Vote: MHS Program of Studies

Transcript (~30 min @ 21:45)

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▶ 21:40 Speaker 5: Thank you. Welcome back. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good to be here again.

▶ 21:47 Speaker 6: So if there's no particular order, we'll start with the program of studies for the high school, because we kind of talked about that a bit as we left off with the middle school. So as we said at the last time we were here, a lot of folks have helped to shape this, including our student body at the high school, as well as our faculty and staff. Certainly, Ms. Tsoutas has played an integral role in this as the Director of Academics, and our Assistant Principal, Mr. Beaver, along with Mr. Corrigan,

▶ 22:20 Speaker 7: and our teaching staff for sure, as well as our content leads in those

▶ 22:22 Speaker 6: departments. So I would say there's no major changes to the program of studies. We've updated some course descriptions in there. I think to point out two new electives in the English department, women's literature and dystopian literature. A name change that's pretty significant just as far as identification for students as well as colleges on transcripts in social studies is just moving back to the language of US History One and US History Two. No change really in the course itself. A new course that is filled up pretty quick, students are extremely excited about is AP Business with Personal Finance. This is an AP course from the college board that we're taking on for the first time. We've had incredible interest in the business world, personal finance, different business courses. Over the past few years, we've certainly seen an increase in the enrollment of students that compete in the DECA competitions and students that do a lot of things on their own after school with different club aspects of DECA and business. So this was another opportunity for them to take a further course that's pretty rigorous, and will look great for students that are going into that field after high school. And then I think we kind of talked about it last time, being able to offer another level of guitar. So that's taken off and we have some kids that have just, it's a passion for them. We have some incredible guitarists in the school, and then we have some students that have learned it for the first time As 9th and 10th grade is, and taken it again, and then want to take it again. So, we're able to offer that as a half-credit class for three different levels of students at the same time, which is great. So, happy to answer any questions if there are any, or field any comments.

▶ 24:38 Speaker 4: Thank you, Mr. Merrill. Yeah. Questions from the committee mem-- Okay, Mrs. Holleran. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you so much, and thanks for coming back again to go over this with us. I was hoping that you could go over the cell phone policy now that it's been a full school year since the new policy was implemented, and just let us know how you think it went, if you feel like teachers and students have bought into it, if you foresee any changes.

▶ 25:09 Speaker 6: Yeah, so we'll get into that certainly with the code of conduct changes. But to touch on that, at the high school level, we went from having a little bit looser of a policy where each classroom teacher could kind of either say they go in a phone condo, they have to be on and off and away, or you can use it with your own discretion. And we got rid of that part of the policy. So there are no cell phones in any learning areas of the high school, which would include any classroom or the learning commons. So they either have to go in a phone caddy or condo if that's what's directed in the classroom, or they have to be off and away in a bag.

▶ 25:56 Speaker 7: And

▶ 25:58 Speaker 6: they are allowed currently in hallways during passing time, and in the cafeteria, like at lunch, or if they happen to be in the cafeteria for a sub block. It's just not feasible to control that. It wasn't something that we thought was super important because it was kind of their time. So, overall, it was an incredible lift to pull off and just kind of do all at once starting in August. I think overall it's been successful. I think there's definitely been a decrease in phone usage. I think even in the cafeteria when they can use them, you've seen a decrease in phone usage. I think if you look in the stands at a volleyball or football game, you see less phones all of a sudden because they became a little bit more used to just not. I think it's very habit-forming to just pull it out and open an app, pull it out. So, I think being able to kind of control that a little bit more

▶ 27:04 Speaker 6: has helped overall with students and their cell phones. I think there's been some students have challenged it. I wouldn't say challenged it as much as it's been a challenge for them. Students have been extremely compliant with if an assistant principal or dean has had to go to the classroom to turn it in. So students have been great about that, and teachers have been very active in the role that we've asked them to play in it. So I think it's been better. It's not perfect. It wasn't a foolproof

▶ 27:41 Speaker 7: thing. And obviously, we

▶ 27:43 Speaker 6: are thinking about what-- We're still a little up in the air of where the state of Massachusetts will end with exactly how they see the policy going. If there's a statewide policy to collect them at the beginning of the day, if they just want us to enforce-

▶ 28:00 Speaker 7: Excuse me

▶ 28:03 Speaker 6: ... a no cell phones in school and no cell phones in learning areas. So, we're prepared to continue to improve on what we're doing, and if we have to pivot and do some kind of collection or something like that, do it. I understand an elected official for the state of Massachusetts saying, "Oh, yeah. This is great. Let's ban cell phones. Yeah. Let's make them disappear during school." School, ironically, is the only place that has any limitations on cell

▶ 28:36 Speaker 6: phone use for teenagers- ... ironically, is in school. But I think there's some challenges around if we were just to magically say they disappear as you walk in the door. We're not going to have a phone condo with 1,000 slots in it. There's things to think about as far as kids that have different schedules and coming in late, leaving early. So there's some challenges around that, and I don't think they're going to be able to manufacture enough Yonder pouches for every student in the state. So, there'll be some challenges depending on how that goes. But we'll look to continue to tighten up what we're currently doing, if nothing else, and really hold strong to starting out the year with our new students and current students to be as strict as we can with the current policy that we have.

▶ 29:28 Speaker 4: And sorry, I got ahead of myself. No, it's okay. I went to that. I was lumping them all together. Still- It's okay. All good ... remembering each thing gets its own vote. But thank you. I appreciate- Yeah ... you going into that a little bit more. The only other thing that I have on the program of studies, I love the new course offerings. I am excited to see how everything goes next year with those. But I did find just two links within the program of studies, one on page 12 and one on page 29, the link to MCAS and the ACTFL proficiency link. Both of them went to page not found. Okay. So would love to see those updated. Absolutely. Just so parents can get to the right spot. But otherwiseAn exciting course offering. So thank you so much.

▶ 30:26 Speaker 6: Thank you. We'll get on that.

▶ 30:28 Speaker 3: I believe that those have been updated. I spoke with-

▶ 30:31 Speaker 6: I'll double-check tomorrow

▶ 30:32 Speaker 3: ... Mr. Corrigan- Awesome ... and I believe they're all set.

▶ 30:35 Speaker 4: Oh, wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Hartman, sorry. Go ahead.

▶ 30:41 Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you for walking us through the course of studies. I've got a couple questions on two different areas. Just curious about the internship program. I'm really curious to learn more about that. I see the three different options that are presented, the internal, external, and the service. Do you know how many students fall into each group, and what kind of areas where they're doing work in those internships?

▶ 31:08 Speaker 6: Definitely the majority of students fall into an internal or external. So when the internship program started, it was a select small group of students. They had to have certain grades to be able to do it. This is going back 15, 20 years. And it started growing. We started thinking, "Well, this is really good for everyone. Even if they have a C in a class, this is a great opportunity." So we

▶ 31:37 Speaker 7: started to open it up more and more,

▶ 31:39 Speaker 6: and then it really got to the point where it was hard to continue to run classes with way less than half the kids there. Mm-hmm. So now it is what quarter four is for our seniors. The tricky part is, is that we have so many students involved with AP classes, and those classes would continue to go right up until they take that exam, which is the first and second week in May. So the internship starts about April 1st, so there's some time where they're doing both. And the same goes for the music classes. Kids would stay in the music class up until the spring concert. So for those students, they do a limited internship. So we basically say it's four hours for every class you have. So you're basically doing, if you're enrolled in six classes, you're doing 24 hours of an internship. You minus four hours for every AP class you take. So if you have to go to an AP class for four hours in a week, you do four hours less of your internship. So it's just something we work through with each student. So for the students that are going back and forth to AP classes and to a music class, a lot of those students end up doing an internal internship- Mm-hmm ... with someone on campus at the middle school or the high school. A lot of the students that don't have those commitments might be doing something external, like within the city of Melrose or even outside. We've had students do things as we've had students that moved to Vermont and worked at a bed and breakfast- Mm-hmm ... for the whole time, for all of quarter four, came back for senior week activities. We've had some students that did things purely at night, work at a radio station, at MMTV, all after school hours. So as long as they're doing their appropriate amount of time, it's okay. And we've had

▶ 33:38 Speaker 6: students do things with the police department, within the city hall, certainly businesses, and as well as with some staff teachers. Mr. Fogarty always has an intern. The assistant principals usually have one. So we feel like it's beneficial. We're always reflecting on it. This year we have some tweaks to how we think we want to roll it out, how we present it at the end. There's always things we want to try to fine-tune a little bit, but overall, we just think it's a worthy experience for our seniors, where I think traditionally not a lot happens in quarter four in most high schools. And we have kids and some people say, "Oh, they're doing it

▶ 34:27 Speaker 7: with their uncle's business. They don't even want to go into that field." Yeah,

▶ 34:31 Speaker 6: well, they're talking to people every day that they've never met. They might be answering phones, trying a skill they've never learned. They might find out that they really want to be a vet. They might find out that they definitely don't want to be a vet. Mm-hmm. Or a teacher, or a nurse, or whatever the case is. So we feel like they are learning some skills, for sure, and they might be learning a little bit about themselves and what they like, don't like, want to do moving forward. So I hope that helps paint a little picture.

▶ 35:00 Speaker 1: No, it certainly does, and I couldn't agree more on the value of an internship. It goes well beyond choosing a career. So, work-based skills are really an important aspect of what you're learning. You're showing up to a clock. You're showing up to report to somebody- Yeah ... potentially around what you're doing and- ... under supervision. And certainly do that in the school-based atmosphere, but not in the same way, I think. Yeah. You learn a lot of those skills in the school building, but it's very different atmosphere in the workplace. And so I think it's a really valuable experience to offer. I would certainly like to learn more in the future. In a future meeting, I'd love to have more of an in-depth conversation around it because I think love to be a model for the commonwealth on that, in terms of what we could offer in learnings to other communities around internships, because I think there's a real need for that career-oriented experience at the- Yeah ... secondary level, certainly. Even if people are going to college, I think it's an important aspect of the education we can provide for them. Sure. The connection to a job in the future and what it takes to keep a job in the future is really important. Whether they're going to college immediately or into some other pathway, I think it's a very important thing to offer. So certainly encourage you to maybe report to us in the future with the superintendent, about where we could go with that program and- Yeah ... if there's earlier offerings as well. Certainly before the senior year, I think we could even be thinking about types of internships and things that career on-the-job type opportunities for students as well. So thank youSo the other area I was going to ask about is the newer policy or perhaps brand-new policy to the document, the policy for external and supplemental coursework. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about that. It seems to include a link to some information about the approval of supplemental coursework, potentially remote coursework. I'm just curious about that, and I'm not very familiar with where that's coming from or what the goals are and

▶ 37:03 Speaker 8: how that policy came about.

▶ 37:04 Speaker 6: Yeah. That's not something that I worked on directly, but I think we always have some students that are doing some work outside of school.

▶ 37:15 Speaker 7: And

▶ 37:18 Speaker 6: some students are taking classes that we don't offer, and we just try to fine-tune our policy to make it fair and equitable for all students to allow it to happen, but to make sure that it's rigorous enough and comparable to what we might be doing at the high school. So I think we're just trying to always fine-tune that process a little bit with our guidance department and Ms. Tsoutas.

▶ 37:49 Speaker 1: What kind of courses end up being taken outside of the high school through that policy?

▶ 37:56 Speaker 6: Well, once in a while we'll have a class that a student gets in a different situation where they might not be able to fit a class that we may even offer. But oftentimes it could be a class, we haven't had one too recently in math, but it might be a class that a student has to take in math that they've already accelerated through our coursework, and they might take a class in math. We have some students that would take classes over the summer if they're thinking about accelerating. We've had a student recently that graduated in three years. They made a plan to accelerate their track of graduation, and they needed to take some courses over the summer. Mm. So that's one. And then we've also had some different classes, like languages that we don't offer. Chinese has been one, but we've had Mandarin, but we've had some classes that we might not offer. It might be in world language. We've had a student take African American studies this year. It was just a class that we weren't able to offer due to numbers, and a student took that class, and then we get it on their transcript for them.

▶ 39:11 Speaker 1: Okay. And what kind of institutions are students finding these courses at?

▶ 39:17 Speaker 6: In the summertime, we'll have students do it through a college- Mm ... often a community college. It's a little bit more on par with the rigor that you'd be asking for a high school, especially if it's like they're advancing and they're taking a math or an English class that

▶ 39:37 Speaker 7: we

▶ 39:39 Speaker 6: want to count. Like they would take the skipping junior English, for instance. We want to make sure that it's the equivalent of that. So they take that. Those are commonly at a community college.

▶ 39:50 Speaker 1: Okay. Do they take it at other high schools in the area?

▶ 39:54 Speaker 6: Not to my knowledge, no. We haven't had that.

▶ 39:57 Speaker 1: Okay. Are there any private schools that they would attend and get credit for?

▶ 40:03 Speaker 6: We don't have any students that have taken classes at a private school- Okay ... that are enrolled with us.

▶ 40:09 Speaker 1: All right. Thank you.

▶ 40:11 Speaker 4: Good. Okay, Ms. Leo, go ahead. Great. Thank you. So first a statement, then I have sort of a general kind of question, not on a specific thing. Which is, the statement is thank you so much for the course of studies. Having a ninth grader who just went through the freshman year, it was incredibly helpful to have the administration regularly point families back to the course of studies. It is a map of options and structure that is just incredibly helpful to parents. So thank you very much. Thank you. Including the academic support section, which I know I asked a lot of questions about in the middle school changes, that I can now see the laddering up of the supports for students with disabilities and students without disabilities into the high school space. So I see real nice alignment, middle to high school. So thank you for that. It's all very coherent. Now to my question about the kinds of things. You had mentioned that students had a say in and participated in some of the adjustments. I would love to hear a little more about how do you get student voice into the decisions, and what does enrollment need to look like or drop below in order to see adjustments so that students and families who are looking in one given year toward, if they're a freshman, towards senior year, for example, understand the process by which things change, because things may change. So just looking for that, I trust you, that you made the decisions you need to make. I don't have any concerns.

▶ 41:48 Speaker 6: Yeah. I think student voice comes in a few different ways. I think AP business definitely came from students knowing about it, talking about it, the teacher being like, "Yeah, I was thinking about we should

▶ 42:00 Speaker 6: do that," and having dialogue like that. I think some of it just comes from dialogue with teachers and then teachers bringing it to us. We've surveyed kids at different times, not as much this year, just overall, but I think a lot of it's been informal. Okay. Students saying, like, "Oh, I'd love to take guitar again." Then all right, well, we can do that within the class as long as we don't go too much above 25 kids. We can keep that together. And then I think decisions have to be made around, we can't run classes of five. We don't have enough staff to do it. So we have to thinkStrategically, sometimes it's like, well, we won't run that class this year. There's a math class we're not running this year, but we've been able to give kids an equivalent opportunity, and/or we can run it the following year. So sometimes a class like forensics, for instance, that might not run every year. It might run a couple sections one year, and then the next year there's only eight kids signed up. So we're like, "Hmm, they're all underclassmen. Let's hold off. We won't run that." But we can run it the following year, give them and others the opportunity.

▶ 43:17 Speaker 6: Because the best case scenario is we get 22 point something kids in every class or whatever the best average is of everything to keep them as low and as full as possible across the board. That's the goal.

▶ 43:34 Speaker 8: So to get there is a little tricky. But we've used

▶ 43:38 Speaker 6: 15 usually as a cutoff within in our work for the past 15 years or so, 10 years, to try to make sure there's 15. There's a few classes, obviously within the special ed world, sometimes within AP Calculus, it's hard to get up to those numbers sometimes, AP Physics, but there's a consistent 10 or 12, so we still run it. So there's a few classes that traditionally run a little lower. So yeah, it's tricky sometimes, and we're still balancing some things out currently. Right now, we're in pretty good shape, but Mr. Corrigan does the bulk of the work on that, and does it well, to make sure we're offering as much to as many students as possible and keeping class sizes down and even across the board, balanced.

▶ 44:34 Speaker 4: And so if a student was enrolled in something that ends up getting cut, how does that work for them? Do you tell them, "Hey, we're going to try again next year"? Do they go to guidance?

▶ 44:42 Speaker 6: Yeah. We'll communicate with them, give them some new options. Sometimes it can be done over email, sometimes it's done face to face. Sometimes it's just, "Hey, we've got to cut this. Here are the options that fit in your schedule." If they're like, "Oh, but I really wanted this as my second choice, and it's not there," then it might be a more back and forth or a conversation about moving some other things around to see if we can juggle to fit. Because some of these electives just are off at once. They're off at B block on Tuesday, Thursday. So if they already have English during B block, we have to do some more adjusting. But sometimes it works out.

▶ 45:18 Speaker 4: Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. It's incredibly complicated trying- It is ... to run schedules with this level of offering.

▶ 45:23 Speaker 6: It is.

▶ 45:24 Speaker 4: So thank you very much for all you do. Yeah. Mr. Kelley.

▶ 45:27 Speaker 1: Sure. I'd like to make a motion to approve.

▶ 45:32 Speaker 4: Second. Second. Thank you. Just a few more comments, unless anyone else wants to go before me. I'm going to just say a few things. So thank you for being here, first of all, Mr. Merrill, and I wanted to ask about, there's a mention of dual enrollment classes with languages, and also there's a big push in the state of Massachusetts to get to early college classes and to really, as Mr. Herman was saying, it's really important to prep young people to be ready to work because not everyone can afford sending their kids to college anymore, and now there's so much opportunity for free classes. So I'm just wondering, less about the program of studies, but more thinking about it going forward, is there anything going on at the high school in terms of looking at what the Healey and Driscoll administration is recommending for reimagining high school? Not that our program of studies, there's nothing wrong with it, but the AP classes, we have a million of those now, which is fantastic, but not everyone wants to do that, and nor can everyone afford to go to college. And now- Yeah ... the community colleges are all free right now. So how are we taking advantage of that? What are you thinking in the future? What's your team thinking? If you can kind of-

▶ 46:55 Speaker 6: Yeah. So I think we have to grow on the early college stuff. We've talked about it at our site council meeting, which has some student reps on there as well, which is great. I think sometimes it's tougher at a traditional high school like ourselves where 75% of the kids are going to an activity after school. It's harder when it's like, "Oh, I'm going to travel at 12:00 to a community college to take a course." We're certainly green light open to it. Any student that thinks of an opportunity that's going to work for them, we're happy to make that happen. But we got to think about how we can integrate that a little bit better. One of the things that was really cool this year that we started, we had a student that took a course at the Peterson School in Woburn.

▶ 47:49 Speaker 9: So they've been

▶ 47:51 Speaker 6: doing a ton of outreach to local high schools. I have to give them a ton of credit and a shout-out. But we had a senior this year that, upon graduation, he also had earned a certificate from the Peterson School, and he's going to potentially continue that after he graduates. So we're looking to build on that next year and having some more students take courses there simultaneously. They're doing those at night. I don't know if they have an online piece. He did it at night. He went physically there. So we're hoping to build on that a little bit. A guidance team went over there for a visit in the spring to make some connections with them. We had this student who was already enrolled over there. So Stoneham High School's also taken that on a little bit. They had a few students that would dually enroll at the Peterson School. So some great opportunities for kids to do someMore vocational things while they're at Melrose High School still. So doors are open to that and I think we have to think a little bit more deeply about how we can get kids involved with some of the community colleges, and taking advantage of those opportunities that are available to them a little earlier. Mm-hmm. Even though it doesn't maybe fit in the schedule of all of our kids- Mm-hmm ... there are kids that it would fit.

▶ 49:16 Speaker 3: Excuse me. Peterson School?

▶ 49:18 Speaker 4: Yeah, could you explain what the Peterson School is?

▶ 49:20 Speaker 6: Peterson School is, they do electrical, maybe HVAC, I believe. Pretty much a lot of things that you could do at Northeast Metro Tech, but it's traditionally a post-secondary, like a high school diploma, you go to Peterson School in Wuben. It's been there for a bit. And, you leave there with certifications and licenses to practice these vocations.

▶ 49:50 Speaker 4: And a lot of the programs that have a big need to fill the spots in the workforce, sometimes it's discounted tuition- Yeah ... sometimes it's free, sometimes it's grant-driven. So I think obviously there's other vocational schools, and it's not your primary job to think about that, but I think the flexibility that you're talking about in terms of offering the whole range of what- Yeah ... a public high school can offer, and building out pathways for kids who need different things- Yeah ... is really wise. Just like you have the STEM pathway. I just think it's really smart to do that.

▶ 50:26 Speaker 6: I would add, too, as much as we want to prepare every student to get into as many competitive colleges as possible, it's definitely not for every student. Mm-hmm. It might not be even the smartest decision that they can make, to be honest. So we've really tried to normalize and open the doors to other opportunities, and we've done that through our work with The Bridge and our career fair that we put on. Every Thursday we have multiple colleges come in to do visits throughout the school year. But we've started to include

▶ 51:07 Speaker 6: other folks that just aren't colleges- Mm-hmm ... but different schools, truck schools, Peterson School. We've had union reps come in on career day to talk to students, and then we did something during a flex time on a Wednesday afternoon with that as well. I think we've definitely seen a little increase with some students doing alternative things after high school, which is great. They've got into college, they're ready to go if they choose, but we've had students do different things. We had eight kids upon graduation last year go right in and take the EMT course, which is a great opportunity. We've had kids that just go in to do work with electricians. So a lot of different things that students can do. We want them to be prepared for any of it.

▶ 52:05 Speaker 4: Great. Thank you so much. So I had a motion to approve by Mr. Kelley. Do I have a second? By Ms. Halloran. Thank you. So motion to approve the Melrose High School program of studies. Let's take a vote. All in favor? Opposed?