[Speaker 3] (0:45 - 1:35)
Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the meeting of the Swanson School Committee. Today is Thursday, November 17th.

And before we get started, could we please all rise, if you are able to, for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Alright, before we get started with committee announcements, if I could indulge everybody and ask Mr. John Piccarello to please come to the microphone and do your thing. Mr. Piccarello has a presentation.

[Speaker 13] (1:35 - 1:37)
Good evening.

[Speaker 8] (1:38 - 1:56)
I come before you with a question. Michonne School had a dogwood tree in front of it that I have no idea why it was there, who put it there, and who it was for. I'm hoping one of you can tell me the answer to that question.

[Speaker 3] (2:00 - 2:01)
I have no idea.

[Speaker 7] (2:02 - 2:04)
Before my time, I don't know.

[Speaker 4] (2:05 - 2:05)
Superintendent?

[Speaker 2] (2:08 - 2:14)
No, I mean, I was there for how many years, but I have no idea who it was there for.

[Speaker 7] (2:15 - 2:18)
It was already there. Right.

[Speaker 4] (2:19 - 2:22)
Do we know that it was for a gift?

[Speaker 2] (2:25 - 2:38)
Like a memorial tree? I was in my first year of teaching, probably trying to survive. First one or two years of teaching, it's gorgeous.

I don't know.

[Speaker 8] (2:39 - 2:44)
Well, if you could take and try to find out, I would certainly appreciate it.

[Speaker 2] (2:44 - 2:44)
Sure.

[Speaker 8] (2:45 - 4:03)
The reason I'm here is because that tree, when they went to take and construct the building for the apartments, that tree was destined to be removed. I approached the town to take and find someone to take and dig it up and move it into the playground. But at a cost of $8,500, they said no.

So I asked for the trunk of the tree so that I could make something out of it. And from that tree trunk, I made eight bowls. One of which I'm keeping because it was just unbelievably beautiful.

One of which I'm giving to a person who 30-plus years ago was a teacher for my daughter. This represents a lot of gratitude and thanks for all you did during those years. I'm going to read this because this is what I think it means.

[Speaker 2] (4:05 - 4:26)
I can't see. I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now.

Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. Oh my gosh.

[Speaker 12] (4:29 - 4:38)
Really? No, no. No, I hope to give you all a hug.

It wasn't just one year, it was two years you had Jennifer.

[Speaker 8] (4:39 - 4:40)
No thanks necessary.

[Speaker 7] (4:42 - 4:45)
That's so sweet. You need to open this. Yes.

[Speaker 4] (4:46 - 4:53)
Wow. Well, I saw what was at the 1907 over the weekend, so I can imagine how gorgeous this is.

[Speaker 2] (4:55 - 5:00)
I like to be the center of attention.

[Speaker 13] (5:02 - 5:02)
Wow.

[Speaker 2] (5:03 - 5:06)
Oh my gosh, is that gorgeous.

[Speaker 12] (5:07 - 5:09)
I can't believe how beautiful that wood is.

[Speaker 8] (5:10 - 5:30)
The wood was extremely interesting. Wow. When I was making it, the grain was pink.

I asked my wood tracking associates why. Most grain is either brown. They said it represents the color of the flowers on the tree.

[Speaker 2] (5:30 - 5:33)
Wow. It is stunning.

[Speaker 8] (5:33 - 5:39)
Enjoy it and think of all the people that it represents.

[Speaker 2] (5:39 - 5:40)
I will.

[Speaker 12] (5:40 - 5:42)
Thank you so very much.

[Speaker 13] (5:47 - 5:48)
First, do you have to go home?

[Speaker 2] (5:49 - 5:54)
Well, I'm not leaving yet. You're stuck with me forever. I was like, is she privy to something?

[Speaker 13] (5:54 - 5:58)
No, no, no.

[Speaker 8] (5:58 - 5:58)
I'll announce it.

[Speaker 13] (5:58 - 6:01)
I have two and a half. No, no, no.

[Speaker 8] (6:01 - 6:10)
I was going to wait until your retirement party, but I don't know that I'd be around then. And I don't know if I'd still have it.

[Speaker 2] (6:10 - 7:13)
Oh, it is gorgeous. It's stunning. I'm honored.

Thank you so much. What I was going to say is, you know who I keep in touch with via Facebook? Facebook has its flaws, but Sherry Brown, Sherry Matheson, the principal over there.

She's such a historian and a lover of history. I guarantee she can tell us who that tree is from. And I'll reach out to her tonight.

I'm honored. I'm flattered. I think of you who brought me, had Jen bring me in peonies, my favorite flower to this day.

I have my own peony bushes because of when Jen walked in with those peonies. And those were simple days. And now I see Jen as a mom with her kids, and it's full circle.

And thank you. I do hope that my 30-plus years, I've at least impacted some lives. So thank you so much.

Well, this was a shock and a surprise, and I'm honored. Thank you very, very much. It's gorgeous.

[Speaker 3] (7:17 - 7:22)
Thank you very much, Mr. and Mrs. Picarello. All right. Congratulations.

[Speaker 2] (7:23 - 7:24)
Thank you. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (7:24 - 7:26)
We can keep a secret if we really have to.

[Speaker 2] (7:27 - 7:29)
Yeah, I'm surprised.

[Speaker 3] (7:31 - 7:34)
All right. So let's start committee announcements. Ms. Wright.

[Speaker 5] (7:36 - 8:02)
I don't really have an announcement. I just want to say I was at the high school today when a lot of activity was happening, and I was so impressed with how it didn't even – I mean, I was in the library. I wouldn't even have known anything was happening because kids were just – I mean, everyone was just so good and calm and just knew the drill.

It was really great. So kudos to the high school staff and the kids for just knowing how to do the drills.

[Speaker 2] (8:03 - 8:20)
You know, it's funny. The staff gets nervous about walking through my satellite office, but they're like, oh, we have our stations. We have to go through them.

I'm like, go right through. And so they all know immediately where to go, where the kids go, what door they're going out.

[Speaker 5] (8:21 - 8:25)
Even though the kids were on a break, too, they were, like, passing in the hall.

[Speaker 2] (8:26 - 8:26)
Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (8:26 - 8:31)
They were passing, and they even knew where to go and what teachers they were going to. It was really just great.

[Speaker 2] (8:32 - 8:37)
It was quite an active day here today. Yeah. But all was well.

[Speaker 3] (8:38 - 8:38)
Anything else, Susan?

[Speaker 2] (8:39 - 8:42)
No. Sorry. These pictures are beautiful.

[Speaker 3] (8:42 - 8:43)
Yeah. Aren't they?

[Speaker 2] (8:43 - 8:46)
Yeah. I'll send it to Sherry tonight and see. I'm sure she knows.

[Speaker 3] (8:47 - 8:48)
Great. Mr. Giantis.

[Speaker 6] (8:49 - 11:22)
Thanks, Glenn. So the thing I have is Mr. Cohen sent out his Big Blue Blast last week, I think. And he recognized some of the fall sport accomplishments with teams and individuals.

And I just wanted to highlight some of those here because I thought it was really terrific, some of these accomplishments. And again, I think these kids deserve all the recognition that they can get. So here.

Actually, you know what? I'm just going to – I printed off the list that I have. Thank you.

Just for the committee to have. So I'm just going to read some of the categories. One is the NEC Lynch Division champions.

So we had – these were teams. So NEC Lynch Division, we had champions for volleyball, girls' soccer, and girls' cross country. We had tournament qualifications for cross country, volleyball, girls' soccer, field hockey, and football.

And the chair team qualified for regionals. And two noteworthy items here. This is the NEC all-conference players.

So these are individuals. So for girls' soccer, Lillian Goslin. And for field hockey, Brooke Waters were recognized.

Those were amazing accomplishments to be recognized in that category. And finally, the NEC all-star category. And I'm just going to go in order here.

Girls' soccer. We have – and apologies. I tried to get everyone's pronunciation before I came in.

But the first one is Victoria Quagrello. We have Laney Fouts. We have Jessie Ford.

And for field hockey, there's Olivia Baran and Coco Clopton. Boys' soccer, we have Lucas Barod and Zymon Wobno. And for cheer, we have Kaylee O'Brien.

And in cross country, we have Collette Isle and my daughter, Thea Jantas. And for volleyball, we have Sophia Comfort and Jamila Oryaki and Anastasia Hayes. So these are amazing accomplishments.

Again, thank you, Glenn, for indulging me on this. I think all the recognition these kids can get is a cross country dad and a cheer dad. I know how many hours and hours and hours and hours these kids put in.

So it's nice when the teams and the individuals are recognized. So I just want to give them all a big round of applause.

[Speaker 3] (11:26 - 11:34)
Thank you. That's great. Amazing accomplishments by those student athletes.

Ms. O'Connor.

[Speaker 4] (11:36 - 11:37)
I don't have anything.

[Speaker 3] (11:38 - 11:39)
Ms. Marshall.

[Speaker 7] (11:40 - 11:42)
I was just going to steal you thunder.

[Speaker 4] (11:42 - 11:43)
Do you want to do it first?

[Speaker 7] (11:44 - 11:56)
I was just going to say it's nice to see such a vibrant, prospective student night and so many staff and students out there representing the high school. Was that what you were going to say? And happy Thanksgiving.

[Speaker 3] (11:57 - 12:03)
Great. Thank you. Thea, sorry about that.

[Speaker 10] (12:04 - 12:12)
Powder Puff is this Saturday at 10 a.m. It's a home game. So come support your Swanscott senior girls. Or women's flag football, sorry.

[Speaker 13] (12:13 - 12:14)
Are you playing?

[Speaker 10] (12:15 - 12:18)
Yes. All right. We're excited.

[Speaker 13] (12:18 - 12:19)
How's it looking?

[Speaker 10] (12:19 - 12:23)
We're looking good. Defense is locked down. Awesome.

[Speaker 5] (12:24 - 12:26)
I'd love to shred the red stuff today.

[Speaker 10] (12:26 - 12:28)
Yes, shred the red was today.

[Speaker 3] (12:28 - 12:28)
Good.

[Speaker 10] (12:28 - 12:34)
Who's the captains? We haven't decided yet. We're a little late, but it's okay.

No worries.

[Speaker 3] (12:34 - 12:53)
You'll have a blast. You'll have a really good time. Good luck.

For me, for right now, I'm going to wait for the chair comment. Superintendent, I do want to say, though, that number four, the theater upgrade, because of the activity at the high school today, we're just going to postpone that until the next meeting.

[Speaker 2] (12:53 - 12:53)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (12:53 - 12:55)
Joe's tied up with other things.

[Speaker 2] (12:56 - 12:56)
That's absolutely fine.

[Speaker 3] (12:57 - 12:59)
Okay. You want to go? You want to start?

[Speaker 2] (13:00 - 13:27)
Sure. Tonight, one of my greatest joys, everybody knows, is to recognize our students for a number of achievements. And tonight, we have the honor of recognizing a young man who showed courage and quick thinking and saving someone's life.

And so I'm going to turn it over to our chair, and we have a little gift on behalf of the district for you.

[Speaker 13] (13:28 - 13:28)
Great.

[Speaker 2] (13:29 - 13:29)
Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (13:38 - 14:39)
So can everybody hear me okay? I'm proud of you. I've never done this before.

One of the things about our society today is that it is always very easy to turn your back and not come to someone's help, defense or otherwise. And the other morning, as I was getting ready for work, I got this alert from Google about a student here in Swanscott who took it upon himself to go headfirst into some very icy water to save another human being. And I don't know what is, if anything, is any more precious than that.

And I contacted the superintendent, and the superintendent did what Pam always does and found out the detail. And I just would like you to come down with your family for a presentation, please.

[Speaker 13] (14:40 - 14:42)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Speaker 3] (15:02 - 15:41)
So we have a little plaque for you. It's about gratitude. Thank you so much.

Yeah. And I want to give that to you as well. Absolutely.

And I'm just going to read this. We are proud and honored and in honor and recognition of your selfless act of heroism and its true heroism to save another life on November 4, 2020, from the Swanscott Public Schools. Congratulations.

I hope everybody has the same shots to do that. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 2] (15:43 - 15:43)
Mom?

[Speaker 4] (15:45 - 15:47)
Yeah, Mom. This is a big.

[Speaker 2] (15:47 - 16:24)
Then why don't you hold the plaque? Not that I'm talking to you. One, two, three.

Now, I'm all about what to use. So it slides out of the sand, but we'd like you to use it. You might want to use it now.

Or you might want to use it as a gift. Congratulations. So proud of you.

Thank you for coming.

[Speaker 3] (16:24 - 16:28)
Great job. Can I say something real quick?

[Speaker 4] (16:30 - 17:08)
Mom, I'm not sure if you remember this, but I am the mother of Finn O'Connor. And you boys were together back in preschool. And I'll never forget when you came to preschool.

And I said to your mom, someday one of our boys is going to get in trouble. And the other one's going to take the blame for it. Well, I have to say, I got a lot of congratulations.

After you dove in that water and was sad to say, no, no, this was not my boy. This was Finn O'Connor. So I went in one direction.

You went in the right direction. So congratulations. Congratulations.

It's a great story.

[Speaker 3] (17:17 - 17:20)
We're just going to give it a minute, because every eight minutes?

[Speaker 13] (17:20 - 17:20)
Every eight minutes.

[Speaker 3] (17:20 - 17:32)
Every eight minutes, we're going to have a little announcement. It is prospective new student day up here. All right.

That was amazing. And again, congratulations. And turn it back to you.

[Speaker 2] (17:32 - 23:16)
Thank you. And you don't have to stick around. Next item on the agenda is something I talked about at the October 27th school committee meeting, where we talked about withdrawing students.

And I said, typically, and I'm not sure why this year they got separated, we do the withdrawing students, and we also do the new student enrollment report. But tonight, you have the new student enrollment report in front of you. Interestingly enough, I pulled out a document from the October 27th meeting, and we had a total of 129 withdrawals.

And at the time, the committee was asking, you know, what usually happens? And I said, typically, the number of students that withdraw is balanced by the number of students that come in. And the report that was in the drive tonight shows you that 138 students are newly enrolled in the Swanscot Public Schools.

So though we had 129 withdraw, we had 138 enrolled. The other piece that I went through today and took a look at is what is, I find, impressive, is particularly under Massachusetts private schools and kids that are coming back into our district. But in particular, under the middle school, it's pretty impressive, because not only are the Massachusetts private schools students coming back to our district, but keep in mind that the charter school in Larwell Head is a public school, and so the total number of students that are coming back to our middle school this year right now is at 18 from private and from charter, which is pretty impressive. It would be 19 if we count the one middle school student who left for a day to go to the charter and came back and said, I never want to leave here again. So it's interesting.

So Mr. Kalishman is very proud of the fact that the middle school is a wonderful place to be and that a student themselves would recognize that. Oh, I forgot that Joey, sorry. And so if you go through and look at the private schools, but on the third page, I believe it is, if you take a look at the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth student, that's Marblehead Public, that's charter.

The 16th and 18th student are also the charter. And then on the last page, the 32nd, 40th, 41st, and 43rd student are also the Marblehead charter. So, you know, yes, we lose students to legacy at the prep.

We lose students. We lost students during the pandemic because the private schools stayed open. But I do believe this committee and I know as a district, we're proud of the fact that a lot of students come back to us.

What we're discussing now is the enrollment trends and just what is the census? Because the current fifth grade and looking ahead to next year, you know, the eighth grade that's leaving will be 170 students and the ones that are coming in are 130, 136. So the numbers are just down overall.

But it's interesting to share with you how many have withdrawn and then how many have enrolled. And we are proud of the fact that students are coming back. And even if you take a look at the high school, students one, two, and three are coming from a private school in Massachusetts.

They didn't say what city or town, but they're coming back. Number five, seven, eight, nine, those are also privates. Fifteen is a private and 22 is a private.

And I highlight this because of tonight's event here at the high school. Many years ago, some of you were still on the committee and were really talking about how we needed to do a better job at advertising the things that we have here at our high school to offer students. And I will say that this administrative team, you know, with the exception of the pandemic years, really put a lot of thought into the way tonight runs and the fact that there are so many students and their parents, if they come, that rather than a free-for-all, they are rotating through everything, rotating through stations.

The clubs and activities are in the cafeteria. But that's what this eight-minute rotation is. And Mr. Cohut was concerned that the committee didn't know that he'd be bothering interrupting our meeting. So I'm just, I think tonight is one of the best open houses they've ever done. I think a big part of that was through our bargaining session with the teachers where the teachers brought up the fact that every teacher should be here tonight and that this shouldn't be optional, and they are, which is why the parking lot is packed. There is nobody better to sell our school and our activities and our programs than the teachers.

And so I'm excited by tonight. I think that our enrollment, you know, I hope we get more kids back. You know, every child, and Amy, you and I have talked about this, that, you know, every child is different and as much as we can support public schools, that's one thing.

But if my child had a need in high school, which she did, she went somewhere else. And so taking that into consideration. So, you know, there's those factors, there's legacy factors, and then there's just what is good programming.

And unless we tell them what we have for great programming, they're not going to know about it.

[Speaker 3] (23:16 - 23:16)
Correct.

[Speaker 2] (23:17 - 23:24)
So I'm excited by tonight. I'm excited by tonight's event. And any questions about the new students enrolled?

[Speaker 5] (23:25 - 23:32)
I just, I'm like, I'm impressed with how many students we have from other countries. Did you say the Ukraine?

[Speaker 13] (23:33 - 23:33)
Yes, I saw that.

[Speaker 5] (23:33 - 23:37)
There's a lot of students here from other countries, and I see the majorities from Ukraine.

[Speaker 2] (23:37 - 23:38)
Yes.

[Speaker 5] (23:38 - 23:45)
It's just awesome. I mean, we're really fortunate for the diversity we're getting.

[Speaker 4] (23:46 - 23:54)
Was there some kind of a program that helped people from Ukraine come to the area that we, like, or is it just, what?

[Speaker 2] (23:54 - 23:56)
Sophia, were you shaking your head?

[Speaker 10] (23:56 - 24:43)
Yeah, so there's actually a really great lady in the high school. Her name is Mrs. Fitzgerald, and she works with all of our students that come in from different countries. And she just specifically has been working with the kids from Ukraine because of all of the traumatic things that have happened there and all the things that they've seen.

So she works with them constantly every single day, and they are adapting really, really well. I got to know some of them over the summer just from mutual friends. And we're hopefully crossing our fingers in talks about making a program that seniors who live in Swampscott work with kids that are coming from other countries and just get them more adapted.

But, yeah, they're awesome, and it's a great program, and she, Mrs. Fitzgerald, is amazing.

[Speaker 2] (24:44 - 25:31)
So, yeah. So Mrs. Fitzgerald is the EL teacher here at the high school. EL stands for?

English Learning. Thank you. No acronym.

And so to answer your question, I'm not sure if there was a local push to get families in from the Ukraine. But when you look at the resources and budget and we talk about FTEs and the number of languages that are spoken within our district, you know, our EL staff has increased. And I concur with what Afiya said, that Mrs. Fitzgerald is a wonderful, wonderful teacher. But I don't know what precipitated all of these students coming from the Ukraine other than things that have happened around the world. So anyway, any other questions?

[Speaker 15] (25:40 - 25:41)
What's going on actually?

[Speaker 13] (25:44 - 25:47)
I'm really trying not to sleep. Not that.

[Speaker 3] (25:48 - 25:49)
I'm sleeping in your wi-fi.

[Speaker 13] (25:49 - 25:57)
I know. That's all I can think of. It's probably just as much stress.

[Speaker 3] (25:57 - 26:39)
Oh, I'm sorry. That is all. I just had that mental picture hit right in the head.

First, I want to actually comment on what's going on here tonight. I think it's awesome. I think that's what districts have to do in this point in time.

And I think this community and this district does a great job. And the more we yell that from the mountaintop, the better. These numbers are great to hear.

And I agree with Suzanne about the influx of kids from out of the country. I think that builds community. I think that builds acceptance.

I think that builds a lot. So those are great numbers. Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (26:40 - 26:55)
I just think about the programs and grants that Dr. Bacon has pursued and the advanced manufacturing and our partnership with Essex Tech, all of those things. Who would know about them unless you're coming tonight and there's actually somebody here discussing them with you?

[Speaker 4] (26:55 - 27:51)
Well, to that end, my daughter is here tonight. And she is here as a student representing the manufacturing group. The teacher asked her to come in and talk about it a little bit, as well as her athletics.

And she was really excited to come. And I don't know if you heard me say this, but before the meeting started, she said, I don't really understand what this is. And I said, well, don't you remember when you were looking, you know, when you came up here?

And she said, yeah, but I just walked down a dark hall and thought, oh, I guess that's where I'm going next year. So, you know, from a 10th grader's mouth, you know, she sees a huge difference. So kudos to the team for making this happen.

Because I think, Glenn, to your point, not so much that we have to sell this school, but to be proud of it and all that we're accomplishing I think is great.

[Speaker 2] (27:51 - 33:35)
People don't know what they don't know. And, you know, Amy, you and I talked about my goal of having an office up here. And it's just been fantastic.

The amount of time I'm able to spend with the leadership team, at least an hour a week of dedicated, you know, what do you think about this, what do you think about that, is really moving our high school in the right direction. And I'm really, really proud of them. The next item, number three on my agenda, is the annual report.

So for those of you who are new that might be watching and listening, every department of the town needs to submit an annual report annually to the town, and they compile all of the departments, and they put them in one document. And several years ago, I keep going back to that night where I shared with you the North Shore Education Consortium annual report that was all pretty and bound and had lots of pictures, and I thought, oh, I'm going to do that. And then Mrs. Karen said, you can't. This is the format they expect it in. This is the format that it has to go in in. So I'm just going to highlight for you what is a very lengthy document.

I am going to go back. This is related, but it's going to seem like it's out of left field. Because I haven't had written superintendents' reports, the blog has not been updated, and therefore these items are not on the district website.

But I am going back with Ms. Mackie Knowles, and we are going to be linking all of the documents that we shared on the website in a blog, so this will be on the website for those people that want to read it. What it highlights is the new hires, their positions. Then it also highlights resignations.

And I didn't. I was going to count the number of new hires versus the number of resignations. But I think it's interesting, when you're looking at this, to piggyback off my comment at the last school committee meeting about just because enrollment is decreasing doesn't mean our needs are decreasing.

And so if you take a look at these positions and new hires, there's math interventionists, there's special education additional staff, there's adjustment counselors, there's tutors, there are ESPs. And so the support positions that come up here really speak to the diversity of our population and the needs of our students. And so particularly coming off the pandemic and any kind of learning loss where we're trying to make gains or the mental health challenges that our students are facing.

So when you look at the new hires, take a look at those titles, but also take a look at the resignations. Some of them obviously are replacing the new hires or replacing some of the positions, but they're lengthy lists. And then finally we recognize the retirees in here.

And then each section of this report, each school has a section of this report. One of the things I would highlight at the elementary level is they have student leaders, fourth grade leaders, and the community service that each of them do. Both Clark, Hadley, and Stanley have mentioned the Toys for Local Children drive that some of the staff at the middle school runs and the entire district K-12 is involved in.

Northeast Animal Shelter, Anchor Food Pantry is mentioned many times. And then a kindness challenge and toiletry drive for Anchor Food Pantry. So I think it's important just to highlight that even at a young age, we are instilling community service and service to the community to our young learners.

And then at middle school and high school, each section, each academic area has things that they talk about as well as the STEM and the fine arts programs, which are also our strengths. And then it goes into the high school. The counseling department is there.

Our partnerships with Innovation Pathways and Essex Tech, as I just mentioned. And also some testing from the counseling, the exams that are given, AP. I did have a community member recently, a town meeting member, reach out to me and ask how many AP classes we were teaching in 2010 versus how many we're teaching in 2018 and how many we were teaching in 2022.

And ours haven't decreased, but apparently an article he was reading said that they had decreased. Hi, Jessie. You're right there.

You said it has decreased? In the article he was reading across globally, AP courses were decreasing that were being offered. Ours have not decreased.

They have increased. And so it was nice to be able to share that data. The data specialist pulled it out and it was really helpful.

So very lengthy document, as I said. I just wanted to highlight some of the things. We will link this to the blog so that people that would like to read it, the international trips, Puerto Rico service trip.

So these are done each year. And the way that each school, we've coached to kind of keep track of everything you're doing as you're doing it so it doesn't come to be June and we're saying, oh, what did you do? So they keep a running record of all of these things.

But it's an interesting read when you wonder what's going on in the district to share with all of you. Can we link that on the website?

[Speaker 4] (33:35 - 33:35)
Yes.

[Speaker 2] (33:36 - 33:47)
Yep, I absolutely can. The annual report would be, I can have Ms. McEnol put something up there. And so we are moving Mr. Dulett's presentation to the first December meeting.

[Speaker 3] (33:47 - 33:47)
That is correct.

[Speaker 2] (33:48 - 33:49)
Got it. All right, that's it for me.

[Speaker 3] (33:50 - 33:59)
Okay, thank you. Anyone have any questions regarding the superintendent's reports or anything to that nature? Jesse, how are you?

[Speaker 14] (33:59 - 34:00)
I'm good, how are you?

[Speaker 3] (34:01 - 34:01)
Good.

[Speaker 14] (34:01 - 34:04)
Did the chorus perform already? Yeah. Oh, great.

[Speaker 2] (34:04 - 34:04)
Congratulations.

[Speaker 3] (34:05 - 34:18)
Excellent. Let's just, just for Jesse's sake, is there any announcements that you would like to make? Anything you'd like to talk about?

Not to put you on the spot or anything like that. It's kind of my job.

[Speaker 14] (34:18 - 34:23)
I mean, to stay on theme, the winter chorus concert's on December 15th this year. Nice.

[Speaker 2] (34:24 - 34:27)
I say nice because I never find out about it until a few days at a time.

[Speaker 14] (34:28 - 34:32)
So thank you. Yeah, I'll find out what time it is. I actually don't know.

But it's on the 15th this year.

[Speaker 12] (34:33 - 34:40)
That's great. Like they're doing an art thing with it too, like an art show. I think so.

They usually do. I always like that because you see both things.

[Speaker 3] (34:41 - 34:50)
Great. Thank you, Jesse. All right.

So next on the agenda is Director of Teaching and Learning. Will you have a presentation?

[Speaker 2] (34:51 - 34:59)
Yes. Dr. Bacon's going to be presenting on MCAS and I-Ready. Do you want to share your screen?

[Speaker 1] (34:59 - 35:02)
Somebody, if one of you can do it, whoever's controlling that maybe.

[Speaker 3] (35:04 - 35:09)
Yeah, we're having a little bit of a technical challenge. Let me see if I can. Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (35:10 - 35:19)
Yeah, because right now. Joe's the host. Yeah, Joe's the host.

Can you control it on that keyboard maybe? We could. Maybe I can do it.

Okay.

[Speaker 3] (35:19 - 35:20)
Thank you, Suzanne.

[Speaker 5] (35:23 - 35:25)
I'll get off the TV screen.

[Speaker 1] (35:46 - 35:51)
We just need to find the agenda and pull up the PowerPoint for the meeting.

[Speaker 3] (35:54 - 35:55)
Sorry for the delay, everybody.

[Speaker 12] (35:55 - 35:57)
How am I going to find the agenda?

[Speaker 6] (35:57 - 35:58)
Can you make me the co-host?

[Speaker 1] (35:59 - 36:24)
Can you make John the co-host? If you go into the Google Calendar, is the person, see the Google Calendar there? If Joe has it.

I can do it. Somebody can sign into the Google Calendar, anybody who's at the meeting. And you should be able to, because it's linked into the meeting invite.

[Speaker 2] (36:44 - 37:23)
While Mrs. Wright is bringing that up, do you want to do the conversation about teacher licensure and one communication? Sure. So this was put on the agenda at the request of Mrs. O'Connor, who brought up a great point that a letter goes home to families when a teacher is not licensed. And Mrs. O'Connor sent a very thoughtful email with a lot of questions about, you know, what is the percentage? How does this happen? And just questions that the community and the families might not know the answers to.

So Dr. Bacon, we put this on here to kind of answer and speak to your questions. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (37:24 - 39:21)
So there's actually in the slide, one of the slides has the link, or it has a little blurb from the Title I regulations that states that a school shall provide to each individual family, and one of the things they have to provide is timely notice that a child has been taught for four or more consecutive weeks by a teacher who does not meet state licensing requirements. So because we're a recipient of federal Title I funds, we have that obligation on us. So the typical things that...

Typical reasons why a teacher is unlicensed, there's several things. One is when we have a long-term substitute and we cannot find... Somebody's on leave and we have to hire a long-term sub, but we can't find someone who has the exact appropriate license for that position.

So far this year, we've had five long-term subs who've come in as leave replacements. Three of them we were able to find with the appropriate license for whatever they were coming in to sub for, but two of them did not. One was someone who we hired who had another DESE license, but not one that was exactly matched to the position that that person was filling, and then the final person was someone who was in a master's degree program for education but had not yet earned her license, and that person has applied for an emergency license, but that hasn't come through yet, so technically that person is unlicensed at this point.

So that's the major reason why we end up having to send these letters is when we have long-term subs. Sometimes we hire teachers who are licensed in another state, and it takes DESE a while to grant them a license here, so they may be starting in August and they may not get their DESE license until December, and again, in that case, they've exceeded the four-week... You know, they're eligible for a license, but they haven't yet been processed as DESE, so that's another situation.

And then finally, on rare occasions... Do you want me to sign in?

[Speaker 13] (39:22 - 39:22)
I'll try.

[Speaker 1] (39:24 - 39:55)
I will try from here. If you're on the Zoom, you should be able to sign in. Or you should be able to just...

I wasn't on the Zoom, so I'm signing into the Zoom right now. And then finally, in very rare occasions, there's a teacher who's been employed with us whose license has lapsed, and that's pretty rare, and that usually happens when there's some kind of extenuating circumstance in the person's, you know, situation that they've, for one reason or another, their license has lapsed, and then we work with them to get them back on track and get them re-licensed.

[Speaker 4] (39:57 - 40:10)
When a teacher's license lapses, not a higher, not like an emergency situation, do they participate fully in the contract, in the steps and lines?

[Speaker 1] (40:11 - 40:15)
A superintendent might have... Either a superintendent or their business manager might have a better answer on that.

[Speaker 9] (40:16 - 40:23)
If they're hired as a teacher, regardless of their license stature, they are on the same page, right?

[Speaker 4] (40:23 - 40:29)
But doesn't part of their licensing have to do with their credits and their...

[Speaker 9] (40:29 - 40:38)
I mean, they're required to have this license, so they would have to review that, and they would work on it.

[Speaker 4] (40:38 - 40:44)
Are there... What happens? How long can somebody teach without a license?

Can you...

[Speaker 9] (40:45 - 40:45)
Waiver.

[Speaker 4] (40:46 - 41:42)
I guess my question is, and maybe part of it is just the communication. What spurred my questions was it felt like a very vague letter, and I know that we can't give personnel details. I recognize that.

But there... As a parent, you get a letter like this, and you think, well, do I need to be worried? Do...

And if not, then I think it would be very easy to say, these things happen often, there's a number of reasons why. Because I know I was concerned, and I got calls from parents who were like, what the heck does this mean? So...

You know, I have the good fortune of having a direct line to the superintendent who said, oh, yeah, my kid got... You know, I got these all the time when I was in school.

[Speaker 2] (41:44 - 42:21)
From Essex Tech. No, it is something... You know, I understand your position that it just was almost checking a box, it felt like, from the receiving end of things.

I wouldn't be comfortable putting that it happens often. I would be... I do think we could do better at saying, there are unusual circumstances for why this might occur, particularly where staffing shortages are occurring, and we are getting applicants from other states, or long-term sub-positions, and the district is doing everything in their power to rectify these situations.

I do think we could probably add a little bit to that.

[Speaker 4] (42:21 - 42:39)
So when a teacher who has been hired loses their licensure, is there a time limit? And how do these things happen? Do we...

Are we notified by the... Not we, but are you notified by the state, or are you notified by the teacher?

[Speaker 2] (42:39 - 42:55)
Lisa, our HR manager, Lisa Koltz, is in charge of licensure, and she is on top of everything and has conversations with the teachers, gives them the timelines, gives them the deadlines, follows their progress. So HR is all of that.

[Speaker 4] (42:55 - 42:56)
Oh, good, so you don't have to do this.

[Speaker 1] (42:56 - 42:57)
No, I don't do that anymore.

[Speaker 4] (42:57 - 42:58)
Oh, good.

[Speaker 1] (42:59 - 43:04)
I believe we post the positions, don't we? We do. We have to post them?

We do have to post them.

[Speaker 4] (43:04 - 43:07)
So if somebody loses their licensure, you have to post that position?

[Speaker 2] (43:07 - 43:07)
Yes.

[Speaker 4] (43:08 - 43:11)
Wow, and is there a possibility that they would lose that position?

[Speaker 2] (43:11 - 43:26)
If somebody comes in that is licensed and is highly qualified, yes. Wow. So it is the employee's...

Suzanne, can you just move that window for me? It is in the employee's best interest to get a move on and get it done, thank you.

[Speaker 4] (43:26 - 43:30)
Okay, so there really is motivation. There is motivation, yeah. Okay, that's good to know.

[Speaker 3] (43:31 - 43:53)
So could I just ask you, I just had a dovetail question about finance. So, for instance, if someone is Masters plus 15 and they let, you know, let's say they're from out of state and they're trying to get a license and they don't, do they stay on that high pay line for infinity?

[Speaker 2] (43:54 - 44:02)
Until they accomplish what they need to accomplish. And in our long-term subs, too, there is in the contract they work 100 and what?

[Speaker 9] (44:02 - 44:09)
I mean, our long-term subs vary. Sometimes if it's a short assignment we're just going to need to trigger, it only has to be like 30 days, right?

[Speaker 1] (44:09 - 44:10)
Yeah, four weeks, yeah.

[Speaker 9] (44:10 - 44:13)
Four weeks to trigger this type of notification.

[Speaker 1] (44:14 - 44:14)
Right.

[Speaker 9] (44:14 - 44:41)
Those long-term subs, short-term subs, are $135 a day. Right. If someone is taking an assignment for a half year or more, we put them on M1 or B1.

Gotcha. And that's it, regardless of their license or status. Right, okay.

It's degree-driven. Gotcha, okay. And if it's M1 or B1, the scenario that you were talking about is someone who's been here and their license is lax, yes, they're going to stay in the lane except that they're in, and they're going to work on remediating that with HR.

[Speaker 4] (44:41 - 44:48)
Gotcha. Okay, so they don't continue to escalate until they've met their requirements.

[Speaker 9] (44:49 - 44:54)
No, someone who's been here whose license is lax will still continue to get subs.

[Speaker 2] (44:54 - 44:56)
An employee, not a long-term subs. Right, okay.

[Speaker 4] (44:57 - 45:08)
No, I mean, it's a curious thing to be, you know, to think about, you know, my years working in a bank, if I didn't have my license, I certainly wasn't getting a promotion in a race.

[Speaker 2] (45:08 - 45:09)
Private versus public.

[Speaker 4] (45:09 - 45:12)
Yeah, I get it. But this is why I asked the question.

[Speaker 1] (45:12 - 45:21)
No, I think they're great questions, Amy. But it's also, in that situation, the person remedies it pretty fast.

[Speaker 4] (45:21 - 45:22)
That's good.

[Speaker 1] (45:22 - 45:23)
Right, like within, yeah.

[Speaker 4] (45:23 - 45:32)
Well, I mean, to know that, to hear that that's been posted, and that there really is, I mean, that is really good incentive to move it along.

[Speaker 2] (45:33 - 45:46)
And a sitting employee, and in this case, there are really extenuating circumstances that all I can say is there's really, it's unusual. Right, it's very unusual.

[Speaker 4] (45:47 - 45:51)
And listen, I want to be clear that I'm not asking about a specific teacher.

[Speaker 2] (45:51 - 45:52)
I understand that.

[Speaker 4] (45:52 - 46:08)
But broadly. And to know that there is that, look, these are extenuating circumstances. We don't see this often.

We feel good about the path that they're on. That, I think, would really help parents.

[Speaker 1] (46:10 - 46:47)
Yeah, and we try to, we have the letter we send, is a template that DESE provides. And we've added into the template some description of the person's background or qualifications, and a statement that we're fully confident that they can carry out an appropriate education. We don't go into the background of all the reasons that these might happen and things like that.

People do have privacy. Right, or just to generally inform people that this isn't something that's super common. In the years that I've been involved with this, we've sent out three or four a year.

And we have a teaching staff of, what, 220 people?

[Speaker 4] (46:49 - 46:59)
So it just happens. As a parent with no perspective of that, I think it would just be helpful. I speak for the other parents who called me and were like, I don't know what to do with this.

[Speaker 1] (46:59 - 47:12)
Maybe there's an additional, if we have an info sheet or something that we can include with the letter that just explain more about the circumstances in which this is likely to happen and how frequently is it happening in Swampscott.

[Speaker 2] (47:13 - 47:22)
I think you brought up great questions. You're close to it. And you didn't even understand it.

So those people that might get it and not know who to ask.

[Speaker 15] (47:23 - 47:24)
Good.

[Speaker 2] (47:30 - 47:33)
You still sound so enthusiastic.

[Speaker 13] (47:38 - 47:43)
Okay, Dr. Bacon. Ready to go.

[Speaker 1] (47:43 - 56:50)
Go on with this. So I'm here to talk about last year's iReady and MCAS results. So to start, I just wanted to remind you of the little context that we've been in for the past few years.

So 2019 was the year before the pandemic. So the data you look at tonight from 2019, it's before the whole thing even happened. In 2020, we went to remote learning in March, and there was no MCAS.

There's no data for 2020. In 2021 was our remote hybrid year, right, which all of you remember very well. And MCAS, the only time the kids were in school that year was from April to June in person, like full-time, really, back to school.

And in that year, DESE only gave half the regular MCAS. They didn't do a full-blown MCAS with all the parts. So in grades three to eight, high school still got the full MCAS that year, but three to eight got a half MCAS.

And so DESE has advised us to look with great caution at the 2021 results. So you'll hear me talk a lot about the difference between 2019 and 2022 tonight. And then 2022 was last year.

We were all in person all year, and we did still have some distancing restrictions at certain points in the year. So we're still, throughout all this data, after 2019 operating in pandemic mode to some extent. So I've divided the presentation about MCAS into some different takes, because there's different ways to look at the data, which will tell you different stories about what's been happening with our district.

So the first one is how we're doing now, last year, when we were back full-time all year, more or less, compared to before the pandemic. So you can go ahead. So I have three charts for you to look at.

This is the ELA results for the last four years. So the first two bars are before the pandemic. The gold bar is the 2021, that sort of funky year of hybrid learning.

And then the green bar is last year. So you'll notice here, in English Language Arts, at the elementary and middle and high school, there's a fairly steady pattern of decline, especially at the elementary and the middle school, when you compare, say, the purple to the green. High school fared better in terms of their ability to sort of hold the levels of performance.

And this is the number, the percent of the students who are meeting or exceeding expectations in the MCAS. And the other thing you might want to... Oops, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Go back, go back. One more back. And the other thing I'd point out here is, if you look at the difference between the purple and the green for our elementary students, how much ground they lost during the MCAS, versus the purple and the green for our middle, right, compared to the high, which basically was the same throughout the pandemic, you can see that our youngest learners especially in reading and writing were most affected by the pandemic.

So that's the English Language Arts, and you can go on. In math, there's a little bit of a different story. In middle and high school, you see the same kind of continued deficit when we compare our 2019 purple results to our 2022 green results.

We're down in math in both middle school and high school. But you'll see in elementary, we actually did slightly better than we did prior to the pandemic. And if you recall, last year was our first year with our new elementary math curriculum.

So that's an encouraging result, and you'll see some more positive results later that suggest that our elementary math curriculum choice that we made and that you approved is having a positive effect on student learning. Okay, and here's our science scores. Again, science is not tested in our elementary schools.

It's only tested at grades five, grades eight, and then once in high school. And so here, again, you see a pretty similar pre- to post-pandemic drop between the purple and the green. It should be noted that grade five and eight last year participated in a special science MCAS pilot.

The teachers over there decided to participate in a program where DESE is piloting more authentic science assessments in terms of students having to reason through problems as part of the MCAS with lots of simulations and things. And so they did training last year, and then half the students MCAS in five and eight was that kind of new pilot MCAS. So last year's results, they only got half of a regular MCAS, and that's what's reflected here.

The new part didn't count at all in terms of their MCAS scores. But that's an exciting thing that our elementary, or our middle school science teachers have been involved in with the Department of Education. Okay.

So that's kind of the general story of decline, and our continued struggles to get back to where we were prior to the pandemic. So the next set of graphs looks at how we're doing compared to the state. So how did our kids fare during the pandemic?

Well, there's two parts to it. The first part here is just, even though we see declines between how we did prior to the pandemic and how we did last year, you can see that when we compare the percent of students meeting and exceeding expectations for Swampscot, the blue lines, to the percent of students meeting and exceeding expectations for the state, which is the red lines, you can see in every grade span and every subject area, we're still outperforming the state in 2022.

So the declines that we experienced in Swampscot are not unique and are still holding us above the statewide averages, which is sort of the situation we were in prior to the pandemic as well. We tend to outperform the state by five to 10 percentage points across the board. Okay.

Now the graphs are getting a little bit more challenging to look at, but I find them very interesting. So this set of graphs is how we did relative to the state in each of those years. What was the gap between our performance and the statewide performance at the elementary and the middle and the high school across those years in English language arts?

And so what we can see here is our performance, if you look sort of at the middle and high school lines, the red line and the green line down the bottom, our performance relative to the state has been relatively constant before the pandemic, throughout the pandemic, and now. It's kind of in the same area. What you see in ELA for the elementary schools, however, is that back in 2018 and 2019, we were outperforming the state by around 20 points.

And now we're outperforming the state by 10 points. So this to me is triggering something we need to think about with that elementary ELA education that we're giving. That may be an area for us to think about what we can do to sort of improve that because we're actually losing ground.

We're not, you know, we're not holding steady, which is like the minimum. We'd be hoping to increase, right? And everything should be going up.

We should be getting better and better in relationship to our statewide counterparts. But that's a concern. Okay, on the next graph, this is the same thing for math.

So the high school, you can see, has been pretty steady in its performance in math relative to the state. The blue line, the elementary, you see that big dip in 2019, the year before the pandemic. And if you recall way back when, I talked to you about several years of decline of elementary math performance prior to 2019.

And that's what sparked us to choose a new curriculum that we put in place last year. And then you can see our performance has rebounded to those, you know, levels that we had prior to that. And hopefully they'll continue to go up as we see the impact of the new curriculum in elementary.

And the other thing to note is the middle school in this graph, you see kind of a slight decline over the last few years. Again, like the elementary readings we saw or the elementary literacy on the previous graph, we see this slight sort of downward trend in the performance of our middle school students vis-a-vis the state. So that's another area that we are looking at, which I'll refer to again later.

Okay, and then one more like this, science. So at high school, the state did not release any statewide high school biology results in 2021. That's why there's no data point there.

So we couldn't compare ourselves to the state in 2021. But you can see that in 2022, we did quite a bit better than we had been doing prior to the pandemic relative to the state in high school biology. So that's great.

And especially, I don't know if you noticed in the earlier graphs, I had pointed out that last year was the first, it's like way back. I'm going to go way back, Pam.

[Speaker 2] (56:50 - 56:51)
Okay, I'll keep going.

[Speaker 1] (56:51 - 56:52)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (56:52 - 56:53)
I'll go forward then.

[Speaker 1] (56:53 - 1:01:32)
Yeah, that last year was the first year of the new biology test. So most of the tests had transitioned to the new MCAS 2.0 over the past five years. But biology is one of the last ones to transition.

There was a new test last year. Even though our scores dropped compared to prior years because we did better on the old test just like they did when the MCAS 2.0 came in for English or for math at the high school, that year you always saw this big drop. But here we see that we did, relative to the state, even though our scores dropped, relative to the state, we did quite a bit better.

So to me, that's saying our students with our curriculum were better prepared for this new, more challenging MCAS 2.0 in biology than were their counterparts across the state. So that's great to see and know that we have a good starting place to move up from there. Okay.

Yeah, in eighth grade, I think our performance was steady and our performance, again, elementary, the blue line, there's a dip in 2022. We know that during the pandemic, there wasn't a heck of a lot of science and social studies being taught, especially at the elementary where we were concentrating so much on literacy and mathematics. So that's not surprising, but we're devoting some energy to elementary science this year.

So hopefully we'll turn that around. Okay. And then this is the most interesting thing that I found, the sort of take three.

So how does COVID impact our learners compared to the learners statewide? So there's a couple of graphs about that, which are again, a little challenging to understand, but I think worth the long walk here. Okay.

So what I did here was I looked at the difference between the 2019 and 2022 scores for students across the state at these grade levels and our students at these grade levels. So if you first just concentrate on the blue lines, so that's telling you, if you sort of read across, especially let's look at the first graph, the ELA graph, you kind of look across the blue line. It's telling you for like at most grade levels, somewhere between 10 and, you know, or five to 15, the number of students who were able to score meeting or exceeds on the ELA MCAS in 2022 compared to 2019 was somewhere down depressed by five to 10 points, right?

Does that make sense to everybody? High school did a little better, right, which you would expect. Older students fared a little better during COVID, 10th graders, they're kind of up at like minus 3%.

But then compare, look at the R line, the red line, right, which is so different, right? It's not like we had a drop that was sort of the same, like the state drop is kind of the same across all grade levels. Everybody kind of goes down, you know, five to 15%.

Our pattern of impact is very, very different than the statewide pattern, which to me is pretty interesting. So our little kids in ELA, right, third and fourth and especially fifth graders, the drop off from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic was much more dramatic for our students than it was for students statewide. So we started from a higher place, we did indeed, and we're still above the state, but we dropped more precipitously than the state did, which is, again, thinking back to those ELA graphs earlier, says to me, like we really, not only do we have maybe some ELA work to do in our curriculum, we also have to figure out how to support those students because they lost so much ground relative to their counterparts statewide in Swampscott for whatever reason that is. And the upper half of the graph in grades six through 10, our kids actually lost less ground than kids statewide. And that's what I would have expected, right?

I would have expected a red line that was kind of running parallel, but north of the blue line, right? Because our kids, we have, like compared to what was going on statewide in some of those big urban districts, we were able to provide a lot more instruction during the pandemic than a lot of kids around the state got. So I would have expected a red line just north of the blue line, but that's not what happened everywhere.

[Speaker 4] (1:01:32 - 1:01:44)
Well, but if I'm interpreting this right, we didn't do, we did better than the state, but we lost more ground. But we, okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:01:45 - 1:01:53)
Our kids lost more ground in early literacy than kids did statewide relative to where they were prior to the pandemic. So they were starting really high, but lost a lot.

[Speaker 13] (1:01:54 - 1:01:54)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (1:01:57 - 1:02:01)
Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. I'm just like, it's curious.

[Speaker 3] (1:02:01 - 1:02:03)
Yeah, it's the exact same question.

[Speaker 1] (1:02:07 - 1:02:09)
Were you going to ask another question?

[Speaker 3] (1:02:09 - 1:02:11)
No, I was, I was, I was going to wait to the end, but I had to stop.

[Speaker 1] (1:02:11 - 1:02:11)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:02:12 - 1:02:14)
No, that's fine. Okay. Continue, please.

[Speaker 1] (1:02:14 - 1:08:24)
I'm sure we're getting to the end. And then the graph on the right is for the math, right? And again, you see for most grade levels are, you know, again, three and four, the math data is better than the state, which is confirms what we saw in the MCAS that we did a little better.

And that's, again, some indication that maybe the new math program and the support we're providing teachers to try to implement that is actually, is helping, is lifting kids back out of the pandemic effect and hopefully above where they were able to perform prior to the pandemic, because we knew that that was an area of concern. But then again, math, we lost a little bit more ground, again, particularly through those middle years with the exception of sixth grade. So grades five, seven, and eight lost more ground than the state in mathematics.

Make sense? So to me, I'm looking at this and thinking, where do we, you know, where do we need to really beef up support for our kids to do some catch-up growth and think about what are the strategies to do that? So one of the things, well, we'll go on and then we'll see.

Okay. So our takeaways from here. So last year when I reported to you, I had expressed like two hopes that last year with the return to, you know, live in-person instruction for the year that we would see improved outcomes across the board.

That's not what we saw, but that's not unusual, right? The state, same thing. The state also declined.

You saw that blue line of, you know, 10 to 15% drop pre-post-pandemic. It's still there. They haven't recovered yet.

The other thing I had suggested is that the new math program, we were hoping, and the increased support for teachers that came with it, that would yield better math outcomes for grades three and four. And so that, there's some good indication from the MCAS data, and you'll see that confirmed in a minute with some of the iReady data, that that's having a positive effect. And so the takeaways from this, you can see them there.

The scores are down, but in comparison to the state, our kids are still doing better. And the areas that I see for attention coming out of this are that elementary, ELA, and science, middle school, math. And then if you noticed in many of the graphs, fifth grade was a big concern.

So we have to think about what's going on there and with that cohort of students. So that's last year's fifth graders who are now sixth graders. Let's see how the data pans out and think about what that indicates about where our trouble spots are.

Is it that cohort of students or is it that fourth, fifth transition? And we need to really think about what that fifth grade year looks like. So we'll be able to tell that in the future.

Okay, a couple slides about iReady. So what else can we learn about our students from the iReady data? I just have a couple slides here.

So here, the iReady, again, is a new assessment we've been giving for the past couple years in grades kindergarten through eight. It happens three times a year, fall, winter, and spring. And yeah, I guess that's all I want to say about that.

So this graph is looking at the fall to spring growth last year. So how many kids were performing at grade level in the fall versus in the spring? And again, the bar for that changes.

So what you expect of an incoming kindergartner, it's being said, like, is this kid, you know, ready to start learning kindergarten curriculum? That's the question that the test is asking in the fall. In the spring, they're asking, has this student mastered what a typical kindergartner should master by the spring?

So the bar is a little bit different, but that's as it should be. So what you can see here, if you notice, in grades K1 and 2 in reading, the proportion of our kids who are kind of where they need to be at sort of different points in the year grows tremendously in K1 and 2. Not so much in 3 through 6, where the percent of kids who are ending the year at grade level where they need to be, having mastered, you know, a certain portion of that grade-level content and ready for the next grade is lower in the spring than it was in the fall.

So that's something for us to be looking at and thinking about. And then on the... Oh, one thing I also wanted to say about the reading one before we move on.

If you look, if you just look at the green bars, all right, that's how many kids by the end of the year we're sending off having, you know, having mastered what's typical for grade-level material. And you can see that pattern. The elementary, you know, we're north of 50%, right?

And then by grade 4, the green bar, the green bars go below 50%. So grades 4 through 8, we have some challenges there in terms of getting kids to the point where they really have mastered the grade-level materials. And I notice, and also the grade 5 here again is the lowest by quite a bit.

And, you know, 31% of the kids on this particular iReady were, has sort of met grade-level benchmarks by the end of the year in reading. And on the MCAS, 32% of our 5th graders were met or exceeded the standard on MCAS in the 5th grade. So the data's pretty consistent.

And then the math, somewhat different pattern. Again, you see more growth over the course of the year. And again, you can see the scope of the growth in grades K through 4 where we have the new curriculum.

Even though they started at a lower place, right? If you look at the blue bars, they started a little less prepared than the kids in grades 5 through 8, and yet they grew so much more over the course of the year.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:25 - 1:08:36)
Is that because of summer learning loss, do you think? Like the fact that they're leaving at the end of the year at a 67% and they're coming in at grade... I'm looking at kindergarten.

They're coming in at grade 1 at 22%.

[Speaker 1] (1:08:40 - 1:08:51)
I don't know, because the previous slide was opposite. That's not the same cohort of kids, but generally there is, like, that pattern that we see. They'll leave high and they'll come in a little lower.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:51 - 1:09:04)
I mean, I would think, especially in the younger grades, when it comes to things like math, where they're not...parents aren't doing math before bed, but they are reading before bed, that maybe that is...I don't know.

[Speaker 1] (1:09:04 - 1:12:07)
Yeah, although there's a graph that I had in here in the first version of this presentation that I took out. It's actually at the end of the thing you have a link to if you want to see it, but what was very curious to me is that when I looked also at the... what percent of kids were ready in the fall of 2021 after that hybrid remote year versus the percent of kids who were ready in the fall of 22 after our essentially semi-normal year last year.

And in math, as you would expect, more kids were higher last fall than they were the previous fall. So after the real pandemic year, kids were even lower than those 23%, 24%. They were down like the teens.

So math across the board improved in terms of the readiness of kids this fall compared to the readiness of kids last fall. Reading it was opposite. At every grade level, the kids were less prepared in the fall of 2022 than they were in the fall of 2021, which is a huge puzzle as to why that should be.

So it's interesting, but it certainly gives us places to think about. So the final slide here, what are we going to do about all this? So these are some of the things that are going on in our department to try to address these.

I'm focusing here on the Tier 1 actions, which means the stuff that's happening in regular Gen Ed classrooms, not special services, not pull-out, not tutoring, but things that we need to do in terms of regular instruction because the problems are so massive, we're not going to remediate our way out of it by giving kids extra services. There isn't the staff, there isn't the time, there's no way we're going to do that. So we have to address it through that everyday Tier 1 instruction that kids are getting.

So we're starting a committee to investigate a new elementary math program to deal with some of those ELA issues at the early elementary, particularly in Grades 3 and 4. We're continuing to implement our new K-4 math program. This year will be our second year.

We purchased last spring, with your support, a new math program for Grades 5 to 8, so hopefully that will help with some of the math issues at the middle school. And then we're focusing on instructional practice throughout the district. Through coaching, we have...

who are hired as instructional coaches. We also have a number of professional learning communities or people who've gotten together to think together about instruction and how to improve instruction. And then we're also doing some calibration activities among all the administrators so that we all have the same idea of what high-quality instruction looks like, and particularly some of the things like universal design for learning and learning acceleration, which are approaches to instruction which are very much designed to help all kids learn, but also to respond to the learning losses of the pandemic in a way that's going to make kids move forward rather than continue to keep them behind for years and years.

So I think that's it, and then if there's any questions from you folks.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:07 - 1:12:12)
I think everyone's going to have questions, so why don't we just go around. Suzette?

[Speaker 5] (1:12:12 - 1:12:35)
I think you did a really great job of explaining it, and I don't understand the same thing you don't understand. Like, that English ELA drop is crazy. And I'm really curious if the fifth grade is about transition.

Yeah. Like, I just don't... It has to be something else, not just the group.

[Speaker 1] (1:12:37 - 1:13:05)
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it could be, and we'll find out, right? Because we'll be able to look at our mid-year I-rated data and see how fifth grade is growing compared to other grades, right?

To see if it's now this new cohort of fifth graders, and, you know, the kids who were that troubled cohort last year in sixth grade, what's happening with them? Are they catching up in sixth grade? So as the year goes on, we'll be able to investigate that a little more.

[Speaker 5] (1:13:05 - 1:13:15)
Yeah, it just feels like you almost need more data points to sort of see what happened during COVID. Pardon? It's sort of like you need more data points to really understand it.

[Speaker 1] (1:13:16 - 1:13:22)
Yeah, well, it's going to take us, you know, several years to get out of this, right? It's not a quick fix.

[Speaker 2] (1:13:23 - 1:14:23)
There's a lot going on. I think it's just a perfect example of what the pandemic did. And, you know, as we think about why we compared to the state, I know every district had their struggles, but when I think about our elementary facilities and how limited we were with ventilation studies and how there were 11 bodies, including the adults, that were allowed in and the parent pushed to get more in, that's all I kept thinking, is you're not going to say that didn't have an impact.

You know, we had to stay hybrid longer than other districts because of our aged buildings. And, you know, facilities doesn't sound like it would have an impact on academics, but it did. And that can't be ignored.

That's what all this data just hits me with, like those conversations about, no, you have to have 11 bodies, and that includes support staff, and that includes the adults. Those cohorts were just really hard to manage. And so here's the result of that.

[Speaker 5] (1:14:23 - 1:14:33)
Is there any way to look at the kids that did the summer programs and how if they were better or worse than their typical or their non-summer cohort? Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:14:33 - 1:15:28)
I did that last year after we had the big summer program that was for, we had a few high school students, but it was largely K-8. And the impact, what I looked at was, like, how, you know, what was their summer learning loss, basically, from fall to spring, spring to fall, compared to the kids who didn't, who were invited to the program but chose not to attend, right? Right.

Right, because we invited a lot of people and about half of them attended, so we had kind of a control group, a little bit of a control group. And the impact was always in the expected direction, so our kids did better, but it wasn't statistically big enough to really, and the superintendent and I had a lot of discussion about that, and, like, is it worth, for the amount of time and energy and money that went into that program, is it worth doing it again for that level of impact? And we made the decision not to do it this summer based on the impact.

[Speaker 2] (1:15:28 - 1:15:47)
And there was also a part of me that thinks about that whole child again, about how many kids just needed to get out and play and get back to camps and get back to, you know, park league. And so, yeah, it's going to take several years, as you said, to follow where we get to with these kids, but it's very interesting.

[Speaker 4] (1:15:48 - 1:17:11)
Well, so to that point, I think, with the whole child, there are, you know, something that we hear a lot of are parents who are really upset that kids are even being tested. And, you know, why can't we just let them learn? Why can't we just, you know, let them get back to normal?

And it sounds like there's a lot of really good data here. So I think that's an opportunity for us as a district to sort of proactively put some messaging out there to say, like, you know, when it does come time for that MCAS, there are lots of us, myself included, that are not fans of it. So to sort of know that it really is feeding, you know, it's really giving you some powerful tools, that it's not about how your particular child does but about how the trends are.

And I think maybe that's what it is. You know, as a parent, when you get that piece of paper that says where your kid is, it's hard to not put a lot of stock into that. But really, we shouldn't.

[Speaker 2] (1:17:12 - 1:19:04)
I'm dying to jump in. Please. We have always said that MCAS is one snippet in time on one particular day or two particular days.

It's one data point. It comes back to what Suzanne said in that, you know, the internal assessments we're doing, whether they're BASC or they're iReady, you know, you need multiple data points to really see, are we providing the best possible education for our kids? It's not so much...

I mean, I'm a superintendent, and I got my child's MCAS scores, and I didn't take a lot of stock in them because it was other data points that the school was providing. That was one day in one moment in time. And was somebody not feeling well?

Did somebody not take their meds? As a former elementary principal, I remember those circumstances. So we have to remember that MCAS is one data point, but so is iReady.

And when we start to see the iReady matching the MCAS, that gives us great information about what we can do better and how we can address the deficits that the students might have. It's not their fault, it's our responsibility. And so, yes, I don't want to assess students to death, but at the same time, how are we going to know the curriculum and academics we're providing are giving our students the best possible education unless we assess and see where kids are at?

And who are we losing, and who is falling behind? And data is important, and Lord knows Mrs. Wright's been preaching that from way back when. So we finally have multiple data points to look at.

And so we certainly don't want to assess our students to death, but it's really important to look at the patterns and trends. And am I surprised by any of this with the pandemic? I don't think any of us are.

[Speaker 4] (1:19:04 - 1:19:08)
Wasn't there a big change last year in terms of the timing of testing?

[Speaker 2] (1:19:08 - 1:19:10)
Was it the timing last year?

[Speaker 1] (1:19:10 - 1:19:44)
Or was it the year before? It was the year before. You mean the MCAS?

Yeah. It was later. During the year that was hybrid remote, it came later.

It was like the testing was all able to, you know, after the kids sort of came back, after the state said everybody's got to come back in April, remember that year? Yes. Yeah, so then they did the MCAS, the half MCAS between April and June for everything.

And now it's back to its normal schedule where we start with MCAS testing in March, and then we do the hybrid testing that goes through May. It's all, you know, very scheduled. And different grade levels, different grade spans have different windows for testing.

[Speaker 4] (1:19:45 - 1:19:56)
Yeah, I just vaguely remember, I don't remember, but it might have even been Mr. Cashman who was saying that it was like later in the year, which meant more learning, obviously, before you get to take that test.

[Speaker 1] (1:19:58 - 1:20:24)
Yeah. But again, it doesn't, because everybody in the whole state is taking the same test. And when they're deciding where the cutoffs are, they're looking at everybody who took the test at the same time.

So it really doesn't matter whether you take it in March or you take it in May. Okay. On a broad scale.

Okay. Like for an individual kid, you know, maybe. But, yeah, on a broad scale, it really doesn't matter all that much.

[Speaker 6] (1:20:25 - 1:20:29)
Great. Joe? Thank you.

That was very helpful, Dr. Baker.

[Speaker 15] (1:20:30 - 1:20:35)
Good evening. It is now time to turn. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:20:36 - 1:20:37)
The pilot's indisposed.

[Speaker 15] (1:20:37 - 1:20:38)
Yeah, he jumped out.

[Speaker 13] (1:20:38 - 1:20:40)
He's one of the flight attendants.

[Speaker 3] (1:20:40 - 1:20:41)
He jumped out.

[Speaker 6] (1:20:41 - 1:20:42)
Come on. Come on, pilot.

[Speaker 3] (1:20:43 - 1:20:43)
Come on.

[Speaker 6] (1:20:44 - 1:20:48)
Sorry. I'm just going to ride this right to the end.

[Speaker 13] (1:20:48 - 1:20:49)
Yeah, right.

[Speaker 6] (1:20:51 - 1:21:11)
I think you've mostly answered the question I had, which was I heard you say a number of times, particularly with the middle school math, you know, we're looking at it, we're thinking about it. And I had written down, you know, what exactly does that mean? But I think as you got into the presentation more, it was, you know, future MCAS's other data points just to assess, you know, where this gap is occurring.

[Speaker 1] (1:21:11 - 1:21:49)
Yeah. And we just, I mean, we knew that middle school math was, even before this data, we knew that middle school math was kind of an issue. And our curriculum at the middle school was not what's called a high quality curriculum.

And that's one of the things we're going through and looking at all our curriculum, our big curriculum programs that we have and assessing whether they meet the standards of high quality curriculum, because there's now all sorts of clearing houses and things that rate all these things. So we knew we had some issues in middle school math, so we do have a new middle school math curriculum this year. And we're working to get it implemented and see if it can address some of the issues with student learning at the middle school, particularly math.

[Speaker 15] (1:21:50 - 1:21:52)
All right. Thank you. Karen.

[Speaker 7] (1:21:53 - 1:22:59)
Thank you again. I think every time you do these presentations for us, we do see how important data is and that we try to do a good job of capturing it. I just think looking at the pandemic years, it's never going to make sense, right?

I mean, even if you expect it, it's still going to be wonky. And I just, we keep saying when we went back, you know, last year to a regular year, as if we expected that it would go back to normal, right? But it's just not going to.

And I do think it's going to take a long time, not just going back in person and everything's fine. I just think it took a few years for those kids to, I don't know how to say it, but to like, you know, lose that connection to school. It's going to take more than just being back in the classroom one year to get back there.

And I'm saying that looking at my own child and talking to other parents of kids whose kids just don't approach it the same or they don't, it's just not, they have to get that back somehow. And I don't know if that's something we can teach or make happen. It might just take time and have to.

[Speaker 2] (1:22:59 - 1:23:07)
I think it's getting back to a routine, getting back to a structure. You know, structure was missing. Right, but it was missing for a long time.

[Speaker 7] (1:23:07 - 1:23:09)
So it might take a couple of years.

[Speaker 2] (1:23:09 - 1:23:39)
Every student's structure from remote learning was different in their homes. And so, you know, for us to look at one cohort of students, even one class of 20 kids, they all had different experiences. And we don't know, you know, were they being monitored?

Were they paying attention? You know, the high school kids will joke, oh, we were playing something else or looking at TikTok while we were supposed to be Zooming. I don't want to hear that, but that's the reality sometimes.

[Speaker 4] (1:23:39 - 1:23:52)
So it's a long time. Home is so different for people post-pandemic. It certainly was during it, but it really has reinvented the workforce.

So everybody's home is very different now than it was a few years ago.

[Speaker 7] (1:23:52 - 1:24:09)
That's kind of what I'm getting at. And even going back to school, it's not like it was for whatever reason. You know what I mean?

And so I just worry that it's not going to look normal. We're looking at weird data from weird years, and it's not going to look normal for quite a while.

[Speaker 2] (1:24:09 - 1:24:26)
Well, I think even students developmentally, they're all two years behind. Basically, that's what it is. My daughter's 20.

Really, I look at her like she's 18, because she recognizes she lost a lot, a lot of experiences. And so we do have to get back there. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:24:26 - 1:24:27)
Anything else?

[Speaker 4] (1:24:28 - 1:25:08)
No, I just want to... It's always fascinating. I appreciate how you dig into these numbers.

I think about where we were five years ago when we got MCAS, and it was just like, here's our numbers, whereas, you know, you... You just bring the acumen that you bring to it. My question is, were there...

I have two questions. One, was there anything that was really surprising to you? And B, has this...

I know that not one thing changes your directive, but are your priorities different now than they were, say, six months ago?

[Speaker 1] (1:25:10 - 1:26:24)
I think something that surprised me pleasantly was the good results for the elementary math. So that was really... I'm very pleased with that.

I'm just crossing my fingers that we continue on that trajectory, because it's hard, it's really hard when you adopt a new program. There's a lot of trepidation and a lot of learning that people have to do, and it's very difficult, so I was really pleased to see that. You know, the fifth grade issue was something that I wasn't necessarily expecting, because that's not something that had stuck out prior to the pandemic, that there was such a difference for the fifth grade, and the fact that it wasn't just fifth-grade math or fifth-grade ELA or fifth-grade science, it was fifth grade in general.

So that raises a lot of interesting questions about why, and I think we're going to need to do some more investigation, have some more data, really track that, you know, those two cohorts, the fifth grade last year's fifth graders who are now six, and the kids who are in fifth grade this year, to see what we're seeing in January and see if that gives us any more clues about how we might explain or address that pretty unusual result.

[Speaker 4] (1:26:24 - 1:26:34)
And that means, like, to the work that we did with the contract, that means those once-a-week meetings with the teachers in that level?

[Speaker 2] (1:26:37 - 1:26:47)
There's a lot of different work groups that are going on. It's not necessarily those Wednesday meetings times where this discussion would occur. You know, the 33 Wednesdays, we got...

[Speaker 1] (1:26:48 - 1:27:47)
Yeah, not tied to that. Not necessarily, yeah. And they're pretty big-picture issues, right?

And those Wednesday meetings are more about, like, you know, these are the kids in front of me, this is what I've got to teach next week, and how can I do best for that? So a lot more energies at that level, I think, during those Wednesday meetings. Or, again, some of the work that I was describing about instruction in general.

And one of the things to piggyback off what you all were saying about the... It's going to take several years to sort of get back to where we were. Part of what's happening also is that our student body is changing, and their expectations for what school is are changing.

And we, as the people who are trying to provide learning for them, also need to change how we're approaching education in significant ways. I mean, the world is not the same now as it was before 2020, not just because of the pandemic, because of so many things that are happening in our culture. So we really have to also be just learning how to educate the new students.

[Speaker 2] (1:27:49 - 1:27:51)
Thank you, Dr. Filkin. Did you have anything?

[Speaker 3] (1:27:51 - 1:27:52)
Do you want to go first?

[Speaker 12] (1:27:52 - 1:27:53)
No, I'm...

[Speaker 3] (1:27:53 - 1:29:11)
First, thank you. As a data guy, this... The worst part of the data is we don't have enough data.

And I was meeting with Mr. Kalishman on a completely unrelated topic earlier today, and we actually talked a little bit about the fifth- and sixth-graders when they came in and the learning differential. And not only are... I think we're seeing this at, you know, at a school district, local level, but I know that at college level, they're really having some challenges with freshman year.

And those kids who are even seniors now aren't ready. Some of those... I'm talking to both my kids who are mightily working hard in their capstones, and there's been a lot of kids who just are struggling mightily because they basically missed a year and a half of school.

And if that cohort is struggling, I can't imagine a fourth- and fifth- and sixth-grader what they're struggling with. So I think it'll be fascinating as we see this data. And I think, as everybody said, unfortunately, there's no quick fix.

There's going to be... We're going to have to look at data over the next few years and see what happens. But this information's great, and please come back at any time.

I think everybody really appreciates it. So thank you very much.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:11 - 1:29:12)
You're welcome.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:14 - 1:29:14)
All right.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:15 - 1:29:17)
Moving on to chair updates.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:17 - 1:29:20)
Okay. I have a couple things, actually.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:20 - 1:29:23)
Wait. How about the... You did that?

[Speaker 3] (1:29:23 - 1:29:46)
Yeah. I have a couple things. First and foremost, just so it's publicly known, the superintendent and myself are meeting in a tri-chair meeting on Monday morning at 8 o'clock in the morning.

That's 8 a.m. in the morning. Um... Pick your light.

That sounds like your Monday morning.

[Speaker 12] (1:29:46 - 1:29:48)
I was just going to say, that's mid-morning for me, so that's fine.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:49 - 1:30:00)
The superintendent and I are meeting with the chair of the select board, the finance committee, and the town administrator to review some... Excuse me, and Ms. Seiber to discuss...

[Speaker 12] (1:30:00 - 1:30:01)
And, I believe, the...

[Speaker 3] (1:30:02 - 1:30:23)
And Amy Zara to discuss some interesting budgetary discussions. So we're all excited about that. If the remaining of the board will indulge me for a couple minutes, there's a couple things I'd like to talk about.

And I'll ask you to make sure I stay in my lane here, okay?

[Speaker 4] (1:30:23 - 1:30:24)
So I can kick yours?

[Speaker 3] (1:30:24 - 1:34:05)
Yes, you can do that. So, just going to... I think the first one I want to talk about is just the...

What I hear was a fantastic job by everybody up in this building today with gas leak from the administrators, the teachers, the students, Swampskate Fire Department, Police Department, and other first responders who came. On behalf of the board, thank you for everybody for your hard work. It was done quickly, efficiently, and learning started quickly thereafter.

A few weeks ago, I did have a little discussion about social media. And as a reminder, I'm a social media guy. I like social media, although I'm very careful to stay off social media right now.

However, there was a post on social media today during the middle of this whole thing that took my breath away. And I do want to thank Amy and Karen who talked me a little off the leg. And I really appreciate that.

You really gave me a lot to think about. And I'm glad the meeting is now. But I spoke to you this morning.

In all seriousness, social media has its place. However, if information is needed or required, please don't post something that you hear, whether you hear from your student, whether you hear from your neighbor, whether you hear from the people at the grocery store. If you have a question and you are concerned for your child's well-being, email the people who actually have the information.

Don't put something out on social media that can cause and add chaos to what was already a potentially chaotic problem. Don't make the problem worse. I'm not going to get into what specifically was said.

I can only tell you that I really do appreciate Karen and Amy in our 10-minute conversation this morning. It's very serious. What was said was serious.

And I think all of us up here, and especially me, who was informed about it by a member of the community, just ask the question. Ask the question of the professionals who you trust your children with. They will give you the answer.

At the same token, in our instant world, everybody has phones, everyone has phones for a very long time. Give the school department at least a second to figure out what the problem is, to get your children to safety, before you start spreading rumor innuendo. That, to me, was the biggest concern, was that rumor innuendo and what someone reading that cold could have reacted to.

I'm going to get off my horse about that.

[Speaker 2] (1:34:05 - 1:35:27)
Can I just add to that? I think it's difficult as parents to remember that in the midst of a crisis, we will get you the accurate information as soon as we're able. But we can't do it when we're not in the building, we're in the middle of a crisis.

So you just said it, but we need a moment to get back into the building to put together that information to share with you. We're not hiding anything, but please don't jump to assumptions in the middle of a crisis while it's still occurring. And that inaccurate information that got out there, I couldn't get back to my office fast enough, nor could Mr. Cohut, to communicate what really happened. Meanwhile, social media is blowing up with something that is so far-fetched and so off-base that it's alarming the community. And that's alarming to me. We can't address, share with you what the crisis is until we're out of it.

And so just give us the gift of a minute to get your kids back in school, get them back to learning, and then communicate what's going on. So, yeah, I really... texting your student during the day or students texting parents with rumors just creates chaos.

[Speaker 4] (1:35:27 - 1:35:38)
It just... I will add, though, that I went... after our conversation, I did go and look at it.

And I think the good news is that it was actually pretty limited.

[Speaker 13] (1:35:39 - 1:35:39)
Yes.

[Speaker 4] (1:35:39 - 1:35:46)
And there were not many people who responded to it. There was...

[Speaker 14] (1:35:46 - 1:35:46)
Luckily.

[Speaker 4] (1:35:46 - 1:36:05)
...somebody who was pretty reasonable and pretty quickly said, like, this is garbage. But there's always gonna be... There's...

They'll always... They'll always be there. So I think your point is the right one, which is call the school.

Okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:36:06 - 1:36:08)
But we're not gonna answer because we're all in the middle of a crisis.

[Speaker 12] (1:36:08 - 1:36:09)
So I'm just saying that.

[Speaker 7] (1:36:09 - 1:36:32)
But still, yeah, if... As a parent, you're always... You always have the right to be worried about your child.

If you are worried, if you think something's happening, you call the school. You call the police. Like, Facebook's not gonna help your kid or you or any social media.

They're not gonna help you. That's not the place to go. So...

[Speaker 6] (1:36:32 - 1:36:39)
But I don't think what we're saying is don't check in with your kid and say, are you safe, which is different than what's going on.

[Speaker 4] (1:36:39 - 1:36:48)
Right, right. But if your child tells you that there is a gun at the school, then the response is to call the police and not to get on Facebook. Sorry.

[Speaker 3] (1:36:50 - 1:36:53)
Um, Suzanne, anything to add to this lovely discovery?

[Speaker 12] (1:36:55 - 1:37:01)
I'm not on social media. I have no idea what happened to end.

[Speaker 3] (1:37:02 - 1:40:45)
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for the comments.

And again, I'm sorry to end that up. So the last thing I do want to talk about, and this goes back a couple weeks now, is the incident up in the high school, the antisemitic incident with the distribution of a highly offensive image. Again, what I hear, because this is not in our lane, that high school did a fantastic job in doing what they could to identify and control what happened up here.

Mr. Culhut did a fantastic job, I understand, at the meeting the next day, made sure everyone felt safe, made sure in no uncertain terms that what is expected in society, let alone in this building. You know, all I have to do is look at the news, not even social media, and you hear things that, you know, for someone like myself and others up here, it's cold. You know, it makes me think.

And it goes on here, it goes on everywhere. We're not insulated whatsoever. And I'm kind of glad that, you know, what's gone has given me a couple weeks here to kind of really think this through.

I mean, I have spoken to many, many people in our community and out of our community, and I would just ask parents, you know, have the conversations. Have the conversations about what is antisemitism, what is racism, what is, what does it mean to be the same? What does it mean to be, you know, different?

And, you know, I know the school district has curriculum about this, these type of topics that maybe should be looked at. Do we expand it? But there's so many other things to do.

We just, a great discussion from Dr. Bacon about we have this learning loss. And so there's so much to cover. But I don't believe that a school's job is to tell our students how to think, what to think, what's right, what's wrong.

I mean, we have to do that because we have rules, we have policies. But it really does start elsewhere. And I know that what happened upset me to the nth degree.

And I'm just a school committee member. I'm not here every day. But for someone that's part of the community, and, you know, it's not isolated.

But it's up to the parents and the caregivers to educate the right and the wrong. We can't do that. You guys can't do that.

We can, the educators, the administrators, staff, they can help. But at the end of the day, it's a parent's job. It's a guardian's job.

Have those hard conversations. And any conversation's not a bad conversation. So that's all I'm going to say about the topic.

I don't know if anybody else has something to add.

[Speaker 4] (1:40:48 - 1:40:50)
If I might, if I may.

[Speaker 3] (1:40:50 - 1:40:50)
Absolutely.

[Speaker 4] (1:40:50 - 1:43:28)
One of the things that struck me was the child that did this and what I believe is true about his lack of understanding of the depth of really what it meant. And it occurred to me that, speaking to learning loss, you know, having a kid who is in his first year of college now, I know that that 8th grade programming about the Holocaust was really influential for him. And I had a conversation with my 10th grader who had a very different response because it was a really truncated experience with that piece of the puzzle.

So I think it's important for us to remember that learning loss isn't always just about math or reading. But, you know, to Mr. Dulett's point last year, there was, you know, a number of kids, you know, there were fights here at the high school that hadn't been seen in years. And I believe that we do have to do more of this at school because of what hasn't happened.

So, you know, the fact that 8th grade programming really didn't happen for a lot of kids, I mean, I'm sure it did, but not in the same way as my child who went through it a few years earlier. And I think as parents or as adults, it's, like, we all have this sort of... So I think it's easy for all of us to say, well, you know, it's the pandemic and, you know, there was loss.

But in our day-to-day, remembering that life is really different for these kids. So I don't know. I don't know what that means, but I don't envy you, Dr. Bacon and Ms. Angelakis, to figure out what it is. It's a daily thing.

[Speaker 3] (1:43:30 - 1:43:38)
Thank you for indulging. I really appreciate that. Subcommittee.

School building committee update. Ms. Wright.

[Speaker 5] (1:43:39 - 1:46:11)
Oh, wow. There's been a lot going on. Very exciting stuff, actually.

Our last school building committee, I think, was... I guess we didn't have a... You guys wouldn't have heard that we voted for a general contractor, I think, because we didn't have a school committee last week.

So we have a general contractor on board. There's, you know, lots of meetings happened this week where we got to meet the whole team and sit together in a room and sort of really, really get down to, like, the project schedule and a whole bunch of nitty-gritty things that were sort of just exciting, because it's going to happen, right? And the first thing that's probably going to happen is a community meeting.

So that's going to be organized to talk about lasting. We have an onsite... I mean, a site work contractor who will be spearheading that and having discussions about the blasting and sort of the timeline and what will be happening for neighbors for their blast surveys.

So that's great. So that'll happen. And then that'll follow up with actually surveying people's homes.

So that'll be great, because I know there's a lot of people out there waiting to hear when this is going to happen. So we're going to have a much better timeline on that very soon. And also, last night's select...

Well, so our general contractor came in under budget by about $725,000, if we use all our contingency to help pay for it, right? So we are at no money for anything, and that's not okay to go into this size project with. And so we've asked...

The school building committee talked about this a lot, and we agreed to ask the town to replenish our contingency. And last night at their select board meeting, that was the first hurdle. They agreed to fund the contingency.

So they're going to replenish us back to our 5%. That's generally what you do for construction. And we were down to, you know, less than 0.05%. So now we're back up to 5% contingency money. And that's money, you know, we hope we don't have to use. You know, we hope we never have to touch it. It's not like to buy extras, right?

It's really to pay for things that we're already doing. But so it's left... It's going to go back to the town, obviously, but...

[Speaker 4] (1:46:11 - 1:46:17)
I'm not sure I follow. So they came in under budget.

[Speaker 5] (1:46:17 - 1:46:37)
So what happens is we have a budget, right? And they bid... So you have to take the little bidder, right, in public procurement.

So they came in with a bid. And our overall budget was just a tiny bit more than their bid. But that included us using our contingency, which we didn't...

Which we don't want to do.

[Speaker 4] (1:46:37 - 1:46:37)
Right.

[Speaker 5] (1:46:37 - 1:47:36)
So in order to say yes to these people, and, you know, we had to just try to figure out how we can say yes to them without cutting anything out of the building. We have been looking at this building, and it's down to exactly what it needs. You know, there's not an extra, you know, chair in the building.

So we just didn't want to compromise any of the learning programs or safety or sustainability. So it was really important for us to try to, you know, ask the town to help us with this right now and sort of get us through to the project. Anyway, I think that it'll go before town meeting.

And we're having a special town meeting in December. I mean, we are anyway, but this will be added to the warrant. So that was really good news because this is really important.

And also we are considering the date of December 13th for groundbreaking.

[Speaker 13] (1:47:37 - 1:47:37)
Great.

[Speaker 5] (1:47:37 - 1:48:00)
So I have no idea what time yet. We haven't really talked about what it's going to look like, but I think it's going to be a couple of people holding shovels. I hope you get a shovel.

Yes, you absolutely get a shovel. I really want a hard hat. I have my hard hat vest and goggles.

I know. Anyway, I think that's the big news, right?

[Speaker 9] (1:48:01 - 1:48:39)
It is. I just can't impress enough how thrilled we are at CTA with the bid coming in within our budget. There are a lot of other bids out right now that are well-spent, $20 million over budget.

Knostad High School, $25 million over budget. And over budget. We are so fortunate that we've done a tremendous job and we did come in within our budget so we can award the contract and move forward.

And we're incredibly grateful that the select board supported us and that we sent for a town meeting and hopefully we can put a town meeting to replenish the contingency. We're not going to spend it unless we need to. Right.

[Speaker 5] (1:48:41 - 1:49:07)
Yeah, it's great. It was really fun to sit with the construction team. I felt really good today.

I really, just to know who's going to be on the site and the guys from our design team, the guys from the construction team that are on the site. A lot of people have had working relationships with each other so it's going to be great. Yeah.

So that's the school building. There's a meeting on Monday, but it's virtual.

[Speaker 3] (1:49:07 - 1:49:20)
It's great. I look forward to the groundbreaking. Yeah, it's really neat.

Yeah. Policy subcommittee meeting dates. Do you guys have anything in the queue that you want to talk about?

[Speaker 5] (1:49:21 - 1:50:03)
Well, we have a spreadsheet that has a whole list of policies that have been waiting in the wings to get done. I know I saw a note before Maureen retired. She sent an email about some policies that internal staff were talking about.

There were some policies about personnel, like just some different things that people were suggesting changes. So I think we have to have an in-person meeting probably with, I think, Dr. Bacon, for one, because there's something about having to have a complaint about curriculum and materials. There's a policy.

We're going to have to look at it.

[Speaker 2] (1:50:04 - 1:50:07)
I'll be happy to be part of any policy meeting.

[Speaker 5] (1:50:07 - 1:50:23)
Yeah, so I think we just need to schedule something, and then we can just talk about maybe which ones we can work on. So many of the policies are just slight word changes or new laws. Let's get together and go through the list.

Yeah, I think we need to do that. Okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:50:24 - 1:50:42)
Great. Thank you. I just know from you guys who sit on the budget subcommittee, I'll send you guys a report after we meet on Monday.

The tri-chair? The tri-chair, just to bring you guys up to speed and let you guys let me know what you think when I send that.

[Speaker 7] (1:50:42 - 1:50:58)
Okay. And then I was going to throw out, I had just communicated with Ms. Eibert, if we want to try to get a budget subcommittee of the whole together before we leave, which would be like the week after. Maybe like Monday, the 28th.

[Speaker 3] (1:50:58 - 1:51:02)
Like immediately after. Yeah. Yeah.

If you would do that, that would be great.

[Speaker 9] (1:51:03 - 1:51:04)
Absolutely. Okay.

[Speaker 7] (1:51:09 - 1:51:13)
So then I'll get something on the books and send it out to everybody.

[Speaker 3] (1:51:13 - 1:51:14)
Perfect. Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (1:51:14 - 1:51:15)
And just reach out to Nancy.

[Speaker 7] (1:51:15 - 1:51:16)
Okay. Perfect.

[Speaker 3] (1:51:16 - 1:52:33)
Great. All right. Thank you, everybody.

All right. The consent agenda. The consent agenda is, you know, Mr. Kovach. I should really be reading this now. The consent agenda is designed to expedite the handling of routine and miscellaneous business of the district. The school committee may adopt the entire consent agenda with one motion.

At the request of any committee member, any item or items may be removed from the consent agenda and placed on the regular agenda for discussion. Tonight we have six things. A is regular session minutes from October 27th, 2022.

B, donation. If you want a state street matching donation, the robotics team. C, donation to Weatherspoon Charitable Foundation for the Swansgate High School Chorus Musical Program.

D, donation for the Weatherspoon Charitable Foundation Discovery Point Program as directed by Emily Borden. Donation once again from the Weatherspoon Charitable Foundation for the High School Trauma Club and warrant number 2317 and 2319. And as has been the case, I'd like to just bring up and talk about the donations, if that's okay.

John, do you want to talk about the first one?

[Speaker 6] (1:52:33 - 1:53:48)
Sure. Happy to. So this is something my wife and I made a donation in my employer's state street as a terrific matching program for nonprofits.

If you submit it, if they approve it, they match your donation. So again, they were able to match and we think very highly of the program. Ms. Wilbur and Mr. Crocker have done a great job with the kids. And our daughter, Helen, is going into her second year with the team. Absolutely loves it. And I think there's about 60 kids now who participate.

And, you know, I just encourage, you know, I was actually mentioning to some friends that, you know, my employer has this matching, just, you know, others out there, you know, check their employers if they have a matching program like this. You know, I was told by folks where I work that, you know, a lot of people just don't even know about it. So just to throw that out there.

[Speaker 3] (1:53:50 - 1:54:23)
That's fantastic. Thank you. I'll just go through the Witherspoon Charitable Foundations.

Dated October 25, 2022. The individual submitting the donation form, Steve Van Zandt. The name of the donor organization, the Witherspoon Charitable Foundation.

They are located in Nahant. And the description is to be used for the Swarovski High School Chorus and Musical Program. That's one.

[Speaker 2] (1:54:23 - 1:54:24)
That's for $2,500.

[Speaker 3] (1:54:25 - 1:54:27)
Thank you. Oh, I didn't see.

[Speaker 2] (1:54:28 - 1:54:29)
Wow.

[Speaker 3] (1:54:29 - 1:55:11)
And that is for $2,500. Thank you very much. Next, again, submitted on the 25th of October, 2022.

The individual submitting, James A. Christie. The organization, again, the Witherspoon Charitable Foundation, located in Nahant.

They are giving a donation of $5,000 grant for the Discovery Program at Swarovski High School. And the use restriction, the use solely by the Discovery Program, as directed by Emily Borden. Do you know, can you just give us maybe 30 seconds, if you know what the Discovery Program is?

[Speaker 2] (1:55:12 - 1:55:20)
Sure. Wait a minute. We need to get you a microphone.

Sorry. I can't say it, but we have the assistant superintendent here.

[Speaker 11] (1:55:22 - 1:55:48)
Sorry, just a tickle. Discovery Learning Center and Discovery Point. Discovery Learning Center is our program for students with autism and intellectual disabilities, grades 9 to 12.

We also have Discovery Point, which is our transition program with the same population for students who are 18 to 22. It's an awesome program. I'm sorry.

That's okay. 18 to 22, based here out of the high school. It is.

It's great.

[Speaker 2] (1:55:48 - 1:55:49)
And Emily Borden.

[Speaker 11] (1:55:49 - 1:56:08)
I don't know if people have been to the Emily Takes the Kids football team. She's out at the Farmer's Market. She's great.

I'm sorry. You're, like, joking. It's my asthma.

I know. She's acting up. But, yeah, she's amazing.

She's really amazing.

[Speaker 3] (1:56:08 - 1:56:20)
Great. Well, that's an amazing donation. And then lastly, dated 11-3-2022, the individual submitting the form looks like Walter Christie.

[Speaker 13] (1:56:20 - 1:56:22)
Walker. Walker.

[Speaker 3] (1:56:22 - 1:57:00)
I'm sorry. Again, the Weatherspoon Charitable Foundation based in Ahant. And this donation will be used for the Swanson High School Trauma Club and to the tune of $500.

So, on behalf of the Swanson School Committee to both John and State Street Bank and the Weatherspoon Charitable Foundation, thank you very much. Your donation goes a very long way at a public school. So, thank you.

Thank you again. With that, can someone please make a motion to accept the consent agenda?

[Speaker 4] (1:57:00 - 1:57:02)
I'll make the motion. Second.

[Speaker 3] (1:57:02 - 1:57:04)
Second. Okay. All in favor, say aye.

[Speaker 4] (1:57:04 - 1:57:05)
Aye.

[Speaker 3] (1:57:05 - 1:57:07)
Any opposed? The motion carries.

[Speaker 4] (1:57:08 - 1:57:15)
Can I ask a question about the Weatherspoon Foundation? I know I did last time, as well, because they gave a pretty generous gift at our last meeting, I believe.

[Speaker 2] (1:57:16 - 1:58:16)
I believe the, so the Weatherspoon Foundation is the Christie family that were, had gone to Stanley School. Since my day at Stanley School, the Weatherspoon Charitable Foundation, of which they run, has been giving significant amount of money to the school district. I believe we totaled in my office somewhere upwards of $12,000.

They're donating to the school in various grant opportunities. But, multiply that by, I left Stanley School in 2014. And so, they continue to give.

Walker Christie, Steve Besant, they are the children who are now grown adults. And Sarah Christie is the mom. James Christie, Walker Christie, and Steve Besant are the children.

Sarah Christie is the mom. They went through Stanley School. They went through the Swamp for Public Schools.

And they continue to give. This is their charitable foundation.

[Speaker 4] (1:58:16 - 1:58:23)
I would love as a group to acknowledge them. Because this is pretty special.

[Speaker 2] (1:58:24 - 1:58:33)
I'm sure we can find Sarah's contact information, the address. I just was with Sarah yesterday. Oh, really?

And you can give me the direct line.

[Speaker 3] (1:58:34 - 1:58:43)
If you know, if they, if she ever wanted to come in, just pay kudos to her. That would be great. All right.

With that, can someone make a motion to adjourn?

[Speaker 5] (1:58:44 - 1:58:44)
I will.

[Speaker 3] (1:58:45 - 1:58:45)
Any second?

[Speaker 5] (1:58:46 - 1:58:46)
I'll second.

[Speaker 3] (1:58:47 - 1:58:47)
All in favor?

[Speaker 5] (1:58:48 - 1:58:48)
Aye.

[Speaker 3] (1:58:48 - 1:58:53)
No one opposed. Thank you very much, everybody. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

[Speaker 4] (1:59:03 - 1:59:04)
Thank you.