Vote: Hoover School Improvement Plan

Transcript (~10 min @ 36:36)

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▶ 36:34 Speaker 2: And we have our wonderful Hoover principal here. Thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you. And I'm so happy to be here. So, um, before I start on the school improvement plan, if it is you indulge me a little bit, I was asked to talk a little bit about the Blue Ribbon Commission Award. Um, I wanna thank the school committee for giving us that. Um, congratulations. And the note that went out from Central office regarding our Blue Ribbon Commission Award. I'm gonna give you a little bit of background. You're gonna bear with me for just one second while I get up my information.

▶ 37:12 Speaker 2: Um, I, I just, I have to say, I have to start a little bit, um, with the kudos to my staff, because without the hardworking people that I have in my building, this would not have been possible. So, Hoover was, um, nominated for the Blue Ribbon Commission. We were one of seven schools in Massachusetts that were nominated, um, for the Federal Government Award. We were nominated based on our overall achievement and excellence. So we're very proud of everything that we've done. Um, there were, um, there were many pieces to what to, um, to finish the application. Many of my staff members who participated in collecting the data and the information that was needed for the award and filling out, um, uh, a huge amount of background work. So I wanna say thank you to all my staff members who were participating in that as well. So, um, thank you. Thank you for everybody. Um, Anyone have questions on that? No. Congratulations again, Thank you. I'm so, so proud of my, um, my staff. Congratulations to all the Hoover Hawks. Yeah. Woo-hoo. Go Hoover. Um, all right, now back to our agenda item, which was the school improvement plan. So I want to thank you, Madam Chair. Um, superintendent Berman, all members of the school committee. Um, and I'm here to present Hoover's, um, school improvement plan. And it's a roadmap designed to cultivate an academic rigor academically rigorous and inclusive and equitable learning community, um, where all students can thrive. Um, we have two overarching targets for our goal this year and our school improvement plan. The first part, um, deals with our mathematical scores, um, our students, um, our hope is to provide a place where math outcomes and, um, can, we can show improvement overall. Excuse me, I'm very tense. Um, we wanna elevate our math proficiency. We are looking at two subcategories overall and what we're looking at. Um, we are focusing, this year we're gonna focus on, um, um, geometry, which, if you look at some of our data, um, we have 28 students who are scoring below grade level at our beginning of the year benchmark. Um, that represents 31% of our overall pop overall population of students. Um, and then algebraic and algebraic thinking with 70, 69 students performing below grade level. And that re represents 27, 20 6% of our student population. So that'll be our two primary focuses. We are using, um, collaborative time in our school, um, during our school schedule, um, to help look at teaching practices in order to help move students along. We are using, um, the, uh, new IXL program in order to help facilitate some of that additional learning. We are, um, digging deeper into some of our, I, um, our envisions programming and what other things that they may have to offer. Um, and through a use of all of that, and with some of our professional, um, development within the school, hoping to move our scores significantly in those two subsets under mathematics. Um, our next goal is about our social emotional goal and improving, um, outcomes for Stu, um, forte teachers and staff in the school culture and climate. Um, and how having a well thought out, um, integrated model of support to implement cohesive frameworks to, in using the, um, school discipline and social and emotional structures that we have. We were granted, we had a grant, um, that was awarded to us to work with Jeffrey Benson on, on his, um, hacking school discipline policy. Um, he's, um, been to Hoover twice this school year, presented to our staff during our staff meetings. Um, with that, we have two teachers who are, um, guiding us through some of those teaching practices. And we're keeping data, um, trying to lower our office referrals, and then having a cohesive, um, set of language, uh, excuse me, a consistent set of language and how we deal with students. And that in addition to that, we'll be looking at our PBIS model and whether or not we're fully, um, using that to the best of our ability. Great. Thank you for that really nice summary of, um, a very detailed plan. I really appreciate all the work that you put into this. And that your team, who, who worked on this with you On the school improvement plan? Yes. So I have two, two parents. Um, and I have two staff members that join us to do This. Great. How did you decide how to narrow it down to those two major areas? Math. So we Looked, we looked at our beginning, um, we looked at our beginning of the year data, and those were the two ca the two, are you talking about math or the social emotional? Both of them. Yeah. So the math categories, we looked at, um, the lowest performances that we had within those standards, and those were the two that were clearly identified. Um, and in our social emotional, we talked, um, there was a lot of anecdotal data coming from the staff, um, asking for some structures around the way we deal with issues in the school regarding student behavior, um, and having consistency with that. That's great. Thank you. Any questions or comments from the committee?

▶ 42:45 Speaker 2: I got one more. Let's, um, how has it been so far this year in terms of what the feedback you're getting from the staff, if you've set up anything to like, help curb the referral process? Um, I think the positive, the, we've had a lot of positive feedback. We're starting to get some more data and we keeping, um, count of the number of office referrals that we have. Um, and that seems to be going in a downward trend, which is nice to have. And I think the teachers have been very happy with the professional development that, with Jeffrey Benson coming in to address specific and going over specific scenarios and how to best deal with those, those things as they come up. So we're getting some, you're getting some coaching through a grant? Yes. That's great. Yep. Exactly. Good. And does that come from the, um, Melrose Education Foundation? It does. All right. Um, thank you so much for being here with us. I don't see any other principles here, so perhaps Ms. Aceto is going to talk with us about the Lincoln one, but before you go, let's have a motion. Wait. Oh, so sorry. I think this, oh, I'm so sorry.

▶ 43:51 Speaker 1: Just one quick question. Sorry. No, that's completely Fine. Go ahead, Ms. Withy. Um, I noticed a lot of the work from an academic standpoint, again, is focusing on math and I appreciate you calling out, particularly in the plan and here too, just the importance of conceptual understanding. I, uh, heard you talk a little bit about the professional learning that was happening with Jeffrey Benson. Was also just wondering like what kind of professional learning is happening related to the conceptual component as well. Like, what structure you, are you able to leverage? How are folks learning a little bit more? 'cause I'll be honest, I didn't learn conceptual math back in the day. Um, so I know that's a huge change as we also think about how math instruction and the standards have evolved over time.

▶ 44:33 Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, we have,

▶ 44:38 Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember the name of the, excuse me.

▶ 44:45 Speaker 2: No worries. I wanna get back to you. Sure. Is that okay? I just, I, I have it on the tip of my tongue, but I don't wanna speaking 'cause it's not

▶ 44:50 Speaker 1: Of No problem. No problem. So thank you for sharing all the information that you are doing, and I think it's great that you're leaning into the math side and the conceptual side. 'cause again, that's just, it's different than how I learned math, and I'm sure many of us did. So appreciate you naming that. Thank You. Mm-hmm.

▶ 45:10 Speaker 5: Mr. Kelly? Sure. Thank, thank you very much. This is actually more of a question for the superintendent. As we've gone through a couple of these, each school has a different focus, um, or slightly different focus depending on what, what's in the, in, in their plan. How do we sort of, at the end of the year or sometime next year, how do you take lessons learned from the various different school improvement plans and apply them across the district?

▶ 45:32 Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think we're trying to have that primary focus on the, of the district strategic plan to try to tie to those. Um, I think as we mentioned previously, some of the work was started at the end of last year. But with just, you know, a lot of the changes that have happened, um, I don't think that these plans are, they're really, really good. I don't know if they're like, quite as consistent as we want in many ways. Um, I think the most important thing we wanna do is get a consistent template for everyone so that we're looking at action plans and then measurable goals that we can then look at and, and really see are we meeting them and, and how do we streamline. Um, I fully expect that, you know, I'll just use the two that are presenting tonight. Like, you know, Lincoln and Hoover may have different goals that are embedded or, um, you know, overarching coming from our strategic plan. But I think if we had a more consistent format just to look at that would help with, um, understanding the consistency for, for what we're

▶ 46:24 Speaker 5: Doing. Great. Thank you. You're Welcome.

▶ 46:27 Speaker 2: Motion. I would appreciate a motion motion on the floor to, um, get, get to, to approve the plan for the Hoover School motion.

▶ 46:35 Speaker 7: I'll happily make a motion to approve the

▶ 46:37 Speaker 1: Hoover School plan.

▶ 46:38 Speaker 2: Thank you Ms. Hy. Second. Um, by, um, Mr. Kelly. Okay. So all in favor. That passes with six in favor and one absent. Thank you so much, principal. Thank you so much. Appreciate, thank you for being here. Um, okay. We are gonna, next, we're gonna move around the, our agenda slightly. Uh, our superintendent would like to us to go to the report about meco, the program, and then we'll go back up to the Lincoln improvement plan. Yeah.