Boston School Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening, and welcome to this meeting of the Boston School Committee. I'm chairperson Jerry Robinson. We'll begin with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

I wanna welcome everyone who is joining us tonight in person on Boston City TV and on Zoom. I'm going to ask everyone here in the chamber to please turn off the volume on your laptops or other devices so it does not interfere with the audio for tonight's meeting. Thank you for your cooperation. Tonight's meeting documents are posted on the committee's web page bostonpublicschools.org/schoolcommittee under the September 10 meeting link. For those for those joining us in person, you can access the meeting documents by scanning the QR code that is posted by the doors.

The meeting documents have been translated into all of the major BPS languages. Any translations that are not ready prior to the start of the meeting will be posted as soon as they are finalized. The meeting will be rebroadcast on Boston City TV and posted on the school committee's webpage and on YouTube. The committee is pleased to offer live simultaneous interpretation virtually in Spanish, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and American Sign Language. The Zoom interpretation feature feature has been activated.

Zoom participants should click the globe icon at the bottom of your screen to select your language preference. I'd like to remind everyone to speak at a slower pace to assist our interpreters. I'm delighted to introduce our newest member of the Boston School Committee, Rachel Skerritt. Miss Skerritt has dedicated her entire professional life to advancing education and brings twenty years of educational leadership to her role as chief strategy officer at Attuned Education. As a proud graduate of Boston Public Schools, a BPS parent, and having served the district in multiple roles, she brings a deep personal connection and unique expertise to the committee.

Miss Skerritt was head of Boston Latin School, guiding the school through the pandemic, principal at Another Costa College, and chief of staff at superintendent Carol Johnson. She served on the Exam School task force to promote equitable admissions. She also served as deputy chief of leadership development for DC Public Schools. Miss Garrett began her career teaching English to middle and high school students. She holds degrees from UPenn, UMass, and Georgetown. Raised in Dorchester, she now resides in Roslindale. Welcome, Ms. Garrett. And we look forward to working with you in support of all our students and families. Would you like to say a few words? Sure.

Thank you so much, Chair Robinson. Very warm welcome. It's really an honor to serve on this committee alongside you and our esteemed colleagues. I first want to thank the school committee nominating panel and Mayor Wu for the appointment. As you shared there, I have worn many hats in BPS.

I attended four different Boston Public Schools, worked as a teacher, school leader, and in the central office, and I'm a very proud BPS parent now. But despite my familiarity familiarity with the district, I know that there is a lot to be learned and I look forward to sitting in this seat from the position of being a listener and a learner, particularly listening to the needs and priorities of students and families. I'm also very grateful to all of the families who have chosen BPS and who are thinking about choosing BPS as the place for their young people to learn and to grow. And I remain very grateful every day to the adults who call BPS a place where they work because we know that it's the work that they do daily to create positive and productive learning experiences for our students. It's our responsibility as a school committee to make sure that we're being strategic systemically about the policies, resources, and leadership that will accelerate student outcomes for all of our students.

And I look forward to collaborating with Superintendent Skipper and her team in these efforts. So thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you. Superintendent, would you like to say a few words?

Sure. If I were capable of doing a forward and backward, somersault in excitement, I would have done both, but I'm not capable. But, I I could not be more thrilled. I think to have your perspective coming from experience of having been a student, an educator, a school leader, and even working with the district in the past in other capacities, it just really gives you such an amazing lens into the district. And I think that will be extremely helpful and welcomed as we go through, you know, difficult decisions, you know, over the course of the next several years.

So I couldn't be more thrilled. Truth be told, Rachel was also my my daughter's English teachers. And I hear regularly, they often ask, how's how's miss Garrett? How's miss Garrett? Even though they're in their thirties. But that's your long lasting impact. And so just really thankful for the partnership and the opportunity to make our district better every single day with you on the seat.

Thank you, superintendent. Thank you. And thank you for reminding me of my age that those seventh graders are now in their thirties sobering.

Great. I'd like to invite my fellow members to offer remarks.

Welcome aboard.

Thank you, Mr. Crane.

Ms. Garrig, I'll just say, we first met when you were another Costa College and you're doing fantastic work there. And then when you were Chief of Staff to Doctor. Johnson and disappointed when we lost you to Washington DC for a few years. But so thankful you answered the call from your home city to come back. First for Boston Latin School and now for school committee. You've been an incredible thought partner to me for a number years. We've had many, many conversations and I am beyond delighted to share this podium and work on this committee with you. So welcome. And the citizens of Austin and our students will benefit from your experience.

Thank you.

We are joined tonight by Mayor Wu. Welcome, Mayor. It's wonderful to have you. The mayor will share a few comments in a moment. Mayor, before we invite you to come up, we need to take a quick vote to approve the minutes. Minutes. We will continue the meeting with approval of minutes. I will now entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the 06/17/2025 meeting and the July 9 and August 2025 special meetings. Is there a motion? No. Is there a second?

Second.

Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent? Hearing none, the minutes are approved. Here we are at the start of a new school year welcoming back students, families, and staff. We've had a great start so far. Superintendent Skipper is going to share details on the start of the school year in her comments tonight. Before we move on to superintendent's report, mayor Wu, I welcome you to join us.

Good evening. First, good evening to everyone behind me. I apologize to have my back to all of the wonderful advocates and community members and families and and educators who are in

the room. Thank you

for all that you do on a daily basis. And thank you so much, madam chair, mister vice chair, to committee member Tran, to new committee member Skerritt, welcome. Thank you so, so much. Absolutely thrilled that you are here. Superintendent Skipper and madam secretary, and to all of the staff who've been preparing.

Thank you for a wonderful start to the school year so far. I wanted just to stop by mostly because of that, to say thank you and to recognize the incredible amount of hard work that has gone into every detail of launching school in this school year. Committee Member Skerritt asked if it is actually the case that I come to every single meeting since this is the first one. I thought, oh, that actually sounds kind of fun. I wish, I wish.

And I hope to be back many more times this school year to offer some more recognition and and gratitude. We have seen all around the country that it is a very challenging time for families everywhere, and particularly for large public school districts, particularly for families who are navigating fear of the current political or policy environment from the federal level, for families who are struggling with economic pressures due to a lot of uncertainty at writ large, and in the field of public education in particular. So much can feel so unpredictable. And schools are are already where all of the various complications and wrinkles of daily life end up coming out through our classrooms for our educators to manage, to support, and to provide whatever is needed at any given moment. And I see that sheer dedication from each and every one of our educators.

Even today, I know there are incidents that come up, things that need to be responded to very quickly, and I'm thankful every day at the ability for our team members and our staff to adapt, to respond when necessary, and to make sure that things are put in place very quickly and and addressed for everyone's safety, support, and quality of of learning in the classroom and beyond. I think the superintendent and I have had this conversation a lot of times that, in fact, the best way to provide for the highest level of the highest quality student experience given all that is unpredictable in the day and given all the challenges and complications outside of school buildings that can happen is for our systems and processes to be as solid as possible, to get the fundamentals right. And I wanna thank the superintendent and her team for all the doubling down on that. In every way, we have seen systems really solidified year after year in the last few years under your tenure, and especially this year, in some ways, see the benefits and the fruits of all of the foundation building. I am so proud that we have had on time performance for our school buses for the first few days at the highest levels than than we have ever seen in the time period that it's been tracked on a regular basis, dating back over a decade.

And I know it is we will not be satisfied as a district or certainly as, parents and family members who have kids in the district until every single child doesn't have any concern about whether they will will have the full time at school for breakfast before the bell and for learning. But the strides forward that we've seen, I believe significantly due to the implementation of new technologies and really stretching and pushing ourselves to take the risks of learning curves in order to reach that next level of of service delivery, that has begun to show that it has made a difference. And I want to particularly thank the transportation team for all that they've done for many months to implement this. I thank all of our drivers for going through all the trainings and certainly all of our family members. I want to also recognize the curriculum and this year that a 100% of classrooms are using the high quality instructional materials that is approved by the district, that is at the highest standards for our young people.

This is a a first, at least in a in a little in in some time in the district to have cohesive focus, clear academic standards and materials and connection to the experiences that our students have at home and in their communities reflected in the materials that they are using. And we're beginning to also see the ripple effects of having materials that are engaging, that are at the highest level of of best practices. Boston Public Schools has now moved out of the categories that are eligible for statewide potential intervention because of the huge advances in MCAS achievement and other measures that come directly from having these building blocks in place. We were very I was very excited to read a book alongside superintendent Skipper as we launched our new literacy campaign, Boston Reads, building on the idea that this is a village effort. Where's your pin, Sue?

Usually she has her her village pin. Building on the idea that all of us, certainly in the classroom, certainly in BPS, certainly in the city of Boston and in City Hall, but in every space that our young people are in, we can be reading out in the community. We can be telling the stories of incredible trailblazers and heroes and sheroes in our community, like Cher Robinson who's featured in one of the story stops that in our communities, anyone can pause, scan the QR code, and hear and and see the story of someone who is a Bostonian living the the values that we share. New books that will be provided to all of our families and a focus on making sure that our youngest, littlest learners get the best start as we transition into this curriculum that goes all the way through their time in Boston Public Schools. Attendance, as you all know, is up.

I'm preaching to the choir. We had a a great door knocking session before the start of school in terms of reengagement and making sure that door by door, we're reaching out to our young people to ask questions and listen and learn about the feedback that they have for how we can do better as a district and as a city. So in every way, from getting to school on time to having the materials and the supports at school to having scratch cooked meals from local ingredients sourced from local farms to the experiences outside school. Our Boston Family Days program is now over 65,000 free visits from our Boston students and their families museums across the city. Sneak peek, we're gonna announce in a little bit the performing arts fall lineup of more several thousand tickets that will be available for free for our Boston families through the same program.

We're going to keep building on this. Free swim lessons and bike lessons were a huge success once again over the summer. More expansion of youth sports than ever before, arts opportunities. And so I'm here to say thank you to everyone who spent so much preparing for this moment, our educators and BPS staff members, our families, and our students working hard all throughout the summer, working their jobs, doing summer learning, and being ready for the first day of school. And I'm also here to make a pitch to anyone out there in our community who may not yet be completely fully involved in investing in our schools and partnering.

If you are a company in Boston, if you are an organizational leader, if you live in Boston, if you work in Boston and you want to make an impact here, please reach out to us and get involved with our Boston students. We have every option and every pathway available for you to form a partnership, to get involved in efforts, to help expand the work that's happening. And we are going to stand fully behind the legacy that Boston Public Schools has. The first and oldest school district in the country must be the best. And and we're working every day to make it the first choice for our families so that learning really is about the entire city of Boston being the classroom, not just within each school building.

So thank you so much. Oh, Last thing I have to say, as a Sarah Roberts mom, thank you. Thank you. The work that has been going into the renovations projects, more BPS buildings either being renovated or being fully constructed from scratch right now than in the last forty years combined. That's taken a lot of investment, a lot of partnership with the MSBA and so many other sources, but also a real dedication in terms of the staffing and the team to prioritize not just the immediate fixes to the unpredictable things that always come up, something is broken or a light needs changing or some other issue, but also additionally finding ways to keep going on the fundamentals in the long term so that we're doing right by every single of our young people.

So thank you for your efforts, and thank you everyone for such a wonderful start to the school year.

Thank you, mayor. So

I just I I just wanna say, mayor, that I talked to colleagues from around the country, and one of the big differences between districts that can do and districts that can't is the partnership, like, true partnership of the city and the mayor with the school district and the superintendent. And I could not find literally a better partner than you in this work because you lead with your heart and you're an incredible mind for the work. And so you're just a great thought partner in it at each step. And to just see how you've taken on learning, because we have our own lingo in education, as Rachel knows. And to just see how you've learned it, but then learn what's underneath it, to be able to build the village that we need, that is like the number one thing a mayor, a really effective mayor, can do for a superintendent.

And I couldn't have a better partner than you. The fact that you door knock, the fact that each kid you meet, you literally take the time to understand, know who they are, and know who their family is. And if there's a resource that's needed, you go out and get it. It's like there's nothing stopping BPS from being the number one district in this country, without doubt, because of your help. So thank you.

Thank you so much for all of your continued support. Right. Right. Superintendent Schippert, I'll now pass it on to you. Great. So

thank you and welcome back to an exciting school year. As the mayor outlined, there's a number of things that we're proud of, including the district wide use of the high quality instructional materials, our gains in chronic absenteeism rates, and the on time performance of our school buses. And I'll I'll get into some of those details shortly. But before I do, chair and committee, I'd like to just close out the summer twenty twenty five. So this summer, we hosted approximately 14,600 students who engaged in a variety of really enriching and fun programming, which included programs like fifth quarter, our extended school year, our exam school initiative, and at the high school level, a lot of our career connections activities, early college, and credit recovery.

The Office of Family and Community Advancement will return to the school committee in October and they will provide our full school committee with a more detailed annual report as they usually do in October that will include a quite a bit of data and detail. And so I would just ask then in terms of questions that we hold till that presentation happens, and the full team will be here to be able to share just the great work that happened. Last month, we held the annual three day August Leadership Institute, which we call ALI internally, for our school leaders and our senior staff. We welcomed also 300 new teachers to our new educator institute. And they were all very spirited and ready to go to teach our young our young students.

On August 19, more than 700 parents and caregivers joined us for a back to school webinar where members of my team answered questions in preparation for the new school year. And that included 11 different languages that we were able to communicate with our families and provide information and answer questions on. It's the second year that we've done it, and every year we just get more and more families. So really proud of the team and all the families that joined. We also brought a tradition back to the Bowling Building.

This was actually originally a tradition in the Court Street Building that then become a tradition in the Bowling Building. But it was one in which we welcomed our school leaders to visit Central Office in late August where they had an opportunity to be able to go department to department, floor to floor, meet people, talk with people and solve problems and really get to figure out how to get the support that they need. We had nearly five sixty students and their families and caregivers join us for an annual citywide countdown to kindergarten event. Chair Robinson is at the heart of the event. We held that on August 26 at the Boston Children's Museum.

And this is just really an event that's an opportunity for our families and our our youngest learners to just be excited about school and to start to get the to get the feel of it. There was a school bus that they could go on, and there was all kinds of games and activities that they could partake in. But it was also a chance for the parents and the caregivers to speak directly with BPS staff, and they could ask questions. They got to meet all the health teams. So they got to learn about dental and vision and all kinds of ways that we support health needs in our schools.

So just really a wonderful occasion, one of the one of the most fun that you'll attend. And then on Tuesday, September 3, we held our annual reengagement door knocking event, which the mayor was referencing. This is when we reach out to our students who are chronically absent. This year, we visited neighborhoods in Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and Dorchester. And it's really the opportunity to make a connection with a family and a student.

In all, there were 79 volunteers. So, again, every year, we get more and more volunteers who participate. With the mayor and I, we went and visited a total collectively of a 184 homes and connected with 63 students and families directly through those visits. We also distribute backpacks as part of the visit and gift cards for back to school needs. Stop and Shop, Tropical Foods, Marshalls all donate to that.

And so a big thank you to them. And I think as the mayor and I went to the homes, you know, we heard directly from students and families about the barriers to coming to school regularly. And, you know, I'll talk a little bit more, but it ranged from sometimes they're contributing financially to the household and they need to work. Sometimes it's caregiver issues. Sometimes they just don't know how to get back on track.

You know, they've been out and they don't know how to reengage. Because of this work, we're seeing a decrease in chronic absenteeism, while many other districts statewide and nationally are seeing it go up in the wrong direction. In school year twenty four-twenty five, BPS chronic absenteeism rate declined for the fourth consecutive year. And it was a cumulative of 10 percentage points. What was most important is that we've had a decrease among every student demographic group.

And so that means we're really our outreach is working. You know, we say students cannot learn if they're not in school. And that sounds very simple. But when you actually drill down to the many reasons they don't come, it's very complex. Besides caring for family members, experiencing homelessness themselves, working jobs outside financially, struggling with mental health, there's just so many different barriers for young people to come consistently and we're working hard to solve those.

We didn't, in our approach, reach out to students to like penalize them, to judge in any way. This was really just to say, welcome back, we miss you. When you're not here, we notice. And we're here to help solve those problems. So in all, this is something we'll continue to do throughout the fall.

The team is gearing up for students who have yet to report to the BPS. And so we'll be really pushing over the next week and a half, two weeks, phone calls home, door knocks to just say come on back. Doesn't matter that you missed the last four or five days, come on back, we're here for you. In terms of school year 2025, you know, besides all the great work that happened this summer, we welcomed back our students in grades one to 12 on the first day of school. And then this past Monday, we welcomed our youngest learners, our k zero, k one, and k two.

And we're just so happy as you walk around the schools, just so happy to have them all back. Just life and joy and and and excitement. As mayor Wu noted, we began the first day welcoming our students this year at the Trotter Elementary School in Roxbury. The mayor and I were joined by Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Pedro Martinez. In fact, the commissioner visited multiple schools with me.

He stayed the whole morning and really got to see and experience the joy that's in our schools. Also BTU President Eric Berg and Vice President Leis Reyna, they joined us on the visits. YMCA President David Shapiro from Boston also attended. And then at the Trotter School, Stephanie Sibley, who is our wonderful leader there. She just did a wonderful job welcoming the community.

I also want to thank Chair Robinson and Vice Chair O'Neill for being there to welcome our students. It's always great to have our school committee members there and present in our schools. And I look forward to working with the committee to do more school visits this year. I think the day was just sort of filled with high fives. There were balloons and red carpets and staff in costumes.

We gave out stickers that says be kind on them to the students, which you know students love stickers. And the energy was just really contagious. I also visited Orchard Gardens, K 8, and the newly built Carter School, which you'll hear more about when we do the ribbon cutting in Tech Boston Academy. And truthfully, I was just inspired the whole day seeing our village wrap around our schools and be present and support. I was also I'm also just deeply grateful to the educators and staff across the BPS who everyday play an important role in making our students feel welcomed and appreciated.

And you could just feel the sense of optimism and excitement. It was palpable in in those first, you know, those first moments. I also caught up with long time colleagues and friends like Alma Wright, who we saw at the Charter. She's a retired teacher from the Charter, turned volunteer, and she's been there for more than sixty years. And I also just met new members of the BPS community, some of them first time educators and new school leaders and sometime veteran.

And then on Monday, I joined mayor Wu at the Ellison Parks Early Education School in Matapan, and we welcomed back k zero, k one, and k two students, and we helped launched Boston Reads. This is a new literacy campaign the mayor was talking about, and it's really designed to create a culture of reading throughout Boston, Not just our schools, but throughout our city. The district's early literacy measures show that kindergarteners are mastering the foundations that really are gonna help lead them to read and develop language skills and develop lifelong love of reading. And so there's a big focus on that. And what Boston Reads is going to do, it's gonna help support our work, frankly, in the schools by making that early literacy access available citywide so that students see it everywhere and they hear about it everywhere.

One of the program's features is StoryStops, which the mayor mentioned. This engages our youngest readers by connecting them to stories in their own communities. And in fact, we have a celebrity next to me, Chia Robinson. She's the subject of a story stop in Roxbury. And my hope is after the report, she'll share a little bit about that. But the kids were we had, like, 50 kindergartners, and they were first graders. And they were just like I pointed to Chair Robinson, and they were like, miss Robinson. Like, they all knew her. So so that that's, I think, going to be fun with our story stops and our story starts, and you'll hear more about Boston Reads. Turning a moment for enrollment and registration.

Although it's too soon to have definitive enrollment numbers for the year, I mean, we're in day five. As of today, the enrollment is 48,128. And this includes approximately 2,400 new registrations between June and this month. So that gives you a sense of the volume. But we just wanna caution the number shifts and changes particularly in the first few weeks of school, but I will continue to update the committee.

In the last sixteen business days, BPS has registered almost a thousand students, which is an average of about 60 students a day. In our welcome center, if you if you go there each day as I usually do, it's really busy. Lots of transfers, changes of addresses and new registrations. So just a big thank you to the welcome staff. We also continue to work through our waitlists.

We've called more than nine fifty students. Waitlist calls and emails continue to go out twice a week as seats become available. And as a reminder to parents, we'll continue to call students off the waitlists as those seats become available until the waitlist expires on November 30 for grades one to 12 and January 31 for K0, K2. In total, through all the calls, we've assigned about four sixty three students off the waitlist. Helpline between August 20 and September 2, the BPS helpline was contacted more than 4,700 times.

Mostly through phone calls on a variety of back to school related issues that ranged from registration information, student assignment, transportation, dress code, those are always kind of the big ones, and some technical support. This is the helpline's third year in operation, and families have appreciated one place to call to get the support they need. And I just wanna remind, the helpline can be reached (617) 635-8873. And we have six different languages that the staff can support. And if it requires a different language, we can do a callback.

So we're really, really trying to reach every single parent or family member that calls in for support. Transportation. Last week, as the mayor said, we achieved our strongest start to the school year on record. Every day since then, we've had a historic high of on time percentage or what we call OTP in either the morning or the afternoon. Today, in the AM, we were at 84% on time, which is two points higher than this same day in any prior year for on time percentage.

And it's just it's a reminder that this is about continuous progress. And what I'm most proud about is Dan and the Transportation team, whether it's one point, two point, they are always striving to make sure every bus is getting where it needs to be on time. This year, we'll continue to use the Zoom transportation technology after rolling it out last year. And I'm pleased to report that currently ninety nine percent of our drivers are successfully using the app every day so far this year. And more than 16,000 families have been using the app to track their students' rides.

So this is, as we implemented it last year, a big piece was getting our drivers trained in using it and getting our parents trained in using that. And you can hear from the numbers that that is certainly happening. And that's just the the strong foundation we have a commitment to build when it comes to our transportation department. I do wanna just give a a particular shout out to executive director Dan Rosengard and deputy director Jackie Haines. Along with their team, they've worked so hard to address the many operational challenges that have existed previously in within the the district.

And they've really been creative in their reforms and their system wide improvement. And this has just led to stronger contracts, improved staffing, the use of modern technology as well as enhanced and accelerated training of our bus drivers and monitors. So just big kudos. Again, we continue to work and I'll continue to update this committee on those results. I just also want to take a moment for parents to just really encourage you to download the Zoom app because it really will provide a lot of good information for you as well as ParentSquare app.

Because those two together are really gonna help you get more control over the information you receive from the district and from your schools. Families will get all, like, important alerts, updates, and announcements, as well as our weekly family newsletter, BPS Beyond the Bell. So just please download Zoom, download ParentSquare so that we can get you connected. Big thanks to our comms team led by Chris McKinnon for more than 21,000 parents and caregivers or 33% have downloaded ParentSquare. We want everybody using it.

So another just big pitch for that. And you can always find those apps on our website, bostonpublicschools.org backslash back to school, all lowercase, Or you can just go to Apple App Store or Google Play and be able to get it. Attendance during the first few weeks of school where this is a big push of ours in mind, which is to really reach out to our kids and not let a pattern of chronic absenteeism form. And we need everybody's help to do that. As I said earlier, the team's gonna continue to focus resources on the students and make sure that they have what they need.

Looking at our student attendance as of noon today, still really early in the year. But we averaged 78.8% attendance on the first day of school. That was two points higher than the previous year. That's not a small jump. And then as of Friday, we were at 79.8. So what you're seeing is the attendance come up every single day. And then we pull it in the afternoon. So I'll report sometime during this meeting as to what ours was for today. Facilities improvements, you also heard the mayor address some of this. But over the summer, the BPS facilities team worked hard to ensure that our schools were ready.

And just in visiting the schools, there was so much work done. I mean, I'm proud to say that by the first day, in terms of cleaning and sanitizing, stairwells, bathrooms, classrooms, lobbies, corridors, and offices had all been done a 100%. And that is no small feat when it comes to our schools. There's lots of territory to cover. We've certainly come a long way in keeping our students and staff also cool the hot weather and comfortable.

This was a priority that started in 2024 with air conditioning installation. 32% of the BPS schools had air conditioning back then. And I'm just proud to say now that 92% have AC. And this summer, we also completed eight out of 12 more schools that were the remaining buildings. There's still a few left.

We continue to look for creative solutions for them. But that's a big, big jump as, you know, we're getting up to near the 100. We also just spent a lot of time on work orders. This can range from facility repair outside to building repair to windows to a whole range of things that happened during the school year from wear and tear. And to give you a sense, this year, the team had 12% increase logging more than almost 3,000 work orders were completed.

And this ranges from everything from roof replacements and structural upgrades to HVAC replacements to radiator cover installations to playground improvements, including CPA projects, security system and entryway improvements, restroom renovations, and ADA compliance upgrades. So big and small, the facilities team was out there getting it done. And that's what's making our schools look and feel better for our students. We are also thrilled to welcome our students back into brand new and beautifully renovated school buildings this fall. And in the coming weeks, we'll have a bunch of ribbon cuttings facilities.

But the renovated and expanded PJ Kennedy School in East Boston, the brand new Sarah Roberts Elementary School in Roslindale, breathtaking. The new state of the art Carter School has to be a national model. Like, honestly, I I the amount of thought that has been put into that school for for our students who are medically fragile is just incredible. And then on Monday, September 15, we're gonna cut the ribbon on next. So our next program is providing the home base for our post secondary students with disabilities is they continue on a path toward employment and internship and self reliance.

And we didn't have that program before. So just a lot of really good things happening on our facility side as well. In terms of Food and Nutrition, we now have 106 of the 122 school buildings that are cooking fresh meals. And this is up from a total of 101 sites last year. And it really does take a lot to get the site operational, everything from staffing to the equipment.

But this is a priority of ours to make sure that all students are eating hot, fresh, nutritional food that is sourced locally. Also, the continued expansion allows for fresher high quality meals and a greater menu flexibility, which I know we've shared last year. Students having more voice in the menu, which they absolutely love. Currently, 99% of the breakfasts, 94% of the lunches, and 86% of after school meals are being prepared in house. So big kudos to the food nutrition staff.

The Central Kitchen on Columbia Road in Dorchester will be up and functioning this fall. And that will really allow us to better in house prepare our meals for all schools in the district. This is really a huge accomplishment for the team in Food and Nutrition and also for the district. It's a project that's been wanting to happen for a while. Hiring began in the late winter and will continue through October success so far and I'm excited to share that ninety six percent of the teachers and school counselors have been hired.

This is really a big markup from the last couple of years. Last year's was ninety four percent that I had reported. And in 2023, it was eighty eight percent. So real concentrated effort by human capital to make sure that our positions are full with staff that are ready for our students. In terms of athletics, there are 3,400 students participating in BPS athletics this fall.

Preseason practice started in mid August and will officially kick off the Massachusetts Interscholactic Athletic Association, MIAA, season with first games on Wednesday, September 3, they did. Fall sports include football, cheerleading, cross country, boys and girls soccer, volleyball, and swimming. Before I close, I just want to remind BPS that they're invited to attend the BPS back to school blast, which will happen Friday, September 12 at 3PM at Harambee Park, 390 Blue Hill Ave. Please come out, join AFCA. They'll be there.

There's a bouncy house, roller skates, roller skating, grilled food, all kinds of fun things. And in terms of the bright spots, which I typically end with, chair, we have a video that, again, our award winning communications team, eight national awards, I will say, has put together. And, so we'd like in lieu of the bright spots by reading them to be able to show you them. It's awesome.

Thank you, superintendent. I'll now open the floor for questions and discussions. I'd like to remind my colleagues about our agreed upon norm that we each have five minutes per member round. Ms. Pravec, will you please remind us when we have one minute? So please keep your BPS staff, please keep your responses brief and speak slowly to support our interpreters. Thank you.

Well, I do have one question just about how we're continuing to plan to get that 96% of teacher staff hiring up to 100. So just a little bit more about what you Sure. Are

So the staff continues onboard. They also continue to recruit in particular positions where we would see it be more difficult. Sometimes these are one to one para or ABA. So we've done creative things like retention or referral bonus, things like that, to be able to continue to recruit. We usually also hold a couple of virtual hiring fairs between September and October for, like, last minute kinds of vacancy, somebody moves or whatever.

But we really try to look to make sure that the teaching positions are full. And the 96%, on average, you end up with one teaching position or less per school. And so then it's getting a long term sub in there, making sure the long term sub is qualified as we continue to try to push on the hiring and the recruiting. And

certainly, I think the updates are great to certainly start off the year. And still today just wanted to I think I'd remiss if I didn't particularly send a shout out to the community in Denver right now that's experiencing some tragedy and just from one school community to another, just how much safety matters. So just, you know, extending prayers and sincerest wishes for comfort for the families that are out there right now.

Well, I don't have any question. It's just to follow-up on the 92% new hiring, of course, members of the school committee will receive the breakdown on the DEI criteria regardless of where federal government is going. I'm very strong on DEI. As you know, I like I like to see it. Yes. Especially with the with the two categories that I'm very concerned with, which is risk and disability. Thank you.

No. We'll we'll make sure in October when we do the readout and provide you with the data from the hiring. We always will disaggregate it and make sure that we're giving you the categories we know that you have concerns about as do we, to be able to show that progress.

It's great to hear these updates and very excited to hear the large number of students who participated in summer learning. Looking through the catalog and emails that came through to BPS parents of all the robust free of charge summer options were really incredible and are typically of high cost oftentimes. And so the fact that our students were able to engage in those is great. Would love to in the future know how many seats went unfilled of some really great opportunities and how we might be able to mobilize school based teams to do some of that recruiting because they're just such wonderful opportunities and we want to hope that every seat gets used because it was a great summer for those of us who were able to enjoy that. My only question was around the enrollment thus far, which we know is evolving, the 48,128.

Is that inclusive of students who have not yet reported?

So we have a category called did not report. And that is those are the students that have yet to come for one school day to claim their seat. That is inclusive of that number. And it is after day five, generally my practice is after day five. The schools have already called home.

They're trying to get in touch with the families. But now we go to sort of the next level, which is we do a knock and we do outreach to figure out which kids are just not coming. So right now, that 48,000 approximate is including the DNR. And the DNR right now will go down dramatically between now and the first Monday of next week. I think in the past, we've run somewhere around like a 7% or 8% DNR in the district.

It varies kind of year to year. I think there's lots of complicating factors this year for students reporting and some of the fear in the community. So we're just really doing our best to outreach to families to reassure them that BPS is a safe place and a welcoming place for them and work with them to get the students here. We'll continue to update for sure by the next school committee meeting. That number will be completely refined.

And then October 1, as you know, is our total enrollment cutoff. And then in terms of your other point about the summer programming, my understanding is we actually ran waitlists in pretty much all programs. And so when a student did not show up for their seat, we then called the waitlist to see if we could backfill it. But I'll make sure that Chief Sanchez reports that out. But we've come we've refined that process now three three years in a row almost, yeah, three years in a row to to get that so that every seat because you're right.

It's gold. Mhmm. That's the right? Many districts charged or it's not the level of quality that we're providing. And in fact, with ESI, we actually added seats because we had a wait list for that program in particular and credit recovery. The team knows for credit recovery that we will never run a waitlist in credit recovery. If a young person wants to make their credit up, we will make that seat available to them.

Thank you, superintendent. Thank you for that report. And congratulations to you and your team. It's an incredible amount of work over the summer to be ready for this school year and the amount of different issues you had to think through. Took me to our operations team. Congratulations to all the work they did. And just seeing little things like the new playground at the Trotter when we were all there. And new bathrooms that have gone in and the cleaning that you mentioned and the new food service operations that have picked up. I was very struck. I was at another school on opening day after the trotter and to stand with the team as they're waiting for the buses.

The bad news on that day was out of 20 buses were there on time. Six they were still waiting for. But it was breathtaking for me to look on the laptop of the team and they could see where each of the six buses were. What students were on those buses. In the old days I've stood there where they're calling transportation saying where's bus 3725.

And now they could actually see where it was sitting in traffic, of course Boston traffic. So the work that the transportation team has done on technology is leaps and bounds forward. So glad to see those numbers continue and arise. And you talked about the new buildings and I know we'll be talking about the Carter and a few of the others. But the work that was done by public facilities of the city in conjunction with our operations team and with MSBA.

Particularly at the Carter School which is, as you said, it is a national model. And when we think through in the past couple of years, we now have a national model for one of the best school buildings in the country to deal with our most medically fragile students. We have one of the top schools in the country for our performing arts students. We have a custom built, first custom built school building in New England for STEM education in the Dearborn. You know we're we're moving forward in a number of positive ways.

I just wanna follow-up on miss Garrett's question about enrollment. And I'm wondering how that number compares against our projection because the projection was how the budget was built. And I know it's still early and you said it would be adjusted. But are these wild variances from what we budgeted or are we comfortable with where it is?

Yeah. So I think, well, I'm never comfortable if there's one student missing. But

I I mean it as

But but yeah. But from a budget perspective, I think the area that we could foreshadow and has held true is that our newcomer numbers are definitely down. And what we've tried to do there is to work with the schools to be able to keep resource in the building, but to have that resource addressing the needs of the kids that are there. What I've cautioned is we can't because of the federal situation, we can't decimate the infrastructure that we've built up to support our multilingual learners. And so we just need to be creative with that resource right now.

That's really the area that we're seeing the most currently. But again, we still have three days and a lot happens in our enrollment in three days, both coming in and shifting. But we've been working with the school leaders, and I can't say enough. Our school leaders heard loud and clear over the summer as we talked about knowing every student coming to the door. And they've just been exceptional at making sure their teams are oriented to welcome kids, to get to know them, to figure out what the barriers are for a kid, and to then activate the resource to help solve that.

And every building I go into, and I've been in quite a few classrooms at this point this year, like every building, that is happening for our young people. And, you know, to get a knock on the door because somebody knows you're not there and wants to see you back, that's pretty powerful for a student. And that opens up a conversation. So that's what the team will now shift to next, is going deep with the special education team. We'll be calling special education student families.

Our multilingual learners will department, our OMME will be contacting our multilingual learners variety of language that's needed. And then regular education, we will be having our student support team, our secondary office, as well as, in general, the broader reengagement center and guidance hitting all of that. And as you know, we're reconstructing alternative education to meet the needs of the students that we're getting. And that will be then positioned for us if students need other kinds of seats, and that's why they're not returning, then we can talk with those students about we have a seat for you. And if we don't have a program that they need, we'll build one.

Great. Thank you, superintendent. Thank you, Joe.

You're welcome.

It actually reminded me, Vice Chair O'Neill, about just as a question, this could be at a later date. Just I know it's the beginning of the year, but what are we currently doing to support the transitions for the schools that we voted to close and merge back in the spring?

Yeah. So in the case of Excel and Lions, we worked very closely with every family. If the student wanted to move, either they were due to move or they wanted to move the year early, we accommodated that. And a lot of kids and families opted for that. And then in the case of merger, same thing. We made sure families had a chance to go over, see the new building, feel comfortable. And if they were great with that, awesome. If they weren't and they wanted to transfer, we enabled that to happen. So we've really been working student by student, family by family as we said we would.

That's good. And I mean I think it's, and it's particularly good to know that that's almost the reaction for families because I think it goes back to what we're trying to do and trying to I guess tie trade out what is the best time to let the So community know around it's important that we're collecting that data so that we know what tends to be the reaction of most families.

That's

right. So thank you for the update.

You're welcome. Yeah, have a follow-up question.

Yes, sir.

Yes. Mentioned that, just a little while ago that you anticipated that the, number of students will be somehow less than what we expected this year, the total number of students. The question is, what would be the most critical foreseeing or foreseeable criteria that would cause that number of that would cause the decrease in the number of students enrolled? And the second question would be what about the bilingual education program and students with a different ability to speak other languages? Are we expecting that they are going to be increasing or is it going to be somehow clumped together with the inclusion program that we cannot count them anymore?

So I think I can actually answer both with the same answer. So the part that was hard to predict, we had seen three historic years of multilingual learner and immigrant students coming in to enroll. Last year, with the shelter system, we saw an even higher number than we had anticipated. And those numbers were, on average, thousands of students extra. We, because we're a larger district, can be flexible and accommodate that.

And we're a welcoming district, so we want that. So we actually opened seats in classrooms and and so forth. To give you a sense, our newcomers were running less than 50% of what they were. So that's a very large group of kids. And that does have bearing on the language pieces. But those students aren't necessarily the same students that would take dual language. There might be overlap or bilingual. So it's sort of it is impacting those numbers. But yet, we have very healthy numbers on our dual language and bilingual education. So what we're most concerned is we're just not seeing our newcomer students as much.

We're seeing, in a very hopeful way, I think, our students who were with us the last couple of years as newcomers who are now no longer newcomers, we're seeing them stay at a higher rate than we thought might happen. And that's why I think the narrative of talking with students and families directly is so critical. Right? So that they can ask questions and they can be assured that BPS is a safe and welcoming district for them. So that's gonna be a lot of the work.

So the number of teachers high for for for those programs will pretty much remain the same?

They they will. So they they are that was, like, to my point where what we don't wanna do is sort of decimate that infrastructure because that infrastructure will be needed at some point in the future. This is all, unfortunately, so tied to policy federal policy. And so there will be a swing at some point. And when that swing happens, we've done so much work to increase the number of our bilingual staff that we don't want to go backward.

Thank you. Most of my questions were already answered. Can you say something about the stories? Oh, the stories. The story stop was a big surprise to me as well.

The story stops are snippets of stories that have been part of the Boston Public Schools curriculum for grades two pretty much. And they are stories about individuals who are in Boston. And I've been in the curriculum for a number of years now in the second grade curriculum and am delighted to go out and visit kids. In this past year, when we had the principal shadowing day, I did that at the Ellison Park School. And when I arrived at the school, much to my surprise, every child knew who I was because every single class had read the story.

And we visited every single class and every single group had a very long list of questions for me. They were just delighted. I mean, Ellison Parks is a school for three to eight year olds. And when you're interrogated by a five year old, you've been interrogated by a five year old. So it was a surprise to me that we were showing the story.

And when they introduced me, all of the kids did know who I was. And that was a surprise for them and for me as well, very delightful. And they, when I went and visited classrooms, I was amazed at how much detail that many of them had remembered about my story in that very short time. And it just reminded me of how much our kids really do and remember. And every single one of them wanted to know if I remembered meeting them last year and who they were and those things.

But it was fun. I hope you all will read the little QR codes. The stories are delightful about a lot of different people across the city and about what, for my story, a lot about what growing myself had meant to me, what were some of the very special things about my going to school. I went to the Nathan Hale School where I returned for kindergarten every year for the past twenty five years. I've gone to the first day of school at the Nathaniel and I went this past year as well.

But it's just great to be able to be a person whose life has been has grown up in this city, educated in the city, and critically believe that this district and this city owes its children the best of an education. And so personally, I will continue to do everything I can possibly do to make sure those little things happen for kids. And so now this issue of literacy stories everywhere, QR codes, and really engaging everyone to sort of learn more about the city and some of its nuance is is a great thing. I hope you all will look for story stops and story starts as well and, share them with the young people in your life and, help us to celebrate the importance of reading in the district. That's great.

Thanks. So I'll now entertain a motion to receive the superintendent's report. Is there a motion?

So moved.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Hearing none, the superintendent's report is approved. And we'll now move on to general public comment. Ms. Marvets?

Thank you, chair. The public comment period is an opportunity for individuals to address the school committee on school related issues. Questions on specific school matters are referred to the superintendent. Question on policy matters may be discussed by the committee later. The meeting will feature two public comment periods with the first comment period limited to one hour.

After one hour, anyone who hasn't testified will have the opportunity to do so at the end of the meeting. We have 15 speakers this evening. Each person will have three minutes to speak, and I would remind you when you have thirty seconds remaining, please feel free to e mail your comments for distribution to the committee. Speakers may not reassign their time to others. The time that an interpreter uses for English interpretation will not be deducted from a speaker's allotted time.

Please direct your comments to the chair and refrain from addressing individual school committee members or district staff. Please note that comments of any public speaker do not represent the Boston Public Schools or the Boston School Committee. Please state your name, affiliation, and where you live before you begin. If you're on Zoom, please sign you sign in using the name you registered with for public comment, and be ready to unmute and turn on your camera when it's your turn to speak. Please raise your virtual hand when I call your name. To support interpretation, please speak slowly and clearly. Our first group of speakers is Roseanne Tang, Travis Marshall, John Mudd and Julia Morales. Ruth Ann Tang?

Hello. I'm Roseanne Tung. I've led research on exam school access, and I served on the twenty twenty one exam school admissions task force. The changes to the exam school admissions policy forecast during the June school committee meeting harm our students who have been denied opportunity for generations. A little context.

The pandemic created an opportunity to rethink the criteria for admissions to remedy disparities. For example, the year before, sixteen percent of BLS students were economically disadvantaged compared to fifty eight percent of all BPS students. Over five months, we engaged the public in 28 open meetings. The task force met its charge. Applications from lower income geographic tiers increased, BLS and BLA increased their enrollment of black and Latina students.

The numbers of houseless and DCF involved youth increased. The number of previously underrepresented BPS sending schools increased. And in response to lawsuits challenging the policy, the Supreme Court agreed that the current policy is race neutral. City leaders now say they want to address complaints of what they call unfair aspects of the policy. I agree with the critics that all applicants should have a shot at an exam school seat.

However, the solution should not backslide on equity gains. Yet, the three simulations do exactly that. For all three simulations, invitation rates would decline for the lowest socioeconomic tier, multilingual learners, former English learners, students who are economically disadvantaged, students from BPS sending schools and BPS students applying to BLS. At the same time, all of the simulations result in an increase of white students, students from the highest socioeconomic tier, and students who do not attend BPS elementary schools. Rather than cater to these families, how about engaging the families and neighborhoods of the students who have the most to lose?

Instead, we have no more task forces. Summer exam school admissions public engagement amounted to two one hour informational webinars. Mere assistance of exam schools stratifies BPS into three levels of privilege, exam, application and open enrollment. Without community pushback against these policy changes, yet again opportunities will close for our students who have been most historically marginalized. These clearly regressive exam school admissions changes will cause exam school demographics to trend disproportionately to the historically privileged. In addition, they distract us from creating more high quality secondary schools.

Thank you.

You. Next speaker is Travis Marshall.

Good evening. My name is Travis Marshall. I live in Roslindale. I'm the proud parent of students at the English High School and the Bates Elementary School. It is the aim of our system of public schools by the blending of all classes to draw upon the whole school, the attention which is too apt to be given only to the favored few, and thus secure to the poor their portion of the fruitful sunshine.

Those are the words of Charles Sumner in the landmark lawsuit Roberts versus the City of Boston. A one hundred and seventy five year old school desegregation case that we celebrate this year with the naming of the new Sarah Roberts school in Rossendale. But Roberts lost her case and the legal legacy of that ruling up until Brown v Board one hundred years later was that separate separate but equal doctrine that legalized segregation. This year BPS honors Sarah Roberts fight for justice while simultaneously proposing policies that further exclude marginalized students from the district's three exam schools. Simulations of the proposed changes show a decrease in admission to black and Latina students, economically disadvantaged students, and former English learners.

Simulations also show a drop in the already minute number of multilingual learners and students disabilities. Groups that make up more than half of all open enrollment high schools but less than 3% of exam schools. We continue to operate separate schools for these student groups and we do not even pretend that they are equal. Inequality is why we are once again revisiting how to dole out seats for the favored few to schools with opportunities and resources that do not exist elsewhere in BPS. The Boston School Committee once told Sarah Roberts that separate schools were legal and just.

I ask that this committee not reaffirm that belief by adopting a proposal that moves this city backwards. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker is John Mudd.

Good evening. My name is John Mudd. I'm a resident of Cambridge, a longtime education advocate in Boston, and the grandfather of a child at, John F Kennedy Elementary School in JP. Greetings to all of you. At its retreat on May, the school committee established three priority working groups on equitable literacy, inclusive education, and long term facilities plan with the goal of analyzing issues and reporting recommendations at this September 10 meeting or later if necessary.

I don't see anything on this agenda tonight. At the retreat and at the June 17 school committee meeting, I expressed serious concerns about the lack of outside education experts and the lack of public stakeholder participation in the working groups. Without public involvement, I sent the committee members of each working group a set of data questions and issues I suggested each group assess. Please consider these issues in future reports. You can read my questions on long term facilities plan and that in my testimony on equitable literacy.

But on tonight, I wanna focus on inclusive education. The question fundamentally for multilingual learners with and without disabilities is whether they are showing progress over the past dismal student outcomes in meeting or exceeding grade level standards on MCAS, where over 90% have not been prepared to meet state standards. If they don't, what will you do? I've heard it said by some that some of us just bring data and problems to BPS but don't talk about solutions. At least with regard to multilingual learners, this is not true.

The ELL task force, and I personally have for years said that the research evidence shows that building on the foundation of native language and expanding bilingual education is a better way to support progress for multilingual learners. BPS has chosen instead to focus on inclusive education for MLs by doubling down on a failed strategy by placing them in English only regular education classes with ESL. The committee could insist that BPS stop implementing inclusion for multilingual learners, encourage parents to speak and read to their children in their home language. Develop long term plans to expand bilingual education and bilingual teachers. Provide professional development to English speaking teachers on how to value and support their students' home language.

This is a propitious time to look at this whole issue. You are looking at the reorganization and new leadership in academics in Boston. Please take this into consideration. Thank you for

hearing me.

Thank you, mister Mahal. Next speaker is Julia Morales.

Good evening, school committee members. My name is Julia Morales. I'm a Dorchester resident, and I am the youth development specialist for the youth community organizing program at Sociedad Latina. We are an out of school time youth development organization that works with high school age youth located in Roxbury. I'm here today to testify about the harms of school issued devices and online products.

Sociedad Latina is part of a national effort to call attention to the harms of online and digital product exposure required in schools under the marketing term of EdTech. Last year, North Carolina's Burke County Superintendent and School Committee passed a resolution to encourage balanced instruction to reduce screen time. There's a body of new research that is pointing to the faults of tech based education that includes increased distraction leading to loss of focus, lower academic performance, physical and mental health issues from prolonged screen time, social isolation due to decreased face to face interactions, cybersecurity risks, privacy violations, diminished coordination and shallower information processing. We need to be examining the actions taken by those responsible for this tech based education. Why are prominent tech executives enrolling their own children in tech free or tech delayed schools that emphasize hands on learning with limited to no technologies instead of schools with the tech they promote.

I will now read the Byrd County resolution. We would like to encourage the district to think about how there can be a more balanced approach that thinks less that thinks about less tech in the classroom. We also encourage the district to always think about the ed tech being purchased and asked. What educational problem is this trying to solve? Is it effective? Is this safe for students? Is it age appropriate? Will it protect the data and privacy of students? I've also printed out three articles to share with you, which the are promise of a device based education, the EdTech revolution has failed, the madness of EdTech, as well as the Burke County resolution. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Our next group of speakers is Debra Manning, Sheena Gilliard, Peter Alvarez and Kelsey Brendel.

Good evening. My name is Deirdre Manning. I'm a resident of Dorchester, a single parent, a public, servant, and sole financial supporter of two public school children. I, for the benefit of miss Garrett, like to give a little bit of recap. I've testified very many times before the school committee.

My students were both at the Henderson School. It was a place that we loved, a community that was amazing. I served as co chair. I was very involved in trying to keep the school successful for all the children that it served. But four years ago, I believe, when the principal was attacked and knocked unconscious by a 16 year old girl, the place just devolved into absolute chaos.

We stuck it out for the end of the year for my fourth grader. She complained to me that her specials weren't special anymore because there were four or five boys who had been transferred into her classroom when students left, and they were getting into fist fights near daily. So at the end of the year, when she received a seat in a charter school, we, with a lot of regret, decided that we had to end her time at the Henderson. And when I realized, probably a year later, I had was simply stunned to know that I had deep sixed her chances admission to an exam school. I was completely taken by surprise that she was going to have to ultimately compete with students who were given eight additional points.

And because of the unfair way that they calculate standard based grades for non BPS students, her GPA was depressed by four complete points. I had no idea that this was underway. It was during the pandemic. I was trying to work full time at home and do Zoom school for my children. I was completely shocked.

So, the Boston Globe has an article saying that this policy has reduced the opportunity for wealthy families. It has not just done that. There have been students who have been doubly penalized because they live in a better off neighborhood, even with the section eight voucher, and they are deprived of these so called extra points. It is super frustrating, and ridiculously unfair. I also would like to point out that there's been no data yet on student outcomes. The superintendent has tasked graduate students at two different universities to evaluate outcomes as essentially a side hustle. Consultants should be hired

Thirty seconds.

BPS administrators state the majority of applicants are admitted, but they don't put it into context to say that there are 1,000 fewer applicants to exam schools because these families know that their children are not gonna be admitted. And just briefly, I wanna say that the superintendent's circular has wildly different testing conditions. A student at Bridge Boston Charter School shouldn't have to give up a Saturday and cross the street to BLA to take the MAP test. It's unfair. It needs

to The next speaker is from the a representative from the Gilbert Alma Community Center, Either Shaina Guignard or Nicole Albert? Could you please identify yourself when you come up? Yes. One person.

Respectfully submit this proposal to establish a Boston Public School supported adult high school diploma pathway for English language learners, immigrants who currently face systemic barriers to employment and education due to a lack of US recognized credential across let's see. We believe Boston Public Schools can lead the way in addressing this inequity by partnering with our organization, the Gilbert Albert Community Center, to offer a community based diploma program that integrates ESOL instructions embedded in the academic subjects, career readiness and job alignment, credit recovery and portfolio based assessments, and culturally relevant trauma informed pedagogy. A diploma pathway offers more than a piece of paper. It offers hope, economic mobility, and the ability to fully participate in the civic and professional life of this city. It is also a strategic investment in Boston's future.

When parents are empowered learners, their children thrive in BPS classrooms. We are ready to collaborate with boss BPS to design and pilot this program in alignment with district standards and community needs. Together, we can write the narrative for adult immigrant learners and make Boston a national model for education educational equity. We welcome the opportunity to meet and present our plan in more detail. Thank you for your leadership and continued dedication to educational justice for all bus Bostonians.

If I have more time I just want to go over some strategic points. So the problem we were able to find is thousands of adult immigrants in Boston are unable to access better employment opportunities simply because they do not have a US recognized high school diploma. While the GED HISAT is a traditional path that is often unattainable for ELL adults due to the high level of academic English required to pass all subject exams, lack of bilingual support in test prep, limited availability to culturally responsive programs that meet both language learning and academic skill development needs. Many adult learners are balancing work, parenting, and education processes, process making traditional GED prep programs inaccessible. This creates a cycle of underemployment, poverty, and systemic exclusion from economic mobility and civic participation.

And so, I'll just revert back to the letter for what we're looking for. Thank you.

Thank you very much. If you can you didn't send all that to me, right?

No, I can send this.

Yes. Thank you. Speaker is Peter

Good evening everybody. My name is Peter Alvarez. I'm a Boston Public Schools alum from Madison Park Tech Voc High School, Dorchester native, former BPS teacher, current West Roxbury resident and father of three BPS students at the Linden. I'm testifying in favor of option C. I know I probably look different than the West Roxbury parents that are usually here but I think it's really important to have a 20% of students across the city to obtain admission to the exam schools reasons.

Equitable for students regardless of where they happen to live or go to school. We can't have students getting a 97.4 composite score and not being admitted under and that's the case under the current policy. And under C, the highest non admitted score goes down to 93.5. The auto 10 points penalizes only seven BPS schools and that doesn't feel equitable at all. Those schools also have low income students there.

These families also invest in BPS and it cuts down on parents gaming systems, transferring schools, and quite frankly, 40% low income is a low threshold and creates an equity within those schools because the higher income parents are taking the slots from the lower income students at those schools because about 50%, 60% of those parents are higher income. They obviously have more resources and can give their students more. They're going to get more slots versus the lower income schools at those schools getting 10 points. That doesn't seem fair. Note that none of those schools and then consider giving all BPS students two to five points.

These are families that are investing in our schools across the district. This also will help incentivize more families to place their students in BPS instead of charter schools, Metco and private schools thus making the district more more robust. In addition to Boston housing consider providing 10 points to for MassHealth, SNAP, Section eight, all BPS schools know which students have MassHealth and SNAP and Section A, MassHealth Limited covers undocumented children because I'm really concerned with them being able to show, they provide evidence that they are also falling into the ability to get the 10 points. This can actually address some of the issues that were in the simulations because in doing so you'll be able to have more ELL students, more black and Latino students getting the 10 points and it's not just limited to living in Boston housing. It expands it including I definitely understand the woman who spoke earlier about Section eight housing.

They can live anywhere in the city. Also, low income students can go to any school in the city. We shouldn't be penalizing families. We shouldn't make those families have to do that. By doing 20% across the board, you're gonna ensure fairness across the system and I am also really, really cognizant of the diversity and equity concerns. I went to Madison Park. I'm from Dorchester Upham's. I definitely care about that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Our next in person speaker our last in person speaker is Kenzie Brendel.

Hi, everyone. I'm Kelsey Brendel. Thank you, madam chair. I'm the parent of a young child with severe disabilities and medical fragility, live in the South End. I'm here this evening to capture the timing and momentum of a new school year and a big week for our city.

The practiced and committed leadership defines the work ahead and what matters most to families and students in BPS. This is such a critical time. Time. No secret here. My laser focus about special education, planning, and policy for students with disabilities is born of my own experience with my own young son who's 12 now, but goes well beyond that, given multitudes of families I've had the privilege to learn from, work with as we became accidental experts together in special education, BPS, and caring for those with severe and profound disabilities.

This time of year, when pencils are sharpened and the Zoom calls take force and the meetings spill over our calendars, there are lots of things to laud and be proud of. Transportation efforts, certainly among them, one of the most noteworthy. You heard the mayor mention this as well and many who have done extraordinary work, but I'm here to simply offer a token start of the year reminder. This is the time, the season to push ourselves and hold one another accountable for what this season must hold dear, one where special education in BPS gets its glow, its center stage status. At every turn, at every table, we must be asking what will this mean for our students with disabilities.

And, yes, I'm saying it here. Students with severe disabilities do have a complicated relationship with the district historically and with community here in Boston. Even given the extraordinary efforts of leadership and the city, the truth is our students are unique in that they are often hidden, silent, or frankly make others terribly uncomfortable. It's just the truth. It's not it's just not popular or pretty, to be honest.

Yet to champion them with the same fervor we have highlighted the challenges of others with vulnerabilities in the city. This is not a fault, but it is an inconvenient truth. We have, all of us, been driven to distraction at times by topics that frankly compete in the popularity contest of vulnerability in the city. We must actively steer away from this tendency. Let this be the year that special attention is paid to special education.

So many of us are here at the ready to positively Thirty seconds. Enthusiastically turn pain into purpose. But you need to know, and I will say it first, the reason it's painful is that our kinds of kids are often the most difficult to serve. They just are. And we should delight in challenge. The number of ways in which it becomes easy to forget about them is enormous. It's often until we have to think about somewhere to put them, place them, include them, drive them, manage them. But without those logistical reminders, you often won't hear from them as they can't speak, and you may not see them. We don't get out much. Would ask for you here this evening to go beyond the work as prescribed and champion a change in our thinking about these most vulnerable kids this year.

Thank you.

We will now transition to public testimony on Zoom. Please raise your virtual hand when I call your name. Our first group of speakers is Jesse Solomon, Alex Oliver Davila, Cheryl Buckman and Mike Heischmann.

Good evening, chair Robinson, members of the school committee, superintendent Skipper. My name is Jesse Solomon, Solomon, executive director of the Boston Plan for Excellence. I live in Jamaica Plain. For two decades, our Boston teacher residency program has prepared, placed, supported over 800 BPS teachers. We are future.

Leader We We

the a math teacher at Brighton High School in 1994. And tonight, I'm driven by the deepest concern I've ever felt in those thirty years for the prospects of our young people. When we began working with Dearborn, we studied the labor market to create career pathways, computer science, health and life sciences, engineering, advanced manufacturing, tailored to high quality job opportunities for grads. And while this approach showed promise, the ground beneath us is shifting dramatically. Take computer science.

While k 12 schools work to teach CS more broadly and train instructors, the job market is changing. Entry level coding jobs are vanishing. The traditional promise of a four year degree leading to a stable job is fading. Young college grads now face rising unemployment, and many end up in jobs unrelated to their degrees. These are not short term challenges, but they reflect deep structural shifts.

We're also mistaking debates for solutions. Neither MCAS nor MASS Core is enough to guarantee high quality employment. And while we debate about whether and how to incorporate AI in the classroom, students are already using it and employees employers expect proficiency as a condition of hire. I don't have easy answers, but I do have two urgent recommendations rooted in core principles. One, that we empower every student and family in the city, and two, that we coordinate cross sector action.

First, Boston needs a real time public database of high demand jobs tied to the credentials required and connected with local schools and training programs. Access to this information empowers families and students to navigate future opportunities. Second, our institutions must work together, bring together industry, government, higher ed, nonprofits, and, of course, k 12 to align efforts and dismantle barriers. Coordination makes it easier for families and accelerates progress. Boston is rich in people, ideas, and resources. What's missing is urgency and

collective action.

Our young people can't afford incremental change. We must respond decisively to support young people we serve, the young people we serve to have access to quality lives. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Alex Oliver Davila.

Good evening, madam chair, superintendent, and school committee members, and welcome, miss Garrett. My name is Alexandra Oliver Davila, and I am the executive director of Sociedad Latina, which is a youth development organization located in Roxbury. Roxbury. I believe supporting young people's independence and autonomy is important. However, the reality is that cell phones and social media are addictive.

The frontal cortex, which is essential for self control, delay of gratification, and resistance to temptation is not up to full capacity until the mid twenties. The draw of constantly checking your phone, social media, and group chats is real. Even when students want to focus on what's happening in the classroom and in real life, it could be next to impossible because of the addictive design. Research suggests that cell phones and social media are negatively impacting young people's social skills, ability to focus, memory, critical thinking, and executive function skills. The instant gratification related to getting likes, notifications, and comments triggers the release of dopamine in the brain similar to playing slot machines.

The high potential for addiction cannot be overstated. As you are all aware, we are in the worst youth mental health crisis in our nation's history. Cell phone and social media can further exacerbate mental health issues by causing anxiety, sleep disruption, unhealthy comparison, and cyberbullying. Today, the Boston City Council voted to pass a resolution to urge Boston Public Schools to support a phone free environment by implementing a belt to belt policy. I commend counselors Santana, Weber, and for their leadership.

The resolution states that well crafted phone rules can foster a greater sense of connection and belonging for students, support student mental health and social emotional growth, and reduce distractions to learning and education. Sociedad Ladina urges the district to act now and to implement a bell to bell policy and join the many school districts across the country that recognize the innumerable mental health benefits for students of device free schools. With this policy, we are returning presence, connection, creativity, focus, and so much more to our students. This is one step towards a healthier future for our young people. I also would like to ask this body to consider letting families switch to online school and have options amidst the mass ICE president presence in our city and our state.

During a time that we should be celebrating Latino Heritage Month, our Latinate community is being targeted and being disappeared. Thank you.

Thank you. Gracias. Next speaker is Charlotte Buckman.

Good evening. My name is Cheryl Buckman, and I'm here tonight as a proud newly proud RBA parent and as the current lead for the Deborah School. I live in South Boston, and I'm speaking tonight in full support of establishing a Deborah Legacy Award, a proposal created by myself and my co lead, who you'll also hear from this evening. The Deborah is more than just a school. It's a cornerstone of our community.

For decades, it has embodied resilience, inclusion, and a belief in every I've seen this firsthand. I've seen students who once struggled find their voice and confidence because someone at the Debra believed in them and stuck with them. That kind of impact doesn't fade, it ripples forward. The Legacy Award would honor that legacy by recognizing individual students, educators, schools or community partners who carry Deborah's spirit forward. It would celebrate those who live out the values that define our school: compassion, determination, perseverance, service and progress.

This award isn't just a tribute to to the past, This it's a commitment to the future. It can be led by the BPS Office of Equity or shaped in partnership with our Deborah community and legacy team. But at its heart, it will be a lasting reminder of what is possible when a school invests in people not just for a year, but for a lifetime. Let's honor that legacy by lifting up those who keep it alive. Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration.

Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Mike Heisman.

Mike Heischman, Dorchester. Trump is being honest when he decided to change the name of his department from defense to war. Wars are happening overseas. Meanwhile, he is escalating his wars at home, including on our immigrant neighbors. In 1790, our new nation passed the Naturalization Act, which was intended to let limit citizenship to white people.

Since that time, most of our laws and practices towards migrants has been have been racist. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 compelled people to cooperate in the returning of those who had escaped from slavery. I taught US history in Chelsea for decades and never thought or taught that those who resisted this law were lawbreakers. Instead, their resistance was justified and heroic. I applaud mayor Wu for her support for our migrant neighbors and her defiance against the fascists who inhabits the White House.

More important than educating our children, it is the responsibility of our school system to protect them. ICE intends to harm our children and their families. The Boston School Committee is the policy making body of our public schools. I am unaware of policy in this area. Our community should know what miss Skipper would do if ordered to cooperate with ICE.

What should happen if ICE attempts to enter our schools? What should our principals do if they discover ICE agents outside their buildings? What should our bus drivers do if they see ICE agents at bus stops, etcetera? The school committee must come up with a policy. You can't be neutral on a moving train. I encourage you to come up with a policy that goes beyond noncooperation. We must resist their attempts to harm our children and their families. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Our next group of speakers is Solika So to, Nadia Stojanova Little, and Havala Abdullahman. Solika So to.

Miss Parveks, just so you know, we cannot hear you on Zoom when you're saying the names.

Thank you.

So good evening. Good evening. My name is Soleka So to. I'm a BPS parent from the South End, and I'm here on behalf of the BUILD BPS stakeholders, Green New Deal Coalition. At some point this year, once again, students, families, and educators will be facing proposed school closures.

And we are afraid that once again, these decisions will fit into a troubling pattern we've seen for more than a decade. Closures and mergers that disproportionately disrupt the lives of low income children of color, destabilize communities, and move forward without transparency or authentic community engagement. Since 2014, our city has seen numerous pledges to transform school facilities, a 600,000 McKinsey audit, a 1,000,000,000 build BPS commitment, and the $20.22 2,000,000,000 green new deal initiative. Yet instead of coherent equitable planning, we've witnessed patchwork solutions, school mergers, and closures targeting students who have historically been underserved. Each pledge promise equity and quality, expanding access to strong learning environments, reducing school transitions, tackling underenrollment, and creating more opportunities for students with disabilities and English learners.

These are still the words we will hear once again, again recycled as justifications for closures and mergers. So we must ask, who is really benefiting? What has happened to students whose schools were closed? Have they really gained access to a higher quality education or seats, or have they faced more disruption and fewer supports? Have they left the district?

If equity and closing achievement gaps are truly the goals, the district should provide evidence that closures deliver better outcomes. So far, all we see is harm. Each step has repeated the same pattern. Decisions made first, communities informed later. Meanwhile, the state required master facilities plan due December 2023 has never been released.

Families are left to guess about the future of their schools, the who, the what, the when, the where, the why, while instability grows all around us. We urge the school committee to halt all closures until a transparent equity centered master facilities plan is developed with authentic community engagement before proposals are finalized. That plan must use the racial equity planning tool

Thirty seconds. Supports

and demonstrate how changes will actually deliver quality education. 30 And any proposals must involve parents and communities in the planning stage with their viewpoints represented before being presented to the school committee. Equity and quality cannot remain empty promises. They must be put into practice. And until then, no school should be closed. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Nadia Stojanova Little. Please unmute yourself and turn on your camera. Thank you.

Hello. Good evening. My name is Nadia Striano Belero, and I am very excited. This is my first BPS, committee meeting. So much to learn and a lot to appreciate.

Good evening, chair Robinson, superintendent, skipper, and members of the committee. My name is Nadia Stiano Belittle. I live in East Boston, along with my husband. We are the parents of, two children, classes k one and second grade attending wonderful Ligieri Montessori School. Over the last two months, my family has engaged directly with BPS Transportation leadership and team regarding the elimination of a long standing bus stop very close to our home, not exactly near or in front, but they're very close.

It was eliminated, and the stop that we were assigned is three times farther in the opposite direction of the school. And despite repeated outreach, we have not received any data or clear explanation for why a stop that served the community for four years was removed, even though the bus continues to pass that same intersection each morning. Our concern is not just about our family's case, it is about the process. Right now, bus stop changes are made without clear communication before the fact, without any data being shared fashion to protect the data privacy and without a consistent way for families to provide input before any of these changes are being made or afterwards. Parents only learn about the changes after the fact when the impact is already felt.

We believe there is a systematic issue, and I want you to refer to what Mayor Wu said earlier to praise the technology and the awareness of the team, how they can use it, as

well

as Superintendent Skipper for all the great words that have been said about the BPS Transportation team. I echo them, and yet, there is a lot of opportunity for improvement. Parents deserve transparency, and a meaningful engagement in decisions that affect their safety and the access to education. So we respectfully ask the committee to support a pilot policy requiring the BPS Transportation to publish anonymized biannual reports on stop eliminations, average walking distances, hub assignments, and on time performance by region. We ask that an it that a structured parent engagement process is established through a parent review panel so that family feedback is included before significant routing changes are finalized and provide clear rationales when stops within policy limits are eliminated, including data on safety, accessibility, and student well-being.

These measures would help families understand the rationale behind the changes, reduce misperceptions, strengthen the trust between BPS and its stakeholders because both students and their parents are just that. He will also align transportation with the Boston's He Belong Here commitment against much. Your time is up. Echoing the mayor's And thank you so much for your time. I appreciate the the opportunity to speak.

Our next speaker is Haval Abdulrahman. Please unmute and turn on your camera.

Please, can you hear me?

Yes. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Good evening. My name is Hawal Abdulrahman, and I am here today as a parent of two students in the fourth grade and sixth grade Endeavor Elementary School. I am also a vice president of Harbor Point Community Task Force. I live in Dorchester for more than twenty one years. My testimony today to express my full support for the establishment of Endeavor Legacy Award.

Just for your kind attention, the proposal has been sent by email as an attachment, and it could be sent again per request to anyone requests the proposal. Devor Legacy Award is a proposal for honoring the spirit and educational excellence that defined the Deborah community for generations. It's proposing the creation of an annual recognition within the Boston Public District that would celebrate BPS students, educators, and community members who exemplify the core principles that define DEVAR. Located in the heart of Columbia Point, DEVAR Elementary has served as a vital institution for generations known for its leadership in multilingual education, inclusive practices, and its unwavering commitment to community centered values. The Deborah Elementary School community, including educators, parents, and educators, are working to ensure that the legacy of this historic school lives on even as it prepares to close in June 2026.

This award would not only serve as a tribute to the generations shaped by Deborah, but also encourage that all the student, educator, or community leaders continue their excellence, roles, and efforts to serve the community for the best delighted future within BPS rules and regulations. The award can be administrated by the BPS Office of Equity or in partnership with the Denver Community Legacy Team. Finally, we hope that DPS support this proposal for the Deborah legacy award, and thank you very

much. REPRESENTATIVE:]

Thank you. Thanks.

Chair, that concludes public comment.

Thank you, Ms. Parvax, and thank you to those of you who spoke this evening and shared your perspectives. Your testimony is very important to us. Our first action item this evening is the grants for approval totaling $2,210,850. Now I'd like to turn it over to the superintendent for any final comments.

Thank you, chair. So tonight, we ask this party's approval of 11 grants totaling more than $2,200,000 The largest of these is the Perkins Program Strengthening Career and Tech Education Secondary Allocation Grant for over 1,400,000 This grant will serve 3,003 students and 100 teachers at 14 schools and will provide resources for the improvement and innovation of designated career pathways for students. The grant's package also includes a $360,000 empowering teens through health promoting adolescent health grant, which will help the district provide quality health education and health services and increase family, school and community engagement for approximately 23,000 students in 65 schools. The remainder of the grants totaling $375,000 include funding for books for Sarah Roberts Elementary School, about the school's namesake, increasing student access to high quality college and career pathways, an ESL level one class for parents, career tech education or what we call CTE, health education, health services, and family school and community engagement, The expansion of teachers' knowledge about genocide education, program improvement and instructional materials for vocational programming, and arts at the Holmes Innovation School and Albert Holland School of Technology. The grant's package also includes nearly $50,000 in in kind donations of musical instruments and related materials for the Higginson Lewis three to eight school.

I would ask the committee to approve our grants.

Thank you. Any questions, comments? None? There's no further discussion. I'll now entertain a motion to approve the grants as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you. Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the grants by unanimous consent? Hearing none, the grants are approved. Action item for tonight is the in kind donation with the total estimated value $49,925.60. Now I'd like to turn over to the superintendent for any final comments.

This is just, it's a different kind of donation. This one here is specifically musical instruments to be used in materials at the Higginson Lewis three to eight. We're very appreciative of the same kind donation, and we know the students will put them all to good use.

Great. Thank I'll now open it up to questions and comments from the committee. If there's nothing further, I'll now entertain a motion to approve the in kind donations as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you. Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the in kind donations by unanimous consent? Hearing none, the in kind donations are approved. Our third action item this evening is the payment of membership dues to the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, also known as mask for school year 2025 to 2026 in the amount of 8,795.

MASK offers a wide range of programs and services including professional development workshops and educational advocacy support. I also encourage the members to consider attending the MASK Annual Conference and to become in the organization's programs. I'll now open it up to the committee for any questions or comments.

I will strictly thank the mass association school committees. Not only do they run tremendous programs that we all. First of training for us, which is always helpful. But also our programs on how to be a better school committee member. But quite frankly, the executive director. I know is always immediately accessible to the chair and to myself and to members for questions about. Open meeting law, best practices. Superintendent searches, you name it. Glenn Cooch, the executive director has been extremely helpful to the Boston School Committee overall.

Thank you. There are no further questions. I'll now entertain a motion to approve the payment of annual membership dues to mask in the amount of $8,795 as presented. Is there a motion?

So moved.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent? Hearing none, the motion is approved. Now we'll transition to reports. Our report tonight is an exam school admission policy update. Let's aim to keep the presentation within fifteen minutes. And I'd like to remind our presenters to speak at a slower pace to assist our interpreters. Superintendent, I invite you to give introductory remarks.

Thank you, chair. So tonight members of my team will report on the public engagement process that's been held to discuss the ongoing review of the exam school policy and potential changes. Monica Hogan, who you'll recognize, Chief of Data Information and Systems Improvement, and Doctor. Colin Rose, our Senior Advisor for Strategy and Opportunity Gaps are here to share the feedback collected so far. As a reminder, this policy is important.

However, it impacts three of our 115 schools. I want to assure the public and the committee that we remain focused on the larger district and the needs of all students. When this policy was put in place, the district and school committee at the time knew it might need to be adjusted. As requested by the committee, each minor change over the past several years has been in service of improving the policy. The policy provides a provision for a thorough review after five years.

We are now at that five year mark. In December 2024, we promised to come back to this committee with an analysis of the policy impact over the last five years and some additional data for your consideration. We presented those findings at the June. Our district goal remains the same, to create an equitable and transparent policy that ensures all students have an opportunity for a seat at one of the exam schools within the city. This time around, however, it's important to me that we have a stable policy that will be left alone for a period of years, ideally three, and a more predictable window for future review.

This feels fair to all of our families so that they know what to expect and will provide us reliable data to see if the goals of the policy are being met. We'll return on Thursday, September 25 with recommended adjustments to the policy based on public feedback and our analysis. Again, we expect this to be the last adjustment of the policy for the foreseeable future. And with that, I will turn it over happily to Monica and Colin.

Good evening school committee. Hello Rachel again. Congratulations. Good to see you. My name is Doctor.

Colin Rose, senior advisor for strategy. I'm here with my colleague Monica Hogan, chief of data information and systems improvement. And we're here to provide a brief update to where we are in the process of our five year review and considerations for potential changes to the exam school admissions process. Gonna look at our timeline real quick. As you may remember, we started with a presentation in late spring of the recent context, the changes to the policy since the review the reforms in 2020, as well as disaggregated enrollment and invitation data for the last about five years in the three exam schools overall.

Then we presented three simulations. These simulations explored three variables namely points, a citywide round, and resizing tiers by the number of applicants which we will go into briefly tonight. This summer there was some community engagement of which we will outline and share some preliminary themes coming out of the community engagement. And this fall the superintendent will consider community feedback, advice from district and city advisors, the historical context, the stated goals of the policy, and our own intuition to make decisions on whether or not to move forward with recommending changes to the policy. And if recommendations are put forth, this body will ultimately deliberate and vote to accept or not accept those changes.

As stated, the district competed completed some community engagement. This included two informational webinars attended by about 50 community members or 500 community members, a website and a video that was shared through multiple means. Both of those really pointing to a feedback form that allowed folks to voice their opinions on the policy and potential changes to it. This form is still open and it will close on Sunday, September 14. The grand majority so far of the responses have been from BPS students and families.

Monica will talk about some preliminary themes that we're seeing as they relate to the variables that we explored through the simulations. Before Monica talks about what themes are bubbling up from the community in the responses, I want to take some time to remind this committee and the community of each of the variables that we're exploring. The first set of themes that we will dig into are connected to the points. So as a reminder in the current policy there are two ways students can receive additional points on their composite score. One, if they attend a school where 40% or more of the students are considered economically disadvantaged, these students receive an additional number of points that are equal to the tiered differential, so basically a number between zero and eight depending on what tier they're in.

Second is for students experiencing homelessness, living in BHA housing, or in the care of DCF. Those students currently receive an additional 15 points. Now, I will turn it over to Monica to go over some of the qualitative themes her team has been able to gather from the community feedback form so far connected to points.

Thank you Doctor. Rose. So relative to the school based points, these are some of the themes that we have heard thus far in the engagement that has been done. So individuals who are in support of eliminating the school based points have shared some of the following. That the points are there's a perception that the points are a departure from merit, which rewards some students and penalize others arbitrarily.

I do wanna clarify that the admissions process is fully merit based as all students need to have a GPA of b or higher as well as have a score from the MAP test to be considered. There have been concerns that the school based points are a poor proxy for individual needs and that the number of points students receive do not feel like they are based on a clear rationale. And we've also heard that the points make school communities feel like they are competing against each other and may influence families when making school choice decisions. Individuals in support of keeping the school based points shared some of the following. They felt that the points are a tool that accounts for historical disparities amongst schools, and there is a perception that points incentivize the families to remain in socioeconomically diverse elementary schools as well as give an advantage to students committed to BPS over private schools.

I do wanna clarify that points are not only for BPS schools. Any school with more than 40% economically disadvantaged students qualifies for the points. So some charter schools, independent, and parochial schools have received the points in the past if they do qualify.

Thanks Monica. The second set of themes that we're gonna be looking at will explore kind of the sizing of socioeconomic tiers for the number of applicants rather than the city's population of students in grades five through eight, right. So resizing those tiers by the number of applicants. As a reminder, this would create tiers with an equal number of applicants resulting in similar invitation rates across each of the tiers. These applicant based tiers would likely increase representations from neighborhoods that have more applicants making geographically representative.

This change would also have an impact on the timeline of invitations being sent as we would not be able to determine the tiers until all of the applicants eligibility have been been determined. So now Monica is going touch on some of those themes connected to tiering.

Similar to the previous slide, we'll go through some of what we have heard in support of tiering, of sizing the tiers based on applicants as well as what we have heard in support of continuing to size the tiers based on the population. So in support of sizing tiers by applicants, respondents have noted that tiers sized by applicants would ensure that students are competing against the same number of peers and have a roughly equal chance of getting an invitation. Some respondents felt that this would address the disparity in minimum composite score by tier. And additionally, respondents felt that this was the better approach because it was based on an actual number of applicants rather than numbers from The US census. And in support of keeping tiers sized by population, respondents felt that this would ensure invitations are sent to a more geographically representative group of students.

And there was also a lot of concern about operational delays if we were size tiers by applicants, as families wouldn't know what tier they were in until after they had completed the application cycle, and so felt that tiers sized based on populations would be preferred.

Great. Our final kind of set of themes that we want to explore and look at are connected to a citywide round. So as a reminder, a citywide round would be a means to ensure that students with the highest composite scores no matter where they live in the city would enter our exam schools. For instance, this could be implemented by either allocating 20% of the seats at each exam school to the students with the highest composite scores that selected that school as their first choice or allocating 20% of the seats to the highest scoring students without any threshold by school. So that was kind of two of the scenarios that we showed.

Monica is now going to dive into the themes we're seeing connected to a citywide round.

So responses in support of adding a 20% citywide round felt that this would guarantee the highest achieving students an invitation, and that would send a message to Boston families that all students interested in an exam school have access. And they also felt that the addition of the 20% citywide round increases the percentage of invitations that all students are considered for. So right now with the four tier 100% system, students are considered for 25% of the invitations. The addition of the citywide round means that every student would be considered for 40% of the invitations because they'd be considered in the 20% citywide round as well as the additional 20% allocated to their tier. Support for maintaining the 100% by tier distribution felt that the addition of a citywide round would make the socioeconomic tiers less impactful and that the citywide round would disproportionately benefit students from higher socioeconomic tiers.

We wanted to also highlight some additional themes that have come out of the feedback that were not specific to the three variables that we just talked about. Respondents have really highlighted the need for clarity, simplicity, and stability. There's a strong feeling that the current policy is confusing, hard to explain, and that because it keeps changing, it is hard for families to know what to expect when their student is applying to an exam school. Additionally, they have highlighted the importance of a strong ecosystem of high quality secondary schools that is not just the exam schools. And just reiterating the call for stability and a clear period of time that the policy will be consistent was also very important in the responses.

There are also a number of comments about using individual socioeconomic information, so we wanted to also address that tonight briefly. There are sort of three sources of information about socioeconomic status. The first was through the previously used free and reduced price lunch forms. As a district that provides free breakfast and lunch to all students, we no longer collect these forms, so this is not something that is available to us in Boston. The second is through data from the executive office of health and human services.

You've probably heard us talk about this in the past as direct certification. So this data is based on participation in specific social safety net programs, which we know do not fully capture multiple different groups of students. And we've also heard that current immigration policies may result in large groups of individuals being off programs. We would also need to negotiate legal agreements for access to data for non BPS students, and this would be a labor and resource intensive process for the city to implement. And the third is through federal government data sources which present similar challenges to state data.

So the recommendation at this time is to not pursue this further and continue to utilize the socioeconomic tiers.

Thank you, Colin and Monica. So the intent of the exam school admission policy set forth by the school committee in 2021 was to expand the applicant pool, maintain academic rigor and generate a student body that better reflects the demographics of all students in the city of Boston. I'd like to start our conversation tonight with two guiding questions. We've heard repeatedly the need for the policy to be clear, simple and stable. As we discussed the variables the district has put forth, how might potential changes to the policy answer the call for clarity, simplicity and stability?

And how well do the potential changes balance the community feedback we've heard with the original policy goals? During the June 17 presentation, simulations and results are in the appendix of tonight's presentation for reference during our conversation. I'll now open it up to questions and thoughts from the members. I

would also just say that Monica and Colin have spent a great deal of time analyzing and really looking and understanding the data. So if you have questions, particularly on the simulations, it would be good to surface those questions so that they can answer them tonight for you.

I

I'll begin. Simulations that were presented, not including the school based points in the three scenarios presented. And if you could speak to that decision and I had some additional context around the original intention of the points, but would love to hear just the rationale on the chosen simulations that were presented.

I think the thought of not adding them in the simulations. First of all the simulations were supposed to be representative of the choices that could be made not three choice, these are the three choice on the table. I think the thought was because of the complexity of the points. Did I go out?

Yeah. Hello?

The fact that in many corners folks wanted to see the simulation without the points that if there was going to be a change made that would be the natural place we would start. Start. So if we're going to manipulate the variables that would be the one that we would start with and then add on top of that. So that's kind of why we came forward with that automatically kind of taken out of the equation. I don't know if Monica you had anything else to say.

Yes, was just I was going to say that also just in listening to the feedback and the public comment from last year, most of it oriented around the points, the confusion of the points. And then some of the changes that we made in the multiple years was to offset some of the issues that the points were creating. So I think that's the reason why the sense was that was probably, of all things, the thing that needed to change if there was going to be something to change.

Thank you. As someone who served on the task force in 2021, I just wanted to share a little bit around the dialogue of the intention behind the points and it's great to see Ms. Tung here tonight who will correct me, I'm sure if I have this incorrect. But from what I remember of the conversation, a key driver and original intention of the points was to really speak to those schools that as she mentioned in public comment traditionally did not send students in any high number to the exam schools rarely or if ever. The conversation was birthed out of a conversation of a handful of schools with a much higher socioeconomic percentage of low income students than a Title I threshold over the course of many evolutions and the superintendent at the time's recommendation that was converted to a Title I equivalent, which has created a very large number of schools receiving points, which may therefore dilute the impact of points.

So, I just wanted to give that context. And the other thing we learned as Superintendent Skipper referenced is that some of the interim changes that have been made have been to reduce the number of points by tier to account for the differential that is distinctive by tier. This was due to an arbitrary conversation around 10 points in the hypothetical that somehow stuck to become a mathematical reality. That was frankly a mistake. So, I just love an understanding of the decision around 10 housing points and I'm sure there's some mathematical rationale there and would just love to hear some background on those recommendations for students who are housing insecure or receive BHA housing.

So we looked at similar to how the school based points have evolved to look at the tier differential. We looked at some data around the difference in composite scores for students who are receiving 15 points compared to their peers in the applicant pool and found that the number was closer to 10 than it was to 15. And so in these simulations made that adjustment. But I think to Doctor. Rose's earlier point, this is, I think, not intended to be, these are only three options and meant to sort of spark some of this dialogue.

Was that differential calculated in the absence of the potential points for other students or in the existing structure?

The way we look at the composite score differential is without points for anyone, but knowing which students would have gotten the points and then looking at the difference in the scores.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Just a follow-up, and it is roughly we said it was about 100 students that received some form of the housing points.

Less than 100 have received the housing points each year.

Thank you. Some of I I really appreciate the theme that was raised around the need for clarity, simplicity, and stability. As someone who's been very close to the policy, even I find some of the details confusing at times, and talking to families there have been a lot of misunderstandings around the implementation of the policy, so appreciate that that's a priority. You mentioned that some of the potential scenarios would involve even further delay. That is very dismaying to hear.

Before the policy was changed, the notification was usually around the second weekend ish time in March. We've really locked in with the dialogue now that notification is mid April, which is still really quite late and does impact families choices. Are we making any effort to get back to mid March under any of these scenarios or

April the imagined earliest that we can evolve to under any iteration of the policy?

I think every year we work to see where we can improve efficiencies in the process, but as the policy has changed every year, it is difficult for the district to achieve mid efficiencies as we have to change our process each year. And so we have a lot of quality control processes in place as well ensure that we are, once something has been done, it then gets reviewed and audited to ensure that it is correct. And so any sort of change in how calculations work, particularly in the first year of implementation, We're gonna learn things through implementation that we don't realize until we're actually faced with them. And so it's hard to estimate how much longer the sizing tiers by applicants would be, But we do anticipate that that kind of major change to a component of the policy would lengthen the time, especially because we wouldn't be able to start that process until we've confirmed who the eligible applicants are.

And it's also true that no one would have a way of knowing their tier at the outset of applying, correct?

Yes.

There's also the issue of the trimester and needing to wait for the schools that are on trimester grades.

The schools who are in quarters. The second quarter on the policy calls for the first trimester, which typically ends in December, and the first two quarters for a school on quarters and the second quarter typically ends at the February. So we can't begin the full grade collection until second quarter grades are in which also impacts the timeline.

And we have had dialogue, but it is, as you can imagine, some of those systems are pretty cemented in with how often grades are collected in schools. So that has also been kind of something that was different than before the policy existed.

So because you wouldn't know who was eligible because of the B requirement, you would not be able to define tiers until grades closed and were collected.

For And all that includes for BPS schools as well as all of the non BPS schools, which as you can imagine is a lot of coordination.

Also in the spirit of clarity, simplicity and stability, can you just create a bite sized distinction of the 20% of invitations holistically versus the 20% by school? Are they both referring to number of seats and not students? Can you just clarify those two options?

So the 20% overall would essentially create a ranking of all of the applicants in the pool regardless of their tier. And the first, if there were a thousand invitations being distributed, the first 200 invitations of that 1,000 would go to the 200 top ranking students to whatever their first choice school is. That Thought

that's there, I'm so sorry, just for understanding. The 20% is not referring to 20% of students then. 20% is referring to 20% of the invitations under both scenarios? Yes. Okay. Sorry.

Go ahead.

Yeah. Sorry. I didn't understand that distinction. But so in the 20% overall, that would mean the first, in this hypothetical example, the first 200 invitations would be distributed to the top 200 scoring students to whatever their first choice school is. So all 200 of those students could select Boston Latin School, all 200 could select O'Brien, all 200 could select Boston Latin Academy, and it would be that would mean that all of those invitations would go to students at that school, which would limit then the number of invitations at those particular schools that are available to students in the tier portion, the 80% of the invitations that are distributed by tier.

In the 20% of invitations citywide round by school, that would mean the first 20% of invitations at each of the three schools would go to the top ranking applicants who ranked that school first. And that would guarantee that of the invitations for each of the schools, 20% would be distributed citywide and 80% would be distributed across the four tiers, allowing students in every tier to still have an opportunity to be considered for an invitation at that school. I think in ninth grade in particular, 20% of the invitations, that number is typically higher than the number of invitations that are available to Boston Latin School at all in ninth grade. So if you were to do a 20% overall round in ninth grade, that could mean that all of the invitations to Boston Latin School are distributed citywide and none of them are available by tier.

Thank you. That's very helpful. I know that in some of the information sessions, November was named as a critical date as that is a date that students from outside of district are sitting on Saturday for the test, etcetera. Yes. Just wanna clarify that there are no differences in steps for parents to take and families to take to submit students interest and application to the exam schools for any of these options. Is that correct?

For any of the simulations or the thing the things we have talked about, the process for how families rank an exam school wouldn't change. But I do want to clarify that this body has a policy that was approved in, I believe, 2017 that non BPS families must prove residency for exam schools by, I think, it's the third Friday in November. And so when non BPS families prove residency, they also rank and do their school choice process to say which schools they would like to be considered for. Students currently enrolled in BPS do not have to prove residency because they're already enrolled here. So we already have their residency information, and they go through the school choice ranking process in January as part of round one.

So non BPS students choose earlier in November?

Yes, and so that November deadline, that is the school committee policy for the non BPS families is what is driving the intention that we would need a vote before November for a policy to change this year.

That said, there are still no differences in the actions that we are asking parents to take under any of these scenarios, correct?

The scenarios, but that the scenarios is not the universe in which you are making decisions.

Right. Okay.

Thank you.

Questions. Okay. Steven. Do you have any questions?

Formulating. Okay,

I wanna pick up on what Ms. Garrett said, and thank you. Lot of questions you brought up, I'm not going to repeat.

But

I am very struck by the conversation particularly around simulation A which is doing the school, doing it by percent of applicants versus percent students. And under the theme of clarity which is what we have heard in feedback the last several years has been a lot of confusion from parents. People trying to figure it out and just saying just simplify it. Just make it something we can understand. Ms.

Hogan, when you have in here sizing by applicants would create operational delays and add complexity to determining tiers annually. And the conversation you just had with Ms. Gerrick about that, that would threaten the April piece. Which is so important for families. And all we have heard consistently is try to make it earlier not later.

And and fact that people wouldn't even know what their tears were until that point. And thank you for stepping through with us the issues with that. While we're at it, we did hear in public comment as well about some of the concerns of trying to come up with a common grade point average because even within BPS, right, we have some slightly different ways of grading and then when we look at our charter partners and our private and parochial schools. Could you address Ms. Hogan some of the challenges that that has created and how we've worked through it?

Because I know that impacted timing. Getting actual schools to submit grades was hard for a while, right? So could you just talk about that for a second, please?

Sure. I think the grading, I think, is a very subjective process. And so it is challenging to sort of norm on what exactly an A means between classrooms, between schools, between district schools, between charter schools, between private schools. I think in the 2021 policy that was passed by this body, one of the additional items under the policy was to explore looking at how to consider grades where an A plus would be considered the same as an A. And so one of the implementation changes that was made after the 2021 policy was passed was that we changed from using a 12 GPA to an 11 GPA, whereas now both an A and an A plus would be considered an 11 as opposed to an A plus be considering being considered a 12 and A being considered an 11.

So that was one change we've done and I know Doctor. Rose has been involved in some previous work around grading. So I'll also let him chime in.

Yeah, mean a lot of the work that we were doing was trying to work with BPS teachers to think about norming and also think about this process. I bring myself into the equation, I was a middle school teacher at the Lewis. I didn't think about exam school grades in my first couple of quarters, I was sixth grade teacher teaching math and I was a hard teacher, a good teacher. But I was not thinking about this process and I think back to some of the kids in my classroom punished that really could have done really well at a BLS. Not really thinking about this process.

So we used to do a lot of norming going to schools, talking about that and demystifying kind of what a one because we do one, two, three, four in elementary then we move into kind of ABCD. So trying to make equivalence and think about those things was the work that we were doing. But there was like a chart that showed the equivalence of a four to A and A plus and those things moving forward. That was a lot of the work that we were doing in addition to kind of exam school initiative back in the old policy where we're doing IAC.

Thank you. So thank you for the work that you're doing today in clarifying and this is actually quite simplified in my mind. For each of the three different things that is being considered and being talked about with the community. I appreciate how you laid it out here both support and for and against in each. That is very helpful to hear. And as you say down the bottom, this is perspectives coming from the feedback. So this is not a specific recommendation. It's not the policy of us or the superintendent at this point. It's coming from feedback. This is very helpful to hear.

Did, as I told Doctor. Rose, I listened in on the presentation, one of the webinars yesterday. And listened to the presentation, so thank you for that. But I am 100% in favor of. What we lay out at the end here which is to simplify and to clarify. And to have stability. Because we have talked about this a lot over the years. And to me one of the important pieces is saying, just as we said the first time with the exam school task force. And I appreciate hearing the perspective of that. Members of that.

But if we can set this aside for a while. That is something we are consistently hearing from families as well so they can plan for it and encourage as many as possible to apply for our schools. Thank you chair. Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation. First, I have a question regarding, could you refresh my memory around the analysis done on the impact of the points? It could have sworn that in within that analysis, it was found that it didn't really have that much of an impact in terms of imitation rates.

Yeah, I think one of the things that we have seen over the last four admission cycles with points present is that the percentage of applicants receiving additional points has been steadily increasing, which as more and more applicants receive points, the impact of the points is reduced, I guess.

Don't if that's the right They way to say

are not as impactful as I think to Ms. Garrett's point, maybe the original intent of them was. I think one of the things to remember about exam school invitations is that it is a zero sum game. So if you give an invitation to student, that means you're taking it away from a different student. And so when you look in the aggregate, there are often not as many changes that you see in the aggregate of some of the demographic groups, but there may be more shifts happening behind the scenes as one student receives an invitation and another student no longer receives an invitation.

I don't know if that made sense, but.

Yeah, I so. I too appreciate the desire to simplify it and I actually appreciate your explanation around the 20% simulations because it kind of helps me fair which way that I want to go. I guess my question is that each simulation, if we're just looking at it, each simulation that we're looking at gets away, I guess, from that third bullet point from my perspective, which is generating demographics of the city. In terms of giving schools the opportunity that have historically not had that opportunity to become a part of the of that exam school community. So in that sense, you know, I guess I'm I'm wrestling with I'm wrestling just with overall, like, what the simulations do, or make feeling like it actually dilutes the original intent of the policy.

So that's just my read on it for right now, but like I'd love to be able to lean on my colleagues to sit with it more. But that's just my initial read on it.

I appreciate his comment. I appreciate his concern. But my question is a little, I don't know whether it is mathematical or it is a result of my imagination in an ideal setting. Simulation two and simulation three both, you know, you recommend 20% for either each school or for overall. That's pretty much the difference between the two sim simulations.

Given all these difficulties, given all the criteria that you are trying to determine and the dilemma, legal dilemma, know, social dilemma in getting at determining the level of socioeconomic status of certain student. Say the unintended consequences are, let's say in an ideal situation we have 1,000 students applying and more than 200 students met all these criteria. And you cannot determine, you cannot determine The difficulty in assessing their social economic status because of all these. So you have more than 200 students. They all wanna go to BLS.

The unintended consequences that you you have more. And what happened to the let's say 300. You invited two two hundred. The other 100 will be pretty much left to attend the other two school. Isn't that isn't in an situation.

Because of the fact that you cannot at all determine. One of the criteria in in in points is socioeconomic status. Right? And you cannot determine because of all these difficulties in actual actualizing their level of socioeconomic status that would meet the criteria on to achieve, you know, to get the points. So you have more than 200, you have 300, 100 left.

Where where do they go? They go to the second, option. They go to the third option. So in another word, you know, regardless of how the the the simulation you are presenting to me right here. They are all always, you know, imperfect and unintended consequences anyway.

Yep. So a certain amount of seats. The best we have is our proxies. We don't have direct income. So we have to do the best we can to think about what those proxies would be.

And that's what we are keep. That's what we keep hearing from from from the community. That's the problem. We keep hearing the disparities and all that from the community, the concerns. So I'm I'm trying to find an ideal situation where we can deal with that. Yeah. Those kind of, or at the very least abate, abate or lessen the negative effect. Yeah. We have to deal with.

I think with the, when the team, we included that slide to show the limitations. We've walked down the road to consider and like look at, is there a way to get to the granular level of a student? But unfortunately, we don't have a clean way to do that. And in the process, we may in fact actually leave more kids out than who might currently be a student who is in a socioeconomic status and attending a school that is above the 40%, below the 40%. I think if you remove the points, that gets at that a bit.

Because the points are actually what's creating the competition between the students. So removing the points other than the points for housing, that actually takes away the competition that we've heard people talk about of school against school. And particularly for students who might be a lower socioeconomic threshold, but they're in a school that doesn't meet the federal guideline. And so by that nature, they're not getting any additional points.

But don't we also so I want to say yes and to that, right? Because I hear what you're raising, Mr. Tran. And it has been brought up, you know, a discussion at this table of are we better off doing it by individual student data versus the proxy of the school that they attend. And so I appreciate this slide where you went through, okay, if we were gonna do it by individual proxy, how would we actually get that information? You operationalized it for us, Ms. Hogan. So it's, could we get it at the state? What I read it as, could we get it at the city level? Could we get it at the federal level?

Here's how we'd get it. Here's the challenges. And so when I read at the bottom, potentially the only place you could really get it is at the state level. And even that had so many challenges in populations that would be missed. That, and delays that you said, that's why we're not gonna do it. But we think we get what I interpret it as. And if we get rid of the points for schools because it is such a small number of schools now and it's created all the challenges we've heard. But are we still getting at socioeconomic status by the structure of tiers. Because the tiers are set up by socioeconomic status, right? And that's census data.

So we're getting at the heart of it that way. It is still a proxy for socioeconomic status because you laid out the challenges of doing it on an individual basis. But if the heart of our policy change was to open up access and ensure more students had access than had access before. And let's not forget by the way that part of the task force recommendations were improve the work we're doing in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade in all of our schools. Get at the issue you raised Doctor.

Rose that when you were a sixth grade teacher you weren't thinking about, we didn't send students to the exam school. I'm putting words in your mouth and correct me if I'm wrong. So the grading

We did, we we sent some.

Okay. I shouldn't have had a blanket case there, thank you. But, it was not as much of a focus as

The parents weren't breathing down our necks asking does so and so have an A.

Right. And that does happen in other schools that we're aware of. So, are we changing that structure, doing the work in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades to get our students ready to have these opportunities? And do we feel that the tiers continue to provide that socioeconomic diversity that we had as a goal? And I'm gonna lay one more question on that for you, Ms.

Hogan. Because I do remember that Chicago was a model that was discussed and they did it by I think four tiers. I think they have a citywide model as well. I'm not sure. How do they do they do it by you know, by school as you talked about here? You know, b versus c? Do do we know how they do it?

I don't actually know the answer to that.

Oh, okay.

But I think we can we can look into it. I believe the Chicago, at the time of the task force, I believe they were doing a 30% citywide round with 70% by tier. I don't know if that has changed since that time period.

Mhmm. You'll be intriguing to find out if they Yeah. Because that distinction about well, are they doing that for multi yeah. They're doing that for multiple schools.

They have more than three Yeah. Selective admissions high schools.

Okay. Thank you. The

piece that we know is consistent is the number of seats that we have. That has not changed from one year to the next. The question for me has always been, I know that we provide invitations to kids who have grades from A to B. How many students have straight A's? I mean, do we do to lessen the pain of not going in by lessening the number of people that are competing?

Because right now, we continuously have all of those compete, but we're not doing anything on the other end of creating more resources. We're just creating more competition at the student level. And so the question is if the exam schools feel they of the right size for this district, then then what is our message? Because we're laying this message onto 11 year olds who are all trying their best and are feeling defeated if they don't get into our schools. But if we're saying A to B plus students, does that lessen your number of applicants?

I don't know. Just trying to figure out what other options can you think about that lessens the issue, pressure on the child.

I mean the nature of having competitive schools, we could decide as a city not to have them, right? But they've been here since before this country was created, right? So the amount of students or percentage of students that get into exam schools here is somewhere near like three quarters.

Yeah, about of the, it depends on how many applicants there are.

Yeah. Obviously there are more applicants but the last few years has been like three quarters which if you compare that to like New York City or even Chicago is well beyond. I think also the thought of grades in of itself what we just talked about that we can't. I would say as an educator I'm not very confident that grades are normed even within a school sometimes but forget across schools. And again bring into those social constructs where parents are very much aware, communities are very much aware in pushing for those.

Like I think you dive into murky waters If you start thinking in those terms. So I I wouldn't necessarily cosign making an A to A plus. I think you know you wanna increase the applicant pool because I think there's probably qualified students that are not applying to exam schools.

Just add one more thing in terms of size just also the framing in our city that believe the exam schools educate about a quarter of our total high school students, which is frankly an outsized number for selective admission schools as compared to most districts around the country, just to put that into perspective. And then the other question is whether any of your simulations have revisited the seventythirty distribution of grades and scores only because of some of the things that you named Doctor. Rose that I think initially in conversations around exams and we know some of the bias that exists in tests, we I think maybe didn't talk enough about the bias that exists in grading. And, you know, that's just another, another variable that hasn't come up in this conversation, but thinking about the original intent of the policy, just it might be worth knowing if that proportion would impact the original goals of the policy in service of the original goals. But I was just curious if those simulations have been run at all with a different proportionality.

No. We didn't run the 30 because we saw a move from the original spirit of the policy going from 10 to 20. And so I think that that would

have. Going

from 10

to I think you're representing 20 the composite, right? So you're saying 70% grades 30%.

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about the cut out. Okay, sorry about that.

We did not run any simulations. The only simulations that were done were the ones that the task force deliberated on in 2021 to come to recommendation.

Sorry, I thought you talked about the cutout.

Might suggest that would be interesting to know.

Anybody else have?

I just I hate to add more things to the table, but just a request. Put it that way. I'd like to have a breakdown for the last five years on the number of bilingual students, former bilingual students, students with disabilities, mental disability, physical disabilities who have been able to go to BLS, BLA, or McCormick. Like to see the the breakdown. Please send it to me. Thank you.

I think that was in the June presentation so we can certainly

So

make it sure that does reflect. Does it reflect? Comparable to the percentage of those loans?

No. Not even close.

Not even close. Thank you.

Okay. I want to just thank you for the presentation and you've given us a lot to think about. And I'm sure that as people continue to take a look at this, there'll be more questions and concerns. We know how important trying to get this right for our city, for our district, for our families is critical. And it's not easy by a long shot.

I mean, all of the options have pluses and minuses. And the truth is, you know, with a finite number of seats, there will be students who make it and students who don't. And that's part of the reality. But as we've said many times here, it's the issue is that we've got to work harder to have more of our seats and more of our schools feeling for families that they have not lost the lottery if they end up in one of them, but that there is quality everywhere. And that's got to be really the place where we put the effort.

It's not fair to try to make three schools do it all for everyone. And they aren't always the right schools for every child, but we need to make sure that every child can end up in a seat that can give them a quality education in the city. That I hope this committee will spend more time this year looking at those issues of really looking at where are our seats, where is the potential, where do we need to push, what do we need to eliminate in order to make the other 75% of the high school seats as desirous of our families as the ones that are exam schools are.

And on a positive note, actually in the last set of data we actually did see more families choosing to stay in the BPS who did not get offered a seat and choosing a BPS high school.

We'll end

on a positive note.

Thank you. Now return to public comment. Ms. Parbegs?

Thank you. We have one public comment on report. May Elanzari.

Today on the policy, my name is May Alunsari. I'm the mother of two children in BPS, one who, is on an IEP. As a child, my family immigrated to United States, seeking educational opportunities, and I went to public school throughout. English is my second language. Currently, I'm a developmental behavioral pediatrician, and I care for children across the city of Boston with developmental disorders.

I applaud the school committee's efforts to revise exam school admissions policy towards equity. I have two considerations, moving forward. The first is and this has been brought up today. I do I would like to advocate for special consideration for students with disabilities and English language learners. Although enrollment has increased, their representation in exam schools still remains alarmingly low.

These students who meet high academic standards deserve additional support and consideration within the admissions process to ensure equitable access. My second point for consideration is I would, strongly advocate for giving equal weight to MAP Growth scores, and grades, and I think this would provide a much more objective and equitable measure for admissions decisions. And I appreciate the comments by Rachel Skerritt and others today to look at different, simulations of that composite. I do remain very concerned about the reliability of GPA as a significant component of admissions decisions. Variability in grading practices, potentially influenced by differential standards across schools, parental advocacy are biased, and I have seen it all, means minor grade differences such as an a versus a b plus can just disproportionately affect admissions outcomes without really reflecting, meaningful academic distinctions.

And I would say that in certain areas, there is significant parental advocacy for grades, which is unfortunate. More of our research consistently shows that traditional grading practices often reflect and perpetuate inequities related to race, language, and disability status. Unfortunately, BPS has yet to implement a fully standardized district wide equitable grading policy. I have seen grading practices that still vary significantly by school and by teacher as we've discussed today. Until there is a comprehensive implementation of the equitable grading policy, I don't think grades should factor so significantly into exam school admissions criteria.

The lack of consistent grading standards was exemplified this past fall, in my experience with my child, who ended up earning a b. We asked for some clarification around that grade, and we were told it reflect, quote, unquote, work habits. Later, when my child achieved high scores on the MAP Growth scores, we were told maybe he was misjudged. But I am deeply concerned that this situation, compounded by the absence of clear grading standards across the district, is likely commonplace among children with IEPs and five zero four accommodations. I do think the MAP Growth scores provide a much more objective assessment that's less prone to bias, and so I would urge BPS to consider changing the way the composite scores are generated.

And I also urge greater transparency from BPS regarding grading policies and criteria.

Thank you. Time is up. Chair, that concludes public comment on reports.

Thank you. New business? None. Thank you. That concludes our business for this evening. The next school committee meeting will take place in person on Thursday, September 25 at 6PM at the Boulding Building in Nubian Square. We will be holding hybrid meetings and members of the community can tune in through Boston City TV or on Zoom. We will continue offering virtual testimony with two public comment periods. The first comment period will be capped at one hour prioritizing in person speakers. If time allows, remote testimony will follow.

After one hour, we will move to regular business and those unable to testify will have a chance at the end of the meeting. If there is nothing further, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting. Is there a motion? Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Is there any discussion or objection to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the motion by unanimous consent? Hearing none, the meeting is adjourned. Thank you all and have a good night.