Review: Recommended changes to Policy JF: Admissions

Transcript (~10 min @ 46:00)

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▶ 45:59 Speaker 7: All right. Moving on to our second agenda item for policy and planning. This is the JF admissions policy, so this is regarding kindergarten admissions. There are some amendments in the packet, and I'll allow the superintendent to do a brief introduction about that and where that's coming from. It's to address some confusion around that.

▶ 46:17 Speaker 5: Great. So, I guess my recommendation is that we strike, as shown in the packet, the early enrollment petition language for both kindergarten and first grade, and establish a firm September 1st age cutoff with no exceptions. And I can give you the why, and I'm happy to have a discussion. So I would think when we just look at developmental readiness, as I think all of you know at this point, I'm very whole child-centered. And we know that kindergarten is academically and socially very demanding these days. While children might test and be very bright, they can struggle with the stamina and the social-emotional demands of a full school day. You're often moving from a preschool setting to a full-out academic school day with older peers as well. And I would state that a firm cutoff date sets every child up for long-term success, and not just short-term. I just want to briefly mention the ability for our educators to differentiate instruction in the classroom. So, enrolling students with their same-age peers, I don't think it will hold any of our advanced or potentially advanced learners back. I really, truly believe that our teachers are very skilled at differentiating instruction. We often talk about them differentiating instruction for struggling learners or someone who has not grasped a concept yet. I truly believe that our educators are also really good at helping to support students who need more, or who need something different, or who need a different challenge. I will come down to consistency and equity. I do think that the whole process itself can be a little bit complex, and it can create an uneven playing field. I do think a single, clear cutoff date ensures one transparent, fair rule for every family in Melrose. It does utilize district resources. Individual testing and screening for each of these children probably takes 12 to 15 hours of our school psychologist's work to assess a child, write a report, meet with a team, potentially having someone else, whether it's that school psychologist or another one of our educators, do an observation. It does take some resources. And could those resources be used in a different way? So I guess, I just want to be really clear that striking this sentence means that a child must turn five on or before September 1st to enter kindergarten, or six on or before September 1st to enter first grade, and that no exceptions would be made. I truly believe that this aligns us with our neighboring districts and supports our student readiness and our teacher success. I've asked this question at many of my different round tables, and there are very, very few policies that have this exception. In fact, in many conversations over the last, probably I'd say six months, I have found one district that has a similar policy to ours. The state law and guidance is this age five cutoff and then the age six cutoff, and I suggest we continue to support that. But that's it. I do have some data I'm happy to share about the past of what we looked at. You want me to keep going? Okay. So I do have five years' worth of data that I was able to pull, just because that's the time that I've been part of central admin and had access to this information. So over the last five years, we had 18 total petitions that were filed since the spring of 2022. All right, so we had nine in 2022, four in 2023, zero in 2024 because we didn't accept them because of all the budget cuts that were happening, and our class sizes were already too large. So we said this policy we're going to-- Because in the policy, it states that we can, because of class size, not move forward with this. So we didn't. In 2025, we had three students, and in 2026, we had two students. So for a total of 18 over the last five years. In order to assess these students, there's a number of things that are done. I actually printed out all the things. We get a letter, we get recommendations, we get a letter from the pediatrician, but then we also do our own assessment through the Iowa Acceleration Scale, third edition, and that is completed by our school psychologist, as I mentioned before. That gives you some scores in terms of academic ability, aptitude and achievement, school and academic factors, developmental factors, interpersonal factors, attitude, and support. And from there, there are four categories where children can score based on a number of points that they get, and it's a range. So we can have students be excellent candidates for whole grade acceleration, a good candidate for whole grade acceleration, a marginal candidate for whole grade acceleration, or whole grade acceleration is not recommended. So those are our four categories. So out of those 18 students, we had zero score as excellent candidates. We had seven score as good candidates, we had nine score as marginal candidates, and we had two score as acceleration was not recommended.

▶ 51:31 Speaker 6: So,

▶ 51:34 Speaker 5: with that, in the decisions that I have had to make, again, I look whole child, and have had some difficult discussions about why it may not be good, even though your child has a high IQ, which is the ability to learn, but maybe has some social skill deficits when we dig into this assessment a little bit deeper. We want children to thrive, and we want children to find success, and I do think that the recommendation that comes out of the state for that age five, and with a September 1st cutoff, I do think it makes the most sense. I will also tell you, a number of those 18 candidates, you're probably wondering about birthdays. A lot of those are September birthdays. But also quite a few of them were October, and quite a few of them were November. I didn't chart all of that. But they are that early piece. So, personally, I don't like to talk about my personal life that much, but personally, I have two fall birthdays, and I didn't do that, but my kids, whole child, do well. They had strengths and weaknesses. They still do. But I think to be with their same grade, same age peers, and to be able to move forward, I personally think that's really important, and that's what the research says, which is why we have this guidance from the state to say age five and not before. So that's my recommendation. I'm happy to answer any questions.

▶ 52:57 Speaker 7: Questions from the committee. Ms. Leo.

▶ 53:00 Speaker 3: Just one more follow-up on the database point. Out of those 18, with those ranked as good or marginal, how many ultimately did you support to accelerate?

▶ 53:11 Speaker 5: So this is where the challenging point came. Okay. Okay. So again, and I should have stated that, sorry. Because my prior role, I oversaw school psychologists and all of these kind of things, I was often involved in the process of gathering the information, but I wasn't always part of the whole decision-making process because that fell under the superintendent. So I was trying to find those exact numbers of students we actually did say yes to and say no to, and that was proving to be a pretty time-consuming thing that I just didn't get to before this meeting tonight. So I know there's a handful. I do know over the last two years, we've said no to many, and even prior to that. We have said yes to a few. I don't think it's been since about four or five years ago. I would say that '22, '23 school year was when we gave the most yeses. Thank you. And it's not because they scored in a certain way. I think it's the decisions that were made. Okay. Mm-hmm.

▶ 54:09 Speaker 7: Mayor Gruder-Nies.

▶ 54:11 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you for all of that, and it's really helpful to have your professional lens, but also the holistic data of how much time and resources we're putting toward implementing this policy. I'm not calling any of them out, but just do you feel comfortable saying what our elementary school principals, who are the ones that are overseeing kindergarten, what their thoughts are on this recommended change?

▶ 54:31 Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that they also believe that the state's recommendation is age five. I also talked to some of our early educators, and I think that oftentimes,

▶ 54:45 Speaker 5: I don't want to say they lag behind, but there are skills that are not as well-developed as some of their peers who may be three, four, even five months older. And so yes, they would support the striking of this language. Thank you.

▶ 55:03 Speaker 7: For Mr. School.

▶ 55:04 Speaker 3: I would make a motion. Or this is informational?

▶ 55:07 Speaker 7: This is informational. It's informational. Yep. Great.

▶ 55:10 Speaker 4: Yep. I'll wait on my first review.

▶ 55:15 Speaker 7: Great. I'd deposit one thought if there's no further from the committee on the floor, just simply that anytime we have a degree of discretionary policy around decisions like this, and especially discretionary application for who is involved in making a petition, there can be equity issues that come out of that. People may not know of a policy, the types of students that are brought forward and pushed through this. We have to think about the impacts of that. So I think a lot about the equity concerns of when there's a lot of discretion involved in how something like this comes forward as making a potentially big decision about a student and their trajectory.

▶ 56:01 Speaker 5: Thank you for highlighting that. Yeah, I tried to bring that in as one of my No, I appreciate you ... but I appreciate you uplifting that as well- Yeah ... because that's really important

▶ 56:07 Speaker 7: I appreciate your data as well. It was very informative. So, all right. Well, if there's no further comments on that, we'll move on to our final agenda item, and that will appear in our next committee meeting for potentially first vote. Our final item on tonight's agenda for policy and planning is the strategic planning discussion. We've talked about this a couple times. As we are now excuse me, in the wrapping up phase of our previous three-year plan, the superintendent and I have discussed a little bit about where we might head with strategic planning on a longer-term basis. And I've highlighted to the superintendent and Chair Kelley a discussion around some steps we might take to move forward on that. So, there's an interest in how we would move forward with potentially a shorter-term plan, reflecting on the fact that over the last three years we've seen a great deal of disruption in our school system financially, staffing-wise, as a result of those financial impacts. In a lot of ways, there's just been a lot going on with the district where we want to first assess where we are in the three-year plan that we are coming to the conclusion on. This gives the superintendent an opportunity to really dig into that and identify places where we've made progress, where we maybe need to focus a little bit more over the next year. So I'd offer that the initial part of this timeline is to look towards August, where the superintendent would come to us, discuss the current three-year plan that's coming to a conclusion, and what that might turn into as a potential one-year plan, highlighting elements of that plan that need additional focus in this next coming year. That would give us the time in late August to meet as a committee again or early September, potentially with the help of MASC, guiding a discussion, pulling out from us as a committee what our directional thoughts are representing the community, highlighting some large topics for the superintendent to consider as she begins a longer-term planning process. So that would be late August or early September, where we would have that as a next step for the committee. At the same time as this, the superintendent and her team is working to pull through that remaining elements of the closing out policy. They would present essentially where we are in September, as well as what would a one-year plan look like. That would be the direction for September. And then her and her team would incorporate the feedback from our dialogue session and work through October to start coming up with strategic elements of a master plan for the next few years beyond the one-year plan. I know I'm throwing out a couple different dates at the same time, but hopefully people are following me. Please raise your hand if you have a question as I'm describing it. So October is really a time for the superintendent and her team to get into the weeds on some of the data, some of the elements that her principals and leadership team need to really get into around strategic planning, hold some sessions with her teams, and that would be her time for her team, October and probably November, to resolve and work on those questions, work with site councils, work with different buildings on elements of a strategic planning process. And then we would look towards December to start seeing some of that framework coming from the superintendent back to the committee. We would consider that framework. We would respond to it, give her further feedback about how she could change direction on certain things or what she would need to focus on as she presents it. And then January through February, we would start to formalize that, start to see coming from the district a more thorough and full strategic plan coming forward. No specific timeline on when we have to vote on it, but this is just the general framework for working through the fall so that we have a process to follow input from the school committee. We could work in community sessions as needed or surveys as another aspect of collecting community feedback. A lot of elements along the way that we could build into it, but giving both the committee some time to focus on elements and giving that feedback to the superintendent, and also giving the superintendent and her team really an opportunity to deeply dive through the fall into the work they need to do so they can bring something back later in the winter and midwinter for us to really consider and chew on.