all right good evening everybody welcome to the regular meeting of the school committee of the town of foxborough today october twentieth two thousand and fourteen tonight's agenda begins with visitors followed by approval of minutes and then a teaching and learning highlight a new problem program the fox for high school i school advocates program which we talked a little bit about in our last meeting we then have an update on high school athletics with some special guests nice to see back  we have a approval request of some overnight travel for the fox for a high school senior class trip will then get into i'm sure a lengthy discussion on the two thousand and fourteen m cas results overview joe was kind enough at our last meeting to let us know that those results  was quickly assembled to review as a result we're ready to go we will have a preliminary discussion on a new topic which is the the prospect of a joint town school maintenance oversight program we have acceptance of a donation or two we have the by county collaborative quarterly update the october first in rome an update and then other matters and i know we were a few things there and i have a couple tonight see the video of the high school advocate program is today in a leadership program that was founded and developed by a company called i school initiative that was founded actually by a young man right out of college several years ago and he's still young man and what their mission really is is develop a couple of things to help schools move technology forward in ways that are that are that match the way students learn today and they do a whole bunch of things they will audit is school system if you need that they will do professional development and a few other things about their four or five programs that they offer the one that i was really interested in is the i school advocate program which really empowers student leaders in the building to help us move our initiatives forward in technology and also to develop their own personal leadership skills so we know the several instances of the high school many that offer students leadership development it could be an athletics it could be in the music program it could be t so there are so many leadership opportunities already at the high school and this is another one that is a little bit innovative and that we think will really bring a different opportunity to students that some students might get really excited about so this is something that mrs myers paklin i've been working on and so will will let you see the video a little bit and then we'll discuss it afterwards and we can add some more information to your questions to fully flesh that out so this is the video that students saw to see if they would have interest in applying to be an eye school advocate so our expectation is that we'll have about twenty students that will participate in this program we'll be happy with fifteen will be happier with twenty and that's about the size of the group that we're looking for so students apply online and this is the introductory video that you'll see me speak in the students before and after and then in between is the actual video from the i school advocate folks and travis allen is the founder of that company and almost two years ago at a technology conference and i had the opportunity to see him again speak to again recently i've personally vest quite fired by his vision pursuing technology used in american high schools and for the role that my plan major for college is computer software engineering today we learned that involved in the plant making a change and i feel like with that information i might better myself  opportunity and actually taking it as fortunately we don't care about our lot with like seventeen year old and sixteen year olds because we feel like we can do it but travis is doing recite taking us where to start we're better prepared to make a regular ordinary creative moment throughout the day i don't care who you are have been out of print storm about what you're you there excited about and what you're in the passionate about and then we kind of have to find other people within the group that have this the pas this is one of the greatest benefit so far of our technology and to create the thing that lingers this is the such an amazing experience i've always wanted to be involved with something big not only think but i feel like it's going to only get bigger office at the high school and including information on how you apply to become an eye school advocate so thanks for listening and i look forward to meeting our future f  sure it's me memorizing the first half and only having one take each time and having to look my paper the second i think it will be something interesting for students so what do you think i'm curious as to where we are in the process right ok great question so the dates have actually changed i want to make sure and forget that so due to a conflict that travis had were originally he was going to be here those three days we've now change the dates nov twelfth thirteen fourteen which is probably actually diane i decided better for a student because it's the first week of term two so they're not really finishing up or preparing for a term on quizzes or exams so it's going to be november twelve thirteen fourteen which will traverse to be all three days because that was our expectation and our agreement and then he ended up with another conflict so it's probably better for us so we've delayed that so today we had our information session after school and we actually had ghost twenty five kids show up so  hope they all paul i we hope to have about twenty school maybe it might be someone i talk to after as it might apply they could give the information session sitting over there so we are in the process of by probably this time next week by mid next week we'll have selected the students so when they apply online the application is right below that video on the high school website so they just follow the link and they go and apply and we will have a conference call with arvind ross actually that you saw in there who will help us look at the students locations and select the students so they participate in student selection as well if you're looking to i did you know i select those students well today is the twentieth so i'm going to say well certainly by a to project would work itself into a senior project so we're actually going to entertain that notion quite well because that's a great idea so even though they don't be here for the senior year if they have an idea with something that they're working on that they'd like to work on as part of this program and then turn it into their senior project that they were actually working in the school doing something with us with technology so i want to avoid that but that would be a great idea so we probably will have a few seniors but we'd like the majority to be students who could continue after this describing it recently is we had a lot of questions about what is actually going to look like throughout the year and we know some of that we don't know all of it so we'll have a teacher who is designated to be the point person so we like a club or an activity that students can work on a little bit during the day they can work on it out of school hours we don't yet know but i've been describing it lately as a little bit like going on vacation without knowing your destination and of those who know me that's that's typically not the way i do things they kind of already have the outcome of the roll out of my head but i'm pretty excited that this is very different because they do think it's on a radio and we're going to really follow the students lead on this which is the whole idea travis allen gets out these kids learn and what their lives are like today because he experienced it and the traditional some of the traditional things about education didn't really work for him because he was a little bit ahead of us and there are all of us so one of the things i like about it is that empower students to take on that leadership role so we don't really know where it's going to go and we're actually ok with that so this is going to be our learning experience here so we'll see what what the program does i think our only goal for this year is to start exploring that relationship of what role students can play in moving forward our technology initiatives at the high school level because they're certainly mature enough they certainly have lots of ideas and skills and talents that we haven't tapped into so we're going to look at how we can develop that relationship of students helping with what something looks like so it could be something as simple example i gave today is the teacher saying for the semester one finally wakes you cool little bit of a performance space project or a hands on project i'm thinking of offering options and going to the i advocates and say or one of them and saying you know could you work with me for a few minutes what what could i make is a technology option that kids would like to do so it could be that advisory it could be that they take on a project that they think will change the world has nothing to do with fox for high school and the  school advocate folks that you saw will continue video conferencing and will continue to be in touch with our advocates throughout the year if they have an idea that's similar to students they have already working on something similar at another school in another part of the country will hook them up with that they could be working on the same project together so there's lots of opportunities and options that we don't really understand fully yet and i think that's part of the exciting thing if mrs packard wants to come to the microphone at anything i'm forgetting at the moment but so they' be working on internal things that they could help us with by building their leadership and communication and presentation skills we first see that some of them could do professional go in workshops so on something they couldn't spin the gamut from our own technology infrastructure in the buildings to lesson planning yes to student coursework many of the above change the world project so in our model in your mind this goes across the entire spectrum has the it has the potential it does impact and contribute to our entire technology it really does to me how many schools is travis been to and has initiated the few might have told us that then you know i don't know actually this is their newest of their five programs that they offer so i don't know if they've been to a lot but the anderson one district he's talking about is a huge huge county district another state so it's it's quite large so they've been to a couple well not a lot of them and i think one of the one of the things about it is that's what's really growing for them this year this is their area that's really exploding for them and it's certainly something that we would like to be a part of to see what what student power in th syria could look like it's you know that was something i was just going say it's not about the project oh i know what it was in some of the other districts that they've been in touch with they're using the students at the exact same time they're rolling out a relationship and to empower students to take on this role and see what that role could be when there isn't a really high stakes high priced initiative at stake i personally wouldn't want to put students in that position so we're going to explore that relationship when and what the only thing that we said when we talked to the people we've had numerous conference calls with them when they said what is it internally that some of the students may be able to assist with what we said was the roll out of office sixty three sixty five it's a business environment take interface students are getting e mail accounts of this fall and there are so many collaborative tools on there there's you know one dr one note which could be used by students to take notes so this there's a lot of things that have potential on there but yet it's not that high stakes high cost to them so they could get involved with helping students use one know they could get involved with helping students use the shared folders in one drive or even helping teachers do that so they're going to actually i advocates will get their student e mail address by the time the training takes place and that they'll be able to explore and get training themselves from traveston arbonne on the ice on a five platform where they're going to get student level training as a small group and then we'll see what develops from there and we can make sure any reactions they have of students to the program i watched an a p s history class and i think the first reaction was well it's a really interesting doing it and i think they're more afraid of being the only kids doing it this is no like that's all get together go in as a group and have fun as friends and learn together so i think there's like a lot but i first was confusion but i think after i was cleared out  we're kind of really the technology comes easy to us like it's what we work with every single day and i know like for example on my music theory class i had to use a new software for playing music and i learned in five minutes and i think it's something that like how he talks about that we don't really tap into what kids can do it technology and i think it's going to help the school as a whole not only the teachers that can learn from the students but the students that can learn from him and have it like improve their own knowledge and technology and use it for more you can do that like learn vocabulary and all that and that could probably help and it can also help like teachers learn things like go forwards to smart boards and all that and that if the kids are how to do that then the teachers could help and i mean the student can help the teachers and i think it's really beneficial so you guys like the idea of this program  i totally agree with michaela both a little bit of confusion because i would call it great great you know the result of it that's great and we've talked about that so much the last two weeks that we can't clearly say to them it's going to look like this because we don't know and that's that's actually the beauty of it i think when it comes to sponsors and work goes and totally we have not tapped into the power we have within students for some of this stuff and that personally you know weeks we really excited to see what we do but whatever happens this year will be great so there's no expectation that when we get into school year x y or z will happen it's it's what what potential does this have and and have we explored that this year and i will i said to the students in this is true of two years ago and i literally followed him out as he was leaving you know and said you know i think you have to come to foxboro so that was almost two years ago and then having seen him again in june in spoken to him personally at the bus the at the bus at the at the  it was that in june and i said this is just meant to be like i'm supposed to do something about this and i really felt like this is the this is the year to do it when we have some things that students can work on that aren't high stakes and then if we develop that relationship and some time in the future we have a huge high stakes roll out there will already have them in the loop as advocates for how students learn something really waffled about this i mean i'm very uncertain larger company the more i can see innovation and maybe even you know down the road things that we might want to say patent or something like that like if something is born here and it's ours  contract with us i want to make sure nothing leaves here or the ownership of where the where the brain surgery is right so if somebody comes up with i don't care pet dog that's a robot for is and i do know the cost and i can tell you where it's coming from what we're really paying them for is the professional development and so what i didn't say is it's really about the students in the focus on them for three full days of training with two people but actually bringing forth because they have other people my company that are there are moving along with becoming leaders faisel advocates so that's neither here or there because we're contracting for the two people to come so it's actually professional development for students that's going to help with student to student p d if you will student to adult p d and other great projects he's also the first day he's here is going to be our high school faculty only p t session after school in lieu of their faculty meeting so they will have direct access to him so that they can fully understand what the students are doing and also learn about his message one directly from him the second day he's doing a district wide session that anyone from the other schools can come to hear about so adult p d s built into his to their three days here and that is the session that i would be welcomed and i would like to have a school committee too so that would be on of a thirteenth which is the thursday time after school to thirty to three thirty exact time a little bit later but roughly two thirty to three thirty ish it might be three a former sure yet we haven't worked out the exact time roughly that's time so this so this adult professional development in the mix here and continue contact with them throughout the year both levels certainly regularly for the students in anything that we need as well so that being said the cost is twelve thousand dollars and three thousand dollars is coming from our district wide p d account because it's for all district wide staff and maybe a little bit from the high school p d probably a quarter and a quarter district wide and a quarter from the district why the quarter for my school  and then well we'll see if we need to shift a little bit money around there and then it's three thousand dollars of from student activities types accounts and then the half balance is from we're suggesting that it be from salary savings because we have as you know we had a little bit of savings and salary this year that bill provided is last update so that's where we had to speak any of the six thousand dollars winners out of school year cost us school year that's for a full since we're paying him for it we're paying for the p d this is a company that provides professional development consultation that's all about it harvey water that's right yes they don't they don't develop products so that is not i don't think even an issue at all so you know soloway think about that as for twelve thousand dollars we're getting professional development around innovation around empowering students to help facilitate a ship skills which then a full year follow for the twenty students with their projects and help with their projects actually ongoing support so let's say help decide to do it she has a project that's way beyond fox where she wants to work on they will help her with that so it's ongoing support for the advocates throughout the year it's a lot of contact and they they they like to do it through skype or some type of video conferencing that they like to be able to speak for the person but it's also one way for us to think about it is in our year of technology here this is a program to support us to enable our students to support that it's twelve thousand dollars for professional development to help parents and guardians of the type of thing that are engaged with her it's all you know because we don't know what it is you know i think i think we're a little bit early for that i think we've got to really see how this develops and let it take on its natural life  think in so it really is and i know the school committee had interest when i mention it to my goals last month so we certainly would invite the five of you if you want to come in here is the message since you know you're also in the loop on that but in terms of the general  have to point it out a lot better than i mean the students in general i think we have to let it naturally evolve and see what it is that they do and then worry about the rest later ok thanks and down the road i mean amy puts together a wonderful parent personally if you wait until you is the adults learn or you have to learn about technology and its role in the classroom before you push it down to students you're way behind in you'll never catch up and you probably are way behind now and there's no chance of you catching those notes probably that's re in favor of it because he's definitely believes that the students you know complete major role the one thing we have decided we don't want is these students are not going to be the glitch fixers they're not the troubleshooters if somebody has a bad connection or lost their internet they're not going to be the ones that are running around fixing things we have staff or that they're going to be working on more innovative meaningful projects that they feel could contribute or that they really personally have a passion about classroom or change the world specific but not no project or not but not infrastructure problem you know they're not going to be the true leaders of it are instruct instructional yeah they're not going to be the technicians but we don't want to tie up their time they have much more to offer for that and the other questions about the program sounds great and you're saying a lot of interest from the table yes so we're hoping come on students that's definitely going to apply if you were there today and then the english department took on the seniors so it really want to specially think them because they had to take some time out of their classes to do that those people actually quite interested the social studies matter of the diggler is up to me and said you know that they all for anything that innovation into the high school and i really appreciate that the more i travel the country and hear about high school programs you know that they are starting to do unique creative out of the box kinds of things this is abrams i know is setting the stage for that at the middle school and then when the things diana you know i just find courage to go forward you know it's a balance right between traditional instruction traditional curriculum and real world twenty first century types of opportunities so you know the senior project and how you're expanding that and now school program i do think these are the things that the committee verse a port of talk thank you to complement the students i think what we talk about all the time is as a team we have such so if anyone wants to help us out with any kind of technology i'm always looking for different ways to incorporate technology into the athletic departments kind of one of my dad's marquee goal object yeah you know that's what i  communicate better with the community there are so many ideas that i think you probably know how to construct me ways to help communicate is that one of my ongoing goals is better communication between the athletic department in the community and it's not easy and it's that's why it's ongoing so it's never never done but so if it's just even though i'm not here you can contact me through e mail and i will answer hopefully as long as there's not a catastrophe at  approached by oliver ames and mansfield athletic directors for the last two years they've had a co op program for their girls hockey team they were worried about the numbers and they came to foxboro for a variety of reasons one because we have a lot of young women playing hockey at younger levels we have the second rank at fox for a lot of that is down to a females playing hockey so they came to me because they identified this community as a community my benefit from having some of our female athletes participate in a girls hockey program we have for playing on the boys hockey program and if you are not aware about boys and girls hockey main difference between the two sports is that there is checking in boys hockey and there's not checking in girls hockey so there really becomes a safety one of the reasons is the safety factor for our female athletes and smaller young men who are playing against eighteen year old boys and we're in a very competitive league and i spoke to my boys hockey coach about this and thought that this would be a great opportunity for to kind of develop our female athletes and i don't look at as a just female athletes i look at the students we want to keep these students in the foxboro school system and so i saw this as an opportunity it was a one year opportunity to see if this is something that we want to continue growing going forward with and looking at the numbers from talking to the hockey people from down below it looks like we have a lot of female athletes playing a female student athletes playing at the younger level so we went to what and it's not just as easy as let's just have foxboro so we had to get approval and to participate in a variety of different sports which so what we are what we like to do is the athletic department is able to pay there is a fee of five hundred dollars and what the athletic department like to do is cover the cost for our student athletes the other schools and i can't speak for them that they handle it in a different way but if given the opportunity for this one year to look at it and cover the costs for it we have identified five girls would like to play last year and we were going to go with the self pay pilot that's what it is in any other time we've looked at sports over the past many years and it isn't very often that we have sports so many years ago when boys place hockey because it was no hockey at all in when boys and girls will cross came in we usually have historically if if there's people a community interested they do self pay for a period of time until we're sure we can float team of them bigots folded into the budget so why is this different just a question i asked if we if we if that's typically what we asked different sports groups that when you're not sure you can get started do you not sure you have the numbers that make yourself pace for and if it takes off same time we had nola prosper graham so we did ask them to be self pay until we could confirm that it was self sustaining this is different because we already offer a boy's hockey program so by asking this team to self pay what we're saying is we're paying for the boards and we're not paying for the girls as a pilot so that makes this different and it makes it an issue of equity not trying out a new sport so that's why i felt differently about this after speaking that was exact question i asked is why is this different and what has changed from our initial proposal to just try out a self pay pilot so that's what's changed you say though that when the boys hockey they did have to sell when it was first started they did self pay for i don't know what period times it was under the difference was back then we didn't have an issue between the genders we had a boys team that wanted to play now that we have a girls team that wants we're already paying for boys i think  that's and that's an issue with i don't mind i think across the country is that you know you look at the activity between sports if you want to try a new sport let's say let's say it's badminton was mentioned as a as a popular thing but let's say either boys or girls want to see if they can float a badminton team then we would probably ask them to self pay get it started because we have no bad but now we only offer boys hockey so if you want to be equitable you need to support girls hockey as well was equity issue with students so if we don't have any students next year is there any and it's only it's a one year later one year and then we're going to evaluate and see where we're at you know and i think that the younger grades are probably more excited about this opportunity and with a co op program that would allow us to kind of build a base where we're not paying huge turn money for five you know it's about trying to build that base but it's a one year we'll look at it of value eight the situation and and to make sure that we could looking at what we any kind of future expenses that we had last year we took that into account and took that out of our budget before we even looked at this costs to make sure that we were ok struggled out i'll be abiogenesis struggle with because they i think there are a few if you will the are anxious about joining a team without foxboro there's you know there's five of them there fraid of joining a team some of that peer pressure that went along  you know though when i spoke to them in the spring and we had a conversation that that one of the foxboro girls would be a captain of the team to kind of include them and having those conversations with the girls i think there is still that anxiety about joining the team and there was a worry about the cost of the program itself and what that would mean for them so that is one of the reasons why i you know they're looking at the equity wanted to make sure that we you know helped with that because i don't why we're so grateful i'm so grateful to all of you in the town of fox we don't have user fees here in foxboro and we're the only school in the hopper mark we really holds true to that in every every aspect so i'm so lucky because a lot of times hockey is a program that there are fees added and i think my athletic directors are very jealous of the fact that you know we don't have to worry about that here so i'm so grateful to that i think having conversations with the girls and i that's why it's a one year commitment to see how it goes i think i just really want to get them on the ice i've seen them at practice i know that they can skate and i know that they like to participate but they don't get a lot of game time minus graduate from last year who played goalie so she wasn't dealing with the physical aspect of for checking and that kind of things that you know i really want to see them get on the ice and i'm hoping that i mean to me that's the to showcase their skills and their talents because they really are a talented group of young women that i just would like to showcase in a game setting that they don't have the opportunity to do that here and it's because of safety purposes i think we look to you for your recommendation about what's the right thing to do but just so i understand is it right to infer then that the girls will sit down with the students in the spring and have a conversation with them again in the spring and we had a conversation in the spring last time i spoke to the students directly because to me it was important to speak to them before we move on to what about any incidental transportation costs aside from the five hundred dollars they're there me i mean for practice i can't speak for priming we don't cover any costs of anyone traveling to any kind of practice knows  there's not it's and that's being covered by another school district something thank you i'll make a motion to accept the request for the athletic department to be allowed to pay their fair player fee for our new girls ice hockey program caitlin so we had a great meeting with with the boosters last spring you were trying to get another one this fall and really it's just a great opportunity to partner with the boosters in all kinds of things that people can work on to give a lot of credit for that you know around that time we're meeting a lot in the spring about golf you know to try to to try to understand what are the boosters do how do we support our students what are some things maybe they're doing that  not that we should be that should be sort all of that continues to be digested and when we have our second meeting in the fall well you'll probably see some discussion of that in our budget cycle about the outcome of that when i'm quite ready for that yet but one of the things that came out of that is caitlin did a great analysis of participation rates in all of our sports and of our a lot of teams and what came out of her spring assessment was that we have our own equity issues so we had three sports all trap for which that the ratio of students to athletes was way beyond much much higher than all of our other sports which typically our other sports were anywhere from forty to one to seventeen to one like students to coach so that's use the typical range most are in the twenty's so she did a great assessment of the ratio and what came out of that is that we have more and more students participating in track but we don't have the coaches and it's a little mean you look at these are the numbers and i'm just grateful that our students continue to participate in sports and i think it's a testament to balancing your time between i think we're getting more and more students who can find the time to balance between music program or other activities and are participating especially in track which is really allowed students to be able to run on their own if they need to if they have something after school and kind of find different ways but what we found that we had three coaches in the winter and we had a hundred thirty one hundred three student athletes and i go back to safety a little just making sure that there's an awful supervision and we talk about student leaders a lot of our track captains take on that leadership role of making sure we're doing but you know just to have a adult around to make sure that there is there are some safety we were concerned about that and i think those numbers so we looked at that number for a winter track in then again these numbers have continued to grow we had one hundred sixty four female student athletes and eighty male student athletes dissipating in the spring we had four coaches for all of those athletes how do you divide those coaches to go to which site you had the head coach kind of driving himself back and forth to places just to make sure that there was enough coverage so we really see a need for an extra coach for those parts and those numbers we just bought on new track uniforms to this year because of those numbers they've just really skyrocketed over the last three years while yes and i'm sorry i'm confused were you just saying you got one hundred three so we have three coaches so it's like three coaches for one hundred three students that's what they were that was on the and then you had forty to one was the boys track because you had two coaches for voice track so that was the high end of so one coach there any different events yet so you don't have the whole team together like a basketball team right there are many different types of events in the any different types of communities that mchale can yes i'm actually part of the winter track team so i can speak a little bit on this specifically for this field and shop it isn't the most popular about for girls so i can imagine that there's going to like a huge increase in all the other brands that are more popular so i think i personally i mean i think this is during the winter i'm just using the winter for example and so you have shop put in there but then you have some using the weight room to use some strength training why they're doing that and so they're in there and then you have people running you it it scares me with the snow banks and people running around outside the distance runners but also doing workouts around the school because you know we don't have a track on campus so a lot of them do run around they've mapped out this around the school and how much that is and then you also have the sprinters who then use the inner area to run around and they've mapped out different workouts for that and so you you just end up having students kind of all over and the hurdlers are in the hallway here so you have  athletic director and i were having this conversation just the other day because also of the j v schedule that we have created now as because of just looking for some facilities not only during we need them during practice as if we have our seem a split in half and half of them are going to tighten and the other half we're going to boston suddenly we don't have enough we have fifty kids so you have one coach with fifty kids having to one area and there is it's hard to just manage those numbers and that is one of the realities of winter track it is a unique track is unique and i think i would only i wouldn't want there to be this many coaches if we had smaller teams i don't think that is a use of our money but right now our teams have continued to grow and i i was shot last i mean last year these numbers jumped continue to jump every year which is wonderful which is what i would what do i want as an athletic director but just trying to figure out how to manage those numbers approval on this tonight you're talking about support for this to be in the budget process well we know that's why it's we for you tonight because we're in a little bit of a dilemma and you notice it doesn't say where the funding is coming from so i'll try to finish painting the picture painting the picture if we wait to do it in the budget process that would be for next year and we become concerned but this many kids who are more participating this year and whether we're willing to put forward a proposal as we are to have you consider it for this year which was not budget for so it's close to ten thousand dollars for these three coaches so again bills budget scenario and yes i understand that it's october so that's the discussion that i hope to have now it's early in the year we do have some salary savings of about thirty five thirty five thousand to the good roughly you know so we are proposing to use that i know it's early and i know that that feels close in terms of you know finances but we felt if we went in of the year without bringing this your attention and waited to do in a regular budget cycle and went through this year with these ratios the same or more because we are having more kids be interested if it became a safety issue we'd feel remiss not bring it to you so i guess the choices are for you to approve it with that budget with that funding purpose or say we'd like to wait to put it in the budget for different than what i understood from reading the packet to me any time you talk about safety and you talk about ten thousand dollars in a twenty seven twenty nine whatever it is million dollar budget knowing that we often under run our budget it's kind of a no brainer  to me though i think what it says is you know it's ten thousand dollars less flexibility we have and we get into the spring and we're looking at finalizing numbers but again when you present it as a safety issue i know what my initial reaction is but let me ask the committee if they have any comments or thoughts or questions beyond my you know definitely safety is a concern i just i think my concern right now is we're going to be making a decision about this and we don't know what other conflicting priorities there might be as part of is you're alluding to that there's going to be other things that are coming for us year after right but still because this is going to need to be absorbed in the next but if we put it in now it's going to be in the budget for the next year so what other athletic programs or requests are there going to be and you know i so i'm concerned if i'm making a decision about this today and then something else may be a priority that i've don't awful about it when i assume of there were other sports where we had an imbalance be presented and that's i mean this is a huge this to me is a big imbalance and it's a safety issue i think what we're kind of alluded to is one of the things we wanted or one of the things one of my goals is to really understand the booster you know booster clubs and how they work and again that goes back to title and i have equity across all of our sports believe it or not and it's just something that gets brought up some times so i working with the booster clubs and we have great volunteers parental volunteers who do tremendous work for each floor and they put in their heart and soul into these clubs and so what we're trying to do is one of the things that is looking at  what they have for numbers because every one team has a different amount of like for mansfield who has again another high percentage i can get the exact number of coaches and i can get it out to you because it is it is something we've had i think every and school and i don't know what their final budget but we've had these ongoing email chains with each other regarding assistant coaches and getting more coaching and getting more supervision not just for track but just i think overall is we have all the schools are having more and more athletes participating and kind of what is our role as athletic directors in the school role in terms of budgetary to provide it well let me ask a question our next meeting will be in november if we asked you to come back well a little bit of that data about what other towns are doing would it be a too much of a personal imposition while you're out and then be too late to hire the winter coach which will be the first one needed it will be close with the winter coach but we've had close before so i mean i i understand your concern and i don't like personally i don't like to spend money i get very and i look at as kind of the town money and i really don't i wouldn't ask for if there wasn't some sort of  kids fault it's really our fault for facility issues and not really want to have you know probably an unsafe level of coaching there i would recommend you know approval of the winter starters resigns like caitlin come back with the balance and that gives you some time on the on the balance into the spring that a different program and run differently say to your game that yeah i am i mean i'm just i'm trying to approach this like we do with kind of a lot of the things that come before us you know what are we you know what do other towns do i don't think that's right it should be really any different and then you know the curriculum kind of approach steve bill suggestion was where my head would my head space was i'm right with katie i love to by law ok so i just want to make sure that we understand and convey to the public that this is a not it's more than a nice to have it's closer to a need and it's to optimize our safety for our students faculty and visiting opponents or whatever they're called that's very well said ok yes so you know if somebody were to say i had it up it was about sixty eight hundred dollars for the three  two hundred dollars for the winter track coach we can still load balanced on the line if say the track program gets a lower number of participants and we don't need as many coaches am i correct there yes you're right ok really does tailor it to right what's happening because it does change from year to year so i just want to circle back real fast do we have an unsafe track program right now yes or not i i kind of i like the way i would say  i i think i trust our coaches to make good decisions in terms of being where they should be but i always i guess maybe it's part of my i always worry about that one time with the coach isn't there if there's something happens and you know and then you have someone in the c gym working with the high jumpers and or shot put people at the same time and then you have someone working with the distance people then you have someone working with the sprinters then we're all kind of covered and all of us i think that's kind of what i'm looking i mean we've covered this well actually starting off in a good position because and that was something that couldn't have been known to time because kindergarten moments when you when you get kind of that one bonus thing i think it's giving you some leeway here to do a few things that you might normally not have the earlier was that there is a need to get a good and don't wait till all the good coaches are hired the recommendation right now as i understand it for a motion to go forward is to be is to is to approve the is that mr americans memo says in accordance with the f a a agreement for two thousand and fifteen sixteen but i believe that that number is two thousand and fourteen fifteen so as long as you allow me to amend the number to what this year's cover contract states which i do think is that number follow along and i use twitter a lot and i said they're not personal tweets now they're very rich wheat of what's going on and our boys football team is has a huge game on friday for the hockey championship our boys in second place right now with some big games coming up in the haka markley their one game behind oliver ames team has had a little bit of a struggle but i know that they're very supportive our cross country team was recently ranked in the top twenty for the small schools in the state we've got some excellent individual participation in our boys cross country teams had some great victories and they participated the meet this week and we'll be looking forward to the state and our cheerleading program has also grown where we have a lot more cheerleaders and if you notice at the football games there's a lot more there so there's more participation at the cheerleading level and i do you know how to feel good today and i don't know and i was actually do think it's just a community support of all these kids and it's been wonderful to see them do well you again from afar so i've made it to one soccer girls soccer game and i'm hoping since the most a lot of these will be in the playoffs that i will had to bring the little kids around so just to formalize my request i make you personally i got another call this morning about boys freshman soccer next year not this year no cost to sure so i would just like to formally ask that you put that it just went unfilled when there weren't enough oh number exactly so we were actually in really good shape for that yes we are we have that that's one of the ones positions that if we don't have the numbers we're not going to fail just for the trick of having but with the boys number it continue to i didn't mean to bring us to an abrupt end on that i just know we have a lot of no other items on our agenda but i think there's great discussion katie thank you for keeping us so consistent across all areas have spent at your feel good suggestion as a way to take that it sounds like we'll see further with all of this we wanted to bring this before the school committee for approval this is a new proposal when i arrived here three years ago i'd had a conversation with then senior class to say what are some things you might like to do in addition to what you're already doing as far as your senior activities are concerned and so we did a had a cookout and a senior signing of the your book at that cookout and so you know if you want to take a trip or you want to do something there's always a six flags of there's going to be like there's a variety of different things that we could possibly do their experience so that was kind of opening for some of our seniors that that year last year's class it said well what about a senior trip and said well if you'd like to do it so we didn't get much further with it there was conversation but in talking to the class officers at last year's juniors they were very interested in the possibility of a class trip now this isn't coming without some background to it so  my previous experience of middleborough they have been running a senior class trip to florida over the vacation time period for a number of years so this was very nice that i could just go right down make the phone call to the travel agency that has been with this and say this is what we would be interested in doing what can we do and a part of this is the grad day after which universal does in disneyland also jason you may have heard of these in the past where they would be a one day a fly down in the afternoon you do this at night you fly back the next morning that's a lot but it is that possibility of doing so instead in middleborough we had it we they had expanded it prior to me even being there and it's been something that's been very popular with the students so i'd said ok well let's make that proposal to hear the juniors and said yes they were interested so for that the shooter seniors in other words so this is what we have these are dates that are in for april vacation but there are slight dates we also want to let you know that there is a music trip that is starting and there will be with the vacation so we didn't want to cross over so it's the dates were put in because the dates needed to be put in for the agency to be able to work with them and include one of the knights of the grad bash at universal once i knew about this were going to slide it but again unless we had permission to go forward that i didn't want to have the agency making a whole bunch of changes are to meet our needs if this wasn't going to become a reality for the students so what we have essentially is you're going down a day one and whatever however we can adjust that date depending upon what we have for our students to go  theme here that we have added that would go on to the stay will be a visit to the lone cabbage fish which is an air boat to work through alligator alley and for the students to have an experience with that it's it's to go to cocoa beach and there's a resort of which we're day to give day passes to it's of the students to enjoy the beach the pool and other facilities that they have at their resort so we apologize for that back then for dave and busters day three would be a trip to busch gardens and then downtown disney that evening for dinner at planet hollywood and then day four is a day at wet and wild and make sure that they're putting down all of the what's the stuff called  the country and that goes until about two in the morning and we come back to the hotel we have breakfast there's pizza time you know at the hotel for the most part that day getting ready that night to go to a movie on presentation and then back home on that six day or after that fifth night that's there there's a lot of movement so that the students are on the bus going someplace we have them going to another location coming back and not really a lot of down time except for that day after they do the kind of the all nighter as it's known at universal and what i wanted to make sure of was that the cost would include breakfast lunch and dinner is for the students the only open one is that first day when we go down because again it would just depend upon what the time is for the flights we're looking at right now at about sixteen hundred dollars it depends upon the airfare but it's all inclusive and we're basing the damage why it's for students it is a there is a cost factor that is there with  e air fares as you know on a kind of all over the place for that probably the largest cost when it comes to this so this is what we're looking at there is a liability insurance that is in there because this is through a travel agency so that's a part that would be included and on it we're looking for this to be a school sponsored trip mean that all school rules apply insistence would be held accountable for actions should somebody make a wrong choice based upon what our handbook yes to say about those seventy to eighty it would all depend upon the class but that was pretty much the average of the number of students that would wind up going and again there's a lot of choices that are out there for students where there would be a music trip oftentimes there was a trip to europe you know we have our london trip here we have our exchange programs that students are participating in as well so i don't want those to get lost in the shuffle of this because that really those are experiences to have yes this is florida yes this is an experience it's a class founded for the barrier we talk about the music programs we talk about the foreign exchange the educational benefit came you share with us what the educational benefits would be probably not it's probably bonding mostly students it's also taking a look at you getting a look at an alligator you're getting a look at and another part of the country you're going to look at the coast yes we live on the coach for the beaches are a little bit different than our own so it's not taking kids out of school we're not looking to remove them from classes which is oftentimes we do have as a part of that educational  like that something new take care of the children should somebody get six if something should occur we do have somebody who's on board we haven't had a nurse travel with the other program so we would handle whatever the situation is and in that way we have had a student who wound up  doing a water slide who happen to hit the bottom cracked their had and was off with one of the chaperones to the emergency room for stitches and a decision was made by the family and by the parents that he could stay down the doctor said that the person was fine and so they opted to stay somebody to go down and be on twenty four hour duty that's usually how that is done i'm sorry it's right down to the lottery or how is that chaperones chosen first come first served if they would like to go in and i would also look i would look at a ratio from males to females when it comes to th thank you and do we need to vote in this or or just voted do we need to vote on it and here's why and i'm not very bright but i couldn't find her trouble source on the web for there is part of this was to try to have the sunset on the agenda in the fall because they have to make those they have to make the reservations both for and again if it isn't something that we can do that's fine for the share but they do need to make the reservations for  universal for the grad night it's also the hotel that's based upon if if the hotel is available the resort if not they go to another and the airfares because the airfare is just continue to go to the closer we get to april vacation particularly that vacation in florida  teachers teachers teachers again if it's going to be a school sponsored trip that's who we're looking at is for that and we've had all kinds of my experience has been that there have been all kinds of other circumstances where in some cases we have taken a parent for a specific individual for specific reasons or an ad assistant for a particular student have you had any feedback from the teachers on this sort of thing whether they'd be interested yes yes there are definitely teachers out there who are interested we haven't heard from parents is is this is very costly and it is going to impact anneliese three the timing which is the vacation right before a senior graduates and whether families are planning maybe maybe the last year and they're going to go on and i mean i don't know i just to make this kind of decision without getting her rental feedback when it's involving students going i would really not feel comfortable about making a vote on this until really i think there was some kind of mechanism to to find out about how parents feel about that that's a good point i think you know when we discussed bring this proposal we wouldn't want to solicit parent input unless it was something committee was going to consider you know if you could you get people pretty excited about the opportunity for the seniors or seniors so to about the opportunity and then have it you know voted down this board so i think if you if it's the world community can to need to consider this and i think that would good next step because you you know i personally i didn't want to surge of everybody get all excited about this in the comes to here and you feel the pressure to say well we have to see this as everybody's already talking about it do you know any mom i see what you're saying so we felt this was the first step i'll take that i mean if if you would have preferred the reverse when diana talked to me about it we thought this would make the good first inroad and i'd say you know i did something like this in high school that many years ago went with chef runs and we went to germany and it was you know we do have a lot of overnight trips and we know that our students can be trusted to chaperon us to do well on overnight trips because we have plenty of evidence of that and amy's sixth grader left this morning for nature's classroom which my niece and nephew live in the town not even know i think it just feels different because it isn't that strong obviously even educational time but it is the type of thing that our kids do do in other settings which is travel to places much further away than this do well boarding buses  directions of their chaperones you know staying to the rules we have we have kids to go to to different countries and all over the place for music and follow the rules so i just feels different because it's florida well don't be great because of that i think because you're tonight i feel a little quick i share katie's concerns and yet i'm the guy who earlier this evening said i appreciate all of the to new experiences so i just need a little time you personally and i value your professional opinion i haven't done this before i value the experience of a trip i appreciate the fact that you are suggesting we consider a school official trips a school rules apply i just i'm nervous about if anything ever happened first personally so i probably just need a little time that's me talking to a few people in the community need to get a little sense which we're going to do formally through parents or but that's just but but to the process question that process was right ok so i think you can certainly send it out you apparently serve now saying this is under discussion and yes just you know just to let you know too i mean this isn't just a few of the let's we just got to students i would never do that we would never do that there would be disabilities and their accommodations i was just going to say that that we did i have had that experience of students that needed accommodations going and we needed to work through with that and we were able to meet those accommodate for students sure thank you very much so i think we're coming close to  consensus but one thing i like diana has brought us a program that has already for about ten years proved successful which means they are dealing with reputable kind of  companies the out of two hundred and two hundred twenty students approximately only seventy perhaps eighty partake of that which means it's not cutting into any other family decisions plans for a cations last april vacation together or anything it opens an opportunity for people that don't have otherwise something special to do so it's not like it's a command performance you're going to take everybody whether they want to go or not and you're ruining family plan i mean i've got on plenty of a family vacations that have nothing really to do anything with education except ski your heart out on the mountains which i found very valuable sow and i think so i get that we got it's not really different from other trips that the high school sponsors which is you know if your family tradition he takes a february vacation then you're not going to sign your child up for the prickly takes so i don't see that is any different i do think to you point it is different that the educational cultural value you know isn't in this but it's different for us so it's very different purpose i mean if you're if you're a french student and you want to go live with a french family and learn the culture and bring extra things back that's it's a different kind of a program entirely and it's on it's on their own personal time during a vacation so i'd like to suggest we just think about this to the next meeting and my question for the committee would be do you prefer diana do this formally or do you prefer we do an informal with our own contacts around town and what we hear well i think i i think because they're addressing the junior class the parents of seniors i mean that yeah that the present senior class i would prefer having having diana expose it to them introduce it to them properly with all the other concerns rather than like what do you think yeah because to me that gets the worry barometer and gossip columns going and i'm not in arrested in that kind of you read but you're also targeting  and i've been on trips like overnight i went to canada last year the music program and i think it's a really good experience and think it offers kind of like a last bonding trip for the people that you might never see ever again your entire life people who are in the music program can't go to washington d c or care that people who can't afford a trip to europe that commute are expensive it's kind of like in the middle for kids who want to have that that last kind of her all with their friends that you know  something at me but i'm not a senior this year maintain your bike if the opportunity was there for like like my friends and i next year we would immediately jump on that like because like like there's like ratio that's like eighty percent after you graduate you're never going to see those like people ever again and like i'm really like i'm i don't know i'm very friendly so i love like saying hi to everyone in the hall that can be different i'm not going to see them again and i want to have that last for all i have fun with all the people that i may never see again and like i don't would be so for this trip i'd definitely go right on you guys that's nice but i don't have to make a motion but i'll entertain a motion that would like to make i do want to make one little comment that that's not necessarily true i just went to read union and i saw all my high school friends and i've seen them so just just remember that you can still you just like and have contacted them yet but you don't always see them every five years in the same way and i think i think is extremely exciting and information on this though before if possible you know a couple of days beforehand when hackett yeah yeah i mean because i think that you know i mean all holders long at the next all so what you're saying to make sure it whatever feedback dana you want to i don't know i don't want to hear it on the on the night or i won't be able to make a vote and i think i would agree i suspect we have a little but i'm going to set a time we might have been able to act on it tonight i don't think it was real clear you know in our package i don't think it will clear are we as good as what to think through so i think that's what we're doing now because we just started talking about it right last week that this a come forward with students you know asking if if this is something that i just say too we had an awesome spirit we can home coming this past week this past weekend with the dance of five hundred students they had a fantastic time it was fabulous so i just have to put a plug in for saying thank you for that thank you for what you're doing absolutely well i'll just turn it right over to amy and as you know while she's getting ready amy always does this presentation two parts which we've done historically for many years which seems to work out well she's going to do the broad overview tonight and when she comes back at the next meeting she'll do the more in depth analysis and some of our curriculum directors and department heads will be here for that part as well so amy in all seriousness you know don't go any faster than you  to because this is important at the same time because we've been through how well you summarize that we have the part to if you don't want to cover every point on every side use your judgment but again don't feel rushed we've this is important to  something that makes perfect sense so just to kind of give the big picture and then i'll summarize at the end i think that what you'll see from the packet as well as the slides i've taken the information that you have been a multitude of tables and represented it visually through graph so i'm going to go through some of those slides we've really seen little change in the area of language english language arts across the district not unlike the state as well and that in math we've seen some really great growth summary table that you have in the beginning of your packet is this graph form and this is looking at all of our grades who are in cas the seventeen tests that are given for each leg and match and what you can see here is that the per are students that are proficiency and yell a has been pretty much unchanged when we look at those numbers across we see for the last five years typically seventy eight percent o students that are positioned and then in math we had further to go and you see an incline over the last five years as we've now moved math to the same area of proficiency  as we look at each of the grades so you have in your packet whether it's one of the grades that's been tested for a much longer period of time meaning grades four seven and ten we actually have fourteen years worth of data that you have in your packet and the other grades we have nine years worth of data so what i did a little bit differently this year was to take each of the grades and look at the last five years instead of looking at it it gets a little bit unwieldy on the on the graph itself if you take the fourteen years or even the nine years let's look at the last five years and see where we've been and where we've come and i broke that down by grade level but i also want to head and added the state line there too because i wanted you to be able to see is our trend consistent with the state and if you look at grade three reading it's very much consistent to state we still have a gap of ten percent where we outperform the state when we look at  the trend line is pretty much similar it's it's not changed a lot in the area of proficiency in grade three and four when we look at math you can look at the gap there for us again compared to that state  improvement with the state but where we have made higher gains in math a lot of resources in curriculum development and instructional pedagogy with professional development has been put into math supplemental resources that you've supported here with the curriculum mark and with our math review that we've had so we're we're seeing some gains there in grade four as an l a we also see in math in it's again across the state what we refer to as the the students scoring advanced has increased by fourteen percent in the last five years so we're seeing increases and we're removing students went to that area of proficiency and in grade six again little change but we're seeing the movements of students moving into the advanced so that average has been seventeen percent in the last five years as far as grade five as well the big gap there is not as much in gr five as it is within other grades and we talk a lot about that you'll hear more when we do the more in depth analysis piece but obviously we have conversations that look at the design of the test what students are being asked to do we talk about the transition of all or a fourth graders moving to fifth grade and having three different schools so there's a lot of things that we look at and we'll talk a little bit more about that at the part two of the analysis in math if you look at the line for grade five in particular here you see a twenty percent gap in proficiency when we look at the state but more importantly if you look from just five years ago where we had forty nine percent of our students proficiency and were at eighty one percent there that is something really to highlight and the work that teachers have been doing from a curriculum and instruction standpoint and the so that's a pretty giant improvement so we're moving them from needs improvement into proficiency but we're also then improving the number of students scoring proficiency and to advance in the reason that there are far fewer people which i was excited about there far fewer people under the category of warning i mean we're down to one and two and that's incredible and that's the support that they're getting from us and thank you to all the parents in town for the schools program that to me that's an exciting so we see those those really nice gains in the achievement and then i have some slides here that will look a little bit afterwards at the growth that we're seeing both so when we talk about if you're looking at achievement we also want to look at growth and to see how they connect with each other and we've seen the highest growth to date at the middle school grades and math as well a grade seven eight over the course of the last five years you can see increases there as well if you look at great seventy eighty four percent of our students at the proficiency advanced and then ninety percent of our students and grade eight and when in particular with grade eight so they have ninety percent of your students proficiency in advanced that's something that you know we're really proud of but at the same time when we look at our percent of our growth for students at grade eight that really pushes us not to get into numbers but i know that eighth grade in particular was ranked seventeenth in the state for the growth percentile from aesthetics for mathematics thank you for that i didn't move the slide forward so looking at the differences here it's it's quite a gap when you see the amount that's the kind of gap we want to have that's the kind of again it's not a good wor percent of our students are scoring higher than the state yes that's seven per fight and then if we look with what thirty more in grade know and a lot of work has been really focused a lot on math obviously we focus on everything but when we look at where we had further to go in math versus the we have a new math program for grade six seven eight that we implemented last year it's not a program it is the resources that teachers use but they've also some of the supplemental resources to really meet the new standards and i think it really speaks to us being fully aligned to the new standards with which this is testing more professional development in more structures that they've created within the middle school to both support and challenge students absolutely all of that and i think within the classroom they're also doing those many assessments so they're going back and yes and i think i think we're seeing some really good results in that area partially because of that they're not continuing to go go go and the kids are being tested on exactly what they did they were doing so that percent there thirty eight percent of them scored advanced and the growth percentile there we talk about between forty and fifty nine is typical years where the growth sixty or anything higher is considered high growth with this is  highest growth of eighty one point five in grade ten we have consistently done very well we know that it's a graduation requirement so it's very important to students to do well so when we look at  the ninety six percent as compared to the state being at ninety percent so we have an increase of outperforming there but we've also continued that trajectory although slight it's hard when you're reaching the ceiling they are to continue to increase and then with math slight increases over the last five years looking at science it's a very different graph when you look at that information for grades five and  eight a lot of the conversation we've had here in the past has been we look at for instance it's these standards for grades three to five and you get to pick and choose what you're going to have in third grade fourth grade and fifth grade so by the time you're tested in fifth grade it's all of those standards from thirteen depending on when they had exposure to those standards makes a big difference as far as the test same is true for eighth grade we will continue with the it's impasse at this time even though we will be piloting part next year because there is not a science test but we have our k twelve science curriculum review that's taking place right now in new standards are coming out for science and they will be grade specific and it will be more to an integrated approach at the middle school so there's a lot more to come in that area but we'll see how that plays out in the future as far as him cast but we're very happy that it's going to be great specific and not great span where it's really left up to the districts to decide which standards are emphasized and which grade levels but if you look at the trend lines there with the state i'm not too far off is far is you look at our trend lines for a very different kind of trajectory than we see in way and math and then in grade ten or actually grade nine for some students it depends on when they take biology and it has a graduation requirement as well eighty percent of our students proficiency or advanced and that has been pretty consistent  over the last five years other than that the dip there a couple of years ago this is just a summary of looking at all of the grades for the last three years to to see from grade four through grade ten really other than grade four there's improvement over the last three years in each of the grades and that grade for dip that we see it's not just us it's something that you see across  districts and the state as well this is the district growth for l a so for all grades and that big circle that you see above the x is foxboro and we want to be in that top right hand corner to show that we have high achievement and that we have high growth so where were released rattling the line there when you look at all grades but when you look at individual grades you can see a little bit different picture and grade four and five n t l a which kind of talked about the scores there that's where you don't see as high of growth there is high achievement but for the other grades it's either straddling the line or they are in that right hand quadrant where we would like to see  performance i mean excuse me is a right to read those charts the higher achievement the harder it is for high growth yes yes absolutely so you want to be within that middle band between well you like to be high growth but the forty to sixty is the typical or a year's worth of growth but again as you're pushing that ceiling for achievement it's much harder so we don't assume we want to go to the right it's impossible to go too far to the right once you get a pretty hard it's harder i mean just as a you know for parents that are out there as a concrete example you know all children are very different i have four at home that all take and pass so i see it very differently and my children are very different when i look at one who achieves at one at a very high level the growth percent was three they had a three percent growth but the achievement was very very high as opposed to one of my other children who i looked at from last year to this year at the first thing i looked at was the growth percentile because i knew where they were from an achievement level and i wanted to see more importantly what had happened during that year and that particular grade and what had happened with that teacher or teachers over the course of the year so the growth percent percentile was much more important to me to make it scared when you come into parent teacher conference you're going to ask all the right questions there that there is a child with the wheels bring it i think more than anything because what i think it's a really good question though because of having the background knowledge somebody might see three percent growth and think what have you done for my child this year we're having the knowledge and understanding that the high achievement to bruce to your point it really is important to understand both and to know when it's important to look at one versus the other or to look at them in tandem so this is just a different snapshot to look at that is far as the kind of look at the the three years the last three years that we've had the growth percentile scores because it's been three years now and to see that that typical growth again which is that blue line for this past school year is within other than our grade five and is in within the typical growth area it's it gets a little bit you know slicing and dicing to look at it different ways to really try to get a good understanding so there's probably more slides than we need but i think it's helpful to look at it at least from our side on the school side in different ways and that's just showing that beyond a forty to sixty that's just a summary of both to see the achievement versus the growth and again to reiterate it's important to look at both in math across the grades you see that blue line which is two thousand and fourteen and those nice increases in achievement across all grades there so when we look at the growth there you can see that it's in a different spot than we were with the we have further to go but again with the high achievement and the growth in that area for all grades and this is the same one for broken down by grade level and what circled there and i had circled that in your package too is really just to point out that for great six seven and eight we're above sixty is high growth and it's not that we had low achievement we had good achievement but then significant growth in those areas with a seventy five percent growth percentile for a great six sixty eight percent for seven and then eighty one point five for grade eight and i think that grade eight it was really significant and that there was a big decision with the common core state standards coming in with our standards and with algebra where so many people were accustomed to algebra being a big part of grade a and there were so many more standards that were brought into the middle school and that realignment that to see that played out here from a curriculum an instruction side we were very happy to see that i think that's a good spot actually to stop and make a note because there's so much in the media now in a lot of it is political about what people should be afraid of kamakura why people go to the common core for us in massachusetts is just a slight shift in the slight or great shift in some of the standards because mr truth is always of the forefront of having high standards and for us it was just a shift to another set of standards that massachusetts did customize to our own state so we realigned to kamakura a couple of years ago and so that it isn't right now it seems to be a lot in the media which to me is about four years too late for people getting all hyped up about the common core because we shifted years ago to those kinds of standards and you can see the results was not really anything to be afraid of it's just a different set of standards that are now more national which we actually welcome because each state before had their own set of standards that may or may not have calibrated and now we're going to be able to see how massachusetts does with a similar stance against several of the states so for us it was never that political hot potato that for some people it can be that we should be afraid of the common core because this is our own state m cas it's not the national test yet and you can see their students have had pretty good growth results as a result of that realignment classically related question yes so the question isn't common core of them is the question with us doing so well using m k s doesn't make us rethink or even think for a minute about why park no because the park is an answer to the common core shift and so whether they as we've discussed whether they go whether a state goes park or stays i'm cast the test itself is going to shift anyway so it's going to shift toward the types of demeans the common core makes a lot students applying their knowledge rather than just knowing things so it's more application of what are you going to do with it and and that's where the college and career read concept comes in so but you know i just think that there's been a lot of rhetoric about common core and for us it's just a shift in the standards that happens quite honestly every several years regardless of if we have heard of com not our state has shifted standards and emphasis within it with emphases within standards every so every once in a while over the years depending on what here the park is more political for what they're doing in past yes it's more it's more the way that students are expected to learn know when to apply it's not enough to know and be able to do it's know do and apply it and it's just the better it's kind of not and i just think the thinking that's involved too where you have things not just multiple choice it's multi select you're looking at a number of different ways we talk about in mathematics explain your thinking in different ways there will be more than one answer because it's showing their thinking in different ways and really being able to reflect on that and look at that other than one multiple choice answers just like when and that's why it's related to college and career ready is because when you go into the workforce you're going to have to  you have no work in teams going to think about what you need to do pitch your idea decide what's the best way to go about accomplishing something no matter what your field is and that's really what they're going to be asked to do more  so that's looking over the last three years like the l a one before but looking at math and you can see that the last three years this two thousand and fourteen the growth exceeded in our grade levels other than grade four but again typical grow and grade four we just had a big difference in growth in the other grade level just summarized out of the seventeen tests not surprising we've done this for a number of years now we've outperformed the state but i think that as we've seen in math the percent that we outperform the state has been much more significant and in the last year and a l a for grade ten we consistently do are we're very strong and do well ninety six percent of our students scoring advanced and yelling and eighty eight percent  math and then also in science as well in english language arts our highest achievement continues to be a great eight and ten and our highest growth is at grade six and seven and i bring that up because i think about if we're talking about both of our highest achievements at eight and ten it's not just what happens in eighth grade or which is happens in tenth grade so if your highest growth is coming in the grades preceding it they really work hand in hand with each other and that it's been fairly consistent although we've seen little change over  the last number of years but as you saw from those trajectories very much the same trend line has been across the state it's not just here with us the growth has been typical for grades four six to eight and ten but grade five has been in the last couple of years a lower growth percentile than the other grades in math the greatest performance grades three then that fourth  grade as i mentioned before five through eight and then ten although we did see an increasing number of our students scoring also advanced in grades five through seven the math performance continues to rise to a steady increases over the last several years and then in grade three that's increased by one thousand percent in the last three years math performance not to reread those slides there but again that high growth that we saw before in science we are exceeding the state as you saw in those kind of funky things if you will but our grade eight has improved since last year by eight percent and then our science is strong with the majority of our students they're performing at the advanced level so we look at eighty eight percent of them scoring proficiency advancement sixty one percent of them are scoring advanced and then just some reminders that i thought would be helpful where we are kind of in a transition this this year impasse will continue for grades five eight and ten in science since there is not a park for science it is still a graduation requirement for grade ten so our tenth graders will be taking a math and science this school year but we will be pilot piloting park and that's a two part march in may for grades three through eleven and then the plan is for our middle school and high school students to pilot the park on the computer on line and our third and fourth graders will be piloting using the paper and pencil per excited so you know where where we're happy with what we're seeing but more importantly i think we're happy with what we're seeing in the classrooms and what the kids are doing because you're seeing kind of the fruits of your labor and all of the professional development i mean all the way down to working with our educational assistance to professional development days on math content they've asked for math content professional development we've been providing that for them over the last several years looking at how they can best support teachers in the classroom and content areas so it's been from the professional development part it has been from the resources that we've put in to supplement where we needed to and then the instruction and working whether it's through professional learning communities teachers working with each other and just really everyone working together this one i think you need this was wonderful i mean as always your presentation was clear concise easy to follow so did a great job with your powerpoint i was wonderful my only suggestion i know the committee likes your raw data which you have here we can get the power point in the packet because that the clarity of that power point i think was excellent like to provide in the interest of transparency but i think that getting that power point in here in advance and also having it on the table for for our guests would be great and just maybe in anticipation of the next time  when the it's crystal clear now it's not going to overly change between thursday and monday no no and it is there are so many when you look at the fourteen years worth of data and that chart it's you know it's a lot to look at so i think that's helpful and if any yeah i skipped right over it but it does and i think that that kind of shows that it takes a village it takes all of us over the course of years and a lot of times elementary teachers don't see the the benefit in the end and it's really ground and that is to ban it and say it with a bang you know i also think you can see the benefits of the different curriculum the use in changes over time in particularly and now they think you're seeing the results and it's really exciting in it say not to be a wet blanket i love these numbers they're they're great i'm a father of fifteen a thirteen year old but what do we do down the road for the numbers with the needs improvements and failures that's  that they you know keep going the extra mile so that everybody passes the graduation requirement and we really haven't had as a student over the past nine years that i can remember that doesn't graduate from high school because of these tests so yes there are some students who that's the number it's there and you know what they do past is what i'm saying to you we have not had that i've been back door has had that at all i think from as a things that we do is we make sure that as soon as the data is available and even when it's embargo and we can't talk about it publicly we can first instructional purposes and so all of the teachers with the kids sitting in front of them at that point they know how they performed the previous year so then we can look at those children to make so it's all very accessible to everyone and i just had a conversation in elementary principal this morning who said you know every data that a principal would want to look at now is in pierce and form and they can do their own analysis and don't have to chase after things in many different places so that accessibility of the data that in your team works really hard on the last couple of years is really very even more fruit and we've had other years thank you when i get i get excited like and in the cohort for twenty fourteen in grade and grade eight and twenty ten there were eleven that needs improvement but by the time they got to the tenth grade there are only four that needs improvement in na no  but that's a long number and when you move from five to only three who need warning three who need warning out of out of the entire class and  are in great plan because of all of the what they've done in the elementary school of the middle school and what they've done with freshman and encouraging sophomores so i think i think we should be pleased with that yes i'm not displeased i'm actually trying to get the message oh and amy did it beautifully when she used the in the terminology of the embargo they're already going to fight the fires before we even know about in the organization of ministration that's right if we if if we have the number two and we want to get it down no one somebody want to down the hallway with the hose to shoot to shoot the fire out and that's fine with me that's all i'm trying to get maintenance responsibilities so i'll turn it over to mr you know but this is very similar to what you know where we share the technology oversight where the director of technology is responsible for both schools in town and this this is a similar proposal for oversights much of it over to build a lot of account because obviously the schools are recognized for the meet with the program that we have had for years back to when michael leary took over i think we made some you know significant changes in the way we looked at our buildings and the long term structures maintenance is everything so what's obviously happening now is the town site is trying to update their facilities one of the biggest deficits they've had is the fact that they don't have any type of a maintenance program for the individual buildings and what's happened is department heads who are you know fighting fires putting you know people in jail type of thing are now being responsible for also managing their buildings which is not what they're forte's so it does make a lot of sense the the preliminary discussions we've had basically as very similar to the i t where they would have to support the process just like they do with i t we mean to say we maintain two separate budgets just like we have with i t our expenses our staffing requirements they would supplement with staffing and have their own expense lines and budgets but it would put together a total program for the town and it would also leverage at times to just do one of the major reasons that the eye teeth i work so well is they had when they did have an i t department it was a one person partner and if you're doing a major deployment like this summer when we did windows seven for the town hall you know one person in town hall we were able to flex and actually put two or three people down there to do projects and then and back into our side as we need you know so the same thing would happen i mean it's to be honest with you it would be very much of an unsafe situation if they were to hire one maintenance person on the town side and expect them to go out on projects we typically when we're doing projects throughout the district will have two guys working together if it's a project with ladders a project with electricity a project with anything like that just so that we're safe so they would even have that ability unless they're willing to hire much bigger crew than when to what we think are they really need we also are the highest  demand let's face it we have five hundred fifty thousand square feet that we maintain three thousand kids go through those buildings every day for a hundred five hundred days a year our staff and so on so we actually have the program down probably better than you know they would over a longer period of time it would work similarly to the way it does as far as i t where i t basically has a dotted line to myself and to randy up at the town hall the finance director the maintenance i would have a similar type of a process and out of line and that just basically gives both sides the ability to talk directly with you have an issue just like i tell you right now it's amazing to randy myself in an area get together and just so that we all understand what the requirements are what the needs are and that's worked out very well so i think this is a it's a good process for the town we are a member of the town we are you know something that should be able to support that as well and they are willing to support the financial you know ramifications for some changes should be for you to start to think about is a few comfortable with this structure similar to the i t and you know then what we were hoping to have is a joint meeting with both of course like me yourselves to kyra just discuss it further and put everything on the table to make sure  in agreement but again i really see this randy and i have talked about this little bit more in depth as far as how we would do the budgeting we do as you see with our own operations we have an operations budget so we have all of our utilities all of our subcontractor costs all of that in different lines that we manage and maintain and i've suggested that they do the similar thing where they stop having it spread across all of their buildings and it's kind of gets lost and bring it back into a similar one line on their side tailor next year i'm using my money's just a sickly deal with that so and randy's you know definitely for that but because we're trying to come into the budget process time and this would be something for f or sixteen which is next year you know obviously we need to don't have the the knowledge or something like tony has i mean he's excellent when it comes to a lot of mechanical things and so when when you know the library has a brand new system that they have absolutely no clue how it operates you know a quick call in tony one of the guys who go over and kind explain to fix it get it going out there or there were a joint public safety on a on a regular basis we've been keeping track of it because i one of the things i wanted to do is see how much time we are putting in it hasn't been you know you know arms but there are there has been you know time that was involved which will also help us in the budgeting process for what they need to support going forward so you know again i have i kind of look at this is one town or one group of taxpayers we all have the same common goal which is to protect the assets we have within the town it is coming  spending a few dollars as far as our labor in the sense here but the way again i look at it as a town supporting us in the budget process so you know both sides benefit in the long run if we can get this to work properly and and and if you do it right like we've done i think on the i the same for someone of the advance even to the school side is that certain times we could even flex that whatever additional people back into our side if we need to under our project just like we can flex back out to their side so there's definitely a positive to also see that you may have said this this is not hoping for that same evening when there is a when the budget forecast happens with that is correct and i have some dates to share with you guys to see what works well for you but you can either respond now or get back to me if you'd like to but i've been in touch with the chair of the board of selectmen and we have a couple of options for your consideration one is that we could meet with them on november twenty fifth i think i share that with you all and there was a concern raise that that's thanksgiving week and that might be difficult another option second option would be to meet on november tenth which is a monday now currently we have meetings on the third and the seventeenth but you'll recall the seventeenth is a conflict with town meeting so we might consider we feel with your approval moving our november meetings of the third and seventeen instead cancel those move to the town have the board of selectmen come here join us we could have the first two agenda items be these two with the budget forecast and also this notion of a joint maintenance oversight the two things to think about with that our number one i would probably be a long evening with the rest of our business we've got a lot going  in the second thing is it is the day before non school day on tuesday that's all right i'll be out of on the fact that's a tuesday so full of the twenty fifth we would we could maintain our november third meeting we would not have a seventeenth meeting and then we would have the twenty fifth to am available i just happen thanksgiving is my holiday so they have just people off but i could do it if it's not the really long meeting because we do have some agenda items that if if if your you just i think correctly from what you just said if we kept the third for your meeting and did that just for the two joint things you know that would be doable i'm open to anything and i know nothing it's hard when ever we make a change to our calendar because we've all blocked the dates and it's hard my concern of course is that we get a quorum and then secondly we get as many people as possible i think we need to keep the third because now we've bumped a couple issues that are time sensitive particular the senior trip thing to be discussed on the we could do we could keep our meeting on the third and have the meeting on  extra meeting one of the five of us probably will not be there well jack when you when you do that you know it's hard ok so let's not make a decision tonight we don't we don't need to make a decision tonight that's fine so i'll leave whatever th think you know like like with the spring trip discussion which was new this is new to all of you so why don't i give you a night to sleep on a day tomorrow think about it and then i think for some of the reasons mentioned we probably do need to make a decision  november third meeting where with the school committee and then a number of november fifth where the joint so be a monday to wednesday well now i can i can ask is that  been working really good there for a couple of weeks with one of the possibilities for two boards i'm just with you right now and you'll just let me know when you change it and not everybody from both boards are going to be there and  the other thing you have to be realistic about what i'm walking away from tonight is with the impression that keeping the meeting on the third and then having a joint meeting on the town is the least  conflicts but again let me give you guys and i in a day i'm trying to be helpful the fifth is m e a c conference so we'll be there oh right ok then i have a suggestion that's off the tee that other wednesday way if anybody has any other thoughts they can come to me tomorrow thank you or feel anything else on that program now that's ok acceptance of donation yes i'll go first in the stuff once we actually have to they just came in on friday and they are going out to schools tomorrow and with everything that's going on in the world right now the timing is excellent one thousand individual bottles of hand sanitizer and there they are decent size of who are they goin to go to the that we're sending them to the school nurse the principal who the student all the teachers in the class so it's going to teachers oh yeah and then they ok and as if one local resident donating wasn't enough we had another friend  local resident arthur barrett who owned his own distribution company deliver them for good and i got a chance to meet him his name sounds familiar fella he met him but he came i cause i suggested we could go pick them up because it's very generous no baseball softball field the youth groups that have come forward the the new baseball field in the back there is an area that actually is between the backstop of the softball quarter of the baseball program and so when we took down the field and obviously that would have been in the middle of the new turf field wasn't quite work so it was saved and brought down to d p w we did have the site work we put the footings in for when we were doing the fields themselves so it's just waiting for the flag pole to go up and the both you sports have decided that it would be a you know a good step to completing the project out there to do a kind of a memorial around that area it's a nice area to sit and be able to actually look in either direction to games that might be going on so what they've been posed is basically a donation that's come from the the youth baseball and softball and human five thousand dollars  and i had the confirmation i got was a recreation also voted tonight to approve fifteen hundred dollars to make it sixty five hundred total the project's going to be close to a nine thousand dollars project but also because all the labor is going to so you know really for sixty five hundred to bring it about one thousand dollars and worth of value and if you look at the pictures that they've actually designed now which is the last couple pagers and they're really showing what their intent is in the end in the center of that would be the fl so that will be going up so it's a nice a nice addition to that backfill area and you know they continue to support the process as that the fields move forward and their new home and i think you know we saw a few few minor things left to do back there but you know this is really kind of a nice nice at least three separate donations that we said well you accept in a donation i guess yes from all three so these the one from the youth baseball and softball for the five thousand towards this they're actually going to find it  and do it just like we've done with the i go play around the example from the p t o side so they'll fund it and they'll actually pay for the supplies and several run through us but you know the end result is we may have the one thousand dollars value increases and what they've done to the site so you need three different motions you can probably just motion the approval of the process itself because a nine thousand dollars donation out of the donation of the park setting around the black hole in the amount of nine thousand dollars quarterly update to each member school committee and this is the fall quarterly update and when it comes to the one page update i guess only two things said probably highlight and one is that we've just got this before but i want to highlight that they're the transportation network that they're running is money much more efficiently and really appreciate the work of baikal has done on the transportation network where one of the twelve districts to participate in that last fall it is something new as you know mean you know under the new educator evaluation system district attorney measures are part of the evaluation system and every staff member regardless of your role must have a medium a district or measure must have to associated with your evaluation or can get things wrong so the by county collaborative since is a special education collaborative apply for a grant to develop d d s in specialized areas and so they did get that grant so they're going to be working with specialized instructional personnel like o t s in p t s and speech in which their person died counselors who you know when you're thinking about what measure of your achievement might apply to your role i mean that the m k s overview you immediately think what classroom teachers are going to be but what is what is the assessments that are going to drive their evaluation when it comes assessment measure so they're working on those specialized areas and some of our people be able to participate and i think that's really a great year we usually somewhere between twenty seven and one hundred and we still are so you know we we tend to watch that trend does go a little up in a little down and that's about where we are so you can see our class sizes you know coming along we typically a around two hundred for a class sizes are juniors and seniors are the biggest class that we have right now and then as you go down in the grade levels we stay around two hundred for the most part but when you get down you know third grade and below well no we've got a two hundred class in grade two and grades one and three are currently running in the in the one hundred eighty s close to one ninety four one of them in the same with with kindergarten so we're not far off our class sizes are roughly thank you for those two reports have i just got some feedback from some parents that i really like the columbus day weekend days schedule and i know i know just for i just wanted to put that out there so that when we're thinking about the schedule for next  is during presidential election years that we take that day we move it to the tuesday november election ok because it's just a bigger turnout right parking at the high can be a little crazier with in and outs and when it's a non presidential election year i think it it's a three day weekend for them they're still at work so opening doesn't get to doesn't really change their work but i think we initially started doing it's a reason for families if we're going to have one if we're going to break up your year you know with professional development days where the kids are coming to school that we might thank you profusely you know i just would like to congratulate the music department and all of our acapella choirs who sang and the string orchestra for an excellent have time show with a rigorous my husband described as college stuff that is in the football team was very strong and had a wonderful showing so it was a great time around friday night so congrats the football team they're doing quite well