Enrollment Report FY18 (10 minutes)

Transcript (~36 min @ 14:36)

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

▶ 14:36 Speaker 1: EP&P portion of our program I am Jamie McAllister grant vice chair of programs

▶ 14:45 Speaker 1: and personnel and tonight we have I believe one item on the agenda because one item is moved off the enrollment report so again thank you

▶ 14:52 Speaker 3: mr. McAllister grant we are pulling the field trip that is on the agenda so we will not be discussing it so in your packet you have the annual enrollment

▶ 15:13 Speaker 3: data again we continue to grow we're at 30 as of October 1 we were 3,912 students as you know this number will continue to change over the course of the year as children move in and out of the district for planning purposes I I will tell the city's CFO, Patrick Del Rosso, that we'll use 3,600 students for the chapter 70. And a reminder that the only ECC children that are factored into that are those children receiving services and it's prorated.

▶ 15:47 Speaker 3: The concerns are the concerns that we have faced for the past several years. As we continue to grow, it's a requirement for added staffing. only classroom teachers but specialty specialists music phys ed ESL continues to grow we're up to 167 from 149 last year the good news is our SPED numbers

▶ 16:14 Speaker 3: have dropped I would love like to think that's because of all the in-house programs that we are building and also because of the approach that we have taken that a child does not have to be special education in order to get the accommodations he or she may need some of our programs as you know especially our social-emotional programs we have made open to any student who needs the supports and that has worked well for us and mostly for the children Donna Rosso

▶ 16:42 Speaker 3: our early childhood director continues to be concerned about the number of children that she sees coming into ECC with autism spectrum disorder and behavioral challenges and to that point she is doing a lot of work around behavior modification and social skills the low-income students had grew a

▶ 17:05 Speaker 3: little bit 693 from 681 last year the problem is we're doing it based on our free and reduced lunch count and the state reimburses us on their new calculation of disadvantaged students which is a lower count it's people who are receiving state services as opposed to applying for free and reduced lunch I will tell you that there are several superintendents involved in a committee with the state trying to get the state to rethink this approach primarily they are superintendents in gateway cities Revere Chelsea Everett Springfield and and new bedford you know and because they have been impacted even more adversely than we have our homeless population we had a sharp rise this year you may not be aware that the division of housing and community development began to use the motel on route 99 again as a shelter they had backed off very successfully from that for a few years but this year due to a shortage of transitional housing and shelter other shelter beds they use the motel again and that impacted us and our choice students are down a little bit and we'll talk about choice when we meet believe in November and what my recommendation will be to you at that point also included in this we made a last-minute decision to give you all the data on the classes at the middle school in the high school so that you could see what goes on some of those classes do get combined when typically when you're looking at French five French for those those courses that may have four or five we typically combine them not only because we're trying not to run classes very small classes due to our staffing issues at the other side of the coin we worked very hard this year with the teachers to reduce the number of classes that are over 30 and we thank them for their help on that so you will see that in the numbers again we do not have a strict class size policy we have a recommendation and I can say in good faith that both mr. Merrill and mr. Conway made every reasonable effort to keep the class sizes to a manageable number what does happen in some courses especially electives if they're a popular elective the teachers our teachers are very generous they love being with our kids and they'll say sure and you'll see classes creep up to 30 31 in some of those electives econ seems to be one of those classes right now future

▶ 20:02 Speaker 3: recommendations the same thing that we've been talking about for the past three years what is the impact of the increasing enrollment on our ability to staff adequately and and to staff a comprehensive education the ongoing challenges as I mentioned with children with behavioral and mental health challenges the high school especially needs staffing I asked for nine teachers last year we were able to provide four and those were all at the elementary level if we do have another 15 section K next year we will need two more teachers at that level as well plus more to build out the art and music a little bit more again and of course with more students becomes the requirement for more resources long-term discussion points and some of this came up the other day when we had our retreat you know how do we continue to be a district engaged in ongoing growth improvement and innovation when we have so many competing needs what additional supports are needed for the staff to be successful in meeting the academic and social and emotional needs of a growing student population continue to develop a rigorous curriculum provide access to specialties as art music and physical education integrate instructional technology and we've had a little bit of a conversation here that I have mentioned a couple of times to the committee the addition that we all anticipate at the state level of either computer science or computing knowledge as many superintendents prefer to call it as a requirement for graduating students and how do we fit that into everything what programs and classes do we need to re-examine for need and relevancy I had a little bit of a conversation with the high school administration around that yesterday

▶ 22:07 Speaker 3: following our retreat when looking at class sizes across the districts are their grades or specific content classes with size may be a concern with the

▶ 22:16 Speaker 3: projected continued growth what are the long-term financial challenges of course and what are the short and long-term impacts on physical capacity as our numbers increase I we've addressed them elementary but if you do look at the charts that Judy Chan nicely provides now with the enrollment numbers you can watch the bars as they march from left to right and anticipate that those growing numbers will eventually hit the middle in high school and with that if there's any questions I'll be happy to take them right so just to frame our

▶ 22:51 Speaker 1: discussion there's no need for a vote tonight this will just be a discussion on this topic and in addition to what the superintendent mentioned I would add I saw some additional positives the decline in the out-of-district placements for special ed which had went from 37 to last year to 33 this year but when I looked at the five-year data there's a decline across five years from high of 48 five years ago now down to 33 which is pretty significant and I want thank the superintendent for this memo that she wrote summarizing the numerous charts and graphs which was very insightful and the questions that she poses which she just read for future discussion I think would be a great jumping-off point for the next retreat of the committee which is scheduled for February so discussion from the committee mr. Scott to what extent do you see this kind of information incorporating itself in next year's budget or your thoughts are on the budget there definitely will be

▶ 23:55 Speaker 3: incorporated in the budget the need for staffing will be brought forward in the budget again as you know we may do this year because there is a slight decrease at the high school we took eighth grade staff and we divided them one one period

▶ 24:18 Speaker 3: at the high school but as his numbers as the middle schools numbers return those staff have to return as well and we need to address the staffing at the high school one of the conversations that we that I'm having with the high school administration is as we get into a more personalized individualized approach to teaching one of the positions we really need you know a lot of conversation about we have 1.2 academic facilitators at this time and actually one of them is shared with the middle school what what should we be really thinking about am I thinking about adding a social studies teacher am I thinking about adding and I'm just using that as an example that's not a specific am I thinking about using an academic facilitator as we begin to think about less courses being confined to the building and going with more online courses more college courses or extended learning opportunities who manages that and who oversees the kids on that so there's lots of those type of discussions happening at the high school and the middle school level right now that will impact the budget and what kind of requests we make guidance has made it very clear to me that they need somebody again we began to shift our guidance model four years ago from guidance to student services it is also the preferred shift at the state level if you go on to the state's website they don't even refer to them as guidance counselors anymore they refer to them as school counselors and they have a very wide mandate about being social emotional resources for kids as well and as we do more and more of that work what do they really need to balance that out we currently have eight five at the high school three at the middle school while the recommended ratio from the professional organization is 250 to one we're getting very close to that number luckily every year we have an intern so

▶ 26:25 Speaker 3: that sort of helps so those are the kind of considerations when we go forward to the budget and again we got lucky when we had to add for music and art this year dr. Talbot and the elementary principals were very creative with their schedule I don't know how long they can continue to be that creative we added like a point to point to we didn't have to add a 1.0 and as you all know by doing that we were able to add the 0.5 ESL that we needed the other thing that we're all waiting on is at the state level they're revisiting English as a

▶ 27:05 Speaker 3: second language again it may be more restrictive it may be more liberal depending on which bill passes the state legislature and that may be a point in our conversation that we have to consider about service delivery and staffing depending on how that plays out going forward just a follow-up question

▶ 27:27 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: question and I wouldn't expect you to know this but just if you do and if not it would be interesting to know how many students have have come into our

▶ 27:38 Speaker 3: district since October 1st I don't know how many since I told us because I August 30th I was at 39 62 or 39 72 and then we do as I told you the DNR's the do not reports and then there's some other shifting that went on so there there's been a a little bit of a a carousel um but i don't know how many that's what what i do know is as i as i've shared with some of you last what what has been interesting is um the month of october has seen some children return from the charter school um so um and then they came in

▶ 28:19 Speaker 3: after the count so what will happen is i'm between registrars right now as you also know ms candelaria you'll see her name on the uh warrant became the assistant to miriam farrell and the registrar usually runs our numbers and when we have a new registrar we'll run the numbers

▶ 28:41 Christine Casatelli: again very good thank you further discussion ms casadona yeah i was going to ask about the if you could attribute the bump in enrollment at the high school is it from the charter school or from coming back from private schools we had 25 students return from charter private and parochial at the middle and the high school we did do that count is it just do you think

▶ 29:02 Speaker 3: this is just a one-year thing or I don't I can't answer that as you know the charter school has had some difficulties in the past year and that has been an impact the parents I've spoken to have said to me that has impacted their decision it is not unusual for us to have some students return sophomore year

▶ 29:28 Christine Casatelli: from some of the local parochial schools um are these students who were our students yes and okay so then they went away to private or charter or wherever private schools and then they returned

▶ 29:40 Speaker 1: right thank you further discussion mr again thank you i'm curious about

▶ 29:46 Jessica Dugan: uh what the committee can do or hear from you to support the conversation around where the limited budget priority can go to support enrollment so in the we know that staff at the high school is a problem and we've needed staff the need is getting stronger yet I think we probably anticipate a similar need as to last year at the elementary level again so how do we balance that how can we support that work of your team and you know where are we in the early stages of

▶ 30:24 Speaker 3: the game on thinking about that for next year there's nothing you can do we're waiting on the numbers when patrick delarusso gives me the numbers and we know what our chapter 70 may be that gets factored in when we know what the city can afford to give us that gets factored in but at this point in time we don't have numbers yet which influence our thinking and around what

▶ 30:46 Jessica Dugan: the priority is within all the competing needs the priority within all the competing needs i i

▶ 30:52 Speaker 3: really cannot answer that at this point in time miss dugan because it depends on what the team decides we've begun to have a conversation internally about what could we do that could be more cost effective and efficient um where could we make changes that would free up resources and once we finish that conversation then we have an idea of where we're stuck and where we have to ask for resources so i think it's a little preliminary to make to make that kind of

▶ 31:28 Jessica Dugan: pronouncement okay i definitely wasn't looking for a pronouncement i'm just looking for what this report can tell us about what we expect over the next few months from you know from how your

▶ 31:40 Speaker 3: team will be building their budget priorities so as i i think it pretty much tells you that i when i point that out in the text here i am sorry i have all the charts in front of me and i'm trying to get back to the text where i talk about the anticipated impact that if we have 15 what that means it means it means grade two or grade three needs to be a 15 so that we would have a 15 at k123 the resources it means talking to the principals about the scheduling what what What do they think they can do with stretching art, music, phys ed, or the digital literacy specialist, who right now we only have in three through five. So we have to begin to run those scenarios. And again, I think an important scenario for me to run with the high school team, which I've begun to talk about, is what should the program of studies look like? that has a big impact on how many staffing they need and part of the thing is which is difficult for people to wrap their heads around is high school teachers actually have more flexibility in what they teach than our elementary teachers because you can point you can teach point two outside of your license it doesn't matter if the English teacher or the history teaches history through film it doesn't matter to me if the English teacher the history teacher or even a foreign language teacher teaches freshman seminar it's those type of choices that we have to get to the bottom of before we know exactly what we

▶ 33:18 Jessica Dugan: need okay so the preliminary indication is that there are some continue to be significant needs at the high school as well middle school and high school and I guess you know in my mind when I think of it it's much easier to articulate the needs at the elementary school because it's more new students coming in every year and I guess we will look to your team to really articulate those needs at

▶ 33:48 Speaker 3: the middle school in high school as well and as I said earlier the state is moving faster than we anticipated on the computer science and if that comes through in the next year that's another thing we have to factor in about not only do we fit that in the schedule but who teaches those courses with any of

▶ 34:06 Jessica Dugan: our subgroups there's some significant enrollment shifts and some of them is does that have any impact on title one funds or well 70 anything anything

▶ 34:21 Speaker 3: significant well as I said the main issue with the title ones funds is the state has decided to go to the disadvantaged student category rather than the free and reduced lunch category and it cost us $90,000 this year approximately even though our numbers are up the other thing I remind

▶ 34:37 Speaker 3: everybody this is October one census this is not money this is not this is money for next year that you talk about not money for this year when you talk October one because the state uses this to calculate next year that that's a factor I think really the factor that we're really having is do we manage to squeeze another 0.5 ESL out of the what you gave us last year does that have to go to 1.0 again it depends on where the state goes on their English as a second language program we don't know yet there was conversation where they are going to allow people to do dual language again where kids can take this subject in their native language that I'm hoping it'll be a local decision not a state decision but that is it that is a something we may have to consider that's that's a staffing issue I think probably the bit the thing that we've done and our people have done it well but it is a strain is the social

▶ 35:41 Speaker 3: emotional supports for kids when you're talking about kids who are immigrant

▶ 35:52 Speaker 3: population in the current environment socially economically disadvantaged either because of family circumstances or because housing circumstances kids

▶ 36:07 Speaker 3: are coming into school traumatized and you know we've had a conversation in this body about what does trauma mean in the year 2017 and it doesn't mean you you survived a war or you were in a car accident and actually I saw a very interesting figure today and I have to remember where I saw it about 35 or 34 percent of all children have had some sort of significant life event that is traumatizing or an impactful to some degree and that plays out in schools and

▶ 36:39 Speaker 3: our kids our staff is doing the best they can but there are days I will not deny to you that it's difficult luckily through the work that we have done with seem collaborative the ten seem communities they have developed for us a consultation service where we can bring into the buildings behavior specialists

▶ 37:07 Speaker 3: ESL specialists people who have been trained in the new leap program from the state um so that they can support us without having somebody on staff it's a pay for service pay you know pay for fee fee for service excuse me but it enabled but it does give us help when we need it um the one thing that i think i've explained all to you that this scene is going to go for a radar grant and one of the things that we want to add through the radar grant if we get it is an inclusion specialist but none of us can afford a full-time inclusion specialist and again i'm using word inclusion in a very broad sense how do you include any at-risk student in your academic and extracurricular life so that that child has a chance to be successful that's where the strain is

▶ 38:04 Speaker 3: and that doesn't get reflected in the numbers per se when you just talk about the numbers but thank you for asking that question thank you further discussion yes mr.

▶ 38:14 Speaker 4: O'Connell thank you very much to the chair the superintendent I was particularly interested in the information you provided about special education in paragraph 7 of the memo and thank you for the memo as someone else said it it's very helpful and this this information particular I found very informative and instructive and I would really like to hear more not tonight but more about the programs we're building because I think there is a shared interest and consensus around keeping more students in district and for reasons beyond just our legal obligations and again I think that there's a shared interest and consensus there it's also you know a budget challenge every year and I think and I'll take this up with with the chair and the subcommittee chair I think we really should have substantive discussion about about these about these programs we're working on because we need to know as a committee how we can support you and your team and building those programs both to serve the needs of these students and also to address this perennial budget challenge so I would

▶ 39:31 Speaker 3: say two things to you again and I think I think you've heard me say it here before and I say this as a former SPED director I hate the SPED designation or the requirement that we must have it in order for a trial to get services and we've begun to move away from that and when we did our CPR when we did our coordinated program review I will tell you the state said to miss white Lambright dr. Adams and myself how have you guys reached the level of inclusion that you have reached because we just keep pushing it and pushing and pushing it and holding it as the standard are we a hundred percent successful of course not nobody is but I was gratifying for me to hear from the state that they thought we were doing a good job of it and part of what we have done is some of of our programs we've reclassified as combined programs their gen ed sped programs for the very simple reason that if a child needs help he needs he or she needs help and you know sometimes a student is in a situation where the sped process is 45 school days well let me tell you something if you put in a referral to me today you're looking at after February vacation before you get an answer because of vacations and everything else we don't wait that long

▶ 40:52 Speaker 3: than kids and so we've begun to build programs that are more responsive I will

▶ 40:57 Speaker 3: also tell you I know I number is I you don't have a context for it I have a context for it our number is exceptionally low we have 3,900 kids and we only have 33 kids on a district that's not counting the occasional kid that goes into a 45-day placement while we get more information I've worked in

▶ 41:19 Speaker 3: districts smaller than us whereas the SPED director I've had a hundred kids

▶ 41:25 Speaker 3: out of district and and what I thank for that is the culture of our parents and the culture of us our teachers who have been open to this because you can live and work in districts where the out of district placement is the expectation here what I've encountered the expectation is I really want to keep my kid in if we can make it work we recognize that for some children it does not work and we have an obligation to do what's right for them but I mean that it that is what we what we hear from our parents how can we make this work that

▶ 41:56 Speaker 4: my child can stay in great and I think we share in those expectations as well I want to support it and I think a sustained substantive discussion as an agenda item would go a long way toward that both in terms of our obligations and again addressing the financial part of it my last comment you mentioned the consultation service that we have through seem I'd be interested in hearing more about that again not tonight you know my recollection is we do an annual review of seeing maybe we just look at the budget it strikes me that that review should be more substantive as well so we could talk more and hear more about this consultation service and maybe even some data about how often we're using it whether it's working whether we're getting a adequate response from the consultation service so again I'll take that up with the chair and the subcommittee chair I'm glad we have it it makes sense I think from a financial

▶ 43:08 Speaker 2: standpoint so thank you you have mentioned through the chair to the superintendent you have mentioned previously work ongoing at the middle school with regards to the teams and how eighth grade there is an effort in progress to make eighth grade remove the teams from eighth grade or at least make that more flexible as I look at the enrollment numbers by grade we are anticipating a decent jump from next year to this year or pardon me from this year to next year and then the following year as you know fifth moves into six six moves up etc what by my count and I'm ballparking here so don't quote me I'm looking at roughly what an additional 50 students within the next three years total right so can you speak to the team system that is currently in place and what modification we can make going forward now we can support you in making those going forward so that we can be more flexible and make sure that there's a balance across the students and the teachers in each grade well I

▶ 44:32 Speaker 3: would not want to make recommendations without mr. Conway being involved in that type of decision he is the middle school principal and the team concept is held near and dear by middle school people while there is conversation across the country about whether or not we need to revisit it for a variety of reasons what we have done at Melrose middle is we at the eighth grade level especially we're doing more cross-teaming so it used to be very difficult for you to take certain electives because we could not go cross-team and we have decided to make that more flexible for our kids mainly for our kids so that if you want to take I don't know Italian you can take a

▶ 45:14 Speaker 3: terrible year if you want to take German you can take it without having to be on a certain team because maybe you're taking algebra one and it's on team A and the Italian teachers assigned is attached to team B whatever it may be we got more flexible about the cross teaming the other thing that has made a huge difference for the eighth grade is the number of eighth graders who are coming over to the high school so if you're taking Latin

▶ 45:42 Speaker 3: one again you're not you're not on a team you can be on all three teams taking Latin one and now you go over to the high school take it so it's again it's that flexibility that you're not stuck with the team and can't move across periods and classes same thing with the algebra one students they're all coming over to the high school now so that has made a huge difference the ability to go cross team the ability to think about especially when you think about kids specialty schedules so if I have and I'm going to use special ed as an example if I have a special ed child and they need a particular service and that service is only B period and B period is normally when they have social

▶ 46:28 Speaker 3: studies on their team the guidance people now have the flexibility to say well maybe they won't take social studies with team B social studies with team C so that they can get their other service so the lack of rigidity around the schedule in individual cases has made a very big difference for students and that was the purpose of it the purpose of doing that was not really about cost savings it was about what do kids need that we can't meet and then when we had to take point two of teachers it drove it even more so we had to get really flexible on how do we meet kids needs with only a point eight teacher as a point as opposed to a point 1.0 future so then forgive me for

▶ 47:20 Speaker 2: jumping in you thank you for speaking to eighth grade flexibility is that flexibility also available to seventh and sixth graders not not as much this

▶ 47:29 Speaker 3: time except for the students who are taking compacted math in the seventh grade so again we're pulling from multiple teams for kids to take compacted math before when you were in that type of program and you had only one section of compacted math all the kids who took compacted math had to be on the same team well think about what that does to the diversity of your team

▶ 47:56 Speaker 3: you know it sort of messes it up pretty pretty badly so by being able to go across team we can keep our teams diverse so another way that what you do that is you decide everybody who's teaching math is teaching at the same block so that way kids can go like this if they have to go to compact math and

▶ 48:16 Speaker 3: things like that so loosening up the rigidity of the team model has benefited

▶ 48:22 Speaker 3: kids where we go next remains to be seen like I said it's a hot potato to talk about doing going to a different team model a different middle school model

▶ 48:41 Speaker 3: the the middle school model as it currently exists I want to say God 35

▶ 48:51 Speaker 3: years old at least and it evolved because of social emotional needs of early adolescence how do you give early adolescence a secure school within a school in which they could flourish rather than a junior high which is

▶ 49:10 Speaker 3: basically a mini high school so is there a hybrid that would evolve for our kids I don't know possibly I think you're seeing that more in the eighth grade right now than the sixth and seventh and I will also tell you quite honestly Mr. Selm the anxiety from fifth grade parents as they move up to sixth grade and I speak to the people in the room not you yet you know they like that team model especially in the sixth grade where it is a little bit more nurturing

▶ 49:46 Speaker 2: so then if I may one follow-up at this time do you anticipate any additional needed infrastructure or staffing to accommodate the roughly 15 odd new students come that will be increased in sixth grade it really depends on how

▶ 50:11 Speaker 3: they're dispersed what does that mean well you have three teams so if it's only five kids on each team it's probably a minimal impact if it if for some reason some team gets 10 and class sizes on that team creep up to 28 29 that's a different conversation but usually mr. Conway can secure control it by how he assigns kids to teams okay thank you very much further discussion

▶ 50:42 Speaker 1: seeing none that concludes EP and P for today thank you thank you so much next

▶ 50:44 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: on our agenda is the finance and facilities subcommittee mr. so good