001[Applause] [Music] Everybody, I'm going to call the meeting to order. Today is Tuesday, August 26, 2025. This meeting is being video and audio recorded for future cable broadcast. Please silence all cell phones for the duration of the meeting. May I have a motion to open the school committee? >> So do a roll call. >> Mr. >> Yes. >> Mr. M. >> Yes. >> Mr. >> Yes. Can I ask everybody to stand to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay. The first item on the agenda is the consent agenda. Everything listed in the consent agenda was distributed in advance of the meeting. Does anyone have any requests for something to be removed from the consent agenda and discuss the voting on the second? See none. May
002I have a motion to approve and accept the items listed in the consent agenda including the minutes for the July 26 2025 meeting. So >> all those in favor? Any opposed? See that motion to pass this. Uh I believe has anyone signed up for delegation? No. Uh seeing no old business on the agenda, I will turn this over to Dr. >> Thank you. We have a couple of things before we have the high schools present. Um it should be relatively quick, but I'm going to call Miss Chznney up to the podium. She will be reviewing the student handbook changes as well as the staff handbook. and then we will take a vote on both of those things. >> Good evening, school plan members. On this evening before school starts, um we have very few changes
003to both. I'm going to be reporting on both the AES and FMS school handbook. Um for AES, it's almost identical except for um dismissal after 3:00 for non-medical reasons. Um must wait until I leave. Um, and we added responsive classroom language to our addendum, our ADA addendum. Um, FMS has added language about prohibiting students from using bikes with a motor on campus. You can find that on page 52. Um, we also discuss staff handbook. Does anybody have any questions about the student handbooks either ads or FMS? >> I would just be looking for a motion to get both of those approved. Can I have a motion to approve the 2025 2026 student handbook? And can I have a motion for you amendment to approve the 2025 2026 student handbook and the 2025 2026 tax? >>
004All those in favor? Any opposed? Seeing none, the motion passes without opposition. >> Okay. I just want to clarify, you didn't have any questions about the staff either, right? Okay, both the student handbooks were approved. So, the next item is a revision to the school calendar. Last week, we received phone call or email from the town officials that the old Conley uh new construction is taking an election is taking place for that new construction on November 18th. The school didn't know about that until last week. So what we did was we decided to change we're recommending changing our September 24th PB day to November 18th. So our students will not have school on election day because as you know everyone in town votes at the elementary school. So that is the only change but I
005it's just updated calendar and I'm just looking for a motion to accept the change calendar. >> Any questions? D motion to approve the 2526 school calendar as all those favor minutes when approved of the use of schools for elections. Just determine that does that motion apply to special elections or just regular elections and you have to opinion on that. Thank you. Okay, if I could just take one thing out of order, which is the business manager's report. Um, I'd ask Mr. Petro to come to the podium to speak regarding school breakfast and lunch prices. There is going to be a recommended change and we're looking for a vote tonight on that. >> Good evening. Um, every couple of years there's a review done. The department of red does it on behalf of USDA food prices
006and the department review that doesn't change but there's a calculation from every year or every other year to determine the price of adult lunches. The adult lunches are still being made with the same commodities that the students being made. So we're currently charging this past year $5 a lunch and according the recommendations we should be increasing it $6 a month. So it's $1 increase even though um calculations show that last year we should have charged more last year. So recommendations we have is everything else is staying the same. Breakfast is free, the lunch is free. The second breakfast is 275 for student. The second lunch is free 75 for student. It's simply the adult the adult breakfast is staying the same at 275. I think it was okay with the adult lunch $6. So, we're
007looking for a vote approve that questions. >> So, can I have a motion to approve the 2025 2026 breakfast and lunch breakfast? All those in favor? Any opposed? Seeing none, the motion passes without opposition. Thank you. And at this time, um, I'd like to call a representative from each of the four high schools to pick a number in terms of the order that they will be presenting in. As you know, uh, each high school, New Beth High School, Fair Haven High School, Pon Regional High School, and Freetown Lakeville Fair High School will be presenting and it'sformational only tonight regarding the course offerings they have for the students. So again, I'd ask one person from each of the high schools to come on up, pick a number, and that will be the order that you will
008present. Um, each school will have 20 to 30 minutes to make a presentation. Okay. So, lucky number one is New Becker Public Schools. So, I would ask them to set up and they'll have 20 to 30 minutes. Good evening everyone. Joyce Cardell is the principal of New Bedford High School, our superintendent. We're really excited to present to you some information about New High School that you may or may not know. So, here's just some um overall information about the school, where we were, where we currently are, and where we're heading. And some things that I think are really important to know. In many urban large schools, there's some assumptions about class sizes being quite large. So, I just want to bring your attention that our general um our average class size is about 13 students
009to one teacher, sometimes less. We have tremendous support from the district to ensure that the students have the instructional support that they need. And I think that that's really something important and critical for academic success. You can see that we've put a tremendous amount into our facilities over the last 5 years, taking an older building and really uh upgrading it, renovating it, and providing our students with state-of-the-art academic um spaces for learning. So we have a beautiful finance lab with you know Wall Street stock tickers where students are interacting interfacing with career um you know things that they're going to see in a career setting. We also have a beautiful pool auditorium renovations. It's just been so much and it really just impacts learning for students and we're really proud of that. We also have
010um a biotech lab, a chemistry lab, health science labs with state-of-the-art equipment where the students are interacting with um not your you know old school mannequin that doesn't move. These guys are like robots and they can you know make the patients sick and they have to triage what the symptoms are. It's really incredible. They get hands-on experience in these spaces. So again, just some information about the supports we offer, what we have as an overall. Something that we're really, really proud of and that we celebrate is the diversity at New Edward High School. And with that comes uh our mission to provide equitable uh resources and spaces and academics for all students from every walk of life. And so with that we have uh so many languages spoken at the high school and bilingualism multilingualism
011is beautiful and needed in our country and abroad. So our students work really hard to earn the seal of bi literacy um and other opportunities they can become certified translators through UMass Dartmouth and they do that right on site. So it's not just about learning English, it's also about valuing their multiple languages and using that um for their future. So you can see that specific to students who um may need to learn English as another language. We do have EL program that's English language development programming. So that we have that though not just in our general classes. We offer AP classes for our students. We're multilingual honors courses. They have access to all of our offerings and our job is to provide the supports that ensure that they can access the curriculum. The same goes
012for students uh with special education needs um and otherwise. So you can see here our staff receives a tremendous amount of training. We really celebrate culture every month. We have specific celebrations, but if you walk through our halls, the goal is for you to be able to see the community that we serve. And so our students see themselves as they walk through the halls as well. So we have lots of support services. Um this this side of the slide talks a little bit about our special education programming. But again, what I want to really highlight is that we pride ourselves on ensuring no matter what the profile is of the student, we are going to figure out how to give you access to all of the programming that we have. And I just think that
013that's an incredible um piece for us that we that we're able to offer that we have the supports to do that. So, you can see that we have open enrollment for advanced placement courses. So our goal is that every student tries at least one advanced placement course while at New Bedford High School. We have academic support classes. We have a wing block which is called what I need and students can opt into uh a block once a week to say, you know, it's like student agency, right? I need extra support in algebra 1. I'm going to opt into that. And really students get to learn where they need to excel. what they might enjoy if they're academically strong. They might go to photography during that time. So, it's really building student agency. We also have
014a large deaf and heart of hearing um cohort and program and we have the supports for those students again so that they can access and engage with any of the programs that we have in courses. We have a onegoal program uh with ground services that follows students through their first year of college. And we have an early college program that is robust and we have partnerships with BCC Mass and Bridgewater where students can take courses and we have the traditional coaul classes subset of courses as well. You'll also know that um counselor access is one counselor to every 205 students, which sounds like a lot, but if you actually go on the mass website and you learn a little bit about other large urban um schools, the numbers are much higher and it's really really
015hard. So, it's recommended that uh school counselors have at least uh under 280 students. So we are doing really well there and we really have um a lot of supports for students. The same goes for our school adjustment counselor. So it's sort of paired together. So if your student has they're now called school counselors but people might think of it as a guidance counselor pairs with a school adjustment counselor. You share a student so that way your child really never falls through the cracks, right? whether it's academic planning, career planning, as well as a social emotional support needed in high school. Um we have three special education administrators, four facilitators and 31 special educators. that's highlighted here because we have so many programs and sometimes it can be quantity over quality and for us we
016have put the resources behind the numbers so that we can support all of the programs and I just think it's critical to things running really slowly and students needs are met that way. We have direct services. We have a beautiful college and career center um that is fairly new into the high school. We have um individual counseling classroom uh core lessons. Our counselors push into the classrooms working with students. Gear up in talent search are wonderful partners that are also in our high school that work closely with our students. So lots and lots of opportunities and supports. So this is about actual next school spending. I don't know if you want to take this slide to talk a little bit about this. Okay. But what you can see right is since 2020 our in district
017expenditure per pupil is much higher. We value our students and we want to make sure that they have all of the resources and supports that they need and we continue to work to make sure that that number of what we're spending on our students matches that. So we have a huge presence in the community. Um we have family w a family welcome center in the high school itself. This also wrap around services in the district. So families that need absolutely any support, therefore there happens to be a tragedy, a fire, um a family member, something happens, any support that they may need, they're in the school, they work with the family to make sure that um students can continue to receive an education. We also invest have a very strong special education parent advisory council
018that meets to ensure that you know we are providing the best education to all students. the same for our LPAC which is our English learner parent advisory council and then uh at the high school we have our school council and we try to really make sure that student voice is part of all of these pieces so that we're hearing from students about what they need not what we think they need as adults and I think that that's just really something that our students value about the process So, I mentioned some of these offerings already, but just to bring um additional attention to we have an Academy of Artist program um that is thriving, robust. We um it has grown so large that we now have four counselors that service the students in the Academy of
019Honors. When we began, we only had one counselor and um about 40 students and we have uh graduated many with AP capstone diplomas um and beyond and have well over 200 students in that program. Now again that is a pathway to an AP capstone diploma which is um recognized by colleges as a very rigorous set of courses that students take. We have the Academy of Civic Leadership and World Studies which is incredible. The students get to interface with students from other countries. There's an exchange program that is part of that. They learn about civic responsibility. Um they really work to build leadership skills but then to apply that into the community. And so our students um in senior year have an opportunity to go study abroad and students from the exchange program can also come
020to the high school as well. So we are really excited about the civic leadership world studies program. We have early college and we have over 28 courses um advanced placement courses and then you can see there on the side where it talks about the different high quality instructional uh materials curriculum that we use at the high school for each of our content areas. So um we are a comprehensive high school. So we offer lots of academics but there's also academics in our vocational programming as well. So we have um an early childhood education program academy of finance our radio and broadcasting um which is really cool. students make like a newscast every Friday and the whole school gets to see the students um broadcast out to the school. We have a business technology program, information
021technology, hospitality, tourism, health sciences and engineering. So students are really able to get a um robust experience in any of those pathways and they are applying skills that they need for industry. Um and then through those programs they get opportunities for internships and beyond and then all the other fun stuff. So way of life we get really excited about this as you can see. We're really excited cuz now we have a mask off. you haven't met him yet, they'll find you up. So, we have so many organizations, no matter what a student is interested in. Um, if we don't have it, the students petition for it and we're making it happen. Every club that you can possibly think of, every activity, every sport, um, we have it in terms of our performing arts, the band,
022we have chorus. Truly, if you have an interest or a passion that goes beyond math class, beyond science, we have a good fit for you. And we have uh incredible advisors that support that. We have a positive um student coordinator. So, she's sort of like a day of students almost. And she works really, really hard to ensure that all students know about the offerings. We have we communicate with students constantly about anything that's new coming up that they can uh get involved in. We provide uh transportation in the afternoons for students that are staying. We also provide a supple program so that students are staying late. We know teenagers need lots of calories cuz they're growing. So before they go on to, you know, athletics or a club, they can eat. So we really try
023to address the whole child and whatever they might thrive in. So these are just uh you know three bullets where big school so it means big opportunities um you know the three middle schools in New York become one plus right some of our surrounding communities that come and join us and we just have a tradition of excellence that we are working really really hard to uphold and we appreciate um everybody that recognizes that New Bever High School has incredible things to offer uh all communities. >> Uh thank you principal Cardosa. So my name is Andrew Liry. I'm superintendent of veteran schools and I did get a nod to maybe talk about financial aspects or operational aspects and on paper I worked in the district a long time for a long time. So on paper I'm
024an expert in school finance and expert in operations. Now, I have five kids and I'm not an expert parent that um for them. Um but I am just so excited about waiver life and our boys have gone to New Bedford High School and we just moved um my eldest Michael into Stonehill on Friday and that was the culmination of his journey starting in ninth grade high school. currently have um Connor and Patrick and we soon have Liam and Julia at New Bedford High School. We are fully invested in being a Wher mainly as given what it's done for our family and reflecting on New Bedford High School, you can get the sense from Principal Carda that there is a pathway for every student. Bedford High School has the capacity, the technical term is the economies
025of scale, but also the resources to be able to offer something for every student. And that's what we found personally. Just as late as last night, Connor was getting ready for his senior year and he was arranging his parking at UMass Dart. So, not only will he be starting his senior year at New York High School, he is taking dual enrollment at UMass Dart. And after looking at the tuition at Stoneville, I'm really glad that uh the credit um thanks to High School from Dartland, we can apply that going forward. Um so we're really appreciative of that journey and it also combines athletics and uh the student experience back high school. Um, I don't remember my high school being as fun. My experience being as fun in the 80s and '90s with better high school
026was a fun place for students to be, for students to grow. And as students, just thinking of our experience navigating the academic challenges when the standards increased in the ninth grade, the supports were there choosing courses that we never thought they would enroll in. Michael enrolled in AP Spanish taking Spanish and education at school as well. So, I can't talk enough about the student experience at Ugra High School this week and we're very um excited to have Patrick and Liam and Julia move forward from there. But I do think we're at an interesting point for all cities and towns in Massachusetts. There's a lot of structural changes, financial impacts, enrollment increases, and declines. I think what you're seeing in my judgment you are seeing a lot of big cities benefit benefiting from a lot of
027the policy changes and investments and that may be a good thing for certain cities and towns and may have an impact on other cities and towns but it's very clear that there's growth in the big cities like Newton and as principal car has outlined we've been able to make those investments I would encourage everybody come to Denver High School even if you're passing through high school halfway Boulevard on the weekend. You will see the parking lots full on the weekend. It could be ESAT testing, AP classes, uh pre tutoring. The high school's always full on the weekend. Our athletes are always practicing and the fields as which have also been overdone. Um we've done are always full at the weekend. So I would encourage everybody to come by and see what's up. There will be
028opportunities. We will have open houses. We will have a school choice fair in October where we invite surrounding schools to come. We invite Jara schools even better to come walk through the high school and see what's on offer. So we do think structurally big picture at the school finance world. There are great opportunities to keep building within the cities like New Jersey and at the level of the students. I'm confident in in in the experience that my students are going to have and their brothers and sisters can come. So, we're available at any time. Come by the high school, come walk through the halls, come see Hatan, and definitely come take in a game. We got any pressure on the football field. We got great prospects for the football games and this fall. Okay. [Applause]
029school community questions. >> Hi there. Um, can you talk a little bit about like the safety and security you have at the building as far as like SRO officers and things like that? >> Yeah, sure. It's so it's um better you guys. Um so we met high school is a huge community um anywhere from in a given year from 2400 uh to 3,000 students across the street middle school about 800. Um if enroll increases to a,000 students that's a huge community in one area. So just logistically everything from traffic safety making sure everyone gets to class on time. You need to ensure you have the resources for them. So we do we did have some of the staffing numbers up there in the slides. So we have increased all of that. Um we did invest
030in same technology you see it like a a stadium as well detectors and all of that very well received by families as well. Um we did see I think all big high schools like that from Everett um to Lexington to New Bedford coming out of the pandemic we did see that see it from prek to Kur disregulation a lot of concerns there but um we have seen that decline and I think on paper in terms of see disciplinary record suspensions suspensions or accidents you see that complain at historic levels know that's partly in terms of the school culture that's been improved. It's partly those resources as well. Um but I think uh overall I think we're very confident from the traffic to the buildings to the classrooms that we had a very safe environment. >>
031Yes, I just echoed that. I think that you know that's a question that lots of families ask us. um you know with thousands of people in one area there are things that happen um they happen everywhere. However, our number one priority is student safety and success in our building uh as well as our staff, right? We have families uh to go into as well. So we have uh 14 uh security and safety officers right now and they work throughout the campus to to ensure uh like um superintendent said whether it's traffic situations, doors uh to students getting to where they need to go as well as an SRO that supports um anything that we might need. And we have uh behavior assistance that really help students to reeregulate if something is to happen. And this
032year we are um launching the uh yonder coaches the use of them. We know that social media has caused uh some challenges for our young people. So we are looking to have a distractionfree if at all possible uh learning environment that I think will help with um some of the when we think about safety I'm not just talking about physical safety right also the mental health of our students and we've seen what the research shows on that um with cell phones and all of that. So, we're really really working hard to ensure that all students have that experience. Um, and when it's not a good fit, really having those conversations and trying to figure out what the best is. So, um, it's a great follow question on the safety and security piece. Um, with the
033middle school just across the street, do you the headcount that you shared with us in terms of school resource officers, security personnel, is that just for New Becker High School or is that shared staff across both campuses? >> It's just New Becker High School. They also have their um school resource officer and security team. >> Can you talk a little bit more about swinging? You know, going to a new high school. uh from a smaller town sometimes can be a little bit daunting. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the transition programs that you have to help kids kind of make that transition? >> Sure. So, one of the things that's been really important to us is getting to know the students um before they actually are there and embedded in everything
034they have to offer. And what I mean by that is when we're scheduling students and we're trying to learn about what they might be interested in, you know, maybe 13, 14, 15 years old where it's a big ask, you know, what do you want to do when you grow up? But we start to really understand them as a person and what their interests are so that we can align them with pathways and classes that they're going to feel connected to, creating a smaller community for them. So something that we also do is tomorrow our 9th and 12th graders will start and we did that so that our 12th graders have this opportunity to model for our 9th graders support them in their transition to high school and it's less intimidating, right? You don't have every
035single student there. The students get this opportunity to come in during our orientation. We do the same thing. We try to connect the students. We have students from different programs there so that they get to know some students before they come in. Um and then once students are there, we although we are one big school, we have four houses. Um so anyone that may have attended Bever High School knows it's blue, green, gold, tan house. And so students start to really uh you know connect with their house, with their team. They see the same people. they have a base of support. So, um it breaks down that big freshman class into smaller, you know, classes across the courouses and then they sort of have like their maid team to support them in that first year.
036>> Another safety and security question for you. So uh could you tell us a little bit about what the school has in place in terms of systems and policies to deal with either internal or external rights? Uh speak to this. I was actually in a high alumni and I was telling you right around the time that the obviously things have progressed quite a bit in the years since but I'd like to know what the school has in place. So like everyone right is uh something we never want to see happen and I hope I never have to uh be in that situation. However, we do have protocols in place as a leadership team and our you know security team. We have a crisis and prevention team. We need to go over all of those things.
037We did a couple of years ago uh install all new alarm systems so that if there's a breach of security, we know that many of the shootings happened because a door was propped or there wasn't proper security coming in. We had a um like trap door system, if you will, coming through the main entrance. So even if you gain entry there, you actually can't access the rest of the building. Um which allows us to contain a threat if there happens to be one. We have um like I said, we do the trainings. We know all the signs in the classrooms so that uh folks know what to do. We changed our lock system so it's a different more efficient lock system for all the doors. We installed uh new doors in the hallways so some
038of those older doors didn't close tightly which again we know whether fire or threat right if you can create barriers right it delays the threat coming to that area. So, there's been a lot of work done. Um, and everybody has a response protocol, if you will, depending what your position is. If something is to happen, you you know what your response needs to be to that to then make sure that the students are safe. >> Thank you. I know it's a big question. So, but you know, I'm sure we're looking forward to seeing some I think I appreciate that question. My daughter started kindergarten tomorrow and in preschool she was doing the journals, right? And it just it's unfortunately a reality for education today. Can I go ahead? >> Hi. I just have a question
039about special education and what your practices are for inclusion. >> We are inclusion. We So I mean that that's a a big question, right? So I I mentioned that we work really hard to ensure no matter what the needs are of the student that they have access. So from our community based program program to our most advanced and academically advanced student, they have access to the same program studies essentially. And so our students uh most of our classes are cold talk classes and even if a student requires some subsparate settings they have access to other courses that are not subseparate. So we really really try to individualize it instead of saying okay because you need this for math you're going to need this for everything. Um and that goes for athletics, right? We have students
040that are engaging in unified sports. We have um students that are in our clubs and we support the clubs that you know they are interested in and if we need to provide that professional so that they can participate, we do that. Whether that's on the band bus to go see a game or at prom, we'll provide the support needed so that they can participate academically or socially. Um in terms of additional extracurriculars, I know you know high school has a pretty wide variety of um activities available between various bands, drama clubs. Are there any particular programs you could call out as um being real crafts of the school system or anything that would really separate them from any other school presenting this evening? >> So I think we're really really proud of a lot of
041our CPT and app programs. um the students are applying the skills in the real world, right? Equally, monthly, they get to do that. I think that we offer an incredible information technology program and I think that that sometimes gets overlooked. Our AP computer science teacher is topnotch and really just pushing students to the next level. They're building robots. a robot, a dog walks around the school. You know, it's really incredible to see students applying something from coding to literally you see the product. Um, I would say that's a pretty incredible program along with um, you know, our global civic leadership program because students get the opportunity to study abroad and I don't know how many high school students uh, can really engage in that that type of civic engagement, but then they apply abroad. So,
042I think that's a pretty incredible opportunity as well. and you know our early college and dual enrollment if you can essentially graduate from New Bedford High School with two years of college if not more completed and it really I mean uh superintendent alluded to you know the cost savings but that that's real you know when uh students are facing the decision whether or not to take a gap year or to continue on and they can say I actually can jump into almost my third year of college. Um, it's a pretty incredible boost of confidence, right? And we know that completion rates of, you know, freshman year of college are quite low where our students, it's much higher because they were going to be almost two years in those programs. So, I know that it's not
043like a one program, but I think that we have um some opportunities that when our students are applying to schools or to jobs, they really have uh an edge because they've already not the experience um that some other you know students are not able to get in different settings. Just on that question, for me, I think in regards to parents curriculars. Um, so we're just coming off hiring. We're wrapping up hiring season right now. And again, we have a a strong teacher contract, which is IRS, it's most independent. So, we're able to get the best teachers around. And what emphasis we put on is to develop that front. I think you are going to see our performing arts, our bands. Um, folks talk about the 90s and everything going back to that. You can see
044that in the athletics as well. We've all seen the kind of power shift to the Catholic schools for winning those titles. You are starting to see last year our basketball volleyball team, our swim team in the newly renovated pool, including a Michael area uh was or going to competing throughout the state. So you are seeing that balance come but it all ties back to academics. It all ties back to what you asked about the student experience, students finding their pathways. It all comes together. It's not just about having something nice over here or trophy. So, you are going to see uh students who are putting in the effort there. Um those highly qualified educators who were in the classroom during the day and then on the go as well and those are really going to
045work. So, very much watch this space and the athletics and the fine arts. One question availability file of scholarships that are available to uh high school graduates. It's got to be a big factor you know in parents maybe you know a higher education you know um absolutely so I think what we do see historically there are leg there are a lot of legacy foundations which the community foundation of southeastern Massachusetts a lot of them have been established legacy scholarships which have remained established for New High School given the investments where we exceed the council ratio in Massachusetts we do counselors invested in building that out and building out and supporting students through the scholarship process of accessing accessing those college and career center as well. So speaking again personally my graduates were able to acquire
046those scholarships as well. So overall it's very robust very strongly elaborate scholarship night and partner then with additional foundations like the Jacobs foundation and community foundation have additional scholarship night. So very much uh students are able to pursue those high rate tracks and acquire significant scholarships as well. >> And just as a number like uh this year we were able to award over uh $275,000 in scholarships to seniors which is a pretty incredible number. Many of the scholarships were you know $2,000 $5,000. the legacy at New Edward High School really draws them along to continue giving to ensure that students uh have access. So there's uh no shortage of scholarships to apply for last question for me. Um could you tell us a little bit about the status of your JRTC program? [Music] How do
047we read that? Yeah, I see. I'm looking at the picture. >> My audience is going down to the picture the whole time and you mentioned JC. So, we are so proud our JC actually on Thursday there'll be uh assistantship service in Bedford where new American citizens are JDC will be there by demand. It is it is the oldest JTC program um in the country. I'm looking out. I don't know is has anyone in this audience been in the veterans ap. And so that's one example. It is the oldest. It just it continues to win awards and has won more awards than any other ROC or equivalent program in Massachusetts. A lot of those students do go on to serve in the military afterwards and of course acquire those scholarships along the way. It's something we're
048very proud about in terms of molding future citizens in terms of building that city pride and it just continues to contribute to the city of effort in so many ways and great multilings but most important it's just a great home after students who try as we appreciate the [Applause] High School. [Music] We have a little we have a little crew here today. So, um, thank you. I just want to say thank you. I'm Tara Ker. I'm the superintendent of the schools in Fair Haven. I previously worked at New Bedford High School. So, I'm a true historian of the partnership and everywhere I've ever worked in a high school, I've always welcomed your Christian students, which is kind of a fun fact. uh both schools that I worked at um always had a cushion of students
049as part of our population. So I just wanted to take a minute to uh answer your request for some questions but also take a minute to share to me this is really the root of everything. We have a longstanding partnership and this isn't just you know from us with education. It's quite frankly geographically where we work. Darwin was huge. New Bedford broke off from it. Um, and at that point, shortly thereafter, 1812, our schools, uh, state parks and Dartmouth was its own entity. New became its own entity, and Fairview were quite literally one. So, I just want to say that for me, I think this is bigger than, you know, um, competing for kids. I think it's about the long-standing fabric of our communities and I I mean that with all sincerity. The relationship between
050our school communities is over a century old as well. So, you know, Old Rochester, they have their community. Fremont Lakeville has their community. We quite frankly have always been the three of us together. So, I'm not here to talk bad about any of my neighboring districts that think they're all fantastic. We're all doing the same thing, right? We're driven by Massachusetts standards. We're all working hard for kids and we're all really trying to do what's right for them with that curriculum. So, I just want to start by saying we're all great and I'm glad you're entertaining all of us, but um at the same time, I think our rich history is something that deserves some merit. So, by the numbers, currently 200 of our FHS students reside in Kushnik. And I say that because they've
051really become part of the fabric of our school. My own children went through public schools and half of their friends were in different towns and always was prior to a freshman. So I thought that was always funny because it always felt like one in that way. At present, the Fairman School Committee has not voted to participate in school choice and that's been a purposeful decision. Our town has put some pressure to say, "Why are you doing school choice?" And our answer has always been because we want to have room for everyone from a mission. That's always been our answer. And I stand by the answer. We are committed to having room for our neighbor district that we are partners with quite frankly. And I say all that not with a, you know, a light heart,
052but to say obviously if you end up making a different choice or open the doors, you have to revisit that conversation. and that's fine. But I want to be transparent with you um because we've really embedded it. This is our mural in our school. We didn't make this up for this presentation. This is truly what's in our school. Our students put this together. Our students painted this. And in case you can't see it well, I tried to get a good um Thank you, Mr. Kak, but I tried to cut it cut it in well, but they built this because they're truly two together. It's not the Kushnet students, it's FHS students and they hail from two very different communities, but they're all entrenched in the same, right? I go to a push crearyy and I
053have the kids, you know, hey, Mrs. Caller, you know, and it's just it's just fun because it's always been the way we move. And I know sometimes the status quo isn't exciting or as jazzy. Um, but I promise we have a lot to offer. And I figured I'd zoom in on the cushion so that you could see um the things that are depicted there. Someone said to me, "Well, you know, Peace is closed." And I'm like, "Well, Peace is like a legend to all of us, so we're just going to keep it there." Um anyway, you get the idea. So, I just wanted to now kind of get into some of our kind of core beliefs as a district. as a district uh we worked really hard on these three words and it we took
054some discussion and argument and quite frankly I don't know what your core values truly are but I think these are really uh you say who we are so we talk about ambition we want kids to always have the opportunity to look for something different something bigger something exciting and to aim for it the front of our school actually says two things that were embedded in 1906 by its benefactor and it says Adam Astro are you and what does that mean? It means shoot for the stars and live for today. And we quite frankly live by that motto to this day. Every single person here who came supports that mindset. So we also recently were going through an accreditation which I'll talk more about later. But when we did that we worked hard on our profile
055of a learner. Beyond math and English and history, there really is some core beliefs that we need to do with people, right? And some of that our students were part of the process. Our teachers, our community members, businesses, they came to the table and said what was important. So we also reflect this in all of our curriculums in every single department. And those are you see there collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, and civic participation. Uh you mentioned a crown jewel question and if I could jump in real fast. Um probably my most favorite moment of any school year is when our kids do the day of service. They go out into the community. Every one of them ends up somewhere volunteering, being a part of something. Some of it's to give. Some have been right
056here at Ford Middle School. Some were in our elementary schools and middle schools. But kids are working with, you know, senior citizens, helping them. We have a student who every single week, just because he wants to, helps our senior citizens at the senior center learn how to use technology. And I know that sounds silly, but to me, it's really a hallmark of who we are. Um, I had a moment with a coach the other day. He just got hired to do soccer last year, but he formerly was a soccer coach at a place I used to work. And I said, "Hey, nice to see you. You retired." And he said, "You know, Tara, I've always wanted to work at UMass Dartmouth. I I put in an application for Fairmont High School in UMass Dartmouth." And
057when I got the job at Fair Haven High School, I was going to go meet the kids. And he said he went to meet the kids and the kids all came to him after and said, "Thank you, coach." And shook his hand. And he said, "In 20 years of coaching, I've never met kids so nice." And I thought to myself, I know this sounds really corny, but I think that's important and that's in the fabric of what we're trying to bring up, right? So, just know that I'm not saying this for all the hoping reasons. They're truly these are truly moments that have happened. So, he did go back home and cancel Mass Dart interview, which I thought was such a funny story. But, um, it meant a lot to me personally because I I
058personally, as a former principal at the high school, felt like I put my blood, sweat, and tears into trying to shift the culture and I think we did a really good job of that and these guys are carrying that to achievements for further more. So, anyway, I'm going to turn it over to our current principal, Mr. Andrew Bulak, and he's going to talk about academic opportunities. Good evening everyone. Uh, thanks for having us. Uh, it's exciting to be here and talk a little bit about what we have at Father. Um, I'm just going to make a personal comment uh, as principal from a personal perspective. I think um my job and my mission has always been to create a school a school environment, a school culture, academic offerings um that will be proud of my
059own students, my own children. I think um with the help of the district and all of my building leaders and staff, I think we are um at that point um we continue to grow. We continue to uh our building is obviously quite historic. It's a beautiful building. The town takes a lot of care in taking care of the building, the outside, but I think what happens inside the building is more important than the structure itself. And I think we try to keep on top of current uh movements. Um what happens inside that building is current. It's advanced. um and providing good opportunities for students and their two mentors for success in the future. So a few offerings that we do have um obviously we are preparing students for college career whatever their choice is for
060college career. So you don't have to go to college, but you'll be prepared for college. Uh there are a number of the advanced placement courses. We start actually in grade world. So we have a strong robust track. We're also again innovative uh opportunities for students. We have an innovative pathway currently uh in place. We're working on developing some along the way. But these innovative pathways create opportunities for students for real world career applications um and skill building. So we're very proud of that and reach for those new students that prepare them for what's coming next out there in the real world. Uh in terms of uh AP we have increased our AP offerings for in school to 19 total courses and uh is a very large school. We are not quite that large but we
061do pack quite a bunch in terms of that. We're very proud of that. Um we also have that capstone program and it's been very successful for our students and regards for I think I'll answer your kind of golden nugget uh question maybe a little bit more political. I think you know the best opportunity for students is whatever makes them things in school. Uh could be athletics, it could be you know a club but if that club brings them to school positive experience their gold I think we work towards me forever. So a part of that we have a few other folks to talk a little bit over [Music] Dawson our director of student services our academic Good evening everyone. >> So, um, at FHS, our English program offers a range of courses that we're really
062proud of. We offer college prep and honors, English as well as AP language, my personal favorite, AP literature, now open um and AP capstone sequence including AP seminar and research. We also have electives like our creative writing course called Brand Beyond the Classroom and a literature elective um mystery and crime literature by popular. Um, last year we added Common Lit 360 to our ELA curriculum. Common Lit 360 is a program that gives students access to a wide variety of interesting, highquality readings along with activities that build skills in writing, discussion, and critical thinking. This allows students to engage in new texts while we continue to ground their instruction and our core works and our inner texts. Students have a choice in what they read and continue to read beyond the classroom classroom through our independent
063reading program. But most importantly, what makes our department strong is what makes FHS strong, and that's our relationships. We know our students. We meet them where they are, and we help them grow into confident thinkers and communicators, ready for whatever comes next. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for having us tonight. It's an honor to be here. Um actually start with our electives first. I'll get away from AP for a second to some fun courses. Uh we offer some really cool elective courses very high school local history. We look at towns like Bedford Dar sometimes beyond those borders too. Obviously our student mission inative ideas >> we need to modernize um we have where criminal justice where we work with youth court um we have guest speakers come in sheriff's office county
064comes in uh we offer a modern issues classes where we can add validated resources We have issues wide psychology courses um economics courses that of course we have other connections for example we have a citizong inside of the department. See which students want to take as a local history. So for example, last year we asked students if they like pop culture courses, if they like civics course, if they like a great films course, if they like world history, myth legend. These are ideas that conversations help the students and we want to constantly see what the students want and try to provide what they want as well as what they need offer world the nth grade which not all schools offer. Um so we then have track positive US history after that government in the economics
065which is the math department. We have US one at all levels world history as well. Um in the core classes we do have traditional activities and assessments. We're trying to pair it with assessments that allow students to choose the way they represent information. So we set a goal for them. Then they choose the path that works best for them. show they understand what that skill concept historical topic is. Um there's research in every single class which means they get to choose what they're interested in and then prove that they can understand those are required skills and allow them to have some choice and voice in our classroom. I appreciate you guys having us tonight. Thank you so much. Dr. Welcome. >> Good evening. I'm Dr. Wely. Um I've been married for 25 years. Um I
066left pharmaceutical company to get your education and that's the vision I tried to bring. Um I really try to get the technology to the students. So angle um small spectrometers um real time sensors. So that's been one of my goals. Um we're also a member of the biotechnology student and through this great class that I essentially did was getting a PhD. So that's an opportunity. Um, what I really get excited about is when one of my students goes out to college and says, "I knew how to use the equipment. I was the only one in class." And that's to me and helping our students push through. Um, I just submitted a grant for $7,000 for technology and professional development. And so with this grant we're going to create a pharmaceutical course in the high level
067and in this we'll be using photoometers which basically measure the amount of chemicals concentrations. Um we'll be using something called crisper. Has anyone heard crisper? Okay. So crisper is a way to cut out genes and insert gen. It's sort of the latest and what's really exciting to me is this is the cutting edge biotechnology in Massachusetts. It's now So that's something um one note my daughter also went to parent high school and she took advantage of a lot of the opportunities um to the audience how code that changed her life she was an announcer of TV now where she's working they ask her to do presentations she does a much better job we just offer our students lots of opportunities to get skills real I skill achieves soft skills hard work that's the soft skills
068relationships speaking everything like that successful I found that tonight students are actually thank you have a great Good evening. Thank you so much for considering what our school has to offer. I am Neville. Sorry, um, and I am the teaching learning coach of the art department at Fair High School. Um, I'd like to highlight some of what our arts and media department has for us. We are a program that consistently proves ourselves as one of the strongest in the region. We prepare our students for college, careers, and community engagement. Our students have access to a complete sequence of courses in fine arts, digital art, photography, ceramics, and media arts. They can start as beginners and progress all the way to advanced placement and portfolio development. In advanced placement art, we have studio art, we have
069drawing, we have photography, we have ceramics and 3D. They gain skills in design, film making, illustration and communication. This ensures that every student, no matter their background, can find a path to creative success using industry standard equipment, supplies, and software. Our students regularly showcase their art talents on state, regional, and national levels. They've been featured in youth art exhibits, scholastic art contests, mass department exhibits, and even at the Wister Art Museum. Recently, our students competed in an international fashion design competition. Um, it's called Junk Charm, and they travel to Ireland to compete. We have students refer in recognition of the New England student production awards and national film festivals. Our students are published in national honor society journals, they create magazines, serve in galleries as assistants, and have internship roles in our local community. These
070opportunities give our students visibility and real world experience before they graduate. Our alumni have had great success. Our graduates bond to thrive not only in the arts but in education, architecture, fashion, film, communications. Alumni have become art educators in our own district. Filmmakers, professional photographers, designers at brands like Coach Groman and even art therapists. Others have worked with musicians, celebrities, professional athletes. One recently received a full race scholarship. They've gone on to top programs at Mass Art, Syracuse, Temple, Roger Williams, and UVM. It's proof that the foundation built here translates into college acceptance, professional careers, and community impact. In short, we don't just create artists in the art department. It develops leaders, innovators, and problem solvers. By choosing our school, you're giving your community, your students, our community, access to one of the most dynamic,
071proven art programs in Massachusetts. One that enriches their education, prepares them for their future, and connects them to opportunities far beyond the classroom. Thank you so much. >> Hello. Melty. I'm the coal director of Fairgen High School. I also have with me Kayla Betsler. She's the instrumental teacher at the high school. She also teaches at the middle school as well. So, the musical draw department at Fairen High School has a long-standing history as a cornerstone of the school's library arts community, known for its excellence in performance, inclusivity, and our commitment to student growth. So, as part of this commitment, the department offers structured pathways in both music education and music performance. It allows students to tailor their learning based on their individual interests and their future goals. What we offer in school is band, orchestra,
072choir, piano, popular music history. We also have marching band, pep band, and jazz band. We're so excited about the growth of our marching band led by Caleb. It's going to be fantastic. We have gorgeous new uniforms up. So importantly, all the extracurricular activities that we do, including drama productions, marching band, and other performance ensembles, they're offered at no additional cost to students. So ensures that every student has equal access to be able to participate and grow in the program. Fair High School also has a chapter of the Tri National Music Honor Society, which is an accredited accredited honor society through the National Association for Music Education. Students at Fair High School also continue to gain recognition at regional and state festivals which continue to affirm the success of our programs. The department has built strong
073ties to the fair and pushed communities through concerts, theatrical performances, competitions and partnerships with local organizations. We have annual plays and musicals, seasonal performances that draw large audiences. We often sell out performances of our musicals from Fairbank and surrounding towns and that just reflects the talent and dedication of our students and staff. So with ongoing excuse with ongoing support from Fairbank public schools and in collaboration with our friends in the Christian music department, thanks Junior. Uh the music and drama department continues to enrich the school's cultural life and welcoming various students for future success in performing arts. Thank you very much. And now [Music] to help um all of our students through all of that academic um situations and opportunities, our director of student services Um I have to say I know you all can
074read the slide. I was standing over here so proud to work with every school one of these people because they are all about kids. I'm sorry I'm a little emotional but I have worked in many other districts um in surrounding areas and I've never met people like like them. Um, and I hope I don't, but okay, I'm good to go. Um, we are all about all kids all the time. And I can stand here in front of you and say that with all of my being that each and every one of us works very hard to ensure that our special education students receive what they need. I did ask sort of tarot when Mr. Kulak said about the golden nugget. It's actually the kids. It's like he's like so spot on when he said that
075it's the kids golden nugget what they what they find important to them. Now yes we offer inclusion services. We offer uh we offer services for our students that require a little bit more. We have an amazing um empowered classroom for our children that you know are below um that they're out and they're getting inclusion and they're getting they're getting an amazing education and they are included. Um, I am so proud to work with the Farah Haven um, high school staff. Whenever I have a situation with a student, we sit down, we problem solve, we think outside the boxes to box, sorry, sometimes it's more than one box to make sure that our kids get what they need. And also I do um I do work very closely with the enforcement families. We've had um some
076families that require some additional support uh through my office and I promise you I I show up all the time to make sure that the kids get what they need. Okay, now I turn it over to Tara. All I know is I need lessons from Molly and how to work the microphone because it's no wonder you're a singer vocalist because you have the most beautiful presence through the microphone. Okay, so just quick I wanted to showcase some recent accolades. Um and pardon me for reading. I hate when people do that and I'm going to do it just because I won't remember every one of them. But in 2025, we're the first district in Massachusetts to get a district-wide accreditation. This is really huge. Um it was a big undertaking. Um but we applied to NAS
077about 5 years ago before I was superintendent and asked if they would consider us for a district accreditation. when our superintendent at that time left and I became superintendent. Quite frankly, I was overwhelmed with the thought of having to pull that off. But we did it and we're really excited because it meant that we committed to very specific tenants that were important and quite frankly necessary to have an evolving educational system. In addition to that, FHS was named a school of recognition by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Ed for exceeding state accountability targets. Last year they were awarded the innovation pathway designation by Jesse for business and finance. I often say we're small but mighty. We work really hard to really keep ourselves on the map. And that's for all of our students. Our
078um football team of course is division 6 state champions. I never forget that. I will never look this down. For anybody who knows me, I am not athletic. Uh this is kind of a joke. In fact, um, someone said, "I think I saw Tara ran a road race and the person who was answering the question said, you must be wrong because she doesn't exercise." How embarrassing is that? Horrifying. Um, but anyway, my joke is I cannot be about athletics, but I sometimes, you know, focus on the academic so much that I sometimes forget to showcase the good things that our student body is doing. Like, I love we have someone here who just came from a soft match. So, right from the course still in his uniform. So, um we have a lot of accolades
079athletically as well. I'm not going to say that um anyone's perfect cuz I think all of our schools compete in different ways and we all wear different hats at different times. But we really centralize the nucleus of our district on what is right for all kids truly at the core of it. Our school committee like you is very dedicated to working on what's right for all of the kids and make decisions and policy decisions. Um in that way we received the advanced placement access award for expanding access to all students. Um and how did that work is they looked at the increased number of kids in AP classes and from different demographics and what was the growth factor during all of that and we exceeded it. were recognized at the state house by the college
080board and also FHS has been uh named United unified champion school by the Special Olympics Association. Um again the first in the Commonwealth that might be a broken record but we're really proud of that distinction. Um I won't bore you with this but you can look online at the NAS goals and standards and they're very um you know researchbased. They're made by a committee and they go all over the world to study schools. So to be recognized as the person of Massachusetts is really an honor and I think it's a great reflection on what all of our staff, dedicated staff really do for our students as you saw here. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Bell strategy. He's the assistant superintendent to talk about student experience. Thank you, Superintendent Coler. Everybody instructs this
081superintendent. And before I get into the overview of all the different clubs and opportunities for students to participate in, I just want to thank three of our students that are with us this evening to really share their story, their story, their successes, their experience, and feeling part of the great high school culture. So, we're really excited to have them here. But we talk about student experience, and I think it's been echoed by our department leads and coaches. We want to do what kids need. You want to give them what they need, what they're interested in, and what inspires them to be great. So, we look at how we identify and develop our programs. It's really all about what they need. We survey our students. We ask them for feedback. We really value that feedback. Not
082only do we value it, we act on that feedback. Many of our new programs, our innovation pathways, receive two additional as well. It's all about the students who are interested in what's going to provide them the best experience and best opportunity for high school. So before we get into those overviews, I do want to introduce our three students with us this evening. We have Matt Me who's a current FHS senior. We have Maddie Gan who's an FHS senior as well. Then we have Leah Nighter who is the FHS class president. >> Hi, my name is Leinger and I am the junior class president. I just really want to talk about all the things that current high school has given me reach all the opportunities that I've taken away. Of course, the academics are endless. There's
083so many different courses you can take, no matter the level that you might find yourself. But aside from that, I really do I love how there's a community aspect to everybody. Yeah, I personally have always been I've always loved to be involved and I'm in various clubs, found American clubs, president and I just think that it's great and it's really given me the opportunity to make these lessons, get better at speaking, which I don't personally love, but here's another opportunity to get better at it. And I just love I love the environment that I step into. I love how sports are accessible to all. There's no price on them. I love that even some of our athletes, we have some really star ones, but all of our coaches see potential in their own. There's numerous
084sports such as volleyball, football, track and field. I believe that everybody because everybody has there's no single players that are better than anybody. And I love I I really just love the environment. I have teachers that I can go to every single morning and they're willing to help me. My dad's comfortable, too. I'm sure I'll speak daily classes. Um, there's never a time where I don't have someone I don't go to like or I'm never bored and I truly do love everything. >> Hello everyone. My name is Maline Gamlin. I graduated from Christian schools in 2022 and I'm now an FHS senior and I truly can't matter myself anywhere else. And I would put that into two categories. One because of their new high school culture and two because of their academic opportunities. So to
085speak on academic opportunities, I believe at FHS staff. As Leah said, I can personally attest this with Mr. Waldo and with Dr. I had both of them as my AP teacher for the past few years and they go beyond teaching in the classroom with Dr. Wely. I had an editing chemistry teacher which is well known as a very difficult class and I spent hours in his room outside of my class time getting help getting assistance and Mr. Dewaldo has pushed me farther than I could ever see myself going. So I do believe that we have staff members that they truly go far beyond expectations of what I can imagine. My mom is a teacher at Okali and to see what teachers go through and to see how my teachers experience the classroom, how they go
086beyond expectations, it's truly an attestment of FHS. So to speak more academic opportunity, I will take an AP class since this is my freshman year. I will graduate with AP capstone. And truly AP classes, they are accessible to anyone. If you want to take an AP class, you go to your guys. Yeah, you can do it. You want to take a dual enrollment class, they'll make it happen for you. The academic opportunity at the endless. And now to speak on culture. As I said, I can't imagine myself at any other school. FHS is a place where I have been on school grounds until midnight for volleyball games or tennis matches. I've never not felt safe. I've never not felt included. One of our big programs, our unified program, I think is really important to recognize.
087I've been a part of the unified club and it is truly extraordinary. We bring students into the classroom, into sports, into everything that any other student have the opportunity to have. The culture FHS, as Mr. Ka mentioned, it's not Christian. It truly is FHS. And I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to be an FHS student. >> Good evening everybody. My name is Matt. I'm a senior at Green High. I want to start by saying I graduated from court and going for a was like just going to a higher level of a Christian schools. It's a family. Everybody's one. Uh playing baseball my whole life was always for Christian and not one or the other. And when I heard about it kind of separating it was like something that hurt me as like
088cuz it's a family. Everybody knows everybody. All the teachers are willing to say hi even if you haven't had your four years. Um, and everybody is welcome. It builds your character as a person and everybody wants you to get better if it's in your academics or personally for me, I'm big sports person. So for me, every coach wants you to get better. Everybody is just hoping on the better of you. If you want to go to college or you want to do something else after high school, it's all open at very high. Everything's available for you. And uh I just feel like this school is So, where you want to be? Everybody's asking, "Oh, are you excited to go back to school?" Like, "Yeah, I am. I'm pumped to go back to school." Um, it's
089fun. I say the best years of the year are September through November. It's the most fun. If you want to come watch football games, there's no better place than high. I don't even play. Uh, so I'm I'm pumped for next Friday. I don't wear nobody. Um, but no, it's like a family. You look around, you know everybody in the stands, you know everybody next to you to your left, to your right. It's it's in some ways I know I wouldn't want to be or I wouldn't want to be anywhere else per se. Um but yeah, it's like it's like being a brother and sister is how I look at Christian. they're connected and you talk about Christianity, you talk about 30, you talk about both and uh yeah, that's all I got to say. [Applause]
090>> So, I think that is a strong testament to a lot of the student experiences in different rankings. So, we're grateful for you all this evening and thanks for joining us. Just go over a quick overview of our club and offerings. We offer 22 clubs annually. Those are automatic and they look every single year. We run an additional anywhere from 8 to 15 more clubs that are based on student interest. They're actually called student interest clubs. Um they bring them to staff members. Staff need to present them to um principal Koulak. Then he brings them to us for funding. So we have a lot of different programs. I think one of the um the biggest ones that we've seen that's really that was really new this year was a fishing club. So we had students,
091you know, we want to be engaged after school. you know how much more want to stick around and that teacher came and advised it we created fishing at Christian River they they thankfully that's one of the way that is now currently offering that every single year because it was so successful student organizations again they speak for themselves um we recently started a deck chapter last year uh which is great our students went and participated we'll help virtually students involved in that this year goes into the second year. We have a margin band that is on the rise. We're super excited about the future of our music and band departments and where they're going, what they're doing. We've already started to see a lot more student interest in those. And then I think when we talk
092about that golden nugget, what's that crown jewel as mentioned? That day of service is an amazing amazing difference. Every single student grades 9 through 12 is involved in giving back to their local community including right here in nurs. And to have that and have students coming back to their schools where they grew up where they came before they became FHS school members. I think that's really something that I'm very proud of the district and do something like that whole school day and make sure that our kids are having that experience and give back. And I talked about student interest and feedback they give us. We talked about providing some community service opportunities and our seniors last year came in and said we want the day of service back on this whole event. It was studentled.
093We had great advisor for it. Our staff was amazing. We had a chapel all over the region. Uh it's really I think one of the greatest things by the department of education. And again we offer additional nursing clubs and other organizations just based on what they think what they're interested in. athletically. Uh I think that Dr. H is a school that's on the rise athletically. Traditionally they're very powerful uh you know sports programs. I met most recently with the Super Bowl appearances the last couple of years. We're NIA school obviously we're governed by their their rules and regulations and we offer all the following sports you see on the right side. You'll notice in the left corner, uh, we have a very old high school in 1906, right? But we have a state-of-the-art facility and
094that's part of the town's efforts. That's part of the school community's efforts and really trying to make our kids the very best of everything. Not only they go to a school that's going into Hogwarts as a building, they get to walk out and participate, compete on a state of New York service in the state of New York City. And we can't do that without the support of our community. Uh but also a big part of our athletics as well as academics is our alumni association. We have the most robust alumni association in England. And we have over 44,000 members. Uh last year alone they donated well over $150,000 to us to our students to projects and facilities. Our school award stadium was a donation of the Alumni Association. So it's just really an amazing culture
095that that spans way beyond their four years at high school. Spans way into their lives. And our current president, Mr. Bob Foster, I had a teacher at high school years ago. He comes in and still gives tours and he is so excited each and every day to be part of that organization and give so much back to our students. You'll also notice in the winter and spring that we participate in unified athletics. probably one of the greatest days of the week as we have unified games. Our entire school population attends those games. They have now live school board referees and it's a phenomenal phenomenal experience. It's also one where we've also trickled down to both the middle school and elementary school unified athletics from K to 12 and public school is really fun. You'll also
096see um just really quickly with the the spring season for unified track and field. Again, just a great way of identities together and providing inclusion and being inclusive as a school and as a district. These are just a couple of quick photos, you know, from their most recent year. uh we were able to participate in a game last January Boston hard and really a great experience for our students, what experience for our families, you be able to come up play on that court with the selfies to all the great play and you can see on the right side uh you know students not always going to play and coach they come back and coaching different teams. So I think that speaks volumes to the inclusive nature of high school and really it's about all kids
097all the time. You see that on the monitor you hear it a lot but it's truly values that we live and strive for each and every day. I think this is another big thing to to mention. Right now it's difficult sometimes you know schools where there are fees uh economic times are tight law school fees and they don't always have a choice but we behave at high school especially are committed to no fees any activity athletic activity no club no marching band etc. We are one of the only schools in the south coast and even in southeastern Massachusetts that does not require a fee to participate in march in May. We don't require a fee to purchase provide all those things for our students. Again, that help cost me as as a parent two children
098in school is significant savings of up to thousands of dollars a year to students and family. So I think that's a huge piece of it. You also notice innovation pathways have been mentioned. We do have one that currently in the business and finance sector. Those come along not only with advanced placement courses, they come along with free dual enrollment courses, free dual enrollment opportunities, and free opportunity to get industry help credentials upon graduating school. We want to give our kids an extra edge that step up. This really is the first beginning of that phase. We have two more, one in health and social services, another in environmental science. So, we're going to be working with all our regional organizations, businesses, um, you know, local communities, mass hire, great beverage, all to make sure that our
099kids have every single thing that they need. We've been very fortunate to have such great support from Christian community, community, as well as for Thank you. >> Thank you. And thank you all for your patience as we navigate these wires and get people off and on the stage. But I think I hope by now you've gotten a sense that we truly are all legends. And I mean that from the very, you know, my very core. Um it's a testament hearing you guys speak. Actually, I want to thank you for coming and doing that. A lot of our kids were already doing you know sports and scrimmages and those types of things and you coming off the golf course and you two spending your evening with us. One of you made me almost cry. I was
100like, but they say it best. And again, this isn't meant to be um, you know, a competition. I think that what happens in New Bedford High School is wonderful. I think we have two very different communities and they offer great things to your kids. So, you have two really fantastic choices already. Um, I just want to say that I think, you know, we're small. It's obvious we're small. They're big. It's obvious they're big. Uh but we both offer unique things. We're staying above and trying to be the best in our area. Um and I mean that you know with all sincerity. Now when it comes to net school spending, I just wanted to answer some more of your questions that um you all by the way school committee have a folder of a little bit
101more detailed packet. Um but just so that the audience can hear, we do hover between 2% and 12% above net school spending which is relatively low. But I want to just point out to everyone because I just don't think it's fair to just tell that part of the story. They actually the net school spending formula deducts the amount of tuition that came in from a sending school. So if say a Kushman left Fair Haven, we would look like we're at 20%. That's just the way the formula works. So I do have an aster on that in your handout because um it is misleading. But when you see graduation day and all the kids, um, I always say we're not perfect, but we work hard with people to make things better and we really live by
102those mods. Um, we're always committed to looking into resources to give you the best value for your tuition, quite frankly. Um, and you know, we I think we I wanted to say out loud, we stand ready to meet with you regarding next steps and what it is you're, you know, wanting to do. Um, please reach out to me, write, you know, send questions, make meetings, whatever you want to do. We're always happy to talk. Um, and I guess I'll just open it to questions and call people up as necessary. Um, you class sizes, what those look like? >> Sure. We're about 12 to 1. Uh, very similar to New Bedford with a 13 something to one. Uh again, we try to run classes that kids have interest in. So it can be a class of
10320 over a year and a class of six or seven over a year. Um but we do also prioritize it where if you're an honors class, you might be a little bit bigger. Um because a lot of times our college prep classes may need a little bit more support or you know um particular attention. So or like AP class sometimes. Could you talk a little bit more about what it means to be awarded a pathway and like does this environment and what kind of opportunities are kids? >> Sure. So, it's actually a pathway where students take courses very specific uh list of courses but they leave with certain certificates. So, they'll have um opportunities to intern in a bank. We recently opened a bank on our property again. So, we have a bank right in
104our school that those students will intern in. Um, so our kids actually leave with a banking finance pathway that allows them to go right into the workforce with the skills needed to enter it. It's pretty competitive. Um, and we have a lot of kids who want to do it right now. We've been able to honor all of those requests. But as Dr. Welty was saying about science, there's been a lot of interest in pharmaceutical and other types of sciences. And as a result, those are the next two pathways that we're actively going after right now. We have our um interest already in and accepted to the Commonwealth. Um, but that was really great to go to the event with the governor and have them really celebrate what we're doing. So, >> um, so I see
105you've got a nice breakout on safety and security in schools. Um, what does the SRO ratio look like? How many do you have at the time? Sure. We had one full-time at the high school. I do want to speak to safety and security for a minute and I'm glad you actually brought that up again. I too was at New High School at the time you just talked about. So, I just want to say that I have an entirely different perspective on school safety than you might hear from most schools. So, I'm just going to tell you the truth. Um, we believe that it's founded in relationships first. If you remember, I mean Bedford at that time it was because of a kid's relationship with a teacher that the story got out. When I say the
106story got out to law enforcement and investigated. It was a real truth right at the time. And um right when I got out of high school, there was actually a murder in my high school. Um and that was about one or two days before you all had a tragedy right here at Ford Middle School. So I'm one of probably the loudest people about school safety. And I say it entirely different. This is like really too much information about me, but I was a psychology major and criminal justice major and I also was a firefighter. So, put all that together, I have a very unique perspective. But what does it do is we have meetings every two weeks with our fire chief and our police chief and are constantly assessing our safety and security. And I
107mean it to the minute. So, I don't believe in training kids and I'm firmly against it because 98% of your school shooters are current or former students and you just told them how to get more people. So, I am a firm believer in not training kids and I will stand by that because I've lived it and know it can happen anywhere. So, I'm happy to answer those offline, but I prefer to not share publicly what our safety points are. Sorry. Actually, it's kind of fun because kids started to question and they said, "We know what you're doing. You have like almost like air marshals in the schools. They thought we had teachers packing." It was really funny, but uh anyway, that's a side note. But when you live it and know it can happen anywhere,
108you're probably going to be alive. >> I have a question. Uh as far as I think this is a big issue after um but just getting some of the kids who have mental health issues and are addressing school and anxiety. Just wondering what efforts the student makes to get those children into the classroom settings. >> That's a fantastic question. Thank you. Um, you know what's funny? Co, not funny. CO taught us a lot of good things and bad things. And one of the things was certainly mental health and isolation. And one of the other pieces with that has been our ratio is similar to what you just heard. It's under the state averages and so forth for counselors. But I always say it's a individual student approach. So I've had kids who started the year.
109I don't want to give any of the description in case you know the child but um who want to have no part in setting foot in school and we will start with you know come in after school at this time we'll just walk around and I've seen Miss Dawson at people's houses helping the parent get the child of the house um and I'm telling you it's individual so there's no real recipe for it but what I can say is I think personally what's worked for us is really building a relationship with the family and setting small goals And I always say it's like having a child like dip their toe in the water. Let's start with that, have a success, learn a little bit more. And we do have online programs that can round up
110the academics in the meantime. But I think it's something we have to look at real seriously and and also pair that with our family center who has some great services all around wraparound services. Sometimes they need an outside therapist who can be a little bit more, you know, do a little bit deeper work to the root of it. Um but that is something we really work on and we used the co monies from the federal government for the purpose of having more fun opportunities for kids to connect. So we actually ran enrichment clubs with the money so that kids would actually get used to being around each other again cuz we had kindergarteners who were like you know wanting to stand completely away from other people. So, I hope that answered your question. >> Dave
111service sounds uh amazing, but I'm just curious, do you have any other programs or things around civic engagement or leadership or gosh, I'm sure other people can jump in here, but certainly they do civics projects. So, every, you know, through the process, we always drove the rug. We're like, "Okay, here they all come." Because everybody's going to give all their ideas on what they want to change. Um guys, do you have anything you want to share about that? Any student? >> Actually, it's embedded in their history classes, not just through the center project, US history too. World's history piece where they choose a world issue and then they research it and write about presentation essay, podcast, whatever, and kind of educate their peers about uh sophomore year they took the current American issue and see
112if they can find this works to it try to get some good participation by looking at the past obviously the stateated civics project US history classes where the project very finite issues to granous issues um so we do embedded into our actual curriculum too and sometimes we've had some of our comp assessments And when those opport beyond just these four walls, I have a question about um lighouses and transportation. for extracurriculars. Does the high school offer any less options for those certificates? >> That's a problem in a current agreement. So, if we talk about the agreement, there are plenty of things that I think we need to revisit. It was done well before I was even working in central office. I was the principal. So, I lived a lot of the challenges that we're still
113living today. Um, so I think that's one of the things that I would recommend that when we get to the table and decide to continue the partnership that we talk about what that looks like because it's something I've always really wanted. Um, but the way the money works with tuition just so everybody's educated is the money goes to the town under it doesn't come to us to use it to pick the things that are important to us. So that's been a real challenge and then they hold us to the contract. So my goal for us is whether or not first I'd like to know if you want to continue a relationship. And if you do, I think we should get in the room as soon as possible and start really fixing the things that could
114be better because there are plenty and they process one. >> Are there any other things that stand out to you that you want to reevaluate? >> Yes, for sure. Um, one is the halftime counselor. I don't think that's a works great the way it is. Um, I think it was something that was needed at a one particular time. I also think I would look at how our special education, you know, uh, works as well as even the enrollment. I've actually talked to my business manager about why are we doing it like in real time, right? Why isn't it maybe done based on the previous year or something so you have some prediction of what your cost is instead of it being like what's our number this year? I think there are things like that that
115would benefit both communities for sure. One last question. Um, do you have any um like careerformational education? >> We just have the pathway right now. Um, we are working with the current New Bedford Btech to offer FHS students which would include our Kushnet students. We've already confirmed that for some after dark programs similar to what New Beckford's already doing. they were able to pilot it with some grants that they had but the state is looking to expand that further. So in doing that um greater and better vote tech is actually offered to work with us to expand that opportunity for FHS students. >> Thank you very much all the student [Applause] Okay. [Music] Thank you. Hey, it's not I'm not sure that number three was the best spot at this point. Everyone looks like they
116might need to move a little bit. The educator at least telling me that. Feel free to stand up, stretch, concern the seventh inning. We will not be offended whatsoever. My name is Mike Nelson. I am the superintendent, actually the proud superintendent of schools for Old Rochester Regional School District and also the superintendency union number 55. Not to go too deep into that, but we are a unique system that is actually comprised of four separate school districts. Old Rochester actually represents our junior high school and high school that sit on one campus. And then the superintendency union number 55 is comprised of three separate elementary districts. one representing the Marian school district which is elementary school pre-k through six a different a different school district representing that poison which is pre-k 6 center school in old
117town and another school district uh which is the Rochester school district which which represents Rochester Memorial School another prek through six district and what happens is that those four school districts have decided that they'll come together again for a fifth school district called the joint school of school committee. And what that does, it allows Old Rochester, again the junior high school to sit down with its elementary districts and towns and talk about what is best practices, knowing that the majority of our students from all three towns funnel into Old Rochester. I share this with you because I think that makes us an ideal candidate for the type of situation that you're looking for. I understand we're talking about the elementary and the middle school students, but we have a long history of being able to
118work with this model and do it successfully. This is my 12th year working in the district, my sixth year as a superintendent. I've also served as the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning and the director of student services for many years as well. And simply put, I love Old Rochester and I love my job. It is my great honor to introduce principal Mike Paul, a longtime principal in Rochester and Lauren Mat who's also worked multiple hats for our district and her years working with us but is currently our assistant principal and I'm going to let them introduce some special guests that I think some of you may know. So, thank you very much for having us here. We are so excited. I've been waiting a long time to be able to get to this podium
119tonight. Feels like an episode of Bachelor I thank you, Superintendent Nelson. I appreciate the introduction. I do think it's also important to mention that the vice chair of our school committee is here this evening, Miss April, as a wonderful supporter of our school district. Uh, and then just kudos to the other schools that are here amongst a lot of familiar faces and wonderful professionals and great school districts. Uh I wanted to go first, but it was great to watch uh some of the others go and figure out what your questions are going to be. So um we we opened up um with our teachers back to school. Welcome back and um the the great part of that event for the entire school district is the awarding of kids. Uh we award service for meeting career
120milestones. Um, and um, I guess I lost track of the time. I got my 25th in here at Old Rochester. I've been around the school since the fall of 2000. Okay. Uh, I was a history teacher. I was the assistant principal. I'm starting tomorrow, first day of school. My 17th year as principal of the high school. I've been to the last two open houses at this school for eighth graders. Um, and uh, I'm a coach at Bold Rochester right now. I coached two seasons last year. I'm a club advisor. I'm also a parent. Uh, my son's going to be a sophomore and then I've got an eighth grader a year. My wife teaches right next door. She's an English teacher. So, four kids, right? Um, but uh I I actually was kind of disappointed to
121see that you were limiting us to 20 to 30 minutes because I feel like I'm uniquely qualified to really uh talk about our schooling programming. Um, but I do um appreciate being here tonight. This is Miss Lauren Mlette, our director of was our director of now is our assistant princip. But I'm very excited and happy to be here and to tell you about our amazing school. Um, we have an incredible community. I definitely think that having such strength and leadership with Mr. Deval is a really great uh source of pride for our community. It feels like a family uh where everyone is there to support each other. Sometimes I joke that he lives at the high school because he just knows anything and everything about all the kids. It's everything that you would ever want
122as a parent for your child to know that the principal knows everything about what your child needs to be successful. Um, so I'm super grateful that I have the chance to meet his assistant principal. Um, we're really pumped that we get to have two of our students here to share their experience with you. Uh who better to talk to you about why you choose Old Rochester than two Aushna students who are here and um have been living the student experience. We are huge believers in student voice. So I'm very proud to introduce Abby Sourcey and Morgan Pila and let them say hello to you as well. [Music] I have been a part of many clubs in my time. I a part of the ambassadors club, Native Crochet, AFS, Kyle Affairs. I am the captain of
123the dance team and I am also part of the education program. >> I'm out of Rochester. I'm running the field team the science of environmental club. >> Awesome. Thank you for being here for joining us. So, um trying to like anticipate what what are we walking into tonight? What's this going to look like? Um feels like are we a match, you know, like what are your core values, beliefs, and what is your mission? And when I saw this uh information, it felt like the words about partnership. when you're seeking a partnership um and and in a safe support environment. Uh but for the vision for me and knowing what I know about being here the last two years, I think the big question is uh how will Kushman students how will they fit in those
124projects? You know, what will we do for them um to provide them the opportunities that we are going to rave about tonight? It's easy to do that. But I would think like being a new student, okay, you leave this wonderful school, then what's next? So, we want to make sure that there's a safe and warm landing spot for what comes next. Um, so I mean, we can match up our visions and our missions and all of those things, but it feels like we're compatible, you know, like what you're looking for is is going to be a lot of what we can offer you as um a school district. But for me, it's uh I consider Old Rochester to be the regional school district of the south coast. Okay. Um I came into the school in
125the fall of 2000. I came into what we consider the tri town of three towns. That's not who we are anymore. Okay? We are the middle school district of the south coast with of our 617 students 95 of them are not from that dry time town. Okay. So that's a a large population of students that walk in the first day of Rochester in grade nine uh as a new student. How do we do bringing them in bracing them? And then 16 of our students are from a Christian. And then to be honest with you, who cares? Really, who cares? You're a bulldog. You're ours. You walk through the door. Um, you're one of our students. So, to hear things like, you know, we got an act of you're a bulldog. Okay. Our our kids that
126went to our junior high had to walk through that door after their sixth grade year, right? They in their elementary superintendent Nelson said. Okay. So, they seventh and eighth. Our ninth grade is truly uh a first day for everyone. We hosted our new student orientation last week where we welcomed 22 school choice students. Uh I don't care where they're from. I don't care that they're a school choice. Welcome to all drop. Here's our new student orientation at Huntsville the first day of school tomorrow. Okay. I just posted I'm the club advisor. I'm the adviser of the ambassador ambassador club. We just posted in our Google classroom to all of the ambassadors who sorry kids will be wearing those shirts tomorrow on the first day. They'll be wearing those to school because I want them to
127stand out. There's 70 ambassadors and there's 70 red shirts, red, beautiful shirts. Why? I want the new students to look for the friendly faces. Look for the red shirts. Find kids that are ambassadors that will help you. We don't care where you're from. We care that you are one of us and you're a so reminder I get to pick up your first day of school. Awesome. For some that's a good thing. Check that especially for others. Yikes. Okay. Academic offerings. I'll put it up with anybody's. It was great to see everybody else's academic offerings. Um we have a robust program of studies. We submitted put for you uh free world language and engineering courses. You can read the slides. Um, one of the things I also was trying to tease out was um, I feel
128like it was important that you want to know about in-person opportunities. These ads are in person. Okay, so we our kids are taking classes in person with our highly trained professionals. Okay, we don't subscribe to virtual schools and and that we have online classes that we use the engineering that you may see from other schools. Uh, but those are primarily for their recovery and summer school purposes. our kids are are accessing our program and studies in person with our staff. Okay. Um and uh similarly we've achieved different levels of success within College Board for opening doors for kids and providing opportunities. We have open enrollment in our classes. Okay. So what classes do you want to take? Take those classes. All right. Uh it gets a little dicey for like an eighth grade to 9th
129grader because for the first time in their life you open our work and say wo there's a lot here. Typically in grade 8 you're going to hand your schedule to them. But for grade nine we want to hear from you. We want to know what are you interested in and there's a lot of areas there and so um that open enrollment allows us to attract kids to what they're interested in. Teach them courses at a level that's appropriate for them. I think a partnership with a cushion would only strengthen our ability to meet the needs of an incoming 9th grade class. So those students that I mentioned from a we don't have partnership with a Christian. Uh so they they come in as a new student be great to be a partner. We will have
130better understandings of what happens in grade six 78 and what are we um what are we walking in with in terms of a skill set for nth grade class. I'm going to pass this over to Mrs. Mlette. Director of guidance was the hat she wore brilliantly and now she's the assistant principal. There was no one that can talk about this. >> Okay. So, I wanted to share some opportunities that we have uh for our students specific to dual enrollment. Uh we do uh work very closely with local colleges so that our students can participate in dual dual enrollment classes. Um through our early childhood uh program, students actually can take three courses. We have a partnership with PCC. We had one graduate from last year that is heading into her freshman year um of college
131with an associates that she was able to earn for free because of that partnership that we have through our early ed program as well as through our innovation pathway uh sectors that we have business and finance and manufacturing. students have opportunities for free uh college courses as well. We just had five students just finish up taking courses across architectural college um who we are partnered with uh for our architecture and manufacturing sector. Um so our kids have a lot of opportunities. We also have students who want to start the college process super early and they might spend their entire senior year taking classes um but yet they are still eligible to participate in everything that our building offers. Uh we had one student last year that uh engaged in mostly college classes but then also
132came in and volunteered in the classroom uh and helped in many ways uh to serve as a leader in robots. So we've got lots of great opportunities to help them. Uh we also within our uh chapter 74 career vocational technical education have really great uh courses for our students um where they start with intro to early education and then they move through a series of courses. They are actively working with preschools. Uh we have a preschool within our own building as well as we have partnerships with local uh child care uh facilities and our students are preparing themselves to become uh educators for uh preschool and younger uh ages. I want to let Abby take a second and actually talk about it because Abby is a part of our early childhood uh program. So Abby,
133do you want to share a little bit about your own experiences? So um throughout the years we our first two years we are able to I we learn inside the classroom but we also spend a lot of the time in preschool that is in school. Um we go through like with our teacher and cal what we should be doing the schedule during the day and alongside with the regular curriculum class. And so we go in a lot of things and learn a lot with the with children. >> And then by the time that they're seniors, they're doing externships. they're headed out and they are spending time um getting their lab hours and their their experience. So, it's a wonderful um area. We're really proud of >> to answer your question. I one of many crown
134jewels would be um our preschool and I'm not just saying that preschool teachers husbands in the back. We have a wonderful uh co-op preschool where our high school students are in our preschool all day long. We have a pretty lengthy waiting list to get for for preschool age students to get in because of the high quality instruction that they get and that the high quality instruction that our students get and it really gives me great pride at graduation to honor the students that are leaving our uh CTE program um and many of which are going off into the field. Okay, to further studies so for sure. Um then again these are the inerson courses they're all in person. Um you can see like the slides are flowing based on what you were looking for in
135your criteria. We wanted to hit them all. So uh this is one of our slides. We do offer online inerson summer school that's done through our ingenuity program. Uh students can take summer school. We do staff two classroom teachers that assist students. Uh in fact we open up our summer school to students from all over. So as a white official call income for credit recovery in our summer program we access uh any we will communicate with their sending school as to what their needs are. We can work with their summer opportunities uh our schedule. So really like this is for me the fall of 2000 I'm had since before I got there one academic schedule. Now I would challenge any high school to do the same in 25 years. Okay? We've got schools that are
136constantly tweaking and trying new one schedule because it works because because it works. All right. Um the only change we made in 25 years they used to be 90minute classes. Now there are 75 because we added the intervention block the bulldog block which we have. We have an intervention block. Many schools come to see our intervention block to see how we do it. And to be honest I can't remember what life is like without it. All right. We were talking this morning with the students um and I we kind of asked them a little bit of what do you do during the bulldog block? Uh and they each gave three different answers and I'm like those are all correct. There was there was a good answer for each of it. So tell me about the
137bulldog block a lot of the time is either I can schedule different that I need extra help with or just to get error in your apps in to get work done for the classes. But also a lot of clubs are running during that time. So you're able to go participate during to participate in clubs during school hours. You don't have to stay after school. For me, the Bulldog block mostly is a period where I can just sit with my favorite teachers or like just somewhere I leave the school and just get all the work I have to do done so that I don't have any interfering with after school activities. And I would say for me um especially with my director of guidance lens, I love the pull out a lot because this is where
138we bring a lot of our colleges and employers in to meet with our kids. Um they don't have to worry about missing out on a class to meet with um someone that's coming in from a a college or from a business. Um because our campus stops at that time and we're able to create multiple opportunities for our students. Um, so I absolutely love the whole block for that. I think it's um something that is another like, you know, another thing that we're really proud of. At our orientation, we had our 70 ambassadors up on the stage and it was tedious, but it was important. I passed the microphone to each of our upper class ambassadors and I asked them to say their name and um what grade they were and then to list the activities
139that they were involved in. Okay? And some of them needed to take out their phone to continue the list because there were so many things. Uh, and what I wanted to do that for was to drive the point home that they were saying and not more. They were saying I'm in the band and the drama club and I play this sport and I have a part-time job. So I want we don't like to put kids in the middle of difficult decisions. So how do we make it all work? We have some clubs that meet during gold block. We have some clubs that meet after school. We we want that the answer to be and because we flipped the the script at our school from a school to a campus and our campus is never closed.
140So there's always something to do. Um and and inevitably the older we get, the busier we get. So Morgan, she spends her 40 minutes every day getting work done. Great idea. Okay. Um versus I was absent today. Tomorrow in my bulldog block, I'm going to go see a teacher. Um, one of the challenges that I saw when I became an administrator of Old Rochester was we are a regional school district. Okay. And for some of our kids perhaps they live far out in Rochester or up way down a long road in Mount Hois. Staying after school was it was hard. So how did we then um figure out a way to make that end? I need help in math and I want to play on a sports team. So the bulldog block for me answers
141the question of what it's I can't imagine life without student experience uh 41 students close it's not a contest but we know all right um three seasons of athletics varsity sports two unified sports as a member of the southwest conference and year round fine arts concerts and productions showing the drop of it is remarkable um I think what I'm most proud of on this slide is our participation rate. Okay, we have 617 students today, 300 of which have been on campus since August 18th already. Okay, participating in our fall athletic season. There are schools that dream about that type of a ratio, that percentage, okay? Um and so the participation rate is what's important for me. The last one's nice, too. I like to win, but uh it's getting kids involved in sports and and
142trying to create opportunities for as many kids as possible. I still know that I think a lot of talk was around busing and things like that. So, we do have a late bus uh 2 days a week for kids at 3:30. Uh students are dropped off at one of three local libraries. I would envision this partnership were to materialize, we would have a similar conversation about how do we support our kids after school because again, it's a campus. All right, schools have hours of operation. we have our campuses. That's always um so our our student experience includes a very strong social emotional learning opportunity. Before tonight, I had known this uh last year when I was here. Um our students in our junior high all the way through preschool through grade 8 are learning the
143responsive classroom that is a staple of this district. So we are a responsive classroom district. All right. So all of our students that walked into 9th grade at Old Rochester uh that had gone through our school and had that exposure to that pretty impressive curriculum. So I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Mlette. We did talk about uh Bulldog Block. That trusted adult is you're assigned a mentor for the Bulldog block. It's a teacher. It's an adult. I'm a mentor. All right. Tomorrow morning, every kid starts their day with their mentor. So I've got eight more kids. I've got eight kids coming to see me first thing in the morning tomorrow. That's the trusted adult that I was with them for four years. >> We also have um our campus programming and so this
144is something that is studentled but staff supported and it is uh with a focus on mental health. We heard our students saying we really want to do more to um ensure that our student mental health is supported and want to create opportunities to build community through that. Um, so our kids uh formed the club themselves, came to adults and said, "How do we get this up and running?" Abby is actually a member who are here, so I'm going to let her share her experience as well. Um, since we love hearing the student experience. >> Um, so through the past year, we've been able to raise money to go towards mental health. We've also posted resources along the between the entire school um on how to help and the building awards. Um we've also hosted craft
145nights to get people just from the community to come on by to um maybe make some new friends, hang out, just learn. Uh they also had a green out night for athletics um where we encourage everybody to come to a game and wear green to show support uh for mental health awareness and there's a lot of planning that it's already going into this year and I'm excited to see um what the students do with for our kids this year. Um we also have character strong uh and that's anal curriculum uh at the high school level. Um we also uh use it for our advisory at the junior high. Um so our kids are familiar with it. It is a focus on sense of self self-awareness um on goal setting. Uh the opportunity to build out
146your vision uh to be thinking about what's my purpose um knowing what your passions are, what's my purpose and how can I use it for not only my own personal growth but for the growth of our community. Um and so our students future plan um they see this through the work with our social workers but also also through our green specific guidance curriculum that we have. Um so we have um opportunities where our guidance counselors are meeting with students and covering lots of topics um so that we can help support the SEO components for our students um not only in the classroom but also with very targeted lessons. Um we also are this year for the first time going to have a freshman seminar. Um we've heard from a lot of our families and students
147that um they really would like for us to help their student uh to gain skills with how do you study for a final exam? Um how do you send an email? Uh we were noticing that some students were coming to the high school and the entire email was in the um the the title the header. Um, so we were like, you know what, we need to spend some time on how do you write an email, how do you sign a letter? Uh, and then also, uh, just working with our staff and our students on what are some areas of need and so our teachers have helped to build a curriculum to support our students so that they feel like they're very organized. We use student voice in the building of that curriculum, but we're also
148going to supplement it with the charact. Uh two things for me on students experience uh that I think is relevant that freshman seminar. I am a way better principal this year than I was last year because I had a freshman last year as a student. So I was able to see through the lens of a parent and yeah it's stressful at our house study for a final exam. Yeah, it's stressful. It sounds great. Everything's in your Google classroom. But that's it. Everything's in your Google classroom. So helping kids navigate skills that we assume they have. No, those executive functioning skills, we make assumptions and we just let's fix it. Let's do something about these. So I I failed my sons with repeating expressions. Um the second thing I want to say is that in terms
149of student experience, right? Um I I did this about 9 years ago. Um, and it's changed, I think, me as a professional and I hope the experience for our new students. In June, for the following in June, I send an email to all incoming students, no matter where they're from, and I offer them 30 minute personal orientations in my office, okay? uh for a parent and a student. And I sign up sheet and this past year, freshman class of 136, 51 kids came in. 51 kids dragged their parents in. Okay. Uh in the middle of the summer. All right. And so what are we doing for 30 minutes? We're talking about what they can expect for their freshman year and how do we string together as many positive firsts as we can so that because
150what is the new student worried about? Will my locker open? Will I get lost sometimes lunch? Will I have friends? Okay, but I try to go past that. That's what the orientation. That's what for the full freshman. This is about how do I string together a great first day of school and then a great first week and next thing you know I've got a successful month and it's the end of term one and I had a happy successful and then we're in June and we can look back and say my first year as a new student regardless of where I was from was positive and successful and I made sure Morgan participated. She was one of She dragged her mom in. Her mom's here for one of those meetings and it's been soon as the
151meetings end, I fire off an email to Morgan's teachers titled Getting to Know Your Freshman. I had the pleasure of meeting Morgan today. This is what she's interested in. This is some of the areas that she has shined in her career, in her life. These are some areas that she's a little anxious about, whether it's in the foreign language classes, so that we can really get to know our students. And so, it's changed me as a professional. I hope it's helped kids transition well to a new setting. Uh we met our two students. We we had this should have put the slide up at the beginning. Um but it's you know this moment where this one is like oh you invited two students and I'm like oh they're official okay great we said doesn't matter
152uh support student services this is special education right. So, our special education superintendent Nelson uh hangs his hat on his experience as a director of student services and his work in special education. It is a strength of our school district. Um many students are coming into our district for the services we can provide whether it be full inclusion as those opportunities exist for some partial inclusion opportunities uh within our severe classrooms. We are a fully inclusive school, but full inclusion doesn't include all of the needs that every student might have. We're able to provide needs for students in a variety of ways. Uh we have uh subsew awesome uh severe classroom at the high school made up of life skill students. These students who just made life school and then metriculating to our 18 to
15322 year old school uh population um and they're working on their post high school um and vocational work. All right. Um and again like our bull luck we have schools that come and visit our program to see what we're doing. So, so uh it's a striking the school is really uh lots of special ed talk here. Uh for the educators in the room, um the best way I describe it is we service special ed kids in a variety of ways. We have our students that uh need a learning support center. So they're scheduled in a learning center where they uh see they stay with one special ed teacher with all the liaison for four years uh and they go to their class and they're getting their act academic support in the learning center and working
154towards the goals and their IEP needs. We also have some students that are part of our instructional support program that may have a learning uh disability but may also have a social emotional need. And we staff that with two teachers and two social workers to support students um and whatever needs may arise outside of the classroom. We wish all kids well for English, math, and science. Okay. And both we've got wonderful uh social workers that help our students as well as our um life skills class of high school age kids and then our 18 and 22 year old students um who do all the things like run our bulldog cafe during the day participate in um we had a um sold plants sold plants this spring. So, uh, they're very much a part. We have
155an onampus garlic function guard. So, there's always garlic available and there's always, um, ears of corn should you need it. Um, and so at a very minimal cost. I think these are the related services that I think you would see in all of our all the schools presented. Um, you know, we're super proud of, um, being a unified sports champion school. We're super proud of that, um, and our student. But I think I think we kind of go even a step further than than many schools. Okay. While we do offer the after school unified basketball in the fall, like all the schools, it is the best event of the day. We go to those unified basketball games. We don't. They're awesome. Unifi Track and Field in the spring. Oh, I left it up. We have
156unified weight training. We have unified weight training as well. But we also offer um inschool during the day opportunities. Uh we have a unified peer partnership class that is brought to us um where our students are supporting their unified teammates in classes and around the school during the day. Uh and it's it's a class schedule for them. And I don't know about you, but I would much rather work with a teenager my own age versus, you know, a par professional in the hospital or something. No, they want to be around their peers. And so during the school day, that's the same thing. There's nothing different. We have unified fizzed class. We actually have to cap that class cuz every kid wanted to take unified fizzed um which I think is an awesome experience for them.
157And then an after school club where they're meeting after school, developing friendships and relationships. very proud organization. >> So, at the high school, we have three full-time guidance counselors um and they service all of the students grade 9 through 12. They have their individual case loads. It's based off of the alphabet. Um but they work together. They collaborate a lot um on the grade level curriculum. They're always presenting together to the students. Um they also help to lead lots of um prep work for the college and career readiness. Uh we're really proud of uh the work that we do for um our college boot camps at the start of the school year. We have boot camps in the evenings that we hold for our students and their families because we want to make sure that
158every family feels supported. We never want to have any family feel like they need to hire someone to help them through the process. Um, so we find ways to support them during the evening as well as we do a lot of uh parent uh meetings during the day or breakfast. Uh, and then we'll also do some evening sessions as well. Financial aid, we bring in someone to help support them as they complete their FASA. Um, so a lot of our work is coming from our guidance counselors. Um, on top of the scheduling and the social emotional support that's available. Um, we also have a full-time director of guidance. She's just uh hired recently. We love her. I'm super excited to have her join us. As well as we have a full-time director of student services.
159And we have two amazing school social workers. Um one of our social workers uh is new, but the other social worker um has been around for a very long time and is a very um trusted adult. Uh sometimes uh people joke what would Carrie do? Some people actually have stickers on their laptops because um she's just such a great resource and I know that we're going to have the same in our other social worker that was recently hired last year. Um so we've got a great um support system. In addition to that, we also have a former social worker um who was working in the school system who is now a school-based counselor that sees our students additionally. So we have lots of supports uh within our building for our students. >> Thank you, Lauren.
160Uh this is who we are. We've demographic state page for everybody. Uh this is who we are as in terms of our race and ethnicity as well as our selected populations. Uh and also the the query was what is the percent of SEI teachers. So that's included uh in our our demographics uh equity and diversity. So um it is a priority of our school district. I'll be very direct. That's a priority. How much of a priority is it? our school committee created an equity subcommittee that meets regularly in public meetings. Okay. And so that um equity subcommittee which is attended by all the administrators in the district um meets to review equity, diversity and opportunities for all of our kids. I mean that's what what it means. Uh so we participated in uh many professional
161development training as at administrative level. What excites me the most is uh bringing these a lot of us go to trainings and things but can you bring it to the student level that's always the challenge and we have I'm going to ask myself to talk about project >> I am very fortunate that I get to run our project 351 and the Celtics playbook initiative workshops at our school. Um absolutely something that I think is a game changer for building school culture. Um we initially started with uh students that were uh junior high and high school level, but we've expanded given the student feedback um down to the elementary schools. When we bring students in and we train them to be culture, we train them to be influencers. We have a culture of influencers. We empower
162our students to be the voices for the student experience. And we always talk about how important it is for every student to walk through our doors and to feel as though they are seen, valued, they matter, that they are absolutely free to be themselves and and um so we have started project 351 and the playbook workshops 3 years ago now. Um and it expanded from a group of roughly 50 students that were involved to 175 students now are involved in this. and um we do leadership training and we talk about how do you help to support an inclusive community. Uh so we look forward to continuing to grow um in the next few years. It's definitely a source of pride for our district. Along with that, we always have a component of service with each
163of the workshops that we do. Um and it's completely studentled. So I should tell you that uh we select each year two students who go in and get trained by the lawsuit subtypes in project 351. um to best understand a playbook, a social playbook. Um so it's a series of different uh social scenarios. And just like in the sports where you would have a specific uh scenario that you need to prepare for and you you know your plays, students learn the plays for how to create an inclusive community. So um we we are absolutely seeing that um have a positive impact and we look forward to the continued growth in those areas. Um, we also have a community service day where all of our students participate in community service, including our students who are in
164the life skills program and our transition program. So, everyone in our building engages in community service. Uh, we do it typically the day before Thanksgiving break. Um, and it was an amazing experience. Uh, last year was our first time doing that. We also are very committed to continuing it. Um, our staff, our students, our families were so excited after our community service day. I'm going to let these guys take a minute and just tell you about what their experience was. But we have students that help to provide us with um areas that they want to serve and then they were able to select from those areas. So, it felt really personal and important to them. And we were fortunate enough to work with Mass Hire who funded our transportation so that we could get as
165many students off campus uh with buses and shampoos. So um absolutely a great day and something that we're really proud of. Abby, do you want to talk about your experience in the morning? Follow that. >> Um, I was able to go to death and um, pretty much we just leave um, give bags and wrap presents. Um, we made we built the cars that kids can ride in. Um, and we learned all about what they sample, what they do. Um, there to then go all the stuff to the hospital. Community service day for me. I stay with one of the art teachers in this school and another group of students. We work to create arts for elderly um people who may not have people to holidays so that we can someone that gets during the holiday
166season. And then we also have a credit for life uh fair each year. We work with K5 and credit for life and we want we want to prepare our students for the real world. And oftent times you hear they don't know how to write a check. We don't even know what a credit card is. Like what is this about saving or spending? Um and so listening to that feedback uh two years ago we partnered with K-pop 5 and Fred for life and we bring them in. Uh in junior year students will have an opportunity to hear from um Jim Kurr from Kpop 5. He comes in, he pushes into our hold up block. He does a presentation uh to the students. Many of the students are like, I need you to send me that presentation
167right away. Um he gives them a budget spreadsheet. uh gives them sort of the presentation of well you want this car or this car and breaks down what that spending would be or those the savings would be over the years because it said this is the most important thing that you guys have done for us over the years. Um, so they get that when they are juniors and then when they're seniors, they actually participate in the fair where they select a career and then because of the career that they've selected, they get a specific budget. All of the numbers are the real numbers that K5 has managed uh to study and update. And so the kids learn how how am I going to make decisions? What kind of car am I going to have? uh
168am I going to have um health and wellness uh representatives at a gym? Can I buy a pet? What should I spend for um my food? And they basically go through all of these different stations. They work with experts in the area who are volunteering to teach them to prepare them for the real world. And then the best part is that um we also receive $1,000 from Cape Cod uh for uh bringing them in and we get prizes for our kids. all things that would be related to financial decisions that they'll need to make in the future. Um so kids are like walking away with dorm room sets or um microwaves or um gas cards, things like that. So it's a really um great experience for our students and I definitely think that it has
169helped support that need for that financial awareness. Um you heard me mention earlier about our college boot camps, career fairs and college fairs um in our building as well. Like I said, we really want to make sure that the experience is easy and accessible for all of our families. And then I'm going to let Mr. Deval talk about the last two things that are on the slide. I hate to be left out my community service group by about 40 kids today where I am. So, it's all hands on that all um the state program. Um we had students just this past year for the very first time on graduation. uh have you been um certified by the state for being um passing the state field by literacy in either Portuguese or Spanish? So we're super
170proud. We do offer three languages. Third would be Latin, not Spanish. Uh and then finally at the university, we conduct uh annual curriculum reviews uh through the lens of facts. What's in our curriculums? uh is it accessible to all uh this is who we are. So I you know the the student to teacher ratio that's like that's what the state tells you that's 11.41 it's not a real number it's not okay those are like how many teachers you have in the building and how many kids you have. So the real numbers are there. We're not hiding. I think those are awesome numbers. As I said, I have a my wife's an English teacher at the high school. If I gave her a class under 15, she'd be crushed. I thought I'd want kids in my
171class. So these are awesome average class sizes for our students at all levels, whether it's advanced placements, honors, or college prep. So these are those are the real ones in my opinion. And then like teacher longevity, which is how I figured that out wanted to know. How about this? I didn't hire a new teacher this year. Okay. I can't think of teachers come to make a career at Old Rochester. This that's just what happens. They come to make a career uh at Old Rochester as I am. Okay. Um and so we we have teachers that stay hired and I think we're fully staffed. A lot of schools would say that right now. We're fully staffed. First day of school is tomorrow. We're ready to go. Okay. Um I'm excited for that. Um then just again
172more of the information we're looking for um 80% from our local survey. Uh those are our graduation rates. Um you know some kids need that fifth year. We we support that. That's it's not it's not a race to the finish line. Um and then our accountability measures we put up against anyone in the region. You know we're doing our job to prepare our students for post high school uh life. uh school performance impact facilities. Okay, this is just a a log on our facilities. Uh at graduation every year, 18 have given 18 speeches. The first year as an assistant principal, they made me give the speech. Uh I say welcome to the hub of the south coast because we house at our we have an auditorium. It's constantly being used by the community. Dance uh
173troops are renting out our spaces because we want people on our campus, our athletic fields. We have uh our football stadium is a place that comes alive for our own events, but also for uh events within and all of the community. So, um in our gym, for basketball games, um our facilities are um you know, we want people in our facilities. We want people in our buildings. want to take a look take a tour, we'd be happy to do that. October 1st of this year, we put uh we're hopeful that we're putting a shovel on the ground for athletic field renovation project. We're going to irrigate more of our uh facility. Um that's going to just enhance our student experience, which is important. Uh safety and security. Heard it tonight. We've heard it. Um, so
174we have um, so it's we have a full-time school resource officer that is on campus every single day. We're fortunate enough to say that we have two. So we have two uh, they're not always there together, but we have two familiar faces on the battle police force that are in our buildings every single day. Okay. Uh, we do participate in Alice active shooter trainings in conjunction with our local police office. Uh just this summer, every administrator and three representatives from each of the police stations in three towns uh went through full alice trainings, okay, to prepare our students in the event of an active shooting. Um we have done a lot of work in the last 10 years pre- postco around uh securing our best schools um and using a school checkin so people can
175when they come in, we're scanning IDs. uh making sure we have safe visitors coming to campus. Um and then our door access technology systems. Um we have comprehensive alarms and cameras. Um and I consider us an extremely safe school. Uh community engagement. We have an alumni association that's active. Um so we here's one of the things I tell parents. I always feel like at the elementary levels, doesn't everybody love their elementary, right? you know, you wrap your arms around the community and then something happens when it's like, okay, now we're at like the junior high and the kids probably don't want mom and dad around as much. I don't want you at my field days. It doesn't feel as good. We want to flip that at our school. We embrace parents. We want them to
176be involved. We want to welcome them into our school. And so, we encourage them to join. Is your kid in drama? It's our most popular club. uh more than seven students as part of club. So join the friends of old Rochester, the friends of old Rochester music. Um Mrs. Mlette has done an incredible job connecting us with Mass Hire to provide local business opportunities for our students and job readiness. Uh we've got a very active athletic booster club that supports what our student athletes are doing. We have run a school council. We have our CPAC for our special education population and parents and active community members. Now, and I'm on the board for the Tritown Educational Foundation Fund Nelson that awards grants on an annual basis to continue to support what our students are doing.
177This is a fun slide, right? So, this is a fiscal responsibility. So, the expenditures per pupil. Okay. Uh so, you can see our total in district uh expenditures. It's broken down by different ways that we're spending it. Um all of that information is available uh online. Uh we do have student fees. We do have student fees. Our students pay 50 bucks to market. Okay. Um and then our students do pay uh for athletics, but I can tell you in my career we have never never kept a kid from playing a sport because we're user feed. Okay. Uh and so we in many cases will wave user feed upon the situation. Um, and those conversations are not done between coach and player. They're done between principal, law, parent, um, in a very warm and understanding way.
178>> I want to just add that first thing is for our APS, any student that wants to take an AP. Um, they're not held back from doing that because of the cost of APs. Um, as well as PSATs. >> Uh, so some historical data we have requested through the presentation. So this is some of our historical data on cost expenditures. Um we are historically uh spending beyond the minimum requirements. We commit to that. We'll always do that. Slides. Uh and then net school spending is evidence of that being met. So there we are with our amount over our net school spending highlighted for you. that our foundational budget included as well. So my my own child would would call this slide cringey. So I think that cringy might name like you dad. So like um
179in advance of this presentation I reached out to Amber who was a 2024 Rochester graduate who I knew and it doesn't matter but I didn't know she went through the original schools. Okay. And I said Amber when are you going back to school? She's a rising sophomore at Yukon and she said Sunday like it was like Sunday a couple days ago. So I said is there any way you could uh just share on your thoughts about I'm going to this is what I'm going to be doing. What can you do? What do you think? You know um and this is what she came up with and it's like this is Amber. This is the old project her experience. She wanted to be very careful to you got to include this. I got the Kushman teachers
180association scholarship. They love me there. set. Um, and so here is this is just straight from Amber. Um, and again, this is what uh her participation project about like trying to talk about like sense of belonging. What is it like to be a new student? So, Amber walked in as a ninth grader, had a freshman over the summer with her parents and this is what she was able to do. She owes it all to me. Get out of here. I owe it all to her. She was an awesome student. All right. A student leader that was a driving force of her senior class. So that is kind of cringy. But uh so this is our last slide. Um I would imagine that there will be questions. We're happy to answer those since anything you want
181to add. President I will take you up on your third professional orientation with my son in a year or two. I'm looking forward to it. Um I want to thank the uh school committee. The uh letter that you provided to us was crystal clear in what you were looking for. We did our very best to address each and every single point. I probably owe my assistant and uh the central office some kind of reward. They spent a lot of time preparing the binders of all supplemental information that I believe will support the information here on the PowerPoint uh in a lot more depth including evidence from the department of education and samples of our communication from the superintendent's office, the principal's office, our strategic plan that informs our school improvement plans and our educator goals,
182etc. Uh so I appreciate that opportunity to share it. uh and some of the other superintendents and members mentioned uh that this isn't a competition and we feel that way. Uh we spent a lot of time uh deciding whether or not this is something that we wanted to consider for our our community uh because we examined your core values as principal met. We compared them uh to ours and we did recognize that we believe that you're looking for a partnership but that's also what we're looking for. This feels somewhat funny because we're sharing so much information about ourselves. We have some idea here for what you're looking for, but if we're fortunate enough to be able to move forward in this process, we would want to sit down with all of you and learn a
183lot more about what that partnership uh should look like in terms of experience that you've had and what you're looking for moving forward. So, I also want to thank my team. Uh I know that it's opening day of school tomorrow. They put a lot of time into being here. I know some others that are concerned about situation. I wish you the best of luck tomorrow as you're opening up schools. And most importantly, I want to thank these two dumb ladies for coming back to their home community to share some of the awesome things that are happening to Rochester. Thank you very much everybody. [Applause] [Music] Terry Fleming, who is our director of curriculum and assessment with us this evening. And I have Kelly Steel, who is our director of student services, who's with us here.
184And I'd also like to acknowledge in the audience, we had a few of our staff members who were here before, but I I think the opening of schools tomorrow might have chased them away. Uh, and I'm going to just simply say that I I've heard the phrase crown jewel quite a bit tonight. So, I would feel remiss if I didn't acknowledge the words crown jewel. Uh, but I think we at aquet are really the crown jewel itself. We are a gem. And I often refer to the school as a gem of the woods. Uh, and by the way, the woods aren't very far away. It took me 11 minutes to get from Aoner Regional High School to this building this evening. So, we're awfully close to your students. I just wanted to make that point
185to you this evening in case you hadn't checked it out. Uh and I'd just also like to preface the presentation tonight with the fact that we are offering something new to Abushment and that we don't have an agreement uh with anyone beyond free time or length uh in our two communities and uh we'd be very interested in coming to the table uh to make a very fresh agreement starting from scratch uh to meet the needs of the push students while we still recognize the needs of our Freetown Lakeville students. So, uh, without much else to say, I'm going to turn things over to our most excellent Papon Regional High School principal, who is an alumni or is an alumni of the school, Kayn Desert. Good evening and thank you for inviting us here tonight. I'm
186Kaylin Desert, the very proud principal of Honquit Regional High School and on behalf of our entire school community. I'm honored to present what it truly means to be a part of Laker Nation. At Aonquit, we believe in a commitment to excellence for all of our students. And tonight, I hope that you'll see how that commitment lives in our classrooms, on our playing field, in the hearts of our students and staff. We'll present a great deal of information and encourage you to ask questions at the end. take time to review the presentation at your convenience. We currently have 28 school choice students in Ler Nation and one of those is from a cushion and she'll be talking with you later in this presentation and we believe that you will see tonight how our students or all
187our students find home in Lake Nation and we believe we can be that home for our Cushion students. Aonquit is nestled in Lakeville uh just about 15 minutes from a Kushnet as Dr. start said and we serve around 640 students in grades 9 through 12. You can see that this is at a glance but it's much more than a glance but we'll try to cover some of these things um give some shout outs to them. So we pride ourselves on small class sizes, low student teacher ratio, a personalized approach to learning and our students come from Freetown Lakeville and hopefully soon a pushnet. We are very proud to be a um a DESC school of recognition in both 2017 and 2024. We earned an 83% accountability score in 2024 and we'll explain a bit more
188about that. It's the highest in our conference. Our most recent class celebrated a 100% graduation rate and a 95% attendance rate. And most recently, just this week, we were ranked um number 81 in Massachusetts by US News and World Report. That is the highest in the entire South Coast. We're very proud of that whole district and to our students and our towns. We truly believe that our achievements and rankings are indicative of the exceptional experience students get as part of Lake Nation. Now, one thing that you will see throughout our presentation is that we are guided by four powerful um core values. Achievement, resilience, honor, and self- advocacy. In fact, you're going to see, you know, that our students do achieve, they persevere, they show honor and kindness, and they speak up for themselves. Student
189voice is very important. These are not just buzzwords. They are within everything we do. We celebrate them in our halls and in our social media and they're part of our daily discourse. From academics to athletics, from clubs to career readiness, we are building graduates who are prepared for their next steps wherever they may lead. Being successful, kind, resilient, using their voice for change. Now, I'd like to introduce one of our assistant principles, Mr. Glet. Thank you. I'm Jeff, one of the assistant principles at a regional high school. Separating us from other schools in the south coast of the south coast conference. We fully align with mass core and our offer offerings in and our graduation requirements and we also offer many other pathways that we'll discuss in a moment. Math core requirements are met and
190exceeded at a point that students pass four years of English language arts, four years of mathematics, three lab sciences, three world history courses, two world language courses, two year semesters of fine of the fine art, four semesters of the wellness and a year-long comprehensive civics department which has earned us recognition from the state. >> We have a tremendous amount of offerings at Monica. We offer a wide range of advanced placement courses over 14 in person courses and many more through group virtual high school an accredited online platform. Students choose these from these uh from these classes that you see and many more to pursue for their interests in possibly genetics, friends and sex psychology, zoologology, fashion design and many more. In 24 2024 213 students took 457 AP exams. 92% of those students scored a
191three or higher. [Applause] directly college savings and confidence. It also results in a contingency of our population that receives a seal biiteracy which is awarded to students who score a four or higher on AP Spanish. We plan to add AP Portuguese to this biiteracy track. Our students perform exceptionally well on the MCAST exam with 96% of our students passing. Additionally, a department of education accountability rating is determined by multiple factors including achievement based on MCAST results, advanced course completion, student growth in ELA and mathematics, English language proficiency, and school quality, including measures like high attendance. We experienced the marked increase in our score for these reasons for increasing our performance for our high students. Now, I'd like to introduce Mr. pillar ideas. This a lot of fun. >> Um so to ensure that our students
192are prepared in life beyond high school, we offer many unique learning opportunities. Um this includes our own formalized LER pathways and subjects such as business, computer science, and engineering. It offers a progressive uh programming approach to prepare students uh for future studies or also workforce participation. Additionally, this year we're introducing our first innovative career pathway in healthcare. Um, as well as adopting several future ICB pathways. Um, one being business. Um, we offer several opportunities for students to connect and engage with the community. We host multiple events such as career, technical, and military days as well as facilitate community service and work-based learning opportunities. We partner with local organizations such as Lakefield Police and Fire and local media access to provide internship and job shadowing opportunities. Additionally, we host um physics Olympics and annually participate and
193send students to the women in STEM summit at college. Um so in this rapidly changing world as we all know for us education goes far beyond the classroom and we seek to continue to provide students with experiences that are both comprehensive and enriching. So while uh nearly 78% of our students pursue college, we certainly want to ensure that every single one of them are prepared for wherever they go after. Thank you. I'll introduce Dr. Cors. >> Hi, I'm Maya. I'm a rising junior and a witness here. Our humanity program offers many electives beyond our mass floor requirements. From the popular ARHS sports center and trending digital media to leadership in horror fiction, our elective offerings are rigorous, relevant, and often the result of the student voice. Our science program provides multiple AP offerings beginning in
194grade 10, a computer science pathway in an expanding engineering and robotics program. Our math department provides math requirements, AP calculus as well as relevant education in personal finance, even sports and office. Our business program introduces students to many aspects of the study of business management and marketing. Very popular in Laker Nation as nearly onethird of our student body enhances this with participation in DECA competition. DECA is a national business achievement club. Our wellness development department meets mass core with four semesters of physical education and health education which includes certification in burst aid and CPR for all our ARHS students. Students can further enhance this path with education in sports medicine and the art of healthy living including cooking and nutrition a very popular in region. Our art program is well around the disabled. Students have
195many pathways to explore painting, ceramics, sculpture, and more. We celebrate this art through building murals, art shows within the school and in the community. And our students compete and win awards such as gold and silver key awards from the Austin. Our art exploration continues through our music program through concert band, jazz band, choir, and select choirs. Our electives evolve over time to meet the needs of our students. And you can see some of our newer offerings such as build a band in TV, film, and video games. Also, our courses really connect with what our students are doing. Like when I was a freshman, I came in and I did public speaking and I was very scared, but now I'm up here today and I feel a lot better about it. [Applause] Good evening. My name
196is Nicole Farweather and I'm a school counselor at Concret as well as the counseling department head for the high school. Another important component of success in LER Nation is our staff. We're 100% certified professionals bringing p a passion and love of learning to our school each day. A wonderful tra tradition which exemplifies this connection is that each graduate gets to choose a school district member or town official that has impacted their educational journey to hand their diploma on graduation day. >> Oh wow. >> For example, as you can see in this photo, students have selected bus drivers, favorite teachers, and police officers to share in this honor. >> With four full-time guidance counselors, mental health staff, and ongoing student support meetings, our students are never navigating their path alone. This award-winning counseling team brings a
197comprehensive program to life through interactive engaging curriculum, meeting students academic, career, and socio emotional needs through group and individual work. Multiple times each year, students meet with their counselor to develop and enhance a personalized four-year plan. Some of some of our most popular events are the air showcase for incoming nth graders, our building wide career day, and the college fair and BSU tour day for juniors. At Apon, our inclusive approach to student services includes a high level of communication with parents and guardians through phone calls, meetings, both in person and virtual. Information sessions such as financial aid, college planning, and scholarship infinars. We believe collaboration with families is a key component to student success, happiness, and health. With two full-time adjustment counselors, a school psychologist, and partnerships with local agencies to ensure wraparound care, we
198take mental health seriously. Roundt discussions, monthly newsletters, and our break room lunch talks are just a few examples of how our adjustment counselors work closely with student collectives to bring awareness to and reduce the stigma associated with mental health. By providing targeted support in small groups and one-on-one settings, students strengthen coping skill coping skills, self-awareness, and resilience as they navigate challenges and achieve personal growth. Our school culture is rooted in empathy, equity, and connection. At Aprit, we strongly believe in personalized learning. We support these experiences through a variety of flexible and student centered programming. We take a tiered approach to education and support with our academic and test and tutoring labs, ensuring academic assistance is available to all students who need additional help with day-to-day coursework, assessment preparation, and organizational skill building. For those who
199find the traditional academic environment challenging, we bolster alternative opportunities to obtain a high school diploma through our credit recovery and online programming. Recognizing others are looking to further enrich their academic experience, we encourage exploration of courses outside of our in-class opportunities, offering upperassman courses through VHS and dual enrollment. We know that no two students are the same and we celebrate our diversity and promote inclusion in Lake Nation. Our high school supports inclusion students by providing individualized services, classroom accommodations, and collaborative teaching to ensure every student can learn and thrive alongside their peers. electives join our special educ education, life skills and transition program students together with their peers through integrated art, integrated maintenance and repair, integrated m music, and integrated movement and fitness. Our adult transition program fully integrates within the community through job site
200experience, college attendance, and our new life suite apartment and kitchen for daily living experiences. All of these programs come together for Labor Nation's most favorite sporting events, the unified basketball and track teams, winning the sportsmanship award and unified champion school banner in recent years. I'd like to introduce some students. >> Good evening. My name is Eliza. I am starting my sophomore year at a regional high school this year. I am an aushet resident and I have lived here for many years. I have been fortunate enough to be able to start my fundamentals in sports, the new Kushnet system, including playing travel basketball and representing our town at a very young age. Deciding which high school to attend, sports played a huge role. I knew that if I was going to be accepted under the school
201choice program, it would really give me a great high school experience. Last year in the fall, I was able to play JV soccer and I made the varsity basketball team as a freshman. I'm very proud to put on my ARHS uniforms. We are proud members of the South Coast Conference. We are excited to have 57 of our students participate in athletics. Of that number, 65% of our school choice students are woven into the fabric of Lake Nation by participating in at least one sport. Our athletic program is supported through our athletic boosters club. Like many nearby districts, we do require user fee for participation in athletics, but we also provide student assistance with fees and do not require any mandatory fundraising. Our wide range of varsity and subarsity athletic programs are not just about competition.
202They're about building character, leadership, and community. Let's celebrate the spirit of honor and excellence that defines our Lakers. Our athletic programs have earned significant success at both the individual and team level and we are very proud of what we have accomplished. For example, the the varsity girls basketball team became the South Coast Conference champions three years in a row as well as making it to the Sweet 16 in our 2024 to 2025 season. Over the years, we had many student athletes going abroad to complete to compete at the collegiate level. We celebrate those students through two official signing days at our school. Here are some of our past graduates competing at the collegiate level. >> Good evening everyone. Um, thank you for your patience and time letting us present today. My name is Ryan Oconor
203and I am this year's senior class president. Um at Aonicquit we have had uh our laborers are very active, engaged and passionate. Um so we offer over 30 clubs and organizations. This includes some of our heavy hitters like drama, DECA, robotics, environmental club and student council. However, this number is still growing as a club provides the amazing opportunity for students to add clubs that they're interested in if we do not already have them. One of my favorite and recent additions was that this spring a group of my classmates worked really hard to add the unique organization of HOSA to our school. HOSA or Health Occupation Students of America is an international student organization that promotes career opportunities in the healthcare industry. All of our clubs, whether competing or not, are all very successful. They provide
204the opportunity for our students to be engaged and involved while pursuing their own interests. notably our DECA programmer gold certification for school store and heat press business and had 11 students qualify for the international business competition. In music and drama, our students are winning awards and more importantly finding their voices. Last year we had two students accepted into MMEA all state along with an excellent rating for band, choir, jazz band and select choir for solo awards at music in the parks festival competition. If you haven't seen one of our Laker drama productions yet, then you are definitely missing out. We have a stellar drama program in which I still have not gotten over the Mamia play that they performed from the spring of 2024. Um, our art program also has received gold and silver keys
205from the Boston Globe. >> Hi, my name is Reagan and I've been part of the student council at our school and all my high school. I started my freshman year as class president and then sophomore year I decided to join the executive board as secretary and this year I'm going into my junior year as executive board president. Hi everybody. I'm also been a longtime participant of student council. My freshman year I was a active council member. My sophomore year I was a class representative for my class and my junior year this year I am now also joining the executive board as publicity coordinator. And actually, fun fact, me and Reagan both have won the MDM award, which is most valuable member of student council. Winning it her freshman year, me winning it my sophomore year.
206So, it truly shows that your work pays off. Our student council hosts a number of unique and fun events that we are proud to organize and host each year. Examples of these are amazing spirit weeks and pep rallies with distinct and unique themes each day that display our pride. Following our spirit weeks and pup rallies are our events such as dog next week which promotes kindness and community where we pick a cause to fund raise whether the local or national scale and our homecoming which is a formal social event to bring the school together. In our years in student council our group has proposed and created three different events that are catered to the foundation of our school such as the senior lock. This event is a once in a-lifetime opportunity and bonding event for
207the graduates to hang out with with the senior community for one last time. In addition, we also host a holiday bonanza which promotes diversity and connection between all the religions and traditions are implemented and displayed. Lastly, our new annual spring fair with different themes and activities each year which acts as a final harassment of people of Lorreation who have worked hard all year and strives for the best throughout their education. We have also hosted two successful card shows this year with our club's branch Pokemon club where the community can join our club for a day of training, competing and more with the help of local businesses which is a thing we strive our club is working with the community. And our biggest and most attended informal event is PonCon. It is our annual school game
208night where everyone's interests are showcased and celebrated. This is unique to our school and unlike any other high school event. At a conquer, we pride ourselves on inclusivity schoolwide. Regardless of age, class, or title, you can participate in student council events with low commitment and without even being elected. Other schoolwide activities include our film festival to provide an outlet for creativity and the junior class specific action projects to better our community. The events at Aponic are endless and are always a good time for everyone in our community. The activities we put on not only bring the community together, but also foster an environment for students to work together to create great things for our school. >> Thank you very much. So late at night, we have a public speaking paid off for all of you.
209So, I hope to the the Christian to the Christian school committee in your community that we would be honored to welcome your students into Laker Nation. And I hope you can see a piece of Laker Nation. We're ready to support them, challenge them, and celebrate them. We know that the transition to high school can be a very stressful one, not just for students, but for families. Um, and we will walk with you every step of the way. At Laker Nation, your students will be known. They will be supported. They will be empowered. They will achieve, be resilient, be honorable, and they'll self- advocate for themselves and for the world around them. Thank you for considering us, and we are happy to take any questions you may have. >> Thank you. though maybe before you have
210a question there's one piece I don't think that we um included you asked you Bedford and we were really proud this year because the students really do achieve and we make partnerships and we encourage them you know to do that themselves and this year um under the guidance of um Nicole Bearweather um our students received $339,000 worth of scholarships for 151 students Did they go over? >> We certainly understand that it's late >> and our presentation was very clearly not exhausted. Uh we have much more information that we would love to share with you. Again, happy to answer any questions this evening. uh you know but out of deference to your time and time everybody else you could certainly follow up with us you know in any way possible. >> Sure. >> Well, it's getting
211you guys are awesome. We really appreciate >> Yeah, definitely. >> Thank you. [Applause] >> Uh yeah, just um couple quick questions. What What's the uh average class size student teacher ratio? >> The average class size is 11. 11. Okay. 14 to six. >> Yeah. >> And then uh do you have any established like early college pathways, dual enrollment programs, that sort of thing? >> We do. We partner with local colleges for dual enrollment. Um we have also started our first year of innovative career pathways in which students um we've made a relationship with Bristol Community College so far um for phbotomy classes for instance and um certifications and we're look this year as part of our three-year school improvement plan we are seeking out all of those partnerships they have our students are very interested
212in in the medical field so that's where we went first >> the designation the healthcare pathway And um do you know how old the building is and when the last major renovation projects were? >> 1959. Our freshman who will graduate in 2029. We just had our orientation last night and I have to tell you there were 108 Laker leaders. That means 108 out of just three classes. Um so about a third of our students, no I'm sorry, one out of four students um participated in that to welcome all those freshmen. It was so wonderful. So I did say to the parents that they are the class of 2029 and they're the 70th uh graduating class. So it was built in 1959 and we have had a renovation in 1999. The most recent renovation of scale
213was in 1999. We did a more than $15 million renovation during the school year while we were on the building. While we're in the building, some of us still have hard hat marks to show for that. uh but we've not done a large scale uh a large scale project on the building since. However, we are looking toward putting together uh what could be a 5 to 10 year capital plan very soon. Uh and we are very much interested in doing some significant upgrades to our facility. >> Sure. >> Any particular upgrades stand up? >> Uh certainly in the science department, right? We'd like we're putting in a health career pathway. We've started health career pathway, right? So we'd like to have some lab space commencerate with that. uh and that is top of the list.
214We're also looking to do some facility upgrades uh long term. Not all of those have been shared publicly yet. So, I'd like to refrain from from talking about campus upgrades. Uh but there are plans in the works and and surely in a meeting coming up in the future once we've shared that information with our own towns uh and our own school committee. Be happy to share with you. >> Of course. Thank you. I have one question. Um because this would be if if it does follow through end up having this collaboration, what type of initiatives would you put in place to have a sense of belonging for the Ausha students there? >> A sense of belonging for them. >> Yes. >> Well, I have to say um we just had our saludiatoran was from a
215cushion and I didn't know that until she was in the top 10. You know, we just don't know that. That that is for real. Laker Nation is a place for everyone. Um, you know, one of the things that we'll need to do, we we do go to our eighth grade. Um, many times they come up to our building so we already know them before the summer, you know, and we have an orientation and take all those extra phone calls to tell the parents, no, we won't be pushed in a locker. It's not a '9s movie, you know. We we do that kind of thing. Um, whatever it is that they need. And we already give them special programming. For instance, um it was mentioned very quickly, but not only do we have academic support, but
216we have something we call TNT, testing and tutoring. So for students who are not on an IEP, but have been identified as struggling or already enrolled in that with a certified teacher, um despite the fact that they don't have an IEP, so we're really proud of that. But in terms of this, we would have to find some ways to visit a lot more and to have you visit our school. We've had some really great orientations. Um we had a really great showcase we called it where they came up and again it was student le, but they got to see every club, every sport. The students were there playing, you know, like throwing the ball around and they just got to see what a place it is. And I have no doubt that they would find
217their place in Laker Nation. Just in the past four years as principal, many of those clubs have been added and many of those electives have been added. I'm thankful to the community for allowing that and I'm thankful to the students who advocate for those Pokemon. Who knew? >> And what do you currently offer in terms of late bus service for your existing district? >> We current we currently don't offer a late bus for our students, but we would be looking in our agreement uh with the pushment to add some type of service uh and also to expand that to students in our own district. It's a need. It's a need that we have. >> All right. Well, thanks again. We appreciate it. Have a great year. >> Thank you. [Applause] >> Thank you very much.
218Thank you guys. [Music] >> All right. So, um we'll wrap up. So, there was some communication and information provided. Any questions or any comments relative to any of the communications? No. No. >> That being said, our next school committee meeting is Tuesday, September 9th at 6 p.m. in the FMS library. Can I have a motion to adjourn tonight's meeting? >> So move. >> Second. >> And we'll do a roll call. >> Mr. Mrs. Mr. Ellis, >> yes. >> Mr. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Heat.