December 17, 2025 – School Committee – Video & Transcript
December 17, 2025 - School Committee
Welcome to the Wayland School Committee meeting on December 17, 2025.
Pete Sambuco will be absent tonight.
We have the remainder of our school committee members and our superintendent,
our director of business and finance, and our director of student services here with us.
And we are being recorded by WACAM.
It is 6.13 p.m.
Um, does anybody, is anyone here for public comment?
So, with that, unless anybody has anything that they wanted to touch on as a welcome note, I will get us kicked off for 3.1. I can share very quickly. Go ahead. Went to the all-elementary chorus last night, looking at my elementary principals there. Um, it was so joyful just seeing the three schools come together and the kids and, uh, loved the song, so many different types of songs. I think Loker School wrote the song, which was very memorable, so that was very cool. You did? Um, it was definitely a highlight of the holiday season. Congratulations to Loker and their cool song. Now I feel like I want to hear it. I hope it was recorded. My kids kept talking about it. Love it. Can you sing it, Brian? No, I'm kidding. All right, maybe Jen, though. I'll just be passing over it. Later. Off camera. Okay. I can send it for you. Yeah, yeah.
Great. Thanks for sharing, Christina. Um, first thing on our agenda is, um, we're taking everything in order. We're going to go in order. Great. Um, we have 80% of our principals here. 80% of our school committee members. We have a full house. Um, we're going to have Allison go first because we always prioritize our colleagues who are going to concerts, as we did last week. So there's an orchestra concert. Concert Stephen. 9-7, which will be great. So Allison's going to head there. And she has two items. The first one is discussion regarding proposal for shifting the National Honor Society and creation of a new Honor Society. And then to follow up questions on competency determination, which we talked about at our last meeting. So Allison will begin kind of with an overview, and then we'll, we'll go to questions. Go ahead. Amy Lima. Amy could not join in. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. We have a sheet. She and I had a converse. Yeah. I'll be able to share. Allison will weave in her conversation with Amy, who's an advisor. Okay. All right. So I'll launch in. And I'm going to begin with an apology related to the timing of the NHS messaging to families and students a couple of weeks ago. I know it caught the community off guard. And I will do better moving forward as far as explaining things in context and providing more details to quell questions that I know many of you had to field in the ensuing days and weeks. The big question is, I'm sure on folks' minds, is why. And providing some context, I think, requires sort of the start. I don't want to start at the very beginning of the, like, inception of NHS. But National Honor Society is something that Wayland High School has had a chapter in for years. And to be honest with you, our bylaws have shifted. So the national organization has its own constitution of various procedures and requirements around eligibility, some of which we'll get into, and also gives schools some flexibility as far as creating their own bylaws, which are reviewed then by the national organization. Over time, our requirements have shifted and haven't sort of found a perfect calibration. The scholarship piece around, so there's four pillars. There's scholarship, service, leadership, and character. Those values we don't dispute. Those are the parts we certainly agree are essential to foster in students and to provide opportunities for them to continue developing those qualities. What has grown uncomfortable for us is some of the behind-the-scenes procedural aspects of NHS. The scholarship part, for example, the minimum GPA that NHS requires is a 3.0. And I'll use that as an example to sort of show how we've tried to sort of calibrate what makes NHS special, because so many of our students on the surface of it, okay, first of all, every student is incredibly special at Whalen High School. But when we talk about eligibility to this national organization, of course, we have to adhere to what NHS is telling us. So their minimum requirement is 3.0. Some years ago, we moved it to 3.5, because so many of our students are high-achieving that the vast majority of our students in both the junior class and the senior class, who are typically the classes applying for eligibility, met that requirement, right? So then we get into different ways that students need to show their uniqueness and excellence in the other three pillars around leadership, character, and service. Trying to find that balance of what makes NHS special and set students apart without being arbitrary and also without trying to preserve, like, a meaningful experience for kids that doesn't feel like just a bunch of checkboxes as far as a certain number of hours of community service, and I need to have an elected officer, and I need...we want to make it sort of deeper, richer. And so over the years, I think the students who have been in NHS have experienced something meaningful. They are definitely committed to all of those four pillars. They are held to pretty strict requirements, but behind the scenes, what's happening is that the national organization has certain requirements around the involvement of the faculty. And so all of this requires not just a willingness by our faculty, but also a true buy-in to both the processes and the outcomes of the selection, particularly the selection process, as well as what happens to students who fall short of the standards. So the national organization requires a faculty council to be convened by the principal or their designee, so Amy Lena has been our really dedicated advisor for the last five or six years, trying again to find that sweet spot of making this really really special, while not making it unwieldy and checkboxy. That faculty council needs to operate transparently, so all the faculty members who are on that council are known, and don't operate in the shadows, and make decisions about who is in and who is not in, based on applications. One thing that we had been practicing in order to eliminate bias, because we are a relatively small school, is having anonymized applications, and the national organization does not allow that. So students have their own reasons, so submitting their applications with names attached to those applications. So, when we talk about sort of the concerns around that, it's not that faculty and adults on campus don't want to be involved in this. They don't want to invest their time and effort into something that could be meaningful for kids. I think it's increasingly uncomfortable for adults who are fostering relationships with students in the context of classes, in the context of coaching, to sort of be on this council that kind of holds that sort of decision-making power. Part of learning is having those hard conversations and being able to engage in those dialogues with students. And there has been sort of a diminishing interest in that level of participation, understandably, by members of our faculty who are sort of required to do this. The other part is that if a student falls short of the standard, so if they fall below a 3.5, you know, if they get a B-plus in AP Chem or something like that, procedurally, they're supposed to sort of, they're entitled to a hearing by this faculty council, which our faculty would be interested in listening and engaging with the student as they present their case and all of that. And there is a level of, there's integrity that we will want to have in the process. And I think the way that it's set up, we worry that it could create discomfort between teachers and students who, teachers who may teach that student right now, may teach that student later, not shying away again from having these difficult conversations. But I think it's, it's increasingly difficult to codify that aspect of NHS. This has been in our minds for quite some time. And I apologize for not having the foresight to share this with the community, with all of you. Amy Lima, again, the advisor, and I have spoken about what if this were a women high school honor society? What if we gave students an opportunity to participate in something that could be even more interesting, that could be, there's total buy-in by the faculty, it means something even deeper to students. And it fits more with the relational aspect of what we're trying to do at the high school. We have no interest in not having an honor society. I think it's really the adherence to the NHS national organization that's become a concern for us. So those are some of the pieces that sort of led to our wanting to rework this. We have spoken to the NHS current officers. We spoke with them earlier this fall just to sort of spitball and share our concerns. Had a good conversation with those students. Sent out an all call to juniors who might be interested in helping us reformulate this, helping us build this new thing. And we have about 15 students who are wanting to dig in with us. And so we're setting up a first meeting in January when we get back. We'll have a list of criteria and subcommittees around establishing what those criteria are and different processes around NHS. I know that creates an aura of uncertainty for families and students who are sort of counting on being able to participate in NHS as they know it. And so the uncertainty right now during sort of construction period, I understand the anxiety around that shared by some students and families. Our timeline is such that we anticipate having a spring induction, which is what we've done before actually. We've had a shifting induction period over time. We've gone from fall to spring and then back to fall again. So now we're going to spring, but that means that these juniors would be the first students who would enter into this and be sort of the inaugural class next year. Modeling that, whether we would want to have another induction ceremony in the fall for next year's juniors would be part of the construction of this. So that is the why and sort of the where we're at right now. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, thank you for that. Thank you for the history and the background. You were right to say, Allison, folks didn't have that. The community didn't have that. They didn't have the background. So I think it sounds like this has been in discussions for quite a while among the community that participates in the NHS selection process and management of it at the high school, the five members, and possibly others. So I guess you mentioned that you've codified the requirements and things like that. Statistically speaking, how many students apply to it and how many are denied application to NHS? So I will find out those numbers. Okay. I would say that one of the things that we've been wanting to do is to be really upfront with students about what their engagement in NHS would look like. So rather than, because right now the GPA requirement at 3.5, that automatically makes a whole lot of students eligible because our students are so high achieving. I'd say the majority of students have at least a 3.5 GPA. So we're inviting those students to apply and wanting them to have the information they need to sort of weigh, is this something I want to do? Is this something I have the time for? Does this mean something to me? Because the time commitment is significant. They need to do 20 hours of community service each semester. There's a chapter project, there's a leadership project, they're volunteering in the academic support center once a cycle. So by the time they apply, those students are, from a scholarship perspective, eligible. And the weighing of who's eligible in terms of the other pillars happens by this council. And I'd say very few students are rejected or not accepted, if any at all. But I will get you those numbers, Erin, as far as like how many actually, of the eligible students, how many actually apply. And can you explain the scholarship component a little bit? If we no longer participate in NHS, what happens with that? The scholarship is, so the scholarship is one of the four pillars, yeah, totally. So it's the academics part. Okay. And the qualification for that eligibility is just the strict GPA. It's just the GPA in the academics, okay. So there's no other added component for schools and universities, okay. That's right. Okay. Or for the national organization, they recognize, because our bylaws say 3.5, that is the eligibility requirement in terms of the scholarship component, yeah. So the timing of it, back to that original statement. Yeah. Why would we start this with the class of 2027 that's kind of beginning their journey into application, into colleges and universities now? Why not begin with a later class, or even the eighth graders, where they can then prepare and follow the path through this program of the Wayland-developed program? Why now? I think, and this is not, I know it's being felt personally by some members of the junior class as far as what in the world, this now, the uncertainty, right. I think I can confidently say that any junior who is anticipating wanting to apply to NHS, the current, like, incarnation of NHS at Wayland High School, would be an eligible member of this honor society that we're going to have at Wayland High School. It is the processes and procedures embedded within it that I think are going to have to shift, and having some other components that make it sort of unique. Like, does it have to be 3-5, or can it be 3-2 plus this, right? Can it be, how are we defining service? How are we defining community involvement? Those kinds of aspects of it, we have enough time to put an honor society together based on the bones of what NHS has always been. So the timing, I mean, I can't apologize enough as far as just the shock of sort of receiving this message from, for some families, and I can confidently assure that students will be well taken care of, what will happen to this honor society, I think, will make an experience even better, and even richer, and even more exciting, especially if students have a hand in creating it, and that uniqueness, I think, will speak volumes about what participation in that honor society actually means. I'm going to ask one more question, then I'm going to, sorry, and I appreciate that the focus of this really is about the student, and about what it does for them as a person, as a person, as a human being, and a contributor to society. So please, I understand that's the focus. However, there is an additional layer to that where it is used in the college application process, and I don't, you know, I don't dispute that, that it is about, you know, building the student, but also about that next step to continue to build themselves as a human being in a contributor society. So how does this new program that we're working on or developing, how is that recognized by the schools and universities that they'll apply to, and how do we give it the weight that National Honor Society has? I mean, I have some, so our counseling department head, Ben Buffett, has been involved in these conversations and has expressed no concern whatsoever about admissions impact. NHS isn't even on our school profile because so many schools have it. Like, it's not a special thing. Okay. We would want to put this actually on our school profile. So the school profile is the information that we send out. It's public-based, and it's a summary of Wayland High School and what makes us special. Ben and I have talked about, once we have a name for it, but we're just calling it the Wayland High School Honor Society, that that would be on our profile. Again, NHS is not because virtually every school, except for like in summary, a lot of schools have National Honor Society. So we would want to use this to sort of signify this is something that makes, that does make us special. But again, in consultation with Ben, and I believe him and I know that they're paying close attention to the patterns, this will not have an admissions impact. I also want to say that a lot of our students who, a lot of our students decide not to apply to NHS because they don't have the time. They look at the requirements and say, I honestly can't commit to this because it's too much. And so they don't have it on their resume, and that's perfectly fine. And these are all students who are landing in wonderful future plans. And for those who do commit, yes, it is a point of pride to put it on their resume, just as it will be a point of pride to say, you know, Wayland High School Honor Society inaugural class of this new thing that's been created. So, so that's what I have to say at this point about that. Thank you. Okay. You, excuse me. You mentioned Lincoln Sudbury. So how many of our peer districts are NHS schools and how many have their own? Many have NHS. Many struggle with the requirements or don't adhere to them and have their own sort of version but call it NHS. And so I've had this conversation with my DCL principal group, with other peer districts. And not all of them have sort of a version of Honor Society if they don't have NHS. Lincoln Sudbury, as I understand it, has kind of a cum laude honor designation for students based on their cumulative GPA. But they don't have an Honor Society per se. So, and we grant honor roll, we have high honor roll, like those things are still very much a part of kind of what we celebrate and how we celebrate kids. So I'd say most have NHS, many struggle, and some of our peer districts don't, are not doing something different, they just don't have an Honor Society. And measure scholarship and bestow honors on students for scholarship in different ways. I guess my other question, because we have received some questions about this, is, is there space to have both NHS and this Wayland School Honor Society? Maybe until, maybe the sophomores go into junior, like it's just a little bit jarring for people who are juniors, and they haven't had time to kind of react to it and plan for it. So is there space to have kind of two Honor Societies for a bit, until younger students transition? I don't know. Let me think, I'll think about it. Yeah. Just from hearing you as well, I mean, you know, 3.5 GPA, that's really impressive. I don't know why we wouldn't have that on our school profile. It sounds like, already, NHS is more stringent than the national standard, so. We deliberately made it more stringent to, and we felt a little strange doing that actually, but we wanted to draw a line in a place that would invite, sort of create some more limited eligibility, I guess you could say. Was that the right call though? It sort of, it introduces all kinds of really interesting questions about how we want students to kind of experience like an Honor Society type, type thing in their high school experience, yeah. Do you have any questions, Betsy? I do, I'm formulating. Do you want to go first, or no? No, no. Go for it. I feel like I have to disclose that I was a member of NHS. Totally, yeah. It's good for you. No, only, I'm just feeling a little awkward. You're on your school profile. But I get, the reason I'm reflecting on it is because obviously that was more years ago than anyone should comment on. Nobody's counting. And you know, times change and perceptions change, but it's hard not to bring your own experience to something, and the signaling was important then to the issues that Erin has raised. And I think we can maybe say with the benefit of hindsight, less important than maybe it felt at the time, but I am feeling a lot of empathy for our juniors and frankly even sophomores who may have older siblings, that at least for years the achievement of reaching for that bar did carry weight. And I think that it is appropriate to hold that for a minute and sort of acknowledge that any homegrown situation, while perhaps enriching and wonderful, is inherently different from recognition to something that is recognized for generations across an entirety of the country. And so we can say that perhaps the import in the admissions process feedback we're getting is less or not, but I do think it's important to acknowledge that it is a seismic shift for people who have been familiar with NHS, and perhaps parents participated, siblings participated. And I would echo my concern about the sort of suddenness of the change, not just the communication, but the impact on the in-school year that we're changing it now in school. I guess I'm curious because we heard a lot of things, and I'm trying to, those I was formulating, is trying to like put them together. I mean I heard you say that there was some growing discomfort about students who weren't eligible, but then I also heard you share with us that the vast majority of students got in, and there was very little rejection. So there seems to be some tension there for me. And I agree, I sort of wrote down discomfort as a part of life for all of us, adult and student alike, and so I don't know that that should be something that makes us make big changes. How much faculty time did service on the council require? Not a lot. Not a lot. Depending on situations that would arise, right? So there are individual situations that I would arise. My conversation when I was asking Allison about this, it wasn't so much the time, it was the concern about relationships in terms of that, that was more the issue of students. No, I heard that. It's kind of cutting, you know, cutting is always hard in districts. I mean, that's why coaching can be so hard, but this is like different. But we're not hearing that. I'm not hearing that. I'm hearing the vast majority make it, and there's very few reject it. And I think part of that, not to say that students aren't, this is where it's a little tricky to talk about this, because the students who are engaged in and want to be in NHS and go through the really rigorous process of application, which we've intentionally created to further help students understand this is the commitment you're going to make. Few of them who apply do fall beneath, but some do. And we get into some tricky situations in saying no, because there have been historical situations also where a no is not well received, right? And so then we get into a whole other layer of complication around appealing to the faculty council, appealing to the principal. All suitable process steps. It's a formal process. And it increases the tension of like, but I'm saying no, you're not. I'm not a nameless admissions officer over here saying yes or no. I'm your math teacher, or I'm going to teach you later. And I think there is, and I wouldn't want it any other way honestly, a real honoring of I believe in the relationships with my students past, present, and future. And it's harder to engage faculty in wanting to do that work on top of all the other decisions that they're making. It's not the time commitment. Betsy is really, you know, a few hours of really careful selection. Maybe a disciplinary issue that comes up here and there. But I think even that, it's not feeling great to sort of have that role. And then perhaps engage in controversy or engage in these processes that are, I don't know that it's appropriate necessarily for teachers to be in that position. I'm, administrators, that seems appropriate, but we're not actually allowed to be on the faculty council. Was there any dialogue with the national, the chapter of the National Honor Society about this tension or this desire to move to anonymous selection panels? There, there was. So last spring, I think it was last spring, Amy Lima, our advisor, has been engaged in the national organization events. So they have these yearly conferences, they bring different chapters together. And she had discussed, um, she had discussed some of these questions with the organizers there. Um, specifically around the anonymized application packets, um, around navigating a faculty council that is not anonymized. Um, and I understand the degree of transparency brings integrity to a process. But how to, how to then reconcile some of those relational pieces that come up? Um, and there wasn't compromise. Okay. Was there, um, so is it the intent then that one of the sort of defining changes of the Wayland Honor Society, as you envision it, be that we would move to an anonymous selection panel, an anonymous review? I don't know if the anonymous selection panel actually, we, we would want to think about that. That's something we would want to engage with the students on as well. Um, I think the anonymous selection, the anonymizing of the, of the applicants would be good practice. Um, because we are so small. And, um. I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt you. I thought you said we did try that already. Yeah. We did do that and then we realized that it wasn't something we're supposed to be doing. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. I misunderstood that. Yeah, totally. Um, so we had begun doing that to bring what we thought was more integrity to that process. And then when Amy went to the conference and had conversations with the organizers, that was something that they discussed. Um, so in terms of though, as part of the new, we would want to talk with the students and in building this, build something that feels good and that feels like faculty would want to engage in this. Um, and that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be a selection process that has integrity or rigor. Um, but we want to build something that allows for those sometimes hard conversations and safe spaces with kids, um, differently. Um, the teachers, the folks who are on the faculty council need to believe in that process. I, this is falling short on me because I'm not sure how we achieve a goal of still having a selection process, having a high bar and teaching our students that, um, not everybody gets to be picked for things. And that things that you do before you try and get on to something such as an honor society in her and in the word is honor society will keep you off of that. And I don't see how moving to something that still seems like it needs to have all those pieces and just not calling it national honor society gets us there. Um, I, I, even if you take the anonymity out of the applications, there's still going to be, the students are going to know those teachers that are part of the selection process. Right. And so you're still going to have to have those hard conversations, which are ultimately part of life. Mm-hmm. Um, and part of having a job, part of. Sure. Totally. Getting into college. Right. Part of, I, I just. Teachers are having hard conversations all the time with kids, right? They totally are. And I think that in the structure of this particular thing, I hear what you're saying, Erin, as far as how do we rebuild something that solves those problems? Part of it is we don't have any flexibility right now and are able still to call ourselves an NHS chapter.
I guess I didn't hear that. I heard you say there was a minimum standard in weeks to exercise flexibility for scholarship. In terms of the actual formulation of structure of how students are being selected. That part, there is no flexibility. So a five-person faculty council, not anonymous, not anonymous applications, um, disciplinary hearings by that faculty council. Well, but those are all still going to have to exist. I mean, it's not like you're going to have community members come in and run it. And it can't be just the administration. Well, would we call them disciplinary hearings? Would they be, what process would a student go through if they fell short? Right now, they have to sit in front of a faculty council and have a disciplinary hearing. I would say it's a continued eligibility hearing. I mean, I hear you call a disciplinary hearing. But, like, what it is is you have, it's not just a selection. You get on and then you have ongoing expectations. Whether that's maintaining your GPA, whether that's satisfying community service, whether that's a character obligation. Like, if you fall short of one of those, would this new society have continuing eligibility expectations? I would hope so. Absolutely. Right. What that process, though, would look like and require which adults and when, I think we would want to consider. Is it, oh, sorry, I'm just listening. Is it subjective, like, the process now? Or is it, like, like, is it, like, if you had two kids, like, could you, like, oh, I think that this community service weighs more than, like, is it subjective now? The only objective part of the application is the scholarship part, the GPA. So, that does make it hard for faculty. If there's a name, like, I see how that can make it harder. Actually, I think it would make it easier. Because if they don't have the GPA, but they do have all the hours and everything else, you're on. And we're hearing, not a lot of people are off. We're not entered in. Right. Fewer students are applying now because of the rigor. Because of the rigor of participation. Which, yeah. That's a concern if we want to take the rigor away. Totally. Like, this isn't math-ing for me. It feels like there was a tipping point, and I'm not quite crystallizing what the tipping point was of, like, why now? Why for this class? Why at this moment? Like, there must have been a breaking point. Because also, as you can sense, we're trying to understand. I, for one, am, like, not supportive or not supportive right now. I am really just trying to make sense of, like, what are we leaving? What are we going to? It feels like we made a rather, for me anyway, sudden decision to leave the status quo, to go to something that is amorphous and not yet defined. And I guess I'm trying to still understand why. Why wouldn't we keep the status quo while we undertake to stand up with more concrete certainty what the future looks like? So let's set aside, do we, don't we? But, like, there seems to be a precipitating catalyst for why we're doing it now and having an impact this year. As opposed to, we're looking at curriculum, and we're going to explore, and then we're going to look at options, and then we're going to discuss it, and then we're going to pick one, and then we're going to have an implementation phase. Like, we didn't follow that with this decision. Right.
There has been, I think, just an, I'll use that silly word again, concern, or discomfort, right? An increasing level of, does this make sense for us, and does this work for us? Is this something that our faculty wants to engage in, in the ways that the national organization is asking them to, is asking us to? And, at a certain point, we have to, like, diagnose the problem, right? That there's, the kids are hopefully having a meaningful experience. The selection process and the formal ways that then the processes are set up for kids who don't necessarily meet the bar, or don't continue to meet the bar, are just not feeling great. Enough so that folks are like, I want to be a part of that, I want to be a part of that. That's what we want, is something we're faculty, and we want it so badly, we want to be a part of that, and have some voice, and helping kids get into this great experience. It's not like that, at all.
This should be about the kids. And it is about the kids. They want the kids to have a great experience. It's not about their, this is where our faculty will do anything to help kids get into, have a great experience, right? And it even felt to us, as we were talking, Amy and I and some other folks five years ago, talking about the increase from 3.0 to 3.5. Like, that, what does that actually mean, right? And we need to just pause and think about, what do we want our kids to experience? And yes, there's a faculty involvement that we don't agree with, but at the root of their disagreement is the kids. Is getting the kids into something that means something, that they also believe in. And there will be those components. There will hopefully be something unique, new pieces to this experience for kids as well, that they have a voice in creating, as opposed to adhering to this national organization. Which, again, generations upon generations, including Betsy, have been a part of this. And I do get that. And like every other state, school, national. Oh, yeah. Which does hold weight when you then find yourself across the country in a dorm with other students that you're getting to know. And, you know. You mentioned. I'm part of national. I, I, it is something they talk about. I, I mean. I'm totally jealous of Betsy. I wasn't in it. You're right. I'm sure you're eligible, Erin. You may just not have applied for it. Yeah. But you're right. There's a prestige to it and an achievement and, like, an accomplishment to that. That's known nationally. That's known nationally. The question is, the college admissions process was, the one area that I'm not, I think is, it's not clear. And, you know, I think the counselors have said this, though, is that college admissions, there are a lot of other things. But why it's not on a school profile is schools put things on a school profile to make their school unique. And it's not as standardized as, for example, having an AP program, which is quite standardized. It's not, you know, it's not standardized in that way. Because GPA is different than. Well, in GPA, we don't have weighted GPA. Right. So the APs don't carry any more weight than. Lots of schools. I'm just saying, so the differentiators are that we've now created a less stringent honor society. Scholarship requirement because we don't weight. More stringent. No, no. You've increased your GPA, but if you're not weighting courses differently, then you have homogenized the GPA, which may be why. I mean, it's not a conversation. I don't think this is a conversation for tonight. But, like, I need to understand better, there's been long conversation back and forth about weighted and why districts make these decisions or don't make these decisions. But they do influence the probability of achieving a 3.0, a 3.5, whatever, regardless of your course load. So there are, like, that's a thing. So I think if you are not weighting your GPA, then some might say the stringency of achieving that GPA is not as difficult as it may be in a district where you are weighting GPA. We can agree to disagree, but I'm just restating sort of I think there is active debate among districts when they look at their GPA and how it's calculated. And we're talking about creating a less stringent honor society. We're going back from 3.5 possibly to a 3.2 in the new. But, I mean, even just to stay as part of the program that we're talking about creating is that we don't want to have to hold any sort of discussion or hearing, whatever you want to call it, with these kids that, hey, you slipped. These are the requirements. You knew that when you signed up. What's going on? You have a semester to build it back up or whatever it is. Repair it. I don't know. Make sure your hours meet. Whatever those issues are that come before a disciplinary hearing, but we're talking about those are the things that are making it uncomfortable that people don't want to participate in. People don't want to participate in telling a kid they don't qualify based on requirements. So we're lessening these qualifications, and we're going to go and say, but we're part of Wayland Honor Society. And fewer and fewer students are applying for NHS, right? So fewer kids are entering into that. So just to add that piece. Because of the rigor, right? Because there's more to achieve. You have to dedicate more time, and I think that's a good thing. I think maybe they acknowledge that they can't allocate the time and commitment that they need to to that. You have to choose, right? There are choices. There's only 24 hours on a day. So if that's where they choose to invest their time, why do we take that from them? You know, not everybody is playing a sport until 8 o'clock at night. This might be something that's really important to them and a track that they're on. I'm curious about those NHS students, the current ones that you spoke with. What was their experience? How did they feel their experience in the program has been? They are, so we talked to them in the early fall when they had been inducted last year. So they were elected as officers leading into this year. They are leading the NHS. They are doing a fabulous job. So they have enjoyed, it's a lot, and they have enjoyed the experience of being a part of it. And it doesn't impact them if we come out of it or not. Correct. That's right. But so those are the kids that we talked to and asked about it, and we didn't talk to the kids that it will impact or might want to be a part of NHS versus a Wayland. And those kids, those 15 kids, they don't have a choice. They've been told NHS isn't happening, so you can either help us form this one or don't. They've been invited to participate in the process. Right. So did this, like, come before the school council, the student council, anybody? It will come before school council. But you've already made the decision. The creation of it will come before school council. I have already announced that we are putting something new together. And that you will no longer be participating in National Honor Society. Right.
With no feedback from anyone in the community or student body, right? No formal feedback from students.
How much have you heard since the announcement? I've heard from four parents. A lot more. And they are welcome to contact me. And I really would like to engage with parents and students who have questions or concerns. I literally, I heard from four.
And I would want to hear from folks who are calling you and speaking with you.
Thank you for relaying those concerns through this conversation. But it's always great to know directly what folks are thinking and wondering before we make the decision, ideally.
And we'll think about some steps in terms of engagement. And we'll talk about some steps in terms of... I'd really like to hear what other people are doing.
What other districts are doing? Mm-hmm.
Many districts have NHS and are... I heard that. I, you know, but candidly, I put out a request to school committee chairs across Massachusetts. Yeah. One got back to me that, like, 20 years ago, there was a school-specific Honor Society. And otherwise, nothing about being removed from National Honor Society. So, of districts that have it? No. Every district. Do you, you know, aren't you participating? Yeah. Are you thinking about removing yourselves? Do you have your own Honor Society? Mm-hmm. One. Other than the cum laude, which is in addition to, not instead of, I understood, at Lincoln-Subbury? They have NHS and cum laude? No, it's instead of. It's instead of. So, LS is instead of. Anybody else that we're aware of? No. And cum laude is just GPA-based? It's different. It's a totally different structure. Yeah. It's a different, it's not an activity-based, like, membership. It's a, as I understand, it's an honor that is bestowed on students at the end of senior year, based on their final GPA.
That doesn't seem like a great alternative to me, either. No. I mean, there's, I don't know that they've ever had NHS, either. No, but then there were questions about continuation of that, because it wasn't as standardized, so I think many districts are having that conversation.
So, you know, I heard a lot. I heard your concerns, and I heard a few things that kind of resonated with me. How often does the five-member faculty council transition over? Is there, like, a two-year term, three-year term? It's supposed to be a one-year appointment, I think. Okay. Yeah. And has it been happening? As far as... Like, have the same group of people been the ones to raise their hand, or felt that they were obligated to raise their hand, because nobody else was? I mean, we know how this goes. Yeah, someone. I mean, there's the go-to people who can be persuaded into something like that.
And to be honest, there are fewer and fewer folks who are sort of willing to be persuaded. Yeah. I mean, we understand that. Right. So, yes, there's been a small number of folks. And so I don't know that it's supposed to be a full, a wholly new five-member council every year, but it's considered a one-year term. What about looking at different ways to refresh that committee or make it on a rotation, where there's overlapping of people coming on with experience and going off? Mm-hmm. So everybody rotates through, and everybody has a chance to be a part of it, and everybody has a chance to roll off of it. So it just kind of, I know we are on this for three years, right? That's a commitment. It's a big commitment. But in one year sounds reasonable to me. Is there an opportunity to rotate through that team? It's unfair to put that on anybody every year, day in and day out. Yeah. And there might be, certainly, we could experiment with making it more fluid as far as who's participating, who's willing to participate, who finds investment in that effort. The bylaws for the Wayland chapter still say that it's an anonymized application packet. Mm-hmm. Those were, yeah, that was submitted in 2020.
I just, look, unfortunately you're in the hot seat on this, but we represent the community, right? And we're supposed to bring those concerns, and we're supposed to help represent those people that aren't here to speak up for themselves. Or maybe they don't feel comfortable, or maybe they don't understand it, or maybe, you know, that wasn't a school-wide notification either. It went to only the class of 2027, right? First, yeah. Yep. And then it went out district-wide. Like in something else, right? It was in my Friday message. Yeah, so, I mean, it's not like everyone's getting that, so it's not exposure to younger folks or younger kids' parents, you know. Everybody's getting it. Everybody might not be opening it. Right. But my effort was to share it with the entire high school community. Right, I'm saying, like, middle school kids, any, you know, there's a greater community, right, that's being served by the high school. Um, so I just, there's a lot of concern. Um, and I think there's policy behind making these types of decisions throughout the district that require solicitation of student feedback as important to the process. And best practice being community involvement. And I, this just seems very siloed, and I'm trying to wrap my head around and say, oh, I get it, but I don't get it. I can't, I'm hearing it, and I, I'm just not. I have to agree. I do, too. I think this is a very big change. And I haven't actually heard a crisp answer as to why now and why for this class. Like, why, what was the impetus? And I'm not saying I can't be convinced, but I'm not. I don't. So why don't, as a suggestion, maybe David and I can work on some engagement with the community and with students. I'd like to continue working with this committee of students who are willing to engage and sort of thinking through and identifying the issues, talking about, talking with them transparently about what the issues have been. We have kids who are willing to dig in, um, and I'd like to continue working with them. Um, and David will help me with some engagement with the community. And I think the anecdotal, as much as it appears anecdotal of it doesn't matter, it doesn't pull the weight that maybe people think it does, which isn't wholly what's driving the issue. But I think real data on what is going on, how is it perceived, um, you know, I think that's important for everyone to see and understand. Um, well, for instance, if it's lost all external meaning and signaling power, then why is it that your canvas of other districts all largely unanimously was we still have it? So it's still very compelling. My sense, Betsy, be really candid. Yeah, please. Okay, I'll be really honest. It's a very hard thing to take away things that are perceived to be advantageous in the college admissions process. So, I mean, let's just name that, and Allison's aware of that, um, that that is a hard lift, having been a part of districts when there's change. If there's a perception, given the college admissions office and the angst around that, that's a hard, that's a hard lift. Um, but I think the question is, are there other reasons besides that to do it? And I think Aaron's question is, what's the story with the college admissions process? Certainly the counselors weighed in, um, because obviously part of counselors' jobs, kids don't get into college, that creates angst for them. And I think the very experienced counseling team at Wayland High School, from what I know, is a part of this. But certainly people get very anxious just in this, this environment about college, college admissions. So I think there's, there's different buckets to the concern, but that, that's one that, you know. Well, some of the people most anxious are the students themselves. So that's, I think, one of the things that is giving us pause, is to change something to as large a population of juniors, as you just described, reach for this. And I hear you that it's been declining, but it's still the, I, for those students who intended to, and we're sort of counting on that line of, I agree, there's a lot of debate about what does or doesn't make the magic ingredient list. But like, this is an ingredient, and I think that that can create anxiety, and I feel for that class. And I think there are things that can come out of being a member of the National Honor Society, such as the work that's done to continue to be a part of it, that kids really do get value out of. And maybe that adds to the value of an essay that they write to get into a school, or something that sets them apart. And so, I understand that that could still be a part of something else. I just don't want to diminish that. There's a lot involved in it, and not just renaming. But why not achieve that on the nationally recognized stage, right? I think that's the point. I mean, honestly, Allison, I think what we're asking for is to preserve it for a time being until it's completely flushed out. So, it's just not there yet. And in my opinion, it would be preserved for the students that are in high school now, because they're on that trajectory. These are things that they've looked forward to. And then the consideration is given to those, I don't even want to pick a grade, but that haven't entered the school yet. I mean, this decision was made quickly, and, you know, I think we've, you know, beat that enough. But there needs to be a little bit more preparation for people, and there just, there isn't. So, can we talk about preserving our engagement in National Honor Society until we've figured this out? Right now, or I'd like to certainly reflect on all of this input and feedback, engage with families, the families who are and aren't contacting you, talk with students, assemble those 15 students together and talk with them. And I hear, I mean, in terms of roles here, I'm hearing you ask me to delay this decision. I am. Okay. And it's probably not the 15 students that have raised their hands to help that are at home worried about this. It's probably not those ones, you know? Yeah, it may or may not, but I'm thinking about those kids too. Right, absolutely. I don't know if it's anybody else's. No, it's might as well. I mean, it seems very amorphous, and I don't really know what we're moving to, and it does seem very abrupt for the junior class, especially. It would be lovely if there was some case study or, you know, success story behind it that somebody else launched one, whether it be, you know, in Alabama or Massachusetts. Just something to kind of, I don't know, a comparator or, you know. Or even run it simultaneous. Simultaneous and, you know, or the simultaneous. I don't know, maybe, yeah. We'll circle back. We'll circle back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. While we're here, competency determination, question do we have for? Betsy sent me some questions, which I apologize. No, I got to it late for, I own that, so I will publicly own that that I told you not to respond to me last night. But they certainly helped me anticipate what kinds of wonderings there might be related to the competency determination. Do you want me to ask them live? Totally. Because the committee doesn't answer. Okay. So, just to refresh everybody, the competency document gave us, like, the overview of why we're doing this, and then it gave us a deeper dive into how benchmark assessments would be met from competency and then exam requirements. So, I had a couple questions about both as the document laid out. For benchmark assessments, the proposed document gave us examples, and I was just curious who ultimately would be selecting which assignments can qualify to satisfy the benchmark assessment. Would that be student choice, teacher choice? Will it be made consistent across subject area and class level? Yeah. So, behind those two words, benchmark assessment, in our chart, in our proposal, there are actual assessments. So, I guess the short answer, the crisp answer, is department heads in collaboration with those teams. So, Dave Schmier, our social studies department chair, met with the sophomore team to determine what those benchmark assessments would be. Like, we started right this very second. So, there's, like, a Revolutionary War paper that the students would do. Peter Galalis met with his English team, and there's some literary analysis papers that they were identifying. But we would want to be transparent with the students and families about which assessments are the benchmark assessments. And the reason why they are benchmark assessments is because they're tied to at least half the standards. So, there is a direct correlation between what students are being asked to do and what the standards require them to be able to do. Good. Okay. And so, the reason why we didn't say Revolutionary War paper in our proposal is because we wanted some flexibility, but they would be predetermined and communicated to students and families. Okay. So, everybody would know which... Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to say, I know what the standards, like, grading looks like at the middle school. Yeah. Does the standards against a paper like that look similar? That... So, it's basically, it would just be, when we talk about standards, it's sort of, it's the core standards in Massachusetts, core standards around those curriculum areas. Yeah. And it would be basically, I have to pass that paper or pass that assessment. Okay. So, it's not like you would break the paper down into specific areas. It would just be, I passed in my paper on the Revolutionary War, and I passed, so I'm good. Exactly. Okay. We had talked about making it even more detailed around the standards, and I think we just didn't want to overcomplicate. And when the expectations are already set for the students to have to show proficiency in those standards, just by virtue of, like, passing that paper, we thought that was sufficient. Okay. Your question answered my next question. I'm sorry. No, no. It was good. It was great. I was going to have to use the word rubric, and I didn't want to. So, I did a much better job. Do you, I guess, one of the things that's striking me right now, and maybe it's not an issue at all, but with this, it seems like there would be a need, potentially. I don't know how many kids don't pass that paper, but to have those uncomfortable conversations about, like, hey, you didn't do this, so now we have to do X, Y, or Z, whereas, like, the MCAS, it's bubbles. It went out, and I know that that's not what you're taking away or anything like that, but is there a way to kind of balance that? Like, if, you know, three kids don't pass the paper, and so, well, why didn't I, you know, I covered this, or I covered that, like, because it's going to come back to that one paper, right? That Revolutionary War paper. Right. So, in terms of. Of saying, like, you don't meet the assessment, so you're not competent. Not, and I don't mean it in that sense. You haven't hit the competency determination. Right. I mean, I think, so our teachers are very skilled at having those conversations, and I think also what's incumbent on us is to make sure that students have other opportunities to pass a different paper, or pass that same paper, do a rewrite with support, so that they do meet that CD. And the goal would be that that conversation is really clear and focused as far as where it did fall short, right? What, what, what led to the student not demonstrating proficiency in at least half the standards, so that they can do, they can do it over again. They've been following year. There will be another opportunity. We will want to have multiple opportunities for kids to be able to do that. Is that what you're asking, Erin? Sorry. I mean, it's a more high-stakes conversation for sure with alternatives and opportunities for them to demonstrate it a different way. Okay. So I guess one of the questions that I didn't ask last time was, is the idea that this is going to go in place for this year again and then be re-evaluated because this is still under so much change and, like, pressure cooking with the state? Yeah, and there's so much change happening just with the graduation framework. But these graduation frameworks don't have it happen overnight, so it's hard to answer that question, Erin. But that's what I'm wondering. Is that the ask, like, we approve this for this, this round? For next, for this, for next year. For now. Because we approve them for this graduating class. It's for 2027, right? So. Exactly. Okay. So this is for, like, the 2027 folks. Okay.
You have more questions, but I'm sorry. I do, no, no, it's okay. I'm actually listening, helping me, like, short circuit. The only other question I had, and this is partly my own lack of knowledge, is there's a documented appeal process proposed in it. Is there one today if a student is determined not to have satisfied our graduation requirements, which I know are different, and is that appeal identical to the one in the competency determination? I think what we would do is establish an appeal process that involves me, and having to sit down and demonstrating, or countering our finding about a lack of proficiency in whatever standard, and then they could show work. We talked a little bit about this with Ronnie, too, as far as, is there a fallback option as far as demonstrating proficiency through a portfolio or through alternative works? I would envision that's the kind of appeal conversation that would happen.
Hopefully it wouldn't happen frequently with enough opportunities for students to try again. To try again. Right. I mean, even with MCAS, they try again. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I remember statistically that was the case, Ronnie. Yeah, there's always retests, and students who couldn't pass. You know, there are students who couldn't, you know, really struggle to pass MCAS, and that was their barrier to high school diploma. So we would do, like, grade-level portfolios and things, but you technically, then it would be certificate, but there, you know, it's not like we'd be creating this from having our structures in place.
So statistically speaking, we're probably in kind of the same realm with needing to look for alternatives, portfolios, retesting. It's a very testing group, but I think we'd be very, given that it's 10th grade, just like, you know, MCAS, like, there's time to work on that, and that's something that if a student was on an IEP, that their IEP team would talk about. Perfect. So I'm just thinking, for that class, the class of 2027, isn't most of this already done for them? Yes. Yep. So it's, like, retrofitting, kind of. It is. Yeah.
Like, Dave Schmier's class, they probably already passed their Revolutionary War paper. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. I guess that's a good question. Do we? We have to submit it. We do. Yeah. No, I know, but I was just saying, like, we're basically, you know. Reverse it. Yes. So that's a good question. Has somebody kind of gone through it retrospectively to see where we're at and how? We're in the process of doing that. Yeah. Perfect. Yes. We have to verify, actually, with the state. And I'm not sure what this process will look like now that it's locally controlled as far as verifying students who have and haven't met the CD. Mm-hmm. Because when it was based on MCAS, they would just send us a file of students and say, right, these are the kids. Yeah. So rural management system, I'm sure. Okay. I'm just going to take a giant step back because I wasn't here last week. I did listen to the discussion. No, it's fine. I'm seeing the table with biology, algebra 1, geometry, English 10, U.S. History 1. Yeah. With the MCAS, like, is this more than that? Is it less than that? Is it different? How does it relate to what the 10th grade MCAS was previously testing?
In terms of the standards? Just in terms of the subject matter. Everything about history. Right. Right. So the students did, there wasn't a history MCAS, so that's when that's new. Okay. Everything else was, yeah. So there's science, math, and English. Right. Okay. Exactly. Okay. And history probably would have been coming because. Right. Civics, right? Yeah. It would have probably been coming if. But I really like how history has a writing component, it sounds like. Mm-hmm. So. Okay. I mean, it looks good to me. So is it acceptable for us to vote these for the class of 2027 with a proposed revisit for next year? That's good, right? Because it's approved for.
Yeah. I think what we're seeking is your approval. And for what time frame? I'm not. I'm turning to David. I think we. I don't know that they indicated when. No, because it's so unclear what the path forward is. Right. I mean, we should probably do next year. And then if we need to extend, which is. Right. So we can always do that. That's quite possible. I will warn everybody that that's quite possible, which is why it's good to get some questions in now. And then we can extend next year and report back. Right. Well, and you might learn something between now and then, too. Yeah. You know. So, do we want to entertain a motion? Do people have other questions? I guess one last question. Ronnie, did you look at this for, like, the out-of-district students or students with IEPs and ensure that this is inclusive? Yeah, we, I met with them. There's some really good, like, fallbacks in here. Yeah. And I'm on a lot of different, like, districts, out-of-district coordinators and directors, and we've all been kind of talking about this, and it's pretty in line with other districts. But I met with Allison and Betsy about it. Anybody want to make a motion? Are we motion-averse today? No, I can make a motion. No, we're just running out of words. I will move to approve the proposed WHS competency determination criteria as presented for the graduating class of 2027. Do we have a second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Did you get that, Diane? Mm-hmm. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, and I think the other idea with that was to kind of tie in the portrait of a learner work, because there's going to be the revisiting of all of these tying together. The graduation requirements, the portrait of a learner, and the competency. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. Okay. You can actually help for me to edit the competency determination, because you're refreshing. Mm-hmm.
What's the status on that portrait of a learner? I think we were looking for an update on that in early next year, but we were trying to get the facility stuff off the ground. Right. We're going to kick off some portrait stuff in January, but we wanted to just, there's some, there's some over, a little bit of overlap, but we're going to kick off some, actually, that we're going to have a message going on right after the meeting, though, about the corporate work. Excellent. So that, that will be, that'll be good. And you mentioned Desi or someone who was doing character over there? I don't know. They've done some vision. Vision over there. Some vision. Exactly. They haven't drawn yet. They're just looking into. Are we ready for our elementary spokes? Yes. They're wide awake, raring to go. They're our earliest starters, but. Incredibly patient with this. I know. Me too. Thank you. They've been at it for more than 12 hours, and they look ready to go. All right? It's good. One more. Don't all jump. I'm versed into song. I know. We're going to have a good time here. Ronnie. I know. I'm going to, you know, drive home. You're going to go to the bed.
Welcome. Hi. Thank you for having us. Yeah. It's good to be here. We have, I just want, sorry, I don't want to interrupt you guys, but we have one, we have a local school improvement plan. We don't have anything else, so if anybody else had a presentation or a, we do not have it in our folder. You don't have a Happy Hollow school improvement plan as well? Okay. And we also have a slide show. They're not combined. Maybe they are? I'm wondering if you have a couple of elements. I agree. I think they have the, I think it's just the. No, it's just local elementary that we have in like the, you know, the plan document. Right. Betsy's not here to put, do you want to figure out how to present? This is the elementary. I think it says the elementary. Is it okay if I look, does it say it? I would say all three school improvement plans are very similar because we like have a lot of problems. Yes, so that's actually all three of us. Oh, okay. Oh, it's labeled as Loker. Yeah. Okay. Oh, you want to know why? Because I think it's because when we first, when we were working together in the summer, we made the copy of Loker. Like a pre-existing Loker. There was an existing one, which was Loker's this year. So we must have not changed anything. But they're all the same. They're all similar. But they're all the same. We had a little bit, like Loker had a Spanish immersion goal and things like that. Yeah. So they are different. This looks like one plan. This is one with one set of goals. But it does say elementary way on double school. Right, but we feel like we should keep the word draft in there because we wanted to speak to you first, even though our school councils have approved it. We were just trying to be respectful. Appreciate it. Absolutely. But I want to make sure we're looking at the right. The intent is good. I'm trying to see if I can find Spanish. I know it's all six goals. I feel like we should show you what we have. Well, you're welcome to work at what's on my screen. Yeah, come on over. Please. Okay, I have, the process will include Spanish immersion as well. So operational. I mean, are, if you guys are all persons of school and district leaders. Oh, no, we don't have that. So that's the last one. No, we definitely don't have that. We definitely don't have that. It's just tonight's presentation. This isn't just group of influence. It's just tonight's presentation. I mean, it doesn't say local school leaders, teachers and staff. So are, if. Yeah, I think it's just the name. I think so. The Spanish immersion is low at the bottom. It'll tell you right away. Of goal one. It wouldn't have been my fault because Brian sent it to me. So I was just, without looking at it, I assumed it was the right one. Yeah, so that was Spanish immersion. So there's district goal five has developed a K-12 Spanish immersion handbook. Right. So that's what we're a school group had. Yeah. Okay. So all three of our schools, the main goals tied into our districts are aligned. The only difference is Spanish immersion, continuing with our new school motto, and then for CLEPIT, it's with a subset for programming. And does that have to do with your community goal for each? Yes. Those are tied in. Mine's with the community. Spanish immersion is community and community. Correct. So maybe just shoot us over your goal five for CLEPIT and Pepe Hallow, and if you rest, then we have them all. Is it Dan? Sure. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be the second. Just, you know, thank you. Well, make sure you have the, make sure that that's not the local plan and that you do have the joint one as well. Yeah, if you want to just send that, yeah, we can do that easily. Whatever works for, just good for us to have it. All right. Sorry for that. No, don't worry. We're at a loss without Betsy. But you did it. Yeah, you got it. Thanks, Ronnie. My pleasure. All right. So similar to what you did with our middle school and high school staff, talking, we, all of our elementary school proven goals are really connected to our district, aligned with our district goals. And so what we, what we love to do in the summer at our leadership retreat is really work together to align what, what are our district goals and then vertically align what we're doing at every single different age level. So, if we're going through our shared responsibilities to create the conditions and structures and collaborative support to leaders and educators. And then as we're going through, you have your academic belonging, equity, and social, emotional learning and wellness. So everyone is tied into their school, aligning with those. And then additionally, we have our student services, community, and operational goals. So, specifically to our elementary, we, we're going to present, and each of us will take a slide of, we'll start with our academic core focus. Okay. So that's the area where I'm going to focus tonight. And Nicolette, you know, we'll talk about belonging. Brian, we'll talk about social, emotional learning. And, you know, I just want to say that the academic work can't happen without those key components as well. So, in talking about our core focus, this year, I'll highlight some of this goal. It's a very robust goal, but we're going to continue the full and comprehensive implementation of the Bridges Math program. So we are technically in year three, but this is year one of the third edition implementation. There are some changes in this curriculum that teachers are adjusting to, but for the most part, it's really similar. There are some things that are done to create more equity for students, more access for students. There are some more culturally responsive pieces. Some of the units have been adjusted slightly. The lessons are more manageable within a one-hour block. So that is very small shifts for our teachers this year, which is great because what can happen now is that we can really focus on going deep with the curriculum because teachers are not focusing on how to implement the lesson, how to manage the materials, when to bring in implementation, intervention, how to address, you know, areas when we notice that students are not grasping concepts, how to reteach, et cetera. We're able to now, like, focus on going deeper. And we're really leaning into our math coaches to help us do that. So some of the things that we are thinking about deeply this year is how do we address intervention in the elementary schedule? How is best to do that? You know, the bulk of the responsibility for intervention is still on our regular ed teachers with some support at Clay Pit with a math interventionist, a little bit in the information version, still with a math interventionist. But we're trying to increase capacity through coaching to address gaps. So in intervention, we're continuing to address gaps from previous years' learning. So really looking at diagnostic tools like iReady to better understand where kids don't have foundational skills and how we can use tools like Bridges Intervention to address those gaps. And our three coaches have been really key in helping us to increase our capacity there. We're also thinking about how to reteach and how to offer that within the math block. So when we have assessed using formative daily tools or summative tools at the end of a unit, and we find that the standards should be mastered, you know, at the end of this unit, and we have kids who are not able to demonstrate mastery, how do we ensure, particularly if there are indicators that the curriculum is not coming back to this concept, how do we ensure that kids get what they need so that we're not leaving students behind? So that is really our year three focus. We're working to ensure as administrators that teachers are teaching the program with integrity. We know that we've made a huge investment as a community in these high-quality instructional materials, and we want to make sure that we are really tapping into them and using them to their maximum impact. So, you know, we are using evaluation, our presence, our work with coaches to really make sure that the materials are being used to their full potential. And then we're really focusing in year three on how we can challenge our students. You know, where are the opportunities where we can embed more challenge in grade-level standard mastery for kiddos? So, you know, whether it's using challenging questions, the way that students are asked to demonstrate their understanding, and using other aspects of the curriculum like the quest to layer in more challenging work for our students is the focus in Bridges this year. Okay, so that's Bridges. The second thing I'd like to talk about is our continued work with the district curriculum accommodation plan, multi-tiered systems of support, and the student support team. So first, we'll talk a little bit about the DCAP. Our student services, together with Betsy and a larger group, has continued to work to create a district curriculum accommodation plan that is robust. And it is really a collection of practices and accommodations that general educators can use to make sure that all kids can access the curriculum and, you know, ideally, able to demonstrate grade-level proficiencies. So, you know, when we talk about the DCAP, like, how can we as educators change the presentation of materials, the environment, the setting in some cases, how students respond, or timing, so that we can really best understand what students know and what they're able to do, and we can create or, in some cases, remove barriers so that they can show us. And then I just want to say that our DCAP also includes not only, like, academic accommodations and best practices, but also best practices around social-emotional learning, behavior, motor skills, et cetera. It's a very, very robust document, and I think Ronnie would tell you that it is also dynamic. It's one that we will continue to revisit as research progresses so that our practices are reflective of research. In terms of MTFS, we made a lot of progress last year in that goal in increasing educator capacity and meet students in the three tiers of instruction. What educators who have done a lot of work here will tell you is that the most important tier is tier one. So if our tier one instruction isn't extraordinary, we cannot intervention or reteach our way out of that. So we do continue to work on ensuring that tier one, you know, instruction is super high quality. In addition, we're thinking about the supports and the structures that we can use in the regular education classroom to make access to tier two instruction. Again, a little bit redundant, but that reteaching, the preteaching, the supports that students need to make good progress every year. And then we're thinking, again, how to support students when they are really struggling through gen ed and special ed in tier three instruction. So thinking about specialized instruction, thinking about increasing frequency. So really looking at our practice and making sure in all instances that they are the best practices. And then we have come together again as a district after kind of revamping our SST process. We were using a different process as recent as three years ago called START. You probably remember that. And now we have transitioned to SST. So it's a great opportunity to kind of reflect on our practices and try to calibrate our practices across all three schools. So we are in kind of a reflection process and thinking about how we revise. Some of the things that we've identified as areas of focus are, again, calibrating, kind of thinking about setting norms at those meetings, ensuring that we have a real asset lens as we look at students. We look at what kids can do, what's next for kids, what supports kids need in order to meet challenging but attainable goals. We're also thinking deeply about how to improve family communication and how to involve our families in the SST process, not completely dissimilar from our special ed process in the new IEP. And, again, we're thinking about how we can meet the needs of all educators. What are the needs of our educators? Do they need more support in efficiently collecting data, for example, in the classroom? And setting measurable goals. So what do we need to do as a district to continue to make it manageable for teachers so that they can make database decisions for kids? And then, finally, I'd like to talk a little bit about increasing inclusion opportunities for students. That's, again, one of our most important goals. We are really committed to educating kids in the least restrictive environment. And then, again, like wondering about what our kids are already doing well and what logical next steps are for our students so that they can grow their skills. And then thinking also about what are the critical skills that kids need so that they can be fully included. And, in addition, we're, you know, constantly thinking about what are the most appropriate settings for students to learn. And, you know, sometimes it is a small group. And sometimes we have to push and increase our capacity so that kids can be fully included in the regular education classroom. This year, we're really excited to be piloting co-teaching. And it is certainly a model where kids have a great deal of inclusion opportunities and access to the curriculum. You know, when we think about a really traditional model, we can guarantee that students are well-supported in the minutes outlined in their IEP. And where that can sometimes be difficult is in an elementary social studies classroom. For example, when students need to write and synthesize information, and that's a really difficult skill for them, they may not be supported in that moment by a special educator. But in a co-taught classroom, kids get the support they need when they need it. And the other thing is that if the kid is just cruising along, we stand back and let them so that we're creating independent learners, not dependent learners. So, you know, it is, like, just so amazing to walk into our co-taught classrooms and see kids getting exactly what they need. And I am hoping that it's something that we can continue to capitalize on. And then finally, I'm not going to steal Sarah Sontag's thunder at all. I hear she's coming in January. But I will say that we are really excited to pilot two different curricular program is going to start mid-January. Each pilot is going to be about six weeks long. They're going to wrap up the piloting phase right before April vacation, and then the committee will get together and talk about next steps and maybe a recommendation. Unanimous recommendation, just like last year. That's how we roll, David, unanimous, like with the SEL curriculum. We have a discussion, but we won't have a game. They are, I will just share that some of our educators were able to go out on some site visit, and they came back giddy. So I can't wait. I'm excited for them. That's all I have on my piece. Thanks, Mary. Can I ask you something? Of course you can. So I had a group of boys at my house, and I can't remember which one, and I can't remember exactly the words, but now that you mentioned the Kotak classroom, one kid was like, it's no fair. He has two whole teachers in his room. And I'm like, is it awesome? He's like, it's awesome. And so I'm just sharing that. Like the perception is that it's a really great experience for the kids, too. I wish I remember which one it was. It fills my bucket. Yeah, it fills my bucket, too. So I'm going to be speaking about the belonging and equity focus. So if we're looking at two of, within our buckets of the belonging and equity, our goals, we really want to focus on just the explicit strategies that increase belonging for students who have been historically underserved, and also focusing on our approach of being a warm demander. So leveraging our relationships and how important relationships are to maintain high expectations for all students, honoring their academic strengths, and also celebrating their shared lived experiences, and bringing their cultures alive in the classroom, and just celebrating diversity, inclusion, and celebrating our community. Now, more than ever, with the conversations we'd be having, it'd be a miss to say that this isn't one of our most important within Whelan schools right now. And at the elementary level, we are very fortunate that we, like every other building, we have our dev lead teachers at each of our buildings. We have Caroline Hahn. We have committed educators who are very skilled and really committed to the work. And so just seeing it come to live. So if I go into a little bit more detail about these schools and what it looks like, first and foremost are those consistent strategies that you'll see across any of our buildings with what it means to be a warm demander and really targeting our relationships and those strategies into our daily instruction. So, for instance, Caroline just sent out a survey for an upcoming PD that we're working on, and Caroline wanted to get actually the staff feedback on what they feel as though they need to focus on and be a warm demander. At each school, our dev lead teachers really kind of take on their own little twist of approaching and celebrating our educators noticing within themselves that they're actually having the skill set of what a warm demander means. So giving some examples of that, recently in a third-grade classroom, a warm demander is leveraging your relationship and still maintaining those high expectations. So in a third-grade classroom, we had a student recently when I was in there who was having some work refusal during math and did not want to engage within the small group and didn't want to engage at all, and the teacher was so skilled with we can do hard things and breaking it down for her and really connecting at a relational level and being able to go ahead and finish the task, show that she could do it. It was beautiful because even when the student said, I just want to do it in a working lunch, a working lunch is either you can have that sometimes with the teacher, it's a way for them just to either do some work or sometimes just have a relationship and chit-chat, and sometimes with myself or maybe Marie and Brian, it's about they have a wonderful idea for our school community and they want to advocate for that, and we have lunch. And she very well said, well, that's not how working lunches work because you can do it and that's not what you're going to use a working lunch for, and that right there is being a warm demander and making sure they realize that they can do it. And when it's tough, we're there to lean on one another. We also are supporting our educators at all three buildings with examining their instructional practice and really analyzing the students' needs with targeted support. So sometimes one size doesn't fit all. Some students might need a check-in or check-out on the day. Some students may need breaks, a sensory walk. Some students need an individualized plan to focus on their areas of growth and be celebrated while other classrooms can have a classroom goal. So one of the pictures I have up here is a classroom, a third-grade classroom, earning their class goal of supporting one another, of really showing their core value, and the teacher surprised them. They were able to earn Fishy Fishy, a game. So I went in and I substituted the class for about five minutes and we were guessing what the surprise could be. We walked down together to the gym where they found their teachers dressed in shark costumes and, oh, the screams you could hear. They were so excited. But that is just, you know, having a goal, working and celebrating each other to really help each other to maintain those high expectations and know that we can do it and help one another out to achieve a common goal. And then, of course, the collaboration amongst all three schools within our own buildings, too, of just really having our students take ownership of our school community and inclusive culture. And then, finally, with that last bullet is really celebrating our community and our differences. So that very bottom picture, one of our Dudley teachers at Happy Hollow took that and it was just, the kids were so cute. They were dressed up and it was, I forget what, I think that was June, but proud of who you are and they were looking in the mirror and our Dudley teachers really do celebrate each month and support the teachers with inclusionary practices and celebrating diversity. One thing that's really nice to see is, as we celebrate all the experiences within each home and our students and having them be proud of who they are and their identities is, especially now with different holidays coming up, are at the elementary level different parents and caregivers coming into the school and teaching, the caregivers teaching their children how to teach their friends about their traditions and their cultures and just the joy that that brings them and children loving to participate that and the children that feel proud of sharing who they are. And it's nice then to see from, let's say, a first grade level, but then in fifth grade where the students can do that independently on their own. And they still want to make sure that they're taking a moment to either now bring it to a school level at an all-school assembly or still have the opportunity to celebrate their culture within their classrooms. So it's nice to see that growth throughout our buildings. And then Brian. Excellent. So David has always taught us context setting is really, really important. And so when we begin to talk about SEL and Wayfinder in particular, which is our new social-emotional program in our first year, though we had teachers that piloted that in another program last year, the core concept, and I want to just read this quote because I think it really explains why we chose Wayfinder and why it's so important, durable human skills are precisely the skills that technology can't not displace and are critical to creating positive work environments. And so when I think about why are we doing social-emotional learning, we need to help kids communicate with one another. My son is driving me crazy because he's getting phone calls in the middle of the weekend on his iPad where he's chatting with his friends, and it's starting to really drive me crazy to take it away. But it's one of those things where kids, unless we're intentional about it, they're not going to learn these skills. There's so many other influences that are out in society that are going to grab their attention unless we're proactive. And so when I think about Wayfinder, what I really like about it is it really fosters that critical thinking and kids being reflective about what does it mean to be part of a group? I observed a Wayfinder lesson last week in fourth grade, and the whole goal was to kind of understand what it means to be part of a group. And so the groups are randomly assigned, and as a group, you had to together do a maze together, solve two riddles, and then do a secret handshake. And everyone in the group had to have a component of that secret handshake. The engagement level for those 10 minutes that they were doing that was through the roof. It was awesome. The kids were really proud of it. And what I loved was everyone really was a part of the group because they were forced to because they had to be part of the secret handshake. But it just felt, even going back to what Nicolette was just saying, kids just felt really empowered within that. And then they came back as a circle, as a whole group, and they reflected on what was the challenges about working in a group? What worked well? What's one word you would use to describe the experience? What are ways we can kind of improve that? And so deeply reflecting on what it means to be part of a community and a group, I just thought was so powerful. And the kids really, they really got it, and they really had such a great experience. And so that's what I've been seeing kind of across the board. When I go into classrooms regarding Wayfinder, it's relevant, it's real-world oriented, and the kids are really highly engaged. Going back to that fourth grade lesson, we were talking about escape rooms, you know, as kind of a premise for how to work together and kind of the teamwork that requires. But then the question was asked, how are you going to use this for the rest of this week? Kind of what you've learned in this lesson. And so it really is very practical. Our teachers had a wonderful professional development this fall during our first Super Wednesday at the beautiful Senior Center, by the way. Schools, too. Yeah, and buildings.
But we had a really great experience there, and the teachers, the ones that I talked to from LOCA, were just like raving about the experience. And one of the really cool things about Wayfinder is they really do value your input. If you, they ask for feedback at the end of every lesson from teachers. And every year, they tweak their curriculum based on teacher feedback. Now, that can be a little stressful for the teachers. The lesson looks a little bit different the following year. But the fact that they really are serious about taking that feedback, I thought, empowered our teachers. And it's only going to make the curriculum better as we progress. So I think Wayfinder was a really wise investment by this district. And just in kind of its first year of full implementation, it feels like it's doable. And it's an important part of our schedule now. I think with all the standards that we're asking kids to do all the way down to kindergarten, the things that can get lost are science, social studies, and SEL, because we have to be so focused on math and language arts. And this program, I think, is really, A, it's created alignment across the three schools about what we're doing for SEL. And it's brought those social skills even more to the forefront. If we're going to, as a district, we're going to say we're educating the whole child, then we better be educating the whole child. And I think that Wayfinder helps us get there. The other big thing that we're thinking about, obviously there's a lot of research out there that shows that there's a direct correlation between attendance and punctuality and student achievement. There's a huge correlation. And I apologize because I'm going to probably act like a little bit of a math geek right now. My vice principal, Christina Santavallon, likes to make fun of me for this. But I love looking at data and I just need to say that Open Architects is one of the coolest inventions that I've ever seen for being able to, like, literally one click and I have the total attendance percentage for the year. At low groups right now it's 96.5%. And I cross-referenced that with one click the last three years. So two years ago our attendance was 95.7 on the third to last day before December break. Last year it was 96.4 and this year it's 96.5. So we are trending kind of in the right direction. Also with another click you can see how many absences were in the last 10 days. You can track number of tardies, number of chronically absent students, five point seven percent of local. So it's things that we can really easily look at and make because it's so easy to use we quickly can identify who needs that support. Yes, you get feelings for that and you can I used to ask one of my secretaries like compile all this information when someone hits 10 tardies I want you to know now with one click I know instantly. So it really makes such a difference. And with PowerSchool and ParentSquare aligned as well we're able to send attendance letters to families and it keeps track and we can kind of automate it we can mail merge them and send them out which helps us do that. But in the end I think the conversations with families about attendance and about tardiness are what's most crucial. and these are not always easy conversations and I think it's something that we continue to work on and continue to try to grow as something that our attendance as a district I believe correct me if I'm wrong I think it went up about 6% last year I'm sorry 60% last year so we have made great progress and I think we're seeing that we're at or continuing to grow a little bit this year as well and I think just helping families understand the importance of coming to school I know at Loker we always have like on Friday we're having a huge deck day drop everything and create we try to have these I've had parents say to me I couldn't go on our trip until Saturday because my kid wanted to go to this event and all the schools are trying to make sure that we're doing things that are meaningful and jam a day is a big one so there's lots of examples of that all the schools are doing it but I think we really do struggle still with families that are taking longer trips this week I will tell you that attendance at Loker has not been great like we had 25 absences today we had 24 yesterday we had 22 on Monday so these are things that that's about it's more it's basically 5% of the population so you know these are things that we track we also have a breakdown by day so I can pick up any school day this year and tell you exactly how many absences I have so we look for trends we had Veterans Day was on a Tuesday we had 28 people out on that Monday despite an email that went out to families like yes we have these Thursday Tuesday holidays you know let's be in school on the Mondays and Fridays and so probably the email probably helped us a little bit but I think just being conscious of that and so it's going to be a process but I think we now have the tools that will not take hours and hours for us to get the information that we need to know and we're able to kind of communicate that with families but in the end above all of this with attendance is the relationship with the families and the trust you build with them that will get us to where we want to be but Open Architects is great to utilize and I think my colleagues definitely agree on me I have a little story in my house so one day Griffin he's a fifth grader at Clay Pit and he was very very tired he was up late lacrosse tournaments all weekend he wakes up he's like mom I'm too tired to go to school and like for one second one second I thought about it you know he's my baby maybe I should let him rats he's a little kid I'm like no we go to school today's a school day go to school that day you sent out the email about 100% attendance and he got home and I'm like if you stayed home we would have never gotten a seatbelt and he said wow and it was really like a full circle moment for our house so he thinks about that well thank you because I haven't had that burnt happy hollow and every day I'm like please can we be like we almost ruined it I love that's a great story I'm glad my kid went to school that day yeah me too we do send our kids every day but I almost caved just like my baby said that I think we do want like families to keep their kids home when they're ill our kindergarten right now is just gross with neurovirus and flu and that's a whole different thing that's not what we're you know worried about of course of course save it for those days any other questions I'm curious about the wayfinder if there's any like parent resources I remember when I had the zones of regulation on my fridge and being in the red zone and all of that I really enjoyed stuff like that do they have any parent resources well each lesson has a letter that can be kind of sent home to families and there are some resources on our websites that our teachers could share or even like putting it on the local website so that parents could access it so it's not another email or something like that that's a good suggestion I want to do a secret handshake with my family me too that's like such a good idea make sure everyone has a role in it yeah okay alright I'm going to do this I think Ms. Brigham said something earlier you can't teach it's important to provide super high quality curriculum out of the gate because you can't teach your way out of that and it kind of resonated here again in SEL and it sounds like you're setting that groundwork very early on with just some really wonderful strategies and best practices so thank you I know it's hard but thank you for doing it and adopting it no it's actually lovely like it really is so nice to go into the classrooms and see the lessons the kids are really engaged there's a lot of student voice and choice and it's very beautiful but even the tech piece for teachers is so intuitive and easy to navigate it's been a really great implementation it's been very very positive and teachers implementing a new program is a huge huge task any teacher would tell you that and you have growing pains and you hear about that as principals I could count on probably one hand the amount of complaints I've gotten about this program and I just think that speaks volumes and the complaints are really like oh I couldn't get on the website or something technology related usually so I just think that we're building a lot of really great momentum and it's only going to get better this is year one it's only going to continue to grow the feedback that we are getting is that the lessons are and I agree when I look at the lessons they're designed to be 20 minutes long and they take 40 minutes like they just do they're very robust but given the number of lessons that teachers need to teach over the course of the year they're very easy to split into two sections so yes they have to be thoughtful about where is our logical end for today and where are we going to pick up next week but the lessons are more robust than a 20 minute session and I find that now that we're in December they're becoming more confident of where to pause for that and continue with them for the next day which has been very nice and depending on the grade level there's approximately 20 lessons for the whole school year so that is when you think about 36 weeks over the course of 180 days it's doable and so teachers can either do part two the following week or they can try to fit in on the time there's time to do that despite a lot of demands on the teachers that was something that they had talked about when they originally presented and that that was one of the beauties of it was that piece just that it was doable and that even though they're made for 20 they take longer and it makes sense how you can make them work and I also want to add that when you look through this program the images that you see they're multicultural one of the challenges that we've had with previous programs is that every single person that you would see was white and so I do think that that was something that the committee that piloted this program last year both programs really look closely at and so we are we're seeing visuals that are representative of our community as compared to it just being kind of the dominant culture so I just want to make sure I add that because that was an important consideration with this program as well and I found at Happy Hollow it was really nice to see that they're applying what they're learning and we find they're across
fifth grade recently we had they did a lesson about respectfully disagreeing and then during math class they were you know with bridges you're always sharing different ways to solve a problem and it was really cute for them to say I respectfully disagree and the teachers though were so proud we just did that in way in math so it's really nice to see that I have fifth graders saying I respectfully disagree and I was like what that was and you're in year three of bridges so the contrast to a wayfinder it sounds like everybody's hitting their stride the magic year that was a heavy heavy we're very glad we did it but that was very heavy Marie was first hand as a math coach in the first year of that and I remember sitting here and it was the beginning and everybody's like it's going to get better it will get better year three it will get better it's like owning a dog right like year three things improve so it sounds like that's happened and you've hit your stride okay that's good that have you seen a reduction in the math intervention because of bridges or is it just opened new new learning you know I my gut you know I'd have to look at some data to answer more accurately my gut feeling is no we haven't I think we've increased our capacity to identify gaps so like maybe not but again that's good to look at a little bit of data yeah well and I think the idea was originally I think we kind of asked that question like how fast and it was kind of like because it's such a change and shift and method it's going to take time for it to have kind of like compounding effect so like the kids who started with it in kindergarten may be reaping a little bit of a greater benefit now than those kids that didn't have all that time to be continued awesome thank you all so much thank you really appreciate it thank you good night thank you thank you we really appreciate it working to schedule but everybody's going to be in school for the next two days thank you they'll be mine too I can't have them in the house you can have them Monday and Tuesday happy to send them next week my kids have school Monday and Tuesday next week that's what someone literally sent to me they like to bring a friend up someone asked me like well why did you I was saying that I was getting like just some small things together for Maren to bring to school for her teachers because she was so excited about it and they were like why did you stay up doing that last night like you have time and I was like because my kids are done with school on Friday and they're like what I'm like yeah so don't talk to me about long vacation have a great vacation thank you again I had that moment today in Target I'm like I was like yeah no I it's not pretty that whole late Thanksgiving that whole lost weekend I'm looking around my I'm staying I'm looking around my house it's not pretty sight yeah no we're with you I'm with you I'm right there somehow it will somehow all happen it always does it sure will it's gonna require a little magic and the loss of sleep oh yes is that a thing sleep I don't get that anymore I don't know when I got
thankfully administering matters 4.1 I just want to discuss our upcoming meeting schedule and potential recalendering of some of our dates so we did have a successful vote of the move for the debt from operating to excluded so that's really good for our budget planning for next fiscal year and with that David and I kind of discussed that it would be really helpful if we pushed back our budget timeline so currently what we have on the calendar is January 7 14 21 and the thought was to keep 7 have that be our next meeting cancel 14 and 21 and then I think right here David I have a questionable we talked about potentially adding 26 February 2nd but also 27 or 28 for the time so we think you know in terms of the budget presentation to do it Christine has a conference on the 28th but we could you know get it to you that Friday the budget the 23rd 3rd we we also that's when we get the state budget information then as well because you know as we know the later we get the more accurate budget and our goal is to give you something that's accurate we'll get health insurance shortly thereafter and then you know you would have that week to look at the budget I could present it maybe that Monday night I think yeah our idea was to do budget first on February 4th February 4th or we could do Monday the 2nd it depends how many budget meetings you think you need we could do the 2nd and the 4th that week or we could just it's up to all of you but I think the goal is to have a few budget meetings prior to the February break depending on your schedule and basically right now they're like front loaded to January where we're going to just have so many questions still well because of the January to February to kind of transfer those if that's possible yeah because one of those big items is the health insurance and that was a positive swing last year for us with it coming in but we're just not sure so could people adjust and keep January 7 then I just I'm confused on and I wrote down my notes but now they're not making sense to me were we thinking of doing the 27th or the 28th or doing the 26th 26th and 27th if we could do one of those two okay so not 28 not 28 do 26 or 27 I thought we were going to do the architects and then do the budget the architects can do the 26th is better because we could do the architects that night and a budget presentation if you're able to because they could come that night to talk about our facilities and planning can they not come the 27th I'm just asking the 26th I think that group is meeting I think they could as they said they could Kirsten we could we have a meeting with our advisory group that night but we could that's over zoom so I think if they could do the 27th if you wanted that and we could still do our meeting the night before that that would be fine I'm pretty sure they can do it we'll go and check with them okay is that better for all of you? I can do either okay I was looking at someone's face to my left and I'm trying to be I would prefer the 27th okay and that's super selfish it's my daughter's birthday okay but super selfish I'll confirm can I do this can I confirm with them that because I'd love to have it like an architect update for all of you given the work that's important to do so let me make sure they can do the 27th but I'm I'm not thinking budget presentation that night I was thinking budget presentation February 4 and potentially add February 11th okay I mean I would do the presentation that night you would have it and then you would ask questions right then and we could have we could do that February 4th and 11th would you want one more just in case? we could do 2-4 potentially and 11 we have the 25th you could present on the 27th what why did we decide against the 28th of February or typical Wednesdays? Kirsteen has a conference no that's your January January because we didn't I won't be okay you're on board we don't have that on the calendar right now okay okay and so that's why because she wasn't here and with budget and HF you're important HF whatever that we wanted her to be there and if you've got to do the 26th I will figure it out and make it work no I'm going to shoot the 27th as long as the architects can come yeah and even if they may be in that night if that's if they if they zoom in that night on the 27th possible yeah if that works to make the 27th work sure yep we'll talk to them and then would you like to do budget that night and then the 4th and the 11th or you'd rather start budget on the 4th and then maybe do that Monday the 9th I'm trying to think of how many budget meetings my I would like to hear from the rest of the committee but my thought is maybe what we do is we pencil in 2-4 and 11 those are all before February vacation that's good and if my thinking is kind of like let's see where we're at the 27th you know and we can always do what we yeah I think that if we start on the 4th you know the later the more accurate information we have I think we all agree on second there I won't have any opportunity to make any adjustments that I have a it's a 3-day conference oh 28 like right 29, 30 yes okay so if there was any requests that would be I wouldn't be able to give it to you prior to February 2nd so how about this we reserve the 27th the 2nd the 4th and the 11th and then we'll figure out the structure as a you know the next right after the break and as what we do at those meetings is that okay but at least we're all holding and we have common calendars does that sound well we don't have the 11th right now so sorry I'm just looking at that yeah we might need that we don't my thought was if we could add that in that gives us a night to vote it before February break is that okay I think so I still have to go back and figure out what I'm taking off January but do that after we add we're going to take off the 14th and 21st I have 12 I have another 12th as well I think we already removed that one because we removed a bunch before oh and I think that's we'll give you some time in January before if we can confirm these ones we can send out an updated one that'd be super but I was hearing Kirstie do you not want to hold the second because that's not going to work from a presentation standpoint you certainly can if we were presenting on January 27th there wouldn't be anything adjusted from that particular one on Monday the 2nd because that's the literal thing that week same week coming in I understand what you're saying now okay I mean I'm certainly happy to take everything I don't know that after and this is what I was saying to David I think a lot of it will matter on where we come in so because if we come in where we think we're kind of going to land and we're not having to make cuts it'll be a more straightforward conversation whereas if we land somewhere we have to make some changes so I think and I'm going to be meeting with Brian over the break now so we're going to be strategizing and trying to get those things ironed out okay so the other sorry the other thing I'm thinking is if we're holding those I know we're going to want to give heads up to who we want to present the specific you know like high school middle school those budgets so I'm just trying to think about that and planning for those pieces too I'll draft something and send it to you okay in the next 48 hours okay and I would love to if we could have a schedule nailed down by Friday that would be good for you and us and my thought is I guess right now what I'm hearing is 27-24-11 would be okay and there's no bads for anyone at the table nor okay that's that's a good plan all right so I'm right now I'm nearing 17-127 yeah 2-2 2-4 2-11 that's great and worst case scenario or best case scenario we take off the 25th and don't need the second or you know but at least okay you're saying February 25th correct okay potentially potentially right now we're holding we're gonna keep those all for now very helpful as we get to perfect so I'm removing January 14th yes that's good I am working this for you in the 21st nothing to do with the I'll circulate somehow that 12th ended up in both hours though
that's if you want me to I'll send out actual google calendar invites if that's helpful no it's okay because it'll go no because it goes to my see I share that calendar with this one yeah okay sure why not all right I'll send placeholders because I missed our zoom the last week too so sure I won't figure that out the 14th and the 21st so on the 7th the 27th yep the 2nd the 4th and the 25th 11th and 25th I foresee one of those is gonna go I don't and it did last year but I think it's helpful to have the placeholders 100% totally to not need them yeah good luck I was just looking back at our agendas because this year we had a one pager of like topical areas it's gonna get reworked and if he sends that to me against these we're gonna rework it based on this but it's because I was just trying to finalize what we we want to finalize so we're gonna rework it but like I know we're gonna do bridges on January 7th right that's the plan that's the plan because that works with a maternity leave and that's helpful for us to meet then and particularly because you need to be in the city on the 14th Betsy we thought we would pass oh thanks so much you're just doing that did you I had a feeling actually in fairness in honor of all of you people I already told my boss I couldn't plan a team dinner that night so now you can go home for dinner um okay I will circulate those and then we'll get the topic updates to everything by Friday okay um so that's all set um 4.2 so in light of some recent um communications etc there's been some discussion um both at like the school level school side of things and the town side of things to have and create a robust policy um around uh media communications press releases and um community communications and so I have not candidly had a chance to do real digging on what's out there for our peer districts but um my thought is that um we may be it's probably best advised that we create a policy around this so we have one I did do some digging yeah it's not so what we have is identical to weston and wellesley's is lighter so just I only had a chance to look at those three I'm happy to circulate them with no deliberation if it's helpful I just looked when I saw it on the agenda and I didn't see anything in the folder I wanted to educate myself so it looks like RKDD is identical to weston so I have to assume I did see that it came and is it based on a mask I couldn't find that mask like doesn't really but it seems like this must have originated somewhere because it looks and we apparently adopted it originally in like 2013 and it revised in 2021 um so that's the best I got yeah my I think um some of what was talked about from like the town perspective does transfer right over to us as far as like crisis specific issues like you know how and when and who would communicate in the event like electricity is down at the middle school or those kinds of things and kind of having like a structure and a and then when things kind of may need to go up the flagpole and be approved in other
of it and be a leader in the space for districts so just um something I think we should work on I don't know if that's if you want to circulate that yeah I mean those are very school specific so I just I think I didn't understand this would be school specific only it would be school specific only okay but it's likely going to also be happening on the town side kind of where I was it was a bigger conversation that I came out of um is there anything so if we have something that admittedly we can take a fresh look at is there anything comparable on the town side or no do you know that I'm not sure it's gonna be all that helpful because I feel like that's more like who there's so many different departments whereas I think our point person is really you right it was it was very like there's a water pipe broken who's allowed to communicate that and where should that go um and so different levels of like escalation where but even if there's an unfolding safety concern as awful as that is I would look at it through that lens too of like who would own that I mean I think us I think it was something involving schools but like I hear you the existing policy doesn't talk necessarily about um emerging or developing situations yeah so um I'm happy to like take it offline with different people I don't know if our policy subcommittee really wants to bite this one off I'm not sure and part of your subcommittee is not here so don't I do think she mentioned she might she was interested okay would you mind circulating those examples even though they're very similar and not maybe as robust as we're thinking no and I didn't have time to do an exhaustive search I just didn't literally looked at LS Weston Wayland I googled Concord but I couldn't I think I did it soon it wasn't um it's interesting where I found it is for districts that have a similar policy manual online and it's under community relations so once I figured out because I was having trouble finding any even ours and for a while I thought we didn't have and I was like that seems strange so anyway I found it found Wellesley's which was totally different then found Weston's by going back through and going to community relations KDD is ours and then I meant to go back because LS I couldn't find and then I had done Concord initially but I didn't I didn't go back with that like connective tissue to see so now I sort of know how to hunt and peck and that was because I also was interested to your point to see if anybody had like if what we have seemed to be like the common recurrent who had changed it I will circulate Wellesley's though because it was very light touch and so I thought that was interesting as well and maybe they hadn't looked at this one yeah and I thought that 2021 was relatively recent yes I will circulate those three I'm also happy to check let me take 20 minutes and see if I can find other districts and then I did check Lexington too and I didn't find anything there so I will look and send what I can for us to just prove okay and then I can just put another agenda and we can kind of revisit just take that plan I guess I'll do some research on maybe some suggestions that might be out there yeah I did look briefly at KDD which is ours and it says things of a sensitive nature but it doesn't define that so it might help to flesh that out a little bit more and I'm also thinking kind of what's the principal's duty versus when it would fall under this policy and agreed there's something to think about okay so I'm hearing we're all going to kind of do some thinking some digging we'll circulate per the instruction of no deliberation please and then we can come back together after the holidays and I can put it back on the agenda and we'll take it from there yep perfect okay David in your experience in other districts too are you aware of communication policies when sensitive times I'm aware of kind of communication practices versus policy so the answer is yes around like practices more so I don't think you'll actually find it in policy manuals but in terms of specific practices like you're talking about yes I'm also thinking that even in the last like year there's been such a proliferation of ways to communicate and devices in lots of different places and so it's probably changed the landscape a lot I mean for example sometimes you know in districts I've seen practices about whether the district engages in social media and responding and there's a lot of like things as the world's changing for example there are districts that would prefer the administration not engage on social media and keep it to email and so those are kind of practices that I have seen but those with the world changing I do think there are practices we need do you want me to see what I can find on social media I did see when I was searching media and press I did but I didn't dig in there but I can grab some samples if you want to sure I think we should all just kind of like get out there see what's out there in different avenues and then we'll bring it back together and come back with maybe some bullet points or ideas and we'll go from there some of them also involve like what the school committee communicates about right yeah right yep I totally agree okay great do we want to we don't no that was my fault David if you missed that entirely my fault I forget about it every week and then she gets mad I don't want to get confused because I'm trying to be prepared I'm kidding and I did these in open session even though they're executive sessions I was going to say I'm wondering well because I don't want to give us an executive session just to review these innocuous executive sessions and we can do it there's nothing so my feeling is we can I thought apologies is to approve without redaction for release so moved all in favor aye any opposed aye all in favor aye any opposed none sorry okay I was like I didn't say aye and do we have any thoughts on the consent agenda that I would like to move to approve it yes and do we have a second all second and all in favor aye any opposed none and moving to matter six are there any dual any matters not reasonably anticipated by the chair yes we do oh so we have the we have a new manager of sustainability in the facilities department Julie Gatton and she notified us that the select board did vote to approve and apply Wayland as a climate leader community as well as an extension of the green community grant program which gives us the opportunity to apply for several different facilities related projects hundreds of thousands of dollars worth so it was very time sensitive and the superintendent we were required to sign a zero emissions first vehicle policy and a letter of support acknowledging that the schools have read and approved the decarbonization road map which I will share those documents it's just a very time sensitive issue they had to submit it before the end of this year knowing that everybody's holiday plans and schedules might not coincide we wanted to make sure that we got this out and David's signature taken care of and we will just share the documents for your information but it just gives us more opportunity to be able to take advantage and be part of that green community grant opportunity yeah so the way I understood it was it didn't actually put more pressure on us or more restrictions it just enables us to have more access correct right okay yes so that we don't have to do anything it just means that we're considered in this category and so then we can apply for these specific niche green initiative projects okay that's how I understand it but I okay super great thank you thank you great update okay does so we have nothing no other matters and I would entertain a motion I'll make a motion to adjourn thanks for that one Betsy do we have a second second all in favor aye any opposed none we are adjourned that's 2025 25 Thank you.
So, with that, unless anybody has anything that they wanted to touch on as a welcome note, I will get us kicked off for 3.1. I can share very quickly. Go ahead. Went to the all-elementary chorus last night, looking at my elementary principals there. Um, it was so joyful just seeing the three schools come together and the kids and, uh, loved the song, so many different types of songs. I think Loker School wrote the song, which was very memorable, so that was very cool. You did? Um, it was definitely a highlight of the holiday season. Congratulations to Loker and their cool song. Now I feel like I want to hear it. I hope it was recorded. My kids kept talking about it. Love it. Can you sing it, Brian? No, I'm kidding. All right, maybe Jen, though. I'll just be passing over it. Later. Off camera. Okay. I can send it for you. Yeah, yeah.
Great. Thanks for sharing, Christina. Um, first thing on our agenda is, um, we're taking everything in order. We're going to go in order. Great. Um, we have 80% of our principals here. 80% of our school committee members. We have a full house. Um, we're going to have Allison go first because we always prioritize our colleagues who are going to concerts, as we did last week. So there's an orchestra concert. Concert Stephen. 9-7, which will be great. So Allison's going to head there. And she has two items. The first one is discussion regarding proposal for shifting the National Honor Society and creation of a new Honor Society. And then to follow up questions on competency determination, which we talked about at our last meeting. So Allison will begin kind of with an overview, and then we'll, we'll go to questions. Go ahead. Amy Lima. Amy could not join in. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. We have a sheet. She and I had a converse. Yeah. I'll be able to share. Allison will weave in her conversation with Amy, who's an advisor. Okay. All right. So I'll launch in. And I'm going to begin with an apology related to the timing of the NHS messaging to families and students a couple of weeks ago. I know it caught the community off guard. And I will do better moving forward as far as explaining things in context and providing more details to quell questions that I know many of you had to field in the ensuing days and weeks. The big question is, I'm sure on folks' minds, is why. And providing some context, I think, requires sort of the start. I don't want to start at the very beginning of the, like, inception of NHS. But National Honor Society is something that Wayland High School has had a chapter in for years. And to be honest with you, our bylaws have shifted. So the national organization has its own constitution of various procedures and requirements around eligibility, some of which we'll get into, and also gives schools some flexibility as far as creating their own bylaws, which are reviewed then by the national organization. Over time, our requirements have shifted and haven't sort of found a perfect calibration. The scholarship piece around, so there's four pillars. There's scholarship, service, leadership, and character. Those values we don't dispute. Those are the parts we certainly agree are essential to foster in students and to provide opportunities for them to continue developing those qualities. What has grown uncomfortable for us is some of the behind-the-scenes procedural aspects of NHS. The scholarship part, for example, the minimum GPA that NHS requires is a 3.0. And I'll use that as an example to sort of show how we've tried to sort of calibrate what makes NHS special, because so many of our students on the surface of it, okay, first of all, every student is incredibly special at Whalen High School. But when we talk about eligibility to this national organization, of course, we have to adhere to what NHS is telling us. So their minimum requirement is 3.0. Some years ago, we moved it to 3.5, because so many of our students are high-achieving that the vast majority of our students in both the junior class and the senior class, who are typically the classes applying for eligibility, met that requirement, right? So then we get into different ways that students need to show their uniqueness and excellence in the other three pillars around leadership, character, and service. Trying to find that balance of what makes NHS special and set students apart without being arbitrary and also without trying to preserve, like, a meaningful experience for kids that doesn't feel like just a bunch of checkboxes as far as a certain number of hours of community service, and I need to have an elected officer, and I need...we want to make it sort of deeper, richer. And so over the years, I think the students who have been in NHS have experienced something meaningful. They are definitely committed to all of those four pillars. They are held to pretty strict requirements, but behind the scenes, what's happening is that the national organization has certain requirements around the involvement of the faculty. And so all of this requires not just a willingness by our faculty, but also a true buy-in to both the processes and the outcomes of the selection, particularly the selection process, as well as what happens to students who fall short of the standards. So the national organization requires a faculty council to be convened by the principal or their designee, so Amy Lena has been our really dedicated advisor for the last five or six years, trying again to find that sweet spot of making this really really special, while not making it unwieldy and checkboxy. That faculty council needs to operate transparently, so all the faculty members who are on that council are known, and don't operate in the shadows, and make decisions about who is in and who is not in, based on applications. One thing that we had been practicing in order to eliminate bias, because we are a relatively small school, is having anonymized applications, and the national organization does not allow that. So students have their own reasons, so submitting their applications with names attached to those applications. So, when we talk about sort of the concerns around that, it's not that faculty and adults on campus don't want to be involved in this. They don't want to invest their time and effort into something that could be meaningful for kids. I think it's increasingly uncomfortable for adults who are fostering relationships with students in the context of classes, in the context of coaching, to sort of be on this council that kind of holds that sort of decision-making power. Part of learning is having those hard conversations and being able to engage in those dialogues with students. And there has been sort of a diminishing interest in that level of participation, understandably, by members of our faculty who are sort of required to do this. The other part is that if a student falls short of the standard, so if they fall below a 3.5, you know, if they get a B-plus in AP Chem or something like that, procedurally, they're supposed to sort of, they're entitled to a hearing by this faculty council, which our faculty would be interested in listening and engaging with the student as they present their case and all of that. And there is a level of, there's integrity that we will want to have in the process. And I think the way that it's set up, we worry that it could create discomfort between teachers and students who, teachers who may teach that student right now, may teach that student later, not shying away again from having these difficult conversations. But I think it's, it's increasingly difficult to codify that aspect of NHS. This has been in our minds for quite some time. And I apologize for not having the foresight to share this with the community, with all of you. Amy Lima, again, the advisor, and I have spoken about what if this were a women high school honor society? What if we gave students an opportunity to participate in something that could be even more interesting, that could be, there's total buy-in by the faculty, it means something even deeper to students. And it fits more with the relational aspect of what we're trying to do at the high school. We have no interest in not having an honor society. I think it's really the adherence to the NHS national organization that's become a concern for us. So those are some of the pieces that sort of led to our wanting to rework this. We have spoken to the NHS current officers. We spoke with them earlier this fall just to sort of spitball and share our concerns. Had a good conversation with those students. Sent out an all call to juniors who might be interested in helping us reformulate this, helping us build this new thing. And we have about 15 students who are wanting to dig in with us. And so we're setting up a first meeting in January when we get back. We'll have a list of criteria and subcommittees around establishing what those criteria are and different processes around NHS. I know that creates an aura of uncertainty for families and students who are sort of counting on being able to participate in NHS as they know it. And so the uncertainty right now during sort of construction period, I understand the anxiety around that shared by some students and families. Our timeline is such that we anticipate having a spring induction, which is what we've done before actually. We've had a shifting induction period over time. We've gone from fall to spring and then back to fall again. So now we're going to spring, but that means that these juniors would be the first students who would enter into this and be sort of the inaugural class next year. Modeling that, whether we would want to have another induction ceremony in the fall for next year's juniors would be part of the construction of this. So that is the why and sort of the where we're at right now. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, thank you for that. Thank you for the history and the background. You were right to say, Allison, folks didn't have that. The community didn't have that. They didn't have the background. So I think it sounds like this has been in discussions for quite a while among the community that participates in the NHS selection process and management of it at the high school, the five members, and possibly others. So I guess you mentioned that you've codified the requirements and things like that. Statistically speaking, how many students apply to it and how many are denied application to NHS? So I will find out those numbers. Okay. I would say that one of the things that we've been wanting to do is to be really upfront with students about what their engagement in NHS would look like. So rather than, because right now the GPA requirement at 3.5, that automatically makes a whole lot of students eligible because our students are so high achieving. I'd say the majority of students have at least a 3.5 GPA. So we're inviting those students to apply and wanting them to have the information they need to sort of weigh, is this something I want to do? Is this something I have the time for? Does this mean something to me? Because the time commitment is significant. They need to do 20 hours of community service each semester. There's a chapter project, there's a leadership project, they're volunteering in the academic support center once a cycle. So by the time they apply, those students are, from a scholarship perspective, eligible. And the weighing of who's eligible in terms of the other pillars happens by this council. And I'd say very few students are rejected or not accepted, if any at all. But I will get you those numbers, Erin, as far as like how many actually, of the eligible students, how many actually apply. And can you explain the scholarship component a little bit? If we no longer participate in NHS, what happens with that? The scholarship is, so the scholarship is one of the four pillars, yeah, totally. So it's the academics part. Okay. And the qualification for that eligibility is just the strict GPA. It's just the GPA in the academics, okay. So there's no other added component for schools and universities, okay. That's right. Okay. Or for the national organization, they recognize, because our bylaws say 3.5, that is the eligibility requirement in terms of the scholarship component, yeah. So the timing of it, back to that original statement. Yeah. Why would we start this with the class of 2027 that's kind of beginning their journey into application, into colleges and universities now? Why not begin with a later class, or even the eighth graders, where they can then prepare and follow the path through this program of the Wayland-developed program? Why now? I think, and this is not, I know it's being felt personally by some members of the junior class as far as what in the world, this now, the uncertainty, right. I think I can confidently say that any junior who is anticipating wanting to apply to NHS, the current, like, incarnation of NHS at Wayland High School, would be an eligible member of this honor society that we're going to have at Wayland High School. It is the processes and procedures embedded within it that I think are going to have to shift, and having some other components that make it sort of unique. Like, does it have to be 3-5, or can it be 3-2 plus this, right? Can it be, how are we defining service? How are we defining community involvement? Those kinds of aspects of it, we have enough time to put an honor society together based on the bones of what NHS has always been. So the timing, I mean, I can't apologize enough as far as just the shock of sort of receiving this message from, for some families, and I can confidently assure that students will be well taken care of, what will happen to this honor society, I think, will make an experience even better, and even richer, and even more exciting, especially if students have a hand in creating it, and that uniqueness, I think, will speak volumes about what participation in that honor society actually means. I'm going to ask one more question, then I'm going to, sorry, and I appreciate that the focus of this really is about the student, and about what it does for them as a person, as a person, as a human being, and a contributor to society. So please, I understand that's the focus. However, there is an additional layer to that where it is used in the college application process, and I don't, you know, I don't dispute that, that it is about, you know, building the student, but also about that next step to continue to build themselves as a human being in a contributor society. So how does this new program that we're working on or developing, how is that recognized by the schools and universities that they'll apply to, and how do we give it the weight that National Honor Society has? I mean, I have some, so our counseling department head, Ben Buffett, has been involved in these conversations and has expressed no concern whatsoever about admissions impact. NHS isn't even on our school profile because so many schools have it. Like, it's not a special thing. Okay. We would want to put this actually on our school profile. So the school profile is the information that we send out. It's public-based, and it's a summary of Wayland High School and what makes us special. Ben and I have talked about, once we have a name for it, but we're just calling it the Wayland High School Honor Society, that that would be on our profile. Again, NHS is not because virtually every school, except for like in summary, a lot of schools have National Honor Society. So we would want to use this to sort of signify this is something that makes, that does make us special. But again, in consultation with Ben, and I believe him and I know that they're paying close attention to the patterns, this will not have an admissions impact. I also want to say that a lot of our students who, a lot of our students decide not to apply to NHS because they don't have the time. They look at the requirements and say, I honestly can't commit to this because it's too much. And so they don't have it on their resume, and that's perfectly fine. And these are all students who are landing in wonderful future plans. And for those who do commit, yes, it is a point of pride to put it on their resume, just as it will be a point of pride to say, you know, Wayland High School Honor Society inaugural class of this new thing that's been created. So, so that's what I have to say at this point about that. Thank you. Okay. You, excuse me. You mentioned Lincoln Sudbury. So how many of our peer districts are NHS schools and how many have their own? Many have NHS. Many struggle with the requirements or don't adhere to them and have their own sort of version but call it NHS. And so I've had this conversation with my DCL principal group, with other peer districts. And not all of them have sort of a version of Honor Society if they don't have NHS. Lincoln Sudbury, as I understand it, has kind of a cum laude honor designation for students based on their cumulative GPA. But they don't have an Honor Society per se. So, and we grant honor roll, we have high honor roll, like those things are still very much a part of kind of what we celebrate and how we celebrate kids. So I'd say most have NHS, many struggle, and some of our peer districts don't, are not doing something different, they just don't have an Honor Society. And measure scholarship and bestow honors on students for scholarship in different ways. I guess my other question, because we have received some questions about this, is, is there space to have both NHS and this Wayland School Honor Society? Maybe until, maybe the sophomores go into junior, like it's just a little bit jarring for people who are juniors, and they haven't had time to kind of react to it and plan for it. So is there space to have kind of two Honor Societies for a bit, until younger students transition? I don't know. Let me think, I'll think about it. Yeah. Just from hearing you as well, I mean, you know, 3.5 GPA, that's really impressive. I don't know why we wouldn't have that on our school profile. It sounds like, already, NHS is more stringent than the national standard, so. We deliberately made it more stringent to, and we felt a little strange doing that actually, but we wanted to draw a line in a place that would invite, sort of create some more limited eligibility, I guess you could say. Was that the right call though? It sort of, it introduces all kinds of really interesting questions about how we want students to kind of experience like an Honor Society type, type thing in their high school experience, yeah. Do you have any questions, Betsy? I do, I'm formulating. Do you want to go first, or no? No, no. Go for it. I feel like I have to disclose that I was a member of NHS. Totally, yeah. It's good for you. No, only, I'm just feeling a little awkward. You're on your school profile. But I get, the reason I'm reflecting on it is because obviously that was more years ago than anyone should comment on. Nobody's counting. And you know, times change and perceptions change, but it's hard not to bring your own experience to something, and the signaling was important then to the issues that Erin has raised. And I think we can maybe say with the benefit of hindsight, less important than maybe it felt at the time, but I am feeling a lot of empathy for our juniors and frankly even sophomores who may have older siblings, that at least for years the achievement of reaching for that bar did carry weight. And I think that it is appropriate to hold that for a minute and sort of acknowledge that any homegrown situation, while perhaps enriching and wonderful, is inherently different from recognition to something that is recognized for generations across an entirety of the country. And so we can say that perhaps the import in the admissions process feedback we're getting is less or not, but I do think it's important to acknowledge that it is a seismic shift for people who have been familiar with NHS, and perhaps parents participated, siblings participated. And I would echo my concern about the sort of suddenness of the change, not just the communication, but the impact on the in-school year that we're changing it now in school. I guess I'm curious because we heard a lot of things, and I'm trying to, those I was formulating, is trying to like put them together. I mean I heard you say that there was some growing discomfort about students who weren't eligible, but then I also heard you share with us that the vast majority of students got in, and there was very little rejection. So there seems to be some tension there for me. And I agree, I sort of wrote down discomfort as a part of life for all of us, adult and student alike, and so I don't know that that should be something that makes us make big changes. How much faculty time did service on the council require? Not a lot. Not a lot. Depending on situations that would arise, right? So there are individual situations that I would arise. My conversation when I was asking Allison about this, it wasn't so much the time, it was the concern about relationships in terms of that, that was more the issue of students. No, I heard that. It's kind of cutting, you know, cutting is always hard in districts. I mean, that's why coaching can be so hard, but this is like different. But we're not hearing that. I'm not hearing that. I'm hearing the vast majority make it, and there's very few reject it. And I think part of that, not to say that students aren't, this is where it's a little tricky to talk about this, because the students who are engaged in and want to be in NHS and go through the really rigorous process of application, which we've intentionally created to further help students understand this is the commitment you're going to make. Few of them who apply do fall beneath, but some do. And we get into some tricky situations in saying no, because there have been historical situations also where a no is not well received, right? And so then we get into a whole other layer of complication around appealing to the faculty council, appealing to the principal. All suitable process steps. It's a formal process. And it increases the tension of like, but I'm saying no, you're not. I'm not a nameless admissions officer over here saying yes or no. I'm your math teacher, or I'm going to teach you later. And I think there is, and I wouldn't want it any other way honestly, a real honoring of I believe in the relationships with my students past, present, and future. And it's harder to engage faculty in wanting to do that work on top of all the other decisions that they're making. It's not the time commitment. Betsy is really, you know, a few hours of really careful selection. Maybe a disciplinary issue that comes up here and there. But I think even that, it's not feeling great to sort of have that role. And then perhaps engage in controversy or engage in these processes that are, I don't know that it's appropriate necessarily for teachers to be in that position. I'm, administrators, that seems appropriate, but we're not actually allowed to be on the faculty council. Was there any dialogue with the national, the chapter of the National Honor Society about this tension or this desire to move to anonymous selection panels? There, there was. So last spring, I think it was last spring, Amy Lima, our advisor, has been engaged in the national organization events. So they have these yearly conferences, they bring different chapters together. And she had discussed, um, she had discussed some of these questions with the organizers there. Um, specifically around the anonymized application packets, um, around navigating a faculty council that is not anonymized. Um, and I understand the degree of transparency brings integrity to a process. But how to, how to then reconcile some of those relational pieces that come up? Um, and there wasn't compromise. Okay. Was there, um, so is it the intent then that one of the sort of defining changes of the Wayland Honor Society, as you envision it, be that we would move to an anonymous selection panel, an anonymous review? I don't know if the anonymous selection panel actually, we, we would want to think about that. That's something we would want to engage with the students on as well. Um, I think the anonymous selection, the anonymizing of the, of the applicants would be good practice. Um, because we are so small. And, um. I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt you. I thought you said we did try that already. Yeah. We did do that and then we realized that it wasn't something we're supposed to be doing. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. I misunderstood that. Yeah, totally. Um, so we had begun doing that to bring what we thought was more integrity to that process. And then when Amy went to the conference and had conversations with the organizers, that was something that they discussed. Um, so in terms of though, as part of the new, we would want to talk with the students and in building this, build something that feels good and that feels like faculty would want to engage in this. Um, and that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be a selection process that has integrity or rigor. Um, but we want to build something that allows for those sometimes hard conversations and safe spaces with kids, um, differently. Um, the teachers, the folks who are on the faculty council need to believe in that process. I, this is falling short on me because I'm not sure how we achieve a goal of still having a selection process, having a high bar and teaching our students that, um, not everybody gets to be picked for things. And that things that you do before you try and get on to something such as an honor society in her and in the word is honor society will keep you off of that. And I don't see how moving to something that still seems like it needs to have all those pieces and just not calling it national honor society gets us there. Um, I, I, even if you take the anonymity out of the applications, there's still going to be, the students are going to know those teachers that are part of the selection process. Right. And so you're still going to have to have those hard conversations, which are ultimately part of life. Mm-hmm. Um, and part of having a job, part of. Sure. Totally. Getting into college. Right. Part of, I, I just. Teachers are having hard conversations all the time with kids, right? They totally are. And I think that in the structure of this particular thing, I hear what you're saying, Erin, as far as how do we rebuild something that solves those problems? Part of it is we don't have any flexibility right now and are able still to call ourselves an NHS chapter.
I guess I didn't hear that. I heard you say there was a minimum standard in weeks to exercise flexibility for scholarship. In terms of the actual formulation of structure of how students are being selected. That part, there is no flexibility. So a five-person faculty council, not anonymous, not anonymous applications, um, disciplinary hearings by that faculty council. Well, but those are all still going to have to exist. I mean, it's not like you're going to have community members come in and run it. And it can't be just the administration. Well, would we call them disciplinary hearings? Would they be, what process would a student go through if they fell short? Right now, they have to sit in front of a faculty council and have a disciplinary hearing. I would say it's a continued eligibility hearing. I mean, I hear you call a disciplinary hearing. But, like, what it is is you have, it's not just a selection. You get on and then you have ongoing expectations. Whether that's maintaining your GPA, whether that's satisfying community service, whether that's a character obligation. Like, if you fall short of one of those, would this new society have continuing eligibility expectations? I would hope so. Absolutely. Right. What that process, though, would look like and require which adults and when, I think we would want to consider. Is it, oh, sorry, I'm just listening. Is it subjective, like, the process now? Or is it, like, like, is it, like, if you had two kids, like, could you, like, oh, I think that this community service weighs more than, like, is it subjective now? The only objective part of the application is the scholarship part, the GPA. So, that does make it hard for faculty. If there's a name, like, I see how that can make it harder. Actually, I think it would make it easier. Because if they don't have the GPA, but they do have all the hours and everything else, you're on. And we're hearing, not a lot of people are off. We're not entered in. Right. Fewer students are applying now because of the rigor. Because of the rigor of participation. Which, yeah. That's a concern if we want to take the rigor away. Totally. Like, this isn't math-ing for me. It feels like there was a tipping point, and I'm not quite crystallizing what the tipping point was of, like, why now? Why for this class? Why at this moment? Like, there must have been a breaking point. Because also, as you can sense, we're trying to understand. I, for one, am, like, not supportive or not supportive right now. I am really just trying to make sense of, like, what are we leaving? What are we going to? It feels like we made a rather, for me anyway, sudden decision to leave the status quo, to go to something that is amorphous and not yet defined. And I guess I'm trying to still understand why. Why wouldn't we keep the status quo while we undertake to stand up with more concrete certainty what the future looks like? So let's set aside, do we, don't we? But, like, there seems to be a precipitating catalyst for why we're doing it now and having an impact this year. As opposed to, we're looking at curriculum, and we're going to explore, and then we're going to look at options, and then we're going to discuss it, and then we're going to pick one, and then we're going to have an implementation phase. Like, we didn't follow that with this decision. Right.
There has been, I think, just an, I'll use that silly word again, concern, or discomfort, right? An increasing level of, does this make sense for us, and does this work for us? Is this something that our faculty wants to engage in, in the ways that the national organization is asking them to, is asking us to? And, at a certain point, we have to, like, diagnose the problem, right? That there's, the kids are hopefully having a meaningful experience. The selection process and the formal ways that then the processes are set up for kids who don't necessarily meet the bar, or don't continue to meet the bar, are just not feeling great. Enough so that folks are like, I want to be a part of that, I want to be a part of that. That's what we want, is something we're faculty, and we want it so badly, we want to be a part of that, and have some voice, and helping kids get into this great experience. It's not like that, at all.
This should be about the kids. And it is about the kids. They want the kids to have a great experience. It's not about their, this is where our faculty will do anything to help kids get into, have a great experience, right? And it even felt to us, as we were talking, Amy and I and some other folks five years ago, talking about the increase from 3.0 to 3.5. Like, that, what does that actually mean, right? And we need to just pause and think about, what do we want our kids to experience? And yes, there's a faculty involvement that we don't agree with, but at the root of their disagreement is the kids. Is getting the kids into something that means something, that they also believe in. And there will be those components. There will hopefully be something unique, new pieces to this experience for kids as well, that they have a voice in creating, as opposed to adhering to this national organization. Which, again, generations upon generations, including Betsy, have been a part of this. And I do get that. And like every other state, school, national. Oh, yeah. Which does hold weight when you then find yourself across the country in a dorm with other students that you're getting to know. And, you know. You mentioned. I'm part of national. I, I, it is something they talk about. I, I mean. I'm totally jealous of Betsy. I wasn't in it. You're right. I'm sure you're eligible, Erin. You may just not have applied for it. Yeah. But you're right. There's a prestige to it and an achievement and, like, an accomplishment to that. That's known nationally. That's known nationally. The question is, the college admissions process was, the one area that I'm not, I think is, it's not clear. And, you know, I think the counselors have said this, though, is that college admissions, there are a lot of other things. But why it's not on a school profile is schools put things on a school profile to make their school unique. And it's not as standardized as, for example, having an AP program, which is quite standardized. It's not, you know, it's not standardized in that way. Because GPA is different than. Well, in GPA, we don't have weighted GPA. Right. So the APs don't carry any more weight than. Lots of schools. I'm just saying, so the differentiators are that we've now created a less stringent honor society. Scholarship requirement because we don't weight. More stringent. No, no. You've increased your GPA, but if you're not weighting courses differently, then you have homogenized the GPA, which may be why. I mean, it's not a conversation. I don't think this is a conversation for tonight. But, like, I need to understand better, there's been long conversation back and forth about weighted and why districts make these decisions or don't make these decisions. But they do influence the probability of achieving a 3.0, a 3.5, whatever, regardless of your course load. So there are, like, that's a thing. So I think if you are not weighting your GPA, then some might say the stringency of achieving that GPA is not as difficult as it may be in a district where you are weighting GPA. We can agree to disagree, but I'm just restating sort of I think there is active debate among districts when they look at their GPA and how it's calculated. And we're talking about creating a less stringent honor society. We're going back from 3.5 possibly to a 3.2 in the new. But, I mean, even just to stay as part of the program that we're talking about creating is that we don't want to have to hold any sort of discussion or hearing, whatever you want to call it, with these kids that, hey, you slipped. These are the requirements. You knew that when you signed up. What's going on? You have a semester to build it back up or whatever it is. Repair it. I don't know. Make sure your hours meet. Whatever those issues are that come before a disciplinary hearing, but we're talking about those are the things that are making it uncomfortable that people don't want to participate in. People don't want to participate in telling a kid they don't qualify based on requirements. So we're lessening these qualifications, and we're going to go and say, but we're part of Wayland Honor Society. And fewer and fewer students are applying for NHS, right? So fewer kids are entering into that. So just to add that piece. Because of the rigor, right? Because there's more to achieve. You have to dedicate more time, and I think that's a good thing. I think maybe they acknowledge that they can't allocate the time and commitment that they need to to that. You have to choose, right? There are choices. There's only 24 hours on a day. So if that's where they choose to invest their time, why do we take that from them? You know, not everybody is playing a sport until 8 o'clock at night. This might be something that's really important to them and a track that they're on. I'm curious about those NHS students, the current ones that you spoke with. What was their experience? How did they feel their experience in the program has been? They are, so we talked to them in the early fall when they had been inducted last year. So they were elected as officers leading into this year. They are leading the NHS. They are doing a fabulous job. So they have enjoyed, it's a lot, and they have enjoyed the experience of being a part of it. And it doesn't impact them if we come out of it or not. Correct. That's right. But so those are the kids that we talked to and asked about it, and we didn't talk to the kids that it will impact or might want to be a part of NHS versus a Wayland. And those kids, those 15 kids, they don't have a choice. They've been told NHS isn't happening, so you can either help us form this one or don't. They've been invited to participate in the process. Right. So did this, like, come before the school council, the student council, anybody? It will come before school council. But you've already made the decision. The creation of it will come before school council. I have already announced that we are putting something new together. And that you will no longer be participating in National Honor Society. Right.
With no feedback from anyone in the community or student body, right? No formal feedback from students.
How much have you heard since the announcement? I've heard from four parents. A lot more. And they are welcome to contact me. And I really would like to engage with parents and students who have questions or concerns. I literally, I heard from four.
And I would want to hear from folks who are calling you and speaking with you.
Thank you for relaying those concerns through this conversation. But it's always great to know directly what folks are thinking and wondering before we make the decision, ideally.
And we'll think about some steps in terms of engagement. And we'll talk about some steps in terms of... I'd really like to hear what other people are doing.
What other districts are doing? Mm-hmm.
Many districts have NHS and are... I heard that. I, you know, but candidly, I put out a request to school committee chairs across Massachusetts. Yeah. One got back to me that, like, 20 years ago, there was a school-specific Honor Society. And otherwise, nothing about being removed from National Honor Society. So, of districts that have it? No. Every district. Do you, you know, aren't you participating? Yeah. Are you thinking about removing yourselves? Do you have your own Honor Society? Mm-hmm. One. Other than the cum laude, which is in addition to, not instead of, I understood, at Lincoln-Subbury? They have NHS and cum laude? No, it's instead of. It's instead of. So, LS is instead of. Anybody else that we're aware of? No. And cum laude is just GPA-based? It's different. It's a totally different structure. Yeah. It's a different, it's not an activity-based, like, membership. It's a, as I understand, it's an honor that is bestowed on students at the end of senior year, based on their final GPA.
That doesn't seem like a great alternative to me, either. No. I mean, there's, I don't know that they've ever had NHS, either. No, but then there were questions about continuation of that, because it wasn't as standardized, so I think many districts are having that conversation.
So, you know, I heard a lot. I heard your concerns, and I heard a few things that kind of resonated with me. How often does the five-member faculty council transition over? Is there, like, a two-year term, three-year term? It's supposed to be a one-year appointment, I think. Okay. Yeah. And has it been happening? As far as... Like, have the same group of people been the ones to raise their hand, or felt that they were obligated to raise their hand, because nobody else was? I mean, we know how this goes. Yeah, someone. I mean, there's the go-to people who can be persuaded into something like that.
And to be honest, there are fewer and fewer folks who are sort of willing to be persuaded. Yeah. I mean, we understand that. Right. So, yes, there's been a small number of folks. And so I don't know that it's supposed to be a full, a wholly new five-member council every year, but it's considered a one-year term. What about looking at different ways to refresh that committee or make it on a rotation, where there's overlapping of people coming on with experience and going off? Mm-hmm. So everybody rotates through, and everybody has a chance to be a part of it, and everybody has a chance to roll off of it. So it just kind of, I know we are on this for three years, right? That's a commitment. It's a big commitment. But in one year sounds reasonable to me. Is there an opportunity to rotate through that team? It's unfair to put that on anybody every year, day in and day out. Yeah. And there might be, certainly, we could experiment with making it more fluid as far as who's participating, who's willing to participate, who finds investment in that effort. The bylaws for the Wayland chapter still say that it's an anonymized application packet. Mm-hmm. Those were, yeah, that was submitted in 2020.
I just, look, unfortunately you're in the hot seat on this, but we represent the community, right? And we're supposed to bring those concerns, and we're supposed to help represent those people that aren't here to speak up for themselves. Or maybe they don't feel comfortable, or maybe they don't understand it, or maybe, you know, that wasn't a school-wide notification either. It went to only the class of 2027, right? First, yeah. Yep. And then it went out district-wide. Like in something else, right? It was in my Friday message. Yeah, so, I mean, it's not like everyone's getting that, so it's not exposure to younger folks or younger kids' parents, you know. Everybody's getting it. Everybody might not be opening it. Right. But my effort was to share it with the entire high school community. Right, I'm saying, like, middle school kids, any, you know, there's a greater community, right, that's being served by the high school. Um, so I just, there's a lot of concern. Um, and I think there's policy behind making these types of decisions throughout the district that require solicitation of student feedback as important to the process. And best practice being community involvement. And I, this just seems very siloed, and I'm trying to wrap my head around and say, oh, I get it, but I don't get it. I can't, I'm hearing it, and I, I'm just not. I have to agree. I do, too. I think this is a very big change. And I haven't actually heard a crisp answer as to why now and why for this class. Like, why, what was the impetus? And I'm not saying I can't be convinced, but I'm not. I don't. So why don't, as a suggestion, maybe David and I can work on some engagement with the community and with students. I'd like to continue working with this committee of students who are willing to engage and sort of thinking through and identifying the issues, talking about, talking with them transparently about what the issues have been. We have kids who are willing to dig in, um, and I'd like to continue working with them. Um, and David will help me with some engagement with the community. And I think the anecdotal, as much as it appears anecdotal of it doesn't matter, it doesn't pull the weight that maybe people think it does, which isn't wholly what's driving the issue. But I think real data on what is going on, how is it perceived, um, you know, I think that's important for everyone to see and understand. Um, well, for instance, if it's lost all external meaning and signaling power, then why is it that your canvas of other districts all largely unanimously was we still have it? So it's still very compelling. My sense, Betsy, be really candid. Yeah, please. Okay, I'll be really honest. It's a very hard thing to take away things that are perceived to be advantageous in the college admissions process. So, I mean, let's just name that, and Allison's aware of that, um, that that is a hard lift, having been a part of districts when there's change. If there's a perception, given the college admissions office and the angst around that, that's a hard, that's a hard lift. Um, but I think the question is, are there other reasons besides that to do it? And I think Aaron's question is, what's the story with the college admissions process? Certainly the counselors weighed in, um, because obviously part of counselors' jobs, kids don't get into college, that creates angst for them. And I think the very experienced counseling team at Wayland High School, from what I know, is a part of this. But certainly people get very anxious just in this, this environment about college, college admissions. So I think there's, there's different buckets to the concern, but that, that's one that, you know. Well, some of the people most anxious are the students themselves. So that's, I think, one of the things that is giving us pause, is to change something to as large a population of juniors, as you just described, reach for this. And I hear you that it's been declining, but it's still the, I, for those students who intended to, and we're sort of counting on that line of, I agree, there's a lot of debate about what does or doesn't make the magic ingredient list. But like, this is an ingredient, and I think that that can create anxiety, and I feel for that class. And I think there are things that can come out of being a member of the National Honor Society, such as the work that's done to continue to be a part of it, that kids really do get value out of. And maybe that adds to the value of an essay that they write to get into a school, or something that sets them apart. And so, I understand that that could still be a part of something else. I just don't want to diminish that. There's a lot involved in it, and not just renaming. But why not achieve that on the nationally recognized stage, right? I think that's the point. I mean, honestly, Allison, I think what we're asking for is to preserve it for a time being until it's completely flushed out. So, it's just not there yet. And in my opinion, it would be preserved for the students that are in high school now, because they're on that trajectory. These are things that they've looked forward to. And then the consideration is given to those, I don't even want to pick a grade, but that haven't entered the school yet. I mean, this decision was made quickly, and, you know, I think we've, you know, beat that enough. But there needs to be a little bit more preparation for people, and there just, there isn't. So, can we talk about preserving our engagement in National Honor Society until we've figured this out? Right now, or I'd like to certainly reflect on all of this input and feedback, engage with families, the families who are and aren't contacting you, talk with students, assemble those 15 students together and talk with them. And I hear, I mean, in terms of roles here, I'm hearing you ask me to delay this decision. I am. Okay. And it's probably not the 15 students that have raised their hands to help that are at home worried about this. It's probably not those ones, you know? Yeah, it may or may not, but I'm thinking about those kids too. Right, absolutely. I don't know if it's anybody else's. No, it's might as well. I mean, it seems very amorphous, and I don't really know what we're moving to, and it does seem very abrupt for the junior class, especially. It would be lovely if there was some case study or, you know, success story behind it that somebody else launched one, whether it be, you know, in Alabama or Massachusetts. Just something to kind of, I don't know, a comparator or, you know. Or even run it simultaneous. Simultaneous and, you know, or the simultaneous. I don't know, maybe, yeah. We'll circle back. We'll circle back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. While we're here, competency determination, question do we have for? Betsy sent me some questions, which I apologize. No, I got to it late for, I own that, so I will publicly own that that I told you not to respond to me last night. But they certainly helped me anticipate what kinds of wonderings there might be related to the competency determination. Do you want me to ask them live? Totally. Because the committee doesn't answer. Okay. So, just to refresh everybody, the competency document gave us, like, the overview of why we're doing this, and then it gave us a deeper dive into how benchmark assessments would be met from competency and then exam requirements. So, I had a couple questions about both as the document laid out. For benchmark assessments, the proposed document gave us examples, and I was just curious who ultimately would be selecting which assignments can qualify to satisfy the benchmark assessment. Would that be student choice, teacher choice? Will it be made consistent across subject area and class level? Yeah. So, behind those two words, benchmark assessment, in our chart, in our proposal, there are actual assessments. So, I guess the short answer, the crisp answer, is department heads in collaboration with those teams. So, Dave Schmier, our social studies department chair, met with the sophomore team to determine what those benchmark assessments would be. Like, we started right this very second. So, there's, like, a Revolutionary War paper that the students would do. Peter Galalis met with his English team, and there's some literary analysis papers that they were identifying. But we would want to be transparent with the students and families about which assessments are the benchmark assessments. And the reason why they are benchmark assessments is because they're tied to at least half the standards. So, there is a direct correlation between what students are being asked to do and what the standards require them to be able to do. Good. Okay. And so, the reason why we didn't say Revolutionary War paper in our proposal is because we wanted some flexibility, but they would be predetermined and communicated to students and families. Okay. So, everybody would know which... Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to say, I know what the standards, like, grading looks like at the middle school. Yeah. Does the standards against a paper like that look similar? That... So, it's basically, it would just be, when we talk about standards, it's sort of, it's the core standards in Massachusetts, core standards around those curriculum areas. Yeah. And it would be basically, I have to pass that paper or pass that assessment. Okay. So, it's not like you would break the paper down into specific areas. It would just be, I passed in my paper on the Revolutionary War, and I passed, so I'm good. Exactly. Okay. We had talked about making it even more detailed around the standards, and I think we just didn't want to overcomplicate. And when the expectations are already set for the students to have to show proficiency in those standards, just by virtue of, like, passing that paper, we thought that was sufficient. Okay. Your question answered my next question. I'm sorry. No, no. It was good. It was great. I was going to have to use the word rubric, and I didn't want to. So, I did a much better job. Do you, I guess, one of the things that's striking me right now, and maybe it's not an issue at all, but with this, it seems like there would be a need, potentially. I don't know how many kids don't pass that paper, but to have those uncomfortable conversations about, like, hey, you didn't do this, so now we have to do X, Y, or Z, whereas, like, the MCAS, it's bubbles. It went out, and I know that that's not what you're taking away or anything like that, but is there a way to kind of balance that? Like, if, you know, three kids don't pass the paper, and so, well, why didn't I, you know, I covered this, or I covered that, like, because it's going to come back to that one paper, right? That Revolutionary War paper. Right. So, in terms of. Of saying, like, you don't meet the assessment, so you're not competent. Not, and I don't mean it in that sense. You haven't hit the competency determination. Right. I mean, I think, so our teachers are very skilled at having those conversations, and I think also what's incumbent on us is to make sure that students have other opportunities to pass a different paper, or pass that same paper, do a rewrite with support, so that they do meet that CD. And the goal would be that that conversation is really clear and focused as far as where it did fall short, right? What, what, what led to the student not demonstrating proficiency in at least half the standards, so that they can do, they can do it over again. They've been following year. There will be another opportunity. We will want to have multiple opportunities for kids to be able to do that. Is that what you're asking, Erin? Sorry. I mean, it's a more high-stakes conversation for sure with alternatives and opportunities for them to demonstrate it a different way. Okay. So I guess one of the questions that I didn't ask last time was, is the idea that this is going to go in place for this year again and then be re-evaluated because this is still under so much change and, like, pressure cooking with the state? Yeah, and there's so much change happening just with the graduation framework. But these graduation frameworks don't have it happen overnight, so it's hard to answer that question, Erin. But that's what I'm wondering. Is that the ask, like, we approve this for this, this round? For next, for this, for next year. For now. Because we approve them for this graduating class. It's for 2027, right? So. Exactly. Okay. So this is for, like, the 2027 folks. Okay.
You have more questions, but I'm sorry. I do, no, no, it's okay. I'm actually listening, helping me, like, short circuit. The only other question I had, and this is partly my own lack of knowledge, is there's a documented appeal process proposed in it. Is there one today if a student is determined not to have satisfied our graduation requirements, which I know are different, and is that appeal identical to the one in the competency determination? I think what we would do is establish an appeal process that involves me, and having to sit down and demonstrating, or countering our finding about a lack of proficiency in whatever standard, and then they could show work. We talked a little bit about this with Ronnie, too, as far as, is there a fallback option as far as demonstrating proficiency through a portfolio or through alternative works? I would envision that's the kind of appeal conversation that would happen.
Hopefully it wouldn't happen frequently with enough opportunities for students to try again. To try again. Right. I mean, even with MCAS, they try again. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I remember statistically that was the case, Ronnie. Yeah, there's always retests, and students who couldn't pass. You know, there are students who couldn't, you know, really struggle to pass MCAS, and that was their barrier to high school diploma. So we would do, like, grade-level portfolios and things, but you technically, then it would be certificate, but there, you know, it's not like we'd be creating this from having our structures in place.
So statistically speaking, we're probably in kind of the same realm with needing to look for alternatives, portfolios, retesting. It's a very testing group, but I think we'd be very, given that it's 10th grade, just like, you know, MCAS, like, there's time to work on that, and that's something that if a student was on an IEP, that their IEP team would talk about. Perfect. So I'm just thinking, for that class, the class of 2027, isn't most of this already done for them? Yes. Yep. So it's, like, retrofitting, kind of. It is. Yeah.
Like, Dave Schmier's class, they probably already passed their Revolutionary War paper. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. I guess that's a good question. Do we? We have to submit it. We do. Yeah. No, I know, but I was just saying, like, we're basically, you know. Reverse it. Yes. So that's a good question. Has somebody kind of gone through it retrospectively to see where we're at and how? We're in the process of doing that. Yeah. Perfect. Yes. We have to verify, actually, with the state. And I'm not sure what this process will look like now that it's locally controlled as far as verifying students who have and haven't met the CD. Mm-hmm. Because when it was based on MCAS, they would just send us a file of students and say, right, these are the kids. Yeah. So rural management system, I'm sure. Okay. I'm just going to take a giant step back because I wasn't here last week. I did listen to the discussion. No, it's fine. I'm seeing the table with biology, algebra 1, geometry, English 10, U.S. History 1. Yeah. With the MCAS, like, is this more than that? Is it less than that? Is it different? How does it relate to what the 10th grade MCAS was previously testing?
In terms of the standards? Just in terms of the subject matter. Everything about history. Right. Right. So the students did, there wasn't a history MCAS, so that's when that's new. Okay. Everything else was, yeah. So there's science, math, and English. Right. Okay. Exactly. Okay. And history probably would have been coming because. Right. Civics, right? Yeah. It would have probably been coming if. But I really like how history has a writing component, it sounds like. Mm-hmm. So. Okay. I mean, it looks good to me. So is it acceptable for us to vote these for the class of 2027 with a proposed revisit for next year? That's good, right? Because it's approved for.
Yeah. I think what we're seeking is your approval. And for what time frame? I'm not. I'm turning to David. I think we. I don't know that they indicated when. No, because it's so unclear what the path forward is. Right. I mean, we should probably do next year. And then if we need to extend, which is. Right. So we can always do that. That's quite possible. I will warn everybody that that's quite possible, which is why it's good to get some questions in now. And then we can extend next year and report back. Right. Well, and you might learn something between now and then, too. Yeah. You know. So, do we want to entertain a motion? Do people have other questions? I guess one last question. Ronnie, did you look at this for, like, the out-of-district students or students with IEPs and ensure that this is inclusive? Yeah, we, I met with them. There's some really good, like, fallbacks in here. Yeah. And I'm on a lot of different, like, districts, out-of-district coordinators and directors, and we've all been kind of talking about this, and it's pretty in line with other districts. But I met with Allison and Betsy about it. Anybody want to make a motion? Are we motion-averse today? No, I can make a motion. No, we're just running out of words. I will move to approve the proposed WHS competency determination criteria as presented for the graduating class of 2027. Do we have a second? I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Did you get that, Diane? Mm-hmm. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, and I think the other idea with that was to kind of tie in the portrait of a learner work, because there's going to be the revisiting of all of these tying together. The graduation requirements, the portrait of a learner, and the competency. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. Okay. You can actually help for me to edit the competency determination, because you're refreshing. Mm-hmm.
What's the status on that portrait of a learner? I think we were looking for an update on that in early next year, but we were trying to get the facility stuff off the ground. Right. We're going to kick off some portrait stuff in January, but we wanted to just, there's some, there's some over, a little bit of overlap, but we're going to kick off some, actually, that we're going to have a message going on right after the meeting, though, about the corporate work. Excellent. So that, that will be, that'll be good. And you mentioned Desi or someone who was doing character over there? I don't know. They've done some vision. Vision over there. Some vision. Exactly. They haven't drawn yet. They're just looking into. Are we ready for our elementary spokes? Yes. They're wide awake, raring to go. They're our earliest starters, but. Incredibly patient with this. I know. Me too. Thank you. They've been at it for more than 12 hours, and they look ready to go. All right? It's good. One more. Don't all jump. I'm versed into song. I know. We're going to have a good time here. Ronnie. I know. I'm going to, you know, drive home. You're going to go to the bed.
Welcome. Hi. Thank you for having us. Yeah. It's good to be here. We have, I just want, sorry, I don't want to interrupt you guys, but we have one, we have a local school improvement plan. We don't have anything else, so if anybody else had a presentation or a, we do not have it in our folder. You don't have a Happy Hollow school improvement plan as well? Okay. And we also have a slide show. They're not combined. Maybe they are? I'm wondering if you have a couple of elements. I agree. I think they have the, I think it's just the. No, it's just local elementary that we have in like the, you know, the plan document. Right. Betsy's not here to put, do you want to figure out how to present? This is the elementary. I think it says the elementary. Is it okay if I look, does it say it? I would say all three school improvement plans are very similar because we like have a lot of problems. Yes, so that's actually all three of us. Oh, okay. Oh, it's labeled as Loker. Yeah. Okay. Oh, you want to know why? Because I think it's because when we first, when we were working together in the summer, we made the copy of Loker. Like a pre-existing Loker. There was an existing one, which was Loker's this year. So we must have not changed anything. But they're all the same. They're all similar. But they're all the same. We had a little bit, like Loker had a Spanish immersion goal and things like that. Yeah. So they are different. This looks like one plan. This is one with one set of goals. But it does say elementary way on double school. Right, but we feel like we should keep the word draft in there because we wanted to speak to you first, even though our school councils have approved it. We were just trying to be respectful. Appreciate it. Absolutely. But I want to make sure we're looking at the right. The intent is good. I'm trying to see if I can find Spanish. I know it's all six goals. I feel like we should show you what we have. Well, you're welcome to work at what's on my screen. Yeah, come on over. Please. Okay, I have, the process will include Spanish immersion as well. So operational. I mean, are, if you guys are all persons of school and district leaders. Oh, no, we don't have that. So that's the last one. No, we definitely don't have that. We definitely don't have that. It's just tonight's presentation. This isn't just group of influence. It's just tonight's presentation. I mean, it doesn't say local school leaders, teachers and staff. So are, if. Yeah, I think it's just the name. I think so. The Spanish immersion is low at the bottom. It'll tell you right away. Of goal one. It wouldn't have been my fault because Brian sent it to me. So I was just, without looking at it, I assumed it was the right one. Yeah, so that was Spanish immersion. So there's district goal five has developed a K-12 Spanish immersion handbook. Right. So that's what we're a school group had. Yeah. Okay. So all three of our schools, the main goals tied into our districts are aligned. The only difference is Spanish immersion, continuing with our new school motto, and then for CLEPIT, it's with a subset for programming. And does that have to do with your community goal for each? Yes. Those are tied in. Mine's with the community. Spanish immersion is community and community. Correct. So maybe just shoot us over your goal five for CLEPIT and Pepe Hallow, and if you rest, then we have them all. Is it Dan? Sure. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be the second. Just, you know, thank you. Well, make sure you have the, make sure that that's not the local plan and that you do have the joint one as well. Yeah, if you want to just send that, yeah, we can do that easily. Whatever works for, just good for us to have it. All right. Sorry for that. No, don't worry. We're at a loss without Betsy. But you did it. Yeah, you got it. Thanks, Ronnie. My pleasure. All right. So similar to what you did with our middle school and high school staff, talking, we, all of our elementary school proven goals are really connected to our district, aligned with our district goals. And so what we, what we love to do in the summer at our leadership retreat is really work together to align what, what are our district goals and then vertically align what we're doing at every single different age level. So, if we're going through our shared responsibilities to create the conditions and structures and collaborative support to leaders and educators. And then as we're going through, you have your academic belonging, equity, and social, emotional learning and wellness. So everyone is tied into their school, aligning with those. And then additionally, we have our student services, community, and operational goals. So, specifically to our elementary, we, we're going to present, and each of us will take a slide of, we'll start with our academic core focus. Okay. So that's the area where I'm going to focus tonight. And Nicolette, you know, we'll talk about belonging. Brian, we'll talk about social, emotional learning. And, you know, I just want to say that the academic work can't happen without those key components as well. So, in talking about our core focus, this year, I'll highlight some of this goal. It's a very robust goal, but we're going to continue the full and comprehensive implementation of the Bridges Math program. So we are technically in year three, but this is year one of the third edition implementation. There are some changes in this curriculum that teachers are adjusting to, but for the most part, it's really similar. There are some things that are done to create more equity for students, more access for students. There are some more culturally responsive pieces. Some of the units have been adjusted slightly. The lessons are more manageable within a one-hour block. So that is very small shifts for our teachers this year, which is great because what can happen now is that we can really focus on going deep with the curriculum because teachers are not focusing on how to implement the lesson, how to manage the materials, when to bring in implementation, intervention, how to address, you know, areas when we notice that students are not grasping concepts, how to reteach, et cetera. We're able to now, like, focus on going deeper. And we're really leaning into our math coaches to help us do that. So some of the things that we are thinking about deeply this year is how do we address intervention in the elementary schedule? How is best to do that? You know, the bulk of the responsibility for intervention is still on our regular ed teachers with some support at Clay Pit with a math interventionist, a little bit in the information version, still with a math interventionist. But we're trying to increase capacity through coaching to address gaps. So in intervention, we're continuing to address gaps from previous years' learning. So really looking at diagnostic tools like iReady to better understand where kids don't have foundational skills and how we can use tools like Bridges Intervention to address those gaps. And our three coaches have been really key in helping us to increase our capacity there. We're also thinking about how to reteach and how to offer that within the math block. So when we have assessed using formative daily tools or summative tools at the end of a unit, and we find that the standards should be mastered, you know, at the end of this unit, and we have kids who are not able to demonstrate mastery, how do we ensure, particularly if there are indicators that the curriculum is not coming back to this concept, how do we ensure that kids get what they need so that we're not leaving students behind? So that is really our year three focus. We're working to ensure as administrators that teachers are teaching the program with integrity. We know that we've made a huge investment as a community in these high-quality instructional materials, and we want to make sure that we are really tapping into them and using them to their maximum impact. So, you know, we are using evaluation, our presence, our work with coaches to really make sure that the materials are being used to their full potential. And then we're really focusing in year three on how we can challenge our students. You know, where are the opportunities where we can embed more challenge in grade-level standard mastery for kiddos? So, you know, whether it's using challenging questions, the way that students are asked to demonstrate their understanding, and using other aspects of the curriculum like the quest to layer in more challenging work for our students is the focus in Bridges this year. Okay, so that's Bridges. The second thing I'd like to talk about is our continued work with the district curriculum accommodation plan, multi-tiered systems of support, and the student support team. So first, we'll talk a little bit about the DCAP. Our student services, together with Betsy and a larger group, has continued to work to create a district curriculum accommodation plan that is robust. And it is really a collection of practices and accommodations that general educators can use to make sure that all kids can access the curriculum and, you know, ideally, able to demonstrate grade-level proficiencies. So, you know, when we talk about the DCAP, like, how can we as educators change the presentation of materials, the environment, the setting in some cases, how students respond, or timing, so that we can really best understand what students know and what they're able to do, and we can create or, in some cases, remove barriers so that they can show us. And then I just want to say that our DCAP also includes not only, like, academic accommodations and best practices, but also best practices around social-emotional learning, behavior, motor skills, et cetera. It's a very, very robust document, and I think Ronnie would tell you that it is also dynamic. It's one that we will continue to revisit as research progresses so that our practices are reflective of research. In terms of MTFS, we made a lot of progress last year in that goal in increasing educator capacity and meet students in the three tiers of instruction. What educators who have done a lot of work here will tell you is that the most important tier is tier one. So if our tier one instruction isn't extraordinary, we cannot intervention or reteach our way out of that. So we do continue to work on ensuring that tier one, you know, instruction is super high quality. In addition, we're thinking about the supports and the structures that we can use in the regular education classroom to make access to tier two instruction. Again, a little bit redundant, but that reteaching, the preteaching, the supports that students need to make good progress every year. And then we're thinking, again, how to support students when they are really struggling through gen ed and special ed in tier three instruction. So thinking about specialized instruction, thinking about increasing frequency. So really looking at our practice and making sure in all instances that they are the best practices. And then we have come together again as a district after kind of revamping our SST process. We were using a different process as recent as three years ago called START. You probably remember that. And now we have transitioned to SST. So it's a great opportunity to kind of reflect on our practices and try to calibrate our practices across all three schools. So we are in kind of a reflection process and thinking about how we revise. Some of the things that we've identified as areas of focus are, again, calibrating, kind of thinking about setting norms at those meetings, ensuring that we have a real asset lens as we look at students. We look at what kids can do, what's next for kids, what supports kids need in order to meet challenging but attainable goals. We're also thinking deeply about how to improve family communication and how to involve our families in the SST process, not completely dissimilar from our special ed process in the new IEP. And, again, we're thinking about how we can meet the needs of all educators. What are the needs of our educators? Do they need more support in efficiently collecting data, for example, in the classroom? And setting measurable goals. So what do we need to do as a district to continue to make it manageable for teachers so that they can make database decisions for kids? And then, finally, I'd like to talk a little bit about increasing inclusion opportunities for students. That's, again, one of our most important goals. We are really committed to educating kids in the least restrictive environment. And then, again, like wondering about what our kids are already doing well and what logical next steps are for our students so that they can grow their skills. And then thinking also about what are the critical skills that kids need so that they can be fully included. And, in addition, we're, you know, constantly thinking about what are the most appropriate settings for students to learn. And, you know, sometimes it is a small group. And sometimes we have to push and increase our capacity so that kids can be fully included in the regular education classroom. This year, we're really excited to be piloting co-teaching. And it is certainly a model where kids have a great deal of inclusion opportunities and access to the curriculum. You know, when we think about a really traditional model, we can guarantee that students are well-supported in the minutes outlined in their IEP. And where that can sometimes be difficult is in an elementary social studies classroom. For example, when students need to write and synthesize information, and that's a really difficult skill for them, they may not be supported in that moment by a special educator. But in a co-taught classroom, kids get the support they need when they need it. And the other thing is that if the kid is just cruising along, we stand back and let them so that we're creating independent learners, not dependent learners. So, you know, it is, like, just so amazing to walk into our co-taught classrooms and see kids getting exactly what they need. And I am hoping that it's something that we can continue to capitalize on. And then finally, I'm not going to steal Sarah Sontag's thunder at all. I hear she's coming in January. But I will say that we are really excited to pilot two different curricular program is going to start mid-January. Each pilot is going to be about six weeks long. They're going to wrap up the piloting phase right before April vacation, and then the committee will get together and talk about next steps and maybe a recommendation. Unanimous recommendation, just like last year. That's how we roll, David, unanimous, like with the SEL curriculum. We have a discussion, but we won't have a game. They are, I will just share that some of our educators were able to go out on some site visit, and they came back giddy. So I can't wait. I'm excited for them. That's all I have on my piece. Thanks, Mary. Can I ask you something? Of course you can. So I had a group of boys at my house, and I can't remember which one, and I can't remember exactly the words, but now that you mentioned the Kotak classroom, one kid was like, it's no fair. He has two whole teachers in his room. And I'm like, is it awesome? He's like, it's awesome. And so I'm just sharing that. Like the perception is that it's a really great experience for the kids, too. I wish I remember which one it was. It fills my bucket. Yeah, it fills my bucket, too. So I'm going to be speaking about the belonging and equity focus. So if we're looking at two of, within our buckets of the belonging and equity, our goals, we really want to focus on just the explicit strategies that increase belonging for students who have been historically underserved, and also focusing on our approach of being a warm demander. So leveraging our relationships and how important relationships are to maintain high expectations for all students, honoring their academic strengths, and also celebrating their shared lived experiences, and bringing their cultures alive in the classroom, and just celebrating diversity, inclusion, and celebrating our community. Now, more than ever, with the conversations we'd be having, it'd be a miss to say that this isn't one of our most important within Whelan schools right now. And at the elementary level, we are very fortunate that we, like every other building, we have our dev lead teachers at each of our buildings. We have Caroline Hahn. We have committed educators who are very skilled and really committed to the work. And so just seeing it come to live. So if I go into a little bit more detail about these schools and what it looks like, first and foremost are those consistent strategies that you'll see across any of our buildings with what it means to be a warm demander and really targeting our relationships and those strategies into our daily instruction. So, for instance, Caroline just sent out a survey for an upcoming PD that we're working on, and Caroline wanted to get actually the staff feedback on what they feel as though they need to focus on and be a warm demander. At each school, our dev lead teachers really kind of take on their own little twist of approaching and celebrating our educators noticing within themselves that they're actually having the skill set of what a warm demander means. So giving some examples of that, recently in a third-grade classroom, a warm demander is leveraging your relationship and still maintaining those high expectations. So in a third-grade classroom, we had a student recently when I was in there who was having some work refusal during math and did not want to engage within the small group and didn't want to engage at all, and the teacher was so skilled with we can do hard things and breaking it down for her and really connecting at a relational level and being able to go ahead and finish the task, show that she could do it. It was beautiful because even when the student said, I just want to do it in a working lunch, a working lunch is either you can have that sometimes with the teacher, it's a way for them just to either do some work or sometimes just have a relationship and chit-chat, and sometimes with myself or maybe Marie and Brian, it's about they have a wonderful idea for our school community and they want to advocate for that, and we have lunch. And she very well said, well, that's not how working lunches work because you can do it and that's not what you're going to use a working lunch for, and that right there is being a warm demander and making sure they realize that they can do it. And when it's tough, we're there to lean on one another. We also are supporting our educators at all three buildings with examining their instructional practice and really analyzing the students' needs with targeted support. So sometimes one size doesn't fit all. Some students might need a check-in or check-out on the day. Some students may need breaks, a sensory walk. Some students need an individualized plan to focus on their areas of growth and be celebrated while other classrooms can have a classroom goal. So one of the pictures I have up here is a classroom, a third-grade classroom, earning their class goal of supporting one another, of really showing their core value, and the teacher surprised them. They were able to earn Fishy Fishy, a game. So I went in and I substituted the class for about five minutes and we were guessing what the surprise could be. We walked down together to the gym where they found their teachers dressed in shark costumes and, oh, the screams you could hear. They were so excited. But that is just, you know, having a goal, working and celebrating each other to really help each other to maintain those high expectations and know that we can do it and help one another out to achieve a common goal. And then, of course, the collaboration amongst all three schools within our own buildings, too, of just really having our students take ownership of our school community and inclusive culture. And then, finally, with that last bullet is really celebrating our community and our differences. So that very bottom picture, one of our Dudley teachers at Happy Hollow took that and it was just, the kids were so cute. They were dressed up and it was, I forget what, I think that was June, but proud of who you are and they were looking in the mirror and our Dudley teachers really do celebrate each month and support the teachers with inclusionary practices and celebrating diversity. One thing that's really nice to see is, as we celebrate all the experiences within each home and our students and having them be proud of who they are and their identities is, especially now with different holidays coming up, are at the elementary level different parents and caregivers coming into the school and teaching, the caregivers teaching their children how to teach their friends about their traditions and their cultures and just the joy that that brings them and children loving to participate that and the children that feel proud of sharing who they are. And it's nice then to see from, let's say, a first grade level, but then in fifth grade where the students can do that independently on their own. And they still want to make sure that they're taking a moment to either now bring it to a school level at an all-school assembly or still have the opportunity to celebrate their culture within their classrooms. So it's nice to see that growth throughout our buildings. And then Brian. Excellent. So David has always taught us context setting is really, really important. And so when we begin to talk about SEL and Wayfinder in particular, which is our new social-emotional program in our first year, though we had teachers that piloted that in another program last year, the core concept, and I want to just read this quote because I think it really explains why we chose Wayfinder and why it's so important, durable human skills are precisely the skills that technology can't not displace and are critical to creating positive work environments. And so when I think about why are we doing social-emotional learning, we need to help kids communicate with one another. My son is driving me crazy because he's getting phone calls in the middle of the weekend on his iPad where he's chatting with his friends, and it's starting to really drive me crazy to take it away. But it's one of those things where kids, unless we're intentional about it, they're not going to learn these skills. There's so many other influences that are out in society that are going to grab their attention unless we're proactive. And so when I think about Wayfinder, what I really like about it is it really fosters that critical thinking and kids being reflective about what does it mean to be part of a group? I observed a Wayfinder lesson last week in fourth grade, and the whole goal was to kind of understand what it means to be part of a group. And so the groups are randomly assigned, and as a group, you had to together do a maze together, solve two riddles, and then do a secret handshake. And everyone in the group had to have a component of that secret handshake. The engagement level for those 10 minutes that they were doing that was through the roof. It was awesome. The kids were really proud of it. And what I loved was everyone really was a part of the group because they were forced to because they had to be part of the secret handshake. But it just felt, even going back to what Nicolette was just saying, kids just felt really empowered within that. And then they came back as a circle, as a whole group, and they reflected on what was the challenges about working in a group? What worked well? What's one word you would use to describe the experience? What are ways we can kind of improve that? And so deeply reflecting on what it means to be part of a community and a group, I just thought was so powerful. And the kids really, they really got it, and they really had such a great experience. And so that's what I've been seeing kind of across the board. When I go into classrooms regarding Wayfinder, it's relevant, it's real-world oriented, and the kids are really highly engaged. Going back to that fourth grade lesson, we were talking about escape rooms, you know, as kind of a premise for how to work together and kind of the teamwork that requires. But then the question was asked, how are you going to use this for the rest of this week? Kind of what you've learned in this lesson. And so it really is very practical. Our teachers had a wonderful professional development this fall during our first Super Wednesday at the beautiful Senior Center, by the way. Schools, too. Yeah, and buildings.
But we had a really great experience there, and the teachers, the ones that I talked to from LOCA, were just like raving about the experience. And one of the really cool things about Wayfinder is they really do value your input. If you, they ask for feedback at the end of every lesson from teachers. And every year, they tweak their curriculum based on teacher feedback. Now, that can be a little stressful for the teachers. The lesson looks a little bit different the following year. But the fact that they really are serious about taking that feedback, I thought, empowered our teachers. And it's only going to make the curriculum better as we progress. So I think Wayfinder was a really wise investment by this district. And just in kind of its first year of full implementation, it feels like it's doable. And it's an important part of our schedule now. I think with all the standards that we're asking kids to do all the way down to kindergarten, the things that can get lost are science, social studies, and SEL, because we have to be so focused on math and language arts. And this program, I think, is really, A, it's created alignment across the three schools about what we're doing for SEL. And it's brought those social skills even more to the forefront. If we're going to, as a district, we're going to say we're educating the whole child, then we better be educating the whole child. And I think that Wayfinder helps us get there. The other big thing that we're thinking about, obviously there's a lot of research out there that shows that there's a direct correlation between attendance and punctuality and student achievement. There's a huge correlation. And I apologize because I'm going to probably act like a little bit of a math geek right now. My vice principal, Christina Santavallon, likes to make fun of me for this. But I love looking at data and I just need to say that Open Architects is one of the coolest inventions that I've ever seen for being able to, like, literally one click and I have the total attendance percentage for the year. At low groups right now it's 96.5%. And I cross-referenced that with one click the last three years. So two years ago our attendance was 95.7 on the third to last day before December break. Last year it was 96.4 and this year it's 96.5. So we are trending kind of in the right direction. Also with another click you can see how many absences were in the last 10 days. You can track number of tardies, number of chronically absent students, five point seven percent of local. So it's things that we can really easily look at and make because it's so easy to use we quickly can identify who needs that support. Yes, you get feelings for that and you can I used to ask one of my secretaries like compile all this information when someone hits 10 tardies I want you to know now with one click I know instantly. So it really makes such a difference. And with PowerSchool and ParentSquare aligned as well we're able to send attendance letters to families and it keeps track and we can kind of automate it we can mail merge them and send them out which helps us do that. But in the end I think the conversations with families about attendance and about tardiness are what's most crucial. and these are not always easy conversations and I think it's something that we continue to work on and continue to try to grow as something that our attendance as a district I believe correct me if I'm wrong I think it went up about 6% last year I'm sorry 60% last year so we have made great progress and I think we're seeing that we're at or continuing to grow a little bit this year as well and I think just helping families understand the importance of coming to school I know at Loker we always have like on Friday we're having a huge deck day drop everything and create we try to have these I've had parents say to me I couldn't go on our trip until Saturday because my kid wanted to go to this event and all the schools are trying to make sure that we're doing things that are meaningful and jam a day is a big one so there's lots of examples of that all the schools are doing it but I think we really do struggle still with families that are taking longer trips this week I will tell you that attendance at Loker has not been great like we had 25 absences today we had 24 yesterday we had 22 on Monday so these are things that that's about it's more it's basically 5% of the population so you know these are things that we track we also have a breakdown by day so I can pick up any school day this year and tell you exactly how many absences I have so we look for trends we had Veterans Day was on a Tuesday we had 28 people out on that Monday despite an email that went out to families like yes we have these Thursday Tuesday holidays you know let's be in school on the Mondays and Fridays and so probably the email probably helped us a little bit but I think just being conscious of that and so it's going to be a process but I think we now have the tools that will not take hours and hours for us to get the information that we need to know and we're able to kind of communicate that with families but in the end above all of this with attendance is the relationship with the families and the trust you build with them that will get us to where we want to be but Open Architects is great to utilize and I think my colleagues definitely agree on me I have a little story in my house so one day Griffin he's a fifth grader at Clay Pit and he was very very tired he was up late lacrosse tournaments all weekend he wakes up he's like mom I'm too tired to go to school and like for one second one second I thought about it you know he's my baby maybe I should let him rats he's a little kid I'm like no we go to school today's a school day go to school that day you sent out the email about 100% attendance and he got home and I'm like if you stayed home we would have never gotten a seatbelt and he said wow and it was really like a full circle moment for our house so he thinks about that well thank you because I haven't had that burnt happy hollow and every day I'm like please can we be like we almost ruined it I love that's a great story I'm glad my kid went to school that day yeah me too we do send our kids every day but I almost caved just like my baby said that I think we do want like families to keep their kids home when they're ill our kindergarten right now is just gross with neurovirus and flu and that's a whole different thing that's not what we're you know worried about of course of course save it for those days any other questions I'm curious about the wayfinder if there's any like parent resources I remember when I had the zones of regulation on my fridge and being in the red zone and all of that I really enjoyed stuff like that do they have any parent resources well each lesson has a letter that can be kind of sent home to families and there are some resources on our websites that our teachers could share or even like putting it on the local website so that parents could access it so it's not another email or something like that that's a good suggestion I want to do a secret handshake with my family me too that's like such a good idea make sure everyone has a role in it yeah okay alright I'm going to do this I think Ms. Brigham said something earlier you can't teach it's important to provide super high quality curriculum out of the gate because you can't teach your way out of that and it kind of resonated here again in SEL and it sounds like you're setting that groundwork very early on with just some really wonderful strategies and best practices so thank you I know it's hard but thank you for doing it and adopting it no it's actually lovely like it really is so nice to go into the classrooms and see the lessons the kids are really engaged there's a lot of student voice and choice and it's very beautiful but even the tech piece for teachers is so intuitive and easy to navigate it's been a really great implementation it's been very very positive and teachers implementing a new program is a huge huge task any teacher would tell you that and you have growing pains and you hear about that as principals I could count on probably one hand the amount of complaints I've gotten about this program and I just think that speaks volumes and the complaints are really like oh I couldn't get on the website or something technology related usually so I just think that we're building a lot of really great momentum and it's only going to get better this is year one it's only going to continue to grow the feedback that we are getting is that the lessons are and I agree when I look at the lessons they're designed to be 20 minutes long and they take 40 minutes like they just do they're very robust but given the number of lessons that teachers need to teach over the course of the year they're very easy to split into two sections so yes they have to be thoughtful about where is our logical end for today and where are we going to pick up next week but the lessons are more robust than a 20 minute session and I find that now that we're in December they're becoming more confident of where to pause for that and continue with them for the next day which has been very nice and depending on the grade level there's approximately 20 lessons for the whole school year so that is when you think about 36 weeks over the course of 180 days it's doable and so teachers can either do part two the following week or they can try to fit in on the time there's time to do that despite a lot of demands on the teachers that was something that they had talked about when they originally presented and that that was one of the beauties of it was that piece just that it was doable and that even though they're made for 20 they take longer and it makes sense how you can make them work and I also want to add that when you look through this program the images that you see they're multicultural one of the challenges that we've had with previous programs is that every single person that you would see was white and so I do think that that was something that the committee that piloted this program last year both programs really look closely at and so we are we're seeing visuals that are representative of our community as compared to it just being kind of the dominant culture so I just want to make sure I add that because that was an important consideration with this program as well and I found at Happy Hollow it was really nice to see that they're applying what they're learning and we find they're across
fifth grade recently we had they did a lesson about respectfully disagreeing and then during math class they were you know with bridges you're always sharing different ways to solve a problem and it was really cute for them to say I respectfully disagree and the teachers though were so proud we just did that in way in math so it's really nice to see that I have fifth graders saying I respectfully disagree and I was like what that was and you're in year three of bridges so the contrast to a wayfinder it sounds like everybody's hitting their stride the magic year that was a heavy heavy we're very glad we did it but that was very heavy Marie was first hand as a math coach in the first year of that and I remember sitting here and it was the beginning and everybody's like it's going to get better it will get better year three it will get better it's like owning a dog right like year three things improve so it sounds like that's happened and you've hit your stride okay that's good that have you seen a reduction in the math intervention because of bridges or is it just opened new new learning you know I my gut you know I'd have to look at some data to answer more accurately my gut feeling is no we haven't I think we've increased our capacity to identify gaps so like maybe not but again that's good to look at a little bit of data yeah well and I think the idea was originally I think we kind of asked that question like how fast and it was kind of like because it's such a change and shift and method it's going to take time for it to have kind of like compounding effect so like the kids who started with it in kindergarten may be reaping a little bit of a greater benefit now than those kids that didn't have all that time to be continued awesome thank you all so much thank you really appreciate it thank you good night thank you thank you we really appreciate it working to schedule but everybody's going to be in school for the next two days thank you they'll be mine too I can't have them in the house you can have them Monday and Tuesday happy to send them next week my kids have school Monday and Tuesday next week that's what someone literally sent to me they like to bring a friend up someone asked me like well why did you I was saying that I was getting like just some small things together for Maren to bring to school for her teachers because she was so excited about it and they were like why did you stay up doing that last night like you have time and I was like because my kids are done with school on Friday and they're like what I'm like yeah so don't talk to me about long vacation have a great vacation thank you again I had that moment today in Target I'm like I was like yeah no I it's not pretty that whole late Thanksgiving that whole lost weekend I'm looking around my I'm staying I'm looking around my house it's not pretty sight yeah no we're with you I'm with you I'm right there somehow it will somehow all happen it always does it sure will it's gonna require a little magic and the loss of sleep oh yes is that a thing sleep I don't get that anymore I don't know when I got
thankfully administering matters 4.1 I just want to discuss our upcoming meeting schedule and potential recalendering of some of our dates so we did have a successful vote of the move for the debt from operating to excluded so that's really good for our budget planning for next fiscal year and with that David and I kind of discussed that it would be really helpful if we pushed back our budget timeline so currently what we have on the calendar is January 7 14 21 and the thought was to keep 7 have that be our next meeting cancel 14 and 21 and then I think right here David I have a questionable we talked about potentially adding 26 February 2nd but also 27 or 28 for the time so we think you know in terms of the budget presentation to do it Christine has a conference on the 28th but we could you know get it to you that Friday the budget the 23rd 3rd we we also that's when we get the state budget information then as well because you know as we know the later we get the more accurate budget and our goal is to give you something that's accurate we'll get health insurance shortly thereafter and then you know you would have that week to look at the budget I could present it maybe that Monday night I think yeah our idea was to do budget first on February 4th February 4th or we could do Monday the 2nd it depends how many budget meetings you think you need we could do the 2nd and the 4th that week or we could just it's up to all of you but I think the goal is to have a few budget meetings prior to the February break depending on your schedule and basically right now they're like front loaded to January where we're going to just have so many questions still well because of the January to February to kind of transfer those if that's possible yeah because one of those big items is the health insurance and that was a positive swing last year for us with it coming in but we're just not sure so could people adjust and keep January 7 then I just I'm confused on and I wrote down my notes but now they're not making sense to me were we thinking of doing the 27th or the 28th or doing the 26th 26th and 27th if we could do one of those two okay so not 28 not 28 do 26 or 27 I thought we were going to do the architects and then do the budget the architects can do the 26th is better because we could do the architects that night and a budget presentation if you're able to because they could come that night to talk about our facilities and planning can they not come the 27th I'm just asking the 26th I think that group is meeting I think they could as they said they could Kirsten we could we have a meeting with our advisory group that night but we could that's over zoom so I think if they could do the 27th if you wanted that and we could still do our meeting the night before that that would be fine I'm pretty sure they can do it we'll go and check with them okay is that better for all of you? I can do either okay I was looking at someone's face to my left and I'm trying to be I would prefer the 27th okay and that's super selfish it's my daughter's birthday okay but super selfish I'll confirm can I do this can I confirm with them that because I'd love to have it like an architect update for all of you given the work that's important to do so let me make sure they can do the 27th but I'm I'm not thinking budget presentation that night I was thinking budget presentation February 4 and potentially add February 11th okay I mean I would do the presentation that night you would have it and then you would ask questions right then and we could have we could do that February 4th and 11th would you want one more just in case? we could do 2-4 potentially and 11 we have the 25th you could present on the 27th what why did we decide against the 28th of February or typical Wednesdays? Kirsteen has a conference no that's your January January because we didn't I won't be okay you're on board we don't have that on the calendar right now okay okay and so that's why because she wasn't here and with budget and HF you're important HF whatever that we wanted her to be there and if you've got to do the 26th I will figure it out and make it work no I'm going to shoot the 27th as long as the architects can come yeah and even if they may be in that night if that's if they if they zoom in that night on the 27th possible yeah if that works to make the 27th work sure yep we'll talk to them and then would you like to do budget that night and then the 4th and the 11th or you'd rather start budget on the 4th and then maybe do that Monday the 9th I'm trying to think of how many budget meetings my I would like to hear from the rest of the committee but my thought is maybe what we do is we pencil in 2-4 and 11 those are all before February vacation that's good and if my thinking is kind of like let's see where we're at the 27th you know and we can always do what we yeah I think that if we start on the 4th you know the later the more accurate information we have I think we all agree on second there I won't have any opportunity to make any adjustments that I have a it's a 3-day conference oh 28 like right 29, 30 yes okay so if there was any requests that would be I wouldn't be able to give it to you prior to February 2nd so how about this we reserve the 27th the 2nd the 4th and the 11th and then we'll figure out the structure as a you know the next right after the break and as what we do at those meetings is that okay but at least we're all holding and we have common calendars does that sound well we don't have the 11th right now so sorry I'm just looking at that yeah we might need that we don't my thought was if we could add that in that gives us a night to vote it before February break is that okay I think so I still have to go back and figure out what I'm taking off January but do that after we add we're going to take off the 14th and 21st I have 12 I have another 12th as well I think we already removed that one because we removed a bunch before oh and I think that's we'll give you some time in January before if we can confirm these ones we can send out an updated one that'd be super but I was hearing Kirstie do you not want to hold the second because that's not going to work from a presentation standpoint you certainly can if we were presenting on January 27th there wouldn't be anything adjusted from that particular one on Monday the 2nd because that's the literal thing that week same week coming in I understand what you're saying now okay I mean I'm certainly happy to take everything I don't know that after and this is what I was saying to David I think a lot of it will matter on where we come in so because if we come in where we think we're kind of going to land and we're not having to make cuts it'll be a more straightforward conversation whereas if we land somewhere we have to make some changes so I think and I'm going to be meeting with Brian over the break now so we're going to be strategizing and trying to get those things ironed out okay so the other sorry the other thing I'm thinking is if we're holding those I know we're going to want to give heads up to who we want to present the specific you know like high school middle school those budgets so I'm just trying to think about that and planning for those pieces too I'll draft something and send it to you okay in the next 48 hours okay and I would love to if we could have a schedule nailed down by Friday that would be good for you and us and my thought is I guess right now what I'm hearing is 27-24-11 would be okay and there's no bads for anyone at the table nor okay that's that's a good plan all right so I'm right now I'm nearing 17-127 yeah 2-2 2-4 2-11 that's great and worst case scenario or best case scenario we take off the 25th and don't need the second or you know but at least okay you're saying February 25th correct okay potentially potentially right now we're holding we're gonna keep those all for now very helpful as we get to perfect so I'm removing January 14th yes that's good I am working this for you in the 21st nothing to do with the I'll circulate somehow that 12th ended up in both hours though
that's if you want me to I'll send out actual google calendar invites if that's helpful no it's okay because it'll go no because it goes to my see I share that calendar with this one yeah okay sure why not all right I'll send placeholders because I missed our zoom the last week too so sure I won't figure that out the 14th and the 21st so on the 7th the 27th yep the 2nd the 4th and the 25th 11th and 25th I foresee one of those is gonna go I don't and it did last year but I think it's helpful to have the placeholders 100% totally to not need them yeah good luck I was just looking back at our agendas because this year we had a one pager of like topical areas it's gonna get reworked and if he sends that to me against these we're gonna rework it based on this but it's because I was just trying to finalize what we we want to finalize so we're gonna rework it but like I know we're gonna do bridges on January 7th right that's the plan that's the plan because that works with a maternity leave and that's helpful for us to meet then and particularly because you need to be in the city on the 14th Betsy we thought we would pass oh thanks so much you're just doing that did you I had a feeling actually in fairness in honor of all of you people I already told my boss I couldn't plan a team dinner that night so now you can go home for dinner um okay I will circulate those and then we'll get the topic updates to everything by Friday okay um so that's all set um 4.2 so in light of some recent um communications etc there's been some discussion um both at like the school level school side of things and the town side of things to have and create a robust policy um around uh media communications press releases and um community communications and so I have not candidly had a chance to do real digging on what's out there for our peer districts but um my thought is that um we may be it's probably best advised that we create a policy around this so we have one I did do some digging yeah it's not so what we have is identical to weston and wellesley's is lighter so just I only had a chance to look at those three I'm happy to circulate them with no deliberation if it's helpful I just looked when I saw it on the agenda and I didn't see anything in the folder I wanted to educate myself so it looks like RKDD is identical to weston so I have to assume I did see that it came and is it based on a mask I couldn't find that mask like doesn't really but it seems like this must have originated somewhere because it looks and we apparently adopted it originally in like 2013 and it revised in 2021 um so that's the best I got yeah my I think um some of what was talked about from like the town perspective does transfer right over to us as far as like crisis specific issues like you know how and when and who would communicate in the event like electricity is down at the middle school or those kinds of things and kind of having like a structure and a and then when things kind of may need to go up the flagpole and be approved in other
of it and be a leader in the space for districts so just um something I think we should work on I don't know if that's if you want to circulate that yeah I mean those are very school specific so I just I think I didn't understand this would be school specific only it would be school specific only okay but it's likely going to also be happening on the town side kind of where I was it was a bigger conversation that I came out of um is there anything so if we have something that admittedly we can take a fresh look at is there anything comparable on the town side or no do you know that I'm not sure it's gonna be all that helpful because I feel like that's more like who there's so many different departments whereas I think our point person is really you right it was it was very like there's a water pipe broken who's allowed to communicate that and where should that go um and so different levels of like escalation where but even if there's an unfolding safety concern as awful as that is I would look at it through that lens too of like who would own that I mean I think us I think it was something involving schools but like I hear you the existing policy doesn't talk necessarily about um emerging or developing situations yeah so um I'm happy to like take it offline with different people I don't know if our policy subcommittee really wants to bite this one off I'm not sure and part of your subcommittee is not here so don't I do think she mentioned she might she was interested okay would you mind circulating those examples even though they're very similar and not maybe as robust as we're thinking no and I didn't have time to do an exhaustive search I just didn't literally looked at LS Weston Wayland I googled Concord but I couldn't I think I did it soon it wasn't um it's interesting where I found it is for districts that have a similar policy manual online and it's under community relations so once I figured out because I was having trouble finding any even ours and for a while I thought we didn't have and I was like that seems strange so anyway I found it found Wellesley's which was totally different then found Weston's by going back through and going to community relations KDD is ours and then I meant to go back because LS I couldn't find and then I had done Concord initially but I didn't I didn't go back with that like connective tissue to see so now I sort of know how to hunt and peck and that was because I also was interested to your point to see if anybody had like if what we have seemed to be like the common recurrent who had changed it I will circulate Wellesley's though because it was very light touch and so I thought that was interesting as well and maybe they hadn't looked at this one yeah and I thought that 2021 was relatively recent yes I will circulate those three I'm also happy to check let me take 20 minutes and see if I can find other districts and then I did check Lexington too and I didn't find anything there so I will look and send what I can for us to just prove okay and then I can just put another agenda and we can kind of revisit just take that plan I guess I'll do some research on maybe some suggestions that might be out there yeah I did look briefly at KDD which is ours and it says things of a sensitive nature but it doesn't define that so it might help to flesh that out a little bit more and I'm also thinking kind of what's the principal's duty versus when it would fall under this policy and agreed there's something to think about okay so I'm hearing we're all going to kind of do some thinking some digging we'll circulate per the instruction of no deliberation please and then we can come back together after the holidays and I can put it back on the agenda and we'll take it from there yep perfect okay David in your experience in other districts too are you aware of communication policies when sensitive times I'm aware of kind of communication practices versus policy so the answer is yes around like practices more so I don't think you'll actually find it in policy manuals but in terms of specific practices like you're talking about yes I'm also thinking that even in the last like year there's been such a proliferation of ways to communicate and devices in lots of different places and so it's probably changed the landscape a lot I mean for example sometimes you know in districts I've seen practices about whether the district engages in social media and responding and there's a lot of like things as the world's changing for example there are districts that would prefer the administration not engage on social media and keep it to email and so those are kind of practices that I have seen but those with the world changing I do think there are practices we need do you want me to see what I can find on social media I did see when I was searching media and press I did but I didn't dig in there but I can grab some samples if you want to sure I think we should all just kind of like get out there see what's out there in different avenues and then we'll bring it back together and come back with maybe some bullet points or ideas and we'll go from there some of them also involve like what the school committee communicates about right yeah right yep I totally agree okay great do we want to we don't no that was my fault David if you missed that entirely my fault I forget about it every week and then she gets mad I don't want to get confused because I'm trying to be prepared I'm kidding and I did these in open session even though they're executive sessions I was going to say I'm wondering well because I don't want to give us an executive session just to review these innocuous executive sessions and we can do it there's nothing so my feeling is we can I thought apologies is to approve without redaction for release so moved all in favor aye any opposed aye all in favor aye any opposed none sorry okay I was like I didn't say aye and do we have any thoughts on the consent agenda that I would like to move to approve it yes and do we have a second all second and all in favor aye any opposed none and moving to matter six are there any dual any matters not reasonably anticipated by the chair yes we do oh so we have the we have a new manager of sustainability in the facilities department Julie Gatton and she notified us that the select board did vote to approve and apply Wayland as a climate leader community as well as an extension of the green community grant program which gives us the opportunity to apply for several different facilities related projects hundreds of thousands of dollars worth so it was very time sensitive and the superintendent we were required to sign a zero emissions first vehicle policy and a letter of support acknowledging that the schools have read and approved the decarbonization road map which I will share those documents it's just a very time sensitive issue they had to submit it before the end of this year knowing that everybody's holiday plans and schedules might not coincide we wanted to make sure that we got this out and David's signature taken care of and we will just share the documents for your information but it just gives us more opportunity to be able to take advantage and be part of that green community grant opportunity yeah so the way I understood it was it didn't actually put more pressure on us or more restrictions it just enables us to have more access correct right okay yes so that we don't have to do anything it just means that we're considered in this category and so then we can apply for these specific niche green initiative projects okay that's how I understand it but I okay super great thank you thank you great update okay does so we have nothing no other matters and I would entertain a motion I'll make a motion to adjourn thanks for that one Betsy do we have a second second all in favor aye any opposed none we are adjourned that's 2025 25 Thank you.