AIP Presentation (20 minutes)

Transcript (~11 min @ 50:05)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 49:57 Speaker 1: representative Broder Senator Lewis thank you both very very much for all all the work you're doing on behalf of our community and the Commonwealth we

▶ 50:06 Speaker 2: appreciate it well thanks for great discussion thanks for all the questions and again really happy to follow up in any way that works best for the

▶ 50:13 Speaker 1: committee we'll certainly take you up on that thank you very much next on our

▶ 50:20 Speaker 1: agenda the accelerated improvement plan presentation by the superintendent

▶ 50:26 Speaker 3: madam superintendent thank you so this is our second round as you know two years ago based on our experience at Horace Mann we decided to change to this model I believe mr. Obronski was intimately involved with that first time around at Horace Mann as a member of the school site council and the school site councils and the principals report to me that they really enjoy this model it gives them a chance to dig deeper and to create really more personalized plans having said that a couple of things Lincoln if you remember last year because we had a new principal we let her report out late so she's not begin they're not beginning a new two-year cycle they're in year two of a dip of a plan and I've extended the same consideration to dr. best at the middle school so that he can put his stamp on a plan and come up with a new plan by November that'll reflect what he sees as needed there in the meanwhile you have plans from the other five buildings and what I would would say to you is I'll take questions but when I went through them for common themes you'll see there is a large emphasis on how we build out inclusive schools there is a lot of conversation about the use of universal design for learning to create best practices work around social-emotional learning and positive behavior intervention and strategies there are schools that do recognize some academic challenges the Hoover for math the Horace man for reading the Roosevelt for math and the Winthrop for math and they do have action plans for that and you will notice that the high school is really focused on how they communicate to families so that they can be more engaged and have more of a say in what's happening at the high school as well as the maintenance of that facility which is which I will be addressing with the mayor in the capital improvement plan that work as well so there are some common themes here again this is a this is a living document it should not be well here's a plan and put it on a shelf they they update it over the course of the year they know that if they find a goal was not realistic or too high or too low they have the right to revisit that and and change that goal so that it reflects what is happening in the building at any given time one of the conversations that I have had with a couple of principals is they're a little bit skittish about doing that they don't know if they have to bring it back to you if they do that but they found that first first round there were some goals they easily achieved and they could have either extended or replaced so that's some thought we have to give to this process by it being a two-year process very good mr. school please yeah I just

▶ 53:23 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: want to say thank you to all of the members of the school site councils who give a lot of time and a lot of effort to engage in in difficult work that's not always their profession during the workday and it's excellent work on behalf of all the students and the staff in their schools so thank you to them

▶ 53:51 Speaker 1: for giving of their time very good any further comments or questions mr.

▶ 53:54 Speaker 5: Thomas please um so I was looking at the Lincoln one in comparison comparing Lincoln one to the other elementary school improvement plans and I it's great to have individuality and that but the Lincoln one is really long and now it's very out of date and I guess and there's certainly even within it there's still a ton to work on so I know it's not completely irrelevant by any means But I'm a little concerned about it because I don't know if it's fair to our current principal to have to be holding on to.

▶ 54:34 Speaker 3: She wrote this with them.

▶ 54:35 Speaker 5: So it looks like it's an old one from 2017, 2018. The DIBELS data in it is from 2017, 2018. And so I'm worried about that data being really old. and then that makes me concerned that people will say that we're not being transparent we're not doing tables pop up up you know that I think there could be a misperception around that and then because the language and the way that they're measuring the data is slightly different than other elementary schools because they do these three tiers and they do ambitious typical not typical the green yellow red now all the schools do they do okay so that's a standard way

▶ 55:14 Speaker 3: that's the standard for tables they're just they're just they just they they were just very specific okay and in fairness to and again what I hesitate and I meet with all the school site councils to talk about their plan and what they were thinking and again I did this is the school site councils plan it's not the superintendent's plan so I try to have that balance where I respect what they feel is important to them and try to guide them so that it's realistic and it's doable yeah and their plan when they did it last year with Miss st. George it really came out of the difficult situation they were in with with Jenny Cordick mm-hmm and the school site council really wanted to almost have a map as opposed to an action plan so I think it is to some degree to your point maybe too much and I'll be very interested to see what they do the next round and in next June it is a learning curve also what happens is to some degree like school committees school site councils turn over and often the the goals of a plan reflect the people who are on the school site council they are supposed to take into account the data but sometimes things are important to them that they want to capture and and again what I think you see in Lincoln is that uncertain period of time for sure and they had the change

▶ 56:45 Speaker 5: over in the principle understandable and I thought so the dibbles data just so everyone knows is looking through this this is not the last time that they've been rebels no there's plenty of dibbles being done at the Lincoln right right so we have that data for 1819 I can have her update that piece I just think

▶ 57:04 Speaker 5: that's right because all she because we don't want someone to be like oh they're

▶ 57:08 Speaker 3: not doing dibbles at length no that's a good catch because you know all she did

▶ 57:13 Speaker 5: was give me the plan with it so and then what was the other thing I wanted to mention I just think what I know from working in a school myself is that you can every year you have incredibly ambitious goals and you want to get so much done and if you're not really focused on the core things that's right three or four things you can lose focus and not get you wind up not doing things really well because you're trying to do so many things right right but anyway

▶ 57:41 Speaker 3: that's my little yeah and that's the discussion I've had with with all the

▶ 57:48 Speaker 5: principles about that and then that's all I think I had for now thank you very

▶ 57:50 Speaker 1: good miss McAndrew please um thank you and I

▶ 57:53 Jennifer McAndrew: also want to thank everyone who serves on these site councils I know it's a lot of work for the community there's community members educators and parents who all volunteer and I one of the things I just I really liked about seeing them all together like this is that you can see the common themes as you mentioned that make us a district and the common challenges but also each one has its own sort of interesting school based opportunities and challenges and also approaches to solving those district-wide challenges so just encourage everyone I know it's a lot of pages and sometimes you know these are all posted on school websites is that right mm-hmm so I encourage on the new ones will go up folks to at home to read the the council plan that AIP for your school where your children are and and because you know because you may see things happening in the school and wonder I wonder why they're doing that and well this might be the reason and and the other thing is I just wondered about you know there's a couple really interesting or newer new approaches in here the Roosevelt has some ideas around matching new families with families who have been in the school for a while or even reaching out to other communities to learn about how think how about families and other communities and as you mentioned the high school plan is actually quite different because it's focused on these two big challenges of facilities and communication how do they then share like let's say something works really really well that could be applied in another school to the site councils share feedback with each other

▶ 59:35 Speaker 3: no no no not really you know we've done occasionally we've done a midwinter meeting with the site council meet so that they can meet and talk about you know their writing and how they feel about the process but again the sharing becomes among the principals okay the the principals the elementary principals have their own district leadership team beside the two that they meet with me every month and the two secondary principals have their own leadership team the high school in the middle school it's a little easier because we really look at as a campus so a lot gets shared including staff as you know but the elementary principals will often problem-solve together about how are you handling this how are you handling this what are you finding you know that's some of the things that have come out out of the PBIS that we have found so for example you'll see a lot of reference to tier 1 and tier 2 interventions because there's a lot of conversation about that we're struggling with the tier 2 interventions some people are doing it better than others you know so that's where the sharing happens thank you any further comments

▶ 1:00:43 Speaker 1: or questions seeing none superintendent you've suggested that you're looking for vote from the committee before these are posted accordingly is there a motion to approve the school improvement plans as presented made by mr. Ozzie Thomas seconded by miss McAndrew any further discussion seeing none all those in favor and that motion to approve passes with five in favor and two absent thank you all very much for that and thank you superintendent for the presentation next on our agenda is the public comment portion of our meeting without objection the public comment portion of the meeting is open are there any members of the public who wish to address the