December 3, 2025 – School Committee – Video & Transcript
December 3, 2025 - School Committee
Welcome to the Whalen School Committee meeting on December 3rd. It is 6.04 p.m.
We will call our meeting to order, and we are being recorded by WACAM.
We will have Erin Muller, Erin Gibbons, and Kate Sambucco.
We will not have Christina Rodrigo. She will be absent.
We have David Fleischman and Betsy Gavron, and we will have Debra Romeo shortly.
And as a heads up, we do not have, on 5.1, we do not have any accounts payables or payroll warrants
that will fall under the consent agenda for tonight.
Okay, anybody here for public comment?
One? You girls are enough? Okay. All right. Come on up. We'll give, wait a minute, just don't, wait one second to start. Can somebody just, um, time? Two? We'll give you. Let me, okay. No, it's just him. We'll give him three minutes. We'll give you three minutes, since you're the only one visiting us tonight. I'm not going to take it much longer. I've been coming off and on. Sanjin Hodzik, coming from 19 Woodland Road, in Wayland. I've been talking about this so many times, so you probably know about it so far. Um, but I wanted to check, because I feel this is one-way communication. Every time I come, or anybody else, we say things, nothing happens. This is for like two plus years, going on and on, and still nothing. Um, I've heard from some people, uh, different ways, uh, different communication channels, and I feel support. The only two people that I haven't heard, that are kind of expressing concern, trying to do something, initiating something. And I'm not calling anybody to say bad things about people. But, Aaron Gibson, since you are chairman, I think you have a power to start conversation about something that is not feeling right. And what we are seeing lately, and also, Mr. David, superintendent, you have a power. It's just about, I'm not calling people, I'm just asking for consideration, and trying to be treated fairly, as everybody else. Lately, we see a lot of racial profiling, you know, incidents, this and that. And it's concerning, it's growing. It's not something that we are attacking and trying to suppress or trying to eliminate. We're just kind of supporting by being quiet. So I'm asking, if we can do something about it, Muslims, we don't have holidays, but we want it to be treated as everybody else. And if somebody else is not treated the way it's supposed to, we step and we ask to be treated the same way as everybody else. There is nothing wrong with that. Um, second thing, the meeting, if it's online, it would be much easier and better for people to watch. And participate and be there. Um, I don't think I'm, or we are asking something that is inappropriate or disrespectful or something extraordinary. It's just something that everybody has. Nothing else. When somebody has it, and another person doesn't have it, it's a discrimination against that person. Or that community. Or that group. Whoever that person is, or whoever that group is. Um, that's all I have. I've been asking, and I'm asking you to put it on agenda. Let's discuss publicly. If I said something wrong, I apologize. And I will apologize again. But just make it right. Nothing else. There's nothing wrong with being right. So that's all. Simple. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you. No other public comment. Okay. We will close public comment. 3.1. Do you want to give any... I'll give a little background. Okay. Tonight is a night where we will talk about our goals and school and building plans with our secondary principals. On December 17th, we'll have our elementary principals. Um, we'll first start at the middle school with Deborah Romeo, year two. Um, come on up, Deborah. Um, and Deborah's going first because she is headed to a middle school band concert at 7 o'clock. And she's on our agenda first. And that is why. Normally we sometimes flip coins, but, um, we, uh, thought, you know, that our band teacher is starting this first concert. It would be lovely for Deborah, who goes to so many concerts just like Allison. So, here we are. Welcome, Deborah. And she'll talk a little bit about goals and the work and school improvement plans on various areas. And she's got a couple of slides, as well, to remind us of our district and school goals. If I have one second.
That's right. Yep. Okay. And Beth, are we zooming ahead to middle school? Or... Yeah, so, um, there's just a couple of, you know, the agenda, sort of, we've got the context setting. Um, we'll review the district goals. Yep. And then get right to the middle school school improvement plan highlights. Um, I think the school improvement, the whole school improvement plan that's been approved by the school council is in your folders. Um, and then the Wayland High School is going to, Allison here is going to talk about, um, follow up on some recent events as well as the school improvement plan. And then, um, talk about the updated, uh, competency determination for our graduating seniors. Time for questions and answers. All right. I'll take that one. Yeah. Um, yeah. Um, so this is our, you know, as we think about our broad district goals, we, our goal as leaders is to create the conditions, structures, and collaborative support for leaders and educators at the building level to actualize their strategic actions, which they're going to talk about tonight within their school improvement plans. Goals, as we think about goals and strategic actions, this is how we think about where do we spend our time over the course of the school year. So Deborah will talk about, you know, time at faculty meetings and the work taking place because capital is really what we have in time. Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um student services we'll hear from in the spring and community is ongoing so those are a few pictures from the middle school um that demonstrate some of the learning and activities that have gone on the picture on the left is one of our eighth grade math teachers and one of our sixth grade students at math night and math night is for sixth grade students and their families it's a wonderful afternoon and evening event the picture in the middle is sense of wonder days for seventh grade and we had it was a stay-at-home field trip for one of the days where we have specialists in in animal refuge come and bring some of the animals and actually teach the kids about the animals and they get some hands-on experiences the picture at the top is a math classroom where kids are collaboratively doing some problem solving and the picture on the right hand bottom was from our French week that was a jam in the morning where all of the kids who studied French came and sang to the school as people were entering and that's our version of the Eiffel Tower so just some of the fun that's happening at the middle school I'm going to dive into each of these really briefly just to explain kind of where we are in the work our academic core focus is on accountable talk on in terms of deepening student engagement and learning and math sign and social studies English and world language and as with any I feel like this is a continuation of a conversation we started last year so with any goal that is really worthy of our time and effort it takes several years last year was our learning year in terms of learning about accountable talk our curriculum leaders did a great job providing professional development to the teachers and now we're looking to operationalize it like putting it into practice in the classrooms and what that looks like it's kind of multi if we're coming at it from very several different directions at the same time many teachers have chosen to make professional their professional practice school focusing on accountable talk and showing how that's going to translate into student learning we also as an administrative team we're going to be going into classrooms to look for how accountable talk is actually coming to life in our classrooms for purposes of saying what skills are the students developing skills like using evidence from whatever they're learning their reasoning skills adding on to others thinking introducing a different perspective and that and actively listening all of those are the skills we're going to be looking for and our curriculum leaders are going to be supporting our teachers as they are implementing accountable talk moves into their classrooms and of course every accountable talk move comes with teaching a teaching point in the classroom to demonstrate to students what it actually looks like so that they can do it more and more independently so this year we're going to be looking at what is the impact on the kids ability to actually have increasing student to student discourse focused on their learning but that's what we're looking for and that would include all of those skills that I just mentioned as well as integrating the content vocabulary into their conversations in different classrooms when we think about next year like kind of taking this this talk year where students are really developing their top skills we're going to look for for example in argument writing which is typically it's like a claim and evidence and reasoning we're going to look and that's in different content areas as well we're going to look for students to improve their actual writing pieces because all of the research suggests that it isn't actually by doing more and more argument writing but rather honing their thinking skills through talk so that their ideas are clearer so that their writing becomes clearer so as we think about like the next like this year is about the talk and next year will be about how does the talk actually impact their learning in different content areas we're also going to be joining the high school in working with Sarah Ward on executive functioning those are going to be our two super two of our super Wednesdays this year and we're really looking forward to that because it the height of the elementary school experience was so positive last year and it is something we notice about our middle schoolers as an area of need and so the more that we know about it the better we'll be able to meet their to meet their needs the next area is in belonging and equity and we're looking to increase our students sense of belonging by building teacher capacity to facilitate community circles as a tier one practice meaning tier one meaning for all students across the school right now but thanks to the grants written by Carolyn Han Caroline thank you we currently have 19 staff members the whole administrative team at the middle school who are trained in circle practice and so and we will in January add another 17 staff members thanks to the grant and what we're very very excited about that because classroom teachers counselors staff in general education special education so right now as we're growing this practice some things that we've done are we created a tool kit they added team created a tool kit for the staff for tag which is our advisory and in that we had a collection of circles that we put together so that people could just use those resources moat I feel like a really important step we took this year is that Miss Rowley Miss Spicer and I are joining tag every Wednesday so for the first 11 weeks I was at sixth grade Miss Spicer works with seven Miss Rowley works with eight and we are modeling circles in those tags or supporting the teachers who are already trained and it's it's great fun and it's inspiring because we're getting to know the kids so much better because one of the things about the circle practice is equity of voice and so we hear from every student as an as individuals and as you do rounds in the circle you get to know them as individuals in this really safe calm setting so we're really looking forward to the training coming up and we're already using it in a variety of ways it's in tag class teachers are using it in their classrooms to circle practice we also use them across meeting structures like I was in our DEP meeting this morning and the facilitator was using a circle structure so that we as a group could collaborate that way we've used it in family and caregiver meetings as well as like in department meetings and curriculum leaders and house leaders so it's a really it's a great tool for like focused conversation and building community and the thing that we're looking for especially is that community piece for our students and increasing their sense of belonging by integrating that practice and the last piece of the social-emotional focus being on reducing the negative impact of devices in the middle school and the implementation of yonder is kind of going as expected and we're working really hard at it our homeroom teachers check pouches every day as part of attendance so kids just take them out yonder recommended that to us because we have to keep sending the message to the kids that this is part of the middle school program we have as an administrative team kind of been the ones to respond to things when things aren't like quite right because it's really important for our homeroom teachers to maintain the really positive relationships that they have with the students and so we don't want like the power like this program to become bigger than it is at the middle level so far the data suggests and I'm gonna say well I thought we had a really robust off-and-away policy we are seeing improvement based on data so last year by this time we had about 83 device infractions about 83 this year we have 44 and 24 of them were before the yonder implementation and so still experiencing that but that's not a surprise and I think that and so we just need to keep like working at it and monitoring it and doing what we need to do in order to kind of follow through on that that goal of reducing the negative impact of the devices one of the things that we didn't expect was that more kids are leaving devices home and that was not necessarily something that we expected but that is happening are we sure they're leaving them at home well see Erin I have kids that's a good point and so our eighth graders are the are the most are having the hardest time kind of following all the expectations which is not a complete surprise and so we did some checking with home when the eighth graders started telling us they were leaving their devices home so that's like an example of administrative follow-through because and so we we did do that double-check because families told us in the registration yeah returning student yeah yeah what devices the kids had so we downloaded that so all of our homeroom teachers and we have that and so when there was a change and suddenly a student didn't have a device it did cause us to pause and wonder and so we thought for specifically our eighth graders it was worth a check and a check at home so that's what we did great yeah thank you in terms of distraction in the classroom have you or have staff noticed that students are becoming more focused less distracted so I think the biggest thing they've noticed so far is not having the interactions around the devices which is very positive because those are distractions to learning um we haven't yet um asked for like we haven't surveyed the staff formally about this about things like time out of class because that was a hopeful visits to the bathroom yeah yeah because they can't they can't text each other to meet right um we don't have data on that yet we still are like just measuring the interactions from year to year um I think you know anecdotally we feel more confident um about hallways and bathrooms great great great any other questions okay um do you want to speak at all to um and it doesn't necessarily have to be you deborah but anybody maybe david or betsy but just um how the school improvement plan works for people that maybe don't know how that gets built and how it gets approved so um so um so we start at our administrative retreat in the summer and it's based very much on the district goals and we start to brainstorm the goals for our schools um for the middle school we then brought that to our curriculum leader group to review it there and get feedback and input there and then the school council review and feedback and then once like this presentation is done and we move forward i'll be sharing it with the staff in pieces um so that they can see how like our work every day is is in this one improvement plan anybody else have any other how do the students feel about the circle practices so that's such a good question um i ask them that as and we ask them that as the last round all the time and i was in the sixth grade um a sixth grade class this morning and most of the kids said things like calm nice i heard something like i learned something about somebody else and then a couple kids said weird um yeah uncomfortable um typical middle school but we want them to be honest like it's okay for them to say like i'm comfortable with this like i didn't do this before a couple kids today said oh we did this in elementary school and just like that kind of like with that intonation um so i think the more that we do it yeah um the more empowering it is and also eventually we want the kids to bring the questions to circle right because we're really talking about community building right now but the the other piece of this is when something goes wrong in the community we have a way of talking about it where kids can feel safe and it's a predictable structure um but the first step is actually like kind of who are we as a community and how does this practice like fit into who we are and it fits in because everybody belongs and everybody has a voice and i'm going to piggyback on that because i heard you mention that you're also using it with families talk a little bit about that so um at caregiver coffees both this year and last year um we came with some questions like last year the since we were all new the whole administrative team went and we got um input on what are the things that you are feeling most positively about the middle school what do you what are challenges you think that we have or areas for growth um and that was really important it was very helpful this year we talked about um kind of family values and and how how we work with middle schoolers to bring those values to life and so it is again i feel like it's a really great structure to have that equity of voice so everybody has an opportunity to participate and also has an opportunity not to like you have the freedom to make that decision for yourself within the structure and are you a follow-on to that are you also using those end times with individual families for conflict mitigation or you know hard conversations so that's a good question we have i would i would say right now for circle practice we're really in the tier one places it's an interesting question erin because i came from a district that we didn't use it in the tier one way we used it for when there was a problem and the difficulty with that is that's that doesn't necessarily feel very safe for everyone right and so we're really focusing on using it in the community building way right now but it does have that potential yeah thank you certainly in tag and when i visit an eighth grade tag um it's just right for that in terms of community building and students sharing um and the teachers are really well trained it becomes seamless seamless and students really know how to jump in and do it yeah these were eighth graders they were in in you know the phone issue was taken care of they were on something something different thank you thank you thanks so much have fun at the concert thank you thank you for allowing me to go at the beginning i appreciate it enjoy you come first in age right we start of the children and i attended the turkey tango last week what a treat that was that was my first turkey tango that was my happy moment brilliant allison is gonna join the table and talk about uh actually you're gonna be up here for a while i am i feel so far away from everybody feel free to come closer so we're gonna discuss work um follow-up in the communication that allison had about 10 days ago regarding follow-up for recent events and the work taking place in high school and then she's gonna talk as deborah did about goals and school improvement and then we're gonna get into confidence competency determination and it's quite the lineup of topics everybody yes there's a range of uh yeah thanks deborah and then today i was on talking about our graduation requirements i'll even add on to that we had a meeting with our uh commissioner and secretary of education to talk about and we it was good back and forth in terms of feedback and so i'll talk more about that after allison can't wait okay um good evening everyone nice to see you we did think it would be a good opportunity and good idea to um give everybody some updates as far as our thinking our action steps um since the late october incident um and as you may have seen from my recent message two fridays ago i guess it was we really wanted to um illuminate for the community concrete ways that we're thinking about our response and things we are doing while acknowledging the ongoing emotion within the community within the school you know the different circles of impact and the different layers um there are so many different complicated layers here there are lots of perspectives and our focus now is and david's been so um clear about sort of this framework of accountability learning and healing um and we really wanted to head squarely into the learning and healing part and communicate that with the community um and so we have a couple of things and this is basically on the slide just highlighting some of the things that are currently underway um it does not go into great detail about some of the longer term things that we're chatting about but does promise to continue updating the community as far as what those longer term larger context things are um and so just to sort of highlight what we've been doing lately and some of this has already begun it's sort of it's sort of more or less in chronological order um and certainly invite your questions or insights on these things um some of you may be aware that we were fortunate enough to enlist the support of two very skilled professionals who have already done one session around restoration and team building with our football team um so last monday they did a session with the entire team and coaching staff um and it was very engaging a very positive first experience um they're doing another session next wednesday um and we're desperately looking for a third time when there can be some follow-up as well um so that is underway um we are providing optional sessions for students to drop in and continue processing their feelings and thoughts not every student is wanting that needing that and we wanted to make sure that students were aware of these opportunities with our counselors um some of that is actually community circle work um with with students and um some of our trained adults on campus um we've been doing something called monday matters where we're looking in kind of little snippets and activities and advisory at um the barriers to achieving our ideal values at the high school so that began with what are those values what would be the ideal values that we want to represent here at the high school we created a word cloud students did some reflecting on it and then picked one and described in an anonymous form the barriers to achieving those things safety belonging kindness were some of the ideal values and so hearing from students about what's in the way is going to help us really dive into addressing those barriers and all of this is headed towards some work with um we're hopeful actually our consultant who's been working with us thanks again to the hate crimes grant that caroline wrote um a wonderful consultant named danica manso brown who is going to facilitate with some interested willing students the creation of core values and a motto at the high school which you know words matter and language matters and in moments like this we need to sort of pin our our direction and pin our efforts um on the things that we most value and so creating that i think will be a really meaningful experience um we have at least 15 students who are interested in partaking in that um in that work so that will be ongoing um as the year continues um and then tomorrow we're actually doing a training with all of our students in an extended advisory on our non-discrimination the protocol and policy um the goal here is really informational so helping students understand and creating a shared understanding about what what discrimination is what is bias um what does it look like what does it sound like and then how do they report it and how do they address it um this will be sort of the first in a series of sessions with students the next will be really delving into scenarios and helping each other understand what to do when um but giving students a language and um sort of a way of thinking about and being becoming aware of discriminatory conduct so that's something that's actually happening tomorrow in advisory um this later this week um heath rollins the athletic director and i are heading to a two-day training on hate in school and sports um which is hosted by the ag's office so this is something that heath has actually gone to several times i'm joining him for the first time in a little while so look forward to that experience and bringing some learning back to this school with caroline's help we are trying to resuscitate some anti-bias training for both coaches and captains um this was something that we began several years ago and we want to sort of bring it back and make it more consistent um and lift it up again so that is something in the works um and then in terms of our curriculum we've been looking and thinking about um how how we already teach hate symbols and how we already teach in the historical context symbols of hate and how we can both emphasize those and kind of draw a narrative line kind of connect those maybe create more coherence when students are learning about those things um so that's really kind of a curricular review and then working with our teachers to highlight um highlight things a little more but also provide families opportunities for follow-up discussions at home and being more communicative in general with families about what is being taught and how they might talk with their students at home and just building awareness about the kinds of things that students are thinking about and learning about in classes um so that is our that's kind of the the follow-up and update um but i'm happy to answer any questions or david betsy did i miss anything um okay okay sure cruising right into our school improvement plan um which is hot off the press i actually had a school council meeting last night where we discussed this and approved it so it's official um the two highlights i wanted to bring to your attention um are one is related to of course our academic core focus and one is related to our sel focus um in terms of our academic core focus um as deborah mentioned we also are really focusing on what are called tier one support so what is universal in students learning experiences in what is happening in all classrooms basically in all learning contexts um and really acknowledging that with this kind of a new exciting generation of learners deepening and building our toolbox is really really important so we're trying to create a deeper shared understanding of mtss which is multi-tiered system of supports a framework we're thinking about how every student's needs are met we have a lot of layers of support at the high school we don't necessarily have a common language about what those supports are and really strengthening our tier one support is the focus this year so our new student services administrator michaela cohen has called together an mts committee and what they're doing right now is just identifying what do we already have at the high school that is supporting our students and then assessing their effectiveness so different structures and supports for example the academic support center we have different interventions we have a lot of things happening and we want to sort of map that out and then assess their effectiveness and then kind of connect things differently and better um so that committee has begun they've met two or three times already um as deborah mentioned we have executive functioning professional development thanks to the wayland public schools foundation um next wednesday at our super wednesday and at the end of february so those are two full super wednesday pd sessions with sarah ward who is comes to us incredibly highly recommended and um one of the things we kept hearing from our elementary colleagues last year was how immediate the implementation of their new understanding of executive functioning was in their classrooms and in their work with kids so we're looking forward to that and also just being with the middle school is going to be so fun it's rare that our colleagues get to kind of learn together um once we have some working knowledge of and new strategies related to tier one um we have begun some pure observations among our faculty we did two rounds of it last year we'll do two more rounds this year with a focus on tier one strategies um and that's been fun of sort of cross-curricular cross-departmental you know spanish teacher observes math teacher math teacher observes spanish teachers really getting to the practices and instruction so we'll focus on tier one strategies that way which i think will be one way of sort of measuring and observing implementation of these practices um in addition to getting student feedback so we're continuing to get regular consistent student feedback from all of our kids and all of our classes twice a year which is something we started last year um and then of course with our sel focus we are implementing our new cell phone policy this year as all of you know um where the the main thrust of the policy is making consistent um the way that students are cell phone free in classrooms so all of them are expected to put their cell phones like physically away from themselves in those little pockets um before it was sort of teacher discretion as far as how that was going to how their classrooms were cell phone free um i think it's been a seamless transition to the consistent implementation of the pockets um the kids have been awesome the teachers have been um awesome as well in terms of just that consistent implementation it has rarely become an issue um there are there have been some sort of sneaky infractions but it has been i think by by most reports a very seamless transition to that consistent um practice the thing that has been harder is making the library cell phone free and i think we all knew that that was going to have its complications just based on the culture of the library and the the way that the library has been um a more kind of lively social hub of the school um in addition to being a school library so i think i shared during our working group last year that we've been seeking a way of renorming the library into a quieter more productive learning space while maintaining it as the hub of our school the cell phone policy is just the trick for making the library quieter more productive space it has disappointed some students who have been accustomed to that being like their hangout place it can still be their hangout place they just need to put their cell phones away and use the space appropriately and if they don't want to then there's other places they can go right the commons has actually become more of kind of the lively social space that the library had elements of last year so we're just we're in transition right as far as renorming these these shared spaces but overall and we will gather input from both students and staff soon about like how it's going so far um i think overall the implementation of the policy has been has been good and i think at the beginning of the year you had mentioned utilization in the library was down have you tracked that is it is it increasing or is it still much lower than it used to be it's way lower than it used to be yeah and it's you know we also deployed um we deployed faculty members into the library as part of their duties and so that's helped enormously as far as kind of just the consistent enforcement of keeping cell phones often away in the library we don't have the pockets in the library um because there's so many kids that are often in there so it's really up to students to shut them off put them away um and that is hard for some students particularly i mean and some students legitimately are like used to using their phone in a pr like in a meaningful academic way as part of their study routine um so there's some there's some shifting going on there um but the adult enforcement there and working together with our librarian um and our librarian's assistant to kind of keep that expectation consistent has been helpful any other questions on there okay all right betsy you're gonna have to help me with this one competency determination we totally got this okay so where should we start um so as we've discussed at this table before but but for folks as you recall we had a vote uh gosh how long ago is that now is it in the spring i think seven months
did you give deeper context this is a result of an election that's right that's right took place um last november yes i was just trying to remember when that vote happened it was back in november it was it was just this past it was 20 yeah it was yeah it was a year number of 24. so no but then we voted about right but it was it was literally it was a ballot initiative abolishing mtas as a 10th grade graduation requirement um gosh i would have thought it was two november's i feel like the voters of wayland did not support that vote however it was statewide and it did pass that's just the context for it and as a result districts had to come up with their own competency determination based on some desse guidance yes so there's the context appreciate that thank you so much david and um as you know we came to you with a revised plan around our competency determination for our students who are graduating last year and we also noted that there was we anticipated that the um bureau of uh education second elementary and secondary education were in the in the works of coming out with some new requirements regarding that and that we would then be coming back to you with a revised version so that's really where we're at today um and i and this is i guess a middle of a conversation because as david referenced this morning we were also hearing about new um graduation requirements but so so these are all interrelated and connected um and this new piece that's due to the state by december 31st is still happening so we are here to sort of present allison has been working tirelessly with her curriculum leaders around this and um i've been working with my job like group she's been working with her job like groups to to really share the practices of how districts are making decisions because before we had um we had mcas and then we had different courses you needed to pass and now in addition to that there's also what core knowledge you need to show to demonstrate mastery so there's really two components to the new competency determination so it's the mastery of common skills and how are we measuring that and the satisfactory completion of coursework so it's the mastery of skills that's really the new piece this year and some revisions i think to to the coursework and this is all not to be confused with graduation requirements so the competency determination is separate from related to but separate from the graduation requirement before the mcast served as the competency determination because it was tied to grade 10 standards so theoretically gave students an opportunity to show that they mastered those standards in the form of that test the kids still take the test this is what's confusing the voters did not abolish it off the face of the earth they just said that will not be the competency determination so now districts so kids still take the mcast they still get a score etc etc but for now for now yeah stay tuned um but they left it up to districts to decide what our competency determination is for these areas these content areas and so what they have said as betsy said is this competency determination must be two separate things for successful completion of core courses and so for us it is in science biology in math algebra one or two english nine and ten and then for this year's juniors u.s history which is new the the state had been sort of hinting i was gonna say threatening but it's more hinting that the history piece was coming and so it is here now and so we so the challenge for us that they have to successfully students have to successfully complete those courses and on top of that they also need to show mastery of at least half of the standards the grade 10 standards in those content areas and the state was gracious enough to have to give us sort of a list of what that could look like um it could look like a final exam a summative exam it could look like a portfolio where students are putting together work that demonstrates collectively their mastery of standards or it could look like some other equivalent measure of those standards so in biology and math we already have a final exam so that serves that purpose so we didn't have to sort of think outside the box there we already have a final exam that asks students to demonstrate mastery of at least half the standards for that content area in the other courses um u.s history english 9 and english 10 they don't have a year-end summative final exam and so what we did is met with our department chairs and talked about what are students already doing or what are they doing that we could tweak so that they in completing that successfully they are showing mastery of at least half the standards connected to that content area and so that's what we're calling benchmark assessments um so students in english 9 and 10 in u.s history will have to successfully complete a benchmark assessment one or two benchmark assessments that we're identifying as that's the competency determination and so they need to pass that in order to pass their competency determination um we're keeping it fairly broad which is what other districts are doing in order to give us some flexibility about what that benchmark assessment is however we know at this point we know what they would be for example for u.s history one there is a causes of the american revolution project that students complete and that would be the competency determination for if if it counted for this year's sophomores that's what it would be for both english 9 and 10 their literary analysis papers that students are doing on various texts that do give students an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of at least half the standards in english 9 and english 10 um so we have those benchmark assessments established and we'd like to have some flexibility because if units change or curricula changes etc we want to be able to empower department heads in their departments to identify what the benchmark assessments would be um do we sorry yeah please um do we foresee between your kind of conversation what governor healy has come out with recently but this is going to be another it's going to change in a year for our folks that are going to graduate in fiscal year 2020 sorry calendar year 2027 and so this is like a placeholder for a year or like is that really where we're here so um it's unclear what the timing is going to be they don't know um what they have said they're looking at end of course assessments in that that right like the um regencies and there is um as kate knows because kate passed the regents that's why she's here um or maybe she did that's why she's here uh regents classes that would be a major that would be a major change the difference is what they're talking about end of course assessments that are not graduation requirements so it's unclear where this goes i don't know what do you think betty yeah i would say based on today's webinar that the end of course assessment will be one piece of the puzzle but not but not passing a single assessment is not going to prevent a student from graduating so it sounds like there will be some multiple pathways that are connected to this work um as well as i you know do you have to pass two out of three or again they're still working through those but they they've defined some parameters around that they've also um talked about things like every student must demonstrate financial literacy so that was that was one of the items that came out today and again all of this was based on stakeholder holder engagement of 400 over 400 people and you know all these surveys and as i as i was going through the hundred page document this morning um you know financial literacy was like the top thing that people were asking for which is why it's going to now be in this graduation requirement so so the this was like an a um a proposal of a framework and then over the next six months before they it sounds like in june they will be making some definitive um finalizing what these requirements will be which is why we haven't sort of touched our courses yet like why bother until this is done right um and then we don't know what the timeline will be around implementation but there were lots of questions and concerns around sort of funding for some of these things that may exist there you know they talk about capstones and portfolio experiences that are required as well so it's a it's a pretty robust proposal um to be determined how it's all gonna shake out i'm also thinking how this potentially ties back to the work that you're all supposed to be engaging with around the portrait of a learner right and like how are these all gonna align yes um and massachusetts um just recently came out with massachusetts portrait of a graduate as well or vision of a graduate based on this so you know it's hard to know erin i think this is going to take this is going to take a while and this would be a big change i mean the regions have been around i used to remind my students for 1876 so that's a long time 300 and are they phasing those out now was that i just i thought i read that at the end of this um regions are being phased out that's what it said at the end of the report i read it said actually i'm not aware it's been around so long i don't know if they're shifting so this is this is going to take a while because think about it to create all these tests and norm them i mean this but so is that the okay so that is the the long-range goal is that there will be some form of replacement to the mcast that everybody takes a standard test versus with a benchmark assessment for u.s history one you may have done a portfolio around the revolutionary war and what have you and you may have written a paper and you might have drawn a painting i don't i'm not saying that but like they're all different that serve the same purpose the goal is to get to something that's like more standardized okay is that i guess that's how you would see it that's what they it sounded like today and that um you know so one of the questions came up like if kids take ap tests can that count instead of these and and the answer to that question is well we want this to be more formative so you know ap tests are often taken at the end of your senior year or those courses so i i think there's more there's a i would say there's a distinct vision for a framework and the devil's in the details when you're trying to sort of map out how it's all going to play out right which is why this is why we're here right even the end of end of court the um eocs and of course uh exams like would factor into grades even it sounded like at some point so so again lots and lots it's early with lots of questions and we'll see where we go right one of the requirements would be completing the fafsa or the massachusetts version of the fafsa really because it's part of financial you know it'll um in addition to because it increases your odds of going to college like 85 of people who complete that then go to research based it's it's all everything's all researched and evidence-based yeah it was very interesting i love financial literacy being a requirement to graduate but i you know but then the question is is there an assessment how do you assess it beyond and that's massachusetts does not have required financial literacy classes some states right well obviously that's what this is going to drive no they did check out multiple pathways to it whether it's a standalone class well whether it's incorporated into other pieces there's again still working out different potential pathways for that so to be continued yeah i have so many questions but i don't think we have answers yet i think that's the bottom line so i'm gonna put a pin in my question yeah exactly um there are a couple of i think key things we just wanted to note that there are some um part part of what we need to submit in at the end of december is also around how are we ensuring our students with disabilities can sort of access these pieces so there's a real specific language in there around the ways in which we're ensuring we're keeping high standards for kids and giving enough access points so so kids can meet the cds same is true with our english learners and using the different wita levels um we just just a framework again for kids coming in at different levels of reading speaking listening and writing um around how they're accessing different grade level curriculum and and multiple means of expressing their their learning and understanding to ensure that they have their accommodations as well um and then there's like a whole section in it for unique circumstances um so late enrolling students a student just moves to this country they're you know late in their junior year um you know we've outlined a transcript review process um that could include things like summer school online coursework master performance exams there would also be limited use of mcas um in some of those unique circumstances with late arrivals where you might not be able to uh have a transcript you know you can envision somebody coming from a war-torn country who didn't have records so there's there's you might use mcas in those situations um to ensure that kids have mastered the um 10th grade standards there would also be an appeal process that's built into and this can actually go back to students who um didn't receive a graduate didn't graduate uh sorry didn't receive a cd and therefore get a college diploma instead of got a certificate of attendance they can appeal and go back and have their transcript reviewed to see sort of see if these new situations are meant um and there's also additional opportunities to show mastery so if the student did not pass that paper that allison was talking about they might have another shot at that same paper or an alternative version in their junior year class exactly right so we really want to map out what are the what are the other possibilities for students to demonstrate mastery um in the circumstance that they don't successfully successfully complete it so it's not sort of a one-shot deal but it could take place later in the school year or an alternative benchmark assessment that the department determines is tied to the standards or at a later at a later year so hey betsy she's moving in
no really um i did just add our current high school graduation requirements um um that we have and we will be revising those with the guidance of whatever comes out um i will though just note that they did say today distinctly even with the the new graduation requirements and the end of course exams that there will still be some version of mcas alt um for students who were not students for whom mcas was the right match based on their so that's all right mid process we do however need you to vote i have one i have one statement sorry betsy all i can think of and i know this is a very unpopular subject to bring up but i have to do it anyways if we're going to judge children on students children or children at freshman and sophomore on final exams we have to give them their test to study they have to have them they have to have all the tests that year in order to review and study there are kids that cannot do this without that information and i think we really have to commit to doing that i think there needs to be consistency that was the way i was yes there needs to be my
consistent look at and i understand from teacher to teacher there's variations in how every teacher teaches right like and that's never going to go away but i just think there needs to be a consistency amongst what's being taught and the pace with which things are being taught against yeah how we're going to then measure these kids one piece is test return another piece is like syllabus and other pieces you know attendance and all those good fun things but i i think they go hand in hand um especially if there is no standard what is the standard right like yeah what do you mean if there is no standard well if there's no it's not just mcas you know you didn't just go and pass the biology mcas right right the final exam that comes but and if you don't have all of your biology teachers at each level of the course consistently approaching that topic and i don't want to say teaching to the test right but then there's they're not all meeting the same standard i guess is my point yeah there's certain competencies that they need to learn to be successful to show mastery i think what you're saying is you want standardization across how those are delivered and the pause the pause if we need to spend a little more time on that so maybe it's not the exact same pace but maybe it is checking in for competency and understanding throughout the course of it without the test so there's plenty of testing right the kids get plenty of opportunity to show us on paper what they can do but can they verbalize that can they do that out loud can they learn from their mistakes on a test um and can we can we speed up and slow down accordingly to make sure that we cover the same amount of topics in the same amount of time but allow the kids to actually master those if that's what we're truly looking for and within those same levels of classes like if it's honors bio that's going to move a little differently than the college prep bio understood but they should college prep a and college prep b should be pretty you know synonymous with how they're moving through the curriculum
but i would also say the expectations need to be consistent that's what that's different instructors but the expectations have to be the same and sort of the process of access to material has to be yes okay and we're talking about exams that are um that are already common so the the final exam for honors biology this all the students taking honors by or taking the same final exam right so right yes and so you want to make sure they're all prepped yes to the thing i was going to say it's not the content of the exam i was going more towards are the teachers expectations the same are the quizzes leading up to the final exam open book in the discretion of one teacher and not another teacher like i don't have a sense today on the consistency of the pedagogy and how much discretion there is in the delivery of the information and that is not dissimilar when you're prepping for a standardized exam i do think that there is some difference when you're dealing with a more traditional your classroom teacher prepared exam than a standardized one that everybody is doing so i i i do think i would agree that we have to be a little more sensitive to the level of consistency that students are getting in there in their instruction if we're going to then use the final exam to to measure competency and peer comparing peer to peer great thank you you need us to vote before the end of december um it is due to desi on december 31st so i have to push enter so new year's um i'm only saying i guess could we take two weeks and come back or is it a week when's our next meeting okay so we do have two weeks could we take that just because i know christina may have feedback and she was unexpectedly and betsy you're like rolling in and so literally i much appreciate your attention but um can we take that just to digest um there was some pretty did not do it next week awesome thank you okay this is good there's a lot of it's a lot of language and yeah yeah and this is just the slide that that's what i pulled the one we saw in march of 2025 and voted on and so i wanted to kind of give us a chance to sure compare them you know just process but hearing your feedback is all really helpful to then go back and look at it okay you know and so would you guys appreciate that or do you i would very much look a little more time i shouldn't just we need a few 3 a.m epiphanies
we were anticipating that you wouldn't want to thank you okay this is a lot this is a lot and a big shift it's a big shift and today i mean again we were sharing some of the information from this morning which is yeah brand new and not not it's related but not in play yet but that's the direction they're having so well preview things it's just like we're gonna have a lot of discussions about things like this yeah yeah so thank you does anybody have any questions left for alison on this before we kind of can you come back in two weeks by any chance if there are questions that think so would that be possible maybe we can like i'm gonna watch the presentation and see if yeah yeah one thing we will need to do is vote that night because that's okay i think yeah the 34th yeah and if you have feedback before that that you need us to that's what yeah that's kind of what i'm thinking we have you know we have a couple weeks we can feel free to send it along yeah yeah okay and then we can kind of if it would be helpful for you to maybe there's other questions to come and think it out or with us that would be great sure okay thank you for all thank you totally yes thank you okay thank you all oh and can you refresh my memory u.s history one is 10th grade correct and u.s history two is junior year that's right it's a two-year sequence one of each of those right now yeah right that wasn't very long ago no no to two years when when that occurs it used to be earlier right u.s used to be all junior year only junior year and so it's so much of sophomore year was telling the story of how we got there how we got yeah exactly yeah so there was really a kind of a movement to make it a two-year um a two-year experience for kids it was such a race the one year oh my gosh you know i didn't make it to the vietnam war you know so yeah and so there's more time and there's also more depth right and more case studies and sort of right unless you know i mean i i love the model of the two years of history if the state was ever to go to an end of year exam like in new york you cannot do
global regions is all about europe yeah and so it's it's very different but here we have some nice flexibility right that's really thank you thank you so much right caroline has been waiting patiently thank you thank you for warming my seat the seat is warm do you have yours i i shared it with um aaron we all have it so well i updated it of course but i have it updated by you fabulous so i don't have to do anything no she probably did updates while we were sitting here she she was i i i i could you didn't though did you i did not because are you right can i should i sit more like that so you can see me here no i'm okay right there oh thank you oh i guess kate hi welcome welcome welcome i mean not welcome thank you
i'm hearing it right now it's like my prime time right now david knows like i'm hitting my stride right
so while that's being pulled up hello how are you all doing okay yeah last we saw you well last i saw you was in boston yeah yeah yeah and so i'm going to present about this hate crime prevention grant and i just want to center that the the why of it is because these acts cause tremendous pain and harm and and um and trauma in some cases right so i'm going to go through all these slides and show all of these wonderful things that we did and and are doing and i just want to make sure that we center that there are real people students families um who are who don't feel safe in wayland um and struggle to put their kids on a bus and send them to our schools and we don't want that and um to change that it requires each of us to make a commitment within our sphere of influence right what it what is within my sphere of influence where i can do something um engage in a conversation that can create a sense of safety and belonging for all students and their families so i just wanted to say that um before we start but i'm ready okay so so i just i when i think about the work that i do i always centered around our district goals and so i just wanted to really quickly just remind um all of us about this goal that we have around belonging and equity so we can move on i'm not going to read it so i just wanted to give some background on how this hate crime prevention grant came to be so as we all know on october 7th hamas attacked israel soon after november in november the healy driscoll administration announces these statewide initiatives that are not just for schools but our grant is obviously focused on schools but non-profits community organizations police and the whole thing onward so our first grant was awarded in at the very beginning of jan of 2024 and we were awarded fifty thousand dollars yep and then we were awarded another fifty thousand and then last earlier this year we awarded um 25 and that's because they set a cap on if you have previously been awarded funds from this grant then you can only apply for 25. so um i just want to note that they did reserve a certain percentage of the funds for schools that are chronically underperforming and and our district doesn't fall obviously under that so i i think it's it's a great thing that we have received the maximum amount all three years that we have applied and we've been able and i just hope that um my presentation gives a good like sort of big picture view of what we've done with this money so there are two main areas of focus one student programming and curriculum and the other staff development and community engagement all right so i'm going to go through both of them so student programs see notice i the little visuals that i have here going on i'm making it move right in front of me yes it's so in the summer of 2024 one piece was around social studies curriculum right so we have since my first year i've been working with the k through five with k through five teachers around um integrating the learning for justice formerly teaching teaching for tolerant teaching tolerance tolerance um standards and they are identity diversity justice and action so one example of that is in grade two there's a unit on immigration and there's an activity that we recently updated around sort of the story of your name and so kids interview ask their parents grandparents the story of either their first or last name and it's a way for both it addresses both their own individual identity but also diversity because kids hear each other's stories do you remember that from second grade i don't remember any of my kids doing that it's recently updated okay yeah all right that wasn't very nice okay
um at the middle school level so last fall rehearsal for life uh we we used some of the funds to bring this improv group to the middle school we had many planning meetings in advance with the core to talk about what our goals were what the middle school goals were keep going um one thing i wanted to point out not only was the reception but the the students themselves were really positive and staff were really positive we did them by grade level but more importantly there was pre-work before the assemblies and then there was post-work after the assemblies so it wasn't just a one-shot like do this assembly um it gave students an opportunity to talk about like their different identity markers and times when they have felt like if this is the group that belongs times when they have maybe felt this way and and what's fascinating i was in one eighth grade um tag group and sometimes the kids who say like share stories are not the kids that you would think right it's like a white male very athletic kid who talks about how when he was in elementary school he was really small and how he it was really hard for him in sports and how like so it's an opportunity for kids to connect around the feeling of not belonging or the feeling of being being teased or targeted which can cut across race and all sorts of other identity markers okay we also at there was a traveling exhibit the auschwitz exhibit which is now i think in cincinnati if you want to go to cincinnati with your suitcase um travel there we funded tickets for them to to go to this exhibit and this is just a photo from that day and pat tutwiler is in the back there former wayland high school principal as allison knows um now the secretary of education now secretary of education of course moving on okay at the high school so the summer of 2024 ninth grade modern world history teachers and the department had met to um talk about and expand their ninth grade unit on the holocaust and genocide and hate make sure that those consistent vocabulary being used across the sections this is obviously the course that's heterogeneous and every ninth grade student takes it um and it's also because of the change in the desi social studies curriculum it teaching of the holocaust and hate symbols got moved to ninth grade whereas before it was in the middle school um and then last winter we had dan this is danica manza brown who allison was mentioning earlier she helped us develop a student belonging survey and then she led listening sessions for a very diverse group of students and so we did that as a way of just understanding how do students who um maybe on quieter or maybe feel reduced sense of belonging how do they experience their classes the the hallways extracurricular activities and this is the other big category or bucket so as has been mentioned earlier we have put in tremendous um time energy
training you name it around the launch of this non-discrimination protocol this was david's idea um a year ago that or to the spring of i guess to be the spring of 2024 just identifying we don't have this of a mechanism for for students staff etc to just report um when there's an active bias or whether they're not sure but they think there was etc so so this is um one of the best practices that research has shown around how to create safety and belonging for marginalized communities one is an anonymous reporting so there isn't enough you can do this fill this out and it can be anonymous right and then also a set of practices and protocols that are consistent across the district um we trained all staff and i don't remember the last bullet item i had there betsy but it's fine oh i was just going to say the middle school has talked and then the high school is doing it tomorrow yeah so okay next so as deborah mentioned look they did the work for me so uh we've been so i just want to add one thing to what deborah said around tier one so um one we think of the especially the word like if you think about restorative justice just that word justice implies like you mean i immediately think about a crime or something there was an infraction and then we have to repair so i i like to use the word restorative practice and one of the things that we have learned from the facilitators at center for center for restorative justice at suffolk university is that this community building this circle practice is is foundational because when there is a harm right one of the reasons why it doesn't work to just go right to the what's called tier three is the harm doer feels no sense of like what what am i restoring to what community do i am i a part of so if that it doesn't exist then the repair and the restorative piece um doesn't work right it's got and it and it is 100 volition you don't want to force a kid or an adult to apologize right the apology is is the words i'm sorry um have no meaning and no impact unless there's a real reckoning with with what they did regardless of intent the impact yeah i was just thinking i think that also works for if you haven't done the tier one work to community build there may not be a participant on the other side wanting to share what hurt them or what their harm was regardless of what the intent might have been um so it works to just have that because you're more open to share on either side and to be open to the sharing to then be open to the apology have you done restorative a little bit yeah because you're sounding very like you knew yeah absolutely and one of the things that i i really appreciated about it when i participated in circles with students and certainly with staff is that in in any group like think about any meeting right they're always the people if it's like a staff meeting a monthly staff meeting they're just people who naturally emerge as the talkers they're they're the fastest processors maybe they are leaders in the school um and then we don't hear from like the other 90 percent most of the time right but in the circle as you're going around everyone has an opportunity to share their opinion their take and they also have the right to pass and that piece is is as much an action and a sharing as is answering the prompt or responding to the prompt and and in this process of equity of voice and even the symbolism of being in a circle right um it's it's community building at its core and then hopefully it's it mitigates the impulse to say and do something that could hurt someone's feelings because i feel like if i were the kid who might say something really mean i now know erin and i don't want to say that to her um i know enough about her to know that that would hurt and so i'm gonna pause that that is a hope okay as deborah pointed out we have two more sessions coming in january k through 12. this is a picture i just put a picture of the rj training from the summer uh she's already talked about that we also had a community conversation did any of you do the community conversation you did it i read the book okay not there i had a conflict at the evening we all read the book you did it okay so this was our we um this was so we used some of the funds to buy the copies so the community members who wanted to participate would have access to a copy of the book and wouldn't that wouldn't be an obstacle and and there were two opportunities to engage in conversations that were using the circle model to have conversation around harm and how this how so then the impact of social media one of the things that i'm so excited about um is the work of this of the deb diversity equity and belonging lead teachers it's a program that um so i'm 0.7 as you all know right and i'm spread across the district i do district level work but i also work in each school like helping supporting staff and principals and and there's just not enough of me and also i think oftentimes teachers listen to their colleagues more than they're going to listen to someone outside their school so i really felt like it's important to build the capacity and the leadership of teachers in their buildings in each school who are really committed to this work there aren't that many opportunities for teachers to take on leadership roles outside of being a you know a house leader or department head and this is has been a great leadership opportunity and i just wanted to share some of the work that they have well they we have done this year we created a mission statement and our mission is to cultivate inclusive school communities where all students and staff feel seen respected and valued and we're below barriers to belonging for historically marginalized groups are recognized and addressed and if you'll notice it sounds very similar to the belonging and equity goal for the district and that's intentional so several of our schools have given out staff belonging surveys and i've been working really closely with the middle school on how they're going to share the results of the survey with their staff what kind of conversation the format um for exploring issues of belonging so for example we learned through this that not every staff member thinks of belonging as as a staff student soccer game or the cookie swap or that and they don't even want that from their workplace like for them coming to work and belonging is being respected um being able to exchange ideas freely etc etc etc so like even just asking people can you show up as your authentic self at work well some people don't want to be their authentic self at work for whatever reason right and so we've learned a lot in the process of even developing the surveys happy hollow just um administered theirs the middle school administered their staff belonging last spring and from it what's what's what's so rich are the the comments that staff make like it's really clear that um there are staff who don't feel like they belong for lots of different reasons that are invisible to people who do feel like they belong right just invisible so i think one of the opportunities is to give people an opportunity to like reflect on that and learn and just consider when you enter a space do do you do i assume that everybody has the same opinion or political persuasion or whatever it is as i do right we all feel this way about this issue and and it is really othering for people who don't and they don't feel comfortable saying well actually i don't feel that way and and when i was explaining when i met with the middle school deb with um debra chithra jada the deblt we're talking about um sometimes staff say like i don't want to talk about like staff belonging let's focus on the kids what are we doing about students like we're so student-centered student-centered and i said this is student-centered work right it is because staff like the way that staff feel when they enter the building the way they if they only feel comfortable when the door is shut and they're with their students that absolutely has an impact on the culture of the whole building and does affect learning and we do have triggers like i know as a teacher i have have and had triggers and if i'm not aware of my feelings and how i'm showing up and a kid triggers me or a staff member triggers me right and i'm unaware it's sel right but sel for adults so the belonging work we're doing with students it's just as essential to do it with staff because if we want our staff to create spaces of belonging for students they need to explore and understand the ways that their colleagues experience it okay so that's that um they also led the deb lead teachers led a professional development last year on and we reviewed the non-discrimination protocol and also did a whole pd on warm demanders and principal said they did an awesome job and this was just one slide from it so um we showed a video and then asked teachers to name or point out the warm demander moves they saw in this teacher who was doing this lesson and one of the things that we're trying to focus on is like that demander part is really important i think we're really the warmth part a lot of people who go into teaching are really good at naturally the caring but that demander part is kind of uncomfortable right and and it's the same reason why it's hard for me sometimes as a parent what when my kids were little to say no to something because i just didn't i couldn't tolerate like their reaction right and so with social media and phones like that's such a huge thing like oh my gosh they're gonna have such a huge reaction if i say no phones in your bedroom at night right i just right and the same thing with the demand if i press this kid i know they're going to react in a huge way and our ability to manage our own distress is part of the tension of being a warm demander and why it's so so important so we're trying to get teachers to i'd be able to identify what are those moves and and what feels comfortable for me it's like a piece of clothing you can decide like i try it on like doesn't fit put it back on the rack all right next slide so one piece we're doing as a deblt team we're calling them glimmer and glows which is to really elevate and acknowledge the the belonging successes i think sometimes we're teachers are so like we're very self-critical like well we can do this better and we can do that better and so it's really important to like just notice notice belonging in action so i just have a few examples so this was from a student who wrote it to his principal because the deblt's have been making a concerted effort to make sure that every flag the flag of every kid who's in the school is acknowledged and represented and we've had these like beautiful very um heartwarming um moments with our buildings and ground crew saying my flag isn't there can you get this flag and they're hanging it up and then this the empowerment that this kid felt like that a he knew that he could make this request and b that he wrote this note i just think is awesome
there we go and then this is not this is actually not from a metco mentor mentee launch party i just needed a picture of some middle school students so so um but they they have this vigorous and active program for metco's boston resident students okay and at the high school this was one example during hispanic heritage month they the world language department put together this display they bought all these books and then the books are going to be donated to the library that's it david how good i'm getting pretty good at this really like really locked it down and you are in your time limit that he gives everybody yeah yes that's that's good and you couldn't even see the clock no i it's like i'm really he senses your inner clock i don't need that when i've got that time the clock manager very good but i wanted as soon as i wanted to answer any questions you have or things that you're wondering about uh or or i i'm free to happy to go home i believe you mentioned not just the staff belonging survey which you gave us a little bit of feedback but there was a student belonging survey i was wondering if you could share a few highlights just at the high school okay just at the high school we haven't done one like district-wide um and i am now gonna so one of the pieces and allison you need to if can she help me out even though she's not at the table anymore no yes um i think you're allowed to phone a friend so so we noted one thing we asked was um how like to rate their sense of belonging on a scale of like let's say one to four and then we asked another question which was how much do you want to feel a sensible and so one thing that we found fascinating is yes there are lots of kids oh not lots but there's a good number of students who don't feel very connected to the school this is sure yeah and of that group many say they don't want to but is that because they don't feel connected who knows yeah like anyone the product are they correlated to each other like yeah so about one hour ago i wrote down deepening connections with students is the best way to know how to support them i wrote that an hour ago and that is very true based on what everybody here has said it's allowing students to have that one person that one adult that one teacher parent coach it doesn't matter who it is but somebody that can share the hard truths with them and that they can share their true feelings with maybe they want it maybe they don't but those that don't say they want it are probably the ones that most need it and um i mean my kids are fortunate to have that at the high school i can name them out loud but they each have a teacher that is a warm demander and sometimes it's uncomfortable and sometimes it's it really cracks into them and that's really important and i wish that for every student and um the ones that say no thank you are the ones i worry most about that's a real yeah well the metro west adolescent health includes that's one of the pieces of data we turn to first is and it's actually considered to protect active students feel to an adult at school and an adult in their life right because it protects them from other risky behaviors um and you know there's there's an we're always sort of we try not to be self-congratulatory about that number until it's 100 right because if it's not 100 then there are students who are reporting adults and it's just one they only need one adult they just need one one it doesn't have to be like happy but you're and the demander part can only come once the teachers earned the trust right to push because they've shown up for the your your son or daughter and because they have shown an interest and and i imagine you're you're i don't want to say child because they're in high school but your your your student feels like that teacher really knows them beyond just you're a student in my class absolutely and i think that's the hardest work that everybody does everybody in this room does right um but probably the most important because that's how you help the curriculum impact them that's how you that's how you are aware of things that bother them and get to their core and and you help them be more successful on the field at home at school um in the lunchroom talking to other other students and other kids but yeah i wrote it a while ago one thing that was i do now now that i'm looking at this it's reminding me uh the the um ninth graders we were really pleased with the rating around them feeling like they found an adult they connect with or there was some question around that where we felt like oh so at the ninth grade level that transition is going pretty well for a lot of kids and that was was that in november of last year it was it was pretty it was early we were worried that the ninth grade number was going to go yeah because it was so early yeah and i think that's a you know they have the ninth grade advisories and they're so there's a lot of um work that is built around that huge transition from eighth to ninth grade it's a really important one and now we got to hang on to them into 10th and into 11th and then they kind of come back in 12th because there's a whole lot going on right yeah um they need everybody's help then yeah because it's a transition into something new yeah the middle the middle part too and belonging so connected to how well students do in school yes and and attendance yes the trusted adult thing you mentioned is one of the biggest levers for getting a kid to school if that trusted adult says hey i missed you where are you aren't you gonna weren't you supposed to come in and show me x or weren't we gonna do this together i love that yeah i heard latoya mention that that there was personal outreach and things and i think that's really really effective yeah when i go into the schools like so especially six and ninth when in the in the beginning of the school year they see me and it's like oh my gosh someone who knows me right because they're in a brand new place and i don't grade them i don't give them consequences i'm just like you know hey and you know i'm sure that teachers are really resentful because they're always happy to see because i'm just like hi and but i think that just that piece around relation like that those relationships matter and how much the ninth graders and the sixth graders miss their people from the school they left yeah right any other takeaways i was just curious well how was participation it was um excellent because we did it during advisories so they had to fill it out that's the way to do it staff surveys too i said give the staff time during the staff meeting to fill it out instead of saying here's a right thing click on it later so we had 700 726 responses okay that's great and that was given when last fall at the high school so nearly 100 percent nearly right i shouldn't say 100 but 80 90. no i can't do that calculation in my head carol why are the feelings person yes that's why i'm the feeling ask me any you can throw any question at me that is about you know issues and i'll and i'll try to answer but not not numbers to your is your sense with the knowing that this is the last time that we'll get we'll be eligible for any of the grant money to help support this work do you feel like we've been able to deploy those funds to stand up sort of infrastructure that we'll be able to go beyond that's a great question i think that's like a david question i'll take i'll i'll take a piece of that one that's a good toss there by the way she's out of time
and i actually caught it at the end zone so we're good so um it's a really good question that's because you know when i look at and think about caroline's presentation it's about like what do we want to build in permanently for our infrastructure so let me talk about a couple of areas you know that we've talked about caroline number one is the deb lts right so that's an infrastructure where we're stronger now so one of the questions we ask for example at budget time if this is something we've invested in that's making a difference that's up to us to keep it here and putting in the budget you know the second one um you know you heard deborah talk about 19 people train and now 17 more in terms of getting uh to a critical mass and something you were talking about aaron in terms of students having a critical a consistent experience so is there a little more work we could do there around professional development so those are areas in terms of building in some of the structures that i think are important that do have an impact on budget because you know the goal of the state and these grants is for you know it's kind of like seed money what are you going to keep doing and build in and so it's a really good question it's something that you know stay tuned because we're starting our budget discussions tomorrow at 9 30 and um okay no and i mean i think we have to be mindful with not just the non-discrimination protocol but also some of the restorative circle work if the schools are finding that the communities are receptive and we're seeing that yielding as we bring in new people to the district we need to find a way to pass on some of that knowledge and training if we've if we've used the grant to fund it for larger groups just to encourage you to think about how we make sure that as new people join us in the district we make sure the work around the grants was you know a very big one-time lift like developing a non-discrimination protocol you know that's a that's a big lift that has been done but there are other parts that kind of need will be every year thank you thanks you're welcome thank you welcome anytime thank you on to on to other matters all right thanks allison of course yeah make the announcement of the release of the executive session minutes of october 22nd 2025 and the release of previously redacted material of the executive session minutes of july 19 2023 august 23 2023 september 6 2023 june 11 2025 and november 5 2025. i would also like to announce the continued non-disclosure of all previously redacted and released or entirely withheld executive session minutes and materials from 2010 to november 5th 2025 aside from those that were previously announced um does anybody want to david do you want to speak to the memo for 4.3 the fiscal year capital requests yes um there was a capital improvement planning committee established and so in this memo there are a few parts of it number one you see a list here of projects that are take that are taking place over the course of this year um certainly uh the boilers are really important uh betsy you know the middle school oh yeah boiler so that work is is really important work um to say the least and this work is approved and ongoing um things like you know an emergency generator which has been done that's all helpful um and you can see here um a lot of this work is district-wide depending on where the needs are if there are more than one building and then on the next page we have capital requests um that um in some cases have been updated um i should note that um there's an explanation here of how playgrounds are funded in whalen historically which is important to note it comes from parks and recreation can i ask a quick question 24 24 year cycle sorry um i know we've gone around and around and around on this but did the emergency generator cost end up getting split between us and the town side because i think it's wherever it hits i get it right it's all coming to the capital budget however people are looking at that as a school capital spend and it's really not for the school so that we have the emergency correct place yeah yeah like the emergency shelter correct um so i'm just curious because i'd like you know or at least put some sort of asterisk because it gets you know it's tagged to the middle school but the middle school is not using it you know and actually the middle school wouldn't be using it no because no one would be using because no one would be in school and that building would be populated by other people which has happened yes it has it has i've seen the cops i've been there me too i haven't been there i've seen the cops yeah went to charge if you could just find out yeah we'll find that out um in terms of some preliminary capital items just to note um that our priorities one is this i want to add one of our district goals around reading and literacy curriculum expansion so that's an important goal a lot of work taking place you'll get a presentation later you've heard certainly updates on this we received a prison grant to cover some of it but we will need more so that is a piece um right there david do you know if that um i guess roughly 500 000 but the 350 is an annual or is it a four-year four-year adoption i see it yeah okay perfect i just wanted to note that we um you can't just use the prison money to buy you know certain grades they if the town doesn't match it to pay the other half you can't access that money so okay you know it was not in a prior ask because the grant just came out last year so typically the capital um is on multi-year cycles but so that's why this is a new request and why it's important that this year because otherwise we lose right a lot of grant money and is that being i guess should one of us plan to attend something to support the approval of our items we don't always attend there's a meeting coming up december 9th next tuesday so um i think this is this is one of those um because i know kirsten's a member of cipc and we got uh brian hurley as our appointed seat so he christine's not voting brian is voting right so yeah and this is why it would be helpful for you to approve this tonight so before next week's meeting we can go in and say the school committee has approved this we really need this adopted um the other part and do you want one of us to attend is what i'm asking to help let me i'll talk wouldn't that be helpful hurt um to do that okay that would be great um you can attend over zoom um and um i think people will understand that because we have half of this paid for to cover the other half this is like a one shot for us to really address literacy and you can also let them know that you know it's a system goal we just didn't respond to this but we've been working on this now for over a year um the other part in terms of um capital items is related to school safety and updating walkie-talkies in a community quite important in schools and that hasn't been updated many many years it's striking me as perhaps maybe it shouldn't but i'm surprised if i'm reading this correctly that they upgraded their systems but this is a like after like a post-hoc thought about the schools like did it come up about the schools no okay so i'm not wrong to be questioning that okay thank you i would say it's overdue i think is a fair way of saying it i think we've been talking about it for a while but we haven't had the funding sources to really actualize it and and um the frequency the frequencies that we're acting that we're using are need to be different than the ones that we're currently using is it's really two hundred thousand dollars wow to purchase the signals as well as the devices and they've got to integrate with
it's just hard for me to believe there couldn't have been some economies of cost if we had done it all at the same time but maybe they need a different they need even a higher scale than um we need certain things that we can use with them but others don't and that addresses all of the schools betsy yes okay yeah we've met with uh escaping me at the moment we we met with vendors and we we've had we've had both you know all of our safety partners have been part of this conversation as well as well about town side folks to make sure everything can integrate and then what i'm seeing above the new asks are things that are already slated so one question i have is how do we think about a five-year capital improvement plan that was adopted two or three years prior to our current master facilities assessment i realize nothing is like breaking ground imminently but if i'm looking at like playground investment on property that could be in scope to be considered right like i just want to be thoughtful about not investing in upgrades that we are then going to undo and i realize we may not have a definite answer to that but i think we would be irresponsible to not at least talk about it it's a really good question um it's it's that balance between shorter and longer term betsy when you're involved in this process um however you know while our students are here we want to give them the best and the question is how flexible will this be and where do you think if you're renovating or rebuilding the location might be because sometimes they're used anyway i've also known of new playgrounds getting knocked down because the school's being built adjacent right and is hm it already got the five-year cap like have we given them all of this background they know what was in scope and they're going to be sharing um they're going to come here on january 12th we're going to talk about that next monday at our meeting kate about updating kind of what their findings have been around our current schools that that will be something they'll they'll share we had a brief update about that you know in a written piece but they'll get into more depth so they'll be joining us on our first meeting after the new year okay so the tc so but the tcw and town building let's just say hypothetically we were in scope to relocate tcw there'd be a question for the town and rec presumably whether that playground remains for town use not for a district school use no or am i why not you're saying no you're talking about on a school property so it's a well it's a shared property right now right because it's tcw so in 2026 so what i'm looking at is we are scheduled to have a capital expense to replace the tcw playground in 2026. the likelihood of us doing something in that area as part of the facilities overhaul to me seems no i think the possibility is to relocate tcw out of that area as part of the facilities plan yeah but when's that gonna happen i don't know what's the lifespan on a new playground well if you think about it it's a 24-year cycle right so that's an investment that you're going to hit for 24 years on depreciation sure but not if there's no school operating where the playground is in that 24-year time period that's what i'm trying to anticipate then there's just a playground without there's just a playground with no school right there'll still be a field here and a building here right but then it's a town thing not a school thing but they're paying it to do it they're paying to upgrade it we're not this is parks and rock it's not it okay but also like if i'm reading this capital budget i mean it's not like if i'm reading this clay pit hill upper has to go first then happy hollow then the town beach then tcw clay pit hill upper already got done so happy all so do the town beach so why are they trying to check it out already done okay stick a fork in me i'm done okay okay um oh my god it was there for all of those i'm losing my mind okay and then david there just seems to be a note here that there used to be 400 every year to fund that work but it's gone yes uh there that needs to some more work and figuring out okay what happened there i i just talked to kirsten about that today okay
so the vote is just to approve adding these two yeah i mean are there any other options on the second one i think keeping our schools safe and communicative with the appropriate departments is really important to us um but it sounds like you've exhausted all other options like this is this is it yeah okay i do like a motion yeah it's right there i can make no i know i didn't know people i didn't know if other people were ready i'm done i'm good all right i will move to approve the fiscal year 27 priority capital requests as recommended by the director of finance and operations totaling 550 000 consisting of 350 000 for the reading literacy curriculum expansion to leverage the fiscal year 26 prism grant funding an additional 200 000 for the school safety phase to address communication device reliability and alignment with police and fire systems i further move to submit carryover requests to the capital improvement planning committee for consideration uh second okay okay all in favor aye any opposed none good job on that motion betsy thanks i don't believe that i read very accurately
that would have been a good one for me betsy
i might have made it shorter but it was very specific and the correct i appreciated not having to stumble over my words um oh allison was gonna just touch on the wrestling so i did ask her about it and she was going to talk i'm sorry yeah i just yeah i did say so uh i did check with her it is an annual trip and it is over uh i thought it was over the break right around there so this is january no not january 10th it's january is it just saturday it's up it's a weekend they're not missing school yeah so it's not then somehow i thought it wasn't um so it is an annual wrestling trip in the berkshires three or four coaches who go so it's well it's well staffed i did ask about that january 10th and 11th so it's not i don't know i don't like that one but it's three or four coaches it does not interfere with school days yes i have never asked this before and it has not occurred to me till tonight do we know when students are staying overnight in a hotel if there's ever a pool a hotel i'm just seeing they will be given access to the hotel's facilities and it made me curious what we do about that with students many times overnight we've never used a i don't know about that high school but i've not been on high school a few of the questions would typically answer ask or answer it in here sean's very well prepared this is an annual this is like well well practiced i i can make a motion if we're ready for it i move to approve the whs wrestling team overnight trip to pittsfield massachusetts in january 2026 on the 10th through the 11th second hop as part of them i move to approve the consent agenda okay i need a minute to look at this that's what i was saying and i i don't see the november 3rd in another folder uh i moved them in there having a tough night maybe i didn't move them in yet hold on i did them so give me one second 19th they're here oh sorry i thought i moved them in boom oh it just popped up getting good man well my esteemed colleagues and committee members are reviewing the minutes because i failed to put them in so that they could prepare uh i have an ask of you to um yes but no related to the special ballot for december 11th and just getting that out for exposure um and any maybe connecting with i don't know elizabeth do we put something in all school news news or is it not i don't know when that will go out i think school news just was that a wednesday it just will go out again next wednesday that would be the day before that might be helpful that is a good place in the town news the timing will be right on i don't know if you want to work in like a link to the faqs that they rolled out by the select board or do that yeah i saw the faqs you don't have to i was considering a revision but i don't need to does that mean you might want to second i thought i did already sorry then we stopped second stopped yeah uh okay all in favor aye any opposed none consent agenda is approved lest the accounts payables and payroll warrants as they were removed at the outset of the meeting do we have any matters not reasonably anticipated by the chair none okay and i move to enter executive session for the purposes of reviewing and approving executive session minutes with the intent to redact and release said minutes as permitted by mgl chapter 30a section 22 for november 19th 2025 the school committee will be joined by diane marabella recording secretary the school committee will adjourn an executive session and will not reconvene in open session do i have a second second okay patsy yes kate yes erin yes erin yes okay
Okay, anybody here for public comment?
One? You girls are enough? Okay. All right. Come on up. We'll give, wait a minute, just don't, wait one second to start. Can somebody just, um, time? Two? We'll give you. Let me, okay. No, it's just him. We'll give him three minutes. We'll give you three minutes, since you're the only one visiting us tonight. I'm not going to take it much longer. I've been coming off and on. Sanjin Hodzik, coming from 19 Woodland Road, in Wayland. I've been talking about this so many times, so you probably know about it so far. Um, but I wanted to check, because I feel this is one-way communication. Every time I come, or anybody else, we say things, nothing happens. This is for like two plus years, going on and on, and still nothing. Um, I've heard from some people, uh, different ways, uh, different communication channels, and I feel support. The only two people that I haven't heard, that are kind of expressing concern, trying to do something, initiating something. And I'm not calling anybody to say bad things about people. But, Aaron Gibson, since you are chairman, I think you have a power to start conversation about something that is not feeling right. And what we are seeing lately, and also, Mr. David, superintendent, you have a power. It's just about, I'm not calling people, I'm just asking for consideration, and trying to be treated fairly, as everybody else. Lately, we see a lot of racial profiling, you know, incidents, this and that. And it's concerning, it's growing. It's not something that we are attacking and trying to suppress or trying to eliminate. We're just kind of supporting by being quiet. So I'm asking, if we can do something about it, Muslims, we don't have holidays, but we want it to be treated as everybody else. And if somebody else is not treated the way it's supposed to, we step and we ask to be treated the same way as everybody else. There is nothing wrong with that. Um, second thing, the meeting, if it's online, it would be much easier and better for people to watch. And participate and be there. Um, I don't think I'm, or we are asking something that is inappropriate or disrespectful or something extraordinary. It's just something that everybody has. Nothing else. When somebody has it, and another person doesn't have it, it's a discrimination against that person. Or that community. Or that group. Whoever that person is, or whoever that group is. Um, that's all I have. I've been asking, and I'm asking you to put it on agenda. Let's discuss publicly. If I said something wrong, I apologize. And I will apologize again. But just make it right. Nothing else. There's nothing wrong with being right. So that's all. Simple. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you. No other public comment. Okay. We will close public comment. 3.1. Do you want to give any... I'll give a little background. Okay. Tonight is a night where we will talk about our goals and school and building plans with our secondary principals. On December 17th, we'll have our elementary principals. Um, we'll first start at the middle school with Deborah Romeo, year two. Um, come on up, Deborah. Um, and Deborah's going first because she is headed to a middle school band concert at 7 o'clock. And she's on our agenda first. And that is why. Normally we sometimes flip coins, but, um, we, uh, thought, you know, that our band teacher is starting this first concert. It would be lovely for Deborah, who goes to so many concerts just like Allison. So, here we are. Welcome, Deborah. And she'll talk a little bit about goals and the work and school improvement plans on various areas. And she's got a couple of slides, as well, to remind us of our district and school goals. If I have one second.
That's right. Yep. Okay. And Beth, are we zooming ahead to middle school? Or... Yeah, so, um, there's just a couple of, you know, the agenda, sort of, we've got the context setting. Um, we'll review the district goals. Yep. And then get right to the middle school school improvement plan highlights. Um, I think the school improvement, the whole school improvement plan that's been approved by the school council is in your folders. Um, and then the Wayland High School is going to, Allison here is going to talk about, um, follow up on some recent events as well as the school improvement plan. And then, um, talk about the updated, uh, competency determination for our graduating seniors. Time for questions and answers. All right. I'll take that one. Yeah. Um, yeah. Um, so this is our, you know, as we think about our broad district goals, we, our goal as leaders is to create the conditions, structures, and collaborative support for leaders and educators at the building level to actualize their strategic actions, which they're going to talk about tonight within their school improvement plans. Goals, as we think about goals and strategic actions, this is how we think about where do we spend our time over the course of the school year. So Deborah will talk about, you know, time at faculty meetings and the work taking place because capital is really what we have in time. Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um student services we'll hear from in the spring and community is ongoing so those are a few pictures from the middle school um that demonstrate some of the learning and activities that have gone on the picture on the left is one of our eighth grade math teachers and one of our sixth grade students at math night and math night is for sixth grade students and their families it's a wonderful afternoon and evening event the picture in the middle is sense of wonder days for seventh grade and we had it was a stay-at-home field trip for one of the days where we have specialists in in animal refuge come and bring some of the animals and actually teach the kids about the animals and they get some hands-on experiences the picture at the top is a math classroom where kids are collaboratively doing some problem solving and the picture on the right hand bottom was from our French week that was a jam in the morning where all of the kids who studied French came and sang to the school as people were entering and that's our version of the Eiffel Tower so just some of the fun that's happening at the middle school I'm going to dive into each of these really briefly just to explain kind of where we are in the work our academic core focus is on accountable talk on in terms of deepening student engagement and learning and math sign and social studies English and world language and as with any I feel like this is a continuation of a conversation we started last year so with any goal that is really worthy of our time and effort it takes several years last year was our learning year in terms of learning about accountable talk our curriculum leaders did a great job providing professional development to the teachers and now we're looking to operationalize it like putting it into practice in the classrooms and what that looks like it's kind of multi if we're coming at it from very several different directions at the same time many teachers have chosen to make professional their professional practice school focusing on accountable talk and showing how that's going to translate into student learning we also as an administrative team we're going to be going into classrooms to look for how accountable talk is actually coming to life in our classrooms for purposes of saying what skills are the students developing skills like using evidence from whatever they're learning their reasoning skills adding on to others thinking introducing a different perspective and that and actively listening all of those are the skills we're going to be looking for and our curriculum leaders are going to be supporting our teachers as they are implementing accountable talk moves into their classrooms and of course every accountable talk move comes with teaching a teaching point in the classroom to demonstrate to students what it actually looks like so that they can do it more and more independently so this year we're going to be looking at what is the impact on the kids ability to actually have increasing student to student discourse focused on their learning but that's what we're looking for and that would include all of those skills that I just mentioned as well as integrating the content vocabulary into their conversations in different classrooms when we think about next year like kind of taking this this talk year where students are really developing their top skills we're going to look for for example in argument writing which is typically it's like a claim and evidence and reasoning we're going to look and that's in different content areas as well we're going to look for students to improve their actual writing pieces because all of the research suggests that it isn't actually by doing more and more argument writing but rather honing their thinking skills through talk so that their ideas are clearer so that their writing becomes clearer so as we think about like the next like this year is about the talk and next year will be about how does the talk actually impact their learning in different content areas we're also going to be joining the high school in working with Sarah Ward on executive functioning those are going to be our two super two of our super Wednesdays this year and we're really looking forward to that because it the height of the elementary school experience was so positive last year and it is something we notice about our middle schoolers as an area of need and so the more that we know about it the better we'll be able to meet their to meet their needs the next area is in belonging and equity and we're looking to increase our students sense of belonging by building teacher capacity to facilitate community circles as a tier one practice meaning tier one meaning for all students across the school right now but thanks to the grants written by Carolyn Han Caroline thank you we currently have 19 staff members the whole administrative team at the middle school who are trained in circle practice and so and we will in January add another 17 staff members thanks to the grant and what we're very very excited about that because classroom teachers counselors staff in general education special education so right now as we're growing this practice some things that we've done are we created a tool kit they added team created a tool kit for the staff for tag which is our advisory and in that we had a collection of circles that we put together so that people could just use those resources moat I feel like a really important step we took this year is that Miss Rowley Miss Spicer and I are joining tag every Wednesday so for the first 11 weeks I was at sixth grade Miss Spicer works with seven Miss Rowley works with eight and we are modeling circles in those tags or supporting the teachers who are already trained and it's it's great fun and it's inspiring because we're getting to know the kids so much better because one of the things about the circle practice is equity of voice and so we hear from every student as an as individuals and as you do rounds in the circle you get to know them as individuals in this really safe calm setting so we're really looking forward to the training coming up and we're already using it in a variety of ways it's in tag class teachers are using it in their classrooms to circle practice we also use them across meeting structures like I was in our DEP meeting this morning and the facilitator was using a circle structure so that we as a group could collaborate that way we've used it in family and caregiver meetings as well as like in department meetings and curriculum leaders and house leaders so it's a really it's a great tool for like focused conversation and building community and the thing that we're looking for especially is that community piece for our students and increasing their sense of belonging by integrating that practice and the last piece of the social-emotional focus being on reducing the negative impact of devices in the middle school and the implementation of yonder is kind of going as expected and we're working really hard at it our homeroom teachers check pouches every day as part of attendance so kids just take them out yonder recommended that to us because we have to keep sending the message to the kids that this is part of the middle school program we have as an administrative team kind of been the ones to respond to things when things aren't like quite right because it's really important for our homeroom teachers to maintain the really positive relationships that they have with the students and so we don't want like the power like this program to become bigger than it is at the middle level so far the data suggests and I'm gonna say well I thought we had a really robust off-and-away policy we are seeing improvement based on data so last year by this time we had about 83 device infractions about 83 this year we have 44 and 24 of them were before the yonder implementation and so still experiencing that but that's not a surprise and I think that and so we just need to keep like working at it and monitoring it and doing what we need to do in order to kind of follow through on that that goal of reducing the negative impact of the devices one of the things that we didn't expect was that more kids are leaving devices home and that was not necessarily something that we expected but that is happening are we sure they're leaving them at home well see Erin I have kids that's a good point and so our eighth graders are the are the most are having the hardest time kind of following all the expectations which is not a complete surprise and so we did some checking with home when the eighth graders started telling us they were leaving their devices home so that's like an example of administrative follow-through because and so we we did do that double-check because families told us in the registration yeah returning student yeah yeah what devices the kids had so we downloaded that so all of our homeroom teachers and we have that and so when there was a change and suddenly a student didn't have a device it did cause us to pause and wonder and so we thought for specifically our eighth graders it was worth a check and a check at home so that's what we did great yeah thank you in terms of distraction in the classroom have you or have staff noticed that students are becoming more focused less distracted so I think the biggest thing they've noticed so far is not having the interactions around the devices which is very positive because those are distractions to learning um we haven't yet um asked for like we haven't surveyed the staff formally about this about things like time out of class because that was a hopeful visits to the bathroom yeah yeah because they can't they can't text each other to meet right um we don't have data on that yet we still are like just measuring the interactions from year to year um I think you know anecdotally we feel more confident um about hallways and bathrooms great great great any other questions okay um do you want to speak at all to um and it doesn't necessarily have to be you deborah but anybody maybe david or betsy but just um how the school improvement plan works for people that maybe don't know how that gets built and how it gets approved so um so um so we start at our administrative retreat in the summer and it's based very much on the district goals and we start to brainstorm the goals for our schools um for the middle school we then brought that to our curriculum leader group to review it there and get feedback and input there and then the school council review and feedback and then once like this presentation is done and we move forward i'll be sharing it with the staff in pieces um so that they can see how like our work every day is is in this one improvement plan anybody else have any other how do the students feel about the circle practices so that's such a good question um i ask them that as and we ask them that as the last round all the time and i was in the sixth grade um a sixth grade class this morning and most of the kids said things like calm nice i heard something like i learned something about somebody else and then a couple kids said weird um yeah uncomfortable um typical middle school but we want them to be honest like it's okay for them to say like i'm comfortable with this like i didn't do this before a couple kids today said oh we did this in elementary school and just like that kind of like with that intonation um so i think the more that we do it yeah um the more empowering it is and also eventually we want the kids to bring the questions to circle right because we're really talking about community building right now but the the other piece of this is when something goes wrong in the community we have a way of talking about it where kids can feel safe and it's a predictable structure um but the first step is actually like kind of who are we as a community and how does this practice like fit into who we are and it fits in because everybody belongs and everybody has a voice and i'm going to piggyback on that because i heard you mention that you're also using it with families talk a little bit about that so um at caregiver coffees both this year and last year um we came with some questions like last year the since we were all new the whole administrative team went and we got um input on what are the things that you are feeling most positively about the middle school what do you what are challenges you think that we have or areas for growth um and that was really important it was very helpful this year we talked about um kind of family values and and how how we work with middle schoolers to bring those values to life and so it is again i feel like it's a really great structure to have that equity of voice so everybody has an opportunity to participate and also has an opportunity not to like you have the freedom to make that decision for yourself within the structure and are you a follow-on to that are you also using those end times with individual families for conflict mitigation or you know hard conversations so that's a good question we have i would i would say right now for circle practice we're really in the tier one places it's an interesting question erin because i came from a district that we didn't use it in the tier one way we used it for when there was a problem and the difficulty with that is that's that doesn't necessarily feel very safe for everyone right and so we're really focusing on using it in the community building way right now but it does have that potential yeah thank you certainly in tag and when i visit an eighth grade tag um it's just right for that in terms of community building and students sharing um and the teachers are really well trained it becomes seamless seamless and students really know how to jump in and do it yeah these were eighth graders they were in in you know the phone issue was taken care of they were on something something different thank you thank you thanks so much have fun at the concert thank you thank you for allowing me to go at the beginning i appreciate it enjoy you come first in age right we start of the children and i attended the turkey tango last week what a treat that was that was my first turkey tango that was my happy moment brilliant allison is gonna join the table and talk about uh actually you're gonna be up here for a while i am i feel so far away from everybody feel free to come closer so we're gonna discuss work um follow-up in the communication that allison had about 10 days ago regarding follow-up for recent events and the work taking place in high school and then she's gonna talk as deborah did about goals and school improvement and then we're gonna get into confidence competency determination and it's quite the lineup of topics everybody yes there's a range of uh yeah thanks deborah and then today i was on talking about our graduation requirements i'll even add on to that we had a meeting with our uh commissioner and secretary of education to talk about and we it was good back and forth in terms of feedback and so i'll talk more about that after allison can't wait okay um good evening everyone nice to see you we did think it would be a good opportunity and good idea to um give everybody some updates as far as our thinking our action steps um since the late october incident um and as you may have seen from my recent message two fridays ago i guess it was we really wanted to um illuminate for the community concrete ways that we're thinking about our response and things we are doing while acknowledging the ongoing emotion within the community within the school you know the different circles of impact and the different layers um there are so many different complicated layers here there are lots of perspectives and our focus now is and david's been so um clear about sort of this framework of accountability learning and healing um and we really wanted to head squarely into the learning and healing part and communicate that with the community um and so we have a couple of things and this is basically on the slide just highlighting some of the things that are currently underway um it does not go into great detail about some of the longer term things that we're chatting about but does promise to continue updating the community as far as what those longer term larger context things are um and so just to sort of highlight what we've been doing lately and some of this has already begun it's sort of it's sort of more or less in chronological order um and certainly invite your questions or insights on these things um some of you may be aware that we were fortunate enough to enlist the support of two very skilled professionals who have already done one session around restoration and team building with our football team um so last monday they did a session with the entire team and coaching staff um and it was very engaging a very positive first experience um they're doing another session next wednesday um and we're desperately looking for a third time when there can be some follow-up as well um so that is underway um we are providing optional sessions for students to drop in and continue processing their feelings and thoughts not every student is wanting that needing that and we wanted to make sure that students were aware of these opportunities with our counselors um some of that is actually community circle work um with with students and um some of our trained adults on campus um we've been doing something called monday matters where we're looking in kind of little snippets and activities and advisory at um the barriers to achieving our ideal values at the high school so that began with what are those values what would be the ideal values that we want to represent here at the high school we created a word cloud students did some reflecting on it and then picked one and described in an anonymous form the barriers to achieving those things safety belonging kindness were some of the ideal values and so hearing from students about what's in the way is going to help us really dive into addressing those barriers and all of this is headed towards some work with um we're hopeful actually our consultant who's been working with us thanks again to the hate crimes grant that caroline wrote um a wonderful consultant named danica manso brown who is going to facilitate with some interested willing students the creation of core values and a motto at the high school which you know words matter and language matters and in moments like this we need to sort of pin our our direction and pin our efforts um on the things that we most value and so creating that i think will be a really meaningful experience um we have at least 15 students who are interested in partaking in that um in that work so that will be ongoing um as the year continues um and then tomorrow we're actually doing a training with all of our students in an extended advisory on our non-discrimination the protocol and policy um the goal here is really informational so helping students understand and creating a shared understanding about what what discrimination is what is bias um what does it look like what does it sound like and then how do they report it and how do they address it um this will be sort of the first in a series of sessions with students the next will be really delving into scenarios and helping each other understand what to do when um but giving students a language and um sort of a way of thinking about and being becoming aware of discriminatory conduct so that's something that's actually happening tomorrow in advisory um this later this week um heath rollins the athletic director and i are heading to a two-day training on hate in school and sports um which is hosted by the ag's office so this is something that heath has actually gone to several times i'm joining him for the first time in a little while so look forward to that experience and bringing some learning back to this school with caroline's help we are trying to resuscitate some anti-bias training for both coaches and captains um this was something that we began several years ago and we want to sort of bring it back and make it more consistent um and lift it up again so that is something in the works um and then in terms of our curriculum we've been looking and thinking about um how how we already teach hate symbols and how we already teach in the historical context symbols of hate and how we can both emphasize those and kind of draw a narrative line kind of connect those maybe create more coherence when students are learning about those things um so that's really kind of a curricular review and then working with our teachers to highlight um highlight things a little more but also provide families opportunities for follow-up discussions at home and being more communicative in general with families about what is being taught and how they might talk with their students at home and just building awareness about the kinds of things that students are thinking about and learning about in classes um so that is our that's kind of the the follow-up and update um but i'm happy to answer any questions or david betsy did i miss anything um okay okay sure cruising right into our school improvement plan um which is hot off the press i actually had a school council meeting last night where we discussed this and approved it so it's official um the two highlights i wanted to bring to your attention um are one is related to of course our academic core focus and one is related to our sel focus um in terms of our academic core focus um as deborah mentioned we also are really focusing on what are called tier one support so what is universal in students learning experiences in what is happening in all classrooms basically in all learning contexts um and really acknowledging that with this kind of a new exciting generation of learners deepening and building our toolbox is really really important so we're trying to create a deeper shared understanding of mtss which is multi-tiered system of supports a framework we're thinking about how every student's needs are met we have a lot of layers of support at the high school we don't necessarily have a common language about what those supports are and really strengthening our tier one support is the focus this year so our new student services administrator michaela cohen has called together an mts committee and what they're doing right now is just identifying what do we already have at the high school that is supporting our students and then assessing their effectiveness so different structures and supports for example the academic support center we have different interventions we have a lot of things happening and we want to sort of map that out and then assess their effectiveness and then kind of connect things differently and better um so that committee has begun they've met two or three times already um as deborah mentioned we have executive functioning professional development thanks to the wayland public schools foundation um next wednesday at our super wednesday and at the end of february so those are two full super wednesday pd sessions with sarah ward who is comes to us incredibly highly recommended and um one of the things we kept hearing from our elementary colleagues last year was how immediate the implementation of their new understanding of executive functioning was in their classrooms and in their work with kids so we're looking forward to that and also just being with the middle school is going to be so fun it's rare that our colleagues get to kind of learn together um once we have some working knowledge of and new strategies related to tier one um we have begun some pure observations among our faculty we did two rounds of it last year we'll do two more rounds this year with a focus on tier one strategies um and that's been fun of sort of cross-curricular cross-departmental you know spanish teacher observes math teacher math teacher observes spanish teachers really getting to the practices and instruction so we'll focus on tier one strategies that way which i think will be one way of sort of measuring and observing implementation of these practices um in addition to getting student feedback so we're continuing to get regular consistent student feedback from all of our kids and all of our classes twice a year which is something we started last year um and then of course with our sel focus we are implementing our new cell phone policy this year as all of you know um where the the main thrust of the policy is making consistent um the way that students are cell phone free in classrooms so all of them are expected to put their cell phones like physically away from themselves in those little pockets um before it was sort of teacher discretion as far as how that was going to how their classrooms were cell phone free um i think it's been a seamless transition to the consistent implementation of the pockets um the kids have been awesome the teachers have been um awesome as well in terms of just that consistent implementation it has rarely become an issue um there are there have been some sort of sneaky infractions but it has been i think by by most reports a very seamless transition to that consistent um practice the thing that has been harder is making the library cell phone free and i think we all knew that that was going to have its complications just based on the culture of the library and the the way that the library has been um a more kind of lively social hub of the school um in addition to being a school library so i think i shared during our working group last year that we've been seeking a way of renorming the library into a quieter more productive learning space while maintaining it as the hub of our school the cell phone policy is just the trick for making the library quieter more productive space it has disappointed some students who have been accustomed to that being like their hangout place it can still be their hangout place they just need to put their cell phones away and use the space appropriately and if they don't want to then there's other places they can go right the commons has actually become more of kind of the lively social space that the library had elements of last year so we're just we're in transition right as far as renorming these these shared spaces but overall and we will gather input from both students and staff soon about like how it's going so far um i think overall the implementation of the policy has been has been good and i think at the beginning of the year you had mentioned utilization in the library was down have you tracked that is it is it increasing or is it still much lower than it used to be it's way lower than it used to be yeah and it's you know we also deployed um we deployed faculty members into the library as part of their duties and so that's helped enormously as far as kind of just the consistent enforcement of keeping cell phones often away in the library we don't have the pockets in the library um because there's so many kids that are often in there so it's really up to students to shut them off put them away um and that is hard for some students particularly i mean and some students legitimately are like used to using their phone in a pr like in a meaningful academic way as part of their study routine um so there's some there's some shifting going on there um but the adult enforcement there and working together with our librarian um and our librarian's assistant to kind of keep that expectation consistent has been helpful any other questions on there okay all right betsy you're gonna have to help me with this one competency determination we totally got this okay so where should we start um so as we've discussed at this table before but but for folks as you recall we had a vote uh gosh how long ago is that now is it in the spring i think seven months
did you give deeper context this is a result of an election that's right that's right took place um last november yes i was just trying to remember when that vote happened it was back in november it was it was just this past it was 20 yeah it was yeah it was a year number of 24. so no but then we voted about right but it was it was literally it was a ballot initiative abolishing mtas as a 10th grade graduation requirement um gosh i would have thought it was two november's i feel like the voters of wayland did not support that vote however it was statewide and it did pass that's just the context for it and as a result districts had to come up with their own competency determination based on some desse guidance yes so there's the context appreciate that thank you so much david and um as you know we came to you with a revised plan around our competency determination for our students who are graduating last year and we also noted that there was we anticipated that the um bureau of uh education second elementary and secondary education were in the in the works of coming out with some new requirements regarding that and that we would then be coming back to you with a revised version so that's really where we're at today um and i and this is i guess a middle of a conversation because as david referenced this morning we were also hearing about new um graduation requirements but so so these are all interrelated and connected um and this new piece that's due to the state by december 31st is still happening so we are here to sort of present allison has been working tirelessly with her curriculum leaders around this and um i've been working with my job like group she's been working with her job like groups to to really share the practices of how districts are making decisions because before we had um we had mcas and then we had different courses you needed to pass and now in addition to that there's also what core knowledge you need to show to demonstrate mastery so there's really two components to the new competency determination so it's the mastery of common skills and how are we measuring that and the satisfactory completion of coursework so it's the mastery of skills that's really the new piece this year and some revisions i think to to the coursework and this is all not to be confused with graduation requirements so the competency determination is separate from related to but separate from the graduation requirement before the mcast served as the competency determination because it was tied to grade 10 standards so theoretically gave students an opportunity to show that they mastered those standards in the form of that test the kids still take the test this is what's confusing the voters did not abolish it off the face of the earth they just said that will not be the competency determination so now districts so kids still take the mcast they still get a score etc etc but for now for now yeah stay tuned um but they left it up to districts to decide what our competency determination is for these areas these content areas and so what they have said as betsy said is this competency determination must be two separate things for successful completion of core courses and so for us it is in science biology in math algebra one or two english nine and ten and then for this year's juniors u.s history which is new the the state had been sort of hinting i was gonna say threatening but it's more hinting that the history piece was coming and so it is here now and so we so the challenge for us that they have to successfully students have to successfully complete those courses and on top of that they also need to show mastery of at least half of the standards the grade 10 standards in those content areas and the state was gracious enough to have to give us sort of a list of what that could look like um it could look like a final exam a summative exam it could look like a portfolio where students are putting together work that demonstrates collectively their mastery of standards or it could look like some other equivalent measure of those standards so in biology and math we already have a final exam so that serves that purpose so we didn't have to sort of think outside the box there we already have a final exam that asks students to demonstrate mastery of at least half the standards for that content area in the other courses um u.s history english 9 and english 10 they don't have a year-end summative final exam and so what we did is met with our department chairs and talked about what are students already doing or what are they doing that we could tweak so that they in completing that successfully they are showing mastery of at least half the standards connected to that content area and so that's what we're calling benchmark assessments um so students in english 9 and 10 in u.s history will have to successfully complete a benchmark assessment one or two benchmark assessments that we're identifying as that's the competency determination and so they need to pass that in order to pass their competency determination um we're keeping it fairly broad which is what other districts are doing in order to give us some flexibility about what that benchmark assessment is however we know at this point we know what they would be for example for u.s history one there is a causes of the american revolution project that students complete and that would be the competency determination for if if it counted for this year's sophomores that's what it would be for both english 9 and 10 their literary analysis papers that students are doing on various texts that do give students an opportunity to demonstrate mastery of at least half the standards in english 9 and english 10 um so we have those benchmark assessments established and we'd like to have some flexibility because if units change or curricula changes etc we want to be able to empower department heads in their departments to identify what the benchmark assessments would be um do we sorry yeah please um do we foresee between your kind of conversation what governor healy has come out with recently but this is going to be another it's going to change in a year for our folks that are going to graduate in fiscal year 2020 sorry calendar year 2027 and so this is like a placeholder for a year or like is that really where we're here so um it's unclear what the timing is going to be they don't know um what they have said they're looking at end of course assessments in that that right like the um regencies and there is um as kate knows because kate passed the regents that's why she's here um or maybe she did that's why she's here uh regents classes that would be a major that would be a major change the difference is what they're talking about end of course assessments that are not graduation requirements so it's unclear where this goes i don't know what do you think betty yeah i would say based on today's webinar that the end of course assessment will be one piece of the puzzle but not but not passing a single assessment is not going to prevent a student from graduating so it sounds like there will be some multiple pathways that are connected to this work um as well as i you know do you have to pass two out of three or again they're still working through those but they they've defined some parameters around that they've also um talked about things like every student must demonstrate financial literacy so that was that was one of the items that came out today and again all of this was based on stakeholder holder engagement of 400 over 400 people and you know all these surveys and as i as i was going through the hundred page document this morning um you know financial literacy was like the top thing that people were asking for which is why it's going to now be in this graduation requirement so so the this was like an a um a proposal of a framework and then over the next six months before they it sounds like in june they will be making some definitive um finalizing what these requirements will be which is why we haven't sort of touched our courses yet like why bother until this is done right um and then we don't know what the timeline will be around implementation but there were lots of questions and concerns around sort of funding for some of these things that may exist there you know they talk about capstones and portfolio experiences that are required as well so it's a it's a pretty robust proposal um to be determined how it's all gonna shake out i'm also thinking how this potentially ties back to the work that you're all supposed to be engaging with around the portrait of a learner right and like how are these all gonna align yes um and massachusetts um just recently came out with massachusetts portrait of a graduate as well or vision of a graduate based on this so you know it's hard to know erin i think this is going to take this is going to take a while and this would be a big change i mean the regions have been around i used to remind my students for 1876 so that's a long time 300 and are they phasing those out now was that i just i thought i read that at the end of this um regions are being phased out that's what it said at the end of the report i read it said actually i'm not aware it's been around so long i don't know if they're shifting so this is this is going to take a while because think about it to create all these tests and norm them i mean this but so is that the okay so that is the the long-range goal is that there will be some form of replacement to the mcast that everybody takes a standard test versus with a benchmark assessment for u.s history one you may have done a portfolio around the revolutionary war and what have you and you may have written a paper and you might have drawn a painting i don't i'm not saying that but like they're all different that serve the same purpose the goal is to get to something that's like more standardized okay is that i guess that's how you would see it that's what they it sounded like today and that um you know so one of the questions came up like if kids take ap tests can that count instead of these and and the answer to that question is well we want this to be more formative so you know ap tests are often taken at the end of your senior year or those courses so i i think there's more there's a i would say there's a distinct vision for a framework and the devil's in the details when you're trying to sort of map out how it's all going to play out right which is why this is why we're here right even the end of end of court the um eocs and of course uh exams like would factor into grades even it sounded like at some point so so again lots and lots it's early with lots of questions and we'll see where we go right one of the requirements would be completing the fafsa or the massachusetts version of the fafsa really because it's part of financial you know it'll um in addition to because it increases your odds of going to college like 85 of people who complete that then go to research based it's it's all everything's all researched and evidence-based yeah it was very interesting i love financial literacy being a requirement to graduate but i you know but then the question is is there an assessment how do you assess it beyond and that's massachusetts does not have required financial literacy classes some states right well obviously that's what this is going to drive no they did check out multiple pathways to it whether it's a standalone class well whether it's incorporated into other pieces there's again still working out different potential pathways for that so to be continued yeah i have so many questions but i don't think we have answers yet i think that's the bottom line so i'm gonna put a pin in my question yeah exactly um there are a couple of i think key things we just wanted to note that there are some um part part of what we need to submit in at the end of december is also around how are we ensuring our students with disabilities can sort of access these pieces so there's a real specific language in there around the ways in which we're ensuring we're keeping high standards for kids and giving enough access points so so kids can meet the cds same is true with our english learners and using the different wita levels um we just just a framework again for kids coming in at different levels of reading speaking listening and writing um around how they're accessing different grade level curriculum and and multiple means of expressing their their learning and understanding to ensure that they have their accommodations as well um and then there's like a whole section in it for unique circumstances um so late enrolling students a student just moves to this country they're you know late in their junior year um you know we've outlined a transcript review process um that could include things like summer school online coursework master performance exams there would also be limited use of mcas um in some of those unique circumstances with late arrivals where you might not be able to uh have a transcript you know you can envision somebody coming from a war-torn country who didn't have records so there's there's you might use mcas in those situations um to ensure that kids have mastered the um 10th grade standards there would also be an appeal process that's built into and this can actually go back to students who um didn't receive a graduate didn't graduate uh sorry didn't receive a cd and therefore get a college diploma instead of got a certificate of attendance they can appeal and go back and have their transcript reviewed to see sort of see if these new situations are meant um and there's also additional opportunities to show mastery so if the student did not pass that paper that allison was talking about they might have another shot at that same paper or an alternative version in their junior year class exactly right so we really want to map out what are the what are the other possibilities for students to demonstrate mastery um in the circumstance that they don't successfully successfully complete it so it's not sort of a one-shot deal but it could take place later in the school year or an alternative benchmark assessment that the department determines is tied to the standards or at a later at a later year so hey betsy she's moving in
no really um i did just add our current high school graduation requirements um um that we have and we will be revising those with the guidance of whatever comes out um i will though just note that they did say today distinctly even with the the new graduation requirements and the end of course exams that there will still be some version of mcas alt um for students who were not students for whom mcas was the right match based on their so that's all right mid process we do however need you to vote i have one i have one statement sorry betsy all i can think of and i know this is a very unpopular subject to bring up but i have to do it anyways if we're going to judge children on students children or children at freshman and sophomore on final exams we have to give them their test to study they have to have them they have to have all the tests that year in order to review and study there are kids that cannot do this without that information and i think we really have to commit to doing that i think there needs to be consistency that was the way i was yes there needs to be my
consistent look at and i understand from teacher to teacher there's variations in how every teacher teaches right like and that's never going to go away but i just think there needs to be a consistency amongst what's being taught and the pace with which things are being taught against yeah how we're going to then measure these kids one piece is test return another piece is like syllabus and other pieces you know attendance and all those good fun things but i i think they go hand in hand um especially if there is no standard what is the standard right like yeah what do you mean if there is no standard well if there's no it's not just mcas you know you didn't just go and pass the biology mcas right right the final exam that comes but and if you don't have all of your biology teachers at each level of the course consistently approaching that topic and i don't want to say teaching to the test right but then there's they're not all meeting the same standard i guess is my point yeah there's certain competencies that they need to learn to be successful to show mastery i think what you're saying is you want standardization across how those are delivered and the pause the pause if we need to spend a little more time on that so maybe it's not the exact same pace but maybe it is checking in for competency and understanding throughout the course of it without the test so there's plenty of testing right the kids get plenty of opportunity to show us on paper what they can do but can they verbalize that can they do that out loud can they learn from their mistakes on a test um and can we can we speed up and slow down accordingly to make sure that we cover the same amount of topics in the same amount of time but allow the kids to actually master those if that's what we're truly looking for and within those same levels of classes like if it's honors bio that's going to move a little differently than the college prep bio understood but they should college prep a and college prep b should be pretty you know synonymous with how they're moving through the curriculum
but i would also say the expectations need to be consistent that's what that's different instructors but the expectations have to be the same and sort of the process of access to material has to be yes okay and we're talking about exams that are um that are already common so the the final exam for honors biology this all the students taking honors by or taking the same final exam right so right yes and so you want to make sure they're all prepped yes to the thing i was going to say it's not the content of the exam i was going more towards are the teachers expectations the same are the quizzes leading up to the final exam open book in the discretion of one teacher and not another teacher like i don't have a sense today on the consistency of the pedagogy and how much discretion there is in the delivery of the information and that is not dissimilar when you're prepping for a standardized exam i do think that there is some difference when you're dealing with a more traditional your classroom teacher prepared exam than a standardized one that everybody is doing so i i i do think i would agree that we have to be a little more sensitive to the level of consistency that students are getting in there in their instruction if we're going to then use the final exam to to measure competency and peer comparing peer to peer great thank you you need us to vote before the end of december um it is due to desi on december 31st so i have to push enter so new year's um i'm only saying i guess could we take two weeks and come back or is it a week when's our next meeting okay so we do have two weeks could we take that just because i know christina may have feedback and she was unexpectedly and betsy you're like rolling in and so literally i much appreciate your attention but um can we take that just to digest um there was some pretty did not do it next week awesome thank you okay this is good there's a lot of it's a lot of language and yeah yeah and this is just the slide that that's what i pulled the one we saw in march of 2025 and voted on and so i wanted to kind of give us a chance to sure compare them you know just process but hearing your feedback is all really helpful to then go back and look at it okay you know and so would you guys appreciate that or do you i would very much look a little more time i shouldn't just we need a few 3 a.m epiphanies
we were anticipating that you wouldn't want to thank you okay this is a lot this is a lot and a big shift it's a big shift and today i mean again we were sharing some of the information from this morning which is yeah brand new and not not it's related but not in play yet but that's the direction they're having so well preview things it's just like we're gonna have a lot of discussions about things like this yeah yeah so thank you does anybody have any questions left for alison on this before we kind of can you come back in two weeks by any chance if there are questions that think so would that be possible maybe we can like i'm gonna watch the presentation and see if yeah yeah one thing we will need to do is vote that night because that's okay i think yeah the 34th yeah and if you have feedback before that that you need us to that's what yeah that's kind of what i'm thinking we have you know we have a couple weeks we can feel free to send it along yeah yeah okay and then we can kind of if it would be helpful for you to maybe there's other questions to come and think it out or with us that would be great sure okay thank you for all thank you totally yes thank you okay thank you all oh and can you refresh my memory u.s history one is 10th grade correct and u.s history two is junior year that's right it's a two-year sequence one of each of those right now yeah right that wasn't very long ago no no to two years when when that occurs it used to be earlier right u.s used to be all junior year only junior year and so it's so much of sophomore year was telling the story of how we got there how we got yeah exactly yeah so there was really a kind of a movement to make it a two-year um a two-year experience for kids it was such a race the one year oh my gosh you know i didn't make it to the vietnam war you know so yeah and so there's more time and there's also more depth right and more case studies and sort of right unless you know i mean i i love the model of the two years of history if the state was ever to go to an end of year exam like in new york you cannot do
global regions is all about europe yeah and so it's it's very different but here we have some nice flexibility right that's really thank you thank you so much right caroline has been waiting patiently thank you thank you for warming my seat the seat is warm do you have yours i i shared it with um aaron we all have it so well i updated it of course but i have it updated by you fabulous so i don't have to do anything no she probably did updates while we were sitting here she she was i i i i could you didn't though did you i did not because are you right can i should i sit more like that so you can see me here no i'm okay right there oh thank you oh i guess kate hi welcome welcome welcome i mean not welcome thank you
i'm hearing it right now it's like my prime time right now david knows like i'm hitting my stride right
so while that's being pulled up hello how are you all doing okay yeah last we saw you well last i saw you was in boston yeah yeah yeah and so i'm going to present about this hate crime prevention grant and i just want to center that the the why of it is because these acts cause tremendous pain and harm and and um and trauma in some cases right so i'm going to go through all these slides and show all of these wonderful things that we did and and are doing and i just want to make sure that we center that there are real people students families um who are who don't feel safe in wayland um and struggle to put their kids on a bus and send them to our schools and we don't want that and um to change that it requires each of us to make a commitment within our sphere of influence right what it what is within my sphere of influence where i can do something um engage in a conversation that can create a sense of safety and belonging for all students and their families so i just wanted to say that um before we start but i'm ready okay so so i just i when i think about the work that i do i always centered around our district goals and so i just wanted to really quickly just remind um all of us about this goal that we have around belonging and equity so we can move on i'm not going to read it so i just wanted to give some background on how this hate crime prevention grant came to be so as we all know on october 7th hamas attacked israel soon after november in november the healy driscoll administration announces these statewide initiatives that are not just for schools but our grant is obviously focused on schools but non-profits community organizations police and the whole thing onward so our first grant was awarded in at the very beginning of jan of 2024 and we were awarded fifty thousand dollars yep and then we were awarded another fifty thousand and then last earlier this year we awarded um 25 and that's because they set a cap on if you have previously been awarded funds from this grant then you can only apply for 25. so um i just want to note that they did reserve a certain percentage of the funds for schools that are chronically underperforming and and our district doesn't fall obviously under that so i i think it's it's a great thing that we have received the maximum amount all three years that we have applied and we've been able and i just hope that um my presentation gives a good like sort of big picture view of what we've done with this money so there are two main areas of focus one student programming and curriculum and the other staff development and community engagement all right so i'm going to go through both of them so student programs see notice i the little visuals that i have here going on i'm making it move right in front of me yes it's so in the summer of 2024 one piece was around social studies curriculum right so we have since my first year i've been working with the k through five with k through five teachers around um integrating the learning for justice formerly teaching teaching for tolerant teaching tolerance tolerance um standards and they are identity diversity justice and action so one example of that is in grade two there's a unit on immigration and there's an activity that we recently updated around sort of the story of your name and so kids interview ask their parents grandparents the story of either their first or last name and it's a way for both it addresses both their own individual identity but also diversity because kids hear each other's stories do you remember that from second grade i don't remember any of my kids doing that it's recently updated okay yeah all right that wasn't very nice okay
um at the middle school level so last fall rehearsal for life uh we we used some of the funds to bring this improv group to the middle school we had many planning meetings in advance with the core to talk about what our goals were what the middle school goals were keep going um one thing i wanted to point out not only was the reception but the the students themselves were really positive and staff were really positive we did them by grade level but more importantly there was pre-work before the assemblies and then there was post-work after the assemblies so it wasn't just a one-shot like do this assembly um it gave students an opportunity to talk about like their different identity markers and times when they have felt like if this is the group that belongs times when they have maybe felt this way and and what's fascinating i was in one eighth grade um tag group and sometimes the kids who say like share stories are not the kids that you would think right it's like a white male very athletic kid who talks about how when he was in elementary school he was really small and how he it was really hard for him in sports and how like so it's an opportunity for kids to connect around the feeling of not belonging or the feeling of being being teased or targeted which can cut across race and all sorts of other identity markers okay we also at there was a traveling exhibit the auschwitz exhibit which is now i think in cincinnati if you want to go to cincinnati with your suitcase um travel there we funded tickets for them to to go to this exhibit and this is just a photo from that day and pat tutwiler is in the back there former wayland high school principal as allison knows um now the secretary of education now secretary of education of course moving on okay at the high school so the summer of 2024 ninth grade modern world history teachers and the department had met to um talk about and expand their ninth grade unit on the holocaust and genocide and hate make sure that those consistent vocabulary being used across the sections this is obviously the course that's heterogeneous and every ninth grade student takes it um and it's also because of the change in the desi social studies curriculum it teaching of the holocaust and hate symbols got moved to ninth grade whereas before it was in the middle school um and then last winter we had dan this is danica manza brown who allison was mentioning earlier she helped us develop a student belonging survey and then she led listening sessions for a very diverse group of students and so we did that as a way of just understanding how do students who um maybe on quieter or maybe feel reduced sense of belonging how do they experience their classes the the hallways extracurricular activities and this is the other big category or bucket so as has been mentioned earlier we have put in tremendous um time energy
training you name it around the launch of this non-discrimination protocol this was david's idea um a year ago that or to the spring of i guess to be the spring of 2024 just identifying we don't have this of a mechanism for for students staff etc to just report um when there's an active bias or whether they're not sure but they think there was etc so so this is um one of the best practices that research has shown around how to create safety and belonging for marginalized communities one is an anonymous reporting so there isn't enough you can do this fill this out and it can be anonymous right and then also a set of practices and protocols that are consistent across the district um we trained all staff and i don't remember the last bullet item i had there betsy but it's fine oh i was just going to say the middle school has talked and then the high school is doing it tomorrow yeah so okay next so as deborah mentioned look they did the work for me so uh we've been so i just want to add one thing to what deborah said around tier one so um one we think of the especially the word like if you think about restorative justice just that word justice implies like you mean i immediately think about a crime or something there was an infraction and then we have to repair so i i like to use the word restorative practice and one of the things that we have learned from the facilitators at center for center for restorative justice at suffolk university is that this community building this circle practice is is foundational because when there is a harm right one of the reasons why it doesn't work to just go right to the what's called tier three is the harm doer feels no sense of like what what am i restoring to what community do i am i a part of so if that it doesn't exist then the repair and the restorative piece um doesn't work right it's got and it and it is 100 volition you don't want to force a kid or an adult to apologize right the apology is is the words i'm sorry um have no meaning and no impact unless there's a real reckoning with with what they did regardless of intent the impact yeah i was just thinking i think that also works for if you haven't done the tier one work to community build there may not be a participant on the other side wanting to share what hurt them or what their harm was regardless of what the intent might have been um so it works to just have that because you're more open to share on either side and to be open to the sharing to then be open to the apology have you done restorative a little bit yeah because you're sounding very like you knew yeah absolutely and one of the things that i i really appreciated about it when i participated in circles with students and certainly with staff is that in in any group like think about any meeting right they're always the people if it's like a staff meeting a monthly staff meeting they're just people who naturally emerge as the talkers they're they're the fastest processors maybe they are leaders in the school um and then we don't hear from like the other 90 percent most of the time right but in the circle as you're going around everyone has an opportunity to share their opinion their take and they also have the right to pass and that piece is is as much an action and a sharing as is answering the prompt or responding to the prompt and and in this process of equity of voice and even the symbolism of being in a circle right um it's it's community building at its core and then hopefully it's it mitigates the impulse to say and do something that could hurt someone's feelings because i feel like if i were the kid who might say something really mean i now know erin and i don't want to say that to her um i know enough about her to know that that would hurt and so i'm gonna pause that that is a hope okay as deborah pointed out we have two more sessions coming in january k through 12. this is a picture i just put a picture of the rj training from the summer uh she's already talked about that we also had a community conversation did any of you do the community conversation you did it i read the book okay not there i had a conflict at the evening we all read the book you did it okay so this was our we um this was so we used some of the funds to buy the copies so the community members who wanted to participate would have access to a copy of the book and wouldn't that wouldn't be an obstacle and and there were two opportunities to engage in conversations that were using the circle model to have conversation around harm and how this how so then the impact of social media one of the things that i'm so excited about um is the work of this of the deb diversity equity and belonging lead teachers it's a program that um so i'm 0.7 as you all know right and i'm spread across the district i do district level work but i also work in each school like helping supporting staff and principals and and there's just not enough of me and also i think oftentimes teachers listen to their colleagues more than they're going to listen to someone outside their school so i really felt like it's important to build the capacity and the leadership of teachers in their buildings in each school who are really committed to this work there aren't that many opportunities for teachers to take on leadership roles outside of being a you know a house leader or department head and this is has been a great leadership opportunity and i just wanted to share some of the work that they have well they we have done this year we created a mission statement and our mission is to cultivate inclusive school communities where all students and staff feel seen respected and valued and we're below barriers to belonging for historically marginalized groups are recognized and addressed and if you'll notice it sounds very similar to the belonging and equity goal for the district and that's intentional so several of our schools have given out staff belonging surveys and i've been working really closely with the middle school on how they're going to share the results of the survey with their staff what kind of conversation the format um for exploring issues of belonging so for example we learned through this that not every staff member thinks of belonging as as a staff student soccer game or the cookie swap or that and they don't even want that from their workplace like for them coming to work and belonging is being respected um being able to exchange ideas freely etc etc etc so like even just asking people can you show up as your authentic self at work well some people don't want to be their authentic self at work for whatever reason right and so we've learned a lot in the process of even developing the surveys happy hollow just um administered theirs the middle school administered their staff belonging last spring and from it what's what's what's so rich are the the comments that staff make like it's really clear that um there are staff who don't feel like they belong for lots of different reasons that are invisible to people who do feel like they belong right just invisible so i think one of the opportunities is to give people an opportunity to like reflect on that and learn and just consider when you enter a space do do you do i assume that everybody has the same opinion or political persuasion or whatever it is as i do right we all feel this way about this issue and and it is really othering for people who don't and they don't feel comfortable saying well actually i don't feel that way and and when i was explaining when i met with the middle school deb with um debra chithra jada the deblt we're talking about um sometimes staff say like i don't want to talk about like staff belonging let's focus on the kids what are we doing about students like we're so student-centered student-centered and i said this is student-centered work right it is because staff like the way that staff feel when they enter the building the way they if they only feel comfortable when the door is shut and they're with their students that absolutely has an impact on the culture of the whole building and does affect learning and we do have triggers like i know as a teacher i have have and had triggers and if i'm not aware of my feelings and how i'm showing up and a kid triggers me or a staff member triggers me right and i'm unaware it's sel right but sel for adults so the belonging work we're doing with students it's just as essential to do it with staff because if we want our staff to create spaces of belonging for students they need to explore and understand the ways that their colleagues experience it okay so that's that um they also led the deb lead teachers led a professional development last year on and we reviewed the non-discrimination protocol and also did a whole pd on warm demanders and principal said they did an awesome job and this was just one slide from it so um we showed a video and then asked teachers to name or point out the warm demander moves they saw in this teacher who was doing this lesson and one of the things that we're trying to focus on is like that demander part is really important i think we're really the warmth part a lot of people who go into teaching are really good at naturally the caring but that demander part is kind of uncomfortable right and and it's the same reason why it's hard for me sometimes as a parent what when my kids were little to say no to something because i just didn't i couldn't tolerate like their reaction right and so with social media and phones like that's such a huge thing like oh my gosh they're gonna have such a huge reaction if i say no phones in your bedroom at night right i just right and the same thing with the demand if i press this kid i know they're going to react in a huge way and our ability to manage our own distress is part of the tension of being a warm demander and why it's so so important so we're trying to get teachers to i'd be able to identify what are those moves and and what feels comfortable for me it's like a piece of clothing you can decide like i try it on like doesn't fit put it back on the rack all right next slide so one piece we're doing as a deblt team we're calling them glimmer and glows which is to really elevate and acknowledge the the belonging successes i think sometimes we're teachers are so like we're very self-critical like well we can do this better and we can do that better and so it's really important to like just notice notice belonging in action so i just have a few examples so this was from a student who wrote it to his principal because the deblt's have been making a concerted effort to make sure that every flag the flag of every kid who's in the school is acknowledged and represented and we've had these like beautiful very um heartwarming um moments with our buildings and ground crew saying my flag isn't there can you get this flag and they're hanging it up and then this the empowerment that this kid felt like that a he knew that he could make this request and b that he wrote this note i just think is awesome
there we go and then this is not this is actually not from a metco mentor mentee launch party i just needed a picture of some middle school students so so um but they they have this vigorous and active program for metco's boston resident students okay and at the high school this was one example during hispanic heritage month they the world language department put together this display they bought all these books and then the books are going to be donated to the library that's it david how good i'm getting pretty good at this really like really locked it down and you are in your time limit that he gives everybody yeah yes that's that's good and you couldn't even see the clock no i it's like i'm really he senses your inner clock i don't need that when i've got that time the clock manager very good but i wanted as soon as i wanted to answer any questions you have or things that you're wondering about uh or or i i'm free to happy to go home i believe you mentioned not just the staff belonging survey which you gave us a little bit of feedback but there was a student belonging survey i was wondering if you could share a few highlights just at the high school okay just at the high school we haven't done one like district-wide um and i am now gonna so one of the pieces and allison you need to if can she help me out even though she's not at the table anymore no yes um i think you're allowed to phone a friend so so we noted one thing we asked was um how like to rate their sense of belonging on a scale of like let's say one to four and then we asked another question which was how much do you want to feel a sensible and so one thing that we found fascinating is yes there are lots of kids oh not lots but there's a good number of students who don't feel very connected to the school this is sure yeah and of that group many say they don't want to but is that because they don't feel connected who knows yeah like anyone the product are they correlated to each other like yeah so about one hour ago i wrote down deepening connections with students is the best way to know how to support them i wrote that an hour ago and that is very true based on what everybody here has said it's allowing students to have that one person that one adult that one teacher parent coach it doesn't matter who it is but somebody that can share the hard truths with them and that they can share their true feelings with maybe they want it maybe they don't but those that don't say they want it are probably the ones that most need it and um i mean my kids are fortunate to have that at the high school i can name them out loud but they each have a teacher that is a warm demander and sometimes it's uncomfortable and sometimes it's it really cracks into them and that's really important and i wish that for every student and um the ones that say no thank you are the ones i worry most about that's a real yeah well the metro west adolescent health includes that's one of the pieces of data we turn to first is and it's actually considered to protect active students feel to an adult at school and an adult in their life right because it protects them from other risky behaviors um and you know there's there's an we're always sort of we try not to be self-congratulatory about that number until it's 100 right because if it's not 100 then there are students who are reporting adults and it's just one they only need one adult they just need one one it doesn't have to be like happy but you're and the demander part can only come once the teachers earned the trust right to push because they've shown up for the your your son or daughter and because they have shown an interest and and i imagine you're you're i don't want to say child because they're in high school but your your your student feels like that teacher really knows them beyond just you're a student in my class absolutely and i think that's the hardest work that everybody does everybody in this room does right um but probably the most important because that's how you help the curriculum impact them that's how you that's how you are aware of things that bother them and get to their core and and you help them be more successful on the field at home at school um in the lunchroom talking to other other students and other kids but yeah i wrote it a while ago one thing that was i do now now that i'm looking at this it's reminding me uh the the um ninth graders we were really pleased with the rating around them feeling like they found an adult they connect with or there was some question around that where we felt like oh so at the ninth grade level that transition is going pretty well for a lot of kids and that was was that in november of last year it was it was pretty it was early we were worried that the ninth grade number was going to go yeah because it was so early yeah and i think that's a you know they have the ninth grade advisories and they're so there's a lot of um work that is built around that huge transition from eighth to ninth grade it's a really important one and now we got to hang on to them into 10th and into 11th and then they kind of come back in 12th because there's a whole lot going on right yeah um they need everybody's help then yeah because it's a transition into something new yeah the middle the middle part too and belonging so connected to how well students do in school yes and and attendance yes the trusted adult thing you mentioned is one of the biggest levers for getting a kid to school if that trusted adult says hey i missed you where are you aren't you gonna weren't you supposed to come in and show me x or weren't we gonna do this together i love that yeah i heard latoya mention that that there was personal outreach and things and i think that's really really effective yeah when i go into the schools like so especially six and ninth when in the in the beginning of the school year they see me and it's like oh my gosh someone who knows me right because they're in a brand new place and i don't grade them i don't give them consequences i'm just like you know hey and you know i'm sure that teachers are really resentful because they're always happy to see because i'm just like hi and but i think that just that piece around relation like that those relationships matter and how much the ninth graders and the sixth graders miss their people from the school they left yeah right any other takeaways i was just curious well how was participation it was um excellent because we did it during advisories so they had to fill it out that's the way to do it staff surveys too i said give the staff time during the staff meeting to fill it out instead of saying here's a right thing click on it later so we had 700 726 responses okay that's great and that was given when last fall at the high school so nearly 100 percent nearly right i shouldn't say 100 but 80 90. no i can't do that calculation in my head carol why are the feelings person yes that's why i'm the feeling ask me any you can throw any question at me that is about you know issues and i'll and i'll try to answer but not not numbers to your is your sense with the knowing that this is the last time that we'll get we'll be eligible for any of the grant money to help support this work do you feel like we've been able to deploy those funds to stand up sort of infrastructure that we'll be able to go beyond that's a great question i think that's like a david question i'll take i'll i'll take a piece of that one that's a good toss there by the way she's out of time
and i actually caught it at the end zone so we're good so um it's a really good question that's because you know when i look at and think about caroline's presentation it's about like what do we want to build in permanently for our infrastructure so let me talk about a couple of areas you know that we've talked about caroline number one is the deb lts right so that's an infrastructure where we're stronger now so one of the questions we ask for example at budget time if this is something we've invested in that's making a difference that's up to us to keep it here and putting in the budget you know the second one um you know you heard deborah talk about 19 people train and now 17 more in terms of getting uh to a critical mass and something you were talking about aaron in terms of students having a critical a consistent experience so is there a little more work we could do there around professional development so those are areas in terms of building in some of the structures that i think are important that do have an impact on budget because you know the goal of the state and these grants is for you know it's kind of like seed money what are you going to keep doing and build in and so it's a really good question it's something that you know stay tuned because we're starting our budget discussions tomorrow at 9 30 and um okay no and i mean i think we have to be mindful with not just the non-discrimination protocol but also some of the restorative circle work if the schools are finding that the communities are receptive and we're seeing that yielding as we bring in new people to the district we need to find a way to pass on some of that knowledge and training if we've if we've used the grant to fund it for larger groups just to encourage you to think about how we make sure that as new people join us in the district we make sure the work around the grants was you know a very big one-time lift like developing a non-discrimination protocol you know that's a that's a big lift that has been done but there are other parts that kind of need will be every year thank you thanks you're welcome thank you welcome anytime thank you on to on to other matters all right thanks allison of course yeah make the announcement of the release of the executive session minutes of october 22nd 2025 and the release of previously redacted material of the executive session minutes of july 19 2023 august 23 2023 september 6 2023 june 11 2025 and november 5 2025. i would also like to announce the continued non-disclosure of all previously redacted and released or entirely withheld executive session minutes and materials from 2010 to november 5th 2025 aside from those that were previously announced um does anybody want to david do you want to speak to the memo for 4.3 the fiscal year capital requests yes um there was a capital improvement planning committee established and so in this memo there are a few parts of it number one you see a list here of projects that are take that are taking place over the course of this year um certainly uh the boilers are really important uh betsy you know the middle school oh yeah boiler so that work is is really important work um to say the least and this work is approved and ongoing um things like you know an emergency generator which has been done that's all helpful um and you can see here um a lot of this work is district-wide depending on where the needs are if there are more than one building and then on the next page we have capital requests um that um in some cases have been updated um i should note that um there's an explanation here of how playgrounds are funded in whalen historically which is important to note it comes from parks and recreation can i ask a quick question 24 24 year cycle sorry um i know we've gone around and around and around on this but did the emergency generator cost end up getting split between us and the town side because i think it's wherever it hits i get it right it's all coming to the capital budget however people are looking at that as a school capital spend and it's really not for the school so that we have the emergency correct place yeah yeah like the emergency shelter correct um so i'm just curious because i'd like you know or at least put some sort of asterisk because it gets you know it's tagged to the middle school but the middle school is not using it you know and actually the middle school wouldn't be using it no because no one would be using because no one would be in school and that building would be populated by other people which has happened yes it has it has i've seen the cops i've been there me too i haven't been there i've seen the cops yeah went to charge if you could just find out yeah we'll find that out um in terms of some preliminary capital items just to note um that our priorities one is this i want to add one of our district goals around reading and literacy curriculum expansion so that's an important goal a lot of work taking place you'll get a presentation later you've heard certainly updates on this we received a prison grant to cover some of it but we will need more so that is a piece um right there david do you know if that um i guess roughly 500 000 but the 350 is an annual or is it a four-year four-year adoption i see it yeah okay perfect i just wanted to note that we um you can't just use the prison money to buy you know certain grades they if the town doesn't match it to pay the other half you can't access that money so okay you know it was not in a prior ask because the grant just came out last year so typically the capital um is on multi-year cycles but so that's why this is a new request and why it's important that this year because otherwise we lose right a lot of grant money and is that being i guess should one of us plan to attend something to support the approval of our items we don't always attend there's a meeting coming up december 9th next tuesday so um i think this is this is one of those um because i know kirsten's a member of cipc and we got uh brian hurley as our appointed seat so he christine's not voting brian is voting right so yeah and this is why it would be helpful for you to approve this tonight so before next week's meeting we can go in and say the school committee has approved this we really need this adopted um the other part and do you want one of us to attend is what i'm asking to help let me i'll talk wouldn't that be helpful hurt um to do that okay that would be great um you can attend over zoom um and um i think people will understand that because we have half of this paid for to cover the other half this is like a one shot for us to really address literacy and you can also let them know that you know it's a system goal we just didn't respond to this but we've been working on this now for over a year um the other part in terms of um capital items is related to school safety and updating walkie-talkies in a community quite important in schools and that hasn't been updated many many years it's striking me as perhaps maybe it shouldn't but i'm surprised if i'm reading this correctly that they upgraded their systems but this is a like after like a post-hoc thought about the schools like did it come up about the schools no okay so i'm not wrong to be questioning that okay thank you i would say it's overdue i think is a fair way of saying it i think we've been talking about it for a while but we haven't had the funding sources to really actualize it and and um the frequency the frequencies that we're acting that we're using are need to be different than the ones that we're currently using is it's really two hundred thousand dollars wow to purchase the signals as well as the devices and they've got to integrate with
it's just hard for me to believe there couldn't have been some economies of cost if we had done it all at the same time but maybe they need a different they need even a higher scale than um we need certain things that we can use with them but others don't and that addresses all of the schools betsy yes okay yeah we've met with uh escaping me at the moment we we met with vendors and we we've had we've had both you know all of our safety partners have been part of this conversation as well as well about town side folks to make sure everything can integrate and then what i'm seeing above the new asks are things that are already slated so one question i have is how do we think about a five-year capital improvement plan that was adopted two or three years prior to our current master facilities assessment i realize nothing is like breaking ground imminently but if i'm looking at like playground investment on property that could be in scope to be considered right like i just want to be thoughtful about not investing in upgrades that we are then going to undo and i realize we may not have a definite answer to that but i think we would be irresponsible to not at least talk about it it's a really good question um it's it's that balance between shorter and longer term betsy when you're involved in this process um however you know while our students are here we want to give them the best and the question is how flexible will this be and where do you think if you're renovating or rebuilding the location might be because sometimes they're used anyway i've also known of new playgrounds getting knocked down because the school's being built adjacent right and is hm it already got the five-year cap like have we given them all of this background they know what was in scope and they're going to be sharing um they're going to come here on january 12th we're going to talk about that next monday at our meeting kate about updating kind of what their findings have been around our current schools that that will be something they'll they'll share we had a brief update about that you know in a written piece but they'll get into more depth so they'll be joining us on our first meeting after the new year okay so the tc so but the tcw and town building let's just say hypothetically we were in scope to relocate tcw there'd be a question for the town and rec presumably whether that playground remains for town use not for a district school use no or am i why not you're saying no you're talking about on a school property so it's a well it's a shared property right now right because it's tcw so in 2026 so what i'm looking at is we are scheduled to have a capital expense to replace the tcw playground in 2026. the likelihood of us doing something in that area as part of the facilities overhaul to me seems no i think the possibility is to relocate tcw out of that area as part of the facilities plan yeah but when's that gonna happen i don't know what's the lifespan on a new playground well if you think about it it's a 24-year cycle right so that's an investment that you're going to hit for 24 years on depreciation sure but not if there's no school operating where the playground is in that 24-year time period that's what i'm trying to anticipate then there's just a playground without there's just a playground with no school right there'll still be a field here and a building here right but then it's a town thing not a school thing but they're paying it to do it they're paying to upgrade it we're not this is parks and rock it's not it okay but also like if i'm reading this capital budget i mean it's not like if i'm reading this clay pit hill upper has to go first then happy hollow then the town beach then tcw clay pit hill upper already got done so happy all so do the town beach so why are they trying to check it out already done okay stick a fork in me i'm done okay okay um oh my god it was there for all of those i'm losing my mind okay and then david there just seems to be a note here that there used to be 400 every year to fund that work but it's gone yes uh there that needs to some more work and figuring out okay what happened there i i just talked to kirsten about that today okay
so the vote is just to approve adding these two yeah i mean are there any other options on the second one i think keeping our schools safe and communicative with the appropriate departments is really important to us um but it sounds like you've exhausted all other options like this is this is it yeah okay i do like a motion yeah it's right there i can make no i know i didn't know people i didn't know if other people were ready i'm done i'm good all right i will move to approve the fiscal year 27 priority capital requests as recommended by the director of finance and operations totaling 550 000 consisting of 350 000 for the reading literacy curriculum expansion to leverage the fiscal year 26 prism grant funding an additional 200 000 for the school safety phase to address communication device reliability and alignment with police and fire systems i further move to submit carryover requests to the capital improvement planning committee for consideration uh second okay okay all in favor aye any opposed none good job on that motion betsy thanks i don't believe that i read very accurately
that would have been a good one for me betsy
i might have made it shorter but it was very specific and the correct i appreciated not having to stumble over my words um oh allison was gonna just touch on the wrestling so i did ask her about it and she was going to talk i'm sorry yeah i just yeah i did say so uh i did check with her it is an annual trip and it is over uh i thought it was over the break right around there so this is january no not january 10th it's january is it just saturday it's up it's a weekend they're not missing school yeah so it's not then somehow i thought it wasn't um so it is an annual wrestling trip in the berkshires three or four coaches who go so it's well it's well staffed i did ask about that january 10th and 11th so it's not i don't know i don't like that one but it's three or four coaches it does not interfere with school days yes i have never asked this before and it has not occurred to me till tonight do we know when students are staying overnight in a hotel if there's ever a pool a hotel i'm just seeing they will be given access to the hotel's facilities and it made me curious what we do about that with students many times overnight we've never used a i don't know about that high school but i've not been on high school a few of the questions would typically answer ask or answer it in here sean's very well prepared this is an annual this is like well well practiced i i can make a motion if we're ready for it i move to approve the whs wrestling team overnight trip to pittsfield massachusetts in january 2026 on the 10th through the 11th second hop as part of them i move to approve the consent agenda okay i need a minute to look at this that's what i was saying and i i don't see the november 3rd in another folder uh i moved them in there having a tough night maybe i didn't move them in yet hold on i did them so give me one second 19th they're here oh sorry i thought i moved them in boom oh it just popped up getting good man well my esteemed colleagues and committee members are reviewing the minutes because i failed to put them in so that they could prepare uh i have an ask of you to um yes but no related to the special ballot for december 11th and just getting that out for exposure um and any maybe connecting with i don't know elizabeth do we put something in all school news news or is it not i don't know when that will go out i think school news just was that a wednesday it just will go out again next wednesday that would be the day before that might be helpful that is a good place in the town news the timing will be right on i don't know if you want to work in like a link to the faqs that they rolled out by the select board or do that yeah i saw the faqs you don't have to i was considering a revision but i don't need to does that mean you might want to second i thought i did already sorry then we stopped second stopped yeah uh okay all in favor aye any opposed none consent agenda is approved lest the accounts payables and payroll warrants as they were removed at the outset of the meeting do we have any matters not reasonably anticipated by the chair none okay and i move to enter executive session for the purposes of reviewing and approving executive session minutes with the intent to redact and release said minutes as permitted by mgl chapter 30a section 22 for november 19th 2025 the school committee will be joined by diane marabella recording secretary the school committee will adjourn an executive session and will not reconvene in open session do i have a second second okay patsy yes kate yes erin yes erin yes okay