October 14, 2026 – School Committee – Video & Transcript
October 14, 2026 - School Committee
Welcome to the Wayland School Committee meeting on October 14, 2026. It is 6.05 p.m. We have four out of five of our school committee members and Mr. Shukla will be a little bit late to join us. And we have our administrative team. And we should be being recorded by WACAM.
Is everyone back there here for public comment? Or I am. Okay. So not here for public comment? No. Okay. So we can give you each three minutes, just two of you. Just give me one. Yeah, do you mind? Three. I know I say the same things all the time, but if you can just...
Say your name and your address for the record and then just keep it within the purview of the school committee and keep it respectful. Those are my messages. My name is Joseph Hardy and my address is 14 Day Colors Drive in Wayland. So good evening. I'm here today to ask the school committee not to wait until May or June to address the local music pilot.
The community has raised serious concerns about reducing fourth and fifth grade instrumental music from 75 minutes to 45 minutes per week. There's been substantial community opposition, and these concerns deserve a full response while students are experiencing the consequences of change, including the reduction in their learning conditions. The concerns now are not just a reduction in music time, but how the district has claimed they would evaluate whether this pilot is successful.
Some of the proposed metrics do not actually measure educational success. You know, things like more instructional time, greater curriculum coverage, and positive survey responses do not by themselves demonstrate improved student learning. Surveys can provide useful feedback. However, questions can be framed to meet an agenda. And subjective perceptions are not a substitute for objective evidence of educational outcomes.
The district also needs to consider the full instructional context as to date not been discussed in regards to the pilot. CKLA Caminos, the new curriculum, already incorporates knowledge building content or cross-grader curricular knowledge building content into its structure, including science and history.
And, you know, simply allocating additional time to subjects does not establish the students will learn more or that the educational benefit justifies what they are losing. We also need to examine what happened to the other students that are currently out of instrumental music, intense skills lab. Right now, the status quo is that they are spending time in front screens because teachers cannot advance the curriculum while the other students are at music.
And we have to ask ourselves, are they receiving meaningful instruction? This is an administrative decision that should be addressed. The children deserve more, and it is within the administration's control to change what kind of instruction they receive during this time, including specialized instruction, even if they don't advance in the curriculum content. Every week this pilot continues. Students lose instructional music, instrumental music instruction time.
That time cannot be recovered and the community is concerned about how this will affect the future of music education in town. I'm asking the school committee to direct the administration to establish clear, objective measures of student learning, provide the evidence supporting the pilot, including the actual data, and seriously consider restoring the previous music schedule now for the 2027-28 school year.
Rather than allowing the changes to continue by default. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Vicki. My address is 10 Clean View Road. I'm here to speak about the local instrumental music pilot, but not about the reduction in instructional time itself. I want to focus on the importance of communication, transparency, and accountability in making decisions that affect our students.
Since this pilot was announced, community members have raised questions about why the change was necessary, what alternatives were considered, how the pilot will be evaluated, and what impact the reduction in instructional time may have on students' musical progress. Has anyone asked the music teachers what they thought? Have we asked families that are in the music?
And have you talked to guidance counselors about what it's like for kids to be in the classroom without any breaks to do something different? These are not questions only from people who oppose change. They are reasonable questions from families who want to understand the decisions being made about their children's education. What is concerning is that many of these questions are still unanswered.
When families take the time to engage, ask thoughtful questions, and share their concerns, they deserve a meaningful response and maybe not necessarily the answer they hoped for, but an explanation of the reasoning and evidence behind the decision. A pilot program should be an opportunity to learn that requires clear goals, meaningful measures of success, and a willingness to examine both the intended benefits and the potential consequences.
It also requires communicating these goals and findings to the community. I recognize that the district must balance competing needs, limited resources, and complex scheduling challenges. These challenges make thoughtful decision-making and clear communication even more important. I urge the administration and school committee to address the outstanding questions and clearly communicate how the pilot's impact on students will be assessed.
Thank you. Is there a secretary today? No. It's just us, really. Oh, can I do, can I do this to you so that you can have it for the records? Thank you. We have... Do you want to take everything in order? Yeah. Okay, so the 2026 MCAS? Yes. MCAS is still with us. There have been, I only say that because after the vote a couple of years ago, there was MCAS. There have been changes, and of course there may be more assessments down the road as we think about graduation requirements. MCAS, of course, is no longer a 10th grade graduation requirement, but our students, grades 3 to 8, we still look at that data in a range of subjects. So Betsy will have kind of an overview about where we are in MCAS, how it's used, and then... In a couple of months, we're going to have a conversation about all the assessments we use, a broader discussion about assessments we use to form instruction, to measure student progress. So we're going to have a whole discussion about that, which I think will be very informative for our school committee members. So we're going to do that. I think we decided in December. Elementary. Yeah. December. I think it's the first meeting of December. I think we should share some of this information with our students because my kids say, we don't even need this to graduate anymore. Why do we have to take it? You're not the only one asking that question. When we talk about 10th grade MCAS in terms of scores, when you read about newspaper articles, there's certainly, Erin, that was alluded to. And it's not just here. It's lots of places. Yes. So we will do an overview tonight. So we'll do a little context setting about the history of FCAS. We'll look at some key points around the four different tests that are tested across the district in the four different subject areas, looking at both proficiency and growth, and our subgroup performance as well. We'll talk a little bit how that factors into our district-wide accountability. Another plug for chronic absenteeism that we'll talk about and continued progress there. And then, you know, how we think about the curricular considerations and implications from our data. So as David was saying, why on earth are we still taking MCAS given the state's vote on question two? And many of you voters, I think, were a little puzzled by that. But there was a difference between it not being a state graduation requirement and our federal mandate that began with No Child Left Behind many years ago. Subsequently, the Every Student Succeeds Act still require testing in grades three through eight and again in grades 10. Additionally, the state does still offer two different scholarships to students based on their MCAS performance, the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship, which is a merit-based scholarship that can provide up to eight semesters of tuition to students at state schools, and also the Stanley Z. Coplic Certificate of Mastery Award, which also offers fixed tuition credits. So those are a couple of reasons why our 10th graders... Still care about those tests. So, gosh, MCAS began back in 1998, which was my first year in the district. We started back then. Since then, it's taken a variety of forms. In 2015, it became computer-based for the first time. And then we had a time when we went from MCAS to PARC tests. When the state sort of made a pivot, we then went back to Next Generation MCAS in the spring of 2017. That's when the Every Student Succeeds Act came into play. The Next Generation Science Standards, and those tests changed in 2022. And then we changed the testing provider. So Pearson was the provider for many years. They switched to Cognia last year. And last year also the eighth grade civics test began. It is important to note that next year, this current school year, but 2027, there will be a change in the science model test. So it's moving to... Rather than the structure it's been in, which is sort of a series of multiple choice questions, short answer questions and a longer answer questions, instead it will be six performance tasks. So it's a very different structure. Five of the tasks will be scored towards students' scores and the other one will be field testing questions to use in subsequent years. The task design will be a storyline format related to different scientific phenomena. There'll be an interactive simulation in each of those, and students are going to be asked to make observation, collect data, and then there'll be some selected response items connected to that. So it's a big change. They piloted it last year, and it will be in play this coming year. That's a little bit what's coming. So kind of at the 30,000-foot view of MCAS, it is probably notable to note that scores across the state dipped and slightly in Wayland as well. That said, all of our Wayland schools still met our performance benchmarks, and we remain a level one district, which means we're not requiring any assistance from the state or guidance. There were improvements in specific grades. So, for example, last year's or the 2025 fifth graders compared to the 2026 graders, there was an increase in score. Same in seventh grade. That was true in math in five and seven. In grades five in science, you can see that fifth grade cohort is a strong cohort. Additionally noteworthy, there's a cohort improvement. So last year's fifth graders, when they moved to sixth grade, their scores increased. Same in seventh, same in eighth. And for math, it was fourth, sixth, and eighth. From a high level, we noted we earned, again, four out of four points towards our chronic absenteeism, which was a real change from a couple of years ago. And we really just want to appreciate families' help with this. We know that's a partnership around getting students to school every day. And it's important to note that we continue to have performance in subgroup disparities for particular groups. Can you just repeat? So the ELA grades 5 and 7. That's this year's 5 and 7 or last year's 5 and 7? So the 2025 5th graders compared to the 2026 5th graders, there's an improvement in scoring. You'll see it in another. So it's a different. Different cohort. It's a different group. And then you can see a cohort improvement. Yeah, okay. And that's the cohort improvement is this year's 6, 7, 8? 6 to 7, the 7 to 8. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Yes, and we'll look at that in a little more depth. So here's taking a bird's eye look at just grades three through eight, and what you'll see in the bold are the Wayland scores, and in the parentheses are the statewide scores. So our MCAS scores are fairly flat in grades three through eight, you know, 72, 71, 73, 71 percent, and you can see the... It mirrored the changes across the state, too, with the increases and the decreases. Our grade 10, we noted this was the first year that the students do not need to pass the MCAS for graduation requirement. There was a significant decline both in Wayland and across the state. The math scores are also there as well in elementary. Did you see a decline in the participation rate in 10th grade? There were fewer students who took the test, yes. And there were fewer students in the district, too, so I haven't done the proportional, but I could check on that for you. Our participation rate was still strong enough to get participation points, if that matters, when it comes to the accountability. In science, technology, and engineering, you can see our scores. It was a slight dip in grades 5 through 8 and 10 mirrored, mirroring the state changes. And civics was pretty flat as well, although very strong relative to this. So here is a table for those of you who are new. This kind of looks at cohorts over time. So you can sort of see that the shade of the color is the shade of the cohort. And you'll notice that in the 10th, you can see there's a difference between 8th and 10th grade that it doesn't follow the diagonal exactly because the year's about one. Erin, your question about the fifth grade to fifth grade, if you look at the fifth grade ELA scores, 65% of students were meeting or exceeding expectations in 2025 and 69% in 2026. So you can sort of see that change from year to year. You can see that fifth grade cohort went from 65 also to 69 if you look in the diagonal. And that sixth to seventh grade cohort went from 70 to 75%. So that's the ELA Longview Performance. We have a similar one for math, kind of tracing cohorts over time. And that's with the knowledge that different classes took different things based on when we had COVID and things like that. So if you look in the upper left-hand corner, you'll see third graders, in 2018, 76% of them were meeting or exceeding expectations. So there are four categories for MCAS, and you want to be meeting or exceeding expectations as opposed to not. And so they're tracked over time, I should just go row by row? So if you go across the row, you'll see third grade classes compared to other third grade classes. If you go diagonally, you'll see the third grade, then they went to fourth grade in 2019, it was canceled in 2020, then they went to the light blue, the pandemic year. So the blue diagonal tracks their improvement. Yes, that's the diagonal, yes. It is a definite reader tester there. We'll give you a performance-based task, don't worry. So this is our open architect interface. Those of you who've been at the table have seen this before. This gives us lots of different data, and we can cut it in many different ways. What you see here is sort of those four different performance bands visually over different years. So the very top is sort of exceeding expectations. Then meeting expectations, so you want to be above that meeting line is the goal. Then you have partially meeting is in the light gray, and then not yet meeting is the reddish color. And you can see the different strands as well, sort of our numbers and operations strands, our operations and algebraic thinking. And they're pretty, there's not a huge variance there. And then you can see the difference by grades. If you go to the next slide, you'll see the, did you already show ELA? You skipped ELA. Oh, there it was. I didn't move on. Sorry, I didn't take it all in. So you can sort of see, again, the percentage of students. You can also see the SGP, that stands for the Student Growth Percentile. So what that does is it looks at students who scored a particular score. So we'll take all the students in the state that they get a 500 one year. If they look at those, how did they then grow the following year compared to all those other same students who had a 500? And that's how they calculate the student growth percentage. An SGP of 1 to 40 is sort of a low growth. 41% up to 59% is moderate growth and then above. 60% is high growth. So we looked at the ELA and the math. The science, you will not see the growth because they do not test year to year. They test in fifth grade and then eighth grade and then either ninth or tenth, depending on which MCAS they take, whether it's the biology or the physics. And here is our civics. Again, this is only the second year that that test has been given. So this is a breakdown of all of our students when we break it down by race. You can see the number of students, what are the percentages that are meeting or exceeding expectations, what was the average score. So a passing score is 500 or above. And then you can see the median student growth percentile for each group. It's important to note that That, you know, the higher the year end, the number of students taking the test, the less a particular student score impacts the mean. So when you have a much smaller group, you'll see a much greater variance from year to year. And those are the science and the civics percentiles as well by race. Are we seeing that gap close at all? Depends on in particular year, you know, some years you'll see it creep up and then some years it will change. I would say that's the answer to your question statewide since COVID. It's actually increased. No, I know. I just we've talked about it here in our town in particular and our district in particular. And so I'm just curious if we're seeing any closer longitudinally. And again, those numbers are like 11. You shouldn't even be showing those numbers. We do just so that you can get a sense, but they're not statistically under 40. You don't want to typically show. This is a scattergram of our, so this is looking at students with disabilities. You can see the scattergram sort of shows a plotting of each student on an IEP, their scaled score. So from 440 to 560, which is the highest you can get in an MCAS, compared to their SGP. So that's just a little scatter plot there. You can see the bar graph giving your distribution of students as well. So the percentage that we're meeting or exceeding is 35%. Can I say that back on ELA? On ELA. This is for ELA. So on ELA, students on IEP. Are meeting or exceeding in the mid-30s compared to the population overall, which is in the high 70s? Which also includes those students in it. Got it. Yes. And that number of same questions. Skewing better, skewing better. There was a little down for this year. Interestingly, though, like students, once students are successful enough, they are no longer on IEP, so that population is always... Changing, you had a number of students who came off IEPs in a given year. And you can see there's, from this grant, there's a lot of students who did have high growth. Some had low growth in low scores. There's a scattergram across there. And here is the math version. And we have 40% remaining or exceeding, achieving. And then... You don't have the same, again, because of the growth, you don't plot it in quite the same way, but 46%, is that 46%, I think? I test her as well. 40%. And then, yes, a larger percentage in civics. That's only one grade, just eighth grade takes that. Here's our official accountability report. So the accountability report is a report that it's a it's like a recipe and the ingredients are MCAS achievement and the SGP as well with a three to one ratio. Also high school completion rates, EL proficiency and chronic absenteeism and also the number of students taking at least one advanced course and then you get particular points for those. It's weighted, it looks at two years, so you're looking at 2025 and 2026 numbers at a 60% to 40% ratio that factors into the growth. So we are, and on that as a district we were meeting exceeding all of our targets that they had created for us. If you go to the next page, so here is the... Kind of what the recipe looks like, how many points you can earn in each of the categories compared to the total possible points. We wanted to, as I mentioned, to shout out to families. Two years ago, we had zero out of four points for our chronic absenteeism. So that continues to be incredibly helpful for... A for a test, and again, this is one test on one day, well, it's two days, two days per subject area. It's also a test, I didn't mention this at the beginning, I should have, it's a test that is very different in its... In the way in which students take it, teachers have to read from a very standard script. You can't give any, like, have you done this section yet? You can't ask any questions. It's just to the script. So it's a very sort of artificial experience in many ways. By 10th grade, kids have done it many times, but it's really new for our third graders. All right. Does the advanced coursework completion factor, does that mean that they... Took an AP class and passed the AP test? Honors and AP classes count as advanced. Just that someone took it and passed it? Is that what? That they completed the class and they get a passing grade, yes. Okay. If you go to, so here's just a little bit more detail about our chronic absenteeism, and our rates have improved, not just last year, but this year as well, so 96%. Attendance rate on any given day. The average number of absences went down to 7.2 per student and only 5.8% of chronic absenteeism rates. So huge improvements from 2024. And all of our subgroups from our Student Opportunity Act plan, which is our subgroups who were furthest from sort of the mean, have also improved significantly.
So what we do every year after MCAS is our curriculum coaches, our curriculum leaders all do an analysis of the curriculum. areas and kind of look at what particular areas we might want to focus on. We think about and we're looking at how do we continue to teach the curriculum with fidelity, our new HQAMs, CKLA, which is brand new this year, and Bridges, which is in year four for us. It's the second year of the third edition, our fourth year overall. So this year we'll really work to collect some baseline data and some of our PD has been focused on where are scaffolds important and how do we fade supports when they're no longer needed. I think one of the things... One of the areas that I think we're really looking at is how do we reduce the scaffolds when you don't need them anymore? I think we've, like many, many districts, you know, I remember when I was teaching, like, what's good for one is good for all. It turns out that is not necessarily true. If you don't need the scaffolding, how do we remove it when it's no longer needed? So that's been a real focus. of our PA day a few weeks ago. At Bridges, we're really thinking about the expanded intervention opportunities that we have and continue with our Tier 2 practice works. We'll be looking to implement some of the suggestions from the high school's MTSS group that met last year to do their assessment. As well as we need to assess our readiness for new graduation requirements is another part of our work this year. Continue with the culture responsive teaching training that's an ongoing work. We know that kids who feel a strong sense of belonging and a strong sense of a belief in their ability to do hard things perform the best. We will continue with our attendance teams. We just had our first district-wide meeting. We were able to celebrate some of our wins and data, which was nice. And that continues to be an important group. And I think really, you know, we look at our MCAS data. It is important data, but it's important to triangulate that data. What does the day-to-day classroom performance look like? What do our common assessments works look like? What do our... Universal screeners and then our progress monitoring along those look like across all of our areas. That is just a quick overview. Happy to answer any questions. Just to give you a general sense of where we are from an M-CAS perspective. In many ways, a very different sort of feeling of a test to take. It is probably the most public and the one that can be compared to the most, you know, give you the greatest sense of comparison across the state, whereas our common assessments we can use to compare to, you know, across classrooms and with other districts who may be using the same assessments, but this is one that we have the statewide data for. Adam's question. The kids' investment in taking them. Yeah, I think it is a tricky one. So we really try to encourage kids to take it seriously. And if it's not an area where they're feeling as confident, like the incentive, I think, to take it as seriously as we might want them to is not as great. And, you know, we also, what... We need to ensure that they're building their skills in this age of AI and other areas. We're having an ELA professional offering an institute that Peter Galaus is setting up around. For teachers of English in the area around teaching English in the age of AI, we have an expert coming in to talk with the group and really, really thinking about we want kids, you know, reading and writing are so important and we don't want kids offloading that cognitive work and the cognitive load because it's really easy to just type a book. I guess one of my questions is...
I used to hear a lot of kind of anecdotal feedback from different people, like kids, teachers, parents, whoever, of having to teach to the MCAS. Now it's not a requirement to graduate that you pass it, but... It's still a measurement of success and a measurement of a lot of different things for our district and our students, etc. So I guess have we been able to kind of align our curriculum and the standards and do they really align with the content that they're testing on the MCAS so that You might have to teach them kind of how to take the test, but that you're not teaching different content or having to reassess where you're at within the year to like change. Right. So I know certainly teachers might, like the week before, you might do a little test-taking strategies kind of work. You'll want to practice with some of the tools that are in, because they're taken on computers too, so you have particular tools that you can use too. Expand the size of text to how do you write the fractions in using these kind of practice with the different tools that are online. But I wouldn't say there's not a focus on stopping to teach to the test. You might do a few MCAS reviews. Or for homework or an in-class assignment, but there's not a ton of teaching to the testing. I don't know where this is going. It's interesting because, you know, you brought up the issue of preparing for MCAS by getting comfortable on the computer. And now we're facing this countervailing pressure of, like, should we be learning cursive in where this is headed? It's a very complicated time around this because... We want the kids, you have to kind of do well in the MCAS, but we're like, why are they in the technology? And, you know, high school kids we now see, you know, right in the old-fashioned way. So it's unclear where this is going. And MCAS is going to, supposedly, in the new graduation requirements, they're going to end the use of MCAS and replace them with EOCs and, of course, assessments that are going to be given at... Supposedly a time in which it will still become a factor into a student's grade overall. Which really speaks to the fact that your curriculum needs to align with how they're going to test against the standards, right? Yeah, and our curriculum, you know, our curriculum is designed to align around the state frameworks in general. And like you saw, one of the high school goals is working on curriculum mapping. It's a component of it. And also thinking about that in light of our portraits of the learner and how do the goals sort of map against both things. I think then we need to think about how we track the data. I'm looking at the long view table. I love the long view table because you can look at the grade over time, but you can look at the cohort over time. And if we're not using this metric to track, how are we? And, you know, I'm looking at the ELA performance right now. I'm really excited about CKLA because you can see there are improvements. There are great opportunities for growth in ELA. And if you go to the math performance over time, you can see where bridges came. And you could see it's changing in those years that some cohorts better than others because every cohort is very different. But I'm curious, you know, how do we keep this data? Yeah, you know, I think it's a great question, and we're already looking at the new data with the, I was just sitting with Sarah Sontag the other day, and we were looking at some of our Unit 1 assessment data, and like already there's very exciting signs around vocabulary, like the vocabulary piece is huge that we're seeing right off the bat, and that was an area where we were not particularly strong in before, so, and there'll be... Pros and cons, right? Like as we look at some of our bridges things, we've seen an increase in conceptual understanding and... As you know, we're looking for minutes, and we do 50 instead of 60 a day in our core. And are we getting enough time for some of the workplaces and where they're practicing that fluency? So we're doing some deep dive analyses around those because we want to, you know, you need both. You need to have that fluency in order to... Not take up your working memory with those kind of things so that you can engage in more rigorous problem solving. So looking at all those pieces and doing some deep dive analyses and prioritizing when do you want more cumulative practice and retention to ensure that you're doing those pieces. And as you know, bridges really spiral. So you introduce something and then you pick it up later and then you pick it up later and when they're at the point of where they should be mastering it. Are they? And I think the coaches and teachers have gotten stronger over time at really identifying which skill sets they need to intervene around based on the data. So really using, this is one, MCAS is one sort of source of data, but really looking at our Bridges assessments and our, what will be our CKLA and Camino's assessments as well. We're getting very close to being in a year where all of our K-5 have had bridges, right? So that's a big turning point that you can look at that data and say, oh, this is really interesting. So I'm looking forward to having the same with CK. Yeah, and I know our middle school folks are talking to our elementary school folks, and they visited back and forth, which has been helpful. What year did they switch to computer? Computer testing was 2015. Okay. I was questioning if it was closer to COVID because we really haven't gotten even close to back up to where we were on the ELA pre-COVID, so I was, well. So I was curious if it was closer to like 18, 19. Yes. There was a note, I went to an accountability webinar, and they talked a lot about how it's important not to compare certain years, like 2026 should not be compared with 2012 to 2017 because of the way they were doing accountability was different then. So, you know, every time you tweak and change something, you're doing it to make... Things better. You're also comparing different apples and oranges then, too, right? Like next, when they went to the next-gen science versions, that was very different from the previous ones, and then this new test will also be different from that. Yeah. Anybody else? Thank you. Thank you. And we'll talk more about, you know, other kinds of assessment, internal assessment in December, because that'll tie in nicely to this work. All right. Next, we shared a memo. I guess it was about six weeks ago, Betsy, you and I met with Elaine and Warner Gossels, longtime Wayland residents. And in 1990, they started a fund for academic excellence. And we had a really good discussion with them because the district hasn't used the fund in a while. And this is a long-term fund. And we thought there was an excellent opportunity to expand opportunities for our students. And in talking to the Gossels, They had several areas that they were really interested in. For example, science. And if you look at part of this proposal at the elementary level, we've talked about wanting to expand opportunities for our students in science, having a science in residence for all fifth grade classes as they think about innovative science projects and STEM projects, as well as starting an after-school science club using this. Funding as part of the bylaws of the scholarships fund, the school committee has to approve the proposals, which is why we're bringing them to you tonight. Another area that they were really interested in was really preserving our democracy and having active students. And schools. And when we think about that, we think of WSPN. As a matter of fact, we have reporters right here. And so we thought, you know, at a time we really need independent journalism, beginning with high school students. There's some fun for additional technology for our students, WSPN. We also thought about our middle school students. We were there earlier today, and we know middle school students have lots of opinions about lots of things. Some of you know that firsthand in our experience right now. And so the middle school, they're interested in starting a student council and having an advisor and being active in the school, and that really fits within the mission of the fund, as does the arts and supporting a choral program. At the middle school, which we're excited about in terms of facilities. And we will have other ideas down the road. We should talk about high school, one of my favorite classes. You know I like high school sports broadcasting. But we know, again, it's students performing, creating a story about the award state. White Volleyball Boys Champions, but it really teaches kids skills and communication through that class, which is expanded. It started with one class and now has three. It's an expensive class to run in terms of equipment. And then we think of our portraits of a learner work. Tomorrow night, I'll be at a middle school PTO meeting with Courtney Rowley, and part of that is going to be getting feedback on our dispositions, but it's to expand this work. So we'll be ready to begin to think about operationalizing the portraits of Lerner in the next school year. And that really fits in with their goal about thinking of the future of the district. And that's something that they were really interested in as well. And we'll get other ideas in the spring, but we thought these were like themes that connect to our district goals and what we want for our students. And we're grateful to the Gossels family for their support.
Anything else they didn't say? Can you hit on the key points? So we're just looking for a motion and a loop. Have you already kind of vetted the pricing on this, that it's in line with what we would need to fund these? Yes. If you had looked at this this morning, you would have seen that it was a little bit less because we were going by last year's prices for the computers, and Jen was able to get an actual quote, so it went up. $1,500 since this morning, so. Okay. I wish it, like this, you know, to have the scientists and residents come in and all that. I just was curious. Yes, that price is for sure. Okay. And that's something that we could continue on next year, so we love it and we get really attached to it. So we would need to think about the operating budget, whether or not. This is something that happened here, like in the early 90s, there was a scientist in residence? Great idea. Yeah. Yeah. The teachers who came with the proposal were very excited about it, particularly because, you know, there are fifth grade teachers teaching fifth grade, but there's key third and fourth grade standards that come up in MCAS, and how do we revisit those in meaningful ways that make connections to their new learning as well. And, you know, when you heard the scheduling group last year talk about more opportunities in science, this kind of fits in what we've been talking about.
And we can fit it in scheduling-wise. These lessons would be during their science lesson time. Okay, so it would replace like a lesson five times a year. Was it five times a year? Four times a year. We worked with the fifth grade teachers about which particular topics would it like. Weathering and erosion was one that came up and some circuits work. I have no idea what the price point would be, but would there be Would this be something that could potentially support a trial like afternoon orchestra instrumental lessons for fourth and fifth graders? And this is not meant to be controversial, genuinely, like, would that be something that, because I also anticipate the question may be raised from. Right. I mean, I would say when they're recurring, you know, most of what we're starting, a lot of this is one time in terms of materials to use money that's not recurring for ongoing costs. That's usually the challenge with something like this. You all probably know that from the foundation as well. I know that comes up as well, Betsy. Betsy's. That's a discussion you're familiar with. And that's where I think the scientist in residence question comes from, too. Will we be able to sustain it? The middle school student council, that would be like a stipend that would need to be staying in. It's low, and again, that I'm just... Part of this is a pilot, though. We want to pilot some things, like the middle school is a good example, and that's something we would have to bring into the budget, but it's something that there's energy around. And there hasn't been a school council there for many, many. Yep. I'm also probably the annoying person, but 10 Macbooks. I'm asking this question because we made the push for students to be on the Chromebooks. But is there a specific reason? Is there programming that's on the... We have students who can answer that. I know a little bit about this because I'm a journalism junkie, but you guys can go ahead. There's specific software that we use in terms of uploading photos and stuff like that that isn't accessible on the Chromebooks and you need a MacBook for it. We use iMovie and stuff like that that just aren't applications on the Chromebooks, but where last year only had MacBooks. Okay, so these will be available for the journalism specifically? Yes, that's what it's for. Leveraging for that, okay. Interesting, anticipating questions, right? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm glad, you know, we always go to students, can always answer better than we can. They've been very helpful, we will say. Yes. Anybody else have any other? Yeah, I got like a basic question. How are these activities matched with elementary, middle, and high school scientists and residents for the elementary school? Is there a logic to that? A lot of it came from conversations with teachers and curriculum leaders, sort of what were the needs that they were seeing within there. You know, I would say also to match the priorities of the Gossels family. You know, we talked a lot about kind of preserving democracy, and that was something I think they raised first. Civics education. When I think of preserving democracy, I think of student journalists. I think of having at the middle school a student council where they can actually practice what they learn in civics at the local level in the school. So I think it was matching their priorities with some of our needs and interests in the district.
I will move to approve the recommended expenditure from the Gossels Fund and just also echo David your thanks to the Gossels for their generous support of the schools over such a long period and thanking you both for what seems like a really productive meeting about where we can put money to work for the students and that resonates for our benefactors. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None.
Do we need to do anything further on that? Do we need to sign anything? Do we need to, or will you just figure that out? Yeah, we'll figure that out. I think this was the step we needed. Thank you all. And then we'll write up a report at the end of the Edison. Next up is the continued review and potential vote to approve the public school's 26-27 district handbook for students and family. Bless you. Bless you.
I just want to thank whoever put the summary of changes together. I felt very grateful for this document. Whoever made those both. Yeah, tell Jen this was, I wish we'd thought of this before just saying like we want to see the red line.
Forgive my forgetting. Did we already do the staff last time? We did. We did the staff. We just hadn't seen the student updates earlier. I remembered looking at a red line. I had one question about adding the links to the individual school handbooks. At our elementary school, are they... Similar? I've only ever read my own kids. They were quite different. We've done a lot in the last year to bring them closer together. Someone made the edit to appendix 13 being a double position note. Must know that. The Julian book has two appendices, both numbered appendix 13, which is coincidentally the one we were talking about this morning. But yeah, there's two. So I think the physical restraint and then the one that we were talking about this morning are both numbered. Do we know why was the Wayland Youth and Families link removed? Yeah, I think that should be added back in if there wasn't a reason for it. The link to Wayland Youth and Family Services was removed from the counseling resources list. I can look into that. I don't remember saying it should be removed. It was probably just...
I think our, the other is the new physical restraint seclusion. There's a note here that it was originally listed as under review by the school committee in July. I thought we, I think it was, I think, yeah, we did this in July. Okay, so that should just get updated as well before it's final. Anybody have any other comments, questions, concerns, or I would entertain a motion.
That youth services link is different. That's why it was removed. Because it was broken. That's right. But we can just update it, right? Can we update it? When we know what it is. Do you have a number or do something? Yeah. Just to make it easy for people to act, you know. At least list it so that the existence. It's there. It's there. Oh, I see. And it has the phone number, too. Oh, good. Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Highland Public Schools 2026-27 District Handbook for Students and Families with noted. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Is she going to do a presentation or you're just going to talk to it? Oh, I'll just talk. So I have the goals in the folder. You know, a couple of things I think about in development goals. Number one is like the role of the superintendent. I think about it in three ways. Number one is the educational part of the role, which we talked about actually the first presentation. And then there's the leadership management part of the role, which is... Everything else around particularly people, but also its resources. And then there's the community and culture part of the role, which I see is really, really important, both the internal part of that role and the external part of the role. And I try to have goals that address each of those areas. You know, we now have with the superintendent evaluation process, they kind of force the goals. So you have to, I take like how I think about it conceptually and try to put it in the goals. And then I also connect them to district goals. I always think about, you know, for me, the professional practice goal is always about getting better as a leader. I think that's so important in the role. So I usually think about building a strong leadership team. And that involves both people we have here. It also involves hiring because every year we have. Whether we have building leadership positions open as we will this year or district leadership positions open. And then how do we support people and how do we build a culture where people want to work here that's a culture of improvement, culture of collaboration. So that's the first kind of, but it's also working with. Town officials. And what I try to do in these goals, based on your feedback of our district goals, you can see I have outcome, but I also have in italics the measurement. I want to standardize these based on your feedback so they're consistent. A second goal is around, which we were talking about earlier with the Gossels Fund, is beginning to think about the future of the Wayland Public Schools around both the portrait work. We were talking earlier about The shifting role of technology and AI and what does learning look like for the future, which we're certainly thinking about. We're going to have a meeting, actually the school committee in January, where we focus on that very topic, which we're looking forward to. I also think about the operational part of the job. We're going to have to actually update our calendar to begin to talk about Our SOI in the future of facilities, and that's really, really important work. So I think in the next month or so to kind of jump back to that and making sure that we have an excellent proposal and we really have a rich discussion about that. I also think it's about our ongoing work about planning for Wayland's financial future. That's been kind of ongoing, but we're going to have to get back to that as we know. And lastly is I always like to go around as we think about tomorrow night's meeting with the middle school, but to think about how to engage the broader community in the work. And with a range of stakeholder involvement and engagement every year, it's different. Some years we've done more around books. Last year it was around portrait of a learner, kind of different themes about where we're headed. And this year we're going to kind of do a variety of events as well. So those are the big ideas. If you have specific some of these goals you're familiar with, and I really try to tie them closely to district goals to the greatest extent possible with the first goal kind of focused on the unique aspects of my role, which I think is really, really important. Do you mind if we come back to finalize these or provide like feedback around them? Not tonight? Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. I just, um... Just like we do with the district goals, we are always open to feedback. As a matter of fact, that should be on here about being open to feedback should probably be feedback in itself. So if I'm not giving the right answer, I am not achieving like my professional practice goal. It does say finalize the language of the portraits of a learner product after receiving feedback from a range of stakeholders. We're doing that tomorrow night. Among many, so we're going to really try to build that into the work. If you want to just take a look at these and we can do it the next minute. I just haven't had a chance to really look at them. Absolutely. So I wouldn't mind. Feel free. Are you guys okay with that? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. The other thing that that made me think of is did we finalize who our superintendent evaluation, we did? It was going to be you and... I'm just thinking that maybe there should be discussion before we finalize approval of the goals in line with how we will evaluate. Yeah, we can. I mean, David's not wrong. No, I know. I was just checking it earlier today. I did follow Betsy. I actually did what I was supposed to do. I'm not always a rule follower. In this case, you have to be a rule follower. I had a totally different thing, but it didn't hit the target, so I had to go back and put them in the way you'd want them. I thought it would give you guys a chance. I didn't know if we had picked people, but now that I'm just to kind of look at it against that so that we're pretty well. And I'll share the link to you. So in the event that you guys look at it and you have feedback. I think that would be helpful to have, too. And also, feel free to change. Like, if you look at my professional practice goal, it's really your decision of how you want to assess the feedback, not mine. But I just, you know, put in what you did before, which individual feedback with those people who I work most closely with. But that's actually your decision. But I wanted to be consistent about having a measurement for each one. So that's, again, that's a proposal. And feel free to, that's kind of the committee's decision, not mine. I figured I would throw it in there. Substance-wise, I personally thought it looked really good. I also would benefit from a little more time on the outcome and measurement and some of the areas that we had feedback on last year. Sure. Okay. Thank you. So I think unless we put this on for our... Boston location meeting, which I'm not sure how that agenda is going to shake out at the moment. It may end up being the second meeting in November. I don't think that's a crazy time to set them. No. No, I don't think so. I mean, you should tell us if you think any of the measurement you proposed is, like, hard to do. I'm assuming that you've used things that are available as the school year proceeds. You took a look at this. As long as it's within striking distance of what you're looking for, I think we're good. If you want me to revise a whole thing, I would be... No, I was more just thinking about the outcomes and the measurements piece. Yeah, no, I think that's worth it. That was all. I wanted a second. No, that's fine. We'll do the second meeting in November. That's good. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Kirsteen, do you have anything to talk to on the approval of the Adolescent Health Survey Grant? I think I was just wanting to ensure that you had acceptance of the grant and the award letter. Okay.
How much was it again? The letter didn't say. It was so funny. It was like, here's your confirmation of the award. How much is it? And it referenced policy, so that's why it's important that you have that acceptance.
Is it just that one, that just one page letter? Yeah, it's the sentence in the last paragraph, I see what you're saying, Kirsteen. Commitment to implement policy. The funding is to implement policy and programmatic changes based on the Metro West at Wilson Health Survey data. Yeah, the focus of the funding would be used to fund our continued work with Jessica Teppero. Is that Jessica Teppero? Okay. Yeah. Which I know we've talked about twice, and I was like, is that this? So we should probably identify that in your acceptance of this. Right, and also call out that previously we had been leveraging funding available and sort of contributed through the community health nursing grant, different grants that they have through the state. And because we were awarded this, we do not need to leverage that anymore, or at least for this year. We don't need to. And so this makes it a little bit easier for us to be able to ensure we have the funds and that they're available. So a thank you to community health. Nurses for continuing to help us with that. If anybody has questions about Jess Tepero or the continued work and its awesome work that she does throughout the district, I would encourage you to talk to anyone over at the high school about it. Particularly Scott, Persegan, even Ronnie, you've got some insight into that. Hannah, Rubio. So Jess is great. And the Healthy Relationships Task Force. Anyway, yeah. I would encourage a motion to accept and...
Delegate use of those funds from the Adolescent Health Survey Implementation Fund to the continued work with Jessica Tepero at the high school around the 2025 Metro West Adolescent Health Survey data. In order to improve the health and well-being of our region's young people. And if anyone wants to second that, I would take it. I was going to be so moved. Okay, do we have a second? All in favor? Any opposed? None. Okay. God bless Diane when she listens to this and makes submit it. We love you, Diane.
Our own in-house Jessica, would you like to give us the quarterly update from the Education Cooperative? Absolutely. And for Prashant and our students that are here today, the Education Cooperative is a public nonprofit collaborative. There are 17 member districts in this collaborative, which Wayland is part of. And so their board meets Almost monthly and then provide quarterly updates. So periodically we will be giving these updates at school committee meetings and they have been in the past. I'm just new to this role. So the quarterly update is in your packets, but what you can see there are just a few highlights. The current enrollment at TEC is 113 students. for starting the year. They shared a little bit of the end of the year report and just a note similar to what, you know, our districts and other municipalities are facing. There was an increase in expenses due to different staffing needs to meet the needs of students there as well as just the The resourcing and the changes in how healthcare costs are across the board when we are employing larger numbers of people. But they did also share, though, that financially they finished the financial... The fiscal year in the positive. Similar to how Betsy reported on some of our extended school year programming at our last meeting, they shared that their extended school year programming included close to 90 students. And they also had about 90, I think she said 92 educators participate in various professional development opportunities over the summer. And also they reported that they received a $50,000 grant from DESE in the last quarter. So exciting, I guess, end to the fiscal year, start to the school year, and I will share the next one in a few months. We had about 12 educators take one of their classes. Oh, great. And we have our OTs and our BCBAs participate in their job lay groups. I was just at their Java Light group a couple weeks ago, and what I really appreciate about Emily and Daniel who sort of run it was that they really have used the folks. From the job-like groups to inform what they then offer for PD and what the needs are. And they're very sort of needs-focused. So, for example, they just revamped all of their 15 PDP modules. So when teachers relicense every five years, you need 15 PDPs, professional development points, in particular areas. So they have created PD to match those needs. And we purchase those so that any... Any district employee can take it for free as well. And they just launched a professional one. Yes. Which is really economically pretty good. Like $600 and you can have unlimited paraprofessionals take it. So us considering doing it for next year actually because we're already like up and running. But yeah, they do take, because I go to a job like there once a month too and they're always looking for me.
Any other questions, comments on that one, that update? That was great, Jessica. And so item B on this is continued discussion regarding Wayland High School graduation date 2027. I did have... Follow-up discussion with Allison. Well, I followed up with David, who said that he had talked to Allison, and then I talked to Allison just happenstance at a game. And so Allison did say that it's working to keep it on, to have it on Friday. And her kind of preference was to just leave it as is. And we did. Briefly discuss our meeting date, and I think our idea was to do that for Saturday, if I'm remembering correctly. Correct, same time Saturday. Yeah, just, yeah. 24 hours. So, just kind of an FYI, because I felt like we did have a lot of discussion around that. I felt pretty strongly about it, but... I feel like we should defer to our high school principal who is very involved in the entire process. And so my feeling was kind of like just defer to her and if that's what's working for them, leave it alone. But if anyone else has other feelings, so then I guess it would be to leave it. Sorry, I'm trying to pull up a calendar quickly. The 4th. It would be June 4th. For the, that would be the Friday, and then the fifth as rain day. So I guess my question is,
Is there, because I appreciated the concerns you raised, right? Just about like the time of evening, it's done. There's no like way, you know, there's this like great culminating experience and then like there's no restaurant. So, right, there's no restaurants, there's no ability to, you know, to gather. So I'm just wondering like if we could even just think through, not this year, but talking through potentially shifts in subsequent years and, you know, openness to that. I think we could certainly revisit the conversation with them. The only thing she mentioned was potentially moving it a little bit earlier, but I thought that that would make it even more difficult for people to get to. So I said there might not ever be a perfect solution. I do think starting that late, if you needed the rain date, almost Saturday to start. You said it starts at 7. Like that. So I appreciate the ease of 24 hours, but that was my only feedback, is that they're starting at 7 on a Saturday. And you don't have all the countervailing considerations of it's a workday, it's, you know, so anyway. Again, happy to leave it as his for this year, but just something to think of and you may hear if we need that rain day, that why are we starting at 7 and not 4, might be resounding feedback. Thanks for the update.
She was self-compelled considering I was the one who caused all the consternation around it, which is frequently the case. She's kind of a healthy conversation. I like to hear about it by people. But yeah, she just kind of was like, it's working, it's good, it's like, and I think it's much cooler than it was before. Right, having it later in the day, yeah. Typically, yeah. My shoes have not melted once. It's a measure of a good graduation. But think of the story you now can tell. Sorry about the shoes. Do you need to do anything to put it back on the calendar? Okay. I guess just David maybe have the communication with Diane, which she's going to watch this anyway, but just to make sure she does put it on the website. Sure. Barring any issues? I'm just giving the minutes. Sorry, I looked at the accounts payable. Kirsteen, you may not be prepared to answer this question, and if you aren't, that's fine. But something that I was looking at triggered my... Have we started the conversation with folks at Loker around the refund? We've been collecting that information. It's just curious. Okay. We received the emails multiple times. Oh, okay. I don't have anybody at local, so I wouldn't, yeah. Nor do I have anyone in instrument anymore. I was just curious. That's great. Okay. Anybody want to make a motion? Motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. I'm not trying to send a message. I move to... Enter executive session for the purposes of discussing strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the whaling custodians and food service workers with a possible vote to approve a random of agreements with those units pursuant to MGL Chapter 30A Section 21A3 and to discuss Strategy with respect to negotiations with non-union personnel pursuant to MGL Chapter 30A Section 21A2 and for the review and approval of executive session minutes pursuant to MGL Chapter 30A Section 22 for September 23rd, 2026 with the intent to approve, redact, and release said minutes. Do I have a second? Second. Maxi? Yes. Kate? Yes. Jessica? Yes. Prashant? Yes. Aaron? Yes.
Thank you. Is there a secretary today? No. It's just us, really. Oh, can I do, can I do this to you so that you can have it for the records? Thank you. We have... Do you want to take everything in order? Yeah. Okay, so the 2026 MCAS? Yes. MCAS is still with us. There have been, I only say that because after the vote a couple of years ago, there was MCAS. There have been changes, and of course there may be more assessments down the road as we think about graduation requirements. MCAS, of course, is no longer a 10th grade graduation requirement, but our students, grades 3 to 8, we still look at that data in a range of subjects. So Betsy will have kind of an overview about where we are in MCAS, how it's used, and then... In a couple of months, we're going to have a conversation about all the assessments we use, a broader discussion about assessments we use to form instruction, to measure student progress. So we're going to have a whole discussion about that, which I think will be very informative for our school committee members. So we're going to do that. I think we decided in December. Elementary. Yeah. December. I think it's the first meeting of December. I think we should share some of this information with our students because my kids say, we don't even need this to graduate anymore. Why do we have to take it? You're not the only one asking that question. When we talk about 10th grade MCAS in terms of scores, when you read about newspaper articles, there's certainly, Erin, that was alluded to. And it's not just here. It's lots of places. Yes. So we will do an overview tonight. So we'll do a little context setting about the history of FCAS. We'll look at some key points around the four different tests that are tested across the district in the four different subject areas, looking at both proficiency and growth, and our subgroup performance as well. We'll talk a little bit how that factors into our district-wide accountability. Another plug for chronic absenteeism that we'll talk about and continued progress there. And then, you know, how we think about the curricular considerations and implications from our data. So as David was saying, why on earth are we still taking MCAS given the state's vote on question two? And many of you voters, I think, were a little puzzled by that. But there was a difference between it not being a state graduation requirement and our federal mandate that began with No Child Left Behind many years ago. Subsequently, the Every Student Succeeds Act still require testing in grades three through eight and again in grades 10. Additionally, the state does still offer two different scholarships to students based on their MCAS performance, the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship, which is a merit-based scholarship that can provide up to eight semesters of tuition to students at state schools, and also the Stanley Z. Coplic Certificate of Mastery Award, which also offers fixed tuition credits. So those are a couple of reasons why our 10th graders... Still care about those tests. So, gosh, MCAS began back in 1998, which was my first year in the district. We started back then. Since then, it's taken a variety of forms. In 2015, it became computer-based for the first time. And then we had a time when we went from MCAS to PARC tests. When the state sort of made a pivot, we then went back to Next Generation MCAS in the spring of 2017. That's when the Every Student Succeeds Act came into play. The Next Generation Science Standards, and those tests changed in 2022. And then we changed the testing provider. So Pearson was the provider for many years. They switched to Cognia last year. And last year also the eighth grade civics test began. It is important to note that next year, this current school year, but 2027, there will be a change in the science model test. So it's moving to... Rather than the structure it's been in, which is sort of a series of multiple choice questions, short answer questions and a longer answer questions, instead it will be six performance tasks. So it's a very different structure. Five of the tasks will be scored towards students' scores and the other one will be field testing questions to use in subsequent years. The task design will be a storyline format related to different scientific phenomena. There'll be an interactive simulation in each of those, and students are going to be asked to make observation, collect data, and then there'll be some selected response items connected to that. So it's a big change. They piloted it last year, and it will be in play this coming year. That's a little bit what's coming. So kind of at the 30,000-foot view of MCAS, it is probably notable to note that scores across the state dipped and slightly in Wayland as well. That said, all of our Wayland schools still met our performance benchmarks, and we remain a level one district, which means we're not requiring any assistance from the state or guidance. There were improvements in specific grades. So, for example, last year's or the 2025 fifth graders compared to the 2026 graders, there was an increase in score. Same in seventh grade. That was true in math in five and seven. In grades five in science, you can see that fifth grade cohort is a strong cohort. Additionally noteworthy, there's a cohort improvement. So last year's fifth graders, when they moved to sixth grade, their scores increased. Same in seventh, same in eighth. And for math, it was fourth, sixth, and eighth. From a high level, we noted we earned, again, four out of four points towards our chronic absenteeism, which was a real change from a couple of years ago. And we really just want to appreciate families' help with this. We know that's a partnership around getting students to school every day. And it's important to note that we continue to have performance in subgroup disparities for particular groups. Can you just repeat? So the ELA grades 5 and 7. That's this year's 5 and 7 or last year's 5 and 7? So the 2025 5th graders compared to the 2026 5th graders, there's an improvement in scoring. You'll see it in another. So it's a different. Different cohort. It's a different group. And then you can see a cohort improvement. Yeah, okay. And that's the cohort improvement is this year's 6, 7, 8? 6 to 7, the 7 to 8. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Yes, and we'll look at that in a little more depth. So here's taking a bird's eye look at just grades three through eight, and what you'll see in the bold are the Wayland scores, and in the parentheses are the statewide scores. So our MCAS scores are fairly flat in grades three through eight, you know, 72, 71, 73, 71 percent, and you can see the... It mirrored the changes across the state, too, with the increases and the decreases. Our grade 10, we noted this was the first year that the students do not need to pass the MCAS for graduation requirement. There was a significant decline both in Wayland and across the state. The math scores are also there as well in elementary. Did you see a decline in the participation rate in 10th grade? There were fewer students who took the test, yes. And there were fewer students in the district, too, so I haven't done the proportional, but I could check on that for you. Our participation rate was still strong enough to get participation points, if that matters, when it comes to the accountability. In science, technology, and engineering, you can see our scores. It was a slight dip in grades 5 through 8 and 10 mirrored, mirroring the state changes. And civics was pretty flat as well, although very strong relative to this. So here is a table for those of you who are new. This kind of looks at cohorts over time. So you can sort of see that the shade of the color is the shade of the cohort. And you'll notice that in the 10th, you can see there's a difference between 8th and 10th grade that it doesn't follow the diagonal exactly because the year's about one. Erin, your question about the fifth grade to fifth grade, if you look at the fifth grade ELA scores, 65% of students were meeting or exceeding expectations in 2025 and 69% in 2026. So you can sort of see that change from year to year. You can see that fifth grade cohort went from 65 also to 69 if you look in the diagonal. And that sixth to seventh grade cohort went from 70 to 75%. So that's the ELA Longview Performance. We have a similar one for math, kind of tracing cohorts over time. And that's with the knowledge that different classes took different things based on when we had COVID and things like that. So if you look in the upper left-hand corner, you'll see third graders, in 2018, 76% of them were meeting or exceeding expectations. So there are four categories for MCAS, and you want to be meeting or exceeding expectations as opposed to not. And so they're tracked over time, I should just go row by row? So if you go across the row, you'll see third grade classes compared to other third grade classes. If you go diagonally, you'll see the third grade, then they went to fourth grade in 2019, it was canceled in 2020, then they went to the light blue, the pandemic year. So the blue diagonal tracks their improvement. Yes, that's the diagonal, yes. It is a definite reader tester there. We'll give you a performance-based task, don't worry. So this is our open architect interface. Those of you who've been at the table have seen this before. This gives us lots of different data, and we can cut it in many different ways. What you see here is sort of those four different performance bands visually over different years. So the very top is sort of exceeding expectations. Then meeting expectations, so you want to be above that meeting line is the goal. Then you have partially meeting is in the light gray, and then not yet meeting is the reddish color. And you can see the different strands as well, sort of our numbers and operations strands, our operations and algebraic thinking. And they're pretty, there's not a huge variance there. And then you can see the difference by grades. If you go to the next slide, you'll see the, did you already show ELA? You skipped ELA. Oh, there it was. I didn't move on. Sorry, I didn't take it all in. So you can sort of see, again, the percentage of students. You can also see the SGP, that stands for the Student Growth Percentile. So what that does is it looks at students who scored a particular score. So we'll take all the students in the state that they get a 500 one year. If they look at those, how did they then grow the following year compared to all those other same students who had a 500? And that's how they calculate the student growth percentage. An SGP of 1 to 40 is sort of a low growth. 41% up to 59% is moderate growth and then above. 60% is high growth. So we looked at the ELA and the math. The science, you will not see the growth because they do not test year to year. They test in fifth grade and then eighth grade and then either ninth or tenth, depending on which MCAS they take, whether it's the biology or the physics. And here is our civics. Again, this is only the second year that that test has been given. So this is a breakdown of all of our students when we break it down by race. You can see the number of students, what are the percentages that are meeting or exceeding expectations, what was the average score. So a passing score is 500 or above. And then you can see the median student growth percentile for each group. It's important to note that That, you know, the higher the year end, the number of students taking the test, the less a particular student score impacts the mean. So when you have a much smaller group, you'll see a much greater variance from year to year. And those are the science and the civics percentiles as well by race. Are we seeing that gap close at all? Depends on in particular year, you know, some years you'll see it creep up and then some years it will change. I would say that's the answer to your question statewide since COVID. It's actually increased. No, I know. I just we've talked about it here in our town in particular and our district in particular. And so I'm just curious if we're seeing any closer longitudinally. And again, those numbers are like 11. You shouldn't even be showing those numbers. We do just so that you can get a sense, but they're not statistically under 40. You don't want to typically show. This is a scattergram of our, so this is looking at students with disabilities. You can see the scattergram sort of shows a plotting of each student on an IEP, their scaled score. So from 440 to 560, which is the highest you can get in an MCAS, compared to their SGP. So that's just a little scatter plot there. You can see the bar graph giving your distribution of students as well. So the percentage that we're meeting or exceeding is 35%. Can I say that back on ELA? On ELA. This is for ELA. So on ELA, students on IEP. Are meeting or exceeding in the mid-30s compared to the population overall, which is in the high 70s? Which also includes those students in it. Got it. Yes. And that number of same questions. Skewing better, skewing better. There was a little down for this year. Interestingly, though, like students, once students are successful enough, they are no longer on IEP, so that population is always... Changing, you had a number of students who came off IEPs in a given year. And you can see there's, from this grant, there's a lot of students who did have high growth. Some had low growth in low scores. There's a scattergram across there. And here is the math version. And we have 40% remaining or exceeding, achieving. And then... You don't have the same, again, because of the growth, you don't plot it in quite the same way, but 46%, is that 46%, I think? I test her as well. 40%. And then, yes, a larger percentage in civics. That's only one grade, just eighth grade takes that. Here's our official accountability report. So the accountability report is a report that it's a it's like a recipe and the ingredients are MCAS achievement and the SGP as well with a three to one ratio. Also high school completion rates, EL proficiency and chronic absenteeism and also the number of students taking at least one advanced course and then you get particular points for those. It's weighted, it looks at two years, so you're looking at 2025 and 2026 numbers at a 60% to 40% ratio that factors into the growth. So we are, and on that as a district we were meeting exceeding all of our targets that they had created for us. If you go to the next page, so here is the... Kind of what the recipe looks like, how many points you can earn in each of the categories compared to the total possible points. We wanted to, as I mentioned, to shout out to families. Two years ago, we had zero out of four points for our chronic absenteeism. So that continues to be incredibly helpful for... A for a test, and again, this is one test on one day, well, it's two days, two days per subject area. It's also a test, I didn't mention this at the beginning, I should have, it's a test that is very different in its... In the way in which students take it, teachers have to read from a very standard script. You can't give any, like, have you done this section yet? You can't ask any questions. It's just to the script. So it's a very sort of artificial experience in many ways. By 10th grade, kids have done it many times, but it's really new for our third graders. All right. Does the advanced coursework completion factor, does that mean that they... Took an AP class and passed the AP test? Honors and AP classes count as advanced. Just that someone took it and passed it? Is that what? That they completed the class and they get a passing grade, yes. Okay. If you go to, so here's just a little bit more detail about our chronic absenteeism, and our rates have improved, not just last year, but this year as well, so 96%. Attendance rate on any given day. The average number of absences went down to 7.2 per student and only 5.8% of chronic absenteeism rates. So huge improvements from 2024. And all of our subgroups from our Student Opportunity Act plan, which is our subgroups who were furthest from sort of the mean, have also improved significantly.
So what we do every year after MCAS is our curriculum coaches, our curriculum leaders all do an analysis of the curriculum. areas and kind of look at what particular areas we might want to focus on. We think about and we're looking at how do we continue to teach the curriculum with fidelity, our new HQAMs, CKLA, which is brand new this year, and Bridges, which is in year four for us. It's the second year of the third edition, our fourth year overall. So this year we'll really work to collect some baseline data and some of our PD has been focused on where are scaffolds important and how do we fade supports when they're no longer needed. I think one of the things... One of the areas that I think we're really looking at is how do we reduce the scaffolds when you don't need them anymore? I think we've, like many, many districts, you know, I remember when I was teaching, like, what's good for one is good for all. It turns out that is not necessarily true. If you don't need the scaffolding, how do we remove it when it's no longer needed? So that's been a real focus. of our PA day a few weeks ago. At Bridges, we're really thinking about the expanded intervention opportunities that we have and continue with our Tier 2 practice works. We'll be looking to implement some of the suggestions from the high school's MTSS group that met last year to do their assessment. As well as we need to assess our readiness for new graduation requirements is another part of our work this year. Continue with the culture responsive teaching training that's an ongoing work. We know that kids who feel a strong sense of belonging and a strong sense of a belief in their ability to do hard things perform the best. We will continue with our attendance teams. We just had our first district-wide meeting. We were able to celebrate some of our wins and data, which was nice. And that continues to be an important group. And I think really, you know, we look at our MCAS data. It is important data, but it's important to triangulate that data. What does the day-to-day classroom performance look like? What do our common assessments works look like? What do our... Universal screeners and then our progress monitoring along those look like across all of our areas. That is just a quick overview. Happy to answer any questions. Just to give you a general sense of where we are from an M-CAS perspective. In many ways, a very different sort of feeling of a test to take. It is probably the most public and the one that can be compared to the most, you know, give you the greatest sense of comparison across the state, whereas our common assessments we can use to compare to, you know, across classrooms and with other districts who may be using the same assessments, but this is one that we have the statewide data for. Adam's question. The kids' investment in taking them. Yeah, I think it is a tricky one. So we really try to encourage kids to take it seriously. And if it's not an area where they're feeling as confident, like the incentive, I think, to take it as seriously as we might want them to is not as great. And, you know, we also, what... We need to ensure that they're building their skills in this age of AI and other areas. We're having an ELA professional offering an institute that Peter Galaus is setting up around. For teachers of English in the area around teaching English in the age of AI, we have an expert coming in to talk with the group and really, really thinking about we want kids, you know, reading and writing are so important and we don't want kids offloading that cognitive work and the cognitive load because it's really easy to just type a book. I guess one of my questions is...
I used to hear a lot of kind of anecdotal feedback from different people, like kids, teachers, parents, whoever, of having to teach to the MCAS. Now it's not a requirement to graduate that you pass it, but... It's still a measurement of success and a measurement of a lot of different things for our district and our students, etc. So I guess have we been able to kind of align our curriculum and the standards and do they really align with the content that they're testing on the MCAS so that You might have to teach them kind of how to take the test, but that you're not teaching different content or having to reassess where you're at within the year to like change. Right. So I know certainly teachers might, like the week before, you might do a little test-taking strategies kind of work. You'll want to practice with some of the tools that are in, because they're taken on computers too, so you have particular tools that you can use too. Expand the size of text to how do you write the fractions in using these kind of practice with the different tools that are online. But I wouldn't say there's not a focus on stopping to teach to the test. You might do a few MCAS reviews. Or for homework or an in-class assignment, but there's not a ton of teaching to the testing. I don't know where this is going. It's interesting because, you know, you brought up the issue of preparing for MCAS by getting comfortable on the computer. And now we're facing this countervailing pressure of, like, should we be learning cursive in where this is headed? It's a very complicated time around this because... We want the kids, you have to kind of do well in the MCAS, but we're like, why are they in the technology? And, you know, high school kids we now see, you know, right in the old-fashioned way. So it's unclear where this is going. And MCAS is going to, supposedly, in the new graduation requirements, they're going to end the use of MCAS and replace them with EOCs and, of course, assessments that are going to be given at... Supposedly a time in which it will still become a factor into a student's grade overall. Which really speaks to the fact that your curriculum needs to align with how they're going to test against the standards, right? Yeah, and our curriculum, you know, our curriculum is designed to align around the state frameworks in general. And like you saw, one of the high school goals is working on curriculum mapping. It's a component of it. And also thinking about that in light of our portraits of the learner and how do the goals sort of map against both things. I think then we need to think about how we track the data. I'm looking at the long view table. I love the long view table because you can look at the grade over time, but you can look at the cohort over time. And if we're not using this metric to track, how are we? And, you know, I'm looking at the ELA performance right now. I'm really excited about CKLA because you can see there are improvements. There are great opportunities for growth in ELA. And if you go to the math performance over time, you can see where bridges came. And you could see it's changing in those years that some cohorts better than others because every cohort is very different. But I'm curious, you know, how do we keep this data? Yeah, you know, I think it's a great question, and we're already looking at the new data with the, I was just sitting with Sarah Sontag the other day, and we were looking at some of our Unit 1 assessment data, and like already there's very exciting signs around vocabulary, like the vocabulary piece is huge that we're seeing right off the bat, and that was an area where we were not particularly strong in before, so, and there'll be... Pros and cons, right? Like as we look at some of our bridges things, we've seen an increase in conceptual understanding and... As you know, we're looking for minutes, and we do 50 instead of 60 a day in our core. And are we getting enough time for some of the workplaces and where they're practicing that fluency? So we're doing some deep dive analyses around those because we want to, you know, you need both. You need to have that fluency in order to... Not take up your working memory with those kind of things so that you can engage in more rigorous problem solving. So looking at all those pieces and doing some deep dive analyses and prioritizing when do you want more cumulative practice and retention to ensure that you're doing those pieces. And as you know, bridges really spiral. So you introduce something and then you pick it up later and then you pick it up later and when they're at the point of where they should be mastering it. Are they? And I think the coaches and teachers have gotten stronger over time at really identifying which skill sets they need to intervene around based on the data. So really using, this is one, MCAS is one sort of source of data, but really looking at our Bridges assessments and our, what will be our CKLA and Camino's assessments as well. We're getting very close to being in a year where all of our K-5 have had bridges, right? So that's a big turning point that you can look at that data and say, oh, this is really interesting. So I'm looking forward to having the same with CK. Yeah, and I know our middle school folks are talking to our elementary school folks, and they visited back and forth, which has been helpful. What year did they switch to computer? Computer testing was 2015. Okay. I was questioning if it was closer to COVID because we really haven't gotten even close to back up to where we were on the ELA pre-COVID, so I was, well. So I was curious if it was closer to like 18, 19. Yes. There was a note, I went to an accountability webinar, and they talked a lot about how it's important not to compare certain years, like 2026 should not be compared with 2012 to 2017 because of the way they were doing accountability was different then. So, you know, every time you tweak and change something, you're doing it to make... Things better. You're also comparing different apples and oranges then, too, right? Like next, when they went to the next-gen science versions, that was very different from the previous ones, and then this new test will also be different from that. Yeah. Anybody else? Thank you. Thank you. And we'll talk more about, you know, other kinds of assessment, internal assessment in December, because that'll tie in nicely to this work. All right. Next, we shared a memo. I guess it was about six weeks ago, Betsy, you and I met with Elaine and Warner Gossels, longtime Wayland residents. And in 1990, they started a fund for academic excellence. And we had a really good discussion with them because the district hasn't used the fund in a while. And this is a long-term fund. And we thought there was an excellent opportunity to expand opportunities for our students. And in talking to the Gossels, They had several areas that they were really interested in. For example, science. And if you look at part of this proposal at the elementary level, we've talked about wanting to expand opportunities for our students in science, having a science in residence for all fifth grade classes as they think about innovative science projects and STEM projects, as well as starting an after-school science club using this. Funding as part of the bylaws of the scholarships fund, the school committee has to approve the proposals, which is why we're bringing them to you tonight. Another area that they were really interested in was really preserving our democracy and having active students. And schools. And when we think about that, we think of WSPN. As a matter of fact, we have reporters right here. And so we thought, you know, at a time we really need independent journalism, beginning with high school students. There's some fun for additional technology for our students, WSPN. We also thought about our middle school students. We were there earlier today, and we know middle school students have lots of opinions about lots of things. Some of you know that firsthand in our experience right now. And so the middle school, they're interested in starting a student council and having an advisor and being active in the school, and that really fits within the mission of the fund, as does the arts and supporting a choral program. At the middle school, which we're excited about in terms of facilities. And we will have other ideas down the road. We should talk about high school, one of my favorite classes. You know I like high school sports broadcasting. But we know, again, it's students performing, creating a story about the award state. White Volleyball Boys Champions, but it really teaches kids skills and communication through that class, which is expanded. It started with one class and now has three. It's an expensive class to run in terms of equipment. And then we think of our portraits of a learner work. Tomorrow night, I'll be at a middle school PTO meeting with Courtney Rowley, and part of that is going to be getting feedback on our dispositions, but it's to expand this work. So we'll be ready to begin to think about operationalizing the portraits of Lerner in the next school year. And that really fits in with their goal about thinking of the future of the district. And that's something that they were really interested in as well. And we'll get other ideas in the spring, but we thought these were like themes that connect to our district goals and what we want for our students. And we're grateful to the Gossels family for their support.
Anything else they didn't say? Can you hit on the key points? So we're just looking for a motion and a loop. Have you already kind of vetted the pricing on this, that it's in line with what we would need to fund these? Yes. If you had looked at this this morning, you would have seen that it was a little bit less because we were going by last year's prices for the computers, and Jen was able to get an actual quote, so it went up. $1,500 since this morning, so. Okay. I wish it, like this, you know, to have the scientists and residents come in and all that. I just was curious. Yes, that price is for sure. Okay. And that's something that we could continue on next year, so we love it and we get really attached to it. So we would need to think about the operating budget, whether or not. This is something that happened here, like in the early 90s, there was a scientist in residence? Great idea. Yeah. Yeah. The teachers who came with the proposal were very excited about it, particularly because, you know, there are fifth grade teachers teaching fifth grade, but there's key third and fourth grade standards that come up in MCAS, and how do we revisit those in meaningful ways that make connections to their new learning as well. And, you know, when you heard the scheduling group last year talk about more opportunities in science, this kind of fits in what we've been talking about.
And we can fit it in scheduling-wise. These lessons would be during their science lesson time. Okay, so it would replace like a lesson five times a year. Was it five times a year? Four times a year. We worked with the fifth grade teachers about which particular topics would it like. Weathering and erosion was one that came up and some circuits work. I have no idea what the price point would be, but would there be Would this be something that could potentially support a trial like afternoon orchestra instrumental lessons for fourth and fifth graders? And this is not meant to be controversial, genuinely, like, would that be something that, because I also anticipate the question may be raised from. Right. I mean, I would say when they're recurring, you know, most of what we're starting, a lot of this is one time in terms of materials to use money that's not recurring for ongoing costs. That's usually the challenge with something like this. You all probably know that from the foundation as well. I know that comes up as well, Betsy. Betsy's. That's a discussion you're familiar with. And that's where I think the scientist in residence question comes from, too. Will we be able to sustain it? The middle school student council, that would be like a stipend that would need to be staying in. It's low, and again, that I'm just... Part of this is a pilot, though. We want to pilot some things, like the middle school is a good example, and that's something we would have to bring into the budget, but it's something that there's energy around. And there hasn't been a school council there for many, many. Yep. I'm also probably the annoying person, but 10 Macbooks. I'm asking this question because we made the push for students to be on the Chromebooks. But is there a specific reason? Is there programming that's on the... We have students who can answer that. I know a little bit about this because I'm a journalism junkie, but you guys can go ahead. There's specific software that we use in terms of uploading photos and stuff like that that isn't accessible on the Chromebooks and you need a MacBook for it. We use iMovie and stuff like that that just aren't applications on the Chromebooks, but where last year only had MacBooks. Okay, so these will be available for the journalism specifically? Yes, that's what it's for. Leveraging for that, okay. Interesting, anticipating questions, right? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm glad, you know, we always go to students, can always answer better than we can. They've been very helpful, we will say. Yes. Anybody else have any other? Yeah, I got like a basic question. How are these activities matched with elementary, middle, and high school scientists and residents for the elementary school? Is there a logic to that? A lot of it came from conversations with teachers and curriculum leaders, sort of what were the needs that they were seeing within there. You know, I would say also to match the priorities of the Gossels family. You know, we talked a lot about kind of preserving democracy, and that was something I think they raised first. Civics education. When I think of preserving democracy, I think of student journalists. I think of having at the middle school a student council where they can actually practice what they learn in civics at the local level in the school. So I think it was matching their priorities with some of our needs and interests in the district.
I will move to approve the recommended expenditure from the Gossels Fund and just also echo David your thanks to the Gossels for their generous support of the schools over such a long period and thanking you both for what seems like a really productive meeting about where we can put money to work for the students and that resonates for our benefactors. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None.
Do we need to do anything further on that? Do we need to sign anything? Do we need to, or will you just figure that out? Yeah, we'll figure that out. I think this was the step we needed. Thank you all. And then we'll write up a report at the end of the Edison. Next up is the continued review and potential vote to approve the public school's 26-27 district handbook for students and family. Bless you. Bless you.
I just want to thank whoever put the summary of changes together. I felt very grateful for this document. Whoever made those both. Yeah, tell Jen this was, I wish we'd thought of this before just saying like we want to see the red line.
Forgive my forgetting. Did we already do the staff last time? We did. We did the staff. We just hadn't seen the student updates earlier. I remembered looking at a red line. I had one question about adding the links to the individual school handbooks. At our elementary school, are they... Similar? I've only ever read my own kids. They were quite different. We've done a lot in the last year to bring them closer together. Someone made the edit to appendix 13 being a double position note. Must know that. The Julian book has two appendices, both numbered appendix 13, which is coincidentally the one we were talking about this morning. But yeah, there's two. So I think the physical restraint and then the one that we were talking about this morning are both numbered. Do we know why was the Wayland Youth and Families link removed? Yeah, I think that should be added back in if there wasn't a reason for it. The link to Wayland Youth and Family Services was removed from the counseling resources list. I can look into that. I don't remember saying it should be removed. It was probably just...
I think our, the other is the new physical restraint seclusion. There's a note here that it was originally listed as under review by the school committee in July. I thought we, I think it was, I think, yeah, we did this in July. Okay, so that should just get updated as well before it's final. Anybody have any other comments, questions, concerns, or I would entertain a motion.
That youth services link is different. That's why it was removed. Because it was broken. That's right. But we can just update it, right? Can we update it? When we know what it is. Do you have a number or do something? Yeah. Just to make it easy for people to act, you know. At least list it so that the existence. It's there. It's there. Oh, I see. And it has the phone number, too. Oh, good. Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Highland Public Schools 2026-27 District Handbook for Students and Families with noted. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Is she going to do a presentation or you're just going to talk to it? Oh, I'll just talk. So I have the goals in the folder. You know, a couple of things I think about in development goals. Number one is like the role of the superintendent. I think about it in three ways. Number one is the educational part of the role, which we talked about actually the first presentation. And then there's the leadership management part of the role, which is... Everything else around particularly people, but also its resources. And then there's the community and culture part of the role, which I see is really, really important, both the internal part of that role and the external part of the role. And I try to have goals that address each of those areas. You know, we now have with the superintendent evaluation process, they kind of force the goals. So you have to, I take like how I think about it conceptually and try to put it in the goals. And then I also connect them to district goals. I always think about, you know, for me, the professional practice goal is always about getting better as a leader. I think that's so important in the role. So I usually think about building a strong leadership team. And that involves both people we have here. It also involves hiring because every year we have. Whether we have building leadership positions open as we will this year or district leadership positions open. And then how do we support people and how do we build a culture where people want to work here that's a culture of improvement, culture of collaboration. So that's the first kind of, but it's also working with. Town officials. And what I try to do in these goals, based on your feedback of our district goals, you can see I have outcome, but I also have in italics the measurement. I want to standardize these based on your feedback so they're consistent. A second goal is around, which we were talking about earlier with the Gossels Fund, is beginning to think about the future of the Wayland Public Schools around both the portrait work. We were talking earlier about The shifting role of technology and AI and what does learning look like for the future, which we're certainly thinking about. We're going to have a meeting, actually the school committee in January, where we focus on that very topic, which we're looking forward to. I also think about the operational part of the job. We're going to have to actually update our calendar to begin to talk about Our SOI in the future of facilities, and that's really, really important work. So I think in the next month or so to kind of jump back to that and making sure that we have an excellent proposal and we really have a rich discussion about that. I also think it's about our ongoing work about planning for Wayland's financial future. That's been kind of ongoing, but we're going to have to get back to that as we know. And lastly is I always like to go around as we think about tomorrow night's meeting with the middle school, but to think about how to engage the broader community in the work. And with a range of stakeholder involvement and engagement every year, it's different. Some years we've done more around books. Last year it was around portrait of a learner, kind of different themes about where we're headed. And this year we're going to kind of do a variety of events as well. So those are the big ideas. If you have specific some of these goals you're familiar with, and I really try to tie them closely to district goals to the greatest extent possible with the first goal kind of focused on the unique aspects of my role, which I think is really, really important. Do you mind if we come back to finalize these or provide like feedback around them? Not tonight? Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. I just, um... Just like we do with the district goals, we are always open to feedback. As a matter of fact, that should be on here about being open to feedback should probably be feedback in itself. So if I'm not giving the right answer, I am not achieving like my professional practice goal. It does say finalize the language of the portraits of a learner product after receiving feedback from a range of stakeholders. We're doing that tomorrow night. Among many, so we're going to really try to build that into the work. If you want to just take a look at these and we can do it the next minute. I just haven't had a chance to really look at them. Absolutely. So I wouldn't mind. Feel free. Are you guys okay with that? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. The other thing that that made me think of is did we finalize who our superintendent evaluation, we did? It was going to be you and... I'm just thinking that maybe there should be discussion before we finalize approval of the goals in line with how we will evaluate. Yeah, we can. I mean, David's not wrong. No, I know. I was just checking it earlier today. I did follow Betsy. I actually did what I was supposed to do. I'm not always a rule follower. In this case, you have to be a rule follower. I had a totally different thing, but it didn't hit the target, so I had to go back and put them in the way you'd want them. I thought it would give you guys a chance. I didn't know if we had picked people, but now that I'm just to kind of look at it against that so that we're pretty well. And I'll share the link to you. So in the event that you guys look at it and you have feedback. I think that would be helpful to have, too. And also, feel free to change. Like, if you look at my professional practice goal, it's really your decision of how you want to assess the feedback, not mine. But I just, you know, put in what you did before, which individual feedback with those people who I work most closely with. But that's actually your decision. But I wanted to be consistent about having a measurement for each one. So that's, again, that's a proposal. And feel free to, that's kind of the committee's decision, not mine. I figured I would throw it in there. Substance-wise, I personally thought it looked really good. I also would benefit from a little more time on the outcome and measurement and some of the areas that we had feedback on last year. Sure. Okay. Thank you. So I think unless we put this on for our... Boston location meeting, which I'm not sure how that agenda is going to shake out at the moment. It may end up being the second meeting in November. I don't think that's a crazy time to set them. No. No, I don't think so. I mean, you should tell us if you think any of the measurement you proposed is, like, hard to do. I'm assuming that you've used things that are available as the school year proceeds. You took a look at this. As long as it's within striking distance of what you're looking for, I think we're good. If you want me to revise a whole thing, I would be... No, I was more just thinking about the outcomes and the measurements piece. Yeah, no, I think that's worth it. That was all. I wanted a second. No, that's fine. We'll do the second meeting in November. That's good. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Kirsteen, do you have anything to talk to on the approval of the Adolescent Health Survey Grant? I think I was just wanting to ensure that you had acceptance of the grant and the award letter. Okay.
How much was it again? The letter didn't say. It was so funny. It was like, here's your confirmation of the award. How much is it? And it referenced policy, so that's why it's important that you have that acceptance.
Is it just that one, that just one page letter? Yeah, it's the sentence in the last paragraph, I see what you're saying, Kirsteen. Commitment to implement policy. The funding is to implement policy and programmatic changes based on the Metro West at Wilson Health Survey data. Yeah, the focus of the funding would be used to fund our continued work with Jessica Teppero. Is that Jessica Teppero? Okay. Yeah. Which I know we've talked about twice, and I was like, is that this? So we should probably identify that in your acceptance of this. Right, and also call out that previously we had been leveraging funding available and sort of contributed through the community health nursing grant, different grants that they have through the state. And because we were awarded this, we do not need to leverage that anymore, or at least for this year. We don't need to. And so this makes it a little bit easier for us to be able to ensure we have the funds and that they're available. So a thank you to community health. Nurses for continuing to help us with that. If anybody has questions about Jess Tepero or the continued work and its awesome work that she does throughout the district, I would encourage you to talk to anyone over at the high school about it. Particularly Scott, Persegan, even Ronnie, you've got some insight into that. Hannah, Rubio. So Jess is great. And the Healthy Relationships Task Force. Anyway, yeah. I would encourage a motion to accept and...
Delegate use of those funds from the Adolescent Health Survey Implementation Fund to the continued work with Jessica Tepero at the high school around the 2025 Metro West Adolescent Health Survey data. In order to improve the health and well-being of our region's young people. And if anyone wants to second that, I would take it. I was going to be so moved. Okay, do we have a second? All in favor? Any opposed? None. Okay. God bless Diane when she listens to this and makes submit it. We love you, Diane.
Our own in-house Jessica, would you like to give us the quarterly update from the Education Cooperative? Absolutely. And for Prashant and our students that are here today, the Education Cooperative is a public nonprofit collaborative. There are 17 member districts in this collaborative, which Wayland is part of. And so their board meets Almost monthly and then provide quarterly updates. So periodically we will be giving these updates at school committee meetings and they have been in the past. I'm just new to this role. So the quarterly update is in your packets, but what you can see there are just a few highlights. The current enrollment at TEC is 113 students. for starting the year. They shared a little bit of the end of the year report and just a note similar to what, you know, our districts and other municipalities are facing. There was an increase in expenses due to different staffing needs to meet the needs of students there as well as just the The resourcing and the changes in how healthcare costs are across the board when we are employing larger numbers of people. But they did also share, though, that financially they finished the financial... The fiscal year in the positive. Similar to how Betsy reported on some of our extended school year programming at our last meeting, they shared that their extended school year programming included close to 90 students. And they also had about 90, I think she said 92 educators participate in various professional development opportunities over the summer. And also they reported that they received a $50,000 grant from DESE in the last quarter. So exciting, I guess, end to the fiscal year, start to the school year, and I will share the next one in a few months. We had about 12 educators take one of their classes. Oh, great. And we have our OTs and our BCBAs participate in their job lay groups. I was just at their Java Light group a couple weeks ago, and what I really appreciate about Emily and Daniel who sort of run it was that they really have used the folks. From the job-like groups to inform what they then offer for PD and what the needs are. And they're very sort of needs-focused. So, for example, they just revamped all of their 15 PDP modules. So when teachers relicense every five years, you need 15 PDPs, professional development points, in particular areas. So they have created PD to match those needs. And we purchase those so that any... Any district employee can take it for free as well. And they just launched a professional one. Yes. Which is really economically pretty good. Like $600 and you can have unlimited paraprofessionals take it. So us considering doing it for next year actually because we're already like up and running. But yeah, they do take, because I go to a job like there once a month too and they're always looking for me.
Any other questions, comments on that one, that update? That was great, Jessica. And so item B on this is continued discussion regarding Wayland High School graduation date 2027. I did have... Follow-up discussion with Allison. Well, I followed up with David, who said that he had talked to Allison, and then I talked to Allison just happenstance at a game. And so Allison did say that it's working to keep it on, to have it on Friday. And her kind of preference was to just leave it as is. And we did. Briefly discuss our meeting date, and I think our idea was to do that for Saturday, if I'm remembering correctly. Correct, same time Saturday. Yeah, just, yeah. 24 hours. So, just kind of an FYI, because I felt like we did have a lot of discussion around that. I felt pretty strongly about it, but... I feel like we should defer to our high school principal who is very involved in the entire process. And so my feeling was kind of like just defer to her and if that's what's working for them, leave it alone. But if anyone else has other feelings, so then I guess it would be to leave it. Sorry, I'm trying to pull up a calendar quickly. The 4th. It would be June 4th. For the, that would be the Friday, and then the fifth as rain day. So I guess my question is,
Is there, because I appreciated the concerns you raised, right? Just about like the time of evening, it's done. There's no like way, you know, there's this like great culminating experience and then like there's no restaurant. So, right, there's no restaurants, there's no ability to, you know, to gather. So I'm just wondering like if we could even just think through, not this year, but talking through potentially shifts in subsequent years and, you know, openness to that. I think we could certainly revisit the conversation with them. The only thing she mentioned was potentially moving it a little bit earlier, but I thought that that would make it even more difficult for people to get to. So I said there might not ever be a perfect solution. I do think starting that late, if you needed the rain date, almost Saturday to start. You said it starts at 7. Like that. So I appreciate the ease of 24 hours, but that was my only feedback, is that they're starting at 7 on a Saturday. And you don't have all the countervailing considerations of it's a workday, it's, you know, so anyway. Again, happy to leave it as his for this year, but just something to think of and you may hear if we need that rain day, that why are we starting at 7 and not 4, might be resounding feedback. Thanks for the update.
She was self-compelled considering I was the one who caused all the consternation around it, which is frequently the case. She's kind of a healthy conversation. I like to hear about it by people. But yeah, she just kind of was like, it's working, it's good, it's like, and I think it's much cooler than it was before. Right, having it later in the day, yeah. Typically, yeah. My shoes have not melted once. It's a measure of a good graduation. But think of the story you now can tell. Sorry about the shoes. Do you need to do anything to put it back on the calendar? Okay. I guess just David maybe have the communication with Diane, which she's going to watch this anyway, but just to make sure she does put it on the website. Sure. Barring any issues? I'm just giving the minutes. Sorry, I looked at the accounts payable. Kirsteen, you may not be prepared to answer this question, and if you aren't, that's fine. But something that I was looking at triggered my... Have we started the conversation with folks at Loker around the refund? We've been collecting that information. It's just curious. Okay. We received the emails multiple times. Oh, okay. I don't have anybody at local, so I wouldn't, yeah. Nor do I have anyone in instrument anymore. I was just curious. That's great. Okay. Anybody want to make a motion? Motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. I'm not trying to send a message. I move to... Enter executive session for the purposes of discussing strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the whaling custodians and food service workers with a possible vote to approve a random of agreements with those units pursuant to MGL Chapter 30A Section 21A3 and to discuss Strategy with respect to negotiations with non-union personnel pursuant to MGL Chapter 30A Section 21A2 and for the review and approval of executive session minutes pursuant to MGL Chapter 30A Section 22 for September 23rd, 2026 with the intent to approve, redact, and release said minutes. Do I have a second? Second. Maxi? Yes. Kate? Yes. Jessica? Yes. Prashant? Yes. Aaron? Yes.