School Committee: January 9, 2025

Transcript captured from MHTV’s Vimeo auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:02 Oh, I don’t spell it. Yeah, right. Is there anybody here that needs to be, that’s okay. No. Okay, great. Okay. But I’m gonna call us to order. I’m, um, at 6 0 4. Um, just one second. I don’t think I, I’m paused recording. Um, but I’m live streamed Frank, so I think I’m okay. Or do I need to un or do I need to unpause? Pause. Pause. Okay. Pause. Can you just, just put your volume all the way down, like exit out. Thank you. Thanks, Lisa. Welcome everyone. Sorry for the delay. We had a couple of technical issues. Welcome everyone, um, to Mar Lit School Committee.

0:50 Um, I wanna thank everyone for joining us online and in person. Um, the first thing we’re gonna do is Pledge of Allegiance. Brian, would you lead us in the pledge? The

1:02 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Thanks, honor. Um, we’re going to go into commendations. Before I open it up to commendations, I just wanted to, um, um, give a moment, um, of silence and a moment for our former principal and guidance counselor. Libby Moore. Elizabeth Moore, long time, um, and beloved member of our staff and our team here. Um, Libby passed away late last month, and, um, I actually, I had worked with Libby, but I had also seen that she had,

1:47 I think a 28 year career with us. So it was really an amazing, amazing career. She was a guidance counselor and then most recently had retired, had served and retired as, um, principal at the Marblehead Veterans Middle School. She was also an amazing community member. She gave of, um, herself in so many ways, um, and will be, will be missed. Um, I did speak to Principal Fox and, um, there are no plans at this moment. He’ll let us know. Um, and that, um, he’ll, he’ll let the committee know. I would like to ask the committee before we do a moment if I have your approval to send a letter of condolence to the family on behalf of the school committee. Yes, please. Yep. Thank you. So if we could just give a quick moment memory of Moore.

2:34 Thank you everyone. Appreciate that. Um, any other commendations? Um, I wanted to give a Ccommodation to Tyler erp, who received his Eagle Court of Honor this past weekend. As many of you know, Tyler, um, his Eagle Scout project was the greenhouse at the Marblehead High School. Um, he had started off looking to fundraise $75,000 to build that greenhouse. Ultimately, it wound up being a hundred thousand dollars project. It was, um, absolutely amazing to watch him throughout the process. Many people, as I, as I saw him at various fundraising events, um, would would say, do you think this is a little too ambitious? And Tyler never wavered in his commitment to this project, and he was able to achieve it. And it’s a wonderful gift to the Marblehead Public Schools.

3:22 It’s a wonderful accomplishment, and I just wanted to commend him on receiving his Eagle Court of Honor this weekend. Congratulations. Any other commendations? Okay. Um, we can move on now to public comment. Let’s start with, uh, folks here in the room. Does anyone here like to make a comment? Okay. Um, sure. Okay. Um, anybody online you would need to raise your hand?

3:55 I’m going to double check.

4:00 I don’t see any hands raised. Frank, do you see anybody with a hand raised? Nope. Okay.

4:09 Okay. Moving on to our student representative. Welcome, Ella Bandana. Welcome. Thank you. On this cold January night. Thanks for coming out. Of course. Hi everyone. Classes have started back up for the new year and have been going very smoothly. The senior show is this Sunday, January 12th at 3:00 PM Tickets are $20 for students and 25 for non-students. The Varsity Girls basketball team is playing at TD Garden this Saturday at 1130, which is very exciting. The musical this year will be Hades Town and auditions will be held on January 15th at 3:00 PM parent yearbook dedications are due February 15th, and most seniors have submitted all their college applications. And the FAFSA is now open. And finally, junior seminars are beginning next week,

4:55 and there’s a junior parent Guardian night on Wednesday, January 15th at 6:00 PM Thank you. Thank you very Much. Just for people who might not know, Ella, if people wanna get tickets ahead of time For the TD Bank North game, um, is that available online or do you just buy ‘em at the door? Um, I’m not entirely sure, but I think they might be on, It’s online. On online with the athletics. Yep. Okay, Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Um, okay. We’re gonna move on to, uh, district updates from Superintendent Robin. Thank you. Um, I think that’s the, yeah. Amplifier, right? That’s, that’s fine. Not do low, low. It’s very Loud. Um, alright. Good evening. I have several items to share with you tonight. Um, firstly, we have established a joint committee

5:42 for school safety, which is com composed of up to 10 union members and up to 10 administrators. We met today for our first meeting and discussed a plethora of items. And I’m pleased with the collaboration, um, which is important to ensure that the district is supporting students and staff in ways that promote success. Uh, the committee will meet in whatever frequency is determined by the committee, and we’ll present a joint, uh, presentation of the school committee in this spring. It was a, it was really vibrant meeting today. It was a lot of good input and a lot of good discussion. So I was really excited about how our first meeting went. Um, thanks to Sally for co-chairing with me. Um, it was, it was, it was nice. Collaboration. Just A second. One second. John, can you just X out the, um, thanks Sam. Sorry John. Alright. It was already too many. Um, can you Just do me a favor and make sure you, we get plenty

6:28 of time for when you want that. Like, if it’s gonna be on a March or April, we make sure we get on the agenda? For sure. For sure. Um, we also created a joint labor committee, um, whose primary responsibility will be to review and update the educator evaluation process, as well as address items that are related to the contract language, et cetera. That committee will be underway shortly. Um, it’s chaired by Julia. Um, and it’s similarly composed of administrators and union members. So there’s collaboration across the district. So we’re very excited about both those committees being in place. Um, it opens up communication in a, in hopefully a positive way, um, for everybody. So that’s great. Um, I was asked to kind of give an update on the independent investigation in regards to the antisemitism. Um, it’s still transpiring, and I just wanna share that timeline for the completion is, has been a bit longer than we all anticipated, but due to several factors.

7:14 So one was we really couldn’t start the, um, the investigation until school started. ‘cause there was a lot of staff members that were involved with the, with the initial, um, interviews, et cetera. So that, so that backed it up a little bit. So it didn’t start, um, in earn until September. Um, there are many attorneys that got involved, um, in the discussion, which, you know, anytime there’s attorneys involved, it kind of delays. Um, I dunno what’s happening here. Um, delays the process a little bit. Uh, and then, you know, obviously with the strike it, it, um, that delayed some things a little bit. So I just want to share that. Um, as the interviews have transpired, I’ve been in touch with Allison Ker in an ongoing way. Um, she’s, um, had me e introduce her to several staff members and get her in touch with former staff members,

8:01 um, to do the interviews. And clearly anytime there’s interviews going on and there’s conversations, it’s like, oh, maybe you should talk to this person. You should probably talk to that person. So it’s kind of like give them also cookie scenario here where, you know, things are kind of, um, continue to, uh, um, elicit more, uh, feedback and, um, from different people for the interview. So I’m hopeful that I’ll have a report that will be short, uh, forthcoming shortly, um, that can update the committee when that’s done. Um, we are also in the process of creating, um, and this is a working title. Um, we had a meeting the other day, um, in regard to, um, you know, doing something around, um, a task force in regard to antisemitism, which was something we had talked about initially when we, when we, um, had the, the aforementioned independent investigation started. Um, working title I’m kind of working on is more

8:48 of a anti-discrimination committee. I, I’m not a big lover of task force, although I’m not, you know, not necessarily unmarried to it. But, um, the initial focus would be, you know, obviously on the antisemitism, um, the need for extra attention and establishing ways to combat discrimination, specifically antisemitism, um, and anti-racist behavior action and ongoing review of curriculum materials has been evident. Um, and we need to move forward proactively rather than reactively. Um, so I think this committee will be, um, established. It’ll be composed of parents, educators, administration, administration and students. And with the initial focus being on, um, the anti-Semitism, we’ll, um, invite local rabbis or, you know, rabbi or rabbis. Um, we had a Rabbi Yoshi you meeting from, um, Alco the other day.

9:33 He said he was willing to kind of give his, um, professional input into reviewing some of the curricular materials for, for some of the biases. Um, which I thought was really helpful. Um, I envisioned the committee being fluid in order to identify and address discrimination in its many forms. But again, the initial focus would on combating antisemitism, um, which is very important for us. Um, here in Marblehead. We hope to include, um, as, as an outcome of the committee’s, uh, PD for professional development, for parents, for staff, for students, review curriculum material with the lens of antisemitism, um, for specific biases and establish more fluid reporting mechanisms and outcomes of those reporting mechanisms. Um, so the collaboration, open communication will be key. I’m also, you know, I’m excited about this committee ‘cause I think it’s important with the climate

10:19 that we have, um, currently. And I think it, it’ll, um, it’ll lend itself to some rich and vibrant discussions as we, as we move forward with the committee. I think the task was to get the committee kind of in, um, set up and moving forward by the end of January. Um, I’ve already had preliminary conversations with our admin team for input into who they feel, um, either in their schools or themselves or maybe some specific parents that they thought might be, um, willing to be on the committee. So I’ll, I’ll follow up with the committee about this committee, about that committee. Um, as we move forward. Um, we had some accolades. Sarah had a question. Oh, Sorry. Um, I had sent it out not very long before our meeting. Um, there is an opportunity for a PD experience. It talks, um, it’s, it’s a film series that work

11:07 that talks about, um, antisemitism and things like that. I know, I believe Matt Fox sent out to some of his staff yesterday as an opportunity. I was asked to forward it onto the committee ‘cause it’s something, um, that is open to school committees as well. And I think, Julia, you were on the email. I said it to John and I think I included you, but if not, John, if you could forward it on, um, and I was just asked to, you know, bring it to everybody’s attention that it, it is an opportunity. Thank you. Yeah, I I saw that late this afternoon Trying to get this, it was really, it was right before I came here. Yeah. So Ill, I meant to send it yesterday. I apologize. Yeah, I’ll look at that. I think, um, obviously any PD opportunity that makes sense and, and, and that are accessible. I think it said it was free. It was free. So that’s always a good thing. Um, it is, it’s obviously a full day commitment.

11:53 Um, and it’s happening soon. I think it’s happening. Yeah. So I’ll, I’ll I’ll review that in the more, and I’ll send it out for folks for sure. Thank, thank you for sharing that. Um, so the district, uh, six DECA competition. Why am I so echo? This is, um, district six DECA competitions were held, um, on January 7th. Microphone. I know I haven’t mute. I’m Like, is this one, If that’s too loud, we can try unplugging it. As long as you guys can still hear. We just wanna make sure everyone doesn’t hear. I pushed mine Back too. Uh, yeah, that might be Better. Yeah. But can you guys hear, Can you guys hear, I can speak loudly for that, but I moved it further away, but sorry, it’s just really distracting when I’m talking. Yeah, yeah, It is. It’s very, Yeah, it’s like reverb.

12:39 We’re having some audio issues here in the room, folks online. So just bear with us a moment here.

12:47 All Right, go ahead. I guess we’re okay. Alright, so lemme start over again. District six DECA competitions were held on January 7th, led by Paul Gleason. Um, and here’s the list of the results. If you bear with me for a second, as the list is extensive, but I think it’s important to read. Um, celebrating many of our students. Uh, so we, let’s see. Marblehead High Schools among 14 area schools that completed competed in the DECA District six career development conference yesterday and won, uh, yesterday being the seventh Tuesday, and won the third highest number of qualifying events overall, which is really cool. Congratulations all MHS students who attended the conference, especially students below who qualified to compete at the state conference in March. So that’s from fall. Um, and he lists, um, several, several students, um, and I apologize ahead of time if I say their names wrong, but I’m gonna do my best.

13:33 Anthony b first place financial consulting. Thomas Conway. First place Automotive Services, Ava Lamb. Second place, apparel and accessories called Barbo. Barbo. Mm-hmm. Second place, uh, sports and Entertainment Marketing. Ivana Gaan. Uh, second place Community giving project. Gary Pastor, Pastor Law, sorry. Second place. Human Resource. I did practice these before too. It didn’t help, did it. Um, human Resource Management, David Alpert. Second place integrated marketing campaign, pro product. Avery Wiser. Uh, third place, principles of entrepreneurship. Kate Cole. Third Place, principles of Marketing. Rebecca Mann, fourth place, restaurant and Food Service Management. Lauren Lew. Fourth Place Career Development Project. Caleb Sedman. Fourth place, principles of Business.

14:19 Mark Management, sorry. Tucker Crane. Fourth place Integrated marketing campaign product. Nate Johnson. Fifth Place in integrated marketing campaign service. And there was some teams of Tatum and Maddie Ferris first place in entrepreneurship. Olivia Goldwater and Ariel Kahn. First place Marketing management. Dylan Gilmore and Kiernan Moss. Second place Sports and Entertainment Marketing. Eliza K and Sidney Woodard. Second place buying and merchandising. Harry Robbins and Aiden. Second place financial literacy. Isaac Brennan and Caleb. Mary Miriam, fourth Place Financial Services in Crookshank and Ava Salem. Fourth Place Community Awareness. Sean Henan and Luke Miller. Fifth Place Sales project. So that’s huge. I think that’s, that’s great showing

15:05 for our students and I appreciate their, their, um, attendance and Paul’s, uh, leadership in that role. So thank you. Uh, mark Tar and Kent Wheeler have provided me the athletics update. So boys basketball is three and three girls, basketball is three and two boys. Ice hockey is 7 1 1 so far. Um, girls ice hockey is oh and four. Gymnastics is oh, and one swim dive team is two and oh, wrestling is three. And one girls track is two. Oh and one the boys track is one and two. So the overall record as of 9 25 is 21 14 2, which is the 0.600 winning percentage. Girls basketball, as Ella had mentioned, is playing Saturday at the TD Garden at 1130. Tickets are still available at the MHS athletics website Coaches, um, CPR and a ED training is on one 16 at 5:00 PM MHS auditorium open to staff.

15:52 Um, next meeting on the Captain’s Leadership Council is scheduled for 1 23. So I just wanna share that. Um, and then the last thing Magic had is celebrating their 20 years and over $2 million in donations from Marblehead Public Schools. Um, they will be celebrating this mind milestone on February 2nd from five to seven at the Masonic Temple. Kudos to all of who made this so successful over the years. And then lastly, I’m excited to discuss the agenda later on the item in regards to my status here in Marblehead. That’s all I have. Madam Chairwoman, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Yeah, many thanks to the magic hat Dave. 20 years. Great stuff. Many thanks to them. Um, okay, moving on to consent agenda, schedule of bills is, um, um, tabled as the, um, Mike Ping had indicated there was only one,

16:38 he was gonna table it till the next meeting. So we don’t have that. So I apologize, I didn’t take it off the agenda. Um, I just didn’t amend the appeal. We needed to amend the agenda for that. Um, we have meeting minutes that, uh, to approve. We have two, um, draft minutes from the December 5th, 2024 meeting in the December 19th, 2024 meeting. I get a motion to approve, um, the minutes for 12 5 24. So moved. Okay. So moved by Allison. Moved by Allison. Second, second, second by Sarah. Um, any questions, concerns, discussion? Okay, um, ask for vote. Al Williams. In favor? Brian In favor, Sarah Fox In favor? Allison Taylor in favor, Jen sch. New in favor. 5 2 0.

17:26 And then I’m looking for a motion for, hang on one second. It’s 12 five for, uh, motion to approve the minutes of 12 nine, the meaning of 12 19 24.

17:36 So moved. Allison. Second. Um, second. Okay. And I’ll, uh, any questions? Yes, Al uh, It had me as a member of that meeting and I I was not in attendance. Oh. As Yeah. And so you can’t, So I’ll abstain, but I just wanted to make sure that edit is made just to not have me as, uh, attending the meeting. Yep. I’ll do that. Please. Um, did you check I’ll go double back and check on the votes to make sure that the votes were, I think the votes that were correct. The numbers, yeah, were right. Okay. I think it was just my name at the top. Okay. And actually you, I think you technically can approve minutes if you weren’t. It’s just, it’s a choice. That’s what my Robert Tools has told me. Oh, I always thought, um, uh, I’ll take a vote. L William, I abstained. Um, Brian Oda in favor, Sarah Fox.

18:24 In favor? Uh, Allison Taylor in favor, judge Schaffner in favor. Four to zero. One abstention. Okay, that is it for our consent agenda items. We’ll move on to school committee communication and discussion items. Um, we have, um, a presentation for the MCAS high Needs overview, academic Discoveries Review from assistant superintendent. Um, Lisa Maria Alito. Welcome. Thank you so much. Thanks For coming, For having me here this evening. I appreciate it. Julia, if you wanna be able to see better, you might. I do. I was actually, I was waiting for the right time. Feel ready? Go Over. I see you. Do you have this? Um, Frank, you have the document. Okay. Yes. Little signal across the road.

19:12 So first of all, thank you to the school committee for inviting me to come, uh, this evening to present, um, some mc a data that is, um, a continuation of the wonderful presentation done by Assistant Superintendent Ferrera. I’d also like to thank Superintendent Du, assistant Superintendent Ferrera, as well as assistant superintendent, um, ping for all their support and working together. So I have a great time to be here in Marblehead. Um, and then a special thanks to Victoria Ryan, who’s my assistant director who’s on Zoom. I think she’s On Zoom. Yes. Saw who was out there. Hi, Victoria. Uh, hi Victoria. Uh, Kathleen Givon, my executive assistant. The team chairs the staff, um, and the building admin. Um, it’s been really like gratifying

19:58 to dig into this work together, um, since the start of the year to help move, uh, the needle for our students here, um, in Marblehead. So, uh, today, uh, tonight the presentation is understanding MCAS data for students 2024, uh, analyzing the impact of, um, our high needs learners. So just as the overview, um, just to make sure everyone has the same knowledge base as we enter, uh, into the presentation. So just the overview is the role of MCAS, which is to evaluate academic performance. Uh, the data provides educators with, uh, another data point, not the only data point, but a data point to tailor instruction and really be able to look at student individual needs

20:44 as well as their strengths, um, and weaknesses. Um, and it helps us to delve into the data, which, um, since Superintendent Ferrera had talked about last time about the data groups coming together. Um, and in this particular case, looking at the subgroups, um, as we’re doing here tonight, and to ensure that all means all, like all students are getting an equitable education here within the Marblehead public schools.

21:11 And so just defining terms, um, MC CA stands for our Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. Uh, we currently measure, uh, English language arts, math, science slash technology, and now civics as well.

21:32 And just to review the scoring categories before I jump into lots and lots of data. Um, so I also color coded the words to match the bar graphs that are coming up. So red, if you see red in, uh, you know, the maroon and the E is exceeding expectations. Green m is meeting expectations. PM is partially meeting expectations, and that bar will be yellow. And then the bright red is NM, which is not meeting expectations.

22:04 And then what’s that? I’m Surprised.

22:10 Um, and then talking about the naming categories, um, that we’re talking about tonight. So all students, that category is the number of students, um, throughout the district who actually took the Mc CAS test. And that would occur in grades three through 10. And then high need students. What, um, there are three groups that fall under that umbrella. And students with disabilities are English language learners as and are, uh, low income, um, students with low income backgrounds. So I just wanted define all that as we, um, before we jumped right into all of, um, the data. Can I ask a question? Um, my assumption is that students are Allowed to take the MCAS in their native native language.

22:55 They’re not, yeah. So an English language learner would be taking it In. Yes. But there are some, um, your domain, but there are some accommodations, especially for our year one. Okay. Uh, English language learners. So, um, they take the test and it gives us information, but it doesn’t necessarily give towards the grade score. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Um, on this slide is answering a question from the last school committee meeting about like, what are, how many students are we talking about? What are the numbers? And so these are our numbers for, uh, last spring 2024. So looking at all students in ELA, uh, 1,356 students took the Mc CAS test in math,

23:40 it was 1,362 students in science slash technology. It was 574 students. And then we break it down into, of all of those students, how many of them are high needs? So in ELA there was, uh, 564 in math, there were 565 science and technology was 153. And then broke down further into the three groups that come underneath. Um, high need students. So low income students was 192 students in ELA 191 students in math, 51 students in science and technology under students with disabilities. We had 303 students in both ELA and math, science and technology. There were 79 students.

24:28 And remember, uh, science and technology is grades, um, five, eight, and 10. And then under English language learners, we had 69 students taking it under ELA 71 in math and 23 in science and technology. Yes. Apologize ahead of time to everybody. I always have a lot of questions when we do data stuff. Um, is there over, like when that, that number up, up above for like Math 5 65, do you get counted once for every column you land in? So, or Yes. You get counted once for every count. So, So it might be that the actual individual students is lower than that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Because otherwise it’s like 44% of our population is high needs.

25:13 That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Okay. Do you have a percentage of how many overall kids are high needs versus, ‘cause this, this makes it a little muddy with, But when we get into the data, there’s lot. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Uh, information. Okay, so now we’re gonna jump right into the data. Um, it’s a lot here, but what this, uh, graphic shows is all students compare it to the high need students, um, for ELA in 20, in the spring of 2024. And so how you read the graph is, again, there’s my color coding. So the blue is, um, exceeding the green is meeting, yellow is partially meeting, and red is not meeting.

26:00 And in the first column you can read it by the bar graph or you can read it by the numbers directly underneath. So the first column says grade three, meaning all students. And that all students does include those same high needs students that are separated out in the second column where it says grade three HN high needs. And so, um, I’m not gonna go into the weeds too much, but I’m just gonna give some observations about each slide. And so in looking at this data, what we noticed was that the, um, majority of our students are in our high need students are in the partially meeting category. So that leads us to say, who are these exact students, um, in, in, uh, the partially meeting.

26:47 And what we discovered is we had many students, not, not, they’re all high needs, but not all, um, special, uh, needs students that were very much on the cusp. Meaning, uh, if they got one or two or possibly three more questions correct, they would’ve been in meeting. So, um, I I just wanted to share that because it is a trend if you look across the board at all of our high need numbers, um, that they are, they’re quite high.

27:18 So it’s interesting ‘cause some trends are similar to what we saw in the all students categories that were presented a couple weeks ago. But something different here is it looks like sixth and seventh grade high needs have the highest percentage not meeting.

27:42 Yes. Is that true at the state level as well? We’re gonna get to that. I, I, I, I’ll just, I’ll just ask to wait till I get through all the data. ‘cause I, I literally answered all of your questions from the last meeting. I love it. This presentation. Thank you. I’ll stop. No, It’s okay. It’s fine. I like questions. Um, so the next slide is math. And quite honestly, it’s basically the same exact trend that you see. And you can look at the bars, you know, to, to notice that our high needs students, um, have a larger percentage, percentage partially meeting or not meeting. Um, but it’s important to note that there are significant number of students who are on the cusp. And I’ll talk about like what do we do about that, um,

28:28 as we continue on. And then the next slide was science and technology. Um, and again, um, same, same sort of trend. Although if you look at the 10th grade high needs in science for meeting expectations, 37%, um, that that isn’t a great percentage, uh, there comparatively speaking.

28:54 Okay. So on the next slide it was asked about, you know, how do we look compared to the state? And so, um, on this slide here, we’re gonna kind of go, um, um, data table by data table. So the top row it are, um, grades three through eight, high needs, ELA, math and, uh, science technology and science technology is only grades five and eight. When looking at ELA, uh, comparing us to the trends of the state, our, uh, 2024 is comparable roughly about the same measure as the state. Whereas, uh, 22 and 23, our students are slightly higher, uh, in the state.

29:40 In terms of, um, their achievement when we look at math 2024, again, is pretty comparable to the state for high needs students in math. And 23 and, uh, years 23 and 22 we’re between three and 5%, um, percentage points better, uh, average than the state. And then when we come over to, uh, science technology, again, 2024 seemed to be like a pretty comparable year right across the board, uh, for grades three, uh, through eight. And in the years of, uh, 23 and 22, there’s a significant difference, um, between 11 and 2% better than the state average

30:28 on those same on those same tests below it is grade 10 high needs. And so when looking at, um, the grade 10 high needs for ELA, um, our students did a nice job in terms of, um, we have, uh, 10 to 11%, um, decrease from the state in terms of not meeting expectations, which is a great trend to have. Um, also in 2024, we are three percentage points above exceeding for our high needs, um, compared to the state in math. Um, again, for all three years we have between a six and eight percentage, um,

31:15 decrease from the state on our not meeting. Um, and the, the other scores, um, with some exceptions in the meeting category remain about on par and then looking over at science and technology. So there, there is not, there is, uh, not comparable information for 2022. ‘cause we were still doing the legacy, the old version of the, um, science technology testing. But in the years, uh, 24 and 23, um, we, we exceeded, uh, the state expectation

31:50 And civics. Is that new? That’s why it’s not on here. You said students? Yes. Okay. So that’s, yeah.

31:57 Okay. So then we broke it down into the high needs groups. And so, um, this looks at same, but it’s not, this is special education. Um, and the great news looking here, uh, kudos to our staff and all the hard work they’ve been doing, um, for ELA math and science technology, if you look at the not meeting, we, we out, we outscored the state, uh, our trend, uh, for not meeting better, uh, than that state historically across there. Does that mean there’s, we’re done? No, that means we have a lot of work to do, but it’s showing that we are moving, we’re trending in the correct direction, and that our students maybe are moving from the not meeting to the partially meeting to the meeting category. Um, so that was encouraging when comparing us,

32:44 uh, to the state. Um, in 2024, um, math grade 10, uh, will be an area of focus. Um, however we are following the same trend as the state. Um, and so that leads us to questions about was the test harder? Were the questions truly aligned to the standards? Um, you know, what is, what does our curriculum look like? But because we are seeing a similar similarity with the state, um, it leads us more to like looking at, uh, the vocabulary maybe and the, and the test questions. Um, and then also in comparing, um, these scores, and I know like the students behind the numbers and looking at their IEPs and do they reflect, you know, what we’re seeing here?

33:31 I, I’m happy to say that we’re getting better and better at aligning our IEPs to the goals, um, towards the standards. Um, and that they’re aligned to the, to, to the standards.

33:45 Okay, the next slide is our, uh, low income group, which is part of the high needs population. Um, in 2024, more students are not meeting for ELA and math in grades three to eight. So again, there’s that, that great trend that we’re shifting over to the partially meeting meeting. And I think part of that is, um, if I had to predict be not being here, um, and talking with assistant superintendent Ferrera is like the MTSS work that’s been going on. The new curriculum updates, you know, the professional development being done with the staff and the implementation, um, uh, uh, with the staff. I hear a lot about wit and wisdom and how it really is supporting our, our, um, special needs, um, and our high needs students.

34:33 Um, and then looking down at grade 10 in ELA and math, uh, less students in 2024 not meeting than in 2023. So if you look at that, we had 25 students not meeting in 2023 and um, it’s dropped down to nine. Um, it is a different group of kids, but I think that it says something and it’ll be interesting to see if this trend, you know, continued. ‘cause then that, um, would give us some evidence to say that our curriculum is working and kids are, um, um, able to utilize it conceptually.

35:09 Um, Alright. Um, so there was a question about comparable districts. And so, um, online there’s a dart, it’s a public, uh, website. Anyone can go on to compare districts to one another. And, um, Uh, what happens is it takes 10 communities and aligns it to marblehead public schools, for example, to say like, you have the similar demographics and so we’re gonna compare your outcomes to each other. Um, for me, I, I felt like, um, five of the communities that are listed up here were really close in demographics and the other five were not.

35:57 They’re much bigger districts. I happen to know one of the districts intimately and you know, and there’s so much more behind these numbers and what these numbers tell. But I thought it was important that, um, we, we share this information, um, with you all. So the districts that were, um, on the DART and comparative would be Bedford Long Meadow, Nashoba, and Newburyport. And it on this chart here I just shared with you, like, what is their enrollment, what is their percentage of low income, what is their percentage of students with disabilities, and what is the percentage of English language learners? So those are the three categories of our high needs groups. And as you can see, we’re, um, pretty close,

36:43 uh, percentage wise. Um, some outliers, for example, long Meadow English language learners, um, and even Nashoba. But it was in two out of the three categories. Okay. So again, defining terms, um, before we dive in. So we’ll be looking at the student growth percentiles or the SGP, uh, student growth percentile measures a student’s progress on mc a s comparing them to their own progress and the progress of other students with a similar, uh, MCAS performance history and the SGPs range from one to 99 within an average being 40 to 60, um, uh, points.

37:30 Is that an average for all Or for height all mm-hmm. Across the state. Mm-hmm.

37:37 So, um, on this slide here, just to give a little lay of the land. So this slide here is, uh, the year’s, uh, 2024 through 2022 ELA, grades three through eight. And our high needs subgroup down the bottom is the color code key of the districts I just shared with you. And, and then we also added the state, which is in purple and on all the slides, Marblehead is red. So to make us like pop out and stand out for you to be able to read the chart easier. So the bars in line in order of the, uh, communities down the bottom and the years go by 24, 23, 22, uh, left to right. Um, and at the top of each bar is the actual SGP score for

38:25 that community for that year, um, for ELA. And so as you just visually looking at it, you can see that we are pretty much on par with the other communities that have similar demographics, um, to us. Uh, in 2023, uh, we actually have the highest SGP of 52.2. Um, but across the board, uh, our SGPs are within that 40 to 60 average growth range, which is right where we want to be.

38:57 Okay, the next slide is, uh, high needs grades three through eight math. And in 24, uh, 23 and 24, again, we have the highest SGP compared to the comparable communities. Um, and across the board, again, in math for grades three through eight, we are within the average range of growth of our students between that 40 and 60. And the other, uh, noticing here is, um, our student growth percentile grew each year in math, got stronger and stronger.

39:34 Okay, the next slide is high needs grade 10, ELA. Um, here we see that there was, um, a steady decline in math, uh, I mean, I’m sorry, an ELA, um, for Marblehead public schools. Um, that this is the only time in 2024 where our SGP fell to 33.6, which is slightly below the average growth measure. Um, however, the other two years with within the, um, average LA uh, range. Um, I know that it was discussed as since assistant superintendent Ferrera and I, uh, we’re not working in silos. We’ll be talking about like, why do we think that is? Um, it’s hard for me to like, I won’t speculate right now

40:21 because I I wasn’t here and it all could also be like an outlier. Um, but I did wanna just bring some attention to that. The good news is newbie report who outpaced everybody else. We, we now have their special education. This is hard. I didn’t wanna put a report on there because I was like, I’m, I’m basically toting myself on here. That’s great. But, um, But we’ll see those reds going up in the, Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, thank you Sarah. Um, and then on the next slide is grade 10. I’m sorry, I just need to grab a little water.

41:03 Our high needs subgroup grade 10 math. Um, you can see, uh, looking here that, you know, we’re within the average range. There’s, you know, definite room for us to look and grow because again, looking at the SGP is 41.5 for 2024 for math. So that it says something, uh, there that we just need to delve into and, and, uh, look more forward.

41:32 Okay. So, um, we’re gonna get into some challenges. Um, and these are just, this is just a, a short list. Um, we really like, love to dig into the data, but I just would wanted to say so a large number of our students, um, in the particularly meeting category on the cusp, as I said before, of meeting expectations. So, um, as was stated before, we’re gonna be targeting this group of students using MTSS as well as direct explicit instruction. Um, and this will be an area of focus for us. Uh, currently grades three through eight high needs, um, marblehead public school students and grades three through eight in the state high needs subgroups are achieving similar percentages in all scoring categories.

42:17 Uh, and our high needs, uh, grade 10 subgroup, um, their SVP needs further investigation as to why the 10th graders are not growing at the same rate as grades three through eight. So those are just some of the, the things we’ll be pulling out. Positives, uh, grades three through 10 are far above the state average. And being able to answer, uh, the select response questions, constructed response questions and essays in all language domains. So, um, selected response questions would be like multiple choice. Constructive response is like, um, digitally, uh, the students have to like maybe put a story in order so they move, they have to manipulate things on the screen,

43:03 and the essays are just what you think they are. They’re written essays, um, usually based off a story. So that was exciting to see that in all three areas our students, um, are, are doing well. Uh, eighth grade high need students were between eight and 16 percentage points higher in all math domains with one exception. And that was real world mathematical word problems and geometry, which was like two percentage points, uh, less. So I didn’t wanna take that from them, um, in presenting because that their mask scores are pretty impressive across the board. The, uh, third grade, eighth grade and 10th grade had a high percentage of students in the high needs subgroup exceeding

43:49 or meeting expectations for ELA in 2024. Um, and the high needs special education, um, low income subgroups in the area of math, uh, all had average to above average student growth, which is nice to see. So then it leads us to like, what is the impact and what’s, what is a holistic approach of services that we will be taking. So the impact on students is, um, that the student support services is critical for enhancing the student’s performance, uh, really individualized and addressing any barriers that we might find to their learning. Um, that we’re tailoring interventions to support the needs of the students. Um, and that will lead to significant improvements

44:37 for, um, all students. But particularly right now we’re talking about our high need students. So how is that being done? Um, as discussed at the last meeting, there are teacher leaders, um, who are supporting their grade level teams, um, doing in depth data analysis, which is happening in the district, um, looking at high quality, uh, curriculum materials, including our new literacy program and, and math program and, uh, the impacts of those pieces. And then in terms of services, um, what are the outcomes that are gonna positively influence, um, uh, uh, the targeted support we are providing, not only on assessments, but the carryover conceptually into, um, other standards and other grades. And that’s building the confidence of our students

45:24 and letting them see their own growth, um, as they continue to learn, um, for what might be for our high needs students, a challenging environment, um, both in inside and outside the classroom. So, uh, looking at professional development, specialized instruction and multi-tiered, uh, systems of support. And then what successes, sorry, I gotta give you the, um, and what successes? So personalized learning experiences. Um, so for students on IEPs, uh, staff are working on, um, more measurable goals. I mean, to do great goals, but more measurable goals based on, um, several different pieces of baseline data and improving the targeted instruction

46:11 and the data collection. Um, so that’s something that we are certainly working on together. Um, improved compliance and procedures for special education timelines and processes to support students and their needs. So at this point, I would love to share that, uh, we received a letter, um, from the Department of Education about our corrective action plan, the six areas that we were found, um, non-compliant. And they have, um, approved us as being compliant in all six areas. So that’s ahead Of schedule, isn’t It? That’s way ahead of schedule, yes. Oh, thank you. This was supposed to continue to do progress reports till June, uh, 2025, but they said they came, they pulled our files, they talked, you know, talked to us and saw all our systems in place

46:59 and the hard work that the staff and team chairs are doing. And so, um, yeah, they approved us. Thank you Lisa. And all a direct result. Just so all direct result of all of the hardest that you’ve done With your team and, and with the chairs, et cetera. I just wanna make sure everybody’s a hundred percent clear on that. A hundred percent, very clear as since July 1st. Truly Remarkable. I appreciate That team accurate. And I can say just as a former special ed director, how, um, how huge a task that is mm-hmm. To get to a point where we had, you know, presented it to the, to DESI and they only came back one time with like, Hey, we need to this, it’s usually months and months and months of corrective action, corrective action, corrective action. And I’ve lived and breathed that in the past. And, uh, to say that you did that, that quickly in this short amount of time with your staff

47:45 and in, in the support of the team chairs and special educators is, is huge. It’s, it’s, I can’t underscore enough. You’ve done a really great job, so thank you. Thank You. Thank you for the students. Thank you much really. ‘cause it’s for the students, you know, it’s a very deal benefits them. It’s a really big deal. Thank you. Thank you so much. I mean, I just love the staff because they’re basically like, tell us what we need to do. We wanna dig in. And we, we said, okay, here you go. This is what we need to do. Um, and I’m not gonna say it’s perfect. We, you know, there are bumps in the road, but, um, the systems are there and, and the staff and the team chairs are really implementing them. So that’s best for kids and best for families. So we’re happy. Thank you guys. And staff and teachers, yes, We talk teachers, everybody good for everybody when we have some systems. Um, so readjusting our district programming instruction

48:32 and program definitions to meet the needs of our various learners within a cohort and professional development targeting that. So, uh, we have contracted with Landmark and, um, outreach program. And so Landmark will have their, um, third visit to the district next week where we’re observing our language based settings and, you know, just gathering information and feedback. And then we’re going to be, um, having sessions throughout the remainder of the year with our, normally our special ed staff, but with our general ed staff who will be the kind of like the co-teaching model, uh, with our, uh, language based program. So we can have a nice rounded program. Um, and we’re just gonna be talking about, you know, what are best practices, like what are we already doing, what do we need? And those are gonna be budget drivers, um, when you see,

49:19 when you see budget presentation in the next couple of weeks. Um, and then we’re doing the same thing with our therapeutic program and our a BA program where I’m in, uh, kind of contract negotiations with Athena Learning K 12. Um, So are they sort of consultants in that, in that Yes. Environment of Yes. Therapeutic versus landmarks on the language based. Exactly. So they’re consulting to help us with our in-district programs. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Wonderful. Excellent. Thank you. Yeah, we’re really, we’re really excited about that. Um, and so we’re excited to have the staff share the input. And then, um, kind of the next one talks about like families. So part of this whole revamping or rebirth of our programs will be inviting parents to give feedback and thoughts and ideas.

50:05 And we’ve been doing that throughout the year, like seeking, uh, feedback from our families, whether it’s after a team meeting, there’s a survey, Victoria and I also have office hours twice a month. Um, we get lots of emails. We love like picking up the phone and calling parents to have those conversations as well. And it just helps us all just to, you know, get better or provide clarity, you know, to our community, um, of what, of what’s happening. Um, and we are also, um, continuing to provide professional development for our special education staff around, um, not only the science of reading, but a student’s reading profile. So we have a reading tracker and um, it has a, um, how do I wanna say it? Like a core set of gold standard assessments

50:53 that should be given to identify students if they have a reading difficulty or reading need. And it really hones it down into the specific areas of reading where there may be concern. And again, that ties into our direct instruction, um, to support the students how they need it. It’s like not, uh, one size fits all. Um, and so, um, it’s gonna really inform our, our direct instruction. And when you say direct instruction, that’s from special educators or regular educators as well, or general education? Um, what I’m speaking of right now is special education, but part of the MTSS is, you know, that tier two level Yeah. Of, with our reading specialists and our math specialists doing some targeted work as well too With general education. Mm-hmm. Yes, yes. Do you foresee,

51:41 And this might not be something that exists because the, the testing may not align in the same way it does for the reading that what you’ve done with this group reading organizer, reading graphic organizer, that you will at some point roll out a, a similar one for math? Or is it, are they not comparable? The hard part about math is that the assessments we currently have do not align to, they did not fall in line for whatever reason to, you know, the shift to common core standards. Mm-hmm. And so, for example, um, key math is a good example of that. Like key math is like a gold standard, you know, math assessment, but it doesn’t necessarily have that, that strong language component that goes with math to assess it.

52:26 Okay. Um, and, and the hard part is everything has to be normed, right? Mm-hmm. So, you know, they have to put it out in trial and norm it, and that takes years. Okay. So, um, I would assume that anytime soon someone’s going to make a lot of money and create that assessment. Um, but, and, and when testing with math, um, it’s a little bit more concrete too because the, the five domains, like we know what they are and so we’re able to give various tests to kind of like fill it in. But we don’t necessarily have a, a organizer just yet. Okay. That’s not to say we won’t.

53:07 And then, um, engaging families effectively, I talked about that a little bit already, making sure we’re involving our parents, especially during our IEP meetings or in our 5 0 4 meetings to understand the student outcomes. What do they mean? What is the learning environment, what’s specifically best for their child? Um, having that strong partnership between schools and families, um, truly encourages, um, um, participation. It kind of breaks down those walls of fear and the unknown. Um, so we’re, we’re hoping that we’re doing that. And then utilizing community resources, um, and programs to kind of enhance our learning together. And, um, we’ve been working with our amazing CPAC

53:52 and we had a meeting today actually, and, you know, we, we couldn’t feel more supported and we really just appreciate their feedback, uh, as well too. Okay. So that is part, that is the presentation. I have other things to say, but that’s the presentation. So I didn’t know if anyone had Thank you. Great news. All good stuff. Go ahead. Questions. Yeah, go ahead Sarah. Um, so I did see that there was, uh, the fourth and eighth grade where the math had the highest, um, increases, which tr the eighth grade trended. ‘cause what we saw last week for the, for all students was that eighth grade was really a spot where some something’s happening because those were our, our best performances on the MCAS.

54:37 And you see that with the high needs students too. So that’s just another layer of something’s happening in that eighth grade. Right. You know, I can’t wait to hear more about that. But what was interesting to me is this fourth grade was the highest as well in the special needs. But what we saw for the all students was fourth grade was our hardest year. So something’s happening really special with those edu special education students in that fourth grade that they’re outperforming with their growth area, where the rest of their peers who don’t fall onto that high needs are having the, the opposite happening. So, you know, from a data perspective, that was really powerful for me to see. When you look at it on your end, can you see the sub, does it break it down by subgroup of, um, not just,

55:25 not just, um, the three groups you saw, but can you see our language based students are having a really hard time in this area so that we can then really target those interventions by program if there is a commonality? Yes. So, um, data like that would involve, you know, you go in on the student side and you’d have to individually pick those students and then run a report. Okay. Um, the, the online system that the, the state keeps changing it, updating it, I wish I would just leave it alone because I liked it better before, um, used to have something called cubes where you could go in and you could really like manipulate the data. And that piece is, uh, as far as I know, I don’t see it on there anymore. Um, but there are different, um, assessments.

56:14 It’s just for me right now, it’s, it’s just a little bit of, um, a time crunch right now. Okay. But we do know, like grade level wise, like who are the students in each, in each category? Because the other thing, um, some, so just some things that we look for, like, it tends to be a lot of students end up on, um, IEPs and they have literacy goals, but they don’t have math goals. And so our question is always like, why, let’s look at the math data. Should they also have math? And that’s not a Marblehead thing. That is just, you know, a, the focus, the heavy focus has been on literacy. Okay. I thought of that as I see here with academic discoveries. Was there some, if there was commonality in grade levels

57:00 and, um, programming, did that match up where with the areas that Academic Discoveries told us, we, we had growth potential with various programs. So I just didn’t know if you go to that deep of a level of the data or not.

57:16 I, I’m just gonna be honest, I haven’t yet with everything. Okay. That’s been going on. You’ve been drinking from a fireplace. But that is my, that is my, uh, I love to do. I love data. I love digging in. I love, you know, looking at individual kids and then watching them grow. ‘cause the interventions we’ve put in place. Um, but I know at the building level, you know, they’re doing a lot of this work too, um, that, you know, assistant superintendent Ferrera shared last week, like they have their war room and they’re in there and they’re digging into kids. And that’s really where it should happen, actually. I mean, it’s great for me to know. Um, but it’s really great to see it happening at the building level and, and being led by teacher leaders and Julia, et cetera. Yeah. So, that’s right. Thank you very much. And Oh, okay. I just wanted, did you have an

58:02 update on Academic Discover? Oh, that’s what I was just about to say. Excellent. So, um, academic discoveries, um, they’re, they’ve almost completed, um, the review of the district. They’re coming back on, uh, January 31st to do some more observations of classrooms that they did not have a chance to get into. Um, so I’m currently creating that schedule and then we’ll be informing the buildings and the staff if their room will be a point of observation. And then, um, um, they had said to me that they’re thinking February is when they will, um, have the report together to, to share, um, with us to review. Okay. And that would be in the school committee meeting, John? Or do we Yeah, we’re gonna talk about what the,

58:48 what the report looks like, and see what makes the most sense for the venue and what the actual report says. I, I surmised that everything that you’ve heard from Lisa Marie is probably in more detail than or, or aligned very well with what they’re gonna discover academically. Um, but yeah, we can talk about that. What whatever the Willow the committee is. Um, Yeah, I just wanna make sure the committee all receives the actual full report. ‘cause this was a report we ordered. Yes. Yes. Um, which leads me back to, I’m just gonna jump real quick, John. The re other report we ordered was the one on antisemitism. So that would come to all of us as well. And do you have a date? If you can tell us later on, but if you have a date of when you think We’ll see that. I, I don’t, I have to speak with her, um, Allison again, uh, either tomorrow or Monday. She, she literally just

59:34 had a couple more interviews this week. Okay. So she, she should be wrapping up. But like I said, every time she’s spoken to someone, they want, they, they Indicate somebody else for academic discoveries. I, I don’t wanna rush anything, but I do feel like it’s really important for us to have that before we finalize the budget. ‘cause there may be really important information that backs up any budgetary drivers. And yeah, I’m assuming we’ll have both, um, in, in fairly shoulder probably before the end of February. Did anyone else el anyone have any questions? Great. Awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for everything. Thanks for the presentation. Everything you and your team have done, it’s been amazing. And the educators obviously too, key, key participants.

1:00:20 So thank you. Thank you Lisa, so much. Awesome. Um, okay. We are now moving on to the, um, proposal for, well, I don’t know if it’s a proposal for discussion of the competency determination. Yes, thank you. I probably shouldn’t have put proposal. I don’t know if you, It’s, it’s okay. No, I have, well, I have a draft. I didn’t get into the Dropbox, um, in time today for you guys to see us. I’ll pass it out. But it, it’s pretty self-explanatory. If you can take one, pass it down, Allison. That’d be great. Um, so, uh, as that’s going around, uh, Julia, myself, um, Michelle Carlson, Lindsey Donaldson have met a couple times now to talk about what the competency determination would look like for our students and then also what things would look like moving forward. So what we did was we wrapped up, um, both the competency determination and our graduation requirements into, into a document

1:01:07 that I just passed out to you. And this is just a, a draft. Um, it’s, it really encompasses, um, what we’re looking to do moving forward. There’s some tweaking that needs to happen, which is why it’s not a full proposal. Um, um, let me, lemme start at the start and then I’ll, I’ll go through it. So the first part at the top is just really, um, why students, um, uh, what the requirements are for competency determination. We, as the school district, needs to decide what that is now that MCAS is not utilized for competency determination, and then the school community needs to vote on that. So on the, on the document, you have that, that’s the narrative at the top. And then in the, in the middle or towards the bottom third is, um, basically the options that we determine make the most sense. So option one be, so basically students in Marblehead public schools

1:01:53 who have not yet earned their competency determination through the MCM CA administration can meet the requirements for competency determination through the following. So it’d be option one, they would need to, um, in English, they would need to receive a passing grade and credit for both English nine and 10 in math. They need to receive a passing grade in credit for both algebra one and geometry. And then in science, you need to receive a passing grade in credit for biology and an additional lab science like chemistry or, or physics. Tho those, um, requirements are in line with the 2023 MCAS, which is what the state tells us we need to align our competency determination with. So that’s, that’s where those, those courses come out. Um, we, we looked into, uh, some other schools and, and everyone’s kind of in the same ballpark, in the same alignment with that.

1:02:38 They may have some nuances that have some that said, you know, algebra one and Algebra two and, uh, geometry and geometry two, um, things like that. Uh, so there’s some nuances there. Then when, if you look at option two, there are, um, actually I believe there’s only one student, it’s been identified at this point that, um, potentially needs to do a portfolio, um, in order to, um, meet the competency determination this year. Um, so that’s the option two in the middle. Um, and we’re working with, uh, that may not actually need to be, need to happen. We’re, we’re trying to determine that now. But if anyone does need a portfolio, it’s just really, um, collecting the data and the information to, um, make sure that they’ve met the competency, determination in those core, in the core subject areas that I just mentioned. And then in, in regard to special education,

1:03:24 there’s the alternative, um, NCAs assessment is still in play. And that’s, um, that’s explained on the rights of the portfolio students with individual education plans that the team decides that needs to, um, be, uh, assessed that way through the, would still, um, have that potential option. And then the rest of the document is just really proposal for, um, like I said, we, we are kind of marrying both the con uh, competency determination in the graduation requirements. So the rest is really outlining the current graduation requirements. And the ask was, uh, that we add in the financial literacy. Um, we did talk about that. And currently we are looking for, um, semester course required for graduation and then select one course listed, um,

1:04:10 in the financial literacy section, outlined the program of studies. There are a couple, um, classes that we already have in the program of studies, um, that we, so they might have a choice that wouldn’t be necessarily one specific course. It could be one of one of a couple. And the reason for that is to make sure that we have give the students opportunity to take those courses within a lot of time, um, before they, before they graduate. So right now we can’t, there’s absolutely no way we can do that for this year unless not for next year. Um, because we need to make sure that if it’s a graduation requirement and students, they have to have the opportunity to take that course in the, in the amount of time they have left in high school. So, um, that’s part of what we need to tweak. Um, we’re working with Michelle and Lindsay and the guidance, um, department to see what does that look like, what does the timeframe look like?

1:04:55 So I’m gonna bring that back to the committee, um, as part, as part of this ongoing discussion. And then the last thing that’s on your, on your page is, um, just notes. Um, we talked a little bit about when students transfer into Marblehead High School, how we address those issues. So that’s kind of outlined there. I won’t go into overall details now either, because when we do the program of studies, Michelle Carlson is gonna come in a program of studies. This is gonna be kind of a repeat discussion. Um, and she’ll be able to speak to it a little bit more, uh, specifically. And we’ll be able to answer some of these questions a little bit, um, with more specificity and it’ll make more sense. But for tonight’s discussion on the competency determination, we are looking to utilize the English math and the sciences outlined on the first page as how students need to meet their determination for this, for this, um, graduation. Yes.

1:05:43 So English, math, science, you’re saying just passed. So that’s a D or that’s actually a D minus. So That’s, so that’s up for discussion, but that’s, that’s realistically what the, um, the input from the other schools that we spoke, spoke with or, or looked into, um, had that same language. So we, we were trying to replicate some of that knowing that that discussion would come up. ‘cause I had the same, I had the same, um, thought processes. That rigor are high enough. But I think where do you, where do you have the cutoff? Right? So right now, if you pass, if you pass ELA and you pass the MAS test, you get your high school diploma, right? So, um, it’s technically a passing grade. And then you take the Mc a s in addition to right now, we don’t have the, in addition to, so we have to, you know,

1:06:30 we had, we had talked about that. We talked about do we, do we make that something other than just the passing grade, but, um, that it’s up for discussion to start With right now. Do you need to get partially meats or do you need to get meats? I assume you need to get meats. Partially meats doesn’t cut it, It’s the score, right? It’s, uh, it’s the, the numerical score, the path to get. But what does that break down to? Does partially meets make it, I’m assuming it’s partially, well, it’s only meets and exceeds same. So in my mind, an F is not meeting, a D is partially meeting and a C is meeting. But we’re not professional educators. No, but that’s why I’m asking the professional educator. Yeah. And clearly that’s, that’s where I started the conversation as well, saying, you know,

1:07:16 where should that bar land? Um, and again, looking into six or seven different school districts, they all use the same language, the passing grades. So I, I, I felt at this juncture, it’s probably, uh, we’re following, following suit, just so we’re, so there’s some, um, you know, discussion in case people say, well, what, you know, this, this district’s doing, this district’s doing that because they like to compare us to other districts. And I wanna make sure that if that’s the case, we’re we’re doing something similar. Now that’s this, this is a fluid conversation. So we need to, we need to, we need to kind of decide now for this year. And then we can certainly, we can certainly, um, create a different, um, pathway forward. Um, because we’ll have some other opportunities, um, for students like the financial literacy, we’ll be, you know, for graduation requirement. Um, so, you know, this isn’t like, oh,

1:08:03 we decided this this year and this is it for forever. We can decide this for this year to, to get us to get our current graduating class to make sure that they’re, they’re meeting the standards, making sure they’re meeting the competency determination. And then we can revisit it and say, is this really what we want to do? And Marblehead, do we want to raise the bar? Do we wanna, you know, um, Change something around a bit? Is it, do you think it’s gonna be harder to raise the bar or should we start with a raised bar? This seems very, Can I just jump in? I want to correct myself. It is a score, it’s not necessarily level for, for, Yeah. I mean, we wouldn’t have as many people passing. I wanna be clear. It doesn’t always have to be meet and exceed. It’s a score, um, when the voters, when this changed, right? It’s changed the game for all schools in the Commonwealth. And I think that that’s something that, um, to John’s point,

1:08:51 we have to work with the rest of the school year. So, um, we work really hard to ensure that all students came in and took the retest in November that needed to, um, despite it being a strike and shut down, we ensured students came first and we did that. Um, and so this is a very small group of students. So we’re looking at just to ensure their successful completion this year, given that no, no more retest will count for, um, competency determination.

1:09:20 Correct me if I’m wrong. No. MCAS counts for this year’s graduation. What’s that like? In other words, the MCS doesn’t count for this year’s graduation. They up to this. Um, they were able to count this November, but any other retest will not count Now. So if we find out in next Thursday, our schools, our scores from November’s retest, Um, so if Students have passed, they’ve completed the competency determination. Okay. And if they unfortunately did not, we need to have something ready to go. Okay. Okay. Because yeah, what I was concerned is someone could, someone could technically have passed the MCAS and not get a passing grade in theory, right? What would happen, you know, would happen. They’ve already earned their company. They’ve already earned their company. So they would be graduating. I mean, I unlikely, but so

1:10:06 The, the, the rest of the discussion, that’s why we combined it with the graduation. It’s, it’s both things. So you have to meet the graduation requirements and, and make sure that you pass those specific courses in order to meet the competency and graduate. Mm-hmm. So if, if someone, if we didn’t have like, hey, you have to take algebra one, you have to take geometry. And there was an option for not for them not to do that, but they met all their other requirements, we wouldn’t say they met their competency determination if they skipped over somehow out algebra one or geometry. So those are like the baseline, like courses that we need to make sure that they take and pass in addition to the rest. You know, they won’t get the high school diploma if they don’t meet all the other graduation requirements. So if that makes sense. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s just the difference is the MCAS used to just take the place of, of us having to say, this is

1:10:53 what you need to do to meet it. The MCAS was like, you have to do this, get your comp. That’s demonstrate competency. So Can we have this kind of, I understand the complexity there. Mm-hmm. Um, but this just, I,

1:11:10 And, and this is the initial conversation. So I mean, we, we, so we certainly don’t have to vote on this tonight. This is just, we wanted to make sure that we got this information. We’ve worked on it, we’ve shared it with the committee. Sure. Can certainly come back the next meeting and Flush it out. I think for me, I would like to see two different competency determinations. I would like to see one for this kind of strange, weird, different complex, whatever word, um, situation that we’re in. Because we have to accommodate for different, so many different buckets because the switch was kind of mid. Um, and then one for next year moving forward where we can maybe raise it the bar a little.

1:11:51 I’m never down here. To me that would be, excuse me, wouldn’t that be an opportunity to, to have it all be one? Right? Right. Well these are your, Sure. These are your requirements to graduate and you need to have passing grades in all of the requirements that make you meet those versus,

1:12:09 you know, this option one, two, and three and this page, you know, to me it’s, you know, going forward, right? I understand in the interim that we might need to do something a little bit different, but going forward you have to do a lot more than pass English nine and 10 to get a mm-hmm. To be able to, to show that you’re competent to graduate high school. Right? So why not just say, Hey, it has to be, what is it, nine 10? I dunno if it’s 11 and 12, right? So we certainly, that could be, that could be the way we operationalize it as we move forward and just say, you know, as a, as a matter of course, when you meet all of our graduation requirements here at Marblehead High School, you’ve met the competency determination because you’ve passed these courses right now we need to make, it’s, it’s really a this year thing that’s really getting us stuck. Right? I understand that separate. We have

1:12:54 To manage that separately to make sure that any of those children or students who haven’t passed those courses, what are we gonna do to help them? They make sure that they can get to that finish line. Um, so I think there’s that piece. And I, and I, and I would agree one that, you know, um, it’s far parcel of of, of meeting all those requirements. ‘cause it’s not just, we have the state tells us that we have to make sure that we’re aligning the competency determination in our district with what the, what the MCAS measured in those areas, which is the English nine, English 10, the biology chemistry, And it went through 10th grade. That’s where, that’s what kind of the cutoff here is with the competency determination because it assessed the 10th grade. So we had, we were showing something that neared that, But we don’t, we don’t have to do that going forward.

1:13:40 We could, our competency determination, there’s some Guidance on some things like that because I think, you know, students do turn 16 and, um, at, you know, a certain age and make choices at that time. We, we could say that by sophomore year, the end of sophomore year, they have to take it past these courses. It’s essentially the same thing. It’s, you know, we just need to make sure that by 10th grade they’ve done those things so that they don’t skip over ‘em and say, oh, I’m just gonna do it in 12th grade. Yeah. But you could also make it 11th or 12th grade requirements too. Right. Which is why, I mean, this, this year having its weird complex, we’re really trying to accommodate. And because obviously our goal is to ensure that, you know, as many people adequately move on, that, that deserve to. But starting next year where we have, you know, the ability

1:14:26 to com I don’t know, maybe compartmentalize a little more, have blow this out a a little more from a detailed perspective to have what you need to do in ninth, 10th, 11th, or 12th even. Um, so that when students do get to be of that age and can make certain decisions, as you mentioned, um, they know that these are still requirements for their graduation. I wanted to just add Though, also, if the students, it gives, if we can come up with something through 10th grade, The intent is that if they have time to make it up and to can you continue to graduate and move in that path if they weren’t sure successful in the first couple years. So we just Sure. We wouldn’t wanna have something where we’re putting our students in a situation where they don’t have time to go back through credit recovery, do the portfolio, et cetera, um, before graduate, Which is why they do the MCAS retest now for that reason.

1:15:12 But there’s, I mean, there will still be those cases, whether it’s the student doesn’t have time or the student doesn’t want to or doesn’t put in the extra effort, I would imagine is required for that. I Right. Exactly. Uh, unfortunately, obviously, um, those are my thoughts. This is, So I just had a couple questions. So Brian, did you have any, I just had, um, it says here that if a student trans into the high school from another district or even outta state, I mean, how, how are you gonna make sure that their courses are equivalent to ours? Especially if they come in in their senior year and we determine somehow that they’re not, will they have time to make it up and still graduate?

1:15:59 Yeah, that’s a great question. So as it stands right now, and as we put in the note, our, um, guidance counselors and the principal review all the transcripts that come in, um, and they look at how it would count for credit. Um, it doesn’t count towards GPA, but towards credit towards the, uh, meeting the graduation standards and they work with students. It’s a paper comparison though, right? They’re not calling me of the school to find out what, I don’t know the level of what they’ve had to do. I’ve been involved in a, a few situations, especially regarding like homeschool and stuff like that, that I’ve worked with. But, um, I, I’m Sure they do. I can, I can give you an example in terms of special education. So say we have a student who’s in a collaborative program or, you know, um, or a residential program and they all, they, they’re able to come back in, right? So if they come back into the district, say in 11th grade, they’ve taken courses while they’re out and part of the regulations there says they need to meet,

1:16:44 meet the certain requirements. So they may take courses in that school setting that look different than our schools here. So we have to do a, a, a review of their transcripts in their course. And sometimes that does take calling the school and say, can you send me the program of studies? I wanna make sure that it align. And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. So it would be similar to out of state, it would be similar to, you know, another school district. You know, most of the schools in Massachusetts, because of the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks, the program of studies for most high schools are pretty well aligned. So it’s not as big of an issue. But if they come in from Nebraska or Tennessee or whatever, you know, we have to look at that, uh, regardless. But in regards to, you know, making sure that they’ve, they’ve met the requirements that we’ve put forth. So I would imagine that’s a very individualized basis when a student transfers in. Yes. Gotta probably a lot of work as well.

1:17:31 Um, I I I don’t doubt that. Uh,

1:17:36 I mean, how would you have done it with mcm CA if someone transferred in from out state in 12th grade, would they take mcm CA? Yeah, who knows? I Don’t know if I’ve had a situation with that. I’m trying to think. I don’t think I lived that either. I can get Back to you, Jeff. Yeah, no, I’m just curious. Like, whatever. So, so there’s a couple things I, I see Allison maybe jump in if you, so one issue is this idea of where do we draw the line in terms of when we’re measuring competency? Are we measuring at the end of 10th grade? Do we eventually wanna measure at the end of 11th or 11th or 12th? So that’s one question. Um, the other question is, what is a passing grade? So right now, correct me if I, a passing grade is like a 1.0,

1:18:19 1.1 0.0 would be a passing grade. So there’s another question is at some point, do we want to talk about that being possibly a higher level to Determine? That’s why I was saying can we have a couple versions of this? Like one for this weird year and another? Yeah. Because that’s one of, I mean, I don’t, well, Or we, we need to decide for this year and then maybe we can work towards into the spring so it’s clear for the Fall. Right? And that’s, that was kind of the thought process. I probably should said at the very beginning, it’s like we need to, we need to figure out this year now, and then we can talk in the spring for the following year. So if we were though AMP possibly raise the, i the definition of the passing grade, you may wanna stop it a 10th grade. So again, if they need to, and I don’t know how that would work, right? ‘cause you’d have to either retake the court or you’d have to somehow display your competency mm-hmm.

1:19:07 If you’re unable to initially get a passing grade. But That’s what a portfolio may come into. Okay. Um, the other question I had is the m what was known as MCAS alt, which is now called our alternative option, did that results in a, in a diploma or not a diploma? That’s what I was, Well, it’ll still be the mca. All That won’t change Internally reviewing that. Okay. What’s already in place with the MCA all? So that’s, that’s kind of the one that’s not changing that much. Okay. Um, and then I think it depends on the student and what they’re going for. If they’re going for, um, certificate Or, uh, for post, for post grad, post certificate complete high school Yeah. Generally equals to certificate generally completion versus, uh, It’s a Certificate. Yeah. Well, previously it could change now

1:19:53 because we don’t have the mc a and previously you would take the Mc a all, but it wouldn’t equate to like a two 40 score that you need to pass. Right. So they would get a certificate of completion. Right. Or, You know, and move on out of the school district into whatever the next, the Next step was. Correct. But without the MCAS and those scores, the ALT assessment could look different and align with, you know, our own competency determination. That’s also something we need to talk about. So, Okay. And in my estimation, we should really kind of look at how do we, how do we create a situation where students can be successful and meet the competency and still have special ed education and instead of just automatically saying they’re gonna get a certificate of completion. Mm-hmm. But that’s, that’s on all the conversation. Can, Can you put this, um, can you have Lisa add this

1:20:40 to the Dropbox for today’s meeting? Yeah. Um, and just can you make sure that it goes up online too for as, as the packet of materials? Um, it doesn’t sound like you’re asking for any action tonight. No. It, it wasn’t intended to be. And I, and I, again, I apologize. Not getting in the Dropbox in time. By the time I got back to it, it was least was kind of, um, on, in her afternoon mode. Um, so I think we just at least have A preliminary conversation. We probably do need to decide this. Yeah, I think, I think we, I think meeting next, next meeting we will definitely vote. I have more questions on this, which I think we all know. I always do. Um, would it be you or Julia or least Marie or a combination? Who should I go to? Um, you can start with me and then we’ll, we’ll figure out what depends on the con, depends on the questions Tomorrow. The other thing I just wanted to mention, everyone you saw the personal financial literacy, um,

1:21:27 I actually had a conversation with John about that, which I was gonna bring up. So he, he added in. ‘cause I, it was something, um, I wanted to, um, to consider for the committee, committee to consider, um, for this going forward. You mentioned that we have some existing courses. I would like to understand what those are because I think mm-hmm. What I, what I would be, and I’m only one member, um, would be looking for is a pretty robust, rigorous program. And I, and I have absolutely no idea what, so that’s just, I think No, I think that’s fine. Or, or options. I guess if you were saying maybe they have multiple options. So we, our initial conversation, there were at least two courses that we felt would, would give the students the skill sets I think that we were looking for from when they graduate to say, how do you, how do you manage your finances? How do you, how do you figure out how to, you know, pay rent and do rent and checkbook and all those basic stuff. They don’t use

1:22:13 Checkbooks anymore. I can tell you I think 20 something, couple of 20 somethings never had checks. You know what I mean? No, I do too. So when we had the initial conversation, they and I, that was the first question. I said, do we already have courses or not? Do we have the development? And that really drives the conversation. So the courses we have, if they don’t necessarily meet the muster that we’re looking for, then we would have to develop and increase and make the more robust, which kind of would push the timeline out. But that’s fine. What I can tell you is that folks here were very excited about that they, okay. There was, there was zero pushback. And like, that’s a great idea. We should Do. And we need educators obviously that, you know, can do it and would need PD to go with It and everything. I think it’s, I think it’s a thing that’s needed. I think it Would really serve an entire generation. Yeah. I I, I appreciate you bringing that Forward. Us Maybe your son can come back. They’ve already graduated and he Yeah,

1:23:00 My son still lives. I have a couple too. But anyway. Um, great. So we, to be continued, we’ll we will revamp this. We can have a conversation, Sarah and um, and anyone else who wants to have a further conversation. Thanks. Alright. We’ll look for that for the next one. Okay. Uh, moving on. We have the preliminary 25 26 school calendar. It’s that time of year again. I think that did make it to the Dropbox. It did, but I do have hard copies if you’re, if you wanna look at it differently. You good? Alright. Um, so This is again, preliminary because we wanna make sure you get the input from the principals and the staff and the, um, and the school committee. Um, ‘cause it’s not just, you know, Julia and I sitting behind the coach or saying, oh, I think this should be the calendar. But, so this was the first swing at it, um, um, indicating

1:23:45 where, where the vacation periods would land, where the, um, professional development, um, and early releases, et cetera, et cetera, would land. Um, but I’m sure that there’s, there’s some questions or some thoughts and that’s fine. Um, we will entertain any of those. Uh, we shared it with the principals. They, they had some thoughts as well. Um, so definitely again, it’ll bring this back to the next school c meeting. I think we have to vote it by the end of January. But we’ll, um, you know, I, I always think this is a good, you know, one or two meeting and two meetings, not more, um, discussion just to make sure we get it right. Um, but this is reflective, um, of the having the PD days at the beginning, like we talked about during bargaining. Um, and then the other two PD days, one landed on November 4th. And I know there’s also already some questions about that.

1:24:30 Um, we’re just trying to be preemptive in the, in the off chance that we do utilize, um, we have to have this bigger discussion, but there was some preliminary discussion about possibly using one of the schools for some voting in town, and we wanted to make sure that if that goes to fruition, we, we already have something outlined for there. But that’s a bigger discussion that we haven’t had that. So I, we put it on there, we can move it, we can change it. It doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a, it’s a kind of an odd place. I’ve always disliked putting our PDs around, um, voting. I’ve had to do that in my last district and it’s, it generally doesn’t land where you want the PDs to land, but I, you know, I also wanna be collaborative so that part of the discussion will be a little bit broader and more in depth. And obviously the school can be asked to vote on that part anyway. Um, but other than that, I mean, not open

1:25:16 for questions, open for thoughts. Um, I’m aware of things land, Allison, so I have a couple questions. Yep. Um, I, I think the biggest one is coming back on Friday, January 2nd. I don’t know that that will provide for a fruitful, I had that one start. I knew that was gonna Be the ality issue. Educational day. Yeah. Day. Then again, I really pushed hard last year to not have to come February, December 23rd and mm-hmm. That backfired. Mm-hmm. But I think if we can not, I think we should not have that. I mean there just, there won’t, there won’t be a lot of students. Yeah. I don’t Disagree with you here. Even if there would, and I’m saying this understandably, there’s no finger pointing. I think, I think honestly that the way it reason it felt

1:26:02 that way is, is ‘cause generally speaking, we come back the day after New Year’s day. Sure. Understood. So, I mean, where, when it falls this weird, it’s, it’s a weird year. So I would agree with that. We just have to make up the, we’d have to slide the day somewhere. Yeah, of course. Um, and then also on November 3rd and fourth, you have Monday as a half day and then Tuesday off. And I fear that that half day again, understandably would maybe not be well attended. Because some people may take, I understand it’s parent conferences, but some people may still take additional time. I didn’t know if it could be pushed to later on in the week. Yeah. Instead like a Thursday Friday. And again, I think, I think it was just, we’re just trying to couple it with the, uh, the potential, uh, voting.

1:26:48 But, um, we can certainly revisit that. I think that was some feedback we got from the principals already too. So we can definitely revisit that. Again, this is preliminary. I just No, I know. I a hundred percent I don’t take any, um, I’m not meaning it that way. No, No. And I’m not taking it. I just wanna make sure, you know, I’m about to get it that way.

1:27:08 I think those are my Okay. Two big kind of glaring mm-hmm. Thing. Sure. Okay. Did you have any Um, I had those originally starred as my question points too. Um, and then what I came back with what, when I looked at the end of the calendar, it looks like if we don’t come back on the Friday, the, the second we wind up having that weird thing again where we have a three, the last week of school, we have a three day weekend and come back just on a Monday. Mm-hmm. And I think that, well, we could have Friday, there’s The Friday, it’s the Juneteenth, it’s Juneteenth. So yeah. It’s not like holiday when I kind of factored in that we would have a three day weekend and come back for one more day. That, that I feel like became more awkward than returning

1:27:56 to school on January 2nd. I don’t think there’s a win situation there either way, but I think it’s less awkward. Um, when I think about, you know, our working families and, and younger kids and things like that, it’s much easier to find, um, a full week of childcare via a camp then segmented. Segmented in, in June. So, um, you know, that was my thought on the January 2nd, which I, I can tell you I felt the same way. Coming back for one day felt weird, but, you know, that’s where I landed on that. And then exact same thing when I looked at November. It looks like that is to accommodate election day potentially. Um, I had gotten outreach from the town to, um,

1:28:42 the potential for using one of our buildings as a polling place. And what had kind of been it’s The request was to use our building for the entire polling Yes. For the entire, for entire single polling place for the entire town, entire. Um, and what was presented to me is the way the location they were looking for was able to be kind of separated from the rest of the building and Correct. And things like that. Which those are much bigger discussions that need to be had further on. Mm-hmm. For this purpose, I, I hate fitting in a PD day on that day just to make it work. Because then exactly what Allison said, we have a half a day and a Monday and it just feels very choppy at the beginning of the year when we already have quite a few three day weekends. Um, one question I had for that p for either that PD day

1:29:30 or the one in March, would it, I don’t wanna move it if it’s not as meaningful, but would it be as meaningful to make it on that October 3rd so that we’re giving, um, families a four day weekend rather than three days in school, one day off and one day back and extending that to a four day weekend? That was one thought. If we, if we move one of those PD days, um, that it could be a little bit more fluid and Yeah. I mean I’m, you can, or the following Monday so that Veterans Day, it’s a four day weekend for families as well. Or if you have, I mean if you guys have talked about how to, if we suggest the changes and you guys can operationally modify it At all. Yeah. And I think, and

1:30:15 I think so it’s always tricky business, right? So, you know, I hear exactly what you’re saying Sarah, but I also hear like, oh great, we’re gonna have, um, you know, the second and then PD on the third and then, you know, that that allows families to have a long weekend. That also allows for staff to say, oh, maybe I’m not gonna come in for PD and no offense to anybody, but like, you know, that happens, right? So, which is less of an issue. But I think, I think we just make the expectation, but I just, it is a consideration. So I just, I, I always try to think about that too. But again, open to open to conversations A little extra. Well I think that’s a management piece. You kind of need to Yeah, for sure. I’m saying, I also think also we wanna be able to work with the townside and help out as needed, but we also, we not wire it needs, it needs to work for us. And again, we, you know, we have, we do have this unique

1:31:04 situation where we, you know, in this coming year we have three days off in the fall for the religious holidays. Um, you know, we’re committed to it, there’s no question, but it does put, you know, pressure on the, um, on the calendar and also, um, still in the contract. We don’t work the Friday before Labor Day. Like we have these things that are pressuring our calendar and uh, and we just, you know, I know how everyone feels about, you know, when you start getting into that fourth week of June, it’s, it’s tough. Yeah. I don’t wanna push it any further. It’s tough. I’m relocating heating. It’s, it’s, you know, the kids are The PD days that are here in the dark. Mine’s in black and white, so I can’t tell what color it would be in the color version like green. But, um, that, that November 4th PD day or that March 13th, if we can place them

1:31:50 either on November 10th and or October 3rd. So it’s not start, stop, start stop. ‘cause I do feel like for kids when they have just one day freestanding, like there’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they’re in Thursday, they’re not Friday they’re in. That doesn’t feel like a, it becomes as meaningful of a day. Kids are kind of already out of it, I feel like. So if we could chunk it out so it’s more fluid instead of just having one-offs here and there, well if you’re not gonna do the fourth, then you can put it anywhere. Right. That’s what where it really makes sense. That’s we’re we make it either the 10th or the third. I don’t agree with it being the fourth. I think it, it doesn’t feel, but to John’s appropriate there. It’s also, I think the other thing too is like that November 4th, like you said, we, we are, we are just trying

1:32:37 to be pre preemptive if, if we do go that way with the town. But realistically, like when you look at the other months where you have, October’s got 21 days, may has 20 days, January has 20 days, the other ones are already a little bit shorter because of the way things fall. You know, we also try to look at those longer months march, but the put the PD days in, right. And sometimes it’s nice to have a couple at the beginning and then strategically in the middle and then towards the end. Um, a lot of the times, the last one during the year is to look at MCAS data, which we don’t have MCAS data anymore, but, you know, those are opportunities for us to look at how we can operationalize supports for students in the following year on that later in the, in the year. But yeah, I, I agree with everything that everybody’s saying. So we’ll definitely bring it back to the, the rest of the team and just kind of go through, um, ‘cause some of these, some of what you brought up have already been brought up to us

1:33:24 and we’ve shared it out with, um, you know, Now this looks like more half days this year then in, in the last few years. I’m assuming that came out because of some PD things. Um, which is, is absolutely important. I know when we moved away from those half days, we were, we had had, I think it was 2015 and may have changed because we were at a model where it was almost like once a month. We were having a a a day every Wednesday in December. And there was a calendar group, a calendar working group that got together with our then superintendent to do away with that model because there was a lot of pushback in the community.

1:34:10 So I just want to at least be cognizant of that and go back and kind of look at some of the feedback and data that came out of why we took that away. Um, and then also a question I have is if we can have this many half days, what does that do to our time on learning? And we’re telling people that we can’t operationalize, uh, a second recess right now because of time on learning yet we’re taking a significant amount of half days. So yeah, that’s what I just was asking. I’m not concerned about, everybody knows my take on the second recess. I’m not concerned about time on learning. I wasn’t concerned about it before the extra five minutes. It’s an administrative decision that’s confirmed from MASC and desi.

1:34:55 But uh, with that extra five minutes it feels like we should be able to maybe garner some of this back. I just, I feel really strongly about some of those days we shouldn’t just be having a time on learning day to have a time on learning day if it’s not gonna be fruitful. And again, this is no indication of blame on anyone, but just to have a day there if we’re gonna have, you know, 25%, um, of students show up. And then also if we keep the second, just like I said about the 23rd last year, it’s really not fair to our educators and staff to have to be there for a very, very, what I’m confident will be a very,

1:35:40 very small percentage of students. I mean we have a huge skiing population here. That alone, nevermind people that go to, you know, warm places. Um, I just, Yeah. So if I’m not mistaken, when I look at the, the half day before the, the winter break and half day before, um, November break, those are early release not PD days. So it’s, it’s it’s early release, but it’s not and and pd. So that’s just to kind of start the holiday a little bit. Um, and I think when Julia and I spoke, um, she, she checked the numbers on the time on learning to be able to make sure that those days would, would meet the requirements. And as far as I understand, they do. Um, so We, we have stricter requirements obviously at the high school time on learning. So we only have three half days for PD with the high school on this calendar. The other half days are connected to holidays, which have kind of always existed in the calendar.

1:36:26 Yeah. Um, I think one of my big questions is if we are not going with the fourth as a PD day, I would like to talk with, um, our team and the school committee about maybe thinking about us utilizing that PD d PD day as really a teacher PD day and revamping perhaps our, our conference model so that we can really leverage that PD day for a full day with our, I’d be very interested in hearing how You can do that. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what you just said. I’m sorry. So, so right now how we use one of our four PD days mm-hmm. With the staff is that we take for, uh, pre-K to eight, uh, we use that as a teacher conference day. So we don’t get to do professional development with 12 Minutes long. Yep. So if we were to think about, but that would likely, if we were to think about taking that

1:37:11 and protecting it as a PD day, that would likely result in a few more half days for our pd For conferences. For, yeah. Conferences. But we do have more flexibility with time on learning, um, than the high school. So we have to, we’d have to go back and check the numbers. I haven’t done that yet because I was sticking with kind of the old, So why don’t you come back with that. Yeah, I’d Love to. And Then the high school doesn’t do conferences right? Right. They, so It’s just get the full PD day. We also are entering, I wanna just mention if I can, John, that we’re entering into the NEASC review and it’s really important time and we need a lot of time with our staff to make sure we have at The high school ready For the accreditation. Um, so that was part of this planning process with the half days as well. Um, to ensure that we are fully ready for our visit. Um, I think you should. Yeah, I Think you should. I mean, I would, yeah, I would love to hear about any revamping for parent teacher

1:37:58 Conferences. I, I can tell you that change that took place back in whatever it was, 2015 we used to do, correct me if I’m wrong, uh, Sally might remember, and Jonathan, we used to do like the four, there were four half days on Wednesdays in December after Thanksgiving. One a week till till Christmas or till winter break. Um, until, um, and they, those were conferences and I think, I think the staff was okay with it. I don’t know what I think it was, was Not staff was fine, it was parents, it was a parent thing, but it, you know, It’s been 10 years. Maybe it’s something to be looking at. One One By the way. I don’t mean to get, they were true conferences like you got, But yeah, if you got more than 12 minutes, you could have much more. They’re not, they’re not. And this is not a dig on the staff whatsoever. Very clear. No, it’s not that they’re not mean,

1:38:44 it’s not a meaningful time period. Like what can you get done? And one year it was seven minutes. I’ll never forget it was like speed. It’s Like 15 Minutes. I don’t think it was. No, I hit a seven minute, were Seven minutes. I ming back when we used to do it for in a row, I think it was like 15. Oh, still they were still only 15. I Don’t think we got 30 minutes. Like I No, no, you probably got 15 or something like that. Yeah. But I went through it and I felt for my students it was plenty of time. And I had a student on an ip. So, So one thing that was really good that came outta Covid, you don’t hear that phrase very often, was when we did conferences via Zoom or o offered a zoom option. Mm-hmm. Because you know, it allowed, especially like a working parent in Boston not to take a full day or a half day.

1:39:29 What I’m wondering is Could we, could we have the best, is there a model where you can have the best of both worlds where you can use that day as a true PD day and you make up some of those conferences, you know, they’re not all in the same day, but you for two weeks straight, you have one a day at the end of your day. Because we do have a half an hour at the end of the day, if you hit 15 minutes for a Zoom conference or we use a we two Wednesdays where you have an hour, what is an hour and a half extra at the end of the day or an hour on Wednesdays to Four. Yeah. So it’s an hour and a half. An hour and a half might Be contact issue there. I don’t know. But we’d have to say, We can check. But like if they took a couple Wednesdays where they were doing, they had like,

1:40:15 ‘cause some people want an in person you, you know, so that one evening or whatever allows for that or that one half day. But there might be an a, god, I hate using this word, but a hybrid model where parents who wanna sign up for take a a zoom slot, we can fit some of the, some of those in and that, you know, two half hour and a half blocks because really on a half day it really is only what, three hours that we have. We do it on a Wednesday, right. They get an hour lunch. We can, we take an hour usually for from another Wednesday afternoon And yeah. But like, you know what I mean, you could do it if we utilized that versus you might be able to have the best of all worlds here. I think it’s a conversation worth having with your PD team that, that that subcommittee seems to be not subcommittee, whatever you’re calling it,

1:41:02 Advisory committee seems To be working really well. Can you, the timing of when you meet, can you meet with them again before our next meeting and come back with something? Yeah, and I feel like the, I’m really excited about this conversation because to think about what we could do differently and how we can also involve students in conferences, maybe student led conferences, voice, I Mean that was something that middle school was working. Really think about some other options here And I’m gonna leave it at this ‘cause we need to move on. But if possible, let’s say we can do this and we figure out some alternate options for conferences, then we could take November 4th as a full PD day. I know that they’re whatever. And then, so there’s no students in the building. There’s teachers in the building and then they can vote on the voting day.

1:41:47 So that’s just something to, that could be an option about, alright, Appreciate. So they’ll come back. Appreciate the con the conversation’s rich and robust. I think it’s, it’s good to have this and then we, we’ll revamp it again, we’ll meet with, uh, admins and stuff and um, get some input from educators and then we’ll bring it back to the next meeting. Great. Thank you. Um, okay, so moving on. Um, we have Three, Um, items to be voting for, uh, voting on tonight. Um, I had requested wording from the, um, through Mike and the town site. It didn’t get that. So just so you know. Um, so what I did is I went in and did some research and I pulled motions from earlier votes that were similar to what we’re voting. So I believe this, the,

1:42:32 the verbiage here is fairly accurate. It is if for some reason the attorneys come back on the town side and we need to change it, that’s fine. Um, so the, I have three motions for the, uh, three votes for the committee to consider. The first is, um, for the coffin school, uh, surplus is to have coffin coffin school named surplus property. Um, the motion for consideration is as follows, to transfer the care, custody management and control of the coffin school building and grounds to the board of, to the select board being, it is no longer needed for school purposes. So this would be a vote, a motion that we would take tonight. We would communicate that to the select board and then they would be responsible for what, um, would transpire at town meeting.

1:43:18 So maybe I can ask for the motion a second and then we can discuss it. So do I have, sorry. Do We need to take a vote to deem it no longer needed for school purposes before we do this? This is what It’s one motion. One motion. Yep. That’s how it was for Gary. So moved. Okay, second. Second. So first by al, second by Allison and discussion. So I, I understand where we are with Cloughton and why we’re taking this vote and I will vote accordingly. I do wanna just make sure everyone is aware. When we had postponed this a year last year, we wanted to see the outcome of the three a vote because there was a concern

1:44:04 that if you’re bringing 900 units on the potential for 900 units, I don’t want anybody to think it’s that it’s automatic they go up or that I’m saying that you’re bringing the potential for 900 units on online. It is very reasonable to think those 900 units will have children at them. And then where do we educate them so that it was voted down, it just came back yet yesterday. Was it that from the state, um, that the state can sue Milton? That was kind of a case law. Yeah. Case law was established through that case they can sue to force that passing. So now that that case law has been established,

1:44:49 three A is back in play for every municipality across the state. So I just, they have to modify some things before they can do that. Yes, but which, but what the court said is the state can sue a town. You don’t have free will over certain things. Um, I’m not debating three a I am not in, in any way, shape or form. I just wanna be cognizant that what the state said is it’s back in play. And what we’re doing is giving up the only piece of plant of land we have on the north side of town. I I think we’re gonna catch 22. I think we have to do it. I’m not saying I’m not going to, but I think it would be irresponsible for us not to somehow acknowledge and know that I agree fully with that. Uh, maybe not totally on the three a part, but I, I agree on giving up the only piece of land, the only

1:45:38 possible piece of land anywhere on the north side of town. That’s something we discussed in facilities meetings for the last few years. Um, and I also wanna make sure that, that it is clear that once we do this and if the select board opts to sell the property, the land I should say, um, that is not going to save any financial problems or deficits from here on out that we have. It isn’t going to, we all know what happened with Gary. It’s going to be the same thing. Um, and I just wanna make sure that’s clear. ‘cause I think there’s some kind of confusion or that money doesn’t come to the school. So I think is what you’re saying, people seem to think it’s close to us. It absolutely does not.

1:46:24 There is no legal mechanism to sell the property and to get the money ourselves. And it’s, it’s also not gonna be as much as, as people I think are probably expecting Gary sold for 880,000 just like Gary. I mean you can, you buy one unit at Gary for twice what the whole piece of land sold for. So, um, and, and I just wanna make sure that that is, that, that the public is aware of that piece of it because I, you know, there’s been a lot on whether it’s public Facebook pages in the newspapers or what have you, just in the community where people seem to think so, you know, even at the dog park, well if you just sold coffin, that would solve all the problems. Um, and it, it wouldn’t, I’m not suggesting that coffin is a building that can be used. Um, but I, I think that the land is valuable.

1:47:11 We had asked at one point to get a price on demolishing the building and retaining the land and you know, that just did. Here we are. But, um, we get it. I just wanna make one point of clarification. It is not up to the select board to determine the final outcome of the land. It’s up to town meeting. Yes. So town meeting will decide what will happen to that property. Right. So we will have the motion and that will be up there. Yeah. Um, likely What will happen is, what has happened in the past is the select board has made a recommendation at town meeting for what should happen to that property. And that will be their determination. Certainly not ours. Right. And I think some of them have already voiced their thoughts on it, but I, you know, you have to go by

1:47:58 what has happened in the past, um, with other properties to kind of understand where it’ll go, who it will end up with.

1:48:09 Can I just make just one? Sure. Um, outsider looking in kind of thing. Um, you know, obviously the historical stuff everyone just talked about, but I think the reality is, and we’ve already kind of decided this is why we’re return it back to the town, but like for the school to maintain that property doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. This charge. Um, I think That’s why we got or maintain the building. The building. The building. I think it’s important to separate, that’s a distinction, right? To maintain the building. Building. So maintain the building. Um, and I think or Do or raise the building. Correct. It’s not, it’s not cost effective to do either. And I just wanna make sure that we’re having that full fledged conversation. ‘cause I think you made the good point that we’re not getting the money. We can’t get the money from the sale or Bill or anything, and to try to manage the building and everything else also doesn’t make sense, fiscal sense or anything, so,

1:48:55 Okay. No, but I, you know, I think her point when saying that was that we, if three A does open back up again and if it does pass or if it’s forced to pass, um, we don’t have land on the north side of town. And when you look at where all of our schools are, that is a giant hole. Yeah. And I mean, similarly, some can buy the property and put, you know, other kind of housing and then it can result in kids there too. I mean, maybe not as many, but like, you know, it’s, it’s A hundred. We’re not gonna know that until we know that. So, yeah. Well, again, you would look at historically, yeah. Who has bought the big properties mm-hmm. In town. And what can I ask? What happens? Can ask a question? I, well, no, I can’t. Yes, you can.

1:49:36 You can ask whatever. I mean, in the ideal world, I’m gonna get slaughtered for this. I’m sure I’d like to see that building raised in that to become an outdoor classroom or green space or community space of some kind. But I don’t know. That’s not under our purview. No. An education space maybe, but I don’t think that’s An outdoor learning space, an educ space, a garden space, a outdoor better dog park, park

1:50:09 Position to do that. We’re not, it will be developed. Um, okay. Can I call for the vote? L Williams In favor? Iota in favor? Uh, Sarah Fox. In favor? Allison Taylor. It makes me really ha sad to say this. Uh, but in favor, like Jen Schaffner in favor. Five to zero. Okay. Um, the second, um, motion I’m looking for is, um, for lack of a better term, a placeholder, uh, for a proposition, a general proposition, two and a half override for the purposes of, um, uh, revenue to, to go to directly to the school budget. So I will read the motion and I will ask for someone to, um, to approve them.

1:50:55 Or first and second, the motion to see if the town will vote to raise and appropriate or transfer from available funds. A sum of money to supplement the school department’s operating budget beginning in fiscal year 2026, contingent upon the passage of a proposition two and a half so-called ballot question or take any action relative thereto. So moved. Um, hang on Sarah.

1:51:19 And second. Second. Did someone Second? Second. Al. Thank you. Anybody? Okay. Discussion. Um, I just wanna make sure everybody knows this is just a placeholder warrant. We are not, we have no decisions have been made on what is or is not needed from a budgetary, um, per perspective. Um, we just, these have to, these motions and warrants have to be in by a certain deadline. So this is just the motion to have a placeholder warrant. Um, in years past, we have kept that warrant and had, uh, an override request at town meeting. And other times we have not. So I just wanna make sure that distinction is Clear too. Yeah, thank you. I was remiss in not explaining that we have to have these, um, warrant articles into the select board by January, 2030 first.

1:52:06 Um, that’s when they close the, the warrant. So we have to have these articles in, if it is deemed, um, at the time of town meeting, it is the will of this committee to go forward with this motion with a specific funding amount. We would take that vote sometime prior to town meeting. Right. If the determination for some reason is made that we do not wanna go forward with this, then we would vote to, to, um, recommend indefinite postponement at town meeting. And that would, again, town meeting could decide what they want, what the, what it wants to do. But, so there, that gives us options. Um, but we need to have the place over hold it if we want to have the option. And the placeholder has to be in by a certain date. Correct. So, one step further on this, um, this is common misunderstanding.

1:52:53 People think that if you pass this, this is guaranteed money for the schools forevermore. The money is guaranteed. If this were to happen to the schools the first year moving forward, it is not guaranteed. It just goes back to the general fund and it goes to be dis dispersed by the will of town meeting moving forward. So, um, all right. Um, um, I’m gonna Just, can you, I I think we should, I feel like we should just walk through that a little bit more so people understand. So this, this passes, I’m just gonna use random numbers. We, the first year we get a million dollars extra, you know, we get the budget that that is set aside for us from the town. And then in addition to that, because of the vote, we get a million dollars the second year.

1:53:39 They don’t have to give us that money. The second, third forevermore, Well, day is town meeting. Yeah. Yeah. What it does is it raises the tax levy beyond 2.5%. And then that allocation comes to us the first year moving forward. The la levy just marches on at the consistent rate after that. And you have your levy of money that will then be dispersed as town meetings seem sees appropriate. But just logistically, so folks understand what, what that would necessitate would be. So say it was raised in FY 26 and it would successfully pass us override that money is allocated to the school district in FY 27. It would necessitate a reduction in our budget from town

1:54:25 meeting to not have that money come to us. Right. In my my experience, I’ve never seen a reduction in No, no, not a reduction. It just might not no. Grow Same rate. No. In other words, you’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna get that million dollars and if you, to your point, you’re not gonna get it the next year. It means they would reduce our budget by a million dollars. Right? Not necessarily. ‘cause it grow at the rate of two and a half percent, it grows at more than a million per year. They might not give you an additional million over your two and a half. Correct. Which would be a lower amount than the previous year. That mathematically. Yeah. Okay. Um, Okay. Can I call for the vote? Any other discussion? Al In favor? Can I ask one more question? Sure. This is, this is, is this the request with the town? Are we doing it with the

1:55:10 select board or are we doing it separate? So the determinate, if there are any other article, any other, um, articles on the warrant for similar to this, for a general proposition to an f override, um, from other departments besides the school? ‘cause this one’s specifically the school department. If there are other ones, um, and those past town meeting, it is the purview of the select board to determine how that vote would look like on the ballot. So the, the select board determines whether it’s separate questions or a combined question. It’s their, it’s their purview. So we wouldn’t know that until, and they usually take that vote. I think, uh, within a day, a couple of days of to end town meeting. Two years ago when we went at it together, Allison, the town and the schools, the schools had a placeholder.

1:55:57 Right? I remember we definitely postponed on the floor of town meeting. It was planned ahead that that would happen. Right? Because we only used the placeholder article the town used. We don’t know if we’re using one their placeholder that’s jointly until well after the state of the town. Right. Or ours. We all have placeholders that I wanted to make sure that that option was still there, because Yeah. Everybody will have placeholders. I think that that is the, an important distinction that will be needed. We don’t know that until really until the warrant hearing. Okay. Until when, which Warrant urgent hearing, which will be the first week of April, which is fine. Again, I just wanted to make sure that we still had that option with how this is worded. That’s all. Mm-hmm.

1:56:44 Okay. I wanna call L In favor. Brian Ota, Uh, in favor, Sarah Fox. In favor? Allison Taylor In favor, Jen Schaffner in favor. That is 5 2 0. This next one’s a placeholder we’ve used every year since 19 as well. So the next motion, um, is, um, in regards to a dev exclusion override, if money is needed for, um, any capital, um, expenses for the school department. So this motion I am asking for is to see if the town will vote to raise an appropriate a sum of money for remodeling and reconstructing and making extraordinary repairs to existing school buildings, infrastructure, and the purchase of necessary equipment, including computer, hardware and software to determine whether this appropriation shall be raised by borrowing or otherwise, or to take any other action relative there too.

1:57:31 So moved. Second. Uh, hang on one second. First was Sarah. Second L seconded. No. L Okay. Discussion. So this particular motion is not for the high school work that we’re currently looking at now, right? This is like, it could be something new. No, it Could be, it Could include that could be, it could include that this is, they use that, the, the, um, we’ve used it for things like that in the past. It’s a placeholder we put on until we have the steps will be next. Um, the town in our finance department, we’ll talk about what they have as an outlay projected for capital repairs. Okay. They’ll compare that to what we are looking at. And if they’re different, then there will be a discussion of whether we use this or not.

1:58:17 But this is a placeholder in, in years past. We’ve used it for that. We’ve used it for smart boards. We’ve used it for, um, security cam, like we’ve used it for different things. Okay. And there’s years we’ve not used it at all.

1:58:31 Any other questions? Okay. I’m gonna call for a vote. Um, Al Williams In favor by An OTA in Favor, Sarah Fox. In Favor? Allison Taylor In favor, Jen Schaffer in favor. 5 2 0. Thank you everyone. Um, okay, moving on. We are talking about the superintendent status, preliminary discussion. No, we’re not talking anything else about the roof except for that, right? Um, well we may have an update in the subcommittee. Okay. I don’t know. The facility subcommittee may have an update, but yeah, that was, that was just the purpose of the place over. Okay. So I put this on, um, the agenda, again, just a preliminary discussion. Um, which we do need to do an open meeting, um, to talk about, um, superintendent ou. Um, currently everyone knows superintendent’s, interim superintendent with two year contract.

1:59:18 Um, so start to, wanted to have some discussion around what it may look like, if we want to both, both sides. Um, if we wanna move forward and look at this from, um, a permanent, a permanency standpoint to make, um, superintendent the permanent superintendent and what that contract would look like. So I put it on this agenda to just open it up to both John as well as the committee members, as to what, um, what we might look at from a, first of all, I think a timeline. And secondly, um, the steps that we might want to take to help make that determination, both from the committee standpoint, staff standpoint, and community standpoint. So, I dunno, John, I dunno if you wanna make a few comments Yeah, I can. Um, so I, I appreciate, um, putting on the agenda.

2:00:05 I said agenda and I have had several conversations, um, just kind of about this and I’m glad we’re kind of having it in open discussion. Uh, I’ve been here for six months, um, have a phenomenal team I’m working with. Um, and, you know, I came on board with the interim tag two year interim tag. And realistically, in terms of my, my career and my trajectory for my career, I think, um, you know, having a more permanent permanency is, is, is, um, helpful for me. But I think it’s actually more helpful for the community, the educational community, this, the, um, committee to have some stability. Clearly, I think I’m the fifth superintendent last four years. That’s not helpful to any district. Um, I appreciate the time, um, that

2:00:51 you guys have given me to kind of have some discussions. I was very clear up front that I wanted to make sure that I was a good fit for you and you felt I was a good fit or, you know, me good fit for each other. Um, so I, you know, after being here for six months, even though there’s a lot of stuff going on, and I think, you know, uh, we’ve talked about a lot of it, I think we’re making some really good strides. I think there’s a lot of really positive things happening. Um, we’re post-strike, we’re moving forward. My mantra is always, where are we now and how are we moving forward? And I think we’re doing some really great things. You’ve heard from Lisa Marie, you’ve heard from Julia in the past. Um, there’s some really great stuff and, and I wanna be a part of that. And I think, um, kind of looking at a timeframe, you know, I, I would love to be able to say July one, you know, um, I think it makes sense to do a July one, um, switch my contract over from interim

2:01:38 to permanent and what does that look like? Um, find out from the committee what you would need from me to, to make those determinations. I know initially I did my goals October to October, which makes sense. Um, so maybe do, you know, midyear check in, you know, a kind of a formative assessment, whether that’s, you know, um, you know, kind of just, uh, a mid-year, how are you doing? Where are we, how are you doing with your goals? Um, are you’re on track? You’re not on track what feedback you guys have for me. So I could do some self-correction and things like that. I think that would make sense. Um, and then we’d all have kind of an idea of where things are moving forward. Um, very, I wanna be very clear and upfront. This is the time where superintendent jobs start opening up. And, you know, I think if, if there’s the support of the committee, which I think there is, um, you know,

2:02:25 I’d rather firm this up now and, and have the conversation so we can all kind of move forward. I’m working on a district improvement plan, which is, you know, a five year plan. And it’s hard to determine, well, it’s actually a three year plan. We have a five year plan here. That’s a whole other discussion. But, um, it’s, uh, it’s hard to develop a plan that I potentially not, may not be a part of implementing. So it’s, it’s kind of, if I’m permanent in a more permanent manner, I think the, the buy-in from the staff becomes a little bit elevated and say, okay, this guy’s sticking around for a little bit. I think, uh, parents would feel the same way. Um, I hope that the committee feels the same way. And, um, so I just kind of want to take those steps and start having the conversation. Great. Thank you. Um, so I dunno if the com, how do we wanna do this? Do committee members wanna make some comments?

2:03:11 Uh, I would definitely feel that, um, a formal evaluation process should be put in place as part of this discussion. The formative, as you stated, is probably coming up quick. So I think that that would be something we have to really take a hard look at. ‘cause then we’ll start looking at real measurables is how you’re doing rather than what we feel has happened over the last six months. Yeah. Um, for me, I think an important part of a full superintendent process is the community feedback, the staff feedback. And we’ve included students even in the past. Um, I would want to, to be able to include those pieces of feedback as well. Um, I think we can, there, there are ways,

2:03:57 there are tools available to us to still get that feedback and, and use that. Um, you know, just anecdotally, I, I have, we, I know I’ve received, and I believe we’ve all received a lot of positive feedback in the time that’s here. But I do think that we need to have that data point and, and the opportunity for the community. All aspects of the community, like I said, you know, staff and included to, to have that mechanism to give us that data. Um, and I agree, I would like to see, I I think it will be important through the process to have some type of formative evaluation. Um, so that, again, it’s a data point. It’s not just we feel that we can say, you know, this is what, this is the growth that has happened

2:04:43 for our district in the last however many months. This is how we’re in a better position than we were then these are the reasons why. And just really have those pieces. Um, I personally think the data’s gonna be there at the end of all this. I, I don’t have a concern with that, but I think it’s really important to go through that process and to be able to have the input and have the evaluatory process. Um, and I also, I also see what you’re saying. Um, we have a lot of good things happening in the district. We talked earlier about the movement that’s been happening in special education. Um, you know, over the last year we did hear a lot from our staff about how the transitions in in administration is been hard.

2:05:29 And I think the idea of cementing something would be helpful for everybody, but we still need to go through the, you know, some type of process.

2:05:40 Allison, do you have anything you would like to add? Yeah, no, I think, I mean, I love the idea of having informal conversations, but I think having some sort of formal, um, review would be great too, just for the public to hear as well. I think it’s important for them to hear as, as much as their feedback is important, it’s important for them to hear our, um, thoughts as well. And I look forward to doing that and I’m excited that you all be the one to say it. I’m excited that you’re, you’re interested if after your, um, trial by firing squad here, the last few months, you’ve gotten everything, um, thrown at you. And I do think that you have handled it with as much style and grace as possible. Uh, and I’m grateful for that. And I, I’m just excited

2:06:26 that you’re still interested in being here. I appreciate that. No, I think, um, you know, I, I just think it’s, it’s good to have the support of the committee, but I I do agree, you know, typically a formative eval for superintendent, the mid, mid cycles, you know, is a lot of that. Where are you with your goals? Are you, are you achieving them? Are you not? Where, how far are, are you, did you make your goals a little bit too lofty and address it? So happy to have that conversation. That’s important. Whether I’m interim going to superintendent, superintendent, staying superintendent, I think that’s important information. Um, so I look forward to that. I think, uh, I, I generally kind of do my updates to my goals as I go along anyway, so we don’t just have to have that one data point. Haven’t really been able to do that for a multitude of reasons. But, um, you know, I think, um, that’s how I generally operate. So I, I look forward to having those discussions

2:07:11 Timeline wise. Would April, so I, yeah, that’s what I was gonna talk about. So with April, Just before we get to that point, the how, um, I think we do this because of performance, right? Not because of timing or personal. I think we’ve all said that, right? So that’s why I think it’s important that we have an assessment, that we have data that supports that. And I, I think that’ll be the case, but I don’t wanna presuppose it either. But let’s assume that goes as, and you know, we have the right person for our students, for our staff, for, for all our reasons then yeah, I’d be supportive of this also. Yeah. Okay. Part of this discussion I think says we should create a subcommittee on the evaluation process for the superintendent so we can start putting together the framework for this evaluation. There’s many ways of doing it.

2:07:57 I’ve seen a lot of districts do it differently on how they evaluate superintendent, but I think it would be a good idea for us to create a format, bring it to the school committee for approval, and then use that as a tool that we evaluate superintendent, whether it’s John or someone else, it doesn’t matter before the process will be there that we’ve all agreed to. And I think that’s important because we wanna make sure that everybody feels satisfied that the evaluation will be accurate. Um, not slant in any way, but assure assessment of how superintendent is done. Okay. All said, I thought we had talked about this already at one of our workshops. Yeah. Right. And I thought we had already agreed to what that process would be. Or are you talking about something

2:08:43 in addition to that, Brian? We don’t, I don’t actually have anything in writing. It says how we’re going evaluate a superintendent. I mean, there’s matrix, just the state has its own superintendent matrix that you use to evaluate. And how we ev how we incorporate that into an evaluation system is up to the school committee. We don’t have to follow all five of their guides, but go ahead. Okay. I, I thought at our workshop we agreed we we have to use that standard form. So what my, So hang on. So yes, so we did, which is usually for an annual evaluation, right? Which will be next October. So we’re talking about doing a mid cycle evaluation as a way right, to determine through this process, moving forward to a permanency. So that, I don’t think we did determine that

2:09:29 because we weren’t discussing that at the time. So that would be a question on how do we want it, because if we just back this up for a second, this is the way I look at it and I’m gonna ask the committee, you know, tell me your thoughts. If, if we just were deciding, I think we wanna move forward, this, John is suggesting that July 1st is a goal for us to have that completed. So con con, if, if we agree with that, July 1st would be, um, we would’ve negotiated a contract, a permanent contract that would be effective July 1st, 2025. Right now it is January 9th. So to get from here to there, we are talking about doing, among other things, an evaluation of the superintendent, which would need to be an open session. Uh, we have talked about getting input from the community, from the staff, from students, um,

2:10:16 in terms of input and feedback. So we, we need to talk about what that will look like, how we’re gonna do that. And then we have to have, um, a discussion in open session, um, to decide whether to go forward. And then my understanding is the actual negotiation of the contract would take place in executive session, right? Mm-hmm. And then we would vote the final contract an open session. I’m just throwing this out there maybe sometime prior, you know, it would be prior to July 1st to be effective July 1st. So how do we want that to go? And that’s my, that’s I think So can I just weigh in a little bit first? Um, so my, my, if you do October. October, right? That’s a year. If we’re waiting till April, that’s six Months. Six months. Yeah. So I, you know, it’s probably not bad. I, I mean, I would, I would love to do it a little bit earlier just so I, I know I have a,

2:11:03 I have a trajectory saying, yes, I’m gonna stay and have a contract, right? So I’m not waiting till June and finding out you guys changed your mind or whatever. And then I don’t have any opportunities available to me. So I just wanna be very clear and upfront. I want to stay in Marblehead, I want to be here, but I also make, have to make sure that I don’t get to a point where it’s so far down the line. I don’t have any other opportunities that are available to me. So I’m, I mean, well you Have another year in the contract, right? No, no, no. Yeah, I understand that. But I just, I, so I just wanna make sure that where, wherever that formative falls, if it’s equal, it’s fine. I just wanna make sure that, you know, we’re looking at that in totality.

2:11:37 So we have a, so this just throwing ideas out, can we have the same committee that came up with the objective, helped us with that, come up with what this Accelerated process should look like? I would’ve personally have no problem with that. Mm-hmm. And then we, I don’t think it’s fair maybe to have the same folks, but maybe another set of folks then talk about what is the process going forward, if that was to, to be, you know, we want to move ahead with permanency, right? ‘cause then, you know, Sarah brought up a good, we all brought up good points, right? We want, we want that process to be robust. We want community involved, we want students involved perhaps. So I don’t know if that also has to kind of be detailed and fleshed out. That actually could Also be subject of a workshop for all of us. Yeah.

2:12:23 I think it should be a workshop. Yeah. That’s okay. All Five of us Very strongly. I think that should, How do we feel about the subcommittee continuing with the evaluation or, I, I think it could all be a workshop. Oh, do it All. A workshop. Workshop. I think we, we have the subcommittee that created the goals. Goals that were already Right. You know, that we’ve already brought. So it’s clear what we are evaluating him, you know, the main things that we’re evaluating him on. Obviously there are a lot of additional data points, um, including community feedback, certainly and, and upward feedback. Um, I, I think I would, um, given the history, uh, and to your point of how many we have had, I think it would be really wonderful to do that, uh, in a workshop. Number one, it allows a little bit more transparency

2:13:09 with the community in what and how we’re going to do this and what’s, what’s important. And allows them the opportunity in a public comment format to provide us, um, some suggestions as they always do. And I think, um, it would be nice to hear all five people’s input on that process in general.

2:13:33 And also, if we were to do it in a workshop, what I am hearing, what we may see is we would do it in a workshop format. We would, it would be sort of one and done in terms of what the process is, right? Mm-hmm. Not the evaluation, the process. That’s right. One, you know, one two hour workshop, we determine how we’re gonna evaluate or do the assessment, what the timeline is, how we’re gonna get the feedback from the community and plan it and put it on a calendar. Um, so does that seem, does That, yes. Yeah. So timeline wise, I want to have that workshop in the next four weeks. Yeah. Yep. So that then we can implement in the next, you know, six week, probably six to max eight weeks period, getting back that community feedback and doing the evaluation

2:14:18 and then presenting that all Yeah. In a public. Yeah. Because all of that is public information. The public gets to see all of it. Yeah. So, um, then, then we need to have time to do that. And then that brings us right up to April. Yeah. We can have a survey to do that easily and As well. So what do we think about for a workshop? Um, can we Do scheduling offline? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, I just wanna get a general idea. Do we want to take a school committee meet the business meeting, or would we do it, Are we gonna do the work up just within ourselves or ask MASC to Come in? I was gonna suggest that I could put a call into Alicia and maybe she would help. She could help. I would perhaps Lead it. I’d like her to help us in workshop. Yeah. Yeah.

2:15:03 Yeah. So let’s find updates from her. And then do I think that doodle poll thing you did Okay. Worked Out well. Okay. Alright. That sounds like a plan. John. Does that sound sounds great. Thank you. Okay. Thank you everybody. I’m just concerned. Two hours. I, I, Well, whatever. I, we can schedule few. Yeah. But I just ask, let’s ask for a little bit more time. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, From Alicia you mean? Yeah. I mean, maybe we do it and plus maybe we do it in an afternoon or we do it Because we shorten it. That’s great. But I don’t run. We Need more time. I don’t wanna run outta time. Yeah, we need, Yeah, we didn’t get a lot done in that last One. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. Um, okay. Um, Subcommittee and liaison updates.

2:15:45 Um, we had a budget meeting this Tuesday. Tuesday, yep. Sounds good. This week feels like it was days and D’S and days ago. Um, and we roughed out our budget calendar. Um, again, these are our rough dates. Um, we know tracking back that FinCon is hoping for us, uh, their, their warrant hearing bill is April 7th. So the entire warrant needs to be tied up in about by April 7th. So we backtrack from there. Um, they’re hoping our hearing will be the pencil in for March 31st, which means we would need to have our budget hearing and our vote in advance to that. So we’re right now roughing our budget hearing

2:16:32 out for March 6th, um, which is a normal school committee night. And we, um, are looking at the possibility of February 3rd. Again, these are dates that are gonna be firmed up and then we’ll be released to you guys. But if people wanna put a placeholder right now for February 3rd in their calendars for the, uh, budget workshop, that’s the night when I’ll not be there. Just so you know, via Zoom maybe. Nope. Okay. Son’s wedding then That night. Yeah. Monday night. Yeah. All right. So we, um, but Honestly, you can, You can run the budget Work done can always get, but it’s, It’s, these are dates are loose. We will work, um, with everybody. ‘cause the goal would be to have everybody there.

2:17:18 Um, and then we talked about having a budget forum, which is different than a budget hearing. The budget hearing is they, people can really drill into the numbers, ask questions about, you know, it, it, it’s a hearing, so it’s no holds barr, but we’re thinking that there might be an opportunity, um, that second week in February for a budget forum. The forums were a goal that we had to give some more discussions, if you will, with the community. We did this last year, um, and in previous years, and we called it a conversation with the school committee. ‘cause it really is folks being able to speak back and forth with us on their thoughts on a particular item. So we are, we’re trying to figure out the logistical pieces

2:18:04 of having a budget forum. Um, then so that if we get a lot of feedback from folks in one item or another, we still have a few weeks to possibly, if we need to incorporate that in any final budget that would be presented at the budget forum or budget hearing budget hearings for school committees or for school districts are required by mass General law. Um, and there’s a lot of posting guidelines so many weeks in advance in the published newspaper. So, you know, we, we have to kind of look further out for that stuff. So, um, our, it’s also one of our goals, right? So that’s why. So budget forum, but forum’s different than the hearing. I wanna be really clear, the two different things. So The budget hearing, we still have to present the budget to the school committee first and then the budget hearing next. So there’s also that. Yeah. So the budget hearing, basically presenting it high level to the community

2:18:52 When that’s when they vote, when you guys vote on it. Um, we, we’ve done it always. We’ve, we’ve not always voted. Um, we try to give a few days, at least in between, but when we voted it, there has been a couple years where we did vote it at the hearing. Um, what we like to do for it to really feel like a, or to be a true hearing is to give the opportunity for us to give some thought to the feedback we heard at the hearing in case any, and if we need to make any changes, the major comes out. Um, but like I said, there, there have certainly been years for time crunches when we have voted after. So potential, I just, I’m just trying to wrap my head around. So the way it’s done here, so potentially do the budget hearing where we get input and everything else, and then anything that may needs to be changed where we can tweak, bring it back, and then we do the vote the school committee vote on the budget after the budget hearing. Yep. Yes. Okay. That’s all.

2:19:38 But before, correct. The finance committee Hearing the school committee Is 3 31. We have like two weeks Meeting in there somewhere, potentially. So that’s, Or it could be a regular school committee. Right, Right, right. Yeah. That’s something we pushed really, really hard for about three years ago. It used to be for as many years as I can remember, Marblehead, that FinCon voted our budget before we voted our budget and, um, pure budget. Yeah. Yep. That is why it was, we’ve changed it. Our relationship has been great with the town. Um, and this allows for several joint subcommittee meetings as well. So, um, awesome. That’s where we are right now. Thank You. Um, other subcommittees? Well, I want the CPAC meeting today. Oh, good. And Lisa Marie did an excellent job once again,

2:20:25 of telling us everything that she’s done to make things working smoothly. Yep. Good. And, uh, CPA was very pleased. I was very pleased. I was always amazed at how much, uh, work you’ve done since you’ve been on board. It’s just excellent. Very, very positive, uh, for you. Uh, as far as the subcommittee goes for communications, I did meet with the Marblehead tv, um, John and, um, Joan and discuss some ideas. They’re, they’re open to it, but they’re not quite sure if the topics would be big enough to warrant taking over a whole half hour slot on their show. So we have to have more discussions. One of them that they were interested in would be to do something with the budget. So I said, I’d get back to you, we’ll have to talk about it and get back to them. We can talk about school committee stuff all day long.

2:21:13 So there people wanna change a chance. It’s whether people wanna listen to it or we could cover a half hour without blinking eye. Um, thank you. Certainly the budget, I think would be a topic that yes, it definitely warrants community Members. They also like the idea of the primer. The primer mm-hmm. To be able to give some, I, and I did find the original copy of, um, Michelle’s. Yeah. I, I have the PowerPoint itself, so you can make edit to it Perfect. Apart. So, yes. Um, and then you and I had talked about the newsletter, so we’ll after, I think we’ll try to start to launch the newsletter in January, so Yes, that would be great. And the FAQs, we got those done too, I think. So we are chugging along. Yeah. Checking off the goals. Yes. Awesome. Um, policy subcommittees meeting next Tuesday.

2:22:00 I need to go home tonight and post that. So Yeah. Um, I will do that. And anything else? Can I just, it’s not a policy subcommittee, but, um, we did do the central meeting of the pcos it, um, day this week. I forgot what A central council. Central council. Yeah. So I just, I just wanted to share that we, we had that meeting and it was really productive. It was a lot of really great information that came out from all the Oh, good. Presidents and stuff. So yeah, just wanted to share that. Share. I was meant to put that in mind. Great. No problem. Thank you. Okay. Any other, can I just ask, do we, do we have an update on metco? We haven’t heard one in a while. I know you were traveling, but John or Julia? So I, I meet with, I meet with Kaia, the director every single week. Um, so she’s done some, um, she’s on, she continues to, you know, she continues to work in Conor, consult with me

2:22:47 and with the administrators, just, um, to make sure that the Boston Bay students are getting what they need in the schools and work with the administrators. Uh, she’s done, there’s a bunch of, there’s a lot of, um, opportunities that METCO has that are kind of in Boston and, and things like that. I can, I can create a list and bring them in. Okay. Um, she, I, there’s too many to even to even keep track of right now. Um, she had done, like the holiday skate party. There’s another one coming up for the younger kids, um, I think, I wanna say the 13th, but that might not be the right day. Um, so she did that. Um, she did that for the older kids and the younger kids. So there’s that, those kind of things. There’s um, some, there’s a meeting with the MECO directors and the superintendents, um, sponsor through DESI to talk about some, um, some of the opportunities that,

2:23:34 you know, they talk about some of the funding pieces that, um, are gonna look different. Unfortunately not trending in our, in our favor for Meco. Um, and then the other thing with Meco is, uh, occasionally I continue to talk about the enrollment. So we’re in enrollment period right now, so we’re working on the administrators to say like, you know, are there any grade levels that would be kind of off limits to, to um, open up to kids because they may be a little bit full. So we have a couple of grade levels that kind of burst in. Um, so we kind of try to manipul you manage that a little bit. Um, so those are all conversations we’re having. Uh, there’s a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff. So, I mean, I was traveling, but it’s also, it’s, it’s hard to do, you know, we meet every week, so I’ll invite you probably turn next one of the one after, so we can, you can kind of hear for yourself. Um, you know, some of the great things that are happening,

2:24:21 but there’s, there’s a lot of good stuff. Um, great. One thing I was interested in METCO is last year Jen and I had the opportunity to attend a METCO PCO meeting. Mm-hmm. And it was very, very informative. Yep. We got, I, I least, I, I don’t wanna speak for you, but there was a lot of really good information that came out of that. I think it seemed like the parents enjoyed getting to ask us questions as well. Um, if that’s something Keisha feels would be helpful, again, I would really enjoy getting to go to another one of those Meetings. Yeah, I did that. I mean, the, the other thing, initially when I first came on board, they talked about how, um, most, most meco districts hold at least one of their school committee meetings at metro headquarters during, throughout the year. And I know, you know, with all the stuff we have going on

2:25:08 this year may not be the best time for that. But Millie, who kind of operation evaporation Yeah. Um, is willing to come in and kind of give her perspective of stuff. Oh, that’s great. So that might be, might be worth doing in the springtime, just to kind of have her come in and, ‘cause she’ll have some good, she’s, you know, sure. You know, milli, but she’s kind of a spitfire. So she’s, you know, she’s high G all the time. She’s really good at like, kind of understanding the pulse of the different districts. ‘cause she, ‘cause she meets with the directors all the time and she really, uh, she had a lot of stuff going on with the state. So, um, it would be, I think it would be good to have her come in, just kind of do a state of the METCO kind of state. That’d be great. So I, I’ll look to do that if you’re amenable to that, probably in the spring. Okay. Any other news? Um, new business announcements or requests? Okay.

2:25:54 Um, I am going to adjourn. I don’t need a vote. Correct. I can just, I’m gonna adjourn us at eight 30. Thank you.