School Committee — 2017-09-26

Agenda

1. To approve executive session minutes of September 12, 2017 (0:12)
2. To conduct strategy sessions in preparation for the negotiation of Superintendent Cyndy Taymore's successor contract (0:30)
3. Vote on Superintendent Taymore’s successor contract (10 minutes) vote required (12:13)
4. Superintendent Updates (5 minutes) (18:45)
5. Second vote required Policy KBE: Relations with Parent and Booster Organizations (20:30)
6. Warrants (20:56)
7. Mathematics Midcycle Program Review (30 minutes) (21:50)
8. Education Stations Scholarships (5 minutes) (48:56)
9. MASC Recommendations - Policies for discussion and first vote (15 minutes) (1:15:15)
10. Strategy Overview (10 minutes) (1:17:52)
11. No New Business
12. Student Representatives/Student Advisory Committee (5 minutes) (1:55)
13. MASC Alternate Delegate Selection (5 minutes) vote required (1:50:48)
14. Liaison Reports (5 minutes) (1:51:42)
15. Action Item Progress Report (5 minutes) (1:56:40)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE MELROSE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES● SEPTEMBER 26, 2017 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Regular Meeting 7:00 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176

(ID # 5936) Executive Session To approve executive session minutes of September 12, 2017

(ID # 5934) Executive Session To conduct strategy sessions in preparation for the negotiation of Superintendent Cyndy Taymore's successor contract

(ID # 5930) Announcements - Chair Vote on Superintendent Taymore’s successor contract (10 minutes) vote required

(ID # 5929) Announcements - Superintendent Superintendent Updates (5 minutes)

(ID # 5928) Consent Second vote required Policy KBE: Relations with Parent and Booster Organizations Adopted

(ID # 5921) Consent Warrants Adopted City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 10/11/2017 9:39 AM Minutes Melrose School Committee September 26, 2017

(ID # 5924) Educational Programs and Personnel Mathematics Midcycle Program Review (30 minutes)

(ID # 5935) Educational Programs and Personnel Education Stations Scholarships (5 minutes)

(ID # 5923) Policy and Planning MASC Recommendations - Policies for discussion and first vote (15 minutes)

(ID # 5926) Policy and Planning Strategy Overview (10 minutes)

(ID # 5933) Finance and Facilities No New Business

(ID # 5932) Announcements - Chair Student Representatives/Student Advisory Committee (5 minutes)

(ID # 5931) Announcements - Chair MASC Alternate Delegate Selection (5 minutes) vote required

(ID # 5925) Announcements - Chair Liaison Reports (5 minutes)

(ID # 5927) Announcements - Chair Action Item Progress Report (5 minutes) Note: The listed agenda items are those that are reasonably anticipated by the Chair to be discussed at the meeting. Not all items, in fact, may be discussed, and other items not listed also may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by law. City of Melrose Page 2 Updated 10/11/2017 9:39 AM

Transcript

▶ 0:00 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: Good evening and welcome to the Melrose School Committee meeting of September 26, 2017. Please rise and say the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. just a note that this meeting is being recorded first on our agenda is an executive session we will have need for an executive session to approve executive session minutes of September 12 2017 and to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for the negotiation of superintendent Cindy Taymor successor contract we will be returning to public session may I have a motion to adjourn to executive session so moved second made by miss casatelli seconded by ms dugan may i have a roll

▶ 1:58 the executive session next on our agenda is a report of the student representative could you introduce yourself again to the community please yes um oh this is my name is ellie ferris and i am acting president for the student council um at mvms following a one-year term as vice president there so since school started on August 30th a lot of exciting progress has been made at MVMS rehearsals for the fall musical once on this island are underway after a record-breaking 92 students auditioned and the MS sports teams had have kicked off their seasons and are off to a great start ie the field hockey and football teams there's certainly a lot of of enthusiasm to be seen in these areas election dates are for student for

▶ 2:48 student council have been announced in ballot forms administered to all those interested in running the election dates are October 31st for sixth graders and October 10th for seventh and eighth graders including myself product impact is holding interviews for the many returning and new applicants interested in the 40 spots this year so there's a lot of interest in that area obviously and broadcast in other clubs like the GSA have begun making for exciting and enriching afternoons for all participating students and open house slash curriculum night was held for all parents of the students last week and is my understanding that the event was very well received by those who attended lastly an essay contest was administered by veterans of foreign wars was

▶ 3:32 Jessica Dugan: announced to the students all participants will have a chance to buy for a five thousand dollar scholarship at the national level thank you that is all I have today thank you do we have any questions for Ellie miss Dugan thanks thanks for the report I am curious one of the exciting shifts this year was that some of the eighth graders would be merging some classes with high school teachers and I don't know if you personally or any of your peers have experienced that and if that is something that's been fun exciting hard any of those things um yeah well I have some friends who are in the advanced math class which is held in the high school and I myself have been going to a Latin classroom in the high school for the past year and this will be my second

▶ 4:19 year so I think it's it's an overall great experience to kind of mix in with like the high school life that most of us will be attending to next year and also on another similar note we have experimented with students switching teams for different classes so they may be on one team say having their homeroom on that team and having a class like science or history on another team so it's a new experience well well received yeah pretty well received as I've heard I don't have particular experience with that but yes great thank you any other questions seeing none thank you so much next on our agenda is public comment do i have a motion to open public comment so moved second made by ms casatelli seconded by ms dugan discussion

▶ 5:13 seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously with one absent public comment is now open anyone like to speak okay Sheila hi can you come right up and that's okay and yep just make sure you speak right into the microphone okay so I'm Sheila couch I am the co-chair of CPAC this year with Jen Blasso and I just wanted to introduce myself to the committee we've been working closely with Ed as well at the beginning of this year and last year and just are looking forward to moving CPAC forward and working collaboratively with district administration as well as the school committee so that's all great thank you and welcome and thank you for the work that you do next mr. Moroz hi

▶ 6:27 I'm Jerry Moroz I'm here to speak about the math program review that's on your agenda you know years ago the public used to be invited to be involved and contribute to such reviews because the school district thought that the response of the parents and the the students through the parents was significant and important in order to help the district grow better that doesn't happen anymore ten years ago though in the fall of 2007 the school community actually allowed parents teachers and administrators to explore some difficult and pernicious issues in the mellow schools together conclusions of that process inform policy and procedure changes, which haven't happened even now ten years later. Since the public is now shut out of such things, there is little chance to impact the status

▶ 7:11 quo of the Melrose system. The community hasn't provided information even regarding the issues. Input the community may be allowed to present even independently is roundly disregarded by the district. In the last couple years, there have been lots of flowery language coming from the district. Some of the language embodies principles and realities which were identified way back in the fall of 2007 and the winter of 2008. And here we are today. There's a math program review going on under the tight control of an administration that apparently isn't confident enough in its own expertise to hold their reasoning up to public scrutiny. There are so many hidden points of a hidden curriculum review process, the public will

▶ 7:54 have no way to identify react to respond to help ameliorate or simply prove wrong for me the last few years my litmus test for those of you that are familiar with litmus paper still is that the middle school makes every sixth grader take the exact same math class together now we know that about around say 25 percent roundly of the fifth graders have achieved advanced on the state accountability assessment in fifth grade. We know that there's probably about 50% of the students in the middle of some rough way that are below advanced and aren't the worst, but they're there. And then we know there's probably about 25% of students that are under the PARCC system in levels one, two, or three, say, that are sitting there.

▶ 8:46 Everyone on the face of it knows that the learning needs of those in the advanced category are very different from the learning needs of those in a much lower category. The fact is that they've shown by their achievement demonstration in the prior year what they've been able to do and what they haven't. What they've learned in some cases, what they've learned in other cases, but what they still need to learn as well. Most of what is taught in those heterogeneous sixth grade classrooms isn't relevant for most of the kids in there. And for the ones that could get the best benefit out of that targeted level of sixth grade math instruction, they don't receive the benefit that they would get either because the instruction

▶ 9:37 is frankly diluted with the outliers in the room as well. And I know a lot of people will get their backs up talking about inclusion classrooms and things like that, but the problem is is that what we do for a lot of kids who have math difficulty we make them sit in the class for a full period of day that they can't engage because they're not ready to engage in that level they're not they don't have that readiness level to engage in it but what do we do we now take a subject that they're already feeling unsure about at a minimum and we throw them into what we call a math lab or some other remedial type math class for another period a day in a block say that now this person who is having difficulty in an area you know it's it's pushed on them pushed on them pushed on

▶ 10:21 them in a way they can't even engage then they have no bandwidth left to engage in the relevant part that they could otherwise so when I look at the program of studies and I see that there's one sixth grade math class that for me is the litmus test I would love to have a much more deeper insight into the whole process to be able to know more of the nuances and maybe there are some redeeming values and what's happening there we won't know them for this two-year review process what we do know is that you don't need a two-year review process in math to know that students deserve to be taught at the level for which they're ready to learn chapter 69 section 1 of the mass general laws states that every student shall be able with the education system to reach

▶ 11:09 their full potential holding students back or pushing students ahead when they're not ready is not helping them reach their full present potential they're not working within their zone of proximal development that's the key it also says that every chapter six nine also says that that every classroom in the Commonwealth including those in Melrose that means are are the students are entitled to receive a meaningful education for them it doesn't say let's teach one thing to all students and say oh what a wonderful school and district we are if a math review process is authentic it will engage in these issues it will involve the public in them and have a public process not a behind-the-scenes process that ends up at the end with oh how great we are that

▶ 11:53 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: the the the track we're on is just wonderful I'm going to continue doing what we've doing we've heard that before it doesn't work thank you thank you we have no other speakers signed up for this evening so I would entertain a motion to close public participation made by ms cantelli seconded by ms duke in discussion seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously with one absent mayor dolan madam chair i'd like to make a motion to suspend the rules to move the item entitled the vote on superintendent successor agreement contract to be moved to the floor do i have a second on that motion made by mr o'connell discussion on the motion seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously with one absence so we will move forward from number eight item number

▶ 12:47 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: one and we will discuss that now so before us tonight we have the vote on superintendent taymor's successor contract we will need a vote um i would entertain a motion to approve the contract with superintendent taymor with the change to paragraph 12 section a changing the number of days notice required from 180 days to 150 school days so moved second made by ms dugan seconded by mayor dolan is there a discussion on this motion mayor dolan i would just like to thank the superintendent for agreeing to continue to work with us she has challenged me personally as a mayor she's challenged this community very public publicly she's challenged this this the school committee and i think she has challenged staff and students in a way that

▶ 13:43 has not been seen in this community for several decades i look forward to continuing to work with her she she is an exceptionally people don't see they see on every other tuesday night an incredibly hard worker with a tremendous amount of depth in her expertise and knowledge of her passion and what she has dedicated her life to which is helping all students succeed and let it let it certainly be known that at this point in her career this is a dedication to this community and at the expense of her husband Jack and her family and of course we have a contract that I think is fair but I think the great benefit tonight is the children of our community including my own and I'm really happy that that we're at this point because we spent a lot of times

▶ 14:42 Christine Casatelli: not mentioning it or talking about it because I didn't know what the answer would be and I'm happy where we are today and I thank you for your service to Melrose any further discussion miss Kestel so in my tenure I I've had the pleasure of working with three superintendents and an interim and I have to say i'm um although superintendent and i don't always agree we always manage to get something done and i'm proud of the work that we've done here together and i look forward to continued success for the school district so thank you for your hard work thank you for the discussion miss dugan thank you um thank you miss timor this um this work that we do together as a school committee it is every single

▶ 15:36 Jessica Dugan: moment of it evident to me of your commitment to our students and your teachers and your staff and I'm excited to support this vote tonight because I think as the mayor said it it extends your commitment even beyond to this community as you see through so many things that have begun and are not yet there yet we're on our way to some some bigger things and i think that your your leadership is what's gotten us to this point and i'm so excited that it'll carry us into the future thank you mr song no we haven't always seen eye to eye but there's always been a learning curve there and it's always been constructive the the dialogue. Particular things that I appreciate is your, A, patience in bringing me along

▶ 16:30 as I learn the ropes. This last two years have been amazing. In fact, if we go back to when I first tried to run, four years, and you've been there every step answering patiently every question I've had and entertained much dialogue you are you are the leader this committee and this school district need at this time and I am very pleased to be able to vote in the affirmative in support of your contract and I know that when you do retire whenever that is I look forward to hearing later the trashy novels you read for the discussion thank you I feel like I should say something negative just to mix things up but I can't I can only echo what my colleagues have said and I'm pleased that we've managed to

▶ 17:33 negotiate a new contract so thank you and I'm just to wrap it up thank you for loving our children yes you may thank you I really appreciate everything you've said and this is my life's work and this is my passion somebody once said to me years ago I was considering changing careers and we were having a conversation and he said to me the only time I ever hear passion and your voice Cindy is when you talk about education so why are you even thinking about it and I took that advice to heart I have to say well I appreciate your praise I I I don't look at it the same way as you look at it I look at it as I'm lucky I have probably one of the most talented teams in the state and even when we've had turnover we've been fortunate enough to have more talented people join us or

▶ 18:22 rise through the ranks and and that's what a district is supposed to do it's supposed to learn how to perpetuate itself and I hope that's what we're doing here and I'm thankful every day for the people I work with thank you for the discussion by the committee seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously with one absent we will now return to the orders of the day and we'll return with the announcements my staff of laughing at the patients must be talking to somebody else just two quick announcements we finalized the date for parent University which we do in collaboration with the Melrose Education Foundation it will be November 19th we hope that many people listening will attend we are developing an exciting array of courses and this

▶ 19:26 year a slight twist we're going to have some students leading them so I hope that you'll come to them Ellie mentioned project impact we're hoping our project impact kids will lead a session and some of our high school kids from the step up club will lead a session as well so we're looking forward to that the other point of information just for the committee is the late start implementation committee has met we've set a schedule had a very very good working session the other day robust discussion strong commitment on everybody's part to have this wrapped up by the first of the year so that we can begin to do the second half of implementation any adjustments we have to make so that's just a brief update on that questions for the superintendent

▶ 20:17 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: Mr. Selm. One more time, can you repeat? Excuse me, I'm being corrected from the audience. November 18th is parent year. That's what I was gonna ask. Yeah, no, they keep me on track. And where, at the high school? At the high school, we'll use the Learning Commons again. Thank you, Mr. Selm. Thank you. Any other questions for the superintendent? Seeing none, next on our agenda is the Consent Agenda, which tonight contains the school committee regular meeting minutes of September 12th, 2017. A second vote required on policy KBE relations with parent and booster organizations, and two warrants as follows. FY18 wire transfer for August, S18008 in the amount of $4,477.27, and school warrant, S18009 in the amount of $185,501.32.

▶ 21:11 Would anyone like to remove anything from the consent agenda? Seeing none, may I have a motion for approval? So moved. second made by mr selim seconded by miss cazatelli all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously with two absent next on our agenda is the mathematics mid-cycle program review ms dugan good evening we have two items on the educational programs and personal agenda this evening and we will start off with mathematic mathematics mid-cycle program review and I invite the superintendent to introduce our guests and the topic thank you so as you know five years ago we instituted a cycle of program reviews in which we work our way through all of our content areas so far we've completed social studies history ELA this we're entering year two a math

▶ 22:23 and we have begun science this is year one of science an important change from the previous two program reviews is at that time we had seven department chairs and we had a single department chair overseeing each of those reviews since then as you all know due to budgetary constraints we are down to four department chairs and before you have Miss Greenwood who is brand new to the position and in her first go up go as a director is not only taking over the math review but starting the science review so she has a lot on her plate as a brand new director but we have every faith in her she's been a teacher with us for many years some of you had children who had her and are particularly fond of her I know so we're looking forward to this process with her

▶ 23:22 again year two of program reviews is the year in which the real work gets done the first year we work on our questions we work on look reviewing our materials putting out our surveys it's the second year that we begin that real analysis the results of the surveys the visiting teams from other schools and we develop the action plan for any changes that they will bring forward to you so with that I give you dr. Adams and miss green with the director of stem so as the superintendent spoke our purpose of the two-year program review process is to look at the curriculum the assessment and instruction of our mathematics programming pre-k through 12 we started last year beginning the work with reviewing this past year we looked at starting by looking at our curriculum

▶ 24:19 and all of our materials and then developing beginning by developing our essential questions so the essential questions that we have are centered around alignment where we were looking at vertical and horizontal alignment of the math curriculum how the standards for mathematical practice are being addressed and assessed looking at best practices core instructional and core instructional practices inclusive practices from the state and whether we're meeting the varied needs of all learners so we began the process this past year by looking at curriculum and assessment every grade span pre-k through 12 presented gave an overview tried to help us answer these essential questions by grade span we also last year did a ELA combined ELA and math site visit of

▶ 25:15 the Franklin we invited about 30 educators to come and at the same since we have them there on site we had them look at our ELA which was in the process of being completed and they also gave us feedback on the math as well why that while they were there we also started to develop surveys trying to seek information from parents students and teachers we ran out of time deciding not to administer a survey at the end of the year because of the busyness of the end of the year so we'll revisit it this fall and administer it this fall thinking that we're likely to get more participation this fall than they we would have in May and June just because of the busyness this coming year we'll complete those surveys start some focus groups of students at different levels

▶ 26:08 and teachers and do a site visit where we invite educators from across the area to come spend the day with us and visit our classrooms and give us feedback on these questions as they visit classrooms they visit our classrooms K through 12 they'll talk to students that day and they'll also talk to teachers that day and given all that feedback they'll report back to us sort of their sense of how they feel we are doing towards these essential questions on that day we'll end the process by sort of then trying to triangulate the data looking at our review of curriculum and assessment our review of the data a a review of the surveys, a review of the focus groups, the site visit, and then start to

▶ 26:58 identify themes that we see coming across from the data and start to summarize those themes and then develop an action plan to begin to address things, themes that we know we need to address that have resulted from the math program review. As you can see there, at this point, we're just giving an update. We don't have any data to report yet. in that process of triangulating and and collecting and really organizing our information so there aren't any budget implications or any anything else to report we'd like to thank the teachers and administrators who give of their time in addition to meeting there's a lot of collection and organizing and this year a lot of writing and sort of consolidating and summarizing

▶ 27:44 information so none of this is possible without the teachers in sight and the administrators and educators who sort of join us in this process and journey so we're very grateful to those members as well as other teachers who aren't necessarily part of the team but invite us in and give us information and feedback as well so we're open to any questions from the community Mr. O'Connell Thank you, Madam Chair, and through you to Dr. Adams. And first of all, let me welcome Ms. Greenwood, first time in the lion's den. I know you've been on staff for a while, so thank you for your work. So just a couple of questions, if I may. Looking at the timeline, the six steps, due, if you will, through today, done, complete, great.

▶ 28:36 with regard to the essential questions I'm interested in two and not trying to put you on the spot I recognize that this isn't the final report I recognize where we are in the process but I'm gonna ask the question that I've been asking with regard to any review we have done with curriculum or programming and in particular with regard to question three with its focus on instructional and assessment practices just briefly how does our exploration to date of competency based education inform this speak to this so we're we're still in our infancy with developing those standards and getting consensus on those standards from staff so it informs like it's a parallel process but we're really looking at what's in place right now and perhaps as the year goes on as that

▶ 29:38 process develops more it will likely influence our action plan and it will inform for certainly parts of our question how we respond to some of these questions can be incorporated into our action plan so when we even look at question number four how we meet varied needs there's an opportunity there to provide opportunities that to make sure that we're giving kids feedback along in their process towards meeting the standards that we develop so I think it's a kind of a there are two separate processes and I think as with this year progresses with the CBE and some of that piloting and some of that work it will better inform perhaps the action plan as we so we're really trying to document what is right now what's currently in place what are the practices and where

▶ 30:30 as we do so what are the particular needs that arise from that great understood and thank you for that I just let me just just so that there's no confusion the standards she's speaking to or is when you are developing a competency based system you identify the standards in each content area and then the standards for graduation as opposed to the standards that are already established by the state in the math frameworks they often coincide or build on each other but in her particular reply to you she's she's talking about the standards we will establish as content area standards in a CBE system the state has already told us what they expect the standards to be K through 12 understood you know I asked the question because I think regardless of where we

▶ 31:21 end up with competency-based education I just think there's huge value in the exploration and we've already seen in various instances that come into play so I'd love to see that come into play as we look at our math program with regard to question four and our aim of meeting the varied needs of students I'm hoping you can speak to the matter of instruction curriculum assessment in the context of special education and what I'm particularly interested in is learning whether in to what degree our special education professionals have been or will be participating in this review so as we're going we looked at and we've come before this committee several times to talk about an achievement gap that does exist for our special education students that is more

▶ 32:19 and more apparent when they get to middle school certainly doesn't start in middle school starts earlier so we were very cognizant of that and that's certainly something that the group is looking at we've looked at data we've looked at access to of our special education students to the math curriculum to the math standards and have discussed that so that's certainly something that we've looked at and have tried to address over the past years and have already started to look we've got some embargo data we've looked at and we are having those discussions great and I'm sure more to follow on that in my last comment if I may madam chair and I've said this before to you dr. Adams I I want to reiterate the request that I've made before with regard to such

▶ 33:15 reviews and reports to the committee that when it's completed that you give us the good the bad and the ugly and when it comes to math and Melrose in this instance and I again implore you implore you to make every effort to tell what we need to hear and know to support you and your team and ultimately the students of Melrose and not perhaps what you think we might want to hear and I'm not suggesting you do that but it doesn't help any of us to when we come here to just get the rose-colored glasses version of reality at the end of the day and I think at the beginning of the day we're all on the same team and we have the facts uh i think we're much better positioned to get you and your team what you

▶ 34:12 need in terms of resources and support so thank you thank you madam chair discussion questions from the committee mr selm so first and foremost welcome miss greenwood thank you um i hope to to I hope to work with you as I worked with mr. Morris prior I want to build on what my colleague asked but in a slightly different direction first you mentioned and I agree that a survey in the fall is probably more likely to get or early winter perhaps is more likely to get more feedback from parents especially as they're still in the homework grind with their kids right but then you mentioned focus groups and so I'm curious if you can discuss a little bit about what you envision the makeup of your focus groups to be what

▶ 35:19 populations do you envision being included are you looking for specific identity groups to be there or is this a general whoever applies and we go forward what are we what consists of these focus groups we've done in the past is focus groups of students to just get the student voice different from a survey to sort of get more authentic kind of quantitative kind of data qualitative sorry qualitative kind of data from them we've we've we've kind of targeted specific age groups because of their ability better to communicate what their experiences so we've targeted fifth graders because they're at sort of the end of their elementary career we've then we've targeted eighth graders because they're at the end of that kind of space and

▶ 36:14 then we've kind of sort of targeted juniors and seniors in the past so that's something the focus group will kind of look at is where might be the best places for particular math in math but those have been have tended to be the age fans that we've kind of kids that we've talked to because of their ability to sort of give us the best sort of feedback on their particular experiences and those have been some of the most valuable pieces of data because the kids are pretty honest about what have been positive experiences and for them and what they have wished we would have done more or less of as well so those those kind of conversations have been the best and we've done as many as we can possibly do with the folks in the group and the folks of in the amount of

▶ 37:00 time that we have and the resources that we have so we've done as many as we could because of the importance of that kind of feedback we have not done them of parents we've sort of focused on the survey of parents that's how we have focused in the past with regards to the students can you talk to the challenge of translating a not the parents the student focus groups can you talk to the challenge of interpreting students like and dislike of an activity versus their ability to grasp a standard and move and tie that into the next standard say yeah And that gets better as the kids get older. I think it's much more challenging with, say, a younger student to have that match. But it depends on the group of kids.

▶ 37:48 We certainly have always tried to gather a group of students that kind of represent a wide range. We haven't necessarily just targeted students who have done very well in a subject or who have struggled, tried to get a broad range so that the kids could communicate their thinking to us. and so that I think the middle school and high school students are better able to communicate how they've been better able to grasp the content say from specific supports that have been in place either in the school or in their class specific classrooms that teachers have done over the years so they're better able to do that matching for us elementary students not quite yet but they have surprised us again what they have said has been invaluable what kids

▶ 38:33 have contributed because they offer another different perspective and very valuable one and unfiltered unfiltered I'm sure yeah and and with your leave I would like one more question in light I realize that this is a math review but I also accept that math is now part of stem the entire and so much of stem is math related and math based so does this program review look at all at any interdisciplinary or inter curricular standards discussions courses I'm sorry don't mean to make you quiver there it's certainly something that's come up because one of our questions is about how how mathematics really supports students to be effective citizens in a stem focused kind of world and in stem careers or just to be a good citizen who can take in information around stem

▶ 39:47 issues that affect our communities our nation in the world so that certainly has come up we still are cut we were still very early to sort of get really specific on where those connections lie and how are how strongly articulated they are I think we've got some ideas that perhaps they're not as in some places they're strongly articulated and other places they're not and could be strengthened so that's certainly something we don't want to see math in isolation it needs to be and there's lots of opportunities to support and integrate with science and technology I had a chemistry professor that said numbers by themselves are meaningless you need the units to go along with to provide context absolutely and how does our math curriculum provide context and

▶ 40:38 Jessica Dugan: if it doesn't where are there opportunities to do so thank you and that's the question I'm struggling with and trying to answer. Further questions? I have a few. It's great to see you. There's no better way to onboard into a new role than to deep dive into curriculum, so lucky you. I know it will be hard work, however, I hope also super valuable for your view of the big picture. I had a very similar question to Mr. Selms about that kind of interdisciplinary potential slightly different lens though I think as these program reviews I find super super valuable because we are looking at the big picture we're looking at a student's experience K to 12 and one of the lenses that I think is really important is around student engagement in the curriculum it translates into a

▶ 41:37 Jessica Dugan: lot of the work we're doing around project-based learning and I think that It's actually critical that these program reviews start to pay attention to interdisciplinary connections because without that, all of those curriculum areas begin to fall flat. This is the way, you know better than I do, the way teaching is going. So I guess I would encourage us to find a way to that exploration sooner than later and not, I know we're midway through this already, but I think it is absolutely critical to engaging students in the classroom in a way that translates for them into the real world. So if we could find our way to that, I think we would avoid missing an opportunity, knowing that these cycles only come around every few years for any given curriculum.

▶ 42:33 Jessica Dugan: Also the value of these, one of the values is, we've noticed it from other program reviews, teachers who are part of the team it gains so much from the experience of looking across grade levels and examining their practice in a really deep and meaningful way and I know there are a lot of people involved who are not on this list but I am a little curious about high school representation on your specific committee it sounds like maybe you were the high school teacher last year is there any way we can it's all elementary other than other than you miss Greenwood elementary and middle school without any high school representation or anyway right we've already reached out to great now the high school math

▶ 43:15 Jessica Dugan: department to try to get at least one or more representatives okay great start attending and and I know it's a volunteer engagement and appreciate the folks who have stepped up for that at the same time I hope you know it's it's So valuable, so I hope that we can get some folks to respond to that. Thank you, if there's, yes, Ms. Seymour. So again, this is, the purpose of the program review really is to look for things that we could do better. That's why we engage in this. It's a very self-critical study. Where are we going well, where are we not doing well? Probably one of the best parts of this whole thing, and I think both Dr. Adams and I don't know Miss Greenwood experienced it is when the visiting teams come in from other

▶ 44:06 districts and they're often districts that are comparable to ours or even considered higher performing than ours and they provide great feedback to our staff they say why aren't you doing this did you ever think about doing this this is what I saw you do well but this is how you could extend it so it's more effective so and the action plan that comes out of this is what we value most the action plan says to us what we need to improve if you remember the social studies action plan we finally began to have a sequenced k5 social studies approach we had never had it before you know the ELA it helped boost our writing across the curriculum and our again our writing alignment k12 so So similarly, this will come out of this with strong recommendations on improvements we

▶ 45:00 can make, areas that we need to address, yes, some praise of what we do well, but everybody likes to know that, okay, I'm doing something well, but that's where it's going to be important. My concern is every time we've had a program review, they all do come out with a budget impact and we have not always been able to meet the recommendations of that budget impact I think on the ELA ELA one if memory serves me correctly we were able to buy some of the books I think PTO has helped us with other parts of the books that we needed to do to add our nonfiction and to expand our library to be a more modern modern version of what we've had social studies we've never been able to buy the materials which we were sort of okay with because

▶ 45:55 the state has yet to settle on a social work studies framework and the worst thing you want to do is spend money and then have the state change its mind that happened in 1995 if I remember correctly so the committee has to understand what the implication is for this the implication for this always has dollars attached either in actual materials or in training so and in this subject especially we could be looking at that during the season now the problem is this will not come to us until after the budget season so whether we put a placeholder in the budget or not it's too early to say but it's something to keep in the back of your minds can you remind us when the last time we bought math curriculum was I thought it was relatively recently ah yes it was we

▶ 46:51 bought envision four years ago we just got the update for k2 envision and we bought new math books I'm looking at Laurie we're piloting this year yeah it's part of the textbook bond but the envision was K to 5 yeah yeah we did not buy new for six to eight recently they're very old no no we're piloting something we bought seven eight prior to me coming so I just started my six year so we brought seven eight prior to me coming it's probably seven or eight years old right yeah so yeah so I think we appreciate that reminder from the superintendent about budget Mr. O'Connell thank you I you know as I said with regard to the good the bad and the ugly I also don't want that realistic concern about budget

▶ 47:49 impact to cause the program review committee to dial back their work they want to say you know this is gonna cost X amount of dollars we can't say that we can't advocate for that I mean you need to push the envelope and it's quite frankly it's our job to say no so thank you further questions discussion you look forward to the continued exploration of math and how it connects to other things and the report later on this school year thank you very much thank you thank you ladies not so bad I'm sorry not so bad please come back regularly okay we are moving on the next topic sorry I have to enlarge the next next topic on our agenda is an education scholarship proposal okay so um let's have a larger conversation here one of the ongoing concerns we have and it

▶ 49:12 often comes up during budget season particularly around athletic fees quite honestly is those members of our community who are struggling financially and cannot reasonably access many of the things we have to offer so as you all know whether it's music fees athletic fees field trips those type of things we have always found his way as a district to quietly help families what we are beginning to see and you know this because I shared enrollment figures with you a couple of weeks ago is we have members of our community who are struggling a little bit more seriously we're up to about two dozen homeless children I think when we do our free and reduced lunch those numbers will have seen an increase our ELL population is up to about 160 many of them are new to

▶ 50:13 this country very new to this country some of them are refugees and increasingly as you know to live in a community like Melrose many of our families are have both parents working and so ed station fills an important void for many of our families it provides the childcare that they need we've had requests for scholarships and for over a year now and miss Farrell dr. Josephson and I have struggled with this topic and I that's why I think it's part of a larger conversation in any situation where we find we need to help families more than underwriting a field trip or something on a lower level lower level of need but something with significant need or significant cost associated to it we're struggling with how do you be fear and objective and

▶ 51:21 apply a criteria that is not cannot be seen as favoritism in anybody's case so one of the things I had suggested to dr. Josephson was to talk to the permanent scholarship committee in the city because they belong been long established and they run our very very successful scholarship program for our high school seniors in which we give tens of thousands of dollars and it's all done very objectively it's done blindly people's information is protected nobody within the schools is privy to it all these things come to my mind people's privacies their pride so Heather went to speak to them and based on her conversation with them she came forth with a proposal and we brought this proposal forth to you tonight i will tell you right now we have a handful of families

▶ 52:24 who need to have children in daycare of some sort and cannot pay or are struggling to pay i will also explain to all of you we do not take early education and child care vouchers that is a department within the state we don't take it for a very simple reason there is a level of inspection and compliance involved that i don't believe that we need to be held to we already are held to a number of inspections and compliance issues as a public school system you all know i can't even open our doors in august until i pass numerous inspections we are nacy certified at our early childhood and in all our case and to be eec qualified for the vouchers it's another whole level of inspections and qualifications so we're coming

▶ 53:27 forth with this dilemma to you but while it is about ed stations in tonight's packet it's a larger dilemma that we need to resolve I think Mary Ann told you in last year's budget that we underwrote and she can correct me $40,000 worth of activities fees for students who could not pay the activities fees we know that we have some exceedingly generous and kind families that when they pay their instrumental music fee pay twice and say to mr. Rappucci help somebody else we have quietly put one or two children into ECC who we feel that if we don't give them early education the impact on those children two three years later when they come to K will be very costly to the district because they will not

▶ 54:28 come ready to learn so there's a number of things we've done quietly but I think we're at a crossroads where we have to think about how do we do this in a more thoughtful yet I'm going to use the word ethical way so that people who come to what need feel that they've been fairly heard fairly treated and confidentiality will be maintained so that's what's in front of you today thank you very much for studying the the table there is their discussion I'm mr. school yeah thank you I think we need even yeah I understand the childcare situation but But we are not in the daycare business. We are in the education business and I think what I hear you fundamentally saying is these are students who would benefit greatly by the early childhood learning that they would

▶ 55:31 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: receive in our building. Is that correct? Mm-hmm. Okay. But that's ECC. This is EdStations. This is EdStations. Okay. But there is an educational component to that which can help. I mean, I think we need to focus on our core mission and I think it's important that there be elements of there's homework time right there's there's support there's you're talking about at ed stations yes there's homework time there's support there's tutoring for kids who need tutoring they do parents do pay extra for that this socialization there's a great amount of socialization I will tell the committee that I have to think about my timelines here two years ago we were challenged legally on ed stations in regard to children with behavioral

▶ 56:25 special needs and our attorneys are of the opinion that that we have a responsibility here because it is an extension of the Melrose Public Schools it does not operate separately as a non-profit it's on state on property that receives state and federal funding and so while it is not part of our original mission and our primary mission and if you know and there's nothing that says we have to do it under any of the regulations it has existed for nine years and it is very much viewed as part of what MPS offers and that's the dilemma okay so I have a couple more quick questions and um this the proposal that you have before us is in compliance with DESE regulations any any regulations that are out there if there is anything there's no regulations no

▶ 57:25 regulation okay so so again you know dr. Josephson the original idea was you know a scholarship fund almost like the permanent scholarship fund has where people donate and then we could use it to underwrite some underwrite some kids my concern is how do you choose those kids so but there are no regulations other than it goes through a revolving fund and as I've explained to dr. Josephson if this is a MPS revolving fund we are held to all the standards of any other revolving fund that we control and you'll be audited on that and be audit on it very good has this proposal been reviewed by the attorney yes okay very good and my last question is um something that I didn't see on here I could have missed it um but the school committee is responsible for accepting

▶ 58:27 all donations so if you would kindly ensure that that's included on the on the the guy the procedures please yeah thank you thank you miss Castelli what do other school districts do they obviously have the same issues that we do other school districts very few school districts have a program as large as ed stations that is the school districts program most school districts that I know bring in the Y a private organization Boys and Girls Club those type of things I know of very few school districts that have have an edge and it stations so I agree that there are some families who need help but I also know our budget is very tight so if the permanent scholarship fund has a good model that we can follow and we can use it for ed stations and

▶ 59:26 Christine Casatelli: ECC I would suggest that we go in that direction people in Melrose are very generous yes they are when they're asked to step up to help other families in need they they often do so my concern is that we don't take money from our existing budget which we need desperately to fund a program like this but instead if we could bolster up a permanent scholarship fund to help our families in need I would certainly support that Mr. Selm first a question a clarification what action are you looking for us to take on this tonight I that's a good question Mr. Selm I think whatever in the end the school committee has to approve this because it's raising money for a function of I I hate saying a function of the school an arm of the school department you know

▶ 1:00:31 so I think that no money should be raised or signed without the approval of this committee so then you are looking for a vote to move forward in collecting funds for a scholar orange and establishing the scholarship fund first before we collect anything and I'm not sure I would expect to vote this evening excellent okay thank you I think there is a lot to be be thought about and worked out here I just would caution the committee about dragging this out there you know it's September 26 already in the entrance interest of thoroughness when this is presented to us for full consideration and a vote I would like to request that we are presented with multiple models by which to accept or grant scholarships I think I think she had what I mean I'm sorry I'm I don't

▶ 1:01:47 see I see the form here I do not see any explanation I think what I think if you look at her proposed scholarship procedures on number six is that where she said I said well let me let me it's in my memory I think she said that she expects that people would be able to either target a school or target the general fund I think that's how she has it by multiple models do you mean partial full percentages is that what you're talking about by multiple models so can I ask me Marianne to come to the to participate in this because she's really been my partner on this sure right I am specifically looking for so I see the award selection committee and I apologize I'm I missed this particular form so obviously I didn't finish my homework bad me I still am even reading

▶ 1:03:08 this quickly I am still concerned that we don't have a specific award criteria you meet X X X and X therefore if we have funds we will give them I think I understand what you're saying when when it comes to filling out the application and you answer a certain set of criteria we don't already have a set answer so So you have to say yes to this and no to this and yes to this in order to get that money. Right. And I think that's what you're looking for more definition on. If what we're looking for is clarity, I don't like using the word because it has so many connotations, but transparency about what is expected in order to be able to qualify for and receive funds, I feel we need more full documentation as to what that expectation is yeah I think that's a

▶ 1:04:10 challenge when you when you think about the permanent scholarship committee and someone makes a donation they say I want this to go to somebody who's going to pursue a career in medicine so it's very specific this is somebody's who's going to donate some money and say that I want to help fund the tuition for this program what you might be looking for is to say I want it to be at the Hoover school because i'm a graduate of the hulu school and i'd like to see it to go to somebody there is that kind of what you're saying no i feel like we're we're talking past each other unfortunately um what i'm saying is is uh i'm not worried so much about the funds coming in my expectation is that as my colleague said uh melrose has a large quantity of generous donors

▶ 1:05:00 I am not concerned about the donation aspect I am concerned about the clarity of who we give them on funds to in your example that you just mentioned you specified that I would like this to go to Hoover School because I'm a Hoover alum are you by that are we saying that that goes specifically for needy and however we define needy children at Hoover School or are we talking about are we talking about this being a discount to all applicants to ed stations at Hoover School what is the criteria by which we sell I understand what she's saying so right now when we go to give help for athletic fees we look at kids who receive free and reduced lunch and where they are in that qualification so you know that when you get free and reduced lunch listen to me

▶ 1:06:04 it's free and reduced you may get free based on the government's calculation or you may get reduced based on the government's calculation so you're looking to say on to qualify for free tuition you have to be at this level to qualify for reduced tuition you have to be at this that's what you're looking for I'm looking for that criteria okay yes and if I may one other you mentioned a very valid point that I think is off overlooked that there are some students whom a little bit of extra help now will lead to less cost to put it in dollars and cents down the road and so what would be the criterion then for those students as well I want it I want to jump in as some chair of the sub committee just really quickly because this is very and we'll return to your

▶ 1:07:07 Jessica Dugan: questions but this seems like a this proposal is clearly a response to an urgent need of people here and now in our community however what it has brought up at that micro level is a much more macro level conversation and I think that I'm not sure that we are ready for this conversation you know quite quite frankly I would encourage us to send this proposal back to the superintendent I have concerns the permanent building the permanent scholarship fund is a separate 501 C 3 funding students to do things outside of our district after they graduate it's a completely different ballgame may have some tips we can learn from but this type of proposal would be committing this district to raising money from our community we don't have a function for

▶ 1:07:56 Jessica Dugan: that right now let alone deciding within the many needs of our low-income families for what they may have maybe asked to pay for to participate in activities our district does sponsor from ECC to ed stations which you know every one of them I don't know how we would prioritize this over forty thousand dollars of athletic fees that that we are underwriting at this moment that members of our community might generously help support if we ask that this is a to me a much more macro conversation that I think I appreciate the urgency I appreciate the potential solution by one of the departments kind of within this but I'm not quite sure that we're ready for this and we can return to questions if people want to add on to that but I actually would

▶ 1:08:47 Jessica Dugan: prefer that we send this back to the superintendent for a proposal on how to find our way through to the solution for this it's a lot of other times we've talked about it we've talked about whether there's some fund within the city for for supporting these families um i i think there's a larger conversation to be had superintendent the um and that's where i began tonight by saying that i think this is um indicative of of a more comprehensive problem that we don't talk about out loud right um and the mayor has his emergency fund but the emergency fund is for one-time situations it's you can't pay your rent uh your car broke down you need to go to work you don't have the money to repair it um very very generous and again um melrose citizens are extremely

▶ 1:09:43 generous to the emergency fund um this is a more of a nine month issue um but to your point about the athletic fees and things like that um it it's a dilemma um and whether it's a solution to be made by an outside group that then donates to the district i don't know um um i think to your other point though is i do have a couple of families in need right now that we need to address my concerns are for the children of course that's where my concern is mainly I never want kids going home to empty houses so I'm looking for guidance on that what would the committee be comfortable with and in the meanwhile we could take a larger proposal back to some administrators and try to brainstorm around it if anybody in the committee wants to help us brainstorm your help is more than

▶ 1:10:52 Jessica Dugan: welcome because again very honestly this is a new role for a superintendent this is not in you know superintendency school about these type of things but as we all know as society has evolved in the educational system has evolved we've had to take on a lot of things that we never thought were in our mission as Miss Driscoll says for the the immediate needs we're supporting this somehow already across these various programs and I guess I would ask if we are if you're able to figure that out within our current budget I don't think we're prepared to approve requesting donations from the community to support this at at this time so is it something that we can find a way to respond to as we have been

▶ 1:11:48 for um last few years um I don't know if we can do that net stations quite frankly I never I haven't done the calculation I haven't looked at what the yearly cost is for ed stations recently I looked at it a few weeks ago and you're talking about a couple hundred dollars a week I'm looking at some of my parents here who maybe they know so if you're talking 40 weeks of a school year a couple hundred dollars a week um you know that's a lot of money for the school system to be for full support for full support maybe there's a discount of some sort right but then again who is eligible for a discount who are you going to leave it to i think ellie wants to say something oh um i was just um i had like a quick question um so you were talking about the spending that has um has been

▶ 1:12:41 Christine Casatelli: given to um ed stations so i was wondering as a student at lincoln i saw a lot of kids from the high school participating in helping kids in elementary school with ed stations so i was wondering if that was volunteer based or half and half they get they get paid ellie yeah okay good question an application now no okay good question good question uh miss castelli that was awesome keep asking questions uh just for the superintendent isn't our isn't our um default the free and reduced lunch why would we change okay why would we change from that and do we sorry and that's a government program so it's it's out of our hands someone a third party determines that so i would i would suggest just keeping all things the same and the differentiation

▶ 1:13:37 Jessica Dugan: between free and reduced and that there's some variation it's not just automatically a full and do we feel like the other organizations who are responding to these requests for any other fee-based programs in the school are using that criteria as well we use free and reduced lunch i'll let Ms. Farrell speak to it yeah one of our programs like our music program is tied to that so that is the benchmark on same thing with our athletic programs free and reduced lunch for athletics as well yeah so if there are folks who are willing to dive into this very complicated conversation please please let us know it is urgent yeah I think it's important to solve it with a broad view are there is there any other

▶ 1:14:26 discussion or comment at this time mr. some I just want to ask will the guideline of free and reduced lunch satisfy the current need I won't know until we go back and we have a conversation she's making a face now we have a very large population on free reduce and if that percentage is the same with the people the families that use that stations I mean there's just no way that we can we can't yeah okay thank you thank you very much miss Farrell and thanks to all of you for diving into this we'll look forward to more and that concludes EP&P this evening thank you thank you thank you next on our agenda is the policy and planning subcommittee mr. O'Connell good evening folks welcome to the policy and planning portion of our program and we continue our journey

▶ 1:15:41 on the mask highway the Mass Association school committee's policy update process we have in our packet tonight an updated policy update grid and we also have on our agenda this evening five policies the committee will recall that these were last before us for information report informational purposes the committee will also recall that we had some discussion about policy ADC smoking on school premises and we also had the benefit of input from the school wellness advisory committee which was much and is much appreciated and the committee will note in looking at revised ADC as it is in the packet this week it does reflect changes based on our discussion in our last meeting so with that said we have ADC BBA BBB AB BDD and be da before us so as a

▶ 1:16:47 As a preliminary matter, before we move this to a vote, does anyone on the committee want to pull any one of these particular policies out for a more detailed discussion at this time? Seeing no such will, the chair would then entertain a motion to approve these on bank, if you will. Is there such a motion? So moved. Made by Ms. DeSelm, seconded by Ms. Driscoll. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none. Ms. DeSomme. I appreciate the added work and input the chair of this subcommittee has taken in from various sources. I appreciate those various sources. Thank you for that and I should note that the majority of the work particularly with regard to policy ADC was done by our colleague Ms. McAllister

▶ 1:17:38 Grant so she really deserves the credit on that. Any further discussion on the motion approved we haven't got to that one yet all righty seeing no discussion all those in favor the motion carries unanimously with two absent and thank you for that the next item on our agenda is one of my favorite pieces of business and documents our strategy overview I note madam superintendent that this is an abbreviated version of it this is the entire document and let me say you know I tend to repeat myself in my dotage I struggle with I struggle with this document I appreciate its complexity and I think I appreciate correctly that this document is more about what you and your team do on an almost daily basis more

▶ 1:18:58 than what we do so it's very informational I really would like us to to find a better way to do this and i i don't have a solution and i i i don't know that i'm alone in struggling to read this document um or maybe i am but with all of that said madam superintendent would you like to speak to the strategy overview yes thank you um so you know again this is a format as i've explained five years ago um is really becoming um universal among superintendents as the state has trained more and more superintendents in conjunction with some local universities they basically adopted an approach that was developed at harvard and this um um from a book called strategy in action if you've never read it and this approach came out of that work and many of my colleagues have a very

▶ 1:20:06 similar it's a theory of action it's an action plan a similar format when we went out to do it this year the first first thing I want to tell you is it's a much larger team when we first started this it was my administrative team maybe 11 people now it's a much larger team we have the educational team facilitators we have the content facilitators in the room we had a couple of teachers who said can I participate and I said sure why not all the administrators so it's a really good discussion about what have we done where were we and where are we going and the first issue that I said to them quite frankly was this is the old vision we do not have a new vision I shared with them some of the conversation that we're having as a committee about a new vision but a new

▶ 1:21:09 vision does not exist so we worked with what we have I think at the time we started this we hadn't adopted it because my retreat was in June so that's all right but they knew what what you were talking about we refined the theory of action which we've done over the past couple of years because we want to include culture and climate we want to include relationships and make sure that we're factoring that into our work what surprised me the most when we went to do this this year is the team which had a lot of teachers in the room said to me can we revisit the strategic objectives and tie them more closely to the rubric to the evaluation instrument because if you remember I had planning curriculum

▶ 1:22:05 instruction data and assessment these objectives came from them they wanted them to be very clearly articulated and tied to the evaluation rubric so we have basically four new objectives and we looked at the rubric and while they don't align 100% with the indicators they reflect the heart of the rubrics curriculum planning and assessment teaching all students responsive and inclusive environments professional culture and community engagement then when we went to do the priorities again they surprised me last year when they participated for the first time they it went on to three pages it was their first time out they learned to regret that because that meant there was so much more we had to report out on and that's where your abbreviation may be

▶ 1:23:10 coming from when you look at this and the very interesting discussion again if you look at the verbs that are used here they raised the level in the business we refer to it as they went to higher higher thinking skill verbiage where before we would say implement explore they said to me no we've done that how do we go deeper so you know update rubrics continue advance further we begin to get stuck after a while foster improve but they wanted to have priorities that pushed deeper work the last thing they surprised me with was they felt very strongly that we somehow get in here continuing to work on content and instruction somehow embed that in the priorities so that's why you you have a objective that says develop and plan high quality curriculum and

▶ 1:24:27 systems of assessment that enhance student-centered personalized and self-directed learning and while you also have employee instructional practices that expect high expectations for content and performance engage all students and are personalized to accommodate diverse learning styles needs interests and levels of proficiency now we all know from when we've done wordsmithing together it gets a little choppy and it gets a little difficult and you try to control it so that it's not verbose and in the end this is what we came away with I don't write this they write this with me I send it out to them after the meeting I asked for feedback I correct it I send it out again so this is really a collaborative effort what what I found

▶ 1:25:16 interesting is probably how far we have moved from the very first one I've done that one was was me and the administrators only and so this really reflected what they did what you do not have here because it's for them internally is they spent time linking what they wrote to specific rubrics so So there is another version of this that if you go to the bottom of every column, it tells you its indicator, and I'm making this up, 1A3, or indicator 3C2, so that teachers know exactly what is going to be the focus when it comes to evaluation. So this is what we've set. continues to be reflect the work that we are doing in quite frankly inclusive education technology competency-based education so it continues those themes

▶ 1:26:27 but in a very integrated approach that I think is much deeper than we were doing before they're trying to push the concept that nothing is in isolation nothing is done as a silo it's all an integrated effort so if I may ask how would you have us use this document so what happens on this document is two things first of all there has to be an alignment between your goals and this document and my goals and then we align the teachers goals with this as well so we always have that what we call that through line so when I sat with administrators last week we talked about their goals and everybody has the strategy overview in front of them they had their AIPs in front of them and what is the goal that you're going to have as an administrator that is somehow going

▶ 1:27:30 to integrate this so that I hold you accountable for it okay that's how it works at the administrative level it has to work the same at your level as well and then what we do on this what I do on this and that this is the habit that you've all developed when since I first presented this five years ago is I report out very briefly against the the priority now you all know and I thank you because you've recognized that what we report out on this is a fraction of the work we every we do every day all right and there is no way to report out on what we do 260 days a year because that's you know that's how everybody in this job is working 260 they may not be in school 260 but they're working 260 all right you have to distinguish between what are your high-level

▶ 1:28:27 Jessica Dugan: priorities in any given year and the everyday work so what the team has decided is that this is their high-level priority as administrators and teachers for this year mr. thanks so I enjoy this document and I find myself getting bogged down in it at the same time but I love that they're bought into it what I'm what I'm seeing a little bit is a lot of thing the same thing being said with slightly different words to fit within each of these objective areas that sounds like it might be on purpose because the point is nothing happens in a silo but in my mind that's a little bit of what's bogging it down so I care very much and to be honest find a little bit there's so much work being done on practices theory of teaching PBIS interventions those types of things what

▶ 1:29:47 Jessica Dugan: I am starting to miss in our work as a district is the deeper curriculum content unit development I'm not saying it's not happening I just know all these other things are such a focus that what I'm missing is what I think is critical to be happening side by side with CBE and you know standards for proficiencies and habits of learning I'm so excited for those things to be brought in but at the same time I think we need to make sure we continue to deepen the curriculum unit and I'm missing that from this so plan just really quickly and I've I've always thought this and I have a hard time figuring out how to say it so it you know maybe this is making sense to me in a little bit different way but it's it's more from the lens of student engagement then how teachers are

▶ 1:30:49 Jessica Dugan: practicing their craft so to me the curriculum content development has to progress and go deeper every year which is the mind frame of your team right but I don't see it reflected in here because I feel like the rest of it the theory that the practices the strategies have taken over so I guess maybe if you could reflect a little bit on that I know it's still happening but I'm not seeing it as a priority and that's a little bit so so that was part of the discussion so the part of the discussion is this is the fifth iteration of this so part of the discussion was how do you keep moving forward building on what you've done without being bogged down in repeating what you've done before so that becomes

▶ 1:31:37 Jessica Dugan: a real issue so when you look at continue to revise curriculum units and assessments that align to content areas that's that curriculum work and habits learning and standards that integrate technology like that to me is said somewhere else but it takes away from the the work that needs to be done on the actual curriculum how are you teaching earth science differently from sixth seventh to eighth grade what is the actual unit so that's that's where it talks about alignment wherever it talks about alignment that's what they're what they're talking about they say advanced inquiry based and project based learning the inquiry based is the science well I hope it's a project based to it so I see that in one place and the rest of it I see that basically all these theories

▶ 1:32:30 and things being repeated over and over again different ways and that is what I'm missing so what you try to do when you try to do this is again and when is is you try to have integration in the document both vertically and horizontally. You're going to have reputation. It's the same thing we tell teachers when they give us artifacts. You don't give us an artifact for a single activity or a single rubric, a single element. You give us an artifact that represents multiple elements across multiple indicators. Again, working towards that theory that nothing is in isolation. So if you look at stuff like assessment, when we talk about assessment, all right, and it goes a little bit to some conversation

▶ 1:33:16 that Ed and I have had recently, all right, it's a cycle. You always have to think of this as a cycle. Where do I start? It's a chicken or egg. So I start with assessment. That's just how I operate. What do my kids know? What don't my kids know? Now, why do they know what they know? Why do they not know what they know? Is it a matter of my curriculum? Is it a matter of my instructional practices? Is there some other factor? All right, now I make my corrections to curriculum. I make my corrections to instruction. I assess again. If I still have gaps in my outcomes, all right, well, maybe my assessment's wrong. Did my assessment not measure what I taught? Was my assessment not aligned? Or am I still missing the boat somewhere?

▶ 1:34:07 Jessica Dugan: So it's always that circular thing in education. That's how we operate. And I think that's what they were trying to capture. Yeah, I get that. I like this. I'm just missing it. And maybe it's what, I don't know exactly what we will see as this develops to show that the curriculum units, the actual content of what is being taught is progressing. progressing I hear what you're saying and I and I will talk to the team about that but again I have to respect that I had 30 odd people in a room and this is the document they created to reflect the work they want to do based on what we've done in the past and I respect that very much too again to me that that's the whole and maybe what that means is that we as a school committee need to talk

▶ 1:35:05 about that a little bit more I may be the only one who sees that but to me that would potentially be a goal that we would set and encourage them to respond to in future years mm-hmm I love how committed they are to this and bought into this so so the interesting thing on the technology is and again we're not talking about machines you may know and I think I've shared with you that the state is accelerating its expectations around what we're beginning to call computing knowledge not computer science where computing knowledge becomes embedded in every course so you can so it was a challenge with that we talked about how do you make that a reality so let me give you an example and it again and see in my head I see it all interconnected because of the way I see

▶ 1:36:06 things when you talk about universal design for learning when you talk about project-based learning when you talk about personalized learning or differentiation for different kids needs there they all interconnect so here's an example of where we're going to begin to see computer computing knowledge become part of every subject I'm teaching English and I'm going to ask you that because I just taught you myths and legends not an uncommon middle school project going back to my roots now I'm going to ask you to take the elements of myths and legends that I've taught you and write your own myth okay well what you're going to begin to see is some kid using Minecraft to create their myths and that be perfectly acceptable to the teacher as long as they've displayed the

▶ 1:37:08 elements I'm looking for another kid may do a traditional writing another kid may write a play you know when you start to talk about multiple means of expression you give kids multiple opportunities to express what they know and how they know it in a way that works for them there is an expectation that one of those options is computer based not in the sense of using a PowerPoint but in a much more using coding using multiple media all right that's going to be an expectation so we've begun to talk about well how do we build out that capacity for our staff and how do we make it okay for people to experiment with that and know that that's okay way to assess a kid so that's one of the things that was

▶ 1:38:07 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: driving this discussion how do we begin to go beyond the fact that gee it's nice to have one of these for every kid but what are they really doing with it that's enhancing their learning and giving them new ways to not only create information but to share information. Ms. Driscoll please. Thank you so I would recommend that we we take this to our goals discussion I think that's a really good idea and just I just want to clarify in terms of roles and responsibilities it is the purview of the committee to vote strategic plans because our budget ties to the strategic plan so I agree with Ms. Dugan that we want to make sure we understand what that is so that when we build the budget for next year we can fund what we collectively agree we value thank you

▶ 1:38:55 and so our strategic planning will inform this document which gets back to my question about you know what our role is and what you want from us with regard to this document does that make sense to you I mean no please elaborate because the state no longer requires strategic plans from school committees that model is gone by the wayside the state has let go of that model where you spend ten twenty twenty five thousand dollars and bring in some advisors and help write a five-year strategic plan this is the model the state has gone to and this is a model that's based on a needs assessment done by the superintendent all right and then producing a plan for the work for the staff to do and yes it

▶ 1:39:44 is tied to your goals well our goal is and even though the the new vision is not there your new vision was very similar it's about raising student outcomes so this strategy overview is how do you raise student outcomes we're doing well in some areas we're not doing well in other areas you know to the discussion earlier tonight we continue to have pockets of concern with middle school outcomes we continue to have pockets of concern with individual classrooms I would never ever tell you differently thankfully the high school is pretty on track including closing the achievement gap at the high school but this is about building capacity so that we can improve kids outcomes and that is ultimately the goal of this district the fallout mr.

▶ 1:40:40 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: yes so I I still question the roles and responsibilities piece so I would with the indulgence of the chair invite the chair to explore with the school committees Association what they feel the role and responsibility is get some counsel from them and maybe ask them what is your experience with this kind of document if it's not a traditional strategic plan what are the roles and responsibilities and can you help that figure it out figure help us figure it out so that we have a clear understanding when we go to do our roles and responsibilities how to parse that out in terms of functions and also the votes that we need to take to you know to execute our responsibilities on behalf of the community will do thank you for that any further discussion

▶ 1:41:31 seeing none Thank You madam superintendent that will conclude the policy and planning portion of our program next next on our agenda is a discussion of the student representatives and Student Advisory Committee mr. O'Connell would you like to speak with that point to that yes thank you madam chair so I've been working with my colleague mr. Selm and also miss Dugan in her role as liaison to the high school and the proposal we would like the committee to consider is a revamp of our relationship with the Student Advisory Committee and the student representatives there on and Ms. Ferris provided a great example of what we hope to achieve at least in some small measure tonight. So the proposal is this that the chair Delegate liaison or

▶ 1:43:02 liaisons from this committee to the Student Advisory Committee and that the required bi-monthly meetings of the Student Advisory Committee take place not in the opening moments of this committee's work but at the high school again it would be bi-monthly it would be in accordance with the requirements but it would be at the high school and not here before our meeting and among the aims of those meetings at the high school would be to review with the students and perhaps a more informal setting but certainly open to the public their interest and concerns and the the format for doing that the context would be the rolling agenda so the liaisons would work with the students to look ahead at the rolling agenda agenda and identify interesting concerns they might

▶ 1:43:59 have and in as well as other concerns beyond that and then work with the students to help them prepare to appear before the school committee or with the school committee and to present their views their perspective on those issues and the expert expectation would be that the superintendent would also ask that the building principal or principals if we were involving and I suspect we will be involving the middle school students that they would act as faculty advisors or their designee so the idea ultimately is to certainly meet the spirit of the law in this regard and I think go a long way toward meeting the letter of the law that governs student advisory committees but more importantly to have the

▶ 1:44:59 Jessica Dugan: students have a more substantive experience as much as we all appreciate being informed of upcoming events at the school or past outcomes of sporting events I think there's a greater opportunity here for the students to participate and with leave of the chair I would ask that we vote on it if that's appropriate tonight or at least have further discussion and I would also defer to Mr. Selm and Ms. Dugan for further comments thank you very good is there any discussion Ms. Dugan the opportunity for student voice is valuable in so many ways and this proposal to me takes a step in that direction I would encourage us from a capacity standpoint to see our way to to this proposal but within a structure that already exists so if there are

▶ 1:46:00 Jessica Dugan: whoever the advisors are to the student governments already maybe could it could be a part of that function or a part of fit fit it within something that's already there so that we're not creating a new role for our faculty but the intention of the role it to me is of what's important and if we can do it within something existing already I think that would make it more likely to succeed I think that's great thing if I may respond madam chair my understanding is I think we'll get to that it my understanding of the way student government operates at the high school or and or the student council at the middle school is that it's at least at present separate and apart from from students role as student representatives to the school committee but I think

▶ 1:46:52 you're thinking is spot-on I think you know long term we'll get to a point where there'll be overlap there'll be interplay between the student government and and the student council at the middle school and these student representatives maybe they'll be one in the same but I think for now until we get to that point you know with leave of the superintendent and I think the building principals are ready willing able to do this if they could serve as advisors or their designees I mean I think there should be someone there it has to be a school administrator or advisor they are just it could be you know a teacher who's an advisor if I remember correctly they're elected out out of their student council at least the middle school kids were elected out of their student

▶ 1:47:48 council the high school kids I'm looking at Marianne I think it's a separate election it's a separate election totally so at the middle school it would make sense for it to continue to be part of their student council um I think at the high school we would have to explore who works with them on keeping them pretty organized I'm trying to think it might be it might be an assistant principal who who stays on top of them at the high school right i mean the fact of the matter is you know by statute it's at least the high school level it's a separate entity right it's not about student government it's about the student advisory committee in and of itself so mr sum did you have a comment i did yes um i think i just want to clarify if i may through the chair

▶ 1:48:41 to mr o'connell um it was my understanding that what the discussion at the sac with the students and one of us as representatives or liaisons would focus on said rolling agenda and upcoming topics and then just to give them background and information such that then they could attend the meeting to discuss that i'm not sure that uh discuss said topics here i'm not sure in the proposal here that that is quite made clear um that's in keeping with my thinking for whatever that's worth so so i just want to put that clarification in uh if we i am uh very much for this but that said if it's the will of the committee to wait or modify amend said proposal i certainly will work with whomever to see this through so manager should i put something in

▶ 1:49:58 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: writing yes so that's what i'm going to suggest is a couple things first um i think we have to to be thoughtful and I of course you folks would do this anyway but we have to be thoughtful about the fact that this is a business meeting so we want to you know stay within our agenda and so forth we also wanted to respect our administrators time we do try carefully to limit the number of times our administrators come before us so that they can get up and do the other work that they do every day so if you would please be sure to include those kinds of criteria and that I would invite anyone who's mr. O'Connell interested if you have more than a quorum you'll need to call a meeting to do that if you have

▶ 1:50:47 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: less than a quorum you can have a discussion put something in writing for the next packet and we can certainly consider and vote that at that time if that is the will of the committee I'm happy to do that perfect thank you anything else okay thanks um next is the alternate delegate selection as you recall we voted previously on a delegate and when i went to fill out the form i realized that there is also a line for an alternate voting delegate so i would be delighted to entertain an individual uh for that for that role is there anyone who would like to make a comment about that miss castelli i would like to make a motion for uh mr selma to be that alternate delegate second made the motion is made

▶ 1:51:35 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: by ms casatelli and seconded by ms dugan is there any discussion on this motion seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously with two absent next we have our liaison reports and unfortunately ms mcallister grand was unable to be with us tonight but she had two liaison reports um both around um birth to five the first is the city is again hosting a free swap on saturday october 7th from 8 to noon behind memorial hall in the city hall parking lot last year birth to five partnered with the city at this event and it was a huge success birth defy would like to encourage folks to come to the event and bring any gently used clothing for babies and young kids secondly birth to five is hoping to partner with the melrose commission on women as they work on

▶ 1:52:25 sending a survey about child care costs for families in massachusetts please keep an eye out for information about the survey and share your thoughts with the commission to aid in their work would anyone else like to offer a liaison report mr o'connell um i actually have um not several but but a couple uh if the sheriff can bear with me and the committee members uh with regard to cpac special education parents advisory uh committee uh they had their first meeting of of the new school year last week the group is focusing on outreach data collection and is always working to ensure that our in district programming and services are meeting the needs of as many students as possible within the limits of our current resources financial and otherwise it's my further

▶ 1:53:08 understanding that the group is partnering with the administration with regard to its planning and outreach efforts finally the next CPAC meeting is scheduled for October 12th and I would urge all with an interest in special education to attend it's my understanding that we presently have some 570 students receiving some level of services under the auspices of special education and I would certainly say that caregivers for and family members of those students should be involved with CPAC lest they not get the most they can from what's available in terms of information resources and importantly lest their time, energy, insights, and perspectives not be part of the CPAC conversation. Again, next meeting October 12th, 7 p.m. The group can be reached

▶ 1:53:56 MelroseCPAC02176 at gmail.com. The second item, if I may, Madam Chair, the Student Activity Fees Working Group, ably led by Stephen Fogarty. This group is meeting at the behest of the superintendent to review our current range of student activity fees with the aim of making a recommendation or series of recommendations to the superintendent. We have met twice to date and will be meeting monthly from now until the end of the year. Our focus has been so far on data collection and discussing the various interests at stake, all with an emphasis on equity for our students and families and importantly the financial sustainability of our programming. In addition to my meetings with the working group members.

▶ 1:54:43 I'm also scheduled to meet in the coming weeks with the Friends of Melrose Drama and the Melrose Band-Aiders. And I'm anxious to see, of course, whether the marching band will refuse to yield. And importantly, I would welcome the opportunity to meet and or hear from other organizations working to support our student groups and activities. I would rather have those conversations sooner rather than later. I would rather have those conversations not in the heat of a vote to adopt or reject fees but in advance and finally in terms of reports and I think I speak for many on the committee I had the benefit and pleasure of attending many of the elementary open houses as well as the middle school open house they were well intended they were attended rather

▶ 1:55:34 and I'm sure well intended informative each of the schools look great the formal presentations that I saw by principals and staff were excellent and in particular the renovations at Horace Mann and the additions at the Hoover and Winthrop schools look terrific and seemed by all indications to have been very well received by the respective school communities I would also note in this regard that the middle school open house is tomorrow evening at the high school beginning at 6 30 and my last item and i realize i'm stretching people's patience but a point of personal privilege if i may madam chair i wanted to note the recent passing of former mass teachers association president kathleen roberts who with the benefit of 103 remarkable years

▶ 1:56:26 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: served the interest of education in Massachusetts with persistence, dedication, and over 30 plus years of her retirement, a remarkable commitment to volunteerism and education that is and was truly inspiring, and we are all certainly better for her life's work. Thank you. Thank you. Any other liaison reports? Seeing none, the last item on our agenda is action item progress report. it's listed here only to say that we'll be looking at that when we do our the agenda for our retreat so if everybody would you could start thinking now at the end of September for the third week in October's give you a little time to please include that in your consideration and we'll be talking about it as we think about the next year and with that I would entertain a motion to

▶ 1:57:19 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: adjourn so moved second made by Miss Casatelli seconded by Miss Dugan is their discussion on this motion seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously with two absent we are adjourned

Original documents

• Minutes (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda (IQM2 PDF)
• Agenda (IQM2 PDF)
• Bulletin (IQM2 PDF)
• Bulletin (IQM2 PDF)
• Minutes packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Minutes packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Agenda packet (CivicClerk PDF)
• Agenda packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Agenda packet (IQM2 PDF)
• Other (CivicClerk PDF)
• This meeting on the city portal