students seven thirty two thousand and twelve two thousand and thirteen and cast analysis part two seven fifty five two thousand and thirteen baseline and benchmarks update ms finale and dr bird house eight ten school improvement plants elementary school i go elementary school and taylor elementary school eight forty school committee liaison for superintendents contract negotiations eight fifty bit award thirty passenger school bus anyone else saying we'll move on to seven ten approval of minutes we have the october twenty first foxboro high school foxborough school committee obviously minutes october twenty first if we want to go back and just that's why i voted in the affirmative but  right yes ok thank you so i'm going to turn over to our cheaters and comment on what is the day do why do you do it what do you get out of it great so good evening my name is matthew carroll i teach have tenth grade us one and one part of the curriculum this is actually the fourth year i've done this activity in my own class and then last year i was actually here with mr rico where i teamed up with mr rico and we had about seventy five kids this year i teamed up invited mr grady and mr couldn't be here tonight and we ended up with about a hundred and fifteen kids so we you know we expand on that and the one of the things that i personally like about this is it's experiential learning so the students get a chance to really see how the process works in terms of trying to pass a bill as reflects what happens in our actual constitution and it helps to get shed some light as to why things work the way they  work and you know looking at looking at some of the breakdown questions at the end of the activity one of the questions is you know how do you feel about the law making process and it's really really neat to see students you know voice you know express some frustration with all process and this this is you know a very very difficult to do that was like yes that's exactly it supposed to be and it's really interesting today actually that some students in my own class afterwards they talked about how sick i couldn't get i passed a bill and some students wouldn't vote for me would vote for my bill but another student did it and they voted for him or her and i said yeah that's kind of what happened sometimes you know differences of you know differences can get in the way of the legislative process in terms of opinions about each other so that's kind of one thing that we kind of looked at just we've seen all these different personalities kind of crammed into the up stairs media center which was the upper house which is the senate in the lower house is the house of representatives represent so today the media we actually had media center last year where we that a student had collected so that they were assigned representative or senator and then we talked about the differences of the political parties and then they got to pick a state where they want to be so every had students walking around today for senator and representative and we had mr kayser as our president and then dan and i were as the cabinet dan was what we secretary of the treasury that was secretary of education so mr pervert i think he was treasurer i believe how you i don't quite remember so we were his cabinet so if a bill passed both houses it went to the president and we had a little powwow and we actually had three bills passed i brought them with us today and one of them i actually really liked  this is the students bill and they were they wrote out to the committee they voted got sixty six percent in the house are sorry in senate it went back up to the senate they voted got sixty six percent and then we have the presidential signature i'm going to photocopy so it's been very it was a good experience one thing i really liked about it is i had actually stepped away for a cabinet meeting and i had stepped away from seventy five kids in the media center and the downstairs media center and  kind of had a little powwow about one of these laws and i came back about four minutes later and there were my house of representatives they didn't miss a beat they just kept on the ball just kept on rolling without me or any one of us needing to kind of prada long the conversation was very very some great things about it and so you know really great to be able to see the students learning in that way i think that today's experience is thankfully more valuable than three or four days worth of class and just kind of talking about this information  vacuum so that was great and again it is as matt said you know watching students just keep rolling with the process kind of take over and we can take a step back and they were putting into practice everything that that we've been talking about and the key piece that i think is so important is you know your teenagers watch the news they hear so much dysfunction in washington to try and help them understand that that dysfunction is actually part of the process whether that's you know sometimes we get frustrated by it but that is the process and and helping them see that that's the process i think is really valuable to helping and you know as they continue to grow and you know and understand how our whole government works so i was really happy to participate and  i think it'll be great to make some improvements for next year so it's great before i ask the questions what they thought one one of the things i thought was great was he asked you know would you guys last the students what would you think in the first student first kid i  saw is hand i said you know go ahead and he goes i think if we were more mature things more things would get passed i think if we were adults more things would get passed i think we all kind of looked at it oh i think this is pretty much you guys past three bills and you know two  learn how the bills have to go through it seems that you just have to have one vote on it that's not at all the case what you have to do is you have to go through a committee and subcommittee and committee and then you have a vote and if someone doesn't like a little bit of that bill getting it struck down and then you have to go through that entire process again so it really shed light on why stuff is seven washington doesn't really kept on last year the student news bill was passed where we had to show the student news of the first ten minutes of every class and that one just could not there was a it was actually there's a small group of senators in the senate who did not like the student news and they it passed the house it went really i mean i wanted the students bill again anyway because i think it's a great thing but it was really good to kind of hopefully make those connections between once again real life application and what we see in class and one amendment to the student couldn't get a majority sixty six percent but it's just what happens when you get a voting block on yeah that's right yes matt how long a process is this and what kind of lessons learned debriefing do you guys do as teachers afterwards it's it's tough because in planning because you kind of have to keep your eye on the timeline of class you know and i feel like probably could've spent even a month in preparation i would say probably about two weeks maybe a week and a half of actual class time simply because you know we go through we go through the constitution as close as we can get a series of worksheets from my classes they had to actually pass the bar exam which in order to come become lawyers and then once they became lawyers after they passed the bar exam then they could participate in the activity in fact a hand out diplomas i don't know if you still have a diploma from from the carroll school  so they like that so i mean that's just part you know that's it's kind of up to each teacher to put it as close as you can one thing going forward a suggestion probably that i'll take into consideration for next year you guys obviously do it much better as the roberts rules and i think that's one piece of that we're going to have to condense that to about a handout so in figure out what i think i think one thing we added was we we had students stand up in state you know and state their name and you know that's where the started by the time you got to the end of the activity that it kind of worn off so that's another thing we're going to have to i'm probably going to have to add that could probably be a half hour to a class period in that preparation so it's kind of tough to had some six questions that we give the students at the end of class at the end of the end of the period so i think we ended at eleven thirty so at around eleven o'clock eleven o five we had about a twenty twenty five minute discussion about some of these questions and then i know when each class you know either today or if they meet tomorrow probably a little bit more discussion like i said i'll laminate put them up in my room and from here on out we'll just go right to you right to those last night had a couple questions you had three bells were pa student chooses to use the past they were received one hundred percent on that homework the pass must be hit it in the day that the homework is due if the student does not use the past by the day by the day grades close that pass must be turned in for five extra points on any assignment except for midterms and finals if the student lose the pass no new pass will be given what's great about this bill is that this was actually approved by both houses vetoed originally by the president because there were some details that needed to be you know kind of ironed out president the president actually went to quorum with five committee members and they had a little powwow for about ten minutes at a quorum and then the bill then was reprinted to the house they approved it and went to the senate got shot like that so that's where they get the carol method so one two three quizzes per term replicated by mr carroll for other teachers the cards must be time specific and they will be chosen at the beginning of the class and then it can only be applied halfway through the quiz so that was the other one that bill and then the last the last one is the harvey bill the harvey bill states that we propose a bill that says that if you're within one point of a higher letter grade and if you complete your homework and work hard through the term then the grade will be bumped up one point only if political for grades fifty nine sixty nine seventy nine eighty nine ninety nine the final decision is up to the teacher in whichever they feel that that person deserves at that point so that one also got mass also which i think is just a good method of measuring and so i had no problem with that those were three bills and last year they had four bills passed so this year was three it was actually it's more students this year so i told them would you do it again and if you did would you try to pull in some friends or acquaintances that he they differ in your opinions or with your opinions next time yes absolutely i believe again and i think it's the parties were pretty irrelevant to th weren't partisan issues there was no conservative there was no liberal approach to these it was just legislation about classes and how they would be carried out so i would definitely bring in acquaintances but  don't know if they would agree with me or not before and so i would have to see the legislation speaking about another great part of this was met and i we brought our costs down and had them take a little survey to find out in the real world whether they're republican and democrat where they fall on that so we were able to not just apply and you know the democrat republican logo or you know affiliation blindly but it was typically representative of where they would actually i guess my question is that all tenth graders who participate do you have anything planned for the juniors and seniors to continue this experience you know in their careers in terms of going for  the the junior curriculum doesn't cover the lawmaking process in this kind of concept and kind of detail it's tough because whenever i kind of send out a little you know notification and history teachers would be willing to participate who have grade ten you know classes because i don't want to i don't want to force something that maybe they don't want in their classroom so that's why it's really was actually really neat last year was just two teachers myself mr rico decided not to make a motion on it which i know was probably disappointing to some of the students but just based on what you know what we can kind of what we have the resources that you know we can kind of move forward once again keeping an eye on the curriculum it's of tough so we kind of had to let that one kind of fall the wayside so it would be nice i have talked to other students in the past and they kind of have always kind of said oh i remember when we did we did that legislative activity so to me that's a victory in its own right  i agree i think that hands on experiences is so instructive to the students as opposed to reading about help bill becomes a law actually walking through the process i'm sure kyle which yes it it really teaches you the difficulty and it's amazing they get anything done in washington and it's great keep up the good work it's fabulous i think i don't enjoy visiting if i can't stay a long time because i think it's one of the best we often people in our generation remember civics and government as a separate course and what i've been trying to explain to me is that it's imbedded in whatever we're starting so this is the american form of government when they get into other cultures or other even ancient forms of government they'll do activities that will bed them in that so they really have a hands on experience but i thought a couple things were interesting that if if one of the proponents of the bill really want to get attention and be persuasive they were standing on a chair so yeah they're really trying to come in the audience because it was it was pretty pretty large and then i ran upstairs and got a chance to see president kayser in one of his compromise meetings it was about the drought that the coral and the group of students who sponsored the bill were really quite literally coming to a compromise with the president and then they were writing notes about the language of the compromise but instead of mr president kids are writing it in the back to kids and he said now you have to craft a really good convincing compromise that is well worth it and the kids were rushing out interested in a bill that's somebody who is not your friend is trying to promote and that that was relationships are important in politics so i just thought it was great and you got president case with quite shop with this stars and stripes  experience that just just can't can't learn that from the books from the actual doing so maybe the next time you're watching the news or you see something they've kind of probably it'll resonate right about what your own experience w full right we're going to move on to two thousand and twelve two thousand and thirteen cast analysis part two spinelli yes and actually i mean i was speaking today we have our our curriculum directors and department heads here so to participate what we thought we do because the next two items are so cool see trying to gather our m casts trend statements along with all the other day that we get that are going to kind of combine these two items the two thousand and twelve thirteen and cast analysis in more depth in combine it update because so much of the impasse is depending on the other bend benchmarks because of the switch to park so i'm going to turn over to amy who will take it from there with all of our people so our directors and courtney's if you want to come up to showing that we have two thousand seven hundred seventy two students enrolled in foxborough right now we have seventeen yellow students which is the same number of students that we had last year although they're not the same not unlike many districts the number can fluctuate from year to year and families move in and move out so we've stayed consistent with our number although it's not the exact same number of students from last year and looking at our graphic data and looking at those students that are eligible for free or reduced lunch very slight decline from last year district wide about a tenth of a percent it really is pretty consistent from last year we do see some increases in and a couple of different schools at the her middle school as well as the i go school we see about a two percent little less increase but pretty consistent from last year when we look at our special education population across the district in every school we've seen decreases and i think that really speaks to the work that we're doing through the right response to intervention and trying to catch kids early and intervene with them to make a difference for them before moving to that that next step and seeing over time those decreases is really i think a great tribute to the teachers and what they're doing for students that's that's really nice to see is far is the data that we're going to be looking at this evening we're going to start with high school and to look at middle school and elementary we started in two thousand eight setting benchmarks the goal is not just for him cast as we talked about at the last meeting because it's really much more than him kept looking at all of our system and data that we have but we really scratch just the surface with the amount of data that we put within this report in our speaking to this evening we have so much more that we look at constantly to really look at all content areas in at all grade levels and we had just want to point out the significant increase in the students eligible for free or reduced lunch from two thousand and eight and i know you included that data so i think it's worth just mentioning that and i think that any notable increase definitely speaks to the challenges that you know the economic so field testing will take place this year for the park which is then going to turn into pilot testing next year with districts being given the choice to choose between impasse and park this what they're saying at this point in time and then if the mean we're looking at the word field testing this spring ok many districts in massachusetts across the country twenty four twenty fifteen will be piloting the park and twenty hard to be giving both assessments and we have three out of our five schools who are selected to participate so far that may end up more and there's all kinds of caviar about if you want you can exempt from this but it doesn't but that comes with a price so it's getting very complicated because it is really difficult to ask didn't take a couple of different assessments for two different purposes and then we're going to be judged on one or both or neither next couple years or are going to be a little bit challenging when it comes to the logistics of switching to park but in terms of what that means for the general or for the average parent an average student we're talking about different types of a sussman and cas and park we're talking about how we look at kids ness and there were a lot of options out there i mean even this year the department that said didn't even though certain schools are selected that we could not accept the invitation to participate but we feel it's important to get a look at the park so that we can learn a little more about it but there are districts that we know of that we've been surprised declined to dissipate so there's a lot of you know and i know discussion going on i know from my own work can are ready but i think it's the concern about too how much testing is too much testing in not wanting to be supported quote guinea pigs but we think it's good to look at it because the the problem is the park is that there are application apply what they know and that is a little bit different from the way they have accounts has been so we'd like to see what that looks like as they roll it out and whether it's successful in measuring what they say it's going to measure so supposedly it's going to those kinds of items that have more application of knowledge do something with it rather than just know it would be able to figure out something ok thank you we were interested in our kids too as it gets helpful background if you're not familiar with parker  systems where it's going to be an online testing in the future where they'll have the choice paper and pencil but the idea is for it to be an online test so there are some states that have actually backed away because of the cost that will be incurred and them not being feeling as though they're not going to be able to find what it's going to take to really transition over from this side of from both of the online piece as well as the professional development that needs to take place and really the standards that and so if you're hearing in the spring from parents that what's all this testing we just had some know when it's more that will be true so i think that's our biggest concern least mine right now and i might have bigger ones as we get closer to know what the logistics of some of that are but right now i think that's my biggest concern sure you guys will keep an eye so at the last meeting we talked about the really the global picture and then pass so we have within your packet in the high school the for the last five years looking at the percent of students that work for fish and dance and we're going to go more in depth with that with water and ensuing lottery and paul but one of the things i just kind of wanted to as a reminder is when we looked at the data at the last time we looked at how we did over a five year time period we looked at how we've done in comparison to the state and in although we want to obviously continue to outperform the state we have on our seventeen test it's really important for us to look at what is that gap between us and the state because if we start to see that get closing in certain areas we need to ask ourselves why is that we're seeing it widening to and we're continuing to keep that continuing to improve as we talked a lot about the last meeting moving the number of students to advance versus proficiency it's really important for us to ask those questions why and that's why we're going to talk a little bit more about some of the roof classic areas and then at the same time just as a reminder  became very clear the parent leaders meeting last week that i don't know that we do a really good job of this and it's to talk about where massachusetts is when we look at the nape of the nation's report card which is all fifty states  randomly piloted we had to over i think i think it was like eight thousand students in massachusetts for the reading and then the nine thousand over nine thousand for math the last five years we've either scored first or tied for first in both of those so it's massachusetts you know obviously nationally you know debbie put that in your package as far as the extra information that's there and then in addition to scoring you know first time for first on the nate for the last five years when we look at the thames study which is done every four years massachusetts ranked sixth in the world in math in two thousand and eleven so i think that's really important to keep the context of where  we are as a state and that greater picture too but we're going to take that into your really then and talk more about the high school the middle school and then also the other assessments and the other pieces of information that we look at when it comes to the news and in english language arts is really phenomenal you know our students seize the day on all three levels again we had ninety four percent of the students score actually ninety five year advance and proficiency and so it's true to my knowledge i think every student took the exam here last year past which the success stories there are if we could go into detail are just stunning kudos to not only th adolescence you know and just seize the day and to get them in those rooms when they don't want to be there and to to slug it out and to give a real college try on everything that they do is testament to their character or just so proud of  fifty six which really puts us up in the big boy category around the state also the writing scores went up thirty one points from five twenty nine to five sixty one incredible year but we worried about that with that casts and and you know actually couple years ago we thought we might have maxed out and now we're even getting better results there so i think we're on a good good track and then with advanced placement courses we had a record number of one hundred three students take advanced placement english exam for safety eighteen was last year and the good news was when you increase in romans you kind of between teachers and students and so thank you to all of you and i think these numbers are amazing i mean i've sist such great news i don't know the rest of the com wants to chime in or not but i go congratulations walter keep it up i know your secret sauce is but john and i the only thing on through my head i was talking to mrs myers back on the way in about the open house coming up in a couple of nights and want  their kids or private schools i don't think we should but we got going on here is good as it gets and the diversity of what we have going to the school right now is for i don't think we've ever been so diverse and the nature of the spirit of the school is i mean the students can tell you such a good school spirit it's a great place to be truly is the kids are what make it makes what makes it the community and families are also part of this commitment and you know business is in the area it doesn't matter whether it's a butcher baker or a candlestick maker you know and engaging these students and hands on even just visual experiences or participatory like we saw earlier with the student government is fantastic and it is you know all of us doing this good news station excellent staff the students nose to the grindstone and families patting him on the back and moving them forward with community involvement and we going to keep that ball rolling and stretch it even further i'm so happy you said that because  he started a one school one book for everyone three years ago and i can't tell you the number of parents who come up to me and said i read the book and i really enjoyed it so my husband he read the  performance we still have a little bit of work to be done in a down at the lower level and we continue to work on that i've been in a lot of conversations with some of the special ed teachers to really work on how can we help those students in particular some of the instruction and there's a lot more discussion in class we're really getting the kids to do a lot of the talking about the mathematics and a lot of the explaining very often when a student asks a question it's not going to be the teacher that's responding it's it goes right back out there you what do you think even with an answer if a student gives an answer and they're looking for is it right that question is getting put back out there to the other students and i really think that this conversation is really helping them to fully understand the material and then be able to demonstrate that and house so we too are very excited about our opportunity with a park in the spring because we really want to see if the changes that we have made are are going to be near bear the same kind of success on those exams as well and you know i can echo some of the same things that walter was saying in terms of the success with both the a p s and with our s a t s and just seeing those scores either staying the same or are rising a little bit some of our numbers fluctuate like with the a p stats that kind of goes up and down depending upon the availability of the schedule but the kids have consistently had averages high three days into the and into the forest for the their overall exams there which we're very happy to have so that's sort of where we're at right now and what we're doing to try to continue our success with the mathematics and to look the great ten science by this is the one area that we are able to can continue with our three year rolling average in our goals for two thousand and fifteen because the science will not be changed with the park we'll continue pretend composite performance index which is the comparison of everything composite of that science in general not great ten composite performance index is twenty five point four percentage points state which was in the last  which is huge value for high for fish and versus low profession tiny's improvement versus low it gives more points there so it's really him at better it's a more accurate number when you're looking at that c almost afraid to make too big a deal about how big these jumps are for fear that they're different year to year but this is really across the board pretty pretty amazing pretty amazing and i don't know what you all attributed to him and probably a lot of things i mean one of the things in our literature is the correlation between the standards and what we're teaching in our curriculum and they seem to be well off but i'm sure or a big part of it is the job you all are doing point was made earlier but this instrumen really really exciting stuff rattling in to your point this is the first year that the m cast had all of the new standards with the new curriculum framework so we had one hundred percent year before last we had really a hybrid so this this one what we do from year to year you're going to see a steady increase last year we had two new a p courses put on for this share so i expect the numbers to go up even further we have a p psychology which was offered this year for the first time p physics so next year we're going to have even more students who are going to be taking the exam and we're expecting the scores of three and better to stay on a steady increase in we're also hoping to  implement even another a p course down the road which will present soon to you guys to so they may be questions about the a p i think one of the things that is encouraging our students to also take more a classes is we run the a p potential might we started that a few years ago and i think that's really helped some of our students look at their potential and take that risk that they might not have wanted to take and i think that's one of the reasons our numbers up it is great that we added to this year and we're hoping to add one more we have to be careful it is a small community so we you know he could go on and on but we do have to you know make sure we have enough educators and the commitment of the families as well because you know a p classes and taking s a t s scores and continuing their work during the school year and there are students are so well rounded and involved in so many different activities so i think it as we see it every every meeting we bring that here so that people at home can see it so i really think that we need to commend everyone it's really wonderful potentially you mention have to be as tight as they can be in some high schools whether it's ours others so i just her philosophy of for any student who wants to give it a try that we should support that i have to commend it was we're seeing really quick results in the first year or two from that belief college but it's really about the classroom experience you know and that whole interaction the class that is the reason we to encourage every kid to try to take some a p classes while they're here bruce did you want to s sustain and improve the pure motivation of the student in concert with the staff and faculty to keep that moving because you know sometimes you have to push of the end of the dark to teach but i love it i love that idea motivation is right in there and then i have spoken about that to kind of the celebrate the kids who are taking the a p courses and really get them try to get pumped up the teachers do a great job with that as well you know yes you have t potentially you just need to do this so between them and then the guidance or doing it and then at home because we do need the support from the parents with that with administration we are trying to come up with some other initiatives to try to get the students pumped up to three year trends because you know you never know if one year to year it's just you know oh is this just a really strong class or is it but it's it's every year we're just doing better and better and all the scores every year so it is really box for high school and now so we're seeing that i don't know it's not really did data so we stick him with the s a t s which is fabulous in question the messy tease i think they probably have in the last thing is again our continuing ads you know again we're preparing the students for college and career ready and we consistently have about ninety percent of students go on you can look at the numbers they go up you know ninety one ninety two ninety four ninety two is the benchmark so we're consistently having about ninety percent the last this year with the last two we're at ninety one point three three is fires are rolling average but this current graduating excellent graduating class is ninety four percent oh ok that's what my question yeah so this is not thank you didn't the ninety for two thousand and thirteen is the highest percentage we've had absolutely that in in certainly my memory is it ever is the highest we've ever had going highest i have ever known yes ninety four percent is extremely one of the thing that i think that it was wonderful about district really is the vertical articulation that takes place it's not just the high school it's not the middle school it's not the elementary it's the constant dialogue that is taking place between all three levels and we're looking at root causes having those conversations we meet together as a group they then meet with their departments we we have a lot of brainstorming sessions to go back and look into things further so it's not just high school it really is this cumulative minutes in it takes  everyone really to to build the students that that we have not just parents the community but teachers from pre k all the way up through grade twelve so if there's other questions for high school otherwise we'll kind of shift but we still have high school here for that piece for moving into the middle school i mean i just want to second what you just said i so glad you said that because it was in the best my mind thinking about that hearing about all the success we are having at high school what a great foundation they're getting in k through eight and a lot of that is in alison's work as well and how well they work they all of our curriculum directors work together as a team so i can see it with my own children is they're working their way through so fortunate not i the districts i speak with they don't have what we have here and that is what we believe if we send stronger and stronger students in the early years to the next level than most and you stronger students then you can take them to  sixty nine percent of rest students were received formed at the advanced efficient level which was that in the end we had a five percent increase in the advanced category and grade six they maintained their eighty percent performance level and advanced category and great we eighty five percent of our students performing at the advanced efficient level and in the middle school we had all grades show the typical growth rates ranging from forty one percent to sixty four percent with grade seven having the notable sixty four an average of sixty four percent student growth percentile and for the m cas so we've really been working focusing at the middle school writing cross the curriculum i'm going to go back to just to look at long long compositions courses while so long composition is hard caste that takes place in grades four and seven and students earn their score by two parts there is topic development score that they aren't and mechanics or conventions score so it's twelve points for topic development and eight for conventions which combines to give them their total store so we look at their scores over time they've been pretty consistent in terms of the past five years we've really been working hard with the changes in the concorde there's been a shift in the writing in the past the old standards who really for narrative writing and information are writing now there's a heavy emphasis on argument writing and opinion writing opinion at the lower grades ships into argument so we've been doing a lot of that's where most of our national development in our curriculum work is banned it's looking at the shifts in the writing  and helping to provide teachers with professor professional development to make those changes and what's really exciting is that the middle school we've put all the content teachers have been become a part of that so seventies great teachers especially have worked together social studies in a we've developed some common grade level rubrics so that we have common expectations at that level for what are the components of a good argument so that the students are hearing the same language in any content are science teachers as well have been incorporating argument writing into their curriculum to so really had a heavy emphasis on that piece and i think that has helped us in the new standards as well just so you know that is trend is really into and between the speaking and listening standards  reading in the literacy being there they go hand in hand to be able to identify claim to support your ideas whether you're speaking or writing or when you're reading something to be able to identify you know the claim what's the evidence that the authors using to support his claim and you do you agree with that is it sufficient so we've been doing a lot of work on that and at the middle school level and that's across the curriculum then across the curriculum because with the new standards we have literacy  content area so they actually now have their say there are standards that are part of the l a standards for reading and writing so it's a piece that we've been working to incorporate into their curriculum it's really exciting to see and they're working so close the social science teacher may actually introduce what a claim is and then it goes back to english and english it works on developing and how do you write a good claim what thinking about the language that you would use so it's pretty exciting that takes real collaboration it's been really exciting to see the shift over the past two years first year they went into teach opinion argument the students didn't have any experience with it so it was a lot a lot of work and now that this year when they came up they have had that practice from last year so it's really exciting to see oh we can go about much further this year because of the work that's done before so it's exciting that's a big shift from the past danders really to have that expectation for your content teachers to teach literacy so there is a lot of collaboration that has to take place to make sure that messages consistently expectations are and that's again as you mentioned occurs in the professional development days yes i mean i think that's important for people at home to understand as well i'm sorry i have no idea i'm going to reiterate that and that this is the proof of the value of the professional that is right exact that's exactly what i was going to say right and i think people need to understand this is an example of how we're actually seeing it in the every area and it's great i know my eighth graders working on an argument paper that's due friday and they get to pick their own topic and i also think it's great because you can write about something you may feel strongly about we did have to sign off on the  didn't have a conversation to make sure it was you know all the parents had to sign off on the topic but i just think it's free and you can see the excitement and the enthusiasm for writing coming through with the students and i think most teenagers do like to argue so for students and what's taught in one place as applications everywhere in your life in your classrooms in your future career so the more we can make those authentic connections is specially in the area of literacy rewriting the better off the kids will be because they're only in the able to carry those skills see where their reading level is that so you can see that for the end of the year that in terms of our rolling average group we have means made gains in each grade level grades have a lot of internal measures that we pay attention to when we need pork that's why i look at the fifth grade from you know twenty to twenty twelve to two thousand and thirteen when we go up six points i'll probably get yelled at by the math if i did it wrong in my head but that's a  a lot of information and that's why we couldn't do one percent one in the other because all the data points connect so in grades three and four our form in time passes been fairly consistent this year we did have a five improve performance improves as they go through district but we typically see a drop from third to fourth and then it continues up and you can see that here where's the line for fourth grade is slightly below the third grade level and that's because of that added component of  exactly like we did you know what does that mean did everybody across the state stop doing some things it's doubtful so that's that's what makes it difficult when there's a different group of kids and a different test every year is that it's difficult when that happens and we don't like to go in that direction at all but what does that mean in the whole stick that happen to the whole state and they don't release the items so we don't get a look at the items anymore to try to figure out what we think it means and then this was the first year of the full assessment on the new standard so last year was an overlap this year is a full assessment and then the writing component in the past has always been a personal narrative so and preparing students to for the assessment teachers really had a focus of what they needed to really focus on with students instruction how to or could have been an opinion our opinion piece so teachers really tried to work hard to think about what's the best way to equip our students because this is very different from what we've done in the past it's always been a personal narrative in grade four like what would you do to snow day what was your favorite snow day a favorite trip you want to i mean it's always a it's been around or something so in this year was an imaginary of so they found a trunk in their backyard and when they opened it something very unusual and surprising how they had to write about it so it's very different from what they've experienced in the past so we were really pleased to see that the long composition score is remained fairly consistent from the past that was surprised at the reading standards and diving a little more deeply into those and thinking about the new standards talk about the text complexity and having students to close reading of the text to really dive deeply into what is it the op is saying and what are the words that they're using to create the all right so the developmental reading susman this is the second here we used to develop months of reading sessions seth's meant the first version and we just recently adopted the second version which is a better assessment it has a time components to it gives us a better more accurate picture of what students can do in terms of reading independently it's incorporated at writing component which begins in second grade and shift students from just a retelling to have to summarize what they've read so that if you look in terms of our performance at each grade level we've seen slight improvements in the two year rolling average from the year before and we are in line to meet our benchmarks for each of those would maintain or improve from the baseline reading assessments similar performance you can see that we've there's been some improvements  actually have just rewritten the district these are district y writing assessments we've written them to more better up to better align with the common core so that we actually want to have a pretty and a post assessment where students for each domain of writing which will help us see what students are able to do when they come in to a grade level for say opinion writing and then we'll assess them at the end to see where is the growth and it will help to really get to help help us to focus our instruction and what are the strengths and weaknesses that's coming next year and then the last do the kindergarten letter sound idea that's also part of the two we use the word analysis which is the second component to the sussman our prior assessment we students were asked to give in the alphabet and they had to either name the letter give a word that started with that letter or say the sound any they could do any three of those images on a point for that this new assessment breaks it down so we can look at students can they identify all the upper case can identify a lowercase and start separately and then when given the letter can they tell us the sound of the letter makes and can they generate a word and then this is all timed as well so it's really seeing how fluent are they with their letter identification and their ability to produce sounds related going back to two thousand nine hundred you can really see the gains that we've made over time and they're pretty consistent in all the grade level so we've had really consistent math scores in the last couple of years and we've had the expected amount of growth that we would look for  now with the new standards they will form a domain on functions that used to be only by the elder one course at the high school through really interested in seeing with the new transition to the common poor how the students would do in their assessment we had identified eighth grade as an area of focus in two thousand and nine so if we were to go back to that other chart that was something that we were looking at because we had a decline of seven percent of students in the a provision advanced category and then we started to track them that increased to sixty three percent i mean that scored advanced which was a jump from the twenty percent and that ten percent was actually purely the advanced we saw that can be so we were really looking at why why is that we realize that with the implementation of the common core we sort of as we've talked about a lot this evening we've had a lot more opportunity and need to be collaborative there's a lot more conversation about how the lessons are delivered the types of questions that we're asking what is the regular look like and it's really brought everybody on the  same and we really have had a huge focus on making the math connections to the real world and i think an eighth grade that's especially important for the kids is a lot of abstraction for them in the mathematics that they've learned and making it real for them increases student engagement it motivates them and it really says ok i need to know this because i'm going to use it in my life and it's actually somewhere we also continue to have the one we grew view at the beginning of the year really helps teachers target students strengths and weaknesses that they can focus their instruction where it needs to be right off the bat in addition teachers are collecting more daily formative assessment data this year we just implemented one new piece that we hope to see the results of next year so we're constantly improving the data that we collect all the data that we collect in math does not get reported here a lot of it is more informal fall into the assessment that we're going to say ok where are the kids really getting it and where do we need to go back and make sure we have it because math as we know it really builds on itself and they don't have a prerequisite skill will definitely hinder their development going forward back to the ship i think that the idea that you have here on causes on the one we concept of you know because there's so much to do so usually we finish then at that time that they take that one week concept review particularly in eighth grade when things really the rubber starts to really meet the road with the basic skills checked to me is one of the best moves that you've done with with the middle school team all the teachers of the team i mean because i just think you know where the kids are with the misconceptions are at the beginning of the year rather than have them continue on and it only reveals itself when difficulties encountered is is one of the best things you could do particularly in the area  that was say that was seen as idea several years ago and started as a more extensive review and it really became a balance of ok we have we have so much to teach and instruct on in the school year so we really now have it down to we target the specific skills and concepts that we want we keep it to a week and we really use that to inform our instruction as we go forward so i may identify weakness in fractions it doesn't mean i'm going to teach every single thing on fractions right then and there and have this big review it means i'm going to implicitly include it in my instruction as i go throughout the year and i'm going to continue is standards based and it does have a common core standards and questions that are aligned to the standards we get the students feedback it's almost immediate and we're able to in real time tell them you had a misconception here why was it and we corrected it immediately so the teachers feel very empowered by that the students feel very empowered by that and we know now that they're not carrying that misconception along with them and it's hindering their growth as they continue to learn new skills and now it's worth noting too that last year was the first year of implementation of the concord middle school the full implementation so to have the results that we had we were pretty excited about them because we weren't exactly sure how it was going to work out with all the teachers having professional development we had a lot more opportunities for middle school teachers to go out professional development and we brought people in from math factional development experts who can really help our teachers strengthen the overall program so i think we've seen the results of that the middle school moving on to the elementary school at the elementary school level again very similar to the way we can see that we've had a kind of growth that we'd like to see over time with the grade three being consistently higher than the very four so one of the things that's worth noting for parents and i realize parents weren't really aware of it this year until i had a really nice conference with some parents is that in the third grade on the end cassis estimates there aren't as many open response questions and the open response questions that they do have are only worth two points that level of rigorous only increases in grade four much like they have the long top and they have multi step over response questions that are worth four points and in third grade it's even written for them they just have to pull on the answer in fourth grade they need to label it a b c d they need to make sure the answer all the parts they need to be sure that they explain so level of rigor significantly increases to really nice to see the results on that we had in third fourth grade this year one of the notable things to talk about in their import grade is the growth was earned in the advanced categories we see our kids moving up in the advanced category from thirty six to forty three percent grade for results show sixty five percent proficient in advance and we hope that that continues to grow as well one of the things that we've noticed we're moving to that right to find that it's on page nine consistent scores or growth in grades three and four you can see that we've exceeded our three year benchmarks so there that we're very pleased with the results that we're seeing in those assessments we've incorporated a lot of the expectations of the common core like justify your answer with the visual model explain your reasoning prove this person wrong those types of things and the end of year assessment if we look at our current scores we had a huge jump from eighty five to ninety three we made some significant changes to our instruction as a result of the concorde down in kindergarten around numeracy and number sense and the teachers in grades three and four reporting that they're seeing those improvements the fact lou and see all the work that we've done around that are really helping the students to really engage with the math in a way that they haven't before to really understand it conceptually and be able to explain it like sue was sucking about in walter the discourse the conversations that go on in the classroom a lot of it is on the kids to talk about that and come up with solutions and share different solution so the only spot that i jumped out at me was a great three had had a dip in i was concerned about that but then when i saw that the end cast went up i thought maybe we're just a little too challenging we want to go overboard with what we're expecting of them so that's been for and we've spent a lot of that's actually been our focus and we're going to be here is to try to figure out why now we know that it's very consistent with the results of the state so you know that gives you some measure of comfort but still we want to know why so we've actually taken the grade five assessment and i've gone through it with all the grades three and four teachers and looked at all the questions to see because it is that cumulative test where in your instruction is this man and did you realize that the the questions were going to be  this way and maybe teachers were really surprised at some of the questions on the science and cast are really asking for a recall of a specific fact and we know over three years time that that's very challenging we're seeing in the next generation science standards that are soon where we don't know their release that we don't know where adopting them yet restart and taught that they're looking for broader understanding of science topics how science topics play together they're not necessarily looking for a specific recall so we get a little frustrated when we see those questions because we can't how is the student necessarily going to remember that once this some of them will many of them do but not all of them so we've really looked at the fact you know as a root cause yes they are humility of tests where can we shore up our instruction where can we fortify and our instruction so we've had those conversations with three four five six seven and eight already this year and one of the things that really came to the forefront was this even learning on line sort of for lack of a better term it's a student review system to call up those topics back to activity they were feeling very pressed for time so last year they didn't do it the same way they decided to remove that from the classroom and focus it on homework because we have found a weakness in the end of fast here with their technology engineering they really wanted to focus more attention on them so they really feel that that really hurt the students because when we look back and analyze it i think that the committee knows and i think people at home know are a great focuses on physical science our seventh grade focus is on life and our sixth grade focuses on  just great is a combination it's all integrated they were concerned that some of the topics that the kids are going poorly on are the earth science because that's all way back in sixth grade so that was a critical component and bringing those those topics back to the fore and homework you know you take a risk when you do it as a hunk upon it sometimes it works out wonderfully not everybody has equal access to computers or time or whatever and some students take it more seriously than other self we're going to reintroduce that as part of the classroom instruction i think that's really you know one example of in addition to all of the grade level meetings that allison has you know lead with teachers focusing on well what are the one of the answers i mean we see certain scores we look across state avoids and we ask a lot of just we're just in summary and i know we're all just marveling at the results but just a couple thoughts i mean one is you know you could say this is just the one year of data but really not with the trends that we're looking at so all i can sit here and think is one of the high performing leadership team we have from the building level administrator to the department chairs to the curriculum directors to this instance superintendent of the superintendent this is just what we have vision i think when when we brought him in we promoted there we this is outstanding so i'm really really really but i wish i could give you tomorrow off but maybe i know maybe next thursday and friday that i know that but you know it was just sitting here thinking you know you guys buy into the assessments then you apply what needs to be taught to meet the assessments and then you understand what the student where the students are and how to remedy that and i think it shows and you know i could go on and on time but terrific job thank you and what i said to her as to be the role of the principals back there because not everyone is lucky enough to have their principals be understand the importance of insert state tests here ok because you all have shifting sands to deal with it seems like these you know  we've had it as a as a community ahead with over but a six or seven percent increase in socio economic difficulty or challenges so you know what i don't know sugarcoated never get it but whatever the word is but we've had a headwind of a seven percent increase in the least district wide you know like different lunch programs and those sorts of things they don't know that as a community yet the average person sees how much they have put into it and the how these changes have impacted them and how much they've had to learn and how much they have to work and do it in my hat is off to them all the time and and thankful to the principals i'm glad that you mention them because they give us the opportunity to meet with the teachers and to have the kind of conversations and the kind of professional collaboration that are necessary to make this happen among the district in a consistent way that's very challenging to do if you don't have that leadership in pla again this is just heard allison summarizing about how much work we do to make sure that it's what our whole district not just our individual schools is another large piece you know through debbie and amy of allowing us to try to work with each other and where we can really part of that is that's for all of our students grades three and four and one of these pieces that mike michelle and i and all of our staff will even be on at preschool it's not just the great for africa as you heard in that science example it might student who is proficiency or advanced receives a full point to students in needs improvement it can be broken down into two areas where a low needs improvement is a half a point high needs improvement is three quarters of a point the warning is broken down into two areas a high warning where they can earn a quarter of a point or a low warning with zero points earned and that then is create an average for all of our students so working from each one of our schools we had a slightly different number but in those eighty's numbers and we want to see up into the ninety's for that  sixteen back to a question from the audience earlier of asking why move to a three year plan for the two year plan and it was really with that idea of as we met with superintendent nast many of our goals as you know this is our ongoing goals and it's really working towards that goal of success for all o students and that was where one of our requests was if we could shift this to a three year goal and really give our councils the time to work on this in our staff to work on the schools to bring them to fruition i'm going to talk about the teacher assistance teams that's something that we all have in common as peter mentioned you know we worked collaboratively on the schools we share best practices and ideas but also each of our schools are unique in one of the commonalities that we do have a teacher assistant teams and those are teams the acronym we use is tat where students might be struggling particularly area whether it's academic social motional behavioral and the teachers gather and they look at the data and they talk about best practices how they can help this child  in our respective school improvement plans and we've done a lot of work and we're going to continue to do work to be able to make this a better process an easier more efficient process for teachers are ultimate goal is then we're able to respond quicker to student  needs every day there's a sense of urgency for our children we want to try to balance that with making school fun and positive but also realizing that every minute is precious for that tackles that we have is we're going to be putting simple goals and we've already started this work in the district and templates and also research based practices on the district share drive so that way if there's a team at i go school that's looking for something in a teacher's over at the barrel or the t l a have done something we can then use that resource right away that way the teachers are focusing more on teaching as opposed to researching and trying to find some ideas on teachers continue to work elaborately with one another they analyze the performance of the students one area that we really talked about as principals in which trying to work with our teachers is a lot of times we have fantastic plans but every day comes a place i might schedule an assembly i might you know put something else in place in the school that then doesn't allow the intervention to happen so what we've talked about is the fidelity of our interventions in really monitoring it to make sure we have a student that comes to us that's struggling that we can say after six to eight weeks we measure their growth in it's a lack of growth we can actually pinpoint we do what we say we're going to do and that's a little bit of a different process we're doing a better job of documenting that so this is work that we've done in all three schools it's been here for many years but we're really trying to do is use technology to be a professional learning communities or p l c we've now implemented time in the teachers schedules that they have time to pull aberrate to begin the year the teachers design both professional practice and student learning goals and then the week once a month to collaborate with their colleagues on developing lessons developing assessments examining student work in ally's ing student performance and then planning the appropriate interventions or enhanced that are needed this is something that we spent a lot of time about halfway through the year the three of us work with amy and really set the foundation for going forward this year with the p l c and you've heard a lot tonight about collaboration we really feel this is the best form of professional development having the teachers be able you know three heads are better than one really be able to sit down together to do this work  so underneath the other three strategic plan objectives in our plans where each going to just highlight one thing that we're doing something through a back to plan so from strategic plan objective to strengthening need school culture and strew ensuring that students staff and all stakeholders feel valued safe and a voice one very important goal for us was to decrease the number of bus issues that were happening and this was really just started from a great opportune well last year the three of us were invited to join our bus drivers were able to do a great session with our bus drivers hear a lot of their concerns provide some information to our bus drivers through that meeting it went so well from  point of view and for the drivers that the drivers have invited us back this year and it's going to be something that's more of an ongoing basis of us working with our drivers and it's one of those unique perspectives that we identified with them that day of saying they're one of our few school employees that have the child from kindergarten straight through senior high school and many of our drivers do keep the same students throughout that so they have a unique perspective that is really helpful for us and as long as we take advantage of that and we can do more great work with our children in addition to this dennis fletcher survey the drivers to ask them what are they interested in having more information about from us and that way we can do is designed specific presentations for them sharing information a few of the results that have already been implemented is last year as we talked about the importance of having positive relationships with the students and identifying when students are doing the right things is each one of our schools have implemented a caught doing the right thing on the bus piece where this treasure box is and each one of our offices students are called down when they're doing the right things on the bus and each of the drivers are just telling us how excited they are by this at the very beginning i think a few people had some reservations about saying how would this be implemented we each started a little differently and tried some different things and as we mentioned before we worked very closely together we share our successes we share our challenges and with the three of us working together we're able to share what worked on some buses but it's not working we find a process where now students said all three schools are being identified we still have more work to do  but we're in a good direction now we're going to talk about a strategic point of view at the number three image her peers students with skills for the twenty first century by maximizing the use of educational technology all three schools we continuing to look expanded in richmond opportunities for students outside of the school day from robotics and drama club but at the i go school one particular that we're going to be focused on is developing the student leadership program something that you know done extensive research on the past few years have implemented it previously but i'm excited because it through the research i found a program that i feel will set the foundation we talk about with the students communication collaboration critical thinking and creative problem solving it's based on the seven habits of highly effective people what they actually did is they created a program for schools called the leader in me where every single child is responsible for their mood their actions how they're going to face each day and it continues throughout the seven skills and the habits that we're going to develop in our students this year we're going to start with just with the pilot program just with our fourth grade students it's going to be during the school day so that way we don't have to worry about students that are going to miss  community so in especially listening earlier to the comments about what great things are happening up at the high school realizing that we set the foundation so that's one area that they're very excited to finally under a strategic plan objective it to maintain strong support for public education within the town of foxborough each of the three elementary schools has a goal to utilize technology to promote efficient and effective two week communication our goal is to increase the types of communication between home and school that focus thought curricula programs school initiatives and also to the specific another thing that the three of us are also looking at as we are finding the communication practices for families whose primary language is not english that actually was something that came out of the way to school systems that we did the kindergarten level too so one example of this i can just share at the girls school you can go on the school council site we have to up now we  video newsletters this year so if you go to the school council website click on video newsletters you'll see it's sort of a month in review in pictures with some of the programs that we do throughout the month it's fun to watch really any question it's crazy that we do by the way we do collaborate a lot and we get along well we tried to t presentation was just a small example of how well coordinated you guys are and smooth and you know none of the stuff we just celebrated prior to you happens with you guys starting it so cudos the only question i have is where's the mulch request because i can't find out you know systemic cultural academic improvement so yes that as a former school council member with some of our other school committee members here i know how much work went into these plans and how much time  spent walling your school councils putting them together i think they look great one thing that you didn't talk about that i saw that all three of you have in common is the community service projects for each grade level and i just think that's fantastic it is one other way to get a foundation and you know encourage student volved and leadership skills and i love the student leadership piece at the i go school i think it dovetails nicely with what michelle is trying to do with the ahern student leaders club and hopefully setting a foundation for you know future school committee student representatives down line but i think that it is just another way of leaving a great foundation for our students on board but i love that community service  piece of these three plans think it's great to have the two i think this kind of culminates into this this evening about how the cooperation is happening out of all the levels and like you said in the in the beginning of the meeting within each grade level within each school and then crossing the schools and here we have the three elementary principals giving us a presentation on their school improvement plans and the collaboration is so evident so  you've given us the support that we need you know that that's been the key that that piece that i mentioned earlier of where we have the time to work with one another as you heard from diane allison that you know we're given the time to get our teachers where they can work together that's one of those large pieces that you know my experience of being principal in two of the districts that doesn't happen in many other places of where you have leadership at the central office and from a school committee that allows for for our schools to collaborate with one another and not just that once a year twice a year feel strong but we're i think principles we're still struggling with trying to get some of those things housewares plate and because of people bill and tony and if they say they need something you know we have a very proactive approach with that so we take care of those things so they can concentrate their plans and their efforts and their time during the day on the things that matter with kids so we're not struggling to fulfill those because if there's a need we figure a way to make it up because that's a distraction i call that miscellaneous as they know oftentimes i'll put it gen printing contract negotiation yeah so we've been talking a little bit about the timeline and i've actually asked some of the superintendents what they plan to do this is all you know fairly new and it also impacts what i'm going to be doing with the principal so my thoughts are with with the principals because their contracts are also going to be reviewed technically i think is that i'm going to be using the next couple of months just to meet with them informally to find out you know what it is that they have interest in and using the month of january to really meet with them and then see where we are and at the end of the february month is the mid cycle review for our administrators so at the mid cycle review kind of get the successor agreement down because you don't ever want to you know have principals be reading until june twenty ninth so that's so it got me thinking then maybe since it's november that the committee could think about and i did have liaison for contributions originally and if you could have a liaison to start those discussions with me and then hopefully really get down to the nitty gritty in january and then when you have my mid cycle review in february you could some pricing point so we weren't out to rebid this we run basically four of the twenty to thirty passenger buses we owned six and we do that similar to the reasons we do it on the bigger buses obviously we do have breakdowns we do have scheduled maintenance so we need to have extra buses but we're placing is in a team of four so it's ten years old got a hundred seventeen thousand miles on it while the body shape wise is in pretty good shape you know mechanically it's starting to see  its age and we're starting their problems with it we are going to keep it and use it for the meat as department give it to the older ones we have sitting behind the i go right now which i don't really like having on the road and you know they don't actually look like they can travel obviously a concern we have form as well and also teaching the students at a more you know seeable level because again otherwise they're raised up as well so bus safety in mind we feel this is the best bus we can get it it's almost one we're replacing so that's going to be nice in that sense and it is twenty eight passengers so these are the buses these are only buses that are air conditioned because obviously we use these during the summer for whatever summer program whether we're doing you know moves from the  herm back to the i go or to the recreation program or even that type of stuff so i have an american issues important to us too so you know this would put the you know we'll have one more probably of the other small bus  right now we're showing you know overall surplus of about seventy six thousand dollars shift is coming really into two areas one you know we have a shift from an expense account to a salary count so it's actually making expense account look better by about seventeen thousand dollars however we're seeing two big things on the payroll side we have two tech positions that are still on filled the one we just built so that as of december ninth we will think of that because we've got a vacancy for a period of time so we've got you know funding for about a three month period that now we're reflecting we also have our integration specialist which is you know our second one that we're looking to fill so we're carrying a seller surplus there at this point so that's really where your differences are coming from minor again minor ups and downs within you know different teachers go out at different times will bring in long term subs and that happens from week to week but so the major component really on the payroll of this point you know the the roughly twenty thousand we pulled out of expenses moved right up into our payroll line that we had to cover which was our school career positions so i think overall you know looking at some of our key points if you were really right on budget right now and actually i've requested the d p w analyze the cost that they're charging us because actually i think we're paying more than we need to our fuel costs right came out of last year in a deficit position the really the results over the last two months have been have been pretty stellar as a turnaround we're now averaging about twenty six percent increase in revenue for the first year much of the year  i think again and alice and her team have done a great job consistent you know making with a more consistent menu again i think hopefully the the students are seeing that the the types of food that the trying to offer i know we talk about the  pizza oven as a kind of a joke but i think it is something that the kids do enjoy and they're actually able to do a lot more with that they can cook vegetables and that often they can do a lot of things that they can't do is on the conventional ovens we had before you know i think the smoothies are hit i think the salad bars the kids like  we've actually made up the deficit and so if we can continue this on we will actually end up you know in ditching by the end of this year and really you know like i've always said is this fire is food service is concerned i'm not looking to make money i'm looking at to just break even and it basically gives the resources to do the things of the you know the better products that we can offer so i'm pleased that this is going where it is so i don't see really any you know downward you know pressure on us from an expense point of view we still seem to be running you know i look today again and they are electric and gas gas is just about right now and you know schedule that we have to the heavy months yet but the electric where we're wallander and again i think the continued  building again tony's philosophy on running a quiz mit and what i really enjoy about working with the team now is that they it's no longer reactive it's proactive so they're doing everything they can to make sure you know what we're spending if you actually dollars  maintenance budgets you know each year right now we really do believe that the outcome is what you get on the saving side so we're we're kind of you know paying a little bit now to have a bigger savings there and they're doing a great job with all the mechanical size and again i think the the real positive effort there is you see within the school environments you know we're not getting the complaints that we're getting a few years ago of the inconsistent temperatures and concerns that way so i think the renovation program helped a lot of think the you know the continuation on working on the equipment so from an expense point of view i'm very comfortable with that we don't really seem to see any real pickups coming at us if anything hopefully maybe some more resources to actually you know attack a few more of these energy programs by the end of the year we did do the urns hot water system during the summer kind of a proactive issue there and it's worked out great so you know we'll continue to look at those little areas and if we have a pocket of money that we say from doing it try to attack track for that well we done all of our everything we can we submitted way back last spring you know all the documents at the record the state basically said i think the last notice we got was the end of june beginning of july where they said it would be a december response do you know we're ready stands and again you know i kind of caution you know there were quite a few on the list that didn't get it last time so we're addition to the list but we're on the list  my my approach on these it was be a things is that basically you need to at least be on the list one time to get through so while we may not get it this time we knew immediately into the next offering and go from there but we have again i building sit we're going to keep taking care of your being proactive and i just said you know i did i know you maintaining it it's just i just didn't know if we need to keep money on the horizon to this day if m s b falls through and what i think it was you know be  here i went to i want to ask the board how we want to move forward for if we want to move forward in mitigation with the race because i found as a citizen a fractured communication within the term for between one department and another with one ad hoc committee or one board or whatever on how or if the school district is affected by th and i don't want to burden our administrative staff in the cycle of the department of redundancy department and i don't want to miss any opportunities that may benefit will district that i think we need but it was for my belief that you can discuss it so i'm bringing it up and i actually don't quite know what to do with this item right now but i'd like it to request it to be put on an agenda and maybe i can help you in the language up to agenda five if that's true and so you so you're the first thing you're doing is asking for feedback from the committee right you know about putting it on the on the senate on the matter or don't i haven't moved on it just because i don't want to break any or marrow issues or or anything i just i don't know what to do with this but i don't want to me someone who  around with some of the area you know right around school districts that they were participating in the medication so try putting on those so i don't know what that would be if anything and it's really up to the committee if you want to discuss it or have an on its image and i am i don't know if don't know what mediately what that would be if anything so i wouldn't even know how to broach this subject or start the questions literally so i don't know how we discuss right now because i just don't know anything about it personally and will so if it's something that someone from that committee wanted to come to us at a meeting as a visitor and give us an update i don't know that even needs to be on our gender and maybe if we heard something there that made us feel like there's a role we should play that maybe we would put it on an agenda that's my own personal reaction i'm not for or against or indifferent i'm just ignorant so i'm for it and i wan make communication with someone to either get a go nogo don't you can you should you shouldn't i'm not trying to throw the town in turmoil i just want to look out for the best interests  district and i would think that i would think first up as for us to get educated and maybe someone should come educate us do we go on our own or do we have somebody visit i like the idea of a visit that i would want to point out so we don't have any opportunities that i miss moment maybe to be proactive maybe we can ask our chair to reach out to the chair of selectmen and see if there's any thing that we should collaborate on and if you want to reach out if you want to reach out to the committee and see if they'd want to come in give us a brief if  i don't know what it would be i mean a lot of things go through our heads like we don't have a great deal of housing stock out there we don't have a lot of rental i'm not sure what what the i don't know but i think the first thing is to find we can't base our life on if first of all we have to find out where it ends in the dark find out that information and click the process is and i can bring back that information under other matters or if there's enough in information that dictates us doing something else then i'll make a decision with the superintendent about putting that as an agenda item so i mean certainly you certainly it's something we're going to discuss and while get the information in and bring it back to all of you and then you can so i think we're talking about information and asking for information in receiving it is is always good so move forward from there so i hear ok and he body else under us tonight just i wanted to mention we were discussing amount of money for each school that then goes to the field trips and enrichment programs that they offer at each elementary school for the district so i encourage people to attend i always have a great time there and that was one thing the other thing i wanted to mention was i did go to math night at the herne and it was fabulous i really learned a lot about our our math technology and i heard a lot of very positive things about both the elementary and middle school math nights from a lot of parents and also literacy nights were provided by the teachers to the elementary school in the middle school parents in different grade levels in and i just began it just speaks to how our teachers and put the program in the air but i have to give him a lot of credit they're one of our strongest partners and everything they do bring to us is sustainable is good for children and we really look forward to more partnerships with them theologians ball fund raisers tomorrow night so there didn't quite go through the automatic system exactly exactly right and one of the opportunities if you remember i mentioned that the august submission doesn't couldn't include it meet as my evaluation ratings weren't determined till september so evidently they heard at the december second meeting i'm going to put it on as an agenda item just to give you an overview of because those are going to be public so i think the committee should have an update hopefully who knows when they can make it public hopefully it's not the first of december two but i'll give you an overview of how they determine the readings and what factors go into it so for example if you have fewer than five or six in a group they wouldn't publicly give those ratings so you will see that it says i have ratings but since i'm a group of one you're not going to see it listed exactly what the ratings are so little things like that and who's included in who they consider administrators which is a pretty broad group so i want to update you on the particulars that before it becomes public in our state let's in the packet i put little clippings from the high school up to one of our newsletter and some of our students really the richmond is astounding and i really would like to mention their names so on the s a t s subject tests we just  on the biology test so perfect scores i think ought to be recognized least up there with congressman joe kennedy created a message as its youth cabinet this september and asked for two junior representatives from as many high schools and to get to participate so i'm really pleased to announce that he and a hicks in liam's collins are two representatives congressman kennedy's massachusetts youth cabinet will be meeting every three months to be engaged in discussing topics relevant to today's youth in our region some national merit let's see mrs myers pac will announce that the following students were named commended students in the two thousand and fourteen national merit scholarship program melissa almeda neal ben caitlin congar katherine notre angelo sarah philbin rebecca regan and brittany thayer they are recognized for the exceptional academic progress and this means that they placed among the top five percent of more than one point five million students who entered the two thousand fourteen competition by taking the preliminary s a t s two thousand and twelve those are names worth mentioning but not least i think this is actually died down but i want to throw it out there there's been a lot of discussion about i worry a logo once the turf field is under operation i've talked to a lot of students about it i actually got haven't gotten any calls in my in my office about it i've talked a lot of people to me so just just to clarify we are warriors the lowest team the same we've always been more is we will always be warriors we just didn't put the logo on the field and now it's very much as simple as we just didn't put it on the field but  nothing happening to the logo this is something about how they perceived whatever had been written about it as a some discussion of the symbol but the word there's been no such want to clarify there's been no discussion of this table but the logo we love the logo actually quite