School Committee Curriculum & Instruction Subcommittee Meeting 10/15/26

AI-generated transcript — the recording is the record.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: All right, welcome everybody to the Curriculum and Instruction Subcommittee meeting. Please be advised that on October 15, 2026 at 4.30pm there will be a Curriculum and Instruction Subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom. This meeting is being recorded. The meeting can be viewed live on the Medford Public Schools YouTube channel or via Medford Community Media on your local cable channel, Comcast 9, 8, and 22, and Verizon Channel 43, 45, or 47. Participants can log in by using the link below. The meeting ID.

Oh, I do not is nine nine six zero four three zero eight nine zero two. And I think we'll start with the roll call. So member Olapade.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Here.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Member Parks. Here. Member Reinfeld. Here, three present, zero absent. And we've got two orders of business today, both building on past resolutions. We will start with the assessment landscape report, whereas standardized based on 2026-20, whereas regular standardized assessment is an essential feature of public schools accountability profile and a contributor to a district's understanding of student learning, whereas scheduling of test administration and preparation has a direct impact on instructional time and curriculum decisions across the district. Now therefore be it resolved that the subcommittee for curriculum and instruction will meet with the assistant superintendent for academics and instruction to receive and discuss her report on the assessment landscape throughout the So this is something that I know Dr. Talbot has been working on kind of since she got here. Congratulations, a year and a couple months in, and has really worked very, very hard to audit what's going on in the district to understand what's happening in classrooms, in departments, across schools, across grades. And a big piece of that, which is a question that a lot of caregivers often have is, How often are we testing kids? What are we testing them on? Why are we testing them? And so we asked her to take a look at things and to share the findings that she was already digging deep into and bringing that to light. as its own thing. So, Dr. Talbot, I think what we want to do is hear what you've discovered, what you're finding, and what recommendations and next steps we might want to take to make sure that our testing activities are aligned with curriculum goals, instructional goals, and the students' best interests.

[Kim Talbot]: Thanks, I appreciate that. I just need to do a technical check with Mr. Papaselli. Mr. Papaselli, shall I present or are you presenting?

[Member Jessica Parks]: I can share my screen. I just need to close out one tab.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: And so the plan is to have the presentation of findings, take questions and comments from the subcommittee, and then if we have any members of the public who have questions or comments, we can take those. Perfect. Thank you.

[Member Jessica Parks]: Everybody see this?

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: We will as soon as the, there it is.

[Kim Talbot]: Perfect. You want to put that in slide view? Thanks, Brent. All right. So thank you for such a warm welcome, Erica, and for making sure that we just are taking things with an asset-based frame. I want to communicate that the assessment landscape in Medford is a piece of the whole. I want to try to rebrand testing and assessments from this evil sort of something we have to do. and recast it as something that we really need to do so that we can do our job impactfully on behalf of students. So our students can celebrate big milestones like finishing fifth grade, you can see that picture on top, all the way to graduating high school with a broad friend group, confident and ready to participate in the world beyond. So, thank you for that. Great. So, as always, we're going to ground what we're doing in our instructional vision. So, the assessment landscape is grounded in high-quality instruction. I think there's some animation there, Mr. Papaselli, so if you want to click. Yep. So it's data informed to tell us what to do next. We consistently collect and analyze data to inform and adjust our instructional practices, ensuring all students reach their potential. That's what the assessment landscape is about. We do that in a variety of ways. And it helps us to ensure that our instruction is high quality with expectations that are super high at grade level for all of our students so that they can meet the needs of the grade level and beyond. We also want to make sure that we're using data informed decisions about instruction so that the work that students are doing is cognitively rich and they can work collaboratively in groups that make sense based on their outcome data.

to really get the most out of their classes and achieve at grade level standards. So assessment does all of these things together, and it's a critical piece of how we do work. And the next slide shows that, you've seen this slide before, that it really matters that students have access to grade level work because a strong academic foundation is, if you can just click that link, the strong academic foundation is one of the five core domains for students to thrive in life, in their careers, and in democracy. So a strong academic foundation does not happen by accident. It requires high quality instructional materials, teachers who deeply believe in their students, teachers who have strong content and pedagogy knowledge that is current and up to date, and putting both of those things together with assessment data to know what to do next for their students. And so that's why the assessment data still matters.

Member Reinfeld, you wanted me to present the whole thing, but I can pause. I think

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: I think if members have, if they want to jump in with questions, maybe just raise your hand and we'll keep an eye on that. But especially with that, which we've seen a few times now in various other reports, let's keep going.

[Kim Talbot]: Great. So generally speaking, I think about an assessment landscape overview in four big chunks. There are things that happen at the classroom level. district level, state level, and then there's a bunch of opt-in things. So thinking about assessments in these four buckets helps me to know why we use each of those assessments. So we'll take each in turn as we move forward, but it's basically the same slide with different components highlighted. So if you click, let's start with the state. So if you click the state slide, the state assessment is designed for grade level standards and targets. And I started here because this is familiar to you. We call this thing the MCAS, or we call this thing the ACCESS.

And it gives us programmatic information on how impactful our curriculum and instruction is. And it helps to inform the state. It helps to inform the state about what they need to do to allocate resources to us in the district. So that's what the state assessment landscape looks like. We don't have, right now, we don't have any choice really in when the high school state assessments are. The state gives us some dates that we follow. But we generally get a window of time in the spring for the rest of the subject areas that are tested.

And each district can use its own professional, yep, that's right, go ahead, thank you. Each district can use its own professional judgment to determine when it makes the most sense for that assessment to happen. It might be different between different, oh my goodness, between districts or different between schools. But the point is we really wanna know what the students know and want to make sure that the testing conditions are optimal for that. And so here is a view of our assessment calendar, and you can see that there's windows for some tests, like access, and there's dates for other tests, like the ELA MCAS in grade 10.

I just want to back up one. I just want to have one more thing to say about this. And so where we can choose, where districts, where Medford can choose when to have assessments, we use our very best judgment to make sure we consider things like, if you're an eighth grade student, that we really spread out when you take the state assessments. And we don't want it to conflict with any big end of year events for grade eight in particular. And so we have the flexibility to do that. And the building leaders use their instructional expertise to make those decisions.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: How does that fit into scope and sequence in terms of scheduling them to rate? MCAS is very much a snapshot piece. It's not a real time. This is going to inform exactly what we're doing with each student.

[Kim Talbot]: Yeah, so the MCAS has come a long way. And so currently the turnaround time is pretty quick on the MCAS. So we have it by the beginning of the year, typically, and it helps us, even though it's an autopsy date and sometimes like the March date for ELA in grade 10 is pretty far away from September of the next year. So some of the data is old, but the MCAS, So I have two answers to the question. But the MCAS will always tell you programmatically how students are faring in your program.

So for ELA in grade 10, even though it's a snapshot of how those grade 10 students did, it does tell you what students have learned and retained programmatically in grades 9 and 10 combined. The MCAS, we, let me, sorry, one more second to get organized here. So the scope and sequence that we choose to follow in Medford is based on the state standards, the frameworks we call them. And so depending on our high quality instructional material, we'll take those standards that make up the framework in a variety of order.

And the state test, the MCAS, also tests on those standards. So even though it doesn't follow our scope and sequence, we know what the MCAS is going to assess is the state standards. And they are the same things that we should be teaching. That is what the state has said is grade level for our students. And so sometimes it means things like aligning the order in which we teach things so that students are ready to take the content that's on the MCAS. A great example for this typically is in math and with geometry in particular. Geometry in many traditional curriculum is always the last subject to be taught, the last topic to be taught in a math sequence. So maybe that would happen in June, but you can see that the window for MCAS and math students would be testing way before then.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: So, and we have the integrated math curriculum, so we're getting geometry. That's right.

[Kim Talbot]: So it's the burden of the district to think thoughtfully. To think thoughtfully about how they're presenting the state standards to students in the elementary grades where we use investigations. Geometry is woven throughout all of the different units. And so geometry actually is a very, very high, like a high outcome for our students in grades K to five because of the HQIM that we've chosen. and the way Dr. Khan and the elementary teachers deliver it. The same is true at the high school. Remember, Reinfeld, when you say we follow not a traditional algebra one, algebra two geometry path, but rather an integrated path where all those standards are woven together in a way that's connected and makes sense for kids.

Thank you. That was a lot of words. Is this landing with people?

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, and we'll dive into results when we, I know we're gonna get the department presentations in upcoming meetings. So yeah, this is that big picture view. So thank you.

[Kim Talbot]: Big picture. So another sort of bucket of assessments are district assessments. So these are for internal measures and they are diagnostic or sometimes they are screening. So it's information that helps us inform tier one instruction that is instruction that all kids get. and additional interventions. And it helps the school and district to identify patterns and to reallocate resources. And that is either patterns of acceleration beyond what's expected at grade level or patterns of gaps that we need to remediate so that students can perform at grade level. So these are internal measures that give us way more actionable data, way faster than the MCAS does.

Most districts have a schedule of three times per year, which we do as well. But just to put names to what I'm talking about, that's the NWEA map. That's our district benchmarking tool. for math and science and ELA. And then we also use dibbles for elementary reading. And this year we've added common writing tasks as well. So Mr. Pippicelli, if you go to the next screen.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Sorry, can you, the common writing is that I know last year you were saying we want to promote academic discourse and use of language. Is that meant to get at that? Or is, can you say a little bit more about what the common writing tool is?

[Kim Talbot]: Absolutely. Academic discourse is how students engage with each other in class, building their academic identities using smart words or academic words in each discipline. We were in a math class today, and grade six students used words like greatest common factor, least common multiple, So that's academic discourse. We've noticed with writing that our writing student outcomes tend to be lower. And so in order to check on what that looks like, we need smart teachers together looking at samples of student work so that they can name strengths and assets and build on them to close gaps. So having common writing assessments helps us do that. They're mostly nestled in the ELA curriculum, but sometimes they can be in science as well.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: And is that a standard tool or is that a term for a practice?

[Kim Talbot]: Common writing assessments is a general name for a practice. OK. And then the writing that we do, for example, all grade two students in this past, maybe the past two weeks, are finishing up their module in interreading. And the teachers had agreed on a common writing task that all of the students would do. OK. in that unit, and that will allow Dr. Chiesa and the literacy coaches to lead grade level meetings, elevating student work, where the teacher experts can name some assets that they see in the student work and some common trends to push against. Okay, thank you. So it's not a, I'm gonna say branded thing like NWAM. Great, thank you. So then in the next slide, we can see why that's so important.

And this is a slide that you've seen before. We know that course grades don't yet reflect grade level standards. And so these benchmarking tests help us to get closer to knowing the gap between student work and grade level standards faster. And in the next slide, you can see what our assessment calendar looks like. for these benchmarking assessments. You'll see the dibbles that are in, the light blue is the NWEA map, the dibbles is in light green, and then our common writing assessments are in white. So you can see how they're spaced out through the year in an effort to give us important information faster.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: And just like a common writing assessment, does that feel like a break from, in the same way that it's map testing day? Is it common writing assessment day or is that embedded into the curriculum?

[Kim Talbot]: That's a great question. So all of those assessments have a window. So this table shows the start date and the end date of the window of those assessments. And the reason we have a window is so that we can plan. Actually, if you click the next, button, Mr. Pipaselli. And so that we can have times built in where we know we can meet with teachers to have some data and action planning meetings. So much like the state testing MCAS, there is a window of time and building leaders use their professional judgment to determine when that happens within their school.

I wanted to make a note about the DIBLS test, which are in light green. We use DIBLS as our dyslexia screener. It's a universal screener. This is guidance from the state that is newly law. And so we've been in compliance with this law for quite some time. And we provide families information about their students reading using the DIBELS three times a year, which is why you can see that the DIBELS testing has like a late May date.

We do use this sort of end of year testing. So like from April and May, we do use information from those benchmarking assessments to help us make instructional plans in the fall until new data is available. Pausing for questions, right? Keep going. Keep going. So, the next sort of bucket of assessments is the classroom bucket, and these are teacher-created and teacher informed. And teachers use this information to inform their tier one instruction and add any interventions that they need to. And it really helps the teacher know what to do next. The teacher is super close to that data and super close to the students. And the timeline is really tight so that we don't lose instructional time. This could look like quizzes or tests or writing or maybe mid-years or finals. But this can also look like exit tickets, write three words you used today, or quick exit problem, solve this quick problem and hand it to me on the board on your way out. Teachers use assessments all the time to find out what to do next for students.

we are moving to a place with our pacing guides that tells teachers sort of how quickly to move through the curriculum so that we're consistent across schools by grade level. And so it could be that things like tests may happen in the same spin of a week across all grade five classrooms. but really the teacher drives when and how those assessments happen so that they can use the data to inform their practice. And the final chunk of assessments in our landscape are what I call the opt-in or gateway to the future assessments.

So these are the kinds of assessments that give information or help students access college or careers or financial opportunities and also any accolades. So those are things like the college board suite of assessments, the PSATs and SATs and ACTs. AP assessments fall into this. We use language exams and the Apple testing for things like the seal of biliteracy. And then the CTE program uses, they have lots of industry credentials. Those are additional assessments that their students take to sort of stamp their learning. Other things that I might include in this list are CPR, the CPR courses and certification also fall into this bucket.

So it seems like a lot. It's a lot when I say it. But really, to rebrand assessment, assessment is a thing that you do to know what to do next. And we do this all the time when you're driving. You pull up to a stop sign, you stop, you assess what's happening. What's coming left? What's coming right? Who's behind you? Where's the e-bike coming from? Are they wearing a helmet? All of those things help you know what to do next. We're assessing constantly in our lives, and it's the same in education, so that we know what to do next.

So, that concludes my formal presentation and I'm happy to entertain any questions that come from that.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: I have a couple, but I want to make sure members of the parks have a chance as well if they've got questions. because I think, all right, I'll jump in and please feel free. I think one of the big questions is how often are we testing and how much, because time spent, some of the assessments do feel embedded in the lessons, but some of them are time away from learning the content. And then the other question that has come up a few times in our larger committee meetings and in other conversations is, How much time is being spent specifically on the test preparation and preparing to take these particular tests versus learning the content that one will be assessed on? So maybe that's a place to start.

[Kim Talbot]: Yeah, that's a good place to start. So things like the benchmark test, the NWEA map and DIBELS, there should be no test prep for. They are designed to understand where students are in the moment so that we know what to do next. should be no test prep. I would say the test prep for MCAS is your course. Everything you do in a class, a course, a grade level, should be about the grade level standards that are part of the Massachusetts frameworks, which is what the MCAS tests. So my answer is we should not be doing test prep. What we should be doing is teaching grade level standards every day to students so that they are prepared to take the MCAS. I do think sometimes what happens, and it's like old legacy talk or words, sometimes teachers will give lots of writing assignments really close up to the MCAS and call it MCAS prep or an MCAS style question. We've made an effort this year to rebrand that as common writing and spread it out across the year in a way that makes sense so that we can, with our instruction, impact student outcomes.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: And so teachers then are able to see the connection even if they're not articulating it as a direct, we're doing this to raise scores. I think there was just an article in the Globe looking at two different communities with similar demographics. and a divergence of scores. And one of the factors that was cited in the article was time spent on preparation. But as you've said, that isn't authentic learning necessarily of content.

[Kim Talbot]: Right, because it's not about the MCAS. It's about the grade level learning. Yeah. It would be great if we could say that a student's end of course grade reflects grade level learning, but we know that that's not true yet. And so the MCAS does reflect students' grade level learning. It's designed to reflect students' grade level learning. And so in places that use high quality instructional materials, You can be sure that if you use the materials provided by that curriculum, that you are- In the way that they are intended to be used. Exactly, that you are continually practicing grade level standards.

If you don't have that kind of curriculum accessible to you, then it might feel like you have to give MCAS style questions because you haven't been doing them all along. for whatever reason, so.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: And that tends to be a little bit different in AP, learning how to take an AP exam. You know, I know the first time students take an AP exam.

[Kim Talbot]: Yeah, so the college board is its own thing. So what I'm going to say in that case is that the purpose of an AP class is to pass an AP test. Like, that's the purpose of that course. And so that entire course is designed so that students have the content and skill practice to pass the test.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, I will also say that there is interesting content in there that is to learn deeply about a particular subject in a particular way.

[Kim Talbot]: 100%, and be able to show it in a particular way.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Yes, that's, I think the, yeah. Okay, and then my second question about, or sorry, did members Olapade or Parks, did you have a?

[Member Jessica Parks]: I had a question, but you can go. You can finish my 2nd.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: It's a new question. It's it's about buy in right? Looking at that chart of 4 columns. Students buy into the the wings of that number 1 and number 4. And less so the ones in the middle. So how do we. How do we address that? And I will say I have seen in Medford a shift. On educator buy in on some of the. the district level, right? When things rolled out, there was a lot of, oh God, not another test. What is this? And then I've heard over the years at Curriculum Night, oh, this is actually really useful.

And so I've seen that buy-in grow among educators. I'm less sure that it's there for students. And I'm wondering how we,

[Kim Talbot]: Yeah, so work with that. Generally, in my opinion, elementary students take their cues from their teachers and middle and high school, maybe more from their caregivers at home. So one of the things that we do, that we have been doing last year and continue to do this year, is to send home the NWEA map and DIBLS reports to caregivers with a caregiver letter that talks about why it's important and what the data means and how we're using it. So I think some of that PR campaign is really, really important. I don't know that the MCAS can come back from their bad reputation with all caregivers in this community, and it really is kind of a shame because when teachers witness students not trying on the MCAS, then teachers will tend to invalidate any of the MCAS outcomes. And I think that's a big leap, and it's not particularly helpful, given how much time we spend testing the MCAS, given that the MCAS is actually designed for Massachusetts grade level outcomes, Fixing that PR, the reputation of the MCAS is an area that we all have to grow. So getting the word out. would be really helpful. I'm really grateful to be able to present at school committee meetings and to keep saying the same thing. It's not about the MCAS, it's about grade level. It's about these slides, so.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you, that's helpful. I think there is potentially going forward a piece where we look at some of the communication that are coming home to caregivers and are they giving caregivers the information that they need to really understand it. I think there have been some subtle changes to the letter and it's become a little more accessible, but it's still, challenging to make sense of, particularly the way the data is presented by the system and the outcome. And, you know, people who stare at graphs all the time even have a hard time following some of that. And so I'm not quite sure what that looks like or what that action item is, but I think it is a next step is to make that part the school home partnership where that letter is a link. I think we can probably do better in understanding what people are taking from it and what they're not getting that they should be getting.

[Kim Talbot]: I'm so happy for that feedback. As you know, that's one of Superintendent Galussi's goals is to strengthen caregiver communication. And so we are definitely open. We want to make sure that the letters are landing with caregivers in a way that's impactful for caregivers. We know what the data says. And so we do our best to imagine how to put that in caregiver speak and not lose the nuance. of what the data actually means. So we are more than open. I am more than open to hear feedback as to how we can improve that communication.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Great. Thank you. All right. I'll stop. Member Parks, go ahead.

[Member Jessica Parks]: Thanks. And I think my question kind of builds off of that caregiver, teacher caregiver connection in terms of, you know, looking at the different Buckets here and then seeing how it was laid out. I mean, you can see clearly. I mean, you did an amazing job at very clearly showing how. Our students are continuously being assessed through all of these different means throughout the year. I mean, from, you know, the day to day. quizzes, exit tickets, whatever, to the district assessments three times a year, like the three buckets a year for each one kind of to the state level.

So our students are continuously being assessed, which I'm not sure, maybe, maybe not. all of our caregivers are aware of that this continuous assessment is happening. So I think that plays into the communication thing. But then with that being said, how does kind of the teacher caregiver interaction occur? What do teachers do with that information in their communications back to caregivers based on the information they see? You know, how does that interplay happen and at what intervals? I mean, I know there's kind of the report card intervals, but are there kind of flags that go up, whether it's good flags or not so good flags, you know? How does that play out?

[Kim Talbot]: A great question, because we only get one caregiver conference a year. Yeah, it is a great question. Caregivers can always access teachers via talking points, email, and set up an appointment, and teachers want to partner with families. So I want to start this by saying, we know that for optimal student success, students need strong support all around. So all that said, I would say that Communication varies by teacher and by grade level. I will say that for the DIBLS, the literacy assessment, we have structured letters that we need to send out if students are in need of service, and we send those structured letters out.

In terms of the NWEA map data, how teachers communicate, teachers used to have conferences with caregivers, elementary teachers, in December, but the data was old and there's only 10 minutes of time. As you said, the reports can be complicated. So we've shifted those to sending them home with some questions that caregivers can ask so that the conferences are more aligned to what students are doing currently. I would say in the very best of worlds, I saw an excellent example of an elementary math teacher building homework packets for students individualized based on their student NWEA map data and said so. Based on your map data, this is what you should be working on. So that is an excellent practice communicated to caregivers. And I'm not sure that it's consistently practiced across the district, but those are some of the ways that teachers can communicate with caregivers.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: That's really exciting to hear that, because that is how things are meant to be used. But I also recognize what a huge time commitment that is for an elementary teacher or any teacher to do that for every single student. And I think it's really important that we do that differentiation and that personalizing of learning. So thank you to that teacher. And I hope we can build in ways for that to happen that doesn't require yet more.

time and energy because it sounds incredibly valuable.

[Kim Talbot]: Yeah, it really is quite exceptional. And then at the middle grades, of course, you remember, Parks, that there's more teachers, the way that teachers engage with students is different. And so we use school brains, there's a grade book, grades are posted, class assignments are posted, like all of that collection, that pile of assessments that accumulates in a grade book, caregivers can peek in a little bit more regularly at the academic outcomes of their students in the middle,

[Member Jessica Parks]: And the secondary grades, yeah, I think there's more definitely more transparency at the middle and secondary middle and secondary grades. And in terms of though, is there kind of the build up? Like. You know, your day to day are. Is it being looked at as, well, kind of your day-to-day quizzes are saying this, your map quizzes are saying this, or your map test is saying this. Is that also being kind of looked at? Say someone is getting hundreds on their quizzes every day, and then their map quiz is saying you're not meeting standards, something like that. Is that something that then gets flagged as a,

[Kim Talbot]: Or vice versa.

[Member Jessica Parks]: Or the opposite, you know?

[Kim Talbot]: Right, on a lot of different levels. Like, is the assessment really assessing at grade level is a question that you would ask. Are the assessments that we're giving actual grade level? Is map assessing content that we haven't gotten to yet? There's all kinds of questions at the systematic level.

[Member Jessica Parks]: And then what level is that being seen? I guess it would be kind of my other question. Is that just kind of being seen by the teachers? Is that bubbling up? Are you able to see that? Where is that?

[Kim Talbot]: Yeah, so part of our practices around map, especially at the now, well, At the elementary, at the middle grades too, so maybe I'll talk about the middle grades. The principals and the directors have worked really, really hard to leverage open architects. Remember, that's the data warehouse that we're using to reflect our data back to us. To ask questions like, based on the most current data, who is most likely to benefit by two days of intervention, four days of intervention?

Our teachers have access to all of their students' data across the board, and so they can see those trends and notice what's happening with the student. I would say, more likely, a teacher, I would say, I would say that from a teacher's perspective, the benchmarking data helps teachers know what to do next for that student. I don't know about red flag raising. They'd have to see a bunch of students scoring poorly in a particular domain for the teachers to say something like, oh, I wonder what happened. I must have taught this concept in a way that isn't landing for students to be able to mobilize it here.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: And the one thing I would add kind of coming back to the homeschool partnerships and where that data goes and seeing it, I think you're right that it is very accessible and can log on and see things, but what really kind of cements the partnership aligned with really the belonging theme that we've been really working hard at these last couple of years is that synthesis, that teacher perspective on the synthesis to say, I see your student, I see individually what they need, what they want, and that's, right, that is not just additional information on top of the data and the numbers, but it is an emotional message, a message around this is not just a collection of numbers, this is a person, and I see that person, and I am committed to supporting that person. So I think by way of encouraging more of that, recognizing that the huge time commitment, I think it pays off in dividends to have that synthesis and not just assume that caregivers are able to look at all those, assuming they've got their logins working to see everything. But I think that's a real valuable thing that it's why we're in school with educators who are wonderful and who care about them is that they can help take that and match it to the person in front of them and the person that the caregiver loves very much and is invested in.

Okay, I'm aware of the time. Yes, member Olapade.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Can I just ask like two quick questions?

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Yes.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: They might be big answers, but, and I know we've talked about this in a few different other instances, so this might be kind of repetitive, but when we are using the data, you know, well after we're identifying the assessment, just like after identifying the data gaps through student performance, how are we interpreting that data? So I think that like we have our state standards, as you mentioned, once we kind of have that data, then what is the, I think like next steps, like the action plan that we're setting forth both, I think for the totality of the district, as well as individual student growth. So I think that it's really easy for us to say that our general state standards are being met across individual grades, let's say, but I do wonder about the students that are not hitting those state standards, generally speaking, and how we're addressing their growth over time. And are they able to ideally hit those standards with the remainder of their class? And I was wondering if there's some, we can talk a little bit about that.

[Kim Talbot]: Yep. So when we get, are you talking about mostly MCAS data?

[Member Aaron Olapade]: I think MCAS data, I know that obviously like each individual, you know, when we talk about devils, like it's a lot younger, so it's a little bit harder to kind of interpret some of that data. And I know that we just talked about it where the MCAS like buy-in, especially post question two, I believe, where there's like less, you know, emphasis on the, you know, but I guess MCAS data, I think, because again, it is like this kind of unnamed shadowy entity that we can never really roll back people's perception of it necessarily.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: I'm not sure students distinguish between MCAS and MAP. It's, it's another testing day.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kim Talbot]: So I will say for MCAS data, we use that programmatically so we can see trends over time. Like, oh, I'll just call back to the running example that I gave. Persistently, students writing scores are not close to where we want them to be. in ELA and also if we desegregate and drill down a little bit into math and to science, we can see that anytime that kids are asked to write, they score typically lower than otherwise. And so we use that data to say things like, oh, we could probably really get organized about looking at student work when they're writing at grade level and seeing if we can interrupt some practices or curriculum. So that's one way we use the state level data for gaps. We might say something like, oof, our kids are persistently not great at life cycles in grades five, eight, and nine. And maybe we need to take a look at, this is false by the way, but as an example, maybe we need to take a look at our curriculum to see like, what are we doing with life cycles? And, oh, the curriculum seems like that's okay. Well, how are we enacting the curriculum? Oh, well, we could maybe use some different practices that could get kids to think more about it. So we use assessment data definitely in that way. I also, as you know, am deeply interested in the predictable outcomes of subgroups. And if we have predictable outcomes of subgroups, then we need to make some interruptions along the way, because that's the opposite of what the promise that we made to the community. And so for me, looking at, are there patterns of how subgroups fare? What are those patterns? And then how do we interrupt them? An example, I'm gonna call back to the work that the middle school principals and directors did about intervention for students and targeted intervention. Are there particular demographic groups that are more likely to be in four day interventions? And if that's the case, what are they missing? And what do we need to do beforehand? Like in the previous grades to really ensure that the gaps aren't that large when they landed in sixth grade. So that's a lot of words, but I don't think I answered your whole question. But those are some examples of how we use that kind of data at a district and then director programmatic level.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Thank you. Yeah, I think part of it, you know, one of the things we've been talking a lot about, I think, just as individual school committee members, but I'm sure it has been happening in the district just with parents and caregivers and educators. And I know we've talked a lot about in school committee meetings is setting or establishing our kind of like learning goals and outcomes and then tracking the progress of achieving those things. That's why we're having these kind of subcommittee meetings and these assessment kind of touch points to say, this is what we've been working towards and this is where we are so far. And so I think that trying to understand better how the curriculum is actually shaping student performance and experience or like what the assessments are intended for. And when we have those academic gaps, wherever they may be identified, as long as we're identifying them and we're able to say, this is what we're trying to do as an action plan to support individual student learning, not just the aggregate, right? I think like, of course, like that is incredibly important, but individual student learning is going to then increase the aggregate as well, right? So it's, you know, so I think that's just something that I'm trying to be really, conscientious as we move forward with these because I think that, again, a lot of the time I think caregivers are saying there's, I think Member Reinfeld mentioned earlier, there's too many tests, right? There's always this kind of, maybe you didn't say that, but maybe I interpreted it that way. I think that that's something.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: That is feedback we've heard.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Yeah, we hear that. I think we hear that a lot. There's too many tests. And what are we testing for? And what's the purpose of it? And if MCAS doesn't matter anymore, why are we still using it? Things like that. And this kind of also goes into, I think, communication out to the district and just into the city in general is that when you have parent and caregiver buy-in based off the information that they're hearing from us about what's the value of this, what we're doing to identify gaps, and how we're supporting students learning. I think that also encourages parents to be more participatory in the student experience because we're seeing that like I think studies objectively show of course that student education in the home very much increases student experience in the classroom right like there's a lot more buy-in from the student if their parents and caregivers and such are also participating in what we're trying to accomplish here in the district and so i think it's like a multi-phase thing i'm just trying to like put all together so i agree i just want to like make two like quick comments if people say to you mcast doesn't matter you say oh yes it does yeah

[Kim Talbot]: because it helps us know where students are with respect to grade level. And at high school, if you are pursuing the seal of biliteracy, you have to take the MCAS and you have to achieve a certain score on the BLA MCAS in order to get that alkylate and that opt-in testing for the state seal of biliteracy. I also wanna name that it might be, I wanna say that sometimes the subgroups that we're really paying attention to are really specific and our action plans and outcomes for those groups may not be appropriate to present at a wide venue like school committee. So I did not get to say that when I presented a couple of weeks ago, but I do wanna name that before the directors present is that it is not necessarily appropriate to present To call into detail in a public way really specific subgroups of students in a way that can identify students and families. And so I think what we're trying to do is to give you enough examples of how we approach the work.

to engender the trust that we are looking to close gaps for subgroups. And we are also looking to accelerate the learning for students who are already above grade level. So I know that's a hard ask to trust that that work is happening. And I just wanted to manage your expectations that you may not see like super specific, like for this group of this particular demographic at this grade level at this school, like that's not the level of detail that we're comfortable presenting as a way to identifiable.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Yeah, thank you. I think it's really good clarification. I think it's really important. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, I think it's worth repeating when the presentations are made for the larger group. And I think probably also in the strategic plan, when we are saying these are our goals for the district for the next 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, right? to say we are looking at groups where there's gaps. But yes, the why we might not see this data or that data, the trust is really important. So thank you. All right, are there other questions about assessment or shall we? I mean, there are always more questions about assessment.

[Kim Talbot]: No more questions about assessment.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: We're done, right, yeah. All the things. Yes, all right. So I want to then move us along to the second item, which is the graduation frameworks update. I'm not going to read the full The full resolution here, but the idea here was when as member mentioned when question to past and cast no longer became a requirement for graduation. The state took that as some motivation to look at what do we require? What does a high school degree in. in Massachusetts really entail and they convened a council who made recommendations to the governor who released a report in June saying these are our new frameworks moving away from the MCAS as the as the anchor point and looking to create a broader Portfolio base, so this is something that the state is working on and that all districts I believe are looking at what they are asking of students of asking of educators to meet that. So we're very early in the implementation. It hasn't formally been. Adopt adopted the governor has made recommendations and so this was just meant to be kind of an early preview of what Medford is doing to realign so. Dr. Talbot, you might want to provide additional framing, but that's kind of the motivation here is this is a conversation we're going to be having for a number of months into years. And so from the beginning, where is Medford in this process and what are we doing? Great, thanks.

[Kim Talbot]: Mr. Perpicelli, shall I share my screen?

[Member Jessica Parks]: I can pull it up.

[Kim Talbot]: Oh. Best. All right, so I thought that was a pretty good frame, Member Reinfeld. And so I'm going to take you through this presentation, and we'll follow the same structure. All right, so next slide. So the agenda is we're going to talk a little bit about the mass graduation timeline so that we can orient everybody as to where we are and what's happening. Review of the requirements that member Reinfeld mentioned that the desi put forward and the governor endorsed. And then walk you through a little bit of Medford and our readiness and Massachusetts readiness to roll this out. And then we'll end with some questions.

OK, so next slide. So Massachusetts is branding the new Massachusetts graduation requirements, which are a direct result of the question to vote to not count the MCAS as a high school graduation requirement. And so they are branding this as strong foundations for bright futures. That's the tagline, strong foundations for bright futures. And so in 2024, the voters agreed to eliminate the MCAS as a graduation requirement. And then in June of 2025, by then, school districts had to say, well, if you're not going to use MCAS, what are you going to use? And the school committee in Medford did a really strong job of updating what our requirements are. And they're found online, and there's a live link there.

In December of 2025, the Statewide Graduation Council, that's what they were called, they released an interim report on the new graduation standards. And if you're interested in reading, you can find it there. Later in like last spring, early summer, the state started what I'm gonna refer to as socializing the graduation requirements. So the commissioner shared the interim report, sought some stakeholder feedback, he had lots of virtual meetings and conferences and targeted outreach with lots of different stakeholders really working hard like on the campaign trail to socialize these graduation requirements.

And then in June, the governor endorsed the final report of the statewide council. And then in July, DESE again began to engage stakeholders to get some more feedback so they can further define the details of the requirement, all in an effort to propose an implementation timeline that was both, what did the commissioner say? Both aggressive and responsive to the needs of the district. So next slide. So here are the components of the mass graduation requirements. And again, there's a linked final recommendation for the statewide requirements here. So strong foundations for bright futures rests on four big pillars. Foundational coursework, end of course assessments, post-secondary planning, and culminating experience for students. And then embedded in those are additional kind of components and requirements that support all kinds of things. And so together they represent a comprehensive figure, excuse me, a comprehensive graduation requirement. So on the next slide, you can see a side-by-side of what those components are, and then what the embedded recommendations are.

Things like financial literacy, work-based learning, completion of the FAFSA or MFSA, some AI and digital literacy skills, and civic readiness. Those are embedded into the primary components. Does that make sense? That's a lot, right?

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: And I would encourage people to read this or at least skim the executive summary at the beginning, because it is really detailed and does give these justifications of why, not just what, but also why.

[Kim Talbot]: So next slide. So Jesse promised after releasing these. So this is an actual slide from the commissioner socializing tour. So they assured us in June that we could expect them to release a readiness assessment to assist districts as they plan for implementation. They actually did that this week. So we got it this week. That they'll share a survey on end of course assessments to deepen our engagement around that particular component. They promised to convene a couple of advisory groups. And to support schools with MassCore, MassCore, by the way, is what the state, the coursework the state recommends that all graduating seniors complete. And MassCore is what the Medford School Committee named as graduation requirements. So like we're right on target. And then MyCap, MyCap is the career, post-secondary planning and implementation. And then DESI will release a suite of resources to help us with each component in 2027. So that's what they promise and they seem to be holding true to their promises as we march through the fall.

So all that's well and good, but what you probably really wanted to know is how ready are we to adopt these standards? And so the next couple of slides show my assessment with the stakeholders that we have here of what Medford's readiness is and what I think the state's readiness is in each of these different components. Shall I continue walking through these member Reinfeld? I'm good if my colleagues are. Great. So foundational coursework, we're ready. Completing the math score is part of what our school committee said our kids need to do to graduate, check. And the state is also ready. Math score has been around for a pretty long time and it is a cornerstone of what DESE defines as what students need, the strong start students need for their bright future.

And of course, assessment. So this is not the MCAS, however, You can imagine an MCAS-like statewide assessment. If you are from New York, that's where I did my undergraduate degree. They had a thing called the Regents, which was something similar statewide.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Just a little thing called the Regents.

[Kim Talbot]: So are we ready? Well, we have a strong system in place for state testing. We do that really well here. per the assessment landscape presentation. And we do things like the PSATs where all juniors and some sophomores test. We have course-specific testing like AP, like we've got our system up and ready. DESE is less ready. They'll need to develop those end-of-course assessments with stakeholder engagement that start with which courses get end-of-course assessments. For post-secondary planning, DESE is really ready. They have a scope and sequence, and they are ready to go. They have been MICAPing for a couple of years.

And in Medford, we are getting close. Dr. Shulman is working together with the school Councilors to use a MICAP Wayfinder. They've got some advisory. We've got school Councilor workshops, and they're piloting it for grades six through 12 this year.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: And we have a new staff member.

[Kim Talbot]: We have a new... And we have a new staff member, yep, at the high school, thanks to the funding from the Barr Foundation, a grant that Principal Cabral wrote, who is helpful in this way, but more helpful in school-based, work-based school experiences. Okay. and then culminating experiences. So DESE is not ready. They're working on developing rubrics with stakeholders, but we're getting there. We have a junior civics connection. You heard Mr. Fallon talk a couple of weeks ago about the honors capstone pilot in CTE. Those are the kind of capstone experiences we think that the state is heading for. And we had been thinking in that direction anyway, so we're kind of ready.

to continue? I think so. Financial literacy. Well, DESE does have standards that address financial literacy, but they're not standalone standards. They're integrated in some other stuff, like economic standards and the math standards. And we do offer financial literacy as an elective at Medford High School. So there is a curriculum. There is a standalone elective that's offered here. And there's also a really popular challenge course in grade 8 that covers financial literacy. They play the game of life. They build the game of life. It's next level. Fantastic. And also some financial literacy content is embedded in the MyCap curriculum.

So we're kind of ready. We're kind of ready. Work-based learning, when I first made the slide deck, Desi didn't really describe what that was gonna look like, but boy, we sure have a CTE co-op program. We have a PE equivalency structure. So that allows us to do some record keeping of students outside experience that would count toward the PE requirement. So we have some infrastructure in place to keep track of all of that. We also have things like a community service requirement of 60 hours. We have a C3 day. We have a Fells day. So we really have a lot going on for students to be doing real world stuff.

So I'm going to call us green until I know for sure what it is that the Department of Ed has in mind. DESE is ready with FAFSA and MAFSA. They are ready. They expect 100% of students to complete either the FAFSA or the MAFSA. And they have a full website suite loaded for that help. About 53% of our students complete the FAFSA or MAFSA. So we're kind of ready, but we do have a plan. We have a structure called advisory that high school students engage with. And so with the new C3 Councilor supporting this efforts, with the advisory in place, maybe you've heard about building plans for a high school that there's in the guidance suite, there is an area for college and career readiness that's proposed to help families understand this process a little bit more. So we're mostly, we've got the infrastructure in place, but we're not at 100% completion.

And then finally, AI and digital literacy. We do have a strong K to eight curriculum in place, and we have robust nine through 12 electives in this area. Jesse is working on some AI standards, which we will adopt and use to help guide our existing K to eight curriculum. And Jesse has digital literacy standards. They'll be developing AI standards. So I feel like we're We're in the same place. Director Layden is really connected with what's happening at the state and is very responsive to the curriculum that she puts in place.

And then finally, only because it didn't fit on the slide, the next slide talks about civic readiness. So we have the Seal It by Literacy. We have the Junior Civics Action Project that's connected to U.S. History Topic 6. And DSE is also ready. They know what they mean by this. They have seals of distinction, seals of biliteracy. They have a framework for student-led civics action projects. So we're all ready to go there. So those are the components of the proposed graduation requirements and my assessment of where Medford stacks up and where the state stacks up to being ready with the information that I have.

We also on the next slide have lots of infrastructure in place to help move some of this work forward that I wanna name here. We have the C3 day where students are engaged in like the PSATs or the SATs and they also get like career counseling. We have late entry days that can be converted into mini seminars. We have advisories at the high school that meets twice monthly. Remember, Reinfeld, you mentioned the new college and career professional. They're hired and on board. We're super excited. And we have a CTE exploratory course for all of our grade nine students that many students opt into, more than half, and also related CTE content. So our infrastructure, I'm confident that we've got a strong foundation to stand on.

But wait, there's more. So this week, Desi did send out their Ready, like they promised, with more information. And so they sent out two things that I've screenshotted here. One is a companion guide, and one is their own version of Are You Ready, which is great. There's the spreadsheet, mine was a slide deck. So on October 22nd, DESE is holding a webinar for high school principals. Principal Cabral will attend that. And then between the 23rd and the 19th, we will need to complete DESE's strength assessment workbook. The workbook has these components in way more detail. I'm excited about the level of detail that they have.

And then Principal Cabral will populate each of those tabs. There's a tab for each component. You can kind of see their color coded below. And that will populate a final page that then Principal Cabral can put into the DESE survey, which is great because that's part of what the state is gonna use to complete their own readiness assessment. and help them decide what, help the state decide what they need to do for high schools to support us. And it'll probably help them set an implementation timeline for the state.

And that is the nature of the Massachusetts graduation requirements as of today, October 15th, 2026. Thank you so much.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, this is a lot, and it's exciting, and it's really nice to recognize that we didn't have to build all of these things from scratch. So I'm processing taking it all in. Obviously, a lot more information has rolled out since that final report. But do my colleagues have particular questions about this?

[Member Aaron Olapade]: I'm in the same, I think, headspace in that it's just a lot of data to try to kind of synthesize into next immediate questions or steps. I do wonder, is this information going to become available? Obviously, you just kind of highlighted it for us now. Is it something that we can have more accessible for caregivers and things like that who may want to see just this general information?

[Kim Talbot]: I would point, I would follow member Reinfeld's recommendation of going to see what the actual report looks like and the letter from, or the endorsement from the governor. Our internal assessment was before Monday, when Desi sent out their new internal workbook. And I think that internal workbook is for internal practices only. I would imagine by December, I would imagine by December, we'll hear more from the commissioner and likely the governor about the readiness of schools across the Commonwealth.

Once that happens, I think it would be appropriate to share like, okay, now really where is Medford? But this preliminary report is an overview. I will say a thing that hasn't changed is those like four core components and then the embedded pieces. That language has been the same since the governor, excuse me, since the commissioner began socializing this back or proposing this back in December. So. Maybe the details will change, but the big broad strokes. Strong start bright future like that feels like that framework feels like the thing we're going to do.

[Member Jessica Parks]: Well, your presentation on this, they'll be available. On our website, maybe we'll, we'll answer that just because I know, like, at 1 point, I was like, oh, I can click on that link and then I realized you're presenting it and I couldn't but. for any caregiver who was watching this, who went back to see what was presented, just because I think those links might be useful.

[Kim Talbot]: Yeah, I can work with Mr. Pippicelli to make sure that the links are available. I'm ready to put the whole presentation up because there's a lot more context that has just happened in the same very week. But the links to the governor's endorsement and the actual graduation standards we can make available.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: I think my question is, you know, you mentioned next steps for the district. What are the next steps for this body, whether it's the subcommittee or the larger school committee, and for caregivers? When we were prepping for this meeting, we said, you know, it might be a little bit early to share all of this, but I think it was really important to preview and to understand the work that has been happening. So what is the district going to be looking for from the Medford stakeholders?

[Kim Talbot]: Yeah, well, I think the first thing that you all can do is congratulate all the members of the school committee who were there, who adopted the competency determination and high school graduation requirements, because your work and willingness to stand by the state's mass core has really set Medford up to be a strong early implementer of the graduation requirements. So that's the first thing. I think it would always be helpful to continue to socialize in a positive way, that DESE is not our enemy. DESE exists to ensure, from my view, to ensure that they provide district supports so that districts can provide students access to grade, I'm gonna say access to grade-level standards and grade-level content so that they can thrive academically, emotionally, socially, and as civic beings. So the more you can socialize that message, that the components that DESE has picked make a lot of sense. Financial literacy makes sense. AI literacy makes sense. And of course, assessments make sense.

You can help us by getting that word out. Caregivers, let's wait and see what the details look like. I think that, I hope that DESE is going to listen to its stakeholders, to the high schools across the state to see Where everybody is in terms of implementation readiness and perhaps phase their rollout. I don't know.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, I think on some sense, I am not super interested in the readiness of everyone else. I wanna know, are we ready? Are we doing things that are high value to students and aligned with the direction of this work? I don't want us to be slowed down. If we have good quality learning experiences, we should be implementing them. And if we're looking at end of course assessments on a more rubric key portfolio kind of basis, Like, let's go, let's do that, let's support students. So one question I have is often when these reports come out, the term unfunded mandate gets thrown around a lot.

Do we feel supported? Is there, you know, is this going to come with significant financial cost or redirecting of resources to make these things happen. Like I said, I'm really encouraged that a lot of these systems are already in place, were already in place, but do we need more than we're currently getting? I know things are tight, it's hard.

[Kim Talbot]: Things are tight. It's hard. Could it be an unfunded mandate? I mean, the track record says that is a possibility, but I still don't know. We just have those broad strokes that I shared. We still don't know specifically what is the thing that DESE is going to be asking us. that DESE is going to be asking us to do. Like, will we need to extend the year 10 school days for end of course assessments? That's going to have a fight. I can't imagine that happening, but that would have a financial implication. That's hard to predict. For 100% family completion of a FAFSA and MAFSA, well, it's free to do that online. And we have the infrastructure in place. That wouldn't cost us. Anything, if it's rolled out in that way. So it's hard to know what the financial implications are going to be, you know, financial literacy, anything like adding courses. Like if we add a financial literacy course, is there room in students' schedules with our current staffing and our current schedule? I don't know. That would be a place I might pay attention to, but adding AI literacy. we can adopt that into our digital literacy curriculum, because director Leighton understands that curriculum evolve and change over time. So that's a long way to say maybe.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, but I think it's important to have a heads up of what we're likely to be facing. Because I think one of the things I was going to ask was, to what extent are our younger grades, the vertical alignment piece of preparing for high school, right? These are things that have to happen in high school. But I was pleased to see some pieces of it building over the years. So it's not suddenly new content, new skills. It's deepening knowledge rather than introducing. Yeah.

[Kim Talbot]: I mean, and I think for me that's a testament that Jesse got it right, like these are not unreasonable requirements, they make sense, it's what students need to be successful in the world. And we know that in Medford and we're planning for that. So the best thing we can do K to eight. I'm going to, if you can say it with me, the best thing we can do K to eight is to ensure that level standards grade level standards. Yes. That's the best thing that we can do to ensure that students are set up to fully embrace their high school experience without the need of excessive remediation or Inaccessible or courses being inaccessible to them.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah. To that end, to what extent, as we're working through this, are we auditing the quality or depth of experience? I think we have a lot of things. Some Fells Days projects are more impactful than others. There's a lot here that you mentioned some things that are electives that people can opt in or out of, but maybe need to be more embedded in something that all students are exposed to, the exploratory piece. It's an option, but people, if the goal is to provide exposure, how are we making sure that's happening, right? At one point, the exploratory was joint with vocational CTE programs and arts programs, and kids got a little bit of everything, and now it's shifted back. So to what extent are we looking at the quality of these experiences?

[Kim Talbot]: Yeah, I think we're constantly assessing the quality of experiences for students because we feel an obligation, a commitment to the community, but also to our students that the time that they spend with us is valuable and we want them to be learning and growing and doing so. The Fells Day is a great example. Like the debrief that I like overhear after the Fells Day is really about what are the experiences the students have? Does it match our goals? Does it match our values? Is it high quality? Is there something else that we can be doing? So we do those kinds of things all the time. It's hard to know what the bar is going to be though until the state finalizes what their sort of like terms and conditions are for these big overarching competencies.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Do you see that moving more towards qualitative assessment versus quantitative? I know Desi's first attempt at this was, well, how about this other test that isn't the MCAS, but looks a lot like the MCAS? And there was huge pushback on that, rightly so. I think that was not the spirit of question two, or necessarily how we wanted to improve the student experience. And we've seen that shift. But do we think this portfolio broad pillars is likely to Because that changes the assessment landscape immensely.

[Kim Talbot]: Yeah. I mean, as a champion of neurodivergent learners and EL students, I think that having more than one way to assess any kind of learning feels like the right thing. I'm excited about things that sound like statewide rubrics feel exciting to me about capstones. The state had their little foray into that with the civics readiness project. in grade eight, and again in grade 11. So they've been experimenting bits and pieces. We've been experimenting bits and pieces. You heard Mr. Fallon talk about our capstone project or our honors.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Capstone experiences that aren't necessarily honors or that are outside of CTE, right? I can see, I know our art students usually have a show that feels like a capstone.

[Kim Talbot]: Sure, and our music students have capstones. Actually, I've seen it in a lot of places. So the rub would be, what are the details of the statewide rubric? But I do think it's exciting to be thinking about the whole child. And you can see that the state's proposed frameworks do that. Financial literacy, AI literacy, being civically engaged, knowing the core content, being poised for after school, like post high school work with the FAFSA, MAFSA.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, I will say, I will say there doesn't seem to be as much emphasis on creativity, which I would love to see that more explicitly. But as you say, let's see what that means for.

[Kim Talbot]: And the mass core does require, yes, there's an arts component to that. So because our foundation is a mass core foundation, like we're already set up in a really strong way with clear values that a well-rounded student is a well-rounded student. Excellent.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: All right, member Olapade, Parks, other questions on graduation requirements? As I said, this is a conversation that I'm sure we'll be coming back to particularly as DESE rolls out more information and we need to know, but I really appreciate having the opportunity to get this preview and have this foundation to refer back to as we move forward on all of these fronts.

[Kim Talbot]: Well, great. Thanks for taking the time to learn more and to be stewards of our of Medford's children's education. I look forward to changing the reputation of testing together with you as we as we fight for or as we fight toward a graduation requirements that are evolving with the times and forward facing. Yeah.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you, thank you for putting 2 meetings together in 1. I know this was. A long subcommittee meeting, but I'm glad we were able to do it and the synergy was. Encouraging, I will say between the 2 topics good. I'm glad. All right, so I think we are, we don't have any particular resolutions or action items. We've kind of brought things to think about and that the district can take back and incorporate into decision making and. thought collaboration. So I think what we're looking for now is a motion to adjourn.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Motion to adjourn. Second.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: All right, roll call. Member Olapade?

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Yes.

[Member Erika Reinfeld]: Member Parks? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Three in favor, zero against. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you all.

[Member Aaron Olapade]: Thank you, everybody. Thank you.