REPORTS - RULE 53

Transcript (~5 min @ 24:54)

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▶ 24:52 Michael P. Zwirko: you have an order under 53 right okay yeah correct so we now move to which is reports under rule 53 of the Board of Aldermen's rules this is a portion of the meeting where any member of the board that serves on a committee outside of this chamber can use this time to now update the public and ourselves alderman

▶ 25:06 Robert A. Boisselle: boys oh yes I like to just educate the public that there will be a traffic Commission meeting just coming December 19th at 5 30 a.m. of p.m. suit sorry 5 30 p.m. in the in this office you can surprise how many people are up at 5 30 a.m. commuting yes that's correct so that meetings the again December 19th at 5 30 p.m. in this room here Thank You alderman boy thank you and yet alderman

▶ 25:37 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: for your obedience sure thank you um president Zwirko just an update on the school committee's meeting from last week the two things i think would be of interest to our board and perhaps to the larger community is one there was a presentation from this school district on the implementation of the new massachusetts history and social science frameworks as well as an update related to the civics bill that was recently enacted and you know this is another example of sort of the state working to modernize our state standards and the curriculum of course that then necessitates adaptation on the part of our local schools in terms of the professional development the teachers need to undertake the types of materials that need to be made available for the students and with respect to the civics bill which requires a student-led civics project that's going to entail a level of a significant level of development and attention the second item on the agenda that I think is of interest for us is that the state the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released the statewide results for all districts related to the accountability system and our test results as you probably are aware there have been a number of years now where the state has been transitioning between different types of final summative assessments at the state level there was in the MCAS then we were with Park for a while now we've got moving toward an MCAS 2.0 system so that's a lot of change which is to say that the results from this first year relate to the first year that most of those tests were taken online by our students except for grades 3 and at the high school and of course we're not able to sort of compare results this year to last year or the year before so it's a time of transition and therefore there are some caveats related to these results nonetheless they're pretty important to take a look at and so at our elementary schools of which there were five last year the way that they worked out the accountability rating is they looked at how students were performing on the state test the MCAS both the overall student population and then there was a new student subgroup called the lowest 25 percent of performers through the bottom quarter and they also took took a look at them and weighted their performance as well as the overall school performance they also looked at things like absenteeism the degree to which students at the higher grade levels were accessing advanced placement courses or dual enrollment courses and that sort of thing so anyway the the presentation was really impressive from the school district and the materials also have a breakdown that's really helpful I think may be produced perhaps by desk you're perhaps by our district itself by school but the the results showed that at the elementary school the the five elementary schools three of them met targets and two partially met them and when it came to the lowest performing students four of the five elementary schools met their targets and one partially met at the middle school and the high school I would say that the results are somewhat more concerning other than that the one elementary school and so far as the middle school also partially met targets the high school partially met targets but neither met the targets for that lowest performing student population and at the high school the only seven they only a seven percent of the possible points for lowest performing students were achieved at our high school so there certainly seems to be some room for improvement and the superintendent and her staff noted they were well aware of some of these challenges they're focusing on how to address it using the evidence that's been provided so they're targeting the different subjects and schools a meeting with teachers to focus on student subgroups but I would encourage you to take a look at the charts that are provided in the November 27th materials they have a nice breakdown by school that's it Thank You Alderman for

▶ 29:42 Michael P. Zwirko: Garabedian any other member willing to provide an update at this time seeing

▶ 29:50 Speaker 2: none will then move to the calendar order 2 0 1 9 dash 1 9 request to set a public hearing on classification of property for November 26 2018 at 7 30 p.m. and subsequently determine the classification of property this order