Superintendent's Goals (10 minutes) vote required

Transcript (~10 min @ 1:56:03)

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▶ 1:55:53 Speaker 1: Seeing none, all those in favor? And that passes with six in favor and one absent. Thank you all very much for your work and for your patience with regard to all of that. Next up, under announcements of the chair, the superintendent's goals. Madam Superintendent.

▶ 1:56:11 Speaker 4: Thank you. So as we had discussed at the retreat, we were going to go down the road of the pilot of the new superintendent's evaluation rubric and protocols. I was sharing with a couple of the members before the meeting that this turned out to be a little bit more challenging than I anticipated to do it on two counts. First of all, of course, I align my goals with yours. So there isn't always a clear correspondence between your goals and the new superintendent's rubric. So that was a little bit tricky. And because of the proposal in the new pilot in the new pilot that I include four to six indicators. And again, there wasn't that clear one-to-one correlation. Sometimes I felt like I was stretching on the indicator. But at the end, you know, it's one of those documents that you write and rewrite. I think it got as tight as we could get it. So on top of it all, it's similar to all evaluations and goal setting no matter what level of an educator, I have to have a professional practice goal, a student outcome goal, and then the district improvement goals, at least two, and then four to six indicators. So the first one, again, is the professional practice goal is we all try to collaborate together on how to use this new instrument more effectively and to see if it is something that we can be comfortable with going forward an interesting piece of this new process is you could do two year goals I chose not to I think because it's a pilot one year goal is sufficient to give feedback on to the process and what difference this might have made compared to previous years and how the setup was those years so again I think that my key actions pretty much track your key actions on student outcome goal this is in in my head related to two things that

▶ 1:58:27 Speaker 4: we're doing on the school not only on your goals but on the district on the strategy overview the move to the lowest 25% is an attempt to not think of kids

▶ 1:58:48 Speaker 4: in categories right now when we do MCAS and we approach MCAS we think of kids in categories I understand the accountability system still holds it but the accountability systems new measure is how much progress you make with your lowest 25% so as I'm discussing this with the principals and with the directors we're talking about what advantage does it give us to think about all learners by taking the labels off if you're no longer saying well my special ed kids aren't doing well or my ELL kids are not doing well and my disadvantaged youth kids are not doing well if you have to focus on your lowest 25% you You really have to think outside of the box about personalized learning and how do I target each of these students so I can help them achieve. There is also the theory by Dessie that a rising tide lifts all boats and that if we become adept at thinking about individual students and their needs, we will then begin

▶ 2:00:01 Speaker 4: to extend those that thinking across the range of students so this is also an

▶ 2:00:09 Speaker 4: equity issue because it you're now thinking about all students and what they need as opposed to focusing on I just have to get up my sped kids well my ELL kids will be fine whatever it is we have we have a tendency with MCAS remediation to hone in on whoever we think is pulling down the score and i think john recognizes that but by talking about your lowest 25 percent you're talking about any student that may not be making the level of achievement we want as opposed to focusing on that subcategory so i tried to create a a goal here using mcast data and ewis meeting with the principals to set student improvement goals and action steps principal's mid-year assessment towards the goal and district common assessments and data team track individual student progress in my meetings with the principal and i remember one of you raising this about you know you weren't you you didn't have a clear understanding what the principal's goals were and what their action steps were and that rang in my head when i wrote this i have already met with all of them and have talked about this about how are How are you going to create a student improvement goal that focuses on the lowest 25% yet incorporates our work in personalized learning and the power that can have in student achievement? My concern is I don't want drill and kill because we're trying to prepare for a test. I want to think about how do we give a kid a deeper learning experience. So that was the student outcome goal. improvement goal was the new director of finance and again conversations we have resonate one of the things that I heard the committee say about and it's again it tracks your goals this is an opportunity to work with a new person with a new set of eyes on what do our reports look like can we revamp our reports to reflect more accurately or more specifically the information you are seeking which you have laid out in your goals so this is not just about onboarding her it's about working with her closely and working with the committee closely to create the kinds of reports we're going to want going forward and the last one was the responsive inclusive environment you know that we've had this in the strategic overview for a couple of years now which you and as I discussed with you is this is a topic that is becoming more in the forefront across the state competency-based education prefer personalized learning in of itself if you talk to the people in the field it's about equity it's about access to deeper learning opportunities it's about every kid having a chance to have those quite frankly privileged opportunities that

▶ 2:03:15 Speaker 4: only some of our children have I have been talking to our staff about it for a couple of years we're talking about doing a analysis of our high school course courses to see what the representation looks like Amy Jackson I have had a conversation about when we get that information how do we think about increasing access for kids who are not being in honors classes who are not in AP classes how do we think about the fact that students in college prep courses often feel that they're being dumped in with all those other kids and how do we take that stigma off these are real issues that we have within the high

▶ 2:04:04 Speaker 4: school in the middle school to some degree and so this goal is focused on how do we how do we do more I don't know what the word I want is I think really

▶ 2:04:14 Speaker 4: the hard conversations around this work how do we begin to get the data that we can have the hard conversations about this work with staff they may not even be conscious of the directions in which they are they are steering kids when they do recommendations or parents may not be conscious of the fact that our AP courses have no prereqs if you want your kids to take a AP course and that child is willing to do the work we're going to welcome that child in so how do we begin to open those opportunities for children and again it's based on interest it's based on a desire to challenge yourself it's a bait it's based on our desire to to provide kids with not just necessarily accelerated courses but deeper learning and this is very much tied to the conversations you will hear out of the new commissioner so these are the goals i wrote for this year i certainly welcome feedback

▶ 2:05:17 Speaker 1: and anything else you may want to offer great thank you superintendent uh for purposes of discussion is there a motion to approve so made by mr. so seconded by mr.

▶ 2:05:33 Speaker 1: Abrams key discussion seeing none all those in favor and that passes with six

▶ 2:05:41 Speaker 1: in favor and one absent pardon me and one abstention so that passes with five in favor one absent and one abstention Thank You mr. and that brings us to our