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. I want to 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 webpage, bostonpublicschools.org/schoolcommittee under the October 8 meeting link. For those joining us in person, you can access the meeting documents by scanning the QR code that's 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, Capoevariano, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and American Sign Language. Zoom interpretation 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. We'll begin the meeting with the approval of minutes. I will now entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the September 25 meeting. 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 motion by unanimous consent? Hearing none, the minutes are approved. To celebrate college and career month, we're bringing back a tradition.

Everyone on the dais is displaying their alma mater, honoring the paths that led us here. This morning, I joined the superintendent, mayor Michelle Wu, school leaders and city officials for the ribbon cutting ceremony at Sarah Roberts Elementary School. It was a very emotional and impactful moment. What makes this occasion even more powerful is its full circle nature. It was the Boston primary school committee that once voted to deny Sarah Roberts a seat at a nearby school.

And today, we stood there as part of a working body reshaping that legacy, committed to ensuring that every child represented and has access to a high quality inclusive education. We will not have a superintendent report tonight. We will continue with a discussion item, the exam school admission policy recommendation data follow-up. During the last school committee meeting, we requested on the 50% MAP assessment and 50% GPA ratio to assess its impact on the recommended exam school admissions policy. Superintendent, I invite you to provide some introductory remarks.

Thank you, chair. Good evening to everyone in the audience, remote and in person. As chair Robinson said, tonight we'll provide some additional data as a follow-up to the September 25 presentation of our recommended changes to the exam school admissions policy. As we said at the last meeting, we are not recommending changes to the criteria students must meet to be eligible for consideration for an exam school seat. Consistent with the current policy, students will need a grade point average or GPA of b or higher, rank at least one exam school on their school choice list, and have a valid score on the MAP Growth Assessment Test.

Currently, a student's composite score is based on 30% of their MAP Growth score and 70% of their GPA, consistent with the current policy. At the last meeting, we were asked to run simulations based on 50% MAP Growth score and 50% GPA scenario. As a follow-up to this request, you have received a memo summarizing this data. This is an opportunity to discuss the results. As you'll hear tonight, the simulations showed there was no significant change to invitation status by changing the ratio of test scores to GPA.

Monica Hogan, chief of data information and systems improvement, is here tonight to give a brief overview of the memo and answer any clarifying questions that you may have. So at this time, chair, I'll turn it back to you for the discussion.

I'll now open it up to any questions from members. Anybody?

Monica, if you want to just give the brief overview and then Good

evening, everyone. So as the superintendent shared in your folder is the memo that is a follow-up to some questions that were asked during the September 25 school committee meeting. The memo outlines the results that explored the weighting of the assessment and GPA within the composite score at a 50% assessment and 50% GPA ratio. That current ratio is 30% assessment and 70% GPA. So there's four different sort of sets of data in that memo.

The first set of the data is the results from the policy that was in place in the year of that applicant pool. So you can see sort of what the actual results were that year. The second column in each of the tables is a simulation of the current policy. So the policy that was in place for the twenty five-twenty six admissions year applied to the '23, '24, and 2425 applicant pools as well.

The third column is the newly recommended policy from the September 25 meeting,

which uses the 30% assessment, 70% GPA split. And the fourth column is that newly recommended policy, but instead of the thirtyseventy, it's a fiftyfifty assessment GPA split. So as the superintendent shared, the big takeaway from the memo is that shifting from the thirtyseventy to a fiftyfifty split does not have large changes application under the recommended policy. So for example, when comparing the policy recommendation with a thirtyseventy split to the policy recommendation with a fiftyfifty split, 91% of applicants in school year twenty four-twenty five and ninety 2% of applicants in school year twenty five-twenty six would have received the same invitation or would have continued to not receive an invitation. Additionally outlined in the memo are the simulation results disaggregated by student groups, by race, by school type, and by neighborhood.

Happy to answer questions.

Thank you, miss Hogan. I know that simulations are a lot of work and that this was a request of the committee at the last meeting. And especially as there have been some speculation why there may be changes in different student body student groups from year to year, I think it really bore exploration to see this as a potential ingredient to those changes. And I think your simulations show that it's not a significant factor. So thank you for exploring that.

I just had two questions. Looking at some of the simulations, the current policy average score for Boston Latin School this year was a 99, if I'm reading it correctly, and for last year was 101 average score. And I'm wondering if you could explain what would be required of a student to have a 99 composite score just from a grade and or map perspective, like how that algorithm transfers to become something as high as in '99 because it just struck me as a very high average.

Yes. So under the current policy, 70% of the score is grades. And so if you have a perfect GPA which under the policy that was passed in 2021 part of that policy was to treat an A plus the same as an A. So a perfect GPA in this case is all As or A pluses. A's or A pluses in all subject areas.

And so a perfect GPA in that case would get you a full 70 points. And then the test score is worth 30 points. That's 15 points for math and 15 points for reading. And the way that we calculate the test score is using the percentile that the student has earned on the test. That percentile compares their RIT score to the national norms of data from students across The United States. And so a student with a composite score of 99 is most likely scoring in the ninety eighth, ninety ninth percentile on that test. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me.

So that's a very high standard. Basically, it's straight As and almost a 99 percentile score. Is the average for the last two years so high in large part because of additional points? Or are there really that many students with that kind of algorithm in the absence of points?

The composite score in your materials does include additional points. I can say that I believe, I don't remember the exact percentage of students, applicants who are now receiving points under the current policy, but that percentage has grown over the last four admission cycles. So additional points are likely a factor, but I don't have a definitive answer in front of me to that question.

Thank you. And then my last question is we'd heard in public comment that there was a concern around grade conversion being different by school type. Can you speak on that at all? Are grades treated converted the same way by school type? Or is there a difference?

So for BPS schools we are consistent with how we convert the one through four grade scale in elementary schools. For non BPS schools because we are not an expert in how they do their grading schools grading scales, we ask the non BPS schools to submit the grades to us on a 100 or A to F scale. So the non BPS schools do that grade conversion and submit that to us. We do not do the standards based grading conversion for non BPS schools.

Thank you.

Thank you, madam chair. Thank you, superintendent. Thank you.

Looking at the data, I have a question. The policy related to the schools? Yeah. The exam school.

I

would like to ask you, since you researched and collected that data, what were the results? Did they increase? Did the participation increase to be part of a school that is related to exam exams? What I mean is with this I'm sorry. I want to try in English.

I'm sorry. So sorry. When the exam school changes in pandemic.

Yes.

Increase or decrease the students the diverse students?

How

How was was the the result? Access? How was that change? How it was when that change was made?

Yeah, so the changes that have been made since the pandemic with the interim policy and then this permanent policy that was passed in 2021, I think has changed the diversity of students who receive an invitation to be more similar to the broader demographics of the city than they were previously. And I think we can the June presentation that Colin and I gave sort of dove into some of that data deeper over the last five years.

So we definitely notice a change from those students that didn't have access to have have access to participate on that kind of schools. How can we make sure that this population of students can have real access?

I think one of the things we've seen in the data is that as the policy has changed, the applicant pool has also shifted. So I don't know that we can guarantee any particular results going forward because we don't know how a policy change may impact individual student decisions to apply or not.

I would like to bring that question because we know that we want the best for our students. And I think we have to provide students with good schools. And I know that here in Boston, we have many great schools. We do have excellent teachers. Leaders with a vision.

That we can support these schools. So that they can have better programs and put our attention to other students even though that they are not in examination school that they can have access to one.

Thank you. Thank you.

This is just a question related to sort of what we talked about a few weeks ago around the how applicants have different, are graded on different forms of semesters. Have you been able to look at any of that data? I imagine that too much would shake out from it, but have you looked at that at all to see any differences in acceptance rates at all? And that doesn't have to be in the memo or anything, but just curious.

In terms of students graded on a trimester versus

Yes.

Quarters?

I have that specific analysis in front of me. I don't know, superintendent, if you have observations from that perspective.

No, it hasn't been a comparison that we've done. I think it's more a difficulty with collection of the data, to be honest with you, in terms of the timing of waiting the full two quarter terms versus the trimester. But because we're dealing with schools inside the BPS and outside of the BPS, that's likely just something that's always going to need to be.

Okay, thank you. We'll the committee will take action on the exam school admission policies recommendations at the November 18. Thank you so

much. Thank you.

We'll now move on to general public comment. Ms. Parvax?

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. Questions on policy matter may be discussed by the committee later. The meeting will feature two quick 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 21 speakers this evening. Each person will have two minutes to speak, and I would remind you when you have thirty seconds remaining, please feel free to email your comments for distribution to the committee. Speakers may not reassign their time to other. 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 the comments of any public speaker do not represent the Boston Public Schools or Boston School Committee. Please state your name, affiliation and where you live before you begin. If you're on Zoom, please 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. And please raise your virtual hand when I call your name. To support interpretation, please speak slowly and clearly. We will start with our in person group, Rosanne Tung, Travis Marshall, Dan French, Dietrich Manning and John Mudd. Rosanne Tung?

Hi. I'm Roseanne Tung. I served on the twenty twenty one task force and have conducted research on this topic. Today I want to share two suggestions on how BPS shares its simulations and three considerations about testing. The first suggestion is to review simulations on the 20 twenty-twenty one applicant pool because without bonus points, the applicant pool will shift back to pre pandemic numbers.

Second suggestion is to review simulations that change one variable at a time so we know each change's contribution to the back slide. Changing two or three variables is overkill. We can fix the street fairness problem without changing multiple variables that we know representation in the wrong direction. Three considerations about tests. The task force had a presentation by past president of the National Council for Measurement and Education, Professor Lori Shepherd.

She summarized much research. Tests correlate with family income, measure opportunities, and have greater disparate impact than grades alone. In other words, tests cement opportunity. Second, grades are better predictors of outcomes because they're cumulative. Third, if you do use a test, you should set a criterion and then use lottery.

Without true public engagement, without time to review the most relevant simulations, with a new variable just added, why would we rush the process? You all have less than a month before the vote. Why would we risk creating greater disparities than already exist? Rather than give in to the current climate of intimidation and fear, rather than ratify a compromise that reduces opportunity for the majority of BPS students, Boston has a chance to continue making to be a leader in this national conversation.

Thank you, Ms. Tang.

Let's slow down, be courageous, and take a chance.

Next speaker is Travis Marshall.

My name is Travis Marshall. I live in Rossendale. I'm the proud parent of students at the English High School and the Bates Elementary School. The exam school policy adopted in July 2021, four years ago, for those counting, not five, was the product of a robust public process. A task force met for months of open meetings with public feedback on many proposals.

In comparison, BPS announced this premature revision last June when families were focused on summer jobs, camps, and childcare. Over the summer, BPS sent out a Google form that garnered just over 300 responses in a district that serves around 45,000 students. 300 responses is less than one third of the number of students invited to exam schools each year. It is a ridiculous number to claim as representative of Boston families, and it's even more absurd to cite as some sort of mandate for change. The two webinars were pro form a affairs with prescreened q and a and no discussion of any kind.

So why the rush to change the policy again before the five year mark? Why the rush to push through multiple significant changes? This rush is exemplified by the perfunctory promise to study how this policy blocks students with disabilities and multilingual learners from exam schools while pledging not to touch the policy for three years. Suggestions for a fifty fifty map and GPA split reinforce the problem that map is only offered in English. BPS claims it's unfair to offer it in Spanish even while a plurality of BPS students identify as Hispanic or Latine.

The proposal essentially states that we've done enough for underrepresented student groups that we overcorrected and have not chosen the right students for elite schools. It's natural for us all to worry about how decisions impact the kids we know best in our lives, but this is about what's best for all BPS kids. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker is Dan French.

My name is Dan French. I'm a live in JP. I'm a parent of a BPS alum, and I co lead a state network focused on of districts focused speaking on the vote to change the exam school selection process. At the prior school committee meeting, the committee discussed increasing the standardized test score weighed in relation to grades with a rationale that was a more objective measure. Nothing is further from the truth.

Research tells us the strongest correlate to standardized test scores is parental income. Why? Students from affluent families have greater access to tutoring and other academic resources. For black and Latin A students, stereotype threat and cultural bias can result in lower scores. Students with disabilities suffer from lack of accommodations and opportunity to present what they know in diverse ways.

Multilingual learners score lower due to lack of English proficiency. I know of no credible research study that finds standardized tests are a fair measure of student achievement across race, income, disability, and language. Consider MCAS. In 2025 on the English test for BPS students, the gaps by income, race, disability, and language range from 29 to 42 percentage points. For math, the gaps ranged from 23 to 48 percentage points.

The standardized test score rate in exam school selection will increase the current unacceptable gaps in invitations across race, income, language, and disability. Why is the school committee considering multiple changes to the exam school selection process all at once? Doing so could result in a move backwards that goes beyond some tier four students with high composite scores not having been invited to Boston Latin School. I urge the school committee to stick to the current

Thank you. Time is set.

Grades and test scores, not make policy changes without ample public engagement and make one change Thank at a you.

Speaker is Deidra Manning.

Good evening. My name is Deirdre Manning. I'm a Dorchester resident and single parent of two public school students. I'd like to remind, school committee members district that Medco, charter, and parochial school students are members of our community. And currently, they are being disadvantaged by the testing conditions and grade conversions.

If you're looking to get more black and brown and Latinx students into exam schools, you should make it easier for these students to receive admission. I'd like to also point out, if you look in the tier map, this is 39 Union Park. It's a home in the South End that sold last May for $10,200,000 This is in a tier one neighborhood. I'd like you to look at a home in Dorchester that is in a tier four neighborhood. I'd also like you to look at another property in Dorchester that vacillates between a tier three and a tier four neighborhood.

If you adopt the recommendation, you will be suppressing enrollment in tiers three and four. Every applicant in every neighborhood should have an equal chance of admission. I would also like people to understand that students at the Murphy, at the Sarah Roberts, at the Curley, at the Orenberger, at the Quincy, these students have in the past four years very easily have gotten into exam schools. That will change if you do not adjust the number of seats in each tier based on the number of applicants. And I do want to speak just briefly to a point brought up by Member Skerritt.

You have non BPS students using a special process to convert their grades when they have standard based grades. You're not allowing that for charter school students. I know from personal experience and I've shared with the district that suppressed an applicant's score by four composite points. That is unfair.

Thank you. Next speaker is John Mann.

My name is John Mudd. I'm a resident of Cambridge, the grandfather of a student at the John F. Kennedy Elementary School. Tonight, you're gonna get a lot of numbers on MCAS, but I want to highlight a few of the results, particularly for multilingual learners. MCAS is an imperfect measure for multilingual learners, but it does reveal a harsh reality.

For multilingual learners in grades three to eight English language arts, only four percent, yeah, you heard me, four percent meet or exceed grade level content expectations in MCAS 2025. In math, the percentage is seven percent. Since 2019, multilingual learners have lost the most and have gained back the least and achievement gaps have increased the most for this group. Inclusive education for ML work students is not working. There is research that shows that all bilingual education programs that are based on the use of home language and instruction produce better outcomes than placing these students in general education classes with ESL.

Now is a propitious time to make changes. There's a vacancy in the deputy for academics. There is a new state commissioner who is aware and said at his first meeting that he had never seen multilingual learner scores as low as these in Massachusetts in twenty years as a professional. BPS could join with the Commissioner of Education in working to develop a model to turn around multilingual education. One, develop a long term plan to expand bilingual programs.

Two, create a long term plan to recruit and develop bilingual teachers. Three, encourage parents to use home language with their children at home. And four, implement professional development for monolingual teachers on how to support their youths. Don't lose the opportunity.

Your time is up.

Thank you for hearing

me. Our next group of speakers is Julia Morales, Julie Santos, James Noonan and Sharon Hinton. Julia Morales.

Good evening. My name is Julia. I live in Dorchester, currently I'm the youth development specialist for the youth community organizing program at Socida Latina. A lot of our youth are here today. 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 discuss the recent AI guidelines Boston Public Schools produced to foster responsible and effective integration of AI within Boston Public Schools. All of last year, Social Latinx youth leaders testified before this body requesting that the district develop an AI policy alongside an educational component for both teachers and students on the appropriate and safe use of AI. Although we agree that these guidelines are a step in the right direction, we are extremely disappointed that this effort was not in collaboration with students, families, the greater BPS communities as was requested by Sociedadatina's youth leaders. We are requesting that the guidelines be reviewed at a broader community level so that students, families, teachers, and stakeholders can provide feedback and better understand it. The youth community organized at Sociolatino will be examining this policy themselves, and we are asking that BPS be open to feedback and recommendations from Sociolatino as well as other community members.

Our youth organizers will be attending a future school committee meeting to share our opinions and recommendations on the policies that you all laid out in the guidelines. As well, we are still requesting that the district have specific online training and certification program for high students as education without ethical training or practice will make these guidelines quickly defunct as these technologies rapidly develop. Please don't forget to include those whose policies most Okay, second. The conversation.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Chili Santos.

Good evening. I'm Julie Santos testifying on behalf of Citizens for Juvenile Justice in opposition to the superintendent's recommendations for the exam schools admission policy. The recommendations, the proposed recommendations will reverse the racial and economic diversity achieved by the current policy. The data tells us that the 2021 policy was effective at increasing invitations to black Latina low income multilingual students and students with disabilities. Simulation b shows that with the new recommendations, the highest socioeconomic tier would receive about 70 more seats than the lowest tier and there would be a drop in invitations for black and Latina students.

The superintendent and chief of data claim that the data collected and presented was inconclusive in indicating the impact of the previous policy and that the variance in the data can be chalked up to difference in the applicant pools. By that logic, the simulations would also be inconclusive. So why are recommendations being issued despite having no evidence and no reliable projections? And why were these data and simulations presented to the community for consideration without the caveat that they supposedly aren't indicative of anything? BPS's failure to be transparent with families about this data sets insufficiency is a bad faith bid for community feedback.

If the district wants to have reliable data then it should keep the current policy as it is instead of making changes that will have a resegregating effect on our exam schools. It's notable that diversity is not included anywhere in the stated goals as it was five years ago which sows serious doubts about the district's commitment to this principle. If the policy must be changed equity and accessibility must be central goals of the revised recommendations which must be determined by robust and legitimate discussion with families and students. These inequitable policy recommendations are devised from mis misguided goals, unreliable data, and disingenuous community engagement. We urge you not to vote them through. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. Our next speaker is James Noonan.

Good evening. My name is James Noonan. I'm an associate professor of education at Salem State, but I'm speaking tonight as a resident of Roxbury and parent of two students at the Nathan Hale School. I'd like to make two brief points about the proposed policy changes to the exam school admissions policy, one about public engagement and the second about impact. On public engagement, in 2021, this committee adopted a change to the admissions policy for the restricted access high schools in BPS with the intention of expanding the applicant pool, maintaining rigor, and ensuring a more representative student body.

This change came after an extensive and transparent process. The Exam Schools admissions task force held four listening sessions, 20 open meetings, each of which had an opportunity for public comment. By contrast, public engagement for the current proposal has been meager indeed. Two webinars with no public comment, one online survey. There are, as another speaker pointed out, over 46,000 students in BPS.

The survey had 326 responses. The response rate to the survey represents less than 1% of students, and I suspect it's not a racially, economically, or geographically representative sample. Compared to 2021, the current process has suffered from a severe lack of public engagement. I urge you not to vote on any changes without a concerted effort to gather a broad range of perspectives across communities. On impact, as the five year impact report showed, the revised policy has been effective at making student bodies more representative.

However, the proposed changes, eliminating the school based points and especially adding a citywide round, are all but assured to halt and reverse this progress. Social science research is clear. Students benefit from ethno racially and economically diverse schools, both academically and socially. Any policy making these change these schools more exclusive and less diverse will have negative impacts on students. I strongly urge you to hold fast to the goals you set five years ago. Thank you so much.

Our last in person speaker is Sharon Hinton. I don't see Sharon Hinton in the meeting. So we will transition to Zoom speakers. Our first speaker is Keandre Macleay. Hi, Keandre. You can start.

Hi. I'm Keandre Kea McClay. I serve as the executive director of the Boston Education Justice Alliance, BEJA. We are a coalition of parents, students, educators, and community leaders fighting for every day to make sure Boston Public School lives up to the promise of equity and justice. Exam school admissions have always been a flashpoint for inequity in the district.

Any changes to this policy must be judged by one standard, access. Who gets access, who is left out, and whether the policy moves us closer to or further away from racial and economic justice. From the superintendent's proposal, we see an attempt to simplify the system by removing school based points and reducing housing related points. But let's be clear. Simplicity means nothing if it comes at the expense of justice.

This proposal is projected to decrease invitations for black and brown students, and the fact that this impact was not even named in the public presentation is unacceptable. Silencing or minimizing the racial consequences of this policy is not neutrality. It is harm. A policy that knowingly reduces access for black Aladdin students is not just inequitable. It's a step backward in the same patterns of exclusion and gatekeeping that exam schools have always represented.

Boston cannot claim equity on paper while enacting policies that close the doors on the very students who have been historically denied opportunity. And this and the continued reliance on the MAP test only deepens the injustice. This is not just a technical adjustment. It is a structural equity issue. MAP was not designed to reflect the brilliance, resilience, or full potential of our young people, especially English learners and students with disabilities.

Locking in a policy for three years that was already known disadvantaged students is an act of systemic exclusion. This committee must stop treating inequality in test sorry. This committee must stop treating inequity in testing and grading as data points to adjust. There are racial justice and disability justice issues.

McKay. Your time is up.

Congratulations. Must be run.

Our next speaker is Julie Galore. You can start.

Great. Thank you. Hello. My name is Julie Galore. I live in Jamaica Plain, and I have a fifth grader and ninth grader in BPS. I would like to ask the school committee to consider not having school on the Jewish high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which fall in September or October. I know that religious observance is an excused absence, but year after year, Jewish families in BPS face the same struggles and stress. These two holidays are not private rituals that can be observed outside of school business hours. They are centered on communal gathering at a specific time and missing school to observe them comes with a very real consequences for students. For the purposes of this testimony, I will share my family's experience from this current school year and the impacts.

But please note that this is not the first time this has been an issue in my decade as a BPS parent. My ninth grader had quizzes and assessments in two thirds of their classes on the Jewish holidays. Even though we knew legally the absence was excused they would be able to make up all of their summative assignments for full credit, the thought of falling behind, especially in subjects like biology, where each lesson built on the last, was overwhelming. In the end, our family agreed that our child could skip parts of the holiday with our family and community so they could keep up with schoolwork. This is not a real choice for a teenager.

It is a painful compromise between education and identity. At the elementary school level, the pressure looks different, but is just as real. Missing work is not the main challenge. It is missing key community events that makes sense. This year, my fifth grader school scheduled the back to school barbecue for Rosh Hashanah with the rain date as Yom Kippur. While these examples do not impact academic performance, they are essential pieces of building strong community. And when they are scheduled in advance on days that Jewish students cannot attend, it sends the message that their participation of the Jewish students is less important. Furthermore, these are values skills that align deeply with what schools try to teach, revising essays, analyzing Thank Your

time up. Our next speaker is Sheryl back Sheryl Bachman.

Good evening. My name is Cheryl Bachman. I'm a parent to a seventh grader at the, Ruth Batson Academy. I'm the lead for the Denver in a residence at South Boston. I'm here to address an email that was sent to the r b RBA community this week.

Firstly, I want to acknowledge the potential value of the failed house project and and what it could ultimately bring to the neighborhood. But as construction continues, just steps away from our school, I believe it's critical that we ask for the greater transparency and stronger safeguards, especially now that hazardous materials, including asbestos, have been identified on-site. What we've been told that the air quality will be monitored daily, but families and staff need real time access to data, not just a general assurance. We also need clear and immediate communication if air quality readings exceed safe limits. Those notifications must go outright right away, not hours and not days later.

I'm also concerned about the noise impact, truck traffic, and dust, especially for our youngest learners, and for students with respiratory conditions or sensory sensitivities. What specific supports are being provided for these students during the school day? Finally, I'm asking BPS to commit to an independent oversight of all safety protocols related to this project. That includes air quality monitoring, asbestos handling, and post

construction council.

Our community deserves full transparency and active involvement in protecting the health and safety of our students and staff. We shouldn't have to wait until there's a problem to be informed. And thank you for your time and make it for making safety a priority not just in words, but in action. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next group of speakers is Haval Abdullah Rahman, Bernie Wilkinson, Tarisha Gwynne Williams, and Ynedd Bazil. Haval Abdullah Rahman?

Can you hear me?

Yes. We can hear you. You can start.

Okay. Thank you very much. Good evening. My name is Habal Abdulrahman. I'm a parent of two students in Dever Elementary School, sixth grade and fourth grade.

I'm a resident of Dorchester since 2004. I live in Harbor Point Apartments company just across of Dever School and across of the field house project. My testimony tonight is about the asbestos hazardous materials have been identified on-site of the field house project. The existing land of the proposed field house project is leased from BPS to collaborative proponent of boys and girls club clubs of Dorchester and Martin Richard Foundation. The project consists of construction of indoor athletic center located just steps away from both the elementary school and the Rathbaston Academy School.

Therefore, hazardous materials exposure during the construction of field house project will directly affecting both schools. For your kind attention, the foundation work and earthwork started more than three months ago or more. But unfortunately, we were just informed this week about the hazardous materials, including asbestos, have been identified on-site. I respectfully suggest the following steps, please. The contractor should have a preconstruction hazardous material surveys and show and share reports on request.

Asbestos records must be available, and and parents should be notified. Air quality control and air quality tests shall be done every day during excavation and earthwork. Dust control process shall be utilized every day. The the contractor shall schedule any work ready to exhaust materials to be after the schools. We want to assure that the safety of our students and the staff is our highest priority. We want to assure that all procedures are being carried out under the supervision of certified hazardous materials specialists, and no exposure risks have been reported. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Vernee Wilkinson. Please accept the prompt. Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening. You can start.

My name is Vernee Wilkinson. I'm with Schoolfax Boston. We have ongoing and significant concerns relative to the BPS data that indicates that there has been a 7% decrease in exam school invitations to black students. During the last school community meeting and also during the recent city council hearing, BPS staff members reported that the decrease in invitations might be connected to a recorded drop in grades for black BPS students. This is alarming information that committee members noted might be connected to bias in the grading for black students.

The district needs to conduct research and report out to the community why there is a decrease, a 7% decrease, in exam school invitations for black students, as well as why grades are decreasing for black students. If grades have decreased for black students applying to exam schools, this is a subset of students, and it leads to the possibility that there could also be a district wide issue for grades as it relates to black students. Do not not let this data be hidden away while exam school policy continues to be the central topic. Also, as BPS reevaluates its exam school admission policy, the inclusion of parent and student voices have been minimal at best. Has hosted just two meetings webinar mode, which we all have lived through enough Zoom meetings to know that this is not authentic and thoughtful community engagement.

More feedback needs to be gathered from families and students ahead of the school committee vote for the proposed exam school admissions. BPS students and families deserve more quality engagement. The cycle of poor quality engagement needs to stop. And in this moment, the district and city leaders need to audit grading practices to better ensure equity in grades for black students. Thank you.

Teresa Green Williams is not in the meeting, so we will continue with Edith Bazille.

Sorry about that. The exam schools data tell a devastating truth. Black students make up 29% of enrollment but received only 15% of exam school admissions this year. Just a few years ago, the number was 21. That is a 29% decline in access for black students.

Meanwhile, invitations for white and Asian students more than doubled. The district's explanation, quote, falling grades. But grades and scores are not neutral. They reflect resources and tell the story of systemic inequities, unstable staffing, lack of high quality literacy, lack of reading specialists, biased grading, segregation, and harsh discipline that removes black students from classrooms instead of supporting them. These are not student failures.

These are systems failures. They show how grades become the gatekeeper and inequity becomes policy. The narrative that, quote, fewer black students got in because their grades dropped, end of quote, is misleading and harmful. It blames students for systemic neglect, conceals policy choices, and school assignment algorithms that cluster black students into chronically failing school schools. The real story is this.

Exam school access reflects not merit, but access to opportunity. White and Asian students are overrepresented overrepresented because their schools have stability, enrichment, and grading systems that reward them. Black and Latino students are underrepresented second. Because their schools are underfunded, understaffed, and undervalued. The story of regression is the is the that the district tells is one that it created created, and BPS has an obligation to correct the use of taxpayers whose children are excluded from opportunity. This evening, I'm here to declare that BPS must reconstruct the system that provides equitable access that has been historically denied to black students because when black students rise, the whole district rises with them. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next speakers are Maria Elena Pereira Rolon, Kaira Amador, Eugenia Corvo, Henri, I don't see any of the two Spanish speakers. So thank you very much, Mr. Bernal. We will continue with Eugenia Corvo.

Wait, just a second. Mr. Bernal, actually, we have our Spanish Maria Elena Pereira in the meeting. I apologize for that.

Yes,

can you start?

My name is Marilyn. I represent the community of Dorchester, and I am a mother of a girl. She's going to She's going to a charter school. I would like to express my dissatisfaction with the opinions shared regarding the exam school different policies. I would like to express that dissatisfaction that I do have.

Making decisions and making decisions based in not the opinions of the families that are being affected, that is very risky to do. Because the families and the youth that are part of the our population, we have to be involved in any decision making because we are the ones suffering the consequences of decision making based on those policies. So it's very difficult to see the differences that arise, particularly with some populations, the black student population and the Spanish speaking population, it is very difficult and hard to see the differences in these populations. Education, it is a right. It is a right by law, and every kid and every child deserves to have a good opportunity to be able to have a chance of being successful.

That is precisely why I do not support any abrupt changes that will impact the vulnerable communities that we do have that are impacted by vulnerable that these abrupt changes. So this is very important before making a decision, our voices have to be heard. The communities have to be heard. We have to be heard as a collective body before any decision making takes place. Our request is not to hurry in terms of implementing these policies.

My advice to you is that to keep the current policy. Take your time. Do not rush the process. As I said before, it is critical that we involve the most affected families and communities. Thank you very much for hearing my opinions.

Mister Bernal, can you please stay? We have our second speaker who needs Spanish support.

Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, members of the school committee. My name is Kyla Amador. I do live in Dorchester. I'm a resident of Dorchester, and I am a mom of one children the child that goes to the BPS schools, Boston Public Schools.

School.

So one of my nephews, she goes to a Trotter elementary school, and my daughter, she goes to a school.

The

reason I'm here tonight is to express my disappointment to all the changes that had been implemented that are related to the exam school policy. I firmly believe that this change could significantly impact the quality of the education of the children here in Boston and limit itself the opportunities that they could have as well. So you have to consider the potential that some of the students do have the opportunities that they could have, but they could be impacted by this particular policies, even though there is a huge potential there. It is very critical to not to hurry in the process. It is very critical to involve all the families and the communities.

It is very important to have clear communication channels to be able not to impact this particular community, so decision making could be clear as well. So our advice, our request is that the current policies are kept because if not, if that is not the case, that could have a significant impact. It could favor the privileged populations as well, and we all deserve an equal opportunity. So we know we cannot remove the challenges. We have to provide every student with the tools that are necessary to be able to be successful.

I would like my kids to be competitive, to be able to develop their full potential to achieve what they're capable of. Thank you very much.

Our next speaker is Eugenia Corvo. And thank you very much, Mr. Bernal. Eugenia Corbo?

Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes. We can hear you. Thank you.

Yeah. Hi, good evening, superintendent and members of the school committee. I'm the parent of two Latino students, one at the Oman Academy in Boston and one at BLS. It was said at the last meeting that the admissions process created by the task force will be reviewed after five years. I wanted to mention, as Travis Marshall did earlier, that it's only been four years, so why the rush?

The process the task force designed involved broad community engagement. These proposed changes have been rushed without the same care or input. At a recent BLS event actually discussed Saturday, someone said, we are close to being a true cross section of Boston, while showing data that clearly did not represent that. It showed, for instance, 17% Latino income in seventh graders when the deficit is that our district is up to 44% Latino. So we're still very far from reflecting demographics.

And after some progress, all the simulations presented move us back in the wrong direction. And the written version of my testimony has a lot more about these. The data shared so far only shows simulations that change two variables at a time. So where is the data isolating the effect of each individual change? Where is the breakdown by exam school? Without good data, we cannot know who benefits and who loses. Are the big losers sending schools with more high needs kids? Are the small changes in the simulations much bigger? Very different.

Can look at

the LS data. We keep hearing that we don't have good data because the policy keeps changing. So let's not do another change with a clear equity risk and try to rush it through and lock it in for three years. As Rodam Tang mentioned before, there is a very high risk that the applicant pool may change. So we could be cementing a more inequitable process. So I urge you to pause any vote until there is meaningful community engagement and complete data.

You, Ms.

Kramer. Need to move.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Our two next speakers are not in the meeting. So we would, Emily Riggs and Betsy Yoshimura. So we will go with, Sharon Hinton.

Good evening. My name is Sharon Eaton Hinton. I'm an educator with forty plus years of experience in public, private, charter, independent schools, colleges, and universities, and a doctoral candidate education in Northeast University. I'm also a former BPS student and mother of a BPS graduate, and I served as president of school site, parent site councils, various other BPS positions over the years. And that being said, I'm calling for a pause in the voting of the Boston School Committee on the attempt to revise the exam school admissions process before we drag our students, parents, and teachers back to the way things used to be, which was never designed for and never fully worked for brown, special ed, or ELL students.

I'm also requesting a broader focus on all of BPS and not just the elite exam schools. I'm against the Boston School Committee voting on BPS based on the last hearing of the city council, where superintendent Skipper said that for the last five years, the last four years, the formula was tweaked tweaked every single year. So we don't have consistent data. In addition, there were only webinars that did include the large majority of parent engagement, and those were held at two different times that it was impossible, at the end of the summer when parents are not around, and also on election day when parents could not be engaged with competing interests. Based on the Commonwealth recent op ed in the Commonwealth magazine, WBUR articles, the recent city council hearing regarding exam school policies

Thirty seconds.

We that can the data shows that black and brown students are not graduating at grade level. We need to focus on all of the black schools, all of the black students and black teachers and Latinos. We need to focus on the lack of black teachers. We need to focus on all of the schools with a special impotence importance, rather, on vocational educational schools. We need to keep the original policy policy for at least the next three years to see how that actually works and get the data.

Thank you, miss Hinton. Your time is up.

From parents.

Thank you

very much. Chair,

that concludes public comment.

Alright. Thank you very much, and thank you to all of you who spoke this evening. Your testimony is very important to us. We're going to take a few minutes recess. We have some unfinished business that the committee needs to do.

We need to take a photo that we couldn't take earlier in the meeting. So we're going to take it now so that our photographer can go home for the evening and then we will come right back into our meeting. So thank you. Our only action item this evening is the grants for approval totaling 3,894,000 Now 646 I'd like to turn it over to the superintendent for any final comments.

Oh, great. Thank you, chair. So as chair indicated, there are eight grants, nearly $3,900,000 for your consideration this evening. The largest of these grants is the new two year Bloomberg Philanthropies BPS Vision Care Initiative grant, totaling $3,000,000 that will serve 46,000 students district wide. This grant will expand access to screenings and comprehensive eye exams for students, prioritizing high need schools using the opportunity index.

Every BPS student will receive vision screenings during the school year 2526. Students who fail the screening will receive free in school eye exams and free prescription glasses. The funding will also support the hiring of support staff and equipment to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the vision screenings. The remaining funds totaling nearly $900,000 will support a variety of other initiatives. There's also nearly $420,000 in funding from school based bridge program grants, which will go to each of the three exam schools to provide intensive clinical and academic support for students returning to school after an extended medical related absence, the majority of whom are returning after a mental health related hospitalization.

This is a continuation of the funding that you approved last year. The funds will pay the salary of a full time academic coordinator among other services. The new $230,000 Massachusetts Life Sciences Center STEM equipment and professional development program grant will support 2,200 students at the Bradley Otis and PJ Kennedy elementary schools, the Elliott k eight Innovation School, and Warren Prescott k eight School in East Boston High School. This grant will fund teacher professional development in the purchase of the equipment, materials, supplies, and technology needed to support new or expanded curriculum. The remaining grants include a $150,000 Play Ball Foundation continuing grant to support athletics for a thousand students across 20 middle schools and nearly 88,000 in increases to the district's continuing federal IDA grants or individuals with disabilities education act funding.

These two increases will ensure that 46,000 students across the district, including eligible three, four, and five year olds, receive developmentally appropriate special education services. And we have David Bloom and Marcello Machella are in the audience as well to answer any questions that the committee may have relative to the grants.

Thank you. I'll now open it up to questions and comments from the committee.

Louder. Apologies. There is a microphone. The grant that is I'm looking for right here.

The Bridge grant?

Yes. Yes. That is serving young folks who are returning to school after a hospitalization. What's the increase in those hospitalizations we've seen, I year over year? Are we noticing a trend that's following the national trend of more young people being hospitalized for mental health issues?

So for the exam schools in particular, I couldn't say that specifically. But I could say overall post pandemic, we definitely have seen an uptick in hospitalizations, calls that we have to make for ENT support for students in psychological crisis.

For just one more question. For students who are returning who are not at the exam schools who return after a crisis like that, what is the infrastructure in place?

So we have we work with our student support and Chief McCarthy along with our social workers, school sites, clinicians to develop plans for the student when they're returning. If the student needs bridge time, they will often attend SUCCEED Boston or do home and hospital services until they're ready to come back full time. This is actually something we're looking to develop out relative to community academy in terms of a suite of services and at Mel King as well so that there would be better transition support for students after a lengthy hospital stay.

Thank you. Just

a quick question about the vision care initiative which I find extremely interesting and exciting and worthwhile and necessary. It says in the chart that it's for fiscal year and Mr. Bouman you're going be the perfect for this. It says it's fiscal year '26. In the write up it says it's actually to cover services for two years. So is that 3,000,000 per year or is that 3,000,000 at one point half per year? And does that allow us to cover the full district for each of the two years? And is this, because I do know as Mr. Bloom is coming up, thank you. I do know we've had some vision programs, particularly at some of our hub schools already.

We do. We have the vision van. And then we do internal screenings. But this is meant to really marry it with the prescription glasses. So it's all at one time.

Yes. So the total grant is $3,000,000 over the two years. Over the two It's all being awarded this year. At once. So we don't have to reapply for the second year. So that's sort of why we organize it that way. Exactly. So it's $3,000,000 but we'll spend it out at 1,000,000 point dollars per year in effect? Yes. Right. In average. Yeah. In average. Not promising that exact breakdown. Of course. Roughly. But this allows us to cover all of our schools. It does. Into the programs we already had?

It does.

Right now the the way the van works is the, you know, certain schools get priority on the van. This would enable us to be able to do all schools.

Well, this is great because it's a need for so many of our students. It impacts their ability to learn. Many times when they're not even aware of it themselves. I'm very thrilled by this and thankful to Bloomberg philanthropies. Thank you.

Okay. You. Are there any other questions? Comments? Thank you all. If 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 objecting to the motion? Is there any objection to approving the grants by unanimous consent? Hearing none, the grants are approved. Now we transition to the reports. Our first report tonight is on the secondary schools policy update. Let's aim to keep the presentation within ten 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. Thank you for the reminder on slow because I go too fast. So tonight, we're presenting two DESE policies related to chapter 74, career and technical education, or CEP programs. First policy is an admissions policy for entrance into chapter 74, CTE programs at five schools, Madison Park Vocational Technical High School, English High School, Boston Arts Academy, Boston Green Academy, and the Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers, or what we call EMK.

The second policy is in the middle school career exploration policy regarding the ways in which the district supports career exploration and awareness about chapter 74 CTE programs at the middle school level. This also includes training more of our middle school teams in the implementation of MICAP, Boston's career and post secondary development framework. We're also sharing a revised competency determination or CD policy with you tonight. As a reminder, BPS' competency determination was approved by the school committee in June 2025. Over the summer, DESE released updated CD requirements.

The policy has been updated to meet those requirements. We will return to ask for your vote on these changes on November 5. And at this point, I will turn the meeting over to Brett Dickens, who you haven't formally met, who is our new secondary superintendent for college career and life readiness, returning from Providence to us in BPS. She's a long time principal in multiple places here. And Doctor. Angela Headley Mitchell, who you do know, Interim Chief of Teaching and Learning, so that they can give you a short presentation.

Thank you, superintendent, and good evening. I am here to present the policies as the superintendent outlined. We have two policies related to CTE, and we have one related, an updated policy for competency determination. All three of these policies are in response to regulation amendments that were passed by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in May. I want to clarify before I go into the CTE policies that these policies are specific to programs that are Chapter 74 DESE approved programs.

That is a subset of all of the programs and pathways that we offer throughout our high schools. The regulatory change has three components to it. Any school with a CTE approved Chapter 74 program must use either criteria for that lottery system for admission into the school or program. Schools are allowed under these policies to require students to indicate interest in vocational education in order to apply for seats in these programs and schools. And this policy requires all districts to provide middle school students the opportunity to receive information about Chapter 74 programs within the district.

As the superintendent said, we have five schools that have Chapter 74 programs. Two of them are Horace Mann charters. Those two schools will be submitting their policies directly to their governing board and then through the governing board to Department of Education. But I do want to make you aware that we aligned our policies with the Horace Mann charters so that they are similar and the experience for a student and family will be similar. The timelines are aligned.

We only have one school that has a school level admission policy, and that is Madison Park. It is the only school in our district that is a wall to wall CTE school. And then the other four schools, as the superintendent mentioned, English High, Boston Arts, Boston Green, and EMK, have a subset of their students in Chapter 74 programs, and therefore, the admissions takes place at the program level. For school level admissions policy, the policy at Madison Park will supersede the policy that was approved by this committee in 2024. It will be a similar policy, but the lottery system applies.

A weighted lottery system was the choice of Madison Park in implementing this policy. So at the school level, Madison Park will have an application deadline of 02/13/2026. And they did choose the weighted lottery. The weighted lottery in their model will have four potential entries per student. Every student that applies automatically gets one weight.

Students that have fewer than 27 unexcused absences in the prior year and a half will get an additional weight. Students without serious disciplinary infractions under 37H and 37H and a half get an additional weight. And students will get an additional weight for demonstrating interest, either by visiting the school or participating in online opportunities if they are unable to visit the school. I want to be clear that in these four entries, there is no scoring of students. There's no scoring of any of criteria above.

It is one weight or not. I also want to clarify that all families will receive the weights before the lottery is run. All families will be notified ten days before the lottery is run how many weights their student student has, so that if there are any challenges to the weights or any mistakes that were made, those will be addressed prior to running the lottery. At the program level, the four schools will run their school level admissions as they do in the present. There is no change to the admission policy for English, BAA, BGA, or EMK under this policy.

Once students are admitted into the school, they have the opportunity to apply to a CTE exploratory program. And if the interest in that exploratory program exceeds the number of seats that are available, they will run an unweighted straight lottery for admission into the CTE exploratory program. At all of all five schools, once students go through the exploratory program, there is a matching process for individual CTE programs, and a lottery can be run, again, if the interest in a program exceeds the number of seats that are available. We also have a brand new middle school pathway exploration policy, and this is a policy to ensure that all eighth grade students, regardless of where they attend school in the city of Boston, have the opportunity to learn about Chapter 74 programs at these five schools. It is important, as the superintendent pointed out, is important to note that we will be using the MICAP framework to work with all of our students throughout middle schools.

The MICAP is a framework that brings students through a series of activities of career exploration, personal exploration, grade appropriate activities at each grade level to help them develop their personalized plan. And we will exceed the requirements of this policy. Each school that has Chapter 74 programs will be offering numerous open houses, assemblies at schools, tours, webinars, videos on their website. And then as you'll see in the blue box on the right, we have district wide opportunities for families to learn about our pathways. Most notably, next Saturday, we have our college career and STEM fair, and we will have a pathway aisle at that event.

And we have our annual school showcase in December. I'm going to move on to the revision of the competency determination. And just to clarify, competency determination is one of three components for BPS graduation. Competency determination, as you know, replaces the MCAS. We also have mass core subject and course requirements for every single student.

And then physical education is required by the state as well. With regards to competency determination, this is the timeline which began in November 2024 when question two passed, removing MCAS as a graduation requirement. Shortly after that time, we formed a CD task force to look at the class of 2025 and review the CD requirement and prepare students for graduation. Then this spring, we worked on a policy for the class of 2026, which you approved in June. Over the summer, DESE released additional requirements.

The task force continued to meet, and the policy that is in front of you is a revision, which is updated to reflect all of the changes that DESE required in that policy. So the current policy that is in place has the component of the coursework requirements for competency determination for the class of 2026. This new policy includes the measures and the metrics for determining mastery and specific language for consideration of students with disabilities, multilingual learners, late enrolling students, students with exceptional circumstances, and students that may require an appeal or a transcript review to meet competency determination. It also notes that there is an additional course requirement for the class of 2027 and beyond in US history. These are the measures that the CD task force proposes to determine mastery for the class of 2026.

There are five courses required. There is a passing grade of a D minus. The task force is looking at CD mastery requirements that are more rigorous. But we could not make a mid course adjustment because class of 2026 already took all five courses before this policy was put in place. As we move forward into 2027, 'twenty eight and beyond, we will be looking to raise the bar for the passing grade or the grade that represents mastery and additional metrics to demonstrate student mastery.

Our next step is to present these policies to you, answer any questions that you have tonight, and hope for your vote in the November 5 meeting. So we will take any questions that you have about any of the three policies.

Thank you. Now open it up to the committee.

Yes, just a pretty quick question. On page 10, the competency determination timeline. The last line is to be determined, a recommendation from the governor's council. Is this body going to be required to wait for for the governor's council recommendations before we make a vote? Or how how how does that work?

No, we are required to submit a new policy before December, but we do anticipate that the Governor's Council on graduation requirements over upcoming months may make modifications or may make recommendations, we will probably have an annual review of this policy as that council continues to revise graduation requirements across the state.

And we would imagine that whatever the recommendations are will be forward looking and not applying to the class that's about to graduate.

Thank you for the presentation. I think it might be worth bearing repeating the distinction between competency determination and mass core. And I'd like to try to distinguish if I can from my understanding and then you can confirm. Mass core is the set of courses that we have adopted that are graduation requirements that students must complete to earn their diploma. In the absence of there being a statewide test for accountability and competency determination, we now have to come up with an alternative of that.

At this time there is no different test from the MCAS and so this competency determination recommendation is really a subset of the same courses that students need for MassCore. Is that right?

Correct. So for competency determination, you're meeting a threshold of what a student would take in ninth and tenth grade in ELA math and science.

And

then that's those five courses. And then the state is looking to adding US history to that for the next graduating class of 2027. MASS course, a framework to look at a set of recommendations that the school department has looked at to say this is what makes a student post secondary ready or workplace ready. So that is encompassing more classes which extends to world language requirements, extends to arts, and extends to five additional core excuse me, electives that students can take.

Got it. So for that reason it makes sense that the five current recommended courses are the courses that students would have needed to take at the time of MCAS. There was a science high school MCAS, an ELA, and a math. For that reason, I do think it is a little strange that the state is proposing history to add to the competency determination when there was not a history MCAS. But it seems like that would go under mass core. But I understand that's a recommendation coming from elsewhere.

Yes. The MCAS history right now is the eighth. Eight. Exactly. Right. At the

high school level. Okay. Another question I had was looking at the class of 2029 and beyond, I definitely understand the desire to raise the bar but would just articulate some concern about creating a different grade report card grade threshold for competency determination from passing a course. I think it could create a challenge if a student does not meet that competency C minus. Do we then put them in the course again that they've passed?

I think it could compromise credit capture. So I just wanted to name that as a concern. On the CTE courses, I think this list is so exciting. There's an appendix here with just an amazing number of pathways that students could pursue. And I'm just really eager for more parents and students to know about this. So I think we're all excited about the middle school exploration and would just love to know when and how parents are being involved in some of that exposure because for many eighth graders it's still going to fall in their parents' hands to make the decision about where they enroll.

So we will be sending specific information home to every eighth grade family about the Chapter 74 programs and highlighting the uniqueness of those programs, not at the expense of other pathways and opportunities, but to highlight that when program is Chapter 74 approved, there are some substantial differences in the number of contact hours, the industry alignment direct into work, and the fact that all of the instructors in those programs are industry professionals, must have industry experience before teaching in those programs. And so the initial campaign is broad, to let all families know that these opportunities exist in the schools. And then at the opportunities that I identified, for example, at the college career fair and STEM fair, we will be highlighting industry clusters and making sure that people are thinking industries rather than buildings. What are the interests? What are the passions?

Another avenue will be for the schools that have those programs to push into all of our secondary schools, regardless of the grade configuration. And then the third sort of leg of that stool is to make sure that all of the personnel at our schools that have middle school students in them, whether that's family liaisons, that's counselors, that's front office, everybody is aware of the nature of these programs. So that when they are meeting with families in different contexts, when they are seeing what the students are saying in their career inventory surveys on MICAP and kinds of interests that are surfacing, that there's a broad knowledge across the district about the program offerings so that students can be referred into tours or other opportunities to learn about the programs.

And I know that the deadline is coming up for Madison Park quickly in this year. We don't have kind of the full year to think about that as we will in the future. But I'd also encourage as we think about making sure that students are aware of Chapter 74 that we do treat all of the options in totality. I'm wondering if we can just go back and look at when students have to rank their choices during for instance the exam school process and the different rounds. Can families have all of the information and the blurbs and the explanation and the brochure all at the same time so that they understand like our portfolio is one of our biggest strengths. And I'm worried that the information about all the different types of schools are coming at different times.

We are working cross functionally between our team and the Office of Family Engagement, all the teams in BPS on the presentation of that digitally and in print. So we do have collateral that exposes families to all of the options. It's an abundance of choice. And we are trying to, as much as we can with enrollment, align those deadlines so that families can apply at the same time.

And it's also it's a really interesting point, because traditionally before, other than the exam schools, parents were and students were making decisions as they were rising eighth graders. Now they make those decisions, rising sixth graders, rising seventh graders, rising eighth graders, as there's multiple points of entry into the high schools. And so, like, in this this particular group of schools, you have in BGA and English a seventh grade entry point, and then you have in Madison and BAA a ninth grade entry. And so this really means that we have to continually educate and support parents and students no matter when in that journey they're making their choice. So it's going to require deeper thought, particularly as we see that seventh grade is now orienting to become the major transition grade in the BPS.

We reach that tipping point.

Which suggests as we get deeper into this process that even at sixth grade, knowing about all of the options, even the ones that start in ninth are important so that you can make those decisions.

That's

right. Yeah.

That's a good point. You ready? Yeah.

Two, one, thank you for the presentation. I am looking at the last slide, just the current data predictions as of 09/16 and we're showing that only 41% of the class of 2026 is on track to graduate with the mass score. Hearing member Skerritt's question and really trying to differentiate our graduation requirement versus the competency determination, but also recognizing that there's a dramatic overlay. What is our plan to move this or accelerate this progress? Are you concerned about it?

And I guess because we still don't know the graduation numbers from last year, it's hard to place where we fit in in terms of young people being able to complete mask requirements and then graduate.

Right. So, certainly the three of us, in addition to Doctor. Wisdom Freedom, we all talk about this. Some of this is working literally school by school around schedule, the way things are coded. And so that 41% has come up from what was even lower as we work school by school to identify the students.

It's also, you remember that you passed a waiver policy relative to our multilingual learners and our special education students. It's applying that as well. So this is something that the committee meets, like, literally weekly on as we look at the data. And so the 41 isn't reflective necessarily of the students the percent of students who will graduate. It's at the moment those that on paper in code have met the threshold.

But, you know, our our committee hears me say, we should not be facing anything less than what our typical graduation rate is for a cohort in a given year because of that change. So that is sort of the marching orders that we're all operating under to look at and to make sure that we work with expediency to get that coding correct. And there may be students who also are dragging legitimate credit and need that opportunity, which is why we put such visual here in the presentation later this evening, historic number of credit recovery opportunities for students. We do we did that again this fall and we'll do that again throughout the spring.

And totally related and at the same time unrelated, do we still not have a graduation rate for

So the graduation rate gets actually produced by DESE and it's a four year cohort data rate. So that is not an internal number that we keep, because they look at the cohort over time. What we know is that this past June and throughout the summer, we had historic number of graduates because of our emphasis on really pushing our students and giving them multiple opportunities to be able to get their credits. So that we do know. And so we would anticipate that our number would be higher than last year, but we will not see that number until somewhere between January and March. That's when it comes out from DESE.

And so

And Monica Hogan is a relevant expert in this area, so she can, of course, correct me if needed.

And so no other city or town in Massachusetts report this is me not, I guess, being born and raised here. No other city or town in Massachusetts reports a graduation rate for the previous year till January.

Yeah. It's a lagging indicator.

That's wild. Second, like that is like bureaucracy at its like It

used government to

at its final.

It used to be in January that we would get the draft results or the

That's human. I mean, we have like AI. Like, you could plug a spreadsheet in and get a like, this should be done like that. This is nuts.

Monica, is there anything you'd like to add?

Mean, could take our current and say how many seniors graduated. It's just a different number from the cohort because it counts kids who transferred in and out. But if we could look at our enrolled seniors as twelfth graders Yeah.

We're running about three about three fifty students over what we did last year. So that that's a very healthy increase. But that to the to answer your question, mister Hernandez, that detail comes out to us from DESE. It used to come out in January. End of recent, it's come out as late as March. Right? Yep. And

we don't have any history. I guess when I was in New York we had a similar process but we would still report on our graduation rate and then have like a second announcement as we'd have cohort data available. I don't think it took us till January but we just we don't share that information publicly till any number publicly till January?

We don't hit we haven't historically reported graduation rates. Part of the delay is October state reporting process that we do, that's how the state captures anyone who graduated over the summer. And then it takes them some time to reconcile that data across the entire state to report out the final four year cohort rates?

I think, and then we'll get back to my actual question. Sorry, this is a bit of a tangent. I do think we have some sort of it. We should have some sort of internal indicator of how many of our kids graduated.

We can we can tell you from the senior class Yeah. What that looks like. Yeah. We can absolutely do that. But the graduation rate is a four year cohort rate. That is what the what DESE calculates. So we can we can do that. We were actually looking at it earlier tonight, which is how I know it was around three fifty students over. But we can calculate that

and bring

that back

to you. I think it would just be helpful, particularly as we adopted MassCore, to have something grounding us in progress on it and the ability for students to complete it, even with waivers we were able to offer. But like, you know, we don't know if it was 60 or 90 Now back to the presentation, sorry, my final question. The I guess with the I I hear member Skerritt's question as well around thinking about Cs and what that means for credits and then course repeating. I guess at the same time I am holding a question that aligns to a trend we're having across other presentations.

Like how are we calibrating across schools the grading process? It is becoming more and more important now for graduation, for exam schools. Have we created a plan for an audit or monitoring processes that already exist? Is there a training around mastery based grading? Like what is a D minus? You know what does that mean? How do you get it? How do we norm around that? And how do we not create inequities based on you know just sort of teacher behavior instead of real standards.

Yeah, I mean I think when it comes to grading in the BPS that is a long overdue research project for sure to be able to see across all of our schools how that's done. It's also that we have schools that are trimester, quarter, capstone, portfolio, traditional. And then within that, a certain percentage of quiz and tests, a certain percent of homework. So there really is no strong consistency across the schools. That is quite an undertaking.

It's one that we've talked about internally that we need to now begin to look at. I think the other thing that we would like to see is what will come of the Graduation Advisory Council and their recommendations because there may be some things in there that we can use or point toward. But I I definitely I do think that this is something when we look and Angela, you may wanna add to this, but, you know, we see grades done in wildly different ways across BPS.

There's recommendation, from the teaching and learning department in looking at commonalities in regards to not letting behavior be part of a grade. So there are some statutes in regards to that. Absenteeism, like what's the threshold, like looking solely at students' product of work regards to grading them and having systems in place. But there is not like a universal grading across. But that's something we can definitely talk more about.

There's quite a bit of autonomy that our individual schools have. Uniform is a great example where that's elected by the school site council. But it is, I think the starting point that we wanna undertake is sort of to capture the universe of what is being done to then make a decision about.

Lost translation.

Oh. Mr. Bernardo?

So, yeah, to finish that. Yes, that will be that is something that we've started to have those internal conversations about.

It's helpful. I'll end here. But I do think if we are making you know, there was an elegance despite the debate of the MCAS because there was a standard that was being held with a very clear floor and a very clear ceiling. If we are now moving more and more towards grades as admissions policies and graduation requirements, I think we have to really build if we have to vote on a policy that uses that says competency is determined by a grade from a teacher, we probably need a pretty intentional process of auditing grades across schools to make sure there's an actual standard behind, that a d minus means something. I can't believe I'm saying this.

But like that a d minus actually has a value that's equal. I would look for that in order to vote for this moving forward, at least some sort of future thinking around it.

And in the interim, as that landscape is assessed, if there is some sort of alternate way for students to show competency if the grade isn't reached, that could be at least temporary potential workaround for the future. Yeah. I did see in the policy at this point that MCAS is an option still in some cases.

In exceptional circumstances, it can be used.

You for the presentation.

It is very exciting to have the schools to offer this technical professional opportunities to our students.

We

have to consider as well that many of our students do not go to college, cannot get to college. So they can take great advantage of this particular program by the schools. So I do believe that it is very important to punctuality that the students go there. It is a critical factor, critical variable, and I think we have talked about this, the students. And this is very important.

Attendance is very important. We have talked about this before as well. So those students that have chronic absenteeism might not be included or taken in consideration. We can say we're going to a crisis particularly with this immigrant students that do not have proper documentation. We're living in a current crisis because of this.

So we have to consider that this particular populations of immigrants could be impacted by absenteeism because of the fear that exists currently already. My question to you is what plan do we have in place to consider that as a factor that is impacting attendance?

That's a great question. And the reason that we are sending the weights out to families in advance of running the lottery is so that if there are exceptional circumstances that were not documented by the school, there is a chance for a student, a family, a counselor to let us know that there were some interruptions in attendance related to those circumstances. And then that student would be awarded their weight. So that's one of the reasons that we do send out the weights in advance of the lottery. I would say once the students are in school, we are lucky that we have many online options for career and technical instruction through Edmentum and other ways to deliver instruction.

I mean, that's one of the things that we've learned. So those alternatives exist. But I think the larger point to think about with attendance and chronic absenteeism is that nationally, the Association of Career Technical Education does report that students that are in career and technical education programs and pathways have higher attendance. They have a higher level of engagement. This can be the game changer for a student that may have had poor attendance for other reasons. But if those reasons are documented and there are exceptional circumstances, those will absolutely be considered admissions. So thank you for question.

Okay.

Thank you.

The other part I would add is that, because it's a great question, member Palako Garcia, is that in the weights that have been chosen or are being suggested, is that there's multiple ways for a student to have a weight. And so while the attendance is one, and to Brett's point that communication with the school can make a difference in terms of the explanation, the student can also earn that weight through no expulsion or long term suspension, as well as by showing an interest in vocation. So there's just a number of ways that students would be able to express it.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yes. I have a couple of questions, just really bouncing around actually. So just to to start back with what you were saying in terms of notifications of the waits for families. I think you noted a period of ten days, think. Is that generally long enough for families to understand and then actually submit any type of questions that they might have? Is that something that needs to be opened up or earlier?

It may be. I mean, we have that tension of trying to keep the application deadline open long enough so that families can apply. But to earlier points, we also want to run that lottery in time for families to consider all of their options. And we know that other schools have deadlines, so we think ten days is adequate. We hope that all students come in with four waits and that we don't have a lot of appeals.

But I think in exceptional circumstances after the lottery is run there would be consideration. There's going to be a wait list. Not every student that is admitted to a program or a school is going to accept that seat. So if someone came in after the deadline I think that we could adjust, we would reflect that in the wait list seat for that student.

No, thank you. My second question is actually related to just the general tracking and use of MICAP. Is that a new is it is that not particularly okay. So so wondering like how how much families are actually using it or are we looking at that just to know that if it is worthwhile resource that's of use for families?

Right now we are using Naviance to enter data around MICAP. In this room this week, we trained over 100 educators in the MICAP system. And we want to make sure that this is not just sitting in the counselor's office, that there is a school wide team of teachers and other professionals that are involved in this work. And that when students are exploring their career interests, their passions, looking at their post secondary plans, that multiple people are able to have a lens into what that student's dreams are. You bring up a good point about parents and making sure that parents do have access to that information.

But as we train more staff, we want to push this out into the parents so the parents are aware that from fourth, fifth, sixth grade, their students are involved in sequential kind of grade appropriate activities. And then they're starting to shape their career goals. And so we're starting with school teams that are broad based and moving it out into the parent communities at each school.

And my last question is actually more of a, I guess, tied back to Member Skerritt's question and also Member Cardette Hernandez's question around, and I think this is more of a a philosophy question of in the district, what are we what do we determine as mastery, for, like, for students. Mhmm. And I think about that. I'm imagining the the class of 2029 is the the starting point because we'll have our first, what, four years under this new competency determination policy. But then also, also I'm wondering how that ties to our full implementation of HQIM across all schools.

How this ties to the rollout of inclusion at all schools. So before we start having this conversation about changing standards, we have to also make sure that across all of our schools, all of the programs that you started with are actually rolled out in totality. I mean, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, but it seems something that would be very important.

So, yes. So I think excuse me. I think that within a within a couple of months, the hope is to be able to see from the graduation committee what they're going to recommend. So for instance, if they were to recommend multiple pathways, like in New York, have exit exam. Right? You have end of year course kinds of exams. Maybe that will be what they recommend is one. Another could be a portfolio. Much like for our special education students with MCAS Alt, there's a portfolio of demonstration of work. That might be a potential another.

A third could be taking a test like the MCAS, right, to show it. We just don't know. And so I think the first step we want is to sort of see what the base is that they're going to recommend so that we can then build from there And sort of say, is there something else we want to be able to implement? Are we going to implement in full what they recommend, etcetera? I think the mass corps, you've already taken action on.

Right? And that's not the case in most districts throughout Massachusetts. So that is, we feel, pretty far ahead when it comes to that. Because we feel like that's maybe a baseline, right, of what other districts would choose to do. But I do think the next couple of months will, as it unfolds for the future classes, we'll start to see which direction we do need to go toward to define what mastery is going to look like.

For instance, now, if a student does not get a meets or exceeds on MCAS, then they have to actually demonstrate that they've taken the equivalent of that for CD purpose with a course. That was already in existence as an alternative to MCAS. It's not too, I think, unlikely that we'll see something like that as an opportunity that's offered through the graduation requirement committee or the graduation advisory committee. But it'll take the next couple of months for that to become clearer for us. I'm not as concerned with us being in the process of moving rolling out inclusion in the equitable literacies equitable high quality instructional materials simply because we're we've made we're pretty much complete with the high quality instructional materials.

It's the usage of those materials on a consistent basis with students doing the task piece of it that is our focus. I think in inclusion, we'll be pretty close to the finality of the rollout. But even so, whether a student's in an included class or not, they're still required from a graduation standpoint to complete the courses that are at hand relative to Mass Core. So I think whatever changes we need to make, our alterations will be back before you. But the next step for us is to really see, I think, where the graduation requirement committee goes.

And just thinking a bit more about Member Cadet Hernandez's specific question, I think what Angela was saying with the grades is that we have what I would call guardrails. But they're very loose guardrails, guardrails, to be clear. They're guardrails. The end course in New York is the definitive kind of you either know the material or you don't, and you can either get a particular number of questions correct or not. In most, at least at the secondary level, in most cases, there's some kind of end of course that's aligned to those standards that's being taken.

So that in and of itself would potentially show the mastery of the content. That's not the final grade because the grade includes other things. But that in and of itself could be used as a marker for the mastery part were we to go down that direction. Elementary, I think, is different. Just

very quick question, two quick questions. One on the CTE chapter 74 program level admissions. I'm looking in particular at not Madison Park but like English BAA, BGA and EMK. So as an example at BAA, you're saying students are admitted by BAA's typical admission process. And and they start as a student and then at some point, they're applying for one of the chapter 74 programs and you have in the listing about six programs that, there are many more programs at BAA. I'm just using this as one example, right? So is the lottery then only for students that are already within BAA for those specific programs?

That's correct. So the lottery is actually to take the exploratory, which is for those CTE Chapter 74 programs. As you pointed out, there are many other pathways at BAA that this policy would not apply to.

Okay, good. I just wanted to understand that if other students could be applying for that lottery for those programs. So it's the ones that are already in each of these schools, English BAA, BGA and EMK.

That's correct. Can be upper grade transfer students in grade ten and eleven if there are seats available. And then there could be a lottery system as those seats become available. So if there is a tenth grade program and there are students that apply in tenth grade and there's more students that meet or there's more interest than seats, then BAA could run a lottery as that student comes into the school.

Great, thank you. And then flipping to a topic other members have been talking about tonight, which you talked about at the end, which is so my understanding is we voluntarily, as a body, decide to have Mass Corp as a graduation requirement. It's not required by the state at this point. And we've been working towards getting there. And one of the big stumbling blocks over the years as you alluded to superintendent was the scheduling. Particularly if you have seven blocks or eight blocks when you talk to the individual schools. Think a lot of our innovation schools have been working with us to get there. But I think phys ed has been the big stumbling block as well. Right? And and we see it in the participate or not the participation figure, but

59%.

59% versus the others. Voluntarily deciding to do MassCore, do we have flexibility to look at different ways to meet that requirement?

Well, phys ed is actually a separate requirement from Mass Core. It's its own requirement and the ideal is 0.25 credits per year. Challenging. You have students that are going off campus for early college or dual enrollment opportunities and you know not everything fits into their schedule. So we are looking at best practices within the district at schools that are able to figure out ways to implement phys ed given the complexity of their schedule.

So that is a challenge. One thing I just want to add is I did talk about the number of contact hours for career and tech programs. Students there with regards to mass core are exempted from a few of the subject requirements in order to allow for additional time for career and tech ed. But physical education is challenging for schools, they are all looking at ways to put that into the schedule without students having to choose between off campus or even in school opportunities that are available to them.

Thank you.

Our hope is that when we see the graduation requirements recommendations that we see some flexibility that's provided to district in areas like this. Similarly with world language, considering all the multilingual learners that we have in BPS who know a language other than English and the amount of ESL that they are required to take, would like ways to be able to count that language as their first language as is very viable. So and asset based. So I think our our hope is in the next couple of months, as this becomes a little bit clearer, we can come back to you and say this is the direction we're taking. But in the meantime, Brett, can you just once more just summarize for the November 5 vote what you need from the committee?

And Angela? So we want a vote on the CTE admissions policy at both levels, at the school and the program level that are outlined in the policy. Approval of the middle school CTE exploration policy and approval of the updates to the competency determination policy as it applies to the class of '26 and '27.

And these are all necessary because of changes that have happened at the state level?

I have a quick question for you. Could you explain the difference between a weighted lottery and a regular lottery? How do the weights impact how the lottery is run?

So in the weighted lottery, I think of it like a silent auction when you buy your tickets and you put them in the bag. So in a weighted lottery, a student can have up to four entries for a seat in a school or a program based on those four criteria. And then the unweighted lottery is literally a number generator when the number of applicants exceeds the number of seats. So in certain cases, we may not need to run a lottery. But when there is an excess of applicants to the number of seats, those are the two ways to run the lottery.

And Madison, I think, chose the weighted lottery primarily on the interest front. They want to make sure that students visit the school, that they look at the website, that they see the videos, that they really understand the opportunity that they are applying for. And so that the reason that they chose that weighted lottery system.

Okay. Just listening to this tonight and then knowing we have our other conversation about exam schools, etcetera, the issues around trying to figure out for a district that's got 32 high schools, how many different entry options are we trying to help parents to understand? And, you know, why can't there be one set of ways of getting through the front door no matter what kind of school you wanted to go to? I mean, because I'm thinking this lottery system is pretty sophisticated, sophisticated, yet yet for for another another set set of of schools schools we we don't want to do a lottery system. And we could do a weighted for those things, we have the equivalent of weights when we're talking about points and other kinds of things.

But I just feel like as a district, how do we simplify this process so that all parents and all students can understand this wide variety of options but not have to have a PhD to figure out how to manipulate or figure out what they want to do. I mean, in the towns where there's one high school, you go to that high school and then maybe there are lotteries or other ways of getting into programs. But it just feels like in a district with as many opportunities as we have that it's over complicated. And sometimes I think frightening for periods. So I don't know what we do.

Mean, because I know we haven't talked about all the other options of others. Don't have to I don't know interview or audition or whatever. So we've got all of those things. But are they really working to the best interest of our families and students? So I'm looking for something

agree that that is the work. Especially this year is making sure that our families as they approach transitions, particularly at seventh and ninth grade, really do see the full portfolio of I mean, the opportunities for families are amazing. But it is complicated and we do need to simplify streamline for our families.

Thank you. So we look forward to taking votes on this at our next meeting. Thank Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we will continue with the summer learning report. Let's aim to keep the presentation under fifteen minutes. Superintendent, I invite you to give introductory remarks. It's going to be a long evening because we are already at 08:23 and we still have two reports. Just making everybody mindful as we move forward. Thank you.

All right. So tonight, the team is here to provide highlights and participation data from 2025, what we call next level summer. The presentation will include an overview of core summer programs, including fifth quarter summer learning academies, credit recovery, the Exam School Initiative, programs offered by the Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education as part of fifth quarter, next level summer and student supports summer synergy. This summer, BPS served approximately 14,600 students, an increase of 600 students compared to the 2024. Our summer programming was led by deputy superintendent, doctor Anna Tavares, who oversees the division of family and community advancement in addition to teams from divisions of academics and operations.

Those teams included specialized services, student support, and multilingual and multicultural education, who collaborated on our goal to increase the overall participation of BPS students, specifically our multilingual learners and our students receiving special education services. This year's improvements that increased participation included shared decision making and communications. This meant that families now get information faster and in their own language, Cross departmental collaboration made processes and communication smoother. Community partnerships and collaboration with our Boston after school and beyond partners. Our family liaisons personalized outreach ensure families are provided the information and support needed to access some learning opportunities and updated communications such as fifth quarter programs organized by themes.

It also featured academic improvements where every classroom now has a consistent high quality curriculum. Thousands of students are using top tier materials in math, social studies, and STEM. It also included cross departmental improvements. And this this was more like students with disabilities were included in new opportunities. This summer, our home office continued to expand access and impact for multilingual learners.

Total of 2,933 multilingual learners participated in fifth quarter programs, which was up from 2,722 last year, with nearly 1,900 students in om led sites across Boston. Eighty one percent of students in credit recovery successfully completed their courses, and almost sixty percent of summer staff were bilingual, reflecting the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of our students and families. We're working towards further expanding access to the exam school initiative to support students who are interested in attending an exam school. It also, featured operational improvements. Hiring and support for schools are faster and more streamlined.

Staff are getting stronger training to build long term capacity. Tonight, you'll hear from deputy superintendent, doctor Anna Tavares, and other team members leading the work, Mugali Sanchez, chief family advancement officer Kay Seal, chief of specialized services Joel Gamere, chief of multilingual and multicultural education and Corey McCarthy, chief of student support. Our goal for the summer month is to keep our students engaged by providing access to instruction and enrichment opportunities, including our multilingual learners and students with disabilities. At this point, I'll turn it over to doctor Tavares.

Good evening. Thank you, superintendent Skipper, Madam Chair, and School Committee members for the opportunity to share the learning our over 14,000 students experienced during fifth quarter next level summer. This work reflects collaboration. Across divisions, our city partners, and our families, together, we ensured that summer was both joyful and an opportunity for growth and achievement. This summer's progress represents the all hands on deck approach across BPS' three divisions and the city.

School committee members, you're in for a treat. Our team is going to share the gains and areas of growth that continue to propel us to improve programming for our students in the summer. And yes, we are already gearing up for next summer. We are so proud of the work that the team has led. And now I am pleased and honored to hand things over to Chief Magali Sanchez, leading the change for summer learning and who, along with our esteemed colleagues, will share summer highlights. Thank you.

Good evening. Thank you, doctor doctor Tavares. Good evening, madam chair, members of the Boston School Committee. It's an honor to be here this evening in front of all of you to share a little bit about our summer next level summer. As superintendent Skipper mentioned, today we are joined by a plethora of our chiefs from our district in service to all of our students.

And I'd like to take this opportunity to also introduce our AFCA expanded learning opportunities team who's here with us tonight, which include Francisca Borders, Jewel Perry, Talbot, Ayanna Spencer, they're sitting over to my left, Eli, as well as our executive director, David Martinez, deputy director, doc Elizabeth Arra who all lead fifth quarter summer learning in service to all of our BPS students. It is no lie that it truly takes a village to implement our fifth quarter programming because it is really an extension of the learning our students have during our years within the regular school year. In addition, as you heard earlier today, you'll have the opportunity to hear from Chief Seal as well as Chief McCarthy and Chief Gamere that's with us today. Our Deputy Director, Lauren Viviani from our Specialized Services, Alicia Scott, as well as Felicia Saunders is also here to answer any questions in regards to our Exam School Initiative programming, which we'll share some information about. This summer showed us a very strong demand for many programs and the need to expand access amongst our most popular programs.

Some of our programs did have some waiting lists. You'll notice within the information provided that we offer two forty one programs citywide reaching, as shared earlier, over 14,000 students. And these programs included credit recovery, summer learning academies, both within our schools as well as with our partnerships with our community organizations and also our programs with Exam School Initiative and our expanded school year programming for all of our students. The program outreach was pretty incredible and we ensured that this was culturally and linguistically applied for our students so that our families were able to access. Thank you for the recommendation of last year of having us provide the programs in a thematic way so that our families can access these programming opportunities which they give us a lot of positive feedback for.

Thank you for that. In addition, I'm supposed to be moving the slides. I also would like to share that we clearly understood the importance of summer learning while maintaining fun and enrichment activities for all of our students. This meant that it was a call for us to proudly expand our offerings combining academics with arts, STEM, sports, as well as hands on experiences. The impact was a rich portfolio that met the diverse needs and highlights the vibrancy of the Boston neighborhoods using our amazing city for their classroom.

Like to talk a little bit about our shared decision making and communications and how our families asked us to make summer learning easier to navigate against. I shared earlier that we made these slow down available in multiple languages, the programs. In addition, we launched newsletters, built parent friendly and again culturally, linguistically, responsive website as well as a multi lingual parent square messages that offered in person multi lingual registration for our families. We wanted to ensure that all of our Boston families had access and that they were able to participate in our summer program and so we did that by a multitude of ways for them to register. In addition to that, I'd like to also share that we recognize that smoother operations as well as staff support were really critical for growth as we learned from 2024.

And so this summer we expanded leadership roles aligned to our regional model. We streamlined our hiring processes. We provided biweekly cross functional professional development for all fifth quarter site coordinators. As a result, this step created a more inclusive student experience with more than three sixty students qualifying for extended school year programming participating in our fifth quarter programming. Now I'll talk a little bit about our enrollment trends.

Last year, we showed a steady demand for summer learning which with more than 7,600 students engaged in fifth quarter programs. This year enrollment held steady but the story shifted. Over 50% of pre k through fifth grade students joined, an increase from approximately 47% last year. Students had the opportunity in credit recovery to access and I think earlier we were talking about access for students and multiple opportunities for them to gain their graduation requirements that they need in order to cross the stage. And so during the summer, we provide this opportunity via our middle school and credit and high school credit recovery programs.

This summer we had a total of seventeen oh two students participating credit recovery, which resulted in 83% of credits successfully being earned. There was an attempt of 4,861 credits of which 4,046 credits were attained by all of our students participating in high school credit recovery. In terms of equity and access, we wanted to ensure that in regards to credit recovery, we were reaching all students, especially the most neediest of populations. This year's participation reflects some meaningful progress towards equitable access and participation, which include 53 of our students identified as Latinx, 37% of our black students, and 82% of our economically disadvantaged students. Their participation in credit recovery was due to the intentional outreach as shared earlier from our family liaisons and our cross collaborative work ensuring that our students have every opportunity to attain the credits that they need to graduate.

In terms of our credit recovery attendance, I'd like to share a little bit about a shift that we did do in terms of our operational way that we actually gain attendance. And so last summer, attendance was recorded using a default system that marked all students present unless noted otherwise. This process is known as a negative attendance process. This year we decided to implement a full attendance process or system which actually requires our teachers and educators to record the actual attendance of students that are in front of them daily. As a result, this provides us more accurate attendance on a daily basis And it lets us know who other students that we need to engage with those conversations when they're not showing up to programming.

Overall, attendance this summer reached 79%. And our Asian, black, white and former English learners students surpassed this rate as well. In terms of enrollment, equity and access in our summer learning academies, our summer learning academies closely reflected the district's diversity. This year we saw strong representation from our black students including 34% as well as representation from my multilingual learners for a total of forty percent with nineteen percent of participants identified as disability, with disabilities compared to twenty three percent district wide. And in terms of our summer learning academy attendance, we improved systems this year to ensure that we increase our attendance.

We did have an average of about seventy five percent with high schoolers, Asian students, and former English learners reaching seventy nine to eighty two percent. This summer I'm excited to share that we did have the opportunity to serve two twenty eight students within our Exam School Initiative programming, of which twelve percent of these students identified as students with disabilities and eleven percent identified as multilingual learners. These were critical increases from prior years. The impact of this was more inclusive pathways that welcome diverse students within these rigorous learning opportunities in order to provide them with access to advanced learning. In terms of other gains within our Exam School initiative, student engagement in these advanced learning programs varied widely in the past.

This year our attendance grew significantly with our black students by six points, Latinx by 15 points, and our multilingual learners by 11 points. This paired with a notable gains in math and literacy as measured by the outcomes from the program. In addition, we targeted students providing them with social emotional learning supports and partnered with the Museum of Science across all of our fifth quarter programming in order to ensure that they had opportunity for advanced learning and vigorous joyful learning opportunities. With that, I am very excited to pass it over to Chief Seale who will talk a little bit about our extended school year programming. Chief Seale.

Good evening, and thank you Chief Sanchez. Madam Chair, members of the school committee, I'm honored to present the outcomes of our specialized programs for the summer, which we refer to as extended school year services, ESY. I think most of you understand that those are services that are mandated by our students' IEPs, and it's through that process we identify the level of services that our students need. I'd like to also give a shout out to some of my staff who actually were hands on in our classrooms, in our schools, across the district, in all of our sites who led this work. Our Deputy Superintendent Chief, Doctor.

Lauren Viviani, who's here today, and Alicia Scott, our Director of Expanded Learning, and also the host of our ESY services like our senior advisors, our assistant directors for special education, our special education teachers, our specialists, our support staff, but most importantly our families who really supported this each and every step of the As you know, the purpose of ESY is really for us to provide a range of mandated IEP services for our students, and through the summer we provide not just educational services, but behavioral, social, emotional, and therapeutic services for our students as well, as outlined by their IEPs. These services are essential to accelerate students' learning outcomes as we focus on maintaining critical skills to prevent regression, and also focusing on their goals. We ensured that our instruction was targeted. Also, we provided enrichment activities for our students to accelerate their learning, as well as to assist them with their transition back to school, where they were able to learn the prerequisite skills, and ultimately, leaning and helping our students to learn meaningful educational progress. As we look at our students and we look at our family engagement, I think I really want to recognize the GROWS.

This summer, we had over 3,400 families who expressed interest in participating across 13 sites, ESY sites. That was a record enrollment for us, and we achieved a substantial increase in student participation servicing over 2,551 students, which is a growth of 500. Am I on? There we go. Which is a growth of over 500 students over the previous year.

This expansion really reaches and shows us our commitments in servicing a greater number of our students, but also making sure that our students continue to learn throughout the summer. We also had strong community connections as we focus on engagement and translations in terms of how we action up in terms of providing open houses families to engage them so that they had an understanding of what their children were going to have experienced through the summer. We had over 300 families in various locations across the city as we start up the program. And I also want to give a shout out to Fifth Quarter because with Fifth Quarter, we really rocked it with inclusion this summer. We really advanced inclusion opportunities for our students and IEPs, and they were with their peers, and they had some amazing learning objects, but also stayed fun.

And that was really exciting for our kids to go into the sites and see the things that they had the opportunity to learn, but not only just learn, but actually do. Can you go to the next slide, please? Thank you. When we think about our excellence and we think about our programs, in terms of what we did in terms of really creating engaging, interesting learning opportunities for our students, we really focused on developing in terms of programs based on competencies, but also based on excellence. We had a high impact enrichment pre vocational career opportunities for our students by Einstein.

When you visit some of our sites, our students were hands on working on global warning problem solving activities. One of our sites, our students were working on creating community in terms of looking at global warnings, in terms of what do you need to do if there's a flood. And it was really interesting to see how they had created that environment to make sure that there was safety. We also did minis in terms of missions, in terms of the pet therapy sessions. We did Arc Fest over transformative arts, which focused on data that boosted creativity, literacy, as well as SEL.

Think she's done. Yeah. Okay. Excuse me. And also, what was really important is the fact that not only did we focus on the academic, we also focused on the SEL for our students. We recognized that there need to be training for our staff in terms of their readiness, and we were able to achieve 98% of compliance with safety care training standards

for

our students. And what that means is that we really worked on making sure that our our staff were trained in de escalation and also providing, support for our students in terms of behavioral supports. We also focused on what we did in terms of expansion with our curriculum. We launched a new ASY curriculum, which was a website based curriculum for our educators to streamline access and also making sure that some of our students had access to technology tools. Our STRiVE program at Madison Park was amazing.

If you hadn't had a chance to see the program, to see our students working with carpentry, we had the hut where our students had customer service and workplace readiness. We also had a bakery program for our students. What was really also awesome was the fact that our students also were doing bike repairs for other students in Our students also had opportunities to work in facilities in terms of alongside our trained staff and supporting a range of maintenance projects in the district, including painting and other building improvement tasks. Our students were hands on, doing the work, learning, and having fun. Me, also partnered with transition students.

Slow down. Okay, sorry. We also partnered with our transition students from East Boston High School who supported our classrooms by creating instructional materials because some of our need visuals, they need hands on, they need manipulatives, and our own students were involved in creating these materials for our students. And they themselves also gained valuable vocational experiences throughout their learning. So overall, we really were excited about this summer, and we know that our students had an amazing summer.

The successes were evident. Our students' learning was positive beyond ESY to involve a range of inclusion opportunities with their peers. And as you hear tonight, our students were given amazing opportunities to engage learning and recreational activities in their community where they live. And it's a pleasure for me now to pass it on to my colleague, Chief Joelle Gamere, who will share the work of the Office of Multicultural Multilingual Learning.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief Seale. Good evening, members of the school committee and madam chair. I definitely want to thank our and give a shout out to our supplemental services manager, Rachel Chen, who's done an amazing job in organizing and working with our friends from AFCA in fifth quarter, and the multiple staff members who worked really hard and diligently to provide a really robust summer for our students. I'd like to take a moment to highlight the impact of the Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education during the 2025. This past summer, our fifth quarter program served 2,933 multilingual learners, up from 2,722 last year.

Of that total, OM led 48 programs, including 27 summer learning academies and 21 credit recovery programs. These programs were located in key Boston neighborhoods, ensuring that students had access to great opportunities close to home. Participation in OHM led programs grew from fourteen forty five students last year to nineteen nineteen this year, a clear sign of our continued growth and impact. This steady increase reflects our department's deep commitment to expanding access and creating summer experiences that not only help prevent learning loss, but also give our multilingual learners meaningful opportunities to strengthen their language skills, celebrate their cultural identities, and stay connected to joyful, engaging learning opportunities. Our outcomes this summer speak to both student achievement and program quality.

The attendance rate was seventy five percent for our current multilingual learners and eighty two percent for our former multilingual learners. Among the eight seventy four students who took part in the credit recovery courses, eighty one percent of them, meaning 708 students, successfully completed their courses. We also strengthened our summer staffing pool. Nearly sixty percent of the OHM summer hires reported proficiency in a language other than English, helping us to ensure that our staff could connect with students and families linguistically and culturally responsive ways. The top languages represented amongst our staff were Spanish, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, Mandarin Cantonese, French, and Portuguese.

Program quality was also affirmed through APT assessments, where our programs earned good and excellent from our participants. And finally, our center was student voice. In our surveys, seventy five percent of our students reported feeling highly engaged, supported, and connected to positive adult relationships. OM is committed to providing high quality, inclusive summer learning experiences in collaboration with our other departments that truly meet the needs of our multilingual learners academically, linguistically, and socially. And now I will pass it to my colleague, chief Cory McCarthy from the Office of Student Support.

Thank you.

Realize I'm on the clock here. Thank you, Chief Gamir. Members of the school committee, thank you for sticking with us tonight. You know, the work is felt and the work this summer was felt within the community, within the hard work that folks in BPS collaborated on to create quality experiences for our young people. You know, I'd like to thank our staff.

This summer, we had our nurses collaborating with our programs. We had our social workers, super active. Our young people, as you could tell, this probably two thirds of the work we were able to do. We were able to put students in cars. We were able to work with the Juice Foundation, with Jaylen Brown to get students to MIT to learn STEM.

Among other things, we were able to play some golf. We were able to have a all boys and all girls STEM specific program, which was grounded in mentoring. We were able to support 300 young women and bring them to Emmanuel College, where they can have a holistic, and athletic, and physical approach to really improving the things that they needed to do. We also explored trades. We had a wonderful trading program where students were able to learn how to be content creators, learn how to do real estate, learn how to explore and build their own brand as entrepreneurs.

We were also able to make sure that our young people played sports. I think the beauty of what we were able to offer this summer was from the day school got out, the next day we began. And we went for ten weeks straight, providing opportunities for young people to get in spaces that they otherwise would not be able to go. This means justice and court involved students. This means students who students with disabilities, students who are multilingual.

We provided an inclusive environment with the support of Fifth Quarter and the help of our colleagues for our young people and our families who showed up. We were super inclusive. We continued our Sunday program throughout the summer. Sunday wellness, we fed families, we supported them academically, we provided a space that was holistic and inclusive of our families. And you know, the data is there, but I invite everyone, especially our wonderful members of the school committee, to sort of see what we have done this summer, but also it has carried over to the fall.

So many of these programs will continue at the request of the families, and we remain student centered and adult adjacent, no offense. But I think one of the final things that we really pushed out this summer was to start our My Brother's Health and My Sister's Health mental health supports. We were able to get students tele behavioral health, students who were struggling, students who didn't know whether or not school was their thing, and we partnered that with a reconnection program and initiative, where we reached out to students who discontinued school and brought them back, and sort of say, hey, here's this opportunity. You defaulted on one pathway, but here's eight more. And I think that speaks to the amount of effort, the amount of commitment, the amount of kindness that we have as a district, and that level of connection that we have built with our families that allowed them to really, really feel comfortable with the work that we're doing and the work that we're going to carry forward.

So yes, we have a high level of participation, we had a high level of activity and community engagement and involvement, but more importantly, young people were very happy. The feedback was amazing and we hope to continue such initiatives with the help of Fifth Quarter and the support of our colleagues. Thank you.

Thank you so much chief McCarthy and to the entire team. Now I have the opportunity to talk a little bit about looking ahead before I close with a fantastic video that our team put together. So what we have definitely learned over the last couple of summers is that collaboration, inclusion, and the joy of learning is what are key and what makes our summers very successful. As a result, we understand that there's a clear roadmap to summer twenty twenty six. Some of our goals are around ensuring that we're expanding access to high quality diverse programs as measured by our SAIL data you heard earlier, as well as our up till data.

Strengthening the implementation and alignment of our high quality instructional materials and better figuring how to use these materials and curriculums to share what our student outcomes are, right, in measuring those. And the alignment is really critical because we provide such diverse programmings that many of our programs have the opportunity to have autonomy within the curriculums that they use. And that's oftentimes what makes it really difficult to measure student outcomes, but we're getting there. We also are gonna ensure that we continue broadening inclusive opportunities for all of our students. It's a pleasure to have all of our students enrolling in our fifth quarter programming with their peers.

That's our goal and that's what should be happening, more inclusive opportunities for our kiddos. And also improving our student attendance. Now that we are actually taking utilizing the negative attendance. It helps us really understand who's attending, who is not attending. We can then knock on those doors with our collaboration with student support, ensuring that our students are showing up to our programming.

Right? And providing them with with access to culturally and linguistically appropriate curriculum so that they're able to access this fun learning as well as in an enrichment environment for them. Now I have the opportunity to show you a video, and then we'll also be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you so much. Thank

you for this presentation and it's great to see all the data, particularly around the attendance and the increases that we've seen from 2024 to 2025. So, commendable job from the entire team on that, first and foremost. I just have a few questions. One, I think in like in the future I would love to see some of the participation demographics also break out our all ed students as part of that is participating in summer programming just so that we're making sure that we're tracking their role and their contributions to summer program and how they're accessing that as well. But my first question is really do we know how many students that particularly I'm talking about credit recovery.

How many of those students that are engaged in credit recovery move to a place of not requiring credit recovery like in the future? So how are we ensuring that our students are getting to a point being like on pace with their performance during the academic year?

Yeah, sure. Thank you for that question. That's currently not a data point that we measure, but it's one that it will be that we definitely can for sure. When we think about credit recovery, our our main goal is I think we said earlier that we try to provide as many opportunities as possible for our students, right, to access the credits that they need in order to graduate. And so our summer credit recovery is one opportunity, but we have opportunities after school, before school, during the springtime as well across all of our programming. But it's definitely a data point that we can definitely share and return back so that that way you'll have that.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

And and actually a follow-up to what we're seeing in terms of the participation. I'm I'm wondering if if I put myself in the shoes of a student, I've now undergone this wonderful series of summer programs. What plans do I leave with as a student going back into the academic year? So, the staffing staffing that's that's there, there, is there a comprehensive plan for students as they migrate back into the academic year so that we're ensuring that the support that they receive during the summer seems to be consistent and that there's plans in place so that again like they may not necessarily need the same level of supports during the following year.

Sure. Yeah. And I would venture to say that during our high school credit recovery, we make a strong attempt to ensure that we're aligning the programming to the needs of the students and where they go to school, right? Sorry, can you hear

me? Okay, It'll come

here it is. Many of our schools have diverse graduation requirements in addition to our course, right? And so what we definitely have committed to and we will definitely wanna do more is ensuring that our students have access to those diverse opportunities and to the courses that they need. But that part about a very clear plan becomes more personalized at the school level. And it's definitely something that I can again also circle back with as well to better understand how do our schools actually do that across all of our high schools.

I would venture to say that it's not gonna be one exact plan for every single student, but just the thought, right, that there is a personalized plan so that one, they don't come back to that even though that's an opportunity for them, which is I think where I hear you going.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. And then my my last question is looking at the Exam School Initiative participation. Do we know the correlation between students engaged in the Exam School Initiative and the invitation rates?

Oh, that's a great question. I know that I have Alicia Saunders with us this evening here. Oh there you are. Okay did you want to come on up?

Sure, yeah. What was the question?

It was just related to understanding the correlation between participation in the exam school initiative and the invitation rates that different demographics will receive?

Yeah, there's actually a formula that you use. So, what happens at the very beginning of us thinking about getting kids registered for the exam school initiative is that each school based on their OI score has a specific number of students they can nominate to attend the Exam School Initiative program. And so that's sort of our first level of getting kids involved. There's also a strategy that we use that central office where we send out invitations centrally to students who are not nominated by the schools who else fit the criteria. So, that's usually the correlation of how we choose or how students actually get registered for the ESI program.

So, I think I'm asking about understanding the participation within the exam school initiative and how that correlates to them receiving an invitation rate when they apply to an exam school. Do we do we track that at

all? No. Okay.

So if we looked at last year's students that participated in ESI, what percent of them would have gotten the invite? So that's data that we can

We definitely can get that data. Yeah.

Yeah. No. Yes. But thank you. Thank you.

You're very welcome.

Sorry. I just your first two questions are just sticking with me on the high school one. When we ran this initially, it was like about forty percent of the students return to have to, again, take credit. The difficulty is seniors wouldn't would be excluded. And we actually have seventh and eighth graders now. So this but but I actually want this data point. Yeah. So you asked it you asked a a really good question. So because I I do think it's important for us, particularly, to do it by subject. Mhmm.

So if if they have failed math the previous year and taken credit recovery, do they in fact, through student support and tutoring back at the school, are they then able to not have to go the following year? So I think we need to break it down by subject.

And it is critical to know that the presentation that you all saw this evening was absolutely influenced by the questions that you asked us last year. So we're meticulously taking notes because you will be influencing next year's presentation.

I it. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you, madam chair.

I'd like to congratulate you. Congratulate you all because of the excellent job and work you did this summer. I had the opportunity to have the conversation with you and I know that it is not only the work that had to do with everything that you did, but heart and the intention that you put into what you did. Thank you very much for doing that with your heart as well. So we have to look at the screen right here at the slide where it's highlighted the increase of this particular population

that Number 19.

Number 19. Has to be celebrated. That metric has to be celebrated. There was an increase there, a reason to celebrate. So you have to consider that we are incorporating the native language in this particular program and we have to celebrate as well the level of satisfaction that these newcomers have when they go into these programs, whether their language and their culture is celebrated so they live with that memories of being welcomed in that particular population that never had this program before.

So I think of a program, maybe we can have their grandfathers or grandmothers to read stories from their own countries to them. Maybe we can think about something like that. In their own language, tell them about stories in their own language where they grew in order to keep that culture and that heritage alive all the time. We have imagined different scenarios here. We have talked about different scenarios, but imagine how a student will feel.

How would they feel when they have a person speaking in their own language, talking about their own culture? Imagine that great feeling that they will have. So I just wanted to share with you that humble advice that I'm giving you in order to be able to implement this next year. I do know for a fact that there will be many volunteers, people willing to come and read for the students. People will show up for this.

It is a great cause. Grandfathers and grandmothers also, I'm thinking about it, they can teach them how to play domino as well.

Dominican pastime, y'all. Pastime.

Thank you. Thank for

the presentation and congratulations on a successful summer of course. I guess first question, do students who attend a summer program show measurable improvement in literacy or math upon returning to school?

Yeah. So we're working towards that. I think earlier I mentioned that many of our programs have the opportunity to have like diverse oh, they have a lot of autonomy with the curriculums that they implement. Many of the programs that you heard about this evening also have we partner with community based organizations and they have their main visions and their goals in terms of what they offer. And so we are working towards consistent curriculum and programming so that that way we're able to better measure our student outcomes and identify how we're gonna measure those student outcomes.

But first we need to ensure that there's consistency around the academic programming, right? So that we're able to come with some level of consistency around what the outcomes look like.

And has there even been an effort just without all of that done looking at map assessment data from the beginning of the school year comparing it to the end of the year?

Thank you for that. That is an effort that we have discussed with our partners from ODA. And it is something that we are looking at how we can best measure it to ensure that there's accuracy in terms of the data that we're presenting. And so to answer your question, yes, there has definitely been an effort. And we have been thinking about ways that we're able to do to ensure that there's accuracy in what's presented.

And do you know what our per student cost of summer learning is?

I mean it's going to depend program to program.

Or

even just on, you know, like the average per student spend for summer programming.

Yeah, I can definitely get that for you, member credit Hernandez, because we actually have totality of budgeting across all of the different programs. And it really would depend to the superintendent's point program to program. So I can break it down by program.

Or even an average. There at some point, you know, all of it together is like an on average we spend x

for a student during the summer.

The only thing I wanted to add is for those of us who have collected data and understand research, one of the things that makes this a beautiful challenge is that there is diversity in program. That's great. We have diversity in program. In order to measure, you have to have commonality to do the measurement. So it's definitely something we are constantly thinking about, not just a little bit, but a lot of it. Because we do want to measure the impact to students ultimately.

Yeah. It's a I don't you do I guess you would there could be some commonality. But at the end of the day, we're a mission focused organization. And that mission is on kids' outcomes. Right? We're talking about, you know, a third of Boston students are reading or doing math on grade level. I mean, you look at black and Latino students, and then you're talking about one in five. So, like, there is an urgency. I hear I get really excited when I hear half of all pre k to fifth graders attended summer programming. Yeah.

And at the same time, I think one in five of our kids pre k to fifth grade are reading on grade black and Latino students are reading on grade level. There's like an adjustment maybe in our thinking. Like, I'm super excited about kids just participating. But there is like an adjustment in how we're thinking about the mission. I could care.

I love that a lot of kids did it. But what I really am here for, well, I'm not having dinner with my son, is because I care about kid closing the achievement gap. And so I'm like, I want to hold joy. And I know everyone worked really hard. But I think there needs some feet to the fire that if we're investing this type of money in summer programming, we have to be talking about kid outcomes as a result of that program. There's another organization in the city who could run joyful programs during the summer. Like we have a mission to close achievement gaps. And so I don't know how we get there.

So I think that the vision of summer in BPS has evolved over decades. There used to be where summer school was where when you didn't reach particular benchmarks in academics. However, participation was very, very low. And I think post pandemic especially, the goal has really been to get kids engaged in a way that they feel connected, valued. Instance, in ESY where it is part of their IEP, they're moving toward their IEP goals.

Right? So it wouldn't necessarily be a benchmark of English and math, but it would be that. But some of it is getting the kids to just feel reattached and to work on socialization, particularly for our multilingual learners and our newcomers especially. It's about coming in and being able to understand language at basics, being able to have different kinds of experiences. So each program sort of has different sets of goals that it's trying to achieve.

In the case of fifth quarter, courageous sailing is a great example. That is one where kids are learning to sail, but they're not spending a lot of time on English and math. So I think it's the type of thing where it is this kind of trade off of and this would be good for the committee to also give us feedback on. But if the committee is seeing this as something that as money becomes and budget becomes tighter, because many of these summer programs were funded out of ESSER, and we now have to fold them into the budget, And it's to be more strictly academic. That's a different way to evolve summer programming.

If the goal is to be able to give students continuity where, and for many of our kids this is really important, they stay attached to the adults that they have relationships with, the schools that they're familiar with in the spaces, and from a food security, home, you know, housing stability. If those things are important, then we it's important to us to offer programs that kids will enjoy and that they wanna be a part of. So there's I think that there's some value things that we have to kind of talk through together. But as it stands right now with the collection of programs, I think that Anna and Magali are presenting, they have such different missions that it's very hard. Although your question is a great one, it's very hard to pull it all apart and say, did they do better in English?

Did they do better in math?

I guess there's like an ROI that I'm looking for that I think, like as a body, has to be part of everything we're talking about. So you're right. There are programs with different missions, and it may not be it may be focus on socialization. But then we have to be measuring if it did that so we can decide if we need to return to that investment again year over year or if not. An easy one for me when you have half of all pre K to fifth graders given the urgency I feel around it is like, yeah, it's a summer of major most of our kids need reading intervention And so you have this opportunity to do that.

Yes, we could run sailing programs and all the other, but there has to be a goal of what we're spending this money for something. Are we getting that thing from it? Maybe it's reading and math. Maybe it's socialization. But I'm just we've done this a few times and it's like there's just no target other than participants.

So I think the fifth quarter the fifth quarter data is interesting data because fifth quarter as you know has been around Boston after school and beyond has been around for twenty years. And they produce data that shows like very clearly students that engage in fifth quarter programming come back to school and they report feeling having higher attendance, generally getting higher grades, feeling socially connected. Like, they do that survey data very deeply. And so that is, like, all available. And that's a large portion of our programming.

I think credit recovery sort of speaks to credit recovery in that it's 80% of the kids are getting their credit. To Doctor. Algon's point, I think what we want to know is, is that kind of like, Okay, great. They got it for that year, then are they coming back? Or is that something that's allowing them to progress enough that they continue? We would just have to think about, for some of the other programs, how we would potentially measure that. For instance, our newcomers and our multilingual learners, what specifically like we saw huge bumps in access, which we'll hear about later on. Is that cross correlated? And

does it lead to in the next presentation, we're going to talk about chronic absenteeism. Half of our high school students are chronically absent. Does this if we're talking about connection, I love that you have a connection over the summer, but are you coming back to school? And is your attendance increasing? There's just a bunch of data points we could be thinking about that we talked about last year that I'd love to see us doing.

Mostly because you're right, the budget is going to this will be one of our budget choices as the budget and I know we hate talking about this. But like this will be one of the things on the table. The only way to really assess its value is to know its value more than just participation. So something for us to think about.

Thank you.

Want to echo my colleagues just celebration of a positive summer wearing my hat as a school committee member and as a parent. It's wonderful, the rich assortment of options for families. Just a question on the 14,000 students served. Is that an equation of SLA plus credit recovery plus ESY plus synergy equals That's 14

correct, yes.

Okay.

That's correct.

And I also just did want to applaud the enrollment being really reflective and representative of our student body, particularly for historically marginalized communities. There's a lot of evenness there, which is very exciting. I want to build on member Cardenas' push to move from inputs to outcomes. These are very different programs, but there are measures that can be attached to the school year for each one. They might not be the same and I don't actually think they need the same curriculum to assess outcomes, particularly if we look past the summer and into the school year.

I think for the summer end of end of experience measure, it might be difficult from program to program, but our students are to your point, all engaging in the same types of assessments and expectations when they go back, whether it's average daily attendance, access testing, MAP, or MCAS. And so I am surprised by the disconnect between the inputs of the summer and tracking students especially now that we have so much data on them. We know exactly who they are. So how is their attendance compared to last year? How is their student growth compared to last year?

If we find out that summer is a game changer just by sailing, which I think it could be. I don't I don't think we're necessarily saying everything has to be exactly like school. Engagement and that fun can prevent learning loss too. If that's the game changer, then the goal is to double the 14,000, right? If there's a marked achievement difference between the two.

So I think that's really important. There are also just some very direct correlations that we should absolutely know the answer to particularly what is the point of exam school initiative. To not know whether they're applying, getting in is surprising. So I would also say for the course credits, just building on Doctor. Elkins point, we could know whether the seniors are graduating in four years or, you know, we can tie that to graduation rate of of course participation.

I think there's a way to define a measure for every type of these awesome programs and that we should work to do that for this past summer's data because it could inform those tough decisions we have to make soon.

First of all, kudos to all of you. I think it's a commendable job. Just for my edification, it's a very quick question. The credit recovery program, Here, the overall is seventy nine percent. Am I allowed to be safe in assuming that the twenty one percent that did not finish the credit recovery will repeat the same class again the next year?

Is how it works? To follow-up on that question, what were or what are the kind of activities or task or deeds or whatever that you that you or we would undertake to ensure that those students who somehow didn't make the cut.

Yes. So generally, Memmatron, generally if a student does not pass a credit recovery course, that gets reported back to their school. Mhmm. And then when the schedule is built for that student Mhmm. Depending on how far behind they might be in credit, they're either included so that they retake that course or they're offered an opportunity to take a different type of course that could count for that.

Like if it's another science or another social studies or history class. But the high school will be informed that they did not pass that. Okay. And so then the student will begin another opportunity. We also have students that take, they drop out, they drop from a credit because they drop.

Does it mean?

So, like, Retaking the class. Retaking. Exactly. Taking retaking the class or retaking a credit equivalent to the class.

Mhmm.

So, like, say a student had a job and they just simply could not juggle going to credit recovery and the job and they need to work. In that case, they would have an opportunity in the fall to take credit recovery at their school or at a central site or build into their schedule to be able to make up that credit. But that would be all tracked at the school level. When the school gets the report, as a school leader, you get a report of which students took what and what they passed. And then that gets input before the schedule gets built.

Just a couple of quick comments because, my colleagues have brought up so many great points. First of all, like the rest of colleagues, congratulations on tremendous amount of work to make this happen. I love the full range of programs for so many different of our populations. In particular, whether it's credit recovery, the exam school initiative, students with disabilities, multilingual learners, etcetera. It reminds me of, and by the way I'm assuming when I look at these numbers, we're not including the other initiatives in the city such as the mayor's summer jobs program etcetera that a lot of our high school students participate. Many of which have educational opportunities as well.

That's correct.

That's correct, yes.

So when we look at how many of our students altogether have some type of engagement during the summer. It's a pretty substantial part of our population now. I do, you know, when I think about how this expanded superintendent, you were saying it used to be summer school. Right? And then, now what we're doing and there are learning portions involved but fun portions you can learn different as a sailor. You incorporate a lot of math and science when you're out on the water. There are different ways to learn and it's fun to do it for a period. It reminded me of, it's like the Hippocratic oath that doctors take. First do no harm. Right? And I think the original intent of this was really to stop the summer slide. Is that the right term? Mhmm. Right? That our students would have.

Summer melt.

Yeah. But I also agree that we are a governance body focused on student outcomes. Mhmm. And since you said you're taking notes, meticulous notes about how to adapt for next year. I agree completely with our colleagues, particularly as we move into difficult budget decisions without the SR funding.

Having the knowledge of what the outcomes are, and is it helping our students increase student achievement? That is our focus. And when it comes to making those difficult decisions, we're gonna have to prioritize those programs that are helping with the achievement. Mhmm. So the more we can build learning into programs, coordinate across programs to benchmarks, measure, and be able to report and compare, so we can learn and prioritize.

That's great. None of those comments are taken away, because this is our suggestions I think for how to continue to improve. But this year was excellent work and I wanted to make sure that end my comments by thanking you for that excellent work.

Thank you.

I applaud all of this work. This is amazing. I have a couple of questions similar to others. We had almost 15,000 students participate. How many could we have had participate this summer if everything was fully do we have a particular number that we were?

We were very hyper focused on increasing diversity and access for students.

And

listening to all of you give us feedback is really critical around making sure we maintain the criteria for what are the areas that we need to focus on programming for next year. Mhmm. And one of them that we heard very clearly from this body last year was really thinking about accessibility across all communities in Boston and across all of our students. And I feel like in that way, we hit that mark and now we have other marks to hit.

I guess my other question is always, were there students that we wish had been in programming who never signed up? Or did we, at a school level, reach out to families of children who we already knew were struggling to help them to encourage them to specifically sign up or sign up for a specific kind of program?

Yes. Thank you for that question, Madam Chair. That's excellent. We absolutely did. Our family liaisons worked really hard communicating and connecting with all of our families in languages that they understand, explaining the programming. In addition to that, we also had in person registrations for our families. We had localized registrations as well. So these all things that we didn't do before, but we heard it loud and clear that they were access points for our families. We also ensured that of course families had the opportunity to learn about the programming in a thematic way. The website was translated in multitude of languages.

I think one of the most the best feedback that we received from our families was the in person support because many of our families wanted that personal connection. So shout out to our helpline team who supported all of our families when they came in to register. We think that that's what really increased. Of course, we always could do better. If it were up to me, all 47,000 students would be in summer and then we'd be talking about a very different budget. So

Keep that in mind, y'all. Keep that in mind.

So keep pushing me in terms of the numbers and those are goals that I'm very happy to set along with clearly understanding that we have to make sure that our outcomes for our students are there. And so we're committed to working really hard with our ODA department to pulling that data and that information so that that way you all as a body can make really clear informed decisions as well. But our goal is always to student attendance because we know how critical these opportunities are for all of our students.

And the only thing I would add is that when we use the term the helpline department was highly involved. Family liaisons were highly involved. The emphasis around language is critical and key to, you know, school committee member Buenaco Garcia's point. We were consistently targeting the top eight highest frequency languages across our system. And that's huge. And that was a purposeful and very clear and intentional form of attracting our families that Chief Sanchez really led.

There's also, we didn't ask it, but there were roughly, well, there was over 10,000 students that were in jobs at the high school level. And we also tried to accommodate as much as possible those that were in jobs to do credit recovery by having different session options for them, which had always been a tension point in the past. And there was a high priority for and there will be going forward. But for students who are homeless, or multilingual learners, or special education, most vulnerable of students, that they would be given priority and be able to get seats in the programs.

That's correct. We prioritize those four groups mainly.

I know we don't have time to talk about it tonight, but one of the other things I am interested in finding out more about the Exam School Initiative that I know we're using with fifth and sixth graders, I have a question of why not go down to fourth grade because I'm really just thinking about the parent engagement over several summers to look at this issue of do we get more kids whose grades improve over the year and other test taking skills so that we are giving them some of that enrichment that some of our other students can get on their own but are not necessarily baked into every family's pieces. And I'm hoping that there's more ways that we can both engage families and also help them to understand the enormous cost to this gift to families in terms of we know if we were going out to put our kid in camp for two weeks with that cost. And there's a lot of investment here. And I know we don't charge our families anything. And sometimes people don't always take it as seriously as they might if they were investing.

But I feel like we really need to help people to understand what that class cost. And that that was an enormous gift and sacrifice of some other things in our budget to do that. I think we need it particularly when we know it's going to get harder to do this because people are all very eager to tell us we should be doing more and more and more without understanding are we fully taking advantage of what we're already giving. And if they're not, why not? So that we're not wasting dollars when we have to make these critical choices.

I think this point about the fourth grade with ESI is a good one. And I think as we've talked about the exam school potential policy change, part of that outreach has to be to our multilingual learner families, to our special education families, as well as to reach down as early as possible relative to the fourth grade. And I think that was part of including the data, was to show that we definitely had a broader, more diverse group attending ESI this year than in the past.

If

there's nothing else tonight, again, thank you all for this. Thank you.

Thank Thank you. Okay.

And another one.

And our last. All right. Our last report tonight is the 2025 State Assessment and Accountability Results Update. Let's aim to keep the presentation within fifteen minutes and Superintendent O'Gannon like you to give introductory remarks.

Sure. Thank you, chair. So last week on September 29, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education or DESE released the 2025 accountability results for schools and districts across the state and the s y 2425 Massachusetts comprehensive assessment system data or MCAS. As a reminder, students in grades three through eight and grade 10 took the MCAS in the 2025 in ELA math and science. We're joined tonight by senior executive director of the office of data and accountability, April Clarkson, as well as doctor Angela Hadley Mitchell, who you heard from earlier, and Joel Gamere, who is here for her own.

I'm pleased to share that the district is moving in the right direction. Boston's data shows encouraging progress in literacy for grades three through eight, with more students meeting or exceeding expectations in both math and ELA or English language arts across nearly all student groups. For grade 10, ELA and math remain focus areas for continued focus. According to our analysis, Boston outperformed districts across Massachusetts and other large cities in the Commonwealth. Although MCAS is no longer a graduation requirement, we are supporting our families and school communities in helping students understand the value of the exam as one measure of their learning and readiness.

These results indicate that our targeted investments and support are yielding positive outcomes across our schools. Overall, in the state's accountability system, the district was deemed to be making moderate progress toward targets and was not identified as requiring assistance or intervention. Across the district, 52 schools do not require assistance or intervention, while 45 schools are designated as requiring assistance or intervention. This is about the same number of schools designated as needing assistance or intervention as in 2024. The district also continued to show great progress in reducing chronic absenteeism over four consecutive years across all subgroups.

BPS met its targets for reducing chronic absenteeism in the non high school grades and exceeded its targets for high school. By reducing the high school chronic absenteeism rate by 2.5 percentage points, BPS exceeded its targets for chronic absenteeism. BPS is making steady progress in critical areas that are contributing to our students' success, including our focus on equitable literacy, support for multilingual learners, and stronger services for students with IEPs or individualized education plans and five zero four plans. We saw some of our best results for English learners who demonstrated strong progress towards attaining English proficiency. At the non high school level, the rate of making progress toward targets increased by three point eight percent to forty eight point four percent, meaning that nearly one in every two English learners demonstrated substantial progress.

At the high school level, the making progress rate is the highest since 2019. At the high school level, this rate increased by more than seven points to 24.9, meaning that one in four high school English learners demonstrated substantial progress. We also saw improvements in science performance in grades five through eight. For the first time, all students in grade eight were required to take the civics MCAS test. Nearly three quarters of students or 73% partially met or exceeded the expectations on the civics exam with a notable achievement gap seen by race with about half of white and Asian students meeting or exceeding expectations compared to 16% of black students and 14% of Latinx students meeting or exceeding expectations.

We had six BPS schools, which were named schools of recognition out of 61 schools statewide, roughly 10%. This is the most we've ever had. These included BLA, BLS, the GRU, New Mission High School, PJ Kennedy, and the former Philbrook Elementary, now part of the Sarah Roberts Elementary School. Schools of recognition are identified by DESE as schools that met or exceeded their targets and high growth. And my mic's working again.

Of the district's 41 transformation schools given accountability percentiles, we had 18 schools improved their accountability percentile and eight remained level. 13 transformation schools have now improved their accountability percentile to 11 or higher. And my team will provide a quarterly transformation schools update at the next school committee on Wednesday, October 29. We are encouraged by the steady progress we're making in reducing chronic absenteeism in grades three and eight math achievement. And will continue to focus on English language and math proficiency at the high school level.

Teams worked hard to implement strong systems across BPS this past year, past several years. The data shows us this is important work ahead of us to improve student achievement. At this point, I will turn it over to our illustrious panel for presentation, and then we'll entertain questions. So, April?

Thank you, superintendent. Good evening, chair Robinson and school committee members. The slide deck that I will share with you tonight encompasses the analysis of the twenty twenty five MCAS access and accountability data. We look at this data to be to better understand district achievement as it relates to our instructional and programmatic strategies during the 2425 school year. The Massachusetts State Accountability System looks at MCAS achievement and growth, English proficiency, chronic absenteeism, as well as two high school specific domains, high school completion and advanced coursework.

Highlights from this year's performance include a continued reduction in chronic absenteeism for nearly all grade levels and student groups. The English proficiency rates for high school multilingual learners reached a five year high, and overall the district was classified as making moderate progress targets. The state's accountability system classifies schools and districts into two broad categories, requiring assistance, which is demonstrated on the right by being placed into one of those two red categories, or not requiring assistance, which is demonstrated on the left by being placed into one of the five blue categories, the highest of which is a school of recognition. As the superintendent mentioned, we are proud that of the 61 schools announced by DESE last week as schools of recognition, six are from Boston. This is the highest number of schools of recognition in the district in recent history.

As a system, Boston met or exceeded targets in 11 areas. Of particular note are the increases across the board for chronic absenteeism and English learners making progress towards language proficiency. In both cases, we see that non high school grades met their targets. This amounts to a one percentage point decrease in the chronic absenteeism rate for high school students, meaning that fewer than one in four students was chronically absent last year. I will now pass the mic to my colleague, Joelle Gamere, to discuss the strong language acquisition performance for English learners last year.

Thank you, April. Good evening, chair and members of the committee. As you just saw, our multilingual learners met and in many cases exceeded their targets in English language proficiency this year. We believe this success is directly connected to the district's implementation of the inclusive ed plan education plan, which has placed the majority of our multilingual learners in inclusive SCI classrooms. In these classrooms, students learn alongside their peers while receiving the targeted language and academic supports they need to access rigorous grade level content.

Beyond inclusive SEI settings, our multilingual learners also thrive in a variety of language supportive programs, including dual language dual language classrooms, which foster bilingualism and biliteracy transitional bilingual education programs or TBE SLIFE and newcomer programs, which provide culturally and linguistically responsive supports to meet students where they are. Additionally, our strengthened service delivery determination process has helped students or our schools more accurately identify the right level and type of language services for each student. This alignment between program design and student need has been a key driver in improving student outcomes on the access for ELS assessment. As a result, we saw meaningful growth across grade levels with elementary schools increasing their progress rates by nearly four points, as my colleague April has highlighted, and high high school students improving by more than seven points. Altogether, this means that one in four high school multilingual learners made measurable measurable progress towards English language proficiency, a strong indicator that our inclusive, data informed approach is moving in the right direction.

And while we are encouraged by this progress, we are not complacent. We remain deeply committed to refining our practices, strengthening our programs, and ensuring that every multilingual learner continues to make meaningful progress towards full language proficiency and academic success. And now I'm going to pass it to our chief of teaching and learning. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm gonna pass it to April. Back to April. Sorry.