School Committee — 2017-11-14

Agenda

1. Superintendent's Update (5 minutes) (20:48)
2. Second vote - Policy DKC: Expense Reimbursements (22:47)
3. Second vote - Policy DJE: Procurement Requirements (23:01)
4. Second vote - Policy BHE: Use of Electronic Messaging by Members (23:07)
5. Second vote - Policy IJND: Access to Digital Resources (23:14)
6. Second vote - Policy IJNDB: Acceptable Use (23:20)
7. Cafeteria Report (23:28)
8. Warrants (23:32)
9. Monthly Budget Summary (2:38:00)
10. High School Girls Hockey Waiver (5 minutes) (24:17)
11. State-Wide Test Results (45 minutes) (28:32)
12. Snow Cancellation Project — Blizzard Bags (15 minutes) (1:50:55)
13. Plan for School Committee Self-Evaluation (15 minutes) (2:31:26)
14. Policy JFABB: International Students (5 minutes) (2:34:55)
15. DESE Annual Report (5 minutes) (2:41:23)
16. Superintendent's Goals (10 minutes) (2:42:02)
17. 2018 Rolling Agenda (10 minutes) (2:50:30)
18. Proposed School Committee Action Items (10 minutes) (2:56:32)
19. Liaison Reports (5 minutes) (2:59:50)

Minutes

CITY OF MELROSE MELROSE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MINUTES● NOVEMBER 14, 2017 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Regular Meeting 7:00 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176

(ID # 6014) Announcements - Superintendent Superintendent's Update (5 minutes)

(ID # 6010) Consent Second vote - Policy DKC: Expense Reimbursements Adopted

(ID # 6009) Consent Second vote - Policy DJE: Procurement Requirements Adopted

(ID # 6008) Consent Second vote - Policy BHE: Use of Electronic Messaging by Members Adopted

(ID # 6011) Consent Second vote - Policy IJND: Access to Digital Resources Adopted

(ID # 6012) Consent Second vote - Policy IJNDB: Acceptable Use Adopted

(ID # 6028) Consent Cafeteria Report Adopted

(ID # 6024) Consent Warrants Adopted City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 11/20/2017 1:23 PM Minutes Melrose School Committee November 14, 2017

(ID # 6025) Consent Monthly Budget Summary

(ID # 6035) Educational Programs and Personnel High School Girls Hockey Waiver (5 minutes)

(ID # 6006) Educational Programs and Personnel State-Wide Test Results (45 minutes)

(ID # 6029) Educational Programs and Personnel Snow Cancellation Project — Blizzard Bags (15 minutes)

(ID # 6003) Policy and Planning Plan for School Committee Self-Evaluation (15 minutes)

(ID # 6031) Policy and Planning Policy JFABB: International Students (5 minutes)

(ID # 6007) Finance and Facilities DESE Annual Report (5 minutes)

(ID # 6033) Announcements - Chair Superintendent's Goals (10 minutes)

(ID # 6004) Announcements - Chair 2018 Rolling Agenda (10 minutes)

(ID # 6032) Announcements - Chair Proposed School Committee Action Items (10 minutes)

(ID # 6005) Announcements - Chair Liaison Reports (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 11/20/2017 1:23 PM

Transcript

▶ 0:00 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: Good evening and welcome to the Melrose School Committee meeting of November 14th, 2017. Can we 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. That was a wonderful pledge of allegiance, students. Thank you. just so everyone knows this meeting is being recorded first on our agenda we are delighted to showcase the Hoover School this evening so I will invite Hoover School folks to come forward and invite the superintendent to introduce them this is the first time we've had a mascot at the meeting and for those of you who don't know Hershey the Hoover Hawk this is we don't know if it's a she

▶ 1:11 or he but this is Hershey and thank you for coming Hoover Hawk students and bird this is a it's our pleasure to have you we take one one meeting a month we highlight a different school and tonight's the Hoovers night and we think it's great that you have such a big turnout this is a totally student run presentation so with that I will turn it over to Hershey and our first speaker would you please introduce yourself hi my name is Hannah Hazeltine and I'm the current president of the Hoover Elementary Student Site Council now some of you out there may be wondering what the students in our council do the Student Site Council is a group of students that has been voted and chosen chosen to represent Hoover School and their individual classes. Our mission is

▶ 2:04 to promote a welcoming and respectful community that fosters innovation, independent thinking, and leadership where students, faculty, and families collaborate toward academic achievement and social responsibility for all. We slowly step-by-step achieve this goal by pushing ourselves and making more goals to better ourselves. We have recently over achieved our goal for the fun run and are wearing our t-shirts that everyone got for participating in it. We like to look into the future and see what we can change or upgrade to make our school a better place. This year we have carried over our reading goal from last year and created two new service projects that we are excited to launch and are sure you will love and agree with. Our friend Hershey over here is just

▶ 2:50 as excited about all these ideas as you are. He has given me a little speech to delivered to you because he only speaks hawk. We have so much to offer here at Hoover, and these students in our council are very excited to share some of the few great things we are currently offering. Now let's get the show on the road. Go Hoover Hawks. Thanks, Hershey. And now for a brief overview of one of our latest service projects. Thank you, and please enjoy the rest of our presentation. Hi, my name is Joseph Brady, and I'm the homer representative for Mr. Sears fifth grade class. We all know about the hurricanes that have been affecting people's lives across the United States and US territories. All the hurricanes have destroyed people's homes, taken away

▶ 3:58 their food and much more. So the Student Site Council has decided to have a food drive for those in need. We have titled this food fight. This is a whole school competition which is why we are calling it a fight. This will be a great way to help those affected by the hurricanes. Each class will bring in donations of different types of food that people need. We have organized it so students will put their donations in their classrooms designated donation bin. Each item counts as one point. At the end of the food drive the class who wins the most points will get a reward. The Student Site Council is looking for a local charity that is collecting specific food donations for this cause and we hope

▶ 4:45 Hoover will bring in tons of donations so that we can help those in need now you can hear about the next service project hi I'm Maddie burns and I'm the homeroom rep for Miss Bode's fifth grade class hi I'm Allie burns and I'm the student side council vice president this year for student council for one of our service projects we decided to do a fundraiser to help raise money for breast cancer and we are doing this in honor of one of our teachers. We thought that we could do a penny war for breast cancer since the penny wars raised a ton of money for the school when we used it over the last two years. The site council members will monitor which classes contribute the most money. Once the penny war is over and the money is collected and counted it will be donated

▶ 5:48 to breast cancer research. We hope you enjoyed hearing about our new service projects. Now let's hear what's happening from our new site council members. When the site council members are interested in gathering information from the students, we often ask them at lunch. We call this council with the council. Recently, we went with K and 1 students and asked them two questions. First, what are your favorite things about Hoover? And second, what are you looking forward to during your time at Hoover? Isaiah Arrington and Ronan Sanzone, homeroom representatives for the fourth grade, are now going to share with you what the students are looking forward to while at Hoover. At Hoover School, they're looking for field trips like Plymouth Plantation.

▶ 6:50 Or DPW Day. And getting checks. Pajama Day. Meeting new kindergartners. 100 Mile Club. Learning with teachers. And Hershey. Please welcome Key and Sullivan, the site council secretary, Adelina Barnes and Colby Higgins, our third grade homework representatives, who are going to share with you some of what the K-1 students' favorite things are currently about Hoover. Recess, including monkey bars, swings, slides, and structures. math and math stars specials particularly art and PE lunch a favorite are the tater tots and with the teachers and Chromebooks and finally after school thank you for your support of Huber have a good evening thank you so much Hoover students do any members of the committee have any questions for

▶ 8:16 our students who are with us tonight this McAllister grand can you all come up here so we can get you answers from you have to sit on the floor first of all thank you so much for that presentation I learned a lot first if I come to Hoover I will definitely order the tater tots I thought you were so well prepared and you did such a great job working together as a team I'm really impressed and I'm thankful for all the work you put into that and thankful to your parents who can families who came out to support you and your teachers and your principal and all those folks who helped to get you ready but it seems like you did a lot of work yourselves didn't you what can you can a few of you tell me what the hardest part was of getting ready for this spotlight

▶ 9:14 Christine Casatelli: any of the time like all of you get together is that hard for school that's early and during lunch was were you nervous at all you were nervous you didn't look nervous at all you did awesome thank you so much any other questions for our students miss Castelli Wow Wow Wow that's all I have to say you know I learned a lot about what's going on at Hoover you you students do so much there but the most important thing I learned about the Hoover is the students there students who go there are so smart and I have to say you have the smartest hawk in the whole school so thank you so much for coming today and we look forward to hearing from you again about all the wonderful things you're doing at your school anyone else seeing none I'm gonna ask you guys to stay right there

▶ 10:22 and I'm gonna ask anyone who would like to take a picture of you to come forward now now would be a good time first you can get in the picture to take your picture of the parents taking your picture all right everybody all set thank you very much Hoover school next on our agenda is the report of the student representatives tell us what you're up to hi I'm Kira Holmberg and I'm a junior at Miller's High School and I'm Abby Breyer and I'm a junior at the high school some recent events that have happened this two weeks ago our Thursday student council held their most successful blood drive that Miller's High School has had and we donated 30 plus pints last Thursday was throwback Thursday for spirit week and this Friday's pajama day lots of students

▶ 12:03 have been showing their school spirit by dressing up for these days. This Sunday is Spirit Week hallway decorating, where each grade decorates a different hallway leading up to Spirit Week. This Thursday from 6 to 9 is the Spirit Spike boys volleyball game. Powder Puff is from 6 to 8 next Monday. And next week is Spirit Week. The pep rally will be on Wednesday. And on Thursday, we'll have the annual Mellors versus Wakefield Thanksgiving football game. For sports, football beat Marblehead last Friday, And they play Hopkington this Saturday at 2. And this game will decide if they go on to play at Gillette. Cross country had states last Saturday in Rentham. And the girls team qualified for all states,

▶ 12:43 which will be this Saturday in Rentham. Volleyball beat Danvers last Saturday, winning the Division II championship. And they have another game tomorrow, which starts their state tournament. The girls swim team broke five Miller's records this past weekend, qualifying for states this upcoming weekend. winter sports are starting in the next couple of weeks Wow questions for our students just very briefly in a comment first of all thank you for the report as always and I would urge you and your fellow representatives and fellow students to tune in to the blizzard bag discussion as it unfolds both tonight and going forward we'd love to get your input on it I'd love to get the student perspective so thanks thank you any other questions or comments for our

▶ 13:35 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: students see 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 miss Dugan seconded by miss McAllister grand discussion all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously is there anyone who would like to come forward for public comment thank you hi my name is Jerry Rose here to talk about a couple different things tonight on the MCAS results and the in the blizzard bags as you have aptly named them the MCAS results what the school committee ought to be looking at is far more in-depth than another primer for the umpteenth year on what MCAS is and how MCAS compares to PARCC, the new one, and on the simplistic basic data that's put in endless slide after slide after slide.

▶ 14:50 You know, we know where Melrose has been. We know how it's changed and how it hasn't changed. We need to figure out what's going to get us over the hump to get past some of these that we have that are that you know are blatant as in a simplistic way of looking at it but the more sophisticated issues about how do we develop all of our students more than we're developing them today you know the mcas is not the be-all and end-all of of determining whether our district's done well and for our students or not it's it's kind of like the minimum proficiency and we're clearly not even there one one thing that i was at a meeting today and i want to highlight that at the meeting that I was at they were showing how many students

▶ 15:39 at the beginning of the year took the end of the year assessment in the various elementary grades and what they scored on that beginning of the year assessment well the beginning of the year assessment is really the standards that they're going to be teaching through the year that we're going to test at the end of the year and we give the same assessment at the beginning of the year or an equivalent assessment I'm not sure which but in this particular school about two-thirds of the students at the beginning of the year had already met the expectations for the year they were about to embark upon in their learning now it was wonderful at the end of the year that you know let's say 90 or 93 percent of the students were now at that same point but the fact means

▶ 16:25 means that all we really did from that whole year of assessing students we only documented that about 25% of the students actually learned anything that year right you start with 68% you end with 93% you know yeah there were 25% that didn't know everything at the beginning the year that no more now but did we even attempt to do anything for the ones for the two-thirds of our students in Melrose in the elementary schools you know extrapolating from this particular school did we do anything for them did we even attempt it now it's clear to me that whatever the benchmark assessments we're using for the beginning year and end of the year they aren't quite in aligned with the MCAS results our MCAS results are showing lower than what our assessments are but

▶ 17:17 you know there's a variance of different years and different times without more particular data delivered from the schools we can't really make that assessment about whether or not or to tease out the all the issues there but I submit with this whole MCAS presentation do not feel good about what's happening here right and do not do not believe that oh well the new MCAS is harder and that's why we don't necessarily do as well or anything like that the thing is that a lot of our students aren't performing to their potential and a lot our students we don't even care to see what their potential is to get them to perform to it and that includes as i'm talking about here the 66 percent of students

▶ 17:59 who at the beginning of the year already know the grade level material yet we continue to teach on the grade level material and what's very obvious in these results is that again my litmus test for melrose if you're really doing something that's personalized learning for students when you see that some students not at all meet the expectations under the new MCAS and some students exceed the expectations under the new MCAS and if they do that in fifth grade math and then we put them in the same classroom in sixth grade math and teach them to have the same textbook the same teacher the same classroom the same instruction you know it's not relevant actually for any of those students because that sixth grade typical classroom curriculum is

▶ 18:41 probably more aligned to the students who are partially meeting expectations or just barely meeting expectations and so please don't continue the charade that we are you know doing wonderfully here because you know in fact a lot of our students you look at you look at students who are in these beginning a year in the assessments two-thirds of the first graders in the school we're meeting expectations at the beginning of the year they didn't all learn that in kindergarten there's the the students are coming to us with capabilities that we're exploiting in terms of looking trying to make the school look good but they're not there the other thing I wanted to talk very quickly is the blizzard bags we have one point I'd like to make we have 180 days of school

▶ 19:26 that's been a standard for a long time we want students to be taught by teachers 90 minutes of work at home or 60 minutes of work at home self-led does not replace the school day. If anything, you know, these are minimums of 180 days. They're minimums. Nobody says you can't do more. The charter school in Malden obviously does way more than that. The issue here is, is that if we want to serve our students, if we want to do what they need for the long term, yes, it's popular for everybody. Every student's going to say, I want another day off of school and not to go another day in June. Every teacher's going to say, oh yeah, I'd love another unpaid day of school, or unpaid day, I'm sorry, a paid day of no work, or, you

▶ 20:07 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: if we're going to try to keep them for professional development for a few days after school the issue is though is that you can't do what's popular on the surface here which is the whole presentation that's happened to date is oh how wonderful this is all the teachers love this all the students love this well you know your job is to do what's right for them to develop them to bring them forward and get them to learn not to find another loophole to teach them less when you're already not teaching them the basics through the whole year thank you thank you do i have a motion to close public comment made by mr o'connell seconded by ms casatelli discussion all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously next on our agenda is the announcements of the superintendent of

▶ 20:48 schools thank you mr driscoll a couple of things one item is in your packet but one thing i just want to thank my administrators many of whom are here tonight and we were out together last night we had an opportunity to go into boston to have a dinner and meeting with our metco parents our metco director Doreen Ward had arranged it we had a great great turnout it was a very productive night we practiced community circles just like our teachers and students are doing in school and we really enjoyed the evening and are hoping to repeat the event so thank you to to my administrators who who are out a second night in the row in your packet you have a memo from me regarding the Hoover Elementary School principal

▶ 21:37 search with a proposed timeline and a search committee composition this reflects the same process we have used for several years now there is no deviation from that process and this is merely informational for the committee as this is a function of these superintendents if you have any questions I would gladly answer them questions for the superintendent miss McAllister grant through the chair to the superintendent can you just clarify when it says participate in site visits sometimes we have that people come to spend the day with us and what will happen is they'll meet with the the parents of the building they'll meet with the teachers the parents they may meet with the administrative team so usually we do that thank you I was just looking to see

▶ 22:25 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: if Mr. O'Connell just briefly thank you very very much for doing what you did last night and the administrators as well that's that's an important constituency and I think hugely important for us when it's appropriate to go where they are because all too often it's the other way around so kudos and thank you for that any other questions for the superintendent seeing none next on our agenda is the consent agenda which tonight includes the school committee special meeting minutes of October 21st 2017 the regular meeting minutes of October 24th 2017 the second vote on policy DKC expense reimbursements second vote on policy DJ e procurement requirements a second vote on policy bhe use of electronic messaging by members a second vote on policy ijnd access to

▶ 23:25 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: digital resources a second vote on policy ijnd be acceptable use the cafeteria report the monthly budget summary and the warrants as follows FY 18 wire transfer for October s 1 8 1 0 1 4 in the amount of two hundred and sixty seven thousand one hundred eighty seven dollars and fourteen cents and FY school s 18015 in the amount of twenty two thousand eight hundred twenty four dollars and sixty nine cents would anyone like to remove anything from the consent agenda miss McAllister grant the October munis report please the October munis report will go on finance and facility facilities anyone else seeing none do I have a motion for approval so moved second made by miss Dugan seconded by ms. McAllister grand all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously

▶ 24:17 with one absent next on our agenda is the educational programs and personnel subcommittee ms. Dugan good evening everyone we have three items on the educational programs and personnel subcommittee agenda this evening and we'll start off with a request from mr. Fogarty for a high school girls hockey waiver mr. Fogarty hello thanks for being here thanks for having currently we have 14 skaters on a hockey team that's 9th 10th 11th and 12th graders we have one goalie that which makes 15 and we have two students in the eighth grade that would be interested in joining the team so I'm requesting that we have a waiver to allow those eighth graders to join with the high school motion by mayor dolan seconded by miss casatelli are there questions and discussion from the committee

▶ 25:48 miss casatelli i'm wondering um are those sustainable numbers for the program they're typical numbers that we've had over the last three or four years so i haven't spoken with melrose youth hockey to see where if there is an increase coming up but currently that's about what we've had the last couple years um there's a little bit of trending with some of those uh female hockey skaters that are going to a private school so our program is about 11 years old right now we had six years where we were joined with watertown and last six or seven years we've been on our own and um right now a little bit of a slump i think we had a couple more last year i think we're closer to 17. so hopefully we can rebound have a successful year

▶ 26:43 how do you recruit do you recruit players recruiting is a interesting word in the you know okay yeah how do you build up okay program yeah mr fogan mr merrill and i are hyperventilating at this point rewind encourage girls to play maybe a new sport that they haven't played before The youth hockey programs, that's the place to start. Again, this is my 16th month in the seat, so I'm still starting to figure out some of those things. Mr. Sorrento, he works in the high school, also highly involved with the Melrose Youth Hockey. He and I have talked about this a little bit, and hopefully we can attract some more of those kids to the program. Well, it's a great program, and it's grown over the years,

▶ 27:31 Jessica Dugan: and we'd like to be able to sustain the numbers and get more girls to play. I agree. All right, thanks. Mr. Fogarty you said there's two ninth graders and two eighth graders who are interested in playing which would bring your roster up to 18 can you play with a not full roster or do you need to reach a certain threshold to fill the team there is not a minimum number okay so as long as every spot on the ice is covered you're fine yes any other questions discussion I've seen that the motions on the table all those in favor and that motion carries unanimously thank you very much thank you and our numbers are very similar to many of the other teams in the Middlesex League there are every team in the Middlesex Freedom Division

▶ 28:22 Jessica Dugan: is out also requesting waivers from their committees as well so it's it's not something that's just with us it is it's the sport it's a lot of factors involved so it's relatively new to the scene great thank you thank you thank you very much next on our agenda is a presentation of our statewide test results much appreciation to the leadership of our district who are who are in the room tonight for this presentation and I do think as we as we prepared for this and began to look at this presentation we are really looking at the way our statewide test results inform our practice and what we can learn from them from the lens of deeper student engagement so we appreciate very much the school committee's goal and focus the district's focus towards that

▶ 29:19 and we welcome the superintendent to introduce the presentation thank you as you know last year we began to see a second shift in the state testing requirement we went from MCAS to PAC to MCAS 2.0 with the exception of the high school which continues to take what is now referred to as the legacy MCAS and they will shift in 2019 the other shift that we had last year is the eighth grade was required to take the MCAS online we had applied for a waiver for the fourth grade which we received but the state would not grant a waiver for the eighth grade it was trying to say the least and we learned a lot from it but in essence it was a new experience for not only our students but our staff the the other grades continue to take paper and pencil a preview of this

▶ 30:29 coming year the only grades taking paper and pencil this coming year I believe a three and six everybody else three six and ten everybody else will be required to do online so there's a bit of a learning curve there as well as you heard referenced it's a different exam and those of you who have elementary school children and you received your results you received the literature that the state provided us for parents similarly to PAC it is more of a performance based exam as opposed to a multiple-choice fill-in-the-blank objective exam when superintendents talk we talked about why we went to 2.0 and how different is it really from PAC and since we were heavily invested in PAC our late Commissioner was the

▶ 31:22 chairman of the PAC coalition many of the questions that were transitioned into 2.0 came from PAC as well so the advantage for our students is we had done a decent job of preparing them for PAC in terms of what the PAC questions would be this is a little bit frustrating for everyone I appreciate the comments that this is one day in the life of our kids it's one data point when we need many more data points I think the frustration is many of us feel that the state artificially moves the goal post as my friend the superintendent in North Andover described it to the newspapers and we're left to reteach the game what I really want from Melrose is that we don't teach to the test I think that's a huge mistake on any districts part but I'm only

▶ 32:30 concerned with Melrose what I really want for our kids is to have deep learning experiences instruction that meets their needs depending on where they start an opportunity to pursue their interests but as long as there is an accountability system make no mistake we have to comply so the trick the trick for us is to walk the line between what we would like for our children and our obligations as a public school system to comply with federal and state requirements the results are in my estimation a mixed I have colleagues that say to me oh gee Melrose did well I think probably the people sitting in this room would say we did okay because we always hold ourselves to a high standard I think that this is a year-by-year learning experience under

▶ 33:35 this new system this new type of test-taking and it's a year-by-year learning experience watching what the state finally decides to use for accountability under every student succeeds Act fondly known as ESSA the The state was given an opportunity to include soft measures for accountability and the state chose not to deviate from their current soft measures. Missed opportunity in many people's opinions. They chose to stick with things like graduation rate, dropout rate, attendance rate when there may have been other soft measures we could have gone to. So again, I caution people about investing too much in these numbers either way. What I would tell you as your educators that we like about this exam, believe it or not,

▶ 34:44 is for the first time in many years, we have item analysis again. park item analysis was blocked from us on a lot of questions because all the questions were being tested we finally have item analysis again and that is probably the most valuable piece to us where we can see where we're on target where we're missing the target the other thing that this exam finally gave us is data at the teacher level so we are able to talk to teachers individually about their results and help them figure out where are you feeling confident where do you think you need some assistance improving your instruction where do you think our curriculum is off so there are some good things that come out of this exam but again I think we're at a new stage of accountability and this will

▶ 35:39 probably continue to unfold a new commissioner whenever he or she may be be chosen may have a whole new take on this and if he or she comes in and has a new take it's a new game so with that I will ask Dr. Adams Dr. Cobbs Mr. Conway and Ms. Singer to lead you through the results thank you so the presentation is organized by ELA a sort of a general kind of overview repeating some of what Mrs. Taymor already said an overview of ELA and math and science with some next steps there are obviously 55 slides here and with a lot of data we'll won't go through every single side but make some highlights and and then allow for questions as we have in the past we have some essential questions as the superintendent referred to you know we for the first time we have item

▶ 36:43 analysis and we can use that to look at our curriculum our instruction and our learning and help that inform our achievement we have achievement gaps you'll see an ELA math and science and what are those and how do we support those particular groups of students and what can and what's different about MCAS 2.0 and how how are they assessing students some background as the superintendent said there are differences in the achievement levels we've been used to that advanced proficient and needs improvement and warning the wording has changed to exceeding expectations meeting expectations partially meeting expectations and not meeting expectations and those are the state's new definitions for those achievement

▶ 37:33 levels this is just a glimpse into what parents received to indicate at which level there this is the student level report which level there's child was at in comparison to the district and the state as well as parents get a glimpse into how their students scored on particular reporting categories or strands or topics to give them some information more specific item analysis of how there's particular child in this was a slide from the state in this was their advice to districts that the expectations are more rigorous in order to meet expectations they hired the benchmark than what previous prof what proficiency look like on the previous MCAS it measured they could they say DOE says it measures learning in a different way and this is our base year you'll see

▶ 38:36 that we don't do comparisons except at grade 10 to previous years in that this is a different assessment with different benchmarks so making comparisons to previous years doesn't really make sense the DOE will say also that Massachusetts educators set these standards in order for them to be more rigorous and to ensure that kids were college and career ready the last bullet comes from also from the state that in some grades and subjects grade 4 English language arts and grade 7 math it'll more mirror the previous MCAS proficiency and other grades and subjects like grade 8 English language arts the results were likely lower there's some resources for parents online with lots of descriptions about

▶ 39:33 how to read those reports because it is a change from what parents have received in the past so high needs subgroup is a particular subgroup that we've had an achievement gap it includes our students with disabilities our English language learners and our low-income students some of the things that we know that are impactful that have had an impact in our results we have an aligned ELA and math curriculum and you've heard us over the last couple years talk about how our curriculum is aligned we've aligned to the standards we're working on our alignment for science we've been in the process in the last two years and hope to be close to finish with that alignment starting at the beginning of next year we have shared with you in the past we have systematic tiered

▶ 40:30 instruction in ELA and in mathematics there are structures and systems in the schools for teachers to look at data to think about data and to use the data to inform their instruction we've identified core instructional practices things that we know but from research have the highest impact on achievement we have instructional coaches that help support teachers in the classroom as well as support in professional development at the middle school in a high school the content facilitators are helping to support that role and I'm trying to also build more opportunities for teachers to take on leadership roles there are also opportunities for growth within the data and the achievement gap is is very clear for particular subgroups the data speaks to a gap with

▶ 41:23 students with disabilities and our high needs students we need to make sure that those students have access to the general education curriculum as well as the tiered supports that they need in order to be successful are aligned for the first time we can look at that item at item and lat analysis and really help try to inform we haven't had that the past two years to really say are there any gaps in our curriculum or instruction in our alignment and in are there even gaps between grades in schools horizontally and vertically as well as looking at at the teacher level to say are there particular places where we need to provide some additional support around instruction or curriculum so for English language arts we give you a glimpse into the grade spans grades

▶ 42:18 three through eight the first row there is in the similar across in math how many students are exceeding or meeting in the past we will put together advanced and proficient and then each of the categories exceeding meeting partially meeting and not meeting you'll also see with students with disabilities and our students with high needs that there's a difference in the amount of students with students with disabilities and I needs who are reaching the exceeding or meeting expectations you'll see results also by school as well as looking at places we've used this kind of chart in the past to sort of highlight again those achievement gaps that we have for particular subgroups in given that we have the an item item allow analysis for the first time we

▶ 43:15 clearly could see by looking at this that writing was an area that we were lower in and I think that was also across the state one of the things that we found is that which is a little frustrating is the state in the past had moved more towards persuasive and informational writing and in this cycle of the assessment focused more on narrative writing which was a big shift in what they had assessed in the past and so the Mrs. Taymor's point is we're not teaching the test our kids are going to need persuasive and informational writing for college and career but the emphasis seems to be at least this past year was on narrative and perhaps this coming year is also on narrative so it's a little unclear about the direction of the state we also saw that our kids

▶ 44:15 again on the essay in the lower grades we had some lower results and in the upper grades a little bit higher but that writing piece and giving kids experience with the type of question on the assessment so our next steps for the ELA at the elementary level are based on that item analysis one thing that we have committed to based on the question and item analysis is that we need to do more alignment with our response to text we notice that the essay prompts were when we looked at the writing were a bit lower that is just good writing skills for kids and they're going to need that regardless of if those questions never appeared again we've also begun to implement online assessments throughout

▶ 45:03 the school year and grades four and five to provide students opportunities to practice this format online assessment is the way of the future we know this and we need to teach this just like we teach a genre of writing we need to teach a genre of test-taking so we're doing some explicit instruction around that and utilizing our Pearson programs to do that in addition to this our students are getting through our digital literacy program they're increasing their skills needed for the online testing so not just navigating the platforms but understanding the different tools that come along in those platforms and then we will continue to identify subgroup populations in need of additional support into yet instruction as dr. Adams reference and the data

▶ 45:47 tells us the story that we still have an achievement gap between our high needs students in our aggregate at the middle school when we look at the English language arts I think dr. Adams referenced the the change in the writing style into more of an essay format from some of the work that our students had really been preparing for in years prior so I think some of our steps really will focus much on that and preparing students for that rewording our question types and the language in the questions so students are more prepared with that essay style format obviously for seventh and eighth graders are going to be doing this online we need them to have opportunities to to practice online utilizing those features it is a different testing experience it's not

▶ 46:39 preparing them solely for the MCAS most assessments as they move ahead will also be online oriented and online platforms we have we're fortunate enough to have intervention classes that we utilize at the middle school and I think we have some work to do with those we already made a shift to break out instead of a generic ela intervention we broke it out into reading comprehension and writing work so we're grouping students in those based on trimester to focus on those those interventions and how those structure beyond that one thing we also added was increased common planning time between the content teachers and special education teachers and in particular when we think about our subgroups and

▶ 47:27 our special education students to really work on the collaboration and utilization of our inclusive practices that our sped teachers can can really work in conjunction with the general education teachers to support the needs of students and we see that writing really is something that can be done across the curriculum areas science and social studies as well working in in those classrooms to change the manner in which those questions are posed to students so that they're having experience writing again in relation to the language where you expect them to use for the MCAS too so at the high school we were 99% advanced and proficient so you're talking about a very handful of students who were not meeting proficient or advanced so the

▶ 48:18 gaps there aren't gaps because you're talking about a real just a handful of particular students so next steps next steps in the high school are a little bit different because we're going to experience a change in the exam in the tenth grade next year so our current ninth graders we're adapting our questions on all of our common assessments and our mid-year and final exams to reflect the phrasing that's used on the new MCAS test. Part of this, you know, we're a little bit navigating in the dark because the state has made so many changes in the last couple of years, but we're restyling our ninth grade assessments to correspond with what's been expected in grades six through eight. I think that's the most reasonable course for us to use moving

▶ 49:17 Jessica Dugan: forward as far as our 10th grade students for this year we're looking to maintain our performance on last year's test students were very successful we were we were able to bridge a gap that we existed last year with special needs with students with disabilities and we were able to target particular interventions with individual students last year and we had great success with that so we're continuing that strategy this year so in math I actually want to take a pause for a second and if we all can focus our questions and comments on ela first just to break it up a little bit I'd love to welcome questions from the committee right now on that piece knowing that for more global questions on state tests we can kind of come back to that at the end but if there's

▶ 50:16 anything ELA specific please hit miss McAllister grant so thank you for all your work preparing this I have a question about what you were just talking about my singer with regard to the targeted interventions that you were able to do could you describe those a little bit so I have a sense of what they looked like certainly we took the results from last year's test and we actually drilled down to individual students and we followed them by cohort through each year of study and we kind of identified them I borrow a term from Dr. Talbot who identifies certain students as starfish so once we we isolated individual students and their progress through our curriculum we tailored our instruction to bridge those gaps for those individual students in

▶ 51:07 ELA we've always well I would say for the last five or six years we've been talking about a very small subgroup of students numerically I think fewer than 25 certainly so we've been able to focus on individual students with individual teachers we also had the opportunity last year it was the first year that we had a real active partnership between some of the special education teachers and some of the regular education teachers and although we've had some changes in personnel we're going to continue that cooperative model at the middle school and certainly at the high school we've also had at the high school we've had for many years we've had a real focus of regular education ELA teachers taking the lead with the ELA instruction including with special

▶ 52:03 education students and we're going to continue that model so at the high school how did you achieve that partnership between the special ed and the general ed teachers was it the common planning time it was common planning time and working on the model of we have a model that allows special educators to be in classes on an every other day model so we've been working also with strategizing the use of the special education teachers in those classes on alternate days especially regarding writing instruction okay thank you mr school um thank you for all your work on this i just want to note that i think every middle school struggles with one test on one day every district in the state and i think you're

▶ 52:49 Jessica Dugan: working really hard and i think you're doing a great job at the middle school so i appreciate that because it's just not easy um and certainly applaud the outstanding results at the high school I think your folks have worked very hard and I know it's a team effort and I know your students have worked hard too so thank you ELA questions I do you have an ELA comment no I don't I have a question I'm writing is something that keeps coming up and I know writing also affects our scores in math and science and everywhere so I am thinking a lot about student engagement I'm thinking a lot about how I personally feel about writing worried that it's becoming the new math like I'm not a writer right so my question is

▶ 53:41 Jessica Dugan: around enjoyment in writing from these scores we can do a lot of analysis on what was hard and how the question was narrative based instead of persuasive et cetera, et cetera, but writing's a tool for communication. We work really hard to teach a lot of strategies, and I'm wondering if there's any thinking from you all around how to support our young people to enjoy writing a little bit more and engage a little bit more deeply and intentionally in it, because they all want to be good communicators with text, with everything they do. I'm just wondering if there's any reflection where we can kind of take this beyond. They are learning to write to formula, and I know 60 percent, all the different schools,

▶ 54:34 many of them are meeting the formula. Many are struggling. But how can we take all of them to a place where this is something that is an enjoyable practice and not a dread, and is there some thinking around that? Well if we look back over the last 10 to 15 years in Melrose, ELA instruction around writing has changed considerably and we're not so much writing teaching students to write to a formula as we're teaching students to write more effectively. I think for for some years we've followed the lead nationally as Dr. Adams described in concentrating on persuasive writing and informational writing and I think that's really the writing in the future of the writing of the future we are certainly kind of circling back to some narrative writing

▶ 55:27 kind of like not I guess leaving that out as the orphan of the writing family but I think that we've had a steady increase in the number of opportunities students have to write both in writing that comes to a formal conclusion and is a formal draft and is assessed by the teacher and other writing experiences that are and that students engage in on a daily basis journal writing note taking etc so I think you know statistics show that the more opportunities students have to write across the curriculum in every discipline and the number of opportunities they have to write in ELA with the increase in those writing opportunities students improve in their writing skills so I think we've seen that improvement over the last 10 to 15

▶ 56:27 years and I think we're kind of on that road and our elementary students every day are doing are working on a writer's workshop which allows for a lot of choice and focus on different genres I think the use of technology and allowing kids to use technology to publish and share their work beyond Google slides or Docs is a way that we can engage kids miss Acevedo with the fifth graders is working on creation of digital portfolios with our fifth graders so that they can create document their own learning and reflect upon it and take more ownership of it so I think in our hope is that the fifth graders can carry that work into sixth grade and see themselves continue to grow as writers and have more voice in their writing and use of technology I think is one way the

▶ 57:26 Chromebooks are in their second year teachers have more faith and that the wireless network is going to work and that the stuff works and so I think that's an opportunity especially with our grade three to five group of students and as we develop their digital literacy skills as well as teachers skills great miss Casatelli thank you very much how much professional development is there among to help teachers with their own writing so it's we focused several years ago around the teaching of writing and part of that is the teacher serving as a model for their own writing and using authors and mentors as mentors to writing and bringing in other pieces of writing to show authors as teachers of writing we can learn so much from what other

▶ 58:24 authors have done our focus has been on new teachers and making sure that they're working to share that format of a writers workshop where it's really like a workshop where teachers kids are working on all different types of writing and trying to give voice so that's been our focus the focus of having teachers serve as writers and feel what it's like writing the writing process at the elementary level hasn't been something that we have focused on to see themselves and develop their skills as writers it's not been something yeah so and so I would suggest that if teachers are going to model the writing if that's an area of professional development that maybe we should pay a little bit more attention to and of course the English teachers

▶ 59:15 that's what they do but you know maybe math teachers or science teachers who are not don't use the writing skills as much as someone in the ELA everybody can use a little little help with the writing so just just a focus for professional development attention thank you very much are there any other ela specific comments or questions fantastic we welcome I step into mathematics so for math it has the same sort of format you'll see in our math data as the grades progress as our students get in the older grades on the MCAS next generation MCAS our numbers a meeting and exceeding go down from third grade to eighth grade the eighth graders are also the ones who took the online assessment so the state does say they accounted for that piece in their

▶ 1:00:32 setting of benchmarks but that that is a factor and that you know taking it's an assessment online is a different experience for many of our students that said we also in math have the same sort of gap with our students with disabilities and our high needs students and you'll see results by a school for the elementary grades grades 3 4 & 5 as well as this chart that looks at the achievement gap between specific subgroups our high needs groups students with disabilities are low-income in our african-american as was said before we can now look at item analysis for grades 3 great for the MCAS in grades 3 through and we we don't really see a big difference between some of the strands fractions has always been something even in previous years in previous MCAS has

▶ 1:01:34 always been something that can that is a challenge as you shift from the base 10 system in the younger grades to fractional thinking and grade 5 I'll show some areas of concern around the measurement and data especially and in grade six through eight you see some areas of of concern around geometry and ratios and proportional relationships at the middle school you'll see as well as that in the question types the constructed responses that asked kids to sort of respond longer were ones that students had more difficulty with so not unlike the ELA we have some of the same next steps as our model for improvement we will continue to practice the online assessment format and mathematics as well as ELA and continue to focus on on those subgroup populations in need of

▶ 1:02:40 additional support again that item analysis is essential because it allows us to not just become more familiar with the question type but to also really drill down further to successes by teachers by class by cohort and we can and we can capitalize that and really help out hope to help out those subgroups something that's new this year is we've implemented Pearson 2.0 and kindergarten first and second grade which is just that it's the updated Pearson curriculum it is certainly different our teachers have done a fabulous job trying to create a hybrid if you will of past practice in this past materials and the new material and create a stronger solid foundation particularly in the base 10 to prepare the kids for the more fractional

▶ 1:03:30 thinking and at the middle school I think what one of our biggest steps that we need to we are taking in sixth through eighth grade is using the envision 2.0 we've used envision at sixth grade the older the first version but at seventh and eighth grade we really have not utilized an updated text or curriculum sort of foundational materials for us that really is that the sort of the cornerstone of a lot of the work that we need to do it definitely presents the students with the information and the performance tasks in a manner which we consistently weren't able to do in previous years and it is absolutely sort of critical particularly when we break down the the data that we see and how the students performed the assessments that are part of envision

▶ 1:04:25 that we're utilizing multiple times per unit students are initially struggling with even this year and we're and we're seeing that way and that corresponds it correlates with what we saw in MCAS performance so we know we have some adjustments with our own instruction to prepare and the teachers are very quickly realizing we've got to change a few things in order to to ensure students are prepared for our own assessments never mind the MCAS so and that that really is the critical piece we're going to do some professional development in particular around math vocabulary and language in performance tasks and constructed responses that language often is in mathematics it sort of is sort of an entry point for students with a lot of the concepts and

▶ 1:05:11 that they may understand a concept but without the language or keywords are not able to communicate it effectively or necessarily select the proper choice even on a multiple choice question so that really is the the biggest piece again though consistent with the LA the comp the increase common planning time again between special education teachers in general general education teachers is really a critical point for us to to implement a lot of this too there are a couple of slides to sort of give a general overview of grade 10 which is again the legacy MCAS we had 86% of our students at the high school and grade 10 advanced and proficient we do have more of a gap around the subgroups in math

▶ 1:05:59 in comparison different from ELA with our students with disabilities and high needs when we do compare with last year there was a we had more students proficient or advanced in those subgroups so there was an improvement and at the high school just like in ELA there was a particular focus last year on particular students we really targeted those students with disabilities and targeted on those high need students and because they're not a lot of kids you know we could target those particular kids and make sure that they're that their needs were being met so at the high school for the math teachers are continuing to use open response questions regularly that's one of the areas that the students struggle with the most are the open response

▶ 1:06:52 questions and in the ninth grade we're transitioning to the new constructed response format so they are rewording and redoing their open response questions to be similar to that format they have some resources to help them with that their current text has performance tasks in it and we also have samples of the envision program that they can use an algebra one that have the constructive response type questions that they can transition we've been giving online assessments and we're increasing that so that the students especially in ninth grade are getting used to that format we are collecting data particularly by subgroups so that we can target intervention for students that need it and we're analyzing MCAS data previous years looking at

▶ 1:07:41 particularly the students that were partially meeting or not meeting expectations the ninth grade or needs improvement and warning for the 10th grade students stop great yeah so any math specific questions mr. O'Connell thank you and thank you for this work it's very well put together a good level of detail well organized it's useful for us so thank you for that and thanks for the time involved with it envision math 2.0 we're using this because it's great we're using this because we're married to it and you know the next iteration is what it is you talk a little bit about that please so we had we've had great success in the elementary schools with the envision the materials it models and integrates the math practices it tries it all it gets at the conceptual level

▶ 1:08:47 it's a different way of thinking about math and it's not about the calculation it really is around problem solving in real life application lots of opportunities for students to talk about math to do math and work collaboratively both as a whole class and small groups and with partners so that it's a real active engaging opportunity to do math and not just sitting and doing problem solving the the book is like a core but it's not what what we do the teachers are the ones who are teaching math so it's a tool of which they use pieces of it to meet the needs of the individual students so looking at the students before them deciding which of the tools best meets the students needs and sometimes envision isn't the tool and they bring some other things into the

▶ 1:09:43 classroom like a real a game that best might teach that concept that's really engaging for kids and provides or a different type of problem because it might better engage students. So it's a tool, but not the only tool. It does allow us to pace out curriculum. I think at the middle school, some of those 43s percents that we saw really begged the question, did we cover it enough? Did we cover it with enough depth? Did we give students enough experience with those particular topics? By having a core kind of text to sort of guide the teachers, we can ensure that we are covering to the same depth and then make decisions. Do we need to pull more things in or do a little less of this? But by seeing some of those pieces,

▶ 1:10:32 we can say, did students get enough depth? Certainly teachers taught it, but did they get enough depth into those content areas? Great, thank you. That's very helpful. A follow-up, please. A more general question about next steps. critics will say look at these scores we've got to do more other critics will say we'll look at the next steps where we say what more we're gonna do and they're gonna say we're teaching the test and I know you spoke to this a little bit and I'm not suggesting that it's the critic who counts but what's our collective answer to that charge that we're always going to hear about teaching to the test particularly when people hear this presentation and see the next step spelled out because people are gonna look at this and say this is

▶ 1:11:24 all they're doing so I think part of the answer is this is just one small piece of what you all do every day but could you speak to that a little bit please I'd like to I and I think even just thinking in terms of envision and the classrooms that I've seen recently using it in an eighth grade math class today working on determining rate and I think you know previously what what we would ask students to do is is given a set of information ask them to calculate the rate and then that's their answer but really what we want students to be able to do regardless of what the MCAS says is we want students to be able to calculate rate and then be able to potentially graph two rates and figure out a comparison between the two of them and develop another question which might

▶ 1:12:19 lead them to further questions about rate and about the information in the scenario so that is a very similar type of question that they would face on the MCAS tests and and yet that mirrors what we want them to be able to do functionally with math in the real world so envision allows our students to do that and that's the exact example I saw the students working on today you know in a math class I don't think that's preparing them for the test I think that's preparing them for what our standards are what we expect of them the tests then assess that the previous MCAS test didn't really assess it that way so great thank you for that thank you for the questions discussion go ahead are we on to general question we're not I do have another math question around

▶ 1:13:17 Jessica Dugan: engagement a lot of the math we see and that we see an envision is related to real-world situations so you're not just working on equations you're working on word problems is there any time or ability for us to so say at the middle school for our math and science teachers to plan together so that their units are reinforcing each other's content like we do with writing can you tell us a little bit about that effort so we actually one of the things that we're working on six or twelve in math and science are cross curricular units and thus far several high school classes and I believe eighth grade is doing it right now as we speak and sixth grade already did a unit where they performed an experiment in science

▶ 1:14:06 they took their data over to math they did some analysis of that in math class and then took it back science again so we are currently working on quite if we're trying to develop some cross-curricular units easier at the middle school because all the kids are taking the same courses but we're working on that at the high school as well we had and I know we're not on to no we did high school yeah the we had a chemistry class and an algebra class kind of team up on mole day to put together an assignment where they were doing some calculations in chem and they were able to take it to their algebra class as well it's a little harder because not all the kids are taking the same classes but that is a focus for this year really making those

▶ 1:14:46 Jessica Dugan: connections between the math and the science and we're also extending it to tech especially in the high school getting the tech teachers involved in some of that as well I think that's fantastic does the structure that we have and this I'm sure it can come up later in budget conversations and in program of studies and all those types of things but does the time we have a structure we have support our teachers to honestly have the time in this space to create those types of learning opportunities is that something that we should be looking for over the next few months to kind of think a little bit more intentionally about I think it's a little easier at the middle school where they have their team time at the high school we're using department nine

▶ 1:15:29 department meeting time to do that it's probably nearly impossible to align science and math prep periods as we're trying to keep the math has the common block science is common block to get them both is probably nearly impossible so easier at the middle school for them to get together and work on these assignments during the day but we've dedicated some department time to that to develop and talk about that so great the one thing I would say as much as we are reduced in capacity by having gone from seven directors to four directors there is a strength in having a stem director and a humanities director because it helps to emphasize the commonalities of those fields great thank you I appreciate that mathematics questions anymore okay we shall move on

▶ 1:16:22 to science so for science these are not new assessments these are the legacies MCAS pre there has not been a redesigning of the science MCAS you'll see some results for grade 5 85% advanced and proficient at grade 10 which should probably be grade 9 because the students are taking grade 9 they're taking biology in grade 9 and 50 in an eighth in fifth grade it's almost an even split between advanced and proficient 50% and approximately 40% at that needs improvement level and then you'll see some data because this is the legacy MCAS we did some we looked across the eight the grades the years for the number of students reaching advanced and proficient and then you'll see a look at our subgroups we have an achievement gap with our subgroups in grades five

▶ 1:17:31 through eight and less pronounced in grade ten because there are fewer students you'll see results by our schools for grade five for the elementary you'll see some results by the topic area that show for the most part pretty even results given the topic in science and grades five and then in grade eight across question types it's that open response and that's been consistent that the open response is more challenging and has students are getting less questions less points on those open and responses so probably one of the most effective next steps that we've already implemented is targeting those fifth grade teachers specifically with individualized professional development support the data allows us to see where the highest proportions of

▶ 1:18:26 students in the need improvement range are and then we can utilize our coaches we can utilize ourselves as building principals to go in and to support these teachers with just as we tear our instruction for our kids with the most appropriate professional development in science content and science practices. The other thing that we're very proud of in Melrose is we've implemented a new physical and earth science units that are aligned to the national science curriculum and the new science framework, and we will continue that process through the lifecycle science unit. We continue also to strengthen and implement our science practices in inquiry-based instruction. we celebrated that with our first kids inquiry conference and teaching new

▶ 1:19:10 approaches of learning and asking questions and increasing student engagement and developing ideas in using science practices in inquiry we're going to continue to expand that at the middle school we we haven't always had intervention classes for science our science classes have been challenge classes sort of as additional support classes we're structuring a little bit differently in particular for eighth grade in the second and third trimester we're able to separate them out by topic and we're going to reorganize the students in second and third trimester based on their topic performance partially on MCAS but more on our own internal assessments to get an idea of which students belong under in which groupings they'll still be using current

▶ 1:20:04 topics but they'll be focused more in a particular domain be it earth and space science be it life science and so forth we definitely have some work to do around the open response and using rubrics in more of a constructed response manner so that's been a focus already and the content vocabulary the the the amount of content vocabulary and scientific vocabulary that we're asking students in grades six through eight to learn understand and then utilize correctly is an incredible amount and it's an it's an eighth grade test but it is a test of three years of scientific concept knowledge and vocabulary the interesting thing is we made a shift in our curriculum over the past year to change to the the newer sign to science and technology and engineering standards

▶ 1:21:00 the test is still the old test we're still another year away and my example of that is for years now we've been talking about shifting our technology and engineering education away from woodshop and moving into more modernized understanding of engineering principles engineering design we have kids coding with kids making robots do it they want them to do all those things and wouldn't you know the very first open response question the eighth graders were faced with last year was how do you build a birdhouse and and the joke was that word-for-word was superintendent a mores thing we need to move away from teaching kids how to build birdhouses and what do you know that was the question how do you build a birdhouse the test will change

▶ 1:21:56 woodworking and furniture making instead there there is not a bird housing crisis that we know of however so that that's sort of the dilemma in the testing we face we made the choice very purposely to shift our curriculum and yet the test is is another year or two away another year away before that shifts to where we're at and at the high school as previously been mentioned the open response questions are really the what's getting our students and so the biology teachers have a very concerted effort and they take care and pride in doing the open response questions they make sure to do practice over response questions and they include them on assessments they do self review peer review teacher review they really focus on the open response questions they

▶ 1:22:51 track mistakes provide remediation and they're using previous MCAS data even though it's not exactly relatable because the biology MCAS is on one year of material so they're really learning everything that's on the MCAS in that year for the most part so the biology teachers do a great job of getting that content covered and covering the vocabulary and getting a good amount of our students to be proficient and advanced fantastic thank you science related questions mr. O'Connell thanks very much you know I'm sitting here listening to this and and feeling that this is a great presentation so thanks again you're clearly very very well prepared and it's much appreciated mr. Conway I'm a dad I'm sitting at home got these

▶ 1:23:45 MCAS results my kid tanked on science I'm hearing you talk about intervention classes what does that mean from a parent or a student perspective how does it work yeah for for science so we're still not really calling them intervention classes we're just structuring the challenge classes a little bit differently we've we've run eighth grade science challenge classes that have basically been current events and it gives students an opportunity to engage in sort of project-based learning based on our current event all three science teachers running them at the same time now each science teacher is going to take up a particular content area and we'll be placing students in there and there'll be students in there who perform perfectly fine but this is

▶ 1:24:35 their challenge class but it gives an opportunity for us to give content boost and reinforcement on particular content areas topics within science that we know some students may have struggled and yet other students will do perfectly well and the structure of that class won't change all that much it'll be top current topics current events using project-based learning opportunity but making sure that if a student didn't do well in the life science based on our internal assessments that they're in that classroom where that teachers having the opportunity to have them delve into it gives them an opportunity to get back to the key science vocabulary and language around biology and utilize that language and that's really what the key sort of access point

▶ 1:25:24 that we're finding for a lot of the kids whether it's an open response question or an actual multiple-choice question if you don't know the science vocabulary you may understand the concept you're gonna have a very difficult time identifying which answer is correct or communicating your answer thank you Mr. McAllister-Grant I'm curious to hear at the elementary level and the middle school level how what opportunities the science teachers have to teach their preferred subject area or are they responsible for doing the whole general shebang so at the middle school in the structure we have all three science teachers teach all the domains and we have it mapped out and we've had to change it based on the new standards and that's what I was referring to of how

▶ 1:26:13 the the teachers have changed to that recently and they the people we hire generally their certification is a general middle school science it's not a although they may have a secondary science certification it's a topic we have discussed previously we've discussed in this forum before of whether or not that is our next step the science standards still are are broad by grade level it's it's not like there are some school districts who teach geology and earth science in an entire grade level and then they'll teach life science in eighth grade and yet when they take that test in eighth grade it covers all domains it doesn't make a lot of sense to have students do topic by topic grade by grade however it doesn't mean that we can't think about the

▶ 1:27:04 structure of the way the teachers teach the content areas and yet the students simply have three different science teachers throughout the year so that's something I think really for us to look at potentially for next year piloting it at a grade level possibly not eighth grade where the stakes are a little bit higher but maybe at one of the other grade levels and see what impact it has particularly on our our own district benchmark assessments at the elementary level there is some variation between buildings but in many cases you have teachers who are departmentalized social studies and science which affords two members of the team three members in a three-strand school to work with their principal to kind of make some determination about what's their

▶ 1:27:54 strongest area of expertise in order to do that I will say though particularly in fifth grade where there is it is a more high stakes year truly is is that pressure of K through five science now needs a boost we have implemented a practice where the partner teacher who may typically only teach social studies may pick up an engineering unit in order to support that but we really do try to capitalize on the individual talents of the teacher which often are their passion not always but really capitalize on their talents and their expertise in that way we've had some flexibility around that thank you science questions I'm super concerned about science not because I'm particularly worried about a

▶ 1:28:44 Jessica Dugan: test that doesn't really even test what we're trying to teach anymore but because this is something we've been struggling with for a very long time and there's not a pretty book like envision to put in front of our teachers this takes a tremendous investment of our of your time as a district so I appreciate the work that we're doing I feel impatient for more and I I guess I I would encourage us to not make decisions based on performing well on a test like what's right for eighth grade because the stakes are higher these stakes matter but what matters most is the progression of science learning across many grade levels at a time so you know with that I just I appreciate the work we're doing it's important to note that we are just beginning with new

▶ 1:29:44 Jessica Dugan: leadership a science coordinated review of the science program a two-year process and I know those are super valuable for for our educators as they reflect on their practice and i think that we'll learn a lot from that and i think the timing is right so thank you for your work on it and i hope that we can um do what we can to continue to to support the need here because um i this is of all of this presentation tonight this is where my biggest concern is mr school i just have um an overarching question please um so the horseman two years ago now began with the accelerated improvement plan in your in your school and my understanding is that that's worked very well to the point where you've expanded the model for other elementary schools shifting away

▶ 1:30:36 from the school improvement model to the accelerated improvement model and I'm wondering if you would be willing to speak dr. Cobbs or anyone to any impact that you see that kind of improvement plan model having on the teaching and learning that's happening and particularly you know the one test on the on one day yes certainly and I would say you know the one test on one day but also the measures that we look at from day to day to see where child is in September into June I think the biggest impact that I have seen personally on that particular process is that the plan is very active and live and what I mean by that is a lot of opportunities within that model for teachers to take on instructional leadership roles and for support personnel to take on

▶ 1:31:22 instructional leadership roles and really solidify systems that are sustainable you know long after any one principal hits lottery and moves to Maui you know what I'm saying so I think that the biggest impact has been it's a very active document I have found that the parents are more understanding of the document in the processes there's more interests in it the site council work i can speak for my own site council the members are very well versed in it and with that just brings healthy conversations around budget decisions and community events and things that will help our kids be successful academically so in short i guess the longest the the greatest impact has has been ownership active engagement from more stakeholders and I think a

▶ 1:32:11 more solid base for stronger systems that could sustain changes in personnel or leadership I think those are the I mean I'm sold I've written improvement plans for 22 years and this is the model I have found the best I credit the people involved in it as well of course but I think it's it's more friendly and people can talk more about it it's not just something that's in the binder on the on the shelf thank you miss castelli through the chair to the superintendent what what's the plan to share these results with the parents the same plan we have every year they'll i think they've begun to share them with their school site councils they'll share them with their pto my preference is always that they share it with you first and then they can roll it out to their

▶ 1:33:00 PTO's so in is that school by school or at school by school thank you mr. O'Connell we have moved into the general question thank you for that alert madam chair if I if I may are we giving you the resources you need to do this work or are we and don't look at the superintendent and or are we otherwise hamstring you in any way do you feel supported on this do you have what you need in science as we've we've already said this before in previous meetings we're creating our own units instead of buying something that's made there are positives in that and that you sort of create the sort of learning experiences that you feel best meet the needs of students the and there are some negative sides it's a very time-consuming process it also means

▶ 1:34:05 that teachers are working really hard to supplement some things so including you know trying to gather you know the the materials that you may need so that was choice that we made one because the materials at that point when we started this process were not that of quality unlike some of the other and like ELA and math there wasn't this wide adoption across the nation of the National Science Standards so publishing companies weren't running to create new programs that were aligned because they didn't know if there was that national market for the materials the market may be better and we haven't gone out to look again to see if there's anything better now on the market because we've been really focused on creating which has its positives and it does has its

▶ 1:35:09 its downsides it's time-consuming for teachers and the positive is we can create some learning experiences that best meet our time our structure and our what we have available to us thank you may ask a follow-up question of a general nature through the chair of the superintendent let me ask you the headline question if I may madam superintendent MCAS 2.0 more rigorous a different way of measuring learning uh do we in melrose remain aimed at college and career readiness and does this reflect that so what um the commissioner's office will tell you is part of the reason this came about is because um even under the old system which in its original inception expected by 2014 a hundred percent of our kids to be a hundred

▶ 1:36:06 percent proficient probably one of the most unrealistic goals in the history of education considering what a human endeavor were involved in even under the old system they were finding that at least in Massachusetts public public colleges 33% had of our students needed remediation so they really did have to step back and say where are we missing the mark and are we missing the mark in the assessment piece is the assessment piece reporting too much success and that yet when the kids get to college that success is not transferable is the problem in the curriculum as my staff will tell you i think we have a new iteration of the frameworks once again Ms. Singer is very much involved with that at the state level, is the problem in the

▶ 1:37:06 structure of the test. So what I think you see happening versus typical fill in the blank, multiple choice answers versus performance tasks. So I think what you see in 2.0 is an attempt by the state to answer all those questions with the new exam whether it will prove our kids to be college and career ready remains to be seen I think for the most part our kids in Melrose when there are some statistics we can look at only for state colleges we're doing okay we're not in the situation that some other cities and towns are so I think that the test will serve its purpose one of the other things they claim about this test is is it's no longer about the end game each grade is about the next year to me that's a little bit redundant since we have standards and our people

▶ 1:38:09 know that their job is to get every child ready for the next year in accordance with the standards and you know my question is does the mcast if it's a grade based test and we're giving our own common assessments which which of those two assessments gives us better data for our kids that we'll have to figure out probably the two things that now get me the most is you have to remember all this conversation is about a state aggregate it's not even about a local aggregate it's about a state aggregate so you're comparing Melrose to Lexington on one hand and Melrose to Chelsea on another hand and when you look at that comparison yeah we're right on target when you look at that internally again my opening question is that what we want so it's that sort of dilemma the other

▶ 1:39:05 dilemma that is coming our way and actually I believe I am about to say this in public but Secretary of Education DeVos made this point today and I happen to agree with her don't give me that look mr. Zia that there is an overemphasis on college as the answer to all our children's futures and we really need to think about that so again when you dig into data the way we dig into data when you look at that the college completion rate in Massachusetts for four-year colleges in four years is something like 35 percent and then in six years is something like 57 percent just off the top of my head trying to remember facts and these are for public colleges you know the question arises should all of those children have been in a college setting or would they have

▶ 1:40:05 been better served in our economy and society better served if they were in technical training programs of some sort or unions of some sort um i think those are the questions we're faced with so i think that you need to think about the career piece of that just as much as you need to think about the college piece of that great thank you very much further questions miss mccauster grant so i know some of the work that the district has been doing has been around inclusive practices using bringing together general education and special education teachers to do common planning and utilizing approaches that benefit special ed students because often they benefit all students well so with that in mind i struggle with we talked about that there's

▶ 1:40:59 a gap with our high need students and i'm wondering how much is performance on the test and how much is the tool like how much how adequate is this tool at measuring all our students abilities just to clarify the MCAS your question is how adequate as is it in assessing that particular subgroups abilities is that the question well yeah how is it as a as a general tool to meet to measure all students at the same time like I don't think any one tool can do that so in someone's always gonna fall short so I guess what I'm looking and you have much more expertise over longevity around have there been times where we had a tiny achievement gap and we feel like oh it's a good enough tool that it's accessible to all of our learners or do we really feel like there might be being

▶ 1:41:52 a new test some flaws in the tool that that are problematic which we can't do anything about I think the DOE's answer would say is the test measures the standards so that it's accessible to all and certainly our special education students have accommodations to make the test more accessible to them I think that would be the DOE's answer what's your I think that it is a I think we need to say it is a measure in time it gives us information some information we have other information and when we triangulate all that information we get a better picture of how our students are doing we our students with disabilities we need to make sure that we get at that achievement gap as early as possible so

▶ 1:42:52 the sooner we do that in the earlier grades we're better off in the upper grades so as our gap grows especially in math it's harder to close that achievement gap when you're doing it over several years versus just in kindergarten or first grade which you're just doing it with a couple of months so it's a measure in time that we gives us information but you know we the students disabilities have specific needs right and we need to continue to strive to meet those and they're different needs because they're very individualized each child is individual and the IEP is drafted to help try to meet those particular needs right in most cases we will also want to make sure our students have access to the general education curriculum that we're meeting their

▶ 1:43:48 needs and giving them remediation and intervention but also supporting them and getting as close access to those standards and getting them as close to those standards as soon as possible I guess I thank you for that I'd be interested to know based on the all the other data points that you collect whether you see as significant achievement gap as we're seeing here my guess is my guess would be no but I'd be interested to know in all your free time no just over you know over time whether you're seeing yeah and then we look at those assessments because we look at them just make sure that we see progress for students so we're benchmarking students to see yep that's where they are right now and are they making progress and is there a way that we can

▶ 1:44:39 make sure they're making ambitious progress so that we can close the gaps in some cases we're successful and others where you know we're really the the children are stubborn and we're trying to do trying multiple ways to try to meet those individual needs and and teachers are trying to change their instruction and we're trying to draft interventions and remediation that needs those particular needs as well as trying to do it as fast as possible so that we close those achievement gaps so the one thing I would say is is going back to what Miss Singer said several years ago we made a real concentrated effort you all know I'm a firm believer that special ed children are regular ed children first and foremost and they have a right to a standards based

▶ 1:45:31 education and then whether and you know and you could say the same about our English language learners some of our other disadvantaged learners they have a right to the same education as every other child sitting in that school and then it's our job to fill in the gaps and hacking back to what Miss Singer said we made a concentrated effort at the high school several years ago and you see the results among the things that we did at the secondary level at least at the high school level is we asked SPED teachers to become dual certified so that they had curriculum expertise I think it is and I say this as a former SPED director probably one of the well-intentioned but biggest mistakes that we ever made about special ed was thinking that special ed teachers

▶ 1:46:23 could deliver the curriculum they are not curriculum experts they're experts in accommodations modifications remediation re-instruction specialized instruction they do not usually while they now have to have a second certificate in a general ed area they typically do not have the degree of expertise either through training or daily use that our general ed teachers have and we made a decision as a district to try to improve their understanding but also to give our children primary instruction by the most qualified person and I have you know in one of the things that I've said often and and I and I have some of my elementary teachers here and here in my elementary principles they've heard me say it we do a lot of small group work

▶ 1:47:20 as you all know that's the model we will use we use the workshop model and an argument I will often have with the teacher is why is the SPED teacher teaching reading most pet teachers are not trained in reading most general ed primary teachers are trained in reading don't you want the person who has the best skill in that subject to be teaching the child so it is very hard to get away from that model and we push it and we push it and I don't think our parents entirely understand it and I don't think our teachers always understand it because everybody is very well intentioned and they want to protect our children but the truth of the matter is you're not protecting the child if you don't put the child in a situation where he has to have some

▶ 1:48:08 intellectual struggle take some risks and push himself or herself because they need to grow so I know the instinct always is give my kid more services put them in a small group put them in a pullout but I think what you can see by looking at the scores is the disadvantage we have given those children with that model over time and well those places where we have remediated that model and we've created systems where our general ed and our special ed people can work more closely together you're seeing some better results for our children mr o'connell just very briefly to follow up on that it's hugely important for us to hear you say that uh with regard to special education um and i i i said this recently and and i will

▶ 1:49:05 Jessica Dugan: continue to say this i we really need to create a forum we're going to be talking about forums later on in the agenda whether it's an agenda item here or a standalone forum to talk along the lines that you just spoke to uh madam superintendent because there is an education piece here in terms of sharing this work with parents that I think we can do better at so thank you for that if it's okay with the committee I'll wrap us up on this what the cameras don't show are the pretty amazing people in the room with us tonight so I just wanted to say thank you to our content facilitators and educators and and principals and department heads everyone who is here play such a role supporting each other and working every day so I on behalf of

▶ 1:50:03 Jessica Dugan: all of us on the committee we have super super high expectations for you and of you and I hope that this community continues to raise our expectations actually and at the same time I hope that we as a committee and you can hold us to providing the support that you need to achieve that so we're here to do that we appreciate this kind of conversation we had tonight to inform our thinking so that we can make sure those things that are priority for you to meet those expectations are are available to you and we appreciate you very much so thank you okay that wraps up our MCAS state test conversation great job thank you and last on the EP MP agenda tonight is discussion around a school cancellation project proposal blizzard bags we will hear from the

▶ 1:51:01 Jessica Dugan: superintendent have an opportunity to ask questions have conversation this evening but we will not be voting on this until our next meeting which is two weeks from now the superintendent assures us that a vote at that time if we move forward will give us the time we need to or the time she needs to submit necessary paperwork so I'm gonna correct you because that's not true anymore okay so just I will just want to say and then I'll let you take over we did receive a tremendous amount of feedback from the community around blizzard bags we thank people for sharing that it was a lot of support but also some interesting folks who did not support the proposal and we very much appreciate the input from

▶ 1:51:49 Jessica Dugan: folks who wrote directly to the committee I know the superintendent has brought the proposal towards some of the site councils and is making that circuit as well so just want to make sure that we acknowledge that and know that that will inform our thinking over the next few weeks as we consider so I think we're under a little bit of pressure to think about this in more in a more immediate way aside from the fact that I live in fear of the weather first of all I want to stop at thanking my colleagues Kim Smith and Eric Conti and David Hodgson, Wakefield, excuse me, Burlington, and Gateway, in that order, who shared with me their work in this area, especially Kim Smith and Wakefield, who basically met with me, North

▶ 1:52:41 Andover, and Saugus and said, here, do what you want with everything I've already done. So I thank them for that. There's not enough days in the year. That's the bottom line. We can't get everything that we've gotten done and I listen to your questions tonight and you keep circling back to PD PD PD and there's just not enough days in the year and you know our teachers have families they have obligations and what we have found is lots of our people can participate up until June 30th it gets tougher over July and August I reached out to the state already in anticipation to this and first of all stop calling it blizzard bags the state does not like that that's New Hampshire's term and it does not indicate Massachusetts

▶ 1:53:35 expectations on this New Hampshire's expectations are on this very differently and I had a great conversation with a very helpful woman at the Office of Charter Schools and Redesign those of you who do not know Desi's been reorganized again and that's her department Shay Edmond and there is no application process okay I had sent her a a pre-intent letter and asked her could you give me feedback on this so I could get take her feedback here tonight night and her answer to me was your pre-attent letter covered all the bases it covered everything we expected you to cover at this point it's between you and your school committee you do not have to apply for this and what Massachusetts calls this just so everybody has the correct terminology is alternative

▶ 1:54:31 structured learning day programs I can't even come up with an acronym I'm sorry okay and you can google it on the on the on the department's website it's under school redesign so and let me read to you just some of it because it is two pages long with and again and what basically what she said to me is this is pre pre a preventive yes she said this is a preventive approach as opposed to a reactive approach in other words we're planning ahead of the event she says you cannot use this for anything but inclement weather it could only be used for inclement weather so I said to her so my friends who lost electricity for three days if they had this in place they could not use this and she said no

▶ 1:55:45 they could not because that was reacting to an event not inclement weather so they're very clear this is about inclement weather only so if we had a gas leak you couldn't use it we had a power outage you couldn't use it we had a tree fall on the middle school roof we couldn't use it you could only use it inclement weather and let me just read you this middle paragraph while the concept of alternative structured learning day programs is relatively new in Massachusetts the department recognizes that such programs are designed to reduce the number of additional school days beyond the 180 required days and minimize student learning disrupted by weather related emergencies by providing alternative learning activities for students that

▶ 1:56:33 may be completed at home these programs may be an alternative option for schools to pursue as long as they can assure that the programs meet the standard for structured learning time and that the assignments or projects are substantial these programs must also be accessible include appropriate oversight and teacher involvement rather than resembling traditional homework assignments and be approved by the district school committee okay that's it so we have provided you with all the literature that we have helped to that we've developed with again Kim Smith's help about oversight responsibilities monitoring this project and everything else and at this point in accordance to Jesse this is between this is your decision at this point so it's

▶ 1:57:24 interesting it's an interesting time in education as we explore CBE online learning blended learning dual enrollment independent learning in every other configuration that we are exploring beyond brick and mortar all right I was amazed when this woman said to me well this is just another way to learn and she used the words beyond brick and mortar which I found very reassuring considering the rest of the work we're doing so it's that shift in where do kids learn and how do they learn and I think the key to the whole thing is the design of the assignments we give them the other key to the process is making sure that those children who for some reason may not not have accessibility to some of the tools that are needed have a time and

▶ 1:58:30 support when they return to school to do the work and we think we have included that I will tell you staff is excited about this and not because they're going to be home doing nothing because if you read the literature you will see that they have responsibilities especially at the secondary level but but they are very much engaged in student agency and student independence and they see this as an extension of student agency and student independence and I was very reassured last night because when I went to the meeting with the medical parents and again they have just as much access as anybody else here a little known fact that I picked up in preparation for another project is there are seven

▶ 1:59:23 million people in the world and six million of them have cell phones and that's more people than have access to toilets so we're very connected society but one of the things I heard from my parents last night that reassured me is the question was posed to them what are your kids getting from school and they all talked about their kids independence their kids ability to monitor their own work their kids pride in their own work and I said to myself my god we're getting it done I know that some of the responses that we got from some of the parents were concerned that they would have to do the work I don't know how to to disabuse parents of that desire or that obligation you know we try to say to parents you only step in when your kid struggles to the point where it's so

▶ 2:00:25 frustrating they can't do it we try to encourage children to do their own work we certainly try to discourage parents from doing their children's work the mayor is fond of telling me he can't do his son's work it's beyond him so he just told me it is okay so I think part of the part of that one of the steps we would have to take is to make sure that our teachers at their PTOs talked about parents about whose job it is to do the work and whose job it is to maybe just encourage but I think it's an opportunity for us as we move more and more away from the constraints of brick and mortar I will I will never deny a teacher in front of you is the most valuable thing I you know I fight for it every day but I also think that we want kids to be independent self-directed

▶ 2:01:35 Jessica Dugan: learners and for all of you who have college children and know that that's probably one of the most difficult skills for them to take to college it's a skill we have to help them master so can you before we have questions can you help us understand I mean this is a significant investment of time reading through those responsibilities there what why is this you know we already get out of school earlier than many districts around us in June because we start before Labor Day. We have not in the last few years come up against an end of June deadline in a very long time. Seems plenty of time for PD at the end of school. So why is the time and effort that this will take such a priority right now? We just heard that we don't have time to develop science

▶ 2:02:27 units what what's the why is this so why is this happening now so well it's happening now because you're seeing a shift to this across the whole state two years ago when we had a very bad winter I think and many other districts went right up until June 30th they lost valuable PD time and things like that I think while right now we get out early we're not always guaranteed to get out early and the closer we get to july 1st the less participation we have in pd because people have made their summer plans i think you heard from parents we have a tremendous amount of working parents in this district and one of the things i kept reading was now i can plan my life and i know having been a working parent how difficult that is i've been in that situation

▶ 2:03:20 where you make summer coverage plans for your kid and you pay for them and all of a sudden oops i'm losing a week's whatever i think there's a lot of different factors that come into this i also will tell you that the later you go in june the tougher it gets in the buildings um you know one of the reasons when you go to school in other parts of the country they begin school mid-august and get out the end of may it has to do with the weather um you know uh we're very we're very hung up in um a new england station it's nine states for those of you who don't know it it's new england new york pennsylvania new jersey who is enamored of this concept about being out of school until labor day and having a february and april vacation

▶ 2:04:15 I for one would go to a March vacation but I never said that out loud right I think that it will help us in a lot of the things we're trying to get accomplished questions discussion from the committee mr. O'Connell thank you very much I always wonder where the song lyrics and it come from during the song lyrics and clearly here it's blue skies nothing but blue skies coming our way focusing on the positive and among the many positives I think with this proposal has been the feedback and the chair spoke to that it's hugely important that we get feedback both pro and con it really goes a long way toward informing our decision-making so we're grateful for that likewise we're grateful to our chair because it falls to our chair to respond to all the

▶ 2:05:17 emails we've received as a committee so thank you mr. is cool for that with regard to dropping the blizzard bags I don't think there's any chance that in fact I think it's a big well give it given the response you know I think we may want to think about blockbuster budget Bonanza enrollment Armageddon and school calendar Smackdown because it clearly generates a lot of interest yeah that's not that's not happening that's not happening one question and maybe through the chair to the chair about the feedback we received I never thought about this before but how much of it other than our discussion of it here tonight goes to the superintendent do we ever share that kind of yes we do well when we receive a an email from a parent and it affects the schools ninety

▶ 2:06:24 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: nine point nine percent of the time as opposed to something like your school committee goals or something like that I copy the superintendent on the reply so she has received a reply and the original email on every single email that we received great thank you a couple of follow-ups if i may i appreciate the detail of the proposal and i appreciate you thanking your fellow superintendents particularly helpful the roles and responsibilities document and the assignment examples and uh not just here tonight but in in my meetings with the site councils uh people have been talking about that as they've looked at our agenda packet or our meeting packet and i also appreciate the out of the box thinking that i think is reflected here

▶ 2:07:20 i want us to be pushing the envelope and trying new things am i understanding correctly that this we are still treating this as a potential pilot program you can decide whether you want it as a pilot you can decide if you want it as a year-to-year decision you can decide whether you want to limit it to just the five days we would be required to make up and if god forbid we had a blizzard of 10 days we still had to make up those five you know those net five days you can decide you know again my guidance from DESE is this is ultimately your decision how you structure this so and this is my last question for the moment to follow up on a question that the chair asked and it was the why now question you know what's

▶ 2:08:09 this push about at this point and I do have a sense and I think it was reflected in some of the input that we got from parents it does feel like this is very much part and parcel of a larger push toward increased online learning spoke to that we've been seeing it and feeling it I think as a criticism but but you don't view it that way necessarily no again I don't think online learning is ever a substitute for the debate that happens in a class the conversation that happens among students or the guidance that a teacher can provide but I think we're foolish to think you know the teacher is the purveyor of all knowledge is going to continue into the future you know in education circles we talk about teachers as facilitators more than teachers as

▶ 2:09:12 providers of all knowledge and again technology is a tool it's one of many many tools that is in this that is in our tool bag but I think you'll also have to understand and I'm going to speak to this a little bit in a few days is the world we're setting our kids up for it's a very different world than we all experienced and you can talk about your own personal experiences you know my own son who is in the technology field works from home one or two days a a week I have other friends who have national jobs and they don't have an office they may go to an office in Canada once every couple of weeks it's just you know the nature of the world that our kids are going to enter and they have to have a good mastery of information gathering information

▶ 2:10:17 creating as they move in to their futures so when we talk about the use of technology and learning it's not because it's a substitute but because it's recognizing the reality of their lives I mean I sit here and out of a corner of my eye I look at Miss McAllister-Grant ask her what she does every day and actually we had a very humorous conversation about it and you can relay that story I won't steal your thunder but our our kids and we all know that she teaches at you know the world's greatest University hitting her course on that that kids don't recognize paper anymore there to that point you heard in response to miss Cassa tell his question about writing that our digital literacy specialist is working with the kids about creating digital portfolios when

▶ 2:11:19 Christine Casatelli: our kids submit papers to our teachers they don't nobody goes like this anymore they go like this send one of my English teachers is up back he opens the Google Doc he makes his notes he sends it back this is the world our kids live in and going to work in Ms. Castatelli so I agree with this is how grown-ups do work in the workplace but you're missing one component i think in the in the workplace we use webex we use go to meeting and i don't see any technology here there's google hangouts but that's limited in scope in this plan so i'm my fear is that there's a snow day um a teacher will just hand a kid some work and say okay we'll see you when the snow melts so so what you got here is not the finished product we've we have discussed this with the

▶ 2:12:32 union at labor management and again everybody's waiting on your vote it once you give approval the teachers are going to sit down and they're going to just they're going to fill out this chat a lot of this was just examples and they will fill out this chat the content facilitators the coaches the principals the department heads will sign off on the quality of the of the work assignment again well we saw we see that the quality of the work result who is who is we well I'm I'm interested in seeing this as a pilot but I want to make sure that the work that we get after a snow day is high quality work there is a requirement here to I didn't want to use the word audit but to review the work and and make that assessment there it there is a review process built

▶ 2:13:30 into this the technology that is in the the template document quite frankly is my limited technological ability believe me my staff surpassed me you know I so I will leave it to them to flesh out the details of what is possible for kids my second question do we know that we have a hundred percent that our students have internet connectivity 100% we think it's 99% miss Arnold did a little bit of a survey for me a couple of years ago actually she did it thinking that we would find out we had an issue and she reported back to me that she was surprised at how many of our kids are connected don't forget for a lot of our kids this is a walking computer but as I said we built into here opportunities

▶ 2:14:30 for kids who aren't connected we also are trying to build out low-tech there some of my clumsy examples in here of trying to build out low tech um so kids have options low tech for those of you who don't know like low tech is a pencil and a paper so um so i would support this as a pilot i think it needs some face-to-face mechanism built in so then i would say limit it to the five days make we already have in the calendar and anything beyond that we have to make up that would be my suggestion to you and speaking of pilots I actually would consider have it kick in after the five days that to me would be something that I would be more comfortable with then we know that we're not going up against then later in June and families can plan by April for their

▶ 2:15:28 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: time in their camps and we still are prioritizing face-to-face learning time and camps deposits is due in February I would love to know camp that was in deposit was due in April I do think sorry I didn't mean to interrupt mr. school thank you so I feel that the documents and the explanation are tremendously thorough I think there's always going to be questions I very much agree with miss Casatelli that this should be a pilot and I'm not comfortable with five days I think it's too many I'd like to start it even on a smaller scale so I think three days it's still a couple of days but I'd like to see what it what it looks like what is it and then I want to hear from families and I want to get some feedback so but I do believe in I mean taking the first

▶ 2:16:19 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: step and I think we can do that tonight on a limited basis based on the the input we've received based on the level and substance of the documentation based on your call with the department but in a limited way that's respectful to our students and our staff so I would make a motion to approve this concept with a limit of three days with an update back to the committee after two days where this has occurred and we a reconsideration of this procedure if you will in September of 2018 can you just clarify what you mean by three days I don't understand it for three days so did you never use it I can never measure it right so it's we never three days but after the three days it's the days are tacked on to the end so you try it and see how it works okay and what was the

▶ 2:17:16 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: second part about two days that you so after after it's happened twice so it happens January 6th and you know February 6th so after February 6th at the next school committee meeting yes on the agenda under EP and P goes how basically how did it go a report from the superintendent on its efficacy okay is there a second second for purposes of additional discussion there's a motion made by mr. school seconded by miss Casa telly discussion and Olin yeah I would just I think your idea is fine but I'd like to hear a little bit more feedback I mean I don't think people really know there's a circle of people that are on the internet in terms of the community Facebook page that got a hold of this consent is a blast of dozens and dozens and dozens of emails that doesn't mean

▶ 2:18:13 the whole community has an understanding of what's going on I this is a relatively new topic i think if we give it one more cycle of one more meeting i think they'd be it could be flushed out just a bit more well i'm not going to ask teachers to put the time and the effort into creating assignments that i don't know if they're not going to they're going to be needed i will say that to the committee we have other work we need to concentrate on in the meanwhile i don't think anyone's asking you to do that yeah miss McAllister grant so I I do support this proposal I think there's a lot of positives and a number of the emails we received pointed that out learning beyond school walls student agency use of technology lots of good stuff not

▶ 2:18:57 leaving probably most importantly securing dedicated time for teacher professional development which I think is critical to where we are right now I i also see opportunities which some of the folks in the emails mentioned as challenges so one opportunity to speak to ms casatelli's point is technology how will students get support beyond their parents hopefully not their parents on these days i think there was a mention of the ask a librarian option that there might be the ability to chat with our media and technology experts while students are doing work i think that would be huge and a general scaffolding skill that we want to build into how they're doing research every day not just on a snow day

▶ 2:19:49 other folks mentioned this is a culture change there could be support around that i agree cbe is a culture change it's all part of the same movement and i think if we can be intentional in the way we talk about that that can really help and another email mentioned the tools that are currently used i think in the secondary level for teacher to student and teacher to family communication that those are not necessarily the best and perhaps we could look into something more effective or trying something different so i think if that could be part of this pilot effort thinking about supporting our students to access through technology their research support and building their communication with their teacher that would ultimately help our efforts you know and scaffold our efforts

▶ 2:20:41 to to learning beyond school walls broadly so so i thank you for this proposal and i thank everyone for the feedback and I will support it I think I don't know that I need to I think I want to wait two weeks as well and give people a chance to give us further feedback mr. O'Connell I too support in general terms as a pilot program and with all due respect to the chair I would also like to wait my one last question about this for the moment madam superintendent will the program review include collecting and considering parent feedback on this we could it could so my question is now a recommendation or request that it it does I know there are a lot of other factors but if we could have that as an as part

▶ 2:21:43 Jessica Dugan: it that would be great thank you so i'd make a motion to hold okay motion to hold um so i i second okay sorry second made by mr school seconded by miss custody um i would say i i'm i am not in favor of the proposal um mostly because i feel like the need isn't um identified well enough to me to warrant the amount of time and effort that it will take of our staff to do it well i'd rather see us go deep on something i i think there's a huge value in exploring learning outside of brick and mortar i think there are intentional ways to do that when it can connect directly to the learning that's happening in the classroom but for this it seems like learning experiences will be created and then put on hold until a snow day not necessarily tied to

▶ 2:22:42 what is happening uh within the day and and i would love to hear if that's not um that's not true so if you read this carefully there's three levels of there's three levels of types of uh assignments the teachers can give they can give immediate assignments they can give intermediate intermediate length assignments and they can give long-term assignments so that if so you have to remember there is nothing that we do that is a one-time learning assignment everything is connected to the final outcome at the end of the year whether it's increasing kids writing ability increasing their application of math skills increasing their understanding of the scientific inquiry method everything is a cumulative experience and anything you do on any given day that reinforces

▶ 2:23:33 any of the skills that we expect children to be able to master by the end of the year whatever we do to reinforce it is working towards that mastery you know I that's how I feel you know you want my teachers to come forward and talk to the about this they can come forward and talk to you about about this but I'll tell you one of the things that we do and you were all concerned about the science is come the second half of the year actually the last February March think about it winter season we do spiral reviews of all our science topics why because of the way that exam is set up if we do not do the spiral reviews we have a concern that kids will not remember what they learned in third and fourth grade to take the fifth grade exam this is a perfect opportunity for

▶ 2:24:30 spiral reviews this is a perfect opportunity for narrative writing we got hit on narrative writing on the mcast this is a perfect opportunity for a kid to take the scientific inquiry method and apply it at home to a simple science experiment anytime we give a kid the chance to either improve his mastery of skills or to apply what they have learned is a bonus for us because it in because that it it internalizes that much more what they are learning when I began to look at this as a couple of assignments assignments here I'm not crazy about but again I'm not spending my time reviewing this and and working with my staff on it until I know it's a go my time is spent as it is I don't have enough hours in the day so but I would I I really have a problem with

▶ 2:25:31 Jessica Dugan: that with that I mean that's like saying telling God kids with what what saying that you don't see this connected to what we do and into the outcomes that were with I'm sorry my the comment was connected to what they were doing the day before and the day after it's not necessarily an opportunity to continue I'm not saying it's not valuable at all but I'm just saying it I don't see that is necessarily connected well the high school people in the middle school people certainly see that connection because they work in longer units and you know let me tell you you know there's many a time that you know you talk about conferencing writing conferencing my ELA teachers you go and you look at their schedule for the week maybe Wednesday is their student

▶ 2:26:17 conferencing day what is the difference between conferencing in the building all day long while the kid is sitting in the room and conferencing over Google Doc from everybody's home it's conferencing that's in the middle of a unit I just disagree maybe because I am in the business of planning units and thinking long term every you know as a teacher when I was a teacher but again this is your decision in the end yeah I have presented to you a plan I've run the plan by teachers we're running the plan by school site councils you have input from parents in the end it is this committee's decision and the teachers and I will abide by your decision I I think that the proposal is challenging to me as well because it was brought to us relatively quickly without a lot of

▶ 2:27:14 Jessica Dugan: notice so to me this is more than a procedural decision this is a decision for us to deliver some of our 180 days in a different way with a different educational model I think that's a significant decision it's not one that I would personally take lightly as a committee member and I do think that it takes time I also think it takes collaborative input and effort from the folks who are on on one part of it which is families I'm not necessarily gonna sit down and teach my children how to do the homework but I am going to have to make sure that they'd sit down and do it so I wouldn't claim that I have to sit there and teach them that's your teachers jobs and they do it well but I am but I do have to manage their time that day and that is a challenge that I

▶ 2:28:05 Jessica Dugan: don't think that we should belittle what parents have that concern I certainly don't belittle it but you can really see when you read the comments that you when this committee got you really see a difference in how people approach what they view as homework and it's an ongoing struggle for the district as a whole I agree you know and I know you I know I know you agree with that and and I don't look at this as homework I look at this as classwork I do have another concern and maybe it's something that I'm happy to look into it over the next two weeks but because we do get out of school already earlier than a lot of the schools around us and maybe that will change in the next few years if more

▶ 2:28:54 Jessica Dugan: people start doing this but certainly for this year I don't know a tremendous amount of camps that start June 13th maybe I'm wrong but I do think that most of the camps I know start later in July because they're waiting for schools to get done so that's something that I will look at and I'm happy to share if people are interested but I do think that there's a disproportional effect on some of our families that are working and is one of the concerns that we heard from community members who wrote in that now they take days off to cover snow days but they don't win those days back at the end of the year they have more days actually that they have to cover for childcare in the summer than they did

▶ 2:29:35 Jessica Dugan: before so I think there's additional effect there I'm interested in also hearing a little bit more and it was well fleshed out but I'm interested in the effect on our special ed students I know there are services that they can get if they like but it almost felt like that wasn't necessarily you know that that's a that's a significant effort on your staff again I'm not sure that this is the the way we should be asking people to spend their time when we are working on all the other initiatives in our district right now to me it's taking the time to learn a little bit more the site councils have been asked to share their input but I know that not all of them have met I think it's critical that

▶ 2:30:18 Jessica Dugan: that they have the opportunity to weigh in as well and are part of a proposal that is developed collaboratively so that's my hesitation not that I think it's a bad idea in the long run but that I think it's something that needs to be developed a little bit more intentionally and deeply I do think sounds like we've decided to hold continue the conversation for next okay so is there any further discussion on the non blizzard bags on the hold correct further discussion on the hold all those in favor of holding that carries unanimously is there any further discussion on blizzard bags this will be something that we return to in two weeks we do want to make sure that we can vote and make a decision and give the superintendent time to to move

▶ 2:31:19 forward if that's the will of the committee thank you very much that concludes EP&P thank you next we have the policy and planning subcommittee mr. O'Connell good evening folks welcome to policy and planning we're leaving the mass policy update horse in the barn this week we do have two other agenda items though the first relates to our school committee self-evaluation process the packet includes a memo aligning the process closed readers will see that substantially similar to what we did last year and the year before for that matter likewise the self-evaluation grid that we use individually to record our comments the process this year as contemplated has us completing our respective self evaluations and the grids more particularly in time for

▶ 2:32:12 submission to the packet for our 1128 meeting that I realize as I say it brings into play Thanksgiving so I'm sure miss Hogan will inform us or perhaps the superintendent will as to when those need to be submitted likewise if we stay with this schedule committee members will be afforded time at the 1128 meeting for comments on the self-evaluation highlights or lowlights as they may be and finally the expectation again if we stay with this proposed schedule is that this subcommittee will report out on our collective evaluation at our 1212 meeting part of the impetus behind getting this done in a timely fashion is to share it of course with our committee members to be madam chair does this require a vote no it does not okay please

▶ 2:33:12 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: mr. but I would just recommend that to address the situation with Thanksgiving and just in terms of open meeting law I would invite everybody maybe with the indulgence of the chair to bring their hard copies as we did with the superintendent's evaluation then should it be the interest of the chair in in receiving comments everyone can certainly comment and then deliver those directly to mrs. Hogan following our meeting for inclusion and then you would be able to see those and draft your summary terrific so bring the completed grids for the 1128 meeting great thank you for that any further comment questions miss McAllister grant I think when we've done the superintendent's evaluation she's often emphasized how valuable the conversation is as as part

▶ 2:34:11 of evaluation I don't necessarily need this to happen for this year because we're sort of far along in the process here but I'd like us to think about that piece perhaps one of our retreats could be could include a conversation around the evaluation I know that we bring it up as an agenda item in the meeting but I can't say that this format is necessarily the most what's the word I'm looking for suitable to really delving into reflection and evaluation but I'd like us to just think about that as we move forward good point well taken any further discussion seeing none thank you for all of that moving on to item number two it relates to our proposed revisions to policy JFA BB the policy with proposed

▶ 2:35:07 revisions is included in the packet these revisions as indicated in the document are being brought forward primarily at the urging or suggestion rather the superintendent who I think has rightly observed that the policy as written might lead one to conclude that our policy is somehow limited one just to quote exchange students or exchange program students and or that we are favoring certain sponsoring organizations to the exclusion of others and I don't think that's our intent so we should address that it's also the intent of the revisions to afford the superintendent the opportunity to adopt appropriate rules regulations and guidelines particularly with regard to tuition free exchange students I would remind the committee that this policy is

▶ 2:35:58 before us for informational purposes only there's no vote required this evening and I would invite the superintendent to comment no I I thank you uh mr o'connor you you adapted the the policy to meet the needs that i'm seeing in the district we keep getting more and more requests about people hosting exchange students especially some of our families who were exchange students many years ago so i wanted to make sure we had a policy that recognized those opportunities as well as put in place some protocols for protecting melrose public schools especially as we have a growing enrollment so i thank you for that thank you and the committee will recall this was last before us in january of 2016. any uh discussion

▶ 2:36:49 miss mcallister grant yes i was curious to know how the tuition amount is calculated for tuition paying students and relatedly if it seems useful i know we've been cautioned against sometimes adding things to policy because they make it harder for us rather than easier but in this case i'm curious does it benefit us in any way to include that information in the policy or to not i don't think it benefits us any way to include it it doesn't benefit us no subject to change it's it's not it's subject to change it's not fixed okay so and it's set according to our per pupil okay thank you that's a good question though miss castelli did you have something i apologize any further comments or questions seeing none we'll bring this forward at the next available opportunity

▶ 2:37:43 with the leave of the chair for a first vote and that concludes our policy and planning subcommittee this evening thank you thank you thank you very much next on our agenda is the finance and facilities subcommittee mr selma is not able to be with us if miss castelli would be willing to um take over i would appreciate you to do that what you're talking about uh i believe that there was something pulled off the yes the monthly budget summary report yes the monthly budget motion to approve second thank you okay um moved by miss mccallister grant seconded by miss driscoll discussion all in favor okay discussion sorry so I wanted to focus on my phone here I just had a question which I already shared in the sphere all about

▶ 2:38:34 there were negative balances in excess of 35,000 for three of our accounts 1410 business and finance 2210 school leadership building and 2310 teacher specialist so I wanted to understand that was a significant change from the prior month and just wanted to get the background on that situation so there's a couple of things that were different in the report this month what we do is about this time of the year we encumber the salaries for the remainder of the school year we wait until we get all of our teacher upgrades and so we had just done that so now when you have a payroll you have to now disencumber the funds I ran the report prior to payroll disencumbering it so it's actually showing up in two places okay so that's my bad so we're not $35,000 today no

▶ 2:39:33 great all right thank you very much for clarifying that okay other questions okay did you want to speak on that would you just clearly explain why you can't run the report again oh so actually today we were working on making adjustments to our chart of accounts desi has made adjustments this year that we have to have in play so we actually had our consultant working with us today to make those adjustments so some of the categories are rolled up together now and others are being broken out and being separated out differently so we have to modify according to what the state requires is there a new chart of accounts that they issue yes they are they've made some changes so that for example special education teachers and regular education teachers which had

▶ 2:40:25 Christine Casatelli: been separated are now put together in professional development now they're breaking out PD into a couple of different categories so you would have consultants from the outside as opposed to just in-house professional development you would provide there's just a couple yeah so if you run the report again it's not the same next month it'll look differently because the numbers will have changed right thank you any further questions sort of a motion and a second to accept the report all in favor carries unanimously thank you next on the agenda is an annual report from Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education I will ask the superintendent to update us so as you all know we have to give a year-end

▶ 2:41:25 report to the state there is really nothing to report on it at this point it's been submitted it will be audited probably in February and so in March we can report back questions so it's just an update no vote required and that concludes the facilities and finance subcommittee thank you next on our agenda is the superintendent's goal for the year and I would invite her to speak to them please Thank You mr. school so you have my yearly goals document as has become practice under this committee you set your overarching goals for the district and I align my goals to your overarching goals there is no one-to-one correspondence between the categories you have established which I thought were well thought out and the rubrics so

▶ 2:42:40 I try to focus in on the keywords within your goals and the keywords within certain indicators that would help align my goals to our the overarching goals so my first goal is on instructional leadership and in that I am trying to echo your your student engagement goal about rigorous innovative and supportive learning and combined environment and hopefully the gold does that my second goal on management in operations is trying to echo your goal around educator development my third goal on and which is also under management and operations talks about fiscal systems and on that I am trying to echo your goal about strategic allocation of resources and my fourth goal which focuses on family and community engagement I am trying to focus echo your goal around community

▶ 2:43:54 collaboration what is not in this it there are key actions in this and those key actions will produce artifacts but many of those artifacts as we have talked about this past year for which I am very thankful to that new practice our exhibits and presentations over the year so so hopefully you will see those as we move through the year if there is something in particular that you think would contribute towards evidence that that we need to work into the rolling agenda the Striscoll has given you a new rolling agenda and we can consider it the the last goal about community and family engagement is a little bit harder because some of it is dependent on the forums you set up and my role in those

▶ 2:44:56 forums so you know the key action participate in community school committee forums that may be topic specific for the purpose of engaging the public and creating a vision for the miller's public schools so there is a need to collaborate on some of this in order for me to achieve my goals and for you to achieve yours discussion on the goals miss McAllister grand I think these look great I really appreciate how they are so closely aligned with what we set for the district and also I also see evidence in all of them of specific things we've discussed that we would like to focus on and I can see you leaving those in so I really appreciate the intentionality and the thoughtfulness that that is evident here thank you for the discussion mr. O'Connell

▶ 2:45:47 thank you very much thanks for the work that went into this superintendent I don't envy the task of straddling our goals our overarching goals which are the district goals not just our committee goals and and the DESE framework but you managed to do it and once we get beyond the desi lingo if you will here the meat of this the stuff that our stakeholders can appreciate and relate to is really with regard to the goals and key actions that's where the action is in this document and you know given the late hour I'm not going to go through all of these but I do want to talk about the family and community engagement one because as you just suggested it's as much about us as it is about you and I appreciate that and and I for one is one of seven and tend to

▶ 2:46:56 Jessica Dugan: take you up on that challenge because I think it's it's the place with all due respect to these other goals and actions it's the place where we working with you can really add value by by really focusing on community engagement so I thank you for that I think that that's going to be a real driver here so thank you mr. thanks I you know what mr. O'Connell said I think the community engagement goal is the closest we've come in a little while to kind of get into the meat of what we're trying to do there so I appreciate that I'm wondering we had a great conversation at our retreat around student engagement as opposed to or next to student achievement and I'm wondering if that standard one if you feel that there's something different in your key actions

▶ 2:48:00 and your approach as the leader in that goal is there something different with it with kind of a different lens in a different slam I think it went the standard itself is too broad that's why I brought it down to 1b and because 1b specifically talks about engage all students and are personalized to accommodate diverse learning styles needs so that's why I thought one be more closely captured you know but again the rubric structure is the rubric structure I think really I will tell you that one of the things that was done recently is you all know that the district has a practice of learning walkthroughs both cross team and level team and with the administration last week we set the we we set a focus of inquiry every year and with the

▶ 2:49:00 Jessica Dugan: administration last week we set the focus of inquiries for student engagement so that as people are doing their little walkthroughs there's if there is a document criteria for school effective schools that we use that has key things that we should look for when we do these walkthroughs so we've already set that as a goal for the teams this year to look for specific engagement activities and as a measure so we're trying to do it with the vehicles we have available I think that's fantastic and I think that you know I know we're working really hard to stick within a rubric here to me what you just said is way more meaningful than anything in here as a key action so I appreciate it but I also hope that that's the type of information you can

▶ 2:49:54 Jessica Dugan: share with us as evidence of your work and these types of areas because that has that is something that has legs you know using the strategy overview to XYZ doesn't to me doesn't have legs I know what you do with it I know the hard work you do with it but it's a lot harder for me to grasp what that actually means from a change in your action so thank you for that anyone else do I have a motion for approval so moved second made by miss Dugan seconded by miss McAllister grand further discussion seeing none all in favor opposed that motion carries unanimously with one absent next on our agenda is the rolling agenda and as you'll see I put in the rolling agenda actually it's only for you know two more meetings but I went back on the 2017 agenda beginning with

▶ 2:50:48 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: January and went through all of the meetings just to make sure that we had a a good foundation for what we actually did. So you will see the final three meetings of the year and we will be adding in the snow cancellation project. I'm not gonna say that other phrase. For November 28th, so I will invite Mrs. Hogan to add that to the agenda for the 28th, please. I believe that the rest of the items are accurate, but certainly we will follow our normal process. would remind everybody that your end of year subcommittee reports are due at that time and that will provide some some good thoughts for for the future so that is the story on the 2017 calendar are there any questions about that what happens to Jamie and Jess if they don't pass in the homework I'm gonna have to

▶ 2:51:51 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: think about so I'll place it on hold so already started we're collaborating online in a Google Doc really collaborating online in a Google Doc yes on snow days no just kidding stop it people stop it it's late 2018 2018 is coming so our inauguration is January 8th I believe it will be the beautiful event it usually is looking forward to that so you'll see that a couple things are enhanced in this particular calendar I've added in the three member participation events that we do as a group because I think they're so meaningful for the committee to come together I've also added in the joint meetings I guess those were there before and I've added in the goal-setting retreat a tentative date for the goal-setting retreat of September 22nd

▶ 2:52:50 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: I will invite us at this point because the dates in here are the ones that we voted earlier in the year we do have a conflict the superintendent and I determined September 18th is a conflict with a religious holiday so we will need to reschedule that meeting our proposal is September 4th so we would have a meeting on the 28th of august and then the 4th of september but um the um the other dates in september are not viable the 11th is not viable nor is the 18th so if we intend to stay with our tuesday meeting schedule that would be the next best option without completely overloading another their date finally I would ask for consideration I did not put a proposal in here but we had talked at one time about a February retreat date so I would

▶ 2:53:48 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: certainly be happy to consider that perhaps the first Saturday in February might be good because we don't want to run into school vacation week and so I think that's the date we discussed, right? Mm-hmm. It's the first one, yeah. So with your indulgence, I would entertain a motion to add the- So moved. Second. Well, what's the motion? Nobody knows. I'm just going to read it. it's going to add the september um 22nd retreat to change the september 18th meeting to september 4th and to add a retreat date the first saturday in february the retreat on the 20 seconds already there though how come you have to because it was not in our original calendar that we voted in the summer oh it's an addition okay I got it yeah so

▶ 2:54:53 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: that is the motion thank you for your for the motion and the second for the discussion seeing none all in favor thank you I have a question but it's not on the things you're adding should I wait until after we this vote yes okay and then you could make another motion if you need to pick another motion but um so that is the motion on the floor all in favor oppose that motion carries unanimously with one absent ms mcallister grant so the election of the chair and vice chair is on the january rolling agenda yes so it's on twice december yes because we have a new committee so we do um we have our newly elected members come and sit with us in december in december so then in january what happens in january because it's not binding

▶ 2:55:40 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: because three of you will not be here there will be three new people so you must revote it with all sitting members of the committee oh so do we come back in january no because you are no longer on the committee it is it is a committee of seven who will vote in january as the official and final vote it's it's in our policy okay you're looking for an extension i was just confused why it was there twice yes and that is what happens in election years if there is changeover if there's no changer over in the committee even in an election year you would only do the December because it is by me got it thank you you're welcome they don't vote though yes yes they do it's a straw poll it declares an intention intention so

▶ 2:56:28 Jessica Dugan: next on our agenda is the proposed school committee action items for your consideration I'm happy to discuss these or move them to the next meeting depending on the will of the committee next meeting except that I do like support the idea of subcommittee meeting in December for new members or with new members I'm sorry say that again okay let me start over there's a recommendation under one of our action items to have a subcommittee meeting in december where each subcommittee has the opportunity to uh share their progress where they are and what's coming forward into next year i think that if we're going to do that we need to secure a date immediately um so i would just say we can discuss everything else next time but how should we do

▶ 2:57:23 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: that how should we find those dates um i would um look at your own schedules the subcommittee chairs and certainly it would be a publicly posted meeting um that anybody could attend certainly our new committee members so we um you know would certainly you might want to reach out to them and you know ensure that they could likely attend and certainly i think we should let our board of new board and current board of aldermen um attend to um so it's just a proposal to to it's not necessary it's not a meeting of the whole it's a meeting of the subcommittee it's an opportunity to for example walk through the rolling agenda so what does that mean what kind of context is there to walk through some for example the policy manual how is how

▶ 2:58:09 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: does it happen what does it mean what are the things that we talk about what kinds of things when we've talked about additional presentations in collaboration with the superintendent say around an educational topic so it would be an EP and P subcommittee technically so what would that look like so it's that how do we make decisions and make plans around that subcommittee so each subcommittee chair would go ahead and schedule that meeting on their own I'll reach out to new members to learn a little bit about their availability share it with other subcommittee well you could do each one independent I think you'll have enough content that you might want to have a couple and if there's also nothing to

▶ 2:58:53 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: say that once people are in their positions next year wherever they are that they couldn't hold that meeting and have it be a collaborative information sharing so this was just one thought but it's it's completely up to the subcommittee chairs how you would like to structure that or if you want to do it if you feel it's necessary if you don't feel it's necessary that's fine it was just an idea and just a procedural question if I may does miss Hogan support us and posting this and getting this done I she would do the postings and the subcommittee chair would take the minutes and submit those to miss Hogan for approval by the committee terrific thank you for that motion to move this topic to our next agenda yeah that's fine I'll just move it that was

▶ 2:59:45 easy huh so if this is Hogan if you would kindly add that to our next agenda that would be great liaison reports are last on our agenda does that anyone have anything they'd like to share mr. calm I know it's late I've got a lot of these and I'm not proposing to test anyone's patience so let me just select one the activity fees working group met last night we meet again one more time and I and i just want to say steve fogarty and anthony de benedetto have gone way above and beyond as well as the other educators and parents on this committee um such that um superintendent you're going to get a set of uh well thought out data driven recommendations uh you're going to get them on time and on budget um and i think you'll be pleased but the work these people put in is is

▶ 3:00:48 unbelievable um you know we were there till nine o'clock last night uh they had been there all day they worked on it all afternoon and this is like the fifth meeting we've had we've got another one so i can't say enough about what they did uh and i think for the first time other than in someone's head uh all of the data is collected participation rates revenues expenditures um so i think you get had a great set of recommendations and most importantly supported by the data and I'll report on some of these other liaison things let me just say you know it took me a long time to be convinced about the value of the liaison reports the first meeting I had with Jess Dugan she said it's one of the most important

▶ 3:01:35 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: things we do and it took me a long time to buy into that and do it but it absolutely is and I know I've tested folks patients and having like six reports and I know I'm testing people's patients right now part of the reason I do it is is to emphasize the importance particularly as we have three new people coming in and and I know we're going to talk about orientation and training and bringing people on board that has to be an important part of it so that's also thanks perfect anyone else I'll just say that the the mass conference was outstanding so much incredible content and so many people volunteer their time to share with their colleagues it's always amazing to me what people do to just help each other and I think that's a tribute to the educational system that

▶ 3:02:30 we have in Massachusetts mr. O'Connor a point of privilege and or a question I think traditionally a madam chair there is a statement of intent on the part of candidates for our leadership position will we take that up at some point on the 28th tonight are we going straight to nominations on the 12th no no so you can say anything you want you can say yes so I will indicate that if it be the will of the committee I am very interested in continuing as the chairman of this committee in the year of 2018 well that's exactly why I asked the question so thank you for that for your willingness to serve again and I would certainly support that if there's ever a time we needed a steady hand on the tiller it's it's now and I think you provide that steady hand likewise I

▶ 3:03:27 Margaret Raymond Driscoll: would like to ask the committee's consideration of my qualifications to serve as vice chair for the calendar year 2018 so thank you very good any other comments before we break very good seeing none I would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second made by mr. McAllister grant seconded by ms. Casatelli discussion seeing none all in favor opposed we are adjourned

Original documents

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