah I so appreciate all the work y'all are doing and coming to present to us tonight so thank you so much for that I think you've partially um answered this question with the last thing we were talking about with the um mentioning the habits of the changes to the habits of work I'm curious just as as you all have been thinking about it do you have a maybe a few more examples of like what are decisions that you kind of no um the uh Administration would not be able to involve students in but then have sort of an idea of like some some things that either you confidently know they could be or you just sort of think that perhaps they might be do you have some examples of those that y'all have been

027thinking about um I know one of them that has come up has been cell phone policy um that's just definitely something that the student body just isn't going to be able to likely have a voice in as much as other policies um I think we also gave some feedback last year about advisory that was a big struggle last year at the high school and so the team was able to give in some feedback about that um I can't think of any oh uh uh absence is absences absences um is another hopefully policy will be able to at least give feedback on maybe not necessarily make changes to because it is currently a law that was put in that kind of changed the policy I believe right now but at least so um administrators can hear

028back about how it's going in the spirit of transparency there wasn't a change to the law it was um it's always been a law and it was just sort of the um the enforcement of of the rules around excused absences versus non- excused absences and I mean attendance is one of those you know student voice is one of the board's goals attendance is another one of the board's goals and that is one of the Avenues um but you know I think even in places where maybe uh you can't be involved on the front end of the decision-making input is great and then also circling back with the feedback on how it's going I think is crucially important because you know we all make decisions that in hindsight maybe we would have done them a little

029differently but if we don't know what the impact is um it's hard to it's hard to make a change so I would encourage you guys to keep that feedback loop open you know in terms of that though with chronic absenteeism um I can't even say that word but I think the students could lead some voice in that um when we were at izy and I were at MIT this past spring we saw a group of uh New York inner city kids that actually were doing all the work on figuring out why kids weren't going to school and they were doing those little forums and the little talks and I think they were getting information from kids that adults were never going to get so I wonder if that's a project or something that the kids

030can definitely um start thinking about um those are hard questions but they might be able to find some answers that then we can you know address and so forth so I might be jumping the gun a little bit on this question but since you mentioned um cell phone usage and cell phone policy I'm just wondering if you've had feedback from the student body about that change definitely like we've all heard it around school I think that's one of the cool Parts about us all being students is like we hear what everyone else is talking about from what our friends are talking about so we before we even do any of our conversations before we have any of the groups we like have a general sense of what's going on um we haven't had any like

031formal conversations about the phone policy yet um but we have spoken about it in our meetings um but yeah yeah we usually we don't have conversations till a little later in the year so yeah yeah and this is I'm um I'm saying this now with the so is um as part of the school board we're all on um different committees and one of the Committees that I'm on is the is our policy committee so that's where uh we're making policies that affect the entire RSU that are not specific to a particular school but it's every school um in the district and I think I just wanted to sort of flag that that there are there are decisions that are being made that are being made um uh Miss gko is very powerful she's a great

032deal of great deal of power um uh but there is there are decisions that are being made that that are that are um above the the level of the high school that are applying to everything and I just I think it just um I'm not sure if there's a way to kind of like make sure that y'all are getting like the updates on what policies we are looking at because um I'm just thinking back to the policies that we've looked at over the last three years I think the only involvement we've had from students on that was for our um the uh policy for on transgender and gender expansive student rights which was extremely helpful and extremely important on that and I just um I can't think of a policy right now that we're looking

033at where you know it would be particularly helpful but just generally if that's something that you're interested in um if it would be great to um be able to have you all aware of what we're doing um so that you could weigh in on some of that yeah I guess to that feel free to always like you can shoot us an email or you can email Miss um yeah I mean hopefully my mom can give you my email oh yeah or I mean I think yeah I don't know a formal way to do it I would love to be I think the team would love to be able to collaborate with that group more and just know more about what the policy policies you guys are dissecting but um if some way we could get

034into some sort of formation could I make a suggestion on how the easiest way since we since no one knows all of your email addresses I think principal GCO um certainly knows what policies are being considered because she can see the agenda and what's happening so certainly as her work with with um your your leadership team she could certainly share that information thank you and I would I would go a step further to say that you know as you guys are looking at policies that you think might be of interest or or import you know ask Jen right she's got a lot of things on her plate um you know just make sure hey we're we're doing these um I I I would just hate to leave it to you know her to happen to

035see an agenda and you know but if you're working on the policy and you know you know your next meeting you're going to talk about this one and you think that might be an interesting one to have some perspective from this team shoot that to Jen and say hey can you share this with the leadership team and go go that route I mean I'll just I guess I'll just say in that in that Spirit we do know that um the in two weeks right Cynthia you're visible to me in two weeks um we're going to be oh there you are I'm sorry I was looking for you at the distribution desk um in two weeks we're going to be talking about the um updates to the uh policies that are impacted by Title 9 which

036have to do with um uh harassment but also particularly sexual harassment um and so those are legal changes that are that are happening and our a number of our policies are being complet revised um we have been uh told by our our lawyers that we can't really go in and start messing around too much with the language there but we've been working hard at the policy committee level to try to understand what those changes are and how those actually impact the experiences of of um both students and staff in the schools um but that language is available so I I suppose we could find a way to um if if that isn't currently in your email box Jen I could send that along and you could share that maybe yeah even if it's just in

037the spirit the understanding the why right um it's great to know what is why things are coming about um and some of it we can't control like law uh but some of it is a decision right like cell phone usage and we currently don't have a policy at the district level for cell phones they're all done individually at the school level um because they're different right a kindergartener is different than a senior in high school um so you know there are districts that do have a policy that governs that districtwide um so yeah B I just wanted to say thank you so much for what you're doing I think it's just so important I'm just really impressed with all of you and thank you for coming to present to us and also um maybe you're

038already aware that we're going to be starting the fiveyear Strategic well it's not a fiveyear process process to create our five-year strategic plan so um I think that you know we'll have hopefully a lot of student engagement and would I think love to have you you know engaged in that and I will let the board know that Izzy is um going to be meeting with us are she is part of the the work I say the worker B group The advisory committee and Izzy will be a student rep on that committee so we thank you Izzy for being willing to serve with us and she has all of their emails I'm sure so when we need to call in the reinforcements for how to get feedback from students she'll know how to do that um

039great any other questions for them great so I would invite you to stay if you want to listen to the conversation about the cell phone usage um and um you know since since we did invite you to stay if you guys have something you want to share even if it's not formal feedback you've gotten from your forums you know what what you're what anecdotally what you're hearing is is great too um you're you're welcome to yeah and thank you guys so much for having us and letting us share our work with you I think it's important for everyone to know so um thank you for having us and we were really excited to be able to share this stuff so and can you send us your presentation to the board thank you great thank [Applause]

040you all right so we will jump to 13 a uh the cell phone usage I'm looking at you this is you right okay um so in your packet let's see what on the green the green sheet 13A uh what I did is I looked at all of the information we do have a couple of the of the agendas around the corner right so if folks in the the attachments oh no okay Scrat so it is available online if you go to the to the board agenda all those all those attachments are there um so for the board the the green packet what I did is looked at each um school's handbook and took the piece that was pertinent for cell phone use on and just to run through here um I hir highlighted um at

041more Street um their languages um cell phones including texting and tablets and other electronic devices are not allowed at school Mass Landing um they're saying cell phones music players video equipment and or other similar devices are not permitted to be used upon entrance to the school building poundo Elementary um cell phon SmartWatches video equipment and other similar devices are not permitted to be used upon entrance to the school building Durham Community School cell phone smartw watches audio devices video cameras and other similar technology Etc are not permitted to be used during school hours Freeport Middle School cell phones are only allowed to be used before and after school hours so um for our our prek-8 schools they're not it's basically Bell to Bell that's what that boils down to um at Freeport High School um

042there were there were some things that were revised in 2024 and students will not have access to cell phones during instruction time including classrooms study halls assemblies advisory and Library um the time they do have access is during passing time during lunch and the before and after school so during the actual not uh the actual school time it's lunch and during passing time that was a change that they made I did ask our um principals to to um just give me some feedback on what they what they have in place currently what their thoughts were um poundo um was suff fish um um the principal said it was sufficient at Mass Landing um principal Grim said it is sufficient for a grade level and it's actually frankly rare that a student brings his phone to

043school but they they deal you know with that issue as it comes at Durham principal pitton said what they have is sufficient um there's one tricky part that he said that that they struggle with sometimes is that there are there are a few parents who actually text their students during the day when their phones are put away um but other than that things work well um at the middle school their Captain bags and turned off during the day um and let's see and Mo Street didn't weigh weigh in on this but they prek 2 there there aren't a lot of cell phones there so it's been a nonissue for those fot um for Freeport High School Jen certainly um sent some information but I think it'd be most appropriate for her to talk about how

044that give give the board some feedback of what she's hearing from students and and staff and parents good evening everybody Jen goo from the high school I have to start by saying how proud I am of this team I'm totally biased I'm their adviser um but um this is the this uh is the fourth year that this team has uh been in existence and just the transformation of them taking over this team and leading it this year has just been uh an outstanding change from where um it was adult Le and the students were doing the discussions and now it I just had to make that point that they are are leading this team and are working incredibly hard so I'm excited for the work and there's still a lot of work to do improvement

045from communication from from me and from Mr melon and between the teacher teams we've done a lot with um uh boosting uh excuse me faculty leadership we have about um 26 members of our faculty are on leadership teams and we need to work on better communication between the adult teams and then to the students I think that that we move fast here with over 700 people in this building and it's something that we're working on so that piece with the cell phone I can start with that that um to your question Colin um this was something that we uh have done a lot of research on the data looking at the impact to students um and to mental health specifically part of tonight is me presenting my goals and we have a partnership with the

046Jed Foundation to increase our mental health support at the high school and our Jed advisor uh who is someone from the Jed Foundation asked us last year what are we doing about cell phones because we know there's a direct connection to to mental health and uh we didn't have a great answer last year it was room to room last year was the the policy for that and so this was a decision that we made without the student leadership the adult uh faculty teams the leadership teams made this decision in the summer for how we were going uh to move forward this year feeling like it was crucial to have that in place for the first day of school what I did do was I emailed this team over the summer before any other student found

047out so that they would know that this policy was coming um and then talked about how we would get feedback throughout the year um this is uh we're about 25 days into school and feeling like we need a little bit more time this is a major change for some classes and some students for other classes it's not they have had um we borrowed this term from another school they lovingly call them cell phone hotels which are the uh shoe racks where the students put their phones and some teachers have had that in place for quite some time for many years there have been no phones whereas um in other classes they were allowed to have their phones right on the desk right next to them and so in those rooms not just for the students

048for the teacher that's a major change in the PO policy then we have some classes where they're actively using cell phones where um uh our foundations of art class where they are photographing their work and then they upload it directly to an app we've had to problem solve what to do in that class because it's not as efficient when you're doing it on a camera to a laptop things like that um and so I think in the first few weeks of school we did some uh informal polling of teachers of how it was going and there were a lot of positive comments feeling like it was going easier than we thought five weeks into school we're seeing that it's difficult to build habits and to stick to those habits and so I think what we're

049starting to see is um in some places in some classrooms it's working really well in that the students walk right in they put their phones in the um cell phone holders they're there for the entire block and pick them up on their way out uh and then in other classes I think we need to keep on working on the consistency where there are some students who we know from the data that there are um there is an actual addiction to their phones uh we've talked about we've marketed this as you need a break from your phone these are the posters that are all over school that are in the classrooms saying like we hold assemblies at the beginning of the year asking students not to take out their phone in the assembly we said when

050you go home that you get the um the update from your phone especially from an app I'm more familiar with an Apple phone of your screen time that you can look at your pattern of how many hours you've spent excuse me on your phone and per app it will show you that and we were saying to students that we challenge them to try and see if they could get their screen time to go down not just overall but on particular apps and so for some students that is really really challenging even with this procedure in place and we do say that it's a procedure we know it's not a a policy um and so I think that we are looking to uh consistently talking to teachers uh that's something Charlie melon and I have been

051saying uh over and over again what kind of support can we give you for a whole class that you're struggling with or um with individual students and then talking to students about where it's working where it's not working um we've heard a lot of feedback which if the students have a chance to speak tonight that they might say particularly during advisory and study halls excuse me I hope I'm not fighting the scratchy throat that I've had all day today um and so that is a real question of um what is it exactly that they're they're struggling with those are two times that are supposed to be academically focused they're supposed to be working on um their class work thank you um they're supposed to be working on their their classwork and then the other side

052of that argument is do students need a break at some point in the day when if they have had three classes in a row four classes in a row something like that um and so the the counter that I've heard to that is we are so fortunate in this District to have onetoone laptops um where if they were needing a break could that be on their laptop could it be doing um something different so um so right now I would say there's mixed review of how this is going um we feel that ultimately reducing the amount of time that students are on their phone and it's really just a 75 minute break because they can check their phone in between uh every class uh feeling that them having less screen time and less time on

053their phones is something that is really really important to their own mental health um I can say it would be incredibly difficult for me right now to name discipline situation between students that has not involved the phone in social media or chatting um it's involved in almost every single discipline case that we have of students um in conflict with one another that somehow their phone and social media in school or out of school has been involved so um so that's a little bit of an up I don't know if there's specific questions too that I can answer oh I think you can guarantee that Kelly yeah I would like you to speak a little bit to um I guess what what would be the ramifications if the high school were to implement a bell-to-bell type

054procedure like the other school buildings have well so I arrived here in Freeport in 2015 and that was the policy Bell to Bell and that was as the the I was the vice principal for one year um that I would say from my perspective with now there's technology like the Yonder bags and things like that there was no technology it was just that our policy was no phone Bell to Bell and it was unbelievably difficult to enforce um it was uh a significant portion of my day I would say more so than focusing on teaching and learning at that point because it was monitoring when we were saying Bell to Bell we're saying at lunch and in the hallways and um and that was something that we found incredibly challenging I think and that was

05510 years ago I think now um i c i can see both sides of that argument I think what I see is uh it's exhausting for teachers when they have this great lesson planned that they start their period by arguing with students about their phones potentially in some classes it's no argument in other classes it's it's asking them again and again and again to put their phone up do you have your phone things like that when when really what they want to do is dive right into the lesson on the flip side of that I think that they are a tool for many students it's where they check their power school it's where they write down their um where they write down their assignments there's all different apps that are so helpful that are on

056their phone a significant portion of our students work and that's how they are getting updates about what they're doing um with work and home and after school so I see both both sides of that I just know that that 10 years ago without some sort of Technology Bell to Bell uh what was incredibly difficult to for us to enforce do you find that the sort of the um negotiating with the te the teachers and the kids at the beginning of the class isn't happening as much because the students know that they can check it at the end of class do you find that they're more amenable to putting them up during class and not dealing with them or is it basically the same battle I think it's student to student I think that would probably

057be a great question for the students of what they're seeing in their classes because they're seeing that a lot more if the principal's standing behind you you're going to put your phone in the little thing um and so you know I think that they could see what they're they they could share what they're seeing or what they're hearing about consistency but I do think that it's a student to student I think some students have said it's nice to have a break from their phone I think that students care very much about fairness and so if they think that this is a fair fair and equal it's in every classroom I actually think it was much harder when it was room to room and then if you had a teacher that said no eight out of

058your eight classes versus your friend who had a teacher had a group of teachers who said you could have your phone I think that that was really hard to navigate um but I think that it there like I said I think that there are students who have a true addiction to their phone and I think um there's not a profile of that student I think that that is um aug huge range of students who fall into that and then it's harder for that individual of what they're um of of what they are uh willing to do I will say I have six fake phones in my office right now I heard there was a very entrepreneurial student immediately started selling fake phones to put in the in the things y yes good thing we we

059busted the cell phone R selling ring but um you know uh but but it is it's it's I think part of that is you know it's a natural part of adolescence to push against rules um but I think that it is truly hard um I would compare it to when we are struggling with vaping we have some students who are dabbling and vaping and then we have some students who are truly addicted to vaping and are struggling to get through the day without tobacco and so I think that there's um some students who are disappointed that they don't have their phone and can't access it and then I think there are some that are are addicted to having their phone in their hand or their pocket and um it's harder for those students I'm wondering

060if you could and I I'd love to hear from the students again if possible to hear more about what this looks like every day so in each classroom are are each of the classrooms using a a hotel cell phone Hotel um and that expectation is that students are handing the phones over preferably not the Fig phones um and I'm wondering if you can share a little bit more about what it looks like in between classes and what lunchtime looks like um since those are times that people do get to re-engage with their phones is it um what does that look like hi um I would say I think for me I think lunch is like it's a social time like high school is don't have recess they have lunch and lunch is when everyone you

061know mingles with everyone and you know at the end of the day it's sometimes nice to check your phone whether it just be like you get to scroll on whatever social media website which I think they actually banned on all the Wi-Fi but or do just like play a game I think a lot of times you do see kids on their phone but all the times at lunch or even in the hallways it's it's kids talking to their pides peers and stuff like that it's not necessarily just every single kid in the hallway is staring at their phone I think I would say I don't think the phone in like the phone usage at lunch has increased or decreased per se I think it's just you know it's what they choose to do at that

062time that's great to hear because I think one of the things we heard from one of the the variety of of emails that the board received was that lunch what that person had heard was that lunch is like eily silent now because everyone is on their phones lunch is not silent okay that's good to hear maybe it's not I don't know but um I was curious if there um oh yeah Pho hand up again Phoebe were you gonna say something about like are you seeing students right now using phones more or less I think a big thing is like it's not that kids are like wanting to be in the middle of class and just be like going and going on Instagram I think it's like okay did my mom text me like what are

063my plans after school and all they need is like they pick up their phone after class they look at their notification they are ready to walk down the hall and not like be tripping because they're on their phone but like I think yeah I haven't noticed like a humongous like increase in hallways or during lunch because for the majority of kids like they're not like they're just wanting to have their phones in order to like it's like the communication thing with whether it be like parents or their boss or their sports teams or their friends um but it's also that like last year without the the whole procedure um kids in class they would have like a phone on the desk and just like check it and then just like check it so like while

064it is just like that quick like check of the notification I think that's an easy thing to do every 75 minutes after class rather than being in class like over and over so yeah that's what I've noticed so we haven't seen an increase in people crashing into each other in the hallways from okay good I I would agree with the students I don't think that we've seen um a an increase of checking in the hallways or L lunch I would totally agree is a very social time when when they're chat and they also they use their phone as part of their conversation showing somebody something and and so it it's um I I would say uh that it might be even that they're talking more and less um stuck to their phones I I I

065I don't know I don't know if you agree with that at lunchtime yeah I they have I was like some of them have open campus and we I'm curious if um the Jud Foundation has any best practices around this right do they find that you know mental health is best in a bell-to-bell situation or do they find that just limiting it in instructional time gets you to sort of the same place um I mean might as well use that yeah that's a great question I I think and you know just as a reminder the Jed Foundation is the they're a nonprofit based out of New York and their um their whole purpose is to um reduce incidents of suicide and promote mental health and and wellness and um um and also so I this was

066going to be in my other presentation somebody asked me what does JED stand for Jed was um uh the the two Founders son was named Jed who died by suicide in 1998 and then they started it in 2000 and um we there are uh the Jed Foundation started by really getting onto college campuses they're over 500 college campuses and when we joined we're the first school in Maine and there's only there was only 75 High School's total so I would doubt that they have really come out with um with a guidance for that level of a nuanced policy of what schools should do I think they are just constantly sending and sharing resources about the impact of screen time in General on Mental Health but they haven't really come um to give a recommendation other

067than they were saying to us when our jet advisor came here it's something you really need to recognize and talk about and and see how this is impacting the students in in your in your school yeah and I want to thank you for taking that initiative over the summer to make those changes so that the classrooms are cell phone free um and I I also really appreciate the leadership team the student leadership team that's here today to really show us that those of us who don't have high school students yet that you're not all just like walking zombies through the hallways and out lunch right you are and you're you're capable people right I think we also know a bit about brain development too and there is still a concern about the attention fragmentation that

068cell phones can cause and I'm so glad to see that that's not H happening in the classrooms as much um or if at all but I still have a concern about the the hallway passing time so quick question how long is that hallway passing time how many how five minutes five minutes okay so I I have a concern about like the um so leaving classroom time and and going right to phones to check and then having to kind of do what's called context shifting which it's not called um multitasking anymore right it's context shifting where your your brain is you know connected to one topic and you're processing that and then you shift to something else we're all doing doing it like adults are doing it all the time as well and it's really hard

069for adults and for for adolescents frontal cortex isn't quite done yet right as much as it looks like right based on the presentations we saw today that they are but but we know that they're not and and so I have a concern you know this is one reason why I would still promote a um a phone free school for the full day um and because of that attention grabbing that is still happening and that that PE that the students are having to navigate throughout the day by having their phones on them um I think that's all I want to say right now I don't know if I had a question to go along with that yeah you mentioned advisory and study hall being sort of some one of those period those periods that are not

070necessarily instructional time and so they I assume phone usage is allowed it's not allowed during those times and I'm you said there was a bit of a struggle do you mean by that that it's not not easy to enforce during those periods and that you are seeing a lot of usage during that time can you explain a little bit more about what that looks like please okay so for advisory study hall less I think espe I think the issue with study hall was the first week no one had any homework and especially for upper classman we didn't have open campus yet so some of us that have less classes were stuck here in study hall for you know maybe two periods and then it you know it got got long after a while but I

071think for advisory um not everyone has a call back during that time and a call back would be they're going to meet with a teacher to work on a specific thing about a specific class or something like that or maybe they don't have a club and so then you you know unless you have open campus you're you're just sitting in advisory and then it just becomes like well what do I do I can't leave my advisory you know I'm not you're not supposed to walk through the halls and stuff and I think kids just get bored and maybe they don't have homework to do or maybe they're just they want to take a break from you know the school day and that's why I think it's an issue I mean I I have seen it

072be an issue in advisory I think a lot of people have I think especially from the upper class when we're kind of like we don't have anything to do let me just you know go on my phone but you know it's not allowed an adviser and then I I I'm usually come to my study halls or some of them and I haven't seen it be an issue and at least the library per se um and even classes I think a lot of times I I'm in mostly honors classes and I mean most of us are a bunch of nerds and we kind of just follow the rules um occasionally you get the one who's like I'm GNA I'm going to be different and you know go against the rules but usually I don't have that

073but I also I would say ITA a pre-algebra class it's probably my favorite thing I do at school all day I I love that class and you know they're they're not like the smartest kids on the planet they're not a bunch of nerds they're just kids who probably half them don't even like school but and even them they you know it's first thing in the morning and for the most part it's definitely gotten better over the year they just like the teacher is like hey guys make sure the phones are on the wall and they go and do it and maybe they make a comment here or there but it hasn't really been an issue and I think to that point I think just advisory is just such a different thing than regular classroom rooms

074it's not just you know everyone's doing some sort of instructional work there's different things happening depending on what student you're talking to so I think that's why it's an issue so before you leave Izzy hold on I know I was like I have a question for izy am I allowed to do that so so now where you have folks that may or may not have a club or or a call back what are they doing without their phone I mean my advisory I I can't speak to any AD my advis we love each other it's my my favorite thing we we chat with each other and usually what happens is we just like guess what happened to me today this is what I did this weekend but like I know a lot of advisor it's

075usually just a bunch of random kids thr in one room and alphab I don't always get along and and there's also some teachers who don't allow them to talk during advisories too right so that makes it a challenge I'm not really sure what those kids are doing I I don't know if I don't know if reading's very popular in this school so I so maybe they're going on their laptops I but but I think a lot of things are also like blocked on the laptops so I'm not really sure what they would be doing yeah um if I were to add something I would say it definitely does depend on classes or study hall because I know that I have seen in some of my classes that a lot of students are more definitely resistant

076and as in they're not putting it in the phone Pockets when they're first walk in and I'd say definitely a lot of students wait for the teacher to say something thing and it's not really a habit and then also in other study halls and other classes I have like witness students who are even resistant when teachers um are to ask whether that's just through like complaints or just more take some time to actually do it but i' not say for all classes but I think it definitely just depends on the teacher or the dynamic of the class so um one thing I've noticed about study halls and advisory in particular for upper classmen who qualify for open campus this was something that someone in one of my classes mentioned um a like people are leaving

077school during their open campus times um a lot because like one of the reasons is because of phones like um somebody said to me that like if they don't have work in their study hall like what's the point of staying in school like when they could either sit in there study Hall and like look at the wall or walk to the parking lot and go on their phone in their car so whether or not that' be like good thing or bad thing people leaving the school it's definitely something that people have mentioned to me is that like a lot of people are leaving during those like kind of flow times that don't exactly have like instruction happening um but yeah yeah I was I my question was going to be about um the using laptop

078when you're an advisory and you don't have stuff to do but your answer was that the things you want to go on like Snapchat are blocked I don't have Snapchat she I well I didn't mean you izzys up that Pinterest oh I've already spoken to Mr Rigby about Pinterest because students first of all Mr said I didn't know students were going on Pinterest and I said I didn't either and so we learned that and I think it's un that was weeks ago that that was unblocked because I think sometimes we're like it got blocked who well and to your point Colin everyone thinks yeah it's unblocked now you can just make your oh that's for we but everyone thinks I I am the technology blocker which I love that they think I know how to

079do that um and I have to remind students at lunch that I actually am not the one who blocks the sites and and I'm not I don't have a list I just send them to Sam yeaha I was that was actually my question is what sites are blocked and if it's forgive my technological literacy but um if it's different like what's blocked on the laptops versus what's blocked on the Wi-Fi so um there is oh I was like the yeah Sam's gonna answer this better okay um I can run through the long the laundry list of categories but the long and the short of it is it's kind of what you would expect um sorry I've got a everybody else's like sub five8 um okay uh um so it's what you would expect so um

080uh social media um of all kinds were kind of with some of that like Pinterest that one seemed like that was in the social media category it didn't really seem like a big deal to unblock that to me um but yeah again it's all category based so Games social media um then there's a bunch of stuff that's like about device security um and there's not really any difference between what's blocked on phones and on laptops but it's only blocked on your phone if you're accessing the Wi-Fi so if you have data you can access all of those things on your phone however the the filtering on student devices that we provide them is device based so regardless of like even if they want a Hotpot to their phone sorry everyone uh even if they hotspot

081to their phone they're still receiving the same filtering so when they're at home they're receiving the same filtering that they're getting in school again I understand why folks why students don't love that but um that felt necessary um given how far we had kind of let the Rope go out what about YouTube uh YouTube is allowed it is um that's been the biggest challenge mostly because we're using um we're using a subset of of filtering features that do block certain topics on YouTube and it's just it's not uh it's not perfect so that's been the hardest thing to try to find where the line is on that um in terms of what to allow and what not to allow um and there's stuff that's getting caught I would say for the most part in terms

082of what we don't want to get caught in the filter but is getting caught in the filter it's YouTube it's stuff on YouTube that gets assigned in class and then yeah and then they can't access okay yep and but it's it's trivial to unblock it so we've just been asking students and do they know how to do that do students know how to do that uh that's a good question um do they know how to unblock it well I assume you don't let them unblock it no no no generally to access generally we generally we ask staff to report it but um we're happy to receive student requests as well as long as you know if they CC a staff member who's who's assigned it then that's fine okay so it's okay because I know

083my kid will use it right to try and figure out math concepts it might not be what the teacher said but she'll be looking up how to do I don't know something so if she couldn't access that she could reach out to the tech person yep yep and right now we just have um our our Network and systems admin and I who are unblocking stuff but we're um as kind of our technicians get more comfortable with the software we'll we'll enable all the building level technicians to do that as well yeah good um thank you I I was just wondering about our technology policy but maybe that's difficult to sort of talk about offand I'm I guess I'm not um super familiar with it so I'm wondering like we're obviously trying to prevent students from

084accessing certain websites on their school devices but then and I can also see that there's like clearly certain websites we don't that are not apprpriate to be accessing in school on their personal devices but I'm wondering kind of our policy around like accessing social media on your personal device not on Wi-Fi is that kind of like a loophole or is that not something we're concerned about at the I I mean I think it's it would seem to me that it would fall under procedure in IND in individual buildings um as opposed to a specific policy because what when when people agree to you know the internet acceptable use policy either by um being being enrolled as a student here or being an employee here um what they're really agreeing to is a set of rules

085and regulations of what they can do with devices that we own and uh what they can do on our on our network but if they're accessing a cellular network on a device that they own in school I don't think I think that that's more of a like that is more of a not not disciplinary necessarily but more of a kind of a procedure in the building until there is a policy about it I guess I actually a two questions for Jen yeah thanks Sam that was very helpful I'm happy about Pinterest um [Laughter] lower um so uh my first question I guess was do you think I mean has there been a lot of discipline that has had to have happen around the cell phone policy like have you seen an increase in I don't

086are we doing detentions or is there is there something and then two I guess you know I don't I feel like the cell phone's never going to go away because as an adult we're we're all using them and I still think that we should do some type of education to kids probably parents and adults all of us us on like really how to use social media and what are some good things what maybe we shouldn't be doing and so forth and I'm wondering you know could the school start some of that and maybe use advisory since seems like there's some free time in advisory and again student leadership can help with this but those are things that you know to me I think would be good ideas to help with the education about the cell

087phone and because I think taking it away they're they're gonna have it in college so do we send them blindly never knowing how to use social media correctly so just those two things yeah uh the first the first question about discipline there's been some I mean it's not um it's not something that's been overwhelming our time but I also think um the teachers would have a a much better sense of that um this is not a school I think we're very proud of this this is not a school where students are often sent out of class to come down to the office and I've worked in schools where where that has been the case and so teachers for the vast majority of situations take care of it in their own classroom and I think some

088of that has gone well as the student said and I think some of it's exhausting and that it's a big part of what they're doing um and so and and we're trying to to support them in that but it does it can lead multiple offenses have led to um higher discipline like detentions calling parents things like that so um um and then your second question about um you know the the education and thinking about that we've talked in some groups about digital footprint I think that that's a a big piece um I think quite frankly we we battle with the adult use of social media right now there's so much negativity there that there's not great modeling of what we're looking at and so I think the more that we talk to students about the

089impact of what they are putting out there um is is really important we've T we just talked I think that was last Friday um that we have battled if you're a High School parent you've seen the emails that we've sent out with Instagram accounts that um we have frequently Asked our whole staff to report an Instagram account because sometimes Instagram will then take it down um but we were I've been talking with some of the students here some of the student athletes of you know what is the perception of other schools of Freeport when we are posting disrespectful comments that are right underneath a photo of our athletes and things like that and um so we're struggling with that and we know that we need education on on what that looks like uh I think

090it's just trying to figure out when and where and how um that that we we make Headway with that for me the thing I thought that really resonated that you said was when you really compared it to The Vaping right and I think it is very similar right we we know that there is there is risk to their health um physical mental um and and anxiety and I know in middle school and and the younger grades and also the high school we have had events right to your point of of Education right let's talk about this right I think a lot of what we hear um in our emails are mostly from parents with younger children that are not in this age group and and they're scared of what they're seeing and um and I

091understand that completely um but I do think there's there's some Norms that maybe they don't necessarily fully understand with with how it how it's actually being implemented and applied and how it's impacting our kids and our schools um and so maybe there's some education there that we could be doing to try and you know make sure everyone is aware that you can be addicted to your phone right like these are things we should be looking for these are things these are ways to avoid that um but also you know these are these are appropriate ways so we don't send them off as you know completely blind into the world with with no you know coping mechanisms on how to manage their their their interaction um I I would love to see if we could do

092something like that uh I'm going to go to Beth because we haven't heard from her yet um just thinking about all the the emails that we've received and just in doing my own um thinking about all this the issue of course I feel personally that the cell phone um policy is a good one at the high school I think that especially transitioning from kids that have sort of been able to just have it out or whatever it is a difficult transition um but obviously super important to not have it out during instructional time so I mean I'm totally on board with that um my where I start to kind of get a little is when people you know are talking about how much it's the cellphone that's affecting the mental health of our young people

093and so I'm not disagreeing that that is part of it but I don't believe it is the be all end all and so I decided to look at the surgeon general's report on youth Mental Health from 2021 and it's updated and I printed off because it was just incredible that this whole graphic around factors that can shape the mental health of young people and there's um one two three four five different categories so Society factors environment Community Family individual and within those factors there's at least 10 things like social economic inequalities discrimination racism migration then in environment neighborhood safety access to healthy food housing community relationships with peers teachers I mean it goes on and on and all of that out of that there's two things that it just says media and technology so I

094think that it's very important that we don't rush to think that this is what the issue is like I feel like it's part of the issue but I think that when I read the surgeon general's report he literally wrote what schools can do what families can do I really encourage everyone to read this report because it really talks about all of the things that affect our mental health what parents can do and and it was just really um interesting because under the taking action steps around um you know what Educators in school districts can do literally not even one mention about cell phone bands nothing I mean it just says um the only thing that he actually says is it um including positive behavioral interventions and supports and digital media literacy education and then other

095things he actually says where feasible school districts should also consider structural changes such as a later start to the school day that supports students well-being and that's something that we've touched on but to me I know that's incredibly I think it's easy to grab onto the cell phone thing and it's fear you know people find it fearful there's a book that's been read that's a bestseller that has instilled fear in parents and I think that it's very we have to be very careful around saying that once you know we just need to deal with this and then oh yeah that's you know it'll be fine um kind of thing because I just there are so many other things and most of the technology and mental health stuff that was listed under the surgeon general's report

096was really under the families and so it's hard for me also to have families really you know feeling strongly about phones and wanting the school to do something instead of taking the action for themselves I understand that probably some parents are taking the actions to limit their students um things but it's also not just about what we do in the schools um and the one last thing I want to touch on is just H um the other thing that he really said was that it was super important to protect and prioritize students with higher needs and those at risk higher risk of mental health challenges which are students with disabilities personal or family mental health challenges or other risk factors such as like lgbtq um kids finding support online in communities where they might might

097not find it in person um and to not take that away and to to realize that it's a really important thing for some of these marginalized kids thank you thank you Beth Kelly yeah I was as I'm listening to what you're saying it sounds to me that the vast majority of students in the high school are being reasonable about this new procedure is that kind of what I'm hearing from you they're for the most part they're following the rules and um not really addicted per se to their phones but pretty much doing what you're asking of them is that kind of what I'm understanding or you really question um I think it depends I I I don't think that I could say that the vast majority I think we need to get some data on

098this I think the teachers would be able to say if you said out of your eight classes right and we were trying to get a little bit more time on under their belts like first weeks of school are tumultuous here where we're changing classes and things like that um I I think that once we have a little bit more time we will be able to have I'd be able to have a a more definitive answer of what percentage would we say of the school day are teachers um having students comply seeing that students are complying with this or are they constantly fighting I think to kessa's point like are are students getting in this habit of you just just walk in and put it in not yet not yet okay um and I think the

099question about an addiction to their phone I think that's a lot higher than we think that it is it's just what's the degree of it you know I mean I think we see it with adults how many people have a their their phone with them all the time um and so I think that that's hard to say about um what what the addiction is I do think um to some of the points you made Beth I was so for forunate I'm I'm a total fan of Dr merthy the the Surgeon General and I saw him speak to our group that my mental health Forum that I'm a part of and what he expressed in his entire talk is concerned about social media specifically that that is what the concern is of that access to social

100media during the day um and so I think those that addiction right now addiction is one way to say that I also think it's the way kids communicate I think the kids could tell you that that not everybody some and some students have no social media which is a a newer Trend um but I do think that if I had to say give me a headon the vast majority of students use some form of social media to communicate with one another yeah that's how they talk instead of chat instead of text it's on on some form of social media so so I think that's that's hard to say about the addiction so that is the piece that could potentially tie in the most closely with the mental health issues that were kind of I think

101most parents are concerned about as they are thinking about this issue right is that kind of your understanding too um I guess I'm kind of curious if you know we're talking about education but if this is actually you know in whatever form it was a problem for a particular student or group of students is there any kind of intervention or you know support that you could provide for those students in terms of helping them take a break from their phone yeah take a break or or break their addiction to social media or whatever is the specific issue I you know it's funny years ago we were asking what we should do we pulled together a group of it was before um this group of students were in existence and we were seeing the rise in

102the number of students that were vaping and we pulled in a group of students we we enticed them with pizza and and ice cream and just had them talk about it and they were saying um that what they I was asking what did they think was an effective way to to make an impact on um people really understanding the severity of it and they've said throw facts at us instead of lecturing just lots and lots of information and so one of the things that we made for teachers I think some of them have them up but not everybody it was just this little chart of um X I should have brought it tonight it was like X percentage it was found that X percentage of students write down uh more information when they don't have

103their phones in class that's that's not a surprise but it was like X percentage of students saw an increase by 10% on a test when they weren't using their phones in class and then saying you need a break from your phone you know these are the things that that we're trying to message but in terms of how do we help students who are are truly really addicted to their phone I don't I don't think that we have come up with great interventions for that yet um so Beth I appreciate the the U letting us know about that report for us to look at as well and that report of the report um and I I think it is a good reminder a couple of good reminders that we're talking you know book is a very

104popular book and there's a lot of information in there um and that this is just such a huge topic such a huge issue that's multi-layered and what can we focus on in the school uh we're not telling people at home what to do with their phones or what how to raise their kids around phone use we are here to talk about what we can do at the school level and I think that there is still some room for um for for doing more um I'm I'm sad to hear that the teachers are still having to to do so much to monitor it with this current um guideline and so that I feel like that's another argument for for really considering a bell-to-bell um phone free time so that it's just not even something that needs

105that is considered during the day for teachers or or for the students and just to kind of give them the freedom to not have to have that connection to phone so I know it that's one way to look at it but I know it's it can be another way to to interpret it when you are in fact addicted to it and I think this is such a tough topic for adults too because I think that every one of us has a connection a relationship to our phone that is that's challenging to us and I also appreciate the idea of the digital um citizenship kind of education I think that's really important to talk about how we can be doing more with that and you know what is the best opportunity to teach kids about that

106is it by allowing them to still have their phones at different times throughout the day and at lunch like what kind of teaching is happening with that do you know what I'm saying like when they when they do still have access to different things to their phone throughout the day and at lunch is there any sort of teaching that's going along with that um would there be any more teaching that would be that could happen if they if they understand what it feels like to have the freedom of not being connected during the day does that make any sense I guess I I'm confused how if how that prepares our children to go out into the world at the high school level I mean I like I fully support all of the procedures that are

107in place every school um but I think that at the high school level it's it's different and I think that you know teaching them to manage it and teaching them that they can have it out at a certain time but then there's times when it has to be away that's life that's every day right I mean we go to work there are times when you can't have it out and then there's other times when you have your break and you can take it out so I mean I feel like these kids are so close to being 18 on their own you know especially Juniors and seniors and I think we just need to really enable them to handle what they're going to be you know out in the world with so I don't agree on

108limiting it more but that's just me phoi I think for me the big thing about like a bellt bell kind of policy where it's away for the whole entire day is like yeah it is like we are trying to be preparing for the next chapters of our life and whatever those may be like college working adult life like phones are going to be there and this is a new thing like even when I was in Middle School I don't remember this being like such a big problem of phones out during like school and I think this like generation of high schoolers has like the unique opportunity to get to learn how to manage the phones like as they're starting to become this big problem and so I think getting taught how do we regulate our

109phone usage at school and how can we bring that to our home life and whatever comes in the future and like getting those skills because it's it's like it's not like any other sort of thing we have in our life that we grow such a dependency on that is so like normalized like everyone's using their phones and I don't think anyone like knows how to manage it but I think we get to learn how to do that like as it's kind of happening you know and nothing we do prohibits parents from going further right I could go onto my kid's phone right now and block access from 7:50 a.m. to 2:20 p.m. every day and she could have it with her on the desk and she couldn't even turn it on or it would do

110nothing for her right so nothing we're doing says that that parents if they don't think their child can deal with the distraction or or is dealing well with it right um they can they can take the phone right I mean generally kids are not buying their own phone with their phone service right like parents actively provide that to them right so I I want to be careful that we're not you know overstepping what our bounds are and and putting our our personal take on you know we're here to educate them the instructional time is um is completely appropriate um and you know I might even be able to get to Bell to Bell I don't know I just as a having kids that have been that age um the the the the coaches that message

111oh practice is now right after school today none of them would know that if they didn't have their phones right if they couldn't see it at lunchtime that they had changed that right jobs those things it's just how the communication happens now and maybe it shouldn't but it does so I don't know if you know and I'll be interested to hear how Morse after a year of doing this has found that to happen right they're high school kids they're doing the same things you guys are doing I'll be interested to hear what that looks like I um I do feel bad that the teachers are still policing it but we are 25 days in and we all know that you know habits 8 weeks is that it is that the yeah so we're not even

112there yet right so I I think our freshmen they've never had their phones out in class that's why it wasn't a problem for you Phoebe because you couldn't have your phone in Middle School um and so our ninth graders have known nothing different our 10th graders I think are kind of in a similar position I have a 10th grader who said I don't really notice a difference cuz I did I had teachers that didn't allow it last year so I think as we get more comfortable with the process it will become a little more habitual and it's just what you do um and I hope that sort of eases the burden on the teachers but I'm definitely open to hearing you know as you get a little more information and and feedback from the teachers

113like what are they hearing if they if the majority of teachers came to us and said we feel like we should go bell-to-bell I would I would take that under advisement for sure um but right now that's not what I'm hearing from you is that correct no I I think from my perspective going bellt Bell we would have to have something to help us like like the Yonder bags yep I I you know I struggle with the Bell to Bell because again I look at this as as a future thing and an opportunity for us to really help kids because I you know I don't you I just don't think you can send kids out here you go and you've never used a cell phone or you've never turned it on and like you said

114Phoebe I what I worry about is for eight hours we can control what they're doing but the other 16 hours we have no control and they're going to be on social media then and again that's a point to do some education so that that next 16 hours they're actually using it properly and not doing things that they shouldn't be doing and you know only having this eight hour you know period of things are okay so you know I I would love for us to work towards something like that because I I think that's the best for the kids and I don't think as Beth you I 100% agree the cell phone is not the the primary thing that's the problem with mental health it's it's a big part of it I 100% agree social media

115all that stuff but there's so many other factors and nobody wants to address those factors I think we have to start addressing everything and that sometimes is a big swallow as a parent um but those are things that I think we we have to focus on we really do to help our kids I'm not concerned that if we were to do a bell to Bell students would then go off into the world not knowing how to use a cell phone or know how to try to manage their time so I I'm hearing that argument um but it's not a a concern for me especially since it is only eight hours out of the 24 and and those are the eight hours that we have some some purview over and um yeah it's a really tough

116topic and I also agree if I didn't say already I know it's not the only the only uh Factor when it comes to mental health but it is one that that I think we we could do a little bit more with and I look forward to seeing more hearing more data from our school from the other schools and seeing um if if this is sufficient yes I have two things one um I guess I'm um while I also share the excitement around and the and the encouragement around the idea of trying to do more on developing digital citizenship I also just want to be careful that we're not as a board giving a little bit of like an unfunded mandate a little bit of sort of saying like in in place of you know a

117different policy right like the administration and the teachers need to do more right and so I think one question I would have um for you Jen is like is there anything now that uh or that as we go into sort of his work and begin our budget cycle right is there is there anything that that you can foresee from us that would be um that would be truly helpful in terms of of providing support or Pro or providing resources to address that piece of it to address actually like how are we training students in general to be engaging with technology and becoming digital citizens is there something you can think of um or you can punt that to say uh maybe that's something we should be thinking about as part of our uh fiveyear strategic

118plan yeah it's a great question I think we'd have to think more about you know right off the bat that there were some things we had to fund right away we got more cameras for the yearbook staff instead of them using their phones we got more cameras for the art classes so that they could use those so there's some some things like that but I think if we're thinking more globally about how are we helping students to learn more about digital citizenship you know I I I appreciate the the comment too about thinking about that there it's figuring out what's the time what's the venue who does that I think there's a lot of thinking on that end of who's providing that um Michelle your comment made me think about I know we've done parent

119workshops on all sorts of things and maybe something for me to explore and talking with Sam might be um a parent Workshop about like what are some of these options that you can do there's some routers that you can buy there's some blocks that you can put and so parents could opt into that to think about even at the high school age my own poor kids oh my gosh I mean they don't have anything um and they have no shot um but so you know until they're older until they're older until they convince me but um but I think you know from with my parent haton there's definitely a lot more as I ease my own kids who are younger into this what are some um things that I can do to help them regulate

120and that is not a workshop that we've held before so I don't know if there's a financial implication to that if there's somebody that we would bring in um as a as an outside organization to help but those are some things I think that we could think of cuz I know like we've funded um what was her name the woman that we brought in and she did PD for all of the teachers the Lions and then she did a night for parents right I mean something like that might be you know and there is a cost to that yeah but it's probably well worth it yeah my other piece on on this is I think that as we as we continue to talk about this I think and is um I guess I'm trying to

121think about metrics on this and trying to think about like um uh my my sense currently is that we have an opportunity now to um to see how the current policy the high school or the procedure of the high school is going um but I think it'd be a missed opportunity if we also didn't and again this is where I'm not trying to also add another unfunded mandate to it of sort of like like how are we going to measure whether or not it's successful I don't think the like compliance rate is in class is the only measure for whether or not it's a successful policy because if it's I think the success of the policy or this I'm sorry success of the procedure or should be about um something that we can get our

122hands around in terms of actual impact on academic performance and on learning and then on um how we then have some sort of sense of is there is there any way to impact the s or to measure the positive impact on Mental Health right and I think without that I think we don't really know what we're talking about in terms of making any real decision about making a change or or or really having a way to evaluate that so again that's not where I want to just say like come up with a way to do that but um I think probably as a district we should be thinking hard about that and thinking about how do we figure out if this is if this is helping on in an academic way is it helping in

123terms of mental health um because otherwise we're just just throwing darts at a whatever you throw a dart at a a board a board a picture a picture a picture that you don't know what it looks at looks like or something yoube help I think I think just to plug the the work of the student leadership you know their their work is very concrete and when they're doing the recorded conversations and then they're coding the data and so it could be that um the the woman that I think um I've spoken to everybody about Jennifer Chase who helped us was an outside cons consult help us get this team started who is our connection to MIT and does the training for the students she and I have talked in the past about you know would

124it be advantageous for me to ask I've never asked the students can you go out and ask this except for one time last year on advisory and that was actually quite helpful we didn't talk about it as much tonight because they went out and they just asked about advisory brought the feedback I shared that with the whole staff and then we made decisions about advisory so they were a huge part of that decision and so that might be something that this year we ask them to really have specific questions that they go in and say how is this a impacting your academic work are you seeing that you're more focused in class now a lot of that is anecdotal questions but what it will come from it is really concrete data that they're able to

125present if if for those of you who are on the board two years ago and they presented and they show the graphs that they MIT has been amazing to help us pull that together so that might be one way we can also do that with the with the teachers I'm also kind of thinking about how you're telling us how this new procedure is impacting certain classes like art class or a um you mentioned yearbook um it is there any way to bring some flexibility back into the procedure so that we can allow cell phones to be used in those situations I mean we don't want this policy to cause hard ship to these you know to these particular courses right so we already did yeah so so U Mr melon and I collaborated with the

126two visual art teachers at the beginning of the year because they were concerned right from the start um and so the four of us came up with the two art teachers came up with a contract and then brought it to the two of us and the four of us agreed um that students in that class actually sign a contract that they are able to use their phone forx purpose in order to photograph their work and then upload it and then they put their phone away I haven't checked in with them to see how it's going about them um I don't know if anybody's in foundations are you in foundations in your book okay I will that you come up to the mic Maddie so in the spirit of the why we ask you to come

127up to the mic because we live stream and so if you speak from the audience they can't hear you at home oh yeah of course so I'm a member of yearbook and sometimes there are cases where we have to like go off and take pictures and of course we only have so many cameras and I have seen like students in my class and like friends like use their phones for purposes that are not exactly taking pictures or like things for yearbook and so whether that be like social media like I've seen Snapchat a lot and then because we're taking photos we're going out of the classroom we're taking pictures in like the hallway and whatnot and so there's just a lot of freedom with that and so I think it's just too much at once

128too much oh sorry too much like I think it's like you're just giving that like of course like there's been like all the policies like you can't use it in class and then like in like yearbook and in foundations like you're given your phone to like use for educational purposes but then that's a lot of freedom and it takes self-control that I don't think many students have to not use it when like you're given that privilege to have it with you yeah so I'm in foundations of Art and so your book is it just Juniors and seniors yes so that's kind of a level of trust that maybe isn't being earned but um so foundations of art I'm in a class um it's all freshman except for me um so that's like a whole different

129like type of kid and what I've EXP like we sign the contracts and we have the phone hotel and we'll finish the work we ask can I go take a picture often times it's the whole class is going lining up taking their picture and then the phones go right back into the hotel after and from my experience in that class even though it is like a lot of freshmen and it's a huge class there hasn't been a huge issue in that um but it's also because we're staying close to the classroom and it's for one purpose maybe for your book it's like a little different but I think signing the contract at the beginning of the year also helped clarify like this is the expectation and you're agreeing to the expectation and so I think

130that makes it a lot easier if that became an issue then like it would be easier for kids to understand like why it was an issue right and it could be revoked presumably if it's being inappropriately used right now policing that is a whole another story right but thank you okay okay okay I just want to respond to the the I know that the folks who have written in and and those of us on the board who who have children who aren't at this level we have a different perspective Ive right as as as parents um I think that we do also look ahead and hope that there's a consistent level of um guidance around phone use in schools and you know to to your point Michelle about parents who can just say my kids's

131not going to have access during the day that's true it also that that that student might also be impacted by their the rest of their peers having access and and there's just there's a social Dynamic there that I think is is a is a tough one and so it can be helpful to have just consistent um guidelines I guess throughout the school day yeah I mean I I think that's that's always the case right if everybody's curfew was midnight it would be great because then I wouldn't have to fight with my kid cuz she has friends who can stay out later than her um unfortunately that's generally not the norm um and so you know there's a Baseline and then if you if you feel like it's necessary to go above and beyond as a

132parent that is 100% you're right that was my point right I'm not saying it it should be completely up to the parents and there be no no you know ramifications in school at all like I think I think where we are now I can't really Envision us going back away from that right like I think instructional time should be protected and it should be instructional time um we can talk about the other space right the 5 minutes you know the the the I guess 40 minutes in total right 20 minutes for lunch and five minutes four times a day in passing um on what that looks like but um I did have a question about the consistency because one of the things we heard about uh from a parent was around the smart watches and

133are they allowed are they not it kind of seems like some of the schools talk about them but not all um I mean I guess it could be picked up by similar by similar device but I mean I guess if you're at if you're at the middle school can you have a Apple watch does anybody know the answer you're not allowed you you are not allowed to okay so no Apple watch okay and I can say I think the reason because I have a middle schooler in my house is that um some kids in middle school have a watch that and no phone yeah and so it it it is what they use to communicate that would be super rare at the high school level okay so they are not really trying to text their

134friends on their watch you're certainly not as Sly right are kids don't even look at their phones when they're texting right I mean would you agree I I don't think a ton of people communicate through their watch like they do their phones in the high school not exactly the same they count their steps no I mean it does it does Buzz right like you do feel it I mean there is that distraction piece of it I suppose um but uh did I see a hand up over here no okay okay thank you Jen thank you guys so much for for staying and sharing sharing your your perspective and we look forward to hearing from you more whether it's directly to us or or through all the great work you're doing at the high school all

135right I kind of teed up the middle school didn't I uh so we are going to move on to administrator reports and we're going to do the update from Freeport Middle School and goal review with uh Amy St Pierre our new principal hello everyone I'm Amy St Pierre principal at at Freeport Middle School thank you for the opportunity to share some of the recent happenings at Freeport Middle School before I begin I would like to Spotlight a few observations from my first few weeks at the middle school the warm welcome that I received from the community staff students has made me feel right at home right from day one positive interactions among staff across all grade levels um has been incredible and it's been a pleasure to see students engaged in learning activities throughout the

136day and to watch so many of them participate in various clubs and activities after school a large portion of my past few weeks has been spending time in classrooms a lot of this year a majority of this year is going to be time for me to just get to know the middle school and get to know rsu5 and to learn all of the students their names that's a feat in itself 300 names learning all of them a lot of work so it it's going to be it's going to take some time for me to just get in there and really observe and see what's going on so that I can then support the great work that's already happening here so looking at last year's goals that were developed with Mr Grogan the first goal staff

137worked on last year was the implementation of responsive classroom in Daily advisory classes responsive classroom is an approach that focuses on creating a positive inclusive classroom environment to enhance learning for students it emphasizes the importance of building that strong student and teacher relationship and really building a sense of community to engage students in their learning nine staff members participated in a 4-day responsive classroom training which was it helped to equip them with various strategies and insights that they brought back to staff in a train the trainer model last year and throughout the school year all staff members I I understand um participated in professional learning sessions that focused on responsive classroom which they still use and have worked hard to improve upon this year monthly meetings provided uh time for staff to collaborate and it

138allowed them to continue exploring those responsive classroom Concepts together throughout the year grade level teams worked to develop classroom activities um with the responsive classroom Focus focus and materials were required to support their learning and planning efforts in in that work I listed three books that were instrumental in the process responsive Classroom middle school core course building an academic community and empowering Educators and in just a moment I'll talk a little bit more about how this has laid a strong foundation for the goals that we're committed to working on this year the second goal last year that staff at the middle school worked on was improving instruction for the multilanguage Learners in mainstream classrooms teams worked to identify the essential learning objectives in various content areas which allowed them to differentiate instruction effectively this in

139ensured that the multilanguage Learners could participate meaningfully in mainstream classrooms staff received training from the technology department on effective tools to use to support translation and to further support support these Learners the instructional material additional instructional materials were purchased to meet identified needs any questions on last year's goals all right so as part of my transition plan into rsu5 and Freeport Middle School I've prioritized a smooth transition for both staff and students as we start the school year an important part of this work involved inviting staff to meet with me one on-one in August to start building relationships with all of them and to learn all that I could about Freeport Middle School the focus of these conversations was to identify what staff appreciated about Freeport Middle School and wanted to retain as well as

140areas that they felt we could direct our attention to this year an overwhelming majority of Staff scheduled time to meet with with me at the end of their summer vacation and from these conversations our schoolwide goals were developed the first goal focuses on reducing chronic absenteeism to a rate that's less than 14% And I've included on the handouts for you Baseline data from the previous two school years for your reference we're dedicated to providing a meaningful experience for all rsu5 students in a safe nurturing and student- centered environment as part of this work we will provide Outreach to strengthen connections to the school Community uh to achieve this we will continue to build those relationships through our daily advisory block with student- centered activities these activities follow a predictable structure to support the students academic

141behavior and social needs each week begins with a power school grade check and at this time students review their grades and input them into their own Digital Data sheet from there students can work with their advisory teacher or independently on a plan that will address their needs and goals for that week with the foundational work from the responsive classroom trainings that teams did last year they've structured the remaining four days with morning check-ins inquiry based learning activities and team building activities as well I think it's important to note that advisory at the middle school is a critical component of a middle school because it connects adults with small groups of students to provide that academic and developmental support to really strengthen that community in the school at Freeport Middle School our responsive classroom advisory block

142is really designed to support students to build those positive meaningful relationships one-on-one and with peers and with the adult that's leading their group it helps to um it helps students to really develop that positive relationship with that small peer group that they're with daily they check in they have conversations they talk about their weekends they talk about academic concerns cell phone concerns perhaps and they really build those those relationships um during that time each day it provides that safe space for students to strengthen academic and social skills and really develop those new skills daily attendance is gathered during advice advisory and advisers will help to identify students at risk of chronic absenteeism and to support our work um to implement targeted interventions interventions might include phone calls emails home to check in with students and

143families when students return after a period of being out their advisers will provide them with a return to school form to document the student would use that to document what assignments were missed while they were away and together they can develop a plan with their advisor to complete the assignments in a a real realistic time frame we understand the importance of recognizing and and celebrating those positive things that students are doing daily large and small and to celebrate the positives we're also working to send out positive postcards home to recognize student achievements throughout the school year we are in the process of strengthening our systems for consistent student students support and as part of this work we're rebuilding our Student Assistance team which includes administrators School counsellors social workers the school nurse and teachers the

144the purpose of the team is to review data and create tailored support systems or plans for our identified students our work will be centered around the consistent schoolwide practices to improve our approach with student discipline as well as academic and social supports needed for students improving Communications with families is another step that we're working on this year for this goal we've streamlined our weekly announcements to make sure that families receive upto-date information information or important details about upcoming schoolwide events will be shared in in advance through our our um announcements that go out and teacher teams are also working on sending out uh newsletters periodically to keep families informed of grade specific information that's our first goal do I have any questions on that one I'm not I wouldn't expect you to know the answer

145to this but maybe Jean might um I uh so just shy of 18% for the last two years it looks like for The Chronic absenteeism we're looking to get below 14 do we know what our preco number was I mean is that even a goal that we're trying to get back to to or I have the data but not on top of my head but I will get that actually I can share what I can do is we pulled for I pulled for um our administrators several years several years data so I will share that with yes can you okay yeah can I can I just ask on that same topic do you know the state average for this year or for this last year I can I can get you that too I'll I'll

146get all that information all right the second goal we're working on is establishing a schoolwide focus challenging students with clearly defined rigorous expectations that that support enriched experiences a common theme that em emerged from meetings I had with staff was the need for clarity and consistency in our schoolwide systems and structures to really support a student centered rigorous learning environment certainly this is an ambitious goal that impacts all aspects of the learning experience and it's going to take some time for us to work through that together we're committed to it and we're ready we've already started the process to begin the leadership team will conduct a review of the Middle School handbook noting sections that require attention all staff will then join in this this collaborative effort which is going to require some time structure

147and careful attention to detail once the faculty and staff have had the time to go through the the handbook for their review we will put together a student leadership team to then put their eyes and and have their voice on the handbook revisions as well the final revised document will be an updated School wide handbook that communicates important information for students parents and staff and feedback from staff has led us to develop and Implement a behavior reporting form this year that's designed to document instances of unacceptable student behaviors that happen throughout the day when teachers input data into the form it is sent directly to administrators allowing us to follow up and provide timely support sometimes teachers will just input the data for just documentation and other times it's it's requiring an administrator to to

148follow up on something through these efforts we hope to create a more cohesive experience for staff and students and and follow up with the the clarity and consistency around the work that we're doing another step excuse me in achieving our second goal is to provide vertical content meetings that align instructional practices and expectations again following that theme of Clarity consistency with Expectations by deepening content area knowledge at the middle level we will enhance the teaching and learning opportunities for students at Freeport Middle School an important component of our instructional Focus this year will be to promote the integration of talk and writing across all content areas so really teaching students and allowing them to have the time to process and before they go into the writing components of of what they're doing and learning we

149will use staff feedback to plan future sessions or training sessions that allow content teachers to work together and learn from each other whenever possible questions can you say a little bit more about what you mean by rigorous expectations is that behavior or academic or can you elaborate a little bit more on that so I would say both um just following the procedures that we have in place or that we we believe to be true and what we expect of all students in in the middle school so just following what what we've put in place and and holding students to it and if if students you know mess up which they're going to their middle school students then supporting them with that and educating them along the way so that they hopefully don't make those same

150mistakes and and we can support them if they do since we just spent two hours talking about cell phones um what are what are you are you seeing anything is it what you're seeing is your uh is it you have an interesting perspective coming from a different Middle School uh I'm curious if if the procedure in place here is different the same if you've noticed any it's a great question uh the middle school that I'm coming from is a very different environment than what Freeport Middle School is so the the cell phone challenges were much greater where I'm coming from we had we had cell phone lockers at the middle school for every classroom and students were required to put their cell phones in the lockers at the start of every class I have not

151seen the cell phone issues not issues but the cell phone challenges here as much as as we dealt with in my previous District do students have them yes are they on their their their self of course they are and what we ask is that students are keeping their cell phones in their bags off and away we probably weekly would have a handful of cell phones that we collect that teachers are collecting but it's it's not by any means um what the high school it sounds like what they're navigating and what I I'm used too so that's a that's a great problem to have other questions for Amy La I just wanted to thank you so much Amy this was just um really great um and commend you on these goals for the school year I

152think they they just look fantastic um I just wanted to mention the TAC literacy class at the middle school because we were discussing that so much at the high school and I know that my might be different than digital citizenship but maybe that's I'm sorry to ask you I don't expect you to say off the top of your head what that course entails but maybe the board you could get back to the board and let us know absolutely sure other questions thank you thank you all right hopefully we gave Jen enough of a break get some water I only got half a cookie though so I got to know it's okay it's it's my dessert dinner and dessert and my glasses okay okay so I am um going to share some reflection on the goal

153from last year and then share uh the goals that we are working towards this year um so I think as um the majority of the board knows uh at the high school we are we work very hard and are very proud of uh the development of our own strategic plan that we have a five-year strategic plan and then each summer our leadership team The Faculty leadership team and the department chair team meet to reflect on feedback that we've gotten from our whole staff on what we did for the Strategic plan that year and then we meet twice in the summer to create the action plan for the coming school year based on the work that we did the year before so the first page that you have uh is showing uh the action steps that

154we had last year tied to our overall strategic plan so the the number one two three four and five those are our fiveyear goals that don't change the big topics so engaging in instruction purposeful assessment equity and inclusion Community connections and support for Learning and growth and so those never change and we uh never change within the five years and then the action steps that come underneath them are what help us to guide all of the meetings that we do throughout the year so that's our PLC meetings our faculty meetings department meetings professional Workshop days everything is tied directly to the Strategic plan um and so I'll just do some quick highlights of what we did uh last year that we worked on um so for engaging instruction um this was a focus of our

155PLC work our uh PLC coach emad Dorian worked with um a large percentage of the faculty to look at engaging instruction practices to really highlight those in our instruction and assessment so that teachers were increasing their toolbox of um strategies that they're using to engage all students and so that was one piece that we did that ties into the engaging instruction and purposeful assessment and so that was something that uh teachers did in um PLC team and then they also presented at a faculty meeting to share strategies uh amongst the teams of what they were working on to increase student engagement in classes um we also Implement worked on and implemented common practices for habits of work last year and it was something that uh we had a pretty wide variance in how teachers were

156using habits of work uh in the Years prior to 23 24 and last year we came to some uh agreements about common practices all that all the way down to even common dates of when teachers were um implementing habits of work it was challenging there were definitely more roadblocks with that than we thought that there would be but the reflection on what we did last year led into um some new systems and new goals that we have for this year um for purposeful assessments we continued our work with all of our departments working on common assessments we do still have Singleton classes um there's quite a number of Singletons meaning um there's only one teacher in one section of that class um but the majority of our staff the vast majority of our staff have

157at least one other colleague with whom they are teaching a common course and they're working on developing assessments and so that has been work that they've made incredible progress in that um and uh revising the the assessments that they have so that students are uh no matter who their teacher is for a particular class that they're aiming towards the same learning targets towards the same assessment um goals that they have even though they're still of course individuality with uh amongst the teachers and how they are presenting that work so it's not an expectations of of teachers being lock step that they have flexibility in how they are are teaching their classes of course but the learning objectives and goals they have worked really hard to align those from U amongst teachers um for the equity

158and inclusion action steps uh one of the specific things uh that we focused on was increasing knowledge about microaggressions or um a terminology that we've used as subtle acts of exclusion uh and that was focused on um work with the with the staff in particular we were not uh working we were not focused on working with students last year and learning and expanding their knowledge about microaggressions um and that was something that came directly from uh one of the leadership student leadership members said from the prior year 2223 students saying that they felt like it would be important for teachers to really increase their understanding of what microaggressions are and how they step in um tool that they're able to do that um the other piece that we did um was Equitable access that we

159did a lot of work last year in going through combing through our student handbook and different programs that we have to look specifically at Financial barriers that might be in place for our students and how do we reduce or eliminate those financial barriers um so things like increasing my funding thanks to the board for um supporting lunch on a field trip and knowing that not every student is able to go to a college campus and pay $9 to eat in their cafeteria we now have funding to do that we increased funding for AP tests for uh reducing the the cost and the U increasing the number of scholarships that we're able to give um so there was a wide variety of things that we looked at but that's our Equity team which is faculty members

160it's a subset of our faculty leadership team that are really trying to identify when and where we're where we have costs um that we are able to prevent um the community connections uh we did a lot of work on our May term program and that is the alternative to senior project it's optional to do a senior project and so we've been working hard for the last two years to figure out how do we have a meaningful and engaging last month for all of our seniors including the ones who opt not to do a senior project um there's a still a lot of work to be done but they were a phenomenal team that did that it's a lot of building the plane as you're flying it um but I think year three we're GNA we're

161going to use a lot of the reflections and revisions um in order to make this year more effective for the students who are doing that um that project and then um our work with the Jed Foundation um they uh for for those who aren't aware of that we are in a three-year partnership with them that was Grant funded um that we entered in that partnership where they are looking uh across all of our systems of school in what support we are providing for mental health and how do we enhance the support uh that we have in place and so really this year it was about meeting uh once in person and then virtually with our jet advisor who's from the Jed Foundation who is looking at our data from surveys from our students and staff

162and then narrowing it down to the things that we want to focus on and put those action steps in place this year uh so last year it was really more about analyzing what is it that we are already doing that we can capitalize on and where are their gaps and what do we need so that feeds into my goals for this year as well um so Switching gears from the Strategic plan and going into um the um some of the specific achievement data we're looking at uh data in all sorts of elements of the school including um common assessment data that that's something that teachers are analyzing closely um but in terms of looking at our main through year uh results and data this was where you can see that we I had a goal

163last year both for our ninth and our 10th graders um after lots of discussion with um our superintendent and assistant superintendent and I presented this to the board last year that we decided to no longer give the test the nwaa test to the nth grade ERS um because it was a standalone test they would be the only grade in the district I believe that would be taking the NWA because the other grades are um doing the main threeyear test um I still don't totally understand why there is not a main threeyear test everybody asks me that question why is there no um ninth grade main threeyear test um and I think we've gone through this a few times that Cynthia can comment on that but there is not a main through year test for for

164I wasn't inviting you I'm sorry I was like she can explain that um but so we made that decision so I do not have data to report for the n9th grade for the 10th grade that is our state required uh test for main through year um and one of the things that we were really proud of is the number of students we worked really hard to get as many students as we could to test so for math we only had six students opt out um we had 159 out of 164 tests uh so we had a a 4% um opt out rate and um I'm sorry that numberers that that's uh supposed to be 165 um and then we had 160 students um test for reading and only had five uh opt out um for

165those of you whove seen this data in the past we've had much higher opt out rates and so we're really happy because it it feels like able to um capture a lot of strong data in where our students stand in the 10th grade um so for our uh results for last year my uh the goal that I had set was for 78% of our students to meet or exceed the achievement Target uh unfortunately we did not meet that we were at 73% which is a 2.7% decrease from 2223 um and so that is viously um something that we are looking at this year and thinking about how do we enhance those scores and the work that we are are doing um with our students to um to enhance their their reading skills but on the

166math side we had great news um that uh the goal that I had set of 59% of students meeting or exceeding the achievement Target um we exceeded that we had 63% of our students meet or exceed and that was a 88.5% increase from 2223 um so that was something that um we were happy to see our our math scores increasing uh and so it's it's uh I'll come back to the goals for this year but it's something that all of the work that our departments are doing with their common assessments with engaging instruction the goal is of course to impact their overall learning including seeing um these scores continue to rise that's the hope um so uh I'm sorry that I was talking to my student leadership some of them um there are there questions

167about last year's goals or do you want me to proceed into this year's goals um I do have a question on last year's goal uh in the first goal under one engaging instruction action steps um with the lens of equity the grading practices um what sort of what did you guys come up with in the reassessing versus the relearning as well as the numeric scale so the numeric grading scale is really like because for our school under a 70 is failing versus other schools it's different right so um is that was sort of the con of what you were looking at yeah that was originally what we did and then we shifted to habits of work and so we really put our focus on the numeric part of Shifting to the one two 3 4

168for habits of work so we have not yet tackled that is a a a massive conversation a about the 0 to 100 and thinking about 60 as a failing grade in some schools and 70 as a failing 69 versus 59 um but last year feeling like we ran into more challenges with habits of work than we thought that we would which then again shifted our grading scale for habits of work for this year and so um we actually decided that that was not one of the action steps that we put on for this year because we feel like this is still a a a pretty massive shift for us to make habits of work work that's an odd sentence uh to make it function well for our students and for our staff and so it

169might be some it it is definitely something that we talked about with the staff that we are tbling that reassessment and relearning is something that we are constantly talking about in departments and thinking about what the the it it is not a retake policy that we have in this school it's not that you didn't study and you stayed up late and you retake it it's that you know time is the variable for learning a skill and that some students need more time so what are they doing in between the first assessment and the second assessment because what you're saying is you need a reassessment because you need more time and you need more practice and so that's constantly conversations of what is that look like and how is that manageable for staff Thanks Jen um

170could you say more about how the habits of work changed for this coming year um well I'm not sorry if I'm jumping ahead yeah yeah that's for this this new goal which I'll say last year's big change was shifting to a one to four because before it was a0 to 100 scale and we were feeling like um the consistency was helpful that all our grades in the school were 0 to 100 but it didn't really make sense of what's the difference between a 79 and an 80 when you're talking about a habit I see okay so it was this scale and not um not the definition of the Habit no so get rid of some of the the for the rubric yes so we so the indicators is that what you're asking so we went

171down to two indicators which is um preparedness and engagement and so really the way that we have phrased this amongst ourselves as a staff and to students is it what are you doing to prepare for class outside of class and what are you doing to engage in learning when you're inside of class those are the two main things that we focused on when we had other things on the rubric in the past what were the other two that got eliminated oh determination well and the joke was that we never had respect because we're just all set here and we you know everybody's respectful that was what the younger principles were saying but now we found that we were really struggling to have um concrete data for those things um that that it was more anecdotal

172are those the same across schools I guess I'm realizing we probably have different habits of work and that didn't occur to me at different schools so so for so I work the most closely with the six through eight and so they have preparedness and engagement and then um we had change we were the first to kind of divert for when we changed it to determination there's a different wording at um DCS and FMS oh yeah respect is there I can I should know what my kids habits of work on but I could not tell [Laughter] you okay great so I'll jump to this year's goals if that's okay um so uh so you'll see that the topics are the same like I said engaging instruction purposeful assessment those five categories stay the same for the

173fiveyear plan and then has changed is the action steps that are below so I won't go through all of them um I'll just kind of highlight a few that we're talking about underneath engaging instruction one of the things that we have seen over and over again um that our students are struggling with more than they were in the past is their exe executive functioning skills and so that is something that we are working on um specifically focusing on our ninth graders but really trying to give concrete strategies to students and feedback on their executive functioning so that they are more prepared with organization time management task initiation things like that um and hoping that we see um some skill building there um and then the revised habits of work what we decided to do and

174um and looked at this at what other schools were doing um there are a couple of main things that um we decided which was one to take habits of work off of student transcripts we found that we were uh I believe other than uh maybe Casco Bay High School we were one of the only schools that was putting habits of work on a transcript the vast majority of schools were are put are still putting it on report cards and then schools in the past couple of years have shifted away from putting it on transcripts we had had information from college admissions reps that it was helpful to see it on transcripts and then saw more schools stepping away from that and so feeling like the important part is that we're giving students feedback on that

175so that it's on their report cards it's in power school but that it's no longer on their transcript um and then um the other piece of that was that we shifted to go to one to three scoring um that we no longer have a four feeling like there are students that certainly exceed the three but that they have gotten feedback k through eight on their skills in a 1 to four range and then feeling that at the high school level they were really having it was getting more and more difficult to figure out what was the four for a habit that you're doing over and over is it like you never ever ever ever ever forget to do X Y and Z versus feel that um a lot of where the students were were Landing

176was in that three category saying this is something that I've asked you to do and you've done it well you've organized you've turned things in on time um and so that was a a place where uh I met with the student leadership team over the summer shared the proposal they gave some great feedback on that were supportive of um shifting to a one to three and then we implemented that so that's new this year we have not collected feedback on how that's going we also reduced we stuck with every teacher in the building ENT habits of work grades on the same date so that we have a it's a Tuesday when um and we're doing that monthly instead of bi-weekly teachers were struggling to keep up with the bi-weekly part because we only see uh

177in a regular week we only see students five times times in two weeks um because we're a rotating schedule and if you add in I don't know a pep rally or a a snow day then that's even less and we were sticking to those dates and they were struggling with that and so feeling like the monthly date is something that's more manageable and still giving students feedback unfortunately in our first round of our first month of this we had technical issues um that we have recovered from that but um it has not been a smooth process and so again this year it's taken more time than we have thought to work out the Kinks of that but really the the the hope is that we are giving students meaningful feedback on their content knowledge and

178understanding and skills and on their work habits that is essentially what we're we're trying to do um shifting to purposeful assessment we're continuing with the development of uh common assessments as we've been doing in year-long plans um but the focus this year too is uh data analysis is really making sure that we're carving out time for teachers of the same uh same course to have time and to sit with their assessments look at the data together and then um not just revise the assessment for the future but inform them about progress of their students doing both of those things uh and so putting it on here is really um making it a goal to prioritize making sure that teachers have time to do that which isn't always easy because they don't all have the same

179planning block and so um that's part of what we'll do in our faculty meetings department meetings and and professional Workshop days um for Equity inclusion we will uh continue the work with microaggressions thinking about how we expand that to students um which um that will tie into that digital footprint piece as well because I think we're seeing so many of these subtle Acts or not so subtle acts of exclusion on online through social media and so that that's a place where those conversations that we're having tonight can certainly connect um we'll continue reviewing um the the um Equitable access and finding barriers where um they're in place especially financially um increasing student voice you heard the students talk about that and that is part of the goal uh of the the work for the action

180steps as well and then the co-curricular eligibility process we have not done a formal review of that in many years years and that that was part of my goal last year and with our new athletic director Eric call coming in and learning our system we postpone that to be this year and so that will be a committee that Eric is leading uh that I'll participate in where he will pull together students staff coaches parents and teachers to look at our current policy look at policies of other districts and then um come up with our our policy um Community connections uh again we we are as always so fortunate to have Dee benell in the position of our Outreach coordinator and she's constantly expanding our offerings for internships for job Shadows um all sorts of things

181one of the things that as a staff we've identified is um being more public with our communication of what our connections to the community are because I don't think we've shared we have so much that happens in this building of bringing people in uh to enhance the curriculum and increasing the knowledge and understanding of that amongst our staff but also outside in the community so even something as simple as a newsletter to say who are these outside organizations that are coming into school which we have not done in the past um and then finally for support for Learning and growth um working on our action steps with the Jed Foundation they will continue to coach us this year um there are three main things that we have decided to focus on that they have coached

182us uh to choose from all of the data and the things that we are going to work on is developing life skills in behavior and social connectedness those are the three things that we will look at specifically and figure out doing um and how do we enhance that work did you say one more time yeah sure developing life skills of course about like when you can't manage your time your anxiety increases H and flip that into something positive when we have better organization and time management skills how does that impact mental health not just your academic work um increasing help-seeking behaviors and social connectedness and the Jed Foundation has seven main principles that they are focused on and those are they guided us to choose the ones that we feel are the most relevant for

183our data so that comes right from the Jud Foundation um seven categories and then um the new cell phone policy which I think or excuse me procedure which um I think we've discussed tonight um we did we did and then um shifting into um the assessment goals uh the math we are um setting a goal of having um increasing from 63% to 65% of students in the 10th grade to meet or exceed their achievement Target and then for reading um we are hoping um uh to reach the goal of 78% which was the goal from last year that we did not meet um and again as I said hoping that all of the work that we do with the Strategic plan is impacting all of the levels of achievement including these assessment points how does

184your strategic plan intersect with the district strategic plan so if we change our strategic plan what does that mean for yours like what year are you in of yours we are uh in year we're going to 2026 this is our second one since I've been here okay so you're in year four okay I think well so so we make our own strategic plan so we are flexible in how that needs to change and adapt and I think that when the district uh we didn't used to have the category of equity it was um about multiple Pathways and so when the district then shifted to have a focus on Equity then we did as well and so a lot of it is a vend diagram of of how this intersects I think it's just really specific

185to the high school and and that the faculty has weighed in so much on this document of um what we're prioritizing thank you thank you Jen um I do have a question just because um I know Jean had said that we would be seeing the chronic absenteeism goal on almost everybody so and I know that's a goal just from being a parent and receiving the email around the new absent absence policy um so I'm no I mean I realize it's a goal um but I guess I just had some questions about that and I'm wondering um uh well a couple of questions but first H have you had any feedback from parents or students around around um the new policy around absences around around bringing in the the excused what's excused versus unexcused um I

186think that again it's it's a new policy that we've put into place um and I think that we anecdotally are already seeing a a decrease particularly in the number of single class absences where jalo was absent 15 times from period 89 maroon and so um pull that data easily to see what the impact is but so so we're already seeing that those numbers are reducing um in terms of uh I think that there are some parents that are concerned um for sure about um having to go through this some of the the concerns that have directly to me now this definitely goes to our office staff more than it comes directly to me um is that they are worried about would a would a a person where they have an appointment refuse to do this

187get tired of doing this and I think that what we have seen is that districts around us have had um much tighter attendance policies than we have had and so it's not uncommon it's actually uncommon that we we didn't have as tight of policies and so um those have been some of the questions and I think we're just trying to answer individual questions there are um always certain circumstances when um someone has a chronic medical condition things like that that uh they're communicating with the nurse about that um but I think um you know in the first week of school we had three um three phone calls for haircuts we're trying to to miss a class for that and we're really trying to say that is not something that we can support during school hours

188that's that's not that's different than a a medical appointment that you can't schedule outside of school hours and so people have three days because we know it can it can happen before it can happen the day of or it can happen three days afterwards as well and so I think that that has helped that the majority of people have been able to share that with us I guess I was um thank you for that and I was also thinking more along the lines of is so is the attendance law the same for elementary as it is for high school or is it different just because I don't know do you know is it the same like same yes it's the same what's excused and what not excuse yeah okay so I remember Emily Grim um

189basically saying last year and so this was before the whole push that as long as the parent called it was excused and so obviously that's not the case at the high school and so is this going to be across the board is this something that's going to be at the elementary schools as well and I also had a qu question about the fact that the procedure is that if the child has one unexcused absence they have to meet with an administrator and I just I that what that's what it says in the handbook yes yes it says that do you not so your way Jen so I you know that was concerning to me because I feel like if a parent is making the choice around saying I'm going to take my kid on this

190trip and the kid doesn't really have you know that much of a choice it just seems that um it it forces the child to sort of have that like consequence and so I had a concern about that so I mean I think that when we have students who have unexcused absences a lot of the times what we're talking with them about is like how looking at their absences how do how are we helping you catch up with your work things like that and and you know I think that it's um it's important for parents to understand that when a student misses two days of school and you know there's of course there's times when it's unavoidable I think there's other times when it's avoidable and when they're missing it at the high school they are

191especially our ninth graders they're missing eight classes eight separate classes that they have to um uh you know figure out how to make that up and what's the impact on students for that and I think that those are the conversations that we're really trying to have of how do we shift because the numbers have so drastically increased since um since covid of students missing multiple days of school missing um class periods and I think that is the goal of saying and so I don't know about the younger grades um and I think I would imagine it's very different because here if a student drives which is our 10th 11th and 12th graders it could be that a parent could call them out and then nobody's coming to get them you know that they so our

192single period absences are uh I would imagine a much larger issue than um at the younger grades okay I guess I was just thinking also around um you know the parents because this is new and so I'm I think that there parents that have probably already planned trips that they were planning to take their kids out for either a day or two you know maybe attached on to the end of a v you know a vacation week or something because it's cheaper to fly on a Wednesday we all know or Thursday before a vacation week and so um so I guess is that the plan that you would then you know that child sits down with an administrator and has a talk about it planned family trips can be excused I think what we're looking

193at um and I know certainly there's been a lot of conversations prek K8 that that that those folks is people who will take their children to Disney for a week in November then they'll go somewhere else in the spring for a week so those are the things that and then that then we have the normal I'm sick um that are excused so that is an allow that is an allowable excused absence plan family could I just jump in with a with a policy because we're misusing that term a little bit and let's let's just use it properly so the the there is a there is a procedure on attendance for the district and it's called Jaa compulsory attendant compulsory attendance and there's a list of things that can be counted as excusable absences um uh

194personal illness an appointment with a health professional that must be made during the regular school day obser observance of a recognized religious holiday when the observance is required during the regular school day a family emergency a planned absence for a personal or educational purpose that has been approved and then f is education disruption resulting from homelessness unplanned psychiatric hospitalization Etc so I think the important thing that just that I would just note is that in our district policy there's a it's very clearly stated that that um a planned absence for a personal educational per purpose has to be approved there's no um that that is at the discretion of the administrator to make so I don't don't think there's there hasn't been any change to that there's no change there's no change to the district

195policy in ter in terms of that I think what you're saying is that there's maybe some changes in the way the way that that is being enforced or perhaps the the way and the frequency with which approvals are being given but no change has been made to our policy so and that's always been a process here so students have to fill out a form if they have an extended absence they have every teacher sign it they have a parent sign it and I Mr melon I sign at last so that and we talk to them about what's your plan how are you going to make this up how are you going to make up the work how you going to catch up when you're back you need to use success Block in The Homework Center

196so we've done that since I've been here that's been in place the difference was um the I think the the larger shift here has been the excused for the appointments and so and that is under our policy it's just our process has not been to ask for the approval which we're now asking for um I think one sort of piece of feedback we heard about the appointments um I will say I've had a dentist and an eye doctor appointment that I've had to get the notes and both of them were like oh you need I don't even remember how to do that hold on and it took each of them about five or 10 minutes to find their they were able to provide it um but it was not something that they typically had to

197hand out for every student that happened to have an 8 A.M dent cleaning um so I don't know I don't know uh how how we differ or the same from others but um they were both able to get it very easily but I think one uh piece of feedback we saw about the medical piece was around privacy um and having to provide a note from the provider who who knows what kind of provider they are maybe they're an oncologist maybe they're you know um and providing a note to the office with that information um might be um feel invasive for privacy purposes uh so I don't know if you have any ideas or Solutions around that but um I think that's worth a thought I yeah and so a couple of things one is that

198I think the easiest thing that people have been giving us is appointment reminders like that you get on your cell phone or you get on um you know through text message or an email or something like that so so then your doctor doesn't have to the doctor doesn't have to do anything if it's an appointment reminder that those are the ones we get the most frequently um and so for the other piece of if a parent had um something that they thought was sensitive that could go directly to me or to Mr melon we handle the most sensitive information in the school and so that could come directly to us and then when I say to the office it's excused then I don't give a reason and so that's something that we could certainly I

199think there are are lots of cases of um significant um either medical or mental health concerns that we know about and so those parents are already communicating with us but I do think that we could you know put that out more widely to say if you have something um that you feel like is information that that is um sensitive that you want to ensure I mean all of our all of our um staff members do the required District trainings about keeping student information confidential the guidance office has very confidential information and so um it would be against our policy if somebody didn't keep that information private oh that we also shred everything and I think uh our office staff tells the people on the phone that so whatever they give us is shredded all right

200one more question um I know that at different times when there has been OB um a threat or you know something against the school that parents will call and say I'm keeping my child home today is that an excused absence excuse that that and and the superintendent I talked about some within the law you have some discretion yeah and I think that that would but that would also go under um it's the um part I'm sorry Colin I can't remember exactly the wording of it about mental health because that's what that's about health and safety well and also there's nothing in our policy that doesn't give the administrators discretion to make those decisions so it's the administrator's discretion whether or not they want to do that that if the administrator decided they didn't want to

201do that they could decide to not do that there might then be consequences to that and we might then have to deal with them but that is at that's the administrator's discretion to not to either excuse it or to not excuse it so that's I think the the point is that nothing's an automatic um or I'm sorry that there's a category of personal I can't remember now I stole Cynthia's computer and I'm not going to steal it back there's a category that's just for that um for personal reasons that can be excused at discretion and so again the point there is that it's at their discretion and I I can get information about the other districts around us I know Yarmouth put this into place last year and then they went tighter this year that's

202where the um back to the point about the vacation that you mentioning that's where um what we've seen in the past on there being you can be excused under a personal but there are multiple trips and then there are illnesses too and that's where the administrator this year really saying we're not some of those we're not going to approve gotcha instead of just automatically saying every trip for as long as us got okay thank you and I'm not sure the letter that went out to the high school showed any of that sort of discretion or flexibility maybe that was intentional because you don't want people to schedule vacations during school um but it it read and I think they even the students thought that well there's a new law and so we can't go on

203vacation because it's unexcused um so there are situations where it would be excused based on the history with that with that student yes okay thank you but just on that I think like um I think leaving it at the discretion of the administrators to determine whether or not a a u a family trip should be excused is absolutely appropriate it's absolutely appropriate educationally so think that so I think that um yes there has not been a change in the law so I but I think that um so just to say I think that if that if if we if we are shifting somewhat our practices around that and being more rigorous um because these folks who we've hired to educate our children have determined that that is for the best in their education then hell

204yes then please do that no no I don't disagree at all uh it it was it the the way it read and to in my I probably read it really quickly um but uh was that it it is never going to be excused it will never be excused is the way it read well then that again that may I would again I'm not saying but not like they told me personally it went to every student no no I know but again if that is the if that is uh that is at Jen's discretion to determine that but if that is the case then then I feel like we should know that now that I mean that is I mean what's the point of having having um if if the answer is always no don't ask

205right I mean why why with questions we haven't changed our policy the the the the district procedure has changed at the high school the procedure has changed not for extended absences the the procedure of approval you mean or of looking at over our time whole absence procedure has changed like now we are required to provide a note documenting if they have an appointment that was not required before right cor correct okay great I have a different question about your presentation yeah um if you could say simply which is probably not possible but I'm G to still ask that because my brain is getting simpler as the hour grows late um what is the in terms of our mental health action and in terms of what we're we're we're focusing on either this year or for

206next year how would you um how would you quantify that as being different from before we started working with the jet Foundation or like what are we doing or what do we have planned for this year that is um that just we did not have before and that we're really looking at it a very different way so I think that it's um it might be small steps I think it's not always going to be um major steps one of those is um you know if we think about those three categories so developing life skills instead of saying you should be organized this is really helpful it's giving concrete strategies here's a method for this here is some ways that you can organize your stuff here's how you could you share that with the board I'm

207sorry or just me maybe yeah you know I use myself as an example and say some of us need our organization help our whole life and so you know I think giving those concrete strategies and giving feedback about that is one and having students really have conversations about it might be the guidance counselors who are going in and they're calling back a full advisory and talking to them about like why does this matter you know what's the connection between being organized and feeling uh more settled and more you know um prepared for what you're doing and how do these things which connects to the Lin Lions work that we've done of this cycle of when we um ramp up anxiety on our own and so that might be something that is just more specific it's

208not that we haven't talked about it but saying we're going into every ninth grade advisory we're going into every 10th grade advisory and having a conversation about this um social connectedness is something that we've worked on a lot in advisory I will say feedback from the student students is they don't always love it and so we're figuring out how to do it in a more subtle way you know so before um before we went on the llbean trips the time where they half of the day they were at we took the ninth and tth graders to El Bean half the day they were at school and half the day they were um at L Bean last year we brought in the Volo organization which was powerful but it was a hard match it was like

209let's go kayaking and then let's talk about mental health in the same day this year what we did was talked about social connectedness but it was in advisory groups and it was questions like if you could get two free tickets to uh any show or any any event what would you go to which led to good conversation between the kids things um you know it was more about how do we just get kids talking and it doesn't have to always be these really difficult conversations and so those might be some subtle things um increasing help-seeking behavior is we're looking at everything that we have and seeing does students have the information that they need when they're struggling is it the first thing that pops up on our website because it's not and and should it

210be um there are things that we've done in the past where we have these little cards and um it has all of our school resources on it and then State and national resources suicide hotlines text line things like that and so we had students take a picture of it with their cell phones before that was last year that was last year we did not do it this year we did not do it this year because we knew they'd lose the little card but they would probably not lose the photo and had them put it in an album that's an example of when it was really helpful for them to have their phones in that moment um and so it might be these subtle action steps but they're helping us to really make sure it's concrete

211so we can say have we done this have we done this and and look at the success rate and then at the end of our partnership with Jed they survey the staff and students again and we look at the and analyze the data this year two Mora thank you Jen um these are really thoughtful I really appreciate this um I just had a comment um that I thought the changes to the habits of work seem interesting and I'll be I'll be interested to see how that goes and how it turns out and if there's some learning there that could carry over to the rest of the schools um um yeah I've heard some feedback in the community about you know the habits of work and about you know some students who have just brains that

212work differently may be struggling more with some of the habits and um kind of internalizing that and and challenges around that so I'm just sort of thinking about that as well and um how we're using habits of work in our schools um that I would love to have the board Explore More but um I guess I don't have a question I just wanted to say I'll look look forward to seeing how that goes thanks so do we essentially just eliminate exceeds so three still meets yes so three is still the goal yes three is the goal okay yes and so the language and some of the rubrics changed so that it it might have altered slightly but not very much okay Kelly so did I understand that you said you've seen an increase in sort

213of struggles around executive functioning especially in the lower grades I'm sort of curious if you have any ideas about why this is happening and whether or not it has anything to do with social media and cell phone usage um I you know I think the thing that we're constantly talking about is covid and not knowing the impacts of covid of I think what we see as a really concrete challenge that came out of covid is that kids were not managing as much right things were cancelled they our if you look at our high school kids right now what they manage in a day of their schedule of four classes and then rehearsal or practice or a job or a family obligation afterwards and then they have to figure out how when and if they're going

214to socialize they didn't have to do all of that even as simple as during the day now a student can join as many clubs as they want so theoretically in a two- week span they could go to 10 clubs because some clubs only meet every other week and we weren't meeting in clubs in covid so they didn't have all of these things that they had to organize and so I'm I'm less familiar about what they have to do on a day-to-day basis other than watching my own middle schooler who's an eighth grader she's got a lot she's she's involved in in um music and and co-curriculars and things like that and she's got to manage things and when they didn't have to do that I think it we're seeing impacts now of struggling with meeting

215deadlines organization time management um task and iation and I I think it's it's we've said a lot about it will be fascinating when the actual data comes out from researchers much smarter than me but I I that's that's what we our hypothesis is is we're seeing this Trickle and hopefully if we're giving concrete strategies then it will make a a difference but um I'm I it could be screen time at home it could be those things but we haven't really explored that as much as really just um thinking about how do we give these concrete strategies that we're seeing as a as a deficit oh Danielle will the the changes to the how grading will that be updated then on the website I only ask because I looked at my son's how grades the other

216day looking at his grades and I kind of got a little upset um but because of the new grading system he tells me he's fine um because two is me a standard three is distinguished now and that's different I just looked so that so you're seeing that in power school yeah so then that is that it three is meeting the standard yeah that's not what it's saying in power school right now yeah and so we this is just as of last week that we were still having issues with with power school one of the things that Paula Roberts has always warned us is like it's a massive change when you change a number system in power school and and we now we really believe her and so I think that that's something that we have

217to we actually turned off access to Power School for students and parents for a few days because trying figure that out I was like it's not closing of the period why can't I check your grades yeah oh you should have gotten an email that we did that that that went out I read the attendance one I can't read them all Jen um but that is something that we'll we'll look into to make sure that it's right but but three is meets that did not change just one quick last question is um the transcripts this year they won't have the have it so they won't have it okay right awesome thank you yes all right any other questions for Jen thank you great thank you sorry Peter I think he's napping in the back room we

218save The Best For Last of course I like I I was told my role here would be to get us back on schedule so you have a time machine that ain't happening Peter all right thanks for having me tonight um so i' just like to uh take a quick look back at last year's goals and give you a quick update on those um the first one was in partnership with other nearby organizations uh establish a youth rugby program with an eye on growing to a regional League um I think I reported to you at least once last year that that um went actually considerably better than we thought it would in its first year um so I'm considering that goal to be achieved we launched our first ever rugby program in the spring of 2024

219and in rsu5 K through2 we had over 60 players um take part in the in a first-time rugby program so first time for anything is is uh pretty exciting and um there's already some good momentum in in sustaining that and growing it for 2025 so that's great news um the second goal was creating a Civics 101 program for adult Learners um I'll uh give them credit every chance that I get but this is is a blatant uh plagiarization of Davidson North Carolina's uh Civics 101 class that they've done there very successfully over the years and um I'm going to call that goal to uh partially achieved we're almost there we in principle are right on the same page as our friends at Freeport town hall and town office and all the municipal offices um it

220really is has been a matter of timing and just being able to find uh the right opportunity where they can focus on on this and get their um key speakers lined up at the right times so we had hoped initially to launch it this fall and um right now we're looking at um February through April of 2025 as being the launch date for that so um I'm hopeful that no later than Friday I'll be talking to Caroline peler the assistant um Town manager um and nailing down those dates and um which personalities will be featured on which dates um um and then the third goal that I had last year um this was one that I am saying is not achieved and uh it I'm one of many people um none more so than the

221principles who felt that uh that the the landscape just sort of changed beneath our feet um last year not long after I presented this goal for the first time to the board um the the Immigrant population that was here and that I was really focused on for helping educate them about the opportunities that were available to them through Community programs uh they were moved out so so this was more or less kind of back burner at that point but um there is some evidence that um that the folks who found permanent housing and Free Port are beginning to get accustom to our programs and understanding what they're about and that they're available to them so we've seen uh we've seen some attendance and participation that we didn't see over the last couple of years um

222and then um I'd also just like to point out that that I think it's it's not a direct correlation and is never um appropriate to make any assumptions but we also could perhaps roll some of this population into a broader effort that we're making this year um to build awareness about scholarship and financial assistance for our programs and so actually just today I sent out uh some information to the uh to the principles of uh K the k35 schools in the district um asking for their support in identifying families and passing it along to their school counselors and other folks who work with um with kids that might know of families that could um could benefit from Camp Seaside in the summertime um basically what we want to do is we don't want to be

223in a position yet again where we're hearing from families asking for financial support and asking to take part in these programs long after the programs have filled and there's no space for them anymore and we find that's really a trend so we're trying to get ahead of it um it's early October still and uh and hopefully this this effort that we're launching now will will address both of those to some degree so those were last year's goals any questions about those how long is the civics class like is it like a eight-week class is it yeah so we're looking at six or seven or eight sessions um each session would feature some personality from the the municipal offices um Town manager Town planner Public Safety um uh codes enforcement Public Works Etc um so those

224people would come and give sort of a presentation about what they do and then it would be a very interactive you know the same group of 20 or so people participants would just have direct um and very sort of intimate access to these people for for questions and answers and really understanding how those parts of the of the Town structure work um I'll uh I'll point out here that I'm starting in Freeport because I I work very closely um with the folks here in Freeport but my hope is that over time um that this could be rolled out in something similar at least done in in pel and or Durham great and do you really have kindergarteners playing rugby because I feel like I want to come watch that yeah we do I'll I'll send

225you some pictures it's really it's really really cool yeah no the kids the kids had a blast this year other questions on last year's goals okay uh do we know if there's anything like the Civics 101 that's happening at the high school or like folks from the local municipality coming into the high school classes is Jen still here yeah it sounds really interesting I'm excited to see more about this I think it's a great idea good all right register when do those summer programs fill up um I am sorry to report that within 12 minutes of opening our registration for Camp Seaside last year it was full an 8-week program with at least 60 children per week was filled within 12 minutes um this year we're doing a lottery system it's a big change there

226will be some folks who are not pleased with that but I think the number of people who say oh thank God I can't get online at nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning because I'm working I I can't be there in those first 12 minutes so we're going to give people a week or two to get their names in and we'll have a lottery system for it it's so with some of the um difficulties that other area summer camps have had um running at full capacity um it it has felt like the pressure is a little bit uh turned up the heat has been turned up on community programs it's beginning to feel like we're not the only game in town but it's starting to feel that way so um there's a lot of reactions about

227what am I supposed to do if if my kid can't be in Camp Seaside and we don't have as many answers to that question any anymore as we used to so um yeah this will this will help we serve more families this way does Freeport Community Services offer scholarships for yes for this camp in particular or any kind of summer camp and any camps um and not just in the summertime so um over the last probably three years um we've formed a much closer relationship with their programs um people there and we are actually sharing scholarship information we merged our scholar ship request forms um so um so we're on the same page and we know um who the who the families are we identifying them they're pushing them to us we're pushing other people

228to them for other needs and um yeah collaborating really closely on that so that's been a great a great match yeah okay very good um okay so for um for the current Year's goals um so the first is about Adult Enrichment classes um which really went South really really really far south um with the pandemic years and it just hasn't bounced back it's the one part of our business the one part of our offerings where the attendance numbers have just not rebounded um everything else has and they've grown and Adult Enrichment has just really stayed sort of behind the curve so um as a team and uh making use of the resources u in the Cumberland County adult education Hub um I want to try to get to the bottom of that a little bit

229and see if we can't make some improvements this year uh so um research adult Adult Enrichment Trends and Adult Ed offices on our region and our Hub create a strategic plan for growth in our offerings improve marketing and sound execution um so this really is going to be a a deep dive into um into the reported numbers of of our Hub Partners um for the last few years to sort of see where we where we match up against how their Trends have been in that same period of time um looking for some anecdotal evidence from from their enrichment coordinators to find out you know what they've learned are there things they're trying that are and aren't working um what they've learned along the way and um then and then launching some sort of program this

230year that is focused and um and that will will help rebuild this part of our program that's really important there's um we we still have a lot of great offerings and they're just not full like they used to be it's also harder finding instructors that group has fallen away somewhat so it's um we' kind of been hit from two directions there but that's the first goal of the Year any any questions there okay um and then the second goal that um that I'll give to you tonight is to um launch at least one new program aimed at marginalized Andor underserved populations and um this this goal has grown out of um some interest that came uh came forward to us last year to um to take the Unified sports model that is um really pretty

231large and and um and popular at the high school level and to sort of bring it down to younger age groups and so um the the first thing that happened last year is that we directed A group of interested volunteers who had some um momentum behind them we directed them to the local Little League organization who had a bodyy ball program that was really successful um that built some interest and some buzz and added some volunteers to their to their group and um so this fall um we have launched a um a Unified sports uh youth soccer program there are 18 participants um the attendance has been great um by all accounts the families are having a wonderful time the kids are having a wonderful time um we offered uh buddies from um so kids

232who are registered in our other soccer programs if they wanted to take part as buddies in this program it was it was free of charge um to sort of build a volunteer Spirit among younger um younger kids and there have been a number that have taken Taken part there as well so um so we're off to a very good start so that first goal is um I think in hand but I I don't want us to be satisfied with that one and so um you know some other things for instance that we're looking into is having a series of events that would focus on women and girls and sports and coaching um to to build some empowerment um and agency there um and then I'm also thinking about uh another partnership with other folks at

233Freeport Community Services and their Aging in place programming um where we can offer some recreational guided and um accessible recreational opportunities for um seniors in in town and in the community so U those are just a couple examples of directions that we might go senior rugby that's what I'm saying oh yeah y great just on that I think that is a great idea I think it should actually be like the there's a chess tournament that is run in um uh in Portland and you B it's like you have to be over the age of eight but otherwise there's no uh there's no like age brackets so if you go which I encourage everyone to to go to uh you will watch uh little like 9-year-olds like whip like 50-year-old men in chess this this sounds

234very specific Colin it's an extraordinary has no no no no no because I I am wise enough to not show up to to participate I just get to watch these very serious uh grown-ups who think they're good at chess uh get whooped by uh children so I think actually it would be great to get the seniors uh together with the kindergarten Partners at a rugby game I think that would be a really fantastic uh program and I want to throw a lot of money at that program uh tonight I want to pull it out of any fund that we still have available to make that happen thanks other questions for Peter yeah um I just obviously this is fantastic so the unified Arts soccer program that's so it's just basically like a non-competitive kind of

235thing is that what it is like um kids can come and play and not feel like they're in a league and they're like you know have to be the best kind of thing is that what yeah where the pressure is off to be the best and to succeed in the traditional Sports ways um uh yeah getting used to working with their peers um learning a little bit about the game and if this you know if this ladds up to a larger um Unified sports Presence at once those kids are in high school all the better um so it's um yeah it's creating some opportunities where there just aren't right right typically um yeah SPAC spaces for those kids thank you other questions for Peter thank you all right we're back on schedule it was worth

236the wait thank you Peter all right um public comment we've driven them away away all right well then I would take a motion to adjourn thank you Beth Kelly all those in favor not oppose thank you