[Sharon Hays]: Hi, Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road. I would like to speak about the new amendment to remove the mayor from the school committee. As a resident, as a parent of two students in the Medford Public Schools, and as a former school committee member, I am opposed to the idea of taking the mayor off of the school committee. I spoke at a previous meeting where I agreed or supported the idea of removing her as the chair of the school committee. And I spoke to some reasons about that at that time. But having her on the school committee, or I should say having the mayor, whoever it is, on the school committee as the head of the city and as the school being the largest department Budget wise and arguably to a lot of people, one of the if not the most important part of the city educating our students. I think having the head of our city not be a part of that or when the mayor has been on the school committee all this time to now decide to take her off, to take that position off of the school committee. I have to say I missed the earlier part of the meeting, I had to leave. So I didn't hear the reasons that were given for that. But I find it really difficult to believe that anyone would think that's a positive move. The mayor needs to be there to hear what's going on with the schools, to understand what's going on with the schools, especially when it comes to the budget season. And so I'm really, really shocked when I, when I came back on and found that that was being put forward, especially given that, as I said at a previous meeting, I spoke to the idea of taking her, taking the mayor off of, of being the chair. And then that was what was put forward to the mayor in the revision that was sent to her. And now when it comes back after her agreeing to it, you're now deciding to take the mayor off of the school committee. I think that's really, really surprising, and I am really opposed to that. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, Ripley Road in Medford. I'll just add my voice to those in support of these. I'll just add my voice in support of these ordinances and in thanks for all of you for doing this and making sure that everyone in Medford knows that our local government supports them and they will do everything they can to protect and keep them safe. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road. Before I start talking and I get my three minutes, I would like to mention that I think it's somewhat disrespectful to the Charter Review Committee members who are here. They are not here as community members. They are here representing the Charter Review Committee. And to the extent that you're making comments about the Charter Review itself, that they wrote the proposal, and about what they did themselves, allowing them only three minutes is incredibly disrespectful and disrespects the reason that they are here. You guys get to speak forever, and that's just part of you being on city council, but not allowing them the time to respond is disrespectful and unfair, and it interferes with the process, too, because you're not giving them a chance to actually respond to what you're saying about the work that they did. I will read my whole I sent an email to the mayor and I will say that I thought about sending it to the city council, but in the end I decided not to, because I don't feel like I didn't feel like it would be heard. I didn't feel like it would be really considered. I would like to say Councilors are I really appreciate that earlier in the meeting you did talk about, you know, you're still making up your mind on this and you're listening to feedback and that's changing your opinion sometimes so I appreciate that. And so I'm not going to say a whole lot I will say that as a. As a progressive, as a person who was a member of the progressive group that's represented by a lot of people here, I know that myself, every conversation that I had about charter review and representation, we talked about ward representation. Those are the conversations I had with those who are currently here who were on that progressive group at that time. Yes, people can change their mind, I understand that, but to suggest that that wasn't the conversations that were being had is not, in my experience, true. I will also say that That was the driving force, I understood behind that while there are other issues to that desire from the community for word based representation to feel like each word have their own Councilor that people had better connection with their Councilors that they had more of an opportunity maybe to vote. a single person in, you know, that was a driving force behind this in my recollection of all the conversations I was a part of. And some of the earlier comments about well we've accepted 90% like we're in agreement, it's just one little piece. This is democracy. Representation on this on the city council is arguably the largest and most important piece of our city charter, because it's how we as a community as we as residents are represented. And, you know, at this moment, I don't feel very represented. Yes, we can disagree. This isn't a minor disagreement. This is a major disagreement because this is the major piece of this charter. Yes, I hear my timer's going. I'll stop now because that's the most important thing to say.
[Sharon Hays]: Is it on?
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, thank you. Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road. I'm a former school committee member. I just wanted to add what I said in my interview with the charter committee. I do advocate for not having the mayor be the chair of the school committee. However, I do believe she should be on the school committee. I think it's critical to have her there, to have her hearing everything that we're talking about. The school budget is the single largest piece of the city budget. So to not have our chief executive there to hear what is going on in the school, to hear what the school committee is thinking about, I think would be a huge gap. I think having her on as a voting member, her again as member Bramley, I'm saying her because our current chief executive is a female. I think it's important to have the vote there from the mayor. I think, however, as the chair of the school committee, the chair does guide the discussions. I do think that having a chair whose whose focus isn't divided, whose focus is solely on the needs of the school and not necessarily having to contend with all of the other needs of the city is truly important. So again, I personally advocated with the charter committee for having the mayor not be the chair to have the school committee elect a separate chair, but for the chair being a voting member of the school committee. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road, former school committee member. I just want to support everything that the chair of the Charter Committee just said, Milva said. I find it somewhat nonsensical and in some ways almost demeaning to the members of this community to suggest that they wouldn't understand different compositions of our two very different bodies, the school committee and the city council. I just don't even understand how that could come up as a reason. They are two very different, they have two very different scopes of authority, of responsibility. So I, I don't even understand how that comes up as a question. I'd like to make the point, too, that where divisions exist and distrust in our government exists, you can almost always trace it back to either a lack of representation or disproportionate representation. And so what we are looking at is ways to increase representation. What the Charter Committee has recommended across the board are ways that will increase representation among the people of this city. But what I'm continually hearing in the meetings that I've seen is a move backwards from this committee, this council, to look for ways to decrease that. And I truly don't understand that. I am totally in support of the way that the Charter Committee structured this. I think obviously, as they've said countless times, they spent two years on this. They spent two years researching this. They spent two years getting community feedback that said across the board that the community wanted more input. wanted more representation, wanted more to feel more connected. And so I truly don't understand why we would suggest otherwise at this point. If we go back to all at large, then nothing has changed. And so the voice of the community, to my opinion, has been ignored. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: I apologize, I probably missed something. Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road. I just wanted to make the comment that in terms of the recommendation of the superintendent, that is found in both recommendations and guidelines from DESE and from MASC. So the language used by the Charter Committee is pulled exactly from what Jesse recommends, because they do recommend that while state law is very clear about the fact that the school committee can select and terminate the superintendent, the other positions are not so clear. And so both, I'm trying to find the wording if you'd like to hear it. The school committee hires a superintendent and assistant superintendents and should rely on the superintendent to hire the other personnel from serving the school district. Future legislation may clarify the statutes, I'm sorry I'm trying to find the exact, but both Jesse and here's the MAS version of it, they say The school committee shall appoint the superintendent, shall appoint the assistant associate superintendent, school business administrator, administrator of special education, school physicians and registered nurses, legal counsel and supervisors of attendance upon recommendation of the superintendent. Consent to hiring based on the superintendent's recommendation should not be unreasonably withheld. So it really does say that it should be, it's not the sole, authority of the school committee, that it's the school committee appoints based on the recommendation of the superintendent. So I just wanted to clarify that that language is taken directly from both DESE and from MASC.
[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road. I'd like to start by saying I am opposed to the amendment. I totally support the ward-based representation as written in the proposed charter by the Charter Review Committee. So many things I wanted to say, but after waiting three and a half hours as a community member, it's hard now to put my thoughts together. One thing I wanted to start by saying is someone who's been pretty engaged and involved in Medford politics for a number of years now. There has been a lot of talk about ward representation going on again for a number of years. And that was the only model I ever heard of from anyone in the community or any of the other elected officials that I worked with or had any other engagement with. There was constant talk of ward representation, of the value of ward representation, of the fact that we have a lot of people in this community who are not engaged, who are, don't feel connected to our elected officials or our government in general, policymaking, things that affect them. So I see that as one of the values or one of the major value of potentially of ward representation. if you know that there's someone that you, a face you recognize. Everyone said this, so I don't need to keep reiterating it. But again, that sense of connection seems to be a big thing that's being talked about everywhere right now across the country. And anything we can do to build up that sense of connection so that we can get more people involved in what's going on, we have a serious lack of civic engagement everywhere. So why we wouldn't be looking for better ways to try to get people more involved, I'm really not understanding. You know, I've lost my train of thought. One of the things that concerns me about the presentation of this amendment, is the potential for a conflict of interest when City Council is getting involved in such a way of what feels to me personally like almost dismissive of the work that we as a community charged this group with doing. I read a blog post from Councilor Leming and also saw him speak at one of the Charter Review Committee meetings where he commented on that and said, you know, If there were to be a conflict between what something that the Charter Committee recommended and a major conflict with what the City Council felt was appropriate, that really there should be deference given to what the Charter Committee, the conclusions they came to. Because if they were charged with doing this, they've been doing this for two years. They have become our local experts on this. they've consulted, they've got data, I was gonna use a perm, they've got tons of data on their website for anyone who wants to look and see why they reached these conclusions and what information they used to come to these conclusions. I'm concerned and troubled by the fact that I'm seeing a city council who now, you know, is suggesting that perhaps their experience should count for more than what the charter committee came to the conclusion after their many months of this. So I really hope you guys will truly consider the fact that this does seem to be what the community wanted. And yes, there could be many other models that could be looked at. Again, it was thoroughly and clearly explained why they didn't choose to look at those other models. So, you know, I really hope that we will go toward representation because I think that's what has been talked about. That's what people wanted. People wanted to have the ability to have more connection. I can personally speak as someone who ran to say that running a citywide election definitely is an expense in resources, time, money that would be different if we had some people running for those who would be able to run a ward based, which one would expect. would bring more people willing to run. So, you know, I think we don't know. We don't know how ward-based will work in our community. We do know that up to this point, a model that's not ward-based has led to some real disparities both in the number in disparities between wards and people who will run, people who end up in office. We also know that we see fairly low voter turnout by wards. So I think that's the gist of what I wanted to say. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: What's that?
[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes 69 Ripley Road think I'm more nervous on this side. I'm not here to advocate for any particular position or program, because as a parent I realized that every single one of these cuts will affect my children. directly or indirectly, immediately or in the future as a long-term impact. And that's true for all of our students. As a parent of an elementary school student who's at the largest school with the currently largest class size, I can echo the worries that the Missittook has about what larger class size, what the impact is on students. We similarly, at the Roberts, in our class sizes of 20 or more, there are a bunch of classes that have some significant emotional behavioral needs, ones that don't qualify for special education supports, but who need supports. And as a school district, we have been lean for a very long time, and so, We also don't have those extra supports that a lot of other schools, other school districts might have. We don't have a lot of reading specialists. We don't have math specialists. We don't have probably as many adjustment Councilors as we need, given the needs of our students. So when you then increase class sizes, and even if it's only by one, two, three students, The impact on the students, the impact on the teachers is huge. And we know that across the country and certainly in our district, teachers are burned out. And if you then add to that by increasing the class sizes, you know. I'm also the parent of a marching band student, orchestra student, a regular band student. I know the impact that that will have if we cut anywhere in the performing arts, any position that's going to necessarily have a ripple effect. Again, I could go through any of these. One more, just I took some notes. When I think of the nursing staff, I can say from personal experience where my kids were very little. Both of them had some real school anxiety. And when they needed a break from the classroom where they had somatic responses to their anxiety, where did the teacher send them to the nurse's office, not because they were sick, but because that was a place they could have a break. Maybe they could lie down on one of the little beds. They got a little TLC from the nurses who were absolutely amazing, who would call me and say, you know, your child's here, but he's fine. Just want you to know that he's here. So it kind of, as I was sitting back there, you know, my stomach started to twist just hearing people come up and, you know, everybody's fighting for the pennies and the nickels and the dimes. I think we as a community and I know I think member Graham said this earlier, and I think every school can remember said this at some point, we need to come together and decide how much do we value our educational system, how much do we value our public schools, and what are we willing to do to fund them to a level that meets that value that we get from them. And so I hope people will take away from this not just You know my, my program may be cut that my child's in or, you know, something in particular my child needs is being cut, but as a whole, our school system is being decimated, which might be a little strong but we're being cut after cut year after year there are positions that the school committee, I can say having been on the school wanted, not just wanted, but felt were really necessary to really have a high quality education for our students. And they would get cut, those positions like literacy specialists would get cut very early in the budget season. So the people who walk away from this just thinking about what do we do to make sure we have more money in the future? I hope people will walk away with that because This isn't gonna get solved by one program being reinstated or one teacher being reinstated. This is going to, I think, as member Rousseau asked and as Gerry McCue answered, this is gonna happen again next year if we don't do something about it. We're gonna be back in these meetings talking about what positions are we gonna cut now and what impact is that gonna have on our kids and our teachers. So I hope people think a lot about that and think about what we need
[Sharon Hays]: Good evening.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. I just had a quick question. So when we're looking at those scores, what's a significant difference? So we've got, just looking at second grade, we've got 172.35 for the national and we're at 175.8. Is that significant? a significant difference? I found myself wondering that as I was looking through the scores. I don't really have a good handle on that.
[Sharon Hays]: So I guess part of what I'm wondering is I know in terms of the ELA scores, we're looking to see, partly we're hoping to see that both with our new reading program, which of course we wouldn't see that influence yet, but with the ECRI that's been in place for a few years now, How is that impacting our scores? Are the kids doing better than they were previously? So how do you make that judgment if you don't know what a significant difference is, I guess is what I'm wondering. Do we have a way of looking at that?
[Sharon Hays]: So I'm looking at slide 21 or at least the numbers 21's class breakdown by instructional area. I would assume or hope that teachers would be looking at this that really gives you each student by you know it's not going to break it down maybe as far as you were suggesting member Rousseau but it does break it down by the areas. And it seems like that gives the teacher some good information about where. Now, what I don't understand on this and I wanted to ask was, is there a score that the teachers are looking for as the kind of, we'd like to see most of the kids falling in this score range. And so kids who are below that, we wanna look at whether they're struggling. You know?
[Sharon Hays]: well, that's problematic though, isn't it? We've got to have some standard that we're trying to get the kids all to. And if it's going to vary by class, when I know, so I guess where I'm struggling again is with, I think members so hit this a minute ago, we keep talking about the real value of this is that the individual student level, or maybe even the class level. And I think that's wonderful. I mean, I remember before I was on school committee, when you were first talking about this assessment, I was like, this is great because MCAS is no longer usable in that way and hasn't been for a very long time. So it was a real gap in having an assessment that we could use in that way. But I'm confused. I find myself, I feel like we are kind of toggling back and forth between the top of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel when we start looking at, you know, when we say something like, well, it's going to be different for each class, but we need something. And then I guess I'm hoping also to get a better understanding of why why are we even being Well, let me rephrase that, that's not a nice way of putting it. The highlights were all really about scores at a higher level. Do you use those? Do you use, when you see that there's a difference between the subgroups, how does MAP help you use that knowledge, or does it? And if it doesn't, then, I don't know, is it worth even spending time talking about it? something else that helps us then at that level. So I guess that was a lot of questions rolled up into one, but I do feel like this conversation, this discussion is kind of going back and forth, you know, between the higher, the top of the funnel and the narrower end of the funnel. And it's hard for those of us who aren't using this consistently or, you know, understand it as well as you do to kind of tease out those differences and understand how this test is really being used.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. I'll be brief. I 100% agree with everything Member Graham just said. In terms of presentation of data in general, I would say the same thing. I would apply everything she said to MCAS presentations, to any, you know, any presentations you do of data. We need to hear Where things are going well, yes, but we need to hear, as Member Graham said, the areas where things aren't going well and what you're doing about it, because that's where we're gonna make growth. 1% ahead of the national norm doesn't tell us anything if we don't understand where we're not meeting the norm or where we're not meeting our personal goals and what we're doing to try to get there, because that's where we wanna know what the growth is gonna be. I would also like to add that in terms of the piece of how classroom teachers use it, I'd like to hear from a classroom teacher or several classroom teachers at different levels. I'd like to hear them explain how they use it. They're the ones who are using it. It would be really helpful to have them walk through, whether they come to a meeting or whether they create videos, however you want to do it. I think that would be really helpful for us to understand. Since again, that was the initial reason for purchasing this assessment and using it district wide was to give teachers a tool that they could use to help in their classroom. So as much as it's wonderful to hear all of you try to explain it, I think hearing it from the source, hearing it from the people who are using it would be really helpful.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you, I have a couple of, just a couple of edit issues too, or questions. In the transition section, where it says the school shall hold a meeting, would like to change that to the school will offer to hold a meeting.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays, did you have another item? Just one more. Under gender markers on student records, I think there was, so on that the sentence upon request by the student or in the case of student under the age of 14, it's a little confusing. I think that a couple of things got either when I wrote it, it came out wrong, or something was changed. But it just feels like it's a little confusing. It says, upon request by the student, or in the case of a student under the age of 14, or has not yet entered ninth grade, then comma, young student not able to advocate for themselves. I think it needs to be, I'm curious if others, if everyone could look at that and see if that feels like it needs to be a little reworded.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm wondering, my motion was to take out to, let's see, to change it like this. Upon request by the student, or in the case of a student who was under the age of 14 or has not yet entered ninth grade, and then take out young students not yet able to advocate for themselves. Just take that out. Has not yet entered the ninth grade by the caregivers. The school should change the gender marker on the record for transgender students. I don't think we need young students not yet able to advocate for themselves since we've spelled out that by law, there's that 14 year old. You can't change. By law, the student record can only be changed by the parent if the student is under the age of 14 or has not yet reached ninth grade.
[Sharon Hays]: So I believe the original wording, this is something that got changed after our committee of the whole. The original language was directly from DESE and did not specify that 14 year age, but then we did find that the law does, for the student records, the law specifies the age. So I think that young students not yet able to advocate for themselves was part of the original DESE language. Okay.
[Sharon Hays]: Can I make a motion to suspend the rules and waive the second reading?
[Sharon Hays]: Motion to approve the policy. Second.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. I'm just wondering since, you know, since it's difficult to, as a committee will be difficult to not to actually cut off new policies, is there a way we could create a process for if there are additional policies after the deadline for the student handbooks? I know like the bullying policy, which I think for many reasons was put directly on the webpage, but could there be a tab somewhere or a link somewhere that says here the policies that were passed after the deadline for that the handbook so that we have the deadline but we also have the possibility if needed to add additional policies past that deadline.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I can start. So in looking through both the bullying policy and looking just through our webpage, what I realized in looking at everything related to bullying is we do have a lot of descriptions of some of the, I guess, more of the prevention. We have responsive classroom, which gets a lot at building community, social emotional skills, emotional regulation. We have the Nexus classroom, we have, I'm trying to think, there's a number of things that we have. I couldn't find anywhere, sorry? Just say hello. Oh, just say hello and Sandy Hook, yes, the Sandy Hook, which more gets at when you're looking at someone who's really in an emotional crisis and what do you do about that? But I didn't see anywhere that explained clearly for parents in the community and us, where we have in our curriculum explicit, like it says in here, explicit instruction for students, sorry, about how to identify bullying. And it's gonna be developmentally different at every age, of course, but really, I think we need to clearly understand what are we teaching kids so that they know what bullying looks like, what it looks like, what it sounds like, And again, that idea of, you know, we did have a parent who wrote to us a while back about their student, their child in school, talking about how kids were, how language was evolving at the middle school level. And there were words being used that sounded benign, but were being used very much in a hate speech manner. And I think that there's a lot of kids who don't understand that and might hear it and might not identify that as bullying or then identify it as hate speech. So kind of all of this explicit teaching of what bullying is so that kids know what to identify when we're saying, you know, call us or tell us or find your trusted adult. I'm not sure that we have anything that tells us how we're teaching kids what they are bringing to the adult.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. We do currently now have a tab on our MPS website that does have this past year's superintendent evaluation. So this motion, this resolution really is just to continue that. I did put in 21-22, which would be the previous year's evaluation, which I opened up to the committee to decide whether they want to include that in this. I just put that in because that was my first year on the committee. But I think it's important that we make these evaluation reports more easily accessible than they have been in the past. Again, as it says in the motion, these reports are not only about the performance of the superintendent, but because the superintendent is the chief executive of the school system, they're also an indication, one indication of how the school system as a whole is doing and how our goals are tied to our strategic plan. It's a measure of how we're meeting the goals in our strategic plan. So this is just a motion to make an already public document more easily accessible to the public.
[Sharon Hays]: Here.
[Sharon Hays]: Hi, I'm Sharon Hayes. Unfortunately, this is the only chance I will get to meet with you because I won't be on school committee the next time you meet. But I'm really, really excited that so many of you wanted to do this, and I'm really glad we're getting this going. My reason for really trying to make sure this got started and, you know, I know it had support from administration and all the school committee members, really. But we talk so much about how everything we do is for the students, and we mean that. But what I think we've all realized along the way is that what we really need to hear is what you think you need, because we are older. We've been in high school, but times are different. So we do need to hear from you what's going on, what's going well, what's not going so well, what ideas you have for change. It's just so important to get your voices in. So thank you so much for doing this.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. I just wanted to say, you know, I think This issue with backpacks, I don't know if any of you have actually attended any school committee meetings, but this is a big topic that has come up a couple of times. And in fact, when we last year had a culture and climate review done by an outside consultant, that came up as an issue that he saw to both the physical needs of the students being able to carry around your stuff, being able to get from point A to point B in time, get to lunch, all of that, but also the inconsistencies among teachers and how they handle the backpack. So all the things you've brought up, he brought up too. So I just wanted to say, you know, you guys really are on topic with things that also the consultant saw as being issues. And, you know, I think we do need to look at a school, as a school committee, as whether there are any ways that we can support Changes to this policy. I know that it's, you know, there is a lot that the site council does. And I'll be honest, I've only been on for two years. So my understanding of kind of the What becomes school committee policy versus what becomes a site council issue. I'm still not 100% clear on myself, but I again in terms of this, this group of people of students coming together. I think it's incredibly helpful for us to hear directly from you what the issues are with the backpack policy, how it affects you in your being able to navigate around the school, being able to get places on time, the differences in how teachers handle both the backpack issue and the issue of if you're a little bit late because of that. So I think this is really valuable to hear. And I think, you know, again, maybe it's a site council issue. Maybe we as school committee also need to talk about is there Is there some space for us to also support policy-wise in terms of student wellness, student mental health, whatever, to be able to alleviate that stress? Because that sounds like it's a pretty significant stress around a lot of kids.
[Sharon Hays]: So yeah, I think in really trying to get this going, we did look carefully at the law and at the policy, which is really the policy is directly from the law. The law is pretty specific in saying five. They don't really say why. And I think one of the at least my personal thought behind that was whenever you get a huge group of people, it can be harder to have a clear voice come through. It can make it more difficult actually to run a meeting if you have 20 people trying to all kind of get their thoughts through. So my sense was that this was an attempt to make sure that we really hear student voices, that by having a smaller number, there really is more time for direct back and forth for the members who are the five members involved. And also similar just to every level of our government, you're representing. It's true that the more people, maybe you feel it could be more representative, and I guess we could say that for probably any, we could say that for school committee, city council, at some point, you know, and we can talk about this and adjust it if people feel really strongly about it. But at some point, that is the point, you guys are the representatives. And then the question becomes, how do you get out and get the voices of the other students so that you can gather all that information and the five of you bring it back to us? Because I think that no matter, you know, we could have 20 members And some people still might not feel represented. So, so it still would come back to how do we either. How do we support you in doing it. How do the advisors who are working with you support you in figuring out how to get a larger representation through your outreach or through your availability to talk to other students, whether you can do surveys, just what other ways can you make sure that you're hearing from more students than just obviously yourselves or your friends? So I'm not closed off to adding more. Five was the way the law is written. And again, like I said, I think we need to think about where do we fall, where it gets to just be too many people in a room and not enough ability to really to talk directly.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. Thank you. quickly to give a little background too. So you guys have had a student advisory council. I don't, I'd have to look, I don't personally know how that's designated in the handbook. This piece of it, meeting with school committee is brand new. You guys are the first, this is the first time this has ever happened. This was a law that was, I don't, quite no, maybe three or four years ago put into place. And from my research that I've done, we may be one of only a handful of districts who's really trying to figure out a good way to do this, to make sure that we have these every other month meetings at a minimum, that's how the law's written, that it has to be at least every other month. So I think part of your role as being the first group too, is to help us understand figure out how to do this. The law doesn't give us any details of how to make this happen. It just says do this. It says you know you need to have a student advisory committee. You need to meet every other month. They need to meet directly with the school committee so they have direct access to the decision makers, so to speak, and are part of the decision making process. So I think part of what you can. You can really be have an active role in this year is helping the figure out how to make this work. And if there needs to be more students, you can help figure out how to make that happen, how it gets written into the student handbook, how the two pieces of the student advisory council, which may end up being larger than the smaller group of the student advisory committee, which then you get into some semantics there, and it can get a little confusing. But I think you guys can really be crucial in helping shape this for future Years too. So again, thank you for for doing this and think about that as when we go away from today is start thinking about what you think would work really well and how how to help shape this whole idea of student involvement and decision making.
[Sharon Hays]: I can speak to that too if unless the superintendent wants to go first.
[Sharon Hays]: Sure. So I did actually make a few edits to this, which I am trying to print up now so I can read them. But so I did realize that because I did have some questions about that from some members of the community. When it comes to student records, there are some specific regulations regarding age. And so I realized it wasn't just enough to put C, Massachusetts student records regulations. To be more specific, I am trying to, I could try to share this, but student records by regulation are, if a student is under 14, the parent is the only one who can make changes to a record. Between the ages of 14 and 17, from 14 up to, well, 14 up to 18, because once they're 18, they're an adult, and they can take total control. But between the ages of 14 and 17, a student or a parent can make changes to the record. And then once the student is 18, if they make it clear in writing that they want control of their, they want total control of their record and don't want parents to have control over it, which they have to do in writing, they can't just, it's not just automatic, they have to make it clear, then they would have the right to make any of those changes like gender markers or names.
[Sharon Hays]: So I'm not clear, I'd have to see which part you're talking about. I don't think there was anywhere in here that meant to suggest or should have suggested that there would be a classroom meeting. I think in general, Dessie really talks a lot about meetings with the student to talk about how, and the parent if the parent's involved too, about how they want this change to happen or how to make it clear to other adults in the school, other students in the school about this change. Jesse's really trying, I think, leaves things a little open-ended in a lot of places just to really drive home the fact that the point of this is to be supportive of the student. I mean, the title of their webpage for this is Guidance for Massachusetts Public Schools, Creating a Safe and Supportive School Environment. So they're really talking a lot about this being student-driven in the sense that really if a student comes out at school and reveals to an adult at the school that they are transitioning or need to use a different name or that then there would be a process, which that would then be the school end kind of coming up with what their process would be, of meeting with the student talking about how they want this to look in school and how they are comfortable with this being revealed to other people.
[Sharon Hays]: Well, we can also do it for the second reading. I think, so what I, what I was going to do anywhere where it's student records, so under privacy, confidentiality, and student records, under gender markers and student records, just to add that notation that, and I think, I think what I did in the first, under privacy, confidentiality, and student records is I actually just cut and paste the law itself that explains the age ranges. And then for gender markers and student, on student records, just added a notation that said per regulation, student records regulation 603 CMR 23-01. So that, that would be there for each one of those. So that the, the understanding is that any time a record's going to be changed, there are some more specific, there are specific age ranges when, when the parents are the only ones who can change the record. if it's just a student asking to be called something different, you know, then that's, as long as it's not being a student record change, a student can be allowed to request that if, again, there's, that's under the names and pronouns, that if they're consistently being asked to be called that, if there's consistent identification as a different gender than what they've previously been identified as, that they can, asked to be used, called by a different name, different pronouns, without having to prove anything.
[Sharon Hays]: Can I just quickly clarify? I didn't make changes. I did put some edits in based on what people said to me, but with the total understanding that as we discuss it at this meeting, those edits may or may not be part of the final process. I just put in some changes just because people had, you know, things that people had mentioned that I assumed would come up. These are general questions that often come up with this type of a policy, but certainly did not mean to imply that I made changes that were final. So Member Hays, do you have a- I understand, but we still can't see it.
[Sharon Hays]: I apologize. I can try to share the one where I've made some additions or, you know, based on some of the things that are, what's been said here, but other people said to me. Let me see if I can.
[Sharon Hays]: Oh, I'm not able to share it. Let's see.
[Sharon Hays]: OK.
[Sharon Hays]: For which part? The note that I was talking about in terms of delineating the age, referring to the records, that could go either under names and pronouns, really, or the Privacy, Confidentiality, and Student Records is probably the most fitting place for it, since that's where the age ranges really apply.
[Sharon Hays]: So the age requirements only refer to specific changes in the student record. Okay, that's where that that's part of the student records regulations. There's no age range defined by law or by desi in terms of when parents need to be notified if a student just comes to an adult at the school and starts talking about Wanting to change their name or pronouns in usage at school.
[Sharon Hays]: That's actually, I'm sorry to interrupt. That's actually not in the regulations. There is no regulation about, the regulation specifically refers to student records that the student cannot request. Under the age of 14, a student cannot request a change to their record. That can only be done by a parent before ninth grade or 14, whichever comes first. But in terms of speaking to the parents, Desi actually pretty clearly talks about the fact that some students won't be comfortable, will express that they are not comfortable talking to their parents or actually afraid and leaves it open to the discretion of the professionals at the school to kind of make that call and talk about, work with the student to figure out how to tell the parents. In which actually I did, if I could, I did want to add because I know this is a major concern. We all know this is a major concern for a lot of people that I did want to add in there. If I can, you had asked, I'm sorry, Mr. Tucci, did you want to speak first? I did have something I'd like to add in there, but I won't let you talk first.
[Sharon Hays]: If I can just, because I've done so much reading about this, just to come in and say, in all cases, Desi keeps coming back when they talk about this to saying, work with the student to determine what they feel is best for them. So I would honestly hesitate to put something in writing in a policy that says either way what staff has to do. because I think really DESE is trying really hard to leave it up to the professionals at the school who clearly, they probably know this student very well. If this is a student coming to them, it feels comfortable enough to talk to them about it, that looking at a process for working with the student to determine how do you want this to look at school for you? all of your teachers to know? Do you want all of your classmates to know? How can we bring your family into this so your family knows if they don't already know? Of course, if the family's the one coming in or if the student's coming with their family, the team of people working on this would be including the family or the caregivers. But there's a lot of open-endedness to DESE's guidelines and really they keep coming back to in their discussion throughout their webpage or their website for this, that it's kind of a student, it needs to be student-driven, that we need to honor what the student feels comfortable with. And so there really needs to be, whether it's a defined process or just a generally known process of how there's a team of people that gets together with the student, maybe including a guidance Councilor, an adjustment Councilor, nurses, or whoever the student feels comfortable with. to talk with a student about what they need to feel, again, that safe and supportive environment.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Yeah, I agree with with member Graham. I think that, you know, some of that does come down to that, the implementation and the determination by the superintendent and her team. what some of these processes will look like, what will it look like to create a team that supports the student, what will it look like in terms of who we notify, who gets notified and what the student wants. I guess I would also, I was also wanted to add, I mean, at this moment, we have no policy in place. So really teachers have no idea what to do in a situation. So at least hopefully with the policy, it puts something in place that we can work with. And if it's not working, of course, as we've often said, policies are not written in stone. They are there to be tweaked and changed if things aren't working. But again, I keep coming back to that. This is taken 90% from DESE with some of the wording taken from other policies from other districts. So, you know, some of this open-ended, what feels open-ended or feels kind of nebulous, is by intent. By intent to give the school system the flexibility because these are not, these are not situations where we're going to be able to make black and white rules. Because each student is going to be different in terms of what their needs are, what they want, what they feel comfortable with, and it gives the flexibility for the school district and that the staff involved to be able to work with the student and make determinations on an individual basis, as opposed to having to follow some really strict rigid rules.
[Sharon Hays]: Sure, I can respond. So, I know you mentioned that at the last meeting, that was one of the things you were questioning. Certainly, if we take out the definitions, then the steps are what's under each of these sections. The things we will do in regards to names and pronouns, the things we'll do in terms of transitions, restrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities. So these are the steps that we will take to create a safe and supportive environment for our students. But I'm not married to that language. It doesn't really change the gist of the whole thing. So it's fine with me to change it.
[Sharon Hays]: I would suggest just changing the first one there in privacy, confidentiality, and student records, change it to birth gender. I think the rest of them say gender.
[Sharon Hays]: So that's exactly how it's worded on the DESE page under the, again, that safe and supportive environment. That actually is lifted directly from that page.
[Sharon Hays]: It's to the, it's the DESE website, webpage for their guidance for Massachusetts public schools, creating a safe and supportive school environment.
[Sharon Hays]: May I? Actually, that's a different link, I think. There's a couple of different pages.
[Sharon Hays]: Oh, no, I'm sorry. No, I'm wrong. Thank you, Mr. Tucci. That is the right link. Got it. OK.
[Sharon Hays]: Can I go back to names and pronouns? Because there was something I was going to add or talk about adding in there, or it could be added to the student records. But I had talked earlier about adding, actually adding the full text of the regulation, student records regulation 603 CMR 23.01. So that could be added into probably any one of these sections, but it just specifies the fact that if there's a, for a records request change, records change request, sorry, that that's when those age ranges are defined by regulation. So I think names and pronouns is where the first time there's a place that talks about changing student records. So I can either read it out loud for someone to try to type, or if you just want to put in that I will put the full text of 603 CMR 23.01.
[Sharon Hays]: It's very long, and I don't type that fast. It's very long. It's four or five, six lines.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah.
[Sharon Hays]: Uh, so I had put it after the sentence, nothing more formal than usage is required.
[Sharon Hays]: Uh, so I, So I said, with regard to changes to the student record, student records regulations 603 CMR 23.01 states that, quote, these rights shall be the rights of the student upon reaching 14 years of age or upon entering the ninth grade, whichever comes first.
[Sharon Hays]: You're better than me. I never picked it up. These rights shall be the rights of the student upon reaching 14 years of age or upon reaching the ninth grade, whichever comes first. If a student is under the age of 14 and has not yet entered the 9th grade, these rights shall belong to the student's parent. If a student is from 14 through 17 years of age or has entered the 9th grade, both the student and his or her parent, or either one acting alone, shall exercise these rights.
[Sharon Hays]: 6, well, I can look it up to 603 CMR 23.01.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Okay. So after these rights, if a student is 18 years of age or older, He, she alone shall exercise these rights subject to the following. The parent may continue to exercise the rights until expressly limited by the student, end quote.
[Sharon Hays]: Is that where the quote goes? That's where I put it in. I'm certainly open to if there seems to be a better place for it.
[Sharon Hays]: I would ask my colleagues, if it makes sense there, is it clear that this applies just to requests to change the name and gender markers on the student record?
[Sharon Hays]: I was considering that. And then I was looking at, since this is the first place where it comes up the idea of changing a name and student record. But I think whichever one people think is clearer.
[Sharon Hays]: May I ask a question about this before we make changes? Member Hays? I just want to be clear again, because we did have this conversation earlier, that the 14 years of age only applies to if they're requesting a student records change. Some of these that we're changing now are not referring to a record change. They're just referring to a student asking for informal changes at school. And that's a different, that doesn't fall under the records request where the 14-year-old age range comes into play.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, thank you. So again, as we talked about earlier, that is not defined by DESE anywhere. And again, I think they make it clear that the reasoning for that is that every case is individual. And in the case where again, a student is either uncomfortable or truly afraid of talking to their parents about this. At that point, it gives the school and the staff involved the flexibility of taking the student's safety and mental health concerns into account before making the determination to talk to the parents and gives the student the right to actually say, I don't want you to tell my parents at this point. So there is no age range given anywhere for that. And I think that goes back just again to member Graham saying earlier, some of this falls under the implementation piece of how are we, and I think Mr. Tucci also talked about them, how they do this already at the McGlynn in terms of creating a team, whoever that team may be that would work with the student to talk about why they don't want to tell their family if that's the case. And I think we also need to add that that is likely to be a rare case. I think in most cases, especially for younger students, the family is probably aware and involved. But in those cases where we actually have a student who who expresses concern about telling their family, we do need to give that leeway and talk about that implementation piece again, to go back, of how do you create that team of people to work with a student? Because ideally, you do want the family involved. All the research shows that the best outcomes for LGBTQ students are when their families are involved and supportive and affirming. So the emphasis of the school would be to try to figure out how to bring the family in. But in that moment that a student is expressing fear or concern about doing that, to have that leeway to make that determination that at this point in time, we're not going to go right to the family.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. I think, well, first of all, to respond to the question of what we're already doing, we don't have a policy in place about this yet. So in terms of what's being done at the schools, it's not necessarily based on a policy. It's based on what's been common practice at this point. And in terms of DESE's guidance, it is true that it's phrased as guidance. Certainly it's the school system's responsibility to take a law and take the guidance from DESE and form it into a policy. In fact, DESE talks about that in part of that webpage, talking about schools creating policies. At the minimum, they talk about making sure that our policies, our non-discrimination policies list gender identity, but they talk about that as being at the minimum. We do currently, I think, as people may know, there is a court case going on right now in Ludlow, Massachusetts about this very question. And at this point, it's on appeal, but I did find both that our, Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents wrote an amicus brief in support of schools being able to have this flexibility to make a determination of what's in the best interest of the child at that point. I think really the way they phrased it was in terms of creating a safe and supportive environment for students in which they can learn, because we know that precursors to being able to be available to learn, you have to feel safe and you have to feel supportive. giving this ability for schools to make a decision, make a determination at that time, if a student is requesting and letting the school know that they're not comfortable with their parents being brought into the conversation at this point, that the Massachusetts School Association school superintendents came out in support of that and said that we need to be to be able to do that in order to have a learning environment that is conducive for students feeling safe and being able to learn. I also found that our, we also have our Massachusetts Attorney General who came out in support of the idea of allowing schools this flexibility also. I know it's a major, it is a major point of contention at this point, a concern for parents. I did wanna, I was going to talk about an addition I wanted to make also to the, to hopefully allay some of those fears or concerns to add into the section. Let's see if I can find it. Under transitions, to add a paragraph in there or a couple of sentences that does talk about, that says this. Research shows that the best outcomes for LGBTQ students occur when the parents, primary caregivers, or whatever term we choose to use at this point, are involved in affirming. Therefore, the primary goal of MPS staff, or Medford Public Schools, will be to facilitate the relationship between the student and their parents whenever possible, primary caregivers whenever possible. Because I think that is our primary goal. Our primary goal is what's best for the student. And we know that what's best for the student in any case is having the family involved, the family supportive, the family affirming. But in a case where a student is concerned that that won't be the case, and there certainly is a lot of statistics out there about families that aren't supportive, students who do have difficulties at home if they let their parents know that they are transitioning or have a different gender identity than what their parents expect, that there are cases where students have great difficulty at home if parents are involved.
[Sharon Hays]: Sure. Research shows that the best outcomes for LGBTQ students occur when the caregivers are involved in affirming. Therefore, the primary goal of Medford Public Schools will be to facilitate the relationship between the student and their primary caregivers wherever possible. And again, I'm open to any wordsmithing to that. I just thought it was important to put that in there because it is true that is the best outcome and that should be our primary goal is to get the parents and the student together.
[Sharon Hays]: Research shows that the best outcomes for LGBTQ students occur when the primary caregivers are involved and affirming. Therefore, the primary goal of Medford Public Schools will be to facilitate the relationship between the student and their primary caregiver wherever possible.
[Sharon Hays]: Somewhere else. Let's see. Right before where it says some transgender and gender nonconforming students are not openly so at home. So I was gonna, I had it before that. and then added at the beginning of that next sentence, the some transgender and gender nonconforming students added the word however. Yes, thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: I just want to say for two, we'd have to put in under the age of 14. It's because there's that clause to it, or has not yet entered ninth grade.
[Sharon Hays]: May I ask a question first? Member Hays, yeah. Just a question, is there a reason why we can't have it in both so that it's part of the policy if people are looking specifically for policies related to gender identity?
[Sharon Hays]: I guess the only thing I would say is that this piece of the policy gets specifically at how transgender students can participate in interscholastic sports. It's not really a hygiene question. It really is talking about the fact that they can participate in the team that matches their gender identity. So I think that's different, not necessarily specific to a wellness policy, but it is definitely specific to a policy about what we will do to apply laws of non-discrimination to students who are transgender.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Thanks, Member McLaughlin. Yeah, I just wanted to respond to that last, well, a couple of things, but in terms of that last sentence, that again comes directly from the MIA handbook on their rules regarding gender identity and participation in sports. And then just to add, I guess, if I don't agree or disagree really about whether we can have it in two places, I think that given, again, that this is written to really specifically talk about gender identity and participation in sports, that I think it needs to be here. Same with the dress code. I would have to look back. Maybe someone can tell me if we already have something that talks about gender identity and gender expression in our dress code. If it's already in there, then that's true. It doesn't need to be repeated again necessarily. But if it's not there, then I think as a part of this policy, which is all about how we're going to apply non-discrimination by gender identity in terms of our different aspects of the school day, then I think it does belong here.
[Sharon Hays]: Well, this is from the interscholastic. This is from MIAA. So I assume that it didn't specify grade levels. So I'm assuming it covers all grades.
[Sharon Hays]: I guess one thing I'd like some clarity on if I could is, so would there, would the wellness policy include a statement like this about, um,
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah. Because I guess I'm also not clear why if we know that if we already know this policy exists, why can't it. Why wouldn't it say the same thing in a newer policy. Why wouldn't the, why wouldn't the committee just use the same wording, but, you know, so I'm a little confused by why there's some suggestion that it would conflict.
[Sharon Hays]: I guess that would be another concern of mine then though, if the wellness policy changes. and this doesn't exist somewhere else and somehow this gets left out, then we have it nowhere anymore.
[Sharon Hays]: I guess I would likewise say we could trust that we could figure out how to make policies match. But we have no evidence that that's true. We have no evidence of either of the things that either of us are saying, quite frankly. So again, I mean, we're already in the middle of a vote, but I feel strongly that this is a policy about gender identity and how the laws and the guidance from DESE, how we're going to apply that in our schools. And these two sections specify that. And for students who are specifically looking for that, they will look for this policy to see what their rights are. and if these things are not in this policy, they may or may not think to look in another place.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. Thank you. It's really exciting to see so many students want to be involved in this. And I think that's that's wonderful both for for us to get input from the students, but you know, for them to get the experience of being involved more directly with democracy. So my question really, I have is, you know, there really is a very specific policy and law. And I'm wondering how this is going to be hopefully shaped a little bit to more closely fit that. The 13 students is, again, it's wonderful. I don't know if you're thinking of having a combination of, you know, the policy calls for five students, and I think My assumption is that's an attempt to make it less unwieldy if you have a lot of students trying to meet with school committee, so that they can have a more direct involvement. And I'm wondering if there's a way, or if you're considering a way of trying to, for those meetings, maybe have a subset of students attend?
[Sharon Hays]: So I guess I would just say, I mean, we had, I think we had a similar discussion about this already, because I know you have these preexisting student advisory councils, and actually it's pretty specific in saying five students in terms of the law and the policy. And it's not that I'm stuck on the five students, but I do think that there's a reason for that. And I believe that most likely the reason Again, it's to give students a more direct, if you've got 13 students trying to meet with us, the opportunities for each student to really be involved are going to be less than if you have a smaller number of students directly involved in those meetings. And so I'd love to see if there's a way you can maybe try to give each student obviously a chance to do that, but maybe have a smaller meetings that there is more opportunity for them to really be directly involved in having a conversation with school committee, whoever's able, I think we'll need to look at, again, coordinating those meetings to figure out if there's gonna be a subset of us who can make it to those meetings or whether it's a whole committee, which would be obviously the ideal. But I'm glad to see this is getting started and I really appreciate the work you've put into this. And again, it's exciting to see that there's so many students who really wanna be involved.
[Sharon Hays]: Absolutely. And I think that was the reason why the state put this in place for us to make sure that school districts are doing that and really getting the voice of the students involved. So look forward to getting this going. Thank you. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: So I, hopefully you received it, Superintendent. I sent you an email a little over a week ago, just with a couple of my comments and feedback. And so one question I had from you is looking at the communication goals I had requested that you look to add a goal that is more focused, again, we've talked about this, I think, in the past, on two-way communication, that again, the current goals are really focused on the district giving information to families, caregivers, students, in looking again for a goal that may or an outcome, I guess, that would be more specifically focused on that two way communication and in my email to you, I talked about, you know, if you could commit to a number of events, such as monthly coffee hours or attendance at PTO meetings, that two way communication being that you put you're having an event or in a way for parents to actually talk back to you and talk to you about their concerns. It could be that you focus it on a specific topic, or it could just be kind of an open, again, like a coffee hour. Some of that, I think, like last year, you did have a wonderful budget meeting. It wasn't, unfortunately, it wasn't as well attended as I'd hoped, but it was really well designed in terms of having the interpretation for families. So things like that, if you could commit to maybe putting that in one of your goals is a more specific way of getting at that two-way communication.
[Sharon Hays]: So I guess I'm hoping what I'd like to see really is a really specific commitment to a minimum number of events that you would attend or create just so we really have something very concrete for when it comes time for the evaluation.
[Sharon Hays]: I was looking more at the outcomes. It doesn't really have to change the goal itself, but one of the outcomes for communication would be, we'll attend a minimum of five events or have a minimum of five coffee hours. I kind of let that open for you, what you feel most comfortable doing, whether you wanted to have it be more directed as in terms of being like a focus group that you want to focus on a topic or whether you want to leave it towards a more open ended kind of event where you have coffee hours and you can just chat with parents and they can bring whatever concerns they want to you.
[Sharon Hays]: And I did have one other piece, but I know others have their hands raised, so I can come back.
[Sharon Hays]: The other thing that I had asked of you was looking at the accountability, accountability under the literacy law. So I was a little unclear for the NWEA map when you say 65% students, grades two to 10. Is that an aggregate of all of them? Because I would love to see that more specific that, you know, we know that we have differences among schools in terms of how they perform. So an aggregate really doesn't give us a complete picture. across the schools, because we do have some that perform much higher and some that perform much lower. So when you get the aggregate, either end gets a little bit, the information just isn't as clear. So I was, my request has been for both of those two, the DIBELS and the NWEA map that you just had in the phrase at each school.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm just not sure if... That doesn't give us the ability to see whether individual schools are making progress, because it is true that sometimes one school outperforms another, and I think that's information that we need to have as a school committee when we're making decisions and budgeting. And it also is information that the community needs to be able to clearly see because that should drive some of our decisions if there's differences in the scores among the schools. I think that's important information to have. I also think that now that we also have our new executive director of data, hopefully that position, the person in that position could help to explain. Certainly there's always should be explanation of the reasons behind the differences in the scores, but I think that's information that we really need to have because an aggregate score doesn't always completely give us the full picture of whether the students are making progress.
[Sharon Hays]: I just would like to briefly respond since it was my particular goal area that was commented on. I do think that it's important for the superintendent herself to have two-way communication with the community. I have also had conversations with her in the past about understanding that this may mean a trade-off with other beyond school activities that she has done in the past, attending football games, attending other sporting events. I absolutely do agree that when we add something she needs to take something else away. And I also deliberately left, especially when I emailed her, left that kind of open-ended in terms of how she wanted to, how you, Dr. Edouard-Vincent, would like to define that two-way communication so that you can make that fit into your schedule. And again, with the understanding that you may need to alter other things or change other, school events that you would normally attend in order to make those two-way communication events happen. So, just wanted to clarify that.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. I had a few questions. First of all, I am wondering about what the plan is for when the next survey will happen. And along those lines too, I think that we had talked about at some point, whether to use this exact same survey again, or to go with the, I guess my understanding was in terms of using Panorama, where we had originally planned to use their survey as designed, as many of the systems around us do, I'm curious whether that it will be, what we'll be using in the future. So do we know what the timing of the next survey will be? And do we know what form it will be?
[Sharon Hays]: OK. I guess I'd like to, obviously, I will no longer be a part of the committee at that point. I would personally, at this point, like to advocate for using, and I think it had been said at one of our last meeting, one of our meetings at the end of the year when this was first presented, that we were going to be using the panoramic survey. Just to quickly say again that I, you know, in looking at their survey, how it was designed, why it was designed the way it was, all the vetting that went into it, the reliability, validity, it did all of that. I think that it's a really well-designed, thoughtful survey. I'm not as convinced, honestly, the way these questions, part of it is the design of the questions and the design of the way students answer on this particular survey that According to the research done by panorama is actually not an effective way of getting a full picture of how students are really feeling. So I guess, I also had a couple of questions, so I was thinking in terms of we keep talking about this is just being a snapshot and absolutely. any survey is just a snapshot of that moment in time. And I know we talk a lot when we look at curriculum and assessments about triangulating data and using different assessments and pulling them together. And I'm wondering and hoping that maybe our data director, who's been referenced a lot, we do have a climate report that we had from Mr. Welch, Michael Welch, that looked at some of these kinds of issues. Obviously it was done in a different way. We also have obviously data about referrals and incidents in terms of when we look at students saying that they still feel like there's a lot of fighting and violence. We have now that comprehensive report that was done by DESE that has some, again, it's not all exact information, but I think that There is a way, hopefully, or at least our data director can look and see if there is a way to pull some of that information together and see, get maybe a clearer picture so we're not just going with one survey, which is true, that's just one snapshot. But we do have other information to use that I think would be helpful in getting a clearer and wider picture of what's really going on for our students at the high school. One thing that I noticed in terms of, and this is myself creating my own category, but there were a lot of questions in the various areas that really look at students' self-regulation and emotional regulation. Some of these questions about conflict, fighting, it's a lot of, a lot of that gets at that self-regulation, and that's clearly an issue that's been identified over and over again in research as being a problematic area post-pandemic. that students are really having issues across the board at all ages with those self-regulation skills. And so I would think it would be good to hear at some point, what are we doing to work on some of that? Because that's really important when you look at questions about students at this school stop and think before doing anything when they get angry. And only 20% felt that that was true. Students try to work out their disagreements with other students by talking to them. Only 27% felt that was true. Those are really getting at that self-regulation. Do students stop themselves before they move to physical, before they move to fighting? So I thought a lot of that information really was very interesting to see in terms of, again, that's an area that's been identified across the board as an area of difficulty post-pandemic for kids. last question was just in reference to that the racial equity task force, can you tell us last year, how was that group working, how many times did they meet and did they what kinds of issues were they focusing on.
[Sharon Hays]: a comment, I guess, than a specific question about the data, well, about specific data. I just, so year after year, I feel like we, we look at the, when I pull out the data, again, by school, I feel like the overall scores that were presented, and I know this was a much more abbreviated version than we've had in the past even, you know, the scores when it's just across the district by grade level, really obscure some significant differences across the schools. And I feel like that does a disservice to the community and to parents in terms of their understanding of what's really happening in the district and their ability to really question us and question you about what's being done about some of these scores that are remarkably low in comparison across schools. You know, again, The Brooks is consistently higher, almost always across the board. There have been some variations in that, but then, you know, I'm more concerned, I mean, that concerned me because there's always the question I've asked before, what are we doing about that? But more importantly, when I look at scores, like, you know, 25% of the fourth graders in McGlynn were meeting or exceeding mathematics. 25% is alarmingly low. 30% of Mississippi fourth graders were meeting or exceeding ELA. And that was a decrease of 49% in 2022, a decrease. So we're talking, you know, we present data and say, look, the state says we're meeting expectations. okay, but we, you know, we really deserve both the school committee and the community deserves a deeper dive, an explanation of these differences in scores. Because I think some of them are, I personally, I think some of them are truly, as I said, alarming, especially when you look at, we're telling, we're saying that the state is saying we're making growth, and I know that as you've presented, there's a lot of data that goes into that, and that's important to understand. And that student growth potential, I think, is a huge and really complicated statistic to pull into it. But I do think that some kind of a deeper dive and a narrative in some of these explaining the differences between the schools is necessary, and it's not in here. So again, that's more a comment, I guess, than a question because I see some real issues in our numbers here and the presentation as was doesn't reflect that.
[Sharon Hays]: And participation rates were lower. Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: I guess I hope as a, you know, now as our new data director, looking at ways to, again, bring the community in on some of this, certainly parent support at home, if parents don't fully grasp kind of what the big picture is. I mean, you know, I think it's important for our parents to understand some of this data more so that they can be more involved and understand and not just, you know.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, that's kind of what it feels like. And there's often this, well, we're 1% better than the state average.
[Sharon Hays]: I hope that's not our goal, honestly, because the state average includes a lot of places that are really low. So, you know, obviously that is our minimum, we do want, you know, but looking at hopefully loftier goals than that, as I think member Graham was saying, looking at, you know, when we were talking about superintendents evaluation, What are our goals? Is that really our ultimate goal is to be within 1% of the state average. So presenting data in a way that makes that clearer for people. I just don't feel like the presentations are necessarily a vehicle for full understanding for parents and the community in general.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I understand the desire to be positive and there is positive. And there is that comparison that, yes, we always keep in mind COVID, but I just have often felt that there's a little bit of obscuring of some of the negatives. And I think people need to hear that and they need to understand it. And it's only fair to them to really... Go ahead, Ms. Galussi. Your mouth opened.
[Sharon Hays]: And we did hear from the comprehensive review that one of the concerns of teachers, that they were not feeling that they had, or not, wasn't all of them necessarily, but a lot of them were not feeling they had the time or the emphasis or ability to use the data the way that.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. I mean, you know, this body works as a team. And if there are questions about it, and we're feeling that it would be too rushed to do it now, I think it feels like there's a number of members who feel that way. So as much as I obviously had hoped to get this done tonight, it's unfortunate that it was the last thing on the agenda on a very busy night where there were really two, a meeting and a half squished together. So it's fine with me if we want to look for a committee of the whole toward it. Thank you, Commissioner Laughlin.
[Sharon Hays]: So I feel like this is kind of a gift to us. Yes. Because it was free and it's incredibly comprehensive. And one of the things I took the time, not that I took the time because I know it was hard to read, I didn't mean it that way. But I did read through the whole thing and actually probably read it a couple of times. And there's so much more to it, obviously, than you were able to put in a slide deck. And as I first started reading it, what came to mind immediately was when we had the report from Mike Welch. And what started ringing in my head actually was member Graham's voice. saying our issue is issue of implementation. There were many places throughout this report where it was noted that we have the right priorities, we have the capacity to do this and that, but it's not happening, or it's not happening across all buildings, or it's not happening consistently. So as much as I appreciate the, and I believe in your intentions, again, intentions, I think we have the right intentions, but I feel like I've been in this place before where we've heard a presentation about, we've got all this information and now we're gonna do all this stuff. And then we come back to another report that's still saying, but you're not really doing all this stuff. And I, you know, I, I'm uncomfortable being in this position of being, of sounding so critical, but I'm worried. And I've used that word before. I remember using that word as a parent when I stood up in front of school committee once to talk about, I think, reading. I'm worried because I do feel like we keep coming back to the same point. We now have, in my short time here, less than two years now, we've had three reviews. We've, we had Cindy Weeks Bradley. do a pretty significant review of certain aspects of the district. We had Mike Welch do a pretty thorough review of the high school. And now we have this review that's comprehensive of the whole school system. And I feel like we need to sit down and take some more time to pull all three of those together and say, where are the major issues that we see? And how are we going to? I think we need to set real priorities and I think the school committee needs to be a part of setting those priorities, because I think what I've come to realize in my time on school committee is we can't do it all and too often I think we're trying to do it all and it's not all getting done. it's all getting done and we're trying to do too much and there's so many in your report your list of things that everyone's going to try to do that's a lot of stuff. And, and I am concerned that if we don't as a group really administration and school committees sit down, as I said, go through these three reports thoroughly look where the commonalities because there's a lot of commonalities and what these three different groups of people are three different reviewers saw. And where are we really going to target our time and energy and we need to be on the same page about that because you know. This was concerning to me. There were a lot of concerns in here. I mean, just to pull out the data, the issue of data and how it's being used by teachers. And I know that was something I specifically asked about a couple of times with the map. And there are quotes in here from teachers saying, we don't really have time to sit down and look at the data and think about how to use it in the classroom. So that's just one example. I really appreciated that this report did give us a lot of information from teachers, which is something I feel like we've been lacking as a group, really hearing from what the teachers are saying about what they're able to do, that the student support teams, that they don't have a lot of time for those, that they feel, whether accurate or not, that our multi-tiered systems of support aren't really doing much, that there isn't enough. So I guess I'd like to make a motion, maybe, I guess.
[Sharon Hays]: And then Dr. Edwards, Ms. Glucy, then Dr. Edwards. Let me let you ask your question. Are you sure?
[Sharon Hays]: I guess my response to that in part would be, if we're always dependent on which people we have on board, then the next time around, if someone leaves and we need to replace them, they might not be the same person of the same level of skills or investment that we have. And so what we, from my point of view, and what I'm hoping we can do is really dig deeper into this huge, dense report, and I do think there were commonalities between the three that I, in my opinion, in my reading of all three of them, not, you're right, they did start with different goals in mind that we asked those people to look at, but there are definitely some common themes. And so I think if we I guess you're right that the strategic goals, the strategic plan is where we would need to do all this. I guess my concern, again, is that we had a strategic plan, and yet by my reading of this, there were a lot of pieces of that plan that never came to fruition. So the plan is only as good as the buy-in from everyone, is only as good as the understanding from all of us of what resources are needed. And so if we don't sit down all together, and whether this happens with this team of people, this group of school committee, or whether, you know, in January with the new school committee, I, you know, that would maybe be up to those who are still running. But I think school committee needs to be a part of this. We get a report sent to us, as Member Ruseau said, you know, with very little time to read it. And we have responsibility for some of this too. We have responsibility for policies that would directly affect what can be done, budget decisions. Yeah. So to the extent that this is just one part of one meeting, as opposed to like a real in-depth look together at this.
[Sharon Hays]: Well, so I guess I was going to make a motion that we have. Sorry. No, that's okay. I don't know what it would be, whether it's a committee of the whole, whether it's a special meeting. I just think there needs to be some meetings where we sit down and look at all of this together. Because this is the future of our school system and it's, you know, there are some real issues that we need to look at that have been brought up again by all three reports. certainly by this report, because this was the most comprehensive, to really get on the same page about what the priorities are. So. Second.
[Sharon Hays]: Well, thank you. I didn't, I certainly don't want to leave with the impression either that everything was negative or that the school system, as you said, it's falling apart. That's not at all how I read the report either. There definitely were a lot of positives and things to build on. I think then the motion would be I think with what Member Graham, if she wants to restate what she said, but with the idea that Member McLaughlin brought in of all of us coming in with kind of having really looked through the three reports, thinking about what the major areas of commonality were, major themes, and talking all together about the strategic plan. But you always have a nice wording for motions, so if you want to word yours.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you, I still had the same I brought up a question last time, and I know we ended up tabling. I don't know if maybe member McLaughlin was the one who requested the table, if she wants to talk about what her. reason for tabling or what she's found since then, but I do still have the same question that I had asked last time that I'm not sure we ever really fully discussed.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, thank you. It's really just a question. The question that I had last time was about the definitions used for bullying. And when you look at both the Massachusetts state law and the DESE, their model plan, they have the definition as basically as stated on the first page of the current proposed Medford policy. which is defined as the repeated use by one or more students or a member of the school staff of a written verbal or electronic expression or physical act or gesture or any combination thereof directed at a target that and then list those five categories. And it does say in the Department of Education model plan, it does state that for the definitions, including the bullying definition itself, districts may add specific language to these definitions to clarify them, but may not alter their meaning or scope. So then my question really is when we look at the The second page, or at least I have it printed up, the second page of the proposed policy for Medford. Excuse me, point of information.
[Sharon Hays]: That's the one I'm looking at. It's probably easier to refer to the exact lines.
[Sharon Hays]: So lines 50, starting at line 55. The bullying definition here, which is the one that's used, it says bullying investigations may be concluded with a finding of, and on line 55 it says it may be Concluded with the finding of bullying, a finding of bullying occurs when the incident is determined to be between two students who are not considered to be equal in power within the core of the problem. Bullying is abuse and occurs when a socially powerful, example given, popular or feared student mentally or physically abuses a weaker, e.g., example given, fearful student for the purpose of making them afraid or hurt. Bullying is the act of causing hurt, harm, or humiliation. That piece feels to me like it's changing the definition, the original definition in the, both in state law and the model, and adding that piece about a power differential. So that was my question, is to me that seems like a different definition than both on our first page of our model, our proposed, the definition that's given in lines 17 through 24 of this plan. which is a verbatim definition taken from the state law, which does not include that idea of a power differential is necessary for defining bullying. But the second definition in our plan, that one I just read at 55 through 61, adds that piece of a power differential that doesn't appear in the state definition or the model plan from DESE.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes, that is the definition of bullying.
[Sharon Hays]: Right. So if you look at line 62 and 63, there it talks about the pattern of behavior or repeated. So that more closely aligns with the state definition, the state law. But that piece about the power of a differential does not appear in the state law as part of what defines bullying. So yes, I'm talking about, I'm requesting or suggesting that that piece needs to be taken out in terms of defining bullying, how we define bullying if an incident occurs.
[Sharon Hays]: And just to be clear, I also did look at several districts in our area. I looked at the bullying and intervention plans for Arlington, Somerville, Cambridge, Malden, Winchester, Woburn, Waltham, Lexington and Everett, and I didn't see in any of theirs any, as part of the definition of bullying, anything to do with the power differential. That only comes up, and it comes up also in the model plan from DESE. It comes up as a potential professional development topic for educators.
[Sharon Hays]: No, that was my main point, just because that's so essential to the whole thing, is understanding what our definition of bullying is in order to determine when an incident will be classified as bullying.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. So just going back again to the definition, so two things I guess I would like to just make clear. I have looked through the state law several times. There is no mention of the power differential except as a topic for professional development. I mean, I'd be happy if someone wants to tell me where they're seeing it, but I did look back again, because I know that was also said at the last meeting, that it appears several times, and it only appears again, is a topic for professional development, not anywhere in terms of how you determine whether a particular incident is bullying. And in terms of how it's written in this policy, I think that's one of the important things after a committee has gone through as much time as this committee went through, then to present it to people with a fresh eye who look at this and say, but that doesn't make sense to me. And I'm looking at that with a fresh eye and saying, that particular piece doesn't make sense to me. because it does seem to be saying the way that it's worded is that a finding of bullying occurs when the incident is determined to be between two students who are not considered to be equal in power within the core rule of problem. And to me as reading that, it says to me as a parent or as a school committee member, I'm looking at that thinking that's telling me that the only time an incident is going to be or one time when an incident is going to be considered bullying is when someone determines that there's a power differential. And I don't see that anywhere in the state law. I don't see that anywhere in the DESE model. And I think that, to me, that seems to suggest a change in the meaning or a change in the scope of the definition of how we're gonna determine bullying, which the state says we shouldn't do that, that we should not change the meaning or the scope. If we were to go down this road, again, I wouldn't vote in favor of this in it because I think that it changes the meaning, but we'd have to define how someone would determine a power differential. I think that's an incredibly nuanced and difficult thing to determine in any situation, but certainly among students, how they define power, how the power structures are among students, I think would get us into some really tricky and gray areas. But more importantly than that, as I said, it's not part of the state definition. So I don't think it should be part of our definition.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure I know when I was speaking about the definition, I'm not sure that I clearly made a motion to to remove the part about the power differential. I have a question.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, I'd like to make a motion if I can.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. So the issue I'm bringing up is is that the power differential does not occur in our state law definition. I do understand and I have looked at the federal government's website, stopbullying.gov, and they do talk about a power differential. However, our state definition is very clearly does not include that. And so my concern and my belief is that we are waiting into a change of the definition if we start to include that as part of the definition of the way that we of the way that we determine when a bullying incident has occurred, which is what this page says, that it will be determined to have occurred when the incident is determined to be between two students who are not considered to be equal in power. And I do understand, and I think that we see that also in the state, the DESE's model plan, they do talk about the power differential as part of something that that educators need to have professional development about. They're not saying that doesn't exist, but they do not include that as part of the definition for determining when bullying has occurred. So my motion is to remove that power differential as it's worded anyway, it appears to be part of the definition and part of what we will use to determine when an incident is classified as bullying. So I think it doesn't match the state law.
[Sharon Hays]: I can state it. It's to remove lines 55 through 63 and reinsert or insert in their place line 17 through 24. Second.
[Sharon Hays]: If I may, just point of clarification maybe, or you know. Point of order or point of information with a question, point of order with a statement. With a statement, point of order. So I appreciate that you talked with the principals, I think that's important, but I also think that I think that the state law trumps what we believe to be true about, I mean, if there's a state definition and that straight definition does have criteria for what determines an incident to be actual bullying, and they don't include a power differential, again, I think that we're changing the scope of that definition by adding the power differential to it. There are actual criteria for why a conflict in the state law, how it becomes determined to be bullying it places the victim and reasonable fear of harm to himself or damage to their property. It's very well. The very clearest part of it is that has to be three or more incidents. That is repeated use three or more incidents and there's a series of five criteria. that lead to the finding of bullying. But those five criteria do not include a power differential in the state law and the state definition.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm sorry, can you read that one more time.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm sorry, I'm confused as what's going to come after that. There was something about pursuant to, and I don't.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Yes, I wanted to echo what everyone has said. This was a huge amount of work. I watched a couple of the meetings, so I know the back and forth and how long those meetings went. So this is wonderful that we have this plan in place now, and it's updated with all the new information. I did want to mention, I had my hand up a minute ago, in terms of the definition of target, I mean, it's a pretty short definition, but they do have definitions for those newer terms. on the DESI website in their model bullying prevention and intervention plan. So those definitions could just be taken from there if the team decided to do that. So my question, I had a couple of questions, but my main question really had to do with the definition of bullying. There's a definition on the first page, which is page three when you print it up, Lines 17 through 24 has a definition of bullying that I know it was taken pretty much verbatim. In fact, I think it was definitely verbatim from the law, the Massachusetts law. And I looked at a couple of their district websites. It seems like everyone really just pulls that and uses it verbatim. But then on page, the next page, page four lines 55 through, 61, when it's talking about the investigation and how the conclusions of the findings may come out, there's a different definition of bullying. It adds in that bullying can only be found to have occurred. It says, a finding of bullying occurs when the incident is determined to be between two students who are not considered to be equal in power within the quarrel or the problem. Bullying is abuse and occurs when a socially powerful student abuses, sorry, it goes on mentally or physically abuses the weaker. So it's a different definition, really. It's adding in that idea of it has to be an unequal power. And I don't see that anywhere in the law. I don't see that anywhere in the DESE website plans. And to be honest, I looked through a few other local, several other neighboring districts, and I don't see that anywhere in their plans either. So it seems like a pretty significant change of the definition. So I was wondering about that.
[Sharon Hays]: I guess, so my question is that actually under the law, that doesn't require the finding that there was a differential in power. And so we're actually changing the definition compared to what the law says. It doesn't say that in the law. The law doesn't say everything that's in our policy. But the law clearly defines bullying. And I'm trying to find the passage now where it actually says that you should not change the scope of the definition. You can clarify the definition, but you can't change the meaning or the scope, and I would, I'm concerned.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, but I think it, it adds something that's not in the law. It adds something that requires a judgment call on the, whoever's doing the investigation that the law doesn't require. And I didn't find that in any other local school district adding in this definition of you know, abuse of power or a power differential between the aggressor and the target. So I, I think that's a change to the law. And I would, I would, I as a parent, if I had a child who was being bullied or thought was, I thought was being bullied, if they met every other criteria based on the law, and then you said, well, they didn't, it wasn't bullying because we require it to be a difference in power. I, I would probably look to getting some legal advice on whether that's legally allowed for school to add that into the law.
[Sharon Hays]: Point of information, I think, if that's the right term.
[Sharon Hays]: I have the law in front of me, and I actually don't see that unless there's an updated version and I found the wrong one. But I don't see the definition of bullying in this law that I have in front of me, the chapter 71 section 370. That definition of bullying is exactly what is on the first page of this plan, but I see nowhere else any discussion of there needing to be a power differential between the victim or the target and the aggressor. I mean, if anything, adding that power differential makes it harder to define something as bullying because that requires the investigation to decide whether there was a power differential between the two people. And I don't think the law requires that based on my reading of the definition.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm going to just ask I had to check my calendar. We're still with July 19th.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: Oh, well, I was just going to mention that. I wasn't sure that part of the reason also we had to come back to this was there were two changes to numbers and then there was also member Rousseau's full comment. We added a page to put the full comment as formatted so that it's exactly how he sent it to me. So those were the there were two numbers that needed to be updated. and I updated those, and like I said, added a page to put in the full comments of Member Ruseau.
[Sharon Hays]: Excuse me, can I, this will be my first time making motion. Can I make a motion about the superintendent's evaluation? I don't know if I'm out of order doing that. I just want to make a motion that we post that to the school committee page on the school district website. Second.
[Sharon Hays]: Hi, thank you for this. Can you give us an idea of what the timeline is for the sexual health education that you're?
[Sharon Hays]: I just want to make sure I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing for choosing the new sex education program.
[Sharon Hays]: So as someone who was really looking forward to the survey, because I think that it was really crucial to get more specific data from the students, especially after, again, the two incidents that happened and the concern that we had after all of the student listening sessions, that there was a lot of apparently a lot of expression from students of, I don't know, for lack of a better word, dissatisfaction with school or concerns about school or not feeling safe in school. So my understanding from when we first heard that you were gonna do a student survey was that really the purpose was to get at those kinds of questions. And in looking at the questions that we ended up with six months later, In comparison, I did look at the actual panorama survey as created and our questions are really quite different, both in terms of structure and in some ways in terms of kind of the gist of the questions. I mean, the panorama doesn't really get into questions of alcohol use and drug use, it's really broader. And so I'm a little, I'm a little concerned about the end result of how we ended up here. You know, I looked again, I looked through the Panorama website and they specifically talk about the fact that their survey, the structure of the questions is actually questions as opposed to statements that students agree or disagree with, that it's questions. And this was kind of what they said about it. They said numerous surveys used by educators unfortunately fail to adhere to these well-established survey design practices. For example, designing survey items as statements, particularly ones that require respondents to agree or disagree, are likely to inject additional measurement error in responses. Asking questions with response options that are linked to the underlying concept is the preferred practice. And also they talked about using too few response options, not giving a wide array And so I'm looking at the way that we designed this in the end, and I am concerned that why we chose to go so off of what panorama, since we specifically chose panorama, and it's widely used around here, from what I can tell. I'm hoping in the future, and I think you said this to me earlier, that we're going to stick more with the panorama format and structure for the questions, because I feel like you know, this doesn't necessarily fit what I understood, what we talked about, or what was said to us in the beginning about the why for this survey, what the purpose of this survey was. So I'm not, you know, I guess I'd like a little clarity of why that change happened. Why did we end up kind of gearing it more towards the survey questions that I, if I'm understanding right from the earlier presentation, that whole survey is going to be given again in the fall. So we're going to have that. So I'm not really clear on why we needed to do that this time and why we didn't just stick with Panorama's original survey the way it's written, which they of course have vetted and have tested out to make sure it's valid, to make sure it's reliable, and that our questions ended up kind of violating what they say really are best practices for this kind of a survey.
[Sharon Hays]: So the, The new members will also need to take the training from mask. I know that I, it's, I don't know how often it's offered now I know I took it in December so that you know that That will be something that the new school community members might also already be doing in December. I really like the idea, though, of the retreat. I think that's a nice way to introduce. I did feel thrown in at the beginning. So I appreciate that idea, and I think it's a great idea. But I just wanted to add in there that the election is November, and that at some point, hopefully, the person will do that training sometime between then and their first time in January. they'll already be doing that too.
[Sharon Hays]: I did call, I did contact a couple of school committees about it, and I didn't bring those notes with me, but I believe it was Arlington. There was one that said that they did 730 meetings with their student advisory council. So yeah, there were creative ways to do it. Excuse me?
[Sharon Hays]: Arlington does school committee meetings all over the place. They do 10 AM meetings on Saturday mornings. So there are creative ways to figure this out. I'm happy to take the lead on this and try to work. I can work with you to try to figure it out. The worst can happen is it doesn't work, but I think it's worth trying because we have been looking for ways to get more student involvement. And since this is already law and policy, we can try.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays? The one thing I think we missed, I think the school committee needs to take a vote on the superintendent's evaluation, don't we?
[Sharon Hays]: Here. Member Kreatz.
[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Mastone.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. Sure. So we first met with Mr. Welch on May 1st to go over the results of his time with us, his time with us looking at the high school. We had requested his consultation around, actually the superintendent, I contacted him through, I think, ma SS Massachusetts Association of school superintendents around the climate and culture of the high school. I think this was something that had actually been requested by the school committee prior to my time on the school committee, but given the events that we've had this year there were two violent incidents. One in particular, or the one the final one that kind of led to this was the stabbing at the high school. And so, Mr. Welch came in for several weeks and met with, and he can maybe go through that kind of again if he wants to do it when he first comes up, met with a lot of people, students, us, teachers, administrators, and came back with quite a lengthy report for us. And at the time of our May 1st reading, we had only had the report in hand for a few days. And while that I rewatched the meeting this morning in preparation for tonight, and we did have quite a lengthy discussion, but I know I still felt like given the gravity of this situation and given that this is something that has been in everyone's minds for at least a few years that you know issues with the high school. That it felt like it warranted more than just one item on a regular school committee agenda, so we did request that Mr. welch come back. Hopefully, in the intervening six weeks, which feels like forever right now. we've all had a chance maybe to look through the report again, think more about kind of what questions we have further to get further information. I know again in watching the re-watching the May 1st meeting, what struck me and I think which was what caused me to personally wanna ask for more time was something that member Graham said, she said, A lot of these failures, for lack of a better word, are failures of implementation. And what struck me about that is that here we are again with a report from a consultant, and we also had a consultant last year who came and spoke with us, not about the exact same issues, but about some issues with the schools. It was more focused on racial equity, and then even more finely focused on I think the human resources department at the high school, but that we had a consultant come in already and I'm not sure that many of the recommendations were implemented. So I want to at least make a stronger effort this time to really delve deeply into what your findings were, what your recommendations are and how we can try to ensure that we implement your recommendations, or if there are other things that we can put in place, because some of the recommendations may require resources that we don't have right now, but what we can do to move forward with this and not just have it be another report that we need about for an hour, say, yes, we need to do something about this, but then don't really follow through on. So that was the reason for the request. So that's the background, and if you wanna come up and we can hopefully have a deeper conversation about what you saw and what your recommendations are.
[Sharon Hays]: So I guess in my mind, there were kind of two tracks that your recommendations went down in a way. One track was kind of logistical, operational, maybe positions we would need to hire for, which we should talk more about. But there was also the track that had to do more with the shared vision, the consensus around change. And I'm grappling with how that piece happens, because I guess I feel like, I guess we could say this about either one of those tracks, that you can put one in place, but without the other, it's not going to happen, change isn't going to happen. So we can put new people in positions and, you know, the positions that you recommended were clearly to support, especially the assistant principals, which as you may now know, we now are down to one. We're back to just having Mr. Plowk as the remaining assistant principal and we're gonna need to hire two new people. And so certainly they need the support and that's something we need to talk about, but we could have that in place, but if we still don't have this idea of consensus, I do feel like that's a major issue. for us. And so, can you go into more depth about how, how do we do that? I mean, really, practically speaking, how do we go about building consensus in a large community, a large school community, a large general community? How, what are some steps we take to do that?
[Sharon Hays]: I guess I'm wondering, have you Have you seen this in other districts and how do they manage that? Where does the mentoring piece come from for the principal? Who does the mentoring and how do they find the time to have, as you said, the building still has to run. So where does that time come from? I'm really thinking the nitty gritty and I don't know if maybe the superintendent is already working on this. And so maybe I'm asking questions that are already being, so feel free to jump in, but How have you seen this happen and how, how can we make this happen.
[Sharon Hays]: So that's within the district or is that similar to where Dr. Edouard-Vincent found you through mass, is there some. group out there that that provides this mentoring or how I'm really trying to figure out how this happens. And again, I don't know if this is already something that's being considered or, but, you know, I'm really trying to figure out how we're going to, how we can implement this, we do have new people, and it's going to be crucial to get them up and running as quickly as possible, and have them feel as supported as possible. So I'm, I don't know any of this how this all works. So I'm curious How does the district do this is there, is there a group that we go to to find and I guess it wouldn't be school committee but the administration goes to and says we need a mentor, how does this work.
[Sharon Hays]: I guess this kind of segues into a question I had about, so I asked for a couple of additional data points looking at the referrals. And this is all new to me because I don't have a high schooler. But I know we've talked about this, I think we talked about it at the meeting on May 1st. The excessive number of possibilities that, or designations that a teacher can provide for a referral, it's really way too much. I can imagine how overwhelming it must be as a teacher I know, again, having just watched it this morning that Member Graham kind of alluded to that and said, we have 200 different ways to talk about cutting class, which is not true. But in looking at the three different dates, sets of dates that I have, there are at least a dozen ways to classify cutting class. And different ones appear on different sets of data that I have. So I guess the question too I have is thinking about once we get those kind of collective norms, and then again, you say that the only time you would need to have a consequence is when you violate those norms. How do... Is there a better way of doing this? Is there, I guess, again, is there some kind of software out there that does this better? Or do school systems generally just after creating these collective norms their referral codes come out of that, because this is just unwieldy. There's just really no way when I think for a teacher to take this much time to figure out, well, which way do I classify this? And then for the assistant principals or whoever is in charge of following up on this to figure out, well, which ones do I really need to prioritize and what do the consequences need to be? Because there are, you know, on each one of these there's 45 different, you know, classifications of referrals and these are all the referrals that were actually used during that set that those dates, there may be many more that just weren't used at that time so. if you could speak to that a little bit.
[Sharon Hays]: That leads me to another question. Because I think I have an idea of what the answer to this is, but I want to ask you to describe it more at the May 1 meeting you talked about the role of curriculum directors in supporting teachers. And the fact that at the moment, teachers don't seem to see them as a support when it comes to behavior management and classroom management. And I know there was some discussion of well, you know, what does that mean when at this point, we seem to mostly view our curriculum directors. as tied to curriculum and that's their only role. I think I have an idea of where you were going with that, but I'd like you to talk a little bit more about that because, of course, that would be another layer of support if there's a role for them in helping with the classroom management piece that would take some of that load off of the assistant principals that we've talked about.
[Sharon Hays]: I'll keep going. I think obviously that the major recommendations that we'd probably struggle with the most are those organizational, the hiring of additional staff. And I'm not sure, I don't believe we have that in our current budget, if I'm correct. And so I'm wondering, do you have suggestions If we can't hire those additional, what other avenues can we do to alleviate some of the stress on assistant principals or to share the responsibility? What do we do about that? Because we may not be able to hire both the associate principal position that you mentioned, but those 0.5 deans. So do you have some other suggestions
[Sharon Hays]: Can I ask a question of the superintendent that I know you've talked about this at some of our meetings already referred to. looking for some of the positions from within. I don't know if you're prepared to give any more details about where you're at in that process, whether you've actually been able to find people that might fulfill some of those positions or not. And I don't want to put you on the spot if you're not prepared to talk yet, but if you are, that would be great.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. Thank you. I just wanted to ask so the, the literacy, the two literacy coaches are being funded by Esther, or is it two additional that we can have the two literacy coaches there are two literacy coaches that we are recommending.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, I know that I'm kind of a broken record on this, but I wanna say again, that I feel very strongly that we need one at each building And I was hoping at today's meeting, maybe we'd be coming forward with some suggestions of ways to find the money for that. I think that, you know, as I've emailed a couple of times, we've had coaches or interventionists as a priority in the budget for at least the last two years prior to this year. And each time they've been cut out. And this year with the new implementation of the new program, I, you know, again, I just want to keep reiterating I think one each building is really necessary to get this program up and running the first time we've had a new program now and at least 10 years. So I was really hoping we'd be talking about whether there was a way to find some money just for this first year really to get the implementation going.
[Sharon Hays]: Just one question, how many adjustment Councilors are currently funded by Esther.
[Sharon Hays]: Mayor?
[Sharon Hays]: Can I make one comment about this section that I noticed earlier? Under district improvement goal number two, there are only six ratings listed. I think an early version, one person had not sent me their rating for that. So I will correct that in the final draft. This is just the first draft. three significant progress and one met under, I mean, and four met, three significant progress, four met under district improvement goal number two.
[Sharon Hays]: Aye.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays? Yeah, I just wanted to comment. I wanted to thank Member Ruseau for kind of giving me a heads up about this. And I'm working on getting a second page. What happens, or at least, it worked differently apparently in different browsers. The font size got too small with yours. It fit, but it was too small to be legible. So I'm working on making a second page to have your comments on. So thank you for that.
[Sharon Hays]: Today, May 22, 2023, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., there will be an evaluation subcommittee meeting to be held through remote participation via Zoom. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 15 and Verizon Channel 45 at 5 p.m. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call in by using the following link or call-in number. There's the Zoom link with the meeting ID 991-0113-0546. You can dial in using the number 1305-224-1968 with the same meeting ID number. Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting. by emailing shays at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, your name and last name, your Medford Street address, your question or comment. As approved by the committee on February 1 2023 the evaluation subcommittee will meet to review and develop the process for the 2022 23 superintendent evaluation, and in particular tonight's agenda is as approved by the evaluation subcommittee on Thursday, February 16 2023 the subcommittee will meet to create the composite evaluation. So, I just literally a couple of minutes ago sent the other subcommittee members, shared with them the folder I've created with all of the member evaluations.
[Sharon Hays]: Oh, I apologize. Yes. That's OK. Thank you for reminding me. I will call the roll. Member Graham?
[Sharon Hays]: And member Hays is present. All members are present so we can begin. So I just like I said, I was beginning to say I shared moments before the meeting started or probably maybe even a moment as it started. So I began creating the composite just in terms of putting the ratings, which I will share with you guys. I have not had a chance to compile all of the comments because I don't think I gave myself enough time, I think we probably should have planned a couple of days between the due date and the meeting, because all of the, all of them came in, except membercrats, all of them came in yesterday. So let me see if I can bring up the, nope, that's not the right, hold on.
[Sharon Hays]: It's in the shared folder if you're able to open the Google Drive. OK. It should have been shared with you. Hold on.
[Sharon Hays]: There should be one that's labeled composite, or there is one that's labeled composite.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm getting help right now with that one.
[Sharon Hays]: OK, so what I was able to do so far is compile the ratings and fill them in. We created a composite form where we could put, instead of the checkboxes, we could put in the numbers of each rating so we could see how they kind of fell out in terms of understanding what the final composite rating rating scores, for lack of a better word, would be. So as we can see, this first page, the goals, the professional practice goals, there was one significant, five said met and one said exceeded. Student learning was one, some progress, one significant, four met, one exceeded. District improvement goals, three significant progress, three met, and one exceeded. So anyone can jump in at some point if they want to add anything. I mean, I think we can see they pretty much fall out in terms of what the combined scores would be. They're pretty much all in that met when you look at the preponderance of scores. Of course, the five is certainly the professional practice goal. the student learning goal, the four and the 18.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I'm going to put them together in a document. That was my plan was to have that ready for today, but they were just, it was, I didn't have enough time.
[Sharon Hays]: Pretty much across the board. Yeah. When you look at that and we can scroll down through the rest of them, too. But well, these are the these are the three the three main areas. Right. These are the three where we all had to take all of our scores and and Yeah.
[Sharon Hays]: Correct.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes, thank you. Thank you, that was a good way to summarize it.
[Sharon Hays]: Uh, in terms of the comments from members, yes, we can either I mean, we can either work on that. here or here if we can get them to all together into a document or we can we do have another subcommittee meeting scheduled where we could look at that and I think what we had said as part of the process was that the subcommittee would would put selected comments in to kind of represent the ratings that we would select comments from the various members evaluations and create the composite, including the comments to bring to the whole committee.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, thank you. That's a really good suggestion, because as I said, I'd envisioned having it ready for this meeting and we could actually just do it together at this meeting. But given that that, you know, the time frame didn't allow for that, maybe that's the best way to move forward is to create the finish creating that Google Doc, which I've already started, but just haven't been able to finish. And like you said, I can share that with you and member Graham. And when we meet on April 1st, I believe it is, we could probably have a pretty efficient meeting in terms of choosing out the comments.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm sorry, I keep saying April today for some reason. Yes, June 1st. Thank you. That's fine. Great. Do we want to scroll down and you can see some of the other, we can view some of the other scores just so people have an idea of where some of these fell out. These are the specific, the superintendent's specific goals, early literacy, her professional practice goal, and her three district improvement goals.
[Sharon Hays]: I mean, this is really just, I just pulled the data straight out from everyone's individual evaluations. And you can see it really all does fall kind of in that middle, the met range. And then these are the individual standards and the indicators of how people vote rated on the indicators.
[Sharon Hays]: So I guess from here do we need to make a motion that will that that would be the next step would be that I'll send um create the combined uh the document of combined comments and uh We'll meet next time and go through those to fill in the comment sections of the composite. Member Graham?
[Sharon Hays]: Oh, she just texted me that she can't be unmuted. She can't unmute.
[Sharon Hays]: Let me, let me see what I can do.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. So do we, I don't know, do we need to vote on that or is that more formal than we need to?
[Sharon Hays]: OK. Well, does anyone have anything else to add about this? I guess at this point, the data is in. It really is just that question of adding in the comments.
[Sharon Hays]: Well, I will be getting that to you. I mean, I'll be getting the finishing, completing the Google Doc that's already in the, it's in the shared folder I already sent you. I don't know that, I think that actually the next meeting is for us to together create the, decide upon the comments to go in the comment section. So I'm not really sure there's any, I don't think there's anything you need to send to me.
[Sharon Hays]: Is Jess able to unmute, or is she?
[Sharon Hays]: This is a school committee process. The school committee is responsible for evaluating the superintendent.
[Sharon Hays]: You're welcome. I don't know if anyone had anything to add to that, if there was anything I missed about community input. In terms of actual writing of the, the superintendent evaluation, that is our responsibility in terms of community input, that would probably be more through any evidence that the superintendent provides for us of community input on any of the areas that she's being evaluated on. Is that correct to say, yes?
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Yes, I think we're always looking for ways to improve the process and improve our ways of getting information to evaluate. So I think that as member Graham said, looking for a way to include the community in the process would certainly be a next step, a next goal for next year. That being said, if there are any, not any other questions from either the committee or from any members of the public?
[Sharon Hays]: Oh, thank you, I didn't see that.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes, Mr. Garrity, go ahead.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, that's someone else. Superintendent, are you able to unmute him?
[Sharon Hays]: Sure, good question. Well, we use the self-evaluation from the superintendent, where she gives us an update on, it's all based on the goals that the superintendent and the school committee discussed at the beginning of the year, the agreed upon goals and indicators. And so the superintendent presented her self-evaluation two weeks ago, and that's the information that we use to complete our evaluations. Does any other member have something more to add to that?
[Sharon Hays]: I'm not, can you further explain what the question is?
[Sharon Hays]: And I would just add, I think that at our meeting, when we present this to the entire committee for them to vote on the final composite, I think at that point, we will talk as a committee about how exactly we want to share this, what's the best way to share this so that everyone has access to it. We've talked about a couple of different ways of possibly putting it on the website and making sure that everyone has access to both the composite, but also our individual evaluations. Because as both member Graham and member McLaughlin have said, it's all public information. Desi doesn't specify how we share it or how we make it public. So that's really up to us to make that decision. And I've looked around at other districts and it's remarkably difficult actually to find in many districts to find the superintendent evaluation. So it's really kind of up to us to create that process and decide how we wanna share it and create that access for the community.
[Sharon Hays]: I think it's also important, which is also publicly available. Again, the superintendent's goals for the year that are posted, and they're also goals that are shared goals. We work on them together, the superintendent and the school committee at the beginning of the year. So that's really where the, I don't know if the metrics so much, but the decisions about what are the particular focus areas. that is done, again, in open meeting, and it's also a document that's on the website that everyone can look at.
[Sharon Hays]: Good. Thank you. Member McLaughlin, your hand's up. Did you have something else to add? I did.
[Sharon Hays]: That would be great because I am, oh sorry. Go ahead. Just wanted to say, I'm still, as I said, I'm still working on some of the other pieces so it would be helpful if. Yeah. someone maybe could pick up that piece of it, that creation of the slide. Yeah, I'd be happy to do that.
[Sharon Hays]: Second, I'll take a roll call vote then. Member Graham? Yes. Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Hays? Yes. Three in the affirmative, zero in the negative. So this meeting is then, do we have to also adjourn? Continued. Nope, we're continued. Continued, sorry.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. So I wanted to clarify or to understand more the under future considerations, what does future considerations mean does that looking at other funding sources for this coming year or future as in future years.
[Sharon Hays]: Can I continue? So can you then let me know, at this moment, how many reading coaches or literacy coaches to help implement the new program? How many are actually in this budget currently?
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, I would just like to reiterate I've said this before, I am very concerned that implementing a brand new huge literacy program the first one in more than 10 years I believe that not having coaches at each of the schools to help implement the new program. I think is a huge concern. It's a, it's a big program. Well, we don't know which one yet. I have been on the team. I've looked at all three programs as is true of every box literacy program out there. There are so many components involved and there's going to have to be some significant decisions made about how things get implemented and possibly which things don't get implemented because they, they require more time than we have in our literacy blocks. and to not have a coach at each school there to support the teachers, answer their questions, I think is a major concern when we're implementing a brand new program when literacy is one of our main focuses. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Can everyone hear me. Hi, thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I'm sorry. I couldn't find the raise hand on my thing. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt, but. So, the original resolution that I wrote that led to this meeting, which I think was, I think I wrote it back in February, but there were. a series of unfortunate events that kind of put this meeting off really wasn't so much about the student handbook. It was really a more open-ended. So I'm sorry, Mr. DeLeva, that was a great explanation that I just want to kind of clear up. So the original resolution was fairly open-ended and it was really came about after the new safety procedures were put in place. I had at some point pretty soon after the new procedures sent an email to administration with some questions. And then I thought, well, this seems like something more that the whole DEI subcommittee maybe should together just talk about in terms of with the new safety procedures in place, thinking about how that impacts the student experience at school. And really even more specifically, when we think about some of our specific subgroups, how some of like having another resource officer having an increased number of hallway and bathroom monitors, certainly that can have an impact on some of our students of color, thinking about the bath, having some of the bathrooms closed and some of the bathroom restrictions, just how that might impact students with disabilities, students with any anxieties about using the bathrooms, some of our LGBTQ students who might need a gender neutral bathroom. So it was more looking a somewhat open-ended kind of brainstorming session about what could be the impact on students. And from that, Are there things that the school committee might want to either get more information about from administration? Might there be data that we'd like to request, you know, put in, send up to the school committee as a whole to say, do we want to ask for a report about this, things like that. Or even, I lost my train of thought. There was a third thing I was thinking. Well, oh, policies. Are there any policies we might wanna think about that would be related to when there's a change like this for students and how we address the possible unintended consequences procedures and policies like, or it's not really policies, these are new procedures, procedures like this and how they impact students. So that was kind of the broad question. It was a very, I know it was a very broad resolution, but really was a chance for kind of, I guess, all of us together with administration to just think about these new procedures from the student perspective and in particular, some of our some of our more marginalized students and how might it impact their experience?
[Sharon Hays]: Thanks. Yeah, I was going to basically ask the same question about data in terms of just the things that Mr. DeLevo just spoke about with the bathroom. And I'm just curious, again, as you said, Ms. McLaughlin, are there any data being kept? Is there a way to keep data? Maybe we can brainstorm about that in terms of, you know, how much class are kids missing? Do we have any way of finding out from students kind of what they're, how they're feeling about missing class. I know at one point, I think at a meeting, I thought a student spoke up, one of our student reps said something about having a hard time getting to an open bathroom and I don't know about students who might be anxious about missing class and how that's working out. Again, just kind of that whole idea of how can we, as a group, can we brainstorm ways to kind of figure out one, Is this a problem at all? And if it is, what can we do to alleviate some of those problems? Because these are all new procedures and works in progress.
[Sharon Hays]: Can I jump in for a 2nd, please. I guess, so I guess maybe a good place to back up that is to ask is administration collecting data on any of the maybe that's the first step and say, are you collecting data on kind of impact both intended and unintended of the new procedures. both on students in general, but also, again, as we talk about some of these subgroups. And, you know, I think originally one of my main concerns when I wrote the resolution was thinking about with the increased adult monitoring and with, well, really just that, the increased adults who are really kind of monitoring where students are going and what they're doing. Certainly with students of color, that could have an impact both in terms of are there differences in who's being spoken to more often or getting referrals? And even beyond that, just how, has there been discussion with these students or any attempt to kind of figure out, is it affecting them from a mental health perspective? Like, are they feeling uncomfortable with this? Since we know that, you know, there's data everywhere to show that that can certainly be an issue.
[Sharon Hays]: So I just wanna be clear that this resolution was not questioning the need and the critical need at that moment for something to change because there were some pretty major issues at the high school. So the question is not necessarily about the intended consequences and certainly the intended consequences were to have students in class and really to help students feel safer at school. And I don't think that That's not the question of this particular subcommittee meeting or the resolution I put forward. It really is, again, looking at some of the possibly unintended consequences and how do we assess and evaluate now that we're several months out, what's the impact on students and are there any unintended impacts? Because certainly, as I said at the beginning, although I don't know, maybe you weren't here yet, superintendent but you know some of the some of the questions I brought up were questions of you know unintended some of those unintended consequences are certain students being spoken to more often in the hallways now that there's more monitors are some students feeling less comfortable actually feeling less comfortable in the building if there's more adults kind of overseeing them. Are there students who might find it difficult to access bathrooms now that they're closed and that might make them anxious or uncomfortable just, you know, thinking about students with disabilities? students with anxieties about finding a bathroom. I think Mr. Lave already spoke to the LGBTQ population, but certainly, you know, depending on where they are in the building, getting to the main office in that one bathroom could be pretty difficult. And so just trying to think through some of those And how are we giving students a voice to let us know about that and how are we looking at any data that we have or do we need to talk about how we could get more data to better understand now that we're, again, we're past the emergency phase, how do we now move on and start looking at the other impacts or potential impacts of these new procedures and moving forward Are they going to be, you know, if we, if they're going to be continued next year, maybe we need to have a better sense of how they're actually.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, well, actually I'm hoping that that's something we can all brainstorm together. I know that we have the, and I'm sorry, I hope it's okay, Member McLaughlin, that I jumped in. We have now given the student survey, and certainly that will hopefully provide some data. I'm not sure exactly what the, questions were and whether they'll be conducive to getting this kind of information. But, you know, I guess, looking at, are there more informal surveys we can do? Are there, I don't know, I'm hoping there's others that have other ideas of how we could get more information from the students, allow them more of an opportunity to speak. I, you know, I think that, as you said, Mr. DeLiva, that those listening sessions really are wonderful. I think they've been a great new addition. I'm hoping that maybe they'll They'll get, sorry about that, they'll get more formalized. Sorry, now I totally lost my train of thought. But oh, but I agree with you that I think there are students, even if it's a, I don't know what those listening sessions exactly look like, even a small listening session, there are certainly students who might feel comfortable speaking up. And so how do we make sure we get all of those students make sure they all have an opportunity to let us know what the impact is on them.
[Sharon Hays]: clear, you mean we convene to consider what kinds of data we would like to have, or?
[Sharon Hays]: Again, I guess I was hoping that was part of the brainstorming session with all of us is to talk about different experiences we've all had, you know, in our different jobs or parts of our lives with different types of ways to gather data, whether it's surveys, whether it's focus groups, I'm just trying to figure out how we can get, we now have the student survey that will be coming through, which is wonderful. How can we do that on a more, you know, a more regular basis, whatever regular timeframe we would want it to be, but also getting teachers and, you know, families, I just think, again, getting all of those voices in there, the ones who are, you know, who are experiencing the impacts of these new, safety procedures, and so understanding from their perspectives what it looks like during the course of the day for them, and both the positives and the negatives. And, you know, that would allow us better to understand which ones are working well, if there are any that aren't working well, or whether some need to be tweaked or changed. But again, you know, There's no question that we needed some new safety procedures, but I think the reflection piece, we haven't really had a lot of the reflection piece yet on those procedures and what the experience is for those who are actually living with them. So again, this was originally written back in February, and we're a bit away from it now, but I think it's still an open question on how we continue to get That kind of information, so we know how these these are working.
[Sharon Hays]: Thanks, yes, I mean, I think that's I agree with you. I think that. The listening sessions are a valuable tool and the face to face. I would ask maybe that we also if there is a way to have a. I think for some people, the face to face can actually be more difficult, and so I think that having both types having a face to face, but also having maybe a written or more. I don't know, anonymous or at least less confrontational, which is not quite the right word, but a way for people who might feel more comfortable doing it in a different way, just to get as much information as we can as we move forward.
[Sharon Hays]: So I guess, can we make a motion to, well, I don't want to make a motion before talking about what that motion would be. We have the student survey. I don't know how long it takes to get the data and to really work with the interpretation of that. And then, you know, if we did if If you were able to do something with the teachers listening sessions and or something else. Is there Would we want to come back to this committee? Again, I'm throwing out this question to everyone. Would we want to come back to this committee with some of that information and talk about it before, I don't know, going to the full committee with it? Or do we want to just make a motion to have all that information brought to either the last school committee this year or, I don't know, that's coming up sooner than I imagine. next year, the beginning of next year.
[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I think that would be great for start. I guess I'm also, and maybe this would be for another meeting to talk more about it, but kind of talking about ongoing data collection. If these restrictions or these safety procedures continue, I think gathering ongoing data about the impact on teachers and students. And, you know, I think it's really important whenever something that really is a significant change in the way the school is run, especially for the experience of the students themselves, that we continue to look at data of how it's impacting them and whether it's having the intended consequences. Again, I keep coming back to this, but the intended consequences and the unintended consequences. to ensure that we keep looking for that because I think that is our responsibility to do that.
[Sharon Hays]: Just a quick question. So we talked at one point, I remember Rousseau was talking about writing the formal request for a report. Are we talking about doing that, or are we leaving it kind of more open-ended in a sense, but just know that it will go on? Who will be responsible for making sure it goes on the agenda?
[Sharon Hays]: I guess my question was a little more basic than that, like, out of this meeting, do we have a motion that says it will be, you know, in the month of September, we will have a meeting about that or. how do we leave it from here to present to the rest of the committee? Because again, I am a little concerned things get lost over the summer. So I just want to, you know, I don't want, I want to have enough of a a final outcome of this.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. Great job. Thank you. We also have, we actually have two meeting dates set aside for the composite if we need them. So one was the 22nd and I believe, I didn't actually bring the timeline with me right here, but I believe the other one was June 1st. So just in case we needed additional time to work on the composite.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I saw that. I put that on my calendar.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. I did have a I guess a question for longer term members about a policy I came across as I was looking at some of the the updated policies on mask. There's a policy, JIB, Student Involvement and Decision Making, about having us meet with a student advisory council once every other month or some such thing. And I didn't know if that ever existed or whether it's something we need to look into how we create this process. I was hoping someone might know. Repeat what it is one more time, student. It's called Student Involvement in Decision Making, and it says, as required by state law, the committee will meet at least once every other month while school is in session with its student advisory committee.
[Sharon Hays]: I guess I'm not clear on whether that well satisfies. Yes, I'm not sure when it says that it's required by law that the committee meets with them. I guess I don't know historically, is that something that the committee decided sometime in the past that it would be the responsibility of the school administration to do that? And if so, that's fine. I just, I didn't know anything about this. And so I was just curious if anyone had the history on it.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I was just looking through some of the updated this wasn't an updated policy but in looking through. the updated policies, trying to match the letters. And I just, I happened to stumble upon this one, so I thought I'd bring it forward.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Yes, we met on April 27th. We went through. Okay, so we had to, well, we just wanted to finish up both the form, the template that members will use to evaluate the superintendent and also to make sure that the instructions that we have that we will be sending along with the template were clear and included everything that was necessary. This has been passed out to the members before the meeting attached to the minutes that was passed out is the form itself or a copy of the form and a copy of the instructions and I think that it At this point, we needed members to approve. Is that correct?
[Sharon Hays]: We meet again on, well, we meet on the eighth for the superintendent's self-evaluation at that point. Originally, we had planned to present the template to members then, but so we're presenting it now. So I suppose that would mean at the next meeting, members will have a chance to look at it and bring any questions or concerns they have so we can talk about it then.
[Sharon Hays]: Differences from last year?
[Sharon Hays]: On the form itself, there were no major changes. I mean, we are using the DESE forms. There really isn't room for huge changes to it. We did fill in the superintendent's goals and we checked off and highlighted the specific focus indicators that we're using to evaluate the superintendent.
[Sharon Hays]: And then member grants. Thank you. Thank you. One of the things I really appreciated about your report and member so kind of already spoke to some of this was the history you gave because I certainly did not. I have new bits and pieces of the history and, but having it all put together. really helped a lot to provide some context to some of the issues that we're having, because they're not just based on what's happening right now or even in the past two years. There's a lot of history behind all of that that leads us to where we are today. And one of the things that struck me a lot was the turnover, the amazing turnover in the various administrative positions, because it's very hard to implement or to get anything to stick if you don't have some consistency in those positions. And so I'm wondering, did you have a sense, well, two questions I'm wondering, and one of them may not be exactly for you. One, do we do exit interviews when people leave so we can have a sense of, is there some pattern, something we can understand to why we seem to have so much turnover? Did you get a sense from any of the people you talked to who maybe knew some of these people was there any sense of why we seem to have so much turnover? And I guess in your experience, is that amount of turnover typical? I know there's a lot of administrative turnover at all levels of K to 12 education, but that just feels like so much. And when you think of the things that we haven't been able to get done, so much of that, when you've got people who are new to the system, and then also some, I think you mentioned some of these people maybe were just even new to that particular position. anywhere. So it's hard to get much traction for things if people are new and just trying to get their bearings and then a couple years later they're gone and somebody new is trying to get their bearings and did you have any sense of what that why that turnover was happening if there was any pattern to that.
[Sharon Hays]: So I've already requested this information from administration, but I'm curious whether you looked at it too. The discipline data or the referral, the chart that you have from the period that you were here from January 3rd to February 17th, I think was the stretch of time. That, of course, period of time is right after the new procedures were put in place. I'm curious, did you look at all back before those procedures were put in place to see how the data, was it comparable, did anything shift with the new procedures that you noticed? I don't know if you did that or not.
[Sharon Hays]: Dial in number is 1-301-715-8592. Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing shays, that's s-h-a-y-s, at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting questions or comments must include the following information. Your first and last name. your Medford Street address, and your question or comment. As approved by the committee on February 1st, 2023, the evaluation subcommittee will meet to review and develop the process for the 2022-23 superintendent evaluation. Today's agenda, as approved by the evaluation subcommittee on Thursday, February 16th, 2023, the evaluation subcommittee will meet to finalize the template design and instructions. So at our last meeting, we determined that we would, this year anyway, try using the evaluation tool that DESE provides. And we looked through it. And one of the concerns was that on some of the pages, the information is kind of wordy and knowing for the members to know specifically on the standards which indicators we've chosen as the focus indicators, and I will share my screen in a minute to show everyone. But there was a question of whether that might be difficult to see, so that we wanted to look at highlighting those, the focus indicators that we've selected this year, so that it was just really clear which ones people should be rating. So I did that, and I will attempt to share my screen.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, so it's further down. I did fill in also, just so we could see what it would look like when we actually send it to the members. I filled in the superintendent's goals on this page here. and the focus indicators that went, that we selected to go with each of those goals. And then the, there's the highlighting. So I highlighted on these pages the selected indicators. So there's the ones for instructional leadership. And then the one for management and operations. And family and community engagement, there were three. And professional culture, three more. I think that's it. Yes, that's enough. That's it. So I had just emailed these to everyone last, just last night, I think. So I don't know if anyone has any thoughts, comments. Does that seem to work better? to have them highlighted. Melanie, member McLaughlin, sorry.
[Sharon Hays]: Do you know what, it automatically makes it smaller to fit in the box.
[Sharon Hays]: It's not too, too bad. I do have it in front of me.
[Sharon Hays]: I mean, I think there's only so many ways we can really kind of hammer it home. I mean, this is.
[Sharon Hays]: So, cause you know- I can't change the form itself. So I can't put in a line that says Medford Public Schools.
[Sharon Hays]: There's no way to add to the form. There's no way to add that kind of stuff to the basic form.
[Sharon Hays]: There's something I'm thinking about that, but let me let the superintendent speak. She has her hand raised.
[Sharon Hays]: We can. I mean, absolutely, we can. There's no reason not to. This isn't going to go. I think the thing is this is going to be live on our website. and go to the DESI from us. So I don't know if there's anywhere else it's going to be that people wouldn't know what it's for. I'm not sure it's letting me go any further. It's not letting me go any further.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah. No, thank you. I mean, I can look and see if there's something. I'm not a tech wizard with this, but it doesn't look like you can add that much to it. But I mean, the next step for us, of course, I guess, to identify, after all of this is said and done, how it lives on our website, on the Medford Public Schools website, so that the community has access to it.
[Sharon Hays]: I think it's both you and the superintendent.
[Sharon Hays]: I had sent that piece with this too last night when I sent I did make some instructions which I can show, I can share that screen too, or I don't know if anyone else has any comments on the actual form, the highlighting, or anything else. Member Graham?
[Sharon Hays]: Thumbs up.
[Sharon Hays]: OK, so let me share that then. And we can take a look at that if there's no other. Oh, did it come right, is it already up? Did that work?
[Sharon Hays]: OK. So I can scroll down after you read. And I remember Graham said she already got a chance to look at them. So I don't know if she already has some thoughts. Tried to be as specific as I could, but it's hard to always anticipate.
[Sharon Hays]: Oh, OK. And there were some places just so where I mentioned the materials they would need. And I have those all in a folder, so I figured I could send them so everybody has everything they need in hand. We don't have, of course, the self-evaluation yet, but I can take that and make sure that gets attached to the email too, just so people aren't trying to look around for the things they need to be able to fill out the evaluation.
[Sharon Hays]: When we do the, you mean when we create the compiled?
[Sharon Hays]: So my one thought would be in terms of the one piece you said about talking about how to word, not using the I statements. While I agree with that, I think at some point, I guess personally I feel like if we start getting too directive about how you should word your comments, there's a part of me that feels like we're, you know, being a little, not trusting the professionalism of our colleagues in a way. I don't know. I don't recall there being specific I statements or I don't. I don't know. I guess that's just my feeling is I feel like at some point we start to get a little too. intervening too much, maybe, in how a particular member chooses to word their comments?
[Sharon Hays]: So in looking at other cities and towns, I've seen it done any number of ways. I have seen ones where they just dumped members' comments in, obviously not all of them, but they dumped some comments in. Other ones where they created, and it was whoever, whether it was the chairperson of the committee who was the one doing the final composite, or whether it was a subcommittee like us that we're doing, I've seen ones where they did create just a narrative based on the comments. So really we could go either way. And I think the intention is that the subcommittee is going to do that, that we're going to be the ones to create the composite. But of course, then we take it back to the full committee and they have their opportunity to comment on and change any, if they feel like we've miscommunicated something or if we use their comments and they felt like, well, that wasn't a comment that I wanted to put in, I don't know, I was trying to think at one point whether we could put in the instructions somewhere in here that if there's a particular comment that someone feels is, one of their comments that they feel is most important, that they'd like to have included, that we could put in there that they should highlight that for us somehow. But I don't know how do others feel about that.
[Sharon Hays]: Are you saying a narrative plus the comments, so we would do the narrative?
[Sharon Hays]: No, just the comments?
[Sharon Hays]: Is my audio better?
[Sharon Hays]: All right. So then we're looking at just including, saying we'll include representative comments.
[Sharon Hays]: Sounds like a good plan superintendent. You had your hand raised at 1 point. Are you.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm thinking maybe put it in here. The subcommittee.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. So the members are, the deadline for them to return to us, which, oh, I'll have to put that in there too. I have it in my calendar, it's good.
[Sharon Hays]: I think we had it that we would give it to them and talk about it on the 8th as part of that meeting.
[Sharon Hays]: OK.
[Sharon Hays]: Evaluations. I'll fix the spelling are due to the subcommittee
[Sharon Hays]: Well, there we go.
[Sharon Hays]: So I think that's what we have on the agenda. Is there anything else, any other comments on either the form or the instructions?
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, we'll see.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes, you're right. Are they approving the template too? So template, instructions, and process. Instructions and process, yeah. Okay. All right, I should take a roll call vote just to make it official. Can you say again what you're, just so we have it out there, Jenny?
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, so roll call vote. Oh thank you. Member Graham.
[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin. Yes. Member Hays, yes. All right, motion approved. Excellent, thank you. Motion to adjourn.
[Sharon Hays]: Motion to adjourn, roll call vote. Member Graham.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays, yes. Member McLaughlin.
[Sharon Hays]: All right, thank
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. Thank you. I'm also wondering about the new literacy curriculum. Same question that Member Ruseau just had about the health curriculum. We are absolutely going to need literacy coaches or some other kind of professional development to go with the new curriculum or, you know, it's We're going to be spending a lot of money on a curriculum that is not going to get fully implemented if teachers don't have the support they need. So is that also built into this budget or is that another thing that we're going to be trying to figure out how to make happen.
[Sharon Hays]: Do they provide coaching, would they provide coaching specifically around the new curriculum or they still providing coaching around equity because I've started looking at these curriculums they're massive as they all are. There are so many components and so many. places where teachers are gonna need some support and understanding, what do I implement? What do I need to kind of ignore? I mean, without the coaching, I'm just really concerned. We're gonna be spending a lot of money on a very necessary curriculum that is not going to be implemented correctly.
[Sharon Hays]: The kind of coaching they provide, is it somebody that's actually housed in the building? I mean, when you think of, obviously, when you think of a coach that we would hire as a school system, they would be, hopefully, in theory, we'd have one at each building to help across the grade levels, their home would be the building.
[Sharon Hays]: Twice a month. Twice a month. That's not going to do it for a new, a brand new literacy curriculum. And I know you're working hard. So please, this is not coming at you, but I'm just going to say to the powers that be, that's not going to cut it for a brand new literacy curriculum. It's just not, especially when we're talking about implementing the science of reading. I know teachers are already learning that through ECRI, but you know, it's a whole new mass of materials. It's also a whole new style of teaching or pedagogical shift twice a month. And that would be for each school.
[Sharon Hays]: I did. I just want to clarify. I did have one other question, but I just want to clarify, too, that there's the professional development. I know that you're asking about the funding for that. I guess what I'm specifically asking about, though, is coaching, which is different than the professional development. The ongoing coaching that teachers need to have somebody in the building when they need to troubleshoot and It's really not just a frivolous extra expenditure. It's really needed when you're implementing a brand new program like this. They haven't implemented stuff like this in 10 plus years. I have information from the chair.
[Sharon Hays]: Personally, I would say at least a couple of years. Yeah, at least three years. It's a big program. And as I said, we're also looking at not, it's not just a continuation of what they've been doing before. because when you get into that K to two piece, that's the science of readings. And even beyond that, I mean, it is really, at least the one I started looking at now, it continues that piece of morphology. And maybe they're doing all of that already, but I think it's much more comprehensive than what we've had. And you just can't undervalue that having the coaches there to really make sure they continue to implement it. Because if the teachers don't have the support, You know, that's when things start to fall apart. They just don't have the support to do it. The other question I had just in looking at slide 19, when we're talking about potential reduction in positions, which is a really huge and ambiguous statement, can you give us a little more clarity on what kinds of positions you're talking about? Are we talking about teaching positions? Are we talking about possibly administrative positions or director positions, what kinds of things are you looking at?
[Sharon Hays]: I appreciate that. I know that this is tough. This is going to be some tough choices to be made. I'm wondering at what point, though, do we begin to actually get down to the nuts and bolts of what you're looking at? I mean, we are at the end of April already. So I'm assuming you hopefully have already started looking at what kinds of positions you might consider. I'm a little concerned when I hear about class size. And I mean, obviously, if there's some that are very small, but I'm hoping we can start by looking at positions that don't directly affect students.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Member Hays. I just want to be, I think we need to be really crystal clear with people using the word deferred is a really nice way of saying we're not able to fund it. And many, if not all of the positions we deferred last year are not going to be funded this year. And if I understand correctly, you know, we were told in the past that Next year might even be a more difficult fiscal year. So we're not really just deferring these were saying these, you know, and some of these were literacy interventionists at the high school career Councilor at the high school math coaches, we had a lot of really. These weren't, again, extraneous or extra things. These were things that we really felt kids critically needed. So people, the community needs to understand that we need to be clear that calling them deferred until a subsequent fiscal year means we can't fund them and we're not likely to fund them in the next, at least the next year or two. So I just want to make sure that's spelled out clearly to people.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Um, yeah, I think we know that, especially recently, there have been a number of attacks on the rights and protections for LGBTQ people in general and also especially our LGBT youth to youth in schools, and especially our transgender and non binary students. I wanted to look at some of the policies and some of the guidelines that have been put out by some of the groups that were mentioned in this resolution and look at what we can adopt in our schools to help support and show our LGBTQ youth that we support them and that we will provide protections in the schools.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Yes, we met on the 27th and we were looking at, our two goals were to choose a evaluation template and to start looking at some instructions to go with the template. We first looked at the DESI's version of a template And then we also talked about whether to create our own template. Ultimately, we did decide to go with the DESI version this year. There was some discussion about some pages being overwhelming or there being a lot of information and maybe needing to highlight certain pieces of information. So we are going to go back and add that into the DESI template, highlighting the specific indicators that we are using this year. and we will be meeting again on April 21st, 24th, sorry, to finish that up and to finish up the instructions for members.
[Sharon Hays]: I was just wondering, I'm looking at the FY23 ESSER estimated budget. Did we hire, I thought we had hired additional adjustment Councilors using ESSER, but I don't see them on here. So maybe I'm thinking of the behavioral specialists.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: So it's up to the committee.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. I'm just wondering two things. Will the student survey that we're going to do, will that be asking some questions about their current experience with the new rules in place? And do we have an updated timeline for that or when that's going to happen?
[Sharon Hays]: Do you mind to hold?
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. I just wanted some further clarification too about the town hall meetings. I'm not, I'm unclear whether you're talking about specific topics or you're talking about, I'm not sure what you're talking about with town hall meetings.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays? Well, we had talked last time, it's kind of an easy goal to put in because we're already doing it, but we had talked about the updating of the superintendent evaluation process as being one of the, possibly being one of the school committee goals, given that we're already in process of doing that. So I'll throw that out as an idea.
[Sharon Hays]: Well, we're still working on it. So, I mean, just a thought, it's already, it's already happening. So yeah. to add so that the community knows?
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. Thanks. Yes, we did talk about sending it to the Rules and Policy Committee three months ago. It hasn't come up yet, so I thought maybe this would be a different route to try to get it formally moved forward. So this was my attempt to do that. I don't know what to say. I think that I've made that attempt to do that in a formal way. We did all vote on it, and it was passed through a motion to send it to a committee that it has not yet been brought up to. So... I don't remember a motion to send it to the... Yes, December 5th, it was motioned to be sent to the Rules and Policy Subcommittee.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Yes, that might be a good way to go about it. I just want to be clear that this was not an attempt to criticize in any way. It was an attempt to move something forward where I knew that there were other things that were of more pressing importance in the subcommittee that it originally was set to. So I apologize if it came across as a criticism. I was really specifically trying not to make it that way. I was just trying to present it in a different way to hopefully move it forward. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. Well, I'd like you to go. I think I would like you to go, since this is something that we brought up during school committee, I would like you to go to the subcommittee and we can discuss it there.
[Sharon Hays]: Um, so the only thought I have about that is I think the difference we're doing the process very differently. So in fact, if we're creating it as subcommittee meeting, I don't know, I mean, you superintendent attended our last subcommittee meeting. If we're creating it at a subcommittee meeting you're attending. I mean, we can still provide it. I think the thing to realize member press maybes we're not last year, the way it was done was that one member took all of ours and created a composite. on their own. This time we're doing this as a group, we're doing it at a subcommittee meeting, which will be a regular subcommittee meeting that's open for people to attend. So it is a very different process altogether. We can still present what we end up writing, but I think you'll be a part of the superintendent along the way too. . Point of information?
[Sharon Hays]: What I'm saying is according to the process we have established, the subcommittee is going to work on a composite evaluation. We obviously can't approve it in the subcommittee meeting. We would be taking it to the committee of the whole, which is where the whole committee would
[Sharon Hays]: Aye.
[Sharon Hays]: Congratulations.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. Hi, I had a question about the survey also. Is this still the same, the panorama survey that we were?
[Sharon Hays]: So my understanding, I had talked to some, I talked last week about the survey prior to vacation was that there was a survey ready to go. Is this now a different survey than was ready to go? There was talk of doing it the week before vacation and then it got pushed out a little bit. I thought it was gonna be done this week. Is this still the same survey or are we talking about a different survey now?
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. I would just like to put my concern out there that in late December, there was an email sent out to families that this survey would happen in the first two weeks of January. And then it kept getting pushed and pushed and pushed. And I am concerned now that we're missing critical information that we need from the students. You know, this was that we're now talking about mid March before it goes out and then it has to be analyzed. And so we're getting pretty late in the year. So I just would like to put out there that I'm really concerned about how long it's taken to get the survey out there and getting the critical information that we need from the students.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes, because we have a new business that's going to take a while.
[Sharon Hays]: All right, well, it's 5.02, and maybe in the interest of time, I will just go ahead and start. Then we'll start. I will go ahead and read the meeting notice, and we can continue to let people in if people show up. Please be advised that on Thursday, February 16th, 2023, from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., there will be an evaluation subcommittee meeting held through remote participation via Zoom. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 15 and Verizon Channel 45 at 5 p.m. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log in or call in by using the following link or call-in number. And the number, one of the numbers anyway you can use is 309-309-205 and enter the meeting ID number 954-1274-6142. Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing shays at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information. your first and last name, your Medford street address, and your question or comment. As approved by the committee on February 1st, 2023, the evaluation subcommittee will meet to review and develop the process for the 2022-23 superintendent evaluation. The agenda is as follows. One, Develop a timeline for the 2022-23 superintendent evaluation process, including due dates for all parties involved and a tentative schedule of subcommittee meetings. Two, develop a process for the 2022-23 superintendent evaluation, including the timeline, templates, and instructions for school committee members. And three, Discuss the types of evidence the superintendent will provide to document progress on the year's goals and selected indicators. And, oh, I just realized, are we missing a member? I don't see Melanie McLaughlin on yet.
[Sharon Hays]: Two out of three of us, we can do the meeting? OK. Okay, so I will call the roll then. Member Graham? Here. Member McLaughlin? Oh, there she is. Member McLaughlin, hi. Calling the roll. Member McLaughlin?
[Sharon Hays]: Yes. Okay, so. Member Glaufen is present, just connecting. And Member Hays, present. Present, thank you. I couldn't get to the unmute button. Thank you. No problem. So let's see. So just to give a brief introduction as to why we're here for anyone who watches this who might not have seen our last meeting. We, the school committee had a retreat with Dorothy Presser from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, who has also worked extensively with Jesse on the superintendent evaluation process. And through that retreat, she gave us a training, just an update on the superintendent evaluation process. And through that meeting, we realized there were a few updates we could make to our process to align it more closely with Desi's guidelines. So we had a committee of the whole meeting on February 1st, where we discussed some of the updates we wanted to make. And then at the regular school committee meeting on February 6th, the school committee approved some of those changes that we or or approved some of the updates. And one part of that was also approval for a new subcommittee to be called the Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee. And this is our first meeting. So I don't know how far to go in the background. Some of the things that have already been approved that were approved on February 6th, included this year, rather than using a number rating system, we would use the word-based rating system that is in the DESE guidelines. We'd be using, really following that very closely, using their wording for rating the superintendent, those words like exemplary, proficient, needs improvement, and unsatisfactory. that we would, the subcommittee would be responsible for compiling, creating the process for the evaluation this year and also compiling all of the individual evaluations and creating the composite evaluations that we would then submit to the school, the full school committee for approval. We agreed that the superintendent's evaluation would include the raw data from all the members in addition to the composite evaluation of the subcommittee. And we also approved nine indicators that we would use from the superintendent evaluation rubric. This year, we chose nine indicators that would most closely align with the superintendent's goals. So for this first meeting, I thought, and obviously members can chime in and let me know what they think, maybe we should start with the actual timeline, kind of work backward from the date where we want to have the final meeting of where we approve the composite evaluation, and then kind of work backward from there, and that would determine then also we could look at what meetings the subcommittee needs to have based on that timeline.
[Sharon Hays]: So I don't actually have anything to share, but I can talk about that. I mean, I did make myself a a personal agenda for this meeting. So I can say, you know, what I have down is that we would need to start really with the final date, right? That final composite evaluation date, sometime probably late in June. And then working backward from there would be the dates, let's see, the dates by which the members would need to return their individual evaluations. And then before that would be the date by which we would provide those, the templates for those evaluations to the members. And prior to that would be the date of the, I think last year it was a committee of the whole meeting, um, where the superintendent prevent, uh, presented herself evaluation to us.
[Sharon Hays]: Well, I don't know if we need to, well, I think that's a separate issue of what template. There are some templates we could just, there is a DESI template, but that was later on the agenda. But I think that we need to know when the final, I think we need to start with when we know the final is gonna be and work backwards, because we could choose a date on, if we'd start with choosing a date when we're going to hand out the template, then we move forward and find that doesn't work because we don't have enough time to complete the whole thing before we have a meeting. I feel like we need to, I think working backwards seems to make more sense. If we know when we're gonna have that final meeting, then we start talking backwards about how long we need to, because we are gonna need some time to create that composite. And then that would work backwards from there. So if we get a sense of when the final meeting would be, Do we have, is there any reason why we can't have another, I know we have two regularly scheduled meetings already set. Is there, I don't know if there's a rule that says we can't have another meeting, if we, because if we start pushing it back to May, then we're, I don't know, it feels like we're cutting off a couple of months, but maybe that's, I've only done one before, so maybe that's the way it's always kind of worked.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, Jenny had them up a minute ago. She had typed them out. And I think that was pretty much, I think the creation of the template, I mean, we could go and start with that if you want. There is a template that Desi provides that, I mean, I don't know that we need to recreate the wheel, but we can look at it and see if we feel like that would work.
[Sharon Hays]: So whatever, eight weeks. Well, do we want to put in and say then? I mean, I think this kind of general eight weeks, we need to work with how much, because we're gonna need a couple of weeks to compile, I would say.
[Sharon Hays]: And then two weeks for, I don't know, I don't remember last year if we had a week or two weeks for members to fill out the template. It was like 10 days, I think, maybe two weeks.
[Sharon Hays]: All right, well, why don't we do that? So if we say that, so if we're going to have the 6-12 meeting, the date at which we approve it at the full committee.
[Sharon Hays]: Vote on it. then go back. I think, Jenny, you actually kind of have it there. Let's see. We have some of it.
[Sharon Hays]: Sorry. So 5A would be like a committee of the whole where the superintendent would present her self-evaluation?
[Sharon Hays]: So we want to schedule a meeting in April to look at a template together?
[Sharon Hays]: I can, I was going to share, I can share that today. I mean, it could even be that we do a template today. It's pretty straightforward, but we can come to that. I don't know if we want to feel like we're jumping around if we, but we can take a look at that. So we can, we can look at that tonight. And if we want to work on it more than we could schedule a meeting just to go over the template and create the template or alter it in any way we see necessary. I would back that up a little bit just to have the time if we needed, if we were going to do that, kind of the technical how to make it work. I know the previous one we were using, I think took a lot of work from member Rousseau to make it work for everyone. So I think if we're gonna create a new one, we'd wanna have some time to really work on it.
[Sharon Hays]: Would you like to see the DESI one?
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah. I mean, it's really pretty simple.
[Sharon Hays]: Can I, I don't know if I'm, am I sharing right now? Cause I've never shared before. So this is the DESI one.
[Sharon Hays]: Right, which is, yes, that was my thought. I think my software husband said he could probably could figure that out. So, I mean, it's pretty straightforward and I think it's pretty easy to use.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, and so I take a vote. Is that correct?
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. Roll call vote on having a committee of the whole on Monday, May 8th, that would include the superintendent self-evaluation and the presentation of the template for individual members to use for their individual member evaluation of the superintendent. Member Graham? Yes. Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Hays? Yes. Uh, motion passes.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. So what I have written down then is the 12th, at the meeting on June 12th, we would have that final vote by the whole committee. It's a regular school committee meeting to approve the evaluation, the composite evaluation. And then on the 5th, the week before, we would have a committee of the whole before the regular meeting to review. Let's see, what do I have written down here? Sorry, does anyone have the rest of that? On the fifth it was, so before we vote to approve, we would have the committee of the whole to review the composite evaluation. Oh, that's right, we'd have to have a committee of the whole to review that. And then we would vote on it on the 12th. Then prior to that, we have the eighth for the, superintendent self evaluation and present the template.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes. So if we want to give them two weeks from the eighth, I think we, Oh, I hear, I have that written down. We said something like Sunday, the 21st. So that would give them almost two weeks.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. So we'll be looking at, so 522 to have a subcommittee meeting, okay.
[Sharon Hays]: The 22nd. On Monday, the 22nd. Yeah, the 22nd.
[Sharon Hays]: So item one. We certainly can look for one, sure. So looking back at April.
[Sharon Hays]: All right. So in addition to that, let's see. So timeline templates and instructions. So I think what we're looking at, although we talked about developing them today, it looks more like we've developed the timeline for developing those.
[Sharon Hays]: Do we want to meet even earlier than 4-24 to work on the template, just in case we need more than one meeting?
[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I can take a shot at that, too, so it's not falling all on you. Yes, I do think, as I said, I think my husband said there was a way, there was a way he could do it, he just didn't have time to do it before this meeting. So I will work on that and bring that. Obviously I can send you guys, send you all some work in progress as we're working on it if we wanna take a look at it while it's, while he's working on it, so you can see if there's anything we want to change or add to it. And then we can talk about it more at that meeting on 4-24.
[Sharon Hays]: I am not an expert on open meeting laws. So I don't know. I mean, we could also, I can work on it. I can get to work on it now. And if it seems like it's not going to be doable easily, then we can look at maybe scheduling another meeting to look at making our own if we want to. It seems like it should be, I would think that Desi should have a version of it. My other thought was simply to get in touch with Desi and ask. There's gotta be a version of it somewhere that school committees can use because that seems to be their recommended template. So.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, I can work on it and see, I can work. I can work with my husband on it and we can see if we can get it translated. I mean, it seems like a pretty user-friendly version of it and easily, to me anyway, it looked pretty easily translatable into a composite in terms of having the information clearly laid out and with the check boxes are pretty easy for members to just have to check off their ratings.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes. Do we want to just maybe meet in late March even to look at it? So we have lots of leeway in case there are changes that need to be made and we could look at that last week of March even.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah. So do that instead of the April 24th, but then we would have time if we felt like we needed to schedule another one sometime in April, we could.
[Sharon Hays]: All right, so in terms of our agenda for tonight, developing the actual templates and instructions it's more, we're gonna do that during subsequent subcommittee meetings, but we have the timeline, which was one of our major goals. So I think that's really it for the superintendent evaluation process in terms of what we had for kind of the organization of it. The third, well, unless anyone has something I missed, because there is a third agenda item, is somewhat separate. That's a discussion of the type of evidence for the superintendent that had been on our last meeting, but we never, we didn't end up with time to talk about that. I wanted to leave some time to do that, just especially if the superintendent felt like she wanted some information from us about that. I did, I can also share the, There's examples on the DESE website of types of evidence for each of the indicators. Just examples, we can always change or alter or add our own ideas to it. But let me, I can bring that up and people can see. Still getting used to screen sharing. Let's see, where would that be?
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. We could look through these. I have the indicators that we chose, so we could look through the types of evidence. Could you possibly make it a little larger?
[Sharon Hays]: Does anyone know how to tell me to do that? Let's see. Oh, how's that?
[Sharon Hays]: Now, oh, there we go. I just wanted to make sure I knew how to scroll it. So the indicators that we chose, or that we, with the superintendent's input chose, so under standard one, instructional leadership, we had 1B and 1E, which is on the next page. So 1B, instructional, Instructional instruction indicator. There's examples are aggregated classroom walkthrough observation data and aggregated student feedback. Does anyone have any thoughts about that? I mean, I think the I know. Go ahead, sorry, go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Oh, well, I was just going to say I know that the superintendent I think is doing. classroom walkthroughs I think you have a different name for it, but so having that information. I think you might already have that so that would be a good thing to. Maybe to to choose as one of the pieces of evidence.
[Sharon Hays]: That's a good question. Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: So one question I would have at this point in the year, since we're already headed into March, I like the idea of student feedback. I think that's necessary at some point. I guess my question for the superintendent would be, is that something you can get within the next two and a half to three months? Because I don't know what form that would take. And I'm just wondering if that's something you might need more planning for instructional student feedback.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay I see two members have their hands raised. I wasn't looking up to see who it was first. I can wait. Okay to member Graham.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes. So it says, let's see, 1B, instruction ensures that practices in all settings reflect high expectations regarding content and quality of effort and work, engage all students, and are personalized to accommodate diverse learning styles, needs, interests, and levels of readiness.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. Member McLaughlin, did you want to talk?
[Sharon Hays]: Superintendent.
[Sharon Hays]: If I can just before I call on Member McLaughlin, so I just want to clarify too that my hope in doing this was more not to be prescriptive of what the superintendent should have to present to us, but I guess I'm always aiming for a clearer shared understanding of the expectations. So maybe this is more of an aspirational, maybe next year when the when the process, or hopefully next year, the process from the beginning, we choose these indicators, then maybe as part of that conversation, we talk about shared understanding of what the evidence, what the actual artifacts we'd like to see are, and what, again, a conversation. So it'd also be, of course, what you, superintendent, think you can provide and what makes sense to provide. But again, just the goal always being kind of more of a shared understanding of the expectations so we all know what's coming at the end. I just want to say personally from the person who was doing it the first time this past year, I guess one of the things I was hoping or wanted to talk a little bit about was just when we get your evidence, having perhaps more in some of those, more of an explanation from you about what the evidence you're providing means as opposed to just Sometimes you gave us links to things or told us, gave a list of professional development, perhaps for some of those giving more of an explanation of what came out of that professional development. Have you seen teachers using some of the information they got or your own professional development? What did you take away from that? And how did you see that affecting anything that you did later as the superintendent of our district? Just a little more of your, A little more understanding of how you see the evidence and tying it all together and, and how it's really making changes for our district, I guess, just more narrative, maybe.
[Sharon Hays]: Right, okay, thank you. And member McLaughlin, did you still wanna speak?
[Sharon Hays]: All right. I think we've hit all of our agenda items. I don't know if other members can help me. Do I need to make any motions or is there anything I need to do to? No, we're all set. You just need a second and a roll call. All right. So motion to adjourn, second from?
[Sharon Hays]: Member McLaughlin, roll call. Member Graham? Yes. Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Hays? Yes. Thank you all for joining us.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays and Member McLaughlin. I just wanted to come back to the K to five level. I wholeheartedly agree with you that both developmentally and philosophically, we don't want to get into some level with a K to five, the same level that we want to get in the six to eight or nine to 12. I do think there's a little bit of that it feels so open ended that parents don't know what to expect. And correct me if I'm wrong, maybe it's written down somewhere and I'm the parent who hasn't found, hasn't looked at it. I think even being at the same school as the mayor's children, I've had different experiences with different teachers. I had a teacher who sent home little notes if there were misbehaviors that weren't, I don't think were put in a folder anywhere, but it was more the communication to me just to let me know your child is, you know, doing somersaults during circle time. And now I have a teacher who's very good at letting me know verbally, either calling me, sending an email, catching me after school. I think the concern though, I think that the genesis of this original question about parent notification, at least at the K to five level was, you know, I don't know how often this happens, but there were situations that we've been aware of where parents had been brought in after a number of incidents at school. And again, they're, you know, they're, they're small children. They're not huge incidents, some of these, but you know, And in the process of saying, we need to talk about your child, they say, well, all these things happened. You know, these things have been happening. And the parent is like, well, I had no idea. So where in between can we have somewhat of a standardization or some kind of a process that parents will know and the teachers will know that across all schools, it's expected that at this point you contact a parent or you call the parent every time. any, whatever the process would be, but I think it feels, the way we talked about it tonight, it feels very open-ended to an extent where as a parent, I don't really know what I should expect if my child is misbehaving or having any kind of an issue.
[Sharon Hays]: Is that, so I guess the question then, is that something you are working on at this point?
[Sharon Hays]: I feel like we're all getting very tired, but if I could just a couple of quick questions, and thank you. I met with you for quite a while to go over some of this, and I really appreciate that. And just a couple of quick clarification. I think these were things we already talked about privately, but good to talk about them here. So that question number five about how is progress monitored of at-risk students who are not receiving intervention. So the gist of that question was an assumption on my part that I think is true in every district that every district has limited resources. And so to the extent that I guess the question being when students have that red or in that red zone or whatever they want to call it, red flagged, Are we able to service, do we automatically service every child who's in that red zone?
[Sharon Hays]: I think a lot of this, too, kind of harkens back to something we were talking about earlier, that idea of what can parents hold onto to understand that if my child, if it gets to report home, I don't know if the report shows red, you know, for, I don't remember what the dibbles, I did it a while ago, but I don't remember anymore. And I think it's changed. Does a parent report go home that show where parents would see, oh, my child's in the red zone for this, this and this. And so I guess that question being, and there was a flow chart that you, you linked to, and I know we talked a little bit about, is there a way to maybe, flesh that out a little bit for parents to the extent that you can with the understanding that teachers use their professional judgment in terms of looking at multiple pieces of information. But again, something that parents can hold on to if they see, they feel their child is struggling and also see that they're getting this report that says, yeah, your child did struggle on this assessment in this area. How are we communicating to parents that you should expect or you can expect that we will be intervening or that we will be contacting you to talk about whether we need to intervene and what we're doing.
[Sharon Hays]: The other question I had, and again, we've talked about this, for parents whose who have a child who is either receiving the tier two level support or receiving special education support in reading. Is it fair to say that at this point, if they, if their child is being sent home with, or that they are somehow getting information that their child is using leveled readers or is being told to use queuing strategies, such as use the picture to help you. use the context, what would make sense, those three cueing strategies, that it is very appropriate for that parent to question why that's being used, whether they first, they should, obviously I think we talked about first go to the teacher and talk about it, but that, it is fair for a parent at that point to question, given that my child has already been identified as having areas of weakness that would make, those queuing strategies actually be detrimental to their progress? They should question that.
[Sharon Hays]: I would just want to clarify. So my question pertained to kids who have already been identified as having weaknesses through the screener or otherwise in phonics. So I would suggest they should be taking home decodable readers at that point, that if they're taking home level readers, or maybe that's a conversation, but you know, there certainly are in any classroom, a percentage of kids who don't need decodables, but we're talking about kids who've already been flagged by a screener. And those students should be taking home practice books that.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I don't think, I mean, it's pretty self-explanatory. I think that anytime we start looking at increased adult presence or increased supervision, just that look at it from that particular subcommittee is important to have looking at. And again, looking at the data that I know is already being collected to look at how students are responding to this intervention, or this intervention, these changes in procedures and additional staffing. While we know that some students have already expressed that they're really feeling much safer and feeling more comfortable at school, we also know that there can be populations of students who may not be responding the same way. And we want to look at some of those issues just to make sure that everyone feels they have a voice in this, and that sense of belonging is there for all students. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Member Hays. Yeah, I had a couple of things, too. Thinking about the budget process, as member Graham was saying, I think another thing that would be great for us to do within that earlier budget process is how can we bring the community in more on helping us develop the budget and hopefully also as an educational process for the community to understand how we make the budget and, you know, decisions that have to be made, I think that's important for the community to be a part of. And then as a, that is a part of maybe a larger goal is our role in educating the community about some of these processes and what we do, what it means to set policy. I'm trying to think of some other ones. We've talked about these kind of along the way among ourselves, maybe, maybe at meetings, we've talked about how there are certain things where we could hold maybe town hall meetings that we could educate the public, or maybe we create videos that could go on our school committee webpage that people could refer back to any time when they want to understand some of the things that we do. So again, that kind of view of us as a body that also communicates with and educates the community.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays? I guess it would depend on what we're considering to be that goal timeline or the term, because how many we choose. If we're only going to the end of this year, then we want to choose accordingly. But if we're going to start now and go until next January, we might want to choose more goals.
[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to, you know, member Ruseau had asked if I had any thoughts about it. I do think it would be a lot for a new member to step in and try to help set goals for something they've never been a part of. So as for that piece of information, I mean, I do think that would be hard and depending on how many new members we have, that could make it a really difficult process. The other thing I'm wondering is, you know, when I looked through all these documents, it seemed the idea of all the goal setting is from the top down, right? That our goals should the superintendent's goals coincide with the goals all the way down. So if everyone else is working on basically a september to june, maybe it doesn't make a difference, but I just wanted to throw that out there that if we're working on a different timeline, but all of our goals are supposed to work together, you know, does that make a difference?
[Sharon Hays]: If I can jump in. So the training that we had with Dorothy Presser about the superintendent evaluation, there were a few things that came up that we just needed to, I guess, update our process in terms of to match the, I think this is, does it say 2019? I don't know if it's a change or not since I wasn't doing it before this, but there's some guidelines in terms of the indicators under each standard. So there's what, five standards? And based on that training, what we were told is that, maybe there's just four standards, that overall there should be six to eight, we should choose six to eight indicators to focus the evaluation on, that there has to be one from each standard. So we have to choose at least one focus indicator from each standard. But beyond that, you know, And it should match, we should choose the ones that seem to most closely align with the superintendent's goals.
[Sharon Hays]: That's why, yeah, so I obviously, the one I have was out of date. I looked it up, I Googled it just because I found the same thing that Jenny said. I couldn't, there were missing pieces, like it just, you couldn't actually really read all of it. So I was trying to find a cleaner copy, but I guess I got a wrong, a not completely updated one.
[Sharon Hays]: If you go down one more page, if you go down one more page, it actually gives the description of each of those rather than just the titles. So it gives, yeah.
[Sharon Hays]: Sorry, Jenny, I interrupted you.
[Sharon Hays]: If I can, I, I have the same. Also, just to be clear, it's six to eight. So we can, it could be, we have to have one from each, and then we could have two in some, we could have three in some, depending on what seems to be most aligned to Dr. Edouard-Vincent's goals and to kind of what we think is most important focus I think for the year two together with the superintendent. I had actually the exact same thing, instruction and data informed decision making based on looking at the early literacy student learning goal that did focus both on looking at our literacy instruction but also using the MAP scores really to focus on that data-informed instruction.
[Sharon Hays]: I had the same.
[Sharon Hays]: Did we want to, I'm sorry. Did, did we want to talk to the, did the superintendent want to weigh in on it too, or is this something I don't really, I'm not really sure. Is this something that we just.
[Sharon Hays]: So two votes for E, one for B, four for A. The only thing I would say is I don't see that reflected in her goals. I don't know how tightly we have to stick to that understanding of having it, the focus indicators match to her goals. But if we do, which it says aligned to the superintendent goals, I don't I don't know, unless someone has a different way of looking at it that does make that match some of the goals. I don't really see anything necessarily about budget unless we're talking about buying. I mean, we do talk about buying a new literacy program.
[Sharon Hays]: I mean, member Hays. Sure. Um, I just based on what member Graham said just a few minutes ago, I felt the same way about this, I think are both long term, we've been talking about family and community engagement and communication. And now with things that have happened in the past couple of months, I think that's come into a sharper focus of an area of of growth. So I agree with her. I felt, I mean, when I felt like I had to narrow it down and went with B and C, but I could certainly see all four of those even being a focus.
[Sharon Hays]: I agree with the committee idea, at least, I mean, maybe at least for this first year as we're since we're looking at some changes, possibly to how we do it. Just to take it off of having one person feeling responsible for it really is a pretty big task that idea of kind of combining everyone's ideas into one. I think it really is a big thing. big thing to do and it's one of our most important roles as a school committee so I would I would agree with the idea of doing it in a smaller subcommittee.
[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to clarify. So one of the things we did find in that retreat training was that the numbers are not necessarily what we're supposed to be using. And I don't know if that's exactly what you meant, Member Graham, when you were saying that. But in terms of finding that proficient or needs improvement. Again, I forget exemplary, but that based on the training, it was using those words that each member should be reading. So just want to, again, clarify for people that we have been doing the numbers, I think for years. I know we just did them that way last year, but that moving forward, we were going to use the category names or instead of using the actual one, two, three, four numbers and averaging them. I just didn't remember what the names were.
[Sharon Hays]: It seems to cover everything. And it honestly feels like the process that we went through, I wasn't on the committee, the process that was went through with the naming of a school already. So it seems to follow that pretty closely, I think.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think it needs to be in there. I think ultimately, as you both have stated, it is a responsibility of the school committee. So ultimately, we do have to be the ones responsible to make sure that the name, in the rare occurrence, if the number one chosen name by the advisory committee or whatever just wasn't appropriate, or we had some reason to understand that it isn't a name that would be appropriate to use I don't know if we wanna put something in there. And this would, I guess, really just be in an effort for people who read it to understand that we would emphasize or choose a better word, the name or names suggested by the advisory committee that that would be, our preference would be to choose one of those names, but in the event that the name is more inappropriate or I don't know, You guys might have better wording for it, but if we want to put something in there, at least to let the public know that yes, if you're on this advisory committee, it's not just that you're there and we still might just choose an alternate name just because, but that we do take it seriously and we do take the names recommended seriously. Just a thought to put, maybe we could put something in there to that effect. Not that I want it to get too wordy, but.
[Sharon Hays]: Sorry about that. When we, in the event that we did have that wonderful $100 million donor who wants to fund our school and have their name on it, and maybe this doesn't belong in here, but we certainly have had incidents recently, not locally, but Tufts had an incident where they had a big building, had a building named after someone and changed the name. Does that, would that need to go into this kind of a document or is that just totally out of the realm of this kind of, this kind of document in terms of that, that idea, if it turns out, if it turns out that big donor, for some reason we decide isn't any longer an appropriate name to have in our school, what would happen with that?
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, so I think going back to a member Rousseau's question, I guess then the point of it is to raise money. Cause if we're looking at different donation levels, getting different recognition than it is. And I guess part of what I was, what occurred to me as we were talking about this, and I can't remember whether this was already in the plans for the playground and another space, when we start looking at families being able to donate a brick or for $50, whatever, there are a lot of people who couldn't afford that. So I'm wondering if we want to, and maybe this is separate from what we're talking about now, I don't know, but make sure we have a space that's maybe just anyone in the community wants to, I don't know, paint a brick, paint a, I don't know, because I do think we get to a point where it's the people who have the money who can afford to do it. And if we want to look at, again, if we're going back to this is a community playground, it belongs to the school, it belongs to the community, the kids, kind of making sure we're not excluding people through some of these. But I like the idea in terms of the big donors, which you were talking about just a minute ago, I think that idea of maybe having a separate space where we have a plaque that recognizes whatever we determined to be those, those big level sponsors and those who contributed time and energy into it. I like that as opposed to having it, like you said, I think if we had every piece of equipment named or, you know, people could buy the swing set or then you do, it does feel like it gets into a pretty more of a commercialized almost playground, doesn't feel as much belonging to the community.
[Sharon Hays]: I like that idea. I would agree with that. OK.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. I just had a few, few questions, some of them might be very quick, hopefully.
[Sharon Hays]: And then have we put any thought into, and maybe this goes towards resources and what the school committee can do for you, giving this survey on a yearly basis, even twice a year. I looked it up and there's some school systems in the area who seem to be giving this kind of a survey. In fact, I think it was the Panorama company or platform. Just something to think about in the future, just to keep getting this information from students and families. The world is ever-changing. our needs are going to change and it would be nice to have this information on a, maybe an annual, maybe even by, I don't know. I don't know what the costs of it are and what the feasibility would be, but just something to think about because I think, you know, we know that getting the student information was huge for us with this. This was really, um, eyeopening to a lot of people, um, what we needed and what, what was going on. Um, so the more often you can get that kind of information, I think, you know, the better, which also leads to my next question. I was wondering about the listening sessions and kind of how is data being collected from those listening sessions? Because it would be good to know, obviously, to figure out are there certain groups of students who are feeling more uncomfortable than others or certain concerns that crop up for, you know, males versus females, maybe our LGBTQ population, maybe our students of color, are we actually collecting the information in a way that we could look at it in that depth?
[Sharon Hays]: I just was wondering, as you're doing those listening sessions, someone writing down.
[Sharon Hays]: And one last request I had, or maybe you're already doing this, for the counseling services and making sure that, or the support services, those phone numbers you gave us, are those being posted on the school website so people have a central place they could go to find those? rather than, you know, trying to remember from the meeting.
[Sharon Hays]: And those numbers in the community I was thinking of specifically because those are newer. And the care solace, just if there's a- Oh, those phone numbers.
[Sharon Hays]: I had a question, not so much about what's been put in place for the safety procedures, but just thinking about the incident, the stabbing incident, and the response to it that day. Just wondering if you as a team have met to talk about the response itself, looking at what went well, maybe what didn't go so well, kind of that debriefing. Have you had a meeting like that yet? Are you planning to do a meeting?
[Sharon Hays]: And did you see on separate walks or a lot, but, um, it was a pretty, it was a brief walkthrough, but yet there. Well, first of all, the hallways were very quiet. And there were, you know, a student who came out was going somewhere and you know, the superintendent asked them where they were going and they were prepared with their response. They knew they were going to have to respond. Um, we did get to talk to some staff, um, who were on, I think they're on their lunch break actually. Um, and they seemed very enthusiastic about the rules, the new procedures in place and said, you know, that they did have a few students who kind of grumbled about it. And they said to them, you know, this is the way it is at most high schools. So that we're not different. This is important. And he said, for the most part, this one staff person said, the students were responding well to it. Great. Good. Yeah. So far, so good. OK. Good. Thank you, guys.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm just wondering what the consultant thinks. I mean, I think I would assume you had conversations about the scope of work and what you felt was a reasonable time. Do you have any input that you want to give it to this conversation or if I may, madam chair?
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. I guess I'd want to add to that, I think another piece that you mentioned, and I don't think you deliberately mentioned it quickly, but the having instructional support coaches as much as the professional development is important, that ongoing support to teachers where they can troubleshoot when they're trying it out. You know, you can't do that in a one day professional or even a five day professional development because things happen as you're teaching something and you need to understand how to tweak it or change it. So I think balancing out, if we're talking about how we're going to spend money, you know, instructional support coaches versus professional development or do we have the money for it all? But I just don't want to, I don't want to go over that lightly because you did mention that. And I think that that is incredibly important and something not to be overlooked. I agree.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you, I just had two very quick things. One, well, first I'd like to mention that it's great we've already got the microphone for our student representative. I did want to check on the follow through with the idea of putting student participation on the agenda and just, I brought it up, but I don't think we talked about how that would, we'd follow through on that, whether that needs to go to maybe the rules subcommittee to talk about.
[Sharon Hays]: Aye.
[Sharon Hays]: One other quick thing, so we had a training meeting back in October, was it, about the superintendent evaluation, and I know we've talked a little bit about, there were some things that came up that we need to either update or refine. If we could put, I think we were talking about maybe doing a committee of the whole for that, I just wanted to make sure, again, there's a lot going on that got followed through with.
[Sharon Hays]: I'll make this brief. You know, we are talking a lot about reading this year. We already have another report requested about looking into our, how we're following the science of reading and the new, Well, I guess it's not too new, but the research that's out there about how to the right way to teach reading and this just kind of falls in line with that. I know that we, the state within the last few years has mandated the dyslexia screening and they are now looking towards also, um, requiring interventions to be put in place. And so this particular motion or request for report is just looking at what are we doing now? We do have a dyslexia screener. What do we have in place for students who are shown at risk by the screener? What kind of data do we have and what interventions do we have in place?
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Member Hays. Thank you. Yeah, I also had something for the good of the order. I wanted to, as we've talked a lot about trying to get more student engagement and student involvement, I wanted to discuss the possibility or at least bring up the possibility of having an agenda item that's actually dedicated to the student representatives, so that if they had something they wanted to talk about, if there was an issue, a question, a concern, or if they wanted to highlight the student achievement, anything, just to put it on the agenda so it's not as if they have to approach us to ask if they can talk. Just a thought, just a way to try to give them more space and support their voice in our meetings.
[Sharon Hays]: Probably the school side.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: I just had a quick question about the investigation program at the elementary level. I recall the early versions of investigations that some of the criticisms were that they lacked some of that procedural like a real emphasis on that in the early math facts and things has that been. remediated or are we adding extra in to make up for what it might be lacking since it's very problem solving based and sometimes does, or at least in the past, it didn't have.
[Sharon Hays]: Hi, I have a question about looking at the anchor strand analysis, which I know you don't talk about at this point, but we had it in our binder. And one thing that stood out to me is that our lowest scores pretty much by far are in any question that involves writing, whether it was an actual essay or constructed response, they call it, or, you know, and to be fair, it matched the state really that that's true for the state too. But I'm wondering for our district, what are we doing to really focus? I mean, we should focus on all of reading obviously, but clearly that's a, difficulty for our kids. And actually, if you could also explain to me, what does production and distribution of writing refer to?
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: That makes a huge difference in what kids can do. It's a completely different task than writing a, used to just be the essay. That's what I was used to seeing.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. One more question. Yes. Has it been implemented across the board now? I know that you mentioned that as one of the action items. Is it in every classroom now?
[Sharon Hays]: Amber Hayes. Hi, thanks. I just had a general question, and this is why I waited until the end. Looking at the data, when you do disaggregate by school, and I've only gotten so far at this point of doing elementary ELA, but there is a trend when you look back through the years of certain schools having higher scores than others, and it seems to mirror needs of the population in those schools. So I'm curious about how that figures into your, you know, your data dives and what you're talking about and how you determine then equitable distribution of resources. You know how you level the playing field for those who are starting maybe with less.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah I guess I would hesitate to um a classroom teacher can only do so much if they've got a lot of needs in their classroom and they can be a wonderful great teacher who does all the things that a teacher needs to do to meet the needs of their students. But if you've got more of those needs in your classroom, it's just going to be harder. And so that's what I mean, I guess, in terms of looking how we spread out our supports. So I'm just hoping that's a part of that. We've got limited resources, but it's just a question of, are we using them? When I look at the data and I see that we're really not leveling very much, at least as far as I can see from the data. between the schools and, you know, how we try to do that when we're, you know, our focus is on equity and are we looking at how to, how we use our resources equitably?
[Sharon Hays]: Yes, yes. Sharon, you're mic'd. Sorry, I just asked if you are able to actually shift the supports depending on, as you just said, if one school needs more than the other, but the next year it's a different school, you're able to shift the supports around like that? Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: That's what I'm looking at.
[Sharon Hays]: We didn't get that.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I just wanted to point out, and maybe you still want like hard and fast COVID counts, but on page three under coverages, it does talk about medically imposed restrictions being covered. So I would assume that would be a medically imposed restriction. It's number two under coverage.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Ms. Hayes? Member Hays? Thanks, I had a question about the the memo that went out about bus transportation and that buses are crowded and I had several parents express some worries about that, especially I think there were a couple who had to were in the school for the first time and who aren't completely clear about. the cutoff of the one mile and they're concerned that they might actually be told that they can no longer take the bus. So will there be a clarification of that sooner? How will that be communicated to parents if they are no longer going to access the bus?
[Sharon Hays]: So I know, for example, in my case, I was given a choice of three different bus stops that were really close, all were close to my house. So when you say a bus stop is eliminated, those families are no longer eligible for the bus or they need to go to, I just think that could be confusing.
[Sharon Hays]: Just curious about that when you present again at the November meeting, will we at that point get information about class sizes?
[Sharon Hays]: Mayor.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Yeah, no, I just wanted to say the same as some of my other school committee members have said. I likewise don't feel like I made any errors. There's nothing I want to change. I do hope and plan to meet with the superintendent over the summer just to go over some of my comments and some areas that I didn't get to make any comments because of other things going on in my life. But I think that the major thing that I'm finding from this being my first time and just the general kind of confusion that I'm hearing is that we really do need to meet to talk about the process. I think, you know, it would be great if we had someone from outside to come in and talk with us about the process because it seems like we ourselves are not clear on it. So I don't know that just an internal discussion is going to yield satisfying results for everyone. So, you know, it's, I think it's, I think it's good. I'm just gonna say, I think it's good that we're all taking this so seriously that we are having some major discussions and finding it confusing. I think that means that we're all taking it very seriously and trying to figure out the best way to make this work both for the school system, but also for the superintendent, because she's ultimately the one who's being evaluated. And if we're lacking clarity in it, then it's, you know, it's a tough, tough to be the one who's being evaluated if the people doing the evaluation are expressing confusion. So I'm all set with my evaluation though, personally.
[Sharon Hays]: Hi, thanks. I just wanted to say, too, given this is my first time going through the evaluation, It was difficult, I have to say, because there are, even though I understand from Member Ruseau that it's been actually streamlined by DESE, there still were 20 indicators that we needed to give an evaluation on or give some kind of feedback on. And looking back at some of the information from DESE, I think as we move forward, I know Member Graham has kind of started us on the path updating this process to more closely match what DESE has. According to DESE, we should be choosing like six to eight of focus indicators that we would really be doing our evaluation on, which I think makes a lot more sense in terms of helping us as a school committee and also helping the superintendent kind of focus on what our main goals are, even though, of course, she's always and we're always looking at the whole picture. You know, I think, I think as as member McLaughlin said, I think that when the new superintendent came in, I think there was hope for or expectation and possibly unrealistic, definitely unrealistic expectation of instant change and we're excited, we're going to make all these changes and kind of update a lot of policies, update a lot of curriculum, just everything. And not only I think was it probably the timeline that people were hoping for, unrealistic anyway, but then you throw in the pandemic and you know, the focus shifted and it had to shift and we're really still coming out of that. So, I wanted to make that point. And also just to make the point that I think anytime you do an evaluation of anyone, unfortunately, I think often you go towards the, I don't want to say negative, but you go to where there could be improvement. And it's also, you know, there's a lot of, I went through and made a list for myself of just all the things that have happened just this year, all the things that Superintendent has done. And there's a lot. a lot. And so I want to make sure that at least I want to make clear from my point of view, when I talk about areas where I see improvement, that we can make improvement or make growth, I don't see that as deficiencies so much as we're always going to have areas of growth. I mean, hopefully we're always striving for more. So I, you know, when we start talking about where we see areas that we could improve, it's, you know, a district improvement, it's certainly Also because the superintendent represents the district. It's improvements that we see are asking her to implement, but I just wanna, again, like I said, that idea of areas of growth and improvement versus deficiencies. So that's where my head is at in terms of the evaluation and the comments I made, and just wanted to say that. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Member Hays. Thanks, I just I wanted to add to that in terms of I think that's, that's part of what we can improve on with the evaluation process. Also, I looked at some other cities and towns just to see how it's done in other places. And And I think they also said this in my orientation, that part of the process when we create the goals is to really talk about what evidence we would need to see to be able to evaluate you clearly and accurately and fully. So I think that as we move forward and start to really try to update this process and make it mirror more, I think what Desi intends, that's a piece that we really should be doing is really being clear about what evidence we want to see so that you know what to expect from us because You know, if it's open-ended and you don't know, you may feel like you're providing us what we need and we're looking at it and going, but I don't know if that quite meets what I was thinking. So I think if we can all be on the same page about what evidence would give us, you know, would help us to be able to evaluate you, I think that it will go a long way to making this process easier also and fairer. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Hi, yes, thank you for this. I mean, it's a lot of information. And we appreciate you putting them all together. I have a few questions. Just I know, obviously, the questions we're getting these days from families and have been getting is based on what we're learning in the moment about what happened in Uvalde and some of the issues that are coming up that they found were problematic, the reasons why the shooter was able to get in, why maybe no one knew that this person was clearly in trouble and needed help. So a couple of questions I have when I look at, you said that 1 to 250 ratio that we're getting close to that. I seem to recall an earlier meeting this year where I thought we were told that we were at that, and I don't know if we're talking about different numbers and different because I know there's adjustment Councilors, there's guidance Councilors, there's all different forms, but I know at some point there was that one to 250 ratio and I thought we were told that we were at that and maybe even a little better than that. So I'm curious if that's a different number or why I'm hearing a difference now that I feel like I'm hearing a difference.
[Sharon Hays]: okay and then I'm wondering too so um another thing that they've definitely talked about is um and this would also get to the staffing ratios or how we I honestly don't know how we go about doing this but you know that that a key a key thing to have is to try to make sure that every student has one adult who they are in contact with or who is kind of there watching them in a way or has a relationship with them, that schools try to build that into their structure. Whether it's the teacher, whether it's a Councilor, whether it's a club advisor, are we in any way looking at how we could try to systematically build that in? I know we've got large numbers of kids, but And I know that that's something that seems to come up with every one of these school shootings saying that this was a person who was kind of on the fringes and wasn't being watched or was didn't have an adult that was. And I think, in this case, obviously, we've all did it was already out of school, so if that wouldn't change the school setting but. In some cases, for kids who've been in school, it does.
[Sharon Hays]: I have some other basic questions, but I think other people.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, I was just wondering if at some point we could also just go over, I think, you know, again, parent letters that we've gotten have also been questioning kind of at a more basic level, you know, things like the intercom systems at the doors. They're not necessarily consistently used at every school to let someone in. I know that some schools have a, such as the one I'm at, the Roberts, you know, there is a person sitting at a front desk. I understand that the security cameras, but you know, the question we've gotten is, but by the time you let someone in, you know, that's, that, that doesn't help, you know? So, so if you, if you're not questioning who's coming in and why, you know, that seems like a pretty basic safety thing that could be in place. Questions about, you know, are, do we have a way of ensuring that, Doors that go to the outside once the kids are in in the morning, are they locked? I did notice somebody the other day at the Roberts again, going around and checking doors just to make sure they were locked. Just are there actual protocols in place for ensuring that these things happen? I think some of those for the community, some of those kind of basic things would be as much a sense of security as some of these higher level things that are important too, but just that idea of What are some of the basic things at each school that are in place each day that ensure the kids are safe in their school, you know?
[Sharon Hays]: Hi, so my question has to do more with the original resolution that we passed asking for information about the NWA map really didn't talk about the scores. I mean, I think that's interesting. And I think parents do want to know that information. And I know that we also have a newer resolution that next year to have regular meetings after each administration to go over the scores. Our resolution that we passed had more to do with the implementation questions of it. We had asked, especially since it was, I have the questions right in front of me that were part of the original resolution, that the idea of this assessment, or a large part of the assessment, was to give teachers information, as you said, to inform their instruction. And so one of our questions, or several of our questions were looking at getting some more information about how they were using the information specifically, how they were using the data that they got with some really specific examples at different grade levels so we could understand how teachers were using this. Also wondering, I think one of the questions I hear was asking for the teachers' perceptions of the test, and did it seem to match their perceptions of their students' levels? We really wanted to understand, or the idea was to understand the assessment itself, and how teachers were perceiving it, how families were perceiving it. One question was, are special education teachers able to use the math results to inform their IEP goals and objectives? are English language learners, are those teachers finding they can use the math results to inform their instruction? And then we did ask, as Mr. Rousseau had just asked, the last question was, how long is it taking for students to complete the assessment at each grade level, and how are the students responding? Because of course, we know the first go-round of this We did get a lot of reports. I don't know, maybe a lot is too strong, but we were getting reports that some students were very upset by the test. And so I'm feeling like this report, while it's got a lot of information, isn't necessarily matching the resolution questions that we had passed.
[Sharon Hays]: I guess if I can say, I think big picture, the purpose of this resolution was really to understand better Is the investment in time and really, I guess, time for the students, time for the teachers, is it giving us the bang for the buck that we want? Since the goal was to give teachers a better tool, a better assessment for informing their instruction, because MCAS has long been obsolete for that purpose. We wanted to know, is the amount of money and time that's being spent on this, is it worth it?
[Sharon Hays]: I'm not feeling like the information I got in this particular presentation gives me enough detail to know that for sure. And it's not that I don't trust you, but I really, we tried very hard in this resolution to be very specific about the questions you were asking so you would know what information we were looking for. And I don't, I don't feel like we got it in this presentation is, you know, as well put together as this presentation was. We did get the scores, but really the gist of this resolution wasn't about the scores and what are the scores showing us. It was, how is the assessment working for the teachers? Is it, you know, again, is there a lot of time being spent in this that's not necessarily translating to, you know, enough information for teachers to really make a difference in their teaching?
[Sharon Hays]: I didn't say that. I just want to be clear that I'm not arguing against this assessment or arguing that the data doesn't show growth. I'm simply saying that those were not the questions that I asked in this resolution, that we asked in this resolution. And so I'm still feeling like the questions that I have, I still have them. I'm still trying to understand how it's being used by teachers. I don't want to keep belaboring this, but I do want to be clear that I'm not against assessments if they are truly useful and if we find that the value-added evens out with the amount of time spent on it. And so maybe we need to talk about this more another time in terms of what information would help the school committee understand that better.
[Sharon Hays]: I just wanted to add that it's also at the elementary schools.
[Sharon Hays]: I had a question about, so what we got in our pack this week was the slides from the first two meetings, I found, especially tonight the slide that actually kept put the priorities out by categories, because I think, I don't know, I might have some questions about some of the categories.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, I'm just curious, so obviously this is my first time going through the budget. In terms of the timing and the process, as Member Graham was talking about, when would be the opportunity to ask questions about some of those, some of the detailed priorities, things that might be in category C or D or, you know.
[Sharon Hays]: So, okay. I do have, I mean, if we have a moment or if we want to, I don't remember Graham had something else. If we could go back to look at some of the category D, I think it was category D and E. Can I ask a question while we're doing that?
[Sharon Hays]: So the question I had, and I've already asked this privately of a couple of administrators, and I don't know if it's on this slide, but I did have a question about the math interventionists.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm just trying, I guess.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. So it's in category D. Right. So that might be different than what I remembered before. I think it was, might've been a lower case. So I did want to just bring that up as, you know.
[Sharon Hays]: It is. I guess I just wanted to make that or to suggest from my point of view, or from thinking about the math interventionists, I'm concerned if we wait, you know, I think we have, we have at least two cohorts of kids who were not physically present in school at a time when the hands-on math foundations are built. So those kids will now be going into third and fourth grade, second, third, fourth grade. If we wait another couple of years and those foundations are still shaky, it doesn't matter what the math program is because the foundation is shaky. Now, I don't know, we haven't talked a lot about what the math assessments may have shown. Maybe I'm wrong in that assumption that kids don't have that foundation because they weren't in school at that time physically full time. But that's, I just wanted to put that out there.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm just wondering about that turnaround time from the 10th. No, I'm sorry, what are the dates?
[Sharon Hays]: Well, from the 10th that we give the evaluation and then the 17th for the new goals, I'm just curious. It's a little tight.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Melanie, are you going to National Honor Society? The teacher's just asking. I think I am.
[Sharon Hays]: So I'm trying to put information together here from, so we got sent a spreadsheet that had requests from principals and things like that, and I'm wondering how how some of that information fits into these presentations. There were some pretty specific things about math specialists and I forget what else, but just some of those things. I don't know if I missed some things because I was having some computer issues or how do those pieces come in and do we talk about those?
[Sharon Hays]: So I didn't hear anything unless I missed it. I'm sorry. I didn't hear anything about any of those supports. So does that mean those have not been included in this budget?
[Sharon Hays]: There were, again, math coaches, math specialists. I think there might've been some reading specialists.
[Sharon Hays]: Hi, I apologize I actually had a question on the previous, I was just trying to I was trying to keep up with the school adjustment Councilors. Did we talk about Andrews? I know you talked about the Brooks and I didn't actually get what the increase from what to what that was when you went through the other schools. I was wondering if you could go through that.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, and then the Brooks, can you just go back again? I know you said you were adding one. So what will that bring them from what to what?
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. So even compared... I mean, I know the McGlynn is actually the largest school in the district, correct, elementary-wise, so even comparatively... Are they ending up with, I'm sorry. Are they ending up with, so everyone's going to be bumped up basically to 2.0, it looks like. The elementary.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. Thank you very much.
[Sharon Hays]: I just, I thought I, my understanding was that it was currently in the budget, the state budget to fund lunches through next year. I don't know if anyone else has more information on that. I thought, I thought that was kind of a done deal already, but it just, the budget isn't a done deal.
[Sharon Hays]: I just had a question about process since this is my first time. As we digest all of this information, because there's a lot of detail, is there a chance to, Not to prolong the process, but is there a chance to ask questions about some of the things tonight? If we have more questions to ask later or to ask, I don't know, somebody outside of the meeting to ask.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: I had one question on the, sorry, the bills. I just, there was one- Mayor, sorry.
[Sharon Hays]: Just a quick question about them. There's one that's missing, the vendor number and vendor name.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes, I believe that was. The amount is the $58,897. It just didn't have a vendor name and a vendor number.
[Sharon Hays]: Hi, this is a great list of, there's a lot of things to do this summer, it's wonderful. I'm wondering if it's possible to go through and let us know, besides the one, the really cool sounding Starbase that you said was free, can you talk about which kind of the general, not specific cost, but which of these might be either free, it would be lovely, or low cost, versus ones like the Fells Camp is wonderful, but it actually is quite expensive. I'm wondering which of these might be lower cost, if you know.
[Sharon Hays]: I just want to thank you for this. I think it's helpful, especially the timing of this rate, given that we're coming up on budget season, and it's good to get this feedback of what teachers are letting you know they feel like they need, because that's important. Obviously, it's critical for us to know that as we look at the budget. That one quote that really stood out to you and stands out to me too, and I'm curious if you have any more details about what this teacher or support staff, I don't know who it was coming from, you said, we need more support, training, and grace. Did they talk about areas where they felt they needed more support and training in specific, or was it more just a general?
[Sharon Hays]: Can you, if I can ask one more question, in terms of the ECRI professional development, what was it specifically about the format or the way that that professional development was done that I think there was an earlier meeting, a little while back, where I think it was actually Dr. Cushing who commented that the people who came in to do that professional development at one point said, I think the way it was put, please correct me if I'm wrong, but that they were reluctant to come back again unless they could do the professional development the way they wanted to do it. There was some statement about that and I'm curious what it was, what was. Well, again, if you could give some details about what was so popular.
[Sharon Hays]: I actually have a few questions. Oh, sorry. I have a few questions. So, the original intent of this resolution really was to try to tease out, especially given the pandemic, obviously, kind of what we have in the schools to meet the needs of kids who come up during the time, you know, not kids who are already identified for it may have it on their IEP, some kind of counseling service. But really, what do we have beyond that for kids who come up at any point? Because we know, I'm sure that's already happened this year. And I think, you know, based on what you read from the experts out there, it's going to be a continuing, in fact, possibly a snowballing effect as this keeps going on, and as other things happen in the world. So I'm still trying to understand I think some of the, like, so the additional staff when we look at some of the additional staff that you went over. Unless I'm misunderstanding, a lot of that staff is more focused on kids who have services on their IEPs. Is that correct? Like a behavior specialist. Are they just available for any? Yes, they are.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay.
[Sharon Hays]: So I understand, I guess, that they would be available. I guess the question I was trying to, again, one of the questions I was trying to tease out how much of their time is available for that. When you look at someone like a school psychologist, they're generally pretty tied up with testing in most places. And the behavior specialist, I'm just not clear. I guess I was trying to get some really specific details and maybe, I know it's constantly changing. I do understand that. But it's hard to know from a, you know, when we start looking at the budget, what more might we need?
[Sharon Hays]: Do you have some of the specific information, the more school-based information about Again, we know that our, especially at our elementary level, we have different, very different demographics at different schools. That's correct. And it kind of looks like we have similar supports at each school. And is that, you know, how is that working out? Are there certain schools that might need more? I was hoping to get a little more specific school as opposed to an average. And I guess I'm also curious about at the elementary level, what does average caseload referred to is that the adjustment Councilors average load is that average load across the schools of. I wasn't quite sure what the average caseload referred to, given that there's a school there's social workers and their school psychologists. I know this is all like second nature to you, but all these different positions.
[Sharon Hays]: Do you have a sense, or can you give us a general idea of the behavior specialists? Because I saw in terms of new positions that were added at the elementary level that I think that really was it this year, was the new, and not that that's not a lot, but I mean, the behavior specialists were it. There weren't new adjustment Councilors or social workers, that it really was just the behavior specialists. And again, I don't mean just. but how are they really providing a lot of direct counseling? It wasn't clear to me.
[Sharon Hays]: So in terms of the in school kind of if they needed more than that, that would be the school social workers that would provide an ongoing that's right, and they might have in conjunction they may have more than one provider working with them based on their needs.
[Sharon Hays]: And how are they referred for those services? Sorry, if other people are going on and on, but how are they- In a variety of ways.
[Sharon Hays]: I had a motion to replace the text for rule number 88. I don't know how to go about this. This was a joint effort with member McLaughlin and member Rousseau on rule number 88 about creating a tracking system. And they do have copies of the new, the proposed new text.
[Sharon Hays]: I have a proposal for a new text to replace the text that's already in the current rules.
[Sharon Hays]: I can read it, and I can provide a copy for everyone.
[Sharon Hays]: So the proposed new rule number 88, the original rule really focused on items that were sent to subcommittee. So this broadens that a little bit to any or a lot to any action item that we propose. It says the superintendent will maintain a tracking system to be made available to the public on the school committee page of the NPS website and containing the following information. A, item number, B, date of meeting, C, date completed, D, when applicable, the respondent, superintendent or subcommittee, E, text of item, F, when applicable, date, if specified, response to be returned to the school committee, G, type of response requested, for example, a verbal update, written report, or a presentation. H, when applicable, subcommittee name. I, when applicable, meeting date or dates of subcommittee where the item has been on the agenda. J, one or more status information containing the following information. One, date of status entry. Two, status indicator. Underneath that is one, pending action. two in progress or three completed.
[Sharon Hays]: Also the beginning text The current one, not the replacement text that we're looking at, says the superintendent will maintain a tracking system identifying the items sent to subcommittee containing the following information. So the current one, again, broadens that, or takes out that specific, that it's only things sent to subcommittee. It's any action item that we would present.
[Sharon Hays]: Well, there are some items that we request or actions we request that don't necessarily get sent to subcommittee. So for example, I actually had a parent ask me today about an item from early in the year, actually more like September before I was even on committee, about getting left-handed desks for the classrooms. That didn't get sent to subcommittee, but it was an action item in the sense that we were expecting an action to happen, the left-handed desks. So following up on that, this would allow for, this would create a way for that to be able to be followed up and also for the community to be able to see how things get followed up on.
[Sharon Hays]: It does, yes, with the intent of making it more transparent for the community to be able to see how we follow up on things and what the resolution has been. Because there is a sense in the community that there are things requested that they don't ever hear the resolution to.
[Sharon Hays]: I think, so there was also the original this is this is not extremely different from the original rule that we already, I think, discussed. I think part of the question is having a having a tracker that's more user friendly for people to be able to see you know what what we've asked for, how we get, again, I feel like I'm being redundant, but I think it's an accountability measure too. I think that's the one you're talking about is probably, like you said, it's not necessarily what this is referring to in the sense that yours is more of a, was meant to be more of an internal tracking. And we're trying to look for a way, I believe, to make things clearer for everyone and to hold us all accountable, not just the administration, but I think, you know, we share the school committee members share some responsibility in this and making sure that we're clear when we're asking for something, something to be done or resolution for a new process, whatever it is that we're clear about what response we're expecting when we're hoping to get that response. And then we follow up on it at a meeting. So everyone knows that it has been followed through on.
[Sharon Hays]: I apologize, yes.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays? So I think in terms of the aggregated data, I think what we've been hearing from the administration is that this first year of implementation, especially immediately post-COVID, that that data may not be fully accurate or useful at this point in some ways. I'm sure the teachers, I guess my understanding when it was presented to, and this predated me too, but that the hope for the NWEA map was to really provide data that teachers could use to inform their instruction rather than just broad data like the MCAS might give us. Now there is some broad data that I'm sure over time would be used too. But I guess my thought was more looking at, at this moment, is it really serving to inform instruction, especially because we are getting questions about the time that it takes versus its usefulness. And I think that it can be hard to, on the one hand, explain to parents that this one test doesn't decide your child's whole future, but it does provide information that teachers can use. And I wanted to get, as the phrase goes, drill down into that a little bit, because I thought that was the main purpose really of the map. In terms of the part that I wasn't really clear what you were suggesting in terms of the part for the parents, I definitely think it would be good to have something, as you said, that parents can look back to.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes, my question about that would be if we don't do it as part of a school committee meeting, would we have the opportunity to ask questions if we need clarification or want to have a better understanding of how it's being utilized?
[Sharon Hays]: I think that's a fine idea. I don't know that there's any questions in here that I don't think that would also be appropriate for us to have the opportunity to hear as part of a school committee meeting, though I'm not quite sure which questions member Graham is referring to that would be part of the video as opposed to the school committee meeting.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm not sure, I'm confused, are we still going? It's fine, it's fine, I'm fine, just vote.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. I mean, I certainly don't want to make anyone's days longer. My only concern is that, and I don't remember historically, even though I attended most of the meetings, how if most of the meetings do go very long, but at some point, if we keep backloading meetings with the previous week's unfinished agenda items, we're not going to make it through all of our agenda items. And I don't, again, I think I've said this a lot, but I don't know where the balance is, but I'm a little concerned that if we cut it off too early, that on those days where we have a lot of agenda items, they're just gonna keep getting pushed. I thought the purpose of this particular rule was really just to say, that's the outside time we will go to. Not that generally we expect our hope meetings to go that long, but that this would just be the very latest we would ever go. So I'd be curious to hear what other people have to say. I am concerned about pushing items off too much.
[Sharon Hays]: So I just feel like we had a pretty lengthy discussion about the six versus 630 start time last time. And if we're going to keep revisiting these, it's going to make this meeting really lengthy, but We did have a discussion about how the six o'clock time is much harder for community members who want to watch, because that's a time when either they're just getting home from work, a lot of people, or busy getting dinner ready, whatever. And so we had a long discussion about keeping it at 6.30 because of that very reason. So I would vote to stay with that, but I guess we'll take a vote on the motion.
[Sharon Hays]: So I don't know how to do that. You suggested severing the motions. I'd like to sever.
[Sharon Hays]: Hi, I was just curious, because when I read the, when we got this packet and I read about it, it sounded like it was brand new, but yet it sounds like maybe it's been around for a while and there are a lot of districts doing it. Can you give just a quick, I don't want to take too much time, but just how long has this integrated pathway existed in Massachusetts anyway? like you said, apparently is around the world. And what districts, or not what, but how many districts are doing it? Like, can we get some support from other districts in understanding how to implement it? That's right.
[Sharon Hays]: You might have already answered it just in the course of it was just a general sense of how long has this Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: Just one quick comment and one quick question. One, I think all of the programs sounded wonderful. I love, especially that we're finding a way to get kids to understand and know about the voc tech, like that's wonderful to have them going into some of those programs. I can remember doing that as a kid myself, and it was fun to be able to do that, and it's a good way to just make that more known in the community. I'm also wondering about summer, if you're thinking about doing this for the summer. And I know, I'm sure as parents yourself, you know, like summer camps are filling up now, parents are needing to commit now. So if there's any way to give people a heads up of whether you think you're going to be doing it, when you think it might be, I mean, I know that's difficult. I'm not trying to put any pressure, but as you know, people are committing now and it makes it hard to hold out if we don't know for sure.
[Sharon Hays]: Excuse me. Just to make sure that people understand, because there's a lot of terminology, diagnostic testing, can we go over exactly what will be in place after the pool testing is done this week so people fully understand the different
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. I know I've had several questions from people in the community about for families that may have someone living with them who is high risk for any number of reasons, immunocompromised or older or too young to have the vaccine. And I think I already asked this personally of Avery Hines. I just want to make sure that everyone gets to hear it. Is there a way or how can families Since we're not doing contact tracing if they need to know if they if they really have a reason to need to know if there's someone in the classes test positive because they they want to have that information in terms of the person at home that's at risk, how can they or can they is there a way for them to go about. talking. I think what nurse Hines had said was to have them talk to the school nurse. I just wanted to make sure that kind of got out in a public forum.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays. I just wanted to clarify, because I thought your question had more to do with, if there's more than 16 kids identified that need the support, will you only go with the lowest, you know, 16, or is there an opportunity to expand to two groups at a grade level?
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. A couple of hopefully quick questions. One is, I feel like I remember this being discussed at a meeting, but I think it predated me, talk about a sliding scale to increase the revenue from those who maybe could afford a little bit more while still keeping it affordable for others. I feel like that's been discussed. Maybe there was a reason why it was dismissed. I don't know. And then I'll ask my other question into the boat, Given that we were just talking about how limited it is really difficult to find after school care. Before school, I'm sure I know from experience after school care is very difficult to find, and given that especially it's hard to find anything affordable. Can we talk about or has there been talk about making sure that there are seats, some seats available? I don't know at this point. I think you spoke earlier, but I'm not sure we talked about numbers of how many actual students that are from low income or economically disadvantaged families, and how are we making sure that not only it's affordable for them, but there are seats available for them, because it's going to be that much harder for them to find accessible, affordable child care than for some of the members of the community.
[Sharon Hays]: Is there some way we can get more detailed information about what you're looking at? I don't know if that's even appropriate.
[Sharon Hays]: has there been consideration from the other end, looking at the data of how many people could afford more so that maybe this modest, very modest increase could be more of an increase to people who could afford more?
[Sharon Hays]: Hi, yes, thank you. I was curious about some of the classroom programs for social-emotional learning and wondering what kind of ongoing support there is for teachers as they try to implement some of these after the initial professional development.
[Sharon Hays]: Is that built in, or does the teacher have to come and ask for that if they want it?
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: I don't have much to add. I do appreciate that member McLaughlin brought this and asked me to sponsor it with her. I think it's, as a new member, this would be great to have, certainly when you're first starting, because information is coming at me from different places. It would be nice to have it all coming at the same time from the same place. Also, I think it's just kind of a nice way to start the year off as a group, as a team, if we're all starting off with the same orientations at the same time and kind of have an opportunity to discuss them together and go over them together. I think it'd be a nice way to start the year.
[Sharon Hays]: I'm just wondering why we wouldn't want to post it in as many places as possible, unless it's just really too difficult to get it to the library, now that we've got a wonderful new community library that everyone, a lot of people are going to, why wouldn't we take the advantage of having a place where other people might see it who might not necessarily access it online?
[Sharon Hays]: Just briefly, I had the same question about that. I was concerned about, as someone who came to a lot of meetings, There were times where I didn't know ahead of time that there might be something I want to talk about and then it would come up at the meeting and I'd want to ask a question or offer a comment. And I do understand the intent behind it of trying to streamline and make the meetings more effective. And I don't personally know where the balance is at this point between making them more effective and streamlined and also allowing for public access, but that did concern me. I think that could be difficult also in terms of for the superintendent, if she was getting a bunch of requests from people, and what would the timeline be on that? I think there's a lot of details that could be difficult to follow through on. So that was my thought.
[Sharon Hays]: Possibly.
[Sharon Hays]: I apologize, I lost track. Can you tell me the motion again? Motion is to take table number 67, Oh, no.
[Sharon Hays]: Miss, um, member Hays. Hi. Um, I have a question. If you could go back, I don't know if you can go back to the chart.
[Sharon Hays]: So on the week of 2-7 where it says PCR pool testing and contact tracing for high need students.
[Sharon Hays]: Is the PCR testing only for high need students?
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. Can I have a couple other questions unless someone else
[Sharon Hays]: I wanted to ask about the infographic that went out, which I thought it was great that it went out so quickly that that information just in a really clear simplified. That was wonderful and helpful. I did want to ask about one possible clarification on that, if there's possibility of tweaking it. I didn't think it was particularly clear when day one since the since really day zero is supposed to be the day when you first find you have symptoms or test positive. And then from there you start counting one.
[Sharon Hays]: With that in mind, I wanted to ask again about the communication going home in the backpack that we've talked about a few times. if we can get again because there's so many changes that are happening that to get that home because not everyone always accesses the information that comes either through email or on the school website and we talked about that and I was hoping that maybe that's going to happen soon especially because then we can get make sure it all gets out translated and everyone gets it.
[Sharon Hays]: Going back to the original reason we were looking to start the budget process earlier, looking to be able to hire or have a wider pool of candidates to hire from. As a teacher, I know when I would look for jobs, I would start looking probably even in early March. And there were lots of towns that were listing 2030 anticipated openings. Is there any reason we couldn't do that, that we at least start getting a pool of candidates we know are interested?
[Sharon Hays]: Maybe I'm unaware, has that been done before? Have I just not been aware of it?
[Sharon Hays]: Oh, it wasn't, okay.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes. So You know, as the resolution states, we know from many of the experts in the field of pediatric mental health and pediatric psychiatry that there is a significant mental health crisis. And we've talked about this at meetings before. And so this was really an effort as we move into the budget season. to make sure that we're kind of all starting on the same page as to what the supports are that we already have at Bedford public schools. Some of the titles I think are, you know, we started to talk about it at one meeting I think prior to before I joined. and understanding what the titles are and where the direct services to students come from, and how they're accessing those services, how many of them are accessing them, just so that we can begin to have, or have a more in-depth conversation about what our needs are. So that was the purpose of this resolution.
[Sharon Hays]: Yeah, so the reason behind that was I know that as a former special ed teacher myself, I know that students who have it on their service grid are going to get it no matter what. So this question was, do we have enough really supports to cover students who don't necessarily have that legal obligation of having it on their IEP grid?
[Sharon Hays]: Here.
[Sharon Hays]: Here.
[Sharon Hays]: Member Hays? Hi. Thank you. I want to reiterate what everyone else has said, and thank you all for the work you're doing. This is a really tough time. And I've seen Avery Hines on updating the tracker late at night when I've been checking the tracker. So I know the hours you're putting in, and they're incredible. And the school nurses have been wonderful. My question is about communication. I know the last meeting there was discussion again of written communication going home rather than just the website and the email. You know, I think we're at a point given the incredible surge we're in and that we're changing a lot of our procedures that putting some written communication home in backpacks, in folders, I think now is a time to do that. I know we've been holding off on that with the belief that we could be over over inundating people with information and they might overlook it or ignore it or just feel overwhelmed. But at this point, I think as much communication as we can get to people as possible, even this, I know it would have to be updated because it's already out of date, but the written for tonight that you put together Ms. Hines, something like that with the updated procedures and especially because we really do want to get people vaccinated. As Mr. Murphy said, that's the key now. So making sure people know about the vaccination clinics, know how to register, I think every way possible that we can get the communication out as necessary.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. One last question, just can you give an update on the possibility of, it was discussed last time, the in-school, school day vaccinations for those who might not be able to access the high school, afterschool?
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you. Sharon hey 69 Ripley road. I had a question about the protocols earlier that discussed about for students who are symptomatic, and are either kept home by their parents or sent home. I had a case. week before last where I kept my second grader home because he had the sniffles and runny nose and cough, typical cold symptoms. But it wasn't clear to me what I needed to do at that point. I did end up calling the school nurse and we did go and get a COVID test, went to the pediatrician and talked to the pediatrician, had the COVID test and it was negative. But if I'm understanding correctly, what was said tonight was that you need to talk to the pediatrician, have the COVID test, and be symptom free for at least 24 hours. which that was not communicated to me, but I also, I think in terms of talking about that, or if you guys talk about, I mean, K through two or even three, you're going to have kids with runny nose and cough that lasts for lots more than 24 hours. So, you know, that's going to be a lot of disruption for kids if that's going to be the standard. And I understand it, but I think it's also something that should maybe be discussed more because that's going to be, could be difficult. But also the protocol like I said for letting parents know I I sent I ended up emailing the results into my school nurse but that wasn't necessarily communicated to me that I needed to do I just figured they probably would want to know so.
[Sharon Hays]: Yes. Okay, thank you. Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road, and thank you, you did read my email earlier, so I won't talk a lot, I just, would just like to express and I don't know for how many I can't know how many other parents I speak for but as a person who chose a family who chose full remote out of a lot of concerns for the health of our children no no specific medical needs but and we continue to feel that way so we will stay full remote. I am My kids are struggling and I will be clear and honest about that. They are really, really, really struggling. And when we talk about equity, know that not everyone you look at may look like they're struggling. But there are lots of people who are struggling. And when you talk about, well, the numbers may play out that we need to pull a teacher, we can't guarantee that. I totally understand the competing needs that you have to deal with. But the number of things that have changed over the course of the year for my kids in their classroom, I'm at a point where I've really lost trust and faith in the leaders of the school and whether they really apply their equity lens to everybody. Because to change their teachers potentially, change their classrooms, I understand you're saying it would only be in a crisis situation or an emergency or whatever. I feel like we've had a number of those where that's been said and oops, that's what happened. Two months out of the school year, I don't know what we'll do at that point. And my, you know, again, my faith and trust right now is not very strong in how you guys are making the decisions for our kids. So I get it. I get there's multiple things you're doing and it's a hard, I can't even imagine trying to do it, but we're struggling and this just makes it harder. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Hi. I was wondering, could you explain what the ECRI is as an elementary school parent? I'm getting to see, of course, all the different materials and things that my first grader and third grader are using, and I'm not sure I know or would be able to recognize what kinds of materials might be related to that. Could you describe that just a little bit?
[Sharon Hays]: Thanks. So, um, maybe you're going to get into this later so feel free to say that if that's the case. One of the things that that particularly strikes me as I look at both of both of my sons learning to read and they are both, you know, fine readers they certainly don't have any issues. But I look at the, the sequence that journeys and I believe that I've been a part of some of these meetings before I brought this up the sequence in which the phonics is taught, and you know that the various. I mean, all different part, syllables, I don't really get into the syllable types. It doesn't really get much into syllable division. I mean, all of these things that even my first grader could be using right now. And my third grader really isn't even being taught those. And that's a huge, huge gap in our reading. And so I'm wondering what's kind of what the plan is for that. I know at some point there had been discussion of some of the teachers were going to go do an Orton Gillingham course, I think it was a free course. I don't know what happened with that or if I'm remembering that wrong. But even I was thinking to myself, even if they got that, it does not match at all with what's being taught through the journeys. The journeys program really is not at all good. with that piece. And I know we were trying to, it feels like we're building in all these other little chunks here and there, but it doesn't feel like a cohesive whole to me. And I'm wondering how that's going to be addressed. I mean, the Lexia is great, but the kids go on it and play. And I have yet to see that kind of brought back into the classroom in terms of being followed through with in the classroom. So that's, that is. But that's my main concern. I see a real lack of word attack skills on my kids' part when they come to any kind of a multi-syllable word in a book. Unless I've taught them myself with my own Wilson materials at home, they don't know.
[Sharon Hays]: Nope, nope, go ahead.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay. But just, can I just quickly say, I understand of delving deeper. The problem though, is that the journeys isn't getting to that. So the teachers can't delve in deeper into something that's not being taught in journeys. If the point of the ECRI is to delve deeper into what they're already teaching, I looked through the scope and sequence of the journeys program, and they don't even begin to touch on syllables and things until third grade. And I mean, I know this is an off year, so I'll third grade until they do it. But they haven't touched on it with my son yet in third grade either. So teachers can't delve into something that's deeper and something that's not being taught at all.
[Sharon Hays]: Okay, and is there going to be material, I guess, so I'm sorry, I won't keep going because you may be getting into this, but I mean, I look at the journeys program, how can they use the journeys program and delve deeper into things that aren't even touched in the journeys program, they would need additional materials, additional books, a lot of additional stuff to supplement if they're going to be teaching things that the journeys program doesn't even touch on.
[Sharon Hays]: Sharon, can you unmute? Hi, yes. I'm curious, and I'll try to be quicker this time. So, I mean, I know that Telfer Literacy and Crafting Minds are both fantastic, fantastic resources. I also know they're very strong in systematic, explicit phonics instruction in terms of their belief in that and promotion of that. I'm curious as we talk about looking for new programs, are we talking once again about a program similar to journeys in terms of a full box set, supposedly having everything included, or are we looking at a more, you know, an additional, something like a foundation, some kind of additional explicit phonics? And are we getting recommendations from KILL and Crafting Minds, since they would definitely be good resources in that direction?
[Sharon Hays]: Yes.
[Sharon Hays]: Sharon Hayes, 69 Ripley Road. I had a question about one specific thing that was mentioned. The replacement for the response to intervention, that was really a huge rollout, I remember. At least, was it last year or the year before? And I know I was specifically very interested in it because as an educator myself, I've been involved in response and intervention in other cities and towns and it's a really good process for identifying students who need extra support and then making sure you follow up in a set amount of time to see if they need to go further, if they need more support, if they need to be tested for special education. So I'm a little concerned to hear that that's being dropped or being morphed into something else. Well, I guess I'm wondering, is there going to be a description of what that is? Because I've never heard of this new one. I don't know if it's specific to Medford or not. But like I said, I know the response to intervention. I know it works well. So personally, I'm a little concerned to hear it's being changed. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: Sharon, you can come on up. And this is probably more, maybe it's going to be discussed at another meeting in more depth. I just know that there were a lot of questions and issues with how to even implement the RTI piece of it, in terms of having staffing to do all of the pieces of it, in terms of going into the classrooms, doing observations, and then providing whatever supports were needed. Again, I'm just curious now that it's going to be even a broader process or include more types of interventions or more types of needs, how that's going to be implemented, given that my understanding was RTI has not even been completely implemented yet, the academic piece of it. So that's... Kind of what I'm wondering. I don't know if there's going to be another meeting to talk about it in more depth.
[Sharon Hays]: We did.
[Sharon Hays]: Good evening. Hi. Hi. Hi, my name is Sharon Hayes. I am a parent of one, soon to be two, students at the Roberts School, and I am here tonight to re-ask some questions that I've had about our performance on the 2018 MCAS, especially the third, fourth, and fifth grade English Language Arts Assessment. In October, I attended the Committee of the Whole meeting during which the 2018 MCAS results were presented. At that time, I spoke of my concern that although the scores and progress were presented in a very positive light, my interpretation as a parent and an educator was that the scores on the ELA test were disappointing. It was indicated that a more in-depth analysis of the MCAS results would be presented at a future school committee meeting. And in January, I sent an email to describe my concerns in further detail. The follow-up meeting was then held on March 18th. At that meeting, however, I was disappointed to find that many of my questions were still not addressed. And so I followed up with another, more detailed email on April 2nd. I will briefly summarize some of my concerns and questions from the email, focusing on the elementary ELA MCAS results. First, the March 18th meeting was described as a more in-depth analysis of the test scores. And a great deal of information was presented, but the analysis continued to be focused mainly on the average score of the district at each grade level, which obscures the fact that there are significant differences between the elementary schools and among some of the subgroups. Second, there was little to no discussion of the significant demographic differences between the student populations of the four elementary schools, differences that research has shown to have considerable impacts on academic performance. The Brooks School's demographics are significantly different from the other three schools across four subgroup categories. Brooks has significantly lower percentage of economically disadvantaged students, of high-needs students, of students who are English language learners, and of students for whom English is not their first language. So one of my questions is, how are these differences being addressed? Third, across all three grade levels and all three test years shown on the Department of Ed website, despite changes in test design and administration, Brooks outperforms the three other elementary schools, often by a large margin. Overall, students at the Brooks also make more progress from one grade level to the next. So another question I have is, have any staffing, resources, materials, or programmatic changes been considered based on this data? Fourth, the data suggests that there are grade levels at individual schools in which fewer than half and in some cases even fewer than a third of the students are reading at grade level expectations. This is very concerning not only for the students who are struggling to read, but also for the other students in those classrooms because the teachers will have to alter the pace and delivery of what they teach in order to meet the needs of the class. How is this being addressed? Finally, the ELA MCAS anchors standard analysis data that was provided at the March 18th meeting clearly suggested that the writing standard is the area of greatest need in K-8. How is this being addressed? Has Medford adopted a specific writing program for K-8 or even K-5? These are some of the most urgent questions that I felt I asked in my email and I hope to receive a response or to hear about just kind of what your thoughts are about some of these issues and whether there are other assessments we have in the system that might refute some of these results. Thank you.
[Sharon Hays]: So I just want to make clear, I was not in any way suggesting that it had to do with teaching, the quality of teaching at any school. In fact, one statistic that you stated is more my concern, that we know that research says that economics, the economically disadvantaged are the ones who struggle the most in school, that has the greatest impact. We also know that that number of students in this district is not disproportionately at certain schools. And so those schools are going to have a more difficult time and may not do as well in the MCAS. So that was my question, was more looking at the demographics, not in any way suggesting that the teaching quality was different at different schools. And it's not my intention to pit schools against each other. But the demographics are what they are.
[Sharon Hays]: Thank you.