We just met for a little while in an executive session, so thank you all for coming. Before I get started tonight, I just wanted to ask your pass for your indulgence here on a brief moment of silence for the Commonwealth's late Governor, Paul Solucci, who was a memorial to him today in the statehouse, and I'd like to just ask for a moment of silence for Governor Solucci. Thank you. To go over the agenda tonight, we'll have public participation. We'll have an update on school safety from our superintendent. We'll have a presentation on district-determined measures and common core alignment. Our assistant superintendent and department heads, approval of the school calendar for next year, the approval of the job description. Go to approve our district goals for next year, the superintendent's report update on our Thompson Rebuild project, monthly financial report, subcommittee reports, our consent agenda followed by secretary's report, and if necessary, and I believe it may well be, entertain a motion to enter executive session once again. So, not sure. I didn't see the list. Is there any public participation? None. Okay. We'll move on to update on school safety. Dr. Bode. There was a request to just have an end of the year report on how we've been doing with securing the buildings. Though I will say the school safety and security also extends to the types of practice and drills that we do so that students and staff are both ready in the case of an emergency. And I will say with this, that particular issue, we have met all of our goals with respect to fire drills and lockdown procedures at every school. And Ellen Digby, who is the person in the district who is responsible for making sure that all happens and making sure that every school meets those requirements, has assured me that that has happened this year. With respect to the buildings being locked and secured, let's talk about each level. At the elementary school, I believe that, and I'm very confident, that we have very secure schools. One of the things that we added to our protocols this year was making sure that when teachers and students left the building for recess, that the door behind them locked, and for a while there, in some buildings, they had to go around to the front door and buzz in, but that became pretty inconvenient. So we did relock, put new locks into those doors, and we have a secure key system where teachers are able to exit and enter through a locked door that always remains locked. At the middle school, the same, though they don't go out for recess, but you cannot get into the building unless you are buzzed in. And that even happens for the gym classes as well that go out and play on the field. So the security there is, I think, is very tight. I know that one parent mentioned that another, someone held the door open for them and they were able to enter and not without identifying themselves. And I think as our consciousness about security grows, there'll be less of that. And that's sort of hard as a school system and entirely make sure it doesn't happen, though we have been trying to change the culture around that as well as we go forward. So I know the building principals have addressed that in different ways in their own schools. Our challenge still remains the high school. And I get a range of complaints. Frankly, more of the complaints is nobody can get in and they want to get in and making sure that everybody's on board as to when the doors need to be open for community ed or for school committees or any other kinds of meetings. But one of the challenges we have is that, you know, our support staff has decreased over the years due to budget reductions. And we really only have two people in the office and both are very busy. Imagine a high school this size that one person is managing really the phones and the buzzers most of the time. What we really need to have, and this won't solve all of our problems, but it certainly will go a long way to improving the situation, is to have someone that sits at that front desk in the foyer throughout the day has the ability to do the buzzing in, check people, making sure that they sign in, that they have badges, that we know where they're going in the building, to the extent possible, notify the people in the building that they're coming. Particularly now that we have central registration in the high school, there have been some issues with that even in the last couple of weeks. So my recommendation, at least going forward for next year, is that we do have someone in that role. We did not include that as an additive position when we were discussing the budget. But I'm asking that you make a motion too, that we could add that position and where I would find the money to pay for it would be out of the international revolving account. And then next year we'll look at how it becomes part of the base budget going forward. I do think that would be important. The other piece is that we are looking to put a proposal together this summer for capital, looking at providing more cameras and secure doors, primarily at the high school, but certainly at Ottison and the elementary as well. And once we have that proposal together, we will share it with you and that will be ready for capital. Usually their deadline is sometime in August, is that right? So that's an update. So the proposal I have is that you vote to make a motion to authorize me to hire someone for that position. It would be at a TA salary. So moved. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. All those against? Thank you. Any questions for Dr. Bodie on this issue? Okay. Moving on. District Determined Measures, Common Core Alignment. I see a lot of department heads here with us tonight. Thank you and good evening. We should introduce everyone. Yes. And I really appreciate them coming this evening because it's a busy, busy time of the year, as you all know. I'm going to represent our five core department chairs. We have Deb Perry, who is our K-12 English Language Arts Department Chair. Matt Coleman, Mathematics. Larry Weathers, Science. Carrie Dunn, Social Studies History. And Catherine Ritz, World Languages. So I'll turn this over to Laura. We're actually going to start with the presentation on the Common Core Alignment because it is from this that the district determined measures. This is what the district determined measures will be measuring. So I wanted to start a little bit with this. There are some slides in here that are very dense and they're mainly for your information and not to actually go over in great detail this evening. I want to talk a little bit to remind everybody about the overarching view of the Common Core state standards. Talk about the major changes that we have put in in terms of literacy and numeracy. Give you a current status on our implementation and talk a little bit about the work that lies ahead. We've been talking a lot about the Common Core over the last year. And we really needed to boil it down to just exactly what does this look like and what does it mean to our students. So if we take the pages and pages and pages of documentation and there are quite a few of them on the Common Core, basically it boils down to this. We need to prepare our students to work both independently and collaboratively. They need to be able to analyze and synthesize multiple sources of evidence of varying types. We need to be able to use that evidence, they need to be able to use that evidence in creation of robust arguments. And they need to be able to communicate those arguments in oral, written, and digital forms. This is what the Common Core means across all subject areas. The ability to analyze and synthesize multiple sources of evidence is important in English language arts, in social studies, in science, and in mathematics, and even in world language. The ability to create those arguments using that evidence, again, crosses all subject areas. And students need to be able to communicate those arguments in oral, written, and digital forms. And why is it important to sort of melt it down to this? And that is when you hear the district-determined measures and as we go through the rest of the slides, you're going to hear the word evidence over and over again. When you hear the district-determined measures, you're going to hear analyze and synthesize over and over and over again. And you're going to hear things about performance tasks, which are students' ability to communicate those arguments in oral, written, and digital form. So this is at the heart of everything that we do. When we look at major elements in literacy and what the changes that we've had to make in terms of our curriculum, and we discussed this last time when we talked about the calendar, questions came about, and we've spent a whole year on the Common Core. Why aren't we not done? And my answer was that we're done with, or we're fairly done with the documenting of the curriculum, but the biggest change in the Common Core is not so much what year you cover what topic, but rather what you ask students to do to be able to demonstrate their knowledge about that topic. So in the area of literacy and reading, there's a staircase of complexity. So students go all the way from the beginnings of reading until the demands that are at college and career are ready, and they need to be ready for that no later than at the end of high school. And so that's something that we had to realign our curriculum to match. We look at progressive development of reading comprehension so that students are advancing through the grades are able to gain more and more from what they read, and that's often termed as going from learning to read to reading to learn. And they need to be able to read a diverse array of classic and contemporary literature as well as informational text, and you know a lot about that. Students need to be able to gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives. And so we've been working K through 12 at what does literacy look like in terms of reading across all subject areas to make sure that students will be able to meet the needs of the Common Core. In terms of writing, again, the word argument comes back, substantive claims talking about evidence, sound reasoning, which you'll hear when we talk about the theories of the mathematical practices. You'll hear Ms. Dunn talk about research and the focus on research and social studies, and that also comes across in the area of science. It's emphasized through all the standards, but most prominently in the writing strand. Literacy doesn't just involve reading and writing. It also involves speaking and listening in the Common Core standards. So students need to be able to not only gain that information, but gain it through listening and speaking. They need to be able to have academic discussions in one-on-one small group and whole class settings. So when you hear about the Common Assessments, you're not going to hear only about paper and pencil tests, but you're also going to hear about other performance assessments. And formal presentations are one way in which students need to have this talk occur, but also informal settings, and those settings need to include digital settings, blogs, and online discussions. Vocabulary has a very big emphasis on the Common Core state standards, and so our English Language Arts and Literacy people have been working on how does it look to build that vocabulary. Students need to be able to use formal English, but they also need to be able to make informed and skilled choices. They need to be able to choose the right word and know what the right word would be in each circumstance. Vocabulary and conventions are treated in their own strand, not because they're in isolation, but that they go across the areas of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. And so I know, for example, Deb Perry has been working with our teachers on the discussion of how do you teach grammar and not make kids hate reading and writing at the same time. So what is the vision of implementation of literacy on the Common Core? It's cross-disciplinary. The literacy expectations are so that students must be prepared to enter college in the workforce. So what does that look like in practice? Because this is where the rub comes in. Not so much in lining everything on paper, but what it looks like in the classroom. There's an increased rigor. Students need the ability to quickly review and analyze information, and that is not something they are born doing. We need to teach them how to do that. Again, take a stance. Create an argument. Defend that stance with evidence. They need to move well beyond summarization and narrative writing. Many oftentimes in the beginning years, especially, we want students to be able to enjoy writing. So we have them writing narratives primarily. That was under the formal curriculum. Now we're going to have to be doing informational writing at a very, very early age right from the beginning. And we need to combine the research and thinking required to understand content area attacks and the application of writing skills that are needed. So here's an example of what a prompt might look like that matches the Common Core State Standards from the SATs. You'll notice that this prompt provides some background information, and then asks students to plan and write an essay in which they develop their point of view on this issue. But they need to support their position with reasoning and examples taken from reading, studies, experience, or observations. They are not asking people to write about their opinion. They're asking them to use evidence to back up their argument. What does that look like in an AP class? Because they may come in in kindergarten, but their goal is to get them here. So there's a sample synthesis essay prompt that talks about television and how it has been influential in presidential elections. It's telling students that they need to take information from six sources, including the introductory information from each source, and then sensitize that information from at least three of these sources and incorporate it into a coherent, well-developed essay. If that's what our students need to do by the end, and by the way, these are the sources, one from a book, one from an online article, one from an article in the New Yorker, one from a chart that gives some data information, and excerpts from two other books. So in about 45 minutes to an hour, students need to look at this information and then write. How does this skill develop? If you get to there where the AP, where do students need to start? As early as kindergarten, we need students to use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to state an opinion or a preference about something, but they need to use evidence. As early as kindergarten, they need to use these things to compose an informational piece. They need to name the topic and supply information about the topic. So all the way from kindergarten to AP, that's what literacy looks like in the Common Core, and that's what we've been working on aligning with this year. In terms of major elements in numeracy, elementary school begins with the focus on number systems and works through our basic operations, and to those things that are the bane of the existence of many a math teacher, fractions, negative numbers, and the beginnings of geometry. That's what we come up with in K-5, and Matt Coleman's been working with the teachers to make sure that their curriculum is aligned in terms of topics this year. When we look at grades seven through 12, we're building on that solid foundation, and our hope would be, and this is a big goal, that students who have completed seventh grade and have mastered the content and skills through seventh grade and mastered the key word here, will be well prepared for algebra in grade eight. Every student. Now that's a goal. We're not going to be there right from the start, that is our goal. The middle school standards are robust, and they have rich preparation for high school mathematics. High school standards call on students to practice mathematical ways of thinking to real world issues. It also prepares students to go out into college and career readiness to use mathematics in a number of situations. In this case, the key word in that last bullet item is novel situations. Mathematics to apply mathematics to problems that they have not seen before. Mathematics in grades seven through 12 needs to emphasize mathematical modeling. That modeling needs to link again class from mathematics and statistics, which you heard Matt talk about earlier this year, adding statistic class back in to everyday life. When making these mathematical models, technology is valuable to varying assumptions, exploring consequences, and comparing predictions with data. In fact, if you look at the common core standards, as early as kindergarten, students need to use technology in both literacy and numeracy, and those are things that we attended to this year. But we need to connect the mathematical standards for practice to the common mathematical standards for content. And so we need to look at that base, because if students don't have that base of understanding of that content, they are not going to be able to go to the areas of practice. Just to remind you, these are the standards for mathematical practice, and we need to assess both the standards of content and the standards of mathematical practice. We also need to instruct students so that they are capable of being able to achieve on those assessments. I'm not going to go through these slides in order, in detail, but this is for your reference, if you want to look back at later what topics are covered in each grade level so that you can see how we are building towards high school. So where are we now? All our content is aligned in terms of scope and sequence. The majority of the alignment is documented in Atlas Rubicon, which is our online curriculum mapping system. It will be our focus for the summer and the 13-14 school year to focus on instructional and assessment changes. The scaffolding to increase student expertise analysis and synthesis. We need to have explicit instruction in evaluation and selection of evidence because too often, as you know, students Google and they get 450,000 pieces of evidence and they don't know how to tell which ones are the best ones and we need to work with them on that. There needs to be regular practice in the use of making evidence-based arguments and there has to be significant emphasis in the use of discourse across all subject levels, especially for students to demonstrate what they know and are able to do. So we have two days for each elementary grade for curriculum work and math this summer. Again, focusing more on the instructional techniques and the mathematical practices and discourse. One day for each subject area in 7-12 math. Two days for elementary grade level work and literacy, cross-curriculum work and social studies and literacy. Tech University to focus on leveraging in order to change instruction and PD's experiences for our teacher and I have to thank Linda Hansen for calling this to my attention as we looked at that first slide at the beginning that talks about and I'm going to flip all the way back to it if I can do it fast enough. The overarching view of common core state standards, if we are expecting students to be able to work independently and collaboratively then we have to have our teachers be able to do that. If we need to have our students analyze and synthesize multiple sources of evidence of varying types, we need to give teachers experiences to do that because this is not the education that they grew up in. We need to give them the opportunity to practice using evidence in the creation of robust arguments and to communicate those arguments in oral, written and digital forms and that's where we are right now with the common core and the road ahead of us is much steeper than the road ahead of us. Questions on that before we go on to the next topic? Thank you. Any members have any questions for Dr. Cheson on any of that? Can you bring up the next panel? The next thing is how are we going to assess this? Arlington is very lucky and that we have had common assessments, common formative assessments and we've talked about this before for quite some time and we want to have district determined measures by the state. We want to have district determined measures for us but you'll see probably slightly less enthusiasm for district determined measures than the common formative assessments and I'll tell you why. We're going to review the difference between those two and then I'm going to ask each curriculum director to come up and talk about the district determined measures and the common formative assessments in particular with the work that Lysa had done. Common formative assessments which our teachers are doing very extensively is assessment for learning. It allows teachers to adopt instruction based on the evidence again, making changes and benefits that will immediately benefit student learning. Students can use that evidence to actively manage and adjust their own learning and the feedback in an assessment is for learning occurs when it's the measure of the highest interest for our teachers. They're very interested in this. I sat in and data meetings this week where people were talking about the DRA scores of students from the fall and the winter and the spring. There was a lot of conversation about how this can inform what students do over the summer and what they do in the fall. District determined measures are used to make judgments regarding student growth over a yearly basis. The assessment of learning is what happened on an annual basis. It's most closely tied with the measurements that are in our goals for the district for SGP of 51 or better and the PPI of 75 or better. They were acquired by the state as part of the new teacher evaluation system. One of the hardest parts about this is that the state's directives as to what we need to be able to demonstrate where we are in the district have been changing significantly depending on the day. But at this point, we were marching in this direction so they can change what we need to do but we're going to be ahead of the curve and I think you'll hear that tonight. I'm going to start with grades K through 5 and I'm going to ask Lynn Hansen to come up and talk about that. Hi, good evening everybody. We're going to look quickly at elementary literacy. We'll start off with reading. This is something you've heard of the DRA, the developmental reading assessment before. We don't have quite the right slide in here. We do have expectations for kindergarten at the winter and the spring benchmark. None actually when kindergarteners come through the door though. We give them a break for the first couple months. But these are measures that teachers understand really well. They know what they mean. They're diagnostic. They're helpful. They're very meaningful for teachers. We have a common assessment that we've been using for a number of years in Arlington. But since we need to pick district determined measures for the state, this is one that we are going to pick at the K through 3 level because we can also measure beginning and end of year progress whether or not kids have made a full year's progress in a year's worth of time. No matter where they start, we could still measure what a year from that starting point looks like. So we're going to start with writing. We are kind of bringing together a hybrid of the kinds of on-demand writing assessments that we have done in the past three times a year in the fall, winter, and spring. We're keeping that, retaining that writing on demand at the beginning and end of the year. But we're also introducing the collection of written pieces that are scored with the rubric after each unit of the Lucy Calkins writing program as we move further into the implementation of the Lucy Calkins writing. So what you see here is the on-demand writing prompt and we're going to work on opinion writing. That's going to be the focus this year. That was the type of writing that's the newest for teachers. We've been doing a lot of narrative. We do informational, but it was the opinion writing that really was new. So we're going to focus on that. We've had a significant amount of experience in some of the units of study. Some are going to be brand new this year. So we're trying to do an incremental approach and add bits and pieces each year. So the focus this year will be opinion writing. The following year will be, the focus will be on informational writing. Not that we're not going to do any informational writing this year, but the focus on the new year and information writing next year. And I would call this a common assessment. It's diagnostic. It's keeping track of kids writing over time, but we will not be using writing as a district determined measure this year as part of our pilot. Thank you. When we talk about the English department at the middle school and the high school level, we have had common assessments for a long time. In the middle school, teachers get together three times a year. They give the writing assessment on certain days and then they have a day or two to work together to get them corrected to look at the results to figure out what those results mean and how they need to change their instruction accordingly. In the high school, the common assessments work somewhat similarly, although we don't have as much time for them to work with each other. We have structured time for them to sit down and actually work with each other around the common assessments. Currently, they trade information, things they have learned and they do it online and brief meetings, but they need more time for that. That's one of the things that we will use some of the release time for next year in a more concentrated way. The district determined measures are needed to make sure that the students learn to write because we're going to give the same writing prompt at the beginning of the year and the end of the year based on something that we think the kids should be able to have accomplished by the end of the year. In the middle school, we actually have some very nice, I guess, assessments that use pieces of video and pieces of nonfiction. The kids look at those on one day, make notes on them and then the next day write according to a prompt and then those things will be corrected with a rubric. Many of those, the skills involved in all of that are directly related to the common core. So we're looking forward to be able to assess where the kids are, let's say at the beginning of sixth grade, and then see how they've grown in those years through the year and hopefully the teachers have addressed most of those things. So that will be a very accurate way for us to see the growth students have made. And then at the high school, we were not as geared exactly to all of the common core requirements in terms of using media and using other elements because the writing that we tend to do in English classes is argument based, but it often uses literature and sometimes uses various kinds of literature to compare and contrast, and that's what we'll be testing at the beginning of the year and at the end, the same kind of thing. Thanks for having me, guys. So as it is right now for us, the common assessments, the DDMs, I think there is a lot of crossover for us to do is for me anyways, avoid like assessment overload. So what I'm trying to do is actually intertwine the two and totally redesign what we're doing for our common assessments so that actually has all the DDM stuff embedded inside of it. So right now in K through 5, we're a little bit more of the development stage because some of this stuff hasn't been there already. I would say all of our assessments that don't really show growth because all you're doing is summative assessments from the end of the chapter. So right now some of the work we're doing right now is just developing diagnostic tests. Our summer work is going to be really fleshing out this entire system for 6 through 12, the next slide. This is what we're going to try to do and this is a model we're going to hope to bring down to the elementary school, but we're much more ahead of the game I think for the high school. Our diagnostics, if I look at the kind of common assessments we have, our diagnostics initially at the beginning of the year are always kind of basic skills. So we're going to totally revamp it and try to embed some of this DDM concept inside. So we'll still keep the basic skills and that's going to be part of the growth that we'll look at, how students are doing overall. There are certain things that I would consider foundational concepts that any course would need that you probably had from prior. That's going to be a big part of our anchor of growth. How do they do with these core foundational ideas, let's say before algebra, that really tight algebra, so we can look to see how the overall concepts develop. The weird little twist is we want to kind of maintain this idea of a formative assessment. So we're going to try to embed in that initial diagnostic also stuff that's for the first unit. So I'll use something like an Algebra 2 course. I think we're going to do a statistics unit as one of the first things for Algebra 2. So some of the ideas in that initial diagnostic at the beginning of the year will have some statistics. So that way it's giving the teacher some data that they use initially, some data where they can look for growth, and data they can see for where the child came from. So we're just trying to milk this thing for a lot. Laura had talked about the fact that we have multiple content and process standards to deal with. So we're going to try to put an open-ended writing assignment. Then what's going to happen throughout the year is the mid-year exam will have components of the mid-year that looks back at your basic skills so that we can measure growth from there. It'll look back at the foundational concepts and see how they did with the stuff that's relevant to that unit. The idea of an initial diagnostic, one of the beginning, one at the end of the year, like inevitably you can show a lot of growth if that initial diagnostic is all the stuff they're going to learn. So what I'm thinking of is more chunking it in and showing growth throughout. The last little thing we're going to kind of tie in, and this kind of goes with the growth of the overall writing and communication, that initial diagnostic will have writing at the beginning of the year. But then instead of trying to make every one of these big assessments so like huge, at the end of the first term there'll be another open-ended writing assignment. At the end of the third term there'll be an open-ended writing assignment. So what we hope to do is to kind of look at the standards going through and then look at the writing and look at the communication skills and hopefully have this as our overall structure. The teachers have been working on the diagnostic and they're coming up with really good things that they've used before and just kind of putting it together. Which is kind of nice so far. Any questions? Can we wait till the speaker? Hi all, thanks for having me. I'll warn you my second slide is missing, but I'll submit that later and I can certainly talk about what was on it. I'll start with where we are now in social studies. We do have common assessments in place and we feel very good about them. We feel that they're actionable and allow us to intervene and help students who are struggling throughout the year and identify skills where there are strengths and skills where students need help. We have unit-based assessments in grade six. We do an excellent non-fiction writing-based assessment six times over the course of grade seven, aligned with each unit, but it is the actual same assessment just the content that the students write about and the actual source that they use changes with each unit. And in grades eight through eleven we have three common assessments per year. Some grades actually have more, but we have a standard of three per year. One is students applying a technology skill or platform that they've learned in class and making a presentation designing a website, that sort of thing based on content that they've learned in history class. We do a thorough research process that culminates in the production of a thesis and research paper based on students' own research and then we have a common final exam. So that's what we have in place now. We'll be able to use some of that in the development of our district-determined measures, but we do have to make a few changes. So I'll talk about what we'll look like next year and going forward. Grade seven actually we're going to keep exactly the same. We'll use our first and our last of our non-fiction writing assessments as our two measures within a year. Grade six we'll be focusing on source analysis throughout the year and we'll use a first early sample and a late in the year sample of source analysis as our measurements. Grade eight through eleven we're really going to focus on the umbrella of research skills and source analysis in all of our district-determined measures. So what we do need to add and we're working on now is an early in the year grade level appropriate diagnostic to assess students research skills when they enter the grade and then we'll use the thesis of research paper that students complete late in the year as the second sample measurement based on a variety of measures that the teacher will look at in the paper the teacher will be able to determine their skill at that point in time in meeting our research and writing goals. Okay so let me tell you where we are with the common assessments. We didn't have common assessments in my department prior to the beginning so last year we spent the entire year really developing common assessments to look like and this year we've piloted them. So to give you an overview in the modern languages we decided to focus the three common assessments around the three modes of communication so these are really crucial in foreign language study. You have interpretive communication which is when you are faced with a resource like a radio announcement or a news article and you have to read and understand what it is that you're what you're presented with. Presentational communication is when you have basically a two way exchange of conversation or email exchange with someone else and presentational communication is basically what I'm doing right now you've prepared a discussion or you've prepared an essay or a writing that you present and we also wanted to incorporate the four key skills in foreign language reading, listening, speaking and writing so that's essentially the way we have framed the common assessments and by focusing on a skill and a mode of communication this is something we can track the progress of it's not based on sort of the discrete content it's a skill that can be tracked up the levels. For the classical languages which is Latin in our district we focused on the skill of translation and reading comprehension so that's where we are with the common assessments and I want to just report before I talk about the district determined measures I actually spent the day in Marlboro at a DEFC district determined measure anchor standard panel anchor development panel it's a long wordy title and I served on the French one to two panel where we really were looking at the curriculum frameworks and coming up with anchor standards that could then be used to help districts develop the district determined measures and so the next step would be to submit exemplars to the state for them to vet and I actually felt very very good when I came out of the meeting today we were really addressing the standards that will be used as the anchor standards for the state so I feel very confident about that so the two district determined measures that we're planning to use for next year we decided to choose the interpersonal communication and the presentational communication skill for the modern languages so to give you an example in let's say Spanish one the students have to have a basic conversation hello how are you what's your name you know a little bit of information about yourself we have been filming these we have rubrics that we've developed that really track the progress up the proficiency scales so the rubrics reflect the actful which is the American council and the teaching of foreign languages proficiency scale going from novice to intermediate to low advanced so we have five rubrics to kind of track the students as they go up in the levels and then to jump up to Spanish three the students are looking at a piece of artwork by like Dolly or a famous Spanish painter and they have to have a conversation with each other and ask what is your opinion of this based on what so there is some bringing in evidence what movement is this from or whatever so the conversation becomes increasingly complex as the students move up in the presentational assessment we focused on writing so they have an in class essay and it's really the same thing where at level one you've got a very basic you know tell me about your family you're about food that you like to eat and then you go up the levels it becomes increasing complex in terms of what they're able to write and report on give evident or give make develop an argument on you know X topic and you know support it with whatever so it really focuses on just this increase in difficulty on a very you know a specific skill so that's the overview and very briefly the classical languages for Latin again it's a translation we have level appropriate passages the students have to translate them the Latin teachers we have all developed rubrics that reflect this skill as it progresses up in difficulty as the text move from I guess sort of leveled readers up into authentic Latin where you know with it just becomes increasingly difficult for them to to interpret to translate as well as with the reading comprehension I thank you for letting us share our work with the staff and students with you in the in the science department as Dr. Chestin said there are two two areas that we have to watch this content and this practices we are focusing on two areas of common assessments and and district determined measures they overlap to some extent especially in the area of content although our common assessments tend to be more frequent and sometimes smaller than the larger district determined measures that we are in the process of developing and utilizing so in in our first area of focus we're analyzing pre and post testing data on topical or longer periods of time and we're trying to figure out where where it's best to use smaller groups of time like a topical unit as our district determined measure and where it's best to use year long assessment and that's determined in a sense by us by by what the needs are each course is a little different each time of the school of the students life is a little different so we are choosing critical areas topical areas areas that show weakness areas that have special needs and some of these are we're exploring and and trying things like flip classrooms and how to introduce questions that are our long term questions that that's that we can get some sense of what's happening to a student's understanding throughout the year by monitoring those questions and we're using that as a district determined measure and then our secondary of focus is on on growth and and as the common core the area of science has a newly developed framework called the next generation science standards it's just come out a month ago and from that framework the Massachusetts the state of Massachusetts is now revising its science standards and those will be finished in fall and I've asked about coming when those are finalized coming in trying to give an explanation of where they are and what they're all about but those the next generation science standards in a sense overlap with with the LA and mathematics common core it has practices and the and a very significant overlap of those practices deal with creating arguments from evidence being able to communicate and interpret scientific writings knowing what the meaning of the data is and and so we're basing our second focus of district determined measures on measuring that growth it's part of the common core it's part of the next generation science standards we are looking at kids abilities to read and write about scientific articles as recently as last week we are piloting some measures we had our 10th graders involved in a biology symposium organized by our biology teachers which student all of the 10th grade biology students presented their findings on scientific greetings that they had done they synthesized their own report from reading multiple scientific papers they had to explain that to a panel of students and adults from the community so the kinds of skills that come out of that are things that we're trying to measure now with a rubric base and it could take the form of lab reports or scientific articles and we're still exploring other possibilities thank you so you've heard from the five major subject areas but the state requirement is that we have district determined measures across every educator we have one district determined measure fitness that's currently actually has been used for quite some time in PE we are in the process of creating and piloting two district determined measures in music, art and health and we're in the process of creating and piloting two district determined measures for work related service providers such as guidance counselors and OT and speech and language pathologists I think one of the things that's evident in addition to the fact that you've heard the same words over again evidence, synthesize, analyze, writing using content but not just knowing the content or learning the content but using the content is that these district determined measures came from the staff we did not tell them what they should do it came from the teacher level and that is a very unique way of handling this when we talk to other districts and we still need to negotiate the final version of the district determined measures with the union but I think that developing it from the ground up will really help us get buy in from teachers they're choosing the measures that they want to have their success be determined by so questions for myself or anybody else thank you I'll start first I want to make sure I've got the concepts right because it finally included so the common assessments are like little tests that you do at any point and they just measure do they know this or not they inform instruction right they may not be a test but I get with the point it's a test in the bigger broader yes and then the district determined measurements are like a yardstick you need a beginning and an end and you're measuring what's in between right and you want to know if you went all of 36 inches you got it so then my second question is for subject areas which are assessed via the standardized tests such as MCAS or the new park or whatever how do you plan to go back and see how the district determined measures correlate with what we find what results we see on the MCAS and can I just explain where I'm coming from with this so as we roll all these valuations forward part of what's rolled back with the calendar is that the district goals need to be set much earlier now and so we're not going to have the MCAS back at that point right and so if we have robust information coming from the district determined measures that is helpful well one of things that will be helpful is that and I'm going to ask Matt to come up here because he knows park more inside and out than I do but that some of the park the measurements will actually back much quicker than the MCAS and if we do the park online we're going to get almost all the results back by the time you want to set district goals but can you talk about the other so the way park is structured is right now there'll be an assessment three through you know certain level high school through 75% of the year as well as as close to the end of the year as possible so the one that's the 75% of the way through the year will include some running assessments both ELA and mathematics so what they want is that extra time to be able to grade those in between so what they're saying right now is that you take the 75% of the way through they have that little chunk of time to grade you take the as far as the end of the year once that's in you should have all of your assessment data within a week so as long as you're doing it online so it's a quick turnaround because the one at the end of the year is going to be all computer based so it's not going to be person scored so you know people have asked you know 75% can we get that back sooner but it's not going to be until after the other one is done so it's quicker than ever before you know for math I could say one of the things that I'm trying to do with our DDMs is actually mimic what they're doing for park just because you know we need to it's not a bad structure you know park in the long run what they essentially would like to do is do an initial diagnostic a mid-year exam 75% 95% so you have this idea of the growth all the way through but right now the only two that are mandatory components or the 75 and 95% of the way through the year okay thank you Miss Hyde just to piggyback a little bit off of Dr. Allison Ampey in terms of the measures we're going to be having a beginning of the year to set that baseline we're going to be having an end of the year I think one of the challenges in the past with some of our common assessments that we've had grade level is when they've assessed prior learning that's taken place before that year so that determination of skill base there's the the temptation for teachers to actually go back to curriculum that actually was a previous year's curriculum because of the foundation I know for formative assessments there's a certain amount where teachers need to address gaps before they actually can move on with new information where this is going to be tying into the evaluation what safeguards are going to be in place to make sure that the teachers don't get so tied up in what the children are coming into their room with to begin with that they're not actually spending adequate time on what the curriculum is for that year because there's no way we can assess every single component of what they're doing. So do I understand your question to be if at the beginning of the year if I have a diagnostic and then I realized that my students in the previous year that I would spend time reviewing as opposed to covering the new curriculum is that the question you're asking? That's part of the question, definitely. That's an age old question in the sense that as a math teacher there's always the temptation there was always the temptation to spend the beginning of the year reviewing thinking well they didn't get it so I'm going to give it to them I'm going to ask Matt to chime in if I'm incorrect but there is so much material that has to and as we talked about those charts were very busy and I didn't go through everything from grades K through 8 but in order to be ready or close ready to algebra by 8th grade if you take too many steps backwards you're never going to take enough step forwards. So I understand it's tied to the evaluation system but I think one of the best things about that is that's why we've asked teachers to design these assessments and that will be also working with teachers to understand that's only one piece of evidence that we're using and we'll be very clear about the lack of reliance that we'll have on that. We need to look at a teacher's performance in a broader sense and I think that's going to be part of the trust thing and that's what the whole educator evaluation system is based on trust and about discourse between evaluator and educator and as long as we keep to that and keep building that trust I think we'll avoid that but I do think that that was always a problem even before there was a district determined measure that teachers would say well they didn't learn this or that and try to go back and spend the first 6 weeks of school reviewing. And one other question and once again piggyback off of one of Drs. Allison Ampey's some of the measures have been in place for a long time there's a lot of evidence to support that they've been well developed and mapping to other tools that we've used and showing their validity on the areas where there have not been or great spends where they have not been those measures what ways are you going to have to normalize the data that you're getting from it and to make sure that it actually is an accurate assessment because taking that step back sometimes is a challenge when so much time has been invested in. I'm sure that there's a correlation to other measures that we see so for example in English language arts if we have an assessment that shows the variety of students have gotten to a certain level at writing and reading and then we have the park assessment and it doesn't match up or you have to take a grain of salt with classroom grades because there's so much involved in effort a student can actually score as we well know very well on the MCAS but not have good classroom and vice versa as a matter of fact so we want to make sure that we're looking at the same type of assessment so that is why we will not be throwing our cognitive formative assessments aside and that information will also so we have to look at the whole picture and put all those pieces of information together I don't know that normed I mean the DRA has a normed database sort of but in some ways because you can look at what an A1 is but then again an individual teacher does an assessment and so unless you were constantly calibrating it there's some subjectivity that's involved and the same thing with any of these assessments except for the ones that are scantron so I mean I think we have to look at it in terms of all the other data that's there I don't know that we'll have it norm referenced in the strictest sense of the word ever but we will be piloting it we will be looking at these assessments and saying does what we see make sense and if it doesn't then we'll have to talk about possibly changing the assessment and forgive me because you may have mentioned this is there the idea of actually pooling evaluation of student performance on the assessments so the teacher that has those children is not necessarily the only one that's seeing the open response portion or this or that absolutely I mean that's one of the that's at the heart of a professional learning community to do cross grading and calibration grading and also at the elementary level they have and we're talking about increasing the frequency of it but they have regular meetings where they look at data across students altogether so all those things will continue to happen. Thank you. So I want to pick up on the point that Matt made about embedding the district determined measures in the common assessments and what degree can we do that in other subject areas? You're going to do that in math? I think almost everybody in the effort to try to not be constantly assessing in having assessment overload is going to try to do that to the largest extent possible there's always some overlap with district determined measures in common formative assessments and we go for the greater degree of overlap as makes sense I mean district determined measures tend to just be bookended and so common we need more frequent assessments in order to know whether we need to change our instruction. Okay so it's the goal of all the department heads? Yes it is. That's what I want to understand and also so we have common assessments now aligned with the common core now that we did world language with all subject areas right? They're aligned with the content of the common core we are in the process of aligning our assessments with the instructional emphasis of the common core. But that's pretty good I think it's something you should all be very pleased with I mean that's quite an achievement and I suspect that's ahead of a several, many districts. Yes yes I mean I would say that science will possibly be some shifting because the next generation science standards just came out but aside from that yes. Well congratulations thank you Anyone else? I'm looking I'm looking upon this as really being a standards based operation that these district determined measures are really tied to standards and what we're looking to do is align our assessments to standards and to really be tracking our students to standards and one of the things that I'm really interested in is how we assess and report out the standards of mathematical practice I mean this is new for teachers and parents to deal with and I'm wondering what we're doing to communicate that part of the standards to our parents I agree I actually think that this is something that not to make it a huge issue that even park and everybody is struggling with is that these are habits these are ways in which we want our kids to think and you want to embrace that within the assessments so the way I'm going to tackle it the way I'm going to go for it is with those writing assignments that are much more open-ended that do encourage it does ask for the students to do do the mathematics but the certain qualities are going to be when I'm thinking about this I'm thinking more of a whole list of a qualitative rubric that we can actually look at what they're doing so we'll keep track of that and the next thing we have to do and you're saying conveying this information I could say for the elementary school right now we have to totally revamp and redevelop what our record card is and this day and age in the way in which we collect our information like for me I want to reimagine how we convey this I want to start to use the technology to you know you kind of alluded to the fact that we're going standards based I don't want to create a list of every single standard and say met not met I'd like to do something a little bit more consumable so for us right now we're going to work on these writing assignments work on things that are more holistic we're going to create that rubric that really matches up with what we want to see and then in the elementary school specifically we're going to start to work on this summer Nadine Solomon who's one of the elementary math specialists and I are going to work with some teachers do some research figure out what's out there what's going to be the bulk of next year good portion next year is going to be spent trying to design and create something that we feel pretty comfortable with that actually is parent friendly consumable friendly that people can read and it's meaningful to them as well because I think that is a big issue I don't have a great answer for you right now but that's something that we already know we need to work on yeah I think this is something we're all in the business working on and we've started to incorporate some of the standards of mathematical practice right into our elementary report card in Lowell and you know it's a journey we're looking at how it worked this year and what do we have to do to tweak it next year but the statement that really caught my ear was that MCAS as an indicator does not necessarily correlate well with report card grades and because effort and other things that get mixed in there get in there and I'm a little uncomfortable with that because you know I've got to say that if what we're really stating is that students need to make standards that our grading system needs to reflect standards and not how pretty the cover is on the report or whether the kid is a good compliant student within the classroom I think that what I'm talking about is that a student may not turn in a project or they may not turn in homework and that's going to be reflected in their grade but however when you give them the MCAS they may have mastered the standards for that grade level and it may come across in their score. So does a kid who masters the content it doesn't turn into a project fail the class? It's a longer discussion I think than we have time for tonight. I think that's the discussion this is leading to. I'm not asking for the answer but I'm saying this is a question that we need to be addressing and be a part of because I think that as a district we need to advance into this area with our eyes open. Certainly something we have to discuss. Quickly guys because we're running real late. I just like to thank you all and without being nasty about it this new talk in Boston about all this new technology that the high tech people want to add to the whole curriculum and everything. They want everybody to take computer science from grade 7. Some of the stuff that I've been listening to they sound like they're talking about redoing the whole thing over again which is common with DESE that once we get it working they have to shuffle the deck again. You're doing a great job thank you so much for everything. Yes and may I respectfully request that if the members come up with other questions because tonight was so much in so little time for us to digest. May we submit questions? Absolutely. That would be wonderful and I'd love to see some of this come back to us during the course of this coming year this year of transition and I forgot to introduce Linda Hansen at the table here tonight. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. I snuck in a little bit after you started your formal meeting. Since this is really the first meeting I believe that they've addressed district determined measures in front of the school committee. I do feel the need to just kind of make a couple points here. One is that I do appreciate the work that Massachusetts has done. I feel like on behalf of educators and administrators and school committees to say one standardized test is not going to be the be all that kids are going to be measured against. So we've come up with this thing which is good in concept called district determined measures. It's never going to be a normed standardized thing nor should it be. If we think about the money, the time, the size, the population size, the expertise that the state has put into developing these standardized tests, we have that. So this doesn't need to replicate that. It should mirror and match the standards that it should be important and meaningful to teachers. When you give these things can make all the difference of the world. We could give a reading test the first week after kids come back from summer vacation and what you're measuring is summer loss basically. If we take it two weeks later we're going to get a different result. If we're going to measure kids at the end of the year based on that dipstick in the fall, it depends when you get it. My point is that I want us to really keep some sense in all of this and just not think about it as needing to replicate. We have a standardized test and we're going to have more. Park I actually think that someday park if we get into these 75%, 95%, they're even talking about mid-year writing samples earlier on. If we have one comprehensive set of assessments, we don't need to replicate that. We need to understand why, what the purpose is that we're using these other parallel assessments for and also just the measurability of it. I know teachers are really concerned about what does a year growth look like in terms of research skills or an on-demand writing prompt. What does a half year of growth look like? So cohort size are we measuring year over year? Are we tracking one cohort through you know as they go up through the grades? So I just feel like this is a really intricate exercise that we're all going to be entering in on. And I just want us to go in thoughtfully and to keep doing kind of a gut check on making sure it makes sense for kids and for teachers. So. All right. Well, thank you Dr. Chesson. Thank you everyone our department heads. Thank you very very much. Okay. So we are moving on to approval of the school calendar for 2013-2014. With a very collaborative effort and certainly a lot of input from all of you you've been doing moving forward with this. One of the things just to put again in perspective what we've been trying to do is to be much more ahead of where we've been before. We didn't even get conferences on the calendar until the fall. And what we felt was very strongly is that we really needed to have a calendar at the end of the year where people knew where the early release days, professional day, vacations. Now the major things we've we did back in December. What we have been looking at very carefully is how we're going to be able to do all the things that we're going to do here. Which is extensive. And I think you get a sense of that here. And this is just part of the whole picture. There's so many other initiatives and mandates that are being required of us. So we also were listening to parents, elementary parents who were concerned about the number of early release days. And that was the number from 13 down to 11. And that was the number sticking in our head. In that time frame, feedback we had from the principals of the elementary schools was and feedback from their teachers. Because they were actually counting it up. If I have 25 kids in my class and I meet with parents for 20 minutes at conferences, I need so much time. And the time that we had allotted was insufficient time.  And we have classes next year that will be 28 students. So the elementary principals asked us if we would also include elementary in one of the conference days that we had designated from middle school as well. Which actually brings it up to 12. We had told you we would try to stick to 11. But that's why it changed. Now if you want to reduce one of the early release days for elementary, you know, that would be your prerogative. But I will tell you that we have Laura, Dr. Chesna has worked with the our curriculum leaders and with principals around all of what we need to be able to fit in next year. And it's tight. We could use even more than we have. But on the other hand, it's always a balance between, you know, what we could use and what is reasonable for families. So with that little sort of overview of this, I want to turn this over to Laura who we have a calendar here. And you saw both versions of it, one which did not have the November 19th and one that did. But Laura, do you want to? I just want to add, and not because I know we're running late, but we have 12 days for elementary as we said. Two of those are conference days. Two days are for work for the teacher on the new teacher evaluation system. That leaves the remaining days to be split up three days to math, three days to common literacy, one day for science and one day for social studies. So science and social studies are really getting the short end of the stick. And that's going to be very difficult for all of us. So we have a lot of information science standards, but it's also more difficult because as we look at the common core standards for literacy, as you heard tonight, those are not just for the reading and writing and the literature that has to do with the vanilla literacy. But science has literacy standards in them. Social studies have literacy standards in them. So we have a lot of information that's coming from. Certainly it can't come from the conferences. Certainly it cannot come from the new teacher evaluation system. So that means that we're going to have to look at the core four subject areas in order to say that they would not have a half day professional development day. And to be realistic, they get out at one. It's not like they really have a full day. So as Dr. Bordi said, we could really, you know, have used more, but we're happy if we could get the 12. Questions for the superintendent or Dr. Chesson. The professional development day that you have, I'm looking at, I think it's on both, yes, in November. We talked about it before. I say that you have two teacher days prior to the school year after the students leave. Instead of November first, thank you, have it for right now, June 19th. Well, the purpose of the professional day at that time of the year, which I think there's a universal feeling that this is a really timely place in this because we are able to have a whole variety of opportunities for teachers. One of the things that I think we need to do among many next year is to have time for our PLCs to be working on their team goals and have a chunk there. We need to have more technology workshops. That's the time. Once you get your year established you're ready to look at and you're getting to that point. It's time to look at other ways that you're going to be sort of mapping the rest of your year out. Certainly a professional day at the end of the year would be terrific for other reasons. The first two days how those work by contract is that half of the day is district determined and half of it is for teachers to have in their classrooms to prepare. We this year, instead of having an opening day speaker because our need is so great for curriculum overviews, we are going to start with a a complication of sort, but it's going to be very time limited so we can give almost the entire morning to grade level and department level time to go over the work that's done this summer. Day two of those early days are given to faculty meetings at each one of the schools. And they use that we have a whole array of mandates that have to be we have to go through every year in terms of trainings around FERPA for example. So all of that happens the second day. And that's how those first two days are used. Let's go around. Jeff. We discussed the calendar a lot. I support the professional development days that we have. I'm always concerned that there is not enough time to do adequate professional development. But I think we should adopt the calendar. So we can approve the calendar. So it's on the second draft day or draft day is the one that has the November 19th data draft day. Was there a second to draft day? Okay. Further discussion on that motion. Dr. Anthony, I saw you first. I'll vote for it. But with reluctance because I feel that this is a burden on our families and I'm still hoping that we can come up with some other alternatives. Yes. I was just going to point out that whenever I've been part of professional development, there's always been this discussion about the need for teachers to go back to their classroom the next day and implement it immediately. And that's how districts provide effective professional development to allow it to become embedded and not ask people to remember it over the summer or not be able to try it out right away because they're busy and kids settled into a new routine and schedule and don't really start instruction for, you know, a week later. And so while this is challenging for our families, given I think given our responsibility provide good professional development for our staff and the benefits it gives to our students when the teachers are given additional opportunities to expand their knowledge and integrate into their classrooms. This is the least detrimental to the timeliness of instruction and is going to provide the most opportunity for it to be worthwhile. Anyone else? I'm going to vote for it also but I think we've spent an awful lot of time discussing this several meetings during the year. I think it's it would be good for us to look at the calendar and come up with some creative ways to meet the teacher needs the professional development needs and the parent needs. I don't know if it can be done but I think we should spend more time out of meeting doing this. Thank you. Okay. I just want to echo a couple of words from my colleagues and add a couple of my own. Dr. Ampe, I couldn't agree more over the course of this last year. I heard so much in the way of parental concern, aggravation with the breakup of our year. I look at 2013-2014 and I see EMS and ECR, right? These are two conference dates. Friday the 6th of December and Tuesday the 10th of December. Okay. So for a working family to do an 11-15 on a Friday and then the following Tuesday back to back weeks, I think that's really, really hard. In terms of professional development 12 early release for that. Teacher of Val, two days. Could we not have some sort of teacher of Val study over the summer? These are teacher of Val professional development. I mean, I'm sure it can be done on an individual basis too. I'd love to see next year something in the way of, as Mr. Hayner was suggesting, some sort of more creative out-of-the-box thinking, see a survey. I want to see, the principals say their teachers need the professional development. I want to see the teachers on the ground in the classrooms say, we need 13 days where we're going to do early release. I'd love to see some type of survey. Do teachers come in here and say this is absolutely necessary? Because this is really hard. This is really hard for me to approve. I will vote yes on this. I think it's important the school committee come down and say this is our school calendar. It's important for the public out there to know that we're voting on this tonight. With respect to high school graduation, it is a change. I want everyone to know that there's going to be a change to high school graduation from Sundays to Saturday. This was sort of brought on. I don't know how this developed. What was the genesis of that? Who was called in to think about doing that? There are a lot of changes here. For the second straight year, there's going to be 13, 12 plus 1, 12 early release and one professional development day. 13 days where there's going to be no school or school calendar. I'd love to see 2014-2015 calendar where it downgrades a little bit. We're not going to be in a year of transition. We're not going to have to deal with a new teacher of VAL system. It will already have been implemented. I'd love to see a little bit more creativity and less breaks in our day and our year for working families. So, that said, all those in favor of the 2013-2014 draft day school calendar say aye. Aye. Aye. All those against? Okay. 7-0. We will get this up on the website so people can have that. Thank you. Moving on. Approval of data assisting job description. This is a position that was it is in the budget for this current fiscal year, this next fiscal year. Based on the needs of all the data needs in the district and the move to central registration. Our director of data has a lot of data responsibilities right now, lots of reports that have to be done and has taken on the role of central registrar for the district as well. So, she has asked and we have felt that there's a need for this would be an assistant, administrative assistant position 20 hours a week, this would be a unity position and would be posted in accordance with the unity contract and looking for someone who is, you know, has some data experience who has good technical skills, very precise, detail oriented and can work with the director of data to accomplish all the reporting that needs to be done and the central registration. Do we have a motion? Discussion? Quick question, is this person in the unity? Yes. Anything else? All those in favor say aye. All those against? Sorry, I'll catch you next time. Do you have something? I did have a question. I'm sorry, I just don't see anything about confidential data that isn't the stuff that they're dealing, I mean, should that be mentioned in the job description or just a recognition that the data is confidential? Yeah. We could add that. Isn't that there under item number 6? Okay, sorry, I missed it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on. We did vote. Just our goals, 2013, 2014, our second reading and a vote to approve these goals. The committee spent quite a lot of time at the beginning of this year looking over our team goals and as we look to next year we've had a lot of discussion at the table and we've had a lot of discussion with the administrative team as to what would be the major foci of next year. And I think that the goals that you see here that we've talked about more even during retreat reflects the efforts that we, the primary efforts, doesn't mean there's not a lot of other things that are going to be happening, but that we want to particularly focus on as far as my particular goals for next year we'll discuss those in December, but they represent elements of many of these goals. Motion on the goals. Move to approve the goals. Second. Discussion. I just have one quick minor point on the bottom it says district goals 2012, 2013 can we get rid of that? That was a little mistake. Discussion. We went over these a lot in retreat last week. Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. All those against? Okay. Thank you, Dr. You are on again. Superintendent's report. Good. I'm glad we picked up some time in these because I actually have a fairly long report. It's good. At your places tonight you have the final report of the visiting committee for NEASP and we're going to posting that on our website and as well as distributing it with the high school staff. I do not intend that this is the meeting that we're talking about the NEASP report. We are going to need to have a separate meeting perhaps this summer and certainly this isn't going to be discussing over probably many meetings as we go forward. But it is rather just simply to mention a few looking at the report, looking at a few of the highlights and then you can have some time to read it more thoroughly and I'm sure that there's going to be a lot of questions and at that time we certainly want to invite the high school principal and our curriculum leaders and also the other administrators in the high school to come and be part of that discussion. So this is really a very limited overview of where we are with this. For those that are listening who may not be familiar with what NEASP is, NEAS is an independent accrediting agency. It's called the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and it's a member of that association and it's part of our membership. They come and do an assessment in a number of categories and with regard to the number of standards every 10 years and once that report is issued then there is also follow-up during the course of that 10 years. This represents the 10 year visit and what they found that the team visited in December there was a late spring a draft report that you always do that as part of the process draft report that we respond to and then a final report is issued and then after that there will be a period where they will have a summary letter of their standing relative to the report. So when looking at the report there are a number of standards there are teaching and learning standards that look at core beliefs, they look at curriculum they look at instruction and then after that they're they look at resources for the school culture resources and basically the community so I thought I would just go through a couple of the highlights of these looking at the overarching category of teaching and learning standards which looks at core beliefs and if you want to refer to this this is on page 18 of your report that you have there and how the report is organized it has a narrative and then at the end of each one of the sections they'll have commendations and recommendations that are given and it's going to take some time to read through this to have sort of get a full understanding of it but for example in the commendations for this particular standard that the commendations this is one of six of them the identification of a set of core values which is the eye care and you've heard that mentioned here in this room before that are embodied by the vast majority of staff and it positively impacts the culture of the school and there are other commendations in that line as well one of the recommendations for the school in that regard is to implement a plan to regular review and update the core values beliefs and learning expectations so that's the nature of that particular standard if you turn to page 23 this this is in that broad category again teaching and learning this is about curriculum and there are six commendations and five recommendations in this section again preceded by a narrative but for example commendation is that the Arlington high school staff is committed to providing high quality curriculum to all of its students and further down in another one it says they have authentic opportunities through community service in the capstone project as well as physical education and wilderness survival and wilderness camping a recommendation there's five of them that they would establish additional time for collaboration and ongoing work necessary to maintain 21st century standards and curriculum and actually some of that we're talking about with respect to calendar how do you find that time for collaboration in a high school so those are challenges that will face us when you move on to the instruction section for teaching and learning page 27 accommodation and you've heard a little bit about this tonight the use of evaluations by administrators to ensure that instructional practices are consistent with the school's core values beliefs 21st century learning expectations what is part of the learning culture and teaching culture of the high school are consistent common assessments to measure student learning what we're moving to is a different form of that which measures sort of the yard stick of what's learned in the course of one year they talk about the engagement of students as active and self-directed learners through a variety of research based instructional techniques and the faculty is committed to a high quality instruction in recommendations for example in this section they talk about ensuring that all teachers have equitable access to modern technology and appropriate training to enhance this instructional practices hence the professional learning day because that's an ideal time for that but we also do a lot more with technology than that but again it's as you increase technology increase technology integration it also really increases the need for professional development if you turn to page 36 again in the teaching and learning assessment section this is on assessment one of the accommodations for assessment was that a wide variety of assessment strategies including formative and summative assessments in order to revise and improve curriculum and instruction used by teachers so it's accommodation that this is happening a recommendation again to the time issue provides sufficient formal time for teachers to collaborate in the creation analysis and revision of formative and summative assessments so you get the sense of in this broad category there are a variety of accommodations and recommendations and again this is not meant to do an in depth look at this but rather to look at how it's set up and just calling people's attention to it and letting them know that they can look at this online now that's the teaching and learning if you look on page 38 this will give you an outline of what the support standards are and there are three support standards school culture and leadership school resources for learning and community resources for learning if you look now at page 45 this is on school culture there are there are 11 accommodations and six recommendations a commendation for example is the existence of a positive school culture which makes Arlington high school a safe and welcoming place for students and staff and they also mention the impressive array of extracurricular clubs and organization the exceptional demeanor and deportment of students in the school indicating a respectful and supportive school culture they also comment on the lack of barriers to general student enrollment and core and elective courses and the leadership and initiative demonstrated by teachers essential to the improvement of the school in a recommendation that they want to ensure that research based instructional strategies and teacher collaboration are supported by the school schedule again coming back to this issue of time and a way to address overcrowding in classroom settings in which the use of lab and studio equipment presents potential safety hazards all right so moving on to the next support standard resources for learning on page 52 one of the commendations on this is a the comprehensive array of academic social and emotional support programs and services available to assist students in the 21st century expectations a recommendation is to assure the availability of language appropriate materials for assessing and placing ELL students and that's something we've talked about at this table as well so again you get the sense of there were eight commendations and two recommendations in this section I really want to call your attention to page 56 which is the community support standard and this theme is echoed through in the commendations recommendations and I just want to read this statement quality instruction is being delivered by teachers in spite of the impediments of a crowded and deteriorating building although students and teachers have pride in the programs at Arlington high school the advanced age of the building shows significant signs of wear and tear science labs are not sufficient in size or design for some classes that have larger enrollments columns and posts abstract student vision and movement we'll go further down it says classrooms are insufficient in number and size especially in science and art classrooms where class size exceeds the number of available stations in some classrooms students are able to achieve educational goals and objectives in spite of a facility with significant needs and if you turn to page 58 that sentiment is echoed again in the commendations and certainly in the recommendations in this section it's the reverse we have four commendations and ten recommendations six out of the ten deal with the building with the building, right so we certainly need to have a follow-up discussion at this table there's implications for a whole array of things in terms of support and time and teaching and learning and certainly the building itself so this is something that we will do it's going to be something that probably will be in many ways in our meetings over the next year really there's a lot of issues here and we might want to focus on we'll have to think about how we want to focus on this if we want to take it by standards or a couple of standards at a time and do it that way so I just want to say I read through this kind of stuff all the time and I want to say that on one level this is one of the most exemplary reports that I've seen when it comes to the heart and soul of teaching and learning this building they are commending the teachers they are commending the administration they are commending the students and when you look at the recommendations those are sort of the excellent to exemplary kind of recommendations the thing that will really move us to the very top of the field they're not describing things that are wrong they're sort of pointing us to the next steps here's some of those steps being discussed earlier in the measures but on the flip side it is highly critical of the facility that we are unable to meet the needs of our students with our facility that the teachers are really going the extra mile to provide this high quality education as that sentence you read despite the fact that the facility that they're operating in is a definite drawback and reading through this I can't imagine being accredited ten years from now unless we have a significant improvement in the facility that we're offering for our students okay, all right so you need time to read it and we'll come back to it for sure all right some administrative announcements as you know we have a number of retirements and openings in key administrative positions and also support position and one is our attendance officer in court liaison we met in executive session with Ellen Digby who has just done a phenomenal job in that role we had in all of these cases we had search committees and I will have to say the quality of candidates was really impressive for all of these positions and after a very thorough search I have offered the position to Cindy Sheridan and she has accepted that position and Cindy has comes to us from having been one of the it was the program director for the diversion program when it first started in Arlington Lucille Nicholson who is our director of nursing is also retiring and this is a key position in the district we had two very strong internal candidates and that position has been offered and accepted to Sue Franke who just by the way received her doctorate oh wow yeah, very impressive and again for the athletic director we had a very again quite a search and we had a number of really strong candidates and that position has been offered and accepted to Melissa Lou Lou Lou so the G is silent and the L is silent Lou Lecky it's spelled D L U G O L E C K I and the press release went on the press release went on that one already we won't be doing press release in the others but I thought you would know that because they are somewhat key positions in the district alright today and I want we had our annual staff recognition day and I want to thank those of you that were able to comment to thank Mr. Pierce for coming and giving a very actually talking about some of the reading the lyrics of one of the songs in rent which was so appropriate to the work that they do but we have a number of just wonderful people retiring and I'll give you a copy of the program so that you can see that but this is one of our most I should say cherished events of the year where we recognize the people who have milestones in the district the 45 year, 35 year 20 year we also recognize that the people the teachers who have made professional status this past year because that we feel that that is something we're celebrating and then also this year with Linda and I thinking this through we really want to have a district wide acknowledgement of the people who retiring and we did that today but one person I just want to bring up because this is so unusual one of our staff members who did retire this year Nancy Ortwein 45 years of service in the early into public schools that really is quite unusual and the next person down that was retiring was Peter Rufo at 35 years so it's we have had people occasionally get into those 40's but not many also with respect to graduation we graduated our class this year and our outstanding class great speeches and I think you've seen the ponder report and you can see where all of our students are going and it's a very impressive array of colleges that they've been accepted into and a more complete report will be coming out of the guidance department and talking about the percentages of first choice, second choice that type of thing but again I want to thank members of the school committee for coming because your presence really signifies the level of importance of this event and again thank you to Mr. Pierce for his speech this year we did hear some feedback last year about sound so we hired a company to come in for sound and while people couldn't hear last year now they heard like three times and you're staying in the microphone you could hear each word being said twice it was a little disconcerting so that's now we have to work on that piece of it but it was a beautiful day and congratulations to all of our graduates and congratulations to the parents in this town for their for supporting these students in their success it's been our pleasure and really privileged to teach them for the years they've been here we had another little it's not a little but a recognition of our music department there is a magazine in Boston called the Bostoniano magazine and they featured two of our music teachers and our students in the Pops concert this year which was I have to say rather extraordinary where they had music that was playing two movies it was a very high tech and a concert but just a quick they had a quick quote in there but they really were commenting how flawlessly the students played and that's really such a compliment to the the discipline and the inspiration that our music teachers give them as do our other teachers as well so congratulations to them and also I wanted to acknowledge Mary Villano who this week was giving an award from the Rotary Club for person of community person of the year and well deserved the Rotary Club as you know is really focused on service and there were a lot of people that were honored this year who have given extraordinary service to Arlington but I believe the reason they acknowledge Mary Villano is the work that she has done in her years here in Arlington she's been here for 32 years and has had many roles but one of the things that has been true about her work in the school from day one has been her devotion and work toward involving students in community service and learning how to be a service in their school how to learn to be parents when my first was having seen the dowels that the students were would be carrying around the school learning to be parents and what it meant to have a child and not to leave the child there somewhere where you went off and did something else and I know that Mary offered in many occasions to babies at these dowels but it's really an interaction with the students inspiring them to understand that they to think beyond themselves and to think about how they can be a service to to their friends to their school, to their community and she was exemplified that in her years here so that was a well deserved honor and of course I've been getting emails about class sizes already and I know this concern I will be sending to you where we are at this point but I have to tell you when we look at the numbers forward to next year it isn't state of flux it changes all the time we get a register, we get five registrations one day and then we get to the next and it's just been going on like this now for several weeks and so the numbers have been changing but they change both ways we have students withdrawing and coming in but I will say looking ahead already we're seeing class sizes as a norm in the elementary getting in that 24 23, 24, 25 but we do have some class sizes that are going to be 27, 28 next year and we're going to be watching these class sizes very carefully over the summer I know already grade three at Stratton and Thompson we have class sizes that are at the 27, 28 and grade three that's not to say that they will stay there they may not but they also may grow and so we're going to have to be watching that what is of concern though with respect to that in our budget as you know we had two reserve positions in the budget and we've already had to put one of those reserve positions at Stratton because they're kindergarten which we predicted to be no more than 50 and now 60 and growing so that's what's happening and we'll have to just keep you apprised as to where we are with all of that and the last thing is as you came in the door you saw all of those yellow tape around you probably wondering what's going on maybe not but what's going on is that we're putting cutaways in there for the the door this has been on the agenda for all year it's just like when did that come up on the list the handicap accessibility with the buzzer all of that was put in a long time ago but we need to get cutaways there so that people can come up and what's going to happen now across in those cutaways is those first three places mine's one will be made into handicapped places one down by the the auditorium will no longer be a handicap because that's going to be the point of access but that's why you see it there alright that's my report tonight thank you are you ready to move on to the next one the Thompson rebuild update well we since the last meeting we really haven't had another meeting well that's not true yes we did and we're still on target and we're at the point where the last floor is being laid that that took a little bit longer than we thought they were going to be but right now this the time frame is still that we're going to be substantial completion completion on July 12 and at that point we'll still be punch list the punch list will go into August we expect furniture to start to be delivered in July though the first date is sometime early August we're trying to do is to get the school at least for technology set up by the time we do tech university which is the second week of August we really want the Thompson teachers to be in their building using the technology then and so that's what that's why this substantial completion date is so important because there's other things that need to happen in order for the technology to be ready to go so so far I haven't seen anything the contrary since our last meeting Jeff did you want to add anything to this we're looking at dates for dedications yes thank you very much well there are two dedications one is dedication for the building itself a ribbon cutting and we've contacted MSBA and basically they're just saying to us well let us know when you want to do it and we'll have somebody there I guess it's fair to say I have not we've been trying to mine all the calendars everywhere to see if there's any conflict on the 15th of September which is a Sunday and so far nothing it's my wedding anniversary this will be a good way to celebrate that's gone it's right there so wedding anniversary we didn't want it on it's town day weekend which is the next weekend the next Saturday usually it's that weekend but it's not this year and the reason why because it's one of the Jewish holidays on Saturday but also we have the dedication of the library Bill Chase on the 29th of September and there's already an author that's coming so we need that ahead but I also think the community is going to be could hardly wait to come in and see the building and so I think the 15th works and so we're going to get those out we'll have a lot to have to do with invitations and what the ceremonies can look like and inviting the community to come in and see the school and have tours I think it'll be fabulous we're not clear on the time yet sometime in the afternoon two-ish something like that those details was really getting the date that was the tough part and I feel even a little bit should I say it because is it definite I think it's like right there because I have not had any anybody say no we can't do it then so it'll be up and running and have students and people will be going to class before you do the dedication oh yes the students start back on the Tuesday after Labor Day so we'll have two weeks in the building we originally thought maybe the 8th but that's just too soon a lot of people have a chance to sort of get in the building get a little bit settled maybe you can have some student work up but people are really just going to want to come in not so much see the student work because they really want to come in and see the building anything else on rebuild from the members of the community I think that's a good update in terms of us needing a meeting perhaps in August I don't know we should talk about this before we all split apart for the summer but given that we're going to have a new school up and running right after Labor Day we might want to schedule a meeting at the school committee in August to talk about any potential issues that might arise between now and then on the Thompson we can have a tentative one set up because the first meeting you're going to have is the 13th of September 12th 12th of September but it would be before the groundbreaking but there'll be more communication in terms of what your role and what's going to happen all of that good thank you okay Miss Johnson monthly financial report you have the monthly tracking reports I was able to to delay the creation of these reports because of the data this meeting to capture the second to last payroll of the year so we're pretty spot on where we expect to land and we have we had a small amount of savings roughly 250 I won't know until the last payroll hits next week exactly what our total savings amount out of which we're going to be able to do some year end technology purchasing and some curricular supplies as well Mr. Hanner maybe just my interpretation as it usually is but on page two of three budget tracking yes I'm sorry 8301 tuition to other schools yes that is I have not yet done the journal entry to the circuit breaker account and that's where you see the negative balance there well it's not so much the negative balance I'm looking at this the second column from everything else above the second and third column usually add together and you end up getting the fifth column my correct right the reason this is different is because I have elected to keep the tuition expenses in the general fund appropriation until the very last minute because I find that trying to manage how much we're spending in tuition when I have the expenses scattered out in multiple places is just inefficient so you know the budget when you look at the budget book we budgeted about 6. 6.2 I believe I 6.2 6.3 for FY 13 I'm sorry I have the FY 14 numbers have superseded it at this point in my brain but the amount of that that was coming out of the appropriation was the 4 6 8 3 6 7 7 you see in the first column the reason the expenditures are so high is because I have both all the expenses that's the next column and all the encumbrances frat of district tuition still sitting here in the general fund now it was always planned that the entire amount of the circuit breaker for FY 12 would be used which is I think I just did the journal entry 1.46 and then the other part of that amount would be coming out of the tuition account from SPAD and that was all part of the FY 13 budget but I have elected not to have those expenses sitting in three different funding sources I'm just moving them now I guess why are we not on that first column putting in the budgeted amount of money because this is the appropriation this is just the appropriation this does not include circuit breaker it does not include tuition in appears as part of the revolving expenditures so I'm going to have to be reminded almost monthly as this comes through every single time is this unique just to this type of an account well I mean whenever you're funding one type of expense out of multiple funding sources correct thank you Mr. Thielman the revolving revenue tracking this is on a cash basis correct so that's as of that date as of that date right so I noticed we had a total budget of 350 on the building rental and we've collected 208 have you adjusted the budget for next year yes I have I had lowered it you lowered it yeah thank you so how do we track where we are in terms of out of district payments we have a very extensive spreadsheet that is maintained on a student by student basis and so I know very minutely what our expectations are for out of district tuition we also whenever student is placed we encumber the entire amount of that tuition through the close of the fiscal year and as student changes student placements are changed say they leave one school and go to another then the balance of the purchase order that's encumbered but not yet the balance of the purchase order is changed and a new encumbrance is made now I've made a priority with the the spread financial manager to always get the encumbrance in for the new expense and then clean up you know the POS that need to be cancelled as we go along so sometimes it appears overstated but I would always rather have it be slightly overstated than understated so that's those are the two methodologies by which I keep track about a district it's something that we need to be conversant on so that if somebody asks this is the kind of thing that people ask us you know how are we doing in terms of out of district's bed place and the expenses of that and certainly if I end up running into a FINGCOM member at the stop and shop you know that's certainly they're always welcome to call me well they might ask me and they'd sort of expect me to know the answers as well the reason I leave them the reason I leave tuition in the appropriation in the main budget is because the sum of the expended fraud of district tuition and encumbered fraud of district tuition is as of that moment as tight as we can our expectation for total tuition for the year so our budgeted our budgeted expectation going into this year where does that lie compared to where we're at right now? I think we're right on in out of district tuition we're going to have some savings but as we've had placements creep up through the spring we are right on and we'll probably be over next year based on what we can anticipate but you know we do have reserves to guard against that that's sort of a tracking number that probably if we can look to include that in a monthly report would be a good thing for us to know so how about another line on the summary page that just says out of debt that could work yeah I mean a lot of these check check check check things look pretty normal but that's the one that always gives