November 5, 2025 – School Committee – Video & Transcript

November 5, 2025 - School Committee

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Okay. We're not waiting on anybody from your side, right? Admin-wise? No, right? Okay. Welcome to the Whalen School Committee meeting. It is 6.03 p.m. on Wednesday, November 5, 2025. We have all of our school committee members present and our administrative team, David Fleischman, Betsy Averon, Kirsteen Patterson, and Ronnie Kessler. And we are being recorded by WACAM. I don't see anyone here for public comment. Okay. Oh, we can move right along to the superintendent's update 3.1 MCAS update. Yes, we have a big MCAS update. Okay. Is this in our fold? Yes, it is. Sorry. I apologize. Just pulled it up. Obviously, families get individual results on their students, but we take a look at district data for trends. And also, we have a new test this year, civics. It's my favorite subject. An important one as we think about our country and understanding separation of powers and all that. So, I'll turn it right over to Betsy to share some district themes. We obviously aggregate our data, and she'll talk more about that as well. Well, thanks, everybody. So, tonight I thought we'd do a little bit of context setting. There's been a few changes since the last time we met, including some concerns around some AI scoring that I'm sure you've seen in the media. We'll talk about some of the key points from our ELA math, science, technology, engineering, and social studies assessments, looking at some proficiency and growth. And we'll speak to some good news around chronic absenteeism, and talk a little bit about the curricular implications. So, why do we take MCAS, given the fact that the vote on question two last year voted down MCAS? As you know, but not everybody in the public may know, the no vote on MCAS meant that MCAS could no longer be used as a graduation requirement. However, we still are mandated under federal law to take that. And that goes back to no child left behind for many, many years ago. And MCAS started back in the late 90s. And then our Every Student Succeeds Act came in as well, and continued the federal mandate there. As you know, we updated our CD requirement as of last year. There are some new requirements that have come into play that we'll be presenting about next month, and some adjustments based on that. So, that is up and coming. But MCAS, and MCAS will play a small role in that for some subgroups of students, but on the whole, MCAS will no longer be a graduation requirement. And we still take MCAS also because there's some significant state scholarship money that's involved, um, through the John Adams and Abigail, John and Abigail Adams Scholarship and the Stanley Z, um, um, Public, um, Mastery, um, Certification II, which is, um, a financial award for tuition for some students. So, that's important there. Um, and so MCAS, as I mentioned, began in 98. It became computer-based back in 2015. Um, we had full tests, uh, in 2019. So, this is a lot of uh, in 2019. So, this is just the recent history. Um, as you recall, in 2020, no tests due to the pandemic. In 2021, there was, there were half tests given, full tests in the high school. However, we had a ton of opt-outs that year. So, the data that year is a little, um, questionable. Uh, full tests again in 22-23. Last year, we had full tests, but no test items were shared. So, it was harder to use some of that data. Um, they did, they did send us some tests test items this year, um, as well as some essays this year. So, that's more helpful. What does that mean? Sorry. But, what does it mean, no test items? So, every year, they release certain questions. So, then you can, um, look at the questions, see how kids did, and try to figure out, you know, what they may have misunderstood. So, that you can... Like, on the whole, kind of? Like, looking at the results? Yeah. So, they'll, they'll release about 24 questions, typically, and they'll release, like, at least one essay for each student. Do you know, Betsy? Is it random, or do they select what they release, in part, by how students performed on it in the state? Yeah. So, so, uh, that's a great question. Um, I'm not 100% sure. I do know, though, that some of the questions, so, some students, students take some, all of the same questions, and some are trial questions every year, to sort of see, do they, how, how do kids do in these questions, relative to the other questions, based on their overall, they kind of test questions out as well. So, that, that happens from year to year. Um, go ahead. Sorry. Was there a reason why they said we're not sharing any items in 24? Not a clear one that they gave us, so that we didn't change, um, from Pearson had been our test administrator since we went to computer-based tests, both with the, um, next generation tests, um, as well as PARC, that they had overseen, and we switched to Cognia this past year, which is a different platform. So, I don't know if that was part of the transition, but, but there was definitely, it was frustrating to not have some of the data. So, we were happy to get more of the data this year. Um, and then the civics, as, as David mentioned, that we, um, had piloted the year before, we did a full-blown eighth grade civics test. Um, so, as I mentioned, um, concerns have been raised around AI being used to grade essays. Um, so, so, so that was a newer development this year, um, and they, the, the testing company identified some irregularities that were brought up from a number of different places, um, and they then did a deeper dive and some scoring checks, um, across the board. In doing so, they identified nine Wayland students whose tests were originally, um, graded incorrectly, the essays components. They corrected those, those, those nine students' scores prior to giving us the final release or sending things out to any, um, families. We just got the names late this afternoon of those students, and we started, um, going through those essays. And, overall, they look, the, the new scores look like we would have expected them based on the scoring. Um, if a parent, however, wishes to see some unreleased essays, they did, there was a small, tiny print that's that they can contact. Desi at, um, mcats.mass.gov. So, wanted to put that out there as an option for folks. Um, certainly, you know, when these kind of things happened, it erodes trust and confidence in the, in the tests, and people already have different feelings about MCAS to begin with. Um, so, um, it's important that, that, you know, we, we make sure that the, the grading is consistent. Um, so, so, big picture overall on the test, uh, Wayland met all of our performance benchmarks this year. Um, I did, our benchmarks were higher than the year before, and we, we met those, so we remain a level one district, which is where we want to be. Um, it's notable that across the state, the tenth grade scores dipped a bit. Uh, overall, our Wayland ELA scores have improved, and some specific grade improvement. We had ELA in grades six, seven, and eight. Math in grades three and eight. Science in grades eight. A lot of the other grades sort of stayed steady. Um, you may recall last year, at this point, I was telling you that as a district, we earned, earned zero out of four points on our MCAS, um, chronic absenteeism, and this year, we earned four out of four points. And so, we really, really appreciate family's help with this. Um, and you will see, well, well, we have some great spots in terms of performance and growth improvements. We still have some, uh, disparities that, that remain. So, here is the kind of a big picture longitudinal data. Um, so, when you look at just grades three through eight, you can see the 20, 25 scores that are in bold, and the state scores are, uh, beside them that are in the parentheses. Um, the N, oops, that should say 2025, I apologize. Oh, okay. Um, so, the N is just the, the number of students that were tested in grades three through eight, and then in grades in ten. So, you can see we have some slight improvements in, in ELA, as I mentioned. Um, the other grades are pretty steady, um, significant improvement in math in grade ten, um, and otherwise pretty, pretty steady, uh, for the big picture. You go to the next slide. This is the slide that sort of shows the cohorts over time. So, um, for example, if you start in the upper left corner with our third graders back in 2017, you can, if you go down diagonally, you can kind of track their scores, which goes in a nice, beautiful diagonal until you get to the last line, and it's bumped over one because there's no ninth grade MCAS. So, that's why it's, it looks a little off. Um, the, the big picture story is, while there's some fluctuation over time, on whole, by the time kids get to tenth grade, um, most of our students are meeting or exceeding, um, expectations on the MCAS. And back when MCAS was a CD requirement, um, there are students who are in partially meeting that still meet the requirement, even though it's partially meeting. So, we, we typically do not have many students who do not meet the, the former CD requirements for MCAS. Let's see. Yeah. On this one, tenth grade, the numbers on the left are much higher than the ones on the third grade. Yeah, so there was a change in, um, in, in the MCAS at that, um, at, right, right at that year. Um, so some of them are, are pre-1998 scores. Um, the other, was that the, um, Park and then the next, when we went from Park to the next gen, um, MCAS between 2018 and 2019. So it was a different test and it had a slightly different scoring. Okay. So what I believe is where you see it's at 98%. You know who I said, um, some of our, even though that says 87 and 89, there are more students who would have passed, quote unquote, passed the CD. And I think those 98% um, included those scores as well. It was just scored a little bit differently with slightly different tables, which is why the percentages look higher. Overall, while they weren't meeting or exceeding expectations, still the partially meeting scores weren't reflected there, though they would have been, that would have taken us to those like 98 levels, if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I'm also concerned that, you know, the scores are like 82. I mean, that's like one in five kids are not meeting the expectation. That's like a lot. I hear you. I know we have high standards, but like it just, that seems like a pretty high percentage. Yeah. And I, and, and I do think our state standards are rigorous, um, and that is why we are always working to continue to, um, improve the work that we're doing and tier our instruction so that we can reach more students. Um, here's the comparable math set of scores that you can see. Trace the classes. Trace the classes. That's good. So, um, last, last year we talked a little bit about our new Open Architect platform. Here's a slide from Open Architect, which gives us, um, pretty robust data. This is just a large overview. So you can see that, um, uh, the, in the lower left-hand corner is a, um, a line graph, which sort of shows how our performance has been over time in recent years. And so the line on top is our district line and the line below it is the state line. You can see, um, Christina, that's what you were referencing sort of where that, in the middle section, where that dotted line is. Uh, our students that are partially meeting or not meeting. And so it, it, um, a very useful visual for us to sort of see who those students are. We can click on those and drill down into their data. It also breaks down for us, um, how we're doing in the different, uh, aspects of our ELA test. So you can see reading, language, essay and writing, um, continue to be our, and have historically been and mirrors what's happening in the state. Those are the areas where we, which are, um, which are harder, harder to completely master those, those pieces, essay and writing pieces. You can see the grades as well, um, uh, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, again, meeting and exceeding expectations. Yeah, I mean, I, I just want to comment that it, it's really striking to me that, you know, the reading and the language is high, which is kind of pulling up the scores. But essay and writing, I mean, these are close to 50%. That, that's really concerning to me. No, I, I hear you Christina and Em. We, I was just meeting with the curriculum leaders, are equally concerned about kids writing, um, these days. I think as they're, um, reading less and on, on, on screens more outside of school and experiencing different things. Um, I was just mentioning to somebody recently, kids are not, uh, having the same as, as many language-rich experiences overall. And so we're really trying to inundate them with that in, um, while they're here in school. As you know, we're looking at our ELA curriculum, particularly in elementary school, um, and thinking deeply about the kind of reading and writing experiences, and integrated reading and writing experiences, and really focusing on building knowledge, building vocabulary, um, in very deliberate ways, both horizontally and vertically, in, in different content areas, so that they have more to write about when they're writing, and have a richer vocabulary. You know, interesting, um, things that kids, like, knew many years ago. I, I, I, I was, I was just sharing the difference between do and mildew, and, and using different words kids are getting tripped up on sometimes. So, so, um, we're continuing to look on that, continue to work on that, continue to support students in, in those pieces. Um, but overall, as I said, we've seen some improvements this year. You'll notice that there's an average, um, SGP. That stands for the student growth percentile. Um, so SGP is the, um, so sort of a 1 to 19 would be a very low student growth percentile. And that is calculated based on how students did one year compared to their peers for the previous two years that scored similarly. So, say I got a 500 this year. I'd be compared to, and I'd be compared to, um, how I did this year to next, sorry, last year I got a 500. They'd look at people like, who got 500s in last year and the year before, and then see how we did this year, and use that to kind of scale how the growth is. So you'd kind of line up kids 1 to 100, and you, this is where you fell. So, um, very low growth again is 1 to 19. Low growth is sort of 20 to 39. Typical growth is 40 to 59. And then above that 60 to 79 is high growth, and 80 to 99 is very high growth. Um, so we, our growth has improved, um, overall from our, for the previous two years. So, which is trending in the right direction. But did you have a sense, I mean, um, the delta between the state average and Wayland is obviously quite significant, as we saw in being a level one district. I'm just curious if we think about, and it may vary by grade level, how much of that difference is driven by outperforming on the math versus outperforming on the ELA, whether that's something that you find, you know, at a high level informative or not. Yeah, um. Because we seem closer to the state on the ELA scores. Particularly as we just talked about an essay in writing, so. Yeah. So the, the, um, the, sorry, the average percent correct by category. That means if there were, um, like how many points are available, and how many points we got out of those. Again, I think I've mentioned to this group before, um, you know, the, the essays when students are asking, it's, it's a very scripted condition. You can only read the, um, script that's in the MCAS manual. You can't give any prompts, you can't give any reminders, you can't give, you have to take down actually anything in your room that would be a visual scaffold. Only students who have particular scaffolds in their, um, accommodation plans can use particular things. So none of the coaching, none of the reminding, none of the things. It's, and it's a, it's a very different, it's a long. Is it typing or writing too now? It's all typed. Typed. There, there are a few students who have, um, accommodations. Sure. Who have written, written tests or scribes, but overall. Um, so, and, and I, and I think we're, we're thinking carefully also about, you know, we talk a lot about scaffolding so that, that kids can reach high level standards. And I think, um, one of the themes that we're noticing and we're discussing quite a bit, um, with our curriculum leaders are, are we holding on to some scaffolds too long and creating too much dependency on them? So it's one of the questions we're really, really asking around these things. Um, and it's, it's a very long test too. You know, some kids, when you look at their scores, you'll see they did really, really well and all of a sudden, you know, the second half. Sure. They get fatigued. Exactly. Um, and some kids will sit there literally all day long because it's an untimed test. Would you say year over year, this average percent by category, are these numbers typical? Are they going up? Are they going down? Yeah, so I, um, I, I pulled just a few, um, we have improved in our, like our SGP, um, in both ELA and math and for most of our subgroups as well. Um, particularly, when we get to the subgroup data, well, we, we still have a long way to go, particularly for our black and African American students. As you know, that's been something that we focused on in our SOA plan and they've seen some, um, consistent jumps. So. So I'm talking specifically about this slide, like the reading, the language, the essay, the writing. Are these numbers typical? Is writing going down? Is writing going up year over year? What trends are we seeing with the subcategories here? Yeah, um, yes, we have seen some improvements. Okay. Great. So writing is always lower. Always lower. Just to be clear. No. I've been through a few. I know. Yeah. Um, the writing, where do they look at, like, their grammar? Where is their grammar corrected? Is that writing? In the writing? Yep. So there's, uh, typically in an essay there's two scores, one for idea development and another for conventions in grammar. And there's different rubrics, um, at different grade levels sort of matching what would be expected, um, right? You, you, you're not going to expect third graders to use a semicolon correctly. Right. You will. Right. So it, they, if you Google, um, what are the criteria, it will show you what the criteria are for each grade. And so when I said, you know, we went back and looked at some of the essays that the kids did and we compare them to, to the rubric and we said, yes, these, these match. Got it. Okay. Thank you. It is an area, um, where we continue to need our collective attention and make sure that we're doing writing in, across, across the subject areas as well. Do you feel like it would be helpful to, for students to see their essays and kind of go over them? I mean, I don't know, I've always found feedback helpful. I'm just really concerned with any skill that's going to be at like 51% or 59%. I mean, that's, I don't want to use the F word, but like, that's like failing to me. You know? I, I think the other area is we've seen some very well written essays that didn't quite answer the question that was asked. That was just a little bit to the left or right of what was being asked. Some beautifully developed essays that received zero out of zero, you know, zero out of five points. So, um, and that's the kind of thing where you would have been like, check out that word one more time. And they would have done a beautiful job and gotten full credit. And so that's always a frustration, like a frustration. It's also just one measurement. Remember, like, where, when you have, think about when students are sitting in front of a blank, they get a prompt and it's blank. Like, some kids freeze, some kids need, you know, are used to having that graphic organizer. Um, some kids just have tested anxiety, like it's, they also are used to writing, revising. We've always, you know, you're not done, you're not done, keep revising, keep revising. They have, you know, and there's nobody telling them to go back. There's nobody saying, oh, fix that sentence or fix this or, you know, this is just completely raw of all of that. And it's one measure on one day. So I just, just to caution, like, all of that. Absolutely. And we also look at, when we see kids' scores, we look at it also relative to the other assessments that we do on a regular basis and say, like, does this really match what we see day to day? And if it does, that's one thing. If it's way off other things, then we, then we wonder about some of those test anxiety things and what can we do to support kids so that they feel ready to do this. But it is a really long test, too. We don't typically have kids sit for that long to do this. Because, I mean, you can literally take, like, a one minute break in the middle. You can cover your screen, and then they can stand up and stretch, and then they're right back at it. So it's definitely something that takes time. And when you look over the long run, our students, by the end, are getting to where they need to be for the most part. So here's the math. Math scores are slightly higher than the ELA scores. Again, far above the state, as you can see. The pattern is similar, and we can look at percent correct by categories and all the different strands over grades as well. And the next slide is our science, technology, engineering slides. The science scores on full. Those are just given in grades 5, 8, and 10. Pretty consistent. Civics was given for the first time. Actually, for some reason, open architects did not pull in the other dot. The state average for meeting the exceeding expectations was 39% last year. So we were at 82%. You can see there were three big areas. Government structure, foundations of government, rights and responsibilities. I know you're getting so excited just sitting here listening. I am, too. I share this with David. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And then we're looking at primary source documents, all kinds of pieces with that. I have a quick question. Sure. Back one slide. There's grade 9 on the science. Yeah, so it reports out as grade 10, but because most of our kids take the biology version, our kids tend to take it in 9th grade. There's also, so there's two different versions. Okay. But when it reports in our state data, it'll say grade 5, 8, and 10. Okay. But because of when we offer biology, that's when most of our kids take it. Okay. Great question. Is that unusual? Pay attention to detail. I don't know. I was like. It really varies by district, Betsy, so you'll have districts. What's really usually common in science in Massachusetts is that chemistry is in 10th grade. Right. And life sciences. In 9th grade, you. That's what I did. Students in Newton and Brookline, they have physics in 9th grade, and they take biology in Huffington in 11th grade. That is insane to me. I wouldn't have enjoyed it bad in 9th grade. He took half a year of chemistry and half a year of physics last year, and he's taking a full year of bio this year. Right. That's the integrated model. But the model like the physics in 9th grade. No, that is. Physics for me was junior year. Yeah. And I took AP. So that will impact in terms of what Betsy's talking about. And we've changed our order and math over time. It used to be algebra 1 in 8th grade, algebra 2 in 9th grade, and then geometry. And that has switched. So. Thank you. So when we look at our performance by race, you can sort of see where the disparities are. When I mentioned there were some, while our percentiles are much lower for our black and African American students, they were in the 30s for the previous two years in both of these categories. And so they're into the 40s now. And our student growth percentage, which speaks a lot, was lower. So we're back into the 50s for that. So that is some good news and obviously still a long way to go. Yeah. Betsy, is meeting expectations of 500 or I'm just wondering how far off some of these students were. The other thing that's, so that is the average mean score, 500 is the beginning of meeting expectations. Yeah. So close. Super close. Super, super close. Maybe next year. Yeah. And we have like a list of who's like just one question away. Okay. Are these self-identified? It's however when, when families register for school, when you enroll your child in school, you, just like you do in a census, you indicate your race. It's actually something we were just talking about. We don't have like a Middle Eastern sort of category and there are many people when they come in, they're like, this doesn't describe me properly. So we're, we're, we're thinking about that and there may be some more information. We may expand that. And I heard that Desi is actually going to expand theirs as well, but they just haven't yet. So is this also how Desi maps the student groupings? Mm-hmm. Okay. We have a different mapping than Desi, but to report the MCAS, they would come out as the Desi mappings. However, we. So when we send our data in, so we send it like every, we use our October 1st data, our March 1st data that, that gives us like our total enrollment and our enrollment by, by demographics as well. It goes through there and it's mapped. Like every race has a code. And if you have like this code in that code, it equals this code, which means you're in the multiracial category or. Got it. Different questions. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. And here are the, the science and civics by race. You notice in the, in the right hand column, the civics, those numbers are very small. Um, because it's only one grade. And so Desi would not sort of report out anything under 20, but you know, we always look at data, so we thought it was useful to just share out. Obviously if you have 163 students and one student does poorly, but that does to a mean is, or one student does very well, but it doesn't affect the mean a lot when you only have three in a cohort. Um, that has a huge component. But those are really good percentages that are rates and exceeds for those 13 students. Yes. We are very excited about that. Yeah. I think that's actually outperforming the 163. It certainly does. It certainly does. And it's worth looking at data regardless of Desi's kind of threshold because it's always important. Oh yeah. Which is why we included it, but I did want to note it. That's why we included this presentation, even though it doesn't show out. Typical state report. So I meant to ask this on the civics slide, but knowing that civics came up last year, in your planning for this, did you need to make any substantial curriculum changes, knowing that this test was coming, or? It's a great question. Our curriculum, um, we did a major sort of curriculum realignment a few years ago when the latest standards came out. And so our curriculum was aligned to the standards, so there was not major, you know, teaching to the test. Um, I always, you know, when I taught math here for 14 years, we did not do a lot of teaching to the test, we just taught what we thought well, and then did some test prep the couple weeks before, like, how do you eliminate an answer? You know, the different, different test taking strategy, but having rich curriculum all year long, that's what's going to serve you best on tests like this. So several years ago, districts in eighth grade moved to physics, because historically it was like a U.S. history in eighth grade, so that was a change. So districts had typically a few years ahead of time to really organize their curriculum, and in Wayland, that also caused the shift of the high school as well. So, um, in, for example, in New York, where you and I, you know, I taught, you were a student, you had world history in ninth grade. You taught Kate? No, me neither. No, just New Yorkers. I taught, I know. Sorry. That just, like, blew my mind down for a second. I'm sorry. You were a student, I taught, um, typically in New York. You would have heard about that. Well, I don't look like you really missed that. That would be quite a story. That would be quite a story. I was downstate, she was further upstate. But in New York, you had ninth grade world history and tenth grade European history, eleventh grade U.S., twelfth grade participation in government and economics. And now here in Massachusetts with this shift, students at Wayland High School have two years of U.S. history. Um, and the really advantage of that is that you can really delve in deeply to more topics in U.S. history versus, I once, I know a district where they assume that the kids learned it in eighth grade and you would pick up at reconstruction in eleventh grade. That's very hard to do versus tenth versus eleventh grade. It just puts more pressure on world history in ninth grade because you get one year of that and then the two of U.S. That's kind of the challenge. But it was really the civics that shifted in eighth grade that drove all changes. Um, so we know our students with disabilities. What you can see in that lower left corner is a scattergram where you see sort of all the students who are not in IEPs are in the lighter colors behind it. So you can kind of see how they do relative to each other. Um, in the upper right hand corner you can sort of see meeting expectations. So, seventy-four percent of our students who are, do not have IEPs are meeting expectations. Whereas, um, thirty-eight percent of our students who are on IEPs are meeting or conceding expectations. Um, what this program will also do is you can, uh, we, I blocked out the names in the lower left-hand corner. But it will sort of pull out each student's sort of past score, current score, and then the following year score. So you can sort of do some mapping, which is a nice piece. Um, in math, you can see that there was, um, a slightly, slightly higher percentage of students on IEP who are meeting or exceeding expectations. Um, but still a big, big gap there between the two. The next slide has to do with our science and technology. You don't see the growth? Oh, go ahead. Just a quick question. Ronnie, this one might be for you. Have we seen progress or change in these scores given some of the recent programming that the district has, has initiated like the LBC? Um, that's a good question. Um, I can, like, now that we have, like, open architects, I could pull out, like, I would have to, I could pull out specific, um, student groups and, um, look more closely and certainly can get back to you. Yeah, if you see, if you look right in the center there, though, you can see that at SGP, for an individual student, right, we talked about big growth being in, you know, in those 80s and 90s. We have a lot of students there with some significant growth. And even though there's, you know, we're far behind, we're still seeing a lot of growth, which is the goal. And so when kids are, you know, multiple years behind, you want to see more than a year's worth of growth. So that's good news. Yes. And to your earlier point, the average score for both is in the 490s. So you're not that far away from them. No, you have a number of cohorts, if I'm reading this right, in the 80s and 90s in growth. Yes. Right. Yeah. And partially, it's not included here, but partially, well, it's not meeting, but it's in 10th grade. Yes. Yes. So some of those gray scores actually are meeting the competency determination. On the next slide, you can see there are no growth scores, and that's because you don't go from year to year taking the science. You just have the 5, 8, and as we saw in some cases, 9, and 10th grade scores. And there's the breakdown by the scaled scores as well. So our official accountability report, you can see we had, for our annual criteria reference target percentages, we made some big improvements this year. We're at 75%. A lot of that, as mentioned, had to do with our chronic absenteeism, but also some performance data. So this year, we were at 84%. So we're 80% meeting our exceeding targets, which characterizes us as a silly level one school district. There, I just wanted to highlight, again, thank you. Thank you, families, for helping us do so much better in our chronic absenteeism. Sorry. Great. At all to qualifications or state aid pockets? It's a great question. So there's many things that factor into which grants we're eligible for or likely candidates to get. Many, because our performance, I know we're pointing at some places where we still have lots of room for growth, and yet, as you can see, we're outperforming so many other districts in the state, which make us less likely candidates for many grants. I was wondering if it kind of, like, worked against us in grant funding. Well, it's... No, I don't mean... You know what I mean. It's trying to put the money where it's most needed. Understood. I just... Yeah. And it can make it challenging for us to get the funding that would help us. Although, as you know, we're very excited about our PRISM grant that will fund up to half of the pre-K-3 curriculum for next year that we're exploring. So... And they've been doing some wonderful PD with us as well. We just spend a half a day with our curriculum council, really thinking about what to look for in a curriculum. What does that look like? Why is it there? Why are you looking for particular components? So, I thought that was excellent PD this earlier this week. I think it was the end of last week. Sorry. Days are blending together a little bit this week. Another question I have about this is with the ELA, at least, like, the reading piece, is there any correlation or has there been any look at, like, how our students perform or grow against, like, the DIBELS test against their performance here and their growth? Okay. Now, one of the really nice things that Open Architect allows us to do is, so they have different dashboards. So, there's a MCAS dashboard. There's a DIBELS dashboard. There's an Access dashboard. There is kind of all the different dashboards. But it allows you also to do, like, it's called Student Explorer. And what it will do is it will pull in their, kind of, all of their pieces and components. So, you can look at their Access. You can look at their MCAS. You can look at their DIBELS. You can look at their Track by Progress. And it really, I think, makes our, like, our student support team meetings helpful when we're looking around interventions that we're trying. There's some other components of it that we haven't quite capitalized on yet, that they're just rolling out around interventions and ways to track interventions. Now that we have some interventionists, which is noted up here, we've added a intervention at the three elementaries. We talked about some of the ELA games. Our elementary math scores were a little lower than the year before, which has pushed us to really want to return to five core days of math. Again, it's a tradeoff. There are only so many minutes. You know, we want more science minutes. We want more social studies minutes. And we need recess. You know, we need all the things. So, but it was a component of our decision to go back to five days with math. As mentioned, we're looking at a new curriculum. We continue to work on our culturally responsive teaching practices. We have some PD coming up around that. We're really focusing on that high expectations, high support, and the work on relationships. You know, how much belonging, you know, plays a factor into how students' performance in schools. We'll continue with our attendance team. We will continue to progress monitor and offer our tiered supports. Some questions along the way, but happy to answer others that have arisen. I wonder if we can be doing more on the writing piece. I know that, you know, the signs of reading and all that is very important. I read a lot of these articles about it. I also know that, you know, the more you read, the better a writer you become. But I do have concerns that those particular scores are so low. Yeah. We join you in those. Yeah. Well, and it's a really hard, it's such a complex skill that it's hard to teach. It's not, like, there's not an answer, like in math or science. And so I wonder if we can be doing more with our next steps. I do hope with our, with the new ELA curriculum that, as I mentioned, is really focused on knowledge building, as well as in really deliberate knowledge building, that that will support those writing skills as well. And there's, in all the programs that we're looking at, also have writing components to them. So Betsy, along those lines, I see the return to core math five days a week. I think you, you purchased and you guys adopted a really fantastic new math curriculum. And you tested it out. You tried to peel it back a little bit to allow for more time. But it appears that going back to, you know, following the program to fidelity works. And so we're going to go back to that. I anticipate you'll probably find the same with the reading program. How are we going to accommodate two very robust curriculums in the length of the school day now? Is that being looked at? It is an excellent question. We do have an elementary school master scheduling group that we've had our first meeting. Next week. Next week? The 18th. November 18th. Two weeks. We're meeting with an outside person who's done a lot of scheduling in a lot of districts in different ways and block scheduling. One of our real challenges with the block scheduling is that we have a lot of part-time people that we share. And some of it comes down to our space pieces. And this came up at our master's facility planning. And, you know, the schedule is a real challenge. And some of it has to do with space. And when and where you can offer different courses and things at different times. Like, you can't have gym. And our larger spaces are also used for music and things like that. And so the appropriate spaces can lead to some of the states on schedule. And shared staff across buildings, too, is a real big challenge with that. So. It's not as simple as one would imagine. It's trade-offs, Erin. It's definitely trade-offs. Right. Because we also want students to be, you know, have the arts and, you know, a little bit of science. And, you know, I think when we talk a lot about ELA and math, academically what gets pushed out is science and social studies. And so that's something certainly, you know, you can read and write in those subjects. But that's kind of, that's the dilemma. And I'm glad you brought up the space, which we'll talk about as we talked about the other day, that our space constraints, because the buildings were built before we were doing some of the work we do now, poses a challenge. And some of the curriculums that we looked at really align with the science and social studies topics, though. So you would, like, at least the, I only went to some of the presentations, but they really highlighted their alignment with the standards in science and social studies. So you'd be kind of getting a double dose of some of those curriculum areas. So they're built to be interdisciplinary almost. Okay. That's great. Yeah, they really focus on a lot of non-fiction text reading at pretty high levels. And, you know, the, we talk a lot in the early grades about learning to read and decoding and phonemic awareness and phonics and all of those components. And kids can comprehend at a much higher level read aloud, so the importance of being read to. You know, I, I meet with my middle school colleagues who are like, if I could give kindergarten parents one piece of advice, it would be reading to your kids every single night. And, you know, throughout elementary school into middle school, you can't, can't overstate how important it is for kids to both, both hear and comprehend text as well as learning to read independently. Both are so important. And, and we have such great options now with audio books. And, you know, while you're cooking dinner, you can have an audio book on instead of being on a, on a little device. Um, and, and have conversations about books because they're getting so much language rich environment in, in that way. So. More work to do. I don't know if that was positive though, mostly. Yeah. Trending right, trending in the right direction. Good growth. Thank you very much. Yeah, that was great. Open architect really helps in terms of, that is a, I got addicted to it last year. You did. I kind of did, but it's really something where you can track improvement and growth in a range of, of data. Yeah. And how are, do you think of resources? And how? Speaking of data, I just want to look at a little bit of context of enrollment and why enrollment is particularly important this year. So, you know, when we look at enrollment, there are, there are three ways that enrollment kind of can impact us. Number one, of course, is class planning in terms of number of sections you have in a school, what kind of program you offer a high school. So there's, there's that part of it. There's the course planning. And then there is the, certainly with the state, it's around what kind of revenue do you receive around your enrollment, because that's one of the ways that you receive state aid. The third area, if there is a third one, is facilities planning for the future. And that's what's more relevant now about enrollment than in the past in Wayland, because as we work on our master facilities plan, which we alluded to earlier, we want to take a close look at enrollment trends. The challenge, of course, is that we only go so far with enrollment. And we know local schools that did new buildings. And shortly thereafter, Ronnie, you're familiar with that, with your home district, we had to do expansion, and the districts had to do expansions. And so that, that is a challenge. What that tells you, you should always build larger, some extra space, but it's hard to predict. Um, nobody knew after World War II that we would have, from 1946 to 1964, a baby boom. That wouldn't have happened when buildings were, if you were thinking about after World War I, you wouldn't have predicted a baby boom. So, um, but this is, you know, with that eye is partially why we're, we're taking a look at this with our master facilities planning. With that, I will turn it over to her first student enrollment friends, Kirstie. Thank you, David. And thank you for framing that. Um, that helps, um, segue my conversation in providing a finance and operations lens to this enrollment report, and really, um, looking at the data sources using the, um, fully, um, full-scale demographic study that we just received because that looks at multiple, um, components, not just a cohort survival ratio that tends to be very skewed and not necessarily as, um, relevant over the long term. Um, so this was a compilation of all of that information, and what I'm really hoping to achieve is to, um, tell a story about why enrollment matters, and really that begins with the foundation enrollment. This, um, it means our state funding, and this is, um, computed by how our, our, what our students are and their unique, um, educational demographics. Now we're gonna talk about what our district-wide enrollment looks like, and how the fluctuations and community dynamics are changing, and change that total enrollment, as well as taking a deeper dive into grade-level enrollment. So again, enrollment matters because it is the basis for our state aid funding, and that's what we call the Chapter 70, um, funding. And it's a very complicated, um, formula, but the simplicity is that it is our foundation budget minus the required local contribution, which it means Wayland's portion. And outside of what the state says that we have to fund our school systems, that is the remainder that they provide aid to the district. So again, looking at, I don't want to get into reading all of the components, but just understanding that the calculation is, is really based on the factors around student enrollment. Their grade levels, their specific demographics, such as low-income English learners, such as, um, those types of demographics. And when we talk about the required local contribution, that's again, what the town is required to contribute towards, um, the student education. Wayland is considered a minimum aid, or maximum local contribution district. So that does mean the town is expected to contribute a higher percentage of its total foundation budget. And again, this is part of telling the story for all stakeholders, and understanding what this means, um, going forward. So looking at the reporting for our student enrollment, it is collected through our, um, DESE. It's the SIMS data, and it's, it's named the October 1st counts. And these numbers, this informs the foundation budget for the next fiscal year. So when you are looking at the public facing information from DESE portal, and you see the enrollment count for FY26, that is from the October 1 count of 2024. So it's important to understand where the numbers come from, and how they are funding our, uh, school district in the form of state aid. So again, we look at, um, all of the components that are required to submit to DESE. And we do that through our SIMS platform, which Wayland has now, um, switched to PowerSchool. And the data is submitted in various collection times. But October 1 is the main component that drives the funding for the next fiscal year. So again, the enrollment translates to funding. And when we look at what the foundation budget and the foundation, um, contributions are, this shows you on the far right what last year's enrollment was, is. And that is what our current year, FY26 foundation budget and aid amount is that we receive for the student enrollment. And our populations, which I highlighted in yellow, it's important to recognize that these subcategories receive additional above base funding components with the state funding model. So our special education in district receives an additional component, and the special education tuition out receives an additional component. So I think that's a very important aspect to recognize, that the state also does understand how costly it can be for these, uh, subcategories. And that includes our English learners and low income, um, learners that may not have all of the resources coming into their educational learning. And the state is, uh, providing for those differentials. Can I ask you a question? Can I ask you a question? Just a refresher on how does the low income percentage get defined? Does that tie back to how many families, students qualify for the, um, free and reduced? Yes. So that's, um, the low income percentage, we are very low. So we are in the two, the second tier only out of 10. So we get a very small differential because our low income population is very low. I wonder, though, how that's been impacted with the introduction of everybody gets free lunch? That is not an impact. So people are still signing up for it? Like, to, to qualify? So we have, in the state, we have what's called direct certification. Mm-hmm. So anybody that's receiving any type of state aid in the form of SNAP, housing waivers, any type of assistance. They get automatically. Automatically. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So looking at, uh, Wayland's funding trend, uh, we have been above target, state aid. And the Student Opportunity Act, which is a seven-year phase-in, started in 2019. This made significant changes to the Chapter 70 formula. And this, uh, better reflects the true cost of education. And if you see the, um, the charts in, with the, um, the blue categories, is Wayland received significant bumps in 19, FY 19, FY 20, fiscal year 23, and fiscal year 24. Those were significant increases, not related to enrollment. So that is just showing that the formula that was recalculated by, by the Student Opportunity Act provided additional funding for Wayland based on different criteria. So now we look at overall our district-wide enrollment for the October 1, 2025. Our total enrollment was 2,662, which was a, which is a reduction of 39 from the prior year enrollment of 2007 and 1 student. Comparing the projections, um, to actuals from fiscal year 26 to fiscal, uh, which will be reporting fiscal 27. Um, this is what we're looking at. The demographic study, which was projected for this year, for the fiscal 25-26 year, was 2008-09. So again, looking at some of the demographic study components, it's very difficult to really isolate, and especially when this particular category was done, um, prior to the pandemic. So those, there's a lot of, um, components that are different from just the, um, cohort survival ratio that really shifted student enrollment. And we know that there is a decline overall in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for public school students. So this is not unique to Wayland. Um, this is something being experienced in many districts. You know, I would just add, Kirstie, when I was talking earlier about the difficulty of projecting enrollment over a longer period, no one could have done this 10 years ago, predicted a pandemic. Like, that's an example on the impact because our enrollment projections, um, you know, you were talking about back then, it was 182. Last year, we were looking at an enrollment projection of kindergarten of our most recent enrollment of 139. So that's how much it's shifted. And so our latest enrollment were actually over projection, but Kirstie is nicely showing, like, the historical projections, so you get a sense of some of the challenges as we think about facilities planning. Variations that can happen with that forecasting. Yeah. And then we look at actuals to actuals. So last year's October 1 count was the 2,701, and this year was 2,662. So that difference is much, um, smaller than what that original projection was. So, again, just understanding that there are so many variables within those projections, it's really difficult to hone in and say, yes, this projection model will be the one to follow. And, again, who knows what can happen in a year or two years between the next cycle that we're reviewing the information. And just to give the, um, graphic on, on the right side, it, it, how close they were from, um, one year to the next. So it shows not a significant variation. Then we look at the actuals to actuals by school. And I think there's been kind of a historical understanding. Happy Hollow has had some, um, declining enrollment there. Uh, the Children's Way Preschool, we, we were down, um, 12 enrollments this year. And, but overall we, it was, um, fairly regulated, um, across all, all buildings. This does take into account, though, a student moving from Happy Hollow to Longer, Happy Hollow to Claypit, or the reverse, right? Okay. And again, it's a snapshot in time as of October 1. So if somebody moves in or out or across the district October 2, that won't be reflected. So again, overall, um, there is a, you know, the enrollment challenge and gradual decline. Um, we, in Wayland, um, the forecasting factors include the aging population. Um, the migration movement in or out has really slowed. Um, birth rates and number of children per household has decreased. So those are all factors. And again, looking at a, a long range, uh, forecast, it, it looks like it's a smaller, um, year-over-year percentage decrease. But looking at potentially a decline of 89 students within a 10-year cycle. Then we take a look at the elementary school trends. So this is the, uh, a chart from the demographic study that really highlights what, um, the potential decline represents. So this is based on census data. This is the federal census. Uh, back in 2020, they're, they're very, uh, behind with the federal census. But that also informs our federal grants in certain capacities. But when you look at the category for under age one, you see what a dip it is from the one-year-old and older of, from 92 to 117. So that's what this was, this chart was really taking into account is the concern of the decline in actual school-based children that are coming into the district. And again, looking at the elementary levels combined, um, there's a decline, but it's a steady decline and slow. So overall, uh, 10-year change in this group is looking at a 35-count decline. Christine, can I ask, did they factor in a certain predicted expectation of, like, families aging out of the town and families moving into the town? Yes. And they're, they're using current data. They're looking at Zillow reports. They're looking at, um, you know, actual move-in, actual new building, actual, uh, numbers. What they're seeing is a much higher empty nest, um, category within the town, staying in their homes longer, which means you're not having the migration move-ins for family ages and, um, families with children. Also looking at seeing, um, two, two households with no children. So those are all part of the, um, the makeup of the long-range demographic study. Uh, the middle school grades are forecasted to have the steepest decline, um, but not until about 2030. And it really, it looks like a significant, um, drop of about 79 students, um, in that year, uh, between 2030 and 31. So again, we will stay tuned to see how that materializes. Again, if there's a shift in, uh, transition of empty nesters moving out and new families moving in or a housing development that gets built, this, this could, uh, could change significantly. The high school, uh, has, uh, an interesting spike in correction, uh, type of, uh, projection in their enrollments. The decline is, uh, related to the middle school, um, again, and then returning to kind of the long-term trend. And I think you can really see that in the graphic with the blue and the purple line where there's a, a spike and then it tends to level out, um, but across, it would be returning to the long-term trend, roughly 800 students enrolled at the high school level. So really what this is, um, identifying is that enrollment, student enrollment is the, uh, predictor for our state aid funding and directly impacts our ability to, um, maintain staffing levels and be able to do our facilities planning and allocate resources. It also, uh, highlights that the, uh, challenges that we face are related to volatility in our enrollment. It's very hard to predict and so that also makes it very difficult to plan financially. And we're addressing these by, uh, uh, the process of our master facilities envisioning project. And this is, uh, with the hope to ensure our equitable access for all students and provide the community with the awareness and transparency regarding our future planning and financial planning as, as far as that goes. Is there any questions? How accurate have our predictions been in the past? Well, as you, as the, the first example showed the, um, from the first 10 year demographic, it was 147 predicted and our actual was only 39. So again, it varies based on the different, um, happenings of a given year. I think it depends, you know, for students who are already born, like when we see the drop in the middle school, Christina, it's highly likely that that will happen because of, if you look at those K to two numbers, they're so different than the numbers in like grade five and, you know, grade six. So the enrollment's certainly going to drop and you will see the high school when those cohorts go through. The high school's going to jump and that couldn't, think about staffing. Um, if you, that's like have 55 more kids, there's a couple of more sections. If you think about a ninth grade class, um, that, that does have certainly, um, impact. This may be an odd question, but I don't have a really good sense. Like, so we're at 2662 now. Do we have a sense as a district of like where we're at vis-a-vis our capacity? Like, I mean, we talk about space constraints. Some of that is curriculum delivery of like how we deliver curriculum needs that we didn't predict when the buildings were built. But like, are we a district that has capacity for more students if we need it? Or are we a district that is sort of at capacity as we think about it? Sure. So let's answer the capacity question. In an elementary school, you answer the capacity questions by how many classrooms do you have available. So right now, we use every classroom available except at Happy Hollow where there's some classroom space. space. However, if you look at capacity, um, around space available for special education in other areas, it's not adequate. So, you know, classroom space, we're, we're okay, but we're not for overall space for an education model in 2025. Okay. And same for, true for middle and high or, or we feel like we have comfortable capacity at the high school. The middle's, middle's tight. Um, high school originally okay being newer. Like, I don't think, um, you know, if we think about Needham High School, they finished a new high school and they had to do an addition several years later. Uh, that's true at Hockington as well. We're doing an addition right now into the, one of the schools. Yeah. That was newer. Yeah. Um, yeah, they're building a school and then they're doing an addition. So, I think the high school is, you can have a little more flexibility with high school. It's like how much open space capacity they, they should be fine. High school, the reason, here's how you get in trouble at high schools. If you don't have enough science rooms, for example, it's specialized classrooms that can be difficult in, in high schools. Um, they, they should be, they should be fine because the numbers are going to drop again. Um, I do think, you know, after our tours we had last week with our architects and engineers, there's, there's still some space issues in, in middle school, which you know well. Um, what would you say those are beyond the classroom? Um, there's just very, very little breakout spaces for small groups. Um, you know, people, people's offices are closets and things like that. We have classrooms in the hallway in the sixth grade wing. That was supposed to be all open space there. And it just isn't. We also have some chemical closet issues. When we, um, when we had our visioning meeting on Monday night, uh, Kate, uh, we really saw you were there. Some real, as we think about small group instruction and flexible spaces for creative projects and making, I mean, you, you saw what that looked like. It was different than our schools. It was absolutely different than our schools. And I think they made a great point that, um, you have to teach a certain, you're going to teach a certain way regardless of the space. And we're probably teaching that way. And a space will only support how we're teaching. Um, but yeah, what we were looking at is wildly different than what we have right now. Can you put the enrollment, um, report that we got up on the website? Yes. And I'll use this. I realized I have the incorrect date on the one I shared earlier today. So we'll get that up. The slides or the? The slides, yes. The original date was the October date. Got it. Is that correct? Thanks for putting this together. Thank you very much. Very great. Um, I was just thinking in line with that, we should probably set up a spot on the district website that has a link to all the information that we're collecting with respect to the facilities master planning, um, group. We are doing that. Great. So we, we talked about that at our last meeting. Okay. To get a site for just, um, that reason. Okay. Um, I also just want to acknowledge that, I just want to thank, um, staff members and parents and community members. We just had really good attendance. It was excellent energy. I mean, Kate, you can talk about excellent energy in the room. It was a very positive meeting. There were so many people at this meeting. I was really pleasantly surprised. It was at the new community council on aging building, which I had never been in. So it was a really nice place to sit and have a discussion about space. But there were tons of community members, tons of teachers, a lot of administrators. Um, and everyone was just very open and creative and honest about what we could be, what we're doing very well now and how fresh space could only support that. So, I mean, how many people, do you know how many people registered? I was shocked at how many people were available for two and a half hours on a Monday night to prioritize this. It was great. I think it spoke to us. We were talking about that. I mean, I think there's interest in this topic. Yeah. Across the board. And I think there were more people at that than in similar size districts that they've worked with. Yes. We had shared. I was really impressed with the number of people there. So that was really good for Wayland, I think. Yeah. And I think the people who were, we were going table to table and sharing ideas. And a lot of the people at tables had very similar ideas. The themes that came across were very strong and very universal, which was a little surprising, but not really surprising. We're all very much on the same page of what we would like this to look like in the future. So it was very collaborative. This was, can you refresh my memory? If we, did this include like all ages community outreach or was it more parents and teachers and staff? And the next one. We reached out to community members too. We did. Okay. Yeah. I was just, I was curious to see, were there people from, my table was half community members, half parents. Just that like didn't have. Right. That's awesome. Yeah. Cause that's one of our real goals here is to engage. Actually I had my goals to engage the entire community in this process. And I think that, that really occurred in Hayden. Absolutely. And I think it gave a diversity of perspective, although we all ended up landing on the same themes that we felt were very important. Um, yeah, it was impressive how many different variety of community members were there. Crazy idea that, now that you're probably gonna tell me this is impossible, but, um, it just popped in my head when, I think Kirsteen might have said there was a librarian there, or maybe Ronnie, somebody. Ms. Pam was there, I did, yeah. Um, but I'm wondering if there's a way to kind of team up with the library to facilitate some sort of mixed use space. The trustees of the library and... It was a terrific space, the room we were in. I must say it added to the, just energy and enthusiasm, the light, and it kind of modeled what we were looking for. Yeah. David made a game-time decision about our next meeting, which was supposed to be at Happy Hollow, but now we'll, again, be at that building. It generated very good energy. We'll be there again. And we wouldn't fit particularly. Three meetings there in the back. There were so many people. In the cafeteria, and the gym would have even been a little awkward. You likely are already way ahead of this, but if we are not, can we keep track of some of the highlights of, like, the number of participants across the various stakeholder groups? Because I think as we prepare for the larger community forum in December, and then a possible eventual presentation to town meeting, I think it would be great for us to be able to document the level of engagement throughout the process, and both by invitation in conducting it, but also the receptivity of the community to it, so that there's a sense of real buy-in. That's an excellent idea. Yep. Does anybody mind if I just run to the restroom really quickly? If you want, you could go skip, jump to five, if you wanted to. Any comments on the consent agenda? I do not need a minute to prepare for the consent agenda. I move to approve the consent agenda. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Do I need to go around the room? And I am enjoying the handwritten notations. I almost commented on my e-mail. Oh, there's another one. I'm sorry. I'm shirking my responsibility. I left the pen. I did it. No? Okay. Five. Oh, you did? You told us to. Yeah. You wanted to. We were empowered, and we moved forward. Love it. No edits to the minutes? All good? All good. Beautiful. Great. So you voted? Yes? Yes. Okay. No, that's what I was. All right, so. You have to sign, though. Can I sign in red? Here, here. No. Okay. I got black. The committee pen. I really have an anxiety pen. Red ink. Please don't. That was a good answer. It's true. It's like an omen. Please don't. Finance people do not like red ink. Do not like red ink. Okay. I heard it. I heard it. Is this the pen for this? Yeah. Lucky you asked. Goodness. I would have been sent home to the corner. Okay. Great. All right. Administrative Models 4.1. I would like to announce the release of the Executive Session Minutes of September 10th, 2025 and the redacted Executive Session Minutes of October 8th, 2025. Those can be found on our website or if you'd like to visit our lovely Diane, you can see them in person. And so 4.2 in light of some recent events, the high school that have found their way around the community. I just wanted to kind of note for the community what we have in place in the district for response to potential incidents or reports of discrimination. And we did roll this out last fall and while I know this isn't the first time it's been implemented. I think it is probably the first time that we've had it in place that it's been such a public kind of notification or existence. And so I wanted to kind of call out a few different things that as a committee we've worked with administration on related to this. And so in January of 2021, the school committee adopted the anti-racism resolution and each school does have a copy of that resolution hanging in a prominent place in each of our buildings. Thank you, Jeannie Downs and Caroline Hahn for closing the loop and getting that done. We had a presentation at the beginning of the 23-24 school year around the strategic plan to advance diversity, equity, and belonging in the district, which highlighted developing comprehensive policies, procedures, and protocols for addressing all incidents of bias and discrimination. We've also received, we're in our third year of receiving the hate crime prevention grant from the state. And that's enabled us to achieve some of our district goals around increasing diversity, equity, and belonging, including summer work with social studies curriculum and a variety of leadership opportunities. For staff to address DEB goals and initiatives, as well as surveys around student and staff belonging. Pursuant to our current collective bargaining agreement, all hires after June 30th, 2021 do need to complete cultural proficiency training within the first three years of their employment with the district. As I mentioned earlier, we've continued to apply for and receive grant funding through the hate crime prevention grant. And that has supported our efforts to recruit and retain diverse and culturally responsive workforce. It's supported student age appropriate programming and curriculum around anti-discrimination and increased inclusion and belonging. We've also added a school-based equity leader at each of our schools, which better supports our ongoing professional learning for faculty, and consistent in building support around these efforts to help us in kind of duplicating or recreating Caroline Hahn and all the work that she does, because she's only one person. And so with that, we do have the discrimination response protocol, which David is, I'm sure, going to want to give some just kind of background on. But it's a really thoroughly vetted protocol, and it's available on our website. And it talks about all the different steps that the district needs to follow in response to any sort of report of acts of discrimination, which discrimination is a wide bucket when you look at this protocol and what falls under that, which is incidents of bias, harassment, retaliation, hate, or discrimination. They're all under this bucket of discrimination for the protocol. And while, you know, hindsight's always 20-20, we do need to trust in our leadership and our administration that there's a reason this is in place and there's a reason why they follow these steps. And that, you know, we're looking out for the best of all 27, 2662 students in our district. And we're trusting that they're doing the right thing and they have, you know, education is their specialty and not ours as a committee. And so, David, with that, I'd love for you to give a little bit more insight into all the specifics that went into rolling out this protocol. Absolutely. So the discrimination response protocol, we're now in our second year. And in terms of background, it's really used, as you said, Erin, for students, but it's really all members of our community. So it's used for adults as well, this response protocol. And what it really does, it outlines the steps for investigating, following up, reporting. But it also advises us in terms of learning and healing because part of our message, and even an introduction of this protocol, which we communicated extensively last year to families about, and what's why it's on our website. And it is, I will, people know about it. And you want it, you know, it's interesting. It's something that you want to be used because it's there. And then we think about how do we use it to strengthen the culture of our community. Because at the end of the day, if we think about our goal, about belonging, and inclusion, and welcoming, and everyone feeling safe, that is the purpose of this protocol. So when we do have incidents, they are thoroughly investigated. We often use our legal counsel if we have issues to make sure we follow the protocol. And that's something we do, and we will use kind of outside entities as necessary to advise us. And it's really important that we be very thorough in our investigations. We've had training on our non-discrimination protocol in all schools last year. We've had training with our attorney on various changes. You know, the protocol can sometimes change as laws change or evolve, which we sometimes see in the different titles. So it's certainly something that is evolving and we continue to use. And again, the goal is to achieve kind of one of our district goals and help to do that. And at the same time, we know in every district, you know, I was just thinking, I was just reading in the Globe a little while ago about one of our neighboring districts had some incidents, and they're kind of going through this. And we do see these incidents. And I think, you know, the reason we talk about accountability, learning, and healing is we recognize that students make mistakes. And at the same time, we have a responsibility to address those mistakes in those three areas. And that's something we work hard at. But I also want to, again, suggest that these protocols are also used for adults as part of a culture. Any of you in workplaces know that you have policies and procedures as well. And that's something we always want to talk about as well as we create an environment or effort. So that's kind of the background. It is on our website. There's also a complaint form on our website as well as all the kind of policies and procedures. We went through a lot of steps in putting this together with a lot of input from a range of constituency groups as well. As well, I should share. I missed, I think, in terms of background. It actually applies to all school committee members, staff, everyone. And I think, you know, one of the important pieces here is that the beauty of a protocol is that it should be applied consistently. And, you know, the level of investigation and the steps needs to be the same, whether there's, you know, certain things that might, if you review the protocol, rise to the level of police involvement. But they may not. And it still should follow the same procedure, the same protocol, same notification. And that way everyone's getting the same treatment. So I don't know if other members have anything they wanted to add. But I think it's really important for the community to know that this is what we have. And, yeah. I just want to clarify, just stating the obvious, but discrimination has been against policy for a very long time. This protocol is new as of last year on how to handle incidents of it. But it's not that this is a new rule, per se. This is just a very detailed outline on what to do when it happens. But it has been against our policy for a very, very long time. And, I mean, I can add just kind of one brief thing. I think we sit here composed during these meetings, and that might be viewed as cold and insensitive or unwavering on these things. We are in this position to help follow that policy and procedure that's implemented. But as human beings, as mothers collectively, the five of us are mothers to 18 children. So that is an incredible amount of people that we care for in our homes. I'm going to get choked up in 2,662 students that we are entrusted to care for. And I'm sorry. Please, the community is not here. And integrity is truly born when nobody is listening or watching. But we deeply care. And we have the feelings and the emotions. But we are here to follow policy and procedure. And I just, when community members come and they get their two minutes and we sit here and we need to follow certain policies and understand that there are a chain of events when we make certain decisions and follow these policies and protocols. And so we just, we need to honor that. But that does not remove our human connection to the things that are going on in our community. So please know that. They didn't fall. They just are still in here. Okay. That's it. Thank you for that. Thank you, Chair. I was reflecting a great deal in the last five days on the work that has come to this table since I have been elected and since I know predates me. If you'll permit me, the only things I also want to add is, David, your and your administration's selection of equity and belonging as a district goal each year that you have come forward and suggested goals and the passion with which the team reports on the work that they're doing and the deep conviction that I feel all of you have. I was reflecting on a very joyous opening day in which you chose to highlight the work that will never be done but the important work around equity and belonging and I thank you then and I will thank you again for recognizing both it's important now and the fact that that work very sadly will never be done but that every day we all show up to keep doing it and our community is showing up to keep doing it and it's hard work. So thank you. I share the trust reflected in following the protocol and the policy and I hope if there are things to be learned from that that you will bring them to our attention so that we can discuss the learnings and any adjustments that you think need to be thought about or considered. I want everyone to also appreciate that we have this very detailed protocol. I appreciate the time. Right and we always you feel an immense pressure because we are all moms and we are all parents and we all care so much about this community to react very quickly and people expect a very quick reaction but if this was my child or your child or our children together. Right. This protocol takes time and everyone has the students best interest at heart so I appreciate you know we had a very long day on Monday where people were at a rally at 730 and then people worked a full day and then we had a facilities master plan meeting and then we had a select board meeting and people community is made up by the people who keep showing up even when it's very hard. Right now it's very hard but thank you for continuing to show up and support this process which is not always easy. You know I'll speak for educators that they everything you just said is why they're here and working on this with our students because at the end of the day as you all said that's why we're here and working through really hard challenges with students and adults is part of our collective. Thanks for saying what I can't without crying so great job so I have to keep it very factual. Um okay so we've got any matters not reasonably anticipated by the chair. We'll just add on the facilities committee note so Betsy originally was involved in that um we have flip flopped so now I will be involved in that and Betsy will be involved in the negotiation team. Um yeah so we talked about that around the table um so I appreciate this um and it was like anticipated but we never closed the loop so I appreciate you closing the loop with the rest of the committee. And you know the public that Kate's our rep now from the committee on the um long term. I never call it the right thing. Thank you. I don't have that yet. It really needs an acronym. My name is a great day and the energy is so good. It's a good group. Yeah. That's awesome. Um and Betsy buckle up. No it'll be fine. Looking forward to a productive discourse. It will be. It will be. Um thank you Kate for that. Um okay. I move to enter executive session for the purposes of discussing strategy related to collective bargaining. Excuse me. With the Wayland Educational Association as permitted by MGL Chapter 30A Section 21A3. The school committee will be joined by David Fleischman, Betsy Gavron, Kirsteen Patterson, and Diane Marabella, Recording Secretary, and Ronnie Kessler if she'd like to hang out for a little bit. Otherwise she is free to go. I was packing up. The school committee will adjourn an executive session and will not reconvene an open session. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. Betsy?