i would like to call the school committee of regular meeting on october fifteenth twenty twelve to order now the agenda will read visitors manager transition we are meeting our new manager tonight and cast over you superintendent's goals twenty twelve to twenty thirteen and october first in ro update mrs slattery is not able to be with us tonight and if you are listening we shall miss you and we hope you have a speedy recovery is there are there any visitors  remembrance or consideration of how the discussion went but i know the term field project has gotten a lot of press interest lately and i just want to make sure that we reflect accurately in discussion we had in the last meeting the comment in the mi is that that i moved to mark the second is that we work in support of church subfield project and support funding the project on a tell me more about the word i'm not sure i remembers the the funding work i'm not sure i remember saying we would supported why is it being presented to the town through a warrant for public discussion yes if i remember correctly martha brought up the discussion about putting in a language regarding the funding and we were corrected by bill saying that the funding source is not to be included because it's really a you know it's something that we need to obviously discuss with the municipal side so i think that it's a great point bruce and like you saw how it up how would you like because to me it illustrates so many things but first and foremost the lengths that our teachers will go to help students remember understand and love and content and so when i saw it they were gracious enough to say that they would let this be shown publicly because it was something created for students and i give them all the credit and so you see them here before with robotics and some other exciting things they do and this is the same thing of exciting things or science so we created a music video based on the song vacation by the go go's and it seemed to help students the it scores on their quizzes actually improve substantially we have very few failures on scores so we decided for density why not introduce city on friday and numerous students commented that they had that song stuck in their head as they were taking the quiz and numerous parents mention knowing the lyrics to the song just as well as the children because they sang it at home as well in preparation i have the song stuck in my head but you know not only they'll go for kids obviously they love children so that came out but the collaboration so you know no matter what house your child is that those teachers are collaborating with whatever it takes and i just thought it was such a great example of what i actually just do to help students learn that i just had to show it publicly so we're working on our third video we have students actually want to create a website with a video so that might be in the near future that's michael viral the data and they look at how the students are learning and they identify a problem being the scientists that they are and chided to improve student achievement in the first thing i think they tried a few years ago was the interactive notebook and they and so each time with a group of students doesn't perform well they will try something different and this has the technology twist and now the signature moves in the bloopers and all that and misery that is it's just something that the kids enjoy it is a nice model for the them and they're actually very interactive with probes and a lot of them said it was great it was like having a computer right at their fingertips you know but you know it was it was a pleasure having my kid out for three weeks we spent some time together and you know it showed in an outstanding like that said it was as it was a very great transaction and we just keep it going you know having you know whoever we had selected to come and work with mike for a few weeks on the overlap in salary obviously is always an issue but it's seldom that you can actually put a team together in going outgoing and incoming are going type of thing where you can get the benefits of what the previous person has i think you all know we respect my abilities and what he's accomplished over the last ten or so years that he's been with the district so you know in a lot of ways as i told you before  we were very fortunate in tony's background matching a lot of mike's previous background before he came to the district so you know having been in and working for the club the company and their medical side of things  and so i think you know those two are really drummed into people that bring that injury and then after that obviously his background going into the college level and having to do minor major renovations within a facility had there and then also being  hanover schools for a couple years which actually was an added plus to us because we had somebody who understood you know the purchasing for term and side of things and open the way we have to react to public versus being in the private sector so it was really it was actually fun to watch like to get some validation and that was after he went through all the facilities basically saying even though we have projects like the world to continue working on the status of our schools and the condition that they're in is far better than what he's seen in other districts and i think that's very important i mean i think that's one of things we strive for but and the times put a lot of money towards that you know helping us as far as you know these programs but it's important we're actually accomplishing it you know and i think we feel we are you know it's it's good to have somebody looking at seventeen different assets with that are given and asked for grades to read through ten we over all are pleased with what we see as far as our progress over time with english language arts math and science we put a lot of energy some very particular areas and we can see some improvement in those areas based on that focus and then we also see some areas that we're going to going to focus on where we might not see is great is growth is we'd like to see at this point we see the growth but we just we really hate it when you see it so in your package you had the performance over the last several years for each of those grade levels for math d l a and science and then looking at the same great because we have to remember that each year the test is different and each year when we look at third grade it's not only a different test for the different group of students i know when you're looking at the performance over time we need to keep that in mind so overall we continue to outperform the state in every grade level english language arts math and science so you know we're really pleased about that when we look at those seventeen assessments that are given thirteen of teachers and the classrooms and what they're doing with you every single day as far as growth that's a new factor that we look at how students are doing over time taking into account where they performed a particular grade  year and over two years compared to peers that performed the same place that they did and when you look at those from percentiles anything below forty is considered low growth anything between forty and sixty is steady the typical growth in anything above sixty is high growth so we're looking at the performance over time we're looking at the code works of students to look at the same students over time and now we have this other piece that we've been looking at  far is for growth so it's really important that we take into account the achievement of the growth factors going to focus a little bit on the two pieces as we look more particularly at different grade levels and the growth percentiles from last year we looked at that they did appear to this year we see steady growth over time the highest growth that we see in some areas are in mathematics in grades five through eight as you know that this is our sixth now so those students that are now at the middle school of have the benefit of this they now program for their time in the foxboro public schools which is really important because you look at curriculum and we look at instruction lot of the work that's been done by teachers of professional development and now in math and science what other highlight areas that only look at the number of students that are scoring it advanced in math and science we see that that is doubled also see that down when we've had slight increases you look at from here to the last five years state the state they're more stagnant where we've seen some increases in english language arts there and on grade three and grade four if we have the growth factor which is only a grade poor because it takes two years you don't have a growth kristen tiles are great great again that sixty percent higher is high growth and we have a fifty four percent growth factor but we look at morning moving them in to needs improvement so it's looking at the growth and at the same time recognizing which we felt in the past were doing all this work to do students to higher levels it really wasn't taken into say before it will focus more specifically what are some of the things we're looking at when we drill down into that data is fire is there right is and open response in the short answer in all of those different components because it's important for us to look back here  n as we look at the big picture and then drill down specifically especially where we have particular focus points for instance and now the professional development targeting are we seeing that an know when you look over the last five years and now that grade three just to kind of look at our own trends and compare it to the to the state so we can see that steady progress even though we have a slight decline from two thousand and eleven  yes we're outperforming the state but how is the state down over time as well and most cases you see them with a slight decline there's not any time where we've seen any kind of the crime in the state as i'm saying what i think this is significant is that change every year so very often you know there will be one or two questions it will be very different form to some one thing the other so it's not you know a small trajectory line it usually is a little bit like this but as amy said what we look is is we're dipping but the state didn't that's a really big concern so if the state is dipping down a little bit it could be because the nature of the issues test or whatever the of a myriad of complex factors you know it's not dramatic and it's only one of those look  at english language arts and grades five through eight we get a look at those numbers and if you look at the number of students that are advanced and proficient the numbers look very similar from year to year and then so then kind of look to see in the advance are we moving it may be similar but are we shifting more students to advance and at grade fact if you don't see that right six you do see some of those  and then at grade seven if it's more consistent as far as the percent of students and then it grade eight you see actually i decline there is far as the percent you've got also take into account your really high at the time they have it in grade seven so it makes sense that they're going to be more familiar with that time on the tax on the assessment place where teachers are very comfortable with the program now at this point they've been able to identify if there's areas that we need to supplement and all this fire is more opportunities for and rich meant more opportunities for work down the richmond pieces the critical thinking any of those pieces where we feel like with the standard we're going to you going to remember that a program itself is not written for math kids so it's very important for us to look at what we have  compare it to the standards that are there in constantly assess are we meeting that with all of our students the teachers that work really hard and i think that you can see that with then the performance and growth as well as a watch of the good work that has been taking place just as the first time to get the science just for him to pass so we're hoping to move the over time that our investment in the hands on the base science program will continue to pay off we're thrilled to see this the first time we really looked to see what was happening with the and so we're hoping that that's the start of a wonderfully dramatic trend  advance in math the fifty five percent of the students are advanced and that in science twenty seven percent a lot of hard work by students and a teacher at over time it's ninety four percent of the students from grade ten advanced are professional mathematics eighty six percent advanced for profession science eighty one percent so it's pretty good when people want to know how foxboro high school do to me that's that's meaningful and i think that the need to make a future you know prediction here but i mean with the news and garri program too is that as these students move up it'll be really interesting to see the impact on p within two students out of ten immediate mess so we really do have you know quite good numbers when it comes to the exit exam so we like to see that if you remember the beginning the first few years of em test was really only going tenth grade where kids sort of appl themselves to get over the bar but now they really strive and see if the kids were critically striving for the best they can do and that's what i think we're seeing you know debbie to that point when you look at english language arts  improvement and thirty five and then we're up to seven correct for english language arts and fourteen for mathematics and even science in two thousand and seven forty five percent point we look at those you know that that factor set in those students they are the targeted pieces that are already in place for them and then when they take in the retest we've already thing the success for them because of being able to really individualized what they disabilities so some of the kids who may need to have a retake for math or students with disabilities that we need to you know help them work in the areas that they need to work on and try for the next time so yes all of those students all of our students are included in these results every last one be watching that as we look at him past his standards in a particular grade and half measures they are performance on those particular standards so the growth over time will look at a student and how they perform more or less so you can see overall if you have so it's already performing very highly they may have even seen growth because they're performing very highly where you have somebody that's performing not as high you might see higher growth and that's what we want to look at to see what's taken place i think that's an important point because sometimes when we hear growth we think that means like growth in district scores but the growth percentage is actually about how much progress students make as compared to their peers across the state so if i had a similar profile to you last year how much growth did i made compared to peers who did similarly to me over the last couple of years so it really is about student it is a target for us overall to say where are we really well and where can we continue to strike and we can look at growth in particular groups that are at risk as well so for example our students disabilities in elementary math or middle school math are they making greater is their growth greater then students with disabilities across the state in which case we know our program so working if you know they may have a score that looks so that looks ok to us but if their growth percentile is lower than students with disabilities took the math test across the state then we would know that that's not good enough so we get lots of information from the growth percentile data so this  is one that you have in your packet and i just highlight this when they can see where i've said before that we're looking at performance to start growth over time that yellow highlighted problem there is the growth percentile so we're increase from here to year aside from just looking at it dancer bishop because of the way it's going to play so you know we give you a lot of numbers but try to tell a little bit story about these so if you look down that yellow column you see that our greatest growth in terms of student growth percentile occurred in sixth grade math sixty seven in eighth grade math sixty four and you know overall if you look at all grades mathematics fifty six so we can put a lot of emphasis in math and you see a higher pace of growth in those but if you look for example grade ten english language arts you'll see that the c p i for we were only looking at c p i the way we used to because we had c p i here for a number of years ninety eight point two composite performance index is really really high because so many of our students do so well the tenth grade english exam so ninety eight point two was so high it did there's not much room for growth but if you some of the some of the test but the really high c p i but an average growth which is ok we accept that because we don't have very many kids it's only an improvement but in other times you might see two different but very similar c p i is but you look to the right of it and you'll composite performance index is actually higher in the alley but the growth is slow and so it's a little bit lower in math but our growth is a little bit better so those two things did get two different factors that tell us about what we're doing and whether it's having any i and are they making progress and are we drill down into that we've seen some nice improvements as far as road specific place to go in that we're not just looking at the overall we need we need to look at all of our populations of students to make sure that we're meeting what are we doing for them what's is there a difference you know what's going on with them they're going to be able to show better than typical progress so we can actually click on those that find out who the students are work with they have and i see where they don't saying with command you can see that what we already talked about what we saw for the really high growth in areas those grades are they are to the right of that dotted line just go back to the last one because it's so hard to understand all  that same group of students in grades ten eighty six percent and then respectively great to down to and you see over time those students and a great ten she's got a number of factors that go on it  takes into account and it counts so some students will take it a little bit more seriously because they know that it can and it's poor kids over time of everything that they've learned really putting the emphasis there we're seeing some improvement where i can't speak to other districts but if you look electability over the state you see it right you might think oh we only have slight declines in the greater state stand where they've actually put it or through i know you know you'll do some stuff with the parent leaders but i think this is a nice easy one to read meaningful and you know it's a new way to view it so for the church there's a lot of  we've expected to see improvement we've seen it based on the diligent efforts of the teachers and the you know the students and what they're doing there's been a lot of that assists and there and we've seen some great gro morph that into this room and we thought this is a good time to do it because it's part of the strategic plan to do that so it's timely it is the interest of the committee and the strategic planning group to do so it is also in our interest to do so and as it turns out it happens to be more timely that we think because amy's been meeting with folks and we met today talking about a new three year benchmarks but what we realized is that as you know with the new core and his new national park assessments coming forward two thousand and fourteen have only one more year to one more year of efficacy so it doesn't make any sense to set you through your goals for m cas which is about half let's say of the b sides of benchmarks report because everything's resetting it's a new national exam it's going to be online it's completely new and different so everything m kasra they did which is the bulk of our data i say half of   park assessment will not measure against the standards it will measure student readiness college and career ready so looking at very different it would be a very different look i just w for next year she said i always have to be the one that has to take it so she will take it and then my fourth grader said well then what will i say and i explain that there will be a new assessment this park assessment and that it will good measure but i'm always finding that i'd like us to compare ourselves to something higher than the state average and maybe that's not right but would it be appropriate for example to compare us to other districts that spend per pupil somewhere in the general ballpark of what we spend because to me when we compare ourselves to the state average i have higher aspirations than that compares well when we say compared to say that which we don't mean just that we want to do better the state average what we're looking at is relative comparison so for example if we're seventeen points above the state average we feel much better about that being five points about the state every so we don't ever when she says about the state average i say but we don't it makes sense and i've never ever heard you be content being two percent above the state and now when we use the state average as the denominator it still to me is not what i want to compare ourselves to so i don't so we can say you know it's great we're seventeen percent above the state average but i still don't know how meaningful that is so you know it's one of the few things that we actually can look at for relative performance just say where we are relatively stronger and where relatively weaker the challenge we always have find districts who are similar to us in most if not all of those factors and then see how we're doing compared to them and so that that is i'll just say a capacity issue picked given everything else we're doing is it isn't what we've chosen to do it's not impossible to do but i don't know if it would inform you any more than this type of analysis what about it but i don't you know we  could maybe find six or seven districts that are similar to us when you put those composites together but that would mean that we would have to decide how far away from those factors do you want to get so we'd have to become statisticians ourselves to know that if what we were making decisions on the district were selecting are actually statistically significant and correct and you know that takes a real high level of analysis with people who do just research  you and that is your best donoghue institute a lot of that research used to a couple of decades ago and so the factors are pretty much agreed upon that people should compare themselves to so it's not and that and that's why it's always tricky when people compare any district to someone who is geographically adjacent to it could be you could be two totally different worlds sure just because you share more to share so that's those are really the main factors and that's probably another same and some of those are the factors that debbie mentioned they may get to that point very differently than we did that's why it's so important for asked to look at what standard is it numbers that we're talking math or is it a fraction what area because that all of the objectives and the strands with the now where we need a high performing another district that might look similar their ass is lower and vice versa so it really is more about looking at where are we at identifying any specific that we looked at an area fractions and we wanted to see where students are performing at different grades more to verbal so last year we had a same task it was a problem with brackets and we gave that task to fifth graders through eighth graders knowing at what point at what level that they should be able to calculate that the particular problem and we were able to see fifth grade to the eighth grade they were answering it to make it simple and at the same place correctly all they should have based on the standards for each of those grades so that gave us a window to do well what are we not doing as much at that particular grade level and more at another and then gave that tacit again later on after direct teaching in that area to be able to see and it helps to focus fifth grade teachers first six seven eight at what level with others and under the impression that we give them information every year to the advisory committee february time because you can say whether or not you got it last year we look at her pupil expenditures we look at and cast and that's what paul jackson has done for us same as foxboro but at the end of the day you know i don't want this staff to have to spend time analyzing their data but i do want to know if we're eighty six on math how can we get to be you know ninety or ninety two critically say is this group funded a math special so i think we have no data and i would encourage us to continue to use those benchmarks they're not ideal but we can take a look at all those in the haka mark and i think we have where those communities assimilate it was so they're just geographically close to us so i'm not sure i mean i know people like us and they like to know how we do when it's compared with the heart because that's what people familiar with so it's kind of interesting that people have a comfort level with the league if you will created to have let it and we're going to use the same week to compare ourselves academically it's up i don't know how helpful this but people like it so that's that's what i all of those towns and us to see what it means so we don't really know what but we still share it every year because it seems to be a fan favorite and i hope we continue to do so because i think that's what we need to do to show the taxpayers we're us with those qualifiers and you know it is what it is and take it with a grain of salt kind of and vice from college accident when it is interesting to see what other communities are spending and what other communities i guess what i would maybe just conclude amy this is if there are comparisons you think are meaningful to be interesting to see them i don't know the hawk from from my perspective personally speaking i certainly don't want the same level that being said not in depth being said even years ago we are struggling with take math we're going to pay attention to it we certainly do pursue who's doing well in that area and what are they doing and we reach out that way so i'm not saying we don't ever do it we certainly so i understand and that's just as an example to today we had our first meeting of a twelve program view for man it's that year and really setting what our charge was for the year and what we're going to be collecting as far as information background information first depend of the state of the state and really look at all of our populations of students within that analysis we will be studying very specifically if we have population of students at a particular grade and we feel that where it's high is that you'd like to be why is that and then look to other places to see if they're doing particularly well with special education students or those standards and then the highest performance overall when you look at the name which allows you to compare state to state and that's one of the pieces with the part is now that comparison  then it's time that we discussed what areas i would focus on for my goals so i do have a lot of books this year but i couldn't figure out how to drop off any of them in the future you might not see six but with the new educator evaluation systems coming in effort that would be necessary really all parts to successfully implement to do yes it's educator valuation system so for the purposes of people watching at home i don't know if someone else would like to be my goals if you like me to read  them go ahead read them all right here go yes and this new system requires that there be at least one goal in each category of professional practice student learning and district improvement and then there's also the fourth category called so my professional practice goal which means what it might be going to do personally as a professional in my role to provide targeted and differentiated support primitive streeter's leadership growth and development by identifying group and individual ministers self assessment and the development of their professional practice goals to be measured by ministries evidence of progress towards those goals so i'm currently working with the ministry some principals they are doing their goal setting as part of the system  and helping them through that and i also want to make sure that we're all focused on the things that are important to the district to district so it could be anything that they have now with their own professional practice could be one of those three key strategies this is never the superintendent that you plan to and the student learning goal which is kicking in this year is and i make this a two year goal because we don't want every you know i don't want to give the committee the impression that we do quick goals we can do something kicked off a list and then we're done so this is an area that we paying attention to for a number of years for now i think this is just a two year goal by june two thousand and fourteen the number of district wide opportunities for advanced learning enrichment in town which as outlined to the superintendent your plan strategy for two will increase by at least twenty per so whether they choose you know a more aggressive percentage i wouldn't doubt it but for me over seem this from a higher level that i want to see all three levels not just there they are one building or their share of level so for me  you know i just certainly see that because the elementary i think is turning into a little bit lower number of opportunities than we see at the upper level under district improvement being called a three to closely monitor and publicly report progress toward district improvement as measured by the district strategic plan and the superintendents and to play in three key strategies by developing a district report card by december first two thousand and twelve by reporting progress on the future plan in the entry plan strategy action steps twice a year so my plan is sometime in the year at one of these meetings we had in our shared from proven goal for to facilitate professional growth of teachers by seeking ongoing feedback three times a year on the implementation of the new massachusetts educator evaluation system and working to meet those needs throughout the year so this is  deliberate goal so that we're not just reacting when so but of time throughout the year with the new system we're going to going to we just met today with someone who's helping us do this but we're going to seek feedback from teachers about each segment of it so right now teachers are finishing up people studying with their supervisors so we were going to ask them specifically about the activities in the first couple months of the year how did you find writing sparkle would have the helped you need to go you know getting a lot of feedback about where they are what was what was challenging what was easy and they got all the feedback that we need and then going forward help from us so we're a little bit more proactive about it and then we'll do another media check in how's the documentation and the collection of evidence go wing  through they feel that the formal observations all of the components in the system so that we know how it's going and we have our working group or we call it an educator evaluation working group which is eighteen people the district the event twice a month or last year we're already meeting five to facilitate and support the movement implementation of the new massachusetts the ministry or evaluation system to ensure that all disagree ministries are evaluated according to the new process and standards for the two thousand and twelve thirteen school year as measured by the completion  evaluations by september thirtieth so as you know i'm the only one that was evaluated within the system for this past year thanks to you in the committee's willingness to invest all the time and effort to learn it and devote your time diligently to that so we want to make sure everyone is converted to the new system for this year everyone starting off we're all on pace so far and i need to make sure and you to be able to ensure that all of history is evaluated using the new system this year last year we did have a hybrid that i told you what to get people used to some of it and then last i don't have to have other goals but i do have a very important goal thing which is to successfully conduct conclude the contract negotiations with professional educators by september first  resulting in a new collective bargaining agreement so as you know we're starting bargaining with our biggest promises each interest here it's very important to us to have it wrapped up at the start you don't want to be like many of the districts you read about where they're working without a moment has declined you know a little bit short total moment right now is two thousand seven hundred ninety three students and if you look across the bottom you can see there are class sizes you know i think the largest class size we ever had was to forty five a few years first grade one hundred eighty six students currently underneath one in second grade so you can see there's a trend toward small class sizes first and second graders and we're really going to watch that closely because it is as we've discussed at the staple before it's becoming less and less predictable class sizes facer was living here with construct school so we still see a lot of things happening as a result of the economy which is families moving in you know not in time for school but often they do but sometimes transferrin when they're able to move into town so we don't know if that will stay the same or if we'll see that growing a little bit over time but will certainly watch that but if that trend continues then i think we will see a declining enrollment over time we'll see so we have about fifteen to twenty fewer students in first and second degree than we have historically seen the overall we're probably about thirty students in those two gr ways just curious and this goes kind of back to our and have discussions from sorry for backtracking but if the class sizes were on the lower end of things going forward stay with the group it's in first and second grade when they get in third and fourth and fifth grade is that factor that will take into consideration when looking at their cohorts over time that they are in smaller class sizes in connection with their scores i'm just just in actual smaller classroom sizes our class sizes have been ten sections they almost don't know what you know they don't really realize that's a good a good point just for people hearing that the moon is going down you know that we don't have the same number of section no if we have a and if we don't need that many sections of particular school we don't have a  and for those of you who don't know they were standing at the airport on wednesday evening waiting for their package and by spanish names were announced over the p a they went and they were told well the plane in spain was overweight so we arbitrarily took the suitcases off so one teacher and four students had level i would like to thank everybody in town and forgive me for the past nine months while my son has been in afghanistan and especially from those who stepped up when bill realized thirty six of his men and women his soldiers hop way through the deployment have not received one package those of us have stepped up and made sure that those young people h packages they were away and right now he's about getting up it's already tuesday morning in afghanistan so with the next twelve hours i hope i receive he will be leaving afghanistan and