FY20 Enrollment (15 minutes)

Transcript (~18 min @ 2:17:45)

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▶ 2:17:43 Speaker 6: Mr. Annual Enrollment Report, again, we continue to grow. I think probably what is most important for this committee in face of the possible FRBC revisions and the new funding formulas that may be coming out. FRBC? Sorry, Foundation Budget Review Commission. We will be using 3750 as the chapter 70 number. That is probably the highest chapter 70 calculation number we have used in the past several years. And that is based on the fact that our foundation this year is 3757. As you know, ECC students are not counted in foundation unless they're receiving special ed services. and then they are prorated. To the conversation we were just having, I want to point out some interesting statistics. This year we have 16 Ks, but we have 14 grade 1s. Then we have 15 classes at 2, 3, and 4, and 13 classes at grade 5. You can see the trend, and you can see that there is some fluctuation in it. Our ELL population is up to 196. I always remind the committee my first year here it was 82. And that we really need to think about in the budget discussions how we expand ESL services to every building. Our minority population remains steady. We were 20% last year, we're 21% this year. Our special ed numbers are up. They are up as a reflection of a number of matters. First of all, if you have a growing population, you're going to have more students, and more students being referred. As the committee knows, we also have had a number of move-ins, and some of those move-ins have been quite costly, and that has impacted our special ed numbers. And to the earlier conversation under Steven and Margaret, We're having more students, especially at the secondary level, with mental health referrals. And that is increasing our SPED numbers. Free and reduced lunch, we're down to 643. I think it reflects the changing socioeconomics of the city. We're waiting on the disadvantaged student category, but Judy Chan, our data specialist, estimates it will be around 425. I'm not quite sure where we will land if the Foundation Budget Review Commission recommendations are passed. Whether we will be counting that population as free and reduced lunch or disadvantaged students. That remains to be seen. And just some other information there about school choice, international students, homeless students, and tuition waived in students. As the committee knows, more and more of our staff are asking to have their students go to school here in Melrose. That is a benefit in their contract, and we are up to 13 this year. The new contracts put in strengthened language around maximum class size. It is the recommendation under the contract to reduce class size to 25 or fewer. and at the secondary level to eliminate total student load to 125 when we go

▶ 2:21:33 Speaker 6: into the next piece of information regarding classes over 25 and under 15 you will see where we are having some struggles other than band wellness Orchestra those classes you expect to be big if you certainly don't have a lot of of students in band or orchestra you're not too effective but we are still having some classes high classes when you look at the middle school you're seeing classes in some literature classes the physics lab anything that says a in front next to it is an elective so your a classes are running high because kids are choosing those classes your core content classes are falling within the recommendation recommended numbers so your electives

▶ 2:22:30 Speaker 6: are running high at the middle school and then under you again on IQ m2 mine printed funny on IQ m2 this year I try putting in a recommendation that we we We do not run classes under 15, but we are required to schedule every student. Seven periods, seven day waterfall schedule, and sometimes that results in low class sizes. Dr. Best is aware of this, and it's something he's planning on trying to remedy next year. The high school, you have a lot of what looks like people one, two, or three. are services those are special ed services ESL services related services you see things like academic support reading lab peer mentoring those are services that are required either in students IEPs or because of where they are in terms of their EL placement other classes we continue to combine so for example 3d art 3 French 5h advanced is a combined class you see things like photography 2 is a combined class biotechnology is a combined class where possible we are trying to combine classes for efficiencies again this is a function of several things in the schedule first of all um we have electives that are every other day electives and we do that so that we can have a mirror but sometimes it always doesn't work out where kids have you know something a block monday wednesday friday and something a block tuesday thursday and whatever the next day is in the rotation the other thing that happens is we We still run a large amount of singletons at the high school. Certain advanced placement courses are singletons. Certain upper level language courses are singletons. So what happens is we have to place students in singletons first. When their schedule plays out, sometimes you end up with the remainder of their schedule being in low population classes. So, that's a function of the seven-day double waterfall schedule, which I don't want to explain to anybody, unless you are currently in high school, and if the girls were still here, they could explain it to all of you. The high school has a scheduling committee going this year, again, still trying to tackle this problem. How do we get better at scheduling, and how do we work our schedules so that we don't get into these situations? But as long as the Melrose High offers the array of courses it does, and as long as we support students taking those things that not only do they need, but those things they are interested in, you're going to have some classes over 25 and some classes under 15. Again, it's putting students first. And the last part of this presentation is the numbers, and Judy Chan, our data specialist, does this breakout and breaking it down into subcategories by building, by demographics, by first language, not English, limited English proficiency, low income, and special ed, so that you have a full detail of our population.

▶ 2:26:25 Speaker 6: Questions?

▶ 2:26:26 Speaker 7: Very well. Any questions?

▶ 2:26:32 Jennifer McAndrew: mcandrew please um thank you it's always very helpful and particularly helpful this week paired with the bb school presentation thank you um i wanted to ask a couple of questions about the the two documents related to sort of over enrollment and under enrollment um and i i i heard you about the a block classes um versus the core classes but i i would just say it's a little concerning or i'm interested in your thoughts on why there are so many core classes in six and seven that are over 25 and i'm you know there's multiple english sections there's the seven eight compacted math um and i'm i guess what i'm thinking about is not necessarily that having 26 versus 25 is some revolutionary hurdle but just that what does this portend for our teams going forward when though the current sixth grade is big the current fourth grade is really big and so i guess i'm just you know even with the a block classes being i mean that's still a full class i get isn't it elective um also my experience is that students are assigned that they don't pick anymore um so given that that's happening it's somewhat concerning to see them all a lot of them at 27 28. so i guess i'm just thinking about what that means for the future and if i could harken back to the previous conversation how that puts um a fine point on the fact that we will eventually need more space at that campus and that adding fifth grade to that campus is not an option given that exactly my view i'm expressing it i know you're expressing your

▶ 2:28:19 Speaker 6: of you and and again you know I emphasize to everybody whatever educational model we decide upon we make work for the benefit of kids so if the fifth grade were to come to the campus we would make it work but the space is the issue so I'm trying to pull back up the BB presentation and for some reason my thing doesn't work as well as I would like so when you look at the current

▶ 2:28:58 Speaker 6: enrollments you see where it's coming to and that and so it's begun to creep up so I think the sixth grade is our first bigger class I think our eighth grade is our last very small class and that is a problem we will be facing so part of the Another question that we have to explore with Dr. Best is if you had to add a team or if you had to go to a split team. And split teams are not ideal. We had a split team last year, but neither is it cost efficient to add a whole other team either. So right now we figure that our teams run around 100 and they're beginning to creep up to 105, 110. so that that is a coming problem thank you and just a quick question on the high school

▶ 2:29:53 Jennifer McAndrew: the smaller sections when courses are combined for example photography two and photography three or whatever the other option and or tell me is this correct is the other option that we don't offer

▶ 2:30:14 Speaker 7: them okay that's all thanks seeing no further discussion oh miss rosie thomas please i just

▶ 2:30:18 Speaker 5: want to thank thank you for all the enrollment data for the last five years I believe and it's really interesting to look at it closely it's you know it's I think it's very important that we keep in mind that we do have minorities in Melrose doesn't always look like it we're not always aware so much as we could be about that and that it's it's really interesting how much the Asian population has grown really that's really really bumped a lot in the last six years and then I think that we don't have socioeconomics here in terms of average income or anything but I think we're gonna see that go up and then we're gonna see our homeless numbers go up too so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and that happens everywhere across the united states of america including melrose and so we have to just start you know keeping that in mind in terms of equity and you know being being fair having a trying to level a playing ground for everybody but i think it's really important that the committee pays attention to what's happening with our demographics not just with our enrollment so equally important but oftentimes what we wind up spending the vast majority of our time on is budget and how we're going to fit all these kids in the building and we also need to pay attention to the other stuff too i know i'm preaching to the choir but i just wanted to point you i liked your memo it was very helpful um and also the number of first language families that are not english is 537. so there's some diversity in melrose and and I think it's a challenge for us as a committee to figure out how to best bring that up in our community conversations because oftentimes we are the same people speaking the same people and we want to try to include more people to be part of the conversation across the city just a comment it's

▶ 2:32:28 Speaker 6: It's interesting how our EL population shifts.

▶ 2:32:36 Speaker 6: Seven years ago, our primary language, believe it or not, was Turkish.

▶ 2:32:41 Speaker 2: Turkish.

▶ 2:32:44 Speaker 6: We were a large settlement for families from Turkey who were going to university or doing residencies, and that has shifted. And now our primary language is Portuguese, followed by French, and we use French because it's Haitian Creole, but most of our Haitian families read and write French. And actually we're having an uptick in Mandarin, which we have not seen in a long time. So it shifts as the population shifts. it's its own set of challenges and it's very it's it's very rewarding I think for students and our staff but it has its own set of challenges and that you know and again as I said earlier I would like our families to have an opportunity to be spread among our buildings just the way any other Melo's family gets a choice but right now we have if they do not speak English the students get placed at Hoover Roosevelt or Lincoln seeing no other questions from

▶ 2:33:55 Speaker 7: the floor just remind us two years ago we had a finding that we needed to spend more on translation services for ESL families will we will that be a topic

▶ 2:34:18 Speaker 6: that we see and visit again here shortly you'll see it in the budget so both miss White-Lambright in providing IEPs and IEP services and dr. Adams in providing any student information has to translate those documents that are not readily translated via our website or some other means and so we build those into their budgets to do that I think when we do the did the handbook unfortunately dr. Adams left we've tried to structure the handbook in such a way that the only time we have to do the translations is those sections we're changing so we're trying to again think think ahead so if the majority of the handbooks are the same you know like all the laws and stuff that we don't have to change but if we change some other section say discipline we're only translating those section so trying to be a little bit better about it i don't think it's as costly as it was when we first had to get up to speed very well thank you all that concludes epnp tonight thank you mr sell

▶ 2:35:26 Speaker 1: that brings us to finance and facilities with ms mcandrew thank you hello everyone welcome to